and a heart of stone

He knows what he should feel, about his counterpart, this specimen who is simultaneously more officer than science and more science than officer.

Hate is not a logical emotion. He does not feel it, cannot feel it.

But neither is love a logical emotion, and that one...he feels all too well, all too strongly.

Spock has fought for too many years, through too many shields, walls, boundaries, teachings, both self-imposed and not, not to love this younger, alternate version of himself as wholly as he has come to cherish his own life - moreover, the memories of it.

He cannot fault. Even if circumstances were much closer to exactly the same (regarding Jim, most likely) and this was still how the other Spock turned out, he cannot find it within himself to feel anything worse than a valiant sort of pity, if that.

Reality, simple facts, dictates that they were born the same person. Old Terran philosophy - French, Greek, others - speaks of the universal good, of the inherent capacity and indeed capability in man, for benevolence and benignness.

So while it hurts, to see the stiffness, the lack of something twinkling in the circuitry of an impossibly old soul, it does not ache as deeply as it could have.

If he were that Spock grown old, and the kindness were not his.