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Before
For a few months, it’s perfect. They have their little corner of the universe, and Jim has all but forgotten why he’s there in the first place. They spend their days doing chores, everything from cleaning the house to helping to lay the new irrigation system in the alien-purple fields, and they spend their nights on the roof of his aunt’s house, mapping the stars with the help of a telescope they’d borrowed from Ms. Sato. Spock brings his new tricorder — a gift from his mother before he left Vulcan — and they spend hours logging and naming new constellations, coming up with stories behind each one. Jim’s favorite is Wuh Sehlat Heh Wuh Lesh: The Sehlat and the Bear. Spock calls it illogical, but he logs it all the same.
During
When the rationing begins, Spock is worried. Jim isn’t. There has to be a logical reason that Spock isn’t able to contact his father, right?
Wrong.
Spock’s cousin tells them to stay home even though they’re both on the list: he has a bad feeling about the assembly. Spock argues at first, in sharp, hurried Vulcan of which Jim only catches a few words here and there, but they stay inside, old-style fan on full blast in an attempt to chase away the smell of the spreading fungus. It’s loud, a loose screw clattering with every rotation.
They can hear the screaming anyway.
After, I
There are fifteen children, after all is said and done. Well, less said and more done, really, Jim thinks wryly. There hadn’t been a whole lot of talking. Kevin is far quieter than a three-year-old ought to be, one hand perpetually in his mouth and the other fisted in Jim’s pants leg, but Jim can’t find it in him to complain. They’d all been on the governor’s list, so quiet is... preferable. Still, the silence bothers him somewhere deep in his gut, in a way he cannot name.
They sleep in a close circle, Spock’s alien heart thrumming hummingbird-quick against Jim’s side. His dark head is buried in the jutting crook between Jim’s neck and shoulder, breath too cold against his skin. He hasn’t meditated in...he doesn’t know how long. Time is meaningless here. They sing, sometimes, and the wind carries their voices away in swirls of blue dust.
After, II
Jim’s proficient in Vulcan, and he’s never been so glad of it, because Spock doesn’t speak Standard anymore. His skin is flushed green with fever, and it’s a good thing that water is easier to find than food here, because Vulcans don’t sweat and Spock’s skin is far too hot. He trembles in Jim’s arms, whimpering weakly as his muscles spasm and twitch.
“Sanoi,” he gasps, “nash-veh k’avon,” his eyes are glassy and fever-bright, and he clutches weakly at Jim’s shirt, “sanoi.”
“I know,” Jim whispers, looking to the sky, “we all are.”
After, III
They lose Ivrila first. A slip of an Andorian girl, the summer sun too hot for her fragile body to bear along with the emptiness of starvation. Her cornflower skin blisters and cracks, and Jim sleeps with her on one side and Spock on the other. Spock sings for her in a voice that catches and finally breaks, and he finishes in a whisper. She dies nestled against his arm.
They bury her in a shallow grave at the edge of a field dusted with blue. Three more will follow, and Jim asks himself if it is wrong to envy them, just a little.
After, IV
He isn’t going to lose Spock. He doesn’t care that his friend isn’t getting any better, no matter how many times Tommy reminds him.
“Look at him, Jim,” Tommy whispers, after the sun has gone down and everyone else has dropped into an exhausted sleep. “Be realistic.” Jim shakes his head so hard he sees stars, and holds Spock impossibly closer. Spock whines, and Jim shushes him, rocking his friend like a child (they’re all children). There’s a bond between them, a golden thread so bright it makes him squint when he thinks of it. It’s warm, warmer than any fire he’s ever known, and they all know that if they lose Spock they’ll lose Jim too.
He slips into Spock’s mind when they sleep, eventually. The dream is red on one side and green on the other, and Spock is the crack between sand and grass. T’hy’la, he whispers, and everything is shot through with gold.
When they wake together the next morning, Spock’s eyes are clear. He meditates to the rhythm of Jim’s breath, and finally manages to reach out along his parental bonds.
“Gol’nev dungi sarlah,” he says. Help will come.
An Ending
Kodos finds them. No matter how hard he tries in the years that follow, Jim will never forget his face. The youngest children hide in the hollow of a rotting tree, and Jim stands with Spock at his side, Tommy, Leah and Vanya behind them.
“I am almost impressed,” the governor says, and Spock holds Jim’s hand so tight it hurts, “children, hiding in plain sight.” He laughs, and the sound grates against Jim’s ears. “Remarkable.”
There’s the whir of a phaser, and by the time Jim turns around, Vanya and Leah are gone, and half of Tommy’s face is burned bright red.
Someone is laughing, and the last thing Jim hears is Spock’s strangled scream as they are torn apart.
Deep in his mind, something snaps, and all he can see is blue.
Coda, I
He wakes up in the medbay of a starship. The USS Shenzhou, he’s told, by a woman who reminds him achingly of Spock. He asks about him, he thinks, heart dropping into his stomach when he receives only a sad smile in return. His hand twitches at his side. They’re taking him home, she tells him, and he thinks of purple fields and bubblegum skies, before everything went wrong.
There is no gold here. But there is food, and endless stars, and the recycled air tastes like salvation.
Coda, II
He goes home. His mother holds him so tight he can hardly breathe, and his father gathers them both in his arms. They both cry (Jim doesn’t). They say he can have anything he wants, but the only thing he wants is long gone, now. He and Sam develop an odd sort of understanding, and his brother only asks when Jim climbs into his bed at night once.
(“Jimmy?”
“Yeah?”
“Why’re you in my bed?”
“I’m not used to sleeping alone.”
Sam wraps an arm around him, and they don’t speak about it again.)
He keeps in touch with Tommy. Thomas, now, with an eyepatch and a ropey scar stretched over a crooked grin. He calls him when he’s at the academy and the main replicator breaks, and Jim’s roommate knows better than to interrupt when they start to sing in a mix of Standard and Vulcan and Andorian that only they and a few others can understand.
“He’d be proud of you, Jim,” Tom says, and Jim just shakes his head.
“I haven’t done anything worth being proud of,” he whispers, and thinks of stories told under a violet-black sky, “not yet.”
Coda, III
He knows the names of every single person on board the Farragut. Gary Mitchell calls him crazy, and Jim laughs, though his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. A few hundred names is nothing compared to four thousand, one hundred and twenty-six.
Knowing names hardly helps when two hundred of them are gone.
Coda, IV
The Enterprise. They’re giving him a ship! Captain Pike is getting a promotion, and Jim is going to be a captain. He calls Tom and Meira the night he gets the news, and they all laugh and laugh until he’s sobbing because how the hell is he supposed to keep four hundred and thirty people safe when he could hardly protect fifteen?
“You’re gonna do great,” Meira insists, her eyes shining. All he can think of is how another pair of brown eyes must’ve looked the moment their light went out.
Coda, V
“Permission to come aboard, sir?” Jim steps onto the bridge, and Pike stands from his captain’s chair with a wave of his hand.
“Permission granted,” he claps Jim on the shoulder, and the whole situation is suddenly oh-so-real, “welcome aboard, captain.” Jim looks around, settling into his center seat to an echoed chorus. Kevin winks at him from his place at the navigation con, and Jim’s breath catches.
“Your science officer will be joining you shortly,” Pike says, “and then you’ll be all set to go.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Of course,” the Admiral grins, and turns to leave, “good luck, Jim.”
Coda, VI
The turbolift doors open, and the Enterprise’s science officer steps onto the bridge.
“Permission to come aboard, sir.” It’s a statement, not a question. He hears Kevin’s soft gasp from somewhere to his right. Jim swivels his chair around to see a blue shirt and regulation slacks, and his gaze lifts to meet familiar bright eyes that have gone wide in almost-imperceptible shock.
“Permission granted,” he breathes, and everything goes still.
A Rest
“Spock.”
The bridge is silent. Jim stands and is at the turbolift door in what feels like one step, and his hands hover over Spock’s arms.
“Captain,” he murmurs, and his voice is different but somehow exactly the same, “perhaps this conversation would be better suited…” Jim nods.
“Mr. Sulu, you have the con.” His voice is hoarse, but he doesn’t care.
“Yes sir.”
They leave the bridge.
Addendum
“I thought you-”
“I did not know-”
They speak at the same time, words stumbling over one another as they clutch each other by the arms. Jim has never heard a sound more beautiful. He punches the emergency stop button, and the turbolift jolts to a stop.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, finally.
“I was dead,” Spock’s eyebrow quirks, “for approximately twenty four point three seconds.” Jim laughs, then, a little hysterically, and lets his forehead fall against Spock’s chest, “However, I recovered.”
“I can see that.”
“It is gratifying,” Spock says softly, and Jim puts a hand over his heart, “to see that you are well.”
Finale
Kodos is dead, and they go to Vulcan. It’s hot, and red, and Jim recognizes it as half of Spock’s mindscape. He wonders if it still looks the same, but somehow he knows that there’s a purple field, now.
“Wait a second, Jim,” Bones says from behind him, and he feels the sting of a tri-ox hypospray on the side of his neck, “there you go.” Jim swats his friend’s hand away, but smiles all the same.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” the doctor sticks himself with a hypo, “seriously, don’t.”
“Fine, fine.”
“Now go,” Bones steers Jim in the direction of the hovercar, where Spock is waiting, earth-tone robes flowing in the desert wind, “go have fun with your hobgoblin.”
“Yeah,” Jim says, “I intend to.”
--
Spock’s mother takes one look at Jim before pulling him into her arms. She smells like cinnamon and sage and some other alien spice that Jim doesn’t recognize, and he hugs her back. They stand there for a while.
"Thank you,” she whispers, and he can only nod.
--
They climb onto the roof of the house, flat-topped like a stone oven glowing a gentle orange in the setting sun. There’s a telescope waiting there for them, and Jim can’t help but look for a purple-striped tricorder to go with it.
“I did not know,” Spock says, “that you had survived.”
“Yeah,” Jim’s voice cracks, “yeah.”
“I am,” he falters, “very glad. That you did.” He is shaking. They are quiet for a while.
“Spock,” Jim says, finally, his voice a murmur and his eyes fixed upon the stars, “what are we going to do?”
Spock takes his hand, and cups Jim’s cheek so that he looks him in the eyes. “I do not know,” he says, “but whatever may come, we will face,” he rubs his thumb over the scar under Jim’s left eye, “together.”
Jim covers Spock’s hand with his own, stroking his fingers gently along the back of the other’s hand. He smiles at the way Spock’s breath hitches. “I like the sound of that.”
The sun sets over endless seas of sand. And it may not be perfect, but it is theirs, and Jim thinks that that is enough.