Title:  The Wizard, the Witch and the Whirlwind

Part 9:  Back Home Again

Based on The Wizard of Oz  (1939)

Author:  Shoshana

Summary:   Spock and McCoy visit a visit to Jim Kirk in Riverside, Iowa.  But the three don’t stay there.   

Pairings:  S/Mc    Dorothy/original character(s)  

K/Antonia    K/Edith

Rating:  PG-13    sexual innuendo

Word count:  5300

Disclaimer:   Brief dialogue quoted/adapted from The Wizard of Oz, screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.   I do not own The Wizard of Oz or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Nor do I own Star Trek.  Not a molecule, atom, quark or vibrating string of it.

Author’s note:  Novella length.  Though a Spock/McCoy marital relationship is an important element of the story, the fic is primarily a trio friendship story.  For the purposes of this work, Jim does not disappear/die in 2293 aboard the Enterprise-B.  Thank you to Stef for the beta.  Errors are my own.

The voices of Spock and Jim came to Leonard from far away, but were getting closer.  Or maybe he was the one getting closer . . . . 

“Leonard, wake up!”  Leonard felt the familiar cool touch of Spock’s hand holding his.

“Bones!  Can you hear us?” 

“Yeah, I can hear you,” Leonard mumbled.  Spock squeezed his right hand in response. 

Leonard opened his eyes.  He was lying on his back, Spock’s face hovering above him.  A thin trail of blood had congealed on the right side of Spock’s jaw, trailing down his neck.  Vulcans’ blood coagulated quickly, an adaptation minimizing fluid loss in their desert environment.  His clothes were dusty and torn.  Above Spock’s face an expanse of clear blue sky shone through a massive jagged hole in the walls jutting above them.  Piles of debris, a chaos of splintered boards, shards of glass, twisted metal, shreds of paper and fabric lay in heaps all around and mounded against the walls of the bathroom.    

Jim was on his hands and knees, searching among the rubble for something.  A communicator, probably, Leonard guessed.  Jim’s clothing, like Spock’s, was torn and dirty, and blood dripped from a nasty gash on his cheek.  Nearby Peter Kirk’s big brindle Bouvier des Flandres, Oswald, lay outstretched on the ground, his left hind leg splinted with a round pole secured with strips of a torn towel.  Next to the dog lay the bristled end of a broom, its handle snapped either deliberately or in the tornado’s fury. 

“So we got back home from Oz.”   In response to hearing his nickname the dog briefly thumped his tail.  “Thank God the witch’s broomstick worked.”

Concerned by Leonard’s mild dysphasia, Spock and Jim exchanged a glance.  Rather than from Oz, McCoy obviously meant “back home to Oz,” referring to their panicked retreat to the house as the tornado approached – even though Peter Kirk’s house in Riverside, Iowa had never been Leonard’s home, and Jim had not lived in it since childhood.  They assumed the “witch” Leonard was referring to was the straw figure that had been sitting on the front porch, and that “worked” referred to functioning as a splint. 

“It’s a miracle we’re all alive, or weren’t more badly injured,” said Jim.  “Though I don’t look forward to telling my nephew his house has been demolished.”  Peter and his family were visiting Kansas City.  “Our flitters are probably gone, too.  How do you feel?”

“Like when Eleen hit me over the head with a rock.”  Leonard’s free hand – Spock still grasped his right hand – reached for his aching head, or perhaps for his husband’s bloodied face, but stopped half a meter in front of his own face.  Leonard stared at it.  Heaving a shuddering sigh, he let his arm drop.  “But glad to be back to normal.”   

“Lie still, Len-kam,” Spock said. 

Jim took care to hide his smile, for it was very rare for Spock to use endearments for his husband in the presence of anyone else, Jim included. 

Spock continued, “You were knocked unconscious by a metal bucket while we were running for the house.  I carried you in.  We reached the basement immediately before the tornado hit.”

“Metal bucket,” Leonard said with disgust.  “Figures.”

“We can’t get out, and we can’t find any of the communicators.  We think yours fell out while Spock was carrying you.”  Jim moved a broken chair which had fallen from above.  “The basement door is blocked by debris.  So are the stairs to the first floor.  We might have to climb out of here.”  He looked up.  “Looks like the roof and the second floor are gone.  Not sure how much of the first floor is left.”

“How badly are you two hurt, aside from your faces?” Leonard asked.

“Jim and I seem to have incurred no serious injury.  Oswald, however, appeared to have fractured his leg.  As you can see, we have splinted it.”

“Sloppy job, but it’ll do.  No ‘serious’ injury?”

“We’re both pretty banged up,” Jim admitted.  “We had other things to worry about.”

A picture frame from above fell with a clatter, coming to rest near Oswald’s hindquarters.  The dog whined and lifted his head, turning to see the source of the noise.   

“Stay!” Jim said sharply.  He didn’t want the dog injuring himself further or worse, making more debris fall by his movements.  

Leonard said, “The rest of us are glad to be back to our normal bodies, but I suppose Oswald might be sorry he’s lost the ability to fly or speak.”

Spock and Jim exchanged an alarmed look.  Spock asked quietly, “Leonard, what are you talking about?”

Leonard saw on the concern and confusion on his companions’ faces.  He tried to rise, but Spock’s firm hand kept him from doing so.    

“You two don’t remember the land of Oz?”  No recognition showed on the faces of Spock or Jim.  “How our bodies were changed, and how we saved a girl named Dorothy Gale and fought the Wicked Witch of the West?  God, I hope Dorothy got home to Kansas.”

Another look passed between Jim and Spock.  Jim asked, “How were we changed?”

“I was a tin man, and you were a lion, and Spock a scarecrow, and Oswald a bluebird.  And all of us could talk.  You don’t remember anything?”

“Whatever you are remembering,” said Spock, “was obviously a hallucination.” 

“That’s what you kept saying when we first got to Oz, but you changed your mind!  It was real!”  Angrily, Leonard pushed away Spock’s restraining hand, and sat up.  “Oswald’s leg was broken at the Witch’s castle, and Jim’s four ankles were chafed by chains.  Look how his wrists are rubbed raw.”

Jim looked at his wrists.  Both were encircled with raw, abraded skin.   

Jim rubbed his wrist.  “This must have happened to me in the collapse of the house, or climbing out of the debris.”

“Look at your ankles – better yet, your left side!  Aren’t you sore there?”

“Well, yes, but debris fell on me.”  He pointed to a nearby board. 

“That, for one thing.”

“Raise your shirt.  You were stung by a Hagabateelian nightwing scorpion.  Twice.”

“Bones, if I had been stung by a nightwing one time, much less twice, I’d be in a lot more pain.”

“I treated the sting with an ointment.  It relieved a lot of the discomfort and swelling.  Lift your shirt, dammit!”

Reluctantly – and gingerly, for his side hurt more than he had acknowledged – Jim pulled up his dusty shirt.  On his ribcage was not the bruised contusion he expected, but instead a large, angry red swelling with a central crater.  He swallowed.      

Spock said, “The lesion does resemble a nightwing sting that is subsiding.  But perhaps Jim was stung by one or more wasps, and adrenalin prevented him from noticing.”

“Maybe,” Jim answered dubiously. 

“Bee stings don’t leave a crater,” Leonard said.  “Spock – pull down your pants.  You were burned on your left thigh, midway up, when the Wicked Witch threw a ball of fire at you.”

Spock’s raised eyebrow conveyed very clearly his skepticism, and both Leonard and Jim expected he would put up an argument.    But reluctant to risk his injured mate’s further agitation, he complied with the request.

The three men stared at Spock’s thigh.  An area the size of an outstretched hand was an ugly mass of charred white tissue and weeping green fluid.      

“That’s a serious burn.  Third degree, which is why it wasn’t more painful.  The tissue is destroyed.  You need medical attention.”  Leonard looked around in frustration.  “Damn, I wish I had my medkit.”  Sighing, he turned back to his companions.  “Believe me now?”

“I am forced to give tentative credence to your story,” Spock said. 

“I was not exposed to a fire or a heat source, and even if I had been it is not possible to incur a burn that severe while wearing clothing without the clothes being damaged.  My pants are not even singed.”

“‘If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is possible,’” Leonard said, quoting Spock as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

“That we’ve somehow traveled to and from a place with fire-throwing witches and talking animals and Hagabateelian nightwing scorpions definitely qualifies as improbable.”  Jim glanced at his side, the sting again hidden by his clothes.  

“Well we did,” Leonard said.  “Spock, put the pants back on.  They’re not sterile, but they’ll provide at least a little protection for that burn.”   He picked up a strip of filthy pink tulle.  He recognized it as part of the fairy costume he had noticed the night Spock and Jim had played chess, but Leonard was reminded of Glinda’s dress, as well.  “They’ll be as clean, or cleaner, than anything else around here.”

“Why are you the only one who remembers?” Jim asked. 

“Perhaps it has to do with Leonard’s head injury,” Spock suggested.  

“Spock, mind-meld with me.  That probably would help you remember.”

“No,” Spock said sharply.  “Not now.  You’ve suffered a concussion.  A mind meld would be dangerous.”

Jim resumed his search.  “If I don’t find a communicator soon, I’m going to climb out of here.  I’m the one least seriously injured.”

“Climbing out would be dangerous,” countered Spock.  “The walls are compromised and the debris is unstable.  We should wait until help arrives.”

“Spock’s right.  Just because you’re an accomplished free climber doesn’t mean you can maneuver over this rubble.  You might kill yourself and the rest of us with you if what’s above collapses.”

All their heads jerked up as they heard a scrabbling sound coming from above.

“Hello?” called Jim.  “Three people are trapped down here!    Anyone up there?”  Leonard and Spock joined in calling for help. 

High above them, the face of a small orange tabby cat peered over the edge of the broken walls.    

“It’s Peter’s cat Munchkin,” Jim said, disappointed.

“Dorothy mentioned Munchkins,” Leonard said.  “They were –” 

The cat meowed.  Oswald jumped to his feet, barking.  The bark turned to a yelp of pain as he lunged, stumbling, into a pile of rubble.  The pile shifted, then collapsed in a cloud of dust.

Spock, closest to the dog, reached and pulled him back gently onto his side.  “He has not dislodged the splint.”  Spock noticed something in the dislodged rubble.  “I have found my communicator.”

Leonard stroked Oswald.  “You helped us escape the Witch’s Castle, and you’ve helped us out again.”

Spock raised a questioning eyebrow, but did not ask Leonard for an explanation.  More urgent than hearing the details of their supposed escape from a witch’s castle was effecting their escape from the basement of Peter Kirk’s ruined house.  Spock flipped open the communicator.  “Emergency Services, get a lock on these coordinates.  Prepare to beam out three men and one dog, all in need of medical attention.  None of us appears to have life-threatening injuries.  The building in which we were sheltering during the tornado has collapsed, trapping us.” 

In the shimmer of a transporter beam, Spock, Jim, Leonard and Oswald disappeared.   

They received medical treatment promptly, Oswald included.  The three men were the object of a different sort of attention, one less welcome; word soon got around the hospital of the presence of the three celebrities.  And if Jim and Spock drew the bulk of the attention from the general public, Leonard, to their amusement and his annoyance, drew even more from the medical staff.

To the relief of Jim and Spock, the medics did not question the provenance of their injuries.  The physician’s assistant treating Jim assumed the huge welt was a bee sting, and the physician and nurse treating Spock were oblivious to his undamaged pants; perhaps they assumed he had had the opportunity to change them.

More likely they were so busy the issue never crossed their minds.   Hundreds of houses and other buildings had been damaged by the tornado, and the medical staff at University Heights Hospital was taxed treating the numerous casualties, many of them life-threatening.  Leonard begged, after he was treated for traumatic brain injury, to be allowed to treat patients.  The short-staffed hospital gave him permission to do so, but restricted him to seeing less seriously injured patients, rather than to perform surgery as he would have preferred.  Spock and Jim joined in the rescue efforts in the community.

Three days after the tornado, Leonard and Spock returned to San Francisco by shuttle, their flitter having been destroyed.  Jim had found lodging with the parents of a former classmate, and was staying on in Riverside, in order to help his nephew’s family and to continue to assist in the ongoing rescue and relief efforts.

Shortly after returning home, Spock performed a mind meld with Leonard, who had said little to his husband, and even less to Jim, about their strange adventure.  Leonard had been busy at the hospital, Jim and Spock in the ravaged community; moreover, Spock had recommended that his secondhand memories of Oz not be contaminated by Leonard’s verbalized descriptions, but based instead on sharing Leonard’s direct experiences. 

The mind meld complete, Spock withdrew his hand from Leonard’s temple.  Spock stood so calm and unruffled that Leonard wondered if the link had failed to trigger Spock’s personal memories. 

“Did it work?”

”Yes,” Spock said simply.  “I remember.” 

He had recovered his unique memories of Oz, experiences not shared by Leonard – the unsettling resemblance of the Wicked Witch of the West to Spock’s rejecting great-great-grandmother; Dorothy’s hugs reminding him of the embraces of the young Saavik and his stepgrandaughter Fallon; his conversation with Jim, injured and sulky, following the nightwings’ attack; his mind meld with Demelza’s dying pony, the animal relieved to be delivered from the agony of its illness. 

Shortly after the recovery of his memories, Spock engaged in an intense flurry of historical research in the hopes of verifying the theories he had formulated while in Oz.

Spock quickly documented that Dorothy Gale and her friends and family members from Kansas had indeed been real.  In October of 1918 Dorothy had married – not Alan Lyons, who had died a month earlier, shortly after joining the Navy – but Simon Head. 

Seven months later Dorothy gave birth to a daughter, the timing of which prompted Leonard to speculate about the child’s paternity.  

“Looks like Al Lyons kept his word,” Leonard commented dryly, “when he told Dorothy he’d wait until she was sixteen to court her.”  Similarly mordant upon learning Dorothy’s two subsequent children had been named James Simon and Leonard Milton, he had quipped, “Good thing she didn’t have a third boy.  I doubt the name ‘Spock’ would have gone over real well in early twentieth century rural Kansas.”  Spock had calmly agreed, saying this was evidence modern-day Capellans were more advanced and broad-minded than Leonard’s twentieth century ancestors, since the Ten Tribes had accepted with indifference the pair of alien given names the current Teer shared with Dorothy Gale’s two sons.  But Leonard had gotten in the last word:  “Darlin’, you’re the one spending almost every waking moment in Starfleet’s library, trying to prove those backward twentieth-century rural Kansans are your very own ancestors.”

For Spock had taken up a new activity.  (He hid his annoyance when Leonard would refer to his labors as “a hobby”.  Vulcans did not engage in hobbies, which were typically illogically useless activities engaged in for purposes of recreation.)  Spock had plunged deep into genealogical research, as he attempted to verify that either Leonard, Jim or he was descended from Dorothy Louise Gale Head.  Scion of the House of Surak, Spock possessed a recorded Vulcan genealogy boasting a length and an age which put to shame those of Earth’s royal houses and sacred scriptures.   Of his human lineage he knew comparatively little – certainly not four centuries’ worth.     

Even with the assistance of a computer’s speed in compiling information from Starfleet’s massive database of Earth historical records, the process was tedious.  (The current Head of Historical Records, who had trained under Spock when he had captained the Enterprise, quietly provided him, retired or no, access to the database.)  Nearly four hundred years had passed since Dorothy’s birth.  Assuming – for purposes of a very rough estimate – four generations were born per century, with individuals producing two children each, Dorothy would have sixty-five thousand five hundred and thirty-six sixteenth-generation descendants, among a total of one hundred thirty-one thousand and seventy descendants.    

The computer search very quickly determined that Dorothy’s older son James had died, childless, in the Pacific theatre during World War II.  Her daughter and remaining son had produced between them a total of fourteen children, who had themselves produced fifty-one children.  With Dorothy’s immediate descendants having proven so prolific, there were a multitude of threads for the computer to follow.  In the end, those trails all proved dead ends.  Neither Spock nor Jim nor Leonard was descended from Dorothy Gale.  Spock was disappointed; he had hoped to verify that their voyage to Oz had preserved the existence of one of the travelers.

“Maybe one of us actually is descended from her,” Leonard suggested.  “Even these days, with routine paternity testing, the man recorded as father on a birth certificate isn’t always the biological father.  I have the hunch, after all, that was the case with Dorothy’s daughter.” 

As an afterthought, Spock directed the computer to check if any of Dorothy’s descendants had a non-genetic connection to him, Leonard or Jim.  No one associated with Spock was found among Dorothy’s descendants; several remote connections to Leonard, none of them people he had known well, were discovered, the result of a descendant of Dorothy’s having moved in 2138 to northern Georgia; but one unexpectedly close connection to Jim turned up:  Glenda Kirk, the wife of Jim’s nephew Peter, proved to be a fourteenth generation descendant of Dorothy. 

“Well, that’s interesting,” Leonard said.  “Looks like we were sent to Oz, so that Glenda and her two girls would exist.” 

“It appears so,” Spock agreed.  “I was, however, hoping to establish a circular causality of a more immediate nature, similar to when I went back to Vulcan’s past to save my childhood self.”

“I wonder how Peter and Glenda are doing?” Leonard mused.  “We haven’t heard much from Jim since we left Iowa.  He’d be interested in hearing what you’ve dug up about Dorothy.”

“That is probable.”  Jim had written them that his memories of their adventure in Oz were fragmentary and dreamlike, and that he would be willing to undergo a mind meld in hopes of recovering them in full.  

 Leonard smiled.  “And we haven’t told him our news.”

“True,” Spock said.  “I would like to see Jim before we leave Earth.”

“We’ll have to see him soon.  You leave in a week.”

“Eight days,” Spock said, with Vulcan precision.

The intensity of Spock’s historical research had been prompted by his imminent departure.  He and Leonard had accepted the offer of positions in the quantum neurophysics department of the Vulcan Science Academy.  Skevunek had resigned, amid rumors (on Earth) that his dictatorial management style had antagonized even his phlegmatic Vulcan colleagues.  T’Pramla, highly qualified and more easygoing than her predecessor, now headed the division.  Leonard and Spock had readily accepted when the new coordinator had extended her personal invitation of positions at VSA.  Spock would be leaving for Vulcan immediately after Thanksgiving, which they would spend with Joanna’s family; Leonard would remain behind on Earth for two weeks in order to get all their affairs in order. 

Leonard would then leave Earth – heading, not for Vulcan, but for

Setlik III.   A physician on that colony had just published a paper

documenting a promising treatment for the debilitating delayed

side effects of the Fabrini cure for xenopolycythemia.  Under-

standably, the eight thousand patients who had received the Fabrini

drug were clamoring for access to the new therapy.  Leonard had

been given priority, based not on his prominence in the medical

field, but because his symptoms were relatively advanced, the

consequence of Leonard having been the first patient to have

received the double-edged cure. 

Two days after their conversation, Spock and Leonard traveled to Cedar Rapids, where Jim, Peter and Peter’s family were staying at the home of Glenda’s grandparents while the house in Riverside was being rebuilt.  (Again in garish colors, Peter having relented to the wishes of his wife and daughters.)  A racket of barking from the fenced backyard greeted them when their rented flitter landed on the pad; Jim had informed them that Jerry and Eileen owned four Bouviers des Flandres.  

Leonard and Spock had not seen Jim’s great-nieces, now eleven and thirteen, for more than a decade.  They were also reunited with Oswald, recovered from his fractured leg.  The big dog gave them an enthusiastic greeting. 

“Thank you taking care of Oswald,” Dorie said.  “Uncle Jim told us how you went looking for him when he was lost, and how you splinted his leg after he was hurt in the tornado.”

“You’re welcome.  I’d say Oswald did a good job watching out for us,” Leonard replied, with a wink at Jim.

Gaila, the younger girl, nodded.  “Uncle Jim also told us how Ozzie helped Mr. Spock find the communicator.”

Later, alone with Jim, they shared with him the news of their new positions at VSA, and of the therapy developed on Setlik III.  Jim was already smiling at the first news, but when he heard about the new therapy his grin broadened into undisguised delight. 

“Bones, that’s wonderful!  You know how much I hope this drug works.  And congratulations on your positions at VSA.  I hope that works out well, too.  I’ll miss you both, of course.” 

“The positions and especially the therapy are welcome developments,” Spock said.  “Our three month separation is not.”  He held out two fingers to his husband.  “But we are grateful that Leonard is eligible for the new medication, and that T’Pramla has been willing to hold the position open for him.”

Jim announced, “I’ll be starting a new job soon, too.”  He explained that while helping in the rescue efforts in Riverside he had met the owner of a private rescue and reconstruction outfit who was planning to semi-retire in a year or so.  “Doug’s offered to train me, and let me take over down the road.  I think he believes my name will pull in more donations; the outfit is a nonprofit.  But I really enjoyed working in Riverside after the storm.  It was making a difference in people’s lives.”

“So you’ll be spending your so-called retirement saving people,” Leonard said.  “Doesn’t sound all that different than what you were doing all those years on the Enterprise.”

“The locations aren’t as remote or exotic, obviously,” Jim said.  “But some of the working conditions are a lot more difficult than they’ve been here in Iowa.  Doug’s gone to a remote mountain town in Wyoming that was nearly wiped out in a landslide, and to Alaska last year after that big earthquake hit during a blizzard.”

Jim’s eyes were shining; he was more animated than he had been when his friends had visited him just three weeks earlier.  Pleased for their friend, Leonard and Spock wished Jim luck in his new business venture.

Jim said, “Now let me have a shot at remembering what happened when that tornado hit.  I can remember bits and pieces, but it’s vague, like a dream.” 

Spock performed the meld.  Jim sat quiet for a moment afterwards, obviously shaken.  “Wow.  That was quite a trip we took.  Fun though.”

Leonard rolled his eyes.  “You call almost getting killed half a dozen times over by a witch fun?  After Oz, earthquakes and landslides and tornados are going to seem mundane.”

“Maybe so.  But the two times I’ve tangled with witches is two times too many.  I’ll be happy enough to stick with natural disasters.”

They spoke more of Oz, and Spock reported to Jim the findings of his research – Alan Lyon’s early death, Dorothy’s marriage to Simon Head, “their” three children, the death of Jim’s namesake in World War II, and Spock’s failure to trace back to Dorothy the descent of Jim, Leonard or himself.

“Spock found out a couple of other things about Dorothy you’d be interested in,” Leonard said.  “In 1926 the farm got destroyed by a tornado – her aunt and uncle and Jackson Cutter were all killed.    Dorothy and Simon and the three children moved to New York City.  For eight years they lived a block away from where you and Spock stayed while you were looking for me.”

Jim said, pensively:  “The building where Edith lived.”

Leonard eyed his friend.  “We wondered if we should tell you.”  Jim had long ago made clear that discussion of their experiences in Depression-era New York City were verboten.  “But you had been so convinced you had seen Dorothy, we thought you’d like to know.  It’s likely you saw her on the street, maybe even talked to her at some point.”  

“Bones, it’s OK.  All that happened more than twenty-five years ago.”  Jim smiled.  “Or more than three hundred, depending on how you look at it.  You said a couple of things.  What else?”

“Dorothy died in 1986,” Spock said.  “Twenty years earlier, in her sixties, she published a children’s book called The Wizard of Oz.  It was the only book she wrote, or at least published.   The story told of a girl named Dorothy who traveled to a magical kingdom called Oz where she was befriended by a scarecrow who wanted a brain, a tin man who wanted a heart, and a cowardly lion who wanted courage.”

Jim laughed roundly.  “A cowardly lion?  Oh, well.  From the title I can assume there was a wizard.  I suppose there was an evil green witch, as well?”

“Sure was,” Leonard said.  “And a little dog named Toto, and a beautiful good witch named Glinda, and flying monkeys and an Emerald City.”

“Was the book successful?”

“Not especially,” Spock answered.  “It did not receive a second printing.”

“I would like to read it.”

“I will send you a copy,” Spock said.  “And there is one last fact to tell you.  Peter’s wife Glenda is a fourteenth generation descendant of Dorothy Gale, through her son Leonard.”

“So Peter’s girls are descended from Dorothy,” Jim said.  “That is interesting.  Quite a coincidence about their names.”

Leonard said, “We figure the three of us were sent to Oz so that Glenda and Gaila and Theodora would be born.  I suppose that’s why Oswald came along for the ride, Glenda and the girls being his owners.  Oswald was helping save the people he loves.”

Jim nodded.  “Makes sense, I suppose.  Although . . . .” he said musingly.  “Spock, is Glenda descended from Dorothy through Eileen?” 

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Eileen has been breeding Bouviers for more than sixty years.  She’s owned more than a dozen generations of Oswald’s ancestors.  One of her current dogs is his sire.  If she had never lived, Oswald wouldn’t exist.”

“Hold on,” Leonard said, his arms waving in indignation.  “You’re suggesting we went through all that danger in Oz just to save the life of a dog?”

“Bones, you almost got yourself killed trying to find that same dog when you thought he was lost.”

“That’s not the same!  The idea of a dog traveling to another universe so he could be born – that’s crazy!”

“Leonard, don’t you remember what I told you when the Enterprise intercepted the transmissions from the probe?  ‘There are other forms of intelligence on Earth.  Only human arrogance would assume the message must be meant for man.’  Your human arrogance is showing.  Why is it logical to assume that Oswald went to Oz to save human beings he loved, but it’s not logical to accept that he went to Oz to preserve his own existence?”

Leonard pointed an accusing finger at his husband.  “I think it’s your Vulcan arrogance that’s showing.  You’re grasping at straws to make your hypothesis fit the facts.”

Jim laughed.  “Well, the two scenarios aren’t mutually exclusive, after all.  By rescuing Dorothy, we saved Peter’s wife and daughters, not to mention Dorothy herself, and a multitude of her other descendants including Eileen.  If we saved Oswald at the same time, or he saved himself, I’m not complaining.  He certainly helped us out a lot.”

“Your logic, Jim, is admirable.”

“Maybe,” Leonard said, scowling.   

“If living with a Vulcan hasn’t gotten you used to Vulcan logic by now, Bones, you better get used to it real soon.  You’ve agreed to live on their planet.”

“Don’t remind me.”  But Jim and Spock saw, under the forced scowl, Leonard suppressing a smile.

“Goodnight, Granddad.  Goodnight, Spop,” Fallon said, hugging Leonard and Spock in turn.  “I’ll miss you.  Have safe trips.”  The Thanksgiving meal at their San Francisco apartment had been the first time since their journey to Oz that Leonard and Spock had seen their granddaughter, and both were reminded of long-dead Dorothy Gale.  

“We’ll miss you, too, honey,” Leonard said.  He did not close the door until his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter had disappeared down the steps. 

“Do you not feel well?” Spock asked Leonard.  “You did not eat a great deal.”  Leonard, who still loved his food, had eaten if not abstemiously, not as heartily as Spock would have expected.   

“I feel fine,” Leonard said.  “But this is our last night together for three months.”  Spock would leave for Vulcan early the next morning.  “I didn’t want to be too full.  I wanted to be sure I was hungry for other things.”    

“Ah, I understand,” Spock said with a smile. 

Later that night, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms.

“It was fun ringing our bells a dozen times in a row with my oilcan or your stuffing,” Leonard said.  “But I like this better.  Do you?”

Spock did not bother to point out the incongruity of the images.  He said, instead, “I agree.  Do you wish to be oiled, Len-kam?  Or would you prefer to stuff me?”

“I’m not up to it again, darlin’.  I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Spock wondered, shielding the thought, if Leonard still wished he could have returned to his youth – or if he did not, if he would have been regretful, had not the new therapy loomed on the horizon. 

But Leonard guessed his thought anyway.  “You were right, Spock.  And so was Oswald.  It’s not right to cheat time.  I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

“I am glad you feel that, Len-kam.” 

“And three months from now, when I’m with you on Vulcan, I’ll still be where I’m supposed to be.”

Spock smiled.  Soon they were both asleep.