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“Somehow I knew,” he murmured. “I knew I’d end up back here. It’s been like one of those nightmares that won’t quit coming back. Look at me… I can’t breathe right, there’s no blood in my hands… I used to get like this before academy exams. Or before meeting you.”

Across the cell, the ambassador observed him as if he were watching bread dough rise, which annoyed Stiles right to the hairs on the back of his neck. Kicking at a loose stone that had been loose ten years ago too, Stiles vented, “Did it ever happen to you that you didn’t know what to do next?”

Spook did not venture an answer to that. Instead of the ambassador’s voice, Stiles heard a thousand voices from the past speaking to him, echoing against the hard-learned lessons of a young officer, the struggles of living with crewmates, and finally learning to live with himself. He seldom looked in this kind of mirror any more. He’d never liked the reflection when he had. Today, though, he didn’t look away.

“Funny;’ he began aloud, “when we were about to die because something grabbed the ship and we had thirteen minutes to live, I wasn’t afraid. Standing up there looking at Orsova over the top of that big desk… I about crapped my pants.”

“I’m glad you restrained yourself,” Spock commented lightly.

“Ship disasters don’t scare me” Stiles said, keeping on his track. “Disastrous people scare me.”

It seemed there was something just around the corner, just beyond his grasp, a whisper in the fog.

After a few seconds, Stiles found himself asking, “Did people scare… him?”

The last word, revered somehow all by itself, came out as a pathetic sigh, a comparison that shouldn’t be made if any progress was ever to be accomplished. Instantly Stiles regretted that he’d asked.

Spock’s answer took some time coming. “Helplessness scared him.”

For the first time, Stiles felt a steely connection forged in the cool cell. “Did he ever think of himself the way I think of myself?. Like I don’t belong where I am?”

Veiled contentment settled over Mr. Spock as the past opened briefly before him for viewing and he enjoyed what he saw. His voice was low, even soft, yet carried a scolding tone.

“‘He’… was an exceptional man. He was also my friend. As such, we had our disagreements. We saw each other’s uglier moments. The mission logs fail to show those aspects.” Stiles looked up. “Are you saying the logs are inaccurate?” “Not at all. We simply left things out.” “Like what?”

Spock paused to think a moment. “The logs, the legends, the tall tales, the song and story-these are spirit-charging powers for us. But legend is selective and usually written by the winners. The legends of the first Enterprise… they reflect the heroic, not the human aspects, of our life together in those years… Jim Kirk, Dr. McCoy, the others, and myself. Legend is a great filter. The traits that shame us most, the ones we leave out of the stories, are often the flaws that give us texture. Without them, we would be only pictures.”

Speck leaned back on an elbow, maneuvered his leg to a better position, and considered the past through scopes in his own mind.

“I have come over these many years to understand what it means to be a captain not so much in rank but in manner. There are captains of rank, captains of ships, and captains of crews. A few men are all three. I once commanded the Enterprise as her captain. I was capable of giving the proper orders and expecting proper behavior, but I was never captain of the crew’s hopes and devotions. That is a different passion. A different manner of man than I.”

At first it seemed Spock might be selling himself short, judging the past too harshly-but no. Stiles knew too well the symptoms of that, and didn’t see them here. This, instead, was a kind of personal honesty, a stunning depth of self-respect.

He wanted it. He wanted to know how to do that. Spock was so graceful at understanding subtle differences that mattered, and didn’t recoil from knowing his talents and limitations.

“Different how?” Stiles asked, somewhat abrasive.

Spock tipped his head in thought. “I see chess,