A/N: I was fairly adamant about not wanting to update this fic as a WIP, but since it will reach something of a natural stopping point after a few parts, I decided to start it up; just be warned there will be a hiatus coming up after three chapters, assuming I don't change my mind.

At present this looks to be about the same length as Book I, but we'll see. Book II will complete the main story of ION, but there may be more to come from this continuity after I've finished.

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chapter 1

spock

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1 DAY

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On the day that Jim Kirk's luck ran out, Spock began to lose track of time.

The hours during the four's initial absence felt filled to the brim with empty explanations; it seemed that without the captain's quick manner of insistence, without him at Spock's side, Spock was prone to overcomplicated forms of managing the rest of the crew's role in ensuring it would be possible for him and the other three to return. Even when describing to the members of engineering and assistance who were the most comfortable with transdimensional theory how this was one of thousands upon thousands of unpredictable variables in the lifetime of this part of the universe's ionic irregularity, that they were in the fragile pocket of a rip in reality that would collapse from eager and open to a metal wall of impenetrability for good, even then he felt that he was alone in understanding the precariousness of the situation. He was assured later on that this was only a skewed perception. It did not matter in the end; there was nothing that any of them could have done.

When he was not monitoring the readings in the transporter room himself, he had Chekov stationed there, poised to alert him at the peak opportunity for the transporter transmission to be attempted again. But the problem came from the other side; it was untouchable even as it cracked through the disruption, heavy and fateful but mockingly subtle.

This all began with Spock receiving Chekov's voice over the comm system: "Sir, there is a problem."

Spock was certain when he arrived at the transporter room that there were crew members lingering there for no protocol-abiding reason, but he almost did not notice; he was singularly focused on examining the new readings himself.

"The readings suddenly became...irregular—" Chekov stammered to explain to everyone else in the room, "They have been irregular the whole time, of course, but it was no longer following the same pattern. Before, the dimensions were waving closer to one another in tandem, now..."

It was the rest of the room that needed him to continue; Spock had not looked up from the chart since he first walked in and went right for the first transporter console.

"It is the slightest shift in the pattern, but it will become increasingly rather than less dangerous, for them to..." Chekov shook his head, again and again, unable to tell any of the eyes trained on him what they wanted to hear.

Spock spoke into the comm: "Giotto, begin escorting the four passengers to the transporter room." He then addressed everyone else. "My calculations would be more exact if I was privy to the other universe's readings, but I estimate between a fifteen and twenty percent chance of successful dimensional transportation, assuming the four are attempting it at this time."

"And if they're not?" a quiet ensign asked.

"Their chances will only dwindle." Spock finally uttered the bleak explanation for anyone present who wouldn't specialize in the science of the readings: "We are monitoring irregularities in the warp stream which can only be explained by faint cross-readings received from a nearly identical transporter in the alternate reality, and this data suggests that the functionality of the other transporter has been tampered with."

"You're bringing the others in here...Why, so they can try to take the gamble?" Sulu asked.

"Should we really do that?" Chekov could be quite forward in his most emotional states.

"It is their prerogative to take the risk," Spock replied, but he was still evaluating the factors somewhere underneath the other noise in his mind, and Sulu finally spoke up from where he stood next to Chekov.

"But you're saying that there would have to be a trade-off, one or more of them would have to decide to take the risk and see what happens, and that it's a lot more likely to work if the counterpart is going into the stream at relatively the same time."

"Yes."

"But none of them would do it. Not even Kirk." Sulu interrupted the couple opening mouths, explaining with immediate certainty, "In some other world, somewhere safer, he'd make himself the guinea pig, sure, but think about what their doppelgangers have been like since they got here, what kind of place it must be that they came from. Would he leave the other three to such a hostile world, on their own? I don't think so."

"...I agree with that assessment," Spock realized hollowly. His mouth was open for a second before he managed to comm security and tell them to belay the order to remove the four from the brig. "Also, please inform them in as decent a manner as possible that they will not be returning home."

A vague, slightly sick noise went around the room at the certainty that paralleled what Spock had just said. Sulu sighed. "We could still let the other Kirk take the risk?"

"Are we confident in knowing what Jim would do or are we not?" Spock demanded, though he understood the reach for hope, that Jim may attempt it after all, that someone could be salvaged. "We will not recklessly forfeit any of their lives."

Sulu was already conceding with defeat, "You're right. Just...Jesus," his voice finished in a small astonished mutter.

A long air of stunned silence overtook the transporter room. Yet another member of engineering came walking in, matching the way the rest of the room seemed oddly out of breath, and her face took on a flatness of realization before someone took her by the arm and whispered something to her.

Remembering himself, Spock stepped back to the nearest console and pressed the announcement comm to active.

He did not know how long it was, how much time went by then, before he realized how his voice had caught in his throat and he was leaning over the computer system poised with unworded news, unable to grasp them into speech. He had never in his entire life experienced quite this incapacity to form words. The moment became tangibly rooted when Spock realized Sulu was now next to him, a hand resting on the side of the console after some aborted motion.

Sulu appeared to be exchanging a look with Chekov before he held down the mute on the comm and said, "Listen, I'll do it."

Spock was on his way back to the bridge as the announcement emptied the rest of the ship of any clammering noise, dimming all motion almost to a frozen stop.

"Attention, all crew members..." Sulu hesitated and then left his name out of the announcement, possibly out of hesitation to state his rank. "I regret to inform all of you that after an unforeseeable irregularity in our readings of the transporter functions, I have just been informed that a rescue of the missing away team has been evaluated as a practical impossibility..."

Word had clearly made it to some through private comm systems even faster than official information; Spock's slower than normal pace through one corridor took him by the sight of Nurse Chapel crying tightly into the shoulder of a communications officer. At every turn he was met with the sight of people clutching some proximal sleeve, hands over mouths in shock at what they were hearing.

"Captain James T. Kirk, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, and Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy are as of now permanently missing. The Enterprise will now report to the nearest Starfleet outpost; duties must be carried out at full capacity until then. The crew will be informed of any other pertinent information as it comes. Sulu out."

The situation being one that significantly paralyzed productivity for the next two days of travel, Spock felt it necessary to arrange a meeting for the sole purpose of rank reassignment, as if to gently remind those who now inherited certain responsibilities that they were fully capable of doing them. Perhaps this was some reassurance Spock needed himself, but for the time he found himself in the first of several companionable confrontations with Sulu, who called him out on seeming hesitant.

"None of that is needed," Spock said in mild dismissal, and abruptly added, "but if you feel capable of assuming command for two days, I believe I will require 48 hours off duty." He ignored a rocky surface of bitterness and discomfort with putting an actual number on the emotional process, but it was more than he would have allowed himself in a similar situation years ago.

"Why?" Sulu blinked and then mumbled, "I mean, what should I state as the formal reason?"

"I should think I am in a state of extreme emotional stress and temporarily unfit for duty. Nurse Chapel," he said just as shortly as she was in the vicinity, "I require an evaluation of my mental health as is routinely required in the instance of duty relief, if you could ensure that I am on the roster."

Christine Chapel looked struck, if only in the way one did when they were just barely able to juggle thinking about more than one thing. "Oh. We don't have to do that right away...But I'll have someone let you know."

He nodded and walked away.

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While it was a habit Spock had at first found a bit more lax in decorum than appropriate, Jim had begun shortly into the five-year mission to foster a neighborly area around the living quarters of the ship by leaving the door to his quarters open when he was off duty and requiring no privacy. It had become somewhat customary and unique to the social atmosphere aboard the Enterprise, but Spock's first day on leave marked the first time he left the door open himself.

He had been sitting at his desk attempting some reorganization of his history data when his consideration had landed and then froze on the chess set still stranded in an unfinished game. He did not realize the presence of Christine Chapel until she gently cleared her throat.

When he looked up she seemed to be aware of something in the room she was interrupting. "Is this a bad time, sir?"

Spock was already noting a new transparency to Chapel's character that had emerged since the disappearance. She had often been a little fumbling in his presence; he had soon after first meeting her neutrally observed that she gave signs of being physically attracted to him. As of now there was no more shy sparkle in her eyes, and she was now speaking to Spock at all times with the type of frankness she'd previously reserved for medical duty. He did not have to wonder what had incited the sudden change, as if she were suddenly but permanently more indifferent about certain things.

"What is the problem, Nurse Chapel?"

She held out a PADD she'd carried in and in a burdensome way explained, "We're kind of dealing with an incident that is too unorthodox to be recognized by the record system?"

"How is this in the realm of your duties?" he asked when he looked at the form on the screen.

"That would be the problem, sir. The accident wasn't reported as crew members going missing because—I mean, obviously that's a whole different set of protocol and paperwork—and it wasn't reported as a general discharge. But we have to release formal messages to the families explaining what happened, which usually happens with deaths and needs signatures from the medical workers who were on duty at the time of death, only they're not dead, so I don't know what to—"

"Yes, I see the dilemma. I will alter the records, if you are willing to leave them with me."

After a second she quietly said, "Sure," and set the PADD in front of him. Her gaze lingered on the chess set, and then she seemed to be talking herself into something. "Captain, um. While I'm here, I might as well notify you that I intend to request a transfer to go back to work on Earth."

Spock looked up, his back straightening in surprise. "Please state your reason."

He couldn't place the cause for the sudden coldness in her demeanor, except that she was frustrated and did not want to betray too much of her emotions at the moment. Spock found he could very well relate, but it was making their conversation increasingly stilted with such behavior on both ends.

"I'm not proud of it, but I can't honestly say I enlisted for the right reasons. I won't bore you with the personal details." She took a breath. "When certain things didn't work out, I wanted to drop out then, but then I...made such a close friend in Nyota, as you know. And I did enjoy my work, but I'm not even sure I will feel as challenged without working under Doctor McCoy. It's a sentimental assumption, I guess, that I won't be able to enjoy my job again here, but I just can't see the work outweighing how it's going to feel being surrounded by all the memories. I would just feel better starting all over again on a different ship, if I can't return to work somewhere back home. I know that it's a selfish reason to want a transfer and I understand if you won't authorize it, but I wanted to be honest. Sir."

"I will note your request without judgment. As the current captain of this vessel, I am obliged to say I will regret the loss of your service, Miss Chapel." He meant it. He realized that he wished there was more he could ask her.

But she let out a bit of a laugh, dark but not quite bitter. "Come on. You'll barely notice I'm gone."

He was not quite able to form a reply before she quickly turned and left.

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Over the next month, Sulu found his footing in his new position. Spock had consistently found him an unpredictable person, the type who occasionally came out of a seemingly submissive nature to give a strongly worded disagreement only when it felt necessary to him. Spock found after a point that he made a sharp first officer, if not one who would have been very fitting with a captain more like Jim. Sulu was usually less vocal than Spock had been as X.O., but when his input was solicited he always proved that he was thinking situations through far more often than he appeared to be.

Spock did not personally see to the issues of the four prisoners who labeled themselves members of a "Terran Empire," only pausing from a day on the bridge to concede with the security personnel that they were best kept in the brig, this deliberation unofficially affected by the fact that a Klingon they had to apprehend for some involvement in piracy quickly expressed some unease with them after being in the cell just next to them for only a night. Spock had to at first give the crew some hard words about not entering the brig without a valid reason, as many were clogging it with their grim curiosity for the first day or two.

They finally received their orders from Starfleet to take them to Terra rather than an outpost so that an ideal amount of psychological evaluation could be applied. Spock emphasized being ethically objective, perhaps uncomfortable with the notion of them being expected to obey laws that were entirely foreign to them in his discomfort with the possibility that his former companions would not be receiving the same treatment.

He was granted an amount of authority on the matter of the exiles' fate as if it was some consolation tool. It did not console him in the least.

He may have been less surprised by their eventual escape if he had been surveying their behavior more closely, but those who had been on security duties had warned all relevant personnel not to allow them out of their cells under any circumstances. This required, therefore, that any kind of emergency would require someone to enter the cell rather than escort them to medical services, and this was in the end used to their advantage.

He was planetside with Sulu when it happened. As reported to him later, the events transpired from the point when a scuffle was acted out between the prisoners, resulting intentionally in Scott's counterpart sustaining enough injuries to require a small amount of medical attention. It was unknown how the prisoners managed to steal the phaser from the member of security who let in Nurse Riner, because in some kind of orchestrated attack, the nurse was struck unconscious before she had the chance to alert anyone on her comm unit of the emergency. The four exiles quickly after managed to get an ensign held at gunpoint, demanding the bridge to block all communications and supply them with an escape pod.

Lieutenant Freeman, the officer whose phaser was stolen by Kirk, was the one person killed in the incident.

Sulu more or less matched Spock's professional façade when they were first informed, but once they were discussing it in private with the senior of security he was clearly frustrated about the disaster. Spock assumed it was the matter of him never before being in such a high position of responsibility when the ship lost a member, though it was illogical to assume their absence had been a factor in the success of the escape, and either way, they'd had no way of communicating even when they began to suspect something was amiss.

Spock had encountered many kinds of immorality in his own universe, but something about those four, masked in the bodies of familiar friends, resonated with the crew much more terribly than anything heard of before on their mission. Spock rarely had nightmares, but something about the escape of the four counterparts made him uneasy in his bed for weeks.

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30 DAYS.

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"Are you sleeping enough?...You can put your shirt back on." Nurse Chapel took a last check at his records, pacing back a bit and peeking through the edge of the privacy curtain in response to hearing someone come in.

"No, I do not believe I am acquiring sufficient sleep." Spock had never been in the habit of changing subjects, but he now said, "Miss Chapel, I should inform you that Starfleet has reviewed your request for a transfer and that it may be up to a year before they can consider it an appropriate time to relieve officers in your position from galactic duty. You may know that there have already been two other transfer requests made recently, and if those officers are given their respective requests, I hope you realize it is because of the quality of your service that you are considered indispensable at present."

She blinked at the oddly angled comment, the way he was straightening out his quickly placed shirt and sitting up ramrod straight in order to assume some presence of authority that wasn't entirely achieved sitting on the medical bed. She said flatly, "Alright. I'm not exactly surprised."

"This is not a rejection of your intentions, I hope you realize, however Starfleet is still having to be unaccommodating because of the many cadets that were lost in the Nero incident..."

Chapel did not look like she was quite listening to him now. She swerved, still in a slightly pacing way, tapping her nails against the PADD she was holding before she lightly tossed it onto the bed next to where Spock sat. "How are you handling this?"

Spock was in no mood to be pedantic, so instead of pointing out the illogical change of note, he only raised an eyebrow.

"I mean...those people. They murdered one of us, maybe somebody they even recognized from where they come from, like it was nothing."

Spock took a moment to consider himself before saying, "I do not wish to discuss this."

"Well, who am I supposed to talk to about it, sir?" Chapel's voice rose in frustration, a note to it as if it was laughing at its own insubordination just before she managed to remember the propriety of the setting. "I have no idea how to ask you if you're doing alright. You and I may have never exactly been buddies, but Nyota was my best friend on this ship. I know, maybe better than anyone else here, that you've just lost the most important people in your professional and personal life all in one go, and I'm trying to tell you that I'm here, I have some idea of how this feels."

"And you're leaving as soon as you can," Spock reminded her.

Her expression pulled back in, a deliberate blankness coming over her. Something about it disarmed him.

"Nurse Chapel," he found himself dutifully asking, "are you alright?"

"...No." She shook her head, again and again. "I'm not okay. I have these awful dreams, because four of the most undeserving people I can think of have been thrown into some place that I can't see, but I know it can't be good, and people around me keep talking as if...they're just dead. When it could be worse than that for all we know. If everyone around them is like those people? If you could tell me, logically, that I should be grieving, rather than worrying, rather than panicking, maybe eventually I could move on. But it just won't leave me alone."

It was as if she'd solved some riddle, pointed out something in a picture he'd been staring at for days, or for weeks. She looked at him, and immediately her expression was pulled into confusion.

"What? Are you okay?"

"...Of course I'm not alright," Spock said.

"Captain?"

Spock was replacing his uniform over his undershirt in a short series of movements. "The title would be acting captain, to be exact."

She stammered after him, "Sir?..."

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The meeting was tacked into a crevice between second and third shift. Two thirds of the crew who had any esteemed skill with sciences were present, as well as a number who straggled in from engineering, and some others who simply wanted to watch, filling the conference room all the way to the back. No one really knew what the meeting was about, but there was an anxious buzz of curiosity that Spock took almost a minute to signal down. It reminded him of academy students getting restless before the weekend, only the stirrings were not so elated.

"I understand the circumstances of this meeting were not explained in the announcement, so I wish to commence promptly." Spock said, "As you all know, we recently had a very unfortunate and also very unique incident in which we lost four members of our crew, including our captain. We have since the accident proceeded with the five-year mission as planned. And we have no need to suspend the mission. However."

Spock's pause held the room in a transparent and yet motionless shift of curiousity, as if no one dared to anticipate or speculate. He continued.

"I believe that the recent violent actions of the counterparts from this other universe, who are the only individuals we have to represent the world in which we must speculate our missing crew members do now inhabit, give us reason to reevaluate the grounds for procedural dismissal of the mission that caused the four to become stranded. It is after all imperative that we mourn our losses, but it is imperative also that Starfleet members resort to all possible measures not to leave behind people who are still alive. For these reasons, I have evaluated the status of the events of stardate 3163 and promoted it to the necessity of a rescue mission."

The room hissed into dialogue, several hands of the more earnest raising at once.

"I have spoken already with Ensign Chekov, who is aware of a theory of how we may proceed in attempting a deliberate transdimensional leap." The room was already quiet again. "We will require the help of anyone with an excelling grasp on sequential mathematics and algorithms. There may be further opportunities for other members of the crew with further developments; what I must clarify is that the project is secondary to our preexisting mission, and is also compulsory. I must stress that this mission will, in all practical considerations, embody your extracurricular time. Anyone who is not comfortable considering at this point should not be sitting in this room; you have three minutes to evaluate."

"You're just full of surprises," Sulu leaned in to mutter while the crowd tangled and dispersed.

"I assumed Chekov would have mentioned the matter to you."

"That isn't what I meant." Sulu looked more directly at Spock now for a second, conveying a more serious assuring tone before he nodded and said, "I'm with you. I have no clue if there's any chance in hell we can do anything, but I'm with you on this."

After the three minutes were up, the room had forty-three people.

Once Chekov was done explaining the mere basics of Valoit's theoretical equations, it held twenty.

Sulu was the first to say, "Let's get to work."

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"I'm still not understanding..." Chapel fixed a pondering look down on her lunch. "We already know the equation?"

"Valoit's equation is a proposed figure which cannot be effectively tested until contact with a parallel universe has been made, though one is also at leisure to experiment with spacial irregularities which appear to be possibly transdimensional, which is apparently what Valoit was doing when he was attempting to perfect the science..."

"I thought Valoit was still alive?"

"He is, but it must be noted he did not have the type of motive we do. After attempting to exact the figure for some fifteen years, he retired the project to a hiatus."

"He got bored and gave up," Sulu translated, from where he and Chekov sat with their dining table inched not quite up next to Chapel and Spock's.

Spock considered how to explain further. "While it is a rough abbreviation of the calculations we are attempting, if you imagine an algebraic equation where the result of our universe depends on some unknown variable interacting with the other universe...we, having various statistics on the matter through the dimension gap, are able to repeatedly attempt to solve what we are calling the 'interaction variable,' which could be part of a very large number of calculations."

"And how many permutations are projected to be possible?" Chapel winced. "Like several thousand?"

"Over six million."

Chapel had to slap her hand over her fork in a flustered attempt to keep it from clanging off the table when she dropped it. Chekov and Sulu were exchanging looks as she gathered herself into a schooled look of innocent interest. "Well. I mean, that's good. It's something."

No one asked the long, unbearable line of questions that should have come after, the harsh hypotheticals. (If it worked, and if they could use it to actually get there, if and if and if, how in the name of any deity or science could they depend on actually finding them?)

Possibly the question did not occur to others the way it did to him. Perhaps it was something of a default assumption about their whereabouts that they would still be somewhere in the parallel vicinity of the Enterprise, as if that would necessarily be good or safe for them, as if the vessel even had anything like a static location. The circumstances of the gap that swamped the four there depended on an overlap of the ships' points in space, but Spock did not find it hard to imagine that the mere events caused by the transporter accident bumped both worlds off of their correlation by the irregular behavior of those in exile. The prisoners, after all, had escaped.

Spock hoped, with a humming constant faith but also a deep unease at the idea of their absolute distance, that his companions had managed to get away.

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Spock was promptly informed when three of the counterparts, all except Scotty, were found and arrested on a small fleet-colonized desert planet where they had landed after having mechanical difficulties with the pod they stole. A security inspection of the vessel suggested they had been stealing several parts from local merchants for weeks in an attempt to leave the planet, but it was the astounding oversight of simply behaving too brashly that got them noticed by the locals. McCoy and Kirk had been in a violently escalating argument close to a recreational camping site, when a teenager had apparently been too wary of even walking by them on her way to her cabin and went to find the authorities.

Uhura was located rather quickly after that, and none of the three seemed to have any idea where Scott was. He was said to have disappeared only days before. After hours of grueling interrogation the only thing any of them offered was the assumption that Scott had found some other vessel to steal and decided pretty easily it only had room for one.

After the three of them were shipped back to Earth for intensive rehabilitation, Spock was eventually asked, just as before, for any input he had on what should be done with them.

"Split them up. Absolutely." Chapel voiced this agreement with not quite the sentiment he'd expressed; her tone suggested one of horror at the idea of letting them be anywhere near each other considering their conspiring when they were on the ship, but Spock had honestly considered it the best choice for the interests of whatever psychologist might have to somehow sit them in an armchair. He had figured, admittedly with some evident idealism, that being separated from each other and simply immersed in very different moral ideas may allow them to less self-consciously evaluate their situations and perhaps be less defensive against change.

He had little hope, though. The only one of them he spoke to was Uhura. Upon being placed in confinement she was allowed one transmission; once the Enterprise was within the region she asked for him, and he was grudgingly indebted to follow up on her request.

Spock could not describe the grazing discomfort of that conversation. She began with a highly dramatic plea for sympathy, insisting she was frightened and had been helpless to do anything but cooperate with the others' plans in case they saw her as weak and turned against her, and had been getting along that way for much of a year. She was very affecting and Spock had a tremble of doubt over whether it was a fabrication. In the end he coldly asked how Uhura had surmised that her counterpart and himself had been "amiable," the testing implication being that he knew he was "being played," as Jim would have said.

Uhura leaned back, one side of her mouth crooking up into something wry; she said, "Yeah, it was worth a shot." Naturally he did not mention that he was afraid if she'd underestimated his intelligence just a little, pushed a bit harder, she may have been more successful.

McCoy, Spock was told, was being the most cooperative, if extremely defensive and generally unpleasant to be around. If any of them had in fact been pressured into their crimes, the unofficial consensus was that the finger pointed at the doctor. Shortly after he was admitted into a relatively hospitable institution it was imparted to Spock that he had textbook symptoms for manic depression, if not post-traumatic stress disorder. Spock didn't entertain memories of the few times he was in their company, though he did remember McCoy's nervous trembles, the way the supposed doctor had seemed less menacing but more unpredictable. In a candid conversation with his counselor, a Doctor DeSando remarked that morally pinpointing him was something he would be arrogant to presume he could do.

James Kirk offered nothing. He had refused to participate in any kind of interrogation, even when security threatened the worst punishments, most of which would have probably been unlawful for them to actually follow through on, if he refused to even submit to a psychological evaluation. For his stubborness, he remained the prime suspect with the crime of murdering Ensign Freeman and was placed in a high-security prison close to Tokyo, pending trial.

Weeks later, an explosion triggered by a phaser that had been dangerously tampered with blew an entire side off of the prison building, resulting in twenty-six deaths, many serious injuries, and the escape of several prisoners, including Kirk. If the reckless method of triggering the explosion was in fact Kirk's work, no one between the witnesses and the forensics team knew of a way he might have had direct access to the phaser, but the conundrum held no interest for Spock; he had seen Jim accomplish more improbable things. He understood why Kirk had refused any cooperation even when it was in his best interests: For him it hadn't mattered. He had been determined, and capable, of somehow escaping.

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A couple weeks back, Sulu had come into Spock's quarters holding a couple small crates filled with an assortment of things, and Spock had easily guessed what it all was. Because the captain's and first officer's quarters were identically sized, Sulu had suggested simply moving him into Jim's old cabin. The offer had probably not only been what seemed sensible but, in a way, a thoughtful gesture on his part.

"I should have done this a while ago. You probably know the captain didn't really keep a lot of stuff on the ship, so I was just letting a lot of it still live around for a while, but I figured it was about time I give it to you. I mean...I don't know who else would..." Sulu trailed off, shrugging sadly at the boxes he was hesitating to set on Spock's desk.

"You can leave them there. Thank you, Sulu."

Spock had proceeded to ignore the objects completely until now.

There were several data and reading PADDs, old-fashioned paper books of an unpredictable variety, oddly fashioned objects Spock could have imagined his mother labeling "knick-knacks." Several of the books had other paper and novelty items tucked between pages. A People's History of the Galaxy sandwiched an old pressed flower; two pages of some forgotten fantasy volume hugged what Spock realized was a wedding invitation Jim's parents had sent to Christopher Pike, long ago.

The first thing that gave Spock's heart a quiet jolt was a glossy sheet tucked into a Kundera paperback: It leaned up out of the pages and the memory was already nudging at him when he suspected he already knew what it was. He opened the book to slide out the narrow strip with its photos separated in panels, that day cracking right open in his mind.

Spock, Jim, McCoy and Nyota had all, by some coercion from the captain, ended up on a particularly Starfleet-centric leisure establishment on the next planet from a Federation outpost; having made no specific plans for the evening, they found themselves spending several colorfully idle hours at a vacationing club that hosted an array of old-fashioned Terran activities.

The four of them were just outside when something Jim quickly realized was a very antique photo booth caught his attention, and in the next moment he and Nyota were skidding onto this common ground of happy insistence that someone just had to use it. Nyota had had some alcohol and was exaggeratedly enthusiastic, and then disappointed that similarly old-fashioned coins were required to operate the mechanism and they would have had to win them by playing some of the video games inside. Nyota took several minutes to explain the overcomplicated traditions of arcades to Spock while McCoy snickered at his questions.

Jim went into the club for a drink and when he returned in some fifteen minutes casually clinking into Nyota's palm a handful of the plastic tokens he had managed to wrangle from several other vacationers, her face fell in a sweet little way and then wrapped to a smile. She was so innocently touched by the gesture that a surprised Jim was the one she took by a looped arm off to the photo booth. Spock and McCoy were left to continue speculating about an upcoming mission and only a minute later the two emerged from the booth, sniggering and almost tripping on each other, Nyota stuffing the photos into Jim's front pocket and returning to Spock's side with a happy hugging of his arm.

While it may have seemed to some onlooker that these actions were as inconsequential to Spock as anyone else, it was something in which he'd harbored an affectionate peripheral interest. He had never quite understood, through most of the first year he served with all of these people, why Jim and Nyota had not seemed capable of becoming friends. He admired many similar qualities in both of them, and had said as much to Nyota on a couple occasions. Even if with regret, she repeatedly dismissed the possibility of having anything more than efficient camaraderie with the captain; it offset something in Spock that he couldn't quite talk about as a significant concern.

It was the fact that over time Nyota had doubtlessly grown to admire Jim as a leader, as a superior, but seemed unable to fully trust him in any other capacity, and unable to help it. Spock had never wanted to pry too much at it; he only expressed his regret over the situation by pointing out that he and McCoy, by contrast, had finally become more amiable.

"Come on, you and the doctor need less help being buddies than either of you would admit," she'd said, and added, "and you two have to do a lot more of the crazy work together. Nothing on the bridge is ever that personal."

But her refusal to entertain the possibility was one day delivered with a more understanding look in her eyes.

When he'd thought the subject had passed because of the softness in her expression, she came out of some reverie, smiled at him and said, "He means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

The concept of photos as valuable souvenirs had always somewhat escaped but also fascinated him, given that they seemed to invite a combination of the contrived and the genuine to one's own history. There was a frustration about the mix of posed falsities and graceless, true, accidental moments that could be captured in a single image. These panels of various pictures of Jim and Nyota were often theatrical, but also real, the brightness in their expressions undeniable and stunning. Jim had dug out his reading glasses from his overnight bag, and they switched from his face to Nyota's in the second picture, in which they were both cross-eyed. In the next picture the glasses were pushed up atop her head while they displayed matching hand signals which must have had some meaning Spock did not recognize.

In the last panel, nothing about Jim was even remotely posed, as it depicted the flushed impulsive action of Nyota crooking him in her direction by an arm around his neck and planting a good-humored kiss on his cheek, and he was caught looking much like she'd looked when he walked up to give her the game tokens only minutes before, just for a second thrown softly off his guard by the unexpected gesture. It was all of this that made the inconsequential little object so meaningful, that it was as if he was able to hold in his hand the very moment when, not mainly for his sake but in his absence, these two important people in his life had begun to care about each other.

Spock's vague projection of his crewmates as they would be now had blossomed into the type of zealous fancy that would amuse Jim, not just out of his smugness but in his way of smirking in surprise whenever Spock displayed any kind of imagination. It was something almost romantic and picaresque: four bodies stealing through some societal underbelly, nudging and reshaping the course of its future as if some steel-belted cosmos could turn its head, transforming, at the mere motion of a kind hello.

In an idealized vision like this, Jim appeared in Spock's mind as something that strengthened somehow with weathering: Some vibrant force under his surface, like the black dangerous heat at the center of a sun, became charged up with a deep and angry virtue at the disturbance. Spock remembered being frankly surprised at the first signs of heroism in that man and he took a proud faith in that contradiction now, just as Nyota always appeared to him too, in her seeming inversion of that type of boldness.

He always imagined her next to him, yielding and warm as ever in the fluid nature of her; but impenetrable, tall and sharp, both changed and unchanging.