Starting Over by Liederlady

Here's our second response to the Nimoy-Urban Challenge. Thanks Liederlady!

Title: Starting Over
Author: Liederlady
Genre: Star Trek Fic
Missing Scene: friendship; pre-slash; Spock Prime/Young McCoy
Rated: G
Word Count: 999 words

Starting Over

by Liederlady

~oOo~

“Personal Log, Stardate 2258.43 Leonard McCoy, Acting Chief Medical Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise.

“I’ve made final rounds with Star Fleet medical personnel for the last of the Vulcan survivors. All have been transferred to the Laurel B. Clark1 wing of Star Fleet Medical Center.

“I would have preferred not to be forced to take a crash course on Vulcan physiology.”

Vulcans! Organs in the wrong place. Meaningless vital signs. I’ve never treated a more resolute, uppity, valiant group of SOBs. Nearly all of them exhibited definite symptoms of shock, not that a blessed one would admit it.

But it showed in their eyes. Less than pain. More like sheer disbelief. An oddly blank stare coupled with an expressionless inflection. From what Jim said, their damned telepathy psychically links them all.

I punch the comm control, slump back into my chair and close my eyes.

If that’s true … Good God! Six billion lives. A whole planet. The enormity is only now hitting. Eighteen crew cases of post-traumatic stress reaction.

And the Vulcans. I can’t imagine what those poor devils are going through, reliving the death cry of their entire civilization.

Or would the lost have denied the expression of even that emotion, preferring mute fatalistic logic before being winked out of existence by a single, goddamn madman? I open my eyes to purge the horrible image of Vulcan’s annihilation and run a shaky hand across the breakthough stubble on my jaw before viciously thumbing the comm control open again.

“I’ve notified Star Fleet to assemble a full complement of counselors to treat the Vul …”

The door signal interrupts me and I have to roll my eyes. What now?

“Come!”

The door swishes and through it glides a tall figure in gray.

Him! Spock. The older version. I hadn’t realized he’d come aboard.

Jim had told me of their encounter while I patched up his busted ribs—told it in a sort of wondered daze. He kept mixing up verb tenses and Spocks. He also made me promise not to tell Spock, Commander Spock, anything about it.

Then Jim suddenly hopped off the table, wriggled into his bloody tunic and flew out into the corridor muttering something about “liberating” a scout ship from the Academy pool.

I later learned he’d retrieved the Vulcan from Delta Vega.

I can’t wrap my mind around the idea. One Spock seems problematic enough. But two of them? Like twins separated by a dozen decades.

The figure continues through the doorway and raises hooded eyes to meet my gaze. I brace myself for the same blank look the other Vulcans wore. Instead the dark eyes harbor an enemy I know far too well.

Pain.

Enough to shoot me from my chair and around the desk.

The Vulcan’s head cocks to one side and the leathery skin about the eyes crinkles. And the pain is displaced by something I can’t quite pin down.

“Doctor McCoy, I presume,” he says, with a hint of irony.

I gesture him to a chair.

“Thank you,” he says, his eyes still on me as he folds his frame into the chair.

“You’re Spock,” I say stupidly. I have little notion of what to say to this man who obviously knows-- knew me. And whom I would apparently know at some point.

Blast it. This time traveling is nonsensical enough to spark a blazing ache behind my right eye.

“Yes.”

I wait for him to say what he needs, but he remains silent, just gazes at me with those depthless dark eyes and a strange expression—strange considering what he’d been forced to witness.

Inexplicably he looks at peace.

“How can I help you, sir?” I ask.

“A drink would be welcome, if you would not mind.”

I start at that, but rise to fetch us both one, picking my way through Dr. Puri’s inner sanctum. I hadn’t had a chance to see it before it got converted to rubble by the Narada’s attack, much like the rest of Sickbay.

“I got the impression Vulcans don’t drink,” I say.

“Many do not,” Spock answers.

“Brandy ok?”

“Adequate.”

I hand him his glass and sit on the edge of my desk, waiting. He’d obviously come here for more than a drink.

“To friendship,” Spock says, raising his glass. I return the gesture and we both nurse the brandy. After only a sip or two, I put my glass on the desk.

“You have the appearance of a man with a problem,” the Vulcan says.

I glance up at him.

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” I shoot back with a scowl. His left eyebrow creeps up to touch his gray bangs.

That’s right, Len, attack the patient. Great bedside manner.

“Sorry. It’s just-- You can’t return to your own time. Your world, your people. Gone. What are you going to do now?”

His eyes drill into mine and I know I’ve pushed too far for once. This man may know me, but I don’t know him, don’t know how to reach him or treat his breed of agony.

“Start over,” he says simply. “Surely, something you understand, Leonard.”

Suddenly, I cannot look at him, opting instead to stare at my left pinkie where Jocelyn’s discarded wedding band mocks me.

“Other civilizations have survived genocide, Doctor.”

“The odds are against you,” I murmur.

Spock nods.

“A very dear friend once taught me that we may find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. What matters then is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph.2”

“I know that,” I say, trying to recall it.

“Yes. You do,” Spock’s deep bass replies. “When all hope was taken from him, the meaning Nero discovered was to inflict comparable suffering.”

“Monstrous.”

“Desperate,” Spock corrects. “Nero lacked such a friend as mine.”

We spend the balance of the evening finishing the brandy.

1. Laurel B. Clark was a medical doctor and Space Shuttle mission specialist killed in the Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy in 2003.
2. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (paraphrase)