Fic: Two Summers, 1-7
“Give us your ship, and we will give you what you long for most.”
There’s a trap in that statement somewhere, Jim’s instincts are screaming at him to leave these aliens and get the fuck out.
His heart is like a lead weight. It keeps him firmly in place.
“Surely it would be an equitable trade. Your ship for your First Officer.”
This whole grief thing? It’s turning him into an old man. Suddenly he knows why people want to live forever or raise the dead or believe in an afterlife. Because the alternative hurts too damn much. He hasn’t accepted the possibility that Spock’s just gone. Disappeared. That they’ll never see each other again. He doesn’t think he’ll ever accept it.
“Imagine, the two of your reunited. We can give you what you long for, what you yearn for. Just give us your ship.”
He can almost understand Nero, and whatever that idiot must’ve felt losing his wife and unborn child. Almost.
“Don’t do it, Jim.”
“She doesn’t know what it feels like captain, to live with this unbreachable gap in your life.”
“And you do?” Uhura retorts. “Captain, let’s go.”
“We have the technology to bring him back to life! Exactly as he was-you’ve seen our facilities, you know what we can do.”
“I know.”
“Then take it. Take this opportunity to be happy again. Give us your ship, that is all we ask as payment. Your ship, and you will be free of this sorrow that hunts you.”
Is that really what he wants? Would he really be happy again, would all these feelings just go away if Spock came back, as though he never left? But he did leave. That’s the point. He died. He’s dead. Jim was there, he saw the three funerals.
“Jim, don’t. They can’t give him back to you. Even if they gave you a perfect replica, you know it wouldn’t be him.”
“We’ve found a way to break the memory barrier. Spock would remember everything perfectly, even his death. You would never be able to tell the difference. They would be the same person.”
His heart is hammering.
Spock is dead.
“Leave the dead in peace,” she hisses. “Would he want this, captain? Look at me and tell me he’d want this exchange.”
“He’d want to live.”
“But at what cost? At what cost to you and to us?”
Captain, decision maker extraordinaire, famed throughout the galaxy for knowing what to do and say at exactly the right time. Those skills desert him and his mouth is dry and Jim doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do.
“Don’t do it, Jim.”
But I want to. I want to so bad, I want to see him so bad, I want another chance and time and place and skin and feet and hands and lips I want him back I want him alive and next to me, breathing and heart beating in his chest. I want this oh god I want this my heart is breaking again I want this so bad oh god oh god I want this.
Nyota can read him. She hugs him fiercely and whispers in his ear.
“I miss him. We all miss him. But before you say anything, think about this-if you bring him back to life, are you doing it for him or for yourself? And if you can look me straight in the eye and tell me you’re doing this for Spock, then I don’t know what to tell you. But otherwise, no. I’ll declare you compromised and take command, lock you in the brig and throw away the key until we’re lightyears from this planet. Do you understand me?
“Two summers. Think about this possibility after two summers, and then you tell me what your decision is.”
Can’t wait that long I want this so bad heart breaking miss him so much want him so much tired of living without him love him want him please return to me come back to me Spock Spock don’t leave don’t die Spock.
“Beam us up,” he manages to croak into his communicator and immediately regrets it when he’s back on the transporter pad, throwing up everything and more.
Nyota makes some sharp orders the same way Spock would and Sulu warps them out and Jim’s left with his mind whirling with hypotheticals what ifs the vision of Spock and his groin aching and his heart shattering into tiny pieces again.
Scotty helps him up off the pad and escorts him to Sickbay. The man doesn’t really say anything, not even a comment about the mess Jim left back in the transporter room. He suddenly feels so cold and realizes that he’s breaking out into a cold sweat as the possibility of Spock alive and beside him, supporting him and taking him down to Sickbay instead of Scotty doing the same thing grips him and Jim almost collapses against a wall. But Scotty catches him before he crashes, just like Spock would’ve and it’s Scotty’s strength he leans on not Spock’s as Bones directs them to a biobed.
Nyota takes his hand. Bones is demanding an explanation.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry you had to make that decision.”
He wants to retort that he didn’t make a decision, just flipped open his communicator and had them beam up. His mouth is sticky with the taste of vomit and briefly he considers that he’s going crazy because instead of Nyota’s dark brown eyes looking down at him he sees Spock’s, the same gentle approval and support shining through.
“You did the right thing, Jim. I promise we’ll get through this.”
Bones is still demanding an explanation. Nyota squeezes his hand then turns to the doctor. The words wash over him. Chapel comes to his side and checks up on his signals.
She’s listening to Nyota’s account and something floods her eyes as she looks as Jim. He can’t define it, it’s like a reflection and pure understanding of everything he’s going through. Then he remembers-Dr. Roger Korby.
Christine says absolutely nothing except to take his hand, but he reaches up and grabs her instead. She returns the embrace. Like in the Observation Deck an eternity ago, Jim finds himself sobbing all over her blue uniform, clinging to her as if she holds out a promise. He has no idea what that promise is, but it’s more than what he has now and he misses Spock so much he misses the intimacy and love and the way that Spock understood him completely the way they were themselves and more than themselves. In Christine’s grey eyes he finds understanding of a different sort, but he needs it god how he needs it when there’s nothing inside him but this desolate emptiness that used to be filled with Spock but Spock’s dead and they held out the possibility that he could be brought back to life, the same, unchanged, the real thing.
What must it have been like for her, after she found out that Korby wasn’t real? And they promised a perfect replica of Spock, but what if it turned out he wasn’t?
“Two summers,” she whispers. “It took me two summers when they declared Roger dead.”
In his peripheral vision, he’s aware that Scotty, Bones, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura are gathered around his biobed. They don’t really say or do anything. It reminds him how much Spock isn’t there and he tightens his arms around Christine, trying to believe her promise and the unspoken promise that the crew offer him.
Spock was always the one to stand by him. Spock is dead.
He doesn’t think he can last two summers.