Disclaimer: ParaBorg/Viacom owns 'em

Author's Note: This is the seventh story in the T'Rela series. The others can be found at my website www.geocities.com/Area51/Starship/2151. Some familiarity with the main characters in the series is assumed, and encouraged. Okay to post at ASC or archive, all others, please ask.

This story owes a major debt to Rudyard Kipling's "The Lady or the Tiger," and I acknowledge it with my grateful thanks. Thanks also to my betas, Islaofhope, Editrix and PernFancy, who have been there, in one way or another, since this series began. For PernFancy, who reminded me of how "The Lady or the Tiger" ended. For Isla who told me I had to have a Gol story when the very idea made me twitchy. And for Editrix, who beta read this story in its early stages, and kept me focused. Ladies, this one's for you.

Ratings: PG, for adult situations, language, some h/c. TOS, K, S/f

Feedback: Sure, email to [email protected]. Constructive comments welcome, flames will be sent to the circular file.

Chronology: This story is divided into two parts. "The Choice" deals with events just before and just after Captain Kirk's promotion to Admiral, and Spock's subsequent flight to Gol. "Good Enough" concerns events just before and just after ST:TMP

Summary: What choice did Spock make that sent him to Gol?

By the Secret Stair

Shrouded by the night

And by the secret stair I quickly fled

The veil concealed my eyes

While all within lay quiet as the dead…

Upon that misty night

In secrecy, beyond such mortal sight

Without a guide or light

Than that which burned so deeply in my heart.

---Loreena McKennitt, lyrics by St. John of the Cross

"The Dark Night of the Soul"

The Choice

"Why did he leave, T'Rela?" The voice was harsh, worn with concern and anger, and, T'Rela noticed, not a little empty. She could relate to that one, to the feeling of

desolation she saw in his eyes.

The eyes that met his were clear violet, and not a little empty themselves. She's devastated, Jim Kirk noticed, and no wonder. "I'm sorry, T'Rela, I shouldn't have asked it that way."

There was none of her usual animation, no wryness in her eyes. "The cause is more than sufficient." She studied him, needing no telepathy to read his emotions. His unease was almost palpable. In earlier times, she would have asked what was bothering him, would have watched as Spock teased him out of whatever was affecting him.

A gentle touch brushed against her mind. Sudek, home from school with his sisters. Her eldest son, born with the killing gift, could not always restrain himself from broadcasting his presence. //Sudek,// she thought to him //will you please take T'Lir and T'Siri to your grandmother's and stay there until I call for you?//

Sudek was eleven, quite old enough to be included in adult discussions. Yet, as illogical as T'Rela knew it was, she still wanted to protect him. If the children saw Jim Kirk without their father present, they would know something had happened. When Jim left, she would tell her children that their father had gone to Gol, and that he would not be coming back to them.

There was a flash of assent. //Please tell Uncle Jim I think of him.// And then he was gone. With relief, T'Rela heard the door open and close again. She gathered her thoughts and gazed across at the man who was---who had been---her husband's shieldmate. Was that another relationship Spock's vows to Gol would sever? "You are his shieldmate," she replied. "You truly do not know why he left?"

Pain flashed through the hazel eyes. "Gods, T'Rela, you don't know what he was like when he came back from Iatain. It was touch and go there for a while; Bones thought he would die, and when he didn't, we thought that was a miracle. But he was…I don't know, it's like he was dead inside. He ate, he slept, he went for his shift, but he wouldn't talk to anyone outside the line of duty." Jim stopped suddenly, remembering his words. Of course she knows what he was like---she's his bondmate after all. "I'm sorry, " he said. "That was a stupid thing to say. Of course you knew."

T'Rela shook her head slightly. "You were correct the first time. Spock blocked our bond from the time he returned." All at once she stood, and something in her posture caused a long forgotten memory to flicker in Jim's mind. Miramanee, all those long years ago, using her arms to protect their unborn child as the stones rained death upon them…"You're pregnant, aren't you?" he asked softly.

She did not question how he knew; he had always been intuitive, this one. "I am. I found out just before Spock was taken captive on Iatain."

"You knew before he was taken captive?"

T'Rela nodded, and he noticed how pale she was. He had seen her when she was pregnant with Sudek, and when she was pregnant with T'Lir and T'Siri, and Jim had never seen her look so ill. "Sit down before you fall down, T'Rela." It was said in his best captain's voice, and then it hit him hard, as it had over the last few days: he was no longer a captain. "Why didn't you tell him, if you knew before he went on the mission?"

She sat obediently enough. "I did not want to tell him before I was certain."

All at once, Jim's anger at the situation burst forth, his anger at Spock's betrayal, at Spock's desertion of his wife and children, at a galaxy which would suddenly deprive him of his two best friends, and most of all, at himself for seeing a problem and being completely unable to deal with it or prevent it. "Gods, T'Rela, you could have stopped him from going to Gol if you'd told him!"

Her voice, for all its softness, was incised with her own pain. "Do you think so? If the three children we have already had together did not stop him, do you honestly think a fourth child would?" She paused, and her voice seemed to regain some of its usual even tone. "Besides, Jim, if I had told him and he had stayed, would that have solved anything? It may be that he needs whatever healing Gol can provide."

"And you let him go? Just like that?"

There was a faint flicker of humor in her eyes. "Well, hardly 'just like that'. But yes, I did let him go."

For the third time in fifteen minutes, Jim found himself apologizing to this woman. "I am sorry. I keep saying that, and I keep talking and making it worse. Why don't you talk for a while?"

T'Rela smiled a bit at that, but it lacked her usual humor. "Shall I tell you what I saw on Iatain, then?"

"I thought you said Spock was blocking your bond."

"He was, to the extent that we could not communicate. I could not sense his thoughts, he could not sense mine. But I did receive images, I saw what he saw."

Jim considered, but shook his head. "I have to go to Gol. He's only been there a couple of days. Maybe I can---"

"James." The way she said his first name made his blood chill. "Once Spock is vowed to Gol as a kolinahru, he will never leave. Whatever answers you seek as to why he left, you cannot go to Gol to find them. The answers are within us, in what you know of the mission to Iatain and in the images I saw."

Her eyes landed upon his, and all of a sudden he knew, without knowing, what she was going to say next. "Will you link your mind with mine, so that we may better understand? Only there will we find our answers."

Jim might have hesitated. He had never linked with anyone but Spock. But Spock was gone, and maybe this way was the only way to give either of them some peace. He nodded, and her fingers settled on his temples, fever-hot as Spock's had always been. Jim felt her aching loneliness, for the bond that she and Spock had shared for fourteen years, a bond which was now cold and silent. //It is only my pain, Jim. I can bear it// she said, and the link deepened.

Jim forgot the heat of the Vulcan day, his own pain and confusion, the concern over this woman and her family, the lurching pain that convinced him he had somehow failed Spock, and the soul-sick weariness deep inside him at the destruction of all that he had known and taken for granted.

The room itself faded, and they were on the Enterprise.

***

Jim didn't like it---not one bit. And gazing across the chessboard, Jim could tell Spock didn't like it either. "This is most disconcerting," Spock had said, looking up as he captured Jim's king.

The captain nodded in sympathy and genuine agreement. Ever since the incident with the cloaking device, Starfleet had refrained from asking either of them to be involved in espionage. Then the message had arrived, and all that had changed. "I can't believe they're ordering you to do this."

Iatain was a world on the borders between the Federation and the unaligned spaces. What little was known about its people suggested that they were extremely adept telepaths, and officially neutral . They had been offered membership in the Federation but had declined it, and their world was known far and wide as a place where anything and anyone could be bought. Starfleet kept an eye on Iatain, and had begun to receive reports that the Iatain had formed an alliance with the Orion Confederation.

"Here's the rub," Admiral Grace Sheridan had explained. She was a friendly woman who looked like everyone's grandmother, except that this grandmother headed Black Ops for Starfleet Security. "We've tried to send spies in; everyone we sent in has come out in small pieces. What we do know is that they definitely have the capability for large-scale weapons manufacture, and could be in a position to aid significantly if the Orions decided to invade the Federation, but that's about it."

"So how exactly does the Enterprise figure into this?" Jim had asked, suspecting that he wouldn't like the answer.

"Yesterday, the Iatain Consulate contacted the Federation. They wish to discuss a treaty of alliance with the Federation. They asked specifically for the Enterprise, and more specifically, for its Vulcan first officer. It's purely a cultural issue; the Iatain will only negotiate with a telepathic ambassador because they believe that non-telepaths are unintelligent. So you're it." Sheridan forestalled the objection with one sharp-eyed glance. "Commander Spock, officially, you're going to Iatain as an ambassador. Unofficially, you are to find out if their alliance with the Orion Confederation is a strong one, and second, if the Orions are using Iatain support to finance an invasion."

Jim immediately suppressed the thought that if the Iatain thought non-telepathic races were unintelligent, they should meet some of Starfleet's bureaucracy. Spock's eyes met his, clearly perceiving the thought, and the eyes smiled in agreement. He wanted to say, as he hadn't during the incident with the cloaking device, that espionage was the province of Black Ops, not that of a Vulcan first officer and his all too human captain.

Spock's dark eyes met his. The thought was clear as if he had spoken: This was part of the oath we both swore: "To preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United Federation of Planets." I care for this no more than you do, but it is our duty.

They had gone back to the Enterprise, with Sheridan's encoded orders on a disk. And Jim was right; he didn't like it. Spock was to go to Iatain alone and unarmed.

***

"You let him go into that without a weapon?" T'Rela asked. Maintaining a link was an intense, draining experience, and they needed to take breaks from it before becoming dangerously exhausted. In addition, T'Rela was contending with the exhaustion of the early stages of her pregnancy.

"Well, I hardly 'let him do' anything, but yes, I did let him go." The echo of her earlier words would have been sarcastic were it not for the pain of grief in his eyes. "I didn't have any choice. Starfleet orders were specific. All I could do was keep a transporter lock on him, to beam him back at the first sign of trouble."

"And then what happened?" she asked quietly.

"Everything looked fine. It was only when Spock returned that we realized that nothing we had seen on Iatain actually existed."

T'Rela's eyes widened. "An illusion?"

Jim nodded. "They were adept telepaths."

There was a sound, as of a door opening. T'Rela knew, without looking, that it was T'Siri standing in the doorway. T'Rela smiled, although with an effort; she might have known that T'Siri would not stay at her grandmother's for long. It was not for nothing that Spock, in mild exasperation, had once nicknamed her T'Stubborn.

"T'Siri," she said. "I know you're there. If you're going to sneak in, you must learn to do it more quietly."

The child came into the light then. T'Siri and her sister T'Lir were identical twins; how T'Rela could tell them apart without actually seeing them, Jim had never been able to fathom. Unlike the predominantly Akaren features of their brother Sudek, the features of the twins were an almost exact compromise between those of Spock's mixed ancestry and T'Rela's Akaren heritage. Instead of T'Rela's purple eyes or their father's black, their eyes were Amanda's direct, piercing blue.

Jim had known all of Spock's children since their birth. As the twins had grown older, he had wondered how they could have such diverse personalities, given that they shared the exact same genes. Time had not changed their differences; T'Siri was stubborn, and T'Lir more quiet, but where T'Lir led, T'Siri would follow.

"I ask forgiveness," T'Siri murmured.

T'Rela's eyebrows rose, and her voice did have a distinct bit of amusement. "I don't know why, since you're obviously not sorry you're here."

Those intent blue eyes were staring at him, and Jim found he could not look away. He was reminded of his mother, sitting on the front porch in Iowa, speaking of the child of one of her neighbors. "That one has an old soul," she had said, and Jim, looking at T'Siri, knew it was equally true for this child. Spock's eyes had had that quality too, that endless depth.

"So why have you returned, T'Siri?" her mother asked.

The child did not equivocate. "Is it true, what Sudek suspects?"

T'Rela might have sighed. Sudek, due largely to the training he had gone through in order to control the killing gift, was the most self-contained of her children. If something was bothering him, and she had no doubt that there was, he would not speak of it immediately. And although T'Rela knew exactly what Sudek suspected, she also knew that he certainly would not speak of it to either of his younger sisters. "Have you been reading Sudek's thoughts?" she asked.

T'Siri nodded, starlight flashing off the black hair. "Grandfather said it was permissible."

"T'Siri," her mother replied, "we have had this discussion before. Grandfather Siret said it was permissible, and it is, among the Akaren. But you live among Vulcans, and Sudek is being trained in their way. It is not permissible for you to read his thoughts as you would an Akaren."

"But Sudek is as Akaren as I am," the child objected.

T'Rela nodded in agreement. "Yes, he is, but Sudek has chosen the Vulcan way. You must honor his choice."

When T'Siri had left to return to Amanda's house, Jim turned to T'Rela. "Sudek has chosen to be Vulcan?"

T'Rela shook her head. "No, not quite. But there are certain codes of behavior in his training that Sudek must follow in order to successfully control the killing gift. For him, being an Akaren was never really an option."

Jim thought about that one, about how it would be to have the choice of a life's path partially denied because of an accident of birth. About how Spock, because of the choices he had made, would never see his eldest son grow to manhood, watch his daughters grow, or see his next child born. Oh God, Spock, why did you do this? To them? To me? What was so horrible that you couldn't talk to either of us? "What are you going to tell them, about this?"

T'Rela's eyes darkened. "I will tell them what I must, with the answers I have."

Jim shook his head, remembering his mother trying and failing to explain to he and his brother why their father was always gone. "Whatever answers we find, it won't be enough for them."

T'Rela nodded. "It's not the best solution, but it's the only one I have." She gazed at him steadily, seeing the dark-shadowed eyes, strange eyes, a disconcerting shade between brown and green, and the lines around them where none had been before. The face was the face of a man on the edge of physical and mental exhaustion. And because she honored this man, and because Spock would have done it, T'Rela tried to reach him. "Jim, what troubles you so? There is something else, I can sense it."

Jim flinched at the question. He'd forgotten that she didn't know what had happened; everyone else was a member of Starfleet, and therefore susceptible to the rumor mill. "Did Spock ever tell you of the Halkan incident?"

She sighed; it was a very human characteristic to answer a direct question with an indirect question as if it would suffice as an answer. "He didn't, not exactly. It was classified, but I saw the images in his mind. Some sort of alternate universe?" The image was clear in her mind, a wild-eyed, savage version of this same man, shouting insults from behind a forcefield door.

Jim nodded. "Right before we were sent back, I was standing on the transporter platform telling that other Spock to incite a revolution. 'Push until it gives,' was what I told him." He paused, looking years older than his actual age. "That about summed up my command style. This time, Starfleet didn't give."

As a Starfleet officer's wife, T'Rela was no stranger to the intrigues of Starfleet Command. And she knew what had prompted his promotion; Jim Kirk was a maverick, and someone had decided to reign him in. "Could you not have refused the promotion?" she asked gently, wanting only to understand.

"They took the Enterprise away from me, T'Rela," he said, his voice an attenuated shadow of grief and loss. "Said the ship needed to be under someone else's command for the next mission." Jim swallowed. "If I had refused the promotion, I still wouldn't have had a ship."

"I see." And T'Rela did, possibly more than Jim suspected. Spock had told her of his early days in Starfleet, of Garth's mutiny and the chilling effect that had had upon Starfleet policy, and of what had happened when the second captain of the Enterprise had been promoted to commodore. His command crew, whom Starfleet suspected of having too much loyalty to the captain and not enough to Starfleet, had been scattered to the far ends of the galaxy.

At once an image rose to her mind, an image that wasn't her own. A ancient sailing ship Spock had seen once when he was a cadet, listing to one side because there was not enough ballast in it. "And where was the doctor during all this?" she asked.

"Bones resigned, in protest. Said I was a damn fool for accepting the promotion. Last I heard, he was studying medicine with the Fabrini." He threw up his hands in defeated exasperation. "I don't know what he expected me to do. I've been in Starfleet my entire adult life. It's not something you just walk away from."

"Starfleet is not the entire universe," she said quietly, wishing yet again that she could have had this conversation with Spock, that he would have told her what was wrong instead of fleeing to Gol.

Jim smiled crookedly, a smile that had little of his legendary warmth about it. "It is if you want to command a starship."

Healers were trained to make quick, effective decisions, and T'Rela had been a healer long before she ever became a Starfleet officer's wife. "When do you need to return to Earth?"

Jim ran a hand through his hair. "They gave me a week's leave before I start officially being an admiral."

T'Rela rose. "Then I insist you stay here until you need to return." She looked at him in a way that was at once eerily familiar and strangely reassuring. Spock might have been hundreds of miles away, in stone fortress in the middle of the Vulcan desert, but his expression of stubborn persistence was right here.

Jim knew better than to argue with her. As she left him and the night closed in around him, he fell into an uneasy sleep to dream of Iatain.

***

The next morning, Jim awoke to the unfamiliar sounds of a Vulcan household. Apparently, the children had returned from Amanda's and he could just barely hear T'Rela's low voice speaking to them. "Your father has gone to Gol to become a kolinahr adept. If he is successful, tradition requires that he sever his ties to this family."

There was no crying, no audible sounds of distress as there would have been with Terran children. But it was quite possibly the loudest silence Jim had ever heard. Sudek spoke, and Jim smiled. The boy's voice was starting to deepen into his father's baritone. Then Jim's heart tightened; he had allowed himself to forget that he would never hear that voice again. "Why did he go, Mother?" Spock's son asked, and Jim wished that he had the answers for him. It is difficult to have the answers if one does not ask the right questions, Spock had said at one time or another. And Jim would have given everything he had to have asked the right questions.

"His reasons remain his own, Sudek. All I know is that it was not because of anything you children did."

There was a silence. A young girl's voice, one Jim thought might be T'Lir; her voice had a slight lisp that T'Siri's did not. "Does Uncle Jim know why he left?"

Jim could empathize with T'Rela; he'd faced Klingons that were less persistent. "No, T'Lir," T'Rela replied, "Uncle Jim does not know why. That is why he is here with us for a time." Jim could see T'Rela gazing at her daughters, intent and not a little formidable. "And before you ask, remember what I told you about reading people's thoughts. It is permissible if you are among the Akaren, but your uncle would not appreciate it."

There was a slight rustling sound, as of clothing brushing together. T'Rela must have drawn her children into her arms. He heard the sound of her voice, but the words were blurred, indistinct. But the meaning was clear: your father is not here, but I am your mother and I will cherish you.

A door creaked open, and T'Rela's voice, more distinct, spoke. "Now hurry or you will miss the transport to school." Jim stepped out of the guest room as the children left.

T'Rela sat down heavily on the couch opposite him. The shadow of weariness was in her eyes. "I thought giving birth to them was difficult, but it's nothing compared to the pain of not having the answers."

He'd been wrestling with that one himself. "I know. I'm sorry."

"For what cause?" T'Rela asked.

"I served with him for nearly twenty years. Dammit, T'Rela, I should have known what was wrong with him. I should have had the right questions. Maybe if I had, he wouldn't have gone to Gol."

Violet eyes gazed at him evenly; there was no recrimination there. "Or perhaps he would have told you whatever answer would satisfy you, and he would still be at Gol."

"You don't think he's coming back, do you." It was not phrased as a question.

"If I did, what would that change? I am still here, my husband is still at Gol, and my children do not, at this time, have a father. What I believe or do not believe is of singularly little importance compared to that."

"Has anyone ever left Gol willingly, once they've taken vows as an adept?"

T'Rela shook her head. "There is a saying. 'The gates of Gol only open in one direction.' It is not that he would be prevented from leaving if he chose, but kolinahr is perceived among Vulcans as being a higher calling. It is therefore not logical to leave a higher calling for a lower calling, no matter the reason."

Jim was reminded of a song from twentieth-century Earth that Uhura sang sometimes in the Rec Room: You can check out anytime you want/But you can't never leave. "What do the Akaren think of Gol?"

There was a flicker of her old mischievous humor. "The Akaren name for it translates roughly as 'Vulcans' Folly.' We are far too attached to our emotions to think that losing them is anything but a foolish action." The mischief faded. "One I wish I understood."

Jim's eyebrows rose. "Well, that's what we're here for, isn't it? To understand?"

She laughed lightly. "It is indeed."

***

Jim had showered and eaten, feeling a little bit more like his old self. He entered the living room to find T'Rela gazing out over the desert. Her hands were folded into a configuration Jim recognized with a pang. How often had he seen Spock with his hands folded like that, in deep thought over yet another crisis?

The glint of metal in the sunlight caught his eye. T'Rela's wedding band, which had belonged to Spock's human grandmother. For fourteen years she had worn it, and even though T'Rela suspected her marriage might be over, she still wore it. Belatedly realizing that she might be in meditation, Jim made as if to turn away from the living room, but T'Rela's voice, faintly lisping with the Akaren accent she had never lost, stopped him. "Jim, you are not disturbing me."

"Are you certain? I could go---" All at once, it occurred to him that he truly had no place to go. The other rooms in the house were either the children's or the room T'Rela shared with Spock. There was the guest room where he had stayed, but that wasn't home either. What place was, with all of his friends gone or scattered?

And visiting Sarek and Amanda was out of the question; as much as he liked Spock's mother and respected Sarek, he couldn't face their recrimination. Yes, your son was my best friend. He called me his shieldmate, and in spite of all of these things, I could not help him when he needed me the most, and that's why he's at Gol. That's why he's no longer your son.

"Jim, they do not blame you." The voice was T'Rela's healer's voice, meant to soothe and relax.

Jim was having none of it. "How can you be so sure?" All at once, he realized that he hadn't verbalized the thought. "Were you reading my mind just then?"

T'Rela unfolded her hands, nodding. "I am a healer, Jim. To fail to respond to such pain…I could not do it."

"No, I don't suppose you could. I'm just not used to it being done so easily. The few times Spock read my thoughts through his shielding, he always apologized." But what had Spock truly been apologizing for? Jim wondered. For being his friend, for being so mentally attuned that shielding was sometimes ineffectual? Another good question I didn't ask. What else did I never think to ask about?

"I ask forgiveness. I did not mean to disturb you, Jim."

Jim shook his head. "There's no need to. I was just thinking…I used to think that there was nothing Spock and I couldn't discuss."

"You are his shieldmate," T'Rela observed quietly. "I am his wife. Whatever he needed, it was something he felt he could not gain from either of us."

"Then it's time we found out what, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Indeed. Are you prepared?"

Jim shrugged. "As prepared as I can be."

The link opened again, and they were on the bridge of the Enterprise.

***

Uhura tapped some switches on her board. "Captain, we're receiving a coded communication from Iatain. It's audio only, from Mr Spock."

"On audio."

Spock's even voice filled the bridge. Too even, Kirk was to think later when the truth of Iatain was known. But now, Kirk heard nothing unusual in the calm words of his first officer as he delivered his report. "I am meeting with the Iatain delegation tomorrow evening. The negotiations should begin then."

"Good job, Spock. Is there anything you need?"

Kirk could almost hear Spock's eyebrow going up. "If getting clear answers to all of our questions is within your control, then I would request that. Spock out."

***

"When did you realize the whole mission was a fabrication?" T'Rela asked.

"The Iatain were adept telepaths. We continued to receive regular reports from Spock, or at least we thought it was him. Seven days after he'd beamed down, I began to get suspicious."

T'Rela quirked one eyebrow at him. "Why?"

Jim breathed in, collecting his thoughts. He hadn't spoken to anyone of this for fifteen years. "You knew that Spock went through his first pon farr aboard the Enterprise. Before I got him to explain what was going on, he told me 'Not yet, Captain. I am asking you to accept that answer.'" He paused, fearing this was going to sound as strange as it did to his own ears. "T'Rela, in all the intervening years, he never used those words to me again."

"But he did in his report?"

Jim nodded. "And it was just enough out of context that it made me start thinking. On a hunch, I ran a voice-print analysis on his previous reports, the ones we made to send to Starfleet. It wasn't him. The Iatain had apparently gathered enough information from him to fabricate a report, but they couldn't know that Spock would never use that phrase. Before I could order a search, we received an incoming transporter signal from Iatain sending Spock back."

T'Rela drew her eyebrows together. "They must have known that the ruse had ended."

"They did indeed. After they returned Spock, the Iatain cut off all communication except for one message. It was from the leader of the Iatain, D'Shal. He stated that Spock had 'adequately answered their questions.' Then he signed off. We never were able to trace the source of the communication." He laughed then, a sound of bitter emotions barely in check. "Those false reports were more real than Spock after the Iatain had finished with him. I kept expecting him to walk through walls; it was like he literally wasn't there."

"Jim, you said that he was injured when he came back from Iatain. How?" I do not understand, Beloved. Why could you not come to me? Why did you shut me out?

Jim stared hard at her. He really did not want to go into this, did not want to have to tell this woman that her husband had been tortured in a way that was brutally effective for Vulcans. The Iatain had simply invaded his mind. "There were indications of severe trauma at the telepathic centers of the brain: internal bleeding, swelling. Bones thought he'd lose him; Spock couldn't invoke the healing trance because of the damage, and the bleeding almost didn't stop." In his memory, he seemed to see the dark eyes again, lost and wounded with a pain he wouldn't let anyone share. Then the ice as the walls between them had snapped into place again…

T'Rela lost what little color she possessed. She'd seen those symptoms listed, in accounts of survivors of mind rape. "He fought them when they raped his mind." Mentally, she called down every curse the Akaren possessed, even as she knew that none of that would help Spock now. She clasped her hands together to prevent their shaking.

Jim's hand touched hers where they were intertwined, human-cool and strangely reassuring. "Gods, T'Rela, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She did not question this time what he was sorry for. For a Vulcan, there was no more personal violation than that of mind rape. "How long…how long had he been like that before he was returned?"

Jim shook his head. "We never were able to find out. Spock would not speak of it. All we ever knew was that he had fought them, and lost." His voice was low, nearly drowned by the rush of wind across the desert. "What happened down there? What did you see?"

Some of the glazed pain had left her eyes as she looked at him levelly. "Jim, please be certain of what you ask. If we go into my memories of what Spock saw, you will see it as he did. Are you prepared for that?"

Once more unto the breach…"Will it affect me as it did him?"

T'Rela shook her head. "The images are shadows without substance now." Her own eyes were dark with concern. "Please, Jim, be certain that this is what you want. Once the link begins, I may not be able to break out of it until the memories are ended."

He glanced at her, hazel eyes reflecting strangely in the late afternoon light. "Are the memories so bad?"

T'Rela considered. "Unnerving, I would say. Once the link begins, you will not be Jim but Spock."

Jim smiled, a smile of great sadness and little hope. "I used to think of him as the other half of my soul. Now you're saying that through this link, I will see as he saw. I don't know of any other way to understand why he left us."

T'Rela smiled then, hearing the echo in her mind of T'Pau's long-ago words. Spock chose his friends well. "Then we shall begin."

***

I have been told that Iatain is a wet planet. The planet was once named Swamp by the first explorers of this sector, and I have to acknowledge that the name is apt. There is scarcely an acre of ground that is not covered in water or mud. The very presence of so much water is dimly unnerving to me, a desert dweller. But I am far removed from Vulcan's desert sands, and so I find it easy to disregard the unease.

I have materialized inside the capital city of Emer. The city is not big as cities go, but then Iatain was always known more for what could be bought and sold there than any grand architectural styles. Emer looks like nothing so much as an agglomeration of buildings from many different planets, chosen without regard to form or function. Tricorder scans indicate a wide variety of humanoid life forms: Andorians, Tellarites, Terrans, but no native Iatain or Orions.

Like a stiletto blade, I feel another mind slip into mine through my shielding. I am utterly shocked; not even T'Rela could do so in the privacy of our marriage bond. //Spock?// the Presence asks.

I am no ambassador, to ignore what has been done. But the mission… //As you must already be aware. I am Spock.// The mental voice I project is the same as the one I use aloud. All the same, I tighten my interior shields; I have no desire to be surprised again.

A humanoid man, dressed quite sensibly in woolen cloak and breeches against the weather on this planet, steps through a doorway I had not noticed earlier. Strange, and disconcerting. //I am D'Shal, leader of the Iatain Council. Come, we have accommodations for you.// The mental voice is odd, as if a thousand voices were speaking through this one mind.

I am uncomfortably reminded of a children's story I read as a boy; I feel as if I have fallen through the looking glass. Everything here appears just a shade disjointed, as if its reality is somewhere other than where I stand. If McCoy were here, he would probably say that Emer gave him "the creeps." And I, for once, would likely agree with him.

//Forgive me the trespass// D'Shal says as we walk. //On Iatain we can never be too careful.//

My curiosity gets the better of me. //Careful of what?//

D'Shal is amused. //You have not been here long enough to have answers to the question. All in good time.//

He leads me to a squat building that is nearly an exact replica of the building my clan uses for the Council of Bondings. Adobe on this wet planet is clearly impractical, and yet, here it stands, proof of one other thing that makes no real sense. //There are lodgings upstairs// D'Shal says, but I know this already. The upstairs of this building on Vulcan is where clan leaders and other visitors stayed when they traveled. It does not surprise me that it should be the same here, on Iatain.

D'Shal bows slightly and leaves me alone in the room. I do not think it wrong to acknowledge that staying here now, even if it is just a reproduction, makes me uneasy. I begin keying in the notes for the report I will transmit to the Enterprise.

The sound of the rain pounding on the roof is disquieting. My wife finds the rain to be soothing, as do many of my human crewmates. But for me it is a reminder of my first weeks at the Academy, where I fought my homesickness by concentrating on the sound of the rain. I have never learned to like the sound. Listening to it now, I am struck by what is almost a compulsion to contact T'Rela. I do not do so when I am on assignment; my wife does not possess a security clearance and there is much that I cannot share with her.

But now, as the night closes in, I wish to touch her mind, to tell her of the rain on a planet that she will never see. The compulsion to talk to her, to feel her brightness within our bond, is almost as disquieting as the sound of the rain, and the need to do so bewilders me. It is not the Time which urges this, but a desire that I have always, until now, been able to control.

With difficulty, I shut off the compulsion and the sound of the rain.

***

I do not sleep well with the sound of falling water, but there is little I can do about it. I transmit my coded report to the Enterprise, and wait for D'Shal's summons. The compulsion to contact my wife is maddening; it has followed me through the night and now chases my thoughts.

D'Shal comes for me promptly in the morning. The rain has not abated; I throw the hood of my cloak up to keep the rain from drizzling down my neck, but as I glance at D'Shal, I notice that although he is bare-headed, the rain has not affected him. And although there is mud everywhere and D'Shal steps through several puddles on our way out of the building, there is neither mud nor dampness on him. Intriguing, and like so much else on Iatain, disquieting.

He gestures me into another room in a building that was not there on my initial scans. The nehau of this place, what Jim calls its "vibes," is not what it should be. There is something wrong with this planet, with the calm council members who now watch me as if I were a specimen on a slide. But heya, I have my orders, and allowing the nehau of the council to affect me is nothing less than dereliction of duty.

I begin the standard speech of what the Federation can offer Iatain. The Iatain do not take notes of what I offer; indeed, there is no sign of interest at all on their smooth faces. Vulcans are impassive, but our body language can be read by those who know us well. The Iatain have no body language at all.

Pain darts explosively into my mind, and I hear the distant echo of my wife's scream through our bond. I put my hands to my head in agony---the screams are so loud, surely they can hear it? My knees buckle, and I fall to the dirt floor, trying to retain consciousness. There is no hand which helps me to stand, no look of concern for the torment that is growing ever louder. "My wife," I manage to gasp out. "There is something wrong." And a more troublesome thought breaks through the torture---what of our children? I can feel them dimly through our family bond, but their voices are muted by their mother's agony.

I manage to force the pain back so that I can function. My head aches as it has never ached before, not even in the depths of the blood fever. "Forgive me," I murmur, and my voice sounds strained to my own ears.

D'Shal gazes at me impassively. "There are some questions we have for you."

I straighten painfully. "I will answer them if I have the knowledge." I try to touch T'Rela's mind through our bond, but the white haze of agony prevents it. Beloved, what has been done to you? Stay with me, I beg you. The room tilts alarmingly, and as my consciousness fades to green and then black, I hear D'Shal's voice. "You will indeed."

***

Rough shaking. "T'Rela? T'Rela!"

With difficulty she opened her eyes as the thread of the link dissolved. She stared into Amanda's blue eyes. "What are you doing here?" she asked, disoriented. "I was on

Iatain---"

Amanda shook her head. "No, you were in a link with Jim. I came by to get one of T'Lir's school-books and you looked like you were in pain." She stopped. "Your nose is bleeding."

T'Rela wiped her nose, as surprised by the bright green smear as she was by Amanda's presence. "I was in pain," she said shortly, feeling the echo of Spock's anguish through the headache which pulsed with the rhythm of her blood. "Where is Jim?"

Amanda gestured towards one of the bathrooms. "I think he's being sick." The older woman clasped her hands together. "Just what did you think you were doing?"

Oh, Goddess, I do not want to tell her this. "We were trying to find out what happened to Spock."

Amanda took this in silently. "It isn't worth it."

T'Rela's violet eyes widened. "What?"

The other woman's face softened into a reassuring smile. "Don't misunderstand, T'Rela. Of course you want to know why he left. But the knowledge isn't worth what it's doing to you. Let it go."

"How can you ask that?" Jim said, exiting from the bathroom and looking shades paler, the hazel eyes almost dark by contrast.

"Jim, I can ask because I am his mother. I watched him as a child battle with the things he didn't know or couldn't understand: why he was despised for being half-human, why being Sarek's son wasn't enough to gain his father's approval, why he was always alone. In the end, the answers I had weren't good enough. So when he chose to withdraw from us into Starfleet, I let him, and the knowledge of why he went almost destroyed me." She paused, and T'Rela saw, as if in some memory, this woman as she had once been: a young mother, raising a child on a world which fully accepted neither of them. Her eyes, the clear blue of her granddaughters', challenged them. "And do you know why he left for Gol?"

Jim's eyes met T'Rela's and he saw the anguish there, the pain of what the Iatain had done to Spock. "We're close to an answer."

Amanda shook her head. "Whatever answers you find, it won't be enough to explain it. Until you can hear the explanation from Spock, you're just dancing with shadows." Her face softened. "Just be sure the knowledge you gain will be worth the cost of getting it."

She gazed at them sadly, knowing it was for the love of her son that these two had come together, seeking answers for what might be unanswerable.

After she left, Jim and T'Rela looked at each other. "Do you want to proceed?" she asked.

Jim smiled. "The alternative is not knowing. Could you stand that?" He looked at her closely, seeing the shadowed eyes and the cloth she held in her hand, smeared with blood. "The question is, do *you* want to continue?"

"I always wanted to know whatever Spock told me," she answered. "And I didn't know any of this, so there is no real alternative but to continue."

***

I awake inside a room I do not recognize immediately. The kindest word for it is perhaps a dungeon; the floors and walls are of rough-hewn stone, and it is damp in here. My head aches, and I find that my hands are not restrained when I wipe the blood from my nose. I have to find a way to contact the Enterprise, to tell them that this is a ruse. My communicator is gone, as is my tricorder, and my cloak, the heaviest part of the native clothing. To my shame, I start to shiver; I cannot control my body's response to the damp chilliness of the air.

But there is one means of communication the Iatain cannot remove from me, and that is my link with Jim. Forged by the frequent necessity of our mind melds, I have not tried to use it before to communicate with him. All I can do is try to warn him, and hope he recognizes my message when he hears it.

D'Shal is lurking in the concave shadows of the wall. I can sense his presence although I cannot precisely see him. "Are you recovered?" he asks.

I am a Starfleet officer, and a Vulcan. To give into emotion now is to invite trouble, but heya, the anger, fed by the pain, rolls through me. "For what cause do you ask this?" I say coldly. "Surely you knew that there would be damage." I hear the hiss in my voice and shudder internally. The emotional controls which govern my life are now absent, and I realize that this is something else the Iatain have done.

D'Shal smiles as if this is an answer he had expected, and enjoyed. "We knew," he says shortly. "Is there damage?"

I do not answer. I try to focus to send a message to Jim, but the pain from their forced invasion of my mind and the agony they inflicted upon T'Rela chases my thoughts. Pain is a thing of the mind; it can be controlled. But when those controls are absent, the pain is stronger than my will to dismiss it.

The link with Jim is blurred, and the far stronger marriage bond with T'Rela is an attenuated shadow of its usual fire. "Why have you done this?" I whisper.

The Iatain smiles again, thinly. It is the smile of a le-matya on the hunt, or the calidri of the Akaren lands. Predatory, fierce, and completely lacking in either compassion or mercy. "You would not have told us what we needed to know."

I think of the classified information I know, information that is protected by command conditioning, but might be accessible to telepaths as adept as the Iatain. I can stop my heart if they try. "What do you need to know that could be worth this? I have missed my call-in time; the Enterprise will look for me. You will bring down the wrath of the Federation for this." It is not ego, but fact; I already know that Jim will continue to look, orders or no. I can only hope that I have, in fact, missed my call-in time. My time sense, along with my emotional control, has deserted me.

D'Shal comes out of the shadows, and begins to pace. The light level increases slightly. "The Federation does not concern us, although it is curious to us. You spread out over galaxies, promoting an organization of mutual cooperation and defense. Yet we do not understand why you would do such a thing. It is the nature of the weak to be conquered, not for the strong to protect them."

I fall back on a maxim from Vulcan's savage past. "'Even the strong may be weak; the wooden sword may turn shield.'"

D'Shal stares at me, and the silver grey of his eyes makes me think of the Talosians, telepaths who were every bit as formidable as the Iatain. "We want to know what motivates you. You are a telepath, and therefore, our equal. You serve on a ship that has served as the flagship for the Federation's exploration of the galaxy. Yet you also preserve a home on your planet, with your wife and your children. We would know which is the stronger motivation, the will to explore, or the will to preserve your family. What is it that motivates you?"

The pain redoubles; the Iatain is trying to enter my mind, through what remains of my shielding. I fight him, and I can sense that another vessel has broken in my brain. The no-win scenario, a test I never had to take at the Academy, is now blindingly real, for there is no way for me to win. If I choose between my duty to Starfleet and my family, it is more than likely that the other one, the one I do not choose, will die. I can see it in his mind, the knowledge of how he will do this. Engineers lowering the anti-matter containment on the Enterprise, my wife taking the lives of our children and then her own---all of these things the Iatain can do, through their mind-control.

I hear my wife's voice, speaking to me from long ago. We had been bonded only a few days then, and T'Rela had been trying to make some order out of our changed reality. You can have two worlds, Beloved. They can touch, but they cannot merge. She had known, even then, that I could not choose between them, and had given me a way to have both worlds together. Was I now to lose them, at the hands of these people?

Gods of my ancestors, I cannot choose between them.

***

T'Rela broke the link. Her hands shook as she covered her face. "Gods Above and Below, I never asked him to choose. "

Gently, Jim pulled her hands away. "What?" Even as a non-telepath, he could sense the storm of emotions that were rolling through her.

He could see that her face was damp with tears she did not even try to wipe away. "I never asked him to choose. I knew that I would lose if I did."

"T'Rela, Spock loves you, loves your children. I could see it in his eyes every time he talked of you. Surely you don't think---"

His reply was an ironic smile. "---that he loved you more? No. But I never asked him to choose. He returned to me, but he always went back to you. How could I ask that of him? It would have torn him apart."

Just like it did when the Iatain forced him to choose. "No wonder," he murmured, forgetting that a pair of Vulcan-acute ears was right next to him. At her look of bemusement, he continued, thinking that no one had a better right to know. "I should tell you what happened when he returned. Are you ready to hear it?"

T’Rela nodded. "We've gone this far. It would seem…illogical to stop now."

***

The dreams began on the second day of Spock's mission to Iatain. I couldn't remember most of the details upon waking, but the emotions, the fear and the anger, were strong even when I awoke. They gradually changed to dreams where Spock was trying to tell me something and I couldn't hear him. Finally, when the latest dream had slapped me awake, I went to Bones.

When I told him about the dreams, Bones looked at me hard. "What was happening, then, in the dreams?"

I remembered everyone with stark clarity; there had been nothing of the usual dream-fog. "I was in a dungeon of some sort, on Iatain. There was an alien with silver eyes, and he was asking me something, a choice I couldn't make." As if my words had been a catalyst, the rest of the images in the dreams began to sort themselves out. Spock had been trying to tell me, to warn me. Bones' next words were lost as I bolted for the bridge.

D'Shal's message came a scant three hours later, after all of our sensor scans had failed to find any life signs, Vulcan or otherwise, on Iatain.

"I don't know, Jim. There's some pretty severe damage to his brain. Those bastards." Bones' voice was tired and ragged; he'd been working on Spock for several hours by the time I was able to get away from the bridge. I'd wanted nothing more than to be in Sickbay, but I had to keep trying to contact the Iatain Consulate; it was what duty demanded.

I knew, and didn't want to know, what Bones meant. Spock had explained to me after Eminiar the Vulcan abhorrence for forcible mental invasion, and it nearly made me ill to think that Spock had gone through that at the hands of the Iatain. "I've got him on medication right now; he can't engage the healing trance and his mental shielding is non-existent."

I had to ask. "Is it permanent?"

Bones was too weary to even attempt a shrug. "It could be. Right now, I'm just hoping the internal bleeding doesn't resume. What the hell happened down there?"

I didn't have the answers. "I don't know. I was hoping Spock could tell us." I looked past Bones into the room where Spock was, pale and unconscious.

The sound of an incoming hail broke into my thoughts. "Message from Admiral Sheridan," Uhura said. Her voice was calm, but I could hear the worry. "Jim, this is serious."

She never called me Jim. "Go ahead," I said dully.

"Admiral Sheridan wants to know why we diverted from our course to meet with the Iatain."

I thought of the Talosians, and the Commodore Mendez who wasn't. "Tell her…report to follow. Iatain Confederacy held Commander Spock captive under false pretenses. Commander Spock critically injured. " All of this, and for what reason?

Bless her, she didn't question what I'd just said. "Aye, sir. Reply transmitted."

It was four days before Spock emerged from his coma. There was little in the way of residual brain damage, but something more severe had been done to the man I called friend. I'd heard the stories of Vulcans who willed themselves to die when faced with disgrace or dishonor, and I worried that Spock might be trying to do the same.

"I didn't have any reason to hold him," Bones said the week after his release. "His injuries healed as far as they can. He has no mental impairment, and the injuries that haven't healed aren't severe enough to interfere with his ability to do his job. I couldn't go to Starfleet Medical and refuse to release him because he won't talk to either of us."

In the weeks that followed, Spock was as withdrawn as I had ever seen him. He lost what little excess weight he had, and it didn't look like he was sleeping well. I tried to give him time, hoping he would reason his way through whatever had happened. We met for chess occasionally, but the man who sat opposite me played like no one I had ever seen, almost like a newly overhauled computer. Where my friend was, if he was still there underneath this stranger's skin, I couldn't say.

I'd had enough late one evening. I don't remember what prompted it; perhaps it was the cold, distant look in his eyes, or the fact that he was still dodging my questions, but whatever it was, it resulted in a fight that left both of us reeling with its force. "Dammit, Spock, I'm your friend, I shouldn't have to order you to talk! What the hell's the matter with you?"

The cold glaze in his eyes slipped for a second, and I saw some of the interior torment that he'd been hiding. Then the walls were back up, with an almost audible thump. "What I have done is nothing you would understand. Do not dishonor both of us by insisting I explain." The tone was almost cold, the same remote tone he had used when once, long ago, I was a newly promoted captain and he a Vulcan lieutenant. I had hated it then, and I liked it less now.

There was much I should have heard under the cool tones of his words, but didn't. I later wondered if he had chosen those words because they would anger me, and thus distract me from asking more questions. If so, it worked. I did not press him further. The Enterprise put into port and the crew scattered for shoreleave. With my promotion and Spock's resignation from Starfleet left any chance that I might understand what was driving him away.

It was the last I saw of him.

***

T'Rela looked at him, the great purple eyes suspiciously bright. "I'd thought…I'd hoped he would have told you more than he told me. It seems I was wrong."

"Not all is lost," Jim replied. "We know what happened. But why Gol…I don't know." His hand touched her arm. "I should have called you when he came back. I just didn't think about it because I thought you knew."

The thick braid hanging down her back moved slightly as T'Rela shook her head. "I should have known, but he chose to shut us both out. Do not apologize for something that was none of your doing."

She stood then, and walked towards the window that overlooked the garden. Her next words were so soft, Jim had to strain to hear them. "There is a tradition among the Akaren that when someone makes a journey where they might not return, we commend their spirits to the desert. Will you come with me this night, that we may do this for Spock?"

Jim followed her into the still desert night. "Have you decided, then, that he won't return?"

T'Rela smiled at him sadly. "I don't know. But it seems wise to be safe, does it not?"

Buried in a forgotten corner of the garden was a small altar. Jim had seen it before and not recognized its significance, but the reverential way T'Rela approached it made its meaning plain. She stopped in front of it, and flicked a small bit of water onto the ground. "Lady Goddess, protector of all who dwell on desert sands, I ask for your aid for one whose journey is still unknown. Grant that he may find what answers he seeks, that he should not forever walk alone."

T'Rela handed the bowl of water to Jim. Uncertain of the exact ritual, he imitated what she had done, and the raised his eyes to the stars. Forgive me, for not knowing the answers you needed. I should have known what was driving you away. Find your peace, my friend, and your answers. He placed the bowl back on the altar, and they walked back into the house.

THE END

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