Archive of Our Own

McCoy had been to Vulcan once before. He hadn't enjoyed it much then either. Too hot, not enough oxygen to think straight, more danger than the average M-Class planet. But both times he'd come to help a friend.

The crowd that was gathered at the mouth of the ship waited on his answer. His friends were there, his crew, the Vulcan council, and of course, Spock.

"I choose the danger," McCoy said at last, and he was gratified when no one looked surprised. No one could have been more surprised than him just then. He had traveled across the galaxy with the all-but-comatose body of one of his oldest friends, and the same friend's consciousness riding shotgun in his brain. It wasn't really how he'd expected his retirement to go.

He thought then, having agreed, that they'd all retire to some sterile, comfortable facility where something like nurses would attach him to machines to monitor his mind and his heart and all the other parts of him that were important, but instead he and Spock's body were led over to a dais and a pair of raised tables, or rock-hewn beds and laid out flat. Instead of nurses or machines only one old Vulcan lady stood between them, one clammy hand on each of their foreheads to facilitate whatever was supposed to transpire to get Spock out of McCoy's head and back into the pale body lying too still just out of reach.

McCoy took a ragged breath and tried to relax, the tri-ox coursing through his veins, newly administered, making him a little light-headed. He could feel an uneven place in the stone table poking at his lower back, just above his kidneys, and he knew enough of the Vulcan language to overhear one pointed-eared individual whisper to another, "this may take a very long time."

The trick, McCoy thought, remembering an old Terran film, is not minding that it hurts.

The danger he chose was the only chance that Spock had, the only chance that McCoy had to have him back, and so it was never really a choice at all.
___

He woke. Something in him wondered who and what he was and the answer, it seemed, was 'Spock'. That didn't sound to him like a real person or thing but that was the only answer he had so for just then it was true.

Many other questions and answers swiftly came to him before he ever opened his eyes. Am I alive? Yes. Plant or animal? Not plant, therefore animal. What is an animal?

Some of it was pretty easy, language, coordination, even some of the hard sciences seemed to be hard-wired. The softer things, history, especially personal history, they were there but far off, seen through a fog, or maybe a nebula.

By the time he did open his eyes he knew that he was Spock. It was a real person. It was him. And he had a stone digging into the space between his shoulder blades.

A few of his people (he wasn't sure yet what told him that they were 'his' people nor the distinction between 'his' and 'not his' but only that there was a distinction) stood him up and standing across from him was a man he knew. The word "bones" came to him, but that certainly wasn't a name. The man rubbed at his lower back and grimaced, then seemed to notice Spock watching him and said, "Spock?" and the shape of the man's mouth around the word, the arch of his brow, the concern there, the gentleness of his voice was called McCoy.

"Doctor," Spock said, and was surprised at his own voice, but it was his. He just had not heard it in a long time.

Doctor McCoy smiled and bounced on his heels. He had a kind face. "Next time you need a ride," he said, "just ask."
____

In a dream, hours later, McCoy lay beneath a mountain. He could feel every ton and ounce of stone, every pebble in the scree, fine argillite, fragile shale. He knew every atom of red iron, bright quartz, had known them since before the Earth was entirely round, would remember when Sol went supernova. They covered him like a blanket, and he slept gratefully.

He had been raised on a mountain, swam in its cool streams, found life under its canopy, in its rich soil. He had been loved there, and had found love there, too, never mind how it turned out in the end. But this wasn't his mountain. It was too far, too barren and too hot. Eventually there was fire, bubbling up from deep fissures, bright and terrible.

When he woke it was sometimes to darkness, sometimes to light, but then the mountain would call him back.

"Scaphoid," he would say to it.

Yes, it would agree scornfully. So?

"Lunate," he would add.

What else? it asked, but by then he was asleep again, and the mountain was burning.
____

Out over the darkening valley, across the last wine-colored light of sunset, a meteor streaked to its death, one thin flashing line of descent and then nothing. Well, that wasn't true, Spock admitted to himself. It wasn't nothing. Nothing was nothing. It was just a different thing now than it had been before it sailed through Vulcan's atmosphere. A human, Spock mused as he sat cross-legged outside of his and McCoy's--not quarters, dwelling?, yes, close enough--a human would work hard to see the metaphor in that. Spock, half human but also half Vulcan, tried hard not to.

He was Spock and he was human and he was half Vulcan and he was a captain (at least he was before he died, did that make him retired?), and he was a son and a brother and a friend. Since the reunification of his body and his mind he had been working hard to remember, first and foremost, himself and all of the things that included. There was a strange, nagging part of him that told him he was also a CMO and a father and a southern gentleman, but that would fade. He was fairly certain it would fade.

They had been brought down from the highest parts of the mountain to a lower plateau and left alone in an earthen dwelling, barely more than four walls and a low ceiling formed from mud and broken shell from the distant sea, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape. They would stay there together, he and McCoy, because it was part of the ceremony, because the high priestess (whose name Spock only later recalled) had said that it was necessary, that the transition would be easier. Specifically she had said that it would "be a comfort to the human." Spock did not yet know if this was true, since McCoy had been asleep since then, waking only to mutter angrily then return almost instantly to his dreaming.

Not far from the little house Spock sat and finished lighting the fire he'd built and waited, for memories, for himself, and, when the cloth curtain that was the door to their home rustled almost silently behind him, for McCoy.

"Oh boy," McCoy said, feet shuffling noisily in the sand and that something inside Spock that hadn't yet faded understood a lot from those two words.

"Good evening, Doctor," Spock said, just loud enough to carry over his shoulder.

"Is it?" McCoy asked around a yawn and came to stand next to Spock. "Thought it was mornin'. How long have I been out? A week? Feels like it was a week."

Spock regarded McCoy's skinny feet flexing in the sand beside him.

"Not a week, Doctor," Spock said. "About a day and a half."

McCoy crouched, not sitting yet, balancing on the balls of his feet, arms crossed over his knees.

"Don't you mean thirty-six-point-seven-two hours or something like that, Mr. Spock?" McCoy asked, but his tone was gentle, not so much teasing as the habit of teasing. "They did get this whole fal-tor-pan thing right, didn't they?"

McCoy was smiling when Spock looked over, the rosy light of dusk and the yellow glow of the small fire making McCoy look younger. Maybe there were other reasons for that.

"Affirmative," Spock said.

The smile on McCoy's face widened and he moved to sit properly next to Spock and Spock was prepared for more chatter or questions about his mental state but McCoy sat quietly for a while, smile fading gently with the light on the horizon, his legs drawn up close to his body, hands over his knees. He was still in civilian clothes, presumably the only clothing he had with him. Spock didn't remember what he'd worn at the ceremony, but they had no other possessions inside the little house.

"You get any sleep?" McCoy asked after a while, quietly, as if he might frighten something just outside of the firelight.

"Yes," Spock said, having decided that this query was more conversational than medical and so he did not specify how long he had or, more germane to the point, had not slept. When the doctors and priests laid him down to rest after the ceremony, he had not felt fatigued. It was only after a few hours of staring at the ceiling as his mind rapidly re-assimilated with his katra that he had closed his eyes without realizing he had done so and slept, dreaming at first of tall pines and kudzu and dirt roads for three quarters of an hour. When he woke he had not felt any more rested than before, only a sense of relief, of returning to something, to a place that he had not intended to leave.

"Meditation?" McCoy asked, bringing Spock back to the night and the desert and the fire.

"No," Spock said. "Not yet. I have practiced. This body does not remember the technique."

McCoy blinked over at him. "Yes, I guess there are a lot of things you've got to relearn."

"Not relearn, Doctor, only remember."

"I suppose there is a distinction," McCoy said, almost a question, but one that Spock felt did not require an answer.

The fire popped, sending bright motes of ash into the air.

"Anybody else been back around?" McCoy asked after a few minutes. "Seen Jim?"

Spock nodded and realized the motion had come to him without thought, an old habit of his body, even though there wasn't really much left of his old body. "Several have come," he said. "I sent them away. I have asked them all to give us privacy."

"Oh," McCoy said softly.

"So that you could continue resting," Spock said, although he wasn't certain why he'd felt the need to clarify.

"Yes," McCoy said, "Of course. Any idea how long we'll be out here?"

"As long as necessary," Spock said, and when McCoy sighed he added, "have you any prior engagements, Doctor?" and McCoy laughed.

The night and the fire went quiet long enough that an animal could be heard wailing in the distance, a keen howl that might have meant defending territory, family, or calling for a lover.

"What the devil was that?" McCoy asked, almost a whisper, as if the far-off creature might suddenly appear behind him.

"A le-matya," Spock said without hesitation, "female. The males are less active at night. It is unlikely that she would approach the fire." Even as Spock said it he realized that it was true, that it was a fact he'd known and retrieved without knowing that he knew it.

"Curious," Spock said aloud, "I had not remembered what a le-matya was, that they even existed, until I heard the call, and yet now that I have I could tell you nearly everything there is to know about their habits, habitat, breeding cycles." McCoy made a sound, almost a laugh, but more like wonder than humor. "I can," Spock continued softly, staring out at the star-pricked night beyond the fire, "in my mind's eye, see her sleek fur, imagine the wild smell of her, hear the high mewling cry of the fluff-covered kits that follow her, that she would die or kill for."

McCoy swallowed, shifted his feet in the sand and the fire crackled.

"Do you…" he asked after a few moments, "do you remember anything from before? From the trip here, I mean?"

Spock looked over and McCoy was watching him with great curiosity, his usually bright eyes dark in the night, but reflecting the fire.

"Not at this time," Spock said.

McCoy nodded, licked his lips and Spock remembered that it was a habit of his. "But you might? Later?"

"I may," Spock said. "I recall many things today that I did not recall yesterday. For instance, I was just recalling a trip to Risa with you." A smile tugged at his own lips and he was nearly surprised to find it there, particularly as McCoy looked suddenly alarmed.

"You remember that?" McCoy asked, licking his lips again.

"You pointed out a unique species of bird," Spock said "I do not yet recall the name but it was primarily a vivid blue color with a scaled, gold underbelly, and a long beak suitable for extracting small mammals from their burrows. I recall feeling great pleasure upon seeing it."

McCoy watching him, searching for something. At last he said, "That's all you remember about the one and only time we were on Risa together?"

"Should I recall something more?"

"Well," McCoy cleared his throat and shifted as if trying to escape something uncomfortable, "you and I saved about a thousand tourists from the planet's first and, I hope, last avian pox. We were looking for that bird because it was patient zero, smuggled in by some Orion pirate who didn't live to see it make him any credits, not for its plumage, however fine."

"I see," Spock said, and tried to fill in the gaps with this information but it didn't all fit yet. After a moment he said, "And you, Doctor? Do you remember everything?"

"About Risa? Sure. Well, less so the flora and fauna than the science."

Spock shook his head, the opposite of a nod. Another thing his body remembered."No, your trip here? Your journey since I was in residence."

McCoy shifted again, licked his lips. Perhaps it was more of a tic than a habit. "No, he said, "not much."
____

The day after he had lied to Spock about Risa, McCoy woke from a dream: geat, impenetrable, impossible light, and pain, such pain as he had never felt, his body afire, too large, spreading itself thinner, opening up to let the light in, a thousand suns, his skin swallowing up the photons, eating up the brightness, and then, suddenly, snuffing out to total darkness.

That was all McCoy remembered when he woke to the yellow light of the primary sneaking past the gauzy cloth over the windows of the dwelling, and after a few minutes he hardly remembered that. Only the feeling remained, a vague sense of pain, light, and oblivion, no more than could have been attributed to a hangover if he'd had a few good drinks, but he had not. It was not the first dream like it, but it was the first like it that he remembered, if only for a little while.

McCoy scrubbed at his face, flexed his hands, spread his fingers and looked at the strangely unfamiliar skin. "Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum," he said to himself, then finished in a practiced barely audible rush, "pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate." He spared a glance over to the dark, cloth covered form in the other bed (a generous word for the wood and rope cots) for any sign of stirring but there was none. He was glad to see Spock finally getting some sleep, especially if he wasn't yet able to meditate, but also he wasn't keen on picking up their conversation from the night before, in case the Spock of today remembered more than yesterday's Spock.

The truth was, the one and only time they were on Risa together was a little more complicated than McCoy had admitted to Spock. They had saved a lot of people, sure. There had been an alien raptor analogue and a long hunt for same, but there had also been the inadvertent inhalation of an airborne sexual stimulant by a particular Vulan who, by some mistake or luck of biology, was particularly susceptible to its effects. Spock had, due to proximity and for want of another partner (McCoy had always assumed), chosen McCoy as the recipient of his amorous expression and McCoy had, perhaps due to similar intake of the substance (at least that's what he would have told Spock if Spock had ever asked (he had not)), returned the attention. It had only been a kiss. Well. Several kisses… several very long kisses and a lot of touching in the more remote parts of what they had not at the time known was a particularly Risian creation called a pleasure garden. The bird had led them there, deep into a pleasant, cool forest, then disappeared, and McCoy had stopped to rest beneath a gnarled and ancient looking oak when one or the other of them (probably McCoy, he had to admit) had inadvertently triggered the release of the stimulant. A little breeze through the foliage, the trill of birdsong, and Spock had gone very still over his tricorder, caught McCoy's gaze briefly, and then approached McCoy beneath the tree.

They hadn't spoken, not then and not after. It turned out that as efficacious as the stimulant was on Spock's system, it was equally as easily metabolised. One moment Spock's mouth was on McCoy's and McCoy's hands were in Spock's hair and the knots in the tree were digging into McCoy's back, and the next Spock stepped away, considered McCoy, consulted his tricorder, scanned the area, and announced the presence of residual airborne particulates with possible mood-altering properties. He suggested they clear the area and McCoy had blinked and straightened his uniform and Spock had walked away. That had been that, and they had both pretended to forget, or at least hadn't mentioned it. But McCoy had felt, at the very least, they always had that between them. Unspoken, unanalyzed, unresolved, but there all the same. Their own little secret knowledge of themselves, of each other.

Now that was gone. Spock didn't remember. McCoy wondered why that bothered him so much; it should be a relief that it was now in his knowledge alone. He supposed also that now they had a very different sort of knowledge of each other, sharing a mind and all of that nonsense, but Spock didn't remember that either, and McCoy… well, it hadn't been a total lie, he really didn't remember all of it.

At last McCoy rose and made his silent way out into the hot sand to one of the clumps of scrub brush he'd used as a lavatory the day before. Their little house was protected on three sides by cliffs jutting tall overhead, and on the fourth by a shimmering rust-colored dunes that stretched out to the wavering horizon where orange smeared almost imperceptibly into blue. It wasn't Georgia, but some part of him he didn't recognize found it beautiful.

He had finished his business with the bush and buttoned his trousers (he really needed some fresh clothes) when he heard a clatter of rockfall down the path up the mountain. The female le-matya, Spock had said, was more active at night… but what about the male?

McCoy took a step back, tried to gauge just how fast he'd have to run back to shelter when another scuffing sound and a curse came from around a bend in the trail, and following it, Captain James Kirk.

"I guess I'm a little out of shape," Jim said, huffing from beneath the bulky pack he carried on his back.

"I believe your doctor's been telling you that for years," McCoy said, but with a wide grin and rushed to help Jim shift the pack off of his back.

They opened the pack outside of the little house, not wanting to wake Spock, who seemed to at last be sleeping. Jim had brought food (not just the protein and electrolyte bars they'd been living on), single-dose tri-ox ampules, and extra clothing.

"You make it sound like I'm in the brig," McCoy said, crunching his way through a packet of some kind of nut, sweet like pecans but pale and oblong. They sat in the sand in the shade from the dwelling, Jim sweating in his black undershirt. He had asked just when McCoy and Spock were getting out of there, and coupled the question with a mischievous grin.

It was almost overwhelming, the sudden rush of affection McCoy had felt upon seeing his Captain. He'd known, even loved Jim for a long time, but something about seeing him in this place perhaps, or after the trials of the previous day...no, the day before that… he wasn't sure why. It seemed an unfamiliar, new emotion to him.

"Not far from it," Jim said. "You aren't under guard and I suppose you could leave when you wanted but it's a good climb over the cliffs and down into the valley, and we've been advised to hang back, let you recover. That seems to be the only condition of your leaving."

"And yet here you are," McCoy said, smiling. "Why am I not surprised you didn't follow the rules?"

"Captain's privileges," Jim said with a bright grin.

"You mean Captain's used to getting what he wants and damn the Vulcans," McCoy suggested and Jim didn't argue but his grin was softening.

"And are you recovering, Bones?" Jim asked, voice quiet, squinting even in the shade.

McCoy shrugged broadly, as if his body spoke for itself. "I'm alive," he said. "I don't have any ghosts in my head… well, not much."

"What does that mean?"

McCoy thought. What had he meant exactly? The transference had been complete, hadn't it? He certainly felt better, his thoughts less… crowded, but there was something he hadn't quite adjusted to yet, something… just there, a memory, a dream. No. He couldn't pin it down. Like a floater in his mind's eye, there and yet too close to see, his brain seemed to edit it out as soon as he tried to think very hard on it. He rubbed at his neck thoughtfully.

"I don't know, I--" McCoy said, then, "I'm just tired, I guess."

"Yes, you must be. I felt sure you'd beg me to take you out of here first thing."

McCoy shrugged again. "I don't know if it's age catching up or the stress of the transference, but I don't really mind the isolation, the quiet."

"And Spock?" Jim asked, and there was almost a break in his voice.

McCoy smiled. "I guess I don't mind him either."

Jim breathed a small laugh. "I mean how is he?"

"Oh, well," McCoy said, "to tell you the truth, I don't know. He remembers me, remembers more than I expected, but he's quiet, reserved...he's Spock."

"That something, then," Jim said, his smile casual but McCoy didn't miss the way Jim sat up a little straighter, hadn't noticed before how much he'd been bent under the strain of worry, as if still carrying the heavy pack.

Jim took a deep breath like it had been the first since coming into their camp. "I'm glad to have you back," he said after a moment, "both of you. I didn't think…" he paused, watching the desert, and McCoy reached out to pat his arm lightly. Jim nodded.

They didn't speak again for a little while as McCoy ate another packet of nuts and Jim quietly sipped from his canteen. When Jim finally broke the silence it wasn't what McCoy expected.

"You know," Jim said, "I think I might take up climbing while we're here."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "It's nothing less than I deserve," he said.

After Jim was gone McCoy fished out new clothing from the piles of provisions, and made his way over to the well, a low, stone circle in the sand that looked about as inviting as any other hole in the ground, but Spock had assured him it was not dry. He found a pail near the stone wall and lowered it down into the darkness for what seemed a very long time, the sun and the effort making him sweat, until finally the rope went slack and then tugged with an echoing sound of water and the pail became heavy. He hoisted it up for even longer, it seemed, than he had lowered it, until at last he had about a liter worth of clear, cool water. Standing there at the well he stripped off his shirt and dipped it in, frowning as the dusty shirt clouded the water, but it was all the cloth he had besides his new clothing. The water was cold, though, and sweet-smelling when he brought it to his face, then wrung the shirt over his head to wet his hair, to drip down his back. He did this twice more and that was nearly all the water in his pail. He'd have to fetch more up, maybe several more times. It wasn't exactly an efficient method of bathing.

"May I suggest the lake?" someone said from behind him and McCoy spun, knocking the pail into the well where, after several long seconds, the echo of a splash finally sounded. Spock stood there in his robe, dust discoloring it almost to his knees, holding his own change of clothing and what looked to McCoy to be a bar of soap and a couple of clean towels.

McCoy frowned, looking around at the mountain, the desert, their little house, standing there in only his trousers and boots and the beginning of a sunburn. "What lake?"
______

Spock did remember a little about their journey to Vulcan, but the knowledge was so tenuous, so clouded by emotions, partly his, mostly McCoy's, that he didn't trust it, and he felt that it was neither lying nor even lying by omission to withhold data that he did not trust. That was simply good science.

What he remembered, shortly after remembering his own name, was fear. Later, not much later, he realized that it was not his own. He remembered McCoy being frightened. Frightened for Spock. Frightened that he may never see his daughter again. Spock still didn't know if that had anything to do with his katra or if this was McCoy's normal state, and Joanna… upon thinking of her Spock felt something he couldn't name, an overwhelming… concern? Anxiety? And a profound sense, if not real understanding, of love. Especially curious as he had never met the woman, at least not as far as he remembered.

He was reminded of this, the fear and anxiety in particular, when he startled McCoy by the well, McCoy wide-eyed, shirtless, clutching his dripping shirt even as the water from the well rapidly evaporated off of his skin in the broad light of midday. So maybe that was just part of his normal state. Then McCoy frowned at him and he remembered that, too. Not just that human annoyance from being in his skin, but a hundred thousand other frowns just like it, the shape of it, the nuances of sadness, irritation, exasperation, confusion. Something low in his belly found it comforting.

The lake was located north of their camp, up the mountain path where the road (for in the past many vehicles had traveled over it, sehlat-drawn or hovercraft) diverged into two, one clear and well-worn leading to the valley of Shi-Kahr, and an older disused path that led them a short walk to a hollow where scraggly green and brown chaparral hugged the stony banks of a spring. Spock looked closely among the tumble of vegetation, thinking that he should find something there, some small creature… what was its name?

"You didn't tell me about this," McCoy said, drawing Spock's attention from the thing he could not name nor envision and yet felt compelled to seek out. There was more wonder than accusation in McCoy's commeant as they descended a path hewn from the rock, zig-zagging down to where the water sat still and cold, clear at the edges, fading to blue-green, then darker, nearly black at the center, a promise of inestimable depth. In Spock's memory (or perhaps his knowledge of it--he was still distinguishing the difference) it had been much larger. In reality it was barely ten meters across. Something clicked in his mind, some cog (again, the human habit of resorting to metaphors) turning into place told him that yes, it had been larger, long before his father was born, before most of the springs that fed it were re-routed down to the valley for irrigation.

"I had not recalled its existence before this morning," Spock said, slowing to let McCoy catch up, his feet in as much of a hurry as his mind, and McCoy slowed by fatigue or the increased gravity or both. "I woke from a dream and thought I'd like a bath. The lake, in a sense, came to be."

"Convenient," McCoy said, a little out of breath, swinging his skinny arms and bouncing down each step. With the water so low, it was a considerable walk to the shore. "But I'm not sure I'd call it a lake."

"The name is applied generously," Spock said, slowing even more.

Eventually they stood on the stone ledge that served as a bank and stripped out of their clothing and footwear, the rock hot beneath their feet, hotter on their backsides when they sat to slide into the frigid water.

McCoy cried out, part laugh, part shock. "S'cold!" he said, but after only a moment he dove down, turned a flip underwater and came splashing back up, grinning, his hair uncharacteristically flat on his head. "Feels good," he said, and Spock recalled a distant memory of a conversation about sensualism as it applied to McCoy in particular. His thoughts of McCoy, it seemed, were as much physical as mental. He did not only remember the man but felt him in a way that he did not yet understand. It was logical that this was because of the katra transference, but this explanation somehow did not entirely satisfy the suspicion that there was something Spock was missing.

They bathed and swam and after a while lounged on the bank to warm themselves again, towels slung over their shoulders, discarded clothing covering the rest of their bodies to protect them from the primary's radiation. McCoy's had been quick to cover his nudity, so that Spock felt obliged to do the same out of courtesy. If he had a similar need for modesty he did not remember it.

"Do you know the name of the Vulcan primary, Doctor?" Spock asked. It was nearing midday and the sun would soon pass behind the cliffs, still long before nightfall but they were deep in the hollow and the cliffs were high.

McCoy paused, stilled his toes where they circled in the water. "Um, Forty Eridani A… is this a quiz or have you forgotten?"

That answer was familiar, surely correct, but didn't seem exactly right, Spock thought.

"I do not remember the Vulcan name for it," Spock admitted.

McCoy sighed. "I'm sorry I can't help you. I've only learned a little Vulcan over the years, enough to order lunch and introduce myself. I even considered one of those RNA language courses but I hear they put you flat on your back for a while and wear off anyway."

Spock made a comment and McCoy blinked at him, looked confused, but to Spock's surprise he answered.

"I'm not sure how," McCoy said, "but I know you just said that you were flattered by my learning even that, but I don't know how to respond." He paused, brow furrowed, deepening the lines where he squinted against the sun overhead. "I don't think I should have been able to understand you so easily."

Spock nodded, understanding. "It is possible that the presence of my katra has left traces of my knowledge, including that of my language."

"Yes," McCoy said, very gently, seeming not at all surprised, "there've been other things. More… well I know you'll hate the word but more like a feeling of knowing something, having seen it before."

"I have experienced the same, I believe," Spock said. "I did not realize it at first, my mind being uncertain of itself, but I may, in fact, retain some of your memories, or rather, as you say, a feeling of them. It is a relief to admit this to you."

McCoy looked up, cheeks red from the warmth of the sun or something else, eyes so blue they might have reflected the sky. "Yeah," he said at last. "It is for me too." Then he took a deep breath and looked away, down at his hands which he seemed to inspect for a moment, then with a lighter tone added, "Hell of a thing."

"Yes," Spock said, "it does appear to be one hell of something."

McCoy laughed gently, began stirring his toes in the water once more, perhaps growing restless with the intimate nature of their conversation, so that Spock let the silence lengthen until McCoy's towel slipped from one of his shoulders and Spock saw his back clearly.

"You have an injury, Doctor," Spock said with more alarm than he intended.

McCoy twisted to try to see it, hissed a little and drew his hand away when he touched the livid flesh on his right flank, the mark of a deep contusion. "How 'bout that," he said, and covered it again with the towel, shrugging as he did so. "Funny thing I didn't notice before now. Don't even remember how it got there. A lot's happened the last few days." He laughed softly. "The last few weeks, months, years."

"Indeed it has," Spock agreed.

"Even funnier," McCoy continued, "I was just thinking the opposite of you. Not a scratch on you, not even the ones I've grown familiar with over the years, not even from--well, " he hesitated briefly. "I guess Genesis really grew you a new body. Jim told me what Saavik had found; a child, growing rapidly into a young man. And you…" he suddenly grew agitated, gripping the towel back over his shoulder, "well I don't reckon you remember any of that do you? Should I have told you?"

"Do not be alarmed, Doctor," Spock assured him. "It was explained to me, or rather shared with me through the fal-tor-pan, by the priestess, a brief account of my death, revivification and how I came to Vulcan, if not in detail in general. But to answer your question, no, I do not have any actual memories of Genesis. If there was any vestigial information in this body it has been overridden by what you carried for me."

McCoy nodded minutely, calm again but looked away, out toward the primary sinking behind the cliffs, his cheeks, perhaps, redder than before. Spock had the sense of having seen that particular shade on McCoy's cheeks in his previous life, and an even greater sense of fondness, though it seemed illogical that the doctor's embarrassment should evoke such a reaction. Yet it was not a particularly fond memory that came to him then.

It was a morning on Earth, at the Academy, the first time he'd seen McCoy, long before they had shipped together. The doctor had lectured on xenovirology to a group of medical track students and Spock had attended after reading McCoy's paper on the same topic. They had both been much younger then, incredibly young it seemed to Spock, still unfamiliar with much of his own past and sitting across from the doctor as he was now. Behind the podium McCoy had been self-possessed, funny, even charming, but when Spock had waited after the lecture to speak with him he had seen the man flustered, arguing with a woman in the hallway about something he could not hear. The doctor had been red-faced, speaking sternly if quietly, but the woman gestured as if she would not listen, and began to walk away. McCoy had taken a step to follow her then stopped, ran a hand through his hair and exhaled loudly. When he turned he had caught sight of someone else in the hallway but Spock was already turning to walk the other way. For a few moments he could hear the doctor's footsteps behind him, then there was the sound of a door opening, and only his own steps could be heard.

He had never told McCoy this. As far as McCoy knew the first time they met was also the first time, years later, that McCoy had stepped aboard the Enterprise as her CMO. But Spock had long held the encounter as a lesson on the human power to compartmentalize emotions (it was much of why he found human emotionalism illogical, knowing that they could, when necessary, process them without histrionics) and an equally enlightening lesson on his own fascination with McCoy's particular lack of logical behavior, that he could find it both unnerving and endearing.

McCoy made a sound next to him, clearing his throat to break the long silence.

"Alam'ak," Spock said, surprising himself.

McCoy looked at him again, blue eyes bright in the heat, against the pink of his cheeks, and frowned. "Sorry, didn't catch that one."

"It is the word I could not remember," Spock said. "The Vulcan word for 'sun.'"
____

On their third day on the planet they donned once-white robes and the type of protective head coverings common to most desert people and set out to find a ch'kariya. Spock had recalled the name during the night before, but that was all, just a word and the understanding that it was an animal he could find out in the dunes, but no other physical characteristics.

He'd had a bee in his bonnet about it ever since.

"If you don't know what it looks like," McCoy had said as they dressed, "how will you know when we've found it?" The robes had come from a crude wooden cabinet in their dwelling, the fabric yellowed and threadbare. McCoy doubted it was as old as it looked. The desert could be harsh.

Spock had pursed his lips in a way that McCoy recognized from many previous conversations in which Spock had found McCoy's questions tiresome, but Spock had almost smiled as he replied, "I believe I will, as you would phrase it, know it when I see it."

They packed supplies, a few tools, an emergency medkit, and a microshelter into Jim's pack and left before sunrise, taking turns to carry the burden. Spock promised that there would be a savanna south-southeast of their camp unless the season had not been conducive to growth, but all McCoy could see as the primary shone gold and crimson over the undulating horizon was the dark silhouette of dunes and the distant haze of what could have been a city or a trick of colliding temperatures.

Higher and hotter the primary grew until it was a great brass coin overhead, bleaching the blue out of the sky, replacing it with a haze the color of a fevered blush on pallid skin. On their path they sometimes found beetles, very like those of Earth, or the winding tracks of some snake analogue (thankfully never the snake), but even these sightings lessened as they left the rocky shadow of the mountain for the soft sands of the dunes. Out where the horizon shimmered they now and then caught glimpses of herd animals which Spock could not name but knew were not the ch'kariya. McCoy wondered how not knowing the name of something he saw could be so much less bothersome to Spock than not finding the thing he knew the name for, but he did not ask.

McCoy had also begun to wonder, to really wonder, just how long they'd be out here. Not in the sand, looking for the ch'kariya, but separate from the others, and more than that, why it didn't bother him. Once upon a time being stranded with Spock (they weren't really stranded; he had to remind himself of that occasionally) would have been a nightmare, and later it would have been an exercise in restraint. He'd worked past both of those, he thought, the annoyance of disliking him, the greater annoyance of being in love with him, and had come to an agreement with himself that both at once could keep him balanced.

But now. Now he felt tilted, teetering on something, perhaps already falling.

They really needed to go home.

"Do you know--I mean, do you remember T.E. Lawrence? Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence of Arabia..." McCoy asked, trying to get out of his own head, to distract himself from the heat and the sand and ache in his eyes as he squinted against the relentless light of the primary. They had been walking for a few hours and the fine sand dusted the hems of their robes and reddened Spock's hands where now and then he would bend and dig in the sand, searching for some clue even he did not understand. McCoy didn't wait for Spock to answer. "Doesn't matter, only I've been thinking of him a lot since I got here. Something he said about the joy of the Arab? The luxury of abnegation, self-restraint…" He bent himself and lifted a handful of hot sand, let it go. There was no wind and much of it clung to his fingers, glittering in the sunlight. "I can't remember it."

Spock did not reply, but walked on, waiting either for McCoy to make a point or understanding that there was not one.

"There was something else," McCoy continued, "about how some men dream at night, and others dream at day and how the latter man is more dangerous."

"Particularly if he is operating a vehicle," Spock deadpanned.

McCoy laughed thinly, breathless with effort on the incline over a dune. He felt so heavy here. He knew why but knowing didn't help. "This was about officers and soldiers," he said, " at least I think. Dreams of power, dreams of change… I remember the holovid better than the book." His foot slid in the sand and he went to his hands and knees, but stood again before Spock could double back to help him. "Anyway, it's a lot like space isn't it?"

"Dreams?" Spock asked.

"The desert," McCoy said. "Out here, away from the mountain, where nothing can survive, and no one lives, and it's all so…" he looked around, uncertain of what he was looking for and finding nothing anyway, "so godforsaken... so wide open, it might as well be a vacuum."

Spock stopped. McCoy did not until then realize that this was because he had also stopped, was in fact sliding slowly backward down the dune. Spock put one hand on a hip high above him and looked down, shadowed against the sky, considering McCoy. At last he said, "Perhaps it is time for a rest, Doctor."

They made a temporary camp with the micro shelter, a fabric tent that burst suddenly forth from a handheld capsule and would later fold itself back up to almost nothing. It was large enough for one man to lay cross-wise, or two sit comfortably. Spock sat crosslegged in a corner while McCoy lay with his legs sticking out into the sunlight and his head lolling by Spock's knee, having already drunk his fill of the electrolyte fluids they packed. It sloshed coolly in his belly when he shifted.

"This was a good idea, Mr. Spock," McCoy said, adjusting a cold pack on his forehead, "I didn't realize just how much all that open space was getting to me," he touched the sand-colored fabric of the roof, "until now."

"You are not yet fully recovered," Spock said, something like guilt in his tone and drank his own ration. "I should not have asked you to join me or, in fact, made the journey myself." He paused and thought. "Then again, perhaps half a lifetime on a starship has conditioned you to find comfort in confinement."

"Not the word I'd use," McCoy countered and held up his hand to inspect it, black against the bright shine of the primary against the tent.

"Containment?"

McCoy made a noise.

"Quarterage? Shelter? Encapsulation?"

This time the noise was a laugh. They grew silent, the desert outside even more noiseless than before. McCoy turned his hand one way and then the other.

"Some lovers try positions that they can't handle," he said absently.

Spock shifted noisily. "Excuse me, Doctor?"

"It's a mnemonic device," McCoy said up at his hand. "You see, ever since you... well, since Genesis, I keep reciting this to myself, to prove to myself that I am…myself." He laughed softly. "It's the carpal bones of the hand, here, let me show you." He turned onto his side, the cold pack sliding from his forehead to smack dully against the floor of the tent, then raised himself up on one elbow and reached for Spock. "May I?"

Spock's hand, when McCoy took it, was nearly as cool as the cold pack, the skin as pale as the dunes under the primary, a blush of green. Lines of veins, extensor tendons, all showed so clear it was almost an anatomy lesson in itself. Then he brushed Spock's palm with his own and it occurred to him that this may not have been his best idea. But he had started it, he'd finish it or look a fool.

"This caused me no end of trouble in med school. I don't know why this in particular wouldn't stick. Walked around with them drawn on my hand for a week until it did. Uh, let's see," from right to left he pointed with the index finger of his other hand the places where the bones would be on Spock's, "we have scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform in an arc across the top, and below those, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate. Some lovers try positions that they can't handle," he finished with a satisfied smile and cleared his throat and did not want to look up but at last did. Spock was watching him, eyes dark, face unreadable. Amused, perhaps, not angry at least. McCoy was still holding his hand so he added, "Of course that's human anatomy. Vulcans have an extra little bone here," he gestured to but did not touch a place near the inside of Spock's wrist, "vestigial. Probably you once had a claw there," he added with a grin.

Spock at last smiled as well, just barely, more with his eyes than his lips. "You have always had warm hands, Doctor," Spock said, so softly that McCoy at first doubted he'd spoken at all, and when he looked down it seemed that Spock might take his hand away, or turn it and clasp McCoy's as well, so McCoy only nodded and breathed a small laugh and let go of him before Spock could do either. Then McCoy lay back down, tried to calm his hammering heart, and Spock said nothing.

"Any new memories, Mr. Spock?" because it was something to say, and he'd been asking it a lot since their afternoon at the lake.

"Almost every moment, Doctor," Spock said, but he did not elaborate and McCoy did not ask and, without meaning to or knowing that it had happened until he woke an hour later, fell asleep, the same old dreams of fire and light and pain.

They repacked their supplies and the micro shelter sucked itself back into its capsule and they headed back toward the mountain. It was still daylight but the worst of the heat had passed, Spock said. They had not found the ch'kariya but Spock also said that it was unimportant and that they would try again later. Still, they traveled a different, more westerly route than the one they had taken that morning (McCoy only knew this because they did not double over their own tracks), and eventually came upon small patches of grass which McCoy had not seen from afar because they were the same color as the sand, fine as cornsilk. He would not call it a savanna by any stretch, and in spite of nudging their boots around the roots of the grasses, something Spock thought might yield a clue to their quarry, they found nothing but insects and bird droppings and small, pale stones. How did anything live in this place, McCoy wondered, not for the first time.

"No Arab loves the desert," McCoy said slowly as they set out north again, the sky at last beginning to darken, his slight southern lilt making it sound absurd even to himself. "We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing."

"Your Mr. Lawrence?" Spock asked, sounding, for the first time that day, a little tired.

"No," McCoy said, "that was Omar Sharif."
__

Spock had a memory. It had come to him soon after waking following the fal-tor-pan and he had at first recalled it eagerly, again and again, then less often as he began to recognize that it was not his own. He did not try to forget it, but it had begun to fade.

It was the birth of a child, and that child was Joanna McCoy. He had never in his own memories experienced such an opposing mix of joy and sadness, of hope and hopelessness. He did not know if it was the usual reaction or particular to McCoy. It wasn't until he and McCoy had spent several days together on the mountain that he felt he had sufficient understanding to ask about it. He had almost asked as they sat huddled in the little tent out on the dunes, as McCoy had spoken about dreams and taken Spock's hand in his own. But McCoy had been suffering from heat exhaustion and Spock had been loathe to disturb the doctor's queer mood, or the peculiar sense of longing that had lingered within himself long after McCoy had released him.

But in fact he did not have to ask. The Doctor had lately made a habit of asking every day (or more often) about Spock's new memories, and one evening as they sat around their nightly fire, McCoy crunching on dried fruits and seeds, Spock had told him about the small, pink creature in his memory, the fear and elation, the utter exhaustion and uncertainty. McCoy had only rubbed his hands noisily on his robe (which he now wore more often than his civilian shirt and pants) as if trying to clean something away from them and muttered, "That sounds about right."

What Spock did not mention was the other part of the memory; the incredible guilt, the belief that the difficulties of being a parent, the overwhelming responsibility of another human life and the desire to flee from it, had been part of McCoy's decision to join Starfleet, to escape the Sol system and any possibility of error in raising his own child.

This seemed highly illogical reasoning to Spock, since he understood well McCoy's devotion to his daughter, distance or no. As well, it was nonsensical to take on the responsibility of over 400 lives to avoid being accountable for one. Spock knew, even without all of his memories, that even humans were not usually so illogical.

Spock did not mention these things because he felt that McCoy would be greatly discomfited by his knowing, and because, on their fourth day on the mountain, he was able to ask someone else.

The hover car came from the west, the long way around the mountain, in a cloud of dust that Spock and McCoy could see for at least a half hour before it arrived, and stopped a quarter of a kilometer away, where a figure emerged into the early morning light, robed in white, a pearlesque shawl over their head and shoulders, hands gloved and gleaming, carrying a parcel. Only their face, a pink smudge in the distance, was visible.

"Is that…?" McCoy began to ask, standing just outside of their dwelling, a pot in his hand as he had been preparing the morning meal.

"It is," Spock said, and gave to McCoy the packets of dried grains he had fetched and began to walk out to meet the visitor.

As Spock approached, the visitor reached the well and stopped and waited, white robe flapping in the rising wind.

"Mother," Spock said and tried to make it not sound like a question.

"You look much improved," was the first thing that Amanda, Spock's mother, said to him. She was red-faced and her mouth quivered when she spoke but then she smiled.

Spock had such an urge to reach out, but the well was between them, and from her distance, perhaps something more.

"You were there, at the ceremony?" Spock said, "I am sorry, Mother, I do not remember."

This time when she smiled it reached her eyes which were wet, glinting in the light. "I was doing my best to be out of the way--you know me."

"I do, yes."

She laughed softly and a tear rolled down her cheek. It seemed to be a great effort for her to simply stand there, to speak so calmly, to keep her distance, not to ask many questions at once. He understood her so easily all the same.

"Mother," he said, "may I embrace you?"

It was only then, in his arms, that she made a sudden, sharp sobbing sound, and he stood and held her until she no longer trembled. They did not part at once, but she sat on the low edge of the well, her parcel on the ground by her feet, and pulled him down with her to sit beside her, not letting him get far now that she had permission, and for a while he watched her and she him.

Every motion she made, every minute expression, each syllable she spoke brought back some memory he had not known was there a moment before. The way that she said his name so carefully, the smell of her clothing, of her hair beneath the veil when he held her, the curve at the corner of her mouth even when she was not smiling.

"I do remember you," he said suddenly, and with it came a memory of her smiling down at him, lifting him up in her arms.

"I am very glad to hear it," she said, then swallowed back something else she did not say.

"I do not only mean that I recognize you," he said, his eyes searching her face, finding every part of it familiar. He could hear in his mind the sound of her voice, one of a thousand moments when she sang a soft song to soothe him. "But also that I retain memories of our time together. You were…" her hands, holding his, touching his brow, a tightness in his breast that was not only unmistakably his own, but the nearest to the profound, dizzying feeling of Doctor McCoy's memories, "...very kind, and… supportive. I fear I did not appreciate that at the time."

Amanda smiled, took his hands in her gloved ones. "Children usually do not appreciate their parents until much later, but even then a parent does not require it."

Spock doubted that this was true of all parents or all children but he did not argue. Instead he asked after her life since they had last seen one another, even though he did not entirely remember when that had been. But as she spoke he did remember. Each piece of information carried with it countless more, filling in the empty spaces like a puzzle. Relatives forgotten appeared fully formed with one name, places sprung forth from the earth of his memory, newly grown and ancient at once. They sat and talked so long that she began to shift on the stone wall of the well, uncomfortable, and his stomach rumbled.

"Oh, there is this," Amanda said, reaching for the parcel at her feet as if Spock had requested it, and uncovered from an insulated case an assortment of prepared dishes, some Vulcan, some Terran, the smell of which made Spock's stomach rumble again.

"Thank you," Spock said and took the parcel. "Dr. McCoy will be particularly grateful."

"Is he well?" she asked, glancing toward the dwelling into which McCoy had disappeared some time ago, although Spock suspected he was watching them from the darkness within.

"He is improving."

"I would like to thank him, when I can," she said, her brows drawing together in concern. "It was very brave of him to… well, we must have been very intimidating to an outsider up there." She looked toward the mountain, then laughed at herself. "Listen to me, I guess I've assimilated."

She stood at last, still smiling. Spock would not tire of seeing it.

"Mother," Spock said and stood as well, "may I ask one last question before you leave."

"You may ask as many as you like, my darling."

"It is concerning..." Spock began to say, and then, like recalling a lost memory, he suddenly knew what he wanted to ask, "...it is about love."

Amanda's brows rose but she showed no other expression.

"Of course," She said carefully, "but would you not prefer to ask your father? That is… would he not better understand--"

"You are uniquely qualified to answer in this instance," Spock interrupted and would have felt guilty except that she smiled at him, unable now to restrain her pleasure to be of particular assistance to her only child, to whom she had often, Spock knew, felt superfluous.

"Well," she said, and spared a glance to the dwelling where McCoy still waited. Spock did not follow her gaze and after a moment she sat once more on the stone wall of the well, "by all means."
____

A child skidded down the dune, red sand flying up like powder behind him, dusting his black robes as they billowed in his haste. Something was chasing him. The child stumbled and fell face first into the sand, pushed up on his hands and rolled to look behind him. At the crest of the dune a spindly leg appeared, insectoid, segmented, green and spotted black. Another leg quickly joined it and a third, and with them came a great body, more legs, and a small head with innumerable glinting black eyes. The creature was as tall as two grown men together and as wide as three. It scurried down toward the child.

From his place at the foot of the dune McCoy… no, the child… no, he was the child… McCoy scrambled onto his feet and ran, as hard and fast as he was able, slipping on the sand, not looking back, legs and chest burning, he'd been running so long, all the way from the Forge, how long had that been now? Minutes? Hours? He knew he was not supposed to go alone. What had possessed him? He stumbled again, fell, could hear the creature just behind him, felt the sand flying up from where those legs disturbed it, the rush of displaced air from that huge sack-like body. This was it. This was the end of everything.

A great thudding sound, scraping, tumbling, screeching, and a roar he'd know anywhere. The child raised his head and found that he was alive, and turned in time to see the sehlat tear the insectoid's head from its body. Its legs flailed, went limp, and the sehlat lumbered over with something in its wide jaws, dropped the head of the thing in the sand between the child's -- McCoy's--splayed legs, and nudged his shoulder as if asking for a pet for a job well done.

McCoy woke with a start, sweating in spite of the cold night. The dwelling was so quiet, so dark, that for a moment he doubted that he was awake at all, that perhaps he remained in the dream or some only minutely less terrifying limbo, but after a moment he saw a glow through the small window, probably one of Spock's fires. He sat up, closed his eyes again in spite of the fear that he might be plunged back into that dream, and tried to breathe the way that Spock had taught him, the dream slowly fading.

Nights in the desert, McCoy had learned, could get very cold, and so he wrapped himself in his blanket, grabbed a half-eaten ration pack he had not finished at lunch before falling asleep, and shuffled out through the door. Beyond the mountain, down in the valley, the sky might have been murky with light pollution from the city, but out across the dunes the sky was ink-black, so that the night was almost as dark as the room he'd left behind but for the red glow of the fire and the pinpricks of distant stars. No moon shone overhead. No moon ever had.

A few nights had passed since Spock's mother had visited and brought them food that didn't have to be rehydrated, and since Spock had told McCoy, sitting down to dinner that same night, that what he remembered about his time with McCoy was love.

"Whose love?" McCoy had asked, trying to will himself not to blush.

The answer, whenever McCoy had asked if Spock had any new memories, had always been yes, but often that was the only answer, simply "yes" without explanation. Spock had shared a few with McCoy but they were mostly mundane. McCoy knew, for example, that Spock remembered having a minor childhood illness and the resentment of a subsequent confinement. He remembered every question from an exam in his third year at Starfleet Academy and the first spacecraft he had piloted. He remembered Tribbles. Of all the damnedest things.

Why he would remember love… more than that, why he would tell McCoy… well that was positively un-Vulcan.

"Your love, Doctor," Spock had said, in spite of whatever McCoy thought of Vulcan propriety, as they sat in the low light of their hovel around their small table, eating Amanda's gifted food.

This time McCoy had blushed, but if Spock had seen it he did not comment on it.

"My love for what?" McCoy had asked, scraping the last stubborn spoonfuls from a wooden bowl, but even to him it felt like a stupid thing to say.

"For life. For mine. For your daughter's." As Spock had said these things his voice was quiet, nearly reverent, his eyes dark in the half light, glinting in the hearth fire. "For Jim's," he continued, "and for every life, presumably, but there was an alien on Earth whose life you might not have cared for."

McCoy had laughed, relieved. "I remember him. I thought that was you who got so riled up over a smuggler's lack of manners. I still don't know what part of what we did together was you and what was me, where one of us stopped and the other began." He cleared his throat, realizing how that sounded, how… intimate. He had cleared away his dish, an excuse to rise and move away, then took up a piece of cloth and frame to busy himself and sat again.

"I have not thanked you, Doctor," Spock said into the silence that followed, just as softly as before, folding his arms over the table top. "I am grateful."

McCoy shrugged, hunched over the frame. He had found it and a needle and the cloth stretched across it in a little hollowed out place in the wall of the house. Spock had said it was an ancient and now all but forgotten art which was religious in nature. To McCoy it looked like his great grandmother's needlepoint. The design, already half finished when he found it, was of a red circle (presumably Vulcan) surrounded by six sigils that McCoy did not understand and Spock could not remember. He squinted at the small lines as he worked, but it was too dark to see properly and after a moment he put it away. When the silence stretched McCoy had felt that he ought to say something he said, "Not like I had much to do with it."

"On the contrary," Spock had said and shifted, closer to McCoy or simply to see him better, "a transference cannot be attempted with any individual. The recipient must know the transferer intimately well, must, in a sense, already have the key to decode and store the katra, much like a computer needs a compatible language to run a program."

McCoy had looked at him then, squinting almost as harshly as he had squinted at the design. "You're saying I had a Spock-shaped hole set aside in my mind?"

"Roughly, yes," Spock said, and then gently, as if it the information might sting McCoy, "but above all else, the recipient must be willing."

McCoy frowned. "I was unconscious!"

Spock had merely raised his brows, blinked slowly, a gesture McCoy long knew as meaning, 'What can I say? Rules are rules.'

At length Spock rose and put away his dish and said that he would attempt to meditate. "Would you like to join me?"

"Who me?" McCoy asked, and then cleared his throat. "No, I don't think… I mean, I tried a little in college but I was never very good at slowing down, clearing my head."

"Then we are currently equal on that score," Spock had said. "At any rate, it has been a long time since your last attempt, I think. People… beings, do change." Then McCoy had followed Spock out into the night and together they sat crosslegged under the stars and Spock instructed him on how to sit, to breathe, to try to clear his mind.

They had not since spoken of love or anything like it. They had returned daily to the water, always together (perhaps Spock thought that McCoy might get lost and so always accompanied him, perhaps McCoy thought so too), and there had been no more long treks across the dunes to find any half-remembered plant or animals. The days had taken on their own rhythm for McCoy: awake at dawn, breakfast, a hike, a swim, lunch and a nap, only to wake at dusk or, as he did that night to darkness, and again to sleep. For Spock... well, McCoy wasn't certain. Each day seemed the same for him as well, attempts at meditation, contemplating… something, everything, still working to parse through the encyclopaedic catalog of his memories, to re-assimilate them with his physical self, mind and matter, as the old philosophers called it. McCoy had never really believed there to be a difference. Right up until very recently.

McCoy knew, though, that whatever Spock experienced outwardly, however mundane, it was by no means a reflection of what must be happening inside him, the recollection of decades of life and knowledge, a renaissance of emotional understanding, perhaps even the chance to start over without some of his past traumas, which might be remembered but not exactly re-lived, and so perhaps lack some of their original pinch. McCoy hoped that was what was happening anyway. He could have used a little of that himself.

"I don't know why I can't catch up on my sleep," McCoy said when he sat down next to Spock by the fire, days after they had last spoken of love, not waiting to be invited to the warm bright circle in the dark night. "When we get back to civilization I'm going to run some blood work on myself. Damnedest thing being out here without even a medcorder."

Spock did not respond, in fact, he was very quiet and still, only the flickering light of the fire created the illusion of movement across his face, his closed eyes. There was a brief, horrifying moment when McCoy thought something was wrong, some delayed injury to that body or mind, before, after, or even during the fal-tor-pan that had only now chosen to prove lethal. He reached out and somewhere in the instant before his hand touched Spock's shoulder he noted the slow and gentle rising of Spock's chest and lowered his hand.

"Oh, I see," McCoy said but very softly, quietly, "finally managed it, huh?" He sat back, pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, ate his packet of dried fruits and cheese, and watched the fire. After a while the night grew even colder and he had to feed the fire twice before he fetched a couple of extra blankets, carefully placing one over Spock's shoulders, then returned to his place beside Spock, close enough to feel the warmth of him, to share his own.

Behind them the dwelling sat silent and empty, the mountain cliffs beyond so large and imposing that they seemed always to be in McCoy's periphery, that of his mind if not his eyes, and to his surprise he was beginning to find it a comfort, something he could depend on.

He stole a look over at Spock, silent and still, then tried to center himself where he sat, tried to be aware of the placement of his limbs, the relationship of his body to the earth, to the sky above, to the wind and the warmth of their fire and, most importantly, tried not to fall asleep.

He didn't know if what he did was meditation but he found that he could now, unlike the times he had tried before with Jocelyn, just sit, and not feel that he had somewhere else to be. Could that be some remnant of Spock's focus? He figured it was just as likely age as anything else. Try as he might to clear his mind, however, one thought would not leave it, had not left him since Spock had told him: he'd had a Spock-shaped place in his mind, ready made, waiting. No wonder it was so hard to shake now.

Long before they were both on Vulcan, before McCoy had ever been more than one person, before Spock had ever died and then not been dead, McCoy had learned a few things about himself.

He had learned from his father that sometimes love was the worst thing that could happen to a person, and that it was certainly true for him. He had learned from Jocelyn, his ex, that he wasn't very good at personal relationships that required him to regularly show up. He had learned from Joanna, his daughter, that he could love someone so fiercely, so completely that he'd be willing to die for them, do anything for them, and yet still leave them behind. He had learned from Jim, his captain, that he was perhaps better at being loyal than being in love, and he had learned from Natira, an alien high-priestess and his second wife, that only the promise of imminent death could induce him to marry again.

From Spock he had learned that all of the things he thought he knew about himself might not be exactly true.

He had given up on his father, on his marriage, and at one point even himself. But he had never, intentionally or not, given up on Spock. Even Jim couldn't say that.

The fire crackled, the stars shone, and eventually McCoy slumped and fell asleep, and dreamed for the first time in a long time of green trees and cool streams and rich, red clay, slippery in the rain.
____________

The strangest thing, Spock thought, about being back in his body, was remembering being out of it. As he sat in the sand in the dark night next to McCoy he was remembering just that.

"I'm going to tell you something that I never thought I'd hear myself say. But it seems that I've missed you. And I don't know if I could stand to lose you again."

It was still dark when Spock opened his eyes. The night was chilly, his nose especially cold, but the blanket on his shoulders was heavy and his lap was quite warm. He could not account for the first but the second was McCoy, his head resting on Spock's thigh as he slept, just visible in the dying light of the fire.

Spock sat a while longer and considered his meditation, the things he had seen, memories both his and not. What a strange life he had lived, and equally the Doctor. What a contrary and yet sometimes incredibly kind association they had had. He was still contemplating this when the sky began to lighten and some movement in the sand, barely perceptible in the first dawn light, caught his attention.

The creature was long and sleek, with a pointed nose and fine whiskers. Its fur was a silvery pink in the light of the rising primary and it didn't seem to consider the two still men as a threat, though it kept its distance from the glowing embers of the fire. It sniffed at Spock's bare toes, the hem of his robe, then crawled onto his bent knee, over his crossed legs and explored at length until it found McCoy's ear.

Spock caught McCoy's hand as it came up to scratch at the tickle there, in case he would harm the animal, and at the contact McCoy's eyes shot open, bright and confused. The animal started but did not skitter far; it was much too curious.

"Do not be alarmed, Doctor," Spock said down at him, and nodded toward the animal. "We have a visitor."

McCoy blinked up at him, at Spock's hand on his wrist, before finally turning his head to follow Spock's gaze. That movement, too, sent the creature scurrying away and then swiftly back, digging briefly in the sand in search of something, then frantically sniffing the air, approaching the two men with caution over and over again.

Slowly McCoy lowered his arm, but Spock did not release him, so that eventually Spock's hand lay over McCoy's across his chest.

"Let me guess," McCoy whispered.

"The ch'kariya," Spock confirmed, sounding very pleased even to himself, so that McCoy laughed softly (Spock could feel the shudder and warmth of it beneath his hand) and the ch'kariya jumped.

They watched it scamper about, the sun rising to reveal its fur to be the cornsilk color of the savannah grass, until, to their surprise, it was joined by a second ch'kariya. This one was even more timid than the first who squeaked excitedly at it, as if trying to coax it nearer the two strange creatures it had found, but it kept its distance, and eventually they both scurried off toward the stonier protection of the mountain.

The silence of the morning was then only broken by the occasional birdsong far off, or overhead, and at length Spock sensed a tension in McCoy, as if he was uncertain if he should stay put or sit up, but Spock thought that both of them would prefer the former. He was not dissuaded from this belief by the fact that McCoy would not meet his gaze, still staring out across the horizon.

"Love," his mother had said to him when he'd asked her, "is not always what you expect. You do not always find it where you seek it, or seek it where it may be found."

"Perhaps you really have assimilated, Mother," Spock said wryly.

"I cannot help it," she had said, smiling, "it is true. Sometimes, when one is uncertain, love can be the greatest guilt, the hardest confession, especially for humans. Even Vulcans, I can assure you, do not find it easy to accept, either within themselves or from others."

"Good morning, Doctor," Spock said at last and McCoy finally turned his head to look up at him, blue eyes bright, somewhere between sheepish and panicked.

"Oh hell," McCoy said and sat up. After a moment of straightening himself and his blankets, even though the day was already warming, he mumbled, "Sorry."

"An apology is unnecessary," Spock assured him, and did not wait for McCoy to have anything to say which might preclude his next statement. "I am happy to give you comfort."

McCoy blinked over at him, his hair sticking up on one side. "Are you?" he said, his expression open and curious, forgetting to be amused or annoyed, until he seemed to remember himself and looked away, then rubbed at his eyes and stretched and tried to act as if he didn't care about the answer.

"Of course," Spock said, "just as you have done for me many times."

"Have I?" McCoy asked, dusting sand off his pants legs even though there was sand on everything and the effort was a futile one.

"Yes," Spock said, and resisted the urge to clear his throat to force McCoy to look at him again. He was already certain that he had his full attention.

"Well," McCoy said when he had finally stopped fidgeting, and perhaps Spock's simple candor touched something within him, because when next he spoke he met Spock's gaze, and Spock felt a change in him. "I admit, that's a surprise to me."

"Is it?" Spock asked. "Did you not intend to give comfort?"

"No--I mean," McCoy said, hurrying to correct, scowling slightly. "Yes, of course I did. That's my job and I'm… well I think we've always been friends no matter…" he trailed off quietly for a moment before continuing, "but I didn't think you knew, or were willing to accept…." He rubbed at the back of his neck and finally finished by saying, with some defeat in his voice, "I guess I never thought it made much difference to you what I did, or why I did it, or...." He shrugged gently, more with his hands than his shoulders.

Spock could not argue with this, though perhaps he might once have done so anyway, and they sat quietly for some time in the dusky orange of dawn.

"My attempts at meditation," Spock finally said to keep McCoy from standing and moving away, "have at last been successful. I have been able to recall much of my past, though it is tenuous, like a dream so powerful one is certain, upon waking, that they could never forget, but which fades with every passing moment." Spock paused as McCoy nodded, Spock could see the motion in his periphery, and perhaps McCoy did understand this, but he did not, Spock thought, understand everything.

"Except," Spock said, "for my memories of you."

Beside him McCoy went quite still, only licked his lips in that nervous way of his, and Spock continued.

"The memories that I recall of our shared experiences seem… clearest. I think this is largely due to having you nearby."

"Oh," McCoy said, then a little too eagerly, animated suddenly, "well I--" but Spock pressed on.

"For this reason I feel it may be time to descend the mountain and join the others. That is, if you also feel ready."

McCoy nodded and swallowed loudly, pulling the blanket closer around him. "Of course." His voice was soft, suddenly subdued, then it took on its characteristic nonchalance so easily that Spock nearly believed it. "It's been a nice vacation but I'd enjoy a real bed. Anyway, it makes sense that being around the people you knew before-- I mean, that seeing them would help with your memories." He shifted with agitation. "I don't know why it's the Vulcan prescription for losing your mind is to be sequestered on top of a mountain alone."

"The idea," Spock said, "is to avoid undue influence of new information before the existing can be recalled. And yet in some way I agree with you. I am certainly glad not to have been alone." He paused and McCoy cleared his throat but Spock continued. "Having now recalled more of my history than ever before, I must admit that perhaps I have been unnecessarily… austere at times, particularly as I have chosen to make my home among humans. I had my reasons for it," he paused, had the absurd urge to laugh and repressed it. He did, however, smile. "Reflecting upon them now they do not seem logical."

McCoy shrugged off his blanket, brow furrowed. "I understood your reasons," he said, and when Spock looked pointedly over at him he added, "...eventually. But it is a change to hear you say it. A lot of things have changed, though, haven't they?" He paused but something in Spock's face must have alarmed him because he hurried on. "I don't mean that you're different, you're still Spock, I mean... I don't feel any different toward you, I've always--" he stopped, as if he'd said or implied something he hadn't meant to.

Spock thought it best to relieve McCoy of whatever burden he suffered under. "Respected me?" he asked, voice as gentle and unassuming as possible. "Cared for me? As I have for you?" McCoy looked up at him then quickly away and did not reply. "We may agree," Spock continued, "that rather than a material change in either of us, it has been a matter of understanding at last, of learning to understand. And the last few months in particular have been…"

"Highly educational," McCoy offered with a grin and a soft laugh..

"Yes," Spock said, and stood and held out his hand. McCoy fidgeted, took a deep breath, and reached out.
_____

They flew down in the Warbird even though McCoy insisted that he could hike it this time. Spock said that he did not feel fit for it himself but McCoy doubted that was true.

"I don't like this place," McCoy had said as Spock ran the required diagnostics with the alien controls, looking not at all like someone who had only remembered their own name a few days ago. "It reminds me of--" McCoy began to say but then Spock looked over at him with an expression of such familiar concentration, that aloof, faraway look McCoy had seen a thousand times on the Enterprise, that McCoy didn't have it in him to say what it reminded him of, and instead sat down heavily in the copilot's seat. "Anyway, it smells."

As the engines warmed and the little ship came to life around them, (McCoy doing as he was told now and then to assist), they were otherwise quiet. McCoy once said something about looking forward to a cup of replicated coffee but when Spock did not reply he said nothing else that was not necessary, then the noise of the engines peaked, much louder than an Enterprise shuttle in atmosphere, and there wasn't much to be said or heard anyway. Outside the shuttle dust and sand plumed in the wake of their lift and the viewscreens went momentarily black, fading to rust red until they rose out of it, high over the mountain, circling to gain momentum or for Spock to familiarize himself with the controls, McCoy couldn't be certain, before heading north, already descending for their short flight into the city.

They had spent their last night on the mountain as they had every other, in companionable silences and easy conversation about memory, dreams, and what to have for supper. They had not, as McCoy had briefly hoped following their discussion by the fire, curled up together on one or the other hard beds and made out like teenagers. Respect and care was all well and good, and he was truly grateful now to know that he had both from Spock, but that did not equal a relationship. Not the kind he'd been thinking of anyway. By the time they touched down at the Shi-Khahr airfield, McCoy had nearly convinced himself that he'd take what he could get.

Only field crew were there to greet them when they landed, their flight being so short and unregistered, but news of their arrival traveled quickly, and by the time they arrived in the center of town the crew was waiting for them, along with Spock's family and half of the city, it seemed. The crowd was not really for them. McCoy soon learned that they had landed on a Vulcan holy day, in the midst of a Vulcan harvest festival. McCoy didn't know those even existed. Neither did the weather, as the sky grew overcast for the first time since they'd landed on the planet a week before, and cast a tawny light over what was probably white bunting turned bone-colored, silver bells gone bronze, and made ivory the white robes that surrounded them.

Jim found them first, of course he did, found Spock first anyway, clapped him on the shoulder, reached out and took Spock's hand so easily, pulled him close like a brother, like a lover. Then everyone else caught up, all jostling to say hello to them both in turn so that McCoy was anxious that he might be parted from Spock, but every time he looked around he was there, as well as Uhura and Chekov and Scott, all flushed with relief or happiness or too much sun. Had it really been only a week since he had seen all of these faces? So changed, and himself just the same.

There was no ceremony for one returning from isolation following the fal-tor-pan, but they all gathered at Spock's family home and had a meal, a glorious meal, McCoy thought, Vulcan or not, and lazed into the afternoon.

"You must be glad to be back," Jim said to him, sitting next to him on the divan, glassy-eyed with celebration.

"Back to what?" McCoy said, feeling a little contrary though Jim didn't deserve it. "This isn't really my idea of back to anything. I guess some part of me still thought…" he didn't say it, he didn't have to. If anyone understood missing their home, their ship, it was Jim.

"Yes," Jim agreed, a shadow falling over his face like the sky darkening through the window, "not the homecoming you'd hoped for perhaps."

"No," McCoy said, feeling really guilty now. "No, I misspoke. This may not be my home, but you all are. I am glad to be back."

Kirk, wanting to be pleased, smiled and accepted the answer and went to look for another canapé.

McCoy was just scanning the room to find Spock when someone sat next to him, so near him that he leaned in his seat, hip to hip with the newcomer.

It was Spock.

"How do you feel, Doctor?" Spock asked, close and low and McCoy almost laughed. Such a question from a Vulcan. McCoy wondered where he'd gotten it.

"Right as rain, Mr. Spock," he replied.

Spock did not look satisfied. "You seem… uncertain."

McCoy took a deep breath. Nail on the head, that Spock.

"I'll be all right," McCoy said, trying to sound reassuring. "Nothing a bath and a good night's sleep won't cure."

Spock nodded, looking very serious as if this was the logical answer. How different he seemed in this clean, ordered place, how much neater and more precise, down to even small gestures. McCoy felt disheveled in comparison, though his clothes (hardly worn on the mountain in favor of the cooler robes) were clean and fitted.

"To that end I can be of assistance," Spock said at last. "My father has arranged for lodging. I can have someone show you there now if you would like."

McCoy nodded.

Minutes later, a Vulcan that Spock introduced as some relation appeared and McCoy said his goodbyes to all but Spock who was in private conference with his father. The young Vulcan led him to another hovercar that took them only minutes away, to a tall building that could have been a temple or a skyscraper and was apparently a hotel, and left him at the door of a small but well appointed room. Then the door closed and McCoy stood there with nothing on or with him except the clothes on his back and the empty glass he had absentmindedly brought all the way from Sarek and Amanda's home, and the silence of the room around him.

He showered first, because it was something to do and because he needed to keep busy. It took longer to shave, especially as he was not in a hurry. There were clothes for him, robes of various colors including black, grey, light grey, off-white, white, and one very conspicuous red, but he only redressed in his civilian clothes and ordered a bourbon from the replicator.

His window faced south so that Mt. Seleya rose in a steep peak against the bruised sky. In the reflection of the window his face was superimposed over the craggy summit and he took a sip from his glass. He hadn't had a drink since… well he couldn't remember, and it burned going down. Seleya didn't seem so far from this vantage, they'd been that close to civilization all along. He could still feel the heat of the sun on his face, the grit of sand in his shoes. He rubbed his neck absently. Was there still red dust there or was it his imagination?

They could go back. It would be nothing to get back in the stinking warbird… or borrow a Vulcan ship and… he laughed at himself.

"Isn't that just like you, Leonard McCoy. Always gotta do it the hard way." Because he could simply go to Spock now, it didn't have to be on the mountain. Just lay it out, say it plain. Spock wouldn't mind. Maybe the news would even be welcome… even if the terms were not what he would hope. Just to be together, to stay together, in whatever way Spock was willing. It could be enough.

Out across the rolling dunes lightning streaked across the lowering sky and it began to rain. Well, is that how it was? Even the weather was against him.

"Damn you," he said, and finished the last of his bourbon in one easy swallow. "I'll do as I damned well please."

He rummaged through the robes and other clothing waiting in the closet until he found the equivalent of a poncho and pulled it on. To hell with self respect, he thought, sometimes you just had to take the risk. They belonged together… didn't they? It wasn't just because of the katra transference, or all the time on the mountain. He'd had a Spock-shaped hole in his heart and Spock had fitted right into it, and now he couldn't shake him. Didn't want to. He headed for the door. When he opened it Spock stood there, wet from the rain, hand raised to request entrance.

"Oh thank god," McCoy said in a rush, and pulled Spock to him, mindless of the wet, pulled him so close that the door snicked shut behind him, and held him, cheek pressed again the damp white fabric of Spock's shoulder.

"Was I not expected?" Spock asked, and McCoy only nodded, waited until he trusted himself and stepped back, dried his face with the sleeve of his robe as if it was only the rain he was wiping away.

"Of course you were," McCoy lied, "but I don't know what you were thinking going out in weather like this. Get out of those clothes."

He fetched Spock a fresh robe and slippers and a towel and for himself ordered another bourbon. By the time he finished it Spock had redressed but his hair was still dripping.

"Come here," McCoy said, and took the towel from Spock to help him, draped it over his dark head and massaged as Spock watched him, eyes so calm and warm that McCoy had to take a step back, then forward again when Spock made no move to remove the towel so that McCoy had to, and then smoothed down Spock's hair, though it was a lost cause.

"I don't suppose it's logical," McCoy said, fingers still in Spock's hair, not meeting his gaze because he couldn't yet, "for someone in your condition to get involved-- I mean, romantically--that is--do Vulcans do romance? No, don't answer that." McCoy took a deep breath."I guess what I'm trying to say is… well, when a human has a near-death experience they usually shift priorities, especially people like us."

"Like us?"

"Bachelors."

"I see."

McCoy stepped away at last, just out of arm's reach, far enough that he might only be a doctor asking his patient a question and expecting only an answer and nothing more.

"If someone were to offer you," McCoy said, "that is, to ask you, hypothetically, to start a new relationship, would you accept?"

Spock raised a brow, very like the Spock that McCoy remembered, more than the Spock on the mountain, but they were the same, weren't they?

"It would depend on many factors," Spock said, "but if the chief emphasis is on the requirement of the connection being a new one, then, I think I should say no."

McCoy nodded. "Because it would be a distraction from your recovery."

"To the contrary it might even hasten recovery," Spock said. "No, my hesitation would be due to an existing connection which I would prefer to pursue instead." As he said this Spock took a step toward McCoy.

Well then.

"Is that right?" McCoy asked, and swallowed. Spock only smiled softly, expectantly, so that McCoy felt bold enough to continue. "Spock… if I asked you to, would you kiss me?"

"If I say yes," Spock said, "will you ask me to, or is this still hypothetical?"

McCoy smiled then tried to suppress it, then attempted a glare that felt more like a leer, and took the last step that was left between them. This time when they came together it was not all at once, but by degrees. Fingertips first, McCoy reaching out, a little uncertain of how this worked until Spock responded in kind, barely touching McCoy's raised hand, fingers ghosting softly across his palm and always, always watching McCoy. Then lips, as Spock leaned in for a kiss so gentle that McCoy at first doubted its sincerity, but only for a fraction of a moment as in the next he could feel Spock's breath shuddering out, fingers sliding to lace with McCoy's and McCoy stopped second guessing. Then one or the other or both of them drew closer, pulled the other against them or both at once, McCoy really couldn't tell, wasn't thinking too hard about anything other than the taste of Spock and the smell of him and the low, long sigh he made whenever McCoy kissed his throat as gradually they fitted themselves together as if they always had, and as they never had before.

"I've just remembered," McCoy said when Spock pushed the uniform jacket off of McCoy's shoulders and it fell to the floor and McCoy began rucking up Spock's robe to pull it off over his head.

"Yes, Doctor?" Spock said, breathless in a way that made McCoy's heart beat a little faster.

"The joy of the Arab," McCoy gasped out between Spock kissing his mouth and Spock kissing him anywhere else as they moved together to fall sideways across the bed, their bare chests hot against each other, Spock heavy and solid over him, "what Lawrence said about their restraint... He made nakedness of the mind as sensuous as nakedness of the body." His voice broke on the last word as Spock's hand palmed his bare hip, learning the shape of it, and pressed a thumb into ticklish flesh, eyes dark and amused.

"Are you attempting to draw a parallel, Doctor?" Spock asked, as he bent his head again to kiss McCoy softly, from one cheek to the other. "Between this Arab and a Vulcan?"

"It is tempting," McCoy said, but he was beginning to lose the thread of the conversation. He moved to catch Spock's lips again, so incredibly soft and warm, and Spock let him, encouraged him with that low sound, the press of his hips, his sex, hot, hard and damp against McCoy's. Spock. His Spock. So willing to give and to receive, to touch and be touched. McCoy was in wonder. Perhaps they were still on the mountain and he was dreaming. Perhaps they were still in the ship and Spock was still inside his mind. Perhaps they all died with Genesis and this was some bizarre afterlife.

Scaphoid, lunate... he thought, trying to ground himself in what he knew to be true, something he didn't have to analyze, triquetrum, pisiform--

"I must tell you," Spock said, his voice muffled against the corner McCoy's mouth, real enough to bring McCoy back to the room and the afternoon and their bodies, "that the comparison is ill applied at present, as I currently have a greater interest in body than mind."

McCoy laughed, and Spock kissed him as if he would swallow that laughter whole.

"Doctor McCoy… " Spock said a little while later, when the color was high in his cheeks and his breath short, his eyes black and glassy as if he were intoxicated, "may I call you Leonard?"

McCoy smiled with some satisfaction and said, "I think you'd better."
___

"How do you know it's real?" McCoy asked and Spock could feel the hum of McCoy's voice in his chest, pressed as it was against McCoy's back. They were neither of them clothed except for the bedsheets and had not been for some time, had, in fact, taken their evening meal that way. McCoy had said he suspected Spock would make a respectable nudist.

It had taken McCoy's boldness, his touch, to make Spock remember his own desire. He would not admit this to McCoy for many years, it seeming too innocent at the time, but in that simple moment it had all come flooding back in a rush, his desire for the doctor, for Jim on occasion, for a girl he'd known on Earth, every schoolboy infatuation and masturbatory fantasy, even a particularly vivid memory of that trip to Risa and the taste of McCoy, already known to him. It had burst like a firecracker in his mind, flushed his skin, awakened physical memories of past pleasure that made him ache desperately. And McCoy. McCoy had coaxed it out of him.

They had not yet shared a mind meld but it was not necessary for Spock to understand what McCoy did not say, and they had decided that, given all that they had recently experienced, they would keep their relationship, for now, restricted to physical intimacy. But Spock knew him well enough.

"I presume," Spock said, "you mean how do I know that what I'm feeling is a product of my own person and not a remnant of yours."

McCoy squeezed Spock's hand in his gently. "I-- guess I didn't actually know what I was asking but now that you mention it…" he said. "Is that a possibility? Could my emotions have affected you like that--still be affecting you?"

"Of course, but I do not think this is a product of the katra transference. I have isolated many memories and emotions that have, in one way or another, affected me, and I am able to encapsulate them, to see them as a thing separate from my own self. A souvenir, if you will, Leonard, of my time with you."

"Well, I guess…" McCoy trailed off and Spock could hear the sound of him licking his lips, seemingly at a loss for words, or out of excuses. Then suddenly, as if a new thought had occurred to him he asked, "But how do you differentiate from the old you and the new you?"

"Please elaborate."

"I mean maybe this you, this… now you," McCoy pressed their joined hands against the furry warmth of his chest for emphasis, "with only part of your memories--"

"Most of my memories," Spock corrected.

"See that's another thing," agitated now, McCoy released Spock's hand and rolled to his back so that Spock could see his face by the wan light of sunset through their window. The rain had stopped some time during their lovemaking and what moisture had not been greedily absorbed by the earth was evaporating in shimmering clouds from darkened stone. McCoy continued, "How do you know the percentage if you can't remember the whole?"

"That...is actually a good point," Spock admitted. "However, I believe my statement to be true."

McCoy looked dubious but moved on. "Anyway, this you that's mostly you," this time the press of his hand was again's Spock's chest, "what if he has different opinions on things than the you that's all you."

"You are asking, I believe, how do I know that I loved you prior to the katra transference?"

McCoy swallowed thickly, his eyes a curious blue-green in the yellow light. "Yeah, I guess."

"I do not," Spock said softly, and quickly added, "not at this time. Conversely, how do you know that you loved me?"

"I remember it," McCoy said, and then with an almost sad laugh, "I mean… it was longstanding."

"Fascinating," Spock whispered, watching his lover watch the ceiling, remembering things Spock did not, may never. He bent for another kiss, soft and warm but without the urgency, desire but not desperation. "However," he said when McCoy opened his eyes to look at him again, "more germane to the point is the question: does it matter? Is there not a point in any relationship before which a person did not love another, and after which they do? Was there a moment for you?"

"Well, actually yes," McCoy said, "and I remember it well because it made me pretty damned angry at the time."

"And did you question your mental state?"

"I did, in fact."

"I do not," Spock said, and he meant it. Days before he could not have said so. "The self that I am is the self that I shall be, or at least the basis of him, as we all are at any given instance before the next adds a new experience which may inform or change our person… or not." He paused, looking down into McCoy's face with something in his mind, not a memory but the feeling of one, some former part of him was amazed by the openness, the trust he saw in those blue eyes and messy hair, the lazy sprawl of the body against him, touching him. That they could be like this was, according to a history he was still learning, apparently extraordinary. "In this instant," he said, "I love you, Leonard McCoy."

McCoy didn't speak only swallowed and blinked wetly.

"I also happen to remember," Spock added to spare McCoy feeling the need to reply, "that prior to my death I found you occasionally infuriating. This also has not changed."

McCoy smiled the smile that Spock had hoped for, smirked in the way that Spock had not forgotten, and pulled him down for a kiss deep enough and long enough that Spock had nearly forgotten their conversation until McCoy said, "Somehow 'you annoy me' is easier to hear than 'I love you.'"

Spock took an exasperated breath and kissed McCoy's brow. "You are strange even for a human, Leonard."