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.
Spock wants, more than anything, to touch Jim. Which is an odd impulse, but
it's there all the same. A hold over from the days when he was young and
his mother could indulge in human comforts without his father intruding on
it. Without his reminder that, as a Vulcan, it was improper to be held in
such a way. That Spock needed to adjust to a less tactile atmosphere.
Sometimes, she would still run a hand over his hair or stroke his back
while he ate. He thinks about moments like that when he's stressed or tired
or lonely. And then he remembers how they won't come back, again.
Still. Jim's words awaken that old, instinctual desire that he thinks all
humans have--even half humans; that desire to know that they are not alone.
And that, somewhere, someone cares about what happens to them.
"You need not be frightened, Jim," he says honestly. And Spock's scared
too, for different reasons. But he can see now how selfish he's been the
last week. So whatever's going on in his own head has to be shelved. Should
have been, ages ago.
"But. You should tell me all you've omitted. I am sorry I did not fully
inquire before we began this, but I know now I am missing vital
information. Please." He leans forward, almost onto his knees. His hand
presses into Jim's hand in a way he hopes is grounding and not restraining.
"Please, Jim. I will listen. Tell me."
It's a little startling because he knows how intimate the touching of hands is for Vulcans - Jim knows entirely too much about Vulcan culture for an outsider, thanks to Ambassador Spock. That, at least, is knowledge he'll never lose. But he remembers Spock is also part human, and this is very human of him.
Jim sighs.
"It wasn't right, the first time he did it. He was unstable from the shock of being in a new dimension and watching Vulcan die. Melding with me was logical and the most effective thing to do, but what passed between us was.. more emotional transference than there should have been. He knew it even then, I think, but he was too in shock and I was in too much of a hurry. I had other shit going on."
(Like being marooned on Delta Vega and needing to get back to the Enterprise or die trying.)
"I was so focused that it was just-- it was this thing that happened, and then I didn't think of it again for weeks. He explained it like, my psyche is so willful and dominant that it just overrode anything he left behind until I was settled down, and even then it was almost as though I could tell when I was thinking about something that didn't originate from me."
... An odd way of phrasing everything. But it's odd. All of it. Spock should be able to make sense of it, though.
Spock wishes acutely that he had spoken to Jim before coming here. Because it's clear he's had a few misunderstandings about what had happened. Not many and his concerns are far from being appeased, but. Things weren't precisely how he thought. And Jim had deserved to be listened to instead of pushed into yet another thing he didn't understand. Spock's hand stays where it is, but he shifts to get a bit more comfortable as he listens, patient and face free of judgement.
"You knew you had memories that were not your own. Did you...reach out to him to correct this?" Spock is already trying to think of the weeks after Vulcan's demise. It's hard to push past the blackness of those days. Those weeks where he pretended to be fine and perform his duties as was expected of him, but could barely even close his eyes without seeing his planet destroyed.
It didn't help that his father had now lifted their wall of silence, between them. It should have helped, but it didn't. Spock knew the only reason they were speaking to one another was because his mother had died. And, knowing that, every time the man reached out, it was just yet another reminder that it had taken the loss of the one person who had loved him unconditionally to get a single word.
Spock pushed it back and leaned away, hand left in the space between them instead of retracted back against him, as though he were disgusted by what Jim were saying.
"We'd been in infrequent communication, but I reached out to him after... Khan," after I died, "because I needed-- someone to understand. And it was confusing to be in my own head at the time." Jim laughs a little. "It would have been confusing even without someone else's thoughts. I.. couldn't let any of you see me like that."
Jim looks down, shoulders slumped. He doesn't look like himself. He doesn't look like Ambassador Spock, either, he just looks tired. It's slowly beginning to sink in that his friend is dead and that he's going to lose the last remnant he has of him.
"There'd been a time when we were doing something and it was familiar-- this mission, I'm not going to tell you which one-- but the details were skewed. So I did an experiment with myself. I called in what I remembered and held it against what I felt I should do on my own. And I swear to you, it was stark enough of a difference that it almost didn't matter. It's never been consistent. Sometimes I remembered things and sometimes I wouldn't. But after that time..." the whole dead thing. Jim scrubs a hand over his face.
"The ambassador was just. Too worried. He gave me a low dose of lexorin and spent a coupe days poking around in my head doing.. whatever. He ended up admitting the drug was probably overkill, though."
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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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Spock wants, more than anything, to touch Jim. Which is an odd impulse, but it's there all the same. A hold over from the days when he was young and his mother could indulge in human comforts without his father intruding on it. Without his reminder that, as a Vulcan, it was improper to be held in such a way. That Spock needed to adjust to a less tactile atmosphere.
Sometimes, she would still run a hand over his hair or stroke his back while he ate. He thinks about moments like that when he's stressed or tired or lonely. And then he remembers how they won't come back, again.
Still. Jim's words awaken that old, instinctual desire that he thinks all humans have--even half humans; that desire to know that they are not alone. And that, somewhere, someone cares about what happens to them.
"You need not be frightened, Jim," he says honestly. And Spock's scared too, for different reasons. But he can see now how selfish he's been the last week. So whatever's going on in his own head has to be shelved. Should have been, ages ago.
"But. You should tell me all you've omitted. I am sorry I did not fully inquire before we began this, but I know now I am missing vital information. Please." He leans forward, almost onto his knees. His hand presses into Jim's hand in a way he hopes is grounding and not restraining. "Please, Jim. I will listen. Tell me."
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Jim sighs.
"It wasn't right, the first time he did it. He was unstable from the shock of being in a new dimension and watching Vulcan die. Melding with me was logical and the most effective thing to do, but what passed between us was.. more emotional transference than there should have been. He knew it even then, I think, but he was too in shock and I was in too much of a hurry. I had other shit going on."
(Like being marooned on Delta Vega and needing to get back to the Enterprise or die trying.)
"I was so focused that it was just-- it was this thing that happened, and then I didn't think of it again for weeks. He explained it like, my psyche is so willful and dominant that it just overrode anything he left behind until I was settled down, and even then it was almost as though I could tell when I was thinking about something that didn't originate from me."
... An odd way of phrasing everything. But it's odd. All of it. Spock should be able to make sense of it, though.
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"You knew you had memories that were not your own. Did you...reach out to him to correct this?" Spock is already trying to think of the weeks after Vulcan's demise. It's hard to push past the blackness of those days. Those weeks where he pretended to be fine and perform his duties as was expected of him, but could barely even close his eyes without seeing his planet destroyed.
It didn't help that his father had now lifted their wall of silence, between them. It should have helped, but it didn't. Spock knew the only reason they were speaking to one another was because his mother had died. And, knowing that, every time the man reached out, it was just yet another reminder that it had taken the loss of the one person who had loved him unconditionally to get a single word.
Spock pushed it back and leaned away, hand left in the space between them instead of retracted back against him, as though he were disgusted by what Jim were saying.
"Go on. Please."
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Jim looks down, shoulders slumped. He doesn't look like himself. He doesn't look like Ambassador Spock, either, he just looks tired. It's slowly beginning to sink in that his friend is dead and that he's going to lose the last remnant he has of him.
"There'd been a time when we were doing something and it was familiar-- this mission, I'm not going to tell you which one-- but the details were skewed. So I did an experiment with myself. I called in what I remembered and held it against what I felt I should do on my own. And I swear to you, it was stark enough of a difference that it almost didn't matter. It's never been consistent. Sometimes I remembered things and sometimes I wouldn't. But after that time..." the whole dead thing. Jim scrubs a hand over his face.
"The ambassador was just. Too worried. He gave me a low dose of lexorin and spent a coupe days poking around in my head doing.. whatever. He ended up admitting the drug was probably overkill, though."