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No one likes missions like this one, and admittedly, neither does Spock, although he doesn’t permit such emotional factors as likes or dislikes to influence his work. The earthquakes on Varena V have been disastrous, and the Enterprise is the first starship to get to the planet whose capital city has been turned into an immense mountain of rubble, so its job is truly unenviable.
The use of the transporter for getting people from under the fallen buildings is limited due to the construction elements made of highly interference-prone materials, so lots of the job is just old manual extraction. Whenever they manage to dig out a living person, they are happy. But more often than not, they only find crushed, choked, broken bodies.
Spock does not let the gruesomeness of their task deter him from his work. He knows that they still have good chances of finding living people, and the quicker they work, the greater the chance. Every single life counts. The Vareni are humanoid, the only external difference is a yellow hue to their skin and huge rosy eyes beneath their high, expressive forehead.
Spock has already retrieved four people, three women and a man, all only lightly injured, but in severe psychological shock due to the fact that at the same time, bodies of their family members were also found. For now, bodies are stacked nearby, because no one has the time to deal with them – it’s so much more important to search the debris for the living.
There is, however, one thing that keeps breaking Spock’s concentration. He keeps throwing sideway glances to his captain and boyfriend, Jim Kirk, working nearby. Spock can’t exactly tell why, but there seems to be something wrong with Jim. He is working frantically, with a deep frown never leaving his forehead, with his blue eyes absent almost as if he were in some sort of trance, simultaneously focused and distracted.
Of course, the job is neither easy nor pleasant, but Spock doesn’t remember when he last saw Jim like this. Something seems to be on his mind to the point where he’s careless – he has already fallen in the rubble or made some debris rain on him on several occasions, and although he doesn’t seem seriously injured, Spock would very much rather he took a break. Only, he is not brave enough to suggest it.
“Mister Spock!”, a young ensign next to him calls out. “We have an injured child here. Will you help?”
Before Spock knows it, he finds himself with his arms full of a terrified Vareni child, screaming and crying for all she is worth. Spock looks around, searching for someone to whom he could hand the squeaking problem, and suddenly there’s Jim next to him, reaching out to gather the noisy creature in his arms. Spock gives him the kid, relieved to be rid of her but also to see that it will give Jim a much needed break.
Spock is rather surprised when he realizes that the child has stopped screaming almost immediately. Intrigued, he turns around to see Jim walking back and forth, tripping on the rubble every now and then, rocking the child rhythmically in his arms and making a very strange sound. It’s singing, Spock realizes, but performed on a very special tone which seems to be having good calming effect on the child. Also, the language isn’t Standard – it’s in Chinese, as far as Spock can tell. There are many dialects on Varena V, some of which have similar tones and rhythms to several Earth’s languages, but none to Federation Standard, so Jim probably thinks Chinese will have a more soothing effect, and he seems to be right.
After a nurse from their field hospital takes the child away, Jim goes back to work and after a moment, Spock can hear him cry out. He drops everything and runs, to find Jim getting up from the rubble groggily, coughing in the dust, where he has dropped several meters to the remains of a lower level. In a graceful jump, Spock lands right next to him.
“I’m okay”, Jim says, combing a hand through his hair to rid it of the dust. “Go back to work, Spock. And tell the people to be careful, the structure is unstable.”
“They are aware”, Spock answers. “Ashayam, you need a break. Perhaps Doctor McCoy should have a look at you…”
“For what? A bump on my butt, when he is dealing with hundreds of seriously injured?”, Jim protests, clearly outraged by the suggestion. Spock knows when insisting would be a waste of time, but something in Jim’s mood – a profound shadow in Jim’s blue eyes – disturbs him deeply. He opens his mouth to say something, when their tricorders beep to indicate life signs nearby.
“There’s someone there”, Jim says, throwing himself at a blocked passage and trying to clear it frantically. They hear a baby cry from the other side. “Hold on there, we’re coming!”, Jim yells. Spock notices a trace of blood on the rubble that Jim is removing with his bare hands – he must have forgotten to put his gloves back on after nursing the kid earlier.
When they are through, they find a wounded half-conscious woman with a crying baby wiggling next to her and crying with panic as it looks into her unmoving face. Jim picks the yelling child while Spock takes the woman to safety. As they are climbing out, Spock hears this sound again – high-pitched, quiet singing, this time in Italian – and the baby is out like a light, sound asleep before the medics take it over.
They work in the ruins several more hours, finding many survivors and even more dead. Jim is very strict about crew rotation, but he himself refuses to take even a short break, and he tolerates Spock’s company only on the pretext that Vulcans can last longer than most of his human crew. Whenever there’s a hysterical child within the earshot, Jim just takes it in his arms and comes up with a lullaby in one of Earth’s languages, always hitting the perfect pitch, tone and sonority to calm the given child.
Spock can’t help but wonder where he has learned this art, that doesn’t seem self-evident at all – other personnel have only limited success in calming the little Vareni when Jim isn’t available. Spock notices that they start to seek Jim out, so eventually, he ends up taking care of all the distressed children they find before medical services or retrieved family members take them over.
Sometimes the wait is long, but it’s almost as if Jim is a magician, a child whisperer, even though all he does is singing. He can efficiently take care of several kids at once, sitting in the rubble and placing them all in his lap, then rocking his torso back and forth until they calm down or fall asleep, nestled against him, to the sound of his lullabies.
Spock thinks that only having taken care of distressed children could Jim acquire such incredible skill that allows him to efficiently deal even with severely traumatized strangers. It astonishes him, as he isn’t aware of any period in Jim’s life where he could have had contact with children. When he was joining Starfleet, he was the stark contrary of what an average talented nanny looks like – he was belligerent, noisy and pretentious. But young that he still is, before joining Starfleet with some recent history of juvenile delinquency, Jim was little more than a kid himself… Where and when could he have learned?
By the evening, they have combed through most of the remains, helped by the arriving Titan and Anaconda. They have saved many, but the body count is grim, all the people orphaned and bereft, an unfathomable tragedy. Sometimes Spock thinks that in a particularly twisted manner, Vulcan was lucky – an entire race dying together, with only a handful left behind to mourn.
Even Jim seems to finally have had enough. He looks ready to keel over with exhaustion, there is blood seeping from a gash on his forehead and his hands are scraped raw, not to mention all the bruises that can’t be seen under his clothing, but make him hiss from time to time when a move or a touch makes them ache.
“How about a dinner, Spock?”, he asks, trying to muster a smile for his boyfriend, but Spock can see that it doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Long overdue”, Spock agrees.
“Okay”, Jim says, “so beam up to the Enterprise, take a shower and program us something light while I make a quick detour to Bones’s field hospital. I don’t think he’ll want to turn in, and I won’t try to force him, but I want to see how he’s holding up.”
“I shall come with you”, Spock offers.
“No, the hospital is crowded as it is”, Jim protests. “I’ll be right there after you, okay sweetheart? Get us something nice from the replicators.”
Spock nods, mainly because he doesn’t want to waste more time quarreling. He comforts himself with the thought that McCoy won’t let Jim tag along for too long, especially once he sees the condition the captain has put himself in. So he does exactly what Jim told him to do – he refreshes himself and prepares them an easy to digest but nutritious meal. Over which he then spends an hour waiting, before starting to worry and deciding to call Jim on his communicator. Three attempts go unacknowledged.
Before beaming back down to find Jim personally, Spock decides to give it a chance and try to call someone else. He won’t disturb the medical personnel, but he remembers that Nyota is still down on Varena V as well – the local people are so traumatized that they massively forget their Standard, and between hundreds of Vareni dialects, used randomly even by people living next door from one another, the universal translator sometimes needs a pat on the back to work properly. If she isn’t saving some intercultural conundrum, maybe Nyota will answer her communicator. After all, someone should.
“Uhura here”, she says, and even just the two words manage to convey her fatigue.
“Have you seen the captain? He promised to beam up for dinner, but I have been waiting in vain. He was slightly injured and in an atypical mood, which is why I wish to ascertain his whereabouts”, Spock explains, not wanting to look like he’s a stalker, but neither wanting to raise panic by implying that Jim has gone missing, which he doesn’t think to be the case. Fortunately, Uhura understands him perfectly.
“Yes, Spock, I’ve seen him”, she says soothingly. “He’s here, in the hospital, and seems perfectly fine to me. He’s quite busy, actually.”
“What is he doing?”, Spock wants to know.
“He’s… singing to children”, Uhura answers after a while. “Picking them up, rocking them and… yes, singing seems the right word. I wasn’t aware he could sing… I mean, he’s off key, but the thing he’s doing with his voice… it actually works with these kids. They all calm down instantly. I don’t think he’ll beam up any time soon, Spock – there are plenty of lonely kids in the hospital, and I don’t think he’ll just leave them and go. The nurses seem happy to have him – his singing is way less obtrusive than their screams.”
“Acknowledged”, Spock answers. He doesn’t appreciate how Jim keeps driving himself into the ground after the entire day of physically and emotionally exhausting work, without even a pause to have a sandwich, but he knows that reason can’t win with Jim’s stubbornness, especially if he’s needed and helpful. Jim’s skill with kids, his mysterious vocal talent for off-key multilingual lullabies that calm children down is increasingly intriguing for Spock. He knows the field hospital is crowded, but he decides to join Jim and try to make himself useful.
When he beams down, it’s already after nightfall, and he feels slightly ashamed about being the only person no longer covered in dirt, but he chastises himself for the illogic of this emotion. As he walks around among the waiting crowd, he’s attracted to the sound of Jim’s voice, slightly coarse from all the singing in the omnipresent dust, but sweet and soothing all the same. Jim is walking back and forth with two toddlers perched in his arms, while a bunch of other children – all bandaged, pale and upset – are looking at him and listening with hypnotized expressions. When one of them starts wailing, Jim puts down one of the already calmer toddlers he was carrying and picks the crying one, switching to another song, in another language, that immediately calms the new kid down. Spock just stares at him, trying to make sense of the phenomenon.
“Oh, Spock”, Jim finally notices him. “Sorry… I guess I stood you up for dinner. These kids are waiting for the services to find their relatives… I’ve been trying to entertain them. You mad?”
“Of course not”, Spock answers. “Concerned, ashayam – you need to rest…”
“I will, I will”, Jim promises hastily. “Most of them have their relatives round here, just waiting till they’re patched up and then they can set off together… It’s a matter of minutes now.”
Spock wants to argue, to bring up that local nurses can take care of the kids, but the unhappy creatures currently in Jim’s arms start crying again, and so he starts pacing again, to the sounds of “Au clair de la lune”. When more children become restless at a moment, Spock picks one up and, not knowing the lyrics, joins Jim in his song just humming on a pitch imitating Jim’s, but it proves completely no good – the child struggles in his embrace.
“What did I do wrong?”, Spock asks, nonplussed. He is increasingly concerned by this deep shadow in Jim’s eyes, as if the fact that he manages to be of help didn’t bring him any satisfaction, only some deep hidden pain that Spock doesn’t understand. After all, Varena V is not Jim’s planet, and its tragedy, although cruel, is something they all know does happen in space from time to time, on one planet or another. It is not their tragedy.
“Nothing”, Jim says when the song is finished. “But the Vareni are an expressive race, their faces are only unmoving when they are dead or asleep, so the child was afraid of your trademark Vulcan calm.”
“But…” Spock finds the idea outrageous, but before he can protest, Jim sets off with “Weißt du wieviel Sternlein stehen?” on his mouth.
All this singing and rocking lasts another two hours, and then there’s only a couple of kids left while all the others were given a safe haven somewhere among their families or friends, but Jim doesn’t give up. His voice is now completely hoarse, and his legs trail after him as he walks, his arms slumping exhaustedly even as he still strains them to hold their precious burdens. During all this time, while many children came and went, taking their place a minute or two in Jim’s arms, not one of them failed to succumb to Jim’s lullaby therapy, but the sadness in Jim’s eyes has only grown bigger.
Finally, when there are only several kids left in the field hospital, but they are all sound asleep, Jim and Spock are joined by McCoy. His no longer sterile scrubs are stained with blood in various places and his face is ashen with fatigue, but he seems satisfied with his work. However, when he sees Jim, still in his filthy coverall from the morning, with several stains of his own blood caked at various places of his face and body, his eyebrows meet in a deep frown that becomes even deeper when he waves a beeping tricorder over Jim’s form.
“You call it a night, kid”, he says severely. “Why the hell are you still here? You’re dehydrated, starved and exhausted, and I don’t like all these bruises one bit. Up you go, and first thing in the morning I want to see you in sickbay. There is sufficient staff here, Jim, no need for you to drive yourself into the ground like this…”
“But these children…”, Jim croaks out. “They liked my lullabies, Bones. I couldn’t… I just couldn’t…”
McCoy’s expression softens suddenly, and he grabs Jim’s arm with strange compassion that points to some knowledge that Spock doesn’t have.
“Take good care of him, Spock”, McCoy tells him emphatically, looking him deep in the eyes. “Good care, you hear me? Something light to eat and drink, and stay close. He may have nightmares…”
“I will”, Spock acknowledges simply, although he has no idea where all this is headed. Jim casts one more look to the sleeping patients, and then they beam up, leaving McCoy to tend to his last occupations before he, too, goes to sleep. When they’re back in their quarters, Jim tosses a bite of the already cold dinner into his mouth, but no sooner has he swallowed it then he runs to the bathroom and is violently sick, causing Spock’s already considerable worry to increase exponentially.
When Jim emerges from the bathroom after a quick shower, Spock is appalled to see all his scrapes and bruises and to realize that he walked for hours on end, carrying kids in his arms in a condition like this. He understands that this earthquake has stirred some memories in Jim, but has no idea of what exactly. If his observations and inferences are correct, of a time when Jim learned a lot of lullabies and rocked in his arms a lot of children, while he couldn’t be fully adult himself.
“I don’t think I’ll manage to eat anything”, Jim says, pointing to the cold dinner guiltily. “Sorry, Spock… But you must be hungry, so go on…”
Spock tosses the food into the matter recycler and watches Jim put on his pajamas, waiting for him to join him in bed. They sit on the edge together and Spock doesn’t know how to ask, how to chase away the huge shadow in Jim’s eyes, a rain cloud over the blue sky.
“How do you know all these songs? And to sing them just the right way? Did you care about children from various Earth countries?”, Spock finally asks. Jim nods dejectedly.
“Sometimes… sometimes singing to someone is the only thing you can do”, he says in a small voice. “In the end, you do it for yourself, because you know that if you don’t, you’ll become crazy with pain.”
“Was it an orphanage? A hospital?”, Spock asks.
“A colony planet gone wrong”, Jim answers after a while. “There was a fungus infection, destroyed our crops and supplies… we starved. The colony’s leader went nuts and started killing people to save more food, so all the kids’ parents were dead… I wanted to take care of them, but all I had were the lullabies. We ate grass, roots, dirt… When I was singing, many of them fell asleep and never woke up. I think the others envied them. I did.”
Jim’s words weigh heavily on Spock’s heart, and he begins to understand this stubborn shadow in Jim’s eyes, in Jim’s mind, in Jim’s soul. He wants to take it out of there forever, but he isn’t sure if it’s possible. The shadow is like a shroud, for all the faraway children whom Jim’s lullabies put to sleep one last time.
“Did anyone ever sing a lullaby for you?”, Spock asks quietly.
“I was fourteen, so I was too big for that”, Jim says with a mirthless little laugh. “My mom, on the other hand, was never one to rock me in her arms and sing. Did yours?”
“Yes”, Spock says. To this day he remembers when he was very little and his mother nursed him the way a human mother usually does, with this motherly tenderness that he never knew to accept with grace, as it deserved, but that he has kept deep in his heart like a treasure. A treasure that Jim has never had, but that perhaps can still be shared.
Spock shifts on the bed, sitting with his back against the frame and his legs outstretched, with Jim seated in his lap and hugged firmly to his chest. In addition to all the fatigues of the day, Jim seems emotionally exhausted by the conversation, and his head lolls inertly against Spock’s shoulder. Back and forth, Spock gently rocks his torso and Jim sways languidly with him, his eyes closed although Spock knows he isn’t asleep yet.
Reaching to the depths of his memory, to the times when Vulcan was still the name of a living, thriving planet, when he was so small that an emotional treatment was considered only a minor disgrace, Spock finds the melody and the lyrics, folded smoothly in a drawer with things cherished, but too dangerous to be viewed very often. He reaches for this memory for the first time in years, and in a quiet baritone, he sings:
“Sleep, my love, the cities are silent and dark,
Resting before they wake anew,
But even if the cities disappear like a spark,
My love will remain with you.
“Sleep, my love, the forests are asleep in the night,
A majestic and mysterious view,
But even if the forests die in fires bright,
My love will remain with you.
“Sleep, my love, the mountains have all gone to sleep,
Their dark rocks silent and blue,
But even if the mountains are washed to the deep,
My love will remain with you.
“Sleep, my love, all the stars are shining in the sky,
Their light so silver and true,
But even if the sky falls and the stars all die,
My love will remain with you.”
Jim listens breathlessly, and when the song is over, he opens his eyes, still rocked against Spock’s chest, and Spock notices that the shadow is gone – although wet with tears, Jim’s eyes look serene again.
“It’s beautiful”, Jim whispers. “Thank you. And it’s true, what it says. Her love has remained with you, I know it.”
“Indeed”, Spock answers. “As will mine with you, forever. I only regret that for all your lullabies, I have only this one to offer.”
“It is more than enough”, Jim says, and deep in his heart, Spock knows that he’s right.