I didn't know where the feeling came from, only that one moment I was quietly waiting

my turn to speak and the next, I was filled with shaking dread.

Something . . . awful had happened.

The faces in the crowd before me blurred

but no one else seemed to realize . . . only me.

For a moment, I thought I was dying.

A sound nearby brought my reeling senses back into focus, an inhuman groan

which I recognized instantly.

Spock.

A moment before he had been addressing thousands of beings, now he was on his knees,

his face hidden in trembling hands, yet I knew the familiar features were twisted in agony

not his own.

I stumbled to his side, my movements sluggish with my own pain. All sounds faded and I

didn't know if I even spoke aloud.

"Spock?"

Tears - his, mine, ours - flowed from distraught eyes.

He reached out blindly to me, his words a hoarse whisper.

"Jim was alone. We left him alone."

"No, dammit, he was with Scotty and Chekov," I choked out, "the christening cruise for

the new Enterprise. There was no danger."

"He is no longer a part of this universe, McCoy."

The response was harsh, full of anger that I refused to believe his words.

Or my own senses.

The faces around us, the huge audience, time itself, ceased to exist as I looked into those eyes which mirrored my own devastation.

And understood finally that Jim was gone.

. . . I'll die alone.

THE END