Strength of the Mind

The first thing McCoy did once they had all returned to the ship was relieve Jim, Uhura, and Spock from duty.

"It doesn't take a medical professional to determine that you all need some time to take it easy," he told them, giving a somewhat sharp look to Spock in particular, as if he expected him to immediately protest. Spock had never taken any time off for anything. But he stayed passively quiet.

Jim let Sulu take the conn and they stopped at a nearby planet so the three of them could take a long shore leave while a number of other crewmembers also came down in rotations for single days. It was a place of lush green vegetation and huge mountains of a strange glassy red rock which glimmered in the sunlight where they were bare. They found an establishment by a lake where they could stay in quiet rooms with beautiful views of the shining water. After just the first two days of isolation and prolonged silence in which his communicator not once made a sound, Jim was beyond restless.

He was feeling strangely like the Jim Kirk from before the time he joined Starfleet. (The Kirk before Spock, more specifically, though he did not think of it in exactly those terms.) For a while he just let everything slide off of his shoulders. He went out at night on his own like he used to all the time, watching organized fighting matches in bars which a lot of the locals seemed to like betting on. On the fourth night a guy picked a fight with him after he apparently took his seat. It was over in fifteen seconds, and then Jim was silently walking out with quite a lot of eyes following him, leaving him groaning and bleeding from his nose on the floor.

It wasn't quite the same when he couldn't just go back to not caring about anything.


The day before they were supposed to return to the ship, Spock found Jim sitting outside a cantina early in the evening, sleeping with his head collapsed down on a table. An open book had fallen to the ground by his feet which Spock recognized as one from his collection of antique classics. He picked it up and set it on the table, then took a seat by him and just examined him sleeping for a while.

At least he appeared to be quite at peace this way. His features were smooth and relaxed, his eyelashes which had a slight shining luster in the gentle sunlight resting together completely still, without any of the twitching that indicated the human stage of sleep during which dreams occurred. Spock reached out to him slowly, carefully and uncertainly, as if he were some unfamiliar object of scientific curiosity. Or as if he was testing himself somehow. He very nearly touched his fingers to his hair, but then stopped just before reaching him. Then, bringing himself together and not even knowing what exactly he had almost been about to do, he drew his hand back away and crossed his arms, sitting up very straight.

Instead of touching him to wake him up, he just said a little sharply, "Captain."

Jim stirred right away, opening his eyes and slowly sitting up with slow disorientation to find him sitting there. "Oh. Shit...Hi," he muttered, rubbing at one eye. "Well...at least I got some sleep," he then said dryly.

There was a moment of silence as Spock just looked him up and down. "May I ask how long you have been here?" he said.

He shrugged. "Since...about fifteen hundred. The days here are so long I can hardly keep track of when it is..."

"Currently this planet has only twenty more minutes of sunlight per day than the longest day Earth has in a year," Spock informed him.

"See?" he just said, as if this in no way invalidated his statement. "Long."

A waitress passed by them who was cleaning off tables and asked Jim, speaking standard with a slight native accent, "Are you done, sir?"

The woman was certainly one of the most attractive examples of the humanoids on this planet that Spock had personally encountered, with long waves of silvery blonde hair and narrow, heavy-lidded gray eyes. Jim handed her his nearly finished drink with a brief "Yeah, thanks" and didn't look twice at her.

Spock noticed Uhura coming around a corner in the distance and met eyes with her as she spotted them and started walking over. Jim noticed him looking at something and turned around to see her coming.

"Have you been looking for me?" he asked once he seemed to realize they must have come this way together. His voice was so blank, with no color in it at all, and it came out sounding like a question with absolutely no emotional relevance. Spock did not even have any idea if it should have any, or why he sounded so strange to him.

"Yes," he answered as Uhura reached them, stopping and standing back against the next table rather than sitting down with them. "We simply wished to know whether you still intend to resume course to Ariannus tomorrow."

"Yeah," Jim said. "Why wouldn't we?"

"He means we don't have to leave this soon if you don't want to," Uhura said.

At those words, Jim just went silent for a while, not looking at either of them. Then he said, "If either of you does not feel ready to..."

"Neither of us must sit in the captain's chair in our present state as soon as we return to the Enterprise," Spock said, "which is why our concern is primarily about how difficult it may still be for you."

"Captains sometimes have to watch their men die because of their mistakes or go through worse things and they're still expected to keep their heads on and do their jobs," he said. "I can handle it."

Spock just fixed his eyes on him scrutinizingly, but he tried to keep his voice as gentle as his small range of tones could manage. "You are unintentionally falling asleep in public locations," he pointed out simply, indicating how obvious it was that he probably wasn't getting much sleep whenever he actually tried to. As if just looking at his face wasn't enough to tell anyone that.

"I'm fine," he just insisted, starting to look especially uncomfortable.

Spock crossed his arms, finally accepting that—to an extent. "Jim, you may have recovered enough to be capable of performing sufficiently in your duties as Captain, but surely you are not in any kind of condition that can be described as 'fine.'"

"And how would you know?" he asked, only half-heartedly contradicting him now.

There was not exactly anything in Spock's face or body language which showed the difficulty with which he had to speak his next words; only a long delay before the very straightforward admission he responded with.

"Because I am not," he said.

Jim looked straight up at his face with just slightly widening eyes, clearly a little astonished. Then he and Uhura were both staring at him a little sadly as they processed what he had just said. It was not that they had doubted at all that he was struggling every bit as much as they were in his own way, he was sure. But for him to be willing to admit something like that, not only to himself but openly to others, was very rare.

There simply seemed to be no way around it for him. He knew, logically, that no lasting harm had been done to him. No real harm had been done to him at all. He had analytically gone through it in his head over and over, trying to reach that place of peace and release from distress and turmoil that his objective way of thinking usually brought him to. But still he kept finding himself fighting against his deep inner layers of anger and senseless guilt.

Perhaps, he had been forced to realize, it was not possible to heal through wisdom and rationality. True strength was not of the mind, not any more than it was of the body. It came from something else.


It started as a chess game.

On his fifth night back on the Enterprise, Jim was sitting in the level 5 rec room where a lot of the bridge crew regularly spent their time, looking over some reports on a PADD and waiting to feel tired enough to retire to his quarters. The room was completely silent and empty but for him, as it was nearly midnight and most everyone was asleep by now.

After a while he sighed boredly and set the PADD down, and he was leaning over with his elbows on the table and rubbing his temples when someone came in.

Uhura looked ready for bed, if she hadn't already tried to go to bed, wearing academy sweats as pajamas. As soon as she entered the room and noticed him, she stopped in her tracks.

"Captain," she said with surprise.

He waited a little too long before he was able to give a normal acknowledgment of her presence, nodding his head. "Lieutenant."

As she started looking around the same long table he was seated at, he got the idea she felt the need to say something. "Just spending some time alone with the ship?" she asked, her attempted humorous tone only half effective.

"Yeah, I guess...Did you lose something?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered a little absently, and then did not elect to explain what. He just watched and saw her find a pair of earrings that had been set aside by the three-dimensional chess set. Then she sat down in front of it, looking at the chess set which appeared to have been abandoned after a game was just barely started, turning it a little as she looked at it thoughtfully.

"You like to play?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Sometimes...I'm pretty sure this is actually a game I started with Spock a while ago. I'm surprised nobody's touched it."

He looked at it a moment and then asked, "Feel like finishing it?"

She lifted her gaze up to him, looking a little caught off guard, and for a second he wondered why he didn't just shut up and leave her alone. But then she just shrugged again, giving a small smile. "Why not?"

He moved to a chair across from her at the table and she explained, "I think it's your move. Black."

He nodded, examining the positions of all the pieces carefully. What would Spock have done next? he wondered to himself, as he was apparently taking his place.

"So..." Jim started the sentence before he even knew what that "so" was going to be followed with. What the hell was he going to talk about with her? "Have you ever actually been able to beat him?"

Uhura was sitting very stiffly, and she awkwardly folded her hands together, taking a moment to respond. "I'd rather just play if you don't mind," she said, in a way that did not sound irritated at all; almost overly polite.

He nodded, understanding, and replied, "Sure."

Doing anything with someone for an extended time without talking at all was not exactly Jim's usual preference. And in fact, he could think of a lot of things he would like to be able to ask her about: how she was doing, how Spock was doing, how they were doing as a collective item. Whether it was always this difficult wanting to help him but not having a very good idea of what someone like him really needed. If that as well as a lot of other things was making her feel as frustratingly helpless all the time as he felt.

But of course, he was pretty sure he wasn't really the person she could talk to about those things, even if he cared. And he cared a whole lot, so much that every time he saw her now the complete professionalism between them that they had reverted back to felt like a rather unfitting barrier.

But after she said that and they fell into silence, it was surprisingly not awkward at all. As long as neither of them felt any pressure to talk about anything, it was actually very comfortable and calming sitting there with her and just putting their minds to work on something diverting. Uhura always touched the pieces so precisely, delicately holding them between just two fingertips, and without ever touching any pieces besides the one she was moving. This as well as some of her strategic technique did not entirely fail to remind him of the way Spock played.

They had been going for about fifteen minutes when the door slid open with a smooth hiss and yet another person unexpectedly entered. Jim looked up to see Spock standing near the doorway, almost completely dressed in uniform pants with just his black undershirt and some kind of Vulcan knit shoes which could perhaps be called slippers. For a moment Jim unexplainably felt as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn't be doing. Especially when he then realized that either the three of them had been drawn into each other's orbit at a deadly quiet hour of the night by some remarkable coincidence, or more believably, Spock and Uhura had been together in one of their rooms before and he had come to find her after she didn't come back.

"Hey," Uhura greeted him as he started coming closer. "You woke up."

"You know I have difficulty staying comfortable in a room conditioned to feel like the outdoors in winter," he said.

She smirked dryly and asked, "Still tired?"

"No, not particularly."

She rose from her seat and said, "Why don't you finish playing for me? I think I want to go get a cup of tea or something."

He looked down at the chess set and then at Jim as if it made perfect sense, and then said, "Very well."

As she was leaving, Jim couldn't help but note the way they had not touched each other at all. Maybe they had always been that way most of the time they were in the company of others. He found he couldn't really remember.

He and Spock also just played in silence for a while. It was even more comfortable because it was so very familiar. Though something about being with Spock made it more difficult to keep his mind from wandering.

After a while, Jim asked something in a completely casual tone, as if something had naturally prompted the subject. "Did I ever tell you about how I first met Nyota?" he said.

Spock did not look up from the level of the chess board he was contemplating. After a somewhat long moment of hesitation, he responded with careful indifference. "No, you never did."

Jim watched him move a knight, letting the silence stretch again for a few seconds. "But it doesn't matter now, right?" he asked.

This time, Spock did look up at him after the question. His face betrayed nothing, but stayed with his eyes fixed on him earnestly for a long time. "Indeed," he answered. "It doesn't."

Jim allowed himself a mild smile as he made his next move.

Then Spock made one of the final ones. "Checkmate," he said.

Only then did Jim realize with some amusement that Spock was playing the white pieces in a game he had originally started playing the other side. Soon enough he was finishing it, and Jim was finally yawning.

"So who actually won this then?" he asked.

Spock's brow raised slightly and Jim felt a surprising surge of tingling warmth at the sight, for he hadn't made that light face in a long time. "Difficult to determine," he admitted.

Jim had nearly forgotten how completely at ease he could be in Spock's company. He liked to be with him, just like this. Even when they were saying nothing, he found it so assuring.

But he had started wondering lately, just fleetingly when he couldn't stop himself, how long he might have been afraid to want anything more than this.


Late the next day, Jim went to Uhura's quarters and she came to the door with a look of surprise like she had been expecting someone else.

He took her earrings out of his pocket and held them up, dangling them from two fingers. "You forgot these again," he said.

Something in her loosened up for the first time in too long—or the first time in his presence, at least—and the smile she gave him was small and gentle but genuine, coming from deep inside. Just the small glimmer of her old self made him painfully wistful. He missed the times that she was hardly ever nice to him, or at least when he could often hear the reluctance or irritation in her voice even as she said "Yes, Sir," but he could still sometimes make her laugh.

"Why would you take them off?" he asked as he handed them to her, leaning in her doorway.

"I don't even remember," she sighed.

He saw a tall figure approaching out of the corner of his eye. The moment he looked to the side to see Spock coming, he stopped within a few feet of Uhura's door and met eyes with him curiously.

"Sorry to interrupt," Jim said. "I was just leaving, I guess..."

"It is no interruption, Captain," Spock said, and then glanced at Uhura as if looking for confirmation. "Not really."

Jim thought quickly. He had not by any means planned or expected this opportunity, but Spock's words sounded sort of like an invitation to take up their time if needed, and he suddenly knew what his next words had to be.

"Can I talk to both of you?" he asked.

Neither of them seemed to feel awkward about it; in fact, Jim got a vague impression from their comfortable reactions as they all gathered inside Uhura's room that they were sort of relieved one of them had finally taken the initiative to do this. Whatever this was.

Spock and Uhura both took seats while Jim stayed standing and leaned back against her desk. "I've been thinking," he started, "and...I probably should have said this a while ago. Working together the way we have to work together every day...I know that lately it's been weird. Even though there's been very limited disclosure about what happened a couple weeks ago, I know it hasn't even gone unnoticed by everyone else that things are less than comfortable on the bridge these days. And I just think I need to personally tell you that neither of you should feel any obligation to me if it would make things easier for you to request a transfer to somewhere else..."

As his words registered, Spock remained unexpressive, but Uhura started looking a little shocked. "You've got to be kidding," she said quietly, seeming to speak without thinking, and immediately looking over at Spock. "I mean...unless..."

Spock finished her thought, speaking distantly. "Unless that is what you would prefer," he said.

Jim immediately shook his head. "No," he said. "I...don't feel that way. I'm only..."

"Suggesting a permanent solution to a problem that isn't permanent," Uhura said. "Or at least...it's not going to be this bad forever."

"At least it's something," Jim said.

"It sounds more like a way to run away from the problem," she said.

"Fine," he said gently, holding his hands up in surrender. "I just thought I should bring it up."

"Not for us, I mean," she clarified awkwardly, seeming to have trouble articulating exactly what she meant. "For you."

"I just said I don't want—"

"I know. Of course you wouldn't want that." Her tone was oddly confused. "These aren't just professional relationships at stake. You can't tell me you wouldn't feel hurt in spite of everything if Spock just decided to leave now."

He looked up and met Spock's eyes in silence for a moment, finding a comfortably reserved softness in them.

"I know things are fucked up and it's going to take a while before everything between us feels normal at all again," Uhura went on, "but you two need each other right now. And I know it's impossible not to just be reminded of what's happened all the time I'm with either of you, but you're also the only ones who can understand exactly what this is like."

Jim let out a long sigh. "I just wish I could stop feeling kind of like you're both strangers all the sudden," he said.

Uhura's posture sunk a little, and she shook her head sadly. "I know. For a while I...I've just been so angry at both you and I can't help it, and I don't know why."

Jim looked over at Spock again, giving him a tired half-smile. "You haven't said much, Spock," he said.

One of his eyebrows raised just slightly in thought. "As much as my knowledgeable input is usually of invaluable assistance to you, I must admit I have found I comprehend very little about this subject," he said, his voice carrying an almost unnoticeable hint of regret and sadness.

Jim just kept looking at him a long moment before replying in a hollow tone, "I'm sure you comprehend a whole lot more than anyone should have to."

Something in Spock seemed to let go as he started staring down at the floor. "In other words, I suppose...I am just as lost as both of you."

Jim crossed his arms and nervously shifted position a little. "Well, as long as we're not pretending right now that anything still feels normal and professional between us...I guess there's something else I'm trying to say."

Why had he really suggested that they leave? Maybe Uhura really was too perceptive for it to go past her and he really was being sort of a self-sacrificing coward. Maybe what bothered him still was not so much what had happened between them but what might still happen, and he was afraid to end up feeling responsible in some way for anything more.

"I'm sure you don't even need to hear this to know it," he said, "but I just need to say it...You aren't just officers to me. I care a lot about both of you, and I would never do anything to hurt either of you...or to come between you," he added with his breath starting to fail a little, no longer looking directly at anyone. "No matter what kind of feelings I might have."

When he finally brought his gaze back up from the floor, he found Uhura looking deeply affected and giving him a look of understanding. She stood up from her chair and came to him, and as she brought her arms around his shoulders and hugged him, Jim could see Spock over her shoulder appearing very at peace as he watched them embrace, as if it adequately expressed something he shared but could not yet manage to express.

He and Uhura both closed their eyes as they just stood still holding onto each other for a long relaxed moment, breathing deeply. It occurred to him then: lately he had been thinking back sadly on how they used to irritate and tease each other with such easy familiarity, but right now he still felt very close to her. Maybe they had now just grown beyond that without being immediately aware of it.

As they broke apart slightly, his hands still lightly touching her back and hers still rested on his shoulders, he bent down and lightly kissed her cheek.

"Hm." The tiny noise she made as she smiled in response was like an incomplete soft laugh. Then her smile faded a little, and they were instead looking at each other with something a little more intense in their eyes. At this same moment Jim was aware of Spock standing up and coming a little closer to them, but he stopped and remained at a small distance, watching passively.

Uhura's hands were moving from his shoulders as if with a disconnected mind of their own, smoothing down to his chest and stopping there. He might not have expected it, but it felt incredibly nice to be touched like this, just in this small way. Jim was starting to understand what they all might have been trying to tell each other lately, in the little ways they had all been trying to reach out to each other while feeling far apart, what she had really been trying and allowing with that chess game, possibly without any of them really being conscious of it. But there was a strong feeling of silent comprehension and communication in this room now. They were all here. They all saw what was happening.

She started to lean in toward him a little, and then she spoke in a barely audible whisper. "Can I...?"

He gave a single, tiny nod in answer, and then she raised herself up and lightly kissed him. He closed his eyes again, letting out a long breath like a sigh and feeling a powerful warmth blossoming in his chest. After she pulled away, he raised a hand to the side of her face, suddenly feeling a need to show her how beautiful and unmarred she was. Like she was new to him. And he bent over again and could hear her just slightly excited breathing as he softly kissed her neck once and then pulled back away.

Then she turned to look at Spock, and Jim saw that his face showed nothing but a great calm that he had not seen in him for a long time. Without any further words, she extended her hand toward him. He looked down at her hand and slowly came forward to take it, holding it securely as he came to stand at her side. Then he and Jim were just looking at each other with mellow faces. As his left hand was still at Uhura's waist, Jim held out his other for him to touch, not reaching out and taking Spock's hand as he had before but waiting for him to accept it.

When Spock did reach out to him, he did not take hold of his hand at first; he only lightly brushed the sensitive backs of their fingers against each other, and Jim understood at once, reading the simple language of his careful movements and touches. This kind of contact had to be gradually and delicately initiated, eased into instead of rushed, especially when between two people for whom it was not familiar and habitual.

Then when Spock turned his hand to let him take it, Jim raised it to hold it against his chest. Spock blinked slowly when he started gently stroking his thumb up and down two of his fingers, and then after a while Jim could see his chest starting to move a little faster in shallow breaths.

Uhura had her eyes fixed on them unbreakingly, and Jim knew that she had to be aware of what it had meant when they shared this the first time, when he learned this about Spock. She knew those terrible people using them would have been ignorant of this and that one thing had not been their doing. But by letting her see it now, it was the first time they were being completely honest about it. And this time, it was clear she had no desire to look away.

Spock's eyelids were becoming heavy, fluttering at Jim's touches and nearly closing. Uhura came a little closer to him, smoothing her hands down his chest and his side, and she brought her face close to him to kiss his neck. With that, he finally closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply with a small shiver, and then he was starting to lean in closer toward Jim.

Jim first just let their foreheads meet and stay leaning together for a while. Then when their mouths found each other they kissed slowly and tentatively, as if it was the first time they had done this, opening to each other in a gently exploring way. Such an incredibly warm kiss, still a little alarming to Jim. He was shocked by how much his body responded just to being reunited with that unmistakable Vulcan heat, like it was the fastest turn-on he could possibly experience.

He started rubbing Spock's hand a little faster, and in response he said a soft "Mm" into his mouth. Without opening his eyes, Jim reached out with his free arm to find Uhura and brought her in between them. Spock broke away from kissing him and leaned down to kiss her forehead as he brought his own free hand to her neck, then kissed her mouth fervently as Jim held her from behind. Her eyes were closed and her mouth in a small smile as Jim's hand cupped her breast and Spock started lifting up her skirt, and then she spoke softly to tell the computer to dim the lights.

In the soft darkness, for the first time in weeks, they all felt as safe as could be.