Disclaimer: Star Trek was created by Gene Roddenberry and the vision has been shepherded by many along the way.
Summary: episode addition to the latest movie, the “reboot” edition.
Rehabilitation
By Rocky
“Come on, Chris. Give it a try.”
Admiral Christopher Pike—no longer “captain” as they’d kicked him upstairs during his long and painful convalescence—gripped the parallel bars tightly, hesitating a brief moment longer, and then swung himself forward.
“Put some weight on the leg, Chris,” Shanna admonished him. “It’s not going to get any better if you just let yourself hang there.”
Tentatively, Pike eased his right leg down—yes, it did seem that the muscles were obeying him a bit better than they had a week ago—and grimaced as the wave of pain shot up his calf, all the way to the middle of his back.
“Sonofabitch!”
Shanna rushed forward, but Pike waved her off. Sweat poured down his face with the effort of clinging to the bars to keep himself upright. “I’m ok. Just give me a minute and I’ll try again.”
Shanna eyed him warily and then nodded. “Why don’t you start with your left leg, Chris?”
“The left leg isn’t my problem,” Pike ground out between clenched teeth. “Those nerves seem to be healing just fine. It’s the right I’ve got to learn how to use again. Or else spend the rest of my life sitting in that wheel chair.”
“Start with the left anyway. This way you won’t be bringing down your entire body weight on the right all at once.”
With a grunt, Pike eased forward once more, this time beginning with his left leg.
“Very good!” Shanna said. “And now the right….good!”
As Pike hung on the bars there once more, gasping with pain and gulping air with equal measure, Shanna said, “I think we’ve made enough progress for the day.” Pike allowed himself to be disengaged from the bars, and slowly helped into a seat. His arms trembled uncontrollably, now they were released from their nearly insurmountable task. He felt thoroughly exhausted.
“Why the hell can’t they finally get those nerve regenerators they’ve been talking about for years?”
“You’d still have to regain the functionality on your own, Chris. There are no shortcuts.”
“Don’t I know it,” he grumbled.
As he lifted a bottle of water to his lips, he heard Shanna say, “It appears you’ve got a visitor.”
Pike jerked his head up sharply. A tall, elderly Vulcan male stood in the doorway. “If I am not disturbing you, Admiral, may I come in?” He inclined his head politely.
A wave of embarrassment shot through Pike at being seen like this, so vulnerable and…helpless. “You’ve already disturbed me, but why should that stop you?” Instantly, Pike regretted his harsh retort. There was no sense in taking out his frustrations with his own body’s limitations by berating a stranger who looked like someone’s kindly grandfather. “I’m sorry. Please, come in and sit down.”
“Thank you.” The Vulcan took the proffered chair.
“I’ll leave you two alone for a bit,” Shanna said. “You have an electrostim session in about half an hour, Chris. I’ll be back to get you before then.”
Pike watched her leave, then turned to the Vulcan. “Excuse me, but do I know you?”
A fleeting expression—too small and brief to be called a smile, but Pike caught a definite sense of amusement in the other’s dark eyes—crossed the Vulcan’s face. “Indeed you do, sir, but not as I am now.”
Pike searched his memory, wondering what the other meant. “You’re Ambassador Sarek?” he offered tentatively. Which still didn’t explain why the Vulcan had tracked him down to the small therapy room in the Starfleet Medical annex.
The Vulcan shook his head. “I hold the rank of Ambassador, but I am not Sarek. Although you are not the first to mistake me for him.” He added wryly, “Apparently my resemblance to my father is stronger than I have previously been led to believe.”
In a corner of Pike’s mind ran the irrelevant thought that apparently ambassadorships were heredity in some cultures, when the full import of the Vulcan’s words struck him. “You’re Spock.” In his confusion he dropped the water bottle and it splashed as it hit the floor. “Not my Commander Spock, but—“
Spock bent and retrieved the bottle and smoothly handed it back to him. “Yes. I am he. The one who arrived from the future, whose actions have caused an even greater disruption here than they did in my own time.”
Pike immediately shook his head. “No. You’re not responsible for the havoc that Nero caused.”
“And yet it was my actions—or rather, my inactions--or inability to save his planet that resulted in his travel to the past to destroy my own. Not to mention the damage caused to an incalculable number of lives, including yours.”
Pike thought of the Kelvin and George Kirk’s sacrifice. That had been where the “disruption”, as Spock put it, had begun. He recalled Jim Kirk’s insolent smirk in that hole-in-wall bar in Iowa three years earlier, and the change that expression had undergone when for the first time in his life someone had given that young man something to live up to. “No. Don’t include me in your personal tally of penance. I’m alive.” Thanks to that same Jim Kirk, who had at last repaid Pike’s faith in him.
“Yes. You are alive.”
Was that a hint of sadness in Spock’s eyes? Baffled, Pike picked up a towel and mopped his face, seizing the opportunity to gather his thoughts. “I don’t want to hear what would have happened to me,” he said finally. “In your reality—which doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t want to know that I went on to a long and successful tenure in command of the Enterprise, or that I went insane and ordered my crew to beam into the heart of a poisonous nebula, or that I was eaten by a wild targ while on a hunting expedition on the Klingon homeworld.”
“You are correct. The past as I knew it has been irrevocably changed. Those people and events are no more. They live on only in my memory.”
Pike was assailed by a feeling of guilt once more. The man before him had lost not only his homeworld, but his entire past. And though everyone said Vulcans were cold, emotionless beings, Pike had seen enough evidence to the contrary over the years. The elder Spock did feel his losses keenly. Of that Pike was sure.
“I’m sorry,” he said once more. “I didn’t mean to rub it in—what I meant was, this—“ he waved his hand over his inert legs—“this is a temporary setback. In fact, if it weren’t for you and your help, Kirk would never have gotten to me in time. Or stopped Nero, for that matter. So you have done some good by showing up here. A hell of a lot of good, in fact.”
Spock inclined his head. Once more, his dark eyes swept over Pike’s face with a trace of emotion Pike couldn’t begin to identify.
He took a long swallow of water. “Is there something I can do for you, Ambassador?”
“I wished to see you,” Spock said simply. “You were a very important figure to me, in my youth.”
“You served under me,” Pike agreed, a bit unsure of where the conversation was going. “And we were associates at the Academy, particularly in the testing of the cadets.”
Spock leaned forward, his hands resting quietly on his lap, betraying no tension. But Pike could feel it nonetheless. “That is not entirely what I was referring to, Admiral. You helped me a great deal, in my adjustment to Starfleet and in my daily interactions with humans when I first arrived on Earth. You were my mentor, in every respect.”
Pike shifted uncomfortably. The Spock he knew had always been so self-assured, able to meet every challenge, both physical and otherwise, with aplomb. It did not jibe with the picture the man before him had drawn. He felt a sudden shooting pain in his hip and pressed his hand on it, grateful for the distraction.
“So you’re taking a trip down memory lane, meeting with all the key figures of your past?” he asked lightly, not meeting Spock’s eyes.
“Not all of them, no,” Spock said. “That would be…unwise, in light of my younger counterpart’s current relationships with some of those individuals. But I have made an exception for you.” Startled, Pike looked up. “I wished simply to thank you, Admiral, not to lay a burden of guilt at your feet. You have helped me immeasurably; I would not be the person I am today without your help so many years ago.”
“You’re welcome.” Pike cleared his throat, aware of the inadequacy of his response, but unsure of what else he could say. “I’m sorry I can’t help you now, with what you’re facing.”
“The loss of my homeworld, my people, my culture,” Spock whispered, as if to himself. “They saved what they could, but the enormity of what is gone—Gol, Mt. Selya, the Hall of Adepts…” His lips tightened. “It is not up to you to restore to me, to any of us, what is no more. We who remain are charged with rebuilding as best we can. ”
Pike nodded. “And you will.”
Another silence fell. Pike shifted in his seat once more. “Look, Spock, if I may—you said you viewed me as a mentor, so I hope I’m not out of line here if I give you a piece of advice.”
“I would welcome whatever you have to say to me, Admiral.”
“I don’t know what kind of life you’ve led up to now. I know you were in Starfleet at least briefly, and then went on to become an Ambassador, a scientist of sorts—I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered the no-win scenario. Sure, you—or at least your younger self—programmed the Kobayashi Maru test to be just that, to teach our captains that there are times they’re going to have to accept the unacceptable. To make the best of a bad situation and go on somehow. But you never were faced with that situation yourself, never had to deal with the loss of a ship and crew or maybe even your own life, whether in a simulation or in real life.” Spock opened his mouth as if to speak, but Pike went on. “It’s tempting to just give up. Or to pretend that nothing has changed. But as painful as it is, reality is preferable to illusion.”
“’He has an illusion,” Spock said woodenly, almost as if he was quoting someone else. “’And I have reality.’”
“What?”
Spock shook his head, as if to clear away the cobwebs. “A long ago conversation, Admiral, that you reminded me of. And you are correct. Reality is always preferable.” His voice dropped so low that Pike had trouble catching his last words. “But the illusion was so beautiful.”
Pike watched as Spock abruptly left, his long cloak swirling behind him, and he wondered what it had all been about.
FINIS