Jim Kirk was at home on his farm in Iowa when the news finally reached him. He had known it was coming for a while now – Spock's declining health was no secret - but he still wasn't prepared when he finally received the news of his old friend's death. He had lost Spock before, but now there was a finality to the loss that hadn't been there in the past. There was no Genesis project looming on the horizon to undo what had been done this time.

Kirk had always assumed Spock would outlive them all – Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, himself. Spock's logical nature dictated that he avoid the risks, dangers, and vices that might prematurely bring an ordinary man to his end. Having survived Romulans, Klingons, and all sorts of intergalactic villains, it didn't seem right that Spock's own body would betray him in the end. Of course Kirk knew, intellectually at least, that this was how it had to be; no one was immortal, not even those precious few who had conquered death once before the way Spock had.

Kirk had been meaning to visit Spock during the last year, but somehow he hadn't gotten around to doing it. It had been so much easier to see each other before Kirk's retirement from Starfleet. Now, looking out the window in the front room of his house, Kirk wondered why he hadn't made more of an effort to visit Spock. It wasn't like he had been super busy. Mostly he'd just assumed there would be more time. Time. The one thing he had taken for granted more than just about anything in the universe.

Time. An enemy none of them would ever defeat.

"He was the most human man I ever met," Kirk said out loud, even though there was no one else in the room. "He understood what it meant to be human more than any of us did because a part of him wasn't human. I learned so much from him."

Kirk paused to catch his breath. He needed to get this off his chest, even if there was no one to hear it. Maybe Spock would hear it, wherever he was. Even if he didn't, Kirk still had to do this.

"It's not fair that I have to attend a second funeral for you, Spock. I did this once already and it just about killed me. I don't feel like being selfless today. I know that you once said the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one, but today the needs of the one – my needs – are all I can think about."

Unspoken, even in his subconscious, was Jim Kirk's fear of his own mortality. With Spock gone, surely the Grim Reaper was making his way towards Kirk's doorstep sooner rather than later. Spock would have had words of wisdom to assuage that fear, had he been here. Something logical, if not quite comforting.

"Yours was a life well lived," Kirk said. "You made my life better for having known you, Spock."

The words caught in Kirk's throat, and he had to pause again. A single tear rolled down Kirk's cheek.

"I have been, and always shall be, your friend," Kirk said as he sat back down in his chair. He smiled, remembering the good times he and Spock had shared together. "Live long and prosper," Kirk said quietly, echoing a phrase he had heard more times than he could count.

A familiar voice, quiet but unmistakably there, repeated the refrain. Live long and prosper.