Title: In the Blink of a Guardian

Warnings: Canon deaths, spoilers for "Yesteryear" and the reboot.

Summary: What seemed a misstep to be corrected may have been better despite its appearance. And one man's tendency to sacrifice himself for the greater good may go deeper than it seems.

Author's notes: Inspired by a brilliantly conceived TOS fanfic (http:/ liquidfic. org. /reunification. html and remove the spaces) wherein we see what might have happened in the alternate timeline of the TAS episode "Yesteryear." It's a very interesting idea, and the alternate timeline becomes even more striking when you see how it would affect the reboot (which came out several years after the story was written.) And therein lies our tale.

Author's notes #2: Some of this may be slightly confusing if you aren't familiar with TAS's "Yesteryear." Spock goes back in time for research, comes back to a timeline where he died young, and time-jumps again to save his own life. The episode can be found on Youtube, and is worth watching despite the rather iffy animation.

The scene is a nameless, ancient planet, littered with the ruins of a long-gone civilization. At the time portal amidst these ruins, Spock prepares to step forward - a single routine step for this iteration of him, but lifeshattering, painfully literally so, for far too many other people. He completes the step, and space-time stutters, folds backward, and splits. For half an hour, the Guardian remains untouched, and in that time a vastly different reality unfolds.

In another path of time, the boy Spock sets off to resolve his heritage, and the savior that should come does not. Amanda leaves the husband that drove her son to his death, and meets her own death in the process. In the wake of his personal tragedy, the doubly grief-stricken Sarek sees the futility of divisions between races, and forms a resolution that echoes through realities - he will reunite the Vulcan people with the Romulans that are still so very like them.

Fate - random chance, he would insist - is with him as it is not with another such reformer, and the centuries-old chasm between the peoples is bridged. Ripples spread from his success, and one day a wealthy Romulan mining magnate sits bolt upright in his chair. Memories of a life he has not lived overtake Nero's mind, and he remembers - a dark, wartorn Romulus, Sarek's upstart halfbreed of a son, the horrific loss of his planet and wife, a planet folding inward like a pricked balloon. But underneath are the memories of the life he has lived and is living - Romulus is bright and prosperous and Vulcan is untouched, Sarek's son died long ago, and his wife is alive and well.

His wife.

He calls out for her, and though half of him knows they parted only minutes ago, the other half is so overjoyed at her reappearance that he jumps up and embraces her hard enough to draw a startled gasp.

"Why, Nero!" She is laughing through her puzzlement, and the sight sends a thrill through the Nero that has not seen her smile in over a quarter of a century. "What possessed you to do that?"

"I - don't know. I had a dream, I think. The whole universe was wrong, distorted, and you were dead." The stoic Romulan shudders as the full depth of his memories percolates through. "I don't think it was a dream, now. I think it actually happened somewhere, to some Nero." They settle down comfortably in the rather huge armchair, and he recounts his ghost-experiences in the other world. When he finishes, they sit pensively for a minute, newly glad of their existence together.

For half an hour, they are, gloriously, each other's.

In yet another timestream, Spock lives to adulthood, and in the course of time he is seated in a well-furnished room on Vulcan, along with these iterations of Kirk, Sarek, and Amanda. Suddenly, their amiable if meaningless talk is interrupted as foreign memories come to them as to Nero. Kirk's happy childhood with both parents now overlays the fatherless life he may have had, Sarek's marriage bond stutters as if surprised to find its object alive and reciprocating, Amanda remembers a continued existence on Vulcan as well as being absorbed into death, and Spock knows that half of him never failed to save his mother's life.

"Did you just - remember a lot of things?" Amanda speaks first, shaken to find herself alive.

"Yeah, felt like a - mind meld..." Kirk trails off as some of his memories assert loudly that he has never experienced a mind meld.

"I would surmise that we have been subjected to a merging of timelines. Perhaps something has occurred in Nero and Selek's time."

The awkward politeness of a moment before evaporates as all are slightly overcome by the relief of finding that Vulcan's deaths - and one death in particular - never really happened here. Vulcan is solid and warm beneath them, exactly as it has been for eons, and exactly as it will be for eons to come. Spock and Sarek might never admit it, but the euphoria of realization affects them too.
For half an hour, they talk more freely than they ever have.