kirktastic | [Kirk's Quarters] -- [TOS!Spock and Kirk]

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[Kirk's Quarters] -- [TOS!Spock and Kirk]

[OOC: This is happening at sort of an unknown time of the day, so give it some general time allowance. After Kirk woke up with Bones and got the day started, but before he went and interrogated the prisoners.]

Kirk leaned back from the comm after asking Spock, the older Spock, the middle Spock?, to come up to his quarters. Honestly, he wasn't even fully sure why he had asked the Vulcan to come up, but felt it was something he had to do. He wanted to see if he could get some insight into his own Spock's mind by picking another one, maybe.

Maybe it was cheating, but well, he was good at that.

He enjoyed the other man's company, that was for sure. There was an easiness he felt around the older Spock that he was fairly sure had everything to do with the feelings/memories left behind by the oldest of the four half-Vulcans on board. He also wanted to ask about what had happened down in sickbay, wanted to know how to stop the strange part-bond going on in his head.

So he sat back, holding a cup of coffee between his palms, eyes closed as he waited.

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Spock presses the buzzer outside of the younger Kirk's quarters. The rest has done him well, he has lost the drawn look he'd been wearing since the first creeping symptoms of pon farr had appeared. It was amazing what sleep and a functioning mating bond could accomplish. Spock looks almost chipper, for a Vulcan.

Kirk's eyes opened and his fingers tightened around the warm cup in his hands, "Come in." The doors opened for the older Vulcan, and Kirk brought up a small smile to his lips.

Intuition, perhaps, had told him to get out the chess board.

Spock entered Kirk's quarters. They were located in the same place as his own Jim's quarters on their own Enterprise but they were quite a bit emptier.

"I understand you wish to play chess."

"...Wanted to find out why everyone's so into the game." Kirk grinned, feeling a little easier. "Come on in." A vague gesture was made towards the chair opposite from him. He had played several times, enough to know how and have some strategy, but obviously not the master Spock would be.

Well, hopefully he'd learn.

"Plus I wanted to talk to you about some things."

Spock moves to the chair, studies the board in front of him and indicates for Kirk to pick white or black.

"Do you have a particular topic in mind, James?"

Spock suspects this is the real reason behind the suddenly desired chess game.

Well, given the choice, he went with white. He made the opening move, shifting. "I do." He admitted, "I guess I'll start off with the easiest... about that mind-meld-not-quite that happened in sickbay, I'm sorry about it. I shouldn't have been there, I didn't mean for it to happen, I was an idiot, you get the idea."

He looked up to Spock, offering an almost sheepish grin of apology. He knew he had kinda fucked up there.

An adequate beginning. This James Kirk had, perhaps, potential.

"It is I who owe you an apology. I was... not in full command of my own faculties. I fear I have caused much distress among those I would not care to disturb."

The careful formality of Spock's language is at odds with the ease the two men have felt together previously.

"Yea, but you didn't end up in my head walking around being attacked by nazis." He couldn't help the laugh that came up, because it still felt like a dream.

"This is an area... I just don't know anything about except accidentally getting involved in it. This whole mental bond-walking around-thing. So... how exactly did I end up feeling stuff from you? And in turn, the other me and your Bones?" He half paid attention to the actual game in front of them, but more wanted to know this information.

Spock's eyes squinted the barest fraction. In a human, it would have been a wince. However, as Spock is a Vulcan, almost no one would even notice the minute expression. His own Jim, his Leonard, and now this Kirk could read him as well.

"The Nazis... I have accompanied my captain on many away missions. That was not the most pleasant of them."

He contemplated the board, noted Kirk's inattention to it. He had most certainly not been invited to play chess.

"There appears to exist a connection between us. It is unique in my experience and study. An echo, a resonance.

I suspect much but do not yet have sufficient information to draw a conclusion. However, I have noted, it causes you some distress."

"...Maybe its weird for you but... my head's my head. I'm supposed to be alone in here. Feeling what someone else is feeling? That's... weird, at best, and down right disturbing at other times."

And... lonely other times. The feeling of their happiness when he had wanted to find Bones and hide for a while. But, then again...

"I mean, I guess I can't complain too much." He remarked, eyes on the board as he spoke, but glazed. Thinking. "I haven't really been alone in my head since Delta Vega anyway. The only difference is this is... you know, a conscious," He wriggled his fingers by his head, "Feeling. Active. Not just memories."

"I have never known that feeling." Spock tilted his head. "Such a thing is a most fascinating characteristic of humans."

He leaned forward across the chessboard, seeming to look for something in Kirk's face.

"My elder self should have been more careful of you. What memories do you carry?"

The first comment made Kirk blink in confusion. "...You've never known it? But I thought you'd just bonded with Jim and Bones? Weren't you alone up until then?"

He met those dark eyes easily, but wasn't sure about the expression he thought he saw in them. "...Lot of things. Flickers... I think some of its unconscious but I... know his feelings about Jim. Or.. another Jim."

His gaze dropped. "All about how he felt about Vulcan." His tone changed entirely with that last statement. Almost a tone of mourning for a planet he had never truly been to.

It seemed his role to play out all the secrets of a most secret people.

"The bonding of mates is the closest sharing of the mind between Vulcans. Yet there are bonds with parents from the moment of conception, bonds with family that grow faint as the relationship dims but are always there. You saw them, like stars in my mind. The collective voices of my Vulcan. All of them silenced here, their lives and katras lost... No longer sighing in the minds of your survivors. It is a terrible solitude...."

Spock trails off and looks... sadly... at the walls as if trying to catch a glimpse of the stars.

"As you felt what I would feel upon witnessing the death of my homeworld... I grieve with thee, James."

"...so you can feel other Vulcans. Or... did. All in your head, all the time..." The sheer concept of it was normally impossible for a human to understand, but instead it was clarifying a feeling that he had had. "What's a katra, anyway?"

"...It's weird, what happened with Vulcan." He spoken quietly, staring at nothing. "I saw it happen, from the screens in the room near the transporter trying to get out of that dive suit as fast as I could. Just stood there and watched it with Sulu... caving in on itself then vanishing completely, like it never had been."

His tone changed, filled with confusion. "Then I felt it happen. I couldn't have told you what it was, but I kinda understand it now. It felt like there was a blanket, warm and secure around me. But then all at once, it was gone, leaving me standing in the snow, terrified and freezing and so alone that it felt like I would die from that alone. I couldn't see it happen, Delta Vega won't see the light from Vulcan die for a good while, but I didn't need to see it, either."

He went silent, eyes closing as he remembered it all over again. The grief another had felt but now he did too. "All these... places and people... I've never been to but I know, but don't know." It was all a confusing, heavy thick mess in his head.

"The connections are still present for me. A faint breeze across the intellect, more distant that normal but preserved. It is... it is my sky, James. "

A human would offer a hug or a comforting hand. Spock does not know to do either. Instead he sits in his chair and speaks Vulcan secrets so this grieving human can perhaps understand.

"The katra is one of our greatest and most sacred secrets. You have born witness to the death of Vulcan. It is illogical, but I am gratified there is another witness. It is through this alone, through memory, that your New Vulcan will thrive, that my home will not be entirely lost.

The katra... it is an observable phenomenon. The essence of an individual Vulcan, which can be passed to another at the passing of the body."

Spock stares off in silence for a moment.

"The mind meld forced upon you on Delta Vega, by my elder self - I apologize. It is unforgivable."

It is my sky, James. The words rebounded through him, his eyes closing tightly. Would this Spock see it all so different then the Spock of this universe that did not have the same connections? Did Spock, his Spock, feel... alone?

"So... the katra is the soul?" Kirk cautiously suggested aloud, not sure that was right but it sure as hell seemed the closest thing he could understand.

"...You can't apologize because it wasn't you. It was him. You don't know that you'll exactly become him, already your future's been changed by coming here like this. And... it wasn't forced. Not entirely. I could have told him to fuck off."

"Can you hold a soul within you, James? Access its memories and identity? Humans speak of souls... a human hope. The katra is quantifiable, present, undeniable. It is a comfort to those left behind, a source of contact and knowledge and cultural memory."

Spock's dark eyes glisten.

"Nevertheless. It is not done in such a way."

Kirk's eyes widened slowly, surprised at the intensity that Spock showed. This... katra... something very alien, strange. "...Sorry." He felt almost like he had insulted the Vulcan by suggesting what a katra could be. He leaned back, frowning a little bit.

"I'm really not upset with him for doing it but... honestly, I'd like of like all this stuff to be gone." Pause. "No offense, or anything." The corner of his lips quirked. "Is there a way to... stop all of this?" A tiny bit of hope.

"You owe me no apologies, James. You have given no offense."

Spock sits and calms himself, his heartbeat. It easier to speak of these things when he does.

"But you must understand the magnitude of this thing - a people accustomed to intimate links with the past, carried within themselves. A constant presence. Death is rarely unexpected for us and so our view of it is different, cultivated over long years of peace.

Vulcans turned to peace, ancient ages ago, to preserve life, to forego the mindless waste of it. And now, in your reality...."

Spock sighed. No news Kirk would be happy to receive.

"I do not believe we know enough about this... echo of a bond within us to sever it. The risk of damage to your mind is too high. I had hoped to conduct some experiments with you and the doctor, in more quiet moments, to determine the extent of it."

"...All Vulcans are in mourning." Kirk said quietly, looking away towards the wall. "I... when they were in sickbay, the ones we picked up from shuttles, the Elders... they all seemed so lost. I could feel it, every time I touched one of them. I was helping out down there... couldn't sit still. There was this little girl that had gotten her hand cut pretty badly when getting on a shuttle in such a rush. She couldn't cry, didn't cry... but... I heard her. In my head. Crying. She let me hold her hand for a while, just crying without being able to cry, mourning. I didn't fully understand it..."

A small shake of his head, throwing off the memory. "If it was a full bond, like the one you had with the other me, would it be severable? Is it just its unknown nature stopping things?" The very last part made him smirk, though. "Well, I dunno about Bones but I'm always up for 'experimenting'." Even if it was Spock, he couldn't help himself.

Spock picked up a chess piece, his own rook. Studied the material of it, turned it over in his long fingers.

"I did not know there were children among the survivors. This will be... a most difficult time for them."

He is lost, for a moment, in recollections of his own childhood. The taunts and cruelty measured by the beauty of logic, the peace of meditation with elders.

"James, if it were a full bond, it could be severed. By death or by a Vulcan elder. However, such a severing... has consequences."

His eyes are full for just a moment, of all the things that haunt him, the images Kirk saw and more.

"It is rare for a Vulcan to bond outside of our species. My father is one of only a handful to bond with a human. And it is rarer still for a bond to be severed once it exists. To do so is to invite madness."

He looks once again at the chess piece in his hand.

"I conceived of the experiment concept during our unfortunate attendance of the briefing via vid comm. It is possible that I will need time to... re-evaluate my proposed methodology."

Kirk listened in silence to Spock's words, leaning back fully in his chair and closing his eyes. Too many potentials, a lot of them incredibly dangerous. He was silent, up until that last bit. That made him smirk, very amused. "I don't think you need to re-evaluate it."

Oh, he knew he was pushing his luck but well, all Kirks seemed to thrive on that.

"Alright, for now, I'll deal with it. I'm not going to ruin either one of us because I can't deal with being a little uncomfortable." And that was that, for now. "I'm just not used to it." He grinned, "Humans aren't meant to be telepathic or psychic or anything else like that. Just not built for it, I guess."

Spock looked at this James Kirk from under long, dark lashes, measuring and considering. He let it go. For now.

"Humans do exhibit some traits such as empathy which suggest they are not as mind-blind by necessity as the casual observer of the species might suspect. My own Jim, as perhaps you, exhibits a keen... intuitive grasp of many situations which he should not."

Kirk just raised his brows at that, blinking. "...What are you getting at, Spock?" He asked simply. Obviously the Vulcan had something in mind!

Spock replaced the rook and met Kirk's gaze.

"It has occurred to me in the past few days that perhaps my Jim's natural empathy and intuition have led him to have an easier time of managing our bond than a different human. And that perhaps you share this... native talent, rendering the link between us more evident to you. Your Doctor McCoy, your Bones, he has not reacted as strongly as you, and though I can sense many things from him, it is quite different."

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