Author: Dale McKee
Recipient: Alara Rogers
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Star Trek TOS, Firefly
Summary: Death isn't what Spock expected when he finds himself confronted by a mysterious girl who seems to know far more than she should.
Pain.
It thundered over him like a great wave as he struggled to speak, leaning against the transparasteel surface that seperated him from the man who was like a brother unto him. Behind it, numbness rolled in like a black tide, inexorable and unavoidable.
The numbness, he knew, was death.
"I have been... and ever shall be... your friend," he rasped as he lost all feeling in his radiation-ravaged fingers. With an effort, exerting Vulcan control over the body, he forced a hand up to the wall, spreading his fingers in Surak's greeting. "Live long," he managed, even as his knees went weak and he felt himself sliding. "And prosper..."
Slowly, he felt himself sliding away into the abyss. He knew it was a pit of no return, that he had cheated death for the last time. And he knew that in so doing, he'd saved Jim and the ship... his ship... from a fate that seemed inescapable.
It is logical, he'd said. The good of the many... outweighed the good of the few. Or the one. Himself.
Death took him, then. The last sound Captain Spock heard was Jim's strangled voice crying, "No...". He grieved for his friend, wishing to spare Kirk this pain...
Then all went dark. He had a sensation of falling, as if pulled free of his corporeal form. His human half felt a stab of fear, but even in death, he mastered it. Fascinating, he thought, the Vulcan in him predominant. While it was a journey many had made, for him, it was indeed boldly going where he'd never been before. There was a dissolution, a fading... and then...
Probably the last thing Spock had expected was the sudden jarring to consciousness. The impact struck him like a physical blow. He couldn't help but cry out, a sudden gasp of surprise and pain.
He found himself lying prostrate upon a metal-grilled deckplate, the cold steel digging into his ribs and his skull. The scent of oxides and badly-processed air filled his nostrils as he drew a ragged breath, the sound of distant machinery reaching his sensitive ears.
Whatever he'd expected of the afterlife, this certainly wasn't it. Slowly, gingerly, he lifted his head. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to find his vision, previous impeded by radiation scarring, unhampered. A brief glance at his hands revealed no trace of the severe radiation burns he'd suffered while reconnecting the Enterprise's main power couplings.
"Curious," he muttered, glancing around. This area appeared like nothing so much as a somewhat primitive, dimly-lit cago bay. Hardly the stuff of the Sha'ka'ri, or any heaven or hell he'd researched.
And yet here he was.
Gingerly, Spock lifted himself from the deck, taking the time to straighten his uniform jacket as he did so, pulling himself up by the cold metal railing that flanked the walkway.
Distantly, he heard a soft laugh, high and feminine. It echoed, impossible to locate. Turning to glance back the way he thought it came from, he caught a flutter of movement out of the corner of one eye.
"Is anyone there?" he asked calmly, turning the other way.
Again the distant laughter reached his ears. Annoyed, he arched a Vulcanian brow.
"There is nothing to be gained by hiding yourself," Spock announced aloud.
He was surprised when the voice responded. "You're a fine one to talk about that," came a girl's voice. "You always hide. You always run."
Spock swallowed, then frowned. "To whom am I speaking?" he demanded of empty air.
"Me," came the response. "Nobody. Somebody who's as lost as you are, maybe. Are you lost?"
"My name is Spock," he replied tersely.
"Spock, Spack, Spunk. It doesn't matter does it?" the girl's voice echoed, reverberating off of the walls in this dimly-lit cargo bay. "You don't know who you are. You hide from everyone. Why shouldn't I hide from you?"
His frown grew deeper, his dark eyes narrowing, and he let out a sigh of frustration. "I fail to see your fascination in this game, whoever you are," he muttered, exasperated. "But it holds no interest for me." He started forward, intent on finding a way out... or at least ascertaining where he was. His last memories were of the ship, in danger... a deadly battle in a roiling nebula... Jim's voice, speaking to him distantly.
Death?
And yet, he was here. Surely, that proved he was alive.
"Does it?" the voice whispered again. Responding to his thoughts. He paused, then continued, finally reaching a hatchway of some kind.
Stubbornly, it refused to open. He began to examine the locking mechanism, looking for a way out.
"I'm River," came the voice, closer and more clearly, and directly behind him.
His attempts at exit stymied, he turned... to regard a young woman in her late teens standing before him. She was pale, and her hair disheveled. She wore a long flowing... 'summer dress', he believed it was termed. By all appearances, she seemed human.
Spock knew that appearances could be deceiving. But at least he seemed to be making progress.
"As I said earlier," he replied with an inclination of his head, "I am Spock."
River tilted her head to match his gesture. "I know," she said simply, staring up at him with those luminous, almost hollow eyes. There was something haunted about those eyes... something he'd not seen in one so young. Not even in Saavik.
"Where are we?" he asked after a pause, when she offered no further rejoinder.
"Serenity," she said, as if that name should mean something to him.
"Serenity?"
"Yes."
"I see. Young lady, my vision of serenity is not a dilapidated, somewhat antiquated cargo bay. Nor do I find these word games, however challenging, evocative of peace and meditation. Can you clarify your statement, please, in order to shed light on where it is, exactly, that I find myself?"
"You're on Serenity," she said, glancing around, her eyes taking in the walls, the deck, the ceiling. "It's hope and love and fear and death, and everything inbetween. It's all we have and it holds us together."
Ah, Spock thought. Serenity must be a planet, or perhaps, a ship. He was again making progress, albeit at a maddeningly slow pace along a needlessly obfuscated path.
"Serenity is a world, then, or a vessel?" he asked.
Glancing back at him, River looked blankly for a moment, and then recited, "Serenity is a Midbook Transport, standard radion-accelerator core. Class code 03-K64 -- Firefly. A Firefly Transport."
Then, before he could reply, she suddenly demanded: "Why are you here?"
"I do not know," Spock replied, startled at both the sudden forcefulness - as well as the nature of the question. "I had hoped you could supply me with that information."
"I don't know either," River replied matter-of-factly.
Spock frowned. "That is unfortunate."
"I think you know," she said.
"I do not," he replied.
"Do so."
"I do not."
"Unh hunh."
Spock sighed. "I fail to see why you enjoy tormenting me, as we have just met."
"Don't blame me. I didn't bring you here," she said.
"Then you are a passenger onboard this transport, Serenity?" he asked.
"It's my home," River responded.
Spock sighed. If this was the girl's home, he would assume she'd know how he could leave, and more importantly perhaps, how he'd gotten here.
He turned back to the door, to find with a start that it was already open.
Curious, he thought...
Turning back to River, he was only mildly surprised to find her gone. "Very well, then," he said, straightening his uniform jacket before venturing into the passageway beyond. It seemed that, finally, she, too, was done playing games.
"You won't find what you're looking for that way," River's voice came out of the darkness.
Spock ignored her and moved on. Ahead, there was another hatchway. It would logically lead to the control center, or at least an access node, depending on the size of this vessel.
Suddenly, a deep, intoned voice, rich with bass but dripping disapproval and subtle menace, spoke.
"So disappointing. You never listen. You never learn. So... human."
Spock stopped dead in his tracks, his brow knit, his keen hearing straining to isolate the source of that voice. But in his heart, he knew.
"Father?" he asked, barely a whisper.
Ambassador Sarek of Vulcan stepped free of the shadows to confront his son, scorn carved into his features as if upon granite.
"How is this possible?" Spock asked.
Sarek merely shook his head in disgust. "You are not my son," he sneered, and then turned away.
"Father, wait!" Spock cried, then cursed himself for the display... an emotional one that would only serve to underscore his father's disapproval.
But Sarek had stepped back into the shadows from whence he'd came.
"Father," Spock said weakly, hanging his head.
"This is impossible. This is illogical. These things cannot be real," he said in a low tone.
"Why not?" River replied, suddenly next to the Vulcan, though he'd not heard a sound.
Whirling on her, Spock lashed out with savage hands, his grip on her arm steel-like. With barely suppressed fury, he snarled, "Get out of my head!"
River showed no reaction to his anger, his violence, merely gazing up at him with those shadowed, hollow eyes for a long moment. Then she said, "I'm not in your head."
"You're in mine."
"I didn't invite you here, or ask for you, but here you are. And you're holding on to me because beneath you there's nothing, and you're afraid."
Aghast, Spock released her arm and took a stumbling step backwards. Realization struck him like the weight of a warp core, and he shook his head slowly, eyes wide.
"Then... this is the end," he breathed slowly. "The fading sparks of neurons in a dying mind." He resolved himself, and straightened, gathering the tatters of his dignity about him in death.
But River shook her head, and smiled wanly. "No," she said. "It's not the end. It's just a change. And you won't remember this, or what happened here, at least not consciously. But remember what it taught you, and what you learned. You don't have to hide anymore, Spock. And you don't have to be afraid."
Nodding numbly, Spock was surprised to find his legs sliding out from under him as he sank to his knees before the girl-child.
Raising his eyes to gaze at her, he was reminded of the time he lifted his eyes from the plains of Gol... to hear the distant calls of the God-Ship, V'Ger.
"The ship... out of danger?" he asked slowly, echoing his dying words.
River nodded. "You saved the ship," she replied. "You saved them all. And you will again. But you have to let go, now. You can do it if you try. Spread your wings for me. Fly."
Nodding, he reached out a hand to her, and she took it.
And then he was gone.
In her cabin onboard Serenity, River Tam opened her eyes, sitting up in her bunk. Those piercing eyes stared into the dimly-lit room but seemed to be looking farther.
"Good luck, Spock," she breathed softly.
Slowly, she settled down to her bed. It would be a long time before sleep returned to her.