Jim feels certain that he would have chosen to sacrifice himself for the Enterprise even without the interference-- he does what he has to. Period. And he's not suicidal despite Ambassador Spock's self-loathing and guilt about his actions - that Jim certainly felt - because he didn't want to die, because he didn't go down with his ship on Altamid, because of a hundred other things. It's a disturbing feeling to consider it, and he has empathy for Spock's unease about it now, but he's sure of himself. He has to be.
And then that question.
Jim looks at him, expression suddenly shuttered because he can tell how much the idea worries his first officer. So what if he did is his first thought, defensive, because really, so what. Even though he knows (logically, hah) that it was abrupt and too intense, because what in life goes on without a hitch? Jim had to understand. The older Spock made him understand. He made him understand more than he set out to, and left memories in him that sometimes flit to the surface in dreams or even in waking, but so what.
He doesn't answer, just stares at him. Which is answer enough on its own.
Spock feels physically ill. And it has nothing to do with the chocolate he's drank.
"Jim," he hisses between his teeth, setting the mug on the table before getting up to his feet and walking over to the window. His hands ball into fists and press against the frame , white-knuckled and shaking with the strain. "Jim. Why did you not tell me?"
He can't look at his friend. Not when he feels a bit like he was the one who had just violated him. Illogical, certainly, but that doesn't stop him from feeling it. Everything from the last few years is in question, now. Jim's mental state alone is in question. Spock's head bows forward, taking his shoulders with it. The plastic beneath his knuckles bends, just ever so slightly.
"Don't..." Jim's voice sounds weak even to his own ears and he grits his teeth, taking a breath before he stands up, giving Spock his space but making sure to face him while speaking, leaning against the back of the sofa and looking at the back of his head.
"Don't be like this about it. Please. It was on Delta Vega," which is probably the wrong thing to point out considering how wildly compromised Spock was at the time, "and it was necessary, I'd never have gotten back to the ship without him and after that-- after that it was my call."
Implying that a) it happened more than once and b) the first (!!) time wasn't Jim's call.
Well.
"You can't think so little of Vulcan practices, I don't believe that."
He's drunk, but Spock is not stupid. He turns, face open and incredulous in his inebriation as he tries to comprehend all that Jim is telling him. "How many times have you melded with him?" he asks. And the rage behind those eight words is enough to melt through steel. It is a hearkening back to that day when he had demanded Jim thrown off the ship. Proof in exhibit A for his emotional state.
"Considering the first act was not consensual and the subsequent ones were likely done after the insinuation of this being normal had already been planted, you...do not understand what has been done. What I..." He stops. His stomach has roiled in rebellion from what he has heard. What he apparently is capable of.
"I am sorry, Jim. I am...unsure of what else to say. How to make amends for such a violation." He wishes now that he hadn't drank. It's hard to differentiate where his illness and disgust are originating from. "I am...truly sorry."
The look Jim gives him is unavoidably hurt. Violation? He can't think of it like that. It was intense, frightening and disturbing at the time-- and for a while he had nightmares of what it felt like to lose Vulcan and he never, ever told anyone-- but it left him with a glimmer of insight and the feeling of something he's never had from anyone: absolute unconditional love and acceptance. Of course Jim Kirk and Spock were lovers in that other world. How could Ambassador Spock give him an echo of a feeling like that if it were any other way?
And Jim, selfish, fatherless, fuck up Jim, decided that was fine. He liked that feeling. He didn't care someone else earned it, because that universe took his father and ruined his mother's life and killed so, so many people, and so it owed him. Ambassador Spock owed him. If all he ever got back out of it was that feeling-- fucking fine. Because he's never going to feel that way for real.
"That remains to be seen, Jim," Spock argues. And if Jim's face is broadcasting hurt then Spock's is as well, but on a different, quieter frequency. "He...accessed your mind. Someone who shares my very DNA has...abused the privilege granted to us through our race to...reclaim something that was not his, here." He can see it now. Can understand it, on some level. If he came across another version of his mother, he can understand the appeal of wanting to supply her with everything she would need to know in order to be the person he had lost.
But it wasn't right. And it wasn't fair. And the feeling inside of him that is telling him that Jim's regard for him is false is only growing by the second.
"You cannot assess the damage that has been done to you. What...has been changed. Added to your mind without your consent." He moves away from the wall, toward the direction of he bathroom. His face is pale in a way that might suggest a physical response to his emotions, but he's managing it alright for the time being.
Jim watches him with wide, impossibly blue eyes, seeming so much more watery than usual suddenly. Spock is his friend. Jim wouldn't pretend, he wouldn't let someone's ghost dictate things between them-- his friendship with Ambassador Spock had been wildly different, after all, and if Jim was conflating them or allowing it to guide him, wouldn't he try and replicate something? No. He's certain. But at the same time he knows Spock wouldn't react this way for no reason, and would never speak so passionately about something if it wasn't truly important-- and logical.
He doesn't follow Spock to the bathroom. Instead he finds himself drifting to the sofa again, and the box set upon it. He sits down with the little thing in his hands, just resting his fingertips on the surface for a moment before he opens it. The starbase doesn't shift. Reality doesn't collapse. It's just a box with a handful of possessions that belonged to a now-dead Vulcan. All he had.
"If you go with me," he says at length, "I'll see a healer."
It's hard to say what turns his stomach more. True, he hasn't drank in a long time and shooting a full glass of strong cocoa wasn't the smartest way to get back into the swing of it, but he was reasonably sure that he would have kept it down if he wasn't also reeling from the fact that his best friend may have been a fabrication. May have been nothing more than a lonely version of himself recreating a lover he had long lost.
He wonders what it must have been like to be that desperate. Or was the other Spock desperate at all? Was this normal for him? To just push into an unknowing, unwilling mind?
What was he like, there? What was he capable of becoming?
Spock is surprised by Jim's agreeing, but it is muted behind everything else roiling around in his body. "I will," he promises. "The healer will be able to see the damage. They may even be able to fix it."
But, at that point, what would that do to Jim? What would that do to the man who had become his friend?
There may not even be damage. Jim knows that the first meld was done in a way like taking a sledgehammer to his head, but Ambassador Spock had worked with him since then, knowing he'd made a risky call. But Jim had forgiven him before the explanation was even out of his mouth. He sighs quietly, possibly inaudible to Spock. He'll take the necklace, he decides; he doesn't like it and doesn't want to hear the message on it and may never play it, but it's obviously a point of serious upset for Spock. Everything else, well... who knows. If Spock wants to leave it with him, Jim'll keep it, but with the decimation of the Enterprise he feels even stranger about keepsakes. He could send it back to Christopher's house in Mojave, he supposes.
"Are you alright in there?" he asks after a long moment.
The answer that question is complicated, depending on what sort of 'alright' Jim is asking about. However, as his stomach quails once more, he supposes no matter which way he meant it, the answer is 'No'. He doesn't have the opportunity to say it, however. Almost a second after the feeling grips him, he's bending forward, throwing up the liquid he shouldn't have consumed in the first place.
He should have known better, after all. And it was better out than in, at this point.
He threw up the brown liquid, gripping Jim's toilet with white knuckles, actively helping the purging along to rid himself of the poison he willfully contaminated himself with. It didn't take much, really. His mind was spiraling over everything his counterpart had done and that made it all...quite simple.
He would need to meditate. For awhile, after this was all over. Perhaps forever, trying to understand why this had happened. And how bad it must have been for Jim to readily accept and welcome such...invasions.
Maybe that said more things about Jim than it did about the other Spock. However, now, it was impossible to tell where one started and the other ended.
Jim sets the box down and makes his way quickly to the bathroom, wondering slightly hysterically if this is a Starfleet first. He's dead certain there are no medic primer notes about what to do with potentially alcohol-poisoned Vulcans. In a moment he's kneeling beside Spock, one hand on his first officer's back, the other holding a damp washcloth - though he doesn't offer it just yet, wanting to wait until they're certain he's got it all up.
"Don't try and stifle anything," he advises, "just let it work itself out. I really shouldn't have let you have all that..." Jim sighs and rubs his hand soothingly between the Vulcan's shoulder blades, watching closely for any signs he might keel over. Spock doesn't seem to be in organ failure territory or anything, but Jim's definitely puked hard enough to black out before during a fairly routine night out. One never knows.
Spock isn't stifling a damned thing. One retching leads right into the next as he clears his system of the whole mess. 40% cacao might have been too strong, he recognizes belatedly. But there is no way to take it back now. Just to keep getting it out of his body.
After a few minutes, he pauses, panting into the bowl before pressing the button to have it all taken away. He's not sure if he's done, but he is definitely sure that he doesn't want to look at it anymore.
"I...apologize," he says between inhales. "I have...made myself ill. Once I am recovered...I will leave." He's not sure how while the world is still spinning, but he'll figure it out. His head dips forward, resting on the edge of the bowl, his mind behind that forehead still circling over all he's now learned.
"I do not wish to experience a world where we are not friends." Which might have been intended to stay in his head, but now it's out there. "But is that desire more important than mental autonomy?"
"It's not your fault, Spock. It happens to everyone." Jim shifts around to sit properly on the tiled floor, and hands the Vulcan the little towel he'd run under cool water. "Let's just sit for a minute or two."
Chocolate vomit is a weird smell. Jim opts not to remark on it.
Instead of answering that potentially rhetorical question - directly, anyway - Jim considers for a little while. Then:
"Did I ever tell you how I met Chris? Or, did you ever hear about it, I guess."
This seems to be coming out of nowhere and Spock isn't sure if its because he's too inebriated to follow basic logic or if Jim is just not exhibiting any. Considering that the latter is normal for the man, Spock defaults to the more likely of the two and abandons trying to figure out what this is referring to.
"You did not. Your record states you were..." His mind is a bit fuzzy, so it takes a second or so to recall it. "Located in Iowa by then-Captain Pike who assisted in your enlisting. That is all. And I do not engage in petty gossip, so I did not learn more."
While Spock processes his odd-seeming inquiry, Jim leans up on his knees so that he can snag the hard plastic cup off the bathroom counter - a little delta has been stamped onto it - and fills it up with water from the tap. He sits back down and hands it to Spock. "Slowly," he instructs.
And then he sighs and gives his first officer a smile that's genuine, but a little sad. He misses Christopher Pike. A lot. He had a few mementos, little things he'd taken with him on their five-year mission, that are gone now. It's a stinging lesson about being foolish enough to get sentimental over material things.
"I was prowling the shipyard bar. Really, really drunk. I hit on then-cadet Uhura, and several of her companions objected to this, and I got my ass beat pretty badly. Pike called them off me, probably saved me from ending up in the hospital. Anyway-- point is, he was looking for me to begin with, that's why he had that recruitment tour stop in Riverside. Because he served with my parents. Specifically, my dead, hero father. He wanted to know what happened to the Kelvin baby. And there I was. Bleeding everywhere, hammered, getting stomped into the ground by uniformed Starfleet cadets."
The only reason that Spock obeys Jim's command to drink slowly is because he's not quite sure he can stomach even a drop of this water. He takes barely a tooth-full at a time, not even making a dent into the amount of water he has remaining to be drank. But within seconds, he's not thinking about the water, anymore. He's too confused.
"I...do not understand the relevance of this anecdote," he says. Because that's a lot kinder than asking Jim if he is drunk as well. At least that would explain this non-sequitur. But he's listening, all the same. And it makes a small amount of sense. He'd not known Uhura at the time, but he'd heard from her the story of meeting Jim in the bar. He'd had no idea that Pike had also found him there. Nor that this was the moment that he'd been recruited.
Spock had assumed this all occurred in San Francisco, actually. Which gave him a quick lesson on assumptions.
"Did this...have some meaning I was intended to gleam?"
Jim looks right at him, his gaze feeling a hundred years old-- he's grown so much since the first time they locked eyes at the academy hearing. He's died. Sometimes Jim seems so boyish, still, but sometimes the mileage shows up.
"Chris ended up being the most important person to me," he says quietly. "I'd never had anyone like him in my life. I never will again. And the only reason he ever so much as glanced at me is because of George Kirk. Plenty of people have dead parents and never get someone like Christopher Pike to scrape them off the floor. I got him because some fucking Romulan fried the ship my parents were on. And I would never-- never, Spock-- devalue what he meant to me because our relationship was created by the existence of someone else."
Jim had wanted to resent Pike. He wanted to hate him like he hated everyone else who looked at him and judged him against his father, some ghost Jim had never known. But Chris made him see and understand things that had eluded him his entire life. Jim doesn't give a damn why. He loved him. It wasn't fake just because it would never have happened had the incursion never occurred.
"Pike didn't alter your mind. Your emotions." Spock turns his head and dry heaves once, which is a blessing. It means there is nothing else in his stomach for him to get up. That has to be a good sign. The damp towel dabs at his face as he bends his head forward and stares down, into the water before he flushes it away, just to have something to do. The sound is deafening for a second with his head so close. When it clears away, there's nothing but silence.
"We hated one another. I marooned you on a planet you could have died on. Should have, statistically speaking." And he was, at the time, processing the loss of his entire planet, mother, bondmate, and family. But he's long since stopped giving himself slack for that; he could have directly led to someone's death. All because he wasn't aware enough to recuse himself from command.
"Since then...we have become close. I consider you one of the most important people in my life, Jim. But...your comparison. It is not...entirely equivalent. My counterpart touched your mind. Instilled feelings and memories that were not your own. Things that could have impacted...everything. A healer...could remedy these transfers."
And Jim could lose whatever it was that had made him think Spock was worth his time in the first place.
He presses the towel to his eyes, trying to stave off the headache impending. "Forgive me. I am...not of a suitable mental state to have this conversation, anymore. I will return to my room and....speak with you in the morning."
And neither did Ambassador Spock Jim wants to argue, but he recognizes the futility of it. This is personal for Spock-- it's personal for Jim, too, but they're approaching it from vastly different perspectives. The look he gives Spock is sad and tired. He doesn't understand how to explain. Maybe he can't. Jim squeezes Spock's shoulder and then gives it a supportive rub, knowing that he's got to be feeling like hell.
"Let's get you sorted out," he says softly. Jim makes sure Spock's not in danger of any more immediate dry-heaving and that he doesn't look like he's been puking, and then insists on walking him back to his quarters. He doesn't go in, though, not infringing further on his time or his privacy.
When he returns to his own and his gaze falls on the things left to him - funny how they've been left by both Spocks, now - he realizes just how awful he feels. Logically, practically, he knows he should get himself checked over by a healer, because if there is something amiss, it needs to be set right. And certainly he should want to function entirely uninhibited by anyone else, even if he believes quite firmly that he wouldn't have done anything different over the course of the last five years. But... But. The grain of doubt sparks cold fear in him. Fear of losing what he has. What if Spock's right? What if he decides Jim's been insincere this whole time and leaves? He'll lose one of his best and only friends and the comfort of Ambassador Spock's mind.
He doesn't listen to the recording in the necklace. He replicates entirely too much alcohol, drinks it all, and doesn't sleep.
Nearly a week later, Jim arranges to meet with a Vulcan healer, T'Liyal. Her aid explains that she's been asked to serve on the Vulcan High Council, but prefers to wander the stars now that their planet has passed. She feels it's where she belongs now. Jim finds he has a strange understanding for that sentiment. He collects Spock on the way to the appointment, forcing himself to be calm and almost casual about the entire thing. This is going to be fine. He tells himself that like a prayer. Everything is fine. There'll be nothing amiss. This will take ten minutes. Spock doesn't have to worry.
When Jim explains things to T'Liyal, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her quarters, her face remains mostly impassive. Only Spock will be able to detect how, suddenly, she is borderline horrified.
In the week that followed Jim's conversation, Spock has been doing his best impression of himself about four months before he could attach James Kirk's name to a face.
That is to say, he has been acting as though he barely knows the man.
It takes a fair bit of work. Avoiding lunch appointments is the easiest bit of it. Turning down chess in order to 'focus on his reports'. It is almost a miracle that Jim could find Spock at all for the meeting with the healer, what with how busy he kept himself. But it was easier that way, he supposed. A necessary adjustment that was better made early as opposed to late.
The whole trip over to see T'Liyal, Spock's eyes are focused ahead of him. Back straight, face neutral as stone; its the posture and presence he practiced in his room over and over again, each time he cracked in front of a child in school. The one that he had honed over the years to fall effortlessly into whenever his mind was going too fast and his emotions too unruly to be satisfactorily contained.
Shields up.
That is, until they are sitting in front of the healer and he can almost feel the disgust rolling off of her. And his own loathing begins to seep back up, filling each and every single crack he hadn't been careful enough to plug over. At least, this time, he wasn't going to throw up.
Glancing at Jim, he knows that the man is at the very least conversational in Vulcan. But for this, he wants some sort of privacy, so he takes a risk on an archaic dialect (both a risk that Jim wouldn't know it and an even greater risk that T'Liyal would).
"It is as he describes," he explains carefully, for her benefit. "I fear that he may have been given...subconscious memories or feelings from the Vulcan he melded with. I believe he would agree that these should be removed. For the autonomy of his mind."
Jim is a little more than just conversational in Vulcan - but Spock's correct in that it's standard, modern Vulcan. Not something he worries about being compromised one way or the other by Ambassador Spock, because he's always been good at languages and xenolinguistics (which drove Uhura up a wall while they were cadets), and because the older Vulcan had confided in him that the Kirk in his world had been far less polyglottaly inclined. That's all him.
T'Liyal understands and while Jim doesn't, technically, he doesn't need to. With the same amount of warmth that Spock has been showing him this week he says: "You are neither my parent nor my doctor. You're here as a courtesy. You can talk about me with me."
Or not at all is the chilly implication. And so T'Liyal's gaze snaps back from Spock to Jim, shaken out of her initial reaction. Having a human Starfleet officer pull up a Vulcan on manners is apparently a bit of a trip, but well, Jim's had enough of this bullshit silent treatment already. He thinks he's been very gracious and patient this week, giving Spock his space, not guilting him or being too annoying with asking him to play chess - keeping his sulking after each denial privately contained - and as such he's not about to sit here and have Spock talk over his head like Jim's some ignorant human peasant he can't soil his Vulcan hands with.
(Alright, maybe it's kind of mean for Jim to snap at him, but his feelings are hurt.)
"My apologies, Captain," T'Liyal says, falling on the awkwardness grenade with grace and smoothing forward the proceedings. "This is highly unusual. I am glad, however, that you have had some guidance on the matter from a Vulcan. Commander Spock is known to us as being especially psychically sensitive. Are you comfortable with him remaining?"
"Yes." Jim bites out the answer immediately before Spock can beg off, shooting his first officer a look that suggests he might actually develop laser eyes and obliterate him if he tries to leave. This was your idea and I need your support even if I'm pissed at you.
Spock hadn't been entirely fair, trying to talk around Jim. But his mind is in upheaval. His emotions raw as he faces what might be the last few minutes left of Jim seeing him as a friend. As someone worthwhile to expend time in. Certainly their camaraderie would likely stand up to whatever happened after the purging of the other Spock's influence. But what about the rest of it? What about the hints and pushes of something greater that Jim had been unknowingly coerced by? When they were gone, how would things change? Spock had been meditating on it for weeks, but he hadn't liked any of the conclusions he'd come to.
At Jim's curt response, Spock raised his eyebrow but didn't contradict him. "I...prefer to stay. His mind has been tampered with enough for a lifetime. I wish to assure myself that it does not get improperly influenced again." Not that T'Liyal would do such a thing. But she is Vulcan. She will understand the logic of his sentiment. Even if, underneath it, the 'logic' is standing on something far flimsier.
His eyes meet Jim's and don't blink. Don't do anything more than watch. Beg, silently, to whoever might listen, that Jim comes out of this still looking at him the same way. Irritation, anger and all. At least if he is hurt by Spock, that means he cares about him. On some level, it is a comforting alternative.
"You...are certain you are ready to do this?" he clarifies because he's not entirely sure he's given Jim the choice, yet. "You understand what this is meant to do?"
"I understand. I can't have this disrupting our working relationship. It's something I have to see through, because if there's a chance it's interfering with my judgement even a little, it has to go."
He sounds far calmer than he is. Jim is anguished inside, because he doesn't want to lose the warm spark of memory that isn't his memory. It used to be larger, wilder, shuffling someone else's thoughts and dreams into his psyche, but the ambassador had contained most of it when they'd met up after Jim had... died. (There was no one else he could talk to. He'd needed him, then, almost desperately.) But maybe he won't lose it, maybe he won't need to. Ambassador Spock may have taken care of everything already. Jim has no fucking clue.
The truth is, though, that even if he knew for certain he'd lose something important, he'd do it. His job, his crew, his ability to work with his first officer-- it's more important than he is as an individual. Far more important.
And so they settle in. T'Liyal does a cursory exam, her hand gently laid on Jim's face, taking her time. She speaks quietly with him after, about the fact that she can see how someone very skilled did do repair work after the initial violation-- she corrects herself quickly and calmly to say the initial moment of contact, able to tell even though Jim doesn't react outwardly that he hates hearing it spoken of that way. She theorizes that, given how adept the hand was that repaired him, there was no reason why it wouldn't have been completed unless the Vulcan who did it left it incomplete on purpose, or if Kirk resisted.
Jim doesn't offer an answer.
Stage two requires a period of meditation for the both of them beforehand, T'Liyal and Jim and, since he's staying, Spock.
Spock isn't entirely sure what to think of T'Liyal's comment on the healing that had been done incompletely. He's certainly not capable of it, yet, but it seems to reason that his counterpart had at least attempted to heal the damage caused. Unless, of course, it was left open on purpose. Or Jim had refused to have it closed.
Spock is confused, now. And he needs to meditate, but he also needs answers, so he's not sure what to pursue first.
Standing, he stares at Jim as though this is the first time he's ever seen him. There are only two possibilities, now. Either Jim was so deeply influenced that he actually was convinced leaving the memories there was a good idea. Or. Or he had simply consented, after the fact. For reasons Spock could not even begin to understand.
"Do you need assistance meditating properly?" he asks, hoping it is clear that he means 'properly' in the Vulcan sense. "You must have a firm center, for the next stage of your healing. This is not an act you should engage in lightly." He pauses, looking uncomfortable for a moment before it passes. Because what he wants to say is, 'Please. Let's go somewhere and talk. We should have talked long before we got here'. But what he's able to say is, "There is a quiet room. Down the hall. I believe it could be suitable."
Part of Jim wants to tell Spock no, to stay here and get it overwith as quickly as possible, and that impulse might be visible on his face for a moment before he takes a breath and reminds himself that he's got Spock here for this purpose exactly. To be a guide through something that's truly alien to Jim.
"All right," he says, and exchanges a quiet word with T'Liyal about when he'll be back. She's supportive, or at least impassively polite about it. Once, Jim thought he had an alright measure of Vulcan composure, but maybe he doesn't.
In the other room, Jim ends up pacing restlessly near the window before he forces himself to simmer down and go to sit on the floor. He looks up at Spock, trying to school his expression into serene blankness, but failing miserably.
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And then that question.
Jim looks at him, expression suddenly shuttered because he can tell how much the idea worries his first officer. So what if he did is his first thought, defensive, because really, so what. Even though he knows (logically, hah) that it was abrupt and too intense, because what in life goes on without a hitch? Jim had to understand. The older Spock made him understand. He made him understand more than he set out to, and left memories in him that sometimes flit to the surface in dreams or even in waking, but so what.
He doesn't answer, just stares at him. Which is answer enough on its own.
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"Jim," he hisses between his teeth, setting the mug on the table before getting up to his feet and walking over to the window. His hands ball into fists and press against the frame , white-knuckled and shaking with the strain. "Jim. Why did you not tell me?"
He can't look at his friend. Not when he feels a bit like he was the one who had just violated him. Illogical, certainly, but that doesn't stop him from feeling it. Everything from the last few years is in question, now. Jim's mental state alone is in question. Spock's head bows forward, taking his shoulders with it. The plastic beneath his knuckles bends, just ever so slightly.
"You should have told me."
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"Don't be like this about it. Please. It was on Delta Vega," which is probably the wrong thing to point out considering how wildly compromised Spock was at the time, "and it was necessary, I'd never have gotten back to the ship without him and after that-- after that it was my call."
Implying that a) it happened more than once and b) the first (!!) time wasn't Jim's call.
Well.
"You can't think so little of Vulcan practices, I don't believe that."
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"Considering the first act was not consensual and the subsequent ones were likely done after the insinuation of this being normal had already been planted, you...do not understand what has been done. What I..." He stops. His stomach has roiled in rebellion from what he has heard. What he apparently is capable of.
"I am sorry, Jim. I am...unsure of what else to say. How to make amends for such a violation." He wishes now that he hadn't drank. It's hard to differentiate where his illness and disgust are originating from. "I am...truly sorry."
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And Jim, selfish, fatherless, fuck up Jim, decided that was fine. He liked that feeling. He didn't care someone else earned it, because that universe took his father and ruined his mother's life and killed so, so many people, and so it owed him. Ambassador Spock owed him. If all he ever got back out of it was that feeling-- fucking fine. Because he's never going to feel that way for real.
"You haven't done anything. It's fine. I'm fine, Spock."
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But it wasn't right. And it wasn't fair. And the feeling inside of him that is telling him that Jim's regard for him is false is only growing by the second.
"You cannot assess the damage that has been done to you. What...has been changed. Added to your mind without your consent." He moves away from the wall, toward the direction of he bathroom. His face is pale in a way that might suggest a physical response to his emotions, but he's managing it alright for the time being.
"You should see a healer."
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He doesn't follow Spock to the bathroom. Instead he finds himself drifting to the sofa again, and the box set upon it. He sits down with the little thing in his hands, just resting his fingertips on the surface for a moment before he opens it. The starbase doesn't shift. Reality doesn't collapse. It's just a box with a handful of possessions that belonged to a now-dead Vulcan. All he had.
"If you go with me," he says at length, "I'll see a healer."
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He wonders what it must have been like to be that desperate. Or was the other Spock desperate at all? Was this normal for him? To just push into an unknowing, unwilling mind?
What was he like, there? What was he capable of becoming?
Spock is surprised by Jim's agreeing, but it is muted behind everything else roiling around in his body. "I will," he promises. "The healer will be able to see the damage. They may even be able to fix it."
But, at that point, what would that do to Jim? What would that do to the man who had become his friend?
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"Are you alright in there?" he asks after a long moment.
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He should have known better, after all. And it was better out than in, at this point.
He threw up the brown liquid, gripping Jim's toilet with white knuckles, actively helping the purging along to rid himself of the poison he willfully contaminated himself with. It didn't take much, really. His mind was spiraling over everything his counterpart had done and that made it all...quite simple.
He would need to meditate. For awhile, after this was all over. Perhaps forever, trying to understand why this had happened. And how bad it must have been for Jim to readily accept and welcome such...invasions.
Maybe that said more things about Jim than it did about the other Spock. However, now, it was impossible to tell where one started and the other ended.
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Jim sets the box down and makes his way quickly to the bathroom, wondering slightly hysterically if this is a Starfleet first. He's dead certain there are no medic primer notes about what to do with potentially alcohol-poisoned Vulcans. In a moment he's kneeling beside Spock, one hand on his first officer's back, the other holding a damp washcloth - though he doesn't offer it just yet, wanting to wait until they're certain he's got it all up.
"Don't try and stifle anything," he advises, "just let it work itself out. I really shouldn't have let you have all that..." Jim sighs and rubs his hand soothingly between the Vulcan's shoulder blades, watching closely for any signs he might keel over. Spock doesn't seem to be in organ failure territory or anything, but Jim's definitely puked hard enough to black out before during a fairly routine night out. One never knows.
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After a few minutes, he pauses, panting into the bowl before pressing the button to have it all taken away. He's not sure if he's done, but he is definitely sure that he doesn't want to look at it anymore.
"I...apologize," he says between inhales. "I have...made myself ill. Once I am recovered...I will leave." He's not sure how while the world is still spinning, but he'll figure it out. His head dips forward, resting on the edge of the bowl, his mind behind that forehead still circling over all he's now learned.
"I do not wish to experience a world where we are not friends." Which might have been intended to stay in his head, but now it's out there. "But is that desire more important than mental autonomy?"
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Chocolate vomit is a weird smell. Jim opts not to remark on it.
Instead of answering that potentially rhetorical question - directly, anyway - Jim considers for a little while. Then:
"Did I ever tell you how I met Chris? Or, did you ever hear about it, I guess."
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"You did not. Your record states you were..." His mind is a bit fuzzy, so it takes a second or so to recall it. "Located in Iowa by then-Captain Pike who assisted in your enlisting. That is all. And I do not engage in petty gossip, so I did not learn more."
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And then he sighs and gives his first officer a smile that's genuine, but a little sad. He misses Christopher Pike. A lot. He had a few mementos, little things he'd taken with him on their five-year mission, that are gone now. It's a stinging lesson about being foolish enough to get sentimental over material things.
"I was prowling the shipyard bar. Really, really drunk. I hit on then-cadet Uhura, and several of her companions objected to this, and I got my ass beat pretty badly. Pike called them off me, probably saved me from ending up in the hospital. Anyway-- point is, he was looking for me to begin with, that's why he had that recruitment tour stop in Riverside. Because he served with my parents. Specifically, my dead, hero father. He wanted to know what happened to the Kelvin baby. And there I was. Bleeding everywhere, hammered, getting stomped into the ground by uniformed Starfleet cadets."
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"I...do not understand the relevance of this anecdote," he says. Because that's a lot kinder than asking Jim if he is drunk as well. At least that would explain this non-sequitur. But he's listening, all the same. And it makes a small amount of sense. He'd not known Uhura at the time, but he'd heard from her the story of meeting Jim in the bar. He'd had no idea that Pike had also found him there. Nor that this was the moment that he'd been recruited.
Spock had assumed this all occurred in San Francisco, actually. Which gave him a quick lesson on assumptions.
"Did this...have some meaning I was intended to gleam?"
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"Chris ended up being the most important person to me," he says quietly. "I'd never had anyone like him in my life. I never will again. And the only reason he ever so much as glanced at me is because of George Kirk. Plenty of people have dead parents and never get someone like Christopher Pike to scrape them off the floor. I got him because some fucking Romulan fried the ship my parents were on. And I would never-- never, Spock-- devalue what he meant to me because our relationship was created by the existence of someone else."
Jim had wanted to resent Pike. He wanted to hate him like he hated everyone else who looked at him and judged him against his father, some ghost Jim had never known. But Chris made him see and understand things that had eluded him his entire life. Jim doesn't give a damn why. He loved him. It wasn't fake just because it would never have happened had the incursion never occurred.
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"We hated one another. I marooned you on a planet you could have died on. Should have, statistically speaking." And he was, at the time, processing the loss of his entire planet, mother, bondmate, and family. But he's long since stopped giving himself slack for that; he could have directly led to someone's death. All because he wasn't aware enough to recuse himself from command.
"Since then...we have become close. I consider you one of the most important people in my life, Jim. But...your comparison. It is not...entirely equivalent. My counterpart touched your mind. Instilled feelings and memories that were not your own. Things that could have impacted...everything. A healer...could remedy these transfers."
And Jim could lose whatever it was that had made him think Spock was worth his time in the first place.
He presses the towel to his eyes, trying to stave off the headache impending. "Forgive me. I am...not of a suitable mental state to have this conversation, anymore. I will return to my room and....speak with you in the morning."
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"Let's get you sorted out," he says softly. Jim makes sure Spock's not in danger of any more immediate dry-heaving and that he doesn't look like he's been puking, and then insists on walking him back to his quarters. He doesn't go in, though, not infringing further on his time or his privacy.
When he returns to his own and his gaze falls on the things left to him - funny how they've been left by both Spocks, now - he realizes just how awful he feels. Logically, practically, he knows he should get himself checked over by a healer, because if there is something amiss, it needs to be set right. And certainly he should want to function entirely uninhibited by anyone else, even if he believes quite firmly that he wouldn't have done anything different over the course of the last five years. But... But. The grain of doubt sparks cold fear in him. Fear of losing what he has. What if Spock's right? What if he decides Jim's been insincere this whole time and leaves? He'll lose one of his best and only friends and the comfort of Ambassador Spock's mind.
He doesn't listen to the recording in the necklace. He replicates entirely too much alcohol, drinks it all, and doesn't sleep.
Nearly a week later, Jim arranges to meet with a Vulcan healer, T'Liyal. Her aid explains that she's been asked to serve on the Vulcan High Council, but prefers to wander the stars now that their planet has passed. She feels it's where she belongs now. Jim finds he has a strange understanding for that sentiment. He collects Spock on the way to the appointment, forcing himself to be calm and almost casual about the entire thing. This is going to be fine. He tells himself that like a prayer. Everything is fine. There'll be nothing amiss. This will take ten minutes. Spock doesn't have to worry.
When Jim explains things to T'Liyal, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her quarters, her face remains mostly impassive. Only Spock will be able to detect how, suddenly, she is borderline horrified.
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That is to say, he has been acting as though he barely knows the man.
It takes a fair bit of work. Avoiding lunch appointments is the easiest bit of it. Turning down chess in order to 'focus on his reports'. It is almost a miracle that Jim could find Spock at all for the meeting with the healer, what with how busy he kept himself. But it was easier that way, he supposed. A necessary adjustment that was better made early as opposed to late.
The whole trip over to see T'Liyal, Spock's eyes are focused ahead of him. Back straight, face neutral as stone; its the posture and presence he practiced in his room over and over again, each time he cracked in front of a child in school. The one that he had honed over the years to fall effortlessly into whenever his mind was going too fast and his emotions too unruly to be satisfactorily contained.
Shields up.
That is, until they are sitting in front of the healer and he can almost feel the disgust rolling off of her. And his own loathing begins to seep back up, filling each and every single crack he hadn't been careful enough to plug over. At least, this time, he wasn't going to throw up.
Glancing at Jim, he knows that the man is at the very least conversational in Vulcan. But for this, he wants some sort of privacy, so he takes a risk on an archaic dialect (both a risk that Jim wouldn't know it and an even greater risk that T'Liyal would).
"It is as he describes," he explains carefully, for her benefit. "I fear that he may have been given...subconscious memories or feelings from the Vulcan he melded with. I believe he would agree that these should be removed. For the autonomy of his mind."
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T'Liyal understands and while Jim doesn't, technically, he doesn't need to. With the same amount of warmth that Spock has been showing him this week he says: "You are neither my parent nor my doctor. You're here as a courtesy. You can talk about me with me."
Or not at all is the chilly implication. And so T'Liyal's gaze snaps back from Spock to Jim, shaken out of her initial reaction. Having a human Starfleet officer pull up a Vulcan on manners is apparently a bit of a trip, but well, Jim's had enough of this bullshit silent treatment already. He thinks he's been very gracious and patient this week, giving Spock his space, not guilting him or being too annoying with asking him to play chess - keeping his sulking after each denial privately contained - and as such he's not about to sit here and have Spock talk over his head like Jim's some ignorant human peasant he can't soil his Vulcan hands with.
(Alright, maybe it's kind of mean for Jim to snap at him, but his feelings are hurt.)
"My apologies, Captain," T'Liyal says, falling on the awkwardness grenade with grace and smoothing forward the proceedings. "This is highly unusual. I am glad, however, that you have had some guidance on the matter from a Vulcan. Commander Spock is known to us as being especially psychically sensitive. Are you comfortable with him remaining?"
"Yes." Jim bites out the answer immediately before Spock can beg off, shooting his first officer a look that suggests he might actually develop laser eyes and obliterate him if he tries to leave. This was your idea and I need your support even if I'm pissed at you.
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At Jim's curt response, Spock raised his eyebrow but didn't contradict him. "I...prefer to stay. His mind has been tampered with enough for a lifetime. I wish to assure myself that it does not get improperly influenced again." Not that T'Liyal would do such a thing. But she is Vulcan. She will understand the logic of his sentiment. Even if, underneath it, the 'logic' is standing on something far flimsier.
His eyes meet Jim's and don't blink. Don't do anything more than watch. Beg, silently, to whoever might listen, that Jim comes out of this still looking at him the same way. Irritation, anger and all. At least if he is hurt by Spock, that means he cares about him. On some level, it is a comforting alternative.
"You...are certain you are ready to do this?" he clarifies because he's not entirely sure he's given Jim the choice, yet. "You understand what this is meant to do?"
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"I understand. I can't have this disrupting our working relationship. It's something I have to see through, because if there's a chance it's interfering with my judgement even a little, it has to go."
He sounds far calmer than he is. Jim is anguished inside, because he doesn't want to lose the warm spark of memory that isn't his memory. It used to be larger, wilder, shuffling someone else's thoughts and dreams into his psyche, but the ambassador had contained most of it when they'd met up after Jim had... died. (There was no one else he could talk to. He'd needed him, then, almost desperately.) But maybe he won't lose it, maybe he won't need to. Ambassador Spock may have taken care of everything already. Jim has no fucking clue.
The truth is, though, that even if he knew for certain he'd lose something important, he'd do it. His job, his crew, his ability to work with his first officer-- it's more important than he is as an individual. Far more important.
And so they settle in. T'Liyal does a cursory exam, her hand gently laid on Jim's face, taking her time. She speaks quietly with him after, about the fact that she can see how someone very skilled did do repair work after the initial violation-- she corrects herself quickly and calmly to say the initial moment of contact, able to tell even though Jim doesn't react outwardly that he hates hearing it spoken of that way. She theorizes that, given how adept the hand was that repaired him, there was no reason why it wouldn't have been completed unless the Vulcan who did it left it incomplete on purpose, or if Kirk resisted.
Jim doesn't offer an answer.
Stage two requires a period of meditation for the both of them beforehand, T'Liyal and Jim and, since he's staying, Spock.
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Spock is confused, now. And he needs to meditate, but he also needs answers, so he's not sure what to pursue first.
Standing, he stares at Jim as though this is the first time he's ever seen him. There are only two possibilities, now. Either Jim was so deeply influenced that he actually was convinced leaving the memories there was a good idea. Or. Or he had simply consented, after the fact. For reasons Spock could not even begin to understand.
"Do you need assistance meditating properly?" he asks, hoping it is clear that he means 'properly' in the Vulcan sense. "You must have a firm center, for the next stage of your healing. This is not an act you should engage in lightly." He pauses, looking uncomfortable for a moment before it passes. Because what he wants to say is, 'Please. Let's go somewhere and talk. We should have talked long before we got here'. But what he's able to say is, "There is a quiet room. Down the hall. I believe it could be suitable."
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"All right," he says, and exchanges a quiet word with T'Liyal about when he'll be back. She's supportive, or at least impassively polite about it. Once, Jim thought he had an alright measure of Vulcan composure, but maybe he doesn't.
In the other room, Jim ends up pacing restlessly near the window before he forces himself to simmer down and go to sit on the floor. He looks up at Spock, trying to school his expression into serene blankness, but failing miserably.
"I'm fucking terrified," he says casually.
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