personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces

[perform_admirably]

Three days of Hell on Earth - and somehow the hours of the morning after the world is calm again have moved Spock to more frustration than any of it. The insistence of his memory to forget between one day and the next that 'computer, lights on' does not function nearly as well without a computer. The insistence of the building's boiler to always run out of hot water during the very middle of his shower, despite an intentional variance of 0.15 hours every day since arriving in order to determine the best time to schedule it for the early morning. Running out of food and having no great desire to steal more knowing that he has no intentions - out of a lack of present ability - to replace what he takes.

Most would be happy to be alive. Spock finds it easier to be annoyed in very small ways, rather than elated in large ones. Easier to let what concerns him be flat, normal, sterile. To be neither angry about what's happened nor relieved for what can continue.

Flat, normal, sterile boredom draws him down the stairwell and into Jim Kirk's building at no later than eight in the morning, knocking sharply at the door with his knuckles. He waits. The other man is in there, and when Spock knocks, he expects an answer, with the same stubbornness of a child. So he waits.

"Captain," he says, only once.

His sling, a write-off after the anomaly, no longer supports the cast on his nearly-healed arm. In his hand, he grips a box, found incidentally at an antiques shop nearly a week ago during a search for a piercing saw. A wooden tangram puzzle.

It doesn't occur to him that Jim Kirk might not be in any mood for a puzzle.

Comments

[to_boldly]

"Yeah," says Jim after a long breath. "Now more than ever seems like a good time to learn everything we can about this place." He picks up the half-disassembled scanner that he'd arrived with, turning it over in his hands.

"Spock. The capacity for hatred might be an expected trait for humans, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable. Hatred is what turns a man into a creature like Nero. So as soon as I can find it in myself to forgive the man, I mean to."

[perform_admirably]

Both of these things get another dart of mobile brows, but it's some time before Spock speaks. He wants to comment wryly on what the other man says at first, to avoid saying anything at all too somber, personal, about the second. But even Spock's culture held an unsentimental, emotional respect for the truth of death. There had never been another Nero, there would never be another Nero. Whatever he was, however much Spock still desires to hate him, his loss was the universe's loss.

"May we both find peace. May he find peace in death that he could not in life. Peace, peace, and perfect peace." For the three of them.

After the words, he gives a shrug, staring at the equipment in Kirk's able hands before lifting his empty cup. After all of those words between the two of them, he's content to sit quietly in that chair across from Kirk's and watch him work, at least until it's time for Kirk's lunch. "May I have more of this? You aren't using it."

[to_boldly]

Jim wears a faint smile for the words that sound like a prayer, feeling, if not peaceful afterward, than more assured of its possibility. In the days that followed their return, Pike had told him it was the loss of Nero's family that made him go mad. It hits closer to him than Kirk would care to admit outloud. "Peace," he murmurs, reminding himself yet again before he nods.

"Tea hound, huh? Knock yourself out. And take the box if you want it."