Title: When I Sleep Author: Istannor Series: TOS Part: 1/1 Rating: [PG 13] Codes: K/S Summary: McCoy gives a parting message to Spock. This is a challenge tale, and not true Istannor Canon. This is in response to Jungle Kitty's challenge to write a last words story. Paramount owns 'em I just loans 'em out from the library,but I wrote the damn story mesself. Challenge Story: When I Sleep The Vulcan sat quietly at his Com as he reread the message again. It was already etched into his mind's eye but the words read again and again formed a rhythm that comforted him at the same time that he grieved. His thoughts were full of turmoil and an overwhelming sense of ... abandonment. Alone, I am finally alone. All things must come to an end. The notice flashed in front of his eyes again. My Dearest Uncle Spock, I am so sorry to bring you this news. My father passed away quietly in his sleep last night. I don't know if he ever told you but his request was that he be suspended at the last possible moment, so that was done according to his wish. The memorial service will be in a week on Earth at our family home in Georgia. I would so love for you to attend if you can. You know how much Daddy cared for you. My grandson James, the youngest, is eager to speak with you about his great grandfather and your travels together with his namesake. He's seventeen now. Peter, Samuel and George Kirk will all be there with their families. Please come, for us all. You know that we love you. And now you are the head of our own peculiar clan. Oh and by the way Dad asked that I send you this message tape from him. He never told me what was in it but I know it was important. He always reminded me about it. Hope to see you so we can remember together. With Much Love, Joanna Spock sat and slowly closed his eyes to gather his thoughts. He fell into the first level of meditation, then the second beckoned him. He opened his eyes four hours later finally ready to read the tape. He did not try to deny the fine tremor of his hand as he inserted the tape into the reader. The face of a much younger Leonard McCoy came on the viewer. The same face he had seen at Jim's funeral, when he had been shattered beyond healing. The tape began. "Hey Spock, you pointy eared elf, if you are seeing this then I guess I am dead. I don't feel any different. For once I don't feel mad or angry. I am happy Spock, happy beyond my wildest expectations. I am not gonna let you ever see this until I am sure I have croaked and I am in cryo. You need to know this but forgive me for holding it back for so long. I didn't think that you would wait if I told you too soon. I didn't think you could wait." "I don't need to say that you are my friend and I love you dearly. If you don't know that by now then you are just plain stupid. Damn I guess I said it anyway didn't I . I do want to tell you that the years that I spent with you and Jim were the best years of my life. I was never more alive. You two are the best two people that I have ever met or ever heard of, bar none. There, that's out of the way." "Okay, Leonard, get your mind organized here." The doctor visibly took a deep breath and then continued. "Spock I spent two days interviewing the survivors of the Nexus. You know those El Aurians that we rescued off the ship that had been in the Nexus. I talked the longest with a women named Guinan. Sit down and grab your ears my friend." "Jim is alive, in the Nexus. As alive as you and me. Guinan not only met him, but talked with him at length. It sounded like our Jimboy alright, so I had her make up a composite picture to verify it. That's where things started to get sorta strange. I attached the picture at the end of the file. Everything else checked out except that. I don't want to raise your hopes up too high Spock, but listen to this story." "Guinan says that there is an area in Nexus where reality is solid, fixed, immutable. She saw it and stayed there for awhile. In this area is a man, who is building a star ship from the fragments of all the ships that have been sucked into the Nexus. Supposedly people have come there to live, tired of the flux of nexus and wanting only reality. She says everyone calls the man, Jim. No I am not making this up. I would never do that to you." "Nexus saved him and healed him from the vacuum of space. Nexus made him as healthy as it could and took him to his optimum biological age, because it did not understand aging. There is no aging in Nexus, Spock; there is no disease in Nexus; there is no death in Nexus. He is alive." "Guinan spent a great deal of time with him. She said she asked him why he wanted to leave paradise so badly. Spock, his answer was, that he had to correct an error in judgement that he had made on the first go around. She asked him what that error was. She said that the words, the way he said it broke her heart. He told her, "I refused to be loved by the one I was always destined for. I sacrificed my soul for my duty, because I did not feel worthy of that type of love. This is not my paradise, this is my own personal hell. No matter what I do here I can't have what I want. No matter who I create here, I will be alone for eternity if I stay. Worse yet, he is alone now and I never wanted that for him, never. I will go home. I will be loved. I will have my T'hy'la, if he will still have me." McCoy was crying as he finished. "The reason I didn't tell you this Spock is that Guinan said that when she was pulled from the Nexus one of the last things she saw was the vision of a ship, such as she had never seen before. A beautiful silver ship flying through the stuff of Nexus towards space. She could see the name written across the hull. It was called the Odysseus. It had not happened Spock. It was what was to be. If I had told you this you would have probably left for Nexus, and ruined it all by getting yourself killed trying to get in. You are a stubborn as he is." "He loves you Spock, more than life, more than paradise. He was just too overwhelmed by carrying the Federation on his back to let himself be in love with you. Now he is free to do what he wanted to do all along. I wish you both unimaginable joy. Think of me, and wake me up so I can see you both one last time before I sleep. Bye, my friend, for now." The file had a second part, a much older McCoy was now visible through the tears that ran freely down the Vulcan's face. He held himself tightly, afraid to move, in case he started to fall apart, into tiny little pieces. He held the picture that McCoy had attached to the file. It showed the face of his beloved, smiling with startling green eyes, and long brown lashes, looking out from a face that was different than the one he had come to love, to adore. Different from the older man he had last seen but somehow the same, as if he was looking at Jim's brother, younger by many years. He clutched it to him as if he could make it part of his own body, while he listened. "Spock, don't believe Picard. That wasn't him, that was a Nexus construct. It gave Picard what he wanted. He couldn't have pulled Jim out from where he was, remember that. He is still in Nexus building that infernal ship on his way to get you, maybe to get us. Don't give up. He never will." The older vision of McCoy smiled sadly. "I can see all three of us together again and so happy, when I sleep. Don't forget me, Spock. I loved you both as well as I could." Spock sat in the darkening room and sobbed, unashamed of the water that was not wasted, only spent, for his beloved, his T'hy'la, and his friend McCoy and finally for himself. He would wait and when he finally saw the face that was in the picture he held to his chest he would know that the long sleep was over, for them all. The End 1 1