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Jim Kirk was laying down in the tall, cool grass of the fallow field that bordered the farmhouse his family lived in just outside Riverside, Iowa. He had his arms folded behind his head, and he could just barely see the fog of his breath rise above him with every exhale. He stared up into the night sky, clear of any clouds, the stars impossibly bright against the blacker than black ocean of space. He let the vast sea of stars draw him in, pulling his consciousness upward, enveloping him. Floating among the stars, becoming one with the dark.
The sound of approaching footsteps swishing through the long wild grasses pulled Jim back down to Earth. He didn't bother moving from his comfortable nest in the grass to see who came near; he knew who it was that was coming to meet him. The footsteps stopped and the face of a young Vulcan appeared in his field of view, appearing upside down.
Jim gave a small smile. "Hey, Spock," he sighed.
"You've heard," Spock said, both a question and a statement, in the same even tone as always.
"Yeah," Jim replied. He tore his gaze from Spock, looking off into the grass to his right, blinking his eyes quickly a few times as he felt the prickle of tears start.
Spock hesitated a moment, then settled down into the grass beside Jim, arranging the extra fabric of his robes around him neatly before staring up into the night sky. It struck him then that he would never see the stars like this again, the way he was seeing them now. The stars from Earth.
"When are you leaving?" Jim asked.
"Tomorrow," Spock said. "Early."
"Oh," Jim said, sounding disappointed but unsurprised. He had just wished for more time. "Why?" He asked suddenly, his voice wavering.
Spock knew that Jim wasn't asking why Spock and his family were leaving on the morrow. He knew that Jim was asking why Earth and Vulcan were severing relations, and enforcing strict no-contact laws between the denizens of the two worlds. "Politics and bureaucracy," Spock replied. "Neither of which explain how this is a logical action."
"What are we going to do, Spock?" Jim asked, voice deflated.
Spock turned his head to look at Jim through the thin wall of untrampled grass between them. "What is there to do?" He asked back. It was rhetorical, of course. There was nothing to be done about it.
"We could run away," Jim suggested, his tone saying that he knew it was futile.
"They'd find us eventually," Spock said. "And quickly, as neither of us is old enough to rent a car, secure shuttle passage, or sign for housing accomodations." As an afterthought, he added, "And the winters are too cold on this planet."
"Yeah," Jim said. "You'd never survive."
With a slight shake of his head, Spock turned his gaze back to the stars, marvelling at the wide, impossibly dense band of the Milky Way. "You could stow away in my luggage and come back to Vulcan with me," he said.
Jim shook his head, rustling the flattened grass beneath him. "No, shuttleport security would find me," he said. "And even if they didn't, they don't pump oxygen into the cargo holds."
"I suppose that's out of the question, then." They lay in the comfort of a shared silence, watching the stars and listening to the wind trace its path through the meadow grass. The breeze was chilly, and Spock pulled his robes in closer.
"We could hijack a ship," Jim mused, breaking the silence. "We could fly far out into the outer reaches of the galaxy, where nobody could find us."
Spock nodded. "I'd renounce my Vulcan citizenship, and you'd renounce yours to Earth," he added.
"And then we'd belong to nowhere, and no politicians or bureaucrats could tell us we couldn't see each other anymore," Jim continued.
"Our ship would be our home, we wouldn't need a planet," Spock said.
Jim smiled at the thought. "And then we'd find other people like us, who only have space as a home. And we could get a bigger ship so they could be our crew. You'd be captain."
Spock hummed, considering. "No, I think you would be the better captain."
"Pssh, nah," Jim laughed at the idea.
"I mean it, Jim," Spock said. "You have the charisma, and the emotional intelligence to properly relate with the crew. They'd be more at ease following your orders than mine."
"What if the crew are like you and are like, super logical and straight-laced?" Jim asked. "They'd think I was out of control, they wouldn't take me seriously. They'd probably think I would fly us all into a black hole!" He mimed an explosion with his hands, making a sound to accompany the gesture. "Co-captains? Are co-captains a thing?"
Spock shook his head. "I don't think co-captains are a thing. I can be first officer, though" Spock decided. "And we could make all the decisions together."
"I could handle the emotional situations, and you could handle the logical ones," Jim added. "Kind of like 'good cop, bad cop.'''
"Which is the 'bad cop,'' in this scenario?" Spock asked wryly.
"Neither," Jim said, "That's the point."
Spock nodded. "What will we do with our superior joint-leadership and our crew?"
Jim paused, thinking, before countering, "what do you want to do?"
"You first."
Jim hummed, thinking. "We should explore. Check out strange new worlds."
Spock nodded in agreement. "We can seek out new life, and new civilizations," he added.
"And boldly go where no one has gone before."
A soft breeze washed over them, brushing the grass gently. If they closed their eyes, they could almost convince themselves they were listening to the waves lap at a shoreline from calm seas, only the sweet smells of the grass and wildflowers betraying the fantasy. They watched the stars in silence, watching with such patience that they could notice the way that the stars moved across the sky in a slow, long arc, new constellations peeking up from one horizon as old ones dipped below the other.
The moon was new. The perfect circle of darkness it cast against the white backdrop of the milky way was stunning. It almost didn't seem real.
"I'll never see anything like that ever again," Spock said, voice barely above a whisper.
"The new moon?" Jim asked, unsure if that was what Spock was referring to.
Spock nodded. "Vulcan has no moon," he explained, then added, "In my time on Earth I have grown fond of the moon. It's fascinating and beautiful. I have enjoyed observing it as it progressed through its phases. The effect that its gravitational pull has on the planet's water is so strong that it would seem disasterous, yet it seems to be in perfect control. And the tidal lock. I can almost imagine the mystery and wonder that would have come from the other side of the moon, in the age before spaceflight and satellites."
Jim nodded along. He understood. "Maybe we could live on the other side of the moon," he suggested, dreamily. "Nobody would think to look for us there."
Spock shook his head. "There are already habitats and colonies set up up there, you know."
Jim grinned, looking over at Spock. "Exactly! We could just move right in! Easy!"
Spock huffed in amusement. "I like the spaceship idea better."
"Yeah," Jim said. "So do I."
They stayed a while, breathing in the air, feeling the night grow longer and longer despite their wishes for time to stand still.
"I'm going to miss you," Jim said, voice quivering.
Spock tried to swallow back a sadness that he knew would not yield. "I'm going to miss you, too."