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Chapter Text

For all of the Chief Medical Officer’s tiresome ranting about the temperature of Spock’s blood, along with other vulcanoid vital signs, Spock had never before woken up cold in his sickbay.

Logically, it followed that he was not currently in Sickbay. At least, not on the Enterprise, in the correct universe, and under the care of Dr. McCoy, despite the familiar smells of coffee and ultraviolet sterilization. Spock kept his eyes shut and allowed the facts of his current state to shuffle into line.

Fact the first: he was in a medical facility, presumably for treatment, as evidenced by the smells, the intermittent cheep of a biobed receiving an anomalous reading, and the chill pinch of intravenous rehydration in his left elbow.

Fact the Second: he was freezing. This, combined with the fact that the biobed continued to chirp without investigation by medical staff, or a gruffly barked instruction to “shut that damn machine off,” suggested an absence of not just Dr. McCoy, but the entirety of the Enterprise’s medical staff. Further supporting the conclusion that he was not on the Enterprise, no one had yet discovered his return to consciousness.

Fact the Third: his lack of immediate recall as to where he was suggested sedation, either for medical treatment or purposes less pleasant. The lurking, distant ache in his left arm suggested two possible answers as to why it had been necessary.

He attempted to discreetly wiggle his toes, and failed. It was a likely conclusion that he had been sedated with either Sestanyl, or a medicine similar to it, which had once before produced an anomalous, twilight state of consciousness in him.

Most assuredly, he was not on the Enterprise.

Steps approached his bed. They sounded like Starfleet Uniform boots – more than one pair.

“Doctor, I don’t understand – his fever’s still not down.” The voice was unfamiliar, but young sounding. Possibly an ensign or a trainee nurse. Human, by the accent. Belatedly, Spock realized that the continuous anomalous reading must be himself.

“Damn. If only this ion storm would let up so I could get that medical file transferred – I’ll call the Enterprise as soon as it does. Turn the bed’s cooling field up, Nurse.”

It was fortunate that Spock slipped back into full unconsciousness before his teeth started chattering.

***

Memory returned with his next brief foray into consciousness. He had transported over to the Concord, a small Starfleet Courier vessel with a crew component of forty five, to aid them in interpreting some readings they had gotten when an Ion storm had damaged their sensor array while passing by a Class M planet.

Unfortunately, the ship’s sensor console had suffered a catastrophic short circuit somewhere in the internal power supply while he had been elbow deep in it, attempting to extract the memory core. It had caught both him and the ensign assisting him unawares, shocking the ensign and setting Spock’s sleeve on fire.

Listen as he might, Spock found himself unable to determine the Ensign’s fate.

***

“You gave him what?”

Spock awoke for the third time to heat, and to the strident, but not necessarily unwelcome, tones of the Enterprise’s CMO.

“Sestanyl is the standard for emergency sedation in Vulcanoid patients with unknown histories of -”

“I don’t make patient files for the sake of my health, you know! Why, of all the slipshod ways to medicate a burn patient – don’t you know that Sestanyl depresses Vulcans’ body temperatures?”

The Concord’s doctor sounded stiff and annoyed. “Commander Spock,” he said, “Has been consistently running a fever of thirty three and a half degrees, which is significantly higher than the Vulcan norm -”

“And two degrees below average for Spock,” McCoy spat.

There was a long, prickly, and irate silence, and then footsteps retreating. McCoy snorted irritably. A hand descended on Spock’s good shoulder, a mere brush of mind against his mental shields through his shirt and blanket, and squeezed briefly.

“Sestanyl, huh? Don’t bother tryin’ to wake up, you’ve got nowhere to go. Your little assistant is just fine, and we’ll be back on the Enterprise before you know it.”

Spock, still without any conscious control of his movements, could not reply, and suspected the doctor of using the moment to get the last word.

“Soon as we get another break in that ion storm, or someone finally sends us a shuttle, anyway,” the doctor grumbled.

Chapter Text

“Your continued tirades,” Spock said to McCoy, “Are illogical, as surely even you cannot hope to dissuade me from an action I have already committed.”

“Illogical! You call me illogical after you went and let every bug-eyed alien on this asteroid rummage through your skull! It’s a wonder you didn’t sprout antennae to go with those pointy ears of yours!”

There was no use in explaining to the doctor once more that a mind meld could not produce physical alterations in the participants. “Not quite every, doctor.”

“Close enough. I won’t say I told you so if you walk into a wall, but don’t think I won’t be telling the captain about your unnecessarily risky method of dealing with our ex-kidnappers.”

In fact, the Formics had been relatively gentle and hospitable, once convinced of the Enterprise’s peaceful intentions. It was simply an unfortunate chance that the ship had been dispatched to investigate the anomalous readings of the asteroid that they had made their primary colony nursery – and the grubs’ guardians had been rightfully wary of intruders in their sealed, climate-controlled series of tunnels. Neither the two Starfleet officers, nor any of the formic, had suffered any lasting damage beyond a few bruises, and in Spock’s case, a developing headache, which he could attribute as much to the doctor’s incessant over-emotionalism as to his meld with the formic colony en masse.

The problem was one of scale. Vulcans were well equipped to initiate mind melds with members of their own species, and Spock himself was somewhat adept at extending that ability to various beings of increasingly diverse species. The Formics were not even psi-null, though their telepathic abilities were less flexible than his own. Each individual formic was linked, all the way back via a series of relay individuals, to their colony’s queen, and they had no other method of communication amongst themselves, isolating them equally from other colonies and other species.

To demonstrate the sincerity of his peaceful intentions, and the sentient status of himself and the doctor, Spock had been forced to attempt mental communication, however briefly with all the Formic colony in direct contact with the nearest relay, and from there up several more relays to the Queen, and the effect had been supremely disorienting. First, there was the lingering impressions of Formic senses, adapted to low-light, tactile environments, with a compound panoramic field of vision that disturbed his balance. Second, there was the constant emotional chatter of hundreds of Formics, which was processed and filtered by the relay, themselves a cocooned, sessile individual with no exterior senses. Each relay sent information back up or down the chain, nonverbally and overlaid with opinions that were based in alien physical sensations. The mind of a Formic Queen, adapted to handle and redistribute such a wealth of information, was fascinating indeed.

If the Enterprise were to ever come into contact with another Formic Colony, and Spock were able to properly prepare himself for the telepathic onslaught, the phenomenon would have to be carefully studied, perhaps by a meld direct with a mid-chain relay, rather than a single worker with a very rudimentary sense of self. He could easily anticipate writing a paper on it – without interference from Dr. McCoy, who had not considered Spock’s actions to carry a reasonable degree of risk.

“Is anything I’m saying sinking through your pointed ears to that thick skull of yours?” the doctor demanded.

Spock had momentarily been unaware of the doctor’s continued grumbling. His auditory processing must have shut down in self defense. It was also possibly an after-effect of the mind meld, due to the Formic’s lack of regard for vocalization as a method of communication. His other mental processes were not unaffected – he was neither dizzy, nor suffering from any nausea or vestibular complaint, yet he was experiencing a curious sensation of distortion, possibly leftover from the unique sensory experience of the Formic colony.  The room-tunnel they were ascending seemed to vary in size from one moment to the next, as he attempted to focus, sometimes bright and vast and other times dim and snug. Unidentified scents nagged at his consciousness, as did the texture of rock beneath his boots.

“Doctor as we have discussed before, my skull is not significantly thicker than any other humanoid or vulcanoid individual. There is, moreover, no evolutionary advantage to a member of either of our species possessing a thin cranium.”

McCoy snorted. “Glad to know that these ant-aliens haven’t scrambled you too much with your Vulcan Voodoo. You wouldn’t recognize a figure of speech if it bit you in the ass – Hell, if you were ever anything but a literal-minded stick in the mud, I might actually worry about you.”

Spock had, in fact, spent an informative evening in the mess hall with Lieutenant Uhura discussing the historical context of various figures of speech and other idioms that had made their way, largely directly translated, into Terran standard. He saw no reason to inform the doctor of this, as it would no doubt cause him to make his speech patterns even more deliberately abstruse.

Fortunately, their climb continued in silence after that, until the lights on both communicators blinked back on. Spock’s eyes were suddenly flooded with multiplied after-images, superimposing a distorted, hemispherical view over his own binocular vision… he had been wrong in his estimation. Both a headache and a distinct sense of vertigo were forming. He would require extensive meditation upon his return.

“… to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise.”

“Doctor!” The chief engineer’s exuberant crackle cut through layers of rock, the damaged speaker of McCoy’s communicator, and Spock’s eardrums, making him wince. A purely reflexive, and therefore non-emotional, response to negative environmental stimuli.

“Is Commander Spock wit ye? I cannae tell you how glad I am to hear your voice, the crew’s been worried sick.”

McCoy was looking at Spock with an emotive grimace. Spock lowered his hand from his forehead and straightened his shoulders. “Yup, he’s here. He’s been here the whole time. When can we beam back up?”

“Just a tick, I’ll beam ye both up personally. The rock layers on this wee asteroid beastie are tricky ones. And of course, the captain will want to see ye both – Scott out.”

“Don’t wake him up!” The doctor protested illogically. It was both too late to communicate the sentiment, and highly unlikely that the captain had managed any sleep without chemical assistance while the two of them had been missing for thirty five hours.  It was likely only a combined effort by their most seasoned officers that had gotten him off the bridge in the first place.

When he explained this to McCoy, the doctor scowled.

“A man can hope,” he growled. “Grown men like you and Jim shouldn’t need to be tucked in like children on a sugar rush, if it isn’t one of you it’s the other…”

Spock was spared further elaboration on this theme by the return of Commander Scott’s voice.

“Are ye ready?”

“For God’s sake, Scotty, I’ve been down here with the Vulcan since yesterday. Beam us up already!”

There was a half-strangled laugh from the other end of the communicator, which Spock instantly recognized as the Captain.

“Aye, stand by to beam up.”

They dissolved in a dizzying swirl of light.

The enterprise was too bright, the standard overhead lights stabbing into the front and back of Spock’s skull, doubled and tripled in intensity. The smells were harshly metallic, familiar but lodged painfully in the space between his eyes.

“Bones! Spock!” The captain had hurried forward and taken each of them by an elbow, smiling softly through tired eyes.

It was not quite like a tidal wave, but Spock’s mental shields crumbled. His chest grew tight, his eyes grainy, a sympathetic twinge started in the left side of his lower back. Emotions flickered past too swiftly to process or categorize, out of timing with the doctor patting the captain’s shoulder, a blaze of warmth flickering across the upper quadrant of his chest, a deep tiredness, the flickering track of thoughts he was still partially shielded from, faster than a sped-up holodisplay.

“Spock?”

“Captain,” Spock managed, “It is pleasing to be on the Enterprise once more.”

Jim freed a hand from the doctor’s arm and grasped Spock by both elbows. Spock closed his eyes – the speed of Jim’s thoughts had increased, as had the tightness in Spock’s chest, and the associated lightness of his head. Logically, his skull could not be lifting upwards, it had fused during the maturation process of his skeleton like all his other bones.

“Spock, are you all right?” The thumbs that moved asynchronously across Spock’s upper arms seemed strangely detached from all the other sensations clamoring for Spock’s attention throughout his body.

“Damn it Jim, he’s a Vulcan not a teddy bear! Give him room to breathe.”

Both hands fell away from his arms. Spock found that his new bodily sensations had disappeared, leaving him with the simple headache and vertigo that had accompanied him from the Formic colony.

The captain had asked a question – Spock had caught none of it but the curious upward turn of his voice at the end.

“Short version, we met some unfriendly bug-eyed aliens who thought we were there to steal their babies,” said Dr. McCoy, “Spock here did some creepy Vulcan Voodoo to convince them that we had honorable intentions, because they don’t talk.”

Spock opened his eyes and was not immediately assaulted by the corridor’s ambient light.

“Then shall we take this to the briefing room, gentlemen?” The Captain’s hand briefly hovered near Spock’s forearm, but he did not touch him again. His eyes were still full of worry.

“You can go back to bed,” said McCoy, “I need to drag Spock down to the medbay for his mandatory scans while he’s still too tired to resist. If you let him give a report first he’ll get away.”

Doubtless that would be a long and illogical process. “I think you will find, Doctor, that the Vulcan capacity to endure without sleep exceeds that of a human.”

Chapter Text

To Spock’s displeasure and complete lack of surprise, the doctor caught up to him in Science lab three, while he attempted to review reports of the damage caused by the Romulan attack. There was, after all, nothing left to do in sickbay. The odds of any of the members of the survey crew surviving had been infinitesimally low, and an exhaustive sweep of the area of the attack had revealed no organic debris. The fire within the shuttle had only gone out when the hull was breached, explosive decompression spreading the remaining oxygen, briefly still burning, throughout the just-surveyed rings of the class T planet that the Enterprise had been investigating.

“Doctor, I would prefer not to engage in conversation with you at this time.”

McCoy bounced on his heels and looked thoughtful. “Don’t know why I’m surprised at your typical warm welcome. The microscanner in medbay is out of alignment, figured I’d just stop by and ask if I can borrow yours until engineering gets around to it.”

As distracting as the doctor’s presence in the labs will be, it is not logical to deny the Enterprise’s chief medical officer the use of a potentially vital piece of equipment. The microscanner in Lab three is undamaged, and it is unlikely that it will be required by his department in the near future. Neither the ring samples that were scheduled to be analyzed by it today, nor the three scientists who had taken them, would be returning to the enterprise.

“You may, Doctor,” he said, “But I must ask that you endeavor to not distract my department.”

Thankfully, the doctor did not comment on the absence of the other members of the department. He had dismissed Ensign Arnovas, who had been crying so hard as she insisted on securing her girlfriend, Ensign Bin Ali’s workstation, that she had to wipe the moisture off the scanner with laboratory tissues. Upon further reflection, he had also dismissed her roommate, Ensign Sh’vanin, from the botany labs to care for her. The rest of his teams had worked diligently to secure their workspaces and salvage ruined experiments, and when Lieutenant Madhi had informed him that the stellar geology team had planned to repair to a recreation room to hold a wake for their fallen comrades, Ensign Bin Ali, Dr. Sarnovas, and Lieutenant Chun, following the Terran tradition, he had replied that as no scientific work could be continued at this time, there was no need for them to wait until the end of their duty shift.

Spock tallied the quantifiable losses to his department. Much of the ruined equipment could either be repaired onboard or at the next starbase, replacement parts replicated at a relatively low cost. The loss of Ensign Arroyo’s experimental colony of protein producing bacteria represented a more significant setback, which would likely cause frustration to the young man, but given time Spock was confident that he could replicate the experiment from his meticulous notes. Three to five months was not a long time to delay the publication of a discovery, but humans were often impatient.

There was a string of curses as McCoy disturbed the calibration and programming of the microscanner to meet his specifications.

“Whoever programmed this machine needs a good, swift boot to the backside,” McCoy grumbled. “Five seconds to choose your wavelength setting? That’s not enough time to read which one you’ve just selected.”

Despite his control, and the fact that it never appeared to make a difference, Spock could seldom resist pointing out the doctor’s logical inconsistencies. “As the wavelength ranges increase at uniform intervals, and are ordered sequentially, simple arithmetic should be sufficient to determine how often you must depress the selection button.”

“Yeah, well the one we’ve got in the sickbay labs is a different model,” the doctor said. “I’m too old to go re-learning all the ins and outs of these machines.”

Spock shut his mouth on his first reply, which was that in that case the doctor should simply wait until his own machine was repaired, and signed and closed the last damage report. “If resistance to adaptation is how age is measured on Terra, then you are certainly the oldest human of my acquaintance.”

“Well, aren’t your Vulcan boxers in a twist,” snapped McCoy. “Why the hell are you still in here? Your shift ended hours ago. For that matter, why do I have to find out from M’Benga that your department is grieving alone in rec room four while you’re holed up in here with supply reports? It isn’t good for you, Spock, hiding away like this.”

The sudden change in the conversation surprised and unsettled Spock. “It was logical to take over their remaining duties so that they could seek the necessary emotional release,” he said. Unfortunately, it triggered the doctor’s constant need for emotionalism.

 “Logical? How’s that any help to them or you, I’d like to know! I would’ve said you were too scared to deal with their grief, if you weren’t such a cold, emotionless robot. It ain’t just your species either – did you even tell those poor children that you grieved with them? I know Vulcans have got words for that.”

Spock was momentarily trapped between the responses that all his technicians, researchers, and ensigns had passed the age of majority on their respective home planets, or they would not have been eligible to enroll in starfleet or join the Enterprise as civilian scientists, and that he did not experience any fear of human, or andorian, emotionalism. “I do not believe that my interactions with my department are any of your concern,” he said.

McCoy, momentarily lost for words, threw up his hands and stormed out. In twelve point seven minues, he did not return.

Clearly his need to use the microscanner had not been extraordinarily urgent.

Spock continued his survey uninterrupted, then amended his daily departmental report to include a list of the damages. He had already filed a very short log of the day’s events as he had stood on the bridge. The Romulan firefight had been brief, unexpected, and devastating, though relatively undamaging to the Enterprise. The scout ship had fled immediately after a stray shot had impacted the Petrov, and the Enterprise, more concerned with the potential existence of survivors, had declined to pursue.

In addition, the department has suffered the unquantifiable loss of Ensign Bin Ali, Dr. Sarnovas, and Lieutenant Chun, the absence of whose work and presence has already produced a profound negative impact on the Enterprise.

Spock exhaled for a count of three, and decided that his departed subordinates and their surviving relatives would be best served if he delayed his official commentary on the utterly wasteful manner of their deaths until his mental equilibrium had recovered. He began to file and tag the sensor array readings received throughout the day, a routine, meditative task that provided little in the way of complex analysis, yet was engrossing enough to prevent extraneous thought. It should take him approximately seventeen and a half minutes. Data spikes were flagged by algorithm, but must be noted and interpreted by hand. He worked forward from the night shift technician’s last notes, though three hours rich with preliminary data as the Enterprise had scanned and charted the Petrov’s most efficient route to the interior of the rings. At 1137 hundred, there was a sudden spectrography spike, as what appeared to be a data transmission wavelength opened up between the Petrov and the Enterprise. The transmission was automatically relegated to background for the remainder of the record, which had ended when the Petrov had been ordered to lie low due to the Romulan ship's sighting, but it had been stored as a separate, labeled data packet on the long range scanner.

Spock opened it and then sat, frozen, at the console for two hundred and seventy five seconds. It was the entirety of the Petrov’s sensor records, beginning at their descent into the rings. It was not the unexpected data, which he had believed to be lost with those who had been tasked with collecting it, that caused him to fold his hands in his lap to prevent them from shaking. It was the improperly annotated data transmission description that accompanied them.

Instant, complete data backups as requested by the Commander. Like my methods, Raj?

Months ago when she had first come to the Enterprise and frustratedly blamed an episode of data loss on a glitch in her equipment, he had informed Ensign Bin Ali that she should make instant, complete data backups her habit rather than allowing multiple work sessions of scientific endeavor to remain on a single machine. As her methodology had improved, he was logically assured that she had remembered the instruction, but he had been unaware that it had become a joke between her and her direct superior, Lieutenant Raj Madhi. Madhi did not tolerate sloppy work in astrometrics, but was not particularly insistent on formality, and the note had been calculated to make the Lieutenant laugh, since he would have been the one conducting preliminary data collection today if all had gone as planned. It was also very characteristic of Ensign Bin Ali to test improvements on protocol in secret before suggesting them, to ascertain that they worked. Standard protocol would have kept all of this data stored on the Petrov’s equipment, with the secondary backup on a removable data chip.

Not a smidgen of data on the Petrov’s journey was lost, and yet it was no longer possible to determine which atoms slowly being dragged into the disc of the planetary rings had belonged to Ensign Bin Ali.

Spock was forced to attempt meditation where he sat, breathing in and out.

The air you breathe, his mother had once said when he was small, has flowed through the lungs of each of your ancestors, and every creature on this planet that came before you.

He had informed her that oxygen and carbon dioxide were destroyed by respiration and photosynthesis, respectively, and that therefore the air was not the same.

But the nitrogen and all the other inert gases of the air stay mostly the same, his mother had replied. You hardly notice them, but they persist.

It was not until he was older, and fully understood the concept of Katras and the fact that humans as a psi-null species had no method of preserving them, that he had understood it to have been a philosophical comment.

“Here.”

Spock’s eyes flickered open as a covered container of tea landed at his elbow, borne by one contrite-looking Dr. McCoy. He had been meditating for twenty seven point three minutes, more than enough time for the doctor to return to the lab, driven by either regret or esprit de escalier, read over Spock’s shoulder, and replicate a beverage. Two beverages – the doctor dragged over an adjacent chair and took a sip of his own coffee.

“It’s a cryin’ shame and a damn waste, is what it is,” the doctor said decisively. “They all had long careers ahead of ‘em.”

“There is no logic to their loss,” Spock found himself saying softly. It would also be illogical to dwell on the fact that, had they chosen to lie low in a slightly different spot relative to the Enterprise, the shuttle, the two scientists, and the pilot would be alive and well. Kaadith. He could not have known enough at the time to change it, and he could not travel back into the past to save them.

“I’ll drink to that,” said McCoy, and downed the last of his coffee, before settling in to read something on his padd.

He stayed, silent except for vague mutterings under his breath as he read journal articles, until Spock had written the last letter of condolence.

Chapter Text

It was not that Spock disliked the doctor. Far from it, he found their scientific collaboration rewarding, and their proper debates over points of philosophy or experimental protocol enlightening. Conversation with the doctor could also be used as training in emotional control, as well as an object lesson in its necessity. The doctor had a certain knack for personal attack when overly emotional, which logically should not have disturbed Spock’s equilibrium to the extent that it sometimes did.

To take offense to the opinions of one whose logic was so clearly faulty was, in itself, illogical, as his father had told him many times in his youth. As Spock outperformed his peers academically, and as he grew towards adulthood and Vulcan elders had realized that he might be listening rather than concentrating on his lessons or personal projects, he had found that his critics, who scorned his mother and informed his father that to produce a hybrid of two species, well adapted for neither of their progenitors’ planets, was illogical, grew silent. The curiosity of other adolescents in Shikar, which had been offered with no ill intent yet still represented an undue burden on his time, he had endured. Right up until his enlistment in Starfleet, he had presumed that by his third decade it would become evident that his strict adherence to the tenets of Surak made him as Vulcan as any of Shikar’s other residents. That once he had conclusively proven himself the constant scrutiny would cease.

It had not occurred to him, since he had lacked data to theorize, that humans would react negatively to him because of his control. Throughout his time at the academy, he had been subject to envy, curiosity, spite, and a variety of other emotions that ruled the actions of all non-Vulcan species. On the Enterprise, there had been more of the same, though the majority of the crew did not express an opinion, one way or another, on his strict emotional control, and there were several crew members that had attempted to learn various facts about Vulcan culture in order to smooth their professional interactions with him.

Doctor Leonard McCoy was not one of them. In fact, if Spock did not have his entire list of qualifications available, he would have drawn the conclusion from the doctor’s commentary towards him that he Chief Medical Officer knew so little about Vulcans that he could not be trusted to point a tricorder at one. Yet he had successfully managed on numerous occasions to alter medications specifically for Spock’s hybrid biochemistry, perform surgeries major and minor on him, and had even created a customized setting for the sickbay biobeds that accounted for the deviations in Spock’s biology from the Vulcan norm. Yet he constantly pretended ignorance about the most basic aspects of Spock’s anatomy, claiming that Spock’s heart was where his liver should be whenever he did not illogically insist that Spock was deficient in that particular organ.

During the week since they had encountered the Yonada and begun to decipher the Fabrini database, the doctor had been uncharacteristically quiet. If Spock had not known that half the medical department was discreetly monitoring the doctor’s health, it would have been cause for concern. It was logical to devote one’s entire concentration to deciphering the details of a treatment regimen that had the potential to save one’s life, and Spock had never known the doctor to have a logical thought process in all the years that he had been on the Enterprise. He had expected an emotional outburst, which would be noisy, overblown, and tiresome. Instead, when he devoted his second shift to the research, he often found Doctor McCoy in the medical labs already, working silently, unless another crew member was present for the doctor to “bounce ideas off of.”

Today it was Lieutenant Uhura, who cheerfully greeted Spock as he entered the lab, and proceeded to review the results of the last test batch of medicine, which had been introduced to a vial of the doctor’s blood. The doctor’s cells, already enlarged and abundant, had not fared well. The erythrocytes had been devoured by the leukocytes, which marked a distinct lack of improvement from the previous samples.

“It would be a lot easier if we had any cultural context to base our understanding of their metaphors and measurement system on,” the Lieutenant said to McCoy, and bent over her PADD once more. “Or if the Fabrini had used more specific prepositions. It’s starting to remind me of my intro to Andorian class, back in high school.”

McCoy barked out a laugh. “We could just call up the Yonada again and ask them. It’s not like they’re going to charge us for the long distance.”

Spock ignored the attempt at humor, which likely contained cultural references that he was not aware of. At another time, he might ask the Lieutenant for an explanation, but he preferred not to present an excuse for the doctor to extemporize about it.

After a few more minutes, Lieutenant Uhura left, and Spock was alone in the room with McCoy, who leaned against a lab bench wearily. Perhaps he was waiting to hear the results.

“Doctor, the test commenced yesterday was ineffective,” Spock informed him.

McCoy sighed. “Don’t try and sugar coat it,” he said. “It’s a disaster. I already looked.”

Spock finished his observations and replaced the samples. Despite the doctor’s obvious fatigue, he did not leave, which would have been the logical thing to do when no further progress could be made. 

“There are still thirteen other variants to be tested,” Spock said, after a moment. “In addition, the biochemistry of the people of the Yonada, descendants of the Fabrini, had differences from human biochemistry detectable by a basic tricorder analysis -”

“I know, Spock!” The doctor had whirled around to face Spock, and his eyes glittered with moisture.

“- And it is illogical to assume that our chances of correctly recreating the cure are correlated with the order in which our attempts are tested.”

“Jesus Christ, what does a man have to do to get a private corner to sulk in around here?” McCoy buried his face in his hands. “Do me a favor and go back to whatever the hell you were doing without even thinking about how illogical it is for a doctor to be having a meltdown over a failed science experiment!”

This was clearly the inevitable emotional reaction, and it would probably be better for the doctor’s health if he had it elsewhere. “Doctor, you appear to be fatigued -”

“No fucking shit, Spock! It’s not like that’s a symptom of Xenopolycythemia!”

“… Which is likely contributing to your unstable emotional state.”

Spock was well aware that he was not the logical candidate to aid the doctor at this point. The captain or Lieutenant Commander Scott were both far more likely to bring the doctor emotional comfort, though McCoy was currently unable to imbibe the type of liquid comfort that Mr. Scott would likely bring.

It appeared that the doctor was crying, rather than continuing to argue. This could indicate a severe change in his overall health.

“I shall call the captain,” Spock informed him, and headed for the intercom.

McCoy’s hand shot out and grabbed Spock’s sleeve. “Don’t. Just don’t. He doesn’t need to see any of this.” He let go the second Spock stopped walking. “I don’t need him nosing around, worrying and getting half baked ideas into his fool head. It’s almost been a month, Spock. I suppose I’m just finally looking this darn thing in the eye.”

Despite the fact that the doctor had told Spock many times that he was as comforting as an ice cube covered in cactus spines, he did not appear to be in any hurry to leave Spock’s presence.

“I know you’re probably going to tell me it’s illogical, but it just hit me all of a sudden that even if we do figure out what all that chicken scratch is in the Fabrini archive, it might take too long. And I got to thinking which would be worse, if I clung to some far-flung hope and stayed on the Enterprise until you had to relieve me from duty, and died in space without having the decency to go on home to say my goodbyes, or if I went home and let my little girl watch me suffer. She’s not even so little, anymore.”

“For a human, it is not illogical to have an emotional reaction to confronting your own mortality,” said Spock. “Avoiding death is a primary goal for any living organism.”

The doctor gave a watery snort.

“In addition,” Spock continued, “We have options that the Fabrini did not. The Fabrini never developed any form of synthesizer, and do not appear to have ever created an equivalent to the dermal regenerator, so it is entirely possible that we will be able to produce their cure more swiftly and efficiently than they themselves did. Despite our recent setbacks, there is no reason to believe that the cure cannot be properly translated, or adapted for human physiology, the process of which I believe you have some expertise in. I have always found the biological differences in species visually indistinguishable from humans to be -”

McCoy scrubbed at his red rimmed eyes and looked up. “Fascinating?”

Spock could feel his eyebrow creeping up his forehead. “Precisely. When we have successfully translated the cure for Xenopolycythemia, I predict that other medical knowledge contained within the archive will be much less difficult to adapt. The process of adapting these medicines for use on humans, rather than Fabrini, will make a most interesting paper.”

Suddenly, McCoy’s face fell. “I just hope I’m still around to edit it,” he said. “I should feel better knowing that whether or not this helps me, it will eventually help someone else, but…” he sighed. “Promise me that if I kick the bucket before we get the cure working, you won’t let anyone give up? And don’t let them go thinking that it’s their fault, that they should have done more – our departments need food and sleep and time to think just like anyone else. And don’t you dare let anyone name something stupid after me!”

“As it would be illogical to abandon the research completely, I will agree to your first demand,” Spock replied. “And it was not my intention to give any part of this process an appellation referring to you unless you named it yourself, since even in the event of your decease I would be referring to much of your own research and crediting you as a co-author.”

“Well, thanks I guess,” said McCoy, with one of the many illogical human smiles that did not primarily convey positive emotions. “That was as comforting as a wet blanket. Still, your heart’s in the right place – even if it’s where your liver should be.”

Chapter Text

“Hold the turbolift!”

For a moment, Spock considered letting the doors close before the doctor, who was red in the face and jogging down the hallway, could arrive. Unfortunately, as the turbolift would not depart to the next deck before the doctor could press the button, it was illogical to attempt to make his escape in that manner. He pressed the button to hold the door.

“You,” accused the doctor the moment the doors closed with both of them inside, “Have been avoiding me.”

Spock didn’t bother to glance at the doctor. “My schedule is assigned based on my duties as a Starfleet officer,” he informed the doctor.

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you scheduled your physical for M’Benga’s shift.”

“As he has greater experience with Vulcanoid physiology -”

“It was in the middle of the night, Spock!”

The turbolift reached Spock’s original destination, deck five, and the doctor followed him out the doors, though they were not anywhere near Sickbay or McCoy’s quarters. “Doctor, as we are both currently on duty, it would be most efficient if you could state whatever objection you have to my schedule, or whatever argument you intended to make -”

“Damn it, I don’t want to talk about what happened on that godforsaken ice planet any more than you do, you stubborn green-blooded -”

McCoy snapped his mouth shut as all the blood drained from his face. Spock stood frozen, greasy tendrils of shame crawling up his spine despite all his control. That the doctor would anticipate violence as Spock’s response to their conversations was unacceptable. His actions on Sarpeidon had been unacceptable. It had been perfectly logical to ensure that their paths did not cross in any way that could provoke the doctor’s ire, and create distress in the Enterprise’s CMO.

“Can we talk?” asked McCoy, after a long moment of silence, “In private?”

It would seem that doing so was inevitable, unfortunately.

“I am available at the conclusion of Alpha Shift.”

*      *      *

Despite his insistence that they talk, the doctor had a plethora of ways to delay doing so, from fiddling with his various belongings to replicating a pair of glasses of “sweet tea.” The amount of processed sucrose in the drink was truly astonishing, so Spock allowed his to sit untouched while the doctor sat and repeatedly smoothed the knees of his uniform pants.

“I wanted to apologize,” the doctor finally said, “for what happened on Sarpeidon.”

After seven days, Spock had still not been able to banish the physical sensations of guilt, and processing it had occupied the majority of his nightly meditations. He should have been able to maintain control, no matter what neurochemical process had been altered by the Atavachron. “Doctor, I believe human custom would require an apology from myself, not from you, as I was the one who acted in a violent manner -”

The doctor held up a hand. “After I’ve goaded you into it for nearly four years, Spock. You’ve never said anything, but I know some of the things I’ve said to you crossed the line. What I said in that cave – well, you might have had some weird time travel device trying to turn you into your ancestors, and god knows mine aren’t something to be proud of, but that’s no excuse for all the things I’ve said to you before we got there. And here I thought I was a modern man, with nothing to be ashamed of. Figured that I couldn’t be racist because I don’t dislike Vulcans, and after all this time I’d even consider you a friend. But that’s never stopped me from pulling out some insult based on your ears, your culture, the color of your blood – I’ve treated you badly, Spock. If you’re still willing to have anything to do with me, I’d like to learn better.”

Spock took a moment to organize his thoughts. He had not been prepared for this conversation in any way. He had assumed, based on previous experience, that the doctor would want to “clear the air,” which would have included a contradictory and illogical mix of questions and rambling tangents about the previous mission. The doctor’s words and actions were calculated to cause cognitive dissonance, making it impossible for Spock to infer his intentions whenever he became agitated, which was inefficiently often. He had assumed that he would simply endure the resulting confusion for the remainder of their mission, since McCoy was a valuable member of the crew, and the humans surrounding them seemed to understand the intent behind his often caustic words.

“It would be illogical of me to take offense to your statements,” Spock said after a long moment. “Those which were not clearly hyperbolic were factual descriptions of my physicality, though presented in an antagonistic context.”

McCoy let out a snort through his nose. “Doesn’t mean I should have said them,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve spent so much time holding you to my own standards that I didn’t even notice you were doing a better job upholding them than me. I did a lot of thinking the last few days, and I realized I’ve been an asshole.  I asked around and tried to make sure I hadn’t been doing anything to offend the rest of the crew, and apparently my momma raised me right in regards to never letting any ugly old sayings pop out when I run my fool mouth about anyone else. That or they’re all too polite to tell me, but I’d like to think that if I was cutting a path through the crew Jim would pull me aside and tell me to cut it out.”

“I have found that the captain is something of a moderating influence on your rhetoric.”

“Yeah, we fight worse when Jim’s not there. I guess when it’s just you I don’t get a reaction, so I just keep pushing until I’ve put my foot in it. Any psychologist would tell me that I’m taking out my frustration on you because it seems like it’s safe to do it. I’ve been fooling myself into thinking that since it doesn’t look like it bothers you, its okay.” McCoy made an expression that Spock mentally filed as sheepish, though he did not see how it resembled a sheep.

“The circumstances which precipitated my reaction on Sarpeidon are unlikely to reoccur, as all other incidents in which the Enterprise has encountered temporal travel the mechanism by which it was accomplished has not altered any of the travelers,” Spock informed the doctor. “As I was, at the time, unable to control my emotions with the usual methods, it did, as you say, ‘bother’ me. During our normal interactions it is simply an… inconvenience.”

The doctor rubbed the back of his neck. “All right. I promise not to call you a point-eared Vulcan or a walking computer or anything like that anymore. At least, I’ll try, even if I have to paint my fingernails with hot sauce or something to break the habit.”

Spock frowned. “Why would you need to coat your fingernails in a condiment containing salt and capsaicin?”

“It’s an old trick to break kids of chewing on their nails,” McCoy said.

“Would it not be more efficient to replace your usual repitoire of insults with a more reasoned strategy of debate?”

“Or think of something less awful to say when you piss me off?” McCoy asked, and slapped his hands on his knees decisively. “Yeah, I’ll try that. And from now on I won’t go making fun of your culture, or the fact that you don’t like anyone to know you have emotions, even if you have to go sit in your room and stick pins through them one by one like some sort of butterfly collector. I don’t know how you’ve put up with me this long.”

Spock did not reply that he hadn’t even noticed that what he was doing was putting up with McCoy’s emotionally driven insults. Instead, he pushed the still-lingering shame over his lack of control away, to be dealt with during later meditation, and answered honestly. “Initially, it was somewhat… satisfying to be so constantly reminded that I was seen as Vulcan, since for the majority of my childhood and adolescence, many did not believe me to be. However, as I grew to value your contributions to the crew and decided that it would be helpful to gain your respect, your outbursts became more troubling.”

“I respected you from the start! I thought you thought I couldn’t tell my ass from my elbow, with all the times you called me ‘illogical’ and ‘over-emotional’ or called me a witch doctor.”

“And your response was to converse in an even more emotional and illogical manner?” asked Spock in surprise. He had never suspected that the doctor’s more grating conversational gambits had any particular purpose beyond attempting to win the debate by drowning out his opposition.

“Don’t give me that eyebrow. You can’t win a staring contest with a fish, my pa always said. Long story short, I knew I’d never be logical enough to meet with your approval, so I started trying to get you to acknowledge that humans couldn’t function without emotions. Coulda picked a better way to go about it, though. My granny always did say that once I got my mouth running, you couldn’t stop it until the spring ran down. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I run my fool mouth a lot.”

“I had observed,” Spock replied dryly.

McCoy opened, and then deliberately closed his mouth. “I’m turnin' over a new leaf, I’m not even gonna reply to that.”

Chapter Text

“You’ll have to forgive our Chief Medical Officer,” the captain said, clearly trying not to laugh. Spock did not understand the source of his amusement, or that of the rest of the senior officers. Lieutennant Uhura was meticulously cutting her piece of meat into delicate portions with the serene control that she only displayed when she chose to hide her emotions, Lieutenant Sulu was drowning a smirk in his water, and Commander Scott was outright guffawing. “He is very dedicated to the health of our crew – I’m sure no insult to your cook, or your sacred ritual, was intended.”

In the other room, doctor McCoy could still be heard arguing with the chef, but at a volume perhaps not audible to the rest of the crew.  

“Good God, do you mean to tell me you’ve never heard of food allergies? There are dozens of sound medical reasons for someone to refuse your dish, the cholesterol alone -”

The Stitana of Verre pursed her blue lips. “His dedication I will leave to your judgment,” she said, “His manners, however…”

That little trailing silence of disapproval was the standard indication of disagreement in Verre’s political and diplomatic venues, as it’s people prized civility between their leaders. Across the table, Lieutenant Uhura winced.

“Donime Sitana,” she said, with the exact proper inflection for their relative ranks and the situation of disagreement, “We admire your flexibility in dealing with the product of such an alien culture. And we are grateful for the honor of our inclusion in the Bankifaro.”

The Sitana thawed just a little. “It is a pity that not all of you are able to participate,” she said, “Those of us so unfortunate as to be born with immune reactions caused by food have them corrected during childhood.” She resumed cutting her meat, dipping it in gravy, and taking steady bites. Everything served during the Bankifaro was made of some part of the Atabanki, which were a large, migratory species that closely resembled terran wild pigs.

“Donime, on Vulcan it is not unusual to have adverse reactions to meat,” Spock replied. “As the vast majority of our population remains strict vegetarians, it is uncommon for a Vulcan to even discover such a reaction. In addition, the climate of the planet makes large scale production of animal products an illogical endeavor, since it would be taxing to our ecosystems while providing minimal nutritional returns.”

“You have no large runners, such as the Atabanki, on Vulcan? No sacred year of plenty?”

The universal translator was halting, as it often did when cultural referents were not easily given a Terran equivalent. Lieutenant Uhura put her fork down and slipped out her comm to check it. After a moment of fiddling she returned it to her pocket.

“We have several large predators and omnivores, notably the LeMatya and the Sehlat. However, they do not display the distinct breeding cycles of the Atabanki, and produce multiple litters throughout their lives, rather than primarily breeding in response to the life cycle of a plant, with the males dying off afterwards.” The life cycles of the ecologically key species on the planet of Verre were scientifically fascinating, as was the people’s cultural response to the sudden, triannnual influx of available proteins, followed by years of scarcity as their largest herbivores halved in adult population and the next generation slowly matured.

“How interesting,” said the Sitana, and the diplomatic conversation resumed, with Spock’s utensils safely tucked away beneath his plate. At least until Doctor McCoy returned, bearing a plate full of blue vegetables and the plain, unleavened grain product that had served as a base for a paté of Atabanki liver at the beginning of the meal.

“Here you go, eat up,” said the doctor, depositing it in front of Spock. “I scanned it all, there’s not a speck of food on that plate that ever touched a living animal. No reason to go hungry  when there’s plenty of food available.”

“There was no pressing need to disrupt our host’s food preparation for my sake,” Spock protested as the doctor sat back down, “I would have been able to consume adequate nutrition aboard the Enterprise once the festivities were over.”

“You miss enough meals as it is, working double shifts, holding down the bridge after we had that bad ion storm – you’re practically skin and bones as it is. Eat your vegetables, Spock. They’ll make your hair curl.”

There were smirks around the table.

“Why Bones,” the captain said as Spock picked up his fork, “What’s gotten into you? It’s usually me you’re pushing rabbit food on.”

“Even to you, Doctor, the illogicality of believing that ingesting a specific food could alter the structure of my hair must be evident,” Spock said. “As must the futility of attempting to convince a vegetarian to eat more vegetables.”

McCoy scowled. “Just take a bite, you ungrateful pedant.”

The senior officers of the Enterprise lost the battle against laughter chuckling quietly into their meals, while the Sitana looked on in confusion. One of her aides leaned over to whisper in her ear. It was indeed fortunate that the diplomats of Verre were so accommodating, as the doctor continued to have no regard for appropriate diplomatic behavior.

“Ah, I believe I understand,” said the Sitana after a moment, seeming satisfied, “To speak to one another with so little concern for correct manners, the two of you must be of the same house. Am I correct in that the term in your language is… brothers?”

Were Spock prone to such emotionalism, he would have relished the undignified way the doctor turned red and sputtered for many days to come.