MARAYNA: Are you two friends?

KIM: Yes.

TUVOK: No. We're colleagues. I respect Mister Kim for his intelligence and his integrity. And I assume he holds me in the same regard.

MARAYNA: So Vulcans don't hydrosail, and they don't have friends?

TUVOK: We have fellowships and associations, but without the emotional dimension humans experience.

-Star Trek Voyager: Alter Ego.

A petition for the dissolution of this friendship

"Jim, I have come to petition for the dissolution of our friendship."

The words were soft. Precise. Clearly meticulously selected. They also carried with them a sense of unreality to the captain, and he blinked several times as he unsuccessfully tried to parse them.

Petition?

Dissolution?

He carefully put down the cup of Vulcan tea next to the prepared chess board.

"I… what?"

The Vulcan looked down and swallowed. He was still standing just by the door of the captain's quarters, a careful single centimeter outside the door sensor's range.

"I have come to petition…"

"I heard what you were saying." Jim raised his hands towards the taller Vulcan, stopping in mid-air and quenching an urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him. "But Spock... I don't... know what it means." He took a deep breath, thoughts racing, and then took a step backwards.

This had to be fall-out from the landing party foul up.

There were also probably some culture clash issues going on (...dissolution?…).

He'd had training on on this. They didn't give you a multi-species crew without hours and hours of training on all sorts of issues. He briefly remembered slideshows. Role-play exercises. Lectures on interspecies communication and textbooks on intergalactic comparative etiquette.

None of it had touched on what you did when your best friend suddenly arrived in your quarters for a welcome game of chess and a chance to get past the minor disagreement that you had had, and said that they wanted to petition you to dissolve your friendship.

"Alright, let's…" No, Spock would not want to sit. Instead, Jim mirrored the other's body language, hands clasped behind his back, and stepped back so that there was another meter between them.

He made his tone as gentle as he could. "Spock, I don't understand. You'll have to help me out here."

Spock glanced up, and Jim could sense a turmoil in him, almost but not entirely masked by Vulcan discipline. Jim forced himself to be silent.

After a few moments, Spock spoke,

"I am aware that I am ignorant in many of the cultural traditions and expectations surrounding this relationship. I hope that by honesty and benevolent interpretation on all sides, we can manage in any case. I understand that this is a culturally inappropriate request, and that it may be difficult for you to accommodate it. I would nonetheless ask you for it. I ask forgiveness for any discomfort that my actions or words might have caused, and ask that you that inform me if there is a better way to approach this issue, within the framework of your culture."

Spoch had seen the same-slide shows. Jim was willing to bet that that was a verbatim quote from the Academy textbook.

The textbook sucked.

"Is this about what happened on the planet today?" he demanded, knowing that he didn't sound particularly benevolent.

Spock took a breath. This was hard for him. For a small, evil second, Jim was glad for that. "Yes."

"Alright. Let's start there then. I hadn't expected you to be pleased about that, but that was a professional matter, not a personal one. Let me summarize. I made a command decision to go into the village alone with Ambassador Rutherford. Now she's hurt, I'm hurt, she thinks I am a galactic hero for taking out that bowman with a lucky shot, and the only ones who know different are me and you, who organized our retreat through the marsh."

Jim ran a hand through his hair. He wanted something to drink. He'd made tea in anticipation of Spock's visit, but although the Vulcan claimed that the pungent bark was supposed to be relaxing, Jim thought it smelled like week-old sea-weed. His small stash of whiskey and bourbon bottles were behind him in the cupboard, but he didn't think moving from this spot was a good idea right now. It would be too much like giving ground. "And sure, I had expected a discussion about that with my First Officer, Spock. But this… Whatever this is….Listen, I'm willing to admit that I made a bad call on the planet - hell, if you react this strongly, I'm going to assume there were other angles that I hadn't considered, and I'll happily upgrade 'bad call' to 'serious mistake'…"

"It was not my intention to question your field decisions on the planet."

The captain's frustrations boiled over. "Then what is this? Spock, what did I do?"

Spock looked even more tense, squaring his shoulders, eyes roaming the room. "I have no wish to cause you distress…"

"Well you are."

"It is possible that this conversation is a mistake. I should leave. The doctor said…"

"You've spoken to McCoy? About dissolving our friendship?" Jim's stress on the word 'dissolving' made Spock very aware that, despite his careful consideration, he had clearly not chosen a good term.

"I did. He was most... displeased. He said that I could not simply stop a friendship. That it was, to paraphrase, an emergent phenomenon that is either there or not. Something to acknowledged rather than actively formed. I maintained that surely human friendships must be consensual personal relationships, but he insisted that that was not necessarily the case."

Jim took a step backwards, ice in his stomach. Whatever it was that he didn't understand here, had taken on an entirely different dimension as soon as the word 'consensual' came into play. There had been many slides about that - often coupled with other dangerous words like 'uneven power relations' and 'dangerous anthropocentric assumptions'.

He suddenly realized why 'petition' was rankling him so. It wasn't just a question of an odd word choice. Petitioning was something one did to a higher authority, it was begging, a plea. And it was all at odds to the simple yet astonishingly deep bond of affection and respect that he had, up until a few minutes ago, been sure had developed during the last year between him and this man that he now thought of as a brother. This alien.

"McCoy... is wrong. The human notion of friendship is definitely a consensual relationship. You can end it at any time that you wish."

Spock met his eyes again. He seemed torn, a guilty look in his eyes. He hesitated a moment, and then nodded and made a move as if to start towards the door, the matter settled.

Except that it wasn't settled. Jim had no idea what was going on here, and apart from a deep sense of personal frustration, loss, worry, and, yes, anger, he would have to find some balance in all of this if they were going to work together.

"Spock… There is so much that I don't understand about this conversation. What led up to it, what it has to do with what happened on the planet today. Now, or later, as you wish, we're going to have to talk more about it."

Spock stilled his motion, eyes on the door, eyeing his escape route. After a moment he straightened and turned back, reluctantly. "Perhaps it is best to settle the matter now."

Feeling as if he was dealing with a skittish horse - the variety that had hooves as big as dinner plates - Jim went to the table and sat down. He moved the cup of tea towards the other chair, not commenting more on it. As he had expected, Spock remained standing.

"Whatever else is going on, I think there are some cultural misunderstandings here. You say you do not fully understand the human idea of friendship. I freely admit that I know very little about the Vulcan equivalent - something that I apologize for, since I think I was the one who, ah, well, I guess I simply informed you that I considered us friends some months ago."

"Six point two months."

"Right. Right. Well. I think the recommendation is to start with definitions? What's the Vulcan equivalent of friendship?"

"That relationship does not exist on Vulcan."

Jim looked at him, nonplussed. He felt like he was sitting in a shrinking box, encountering wall after wall whenever he reached out. Just earlier today, as they had approached the village, he had revelled in how eerily synced he and Spock had become. Discussions of plans could be held at a minimum in favor of just knowing. This talk was rapidly becoming the very opposite of that.

He was fairly certain that Spock must be lying about this last thing.

He rubbed his forehead, trying to figure out the best approach vector. "I've been reading up on Vulcan history, Spock, as far as I can without hitting the classified material. There are a lot of references to ancient chronicles and poems, sources that I'm apparently not allowed to read without academic access rights from the VSA. But all the quotes from them seem, to me, to nearly always deal with love, friendship and loyalty?"

"I was unclear. I apologize. I should say that while present-day Vulcans recognize the terms and concepts of associates and colleagues, there is no modern Vulcan word for friendship in the human sense. The nearest equivalents are very… negative words."

"Like?"

"What can be best translated as corrupting obsession."

Jim looked appalled, but covered it. "Ah. That wouldn't be a good thing. But those ancient texts…"

"They are pre-reformation." Spock had retreated into giving as little and as factual information as he possibly could, something Jim recognized as a sign of his First Officer feeling pressured. Jim couldn't stop the annoyed look in his eyes though, and Spock seemed to realize that he needed to be more forthcoming. He continued, stiffly,

"While Vulcans recognize the cultural and historical value in pre-reformation works, their content is often deemed inappropriate for many readers. You mentioned that they frequently deal with matters of loyalty and friendship. I think more accurate descriptions would be betrayal, jealousy and a never-ending series of barbaric vendettas."

Jim nodded slowly, grasping at a strand of conversation that seemed to make sense. "Pre-reformation Vulcan seems to have been a particularly brutal place, yes. I gathered that there were a lot of changing factions? Honor killings. Blood oaths. I remember lots of references to the Alliance of the Western Mountains? Especially these songs about two people, Seren and T'Nil? They had a blood oath to each other, and betrayed their clans because of it? What was the term - t'hyla?"

Spock flinched at the last word, but nodded, and Jim continued. "I understood between the lines that there seemed to have been a lot of revenge killings after that, whole family lines wiped out. Look, I'm sorry, I can see this is making you uncomfortable. I get that this is not something you are supposed to talk about with off-worlders. Just tell me this: is that what Vulcans teach their children about friendship? That it leads to obsession with the other, that you lose perspective of the greater good?"

Spock looked uncomfortable, "Yes. Would you dispute that it can happen?"

Jim quieted his racing thoughts and forced himself to stop and think."No. There are definitely cases of corruption. I guess I'm a bit shocked at the idea that the only way to combat it is to eradicate all notions of friendship, at all levels. It seems... drastic." He took a breath.

Spock hesitated then went over to the desk computer, glancing at Jim for permission and receiving a nod. A few strokes of his long fingers called up an image on the screen from the library computer - the ruined wasteland of what once must have been a sprawling city atop a mountain vista.

Spock straightened, eyes carefully kept on the monitor.

"Accurate historical sources are few for the pre-reformation time period that you were referring to, and much of our knowledge come from preserved songs and rhyming poems, the veracity of which are always in dispute. Nonetheless, it seems very likely that the Seren and T'Nil from those songs were indeed historical persons. By all accounts they were t'hyla, soul mates, and had deepened their interdependence through many shared battles. Blood-sworn friends, as the ancient song says. They are, of course, only one of many examples, but one of the most infamous. These stories are told to Vulcan children as cautionary tales about how personal relationship can, insidiously and gradually, warp the rational mind into illogical priorities." He gestured at the image, the bombed-out shells of the houses searing themselves into Jim's mind. "This picture is from Topan, T'Nil's ancestral fortress, at the foothills of the Western Mountains. It is still, today, a radioactive wasteland. She destroyed it after her clan had killed Seren."

Jim looked at the picture, the monitor slowly zooming in on it. Toppled towers. Craters. Lifeless ancient concrete struts. No vegetation.

Things were becoming clearer.

"Ok… Maybe I should define the human version of friendship now. Ah…" He found himself floundering. This should not be so difficult: after all, he had many friends. A precious few were close ones. He'd probably read an anthropological definition somewhere during his time at the Academy. "Well… Like most humanoids, terran humans are flock animals, dependent on interpersonal relationships for survival and, ah, psychological health."

Spock nodded. Jim thought the academic terms were making him slightly less tense, so he continued.

"We need others to acknowledge us, help us organize our thoughts and feelings, and display… affection. Families… clans… are important there, but humans also seem to seek out other social networks, probably an evolutionary advantage so that you don't become too insular in your thinking. But since not everyone can take care of everyone else, people… self-organize… into smaller groups. Friends." This sounded good. "The obligation you have to your family, and your friends, then, must be weighed and balanced with your obligations to society in general, to laws, to ethics. And we usually manage."

"Except when you do not," Spock concluded, flatly. Jim gave him a thoughtful look, but he was starting to get a feeling for the lay of the land.

"Right. Except when we do not. And I think this is where you tell me what I did wrong on the planet today, that made you think of our… former… friendship in terms of a radioactive wasteland."

Jim caught Spock with his gaze, holding him. The Vulcan looked uncomfortable and trapped, but Jim wasn't going to let this go.

"Tell me."

Spock closed his eyes. Was he ashamed? Well, of course he was. He'd said so straight out while under the influence of the psi2000 virus, hadn't he? When I feel friendship for you, I am ashamed. Jim just hadn't listened, had dropped the matter as they all had with their various outbursts after that revealing and embarrassing incident…

Jim knew he was pressuring Spock now, knew exactly what the slides and lectures had to say about this kind of behavior. Dammit, he'd apologize later. He needed answers.

"It was nothing that you did." Spock finally said.

Jim let the silence stretch on, waiting the Vulcan out, and after a while Spock continued, seemingly having resigned himself to a regrettable course of action.

"This is a matter of my own shortcomings. I had thought, based on my mixed heritage and my many years of service among humans, that I could indeed enter into a personal relationship with you, and find a balance between that and my duty. I have ignored all warnings to the contrary." This was becoming a confession. "Today I realized that had been an... arrogant presumption."

"Why?"

"Both you and the Ambassador were hurt in the village. My instinctive reaction was to save you."

Jim blinked. Spock had become still as a statue, eyes on the tabletop.

"I see." He got up, studying Spock. He let the silence lengthen while he thought this through.

"I had an arrow in my shoulder. But she got hit with one in the stomach." He paused, waiting for Spock to respond.

"Yes."

"She's a head shorter than me, more likely to bleed out fast, especially with that kind of wound."

"Yes."

"Getting her there and back were the essence of our mission."

"Yes."

"Yeah, choosing to pull me out before her would have been a fatal error, very likely in the most literal sense of the word."

He went closer to the Vulcan.

"But you didn't, did you? You didn't go for me. You got her out first."

"That is not relevant."

"I think that if you were to ask Rutherford, it can't get more relevant."

"Captain, if one of our shuttles have a suboptimal subroutine, we do not wait until it crashes to fix the problem."

"True. But have you heard the Terran idiom 'it's not a bug, it's a feature'?"

Spock looked up, slightly irritated, Jim judged, by the typically human tendency to sidetrack conversations. "It is a particularly opaque idiom," he answered primly, "mostly ironic, first known attestation from North America, 20th century, in the form 'a feature is what the PR department calls a bug'. I do not see that it helps your argument."

Spock's voice got quieter. "Jim. I believe our friendship is dangerous."

"'Insidious and gradually warping our rational minds' even?"

Spock hesitated. "Yes."

Jim crossed his arms. He seemed calmer.

"Do you remember the Duchess's fortress over at Parli III?" The abrupt change in topic made Spock tilt his head. "Yes, of course you do. Then you'll also remember her collection of daggers. All over the walls, jumbled in boxes. She clearly liked them, she could clearly afford to buy whatever she wanted, but most of them were just lying there, in piles. There was a Klingon one there, I'm almost certain that it was a real one and not a replica, that would have made it about a millennium old... Long, sleek, red rilk-stones in the handle, maybe made by Rathek himself... Incredibly beautiful craftsmanship." He paused, remembering the way sunlight had glittered on it. "I spent most of that long, long investiture ceremony figuring out how to steal it."

Spock gave a minute frown but then shook his head. "That is not the same. You were engaging in speculation and counterfactual hypothetical strategizing. A mental exercise."

"True. But, Spock, for a while I really, really wanted that dagger. If you'd looked into my mind right then, you'd have seen pure greed. There's a reason several of Earth's religions name coveting your neighbors donkeys and gold and whatnot, a deadly sin. We're very easily tempted. Now this, this was a pretty innocent example, but hear me out…" Jim took a deep breath, and plunged on.

"When Finney faked his death to set me up with the court martial a month ago, do you know what scared me most with all of that mess? It was the fact that for a terrifying second, when I saw the fake recording, I wasn't certain that I hadn't done it. Maybe I had pressed that button and ejected the pod with him inside." He stepped closer to the Vulcan, making him look up at him. When he spoke next, he was fervently hoping that Spock would keep that 'benevolent interpretation' in mind… "I had definitely thought about it."

Spock looked shocked, but Jim knew he had his full attention now, the distancing Vulcan control softening. "I was sitting in the center seat, and when I heard his voice call in from the pod, I was reminded of the latest complaint he had made against me. I was tired, I had ten thousand things to do, here was this ridiculous complaint that would take me maybe an hour to write an appropriate response to, and I had this flash of anger. Maybe half a second long. A really strong feeling that if he were to die out there, well, good riddance. It's a horrible, horrible thought. It was unjustified in every way. And if it hadn't been for the court martial, I would have forgotten it two seconds later ad never thought about it. Knowing this, would you still have defended me, despite the evidence arrayed against me, at that court martial?"

"Jim… Yes. But we are not the same. You are used to these… flashes. Temptations. You regularly overcome them. I am not."

"Right. When something punches through your control, even for a second your thoughts go to radioactive wastelands. Spock… Trust me when I say that I recognize all of this. It's a lot harder for me to send you or Bones out on a dangerous mission than some science lieutenant who's only on board for a three-month rotation. It's not ideal, but that's how it is. But I still do it, and I hope that I'm not taking my personal feelings into account. I trust that there are people around me who'd call me on it…"

"Look... I didn't take that dagger from the rich, spoiled aristocrat. I didn't let Finney die even though I really wanted to for a second. Your Vulcan teachers have a point: of course there's corruption in relationships and feelings. And maybe your father's people are cursed, or blessed, with more extreme emotions, maybe you are even more corruptible than humans and your discipline and control is the only way to keep them in check. I don't know. But I'm a pretty good judge of character, Spock, and you certainly inspire loyalty and trust, even awe, in many on this crew, and it's not just because of your intellect and skills. People react to you, get attached to you, when you do let some emotions shine through that control. You can be… like a bonfire. And no matter how you feel about it, their… affection and respect for you are going to make them understand your orders and work with you better, and that same affection and respect might make them a bit less efficient if they were grieving because you were hurt. It's just the way it is - kaidith, as you say. So we use that. We make it into more of a tool than it is a drawback."

He had Spock's full attention now, and while he still couldn't feel their normal rapport thrumming between them, he still seized on that expression. This was how they operated. This was how they worked things out.

He managed a shrug, deceptively care-free. "The way i see it, the only way to keep a shuttlecraft from from never picking up a quirk or bug, is to keep it locked in the hangar-bay. Pretty useless. And I think we use our friendship to make us a stronger command team. If it were just up to me, I'd be willing to risk it."

He could see Spock waver. Both want, and what was, Jim hoped, a rational desire to continue this powerful connection that they had, fighting against a childhood of cultural conditioning.

Spock's voice was uncertain. "Next time, I might choose you instead of someone that I should prioritize. I am not sure that I, having chosen the Vulcan way, can have a... human friendship. My people do not have…" he searched for the words, "degrees of loyalty, once offered."

Jim's lips twitched, and he consciously tried to downplay the affection in his voice. "Yeah, 'casual' does not seem to be something associated with Vulcans. I'm all for a Vulcan-strength friendship. It'd be an honor."

"Jim… I am not certain that I can be trusted with this friendship."

Jim couldn't resist a smile, but didn't follow the urge to place a hand on Spock's arm. Instead he took a clear step backwards. "I'm crowding you, and I'm sorry for that. I feel very close to you, and for humans friendship is an uncontroversial, beneficial positive outcome of that. But I'm an adult, and I can dampen that if I have too."

He was almost certain that was the truth. He went on, a bit hurriedly.

"But listen, there are just two things I'd like to... petition you for. The first is that you consider the term 'proportionate response' in regards to this problem. The second is this: I can't make you be sure about your own integrity when faced with all this... emotional attachment. No one can do that. But I am sure. About you. And I think my logic is pretty solid. It goes like this, you see: 'If I let go of a hammer on a planet that has a positive gravity, I need not see it fall to know that it has in fact fallen'."

Recognizing his own words in Jim's defense from the court martial, a wry amusement was reflected in Spock's eyes. "It is very… tempting to let myself be convinced."

"Spock, I've seen you balance on event horizons at relativistic speeds. If we can do that, we can find a balance between friendship and duty. And if we waver, we'll have Bones there."

Speaking of, I'm going to have to go down to sickbay and get a reality check on just how emotionally manipulative I'm being right now… But later… Please, Spock… Please listen…

The Vulcan studied him carefully. He took a deep breath, and Jim was reminded of the that second on the cliff face on Nova Verona, before they hurled themselves outwards on their winged gliders.

"Very well. I trust you know the best way in this. I apologize…"

"Don't. But let me ask you this then, Mr. Spock: would you like to be friends?"

And somehow, a full second before he spoke, Jim knew the answer as if a wall had come down in his mind. Being psi-null, he could only guess that maybe a wall, a carefully constructed wall, had in fact been dismantled between them in that instance. He had felt as if he'd been floundering in darkness, lost without moorings in unfamiliar space. Now his body relaxed, and he found himself starting to smile even as his friend said simply,

"Yes."

Author's note: Please leave a review with a word or two! How manipulative is Jim being? And how do you interpret the last few sentences?