Lost and Found

Kirk stepped toward the darkened, quiet, house that bordered the desert, feeling apprehensive at what he might find.  He was not invited, likely unwelcome, and had not met this man as yet in this time.  He would, much later, respect and admire him greatly, and grow to care for him through his son and…wife.  He swallowed.  

But as it was, in this time, Kirk would be a stranger intruding on a man who had just lost that wife a week back and only a few years before he was to meet him onboard the Enterprise, on the journey to Babel.  Somehow, if he did not intercede, Sarek would follow Amanda in death soon after, though no details were ever released as to why due to the Vulcan Privacy Code.

Their first attempt to save Ambassador Sarek from assassination, at the first embassy function he had brought Amanda to, had been successful, but they found later that Sarek and Amanda had parted immediately after, so they never married and Spock was not born.  They had been successful then in reconnecting the couple, leaving them to their passionate lovemaking in the beach house.

 Kirk grinned at that, but as quickly sobered.  The Klingons had sent another party in before the ones they had caught, as insurance, to eliminate Sarek’s influence at the Babel conference, as his vote had carried enough weight to bring about the admission of the Coridan system into the Federation.  This time, the Klingons had been successful enough it seemed, and Kirk grimaced at what they had seen played out on the Guardian…

Sarek and Amanda had been walking through Golden Gate Park on a lovely spring day, Amanda smiling gloriously, and Sarek looking as pleased as when he had, would have, Kirk corrected, teased his wife in sickbay of the Enterprise.  They strode along the path, oblivious of the stares, smiles and pointing of passers-by.

A large man had come down the path from the opposite direction and Kirk, as well as Sarek, had eyed him suspiciously.  He was hooded, with a lumbering walk of the injured or perhaps elderly.  Kirk saw Sarek warm to his plight and give him the benefit of the doubt, continuing with his wife with only a brief, concerned glance toward the man as he came close.   As the man neared, he paused and collapsed and Kirk felt dread.  Immediately, Sarek and Amanda stepped toward him to render aid, but almost immediately after, Amanda looked troubled at their vulnerability, and had started to try to pull Sarek away.

The ambassador, now stooped beside the man, turned at his wife’s reticence, looking confused.  She saw the man reach into his coat and she tackled Sarek as several shots rang out.  The authorities were there almost immediately, but too late as the mystery man had disappeared by transporter beam.  Both the ambassador and his wife lay bloodied beside an old-fashioned pistol that would have been untraceable by the old-style tracing system.  The serial number was filed down and it was likely stolen from another time, anyway.

Sarek had been hit in the cheek, shoulder, and thigh, but Amanda had taken the one true bullet through the heart and died in his arms as he held her, caressing her and calling for medical help.  The memory of the expression of terror and grief in Sarek’s eyes that only the Guardian could catch still haunted Kirk 

He felt he betrayed Sarek now.  He had first thought that they’d be allowed to go back to save both Sarek and Amanda, but Starfleet had argued that, since Sarek had died later possibly from something other than his wounds, saving Amanda may not save Sarek anyway.  They felt they needed to act more directly to protect their interests in a strengthened Federation by possibly sacrificing Sarek’s wife to the assassin.

He was aware that in order for the plan to work, he might have to make Sarek believe that they would also save Amanda.  He couldn’t imagine so great a lie to a man who loved his wife so dearly, and how Sarek might look at him afterwards, but he couldn’t help but think there might be another way altogether.

He was known for playing the big bets and winning, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Sarek might die on the journey to Babel if Amanda was not there to intervene and bring father and son back together.  Then there was the look on Spock’s face when he heard that they meant to sacrifice his mother, his father’s wife of forty years, to better their chances at limiting the Klingon’s damage to the Federation.

---ooOoo---

One week had passed since the shooting when Kirk approached through the garden and felt shock at Sarek’s appearance -- he looked drained of life, disheveled, the right side of his face still swollen and blotched around the bandages, his left arm in a sling, and the shoulder above heavily bandaged and obviously stiff.  He moved with a heavy limp from the bullet that had entered his right thigh, though, ironically, his hair was still jet black, with no trace of gray whatsoever.  Kirk wondered if the stress of Sarek’s heart problem had started to turn it prematurely gray.

Sarek looked at him with a vacant yet somewhat irritated expression.  He looked not the least bit concerned that a strange man approached him at close to 3 am in what was supposed to be a secured area of the gardens.  He looked as Kirk had never seen him – defeated.

“Are you from the academy?” Sarek asked tepidly 

“No,” Kirk answered.  He stood back to lesson the threat he likely presented, but it didn’t seem that Sarek even cared.

“The embassy? 

“No,” Kirk answered again, and sat down on one of the many benches.  He realized that Sarek might think that Kirk could, in all likelihood, be sent to finish the failed assassination and he wanted to at least put him at ease 

Instead, Sarek looked marginally pleased.  “At least someone seems to have taken notice of my wishes then," he said, but weariness so infused his tone that any humor was drained.  Sarek looked him in the eye, still with no concern apparent.  “You must be cold out here.  My wife prefers…” and here his eyes looked immeasurably pained, “My wife preferred to be inside in…this season.”

“If you like,” Kirk said.  He was confused by Sarek not asking directly who he was, especially after the attempted assassination.  He followed him inside.  It was warmer, and the soft lighting showed the house to be beautifully grand and decorated, though bereft of anything personal, as if Sarek had just arrived home.  Kirk noticed two pill bottles on the counter – both still sealed, though he had been discharged from the hospital several days earlier. 

Kirk needed to push past Sarek’s fog that must have been caused by his grief.  “Are you not concerned that I eluded your security?”  Kirk asked.

Sarek almost looked amused.  “I turned off the security system days ago.”

Kirk’s eyebrows rose at that, and also at the fact that Sarek had not been exact in his determination as to how long it had been.  “Yet you’re not answering the com or your door.”  Kirk had rung each numerous times, hoping to approach Sarek in a less threatening way after all he’d gone through.

“Vulcans do not enter unless invited.”

Kirk decided to press.  “Are you not concerned about…”  assassins, he thought,  “…intruders?”
 

“No,” Sarek said calmly.  “Would you like some tea?”

Perhaps Sarek had recognized him, or at least thought he should, and was playing the polite host as he did most of his life – old habits.  “You do not know me?”  Kirk asked to be sure Sarek had not run a check on his son and seen that Kirk was his captain 

Sarek turned and looked closely at him.  “I do not know you.”  There was no doubt as to the certainty in his tone.  He placed two mugs down.  “Do you prefer honey? 

Kirk shook his head then watched for a reaction.  “I could be an intruder.”

“By definition, you most definitely are,” Sarek said.  "Since you weren’t aware that the security system was off, you must have used some avenue to attempt to elude it.”

Kirk stared at Sarek bewildered.  He would have to be blunt to counter Sarek’s obtuseness or, perhaps, purposeful ambiguity.  “I could be an assassin.”

Sarek stopped at that and seemed to consider it, then eased open a drawer full of kitchen implements.  Kirk grew concerned that Sarek would now arm himself and order him out of the house before Kirk had a chance to talk to him.  He almost jumped back when Sarek pulled out a butcher knife and set it between them.  He swiveled the handle toward Kirk.  “Will this do?”

Sarek picked up his tea as he watched Kirk’s play of emotions, then stepped over to look out at the gardens, seeming to purposefully turn his back on Kirk, as if waiting to be stabbed.

Kirk picked up the knife and approached Sarek, but he still did not react, though with his Vulcan hearing he would know he had picked up the knife and was approaching him.  He stepped up next to him and held the handle out to him.

Sarek turned and looked nonplussed as he took the knife back.  “You are not a terribly efficient assassin then, at least less so than last week’s.”   Sarek’s voice had so quieted and tightened at that last that Kirk had to strain to hear.  He thought he saw Sarek’s eyes glisten as he quickly turned away and slipped the knife back in the drawer.  He slammed the drawer, causing Kirk to jump.

Sarek seemed to come out of his fog a bit, “Forgive me.  I am not myself.”  He stood at the counter, looking at the bare surface, holding the tea he seemed to have forgotten about.

Kirk stepped up to the counter.  He noticed now that the pill bottles contained a strong pain killer and a strong sedative and that Sarek had not touched them, though he seemed to be in considerable pain physically and emotionally.  He noticed how gaunt Sarek had become in only the week since the attempted assassination.  From his appearance Kirk doubted he had slept at all.

Sarek put his tea down still full.  He looked up at Kirk. “If you are not here to kill me, then why are you here?”  He sounded frustrated and didn’t care to hide it.   Kirk realized that perhaps he had dashed Sarek’s last hopes of joining his wife and ending his pain.  Now he was just irritated with what he likely perceived as another meddler.

“Ambassador…”

“I do not hold that title at this time,” he said stiffly.  At Kirk’s look of confusion, Sarek added, “I am on a forced leave of absence.  They do not trust my judgment presently and…need to be assured that I will survive.”

Kirk understood, merely from Sarek’s appearance and behavior, that first part.  “Survive, sir?”  Perhaps he would unearth the mystery cause of death Kirk was trying to prevent.

“Most bondmates do not survive the other’s death,” Sarek said.

Kirk had learned that two Vulcans bonded often died within hours of each other due to their telepathic connection.  Obviously Sarek had survived the telepathic severance, but still was starting to look deathly ill.  He had to wonder.

“Sir, have you eaten since…” He saw Sarek’s pain again as he likely finished the sentence in his head.

Sarek looked angry now.  “That is none of your concern,” he said coldly.

Kirk felt relieved to get past his foggy apathy and decided to push further to find the man he remembered.  “You have not touched your medication either.”

“You are treading on dangerous ground.”  Sarek’s voice was low and threatening.

Kirk swallowed and felt his body tighten with anxiety, but he had to proceed.  “I bet that full bottle of sedatives would do the trick less painfully."  He had barely finished the sentence when Kirk felt himself thrust up against the wall with such force it took his breath away.  He felt his leg dangling.

Sarek eyes were steely with fury as his grip on Kirk’s tunic tightened.  Nose to nose, Kirk felt his hot breath and felt the man shaking with rage.  “You would do well not to call me a coward," he hissed in Kirk’s face. 

Kirk’s heart pounded.  He had never seen Sarek this angry.  Even when he had bounced the Tellarite off the bulkhead, he had only looked vaguely pleased with himself.

Sarek seemed to regain his control as the shaking lessoned.  Kirk felt himself lowered, but as he reached the ground, he felt Sarek start to collapse as the flow of adrenaline decreased and the strain on his shoulder and thigh injuries likely started to rip though his senses.  As Kirk found his footing, he tried to help Sarek down, but Sarek fought him and dropped in a pained heap.  “Leave me alone,” he rasped.

To Kirk’s surprise, Sarek stayed on the ground.  Kirk saw green spotting through the bandages and tunic on his shoulder.  Sarek looked even paler and made no move to get up or even to straighten his body on the floor.  “You’ve re-injured yourself, sir.”

“Why won’t you leave me alone?  Why do you keep coming?”  Sarek sounded strained and confused.  Kirk realized that there were likely many concerned friends and relatives that had been hounding him to keep him alive.  Kirk had been the end of a long train, and Sarek was weary of fighting.  He had to wonder if the most important person had come.  That would be his next inroad through Sarek’s stubbornness.  If Sarek got through this, there might be a way to return both his son and his wife to him.  Kirk’s mind had already started creating a plan.  The odds were long, but he’d beaten long odds before. 

Sarek passed out and Kirk ran for the medikit.  He pulled Sarek flat on the floor and stripped off his tunic.  He cut away the bandages, applied the pressure swabs to stop the bleeding, and checked his vital signs, which were shockingly low for a Vulcan.  After the bleeding was controlled, he carried him up to what appeared to be the master bedroom and noticed several holos of Amanda obviously watching her husband, the holographer, with adoration.

There was even a few holos of them together in the snow.  They looked secretly taken by another -- holding each other, garbed in very Terran jeans and sweaters and looking very happy.  He was surprised Sarek allowed these holos to be displayed and guessed that few visited the master bedroom, or they were placed more privately when they had visitors.  Kirk paused at whether to leave them or hide them, but likely noticing them gone would be just as upsetting.

Kirk tied Sarek’s arm with the bad shoulder loosely to his waist so he couldn’t re-injure it again and to keep Sarek more manageable, he grinned.  Then he went back to the kitchen for the pills, read the amount prescribed, crushed the recommended dosage of the pain killer and sedative and mixed it in with a heated vegetable broth from the replicator – about the only thing Sarek could probably handle after likely not eating for so many days. 

He found Sarek awakening and staring at his wrist tied to his waist.  He didn’t look angry about it, just confused and possibly a little embarrassed.  Kirk pulled up a chair and sat down with the mug of broth next to Sarek.

Kirk decided simply to ask first.  “Would you drink this, please?”

“What does it contain?”  Sarek ask noncommittally, seeming more himself for the first time since Kirk had arrived.

“Just vegetable broth,” he said.

Sarek looked him in the eye.  “You’re not a very good liar,” he said, but he held his hand out and Kirk handed him the mug.  “But I doubt you would put a bottle of pills in it if you thought I was trying to commit suicide anyway.”

“Somehow I didn’t think you would mind if I did.”

“I was not trying to kill myself,” Sarek said, resignedly.

He waited for Sarek to finish the broth, then said bluntly, “But you will have succeeded…”

Sarek frowned and looked astonished. “You did poison me?”

Kirk realized how what he’d said sounded, “No, sir, I could never do that.  But you would have ended your life, had I not intervened, whether you call it killing yourself or not allowing yourself to survive.”

“Would have, could have, should have.”  Sarek sounded regretful.  “Unfortunately, they are not fact – for you or for myself.  I could have kept my bodyguards nearer.  I should have.  But I did not, and now my wife is dead.  But I will never really know, will I?  Would I have killed myself had you not stopped by?  Again, we shall never know. 

“Sir, your vital signs are significantly low.  They would not have released you from the hospital like that.  I can only surmise you have not eaten or slept, or even rested.  You have been straining an injured and exhausted system unrelentingly.”

Sarek stared at him.  “Who sent you?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“You have no authority over me,” Sarek said pointedly.

Kirk smiled.  “Would you listen if I did?”  He did not try to hide his sarcasm.

“What difference does it really make to you if I live?”  Sarek sounded annoyed, but also curious.

“It is important to many.  It will affect more than you know.”

Sarek only stared at him.  “You want something of me, yet you are not candid.  Why should I listen?  The only person who would have suffered at my death has preceded me.”

Kirk felt stunned at that.  He knew many who cared for Sarek, a son who had loved him even in their estrangement.  That he could excise their feelings…  Then he realized it was his grief talking.  Sarek could not see beyond it.

“But it is irrelevant, since I would not have killed myself.”  Sarek looked Kirk in the eye.  “You can no more argue that than I can argue your assertion that I would have.  We have a draw, I believe.  You can leave my house now.”

Kirk knew that if he left now, Sarek would be at least as motivated to continue as he had.  He may even feel vindicated, if not motivated, to accelerate the process.

“Was I not clear?”  Sarek’s voice grew intolerant.

“Sir, I have not been candid because it would be too dangerous for everyone.”

“Now you speak in riddles.  Leave my house before I remove you.”  His voice was low and threatening.  Kirk knew Sarek could remove him easily enough.  And that Kirk could simply come back.  But Sarek would likely re-injure himself and his body was likely significantly weaker having to repair itself again.  He needed Sarek on his side.

Sarek started to get up.

“Wait, I can be more candid.”

“Then do so, before you find yourself tumbling into the desert.”  Sarek raised his eyebrows in expectation.

“You will die, not would have…”  Kirk stared at Sarek, knowing he would ascertain the difference immediately.

Sarek looked shocked at the seeming prophecy, then eyed him warily, “You are telling me my future?  Don’t you need some sort of prop to be an official psychic?”  The sarcasm was laced with anger.  So, he imagined Kirk a charlatan now 

“It is not a matter of reading, but of seeing first-hand.”

Sarek stared at him blankly, then he looked uncomfortable.  “A time traveler then.  Well, at least your creativity is refreshing.”

“Where is your son, Sarek?”  Kirk asked quietly.

Sarek did not meet his eyes.  “Somewhere out in space, most likely.”  His voice sounded cool, but it was not steady.

“He did not come to console you?”  Kirk hurt for Sarek, but he had to get through to him.

“Are you here to torture me?”  His voice sounded small.  “Have I not endured enough for your taste?”

“Far too much, Sarek.  I want to bring you back your son.  And your wife.”

Sarek turned toward him with hurt, anger and even a bit of hope.  “There is no better pawn than one who dearly wants to believe.”

“In two years time, you will be on the Enterprise where your son is the first officer and science officer.  You will vote on the admission of the Coridan system to the Federation, a controversial issue.  Your vote carried others.  In my time, your wife came with you and you suffered a heart attack…”

Sarek’s eyebrow rose at this.

Kirk continued, “…due to a genetic defect in a valve.  You can check it out, if you’d like – the defect at least.  I would rather you forget what I said and let the stream of happenings fall back into place.  There are…important benefits you will not realize if you don’t.”

Sarek’s eyebrow rose at that.  “Interesting.”

“You have an operation with a blood transfusion from your son.  In order to generate enough blood, a process being tested on Rigillians…”

Sarek’s head jerked up.  “That’s highly classified.  The studies won’t be complete for…”

Kirk smiled.

The light seemed to click on in Sarek’s dark eyes.  “Someone went back in time to kill me, to affect the Coridan admission,” Sarek surmised, "and killed Amanda instead.”

Kirk nodded.

Sarek looked uncomfortable.  “They didn’t allow you to go back to keep the assassination attempt from happening…”

Kirk blinked at that.  He had not thought that Sarek would realize that queer inconsistency so quickly.  He struggled to come up with an alternate explanation.

“If they believe that Amanda’s death did not cause mine, because this time I survived…they would focus on another cause of my death.”  Sarek caught Kirk’s eye.

Kirk did not meet his.  “I’m not sure.”  He had started to realize he had likely said too much.

“Yes, you are,” Sarek said.  “They will not attempt to save my wife if they can save me, will they?”  Sarek looked saddened, querulous and angry.

Kirk had been running the scenarios through his head and didn’t like the possibilities.  If Sarek survived, then the direct connection between Amanda's death and his will be disputed.  There had to be another way.

“But if they have sound evidence to prove a direct connection, they will have to save her, too,” Sarek said.

“We can find a way to show that you would have died,” Kirk said.  He realized that he had used the ‘would have’ that Sarek had so recently lectured him on.  Just because they say “would have”, doesn’t mean it would be at all convincing, as convincing as his death at least.  But there had to be a way, he just need time to think it through.  Together they could figure a way.

Kirk saw the mug Sarek had been balancing starting to tip and caught it, then saw Sarek’s eyes slip closed.  He had momentarily forgotten that he had laced the broth and smiled.  His face look relaxed and he breathed deeply in sleep.

He picked up and draped a blanket over him and pulled it up close to his face and imagined that his wife must have done this many times.  He could not help but glance back at her smiling face in the holo and decided that he would do whatever it took to save Amanda for Sarek, and for her son.  He could not leave Sarek to this bare existence.

---ooOoo---

 

Kirk awakened on the couch in the living room not even remembering laying down there.  He sat up with a sense of dread he could not dispel.  It was entirely too quiet this late in the morning, and he’d not heard Sarek at all and doubted the sedative and pain killer would have kept him asleep this long.

He pulled himself up and immediately noticed a note on the table beside him.  His heart started to pound.  He had told Sarek much more than he had wanted, or perhaps should have.  What if Sarek had not actually believed him?  Or had decided on his own assurances?  Kirk jumped from the couch with a sick knot in his stomach and ran into the kitchen and saw the two pill bottles, empty.

“Nooo!” he yelled.  “Sarek!” he screamed as he bounded for the master bedroom.  He stopped short as he saw Sarek’s arm, that had been tied, freed and draped off the bed.  Kirk ran to him.

He pulled Sarek up but his head lolled and his face was paler than it could have been alive.  He felt no pulse on his too-cool skin.  He thrust his ear to Sarek’s side, but there was no heartbeat any longer.  Kirk felt as if his insides had been clawed out of him and sucked a deep, ragged breath as his eyes burned.

Why had he given Sarek so much information?  He had known he loved his wife.  Why hadn’t Kirk considered that Sarek might throw away his own life in the hope of his wife living again?  He remembered something that Amanda had said just before Sarek’s heart operation, that Sarek had said that he thought Amanda could live with his death, but that he would not, could not, survive her’s.  She had worried that he was entirely too dependant on her love.  She was proved correct.

Kirk had thought that sentimental and foolish of Sarek to say because it sounded as if he thought it romantic.  Now, Kirk realized that Sarek had meant it, that he would be adrift without Amanda, and lost without some lifeline to pull him back.  His son had been absent, leaving him nothing to hold on to.

He realized he held the crumpled note in his hand, and finally blinked the blur from his eyes to read it 

James,

I am sorry to waste your efforts at saving me, but I must join my wife.  I cannot live without her.  You must realize this was the logical thing to do.

Live long and prosper,

Sarek

Ironically, Kirk realized that Sarek had accepted Kirk’s words as fact, indeed, and had thought ahead more clearly and objectively than he had.  Kirk could never have let Sarek commit suicide, but by committing what he saw as such an offense, Sarek had possibly saved himself, his wife, and his relationship with his son by forcing the Federation’s hand into letting Kirk save both Sarek and Amanda and setting history’s course back as it had been.

Only Kirk would know what Sarek had done in this timeline that would never come to pass, if he can save both Sarek and his wife from the assassin.  Sarek would not have actually committed the act of suicide, as he was actually saving his life and his wife’s, and, likely, the relationship with his son.  It, therefore, was the logical thing to do.  He smiled though his eyes still held unshed tears.

He could not help feel the crushing weight of what this man had endured, and the courage Sarek had to take that risk to save all that he knew.  Who knows if he would ever experience what his counterpart would, or if they are truly one and the same?  He would never know, but Kirk would, and he felt blessed and damned by that knowledge.  He laid his hand on Sarek’s shoulder, which already felt cooler than it should, then brushed the side of his face, cool now in death.  Hopefully, Sarek would be transmuted to another life in another time he would have helped to create.

---ooOoo---

Sarek and Amanda walked through Golden Gate Park on a lovely spring day.  Amanda smiled gloriously; Sarek looked as pleased, oblivious of the stares, smiles and pointing of passers-by.  The breezes were light and warm.  Sarek had set aside the full day to spend with his wife as they were headed back to Vulcan the next day.  They would do whatever his wife decided after their walk through the park, but he had an idea of what that might be and repressed the urge to smile at spending the afternoon in bed together before they set out to their favorite restaurant for dinner. 

A large man had come down the path from the opposite direction and Sarek eyed him suspiciously, though he realized this “nagging intuition” had no logical basis.  The man was hooded, with a lumbering walk of the injured or perhaps elderly.  Sarek sympathized and decided that he was just a more unusual sight than most, The same could be said of himself.  He stopped watching the man, as he hoped others would do to him, then continued with his wife.

A colorful turbo-line skater edged over the hill in graceful, sweeping movements that Sarek had thought should be less so with her buxomness – a beautiful, black woman who barely seemed to notice her approach toward the large, lumbering man.  A jogger came striding up from behind them.  As they stepped to the right, he smiled and nodded thanks and Sarek stared after the sandy-haired man as if he’d seen him somewhere.  It was strange that, though the park had seemed rather empty, the five of them appeared to intersect at precisely the right time. A statistical anomaly, but not illogical on its own. 

As the lumbering man neared, he paused and collapsed, but the turbo-line skater seemed almost to predict the fall and swept in with graceful movements and caught him.  The jogger ran to him and seemed to hold him tight – “Uncle Jesse” he yelled at the man, "what are you doing here?”  Sarek and Amanda had stepped toward him to render aid, but the jogger with warm hazel eyes cut Sarek off and waved him away, “We’ve got him,” he said.  “My cousin and I always find him here, no worries.”

Sarek stared at him, seeing something in his eyes that seemed so familiar.  “Do I know you, sir?”  A flash of this man’s face over him, a feeling of warmth shared between them, fingers touching his face as he, himself, lay dead?  Surely not.  Sarek shook his head.  That was completely illogical.

Kirk swallowed at Sarek’s look of confusion and struggling rush of slight expressions.  He needed to get rid of Sarek and Amanda before the sedative Uhura injected into the Klingon wore off.  But he had seen it in Sarek’s eyes, he was feeling “the remnants,” the bleed over from the other timeline – Kirk would look familiar, the sense of déjà vu of things left unsaid and undone in the other timeline, flashes of memory creeping back.

Any other time, Kirk would have helped Sarek adjust, even explained what had happened, enough, at least, not to cause him too much shock and trauma often associated with experiencing multiple timelines.  Even now, Kirk heard a grunt from the Klingon that had been ready to assassinate Sarek and might still accidentally kill his wife.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw him shift and Uhura trying to hold him.  All could be lost.

“It’s a family matter, please.”  Kirk had been very careful with his words to get through to this particular man.  Because of the importance of family privacy on Vulcan, Sarek bowed and wished them well.

 Amanda came up looking a bit concerned.  “My husband, you promised me the whole day to do as I choose with you.”

 “And you shall have it,” he said, now all but wrapped up in her eyes as he turned briefly to nod at Kirk, already seeming to forget the previous confusing flashes with his wife seducing him into a day of her delights.

Kirk waved and chuckled as he turned his attentions to the Klingon, who Uhura held in what appeared to be a hug but Kirk realized was a headlock.  The Klingon tried to grab her but couldn’t reach because of the odd angle.

 “Let’s go home,” he said to Uhura’s beaming smile as they both turned to see Sarek and Amanda disappearing over the gentle hill.

---ooOoo---

One Year After the Journey to Babel

 
Kirk had thought all was lost only weeks after their successful timeline repair when Sarek was wheeled in with bizarrely-similar injuries to the previous timeline, as if fate had owed Sarek and repeated the injuries.  He suffered from some sort of plasma bullet wound to the left shoulder, the right cheek, and his right thigh.  Luckily, however, Amanda’s injury was not repeated as she ran alongside him looking worried.

 The circumstances reminded Kirk too glaringly of that ending.  It also seemed to jog afresh Sarek’s strange feelings of déjà vu and memory flashes.  Sarek lay in the sickbay, and Kirk noticed the twinges of confusion whenever Sarek looked at him, but his wife so often hovered around him that the two of them were never left alone when Kirk stopped by.

 One quiet night, when Amanda had gone to bed after Sarek had fallen asleep in sickbay, Kirk stopped in, walked over, and stood looking at the face close up that he so clearly remembered dying.

 It all seemed so strange – to remember him dying, and to grieve his death that he felt somewhat responsible for.  He couldn’t even think of what other choice he would have had at the time, of what Sarek might have done other than commit suicide, in hindsight.  Perhaps that was why Kirk had not seen the answer in front of him – denial that Sarek might have to die for them to win in the end.  He would never forget touching Sarek’s face gently and it feeling cold.  He had to keep reminding himself that that never happened now – that the timeline had been repaired.

He could not help himself as he sat in precisely the same position as he had, and stared down at the same man, but with hair going gray now among the waves of jet-black.  He reached his fingers to that face and drew them down from temple to cheek as he had before, and smiled at the warmth.

Sarek’s eyes opened and he stared at the young captain, a look of confusion now clear on his face.  "You did that before,” Sarek said quietly.

Kirk looked shocked that he could remember what happened when he’d been dead, and answered truthfully, "Yes and no.”

“When was that?  Where was that?”  Sarek looked lost as he seemed to grasp at the wisps of memories that made no sense.

“Another time,” he said.  “I had to fix some sabotage to a timeline.”

Sarek stared at the captain, “I remember Amanda’s garden, some bottles…of pills.  I hurt you.”  He stared as if he knew much more, and needed confirmation.

Kirk look pained at that.  He had hoped the ambassador would be spared the worst of the memories, but it seemed that those with the most impact were the clearest.  Kirk felt his eyes glisten at the memory that was so clear for him.

Sarek lifted his hand toward Kirk’s face silently asking for a meld.  He wanted to eliminate that pain for Kirk, but in so doing, those same memories would be fresh for Sarek, and Kirk knew he would suffer much more.

“No, please, sir.  Let it be.”  Kirk saw by Sarek’s sadness at leaving Kirk to suffer but Kirk could not let Sarek live through that misery again, if only second hand.

“Did I not hurt you, then?” Sarek asked, trepidation in his voice.

Kirk smiled ruefully.  “It was nothing compared to your own pain.”  He felt his throat constrict as the vision of Sarek dying came unbidden.  He could never tell Sarek what seeing him die felt like.  It would live with him always, but it had been necessary.  It had been logical. 

He could only hope that this man and the one who had sacrificed himself to save him were one and the same.  That he had found his deliverance in himself, and had saved his wife as he’d hoped.  That it was karma in its truest sense.

The End