Stargazer

Title: Stargazer
Author: ExcentrykeMuse
Fandom(s): Twilight Saga / nu!Trek
Pairing(s): Bella Swan/Spock, (past) Bella/Edward
Word Count: 6k
Rating: PG13

Warning(s): death, interstellar travel, time travel, I hate Edward, age disparity (14/18), inspecial couples, staged deaths, xenophobia
Prompt: for Rebecca is Cool: “but I wouldn’t say no to Bella Swan/spock as I loved those stories you’ve written”

Stargazer

“Starships were meant to fly / Hands up and touch the sky / Can’t stop because we’re so high / Let’s do this one more time”

—Nicki Minaj

Bella knew that Charlie thought it was—healthier—than just sitting in a chair and bed rotting.  Since the snow began to fall, Bella took to taking hikes on Quileute land, which was somewhat dangerous as she didn’t have a map, a compass, or a guide.  Still, the calm of the woods called to her.  She knew she had gotten lost in these woods, that Edward had left her to freeze on the forest floor, but somehow that didn’t matter.—These trees were divorced from him now.  When she was walking among them, a peace settled over her, and it was as if Edward Cullen had never existed.

She had almost died in these woods, her mind told her.

Perhaps her heart was left crumbling on the forest floor somewhere.

Perhaps it was held safely in her pocket, ready to come to life if it only had the chance.

That morning Bella left particularly early because the night before she had seen a shooting star that had landed over a particular ridge she knew quite well.  She left with sandwiches and an extra bottle of water and she—

It was a spaceship.

How had no one found this before her?

Going to it, she knocked on it, wondering if anyone had survived the crash.

She walked all around it, banging on it with a stick, until a small voice called, “I am here!”

Startled, Bella dropped the stick and turned to her left.  “I have water!” she called out in the direction of the voice, “and food!—I come in peace!”

For a moment there was no response and then she heard shuffling.

From out of beneath a hanging lip of stone walked a small figure, dressed in robes and huddled in on himself.  At first, Bella couldn’t quite make out the figure, and her heart was beating wildly in her chest, but then she realized that the figure was a young teenage boy.

“God, you’re freezing,” Bella realized as she saw the boy’s teeth chattering together.

She dropped her pack to the ground and took off her coat.  Running up to the teenage boy, she took a moment to gage his response before wrapping him in her coat, her thumb brushing against his cheek by accident.

There was stillness.

Then an outpouring of emotions whipped through her mind: hunger, fear, cold, confusion, loss, and it was as if a thread was snapping into place.  Her cold, damaged heart began to thaw out and it was as if she had been dead for two months and was suddenly alive again.

The teenage boy’s eyes widened and he whispered, “adun’a.”

“What?” she murmured, taking his left arm and stuffing it into the sleeve of her coat.

Wonder and confusion joined the other emotions in her mind, and Bella looked at the teenage boy in confusion before stuffing his other arm into the coat.  Bella quickly zipped it up for him.  “There, that’s better.”  She picked up the hood and placed it over his head (noticing his prominently pointed ears) and drew the strings down to better keep him warm.

“You are my—wife,” the boy told her.

She looked at him askance.

“Can you not feel what I am feeling, adun’a?”

She licked her lips and looked at this strange alien boy with his deep purple eyes.  “You mean this string in my head?” she checked. 

He nodded.

“There’s nothing like it—here.  It’s not,” she checked, “human.”  She paused, realizing she should explain it better.  “Here.  On Earth.  Our planet.”

The boy nodded to her once.  “I know I am on Planet Earth, adun’a.  There was, however, a temporal anomaly.  What I do not know is the year.”

Bella bit her lip and took in his words.  “Let’s.”  She paused.  “One thing at a time:  You know this is Earth.”  She looked over at his crashed spaceship.  “And I’m your wife.”

Adoration filtered over the string—over what must be some sort of bond, and Bella could tell that the teenage boy was smiling even though his face remained impassive.  “Affirmative.”

“How am I your wife?” Bella asked him.  “How did this happen to us?  Here—we need a justice of the peace.  We say vows.”  She looked about her at the trees that were the only witnesses.  “There’s a ceremony.”

“I know well what is required for a Terran marriage, adun’a,” the teenage boy interrupted.  This, though, completely surprised her, which the boy must have felt because he reached out and pressed a hand to her shoulder.  “When you touched me, a bond formed.  It is unprecedented in my culture.  Usually an adept is needed to place bonds between people—and Terrans,” (she looked up at him in confusion) “humans, such as yourself, are known to be psi-null.”

He shivered.

“You’re cold,” Bella worried, picking up her pack and getting out a bottle of water for him.  “We’ll head back to my home and I’ll—hide you,” she decided.  Charlie would never go for an alien in the house.  She’d just have to keep him in the closet and sneak him food—if he ate food.

The teenage boy drank the entire bottle and gave it back to Bella.

“What’s your name?” Bella asked, “if we’re married—” And somehow they were married.  Bella could feel the truth in this strange boy’s words.  She trusted him implicitly.—And she hadn’t trusted anyone since Edward had left her stranded in the forest.

Amusement flitted down the bond toward her even though the teenage boy’s face again remained impassive.  “Spock,” he told her, “Son of Sarek, son of Skonn.”

“Does your father know you’re here?” Bella asked.  She looked over her shoulder at the spaceship.  “Can that thing send a distress signal?”

“My father died in the crash,” Spock told her, a rush of sadness filtering through the bond.  “I have turned on the distress beacon.  I am hoping that a Vulcan ship—Vulcans are my people—will pick up the distress signal and risk First Contact.”

“Okay,” Bella murmured, standing and offering her gloved hand.  Spock wasn’t a child, he was clearly twelve or thirteen, but Bella wanted to keep him close and safe.

Spock was hesitant at first but then accepted her hand.

“Was there anyone else in the crash?” Bella asked as they turned toward Forks.  “Beside your father?”

“Two other Vulcans.  I put them all in stasis so we can later bury them in space.”

Bella nodded, although the practice was of course foreign to her.  Stasis?  Space burial?  Those sounded like creations of the future!—but then again, she was holding the hand of an alien from outer space, who had a mind bond with her, and was her husband.  And if that hadn’t been strange enough, her previous boyfriend had been a vampire.  She just accepted that her husband should be an alien from outer space.  Stranger things had happened.

They walked down the incline and Bella kept on stealing glances at Spock, at her husband.  “How old are you?” she asked. 

“I am fourteen stardates,” Spock told her, pride coming into his voice.  “You are older.”

It wasn’t a question.  He was stating fact.

Before Bella could answer, he continued, “I will grow, adun’a.  I will mature.”

Bella didn’t realize her mouth was hanging open until it suddenly clicked shut.  “But you will leave—” she stated carefully.

He paused midstep, causing Bella to stop and turn toward him.  Spock’s face was devoid of all emotion, but his purple eyes were curious as they took her in.  “I will endeavor never to be parted from you, adun’a,” he told her quite seriously for a fourteen-year-old boy.  “We can either remain here, and I will adapt, or I will take you with me to Vulcan.”

Bella blinked at him, stunned at the devotion she felt filtering through the bond.  “What does adoona mean?” she asked quietly.

Spock looked at her.  “Wife.—You have not told me your name.”

Bella breathed out and turned to continue on their journey, pulling Spock along with her.  He was clearly still cold despite her coat.  “My name is Bella.”  She bit her lip, thinking she should give her full name since his had been so formal.  “Isabella Marie Swan.”

“You are Lady Isabella of the House of Surak,” Spock informed her, and she turned to look at him again.  His purple eyes stared back at her, so certain and yet so young.  She felt valued by Spock in a way she had never felt before.  She was suddenly glad that Edward had left her all those months ago in these very woods.

At the emotion flitting down the bond, Spock tilted his head slightly.  “It is logical you should feel gladness and pride at your name and heritage.”

“I don’t know what my name and heritage mean,” she told him as they turned and continued down through the forest.

He squeezed her mittened hand and she felt a sense of calm wash over her.  “I will teach you,” he promised.  “I shall not leave you ignorant.”

When they got to her old pickup truck, Bella opened the door for Spock on the passenger side since she wasn’t certain he knew how a human car worked and then passed him a sandwich she had in her bag.

“I can tell you’re hungry.”

“Thank you, adun’a,” he murmured as he opened the package before sniffing it.  He seemed to be considering the sandwich for a moment before taking a bite of it.  Bella passed him another bottle of water.

With a jump into the cab, Bella started up the car and drove them back to Forks in silence.

“I have to hide you from Charlie—my dad,” Bella explained as they crossed the town line.  “You can hide in my closet and—I think I’m just going to bring you to school so you’re not left in the house all day.”

Spock was looking out the windows at the scenery.  “What about my ears?”

She had thought about them.  “You can wear a knitted hat.  It’s cold enough for it.”  Bella glanced over at him.  “It should work for a day or two until someone picks up your distress beacon.”

He turned toward her and regarded her.  “Will you come with me then, adun’a?”

Bella looked over at him, his face so stoic, and thought about his request for a long moment.  “I know nothing about you,” she admitted as her eyes fell on the road.  Worry trickled down through her mind.  “You know nothing about me.”  She paused.  “I don’t think you’ll like me when you know me.”  Edward certainly hadn’t.

“I do not believe you,” he said with all the certainty of a child.  “I know you find me fascinating.”

She looked over at him in complete surprise.  Bella thought she had managed to keep that to herself.  “You’re an alien—from outer space.”

“My father was an alien from outer space,” he told her succinctly, his voice slightly tense, “when my Terran mother met him.  They still married.”

“Wait,” Bella rushed, glancing at him.  “Your mother was human?”  Her mind boggled.  “Vulcans have landed on Earth before?”  She looked at him hard before she was forced to return her eyes to the road.

Amusement flitted through the bond.  Bella was not amused.

“Remember, adun’a, there was a temporal anomaly.  My father’s ship was traveling to Earth on stardate 2244.342” (she glanced at him in amazement) “two hundred thirty-nine years in the future when a wormhole opened up and we fell to Earth now.”  The emphasis was strange for him.  He’d emphasized words before, but this seemed almost childlike and so unlike him.  “I doubt I will be able to return to my time, but I can return to Vulcan.”

“So,” Bella checked, “two hundred thirty-nine years from now there is contact between Vulcans and humans.”

“Affirmative.”

“And your mother is human.”

“Affirmative.”

“Did she have this bond in her head?”  Bella had to check.  This was a completely alien experience and not even dating Edward and being his “personal brand of heroin” had prepared her for this wondrous and yet baffling experience. 

“Negative,” Spock told her. When she looked over, he continued: “humans are psi-null.”

“Psi-null,” she repeated.  “Are you saying there is something defective about my brain?”  Trust her brain to be defective.  First, Edward couldn’t read her mind and now she can form an alien bond with fourteen-year-old Vulcan boys.

“Negative.  Your brain is advanced.”

She glanced at him.

“I would posit, adun’a, that you have jumped ahead in the evolution of your species by several thousands of years and are entirely singular.”

Jumped ahead in her species.  She groaned.

Spock turned in his seat and looked at her hard.  “How did you already guess this was the case?”

Bella looked ahead and turned onto her street.  She saw her father’s cruiser parked outside.  “Later,” she promised.  “Charlie’s home.  We have to sneak you inside.  I’m not leaving you out in the cold.”

“How do you propose to do that, adun’a?”

They were now pulling in and Bella pointed to the tree outside her window.  “Can you climb that tree?  I’ll let you into the window with the purple curtains.”

“I am most dexterous, adun’a,” he promised her, with a sense of pride in his voice, the first emotion he had betrayed.

Bella wondered at it.

They got out of the car and Bella pushed him down until he was crouching. 

“Wait until I go inside and make sure no one is looking out the windows,” she told him.  “I’ll be upstairs in five minutes.”  She reached out and squeezed his hand, turned around and grabbed her pack, and then went to the door, glancing once behind her before going inside.

Charlie was lounging in front of the television with a beer.  Looking up, he smiled at her.  “How was your hike?”

“Uneventful,” she told him, sliding off her pack.  “I’m going to go get changed.”

Charlie was watching the t.v. again.  “Pizza tonight.”

It was pizza nearly every night.  Bella just hoped that Spock liked it.

She jogged up the stairs and immediately closed her door when she got to her room.  She took several long strides to the window and opened it easily.  The window was nearly silent, which was unsurprising given how often Edward snuck in.  The face, however, looking back at her from the tree wasn’t Edward’s.  It was Spock’s. 

He reached out for the sill and she helped pull him in until he was a tangle of limbs on the floor. 

Bella quickly shut the window. 

She looked down at him and he was a heap of red puff coat and robes.

“You okay?”

He looked up at her.  “All is well, adun’a.”  He pushed himself up and stood fluidly, with a grace that Bella had never herself possessed.

Suddenly feeling awkward, Bella brushed her hair behind her ear with her fingers.  “I—we’ll have pizza later.  I’ll bring you up a few slices.  Do you need more water?”  She looked up at Spock with her large brown eyes.

He was now unzipping the coat she had given him.  “That would be most gratifying, adun’a.  I thank you for your care of me.” 

She felt gratitude and contentment flit down the bond and she wondered at it.  As if unable to move, Bella stood for several moments and just watched as Spock took off the coat completely and folded it before draping it at the end of the bed.

He was tall for a boy of fourteen, but his face was unbearably young.  It was washed of all emotion and if she couldn’t feel the bond between them, she would have said he was completely emotionless.  His voice certainly was monotonous and unvarying.  Were all Vulcans like him?  Did they all hide what they were feeling?

Spock’s bright purple eyes flashed toward her, a question through the bond, and Bella startled.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.  “I’ll get you that water.”

“There is nothing for which you need apologize,” he told her succinctly.  “I am your husband.”

Husband, yes.  How was she ever going to explain this to Charlie if Spock’s people never came to rescue him?

She hurried out of the room and down the stairs.

Charlie was right where she left him.  “What kind of pizza do you want, Bells?” he asked her.  “The usual?”

“Cheese,” she told him, thinking maybe she should just get the basic recipe for Spock.  “And make it an extra large.  I’m hungry tonight.”

Charlie looked up at her in surprise.  It was no wonder, Bella had been eating like a baby bird ever since Edward had left.  Still, Charlie didn’t ask questions.  He simply picked up the phone and dialled the number.  Bella was grateful she didn’t have a nosy father. 

Bella went to the fridge and grabbed two bottles of water.  She kept more than a dozen in the cupboard for her hikes and as Charlie didn’t keep food or ingredients of any kind, there was more than enough room.  She always rotated four or five bottles in the fridge.

“Did you see that shooting star last night?” Charlie asked her when she was halfway to the stairs.  “I was out on Nantucket Road and it just fell from the sky.”

Stilling, Bella turned and looked at her father.

Charlie had returned his attention to the game, but his head was slightly turned to her.

Licking her lips, Bella decided a half-truth was better than a lie.  “I did see it. I—I hiked up that way near the ridge but didn’t find a meteor of any kind.  I suppose if it had been something of significance, the local weatherman would have reported it.”

Charlie whistled through his lips.  “No.  Dan said nothing about it over the airwaves this morning.”

“Then it was just that—a shooting star.”

She turned to go, but Charlie stopped her again.

“I hope if you made a wish, it wasn’t for that fool Edwin to come back.”  Charlie had turned away from her now and tossed the phone on the couch.

Bella looked down at the water she was holding.  “I know he’s not coming back, Charlie.  I—I don’t want him to come back.”  She glanced up the stairs to where Spock was waiting for her.  He may only be fourteen years old, but she had never felt such love and acceptance from anyone, and she was selfishly going to hold onto it for as long as he remained on Planet Earth.

Charlie grunted.  “Pizza will be here in less than half an hour.”

“I’ve got homework,” she lied.  “Is it all right if I eat in my room?”

“Fine by me.”

With that, Bella slipped up the stairs.

When she entered her room, Spock was nowhere in sight.  She looked around the room, toward the window, and then closed the door quickly behind her.  “Spock?” she whispered, and the closet door opened to reveal the missing alien.

“I thought it best to hide, adun’a, in case your father accompanied you.”

She came around the bed and gave him both bottles of water.  “Makes sense,” she agreed, pressing her hand lightly to his shoulder.  “I think I could talk him down, but I don’t want to have to try.”

“No,” he agreed, opening the first water bottle.  “First contact has yet to be achieved.”

Bella breathed out through her nose.  “You think someone will come for you?”

He finished his first bottle and set it aside.  “Affirmative.  My message was coded in Vulcan.  They should know that there are three dead and one survivor.  It will be of upmost importance to rescue me and not taint your species with post-warp knowledge.”

Bella had no idea what warp was, but she didn’t ask.

“Tomorrow is a school day,” she told him, “but after class we can hike back up to the ship, see if anyone’s there.”

Spock looked at her carefully.  He then reached into his pocket and brought out some strange piece of alien technology.  “I brought a comm signal.  They will be able to reach me.”

“Oh,” Bella gasped, reaching out for it in wonder.

Carefully, Spock placed it in her hands and opened it.  It chirped at her.  “There’s no one in range,” he told her.  “If you speak into it, no one will be listening.”  He then closed it again.

“We have nothing like this.”  Bella glanced up at him.

His eyes, if it was possible, seemed to soften in his otherwise emotionless face.  “I am aware, adun’a.”  He took it and put it back in his pocket.  “Will you not tell me who Edwin is?”

She blushed her horrible blush, the one that reached down her neck and down past the collar of her shirt.  “Do you know of vampires in your time?”

“Vampires?” he inquired, confusion flooding the bond.  “Do you mean the legend from Transylvania?”

“Yes,” she agreed.  “They aren’t just legends.  I guess they’re still in hiding in your time. Edward is a vampire and he was my boyfriend.”

A spasm of worry crossed between them and she looked up into his haunted purple eyes.

“That is not safe, adun’a,” he told her.  “Vampires drink human blood.”

“Yes,” she agreed, not bothering to get into the differences between the Cullens and most of their kind.  “Edward never hurt me though.”

A silence fell between them and Spock came to sit beside her on the bed.  He was taller than her, she realized, sitting there beside her, and he carefully picked up her hand and held it.  A flood of pleasure pulsed through her fingers and Bella looked up at him in shock.  His face betrayed nothing though, the bond only conveying a sense of satisfaction.

“He is your boyfriend no longer,” Spock checked.

Bella blushed again.  “No,” she told him.  “He left me in those woods where I found you, frozen on the forest floor.  They had to form a search party to find me.”

“You know the cold then of those trees,” Spock wondered aloud, looking at her profile.

“Yes,” she admitted.  “When I saw the shooting star last night, I wondered what—who—could be at the other end of it.  I was afraid you might be cold like I had been.”

“So you came to find me,” Spock finished for her.

“So I came to find you,” she agreed.

A warmth had settled in their joint hands and it felt wonderful and safe.  Bella leaned into Spock ever so slightly, and he reached up and touched her hair with his free hand.  They were locked into that moment together, but then there was the slam of a car door and the ring of a doorbell, and Charlie called up for Bella to come get her pizza.

She looked up at Spock sheepishly and promised she would be right back.

“I want my half,” she told Charlie, collecting multiple plates from the kitchen and transferring cheese slices onto them.

“You’re going to have to take several trips,” Charlie noted, but he had never seen Bella balance multiple plates before.  It took her two trips to bring up four plates and two bottles of water with napkins shoved in her pockets, but she managed it somehow.  She laid it all on the bed and presented it proudly to Spock.

“I got cheese because I didn’t know what toppings you’d like.”

“Any meal you provide for me is more than adequate, adun’a,” he told her with obvious fondness.  He picked up a piece of pizza and delicately began to eat it after watching her eat an entire slice.

She waited until he ate two and a half slices, offered him a fourth, before asking, “Do you have an ex-girlfriend.”

“I believe Terrans would say, ‘It’s complicated.’”

Bella looked into his purple eyes.  “I’m your wife,” she told him, still getting used to the idea herself.  “I told you about Edward.  I’d like to know—”

He nodded and carefully wiped his fingers.

“On Vulcan telepathic bonds, like ours, are often formed in childhood and then consummated in adulthood.”

She nodded.  “Did you not have a telepathic bond?”

“My father arranged a match for me.  I went to the matriarch of my clan when I was twelve, which is—old—for such matters, and my mind rejected T’Pring.”  A sense of pride overwhelmed the bond.

“I take it she was—” Bella searched for the word “—unsuitable for your mind to reject her.”

“She was as harsh as the deserts on Vulcan and as cold as the highest mountains on Terra,” he told her rather poetically.

Bella was rather astonished by his words, but accepted them.  She translated him to mean that T’Pring was a bitch.  Spock, however, would never say such a thing.  He was far too polite.  “What happened after that?”

“Father was angry,” Spock told her honestly.  “Mother was gratified.  T’Pring was insulted.  I refused all other possible matches.”

“And now me,” Bella realized—two years later.  “I’m not even Vulcan.”  She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach that was all her own.

“I do not believe I have ever desired a Vulcan mate,” Spock told her quietly.  “While I have always desired a telepathic bond to my wife, which is nearly impossible outside of the species, I have found the logic of my species difficult and cold.”

“Logic?” Bella asked.

“We live by the rules of logic,” Spock told her.  “It is not logical that I am glad you are my wife.  I have always been emotional for a Vulcan.”

“Spock,” Bella laughed.  “Your face shows no emotion at all!”

“I am gratified,” he told her, carefully picking up his half-eaten piece of pizza.  “However, other Vulcans consider me emotional because of my Terran mother.  Now that I have a Terran wife—”  He considered.  “It may be different now.  I have traveled far and allowances may be made.”

“You still want to take me with you?”

He lowered his slice of pizza.  “I will not go without you.”

“I cannot hide you forever—” she warned.

“Affirmative,” he agreed.  “The only way we will find ‘safe harbor’ and acceptance together is with my people.  Vulcans are the only race who can possibly understand.”

“They will understand this?” she asked in astonishment, motioning between them.  “Truly?”

“It is an accepted practice of my people.  The fact that we did not need an adept to form a bond between our minds shows how great a propensity our minds have for one another.”  He set down his pizza and reached for her hand.  “I will not abandon you.”  Love and acceptance and determination filtered through the bond and Bella felt instantly comforted.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and Spock told her, “Speak, wife.”

“Edward left me.”

“Edward was not a Vulcan and I am not Edward,” he told her plainly.  He squeezed her hand, letting a flurry of pleasure wash through her fingers.  “I will never abandon you.  I am incapable of it.”

She nodded once and slowly drew her hand away, picking up her bottle of water. 

Her mind turned over her situation.  This boy was so strange.  He was so alien with his pointed ears and his telepathic bond to her mind.  However, she could hear it hum in the back of her mind.  It was settled there and she was afraid that if he were taken from her, far off to another planet, it would snap and bleed.  Nothing would be able to staunch the blood.  It would be worse than when Edward left and she was left with a gaping hole in her heart that only began to mend with the coming of the frost—with the coming, she now knew, of a spaceship. 

Spock helped her clean up but she went downstairs alone and did the dishes alone.

When it came time to change, she took her sweats to the bathroom and locked herself in.  She took a shower and then braided her hair before putting on her sweatpants and tanktop.  Looking at herself in the mirror, she didn’t know why she should feel so self-conscious.  Spock was a fourteen-year-old boy!  But he’s your husband, a small voice in her head reasoned.

She dithered as long as she could before going back to her room. 

When she entered, she found Spock sitting on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed.

She stared at him. 

Putting her things away, she moved around him and eventually went to bed.

He was still sitting on the floor.

Sometime in her dreams, she felt someone shake her shoulder, and she woke up to hear voices speaking a language she couldn’t understand.

She sat up and took in Spock who was sitting and speaking into the communicator. 

“Are they here?” she asked, crawling to the end of the bed. 

Garbled noises came out of the communicator and she looked at Spock expectantly.  He looked over at her and hope trickled over their bond.  “Affirmative,” he told her.  “They ask that we return to the ship.  We need to use the transporters on board.”

Transporters?  Some other science fiction come to life, surely.

Bella looked over her shoulder and saw that it was three in the morning.  “Let me get dressed.”

She went over to her wardrobe and dressed in jeans and a longsleeved shirt, putting on her socks and trainers, and throwing on her spare jacket.  She came over to Spock who was still speaking softly into the communicator, agitation coming through the bond, and she offered him the puff red coat he had worn before.

“You’ll be cold,” she told him. 

He looked at her, as if he had forgotten she was there, and offered his arm.  She carefully dressed him, putting up the hood and zipping it up, before she put her finger to her mouth and they snuck down the stairs. 

She grabbed her keys and they didn’t turn on the porchlight when they ran to the old pickup truck.

Starting it up, she prayed that Charlie didn’t wake up, and she ambled down the road toward Quileute land.

Spock was once again talking into the communicator.

She had convinced him to wear her mittens even though he seemed to not want to put anything on his hands and she was wearing thick mittens.  It was nearing mid-December and it was quite cold in rural Washington State, and she wondered how the other Vulcans were dealing with the cold, given how Spock was more than a little blue.

Spock forcefully said something into the communicator, and closed it.

“What is it?” she asked, looking over at him.

“They don’t want to take you because you’re from a pre-warp society,” he told her in his calm, detached voice, but she could feel his distress.

Bella’s mouth fell open and she realized, in that moment, she had every intention of going with him.  She had even grabbed her copy of Pride and Prejudice as her one momento of Earth.

“Are you—” (she licked her lips) “—are you going alone?”

“Negative,” he told her firmly.  “They are relaying my request back to the Matriarch of the Clan of Surak.  She will be informed of my existence and the existence of you, my wife.  She will make the decision.  I have also informed them that I will stay here if they do not take you.”

Bella breathed out.  “I don’t know how we’re going to hide you.”

His purple eyes flashed with cunning, the first emotion he betrayed.  “They do not know how I will be hidden.  I have forced their hand.  The Prime Directive must be upheld.”

“The Prime Directive?”

“We cannot interfere with the natural progression of pre-warp societies.  My presence here will interfere.”

Bella nodded.  “Okay.”

The rest of the drive was silent.  No one was on the roads at three in the morning and they got to Quileute land easily.  Bella parked the truck off of the road, and they climbed out, pulled out their one flashlight, and started the climb to the spaceship.

It was much colder than their former climb.  However, they had the advantage of a goal in mind and when one of them fell behind, the other would help pull them ahead.  When they came to the final ridge, Bella flicked the light up.  “I’ll climb first and then pull you up,” she offered.  “The ship is only a couple of yards up ahead.”

She gave him the flashlight and reached up to the first ledge and pulled herself up.  Grabbing the second bit of rock, she inserted her foot in a foothold she knew of, and swung up to the second ledge.  The climb was slow but Spock angled the flashlight for her, but when she reached the final ledge, she almost let go because she was met with a pair of boots.  Looking up, she saw a tall figure and she swallowed.  He was wearing robes not unlike Spock.

Bella reached up her hand, which she couldn’t do anything with, and said as clearly as she could, “Dif-tor heh smusma.”

The Vulcan glared down at her and then, quite suddenly, reached down and pulled her up onto the ledge.  She breathed out and nodded to him, before going back to the ledge and reaching her arm down for Spock.

After some scrambling and help from the Vulcan, Spock was also safely up on the ledge.

Behind them was the crashed spaceship and the three looked at each other warily.

The Vulcan was the first to speak: “Spock, son of Sarek, the Matriarch of your Clan has granted your request.  We can grant safe passage to the Lady Isabella to Vulcan at this time, once we destroy all evidence of your ship.”

Bella felt a great sense of relief wash through Spock.

She looked at him and then the Vulcan.  “How can I understand you?”

“The Universal Translator from my ship,” Spock told her.  “It is programmed with Standard.”

“Indeed.”

Bella looked at the Vulcan.  “Can you make it look like I died in the explosion?”

“That would not be unreasonable,” he told her.  “We will take a sample of your—” he said a word that did not translate “—and the Terrans will assume you died here tonight.”

She nodded.  “Good.”

She thought of Charlie and how she hadn’t even left a note, but perhaps it was better this way.  Her mind flitted to Edward who had almost killed her in this very forest, and how she would die here for all to see.  Perhaps it was best.  She reached out a hand to Spock, who readily took it despite the obvious stare from the Vulcan. 

“I’m ready,” she said, and she walked into her future.

The End.