Meeting blue eyes in the moment that they draw back across the table, he sees Jim. Not for the first time, but just as clearly as any other time Spock has managed to cut through everything extraneous and stopped complicating things out of some fear of slipping off the edge of some cliff.

He'd woken up after the horrors of the last three days, whether he had wanted to admit it or not, feeling so lost, so cut off, so alone. Only he wasn't. And Spock had forgotten that Jim Kirk must have been going through the same thing that he was. Whether or not he liked the other man, Kirk, it seemed, made the emptiness in his mind bearable. No excuses - that's why he's still sitting in this chair.

"If you do not know, don't try." Those blue eyes seem so like mirrors at times, through which Spock can see a reflection of what's desperate to be human in himself. They still make him uncomfortable - Kirk's unexpected wisdom. "It's your right as a human being. You can hate, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact. As can I. As I embarrassingly have been. You deserve the same considerations that I've demanded for myself." Spock pauses, hesitates, and offers, "Do you want to work on modifying the scanners?"