cmdr_zoom | Spock and Pike, "good fortune"

A slightly more polished version of a ficlet originally posted here. Spoilers for the new movie.

Alone in the upper gallery, Spock watches as his friend's first, best destiny becomes a matter of record. The role of quiet observer is one he will have to play often from now on, lest history be altered even further. For a moment, his attention wanders from the young man receiving the accolade to another figure seated at the front of the ampitheatre.

Spock wonders at the cruel irony of fate, that his first captain should still be in a wheelchair despite everything that has changed. This time, he has someone other than a faulty baffle plate to blame. The crippling of one man is a tiny thing next to the lives of six billion, but it pricks at him anyway.

Years before his friends risked everything by traveling to a forbidden world to restore him, Spock did the same for his former captain. But Talos IV will not be necessary here. Christopher Pike may never walk again, but he is still mobile, still vital, able to shake the hand of his successor and wish him well rather than merely blinking "yes" and "no." He is not the shell of a man that Spock last saw in the Enterprise's transporter room, as he delivered his captain into the care of the only ones who could free a keen mind from its prison.

It is a small thing amid so much loss, but Spock has learned in his long life to be grateful for every bit of good luck.