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Only moments ago, the room was silent. Now there is the sound of footsteps, and there is nothing else. Spock knows the weight of those feet on the ground; he would know it blind and deaf. It is him, here in the foreshocks of ending.
But Spock also knows it is only a dream. He does not open his eyes. He is too tired and age-worn to be chasing phantoms. They never stay, Spock knows this better than anything. He has had such visions before. If he tries, he can almost convince himself that he hears the distant echoes of a beloved mind. Parted from me and never parted. He has had that dream before, too.
And yet there is a tremor at the edge of Spock’s consciousness, his telepathy that has grown weak over almost a century of disuse—there, it moves again, trembling, like leaves in the wind. The bond that once lived there, now a house overgrown with ivy. Could it be? Or are these the last lingering longings of an old fool?
He thinks, I will not try. He does not wish to break himself at this moment, just as his long night begins.
He tries anyway. He always does.
A touch. A touch. His thumb tracing circles over a wrist, the steady pulse he finds there, those fingers clasping his own—the touch, of hands and palms and minds, so painfully familiar, he would know them anywhere, he would know them blind and deaf. He has died and he has been resurrected by these hands, these hands that hold him now, that hold the entirety of him, Spock, everything he is, and he opens his eyes.
Blinking, like a newborn, into the dawn. Never and always touching and touched. Hazel eyes that know him, brighter than the sun, this simple feeling. He remembers it all: a life well-lived, a life lived together. Jim, without the shadow of a doubt, beyond logic and beyond reason, Jim Kirk. He is here, and Spock is dying, and there is nothing else.
There are words between them, but they are not spoken. They are only felt. Spock feels. He feels everything. Then he feels only one thing, and he feels it so loudly that he can hear it burning brilliantly through their bond as the sun rises on the last day.
At the end of all things, you.