DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc and Viacom. The story contents are the creation and property of Djinn and are copyright (c) 2013 by Djinn. This story is Rated PG-13.

And Everything Collapses

by Djinn

“It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer...and everything collapses. ” ― Colette

She is sitting at her new station—new: this late in life and she’s finally trying something other than communications—and she hears a voice that sounds so much like Kirk’s she turns and stares.

Not him. Of course, not him.

She’s spent a lifetime on his bridge. Heard him in every conceivable mood. She should know that this other man isn’t him.

Especially when Captain Kirk is dead.

Dead. She can’t understand it. The finality of it for a man whose energy seemed infinite.

Scotty told her what happened. They’ve stayed friends even if their affair died away quickly. He held her when he got back from the Enterprise-B launch. Held her and kept saying, “There was no body. No body at all.”

That’s the hardest thing. And the best.

Because somewhere—in the part of her that still on occasion wants to say she’s scared but now knows better—she hears Kirk’s voice saying it’s all right. Feels his hand on her shoulder comforting her.

It’s all right, she murmurs. It’s all right because there was no body, and he had a way of pulling life from certain death.

She believes he’s alive. Somewhere. Somehow. Unless they show her a body, she will go to her grave believing that her good captain is still living.

It’s not much to hold onto. But she’s spent a lifetime under his command. She can’t bear to think that’s over now.

“I miss you,” she has murmured into her pillow at night.

She’s said “I love you,” too, into that pillow. She never told him when he was alive, but she thinks he knew. He just never wanted to do anything about it. One kiss, on that god-awful planet with those power-mad Greek pretenders. That’s all she ever had with him.

She wonders if, now that her fantasy is gone, she and Scotty might make it. Might be able to reach all the way for each other without a certain captain looming between them—even if the captain in question had no idea he was the problem.

The man she thought was Kirk says something rather loudly.

He still sounds like her captain.

She resists the urge to turn around.

##

It’s hard to believe the captain he served with for so long is gone. He can’t help but feel that he should have done more during that crisis on the new Enterprise. That if he was quicker working the engineering magic he’s known for, the captain could have gotten away from the infernal thing that killed him.

How can there be no body? That’s what keeps him up some nights. There was no body: was the captain in space and they missed him? He ran sensors this way and that—Sulu’s girl helped him look. They looked inside the ship, too, although they never told Harriman they were doing that. He seemed too spooked by what had happened for them to tell him they suspected Kirk might have been ground to bits by the thing he was saving them all from. That he would always be in the ship, trace elements floating in the air and sticking to the walls of the new corridors.

Harriman’s Enterprise? Not likely.

But there was no trace of the captain inside, either. Nothing except where he’d been working, and that was just what you’d find with anyone on board. Nothing to indicate a man died on that spot.

How can a man die and leave no trace?

He’s changed his will since this happened. Used to want to be donated to science, if they’d have his scotch-filled corpse, but now he wants to be buried somewhere. He wants to leave a trace. Even if it’s not on Earth, but on Norpin V.

He’s leaving in four days on the Jenolan. A small ship—not much to speak of compared to his beauty of a starship—but sound and quick. He’ll be at his new home in no time.

His only regret is that he’ll be there alone. Once, he thought he and Nyota might have a chance at happiness, but that feeling went away when he realized he was second best in her heart.

She was in love with the captain.

It hurt, but he understood. Of all the men for her to prefer, that one made sense. Even if she never was with Kirk as far as he knew.

Maybe once he gets settled, he’ll comm her, invite her out. Maybe now they have a chance, when they are both free and both understand what they’ve lost.

Yes, that’s what he’ll do—as soon as he arrives on his new planet.

##

She sits in a helm training module back at Command rather than on the bridge of the Enterprise-B—when will they stop calling it that? When will they just call it the Enterprise? It’s not as if the old one is coming back.

Just like the old one’s captain won’t, either.

The ship is in for repairs after running into that...thing. But there are no repairs for the ship’s image now. It’s bad luck, the whisperers in the hallways of Command say. They trail off when they see her, know she is assigned to the vessel they consider cursed.

Funny how Kirk’s Enterprise could run into all kinds of strange and dangerous things and come out lucky to be alive—one time didn’t even make it back from the joyride he’d taken it on. Now, her captain’s ship is bad luck?

It was on launch day, though. She tries not to be superstitious but it’s hard—stargoing folk tend to be. Something about knowing only a wall of duranium separates you from an agonizing death in the vacuum makes you appreciate the old comforts of superstition.

She thinks about omens and other things, half an eye on the simulator—she could do this in her sleep. Why didn’t they just give her leave? She would have taken a shuttle out to rendezvous with Excelsior. She has a sudden need to see her father, to make sure he’s all right. He loves his ship as much as Kirk loved his. She knows this from sad experience. She’s on the helm of a starship because she thought her father might finally notice her, treat her like an equal, not the little girl he would throw up in the air on the rare times he was home.

She loves her father, but she’s not sure she likes him very much. Although like or not, she has an irrational need to go out and make sure he’s okay.

And to check on Jan. Jan used to love Kirk, maybe still did. She’s probably taking this hard. There might be—if the rumors are right—a hell of a lot of women taking this news hard.

She saw a little bit of that famous Kirk charm the short time she knew him. Short as in minutes. Why was she first meeting Kirk at the launch? Why did her father never show her off just a little to the man he admired more than anyone?

Would he have done it if she were a boy? She’s always wondered. Her father, for all that he left behind the old family ways when he aspired to the stars, strikes her as more and more traditional the older he gets.

If she ever has children, they will never have to wonder if she’s proud of them.

She knows her father loves her. He commed her right after the accident. But she has never been sure if he’s pleased with how she turned out.

She should have chosen something other than helm. Did she really think being just like him would make him want her around more?

But she loves the helm. Loves the idea of such a great and noble ship moving under her hand. She loves her Enterprise more than she ever thought possible.

It’s not cursed. They’ll see. It’s not cursed.

##

She sits on the bridge of Excelsior and listens for the comms. She has been reading a news item that a memorial for Captain Kirk is being erected on the Academy grounds. She wonders what facet of him they’ll try to capture.

She knows so many of them, even if he never let her in the way she wanted. The kind man, the man who felt too much but pretended he was fine, the man who couldn’t sleep at night—usually because he’d had too much coffee during the day or he’d lost someone and had just finished notifying their next of kin.

She remembers the man who noticed her legs—but never commented. The man who believed in her and pushed her to make more of herself.

That man who tried to rape her. The man who afterwards couldn’t look her in the eyes for a week, until she finally sat him down and made him talk to her about what happened.

She wanted to hear that he loved her, that he couldn’t live without her, that the attack hadn’t been violence but passion denied.

She didn’t hear those things. He was ashamed of his dark side: that was the only confession she got.

If he loved her, she never knew.

It’s been so long since she’s seen him. She made a choice to finally give Kirk up when she left Ops to join Hikaru on this ship. And she’s come to love the Excelsior almost as much as Hikaru does. But never as much as Captain Kirk loved the Enterprise.

How could any woman compete with that?

Or maybe not a woman. She always wondered about him and Spock. But if they were together, why would Spock run off to that place on Vulcan where emotion is purged—maybe because he couldn’t compete, either?

She’s never trusted Spock. Not since his comments after the almost-rape. He always presented that cold Vulcan face to the world, but those words had been entirely human, in her opinion. “Interesting qualities?” Really? Really?

Had he been jealous that the captain didn’t go after him?

She sighs. This is pointless. She has spent much of her life resenting Spock for one thing or another. It’s not fair to blame him for the fact that the man she adored never loved her.

It’s not fair at all.

It won’t stop her from doing it.

##

He watches Jan as she sits and broods. She’s been doing that ever since Captain Kirk died.

No trace. The idea gives him nightmares. No trace, no burial, no final resting place.

But people will remember Kirk. The memorial is going in a prominent place on the Academy grounds. Everyone will see him and remember what a true hero is.

He will go to visit the memorial as soon as Excelsior gets back to Earth. He owes Kirk that much and more. The captain was a mentor to him. Pushed for him to get his own ship. Spent evenings over beer talking about the ways of leadership.

Kirk was the best leader he ever followed. If he’s learned half of what Kirk tried to teach him, he will be far ahead of his peers.

He has talked to Demora about what happened on the Enterprise-B. He was surprised Kirk would even go—the captain hated those kinds of things, especially on a ship that in a prior version was his. But maybe he was bored. The captain was living a quiet life now that he was retired. Quiet and alone from what he understood.

He wondered why Kirk had never made romance work when he’d seemed so good at it. Back in the day, he used to wish Kirk could mentor him in the skills of the heart, of passion, of getting someone to notice him.

Kirk got Starfleet Command to notice him. That was enough.

That was everything.

He looks over at Jan, feels a pang for her. She loved him, their forever captain. Even when she was in Ops, she loved him. He almost gets up to go talk to her, to see if he can draw out some of that pain.

Then he sees the set of her jaw, the way she is drumming her fingers on the comm panel, and decides to let her be.

She’ll get over this in her own time. Or maybe she won’t. But either way, it’s none of his business unless it affects her efficiency as an officer. And so far he’s seen none of that.

He turns back to the viewscreen, wondering if he feels even half the pleasure Kirk must have when sitting in the center chair of the Enterprise. He thinks Kirk probably felt more: he never had a wife, never had a child follow in his footsteps the way Demora has.

He counts himself lucky. Even if he disappears in space the same way as his idol, someone will remember him—someone will carry on.

##

She sits in the lab that fills her time but will never lead to greatness. She touched greatness, had a hand in it—no, more than a hand, damn it. Genesis was her baby. Her project. And Starfleet took it away.

Then they took her son.

And now they’ve taken Jim away, too. Killed on that horrible ship—only not his ship this time. Someone else’s Enterprise.

That must have shattered him. Sitting on the bridge—or would he stand? There hadn’t been any guest chairs on his bridge, so she supposes he’d have stood, pushed off to a corner.

Yes. That must have killed him. So much that he had to be a hero. One last time.

Her son—their son—took after him, as it turned out. She wasn’t supposed to know anything about what happened other than the brief, cold message from the Starfleet officers who came to her apartment. “We regret to inform you that your son was killed during a science mission.” Nothing about why or who or how long it took him to die.

But Saavik told her. The girl had sought her out and told her. She knows Saavik risked censure, possibly worse. Genesis was a forbidden subject. But now she knew. Her boy died on that planet. Saving Saavik. Saving Spock.

And the planet was unstable. Her boy had cheated, just like his father. Or that was what he told Saavik. And she had told Saavik to use that fine Vulcan mind of hers. Did anyone expect a planet formed out of stardust and stellar rubble to be stable?

As for cheating? Protomatter in the mix would have happened even if David had thought better of it. She would have thrown it in herself. It was necessary for the process to work. She always knew that.

Why didn’t she tell David that? Why didn’t she let him know he wasn’t like his father, wasn’t cheating. That lack will haunt her till it is her turn to go. That she let her boy die thinking he’d failed.

But she didn’t let him die. Starfleet did.

Jim did.

Only...she knows that’s not true. David left her behind and went on with the project. David got himself killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and then being a hero.

She’s not sure what hurts her most: that David turned out just like Jim, even though she tried her best to keep him on her path, or that Jim had him when he died. David was working for Starfleet, if not part of it yet. On her project that she couldn’t touch anymore.

How dare they? Had Jim been behind that? He wasn’t usually petty but for his son—the son she’d kept from him—would he have been?

She won’t cry. Not for David and not for Jim. She’s lost everything already. Lost Jim a long time ago, and all her tears for him are gone. She’s already cried for David.

She will sit in this lab and pretend to be interested in what she is doing.

And all the while she knows that instead she could be creating life from lifelessness, if only the Federation wasn’t so short sighted. If only military minds didn’t see weapons where there is only salvation.

If only David insisted he could not work on Genesis without her. Why didn’t he do that?

If only Jim didn’t leave her all those years ago—didn’t choose space over her and his son.

If only...

It’s the story of her life.

##

She stands at the window of the Vulcan Science Academy and wonders where Spock is. She has been wondering this for days and knows it is illogical to keep thinking of him, but she does it anyway.

Logic has never been her strong suit. Especially when it comes to Spock.

And to the man who has died. A man she at first held in disdain and then came to see the greatness of.

A man she cried for. In private, however. She is not the same young woman who cried openly for Spock.

But she worries openly—last night Sarek told her to sit down and stop checking the comm system. Normally, he never chides her.

She has no idea where Spock is or if he knows that his greatest friend, his captain for all those years, is dead. What will it do to him when he finds out? The news coming so closely on the heels of Valeris’s treachery.

Spock trusted Valeris and she betrayed him. Betrayed the Federation and Starfleet and everything a Vulcan should stand for. She thought Spock might finally turn back to her when Valeris—his new favored protégé—fell from favor.

But he did not.

He has not treated her the same since his Fal-tor-pan, and she thinks it is because he figured out both what she did for him—or rather for the new Spock in his body—and that she let the restoration ritual begin without telling the priestesses that another mind lived in the body they were going to fill with Spock’s katra. Another version of Spock lived.

A version that had to die so the man she looked up to—the man she loves as a father—could return.

It was a clear case of the needs of the many. She knows Spock understands that concept, has heard him say it to her so many times.

Why does it not apply to that? Is what she did so ruthless?

Does he think it was easy for her to keep him alive during his Pon Farr? To have sex with the man who has been her protector—her father? To touch a mind so young, so innocent—yet resonating with something familiar—and then let it die?

Why has Spock abandoned her this way?

And will he come back now that he has lost both of them—his greatest friend and his newest...what? What was Valeris to him? She has never been sure. But Valeris is at Rura Penthe and Kirk is gone, and now only she remains.

Why does she feel shame at the thought? It is a logical path of reasoning. He needs a confidant. He needs to share.

Once, he shared with her.

Perhaps again.

If only she knew where he was.

##

He is drifting. Lying on an air mattress in a little resort town just outside of Sochi, enjoying the feel of the water on his fingertips. The Black Sea has always represented peace to him. Peace and childhood trips to his grandmother’s and a complete lack of responsibility. No chores. No homework. Just fun.

He has not had fun since the launch of that other Enterprise. They say the ship is cursed, and he almost believes it. Demora gets mad at him whenever he brings it up. But she never served on the real version of her ship, the true Enterprise. He did. He knows. That ship was not cursed.

That ship was magnificent.

The time he spent on that ship were the best years of his life. He grew up on that ship, learned how to be a man on that ship. Met friends for life on that ship. He kept coming back even when other assignments might have brought him promotions faster.

He came back for his friends. He came back because it was the finest ship in the fleet.

And he came back for his captain.

His captain who gave him a chance when he was so young, who put him on the bridge and trusted him. Who gave him every opportunity to lead.

His captain who he fears he let down.

What if he had been with Kirk, working on the deflector relays instead of setting up a makeshift sickbay? Could he have saved him? He was younger—his reflexes were better. He might have been able to pull him to safety.

He shouldn’t blame himself; he knows this. There were potential wounded and someone had to go down to sickbay. He blames Harriman. That Cossack launched with no doctors aboard? What was he thinking?

Does Harriman think? He froze when Kirk did not. The new captain of the Enterprise froze.

Why is he still a commander when the new captain of the Enterprise can’t find his way out of a bag without asking for help from Captain Kirk?

Kirk gave the help, of course. Gave it with a minimum of disdain, even. He does not think he would have been able to do that had he been in Kirk’s place. He knows that in the after-action hearing, he was less than positive about Harriman’s performance.

Actually, he said that Harriman killed the finest captain in the fleet. Fortunately, he muttered it in Russian, and he doesn’t think the officers conducting the hearing picked it up on their universal translators. Harriman is well connected. Word is he kisses ass with the best of them.

It’s how to get a ship these days, apparently.

He knows Hikaru was dismayed at the selection. Hikaru thinks he should be a captain already, but here he is, still a commander, floating on a mattress full of air while an idiot has a starship at his command.

The water feels too warm. The sound of kids yelling and listening to music on the beach bothers him.

He paddles farther away from shore. The sun beats down on him and he can still hear the kids.

Peace is very far away.

##

She sits in Ops, in the big office that used to belong to Cartwright, and watches as the last of the reports come in.

No sign of Kirk’s body. Not a trace.

She knows that the search went on much longer than anyone else is aware. She also knows Spock is leading it. He came to her and asked for her help, so she got him a ship with a small crew.

She can do things like that now. She has power. Especially since the clean-up after the conspiracy was exposed. She was experienced in Ops and not involved with the traitors, and so she moved up fast. She’s in a place she never expected to be. She knows there’s a pool on when she’ll make captain.

Captain? Her? She was supposed to be a scientist, not Starfleet. If not for Roger. If not for the ship she found herself on, the friends she made, and the captain she served.

It might surprise her friends to know she never stayed on board because of Spock. She’s smart enough to know when something is not going to work out. It’s why she left to go to Ops. Not because of Decker being gone, as she knows some people thought. She stayed on the ship three years. If that’s a kneejerk to being demoted, her reflexes stink.

No, she didn’t run from the Enterprise. She ran to Ops. And found bustle and crazy people and power. Power she found she liked.

And whatever power she has is because of Kirk. He talked her up to Cartwright; he got her this job in this crazy place that makes her exhausted and exhilarated all at once.

She would do anything for Kirk. Even if it means bending some rules so Spock can have a ship.

So Spock can keep looking for his best friend when everyone else has given up.

So Spock, too, can fail to find him. Just as she knew he would. But that wasn’t the point of giving him the ship. She never thought he’d find their captain. She just knew he had to try.

She closes her eyes, sees Spock as he was. So frantic—for a Vulcan. Before she saw him, part of her had thought maybe now he would want her. Now that the man she suspected was her rival was dead. But once she saw him, she didn’t care about all that anymore.

Spock was unraveling before her eyes. It didn’t matter why he needed to search for Kirk. It didn’t matter if Kirk had been his lover or his friend. It only mattered to let him try.

She reads the last of Spock’s reports. He is sending the ship back without him. Transferring off at the nearest starbase and heading home to Vulcan. There is a private note. It says only, “Thank you.”

She smiles. In all the scenarios she ran as she sent him out with his somewhat irregularly requisitioned ship, very few had him coming back to Earth to be with her. It may hurt to know that he doesn’t want her that way, but she’s glad she’s still on her game.

##

He hurts. He hides the hurt, of course, behind a mask of Vulcan calm.

His friend is dead. He thought he could find him when others failed, and he thought wrong. He thinks Christine knew he would fail, but she let him go anyway. Found him a ship—he is still not sure how she did that—and a crew and let him go search for Jim.

But his friend is gone. He has always known that, barring accidents, he would outlive Jim. But he did not think he would lose him so early.

When he could have been next to him. He was invited to the launch and declined.

Why did he decline?

He could have saved Jim. Or he could have died with him. Either would have been preferable to this life that strings out ahead of him now. He thought he had found a successor in Valeris. He thought he would have time to spend with his friend.

He was a fool.

On the intercom, he hears that his shuttle is boarding. He rises slowly, appearing probably older than he is to anyone watching. He is so tired—when did he sleep last? And this pain inside him—will it ever end?

And the resonance. The feeling. The wishful thinking, perhaps, that Jim is not dead. That Jim is just out of reach. Spock knows he should not dwell on it. It is merely a stage of grief: denial.

His friend cannot be dead.

His friend can cheat death—he has done it so many times before.

His friend would not abandon him.

Jim would not leave him alone.

He stands for a moment, carryall in hand, in the middle of the spaceport loading area, making people walk around him as he takes a slow, deep breath and composes himself.

Jim is gone.

Nothing will ever be the same.

He will go on anyway.

##

He stands at the spot they intend to put Jim’s memorial and pulls out a bottle of his best Kentucky bourbon and two glasses from the small bag he’s brought. He puts the glasses on the ground and opens the bottle, pouring two fingers into each glass. The amber liquid catches the setting sun, lighting up like liquid fire.

Leaving one glass on the ground, he lifts the other one up and holds it up to the sky. “To the best captain any sawbones ever served with.”

He takes a sip, turns to see what the view is from another angle, and sips again.

This spot is beautiful. Jim would be pleased.

He looks down at the glass and closes his eyes tightly. “To the best friend I ever had. I’m sorry I didn’t come with you to the launch.” He whispers the words, can’t bear to say them much louder.

What does he think he could have done? Saved Jim?

He sips again, and this time the bourbon burns as it goes down. Yes. Yes, he does think that.

Damn it all, why didn’t he go?

He finishes the drink and picks the bottle up, but leaves Jim’s glass where it sits.

“Did you serve with him, sir?” A cadet—if he squints, the boy sort of looks like Jim might have when he was in the Academy—is standing on the path just below him.

“I did, son. Finest captain ever.”

The cadet salutes the glass. “Gone but never forgotten.”

“Here.” He hands the cadet the bottle. “You making good friends here, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Treasure them. Go drink with them. Enjoy the night. We don’t know how many of them we get.”

“Yes, sir.” The cadet takes the bottle, then he salutes him.

He has to say, “No, no, I’m retired now.”

“Don’t much care, sir.”

He realizes the cadet has a southern accent, too. Why didn’t he notice that before? “You go on now, son. Don’t let an old man’s sadness get you down.”

The cadet looks again at the spot where the glass sits. Then he takes out a laser knife and burns the grass just below the glass until it says “Captain James T. Kirk.”

“Thank you. I forgot my laser scalpel. Getting old. I’d forget my brain if it wasn’t tucked in tight.”

The cadet smiles. “Was he everything they say?”

“He was nothing like they say. And he was so much more.”

FIN