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Spock closed his eyes and tried to fill his lungs. Everyone had died. And he could feel it. He could feel the death of two hundred Vulcans, screaming in the building behind him. The smell of death, of coppery blood, hung thickly in the air, and it felt heavy, and Spock couldn’t breathe.
His head hurt. His stomach hurt. His lungs hurt. Everything hurt. He leaned against a tree and buried his face in his hands before quickly removing them when he remembered that they were covered in blood.
He could hear the people he’d escaped with panting hard around him. Spock didn’t know how long it was until someone spoke, but eventually a small voice said, “I-is everyone okay?”
Spock opened his eyes to see the dirty, bloody, blond Human that had spoken. “I am uninjured,” Spock said, and his voice shook shamefully.
“Good,” said the kid, equally shaky.
“I’m, I’m okay,” said another kid, a young child. “My name’s Kevin Riley.”
“I’m fine, I think,” said one more Human. He looked a few years older than Spock. “I’m Leonard McCoy.” He looked at Spock. “You didn’t introduce yourself.”
“I am Spock,” he said.
“I’m Jim Kirk,” said the blond Human. He turned to the remaining member of their small group, a child. “You?”
A loud sob came from the child. He was covering half of his face with his hands. Spock was shocked to see blood seeping in between his fingers. Leonard turned to the child and was quickly kneeling down to comfort him.
“Let me see,” said Leonard softly, and gently removed the child’s hands.
Spock looked away, hating himself for the disgust he felt. It looked like the child had gotten half-hit with a phaser explosion. Skin was burnt and hanging off, a mangled mess of blood and flesh. His left ear was half ripped off, and a few strands of hair remained along a huge patch of bloody scalp. White bits of bone poked through in some spots. His eye was partly gone, a chunk of the eyeball itself missing, leaving a small puddle of dripping egg whites in the remaining half.
That child must be in agony, Spock realized. And suddenly Spock’s own pain seemed a lot less important. He remembered himself, locking it away like a true Vulcan should. Everyone was dead, but he still had to be a proper Vulcan. Surak, everyone was dead. His hands were still slippery from Tavak’s blood. He took a shuddering breath.
“Oh shit,” Leonard hissed. “Does anyone have any bandages? Ah shit, of course not, why would--” He took off the jacket he was wearing and ripped a large strip of fabric off of the bottom, wrapping it as best he could around the child’s face. “What’s your name?” he asked nervously.
“T-Tom,” said the child through sobs. “Leighton.”
“Okay, okay Tom,” said Leonard, clearly doing his best to sound calm. “You’re gonna be alright.”
Tom didn’t say anything. He just sat down against a tree and cried.
Jim sat down next to him and cried with him. Leonard sat on Tom’s other side and eventually joined in, tears slipping out from between his tight eyelids.
Spock stayed where he was and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the raw wound left by the death of two hundred Vulcans.
-----
No one slept the first night.
Tom had run out of tears (he only had one tear duct now), but he kept dry sobbing throughout the night. Leonard sat by him, attempting to soothe him, his own tears having run out as well. Kevin held Tom's hand.
Jim had walked over to Spock and sat down next to him, not saying a word.
And they sat next to each other all night, listening to Tom’s whimpers and sobs and Leonard’s “shh”s and “it’ll be alright”s, closing their eyes as cover from the darkness.
-----
Guards found them. They ran.
They escaped eventually, and Leonard put Tom down carefully.
“Is everyone okay?” Jim asked, an echo of his first words to the group, just one day before, only this time, his voice did not shake.
Spock nodded once, Kevin gave a shaky thumbs up, and Leonard said “Fine.”
Tom didn’t didn’t respond at all.
-----
Spock took longer than the others to get truly hungry.
He could see it on their faces after one or two days. The way their mouths were stiff, their eyes just a bit scrunched up, eyebrows furrowed. The subtle twitches, doubling over slightly.
Tarsus IV did not have a lot of edible plants or wildlife. On the second day, after they’d escaped from the guards (murderers), he and Jim looked for food.
For a while, they were silent, except for the soft crunching of leaves below their feet.
Then, “Spock, right?”
“Correct,” Spock responded.
“Um,” said Jim, “what’s your favorite… color?”
“I do not have one,” Spock said simply, too tired to say anything else. They were all tired.
“Why not?”
“It is illogical.”
“Illogical?”
“Color is simply variations of visible light.”
“Well, I like gold,” said Jim. “It’s shiny, I guess.”
Spock didn’t respond.
Jim spoke up again. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
And Spock turned to him and they made eye contact, and we might never get to grow up hung heavily in the air.
“I want to be a scientist,” Spock said.
“I want to be a starship captain,” said Jim.
“You will be a starship captain,” Spock said definitively. I will not let you die.
-----
They found a small animal, an iftined, native to the planet, about the size of a rabbit. Jim aimed carefully and hit it in the head with a rock. It flopped to the ground, yellow blood seeping out lazily from the wound, matting the animal’s tawny fur.
Jim rejoiced, throwing a fist in the air, shouting “Yes!” before covering his mouth and standing very, very still until it was certain that no one had heard him, an action more befitting of the dead iftined, befitting of prey. “Yes!” he hissed quietly, smiling, looking over at Spock.
Spock felt sick.
-----
Spock didn’t eat the iftined.
They couldn’t light a fire because the smoke would give them away. So Jim, Leonard, Kevin and Tom ate the iftined raw.
It hadn’t taken long to dismiss the risk of getting sick from the raw meat. They were all so, so, hungry.
Tom ate most of it. Or, was fed most of it; Kevin was the youngest, but Tom the weakest because of his injury, and Leonard carefully helped him swallow down the bloody yellow meat before eating his own tiny chunk. Jim and Kevin ate their slightly larger bits with gusto.
Spock watched.
“I am vegetarian,” he’d said.
“You still need to eat, Spock,” said Leonard. “We’re all starving.”
Spock shook his head even as his stomach lurched. “Vulcans can go longer than Humans without food. I will be fine.”
“You need to eat,” Leonard repeated forcefully.
“I cannot properly digest meat,” Spock said. “It will go to waste if I eat it.”
Leonard accepted that begrudgingly, and Spock watched them eat the iftined, trying not to feel disgusted.
Or hungry.
-----
That night, Tom was finally quiet.
The remaining four of them took turns staying awake. Jim went first, then Spock, then Leonard, then Kevin.
No one slept anyway, but it was nice to pretend.
-----
They couldn’t catch another iftined. Jim tried, and even with the help of Kevin, who left Tom’s side to try to help, they came back to Tom and Leonard empty-handed.
They couldn’t even find a plant for Spock to eat.
Jim, Kevin, Leonard, and Tom ate some scraps of the iftinid they had saved, and one more meal was left. Spock didn’t watch this time. He left to go and search for one of the few edible plant species on this planet. He knew what they looked like, he’d studied them, he’d tasted the lab grown specimens at the labs he’d visited with his dead schoolmates (there was dried blood under his fingernails, in his hair, on his clothes).
He didn’t find any.
He wondered if he should have just eaten the iftined. Maybe then he would be less hungry.
Surak, he was hungry.
They were all hungry.
-----
They rotated who watched and who slept again that night.
When it was his turn, Spock listened to everyone else breathe. He could tell they were sleeping, however poorly. He supposed after two sleepless nights eating only a small amount of meat, the Human body would shut down no matter what.
Halfway through Spock’s shift, Jim sat up aggressively with a stangled yell. Everyone else jolted awake, and Jim began to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
Leonard rushed to his side. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Jim didn’t respond. “Nightmare?”
Jim nodded, burying his head into Leonard’s chest.
“It’s okay,” Leonard said, rubbing Jim’s back. “It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” he whispered.
“It’s not your fault.”
Jim cried for the rest of the night. Leonard held him close.
-----
Spock had left his rations under his bed.
The thought wouldn’t leave his brain. And as the days stretched on and they got hungrier and hungrier, it was all he could think about.
T’Ple’s house must be empty. No one that lived in it was alive anymore.
Except for Spock. But he would probably be dead soon anyway.
He wondered if there were guards placed around the houses of the deceased. Maybe he could sneak in, grab the containers he’d left behind, and come back with food to fill himself and the rest of them, to keep them from starving. Because they were starving. They were all starving, and it hurt more than anything else Spock had ever experienced.
He hadn’t eaten since before the massacre.
He wondered if the food he’d left under his bed had rotted. He wondered if it was covered in mold. He wondered if he would still eat it.
They’d found a river on the fourth day. It was miraculous. They washed themselves, and Spock was so glad to see the blood all over him wash off, and Leonard carefully cleaned Tom’s wound. All five of them drank greedily, and Spock’s stomach felt full for the first time since it mattered.
He threw up later, and the water that had been sloshing around in his stomach sloshed up his throat, and liquidy bile escaped onto the ground.
No one saw.
He washed his mouth out after and felt disgusting.
-----
On the fourth night, Spock finally slept.
It wasn’t long before he woke up, images of broken skulls and green puddles still fresh in his mind, but he didn't scream like Jim. He had experience with screaming silently.
-----
The next day they finally found some plants.
Everyone else agreed Spock should have the most. Spock was so hungry he barely protested.
The plants were bitter. Spock had never tasted anything better in his life.
(He didn’t throw up after. But it was a near thing.)