And where else might Spock be, but running with him?
To dream or not to dream, to be aware and not — it is something that Spock has been part and parcel of. It is something he has known, as much as Jim has known. For all that Humans slumber with the fire of days beneath their skin, so too do Vulcans. So too do all that swim and fly and crawl. So too do those who profess to know nothing of the smeared and stuttered landscapes, the emptiness that lays at the bottom of one's emotional wells.
What it is Spock who is Jim who is Spock sees is not at all unimaginable or without understanding. What is cinder billows across the palms, what is lit from within the wick of the self is familiar as it is satisfying. What wanders weaves, nets tangled so about the self that the body of consciousness falls through. Falls down, down —
Down the hall. Down the bright glit of corridors. The Enterprise shapes itself strangely, looped where it should pause. And yet, Spock follows. He follows, because it is Jim that tells him to. He hears himself who is not himself over the intercom, feels himself in the rapid rabbiting of his heart. He feels the swat on his arm as if it is not him, but who is he otherwise? To share what has been once explored is not a novel experience. He has partaken in the muddled mess of memory, tumbled through the strands of parallel existence.
This is another, but he cannot recall starting a meld. He cannot recall when it was they'd both settled down to doze, but — Jim's form flits beyond a bend. Normally, in times such as these, he would recognize Spock's presence. He would come around to face him, not carry on as though he were not there. Not in body, not in flesh.
Not like this, the lurching form of a ship he's only ever glimpsed cutting stark against the viewport. No, he realizes quite suddenly, this isn't at all that Jim should typically drag him to. This isn't something he'd tasted more than the vestiges of, the residual ashes a film at the back of one's teeth.
Spock picks up the pace, his own heart rabbiting as he tries to discern where it is Jim's gone. He smooths along the bond, fingers threading through the length of it. The ship is somehow empty, for all the alarm blares bleak and vibrant.
There have been times, since the advent of their bond, where Spock has led Jim through that which his fraught imagination has foisted upon him. Eased his consciousness back from the edge, led him back to something easier, lighter; coaxed his subconscious mind in carefully, with slender fingers and a gentled touch - soothed the illogical, vivid imagery so that when Jim awoke, it was with peace instead of panic.
This, now, is different. Jim's subconscious mind responds as per usual, the pulse of his essence just as it should be when Spock touches the bond, winding comfortably between his fingers - but the dream does not change. The edges do not warp and ease into something different, they refuse to be smoothed - they are as ragged as Jim's labored breathing, as sharp as the exhaustion that permeates, painted over hastily with adrenaline. How long has he been awake? He's lost track.
There's something ominous about this dream, some telltale equivalent of mental gooseflesh. No, this is not a dream Jim would share, given the option. The Enterprise groans and creaks, listing to the side as the gravity does, indeed, fail - Jim is there, standing on the wall, the hallway now a dangerously long gap in the floor. He gestures, hand outstretched towards Spock. "You have to jump! Come on - we have to get to Engineering! It's the only way to restore power!"
The ship lurches, caught in the pull of some kind of gravity (Earth's? It seems a known fact of the dream, though nothing specific has indicated it thus far). Jim wheels back, off balance, and falls further down the hallway, disappearing into the darkness - the ship is out of control, energy drained as the emergency floodlights flicker.
"Spock!"
Jim's voice echoes through the dream, beckoning him deeper into the ship. The hallway warps, each flash of the lights oscillating between the ship they both know so well - similar to their shared inner mindspace, combining the colorful, clean hallways of Spock's Enterprise and the sleek, silvering design of Jim's. Still, intrinsically, it seems that there is no wrong course - either way, this ship is their home, and they surely know how to navigate it.
Jim is dangling from one of the service bridges, as the darkened hallway opens up to light; he's fallen, precarious, holding onto a man who can only be Scotty with one hand, barely held up by a skinny teenager with the other - Chekov, it seems, dirty work goggles crushing sweaty Russian curls. Chekov turns his head, looking to Spock for help, eyes wide and panicked. "Commander! Zey are falling!"
And what might he do, he thinks, when the dream itself refuses to be soothed? When the edges wind about his fingertips, weave into something wholly without comfort and wholly without ways to move? He might pick along the boundary, he supposes. He might find within the barrier a means or modes of some escape, but Jim’s consciousness thrums and flickers. It bends about his knuckles. It makes no headway, but refuses relent. It refuses to relent, as much as Spock too does. Jim’s mind had always been one that challenged him. It had always been one that caught him at the heels, that tripped him end-over-end into the warmth from which he had been hiding. And now? What it determines to show him is what he determines it must. And as much as Spock should contest as much, it seems he has no option. None, he thinks.
Not yet.
And yet, the corridors continue to shift. No matter how fast it is Spock pumps his legs, he seems never to quite catch the proverbial rabbit. He never quite seems to know where the dream opens, where it is relaxes. He never quite sees the body of it, the whole of the shape it envelops them in. He never quite touches where it is it gives. But, Jim—Jim does. Jim knows where it is leading, knows where it is his feet must fall. As though written already, Spock is nudged along. He knows, rationally, that Jim should be safe along these halls. He knows he should survive the gulf that opens, that he should quite as readily make the distance that Jim cries and calls across. He know, but—
Illogical as it is, his body responds. (And why shouldn’t it? The vision is not real, he knows, but the distress that Jim feels is real enough for them both.) It wheels along with a temporary boost of adrenaline, the aching hum of the ship about them as it breaks leading him further on. He reaches, of course. He jumps where he is beckoned. He pieces together what it is that must be happening (power failures, gravity, the delicate wiring that keeps them all in place)—and then, as he jerks his head up, it’s Chekov. Where it is the lights dim and shudder and fail, he sees the shape of him vacillate through what is known and unknown to him. Young still, yes, always young still, but—he hears the bridge below them groan. He hears, as much as sees, the danger the dream has placed them in. It feels too much a memory to be fully dream, too much a dream to be fully memory, but Spock has no time to pick through the grain of it. He has no time, but to react.
Dream or no, Spock has no interest in enmeshing further betrayal or tragedy into the tangled mess that lies before him. He knows it no better to awake to something so suddenly, as much as he knows it no better than to let it continue as such. He pulls up to a halt before the broken lip, reaches to encircle the finer bones of Jim’s wrist.
Jim has many terrible memories - this is no secret. He has murmured the truth into Spock's skin, and the ones too terrible to speak he has shown, instead, be it intentionally or through the chaotic fragmentation of his dreams. This is...different. This is something Jim has never mentioned, and for good reason. His mind doesn't often conjure it - a form of self-preservation, as Jim understands it. The physical pain alone had been harrowing, let alone...well. It seems it will become all too clear in time, and what's worse is Jim doesn't have the usual inkling of awareness that Spock can coax out from beneath the subconscious - or rather unconscious - workings of his mind. No, for him - this dream is real. For them both, as he pulls Spock through it unwittingly.
Spock hauls Jim back over the edge, and together they manage to bring Scotty with him. Jim's slightly shaky with the pumping adrenaline, but he bumps his shoulder up against Spock's, mind curling gratefully around the bond - which is another inconsistency, as he seems to remember it's there, and react to it, within the dream. It, of course, could not have existed during the time of this memory - yet Jim brushes the golden thread, slides his mind against Spock's with familiarity. Such is the logic of dreams, and Spock has apparently been folded into this one all too easily.
"Even if we get the warp core online, we've still got to redirect the power!" Scotty wastes no time, grasping at Chekov's arm. "Someone has to hit the manual override. Laddie, there's a switch. It's - "
"Behind ze deflector dish! I'll flip ze switch!" Chekov takes off, sprinting up another set of stairs to disappear into the bowels of the ship. Jim grabs Spock's arm, squeezing briefly before he's off, too, taking after Scotty. "Let's go!"
“EVACUATION PROTOCOLS INITIATED. PROCEED TO EXIT BAYS AND REPORT TO YOUR ASSIGNED SHUTTLE.”
Working their way through engineering is complete chaos. The ship is well and truly falling out of the sky, as they skid around a corner into the shuttle bay. People are screaming, the ship listing, heavy machinery falling to the side, unable to launch and evacuate. Jim's eyes widen, and his hand finds Spock's breast, grasping at his shirt with thick fingers. "Come on!"
"Oh no, no, no, no!" Arrival at the warp core, lines of empty engineering workstations that Scotty sets upon like a bloodhound, feels even more foreboding. Jim braces his hands on his knees and does his best not to wheeze, catching his breath after the dead sprint it took to get there. Scotty's manic tapping at the console doesn't tell them anything they don't already know, despair evident in his face when he turns back around to report to Jim and Spock. "The housings are misaligned. There's no way we can redirect the power! The ship's dead, sir...she's gone."
Edited (if you saw that no you diDNT) 2025-01-23 21:34 (UTC)
And what should one do with them, Spock thinks, but hold them? What should one do, when given the tangled root of one's psyche? What should one do, but work to untangle it? His hands are steady and sure with him—with Jim. What it is he has deigned and not deigned to give is entirely up to him. It should be entirely up to him, not parceled from the self and the soul as though a pithos sharded, a mirror cast up from the dirt. It should not be his to see, to experience. It should not be he, who plucks it like one does something buried in the garden, the wet well of rain forcing it up and forward to slice across the palms of hands and the soles of feet.
But, he is here. He is here, among the flicker and fall of a home that is not his as much as it is. He is here, hauling Jim up from the edge of some yawning oblivion. It is him, who follows Jim tread. It is him, who is translating what it is Jim is told before it is they have fully told it. There is no other reason for the Enterprise to list as she does, to suffer the break through the atmosphere. There is no reason other than—but, Jim's mind is there. It is there and it tethers them. And even now, even now—he knows he cannot out-race what has already happened. He cannot outpace it, as much as he attempts.
It is dread and it is frustration and it is something unholy in the cold and barren parts of him. It is something that surges up against the bond, that thrums with an agony that has not been seen or vocalized before or after or since. He recalls his hands knotted up within Jim's, remembers the ache that had persisted in the aftermath—he remembers and remembers and remembers—
"Jim," he says, following as he's always meant to. Following as he does as he gropes and grapples and stumbles for him. "Jim," he starts again, steering around to the front of him as Jim bends over his own knees, as his lungs catch. His heart throbs against his side, chest vising as he crouches down to look at him. To really look at him.
His hands are already upon his shoulders. He does not attempt to wake him, knowing how it must end. Knowing how it must end, but—perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps, he thinks, he might mold it. Shape it. Bring to the fore something else, anything else—he projects the thought of fingers, the thought of an anchor. He thinks of planting his feet, his mind tugging against what holds them both to the other. Gold around the backs of his knuckles, as if to surface. To coax up, from some depth—
I could not have been here, he murmurs across the expanse. He digs his heels in further, eyes widened against the prospect of what must be coming. Of what was. Of what has been here since the outset—his mouth twists at the corners. He does not think, he does not—I would not have allowed it.
He could never have. He would never have. He should have been the one, the only one. He should have taken it all for him. For them. If there was not Jim—no, Spock could not replace him. Spock could never—no, he should never forgive himself. He would never forgive himself. Without Jim, who might he become? How might he have pushed against the tide so young and so fearful and so without the wit and practice that Jim held as naturally as any, more surely than him?
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expiationlogs2025-01-13 12:39 pm
no subject
To dream or not to dream, to be aware and not — it is something that Spock has been part and parcel of. It is something he has known, as much as Jim has known. For all that Humans slumber with the fire of days beneath their skin, so too do Vulcans. So too do all that swim and fly and crawl. So too do those who profess to know nothing of the smeared and stuttered landscapes, the emptiness that lays at the bottom of one's emotional wells.
What it is Spock who is Jim who is Spock sees is not at all unimaginable or without understanding. What is cinder billows across the palms, what is lit from within the wick of the self is familiar as it is satisfying. What wanders weaves, nets tangled so about the self that the body of consciousness falls through. Falls down, down —
Down the hall. Down the bright glit of corridors. The Enterprise shapes itself strangely, looped where it should pause. And yet, Spock follows. He follows, because it is Jim that tells him to. He hears himself who is not himself over the intercom, feels himself in the rapid rabbiting of his heart. He feels the swat on his arm as if it is not him, but who is he otherwise? To share what has been once explored is not a novel experience. He has partaken in the muddled mess of memory, tumbled through the strands of parallel existence.
This is another, but he cannot recall starting a meld. He cannot recall when it was they'd both settled down to doze, but — Jim's form flits beyond a bend. Normally, in times such as these, he would recognize Spock's presence. He would come around to face him, not carry on as though he were not there. Not in body, not in flesh.
Not like this, the lurching form of a ship he's only ever glimpsed cutting stark against the viewport. No, he realizes quite suddenly, this isn't at all that Jim should typically drag him to. This isn't something he'd tasted more than the vestiges of, the residual ashes a film at the back of one's teeth.
Spock picks up the pace, his own heart rabbiting as he tries to discern where it is Jim's gone. He smooths along the bond, fingers threading through the length of it. The ship is somehow empty, for all the alarm blares bleak and vibrant.
And still, he calls out.
"Jim!"
no subject
This, now, is different. Jim's subconscious mind responds as per usual, the pulse of his essence just as it should be when Spock touches the bond, winding comfortably between his fingers - but the dream does not change. The edges do not warp and ease into something different, they refuse to be smoothed - they are as ragged as Jim's labored breathing, as sharp as the exhaustion that permeates, painted over hastily with adrenaline. How long has he been awake? He's lost track.
There's something ominous about this dream, some telltale equivalent of mental gooseflesh. No, this is not a dream Jim would share, given the option. The Enterprise groans and creaks, listing to the side as the gravity does, indeed, fail - Jim is there, standing on the wall, the hallway now a dangerously long gap in the floor. He gestures, hand outstretched towards Spock. "You have to jump! Come on - we have to get to Engineering! It's the only way to restore power!"
The ship lurches, caught in the pull of some kind of gravity (Earth's? It seems a known fact of the dream, though nothing specific has indicated it thus far). Jim wheels back, off balance, and falls further down the hallway, disappearing into the darkness - the ship is out of control, energy drained as the emergency floodlights flicker.
"Spock!"
Jim's voice echoes through the dream, beckoning him deeper into the ship. The hallway warps, each flash of the lights oscillating between the ship they both know so well - similar to their shared inner mindspace, combining the colorful, clean hallways of Spock's Enterprise and the sleek, silvering design of Jim's. Still, intrinsically, it seems that there is no wrong course - either way, this ship is their home, and they surely know how to navigate it.
Jim is dangling from one of the service bridges, as the darkened hallway opens up to light; he's fallen, precarious, holding onto a man who can only be Scotty with one hand, barely held up by a skinny teenager with the other - Chekov, it seems, dirty work goggles crushing sweaty Russian curls. Chekov turns his head, looking to Spock for help, eyes wide and panicked. "Commander! Zey are falling!"
no subject
Not yet.
And yet, the corridors continue to shift. No matter how fast it is Spock pumps his legs, he seems never to quite catch the proverbial rabbit. He never quite seems to know where the dream opens, where it is relaxes. He never quite sees the body of it, the whole of the shape it envelops them in. He never quite touches where it is it gives. But, Jim—Jim does. Jim knows where it is leading, knows where it is his feet must fall. As though written already, Spock is nudged along. He knows, rationally, that Jim should be safe along these halls. He knows he should survive the gulf that opens, that he should quite as readily make the distance that Jim cries and calls across. He know, but—
Illogical as it is, his body responds. (And why shouldn’t it? The vision is not real, he knows, but the distress that Jim feels is real enough for them both.) It wheels along with a temporary boost of adrenaline, the aching hum of the ship about them as it breaks leading him further on. He reaches, of course. He jumps where he is beckoned. He pieces together what it is that must be happening (power failures, gravity, the delicate wiring that keeps them all in place)—and then, as he jerks his head up, it’s Chekov. Where it is the lights dim and shudder and fail, he sees the shape of him vacillate through what is known and unknown to him. Young still, yes, always young still, but—he hears the bridge below them groan. He hears, as much as sees, the danger the dream has placed them in. It feels too much a memory to be fully dream, too much a dream to be fully memory, but Spock has no time to pick through the grain of it. He has no time, but to react.
Dream or no, Spock has no interest in enmeshing further betrayal or tragedy into the tangled mess that lies before him. He knows it no better to awake to something so suddenly, as much as he knows it no better than to let it continue as such. He pulls up to a halt before the broken lip, reaches to encircle the finer bones of Jim’s wrist.
He pulls.
no subject
Spock hauls Jim back over the edge, and together they manage to bring Scotty with him. Jim's slightly shaky with the pumping adrenaline, but he bumps his shoulder up against Spock's, mind curling gratefully around the bond - which is another inconsistency, as he seems to remember it's there, and react to it, within the dream. It, of course, could not have existed during the time of this memory - yet Jim brushes the golden thread, slides his mind against Spock's with familiarity. Such is the logic of dreams, and Spock has apparently been folded into this one all too easily.
"Even if we get the warp core online, we've still got to redirect the power!" Scotty wastes no time, grasping at Chekov's arm. "Someone has to hit the manual override. Laddie, there's a switch. It's - "
"Behind ze deflector dish! I'll flip ze switch!" Chekov takes off, sprinting up another set of stairs to disappear into the bowels of the ship. Jim grabs Spock's arm, squeezing briefly before he's off, too, taking after Scotty. "Let's go!"
Working their way through engineering is complete chaos. The ship is well and truly falling out of the sky, as they skid around a corner into the shuttle bay. People are screaming, the ship listing, heavy machinery falling to the side, unable to launch and evacuate. Jim's eyes widen, and his hand finds Spock's breast, grasping at his shirt with thick fingers. "Come on!"
"Oh no, no, no, no!" Arrival at the warp core, lines of empty engineering workstations that Scotty sets upon like a bloodhound, feels even more foreboding. Jim braces his hands on his knees and does his best not to wheeze, catching his breath after the dead sprint it took to get there. Scotty's manic tapping at the console doesn't tell them anything they don't already know, despair evident in his face when he turns back around to report to Jim and Spock. "The housings are misaligned. There's no way we can redirect the power! The ship's dead, sir...she's gone."
no subject
But, he is here. He is here, among the flicker and fall of a home that is not his as much as it is. He is here, hauling Jim up from the edge of some yawning oblivion. It is him, who follows Jim tread. It is him, who is translating what it is Jim is told before it is they have fully told it. There is no other reason for the Enterprise to list as she does, to suffer the break through the atmosphere. There is no reason other than—but, Jim's mind is there. It is there and it tethers them. And even now, even now—he knows he cannot out-race what has already happened. He cannot outpace it, as much as he attempts.
It is dread and it is frustration and it is something unholy in the cold and barren parts of him. It is something that surges up against the bond, that thrums with an agony that has not been seen or vocalized before or after or since. He recalls his hands knotted up within Jim's, remembers the ache that had persisted in the aftermath—he remembers and remembers and remembers—
"Jim," he says, following as he's always meant to. Following as he does as he gropes and grapples and stumbles for him. "Jim," he starts again, steering around to the front of him as Jim bends over his own knees, as his lungs catch. His heart throbs against his side, chest vising as he crouches down to look at him. To really look at him.
His hands are already upon his shoulders. He does not attempt to wake him, knowing how it must end. Knowing how it must end, but—perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps, he thinks, he might mold it. Shape it. Bring to the fore something else, anything else—he projects the thought of fingers, the thought of an anchor. He thinks of planting his feet, his mind tugging against what holds them both to the other. Gold around the backs of his knuckles, as if to surface. To coax up, from some depth—
I could not have been here, he murmurs across the expanse. He digs his heels in further, eyes widened against the prospect of what must be coming. Of what was. Of what has been here since the outset—his mouth twists at the corners. He does not think, he does not—I would not have allowed it.
He could never have. He would never have. He should have been the one, the only one. He should have taken it all for him. For them. If there was not Jim—no, Spock could not replace him. Spock could never—no, he should never forgive himself. He would never forgive himself. Without Jim, who might he become? How might he have pushed against the tide so young and so fearful and so without the wit and practice that Jim held as naturally as any, more surely than him?
He could not fathom it.