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ninety6tearsTitle: In Our Nature
Fandom: Star Trek (AOS)
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings (overall): Kirk, Uhura, Spock, Chapel, Sulu, Chekov, McCoy, Scotty, mirror-Kirk, mirror-Moreau, mirror-Spock. Kirk/Uhura, Scotty/OC, acknowledgments of a few other pairings.
Summary: After four of the ship's officers never returned from an away mission, Spock reluctantly assumed the role of captain on the Enterprise while mourning the absence of his closest companions. Jim Kirk is meanwhile becoming the Terran Empire's most wanted fugitive in a slowly transforming mirror universe. Both of their fates may be affected by the self-fulfilling prophecy of a man who has very little to lose.
Overall Warnings: Violence (including some torture), secondary character death. This has been a WIP for a long while so it will have some inconsistencies with STID (and obviously contains no spoilers for the second film).
Previous: see SERIES MASTER POST.
The collection of crew members involved with attempting the rescue mission had been uncreatively nicknamed "the Club" throughout the ship. Over time, the line where this group stopped and started became more of a blurred line; a few ensigns were able to help with the basic data organization in their spare hours. There were more people who simply assisted by bringing in food, delivering any information that Spock may want to know about the activity on the rest of the ship, or in some other way showing that they didn't forget that a highly time-consuming extracurricular project was still going on.
Chapel was often at the fringes of the group. When their meetings went far into third shift, she'd show up after getting off work with a pair of sweatpants and a book to read, ready to save anyone a few minutes by going to grab them a drink. For the most part, it was the silent and casual company that was assuring, the fact that certain strings kept the project from feeling entirely separate from the rest of the crew and therefore less tied down by some foolish hope.
The work did well for Sulu. Burdened both by some understated grief and the stress of his new responsibilities, he'd become more irritable after the four had gone missing, and Chekov, worn into a more melancholy reaction during those first few weeks, had spoken to Sulu as if expecting him to lash out at any moment. Even Spock was aware that for some long stretch of days they hadn't spoken to each other at all, as if their sadnesses had vastly different currencies. The two now sat next to each other almost every night, sprawling an arm out to tap a finger at the other's temple when one of them started to look sleepy.
The officers would enter to receive the casual without-looking-up greeting of partners entering each other's living quarters; Sulu or Ensign Manning would lift a PADD with a "Cross-check?" and it would be in Chekov's hand as he swept past on his way back to his chair with an apple carried in his teeth; when Sulu dismissed himself with vague complaints about having to make a shift at four hundred he'd receive a couple voices chorusing, "Goodnight, Sir" and give them an informal smirking salute.
The assistance revolved around about eighteen people, and the much more constant fixtures were Spock, Sulu, and Chekov, with Chapel humming frequently at the edges. After a while the project became most of what Chekov and Sulu talked about even during their free time, the two trying to find some way to condense the permutations or simplify the calculations for the other people in the crew.
They took breaks during their work that consisted of unpredictable conversations: Chapel betting Sulu that Chekov couldn't do a perfect handstand or trading stories about recent shore leaves like the simple entertainment of hearsay was some forgotten gem. On quieter evenings, an ensign would mention something about the missing members, something surprisingly kind McCoy had said, or that time Scotty managed to fix someone's busted tricorder in less than five minutes even though he was blasted on six Rob Roys.
No one talked explicitly of whether they truly believed the work would lead anywhere. The probability that it would was low, but they proceeded with the intent locomotion of gambling addicts, with hope hung lightly over them instead of the cold inertia that had been there right after the disappearance.
In hindsight, it was a waste of time. But there was a fixed rhythm to those evenings they spent around an increasingly familiar crowd, sometimes in the conference room and sometimes moving into the observatory, and it reminded Spock of the smoothly latching routines that had fixed into the bridge crews under Jim's command and which Spock had not yet managed to reawaken on what had now become of the ship. Spock had served with perfectly efficient teams prior to being persuaded to be Jim Kirk's first officer and he had no concerns about the ability of the Enterprise's current crew; Jim had after all selected a great one which he hadn't taken for granted would never need to respond to greater responsibilities one day. However there was still some resonance that Spock knew everyone missed, something that was merely skeletal in its arrangement or like a final chord of music with fingers not quite reaching all of the notes. Spock felt that absence least of all when he was with the others in that small room.
One morning Sulu gave some short response that made Chekov roll his eyes and huff off to eat breakfast by himself. Sulu and Spock went down on an away mission that day with Lieutenant Loneya, the new senior communications officer. It went without dangerous incident, but it felt exceptionally devoid of enthusiasm. A few hours after they arrived back on the ship, Sulu appeared at Spock's quarters with something to tell him. By that point Spock already knew something was wrong.
"Pavel was concerned about how there don't seem to be any correlations occurring between the exponent of the decreasing variables and the—"
"As was I. What has he found?" Spock interrupted; he wasn't one to often demand the short version, but Sulu got the message.
"He thinks—honestly, it sounds a little crazy, but it does kind of check out—that the other universe's particles behave slightly differently than ours under this kind of pressure stasis, which...makes the equation we currently have a total bust."
Pavel Chekov was one of the few people who had repeatedly managed to not only impress Spock but do it in varied, surprising, almost baffling ways. What Spock had just heard out of Sulu's mouth, casually passed along as if it was merely a request for a schedule change, was an entirely new theory about transdimensional relativism. If it hadn't meant what it did, Spock would have been pulled straight to the point with an intrigued blink in his eyes.
What he did at the time was make himself look steadily back at Sulu for a moment, before finally letting his eyes fall down to his desk in a heavy, slow exhale. "We will proceed with the work as planned, but the others should be told about Chekov's doubts. I will have a talk with him later and see if we can come up with any suggestions. Thank you, Sulu."
"Sir..." Sulu faltered before saying, "I have a suggestion. But I don't think you'll like it."
Spock looked at him expectantly.
He dove right in. "See if any of the counterparts want to help us."
Spock could feel his eyebrow stretching to the ceiling.
"Well, even if we knew where Kirk was...hell no," Sulu said in a scoff, "but Uhura or McCoy? Maybe if we withheld enough of what we know...asked either of them if they know anything about this theory and see if they come up with something that's not in our books. It's damn unlucky we don't know where Scott is, if they're anything like ours he'd be the most help with that kind of thing, but..."
It was with a heavy sort of disbelief, observing the response himself in a dull shock, that Spock looked up from considering his desk and blankly said, "I am going to consider that."
The Enterprise was due for a Terran shore leave/inspection landing, and Sulu remarked that he'd rather wave it off and stay at work but couldn't really get out of the pressure of going to visit his parents. Over the same conversation, Spock mentioned that he had a number of matters to attend to and would be taking leave; Chekov, who was planning on staying aboard, gave a sardonically sympathetic "Ay-yay-yay" just as he polished off his yogurt.
The infamous rescue operation had already stirred through the gossip lines, which even Spock found to be improbably more reliable than warp speed at times. Media was scrambling at every opportunity to sensationalize, and no doubt scrutinize, their efforts, and Spock was grateful that being planetside on official business made him less of an immediate target than Sulu might be.
His first priority, however, was nothing official.
Come his first morning on Terra, Spock became thoughtfully guarded throughout his shuttle connections, attempting to get some equations untangled while occasionally enjoying the views, until he was in the dry gold atmosphere of Iowa. After what felt like hours of uncertain anticipation, Spock knocked at the front door of the old-fashioned two-story house. It was a few moments, the inhale-exhale of wind fluting in and out of the partly opened sash windows, before Winona Kirk came to the front door.
His visit consisted of what she described as "talking shop," and also of long silences passing naturally in her kitchen while she sipped at her mug of coffee, as if they had shared a thousand mornings before then.
After rinsing out a couple glasses and blindly reaching for something on the windowsill, Winona lightly clapped her hand onto the wood, let out a frustrated sigh.
Spock asked, "Is something wrong?"
"Not exactly...Ever since yesterday I've felt like some things in the house have been moved around. I was on the comm last night meaning to call the police. I ended up comming my therapist instead." She backed away a bit but didn't look at Spock as she answered, as dazed as if she were talking to herself. "Nothing's missing. It's like I did all this cleaning and I don't remember. My head's nowhere these days."
Without saying much about it, only watching, they turned on the transmission of a brief interview someone from the media had managed to get with Sulu. The recording showed him at an outdoor table of some restaurant, looking distracted and as if he was only willing to talk until the arrival of someone he was waiting for.
"Look, I get that people might find it strange, having so much determination to find some people we only worked with for a year, but..." Sulu shook his head, his explanation a little stammered but very certain. "A year in space is a lot longer than a year. I mean, Jim Kirk risked his life to save mine when we hadn't even known each other for an hour, and then it was hardly the first time something like that happened. Life on the Enterprise never slows down, and it's important that everybody looks after each other. This is just another mission gone wrong, as far as I'm concerned. Those four aren't getting left behind if there's anything we can do about it."
Spock looked at Winona. The glow in her eyes was both hopeful and very sad.
Spock allowed himself to wonder for the first time what response his current sort of tenacity would collect from those who weren't around; in some ways the project was plainly foolish, but even as he acknowledged this he considered it still a worthwhile pursuit. Probably Nyota would have shaped his reasons as being part of a noble nature. Jim might have attributed his actions to simple stubbornness, though whether it would be noted with exasperation or with a knowing smile Spock could not be sure.
When Winona was seeing him out later she said, "If you ever need anything. And I mean anything...You make sure you ask?"
"And the same to you, Miss Kirk," he said with a nod.
There was a brief moment when Spock suspected Winona Kirk was going to do something like hug him, but with an uncertain smile she decided against it and said, "Thank you for coming."
After that Spock was back on the transport for a ride which for him could not take long enough, to get to the city in North Carolina where Nyota Uhura was being held.
Spock had hoped they at least had good leverage. Many humans had an ingrained instinct for the value of having a home, and it only seemed natural that most of them, if given the option, would rather return to familiar surroundings and that this would be a suitable motive for cooperating with their captors.
Uhura surprised him. It was enough to make him wonder, not for the first time, if she had been telling the truth when she implied she had often been merely an unwilling accessory in the behavior of her crew. He had no doubt, however, that even if it were the truth, she was only using the truth to bully him into meaningless guilt.
He could not imagine if there had ever been any relationship between her and his own counterpart worth speaking of, if there was any real reason for it, but Uhura took a particular joy in mocking him. She wore Nyota's face and Nyota's name and he could feel in the electric movement of her that she wanted to hurt him. He had no desire to understand it, and a part of him was almost grateful that she gave him nothing but some vague hint of where Scott might be. He left feeling unreasonably exhausted and for a while he took a seat on a bench outside, silently reeling and straying between too many thoughts at once, until his communicator began to beep.
That was when James Kirk got to him.
At the cafe across from the institution, a server's mouth popped open just slightly at the sight of a very harried-looking Vulcan in a Starfleet uniform, and when Spock said, "I need to use your central communicator and a cross-connector," she was quick on her feet to get it for him.
In a few minutes she was nervously trying to offer him a cup of coffee as he responded quickly to the officer on the end of the comm line with,"Captain Spock requesting senior in communications management. I need an emergency private frequency trace under security code Athena Five-Seven-Eight-Nine; if my personal number is required it's Eleven-Beta-One-"
"We're receiving already, Captain. Trace is in progress, standby for actual."
Spock recognized the specialist who eventually came on as Jacob Mendez, someone he'd had as a student at the academy. "What's going on, Captain?"
"I've just received a birthday greeting from James Kirk."
The gaping most likely happening on the other end was almost audible, and Mendez fell into a very informal "No shit...Well, you know the frequency's bound to be scrambled like hell—"
"Regardless, I want you to send me back the data."
Spock possibly had no idea what he was doing until he had the information in front of him and suddenly realized what he had been thinking all along. The frequency algorithm that distorted the traceability of the location was at first glance extremely irregular, but upon inspection, Spock found the pattern. It was just under twenty-four minutes before Spock was back on the communicator, hanging up on Mendez to make a different contact.
"Domestic security. Please state the nature of the emergency."
"This is Captain Spock, currently of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I have located a fugitive."
The prisoner transport was hanging in Earth's atmosphere as some of the authorities still deliberated about where he would be held. For a small vessel, it maintained an impressive level of security, and Spock suspected that the complicated record-keeping involved with letting in a visitor would take longer than the meeting itself.
He could admit he would not have cared if it was stalled for even longer, but in enough time he was let into one of the ship's twelve cell rooms, past the guard standing at the door which was at a distance of a few yards from the barred chamber in the middle. The room was dark, with dust illuminated into ribbons where the light came in through the slit windows that saw in on a stark white corridor instead of the scenery of space.
Beyond the cell bars, Kirk was doing push-ups.
Spock did not announce himself; he only stopped, holding his hands behind his back in a kind of sardonic imitation of respect, waiting. Kirk finally turned his head, then stopped and pushed himself to his feet in slow, aloof movements that accompanied a slow crack of a smirk.
"Captain Spock of the U.S.S. Enterprise," Kirk said, coming right forward and leaning in a shoulder at one of the bars.
James Kirk was noticeably more muscular than Jim ever was; Spock recognized it as a possible side effect of restlessness in prolonged captivity, even though Kirk had been under no one's control for a brief time. However his hair seemed to always have been the way it was now, as Spock did remember it looking much the same when he'd first been aboard the Enterprise; it was in most ways the same length and style as Jim's had been, but it sprung up in a wilder mess, as if Kirk was in the habit of agitatedly running his hands through it too often.
For some intangible reason Spock found this the hardest thing to stomach: He didn't quite speak the same way. Something had often twisted with that lazy, jeering edge at Jim's words in a way that Spock had become aware put people off of him quite often. This Kirk's mannerisms were certainly tilted with a sharper swagger of arrogance, but the way he spoke was flatter and much more direct. At the first words he said, Spock already felt a cold shifting in the air, that sensation of prickling at the back of his neck. With Nyota Uhura, her manner of talking had been much the same as his Nyota's; it had been her words that reminded him she wasn't the same woman. With this man the difference was immediate, but some small sense of being around him was much the same. The combined effect suddenly made Spock miss Jim almost more than he could have thought was possible.
"Kirk," Spock said. "We have already established that this meeting must be brief, so I would advise you to quickly state your aim."
"Yeah. Sure," Kirk complied. "I've heard that you and yours have been trying to do some serious breakthroughs in transdimensional science?"
It quickly confirmed Spock's suspicions. "Are you proposing to assist us?"
"I thought you'd be quick."
"That's not a viable option."
"How come?"
"You're set to be tried for the murder of a member of my crew."
"Oh. That." Kirk lazily rubbed his hand over his eyes. "Well, if it's such a sensitive topic, I don't see why you met me here at all..."
Spock was not at all sure how far he himself would be willing to take this. "Perhaps I am willing to propose certain options."
"Like?"
"Some regular communication between our vessel and where you're being held; a promise to let you return to your dimension if you are found to have had innocent motives."
"Nah, I don't think so. I need to be more actively involved. I'll have to be on the ship. If I have to be a prisoner on the ship, whatever."
"You do realize you're hardly in the position to determine the leverage? You're a maximum security threat."
"And helping you is probably my only way out of being imprisoned for the rest of my life. But helping you will be no less than fraudulent if I'm not able to do it in an environment where I can actually be helpful. If the project doesn't get anywhere, I don't get anywhere. Do I get maybe five more minutes on this meeting, by the way, for all this fucking around the point?"
"You have yet to demonstrate what it is you will contribute."
"Got a PADD on you?"
Spock hesitated. "It would be better to confirm your intentions in a way that you cannot falsify."
Kirk's shoulders tightened after a second as he gathered what that meant. He backed away a bit to do some pacing. "I don't know about that."
Spock furrowed his brows slightly. "It would only be the most superficial invasion of privacy—"
"Yeah, right. How do I know it's not some sneaky litmus test?"
"If you're incapable of taking me at my word, you don't," Spock said calmly, "but that is your one option."
He turned it over in his mind for a matter of seconds. "Fine. But give me a couple minutes."
The guards shoved Kirk down onto the rickety visiting table across from Spock after letting him out of the cell, strapping a pair of cuffs around his wrists while he chewed petulantly on his bottom lip.
The mind meld took a great amount of discipline. Spock was inflicted with a sense of defensiveness in Kirk's mind which almost managed to obscure his perception of anything else, as if he could not shake the instinct of something lurking dangerously at the edges, about to pounce. Finally, though, the images and calculations came into focus, small bits of history that told a story handsomely enough; Kirk had thought about the fastest possible way to explain it. It was a vague outline, only meant to illustrate that the idea was there, but Spock's curiosity was piqued into it as if drawn to some unique artifact.
Something flickered just at the end, something that made Spock flinch, not just mentally but into a small jolt of physical motion. He almost hesitated in his promise to break the meld before seeing anything he didn't need to. After managing to wrench his mind away, his eyes met Kirk's gasping, agitated discomfort.
Spock foolishly asked. "What was—?"
Kirk shook his head. "I showed you everything you needed. Are we good?"
Bringing Kirk on board provoked some mild chaos.
Officers who would usually be too humble to approach Spock were putting aside timidness to ask for explanations he wasn't yet able to give, and getting through all the confusion to his quarters was an overlong swim. Sulu was there as he'd requested, and his expression made Spock give a weary tilt of his head.
"The only thing I am giving him is an audience," he assured. "It will be the prerogative of the team, once they have heard what he has to say, whether they believe he can be of help."
"You mean whether they'll be willing to work with a ruthless murderer," Sulu said flatly. "Some people aren't going to give a damn what he knows."
"I am aware," Spock said, shrugging out of his civilian coat. "I will ask for more of your input once the meeting has adjourned."
"...Look, are you sure you're not out of your mind?"
Spock looked over at where Sulu looked to have hesitated mid-stride instead of exiting the room. His hesitation was felt like a long sigh. He answered, "No."
Kirk was close to five minutes into his explanation when Chekov got confused, at which point everyone else started to look quite worried.
"So you are going to be using an explosive?" The nineteen-year-old was squinting with a pained look at the hand-scribbled mess of data Kirk had distributed around the table.
"No. I mean, sort of. Keep up, children," Kirk mocked as he raked his hands through his hair, refreshing its windblown look. Everything was explained while shifting and pacing, sitting on the table, doing just about anything but sitting in a chair. "This technology: My father used it the day I was born, and he never recreated the results, but I spent years and years working to figure it out and I'm absolutely certain I could do it again even without the notes I had before, with some time. Anyway, it incinerates anything that it's directed on using a kind of, uh...violent ionic rippling that sort of works like going into a transporter beam and never coming out again. But it's dimensional, not just spacial. You shake the hell out of something and it sub-atomically crumbles apart from this brief interaction with what we can just call the 'wall,' because that's pretty much what it is; an actual forceful burst towards the gap that can't actually strip open the gap is basically like crushing something under huge amounts of force. It's just nice and quiet."
"And you're going to use this as a form of transport," Sulu said, "...how?"
"Okay, look, the reason we can't hitch into my universe from any old ionic interference is because there is a very particular way that the matter has to be different somehow. It's like, particles within particles that we even know about, it's theoretical, but all the testing seemed to suggest basically that our matter doesn't like your matter; and it really takes some very strong common thread, like the identical away teams, that kinda thing, for the collision to even be possible, because once stuff gets jostled up, it pops back into its own dimension."
"A technology operating off of the mere theory of alternate dimensional parallelism, requiring no extended contact with the universe." Spock knew he probably sounded impressed. "And assuming the binary theory of our dimensions, something like the model of matter versus antimatter."
"Exactly like that."
Sulu slowly prodded, "So, how do you plan on cheating the parallel?"
"That's the thing. We don't have to, because it's already been cheated." Kirk had a slight crooked grin, and the amount of engaged enthusiasm made Spock believe for the first time that he could be more or less tranquilized with intellectual activity, even while that impatient air was still present. "The whole adhesion doesn't just work on an extremely small level, it works on a very, very big plane. These interferences have probably happened before, but relatively speaking, they almost never happen; universes are very good at staying their own universes, they've been at it a long time. And when something throws off the scale, when something leaks in and stays in the wrong place, it's like there's this force that wants to push back. So, if we make a big enough ka-boom, and we create a vessel equipped with the right kind of dampening field—I'll get to that later—that can get us to ride right through it, given that they're all there, and I'm here—"
"The four of them would be pulling us," Spock finished, knowing that this was slightly misleading paraphrase but somehow liking the elegance of it. "They are the imbalance."
"And the whole plane here would be pushing at me...Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Though of course since I'm going through with you, the initial journey will take a lot of test work to make sure we don't just bounce right back."
"And this is all...theoretical," Chekov said. Kirk ignored him, so then he asked, "Assuming this all works, you would have to bring as few members of this crew as possible in order to not disrupt the pull, yes?"
"Well, one is enough of a risk."
"You expect the captain to go on a rescue mission by himself? Just with you?"
Sulu had just caught Spock's eye and saved him by clearing his throat. "That would be up to the captain, and anyway we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, if we even do."
Chekov received the look from Sulu that made him raise an eyebrow, then change the subject slightly. "So if it is essentially creating a new ion storm, there would be a matter of limited time before the hole repairs itself?"
"Yes," Spock answered. "The return trajectory will be open for longer than it was for the storm that gave us contact with the universe before. We are most likely planning for a matter of weeks, but we cannot predict anything more specific than that."
"So if he doesn't find them," Kirk flippantly added, "he'll have to haul ass right back or get stranded himself."
Chekov made an overwhelmed little clicking with his tongue. Sulu asked, "What kind of machinery are we looking at?"
Spock said, "The project will require implementing as small a vessel as possible, something probably only marginally larger than an escape pod. Kirk has told me that over 60 percent of the work will involve designing and building the dampening field, as no existing hardware provides a shield with such particular parameters."
The first officer tapped his stylus against the table. "So if we do this...How much work does this add up to?"
"Considering the necessary procurement of materials, the time of voluntary labor, additional calculations and testing," Spock said, "the completion of the device could take at minimum eight months, at maximum nearly two years."
A couple small sounds of astonishment dropped around the room. In the moment of pause, Spock decided to have the security team escort Kirk out of the room and wait in the corridor. James gave a somewhat lascivious expression to the woman who put his cuffs back on; she led him out with a stiff jerk, and Spock made one of a few mental notes to himself.
Once he had left, Sulu's expression lightened a little, as if he was resigned to the dark humor of the situation. "So, when the captain gets back...no one better ever tell him that asshole just might be smarter than he is."
Spock caught up with the security team and volunteered to escort Kirk back to the brig.
On the turbolift he was saying, "You are on this ship solely to provide your services to assist in the creation of a transdimensional device. If I ever come to believe that you are idling in your efforts to help us, I will no longer be willing to provide you amnesty and you will be sent to a holding facility where the Federation will handle you in whatever way they deem appropriate."
"Yeah, yeah—"
"This applies if I was to ever come to believe that you are withholding information that would be helpful to our pursuits," Spock continued. "At any time that you are not under my supervision, your behavior will be constantly monitored by members of security personnel, so be vigilant, Kirk, in your self-control. If you stray into the wrong corridor and my security team does not know exactly where you are, you will be considered a threat and removed from the ship. If you commit any act of violence while on board, I will, again, sacrifice you to the authorities."
Kirk pulled down the zipper of his drab gray jumpsuit a few inches, yawning.
"One other thing," Spock said almost casually. "If I ever come to know that you have made anything resembling even an ambiguous sexual advance at any member of this crew—regardless of their rank, race, sex, or—"
"Does that include you?" Kirk interrupted. When that was met with no hint of amusement, he held up his hands. "I just want to clarify my boundaries here."
"I think the term 'boundaries' strays too close to implying negotiable parameters..."
"Whatever, I get it. I bat an eyelash and I go back to the brass."
"I had not finished. For all you know I may consider the airlock in that instance."
"So touchy," he sang to the ceiling. Then he began, after a moment, to whistle something.
The turbolift seemed to take longer to get to the brig level than anywhere else. Spock found himself wanting to fill the space with any kind of valuable information he could gather, but the first question he thought to interrupt with was, "I understand your father is alive?"
Kirk gave him a bored expression. "Unfortunately, yeah."
Spock ignored his gut response to that callousness. "He wasn't an inspiring figure to you."
"Only competitively. He sure as hell wasn't the reason I got tagged for the fleet."
"What do you mean?"
"I wound up wanted and convicted a couple years after I left school. They give you the option of serving your time in the military, or at least Pike was able to swing it that way when he liked the idea of having me in his debt...I figured rising to the rank of captain in a handful of years was a good enough 'Fuck you' to that," he finished explaining with a cocky raise of his brows.
"Did that happen when you were involved with a second encounter with Nero?"
"Yeah. So?"
Spock hesitated. "Did this encounter involve a singularity connected to a future version of your universe?"
"I tell you, that red matter time travel tango shit is not my style. What a mess, right? Ambassador You..." He stopped to give a vaguely mocking hand motion at Spock, "had to convince me to rise up in the ranks instead of fleeing the service right after the younger version of him marooned me on an ice rock...The dick. Me actually deciding to listen to the granddaddy version was the only good thing that came of that, though to this day I'm not sure why I listened."
After considering this, Spock asked, "Did he have anything else to say to you?"
"Yeah. He was one creepy old bastard," Kirk muttered. His tone became slightly more grim when he recounted, "I'd only met Spock that day of course...We were line-stepping all over each other even then. And then his counterpart told me that, depending on the type of man I chose to be, I would either be the closest man to Spock, or I would be his 'most bitter adversary.' His words."
"...And which did you turn out to be?" Spock asked at length.
"Oh..." Kirk grunted, a mix of rueful and amused as he recalled, "I knew even then that it was always gonna be both."
The turbolift doors opened before Spock could think what to ask in response to that; he continued showing him back to the brig in vaguely troubled silence.
>Wish You Were Here
Fandom: Star Trek (AOS)
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings (overall): Kirk, Uhura, Spock, Chapel, Sulu, Chekov, McCoy, Scotty, mirror-Kirk, mirror-Moreau, mirror-Spock. Kirk/Uhura, Scotty/OC, acknowledgments of a few other pairings.
Summary: After four of the ship's officers never returned from an away mission, Spock reluctantly assumed the role of captain on the Enterprise while mourning the absence of his closest companions. Jim Kirk is meanwhile becoming the Terran Empire's most wanted fugitive in a slowly transforming mirror universe. Both of their fates may be affected by the self-fulfilling prophecy of a man who has very little to lose.
Overall Warnings: Violence (including some torture), secondary character death. This has been a WIP for a long while so it will have some inconsistencies with STID (and obviously contains no spoilers for the second film).
Previous: see SERIES MASTER POST.
The collection of crew members involved with attempting the rescue mission had been uncreatively nicknamed "the Club" throughout the ship. Over time, the line where this group stopped and started became more of a blurred line; a few ensigns were able to help with the basic data organization in their spare hours. There were more people who simply assisted by bringing in food, delivering any information that Spock may want to know about the activity on the rest of the ship, or in some other way showing that they didn't forget that a highly time-consuming extracurricular project was still going on.
Chapel was often at the fringes of the group. When their meetings went far into third shift, she'd show up after getting off work with a pair of sweatpants and a book to read, ready to save anyone a few minutes by going to grab them a drink. For the most part, it was the silent and casual company that was assuring, the fact that certain strings kept the project from feeling entirely separate from the rest of the crew and therefore less tied down by some foolish hope.
The work did well for Sulu. Burdened both by some understated grief and the stress of his new responsibilities, he'd become more irritable after the four had gone missing, and Chekov, worn into a more melancholy reaction during those first few weeks, had spoken to Sulu as if expecting him to lash out at any moment. Even Spock was aware that for some long stretch of days they hadn't spoken to each other at all, as if their sadnesses had vastly different currencies. The two now sat next to each other almost every night, sprawling an arm out to tap a finger at the other's temple when one of them started to look sleepy.
The officers would enter to receive the casual without-looking-up greeting of partners entering each other's living quarters; Sulu or Ensign Manning would lift a PADD with a "Cross-check?" and it would be in Chekov's hand as he swept past on his way back to his chair with an apple carried in his teeth; when Sulu dismissed himself with vague complaints about having to make a shift at four hundred he'd receive a couple voices chorusing, "Goodnight, Sir" and give them an informal smirking salute.
The assistance revolved around about eighteen people, and the much more constant fixtures were Spock, Sulu, and Chekov, with Chapel humming frequently at the edges. After a while the project became most of what Chekov and Sulu talked about even during their free time, the two trying to find some way to condense the permutations or simplify the calculations for the other people in the crew.
They took breaks during their work that consisted of unpredictable conversations: Chapel betting Sulu that Chekov couldn't do a perfect handstand or trading stories about recent shore leaves like the simple entertainment of hearsay was some forgotten gem. On quieter evenings, an ensign would mention something about the missing members, something surprisingly kind McCoy had said, or that time Scotty managed to fix someone's busted tricorder in less than five minutes even though he was blasted on six Rob Roys.
No one talked explicitly of whether they truly believed the work would lead anywhere. The probability that it would was low, but they proceeded with the intent locomotion of gambling addicts, with hope hung lightly over them instead of the cold inertia that had been there right after the disappearance.
In hindsight, it was a waste of time. But there was a fixed rhythm to those evenings they spent around an increasingly familiar crowd, sometimes in the conference room and sometimes moving into the observatory, and it reminded Spock of the smoothly latching routines that had fixed into the bridge crews under Jim's command and which Spock had not yet managed to reawaken on what had now become of the ship. Spock had served with perfectly efficient teams prior to being persuaded to be Jim Kirk's first officer and he had no concerns about the ability of the Enterprise's current crew; Jim had after all selected a great one which he hadn't taken for granted would never need to respond to greater responsibilities one day. However there was still some resonance that Spock knew everyone missed, something that was merely skeletal in its arrangement or like a final chord of music with fingers not quite reaching all of the notes. Spock felt that absence least of all when he was with the others in that small room.
One morning Sulu gave some short response that made Chekov roll his eyes and huff off to eat breakfast by himself. Sulu and Spock went down on an away mission that day with Lieutenant Loneya, the new senior communications officer. It went without dangerous incident, but it felt exceptionally devoid of enthusiasm. A few hours after they arrived back on the ship, Sulu appeared at Spock's quarters with something to tell him. By that point Spock already knew something was wrong.
"Pavel was concerned about how there don't seem to be any correlations occurring between the exponent of the decreasing variables and the—"
"As was I. What has he found?" Spock interrupted; he wasn't one to often demand the short version, but Sulu got the message.
"He thinks—honestly, it sounds a little crazy, but it does kind of check out—that the other universe's particles behave slightly differently than ours under this kind of pressure stasis, which...makes the equation we currently have a total bust."
Pavel Chekov was one of the few people who had repeatedly managed to not only impress Spock but do it in varied, surprising, almost baffling ways. What Spock had just heard out of Sulu's mouth, casually passed along as if it was merely a request for a schedule change, was an entirely new theory about transdimensional relativism. If it hadn't meant what it did, Spock would have been pulled straight to the point with an intrigued blink in his eyes.
What he did at the time was make himself look steadily back at Sulu for a moment, before finally letting his eyes fall down to his desk in a heavy, slow exhale. "We will proceed with the work as planned, but the others should be told about Chekov's doubts. I will have a talk with him later and see if we can come up with any suggestions. Thank you, Sulu."
"Sir..." Sulu faltered before saying, "I have a suggestion. But I don't think you'll like it."
Spock looked at him expectantly.
He dove right in. "See if any of the counterparts want to help us."
Spock could feel his eyebrow stretching to the ceiling.
"Well, even if we knew where Kirk was...hell no," Sulu said in a scoff, "but Uhura or McCoy? Maybe if we withheld enough of what we know...asked either of them if they know anything about this theory and see if they come up with something that's not in our books. It's damn unlucky we don't know where Scott is, if they're anything like ours he'd be the most help with that kind of thing, but..."
It was with a heavy sort of disbelief, observing the response himself in a dull shock, that Spock looked up from considering his desk and blankly said, "I am going to consider that."
The Enterprise was due for a Terran shore leave/inspection landing, and Sulu remarked that he'd rather wave it off and stay at work but couldn't really get out of the pressure of going to visit his parents. Over the same conversation, Spock mentioned that he had a number of matters to attend to and would be taking leave; Chekov, who was planning on staying aboard, gave a sardonically sympathetic "Ay-yay-yay" just as he polished off his yogurt.
The infamous rescue operation had already stirred through the gossip lines, which even Spock found to be improbably more reliable than warp speed at times. Media was scrambling at every opportunity to sensationalize, and no doubt scrutinize, their efforts, and Spock was grateful that being planetside on official business made him less of an immediate target than Sulu might be.
His first priority, however, was nothing official.
Come his first morning on Terra, Spock became thoughtfully guarded throughout his shuttle connections, attempting to get some equations untangled while occasionally enjoying the views, until he was in the dry gold atmosphere of Iowa. After what felt like hours of uncertain anticipation, Spock knocked at the front door of the old-fashioned two-story house. It was a few moments, the inhale-exhale of wind fluting in and out of the partly opened sash windows, before Winona Kirk came to the front door.
His visit consisted of what she described as "talking shop," and also of long silences passing naturally in her kitchen while she sipped at her mug of coffee, as if they had shared a thousand mornings before then.
After rinsing out a couple glasses and blindly reaching for something on the windowsill, Winona lightly clapped her hand onto the wood, let out a frustrated sigh.
Spock asked, "Is something wrong?"
"Not exactly...Ever since yesterday I've felt like some things in the house have been moved around. I was on the comm last night meaning to call the police. I ended up comming my therapist instead." She backed away a bit but didn't look at Spock as she answered, as dazed as if she were talking to herself. "Nothing's missing. It's like I did all this cleaning and I don't remember. My head's nowhere these days."
Without saying much about it, only watching, they turned on the transmission of a brief interview someone from the media had managed to get with Sulu. The recording showed him at an outdoor table of some restaurant, looking distracted and as if he was only willing to talk until the arrival of someone he was waiting for.
"Look, I get that people might find it strange, having so much determination to find some people we only worked with for a year, but..." Sulu shook his head, his explanation a little stammered but very certain. "A year in space is a lot longer than a year. I mean, Jim Kirk risked his life to save mine when we hadn't even known each other for an hour, and then it was hardly the first time something like that happened. Life on the Enterprise never slows down, and it's important that everybody looks after each other. This is just another mission gone wrong, as far as I'm concerned. Those four aren't getting left behind if there's anything we can do about it."
Spock looked at Winona. The glow in her eyes was both hopeful and very sad.
Spock allowed himself to wonder for the first time what response his current sort of tenacity would collect from those who weren't around; in some ways the project was plainly foolish, but even as he acknowledged this he considered it still a worthwhile pursuit. Probably Nyota would have shaped his reasons as being part of a noble nature. Jim might have attributed his actions to simple stubbornness, though whether it would be noted with exasperation or with a knowing smile Spock could not be sure.
When Winona was seeing him out later she said, "If you ever need anything. And I mean anything...You make sure you ask?"
"And the same to you, Miss Kirk," he said with a nod.
There was a brief moment when Spock suspected Winona Kirk was going to do something like hug him, but with an uncertain smile she decided against it and said, "Thank you for coming."
After that Spock was back on the transport for a ride which for him could not take long enough, to get to the city in North Carolina where Nyota Uhura was being held.
Spock had hoped they at least had good leverage. Many humans had an ingrained instinct for the value of having a home, and it only seemed natural that most of them, if given the option, would rather return to familiar surroundings and that this would be a suitable motive for cooperating with their captors.
Uhura surprised him. It was enough to make him wonder, not for the first time, if she had been telling the truth when she implied she had often been merely an unwilling accessory in the behavior of her crew. He had no doubt, however, that even if it were the truth, she was only using the truth to bully him into meaningless guilt.
He could not imagine if there had ever been any relationship between her and his own counterpart worth speaking of, if there was any real reason for it, but Uhura took a particular joy in mocking him. She wore Nyota's face and Nyota's name and he could feel in the electric movement of her that she wanted to hurt him. He had no desire to understand it, and a part of him was almost grateful that she gave him nothing but some vague hint of where Scott might be. He left feeling unreasonably exhausted and for a while he took a seat on a bench outside, silently reeling and straying between too many thoughts at once, until his communicator began to beep.
That was when James Kirk got to him.
At the cafe across from the institution, a server's mouth popped open just slightly at the sight of a very harried-looking Vulcan in a Starfleet uniform, and when Spock said, "I need to use your central communicator and a cross-connector," she was quick on her feet to get it for him.
In a few minutes she was nervously trying to offer him a cup of coffee as he responded quickly to the officer on the end of the comm line with,"Captain Spock requesting senior in communications management. I need an emergency private frequency trace under security code Athena Five-Seven-Eight-Nine; if my personal number is required it's Eleven-Beta-One-"
"We're receiving already, Captain. Trace is in progress, standby for actual."
Spock recognized the specialist who eventually came on as Jacob Mendez, someone he'd had as a student at the academy. "What's going on, Captain?"
"I've just received a birthday greeting from James Kirk."
The gaping most likely happening on the other end was almost audible, and Mendez fell into a very informal "No shit...Well, you know the frequency's bound to be scrambled like hell—"
"Regardless, I want you to send me back the data."
Spock possibly had no idea what he was doing until he had the information in front of him and suddenly realized what he had been thinking all along. The frequency algorithm that distorted the traceability of the location was at first glance extremely irregular, but upon inspection, Spock found the pattern. It was just under twenty-four minutes before Spock was back on the communicator, hanging up on Mendez to make a different contact.
"Domestic security. Please state the nature of the emergency."
"This is Captain Spock, currently of the U.S.S. Enterprise. I have located a fugitive."
The prisoner transport was hanging in Earth's atmosphere as some of the authorities still deliberated about where he would be held. For a small vessel, it maintained an impressive level of security, and Spock suspected that the complicated record-keeping involved with letting in a visitor would take longer than the meeting itself.
He could admit he would not have cared if it was stalled for even longer, but in enough time he was let into one of the ship's twelve cell rooms, past the guard standing at the door which was at a distance of a few yards from the barred chamber in the middle. The room was dark, with dust illuminated into ribbons where the light came in through the slit windows that saw in on a stark white corridor instead of the scenery of space.
Beyond the cell bars, Kirk was doing push-ups.
Spock did not announce himself; he only stopped, holding his hands behind his back in a kind of sardonic imitation of respect, waiting. Kirk finally turned his head, then stopped and pushed himself to his feet in slow, aloof movements that accompanied a slow crack of a smirk.
"Captain Spock of the U.S.S. Enterprise," Kirk said, coming right forward and leaning in a shoulder at one of the bars.
James Kirk was noticeably more muscular than Jim ever was; Spock recognized it as a possible side effect of restlessness in prolonged captivity, even though Kirk had been under no one's control for a brief time. However his hair seemed to always have been the way it was now, as Spock did remember it looking much the same when he'd first been aboard the Enterprise; it was in most ways the same length and style as Jim's had been, but it sprung up in a wilder mess, as if Kirk was in the habit of agitatedly running his hands through it too often.
For some intangible reason Spock found this the hardest thing to stomach: He didn't quite speak the same way. Something had often twisted with that lazy, jeering edge at Jim's words in a way that Spock had become aware put people off of him quite often. This Kirk's mannerisms were certainly tilted with a sharper swagger of arrogance, but the way he spoke was flatter and much more direct. At the first words he said, Spock already felt a cold shifting in the air, that sensation of prickling at the back of his neck. With Nyota Uhura, her manner of talking had been much the same as his Nyota's; it had been her words that reminded him she wasn't the same woman. With this man the difference was immediate, but some small sense of being around him was much the same. The combined effect suddenly made Spock miss Jim almost more than he could have thought was possible.
"Kirk," Spock said. "We have already established that this meeting must be brief, so I would advise you to quickly state your aim."
"Yeah. Sure," Kirk complied. "I've heard that you and yours have been trying to do some serious breakthroughs in transdimensional science?"
It quickly confirmed Spock's suspicions. "Are you proposing to assist us?"
"I thought you'd be quick."
"That's not a viable option."
"How come?"
"You're set to be tried for the murder of a member of my crew."
"Oh. That." Kirk lazily rubbed his hand over his eyes. "Well, if it's such a sensitive topic, I don't see why you met me here at all..."
Spock was not at all sure how far he himself would be willing to take this. "Perhaps I am willing to propose certain options."
"Like?"
"Some regular communication between our vessel and where you're being held; a promise to let you return to your dimension if you are found to have had innocent motives."
"Nah, I don't think so. I need to be more actively involved. I'll have to be on the ship. If I have to be a prisoner on the ship, whatever."
"You do realize you're hardly in the position to determine the leverage? You're a maximum security threat."
"And helping you is probably my only way out of being imprisoned for the rest of my life. But helping you will be no less than fraudulent if I'm not able to do it in an environment where I can actually be helpful. If the project doesn't get anywhere, I don't get anywhere. Do I get maybe five more minutes on this meeting, by the way, for all this fucking around the point?"
"You have yet to demonstrate what it is you will contribute."
"Got a PADD on you?"
Spock hesitated. "It would be better to confirm your intentions in a way that you cannot falsify."
Kirk's shoulders tightened after a second as he gathered what that meant. He backed away a bit to do some pacing. "I don't know about that."
Spock furrowed his brows slightly. "It would only be the most superficial invasion of privacy—"
"Yeah, right. How do I know it's not some sneaky litmus test?"
"If you're incapable of taking me at my word, you don't," Spock said calmly, "but that is your one option."
He turned it over in his mind for a matter of seconds. "Fine. But give me a couple minutes."
The guards shoved Kirk down onto the rickety visiting table across from Spock after letting him out of the cell, strapping a pair of cuffs around his wrists while he chewed petulantly on his bottom lip.
The mind meld took a great amount of discipline. Spock was inflicted with a sense of defensiveness in Kirk's mind which almost managed to obscure his perception of anything else, as if he could not shake the instinct of something lurking dangerously at the edges, about to pounce. Finally, though, the images and calculations came into focus, small bits of history that told a story handsomely enough; Kirk had thought about the fastest possible way to explain it. It was a vague outline, only meant to illustrate that the idea was there, but Spock's curiosity was piqued into it as if drawn to some unique artifact.
Something flickered just at the end, something that made Spock flinch, not just mentally but into a small jolt of physical motion. He almost hesitated in his promise to break the meld before seeing anything he didn't need to. After managing to wrench his mind away, his eyes met Kirk's gasping, agitated discomfort.
Spock foolishly asked. "What was—?"
Kirk shook his head. "I showed you everything you needed. Are we good?"
Bringing Kirk on board provoked some mild chaos.
Officers who would usually be too humble to approach Spock were putting aside timidness to ask for explanations he wasn't yet able to give, and getting through all the confusion to his quarters was an overlong swim. Sulu was there as he'd requested, and his expression made Spock give a weary tilt of his head.
"The only thing I am giving him is an audience," he assured. "It will be the prerogative of the team, once they have heard what he has to say, whether they believe he can be of help."
"You mean whether they'll be willing to work with a ruthless murderer," Sulu said flatly. "Some people aren't going to give a damn what he knows."
"I am aware," Spock said, shrugging out of his civilian coat. "I will ask for more of your input once the meeting has adjourned."
"...Look, are you sure you're not out of your mind?"
Spock looked over at where Sulu looked to have hesitated mid-stride instead of exiting the room. His hesitation was felt like a long sigh. He answered, "No."
Kirk was close to five minutes into his explanation when Chekov got confused, at which point everyone else started to look quite worried.
"So you are going to be using an explosive?" The nineteen-year-old was squinting with a pained look at the hand-scribbled mess of data Kirk had distributed around the table.
"No. I mean, sort of. Keep up, children," Kirk mocked as he raked his hands through his hair, refreshing its windblown look. Everything was explained while shifting and pacing, sitting on the table, doing just about anything but sitting in a chair. "This technology: My father used it the day I was born, and he never recreated the results, but I spent years and years working to figure it out and I'm absolutely certain I could do it again even without the notes I had before, with some time. Anyway, it incinerates anything that it's directed on using a kind of, uh...violent ionic rippling that sort of works like going into a transporter beam and never coming out again. But it's dimensional, not just spacial. You shake the hell out of something and it sub-atomically crumbles apart from this brief interaction with what we can just call the 'wall,' because that's pretty much what it is; an actual forceful burst towards the gap that can't actually strip open the gap is basically like crushing something under huge amounts of force. It's just nice and quiet."
"And you're going to use this as a form of transport," Sulu said, "...how?"
"Okay, look, the reason we can't hitch into my universe from any old ionic interference is because there is a very particular way that the matter has to be different somehow. It's like, particles within particles that we even know about, it's theoretical, but all the testing seemed to suggest basically that our matter doesn't like your matter; and it really takes some very strong common thread, like the identical away teams, that kinda thing, for the collision to even be possible, because once stuff gets jostled up, it pops back into its own dimension."
"A technology operating off of the mere theory of alternate dimensional parallelism, requiring no extended contact with the universe." Spock knew he probably sounded impressed. "And assuming the binary theory of our dimensions, something like the model of matter versus antimatter."
"Exactly like that."
Sulu slowly prodded, "So, how do you plan on cheating the parallel?"
"That's the thing. We don't have to, because it's already been cheated." Kirk had a slight crooked grin, and the amount of engaged enthusiasm made Spock believe for the first time that he could be more or less tranquilized with intellectual activity, even while that impatient air was still present. "The whole adhesion doesn't just work on an extremely small level, it works on a very, very big plane. These interferences have probably happened before, but relatively speaking, they almost never happen; universes are very good at staying their own universes, they've been at it a long time. And when something throws off the scale, when something leaks in and stays in the wrong place, it's like there's this force that wants to push back. So, if we make a big enough ka-boom, and we create a vessel equipped with the right kind of dampening field—I'll get to that later—that can get us to ride right through it, given that they're all there, and I'm here—"
"The four of them would be pulling us," Spock finished, knowing that this was slightly misleading paraphrase but somehow liking the elegance of it. "They are the imbalance."
"And the whole plane here would be pushing at me...Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Though of course since I'm going through with you, the initial journey will take a lot of test work to make sure we don't just bounce right back."
"And this is all...theoretical," Chekov said. Kirk ignored him, so then he asked, "Assuming this all works, you would have to bring as few members of this crew as possible in order to not disrupt the pull, yes?"
"Well, one is enough of a risk."
"You expect the captain to go on a rescue mission by himself? Just with you?"
Sulu had just caught Spock's eye and saved him by clearing his throat. "That would be up to the captain, and anyway we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, if we even do."
Chekov received the look from Sulu that made him raise an eyebrow, then change the subject slightly. "So if it is essentially creating a new ion storm, there would be a matter of limited time before the hole repairs itself?"
"Yes," Spock answered. "The return trajectory will be open for longer than it was for the storm that gave us contact with the universe before. We are most likely planning for a matter of weeks, but we cannot predict anything more specific than that."
"So if he doesn't find them," Kirk flippantly added, "he'll have to haul ass right back or get stranded himself."
Chekov made an overwhelmed little clicking with his tongue. Sulu asked, "What kind of machinery are we looking at?"
Spock said, "The project will require implementing as small a vessel as possible, something probably only marginally larger than an escape pod. Kirk has told me that over 60 percent of the work will involve designing and building the dampening field, as no existing hardware provides a shield with such particular parameters."
The first officer tapped his stylus against the table. "So if we do this...How much work does this add up to?"
"Considering the necessary procurement of materials, the time of voluntary labor, additional calculations and testing," Spock said, "the completion of the device could take at minimum eight months, at maximum nearly two years."
A couple small sounds of astonishment dropped around the room. In the moment of pause, Spock decided to have the security team escort Kirk out of the room and wait in the corridor. James gave a somewhat lascivious expression to the woman who put his cuffs back on; she led him out with a stiff jerk, and Spock made one of a few mental notes to himself.
Once he had left, Sulu's expression lightened a little, as if he was resigned to the dark humor of the situation. "So, when the captain gets back...no one better ever tell him that asshole just might be smarter than he is."
Spock caught up with the security team and volunteered to escort Kirk back to the brig.
On the turbolift he was saying, "You are on this ship solely to provide your services to assist in the creation of a transdimensional device. If I ever come to believe that you are idling in your efforts to help us, I will no longer be willing to provide you amnesty and you will be sent to a holding facility where the Federation will handle you in whatever way they deem appropriate."
"Yeah, yeah—"
"This applies if I was to ever come to believe that you are withholding information that would be helpful to our pursuits," Spock continued. "At any time that you are not under my supervision, your behavior will be constantly monitored by members of security personnel, so be vigilant, Kirk, in your self-control. If you stray into the wrong corridor and my security team does not know exactly where you are, you will be considered a threat and removed from the ship. If you commit any act of violence while on board, I will, again, sacrifice you to the authorities."
Kirk pulled down the zipper of his drab gray jumpsuit a few inches, yawning.
"One other thing," Spock said almost casually. "If I ever come to know that you have made anything resembling even an ambiguous sexual advance at any member of this crew—regardless of their rank, race, sex, or—"
"Does that include you?" Kirk interrupted. When that was met with no hint of amusement, he held up his hands. "I just want to clarify my boundaries here."
"I think the term 'boundaries' strays too close to implying negotiable parameters..."
"Whatever, I get it. I bat an eyelash and I go back to the brass."
"I had not finished. For all you know I may consider the airlock in that instance."
"So touchy," he sang to the ceiling. Then he began, after a moment, to whistle something.
The turbolift seemed to take longer to get to the brig level than anywhere else. Spock found himself wanting to fill the space with any kind of valuable information he could gather, but the first question he thought to interrupt with was, "I understand your father is alive?"
Kirk gave him a bored expression. "Unfortunately, yeah."
Spock ignored his gut response to that callousness. "He wasn't an inspiring figure to you."
"Only competitively. He sure as hell wasn't the reason I got tagged for the fleet."
"What do you mean?"
"I wound up wanted and convicted a couple years after I left school. They give you the option of serving your time in the military, or at least Pike was able to swing it that way when he liked the idea of having me in his debt...I figured rising to the rank of captain in a handful of years was a good enough 'Fuck you' to that," he finished explaining with a cocky raise of his brows.
"Did that happen when you were involved with a second encounter with Nero?"
"Yeah. So?"
Spock hesitated. "Did this encounter involve a singularity connected to a future version of your universe?"
"I tell you, that red matter time travel tango shit is not my style. What a mess, right? Ambassador You..." He stopped to give a vaguely mocking hand motion at Spock, "had to convince me to rise up in the ranks instead of fleeing the service right after the younger version of him marooned me on an ice rock...The dick. Me actually deciding to listen to the granddaddy version was the only good thing that came of that, though to this day I'm not sure why I listened."
After considering this, Spock asked, "Did he have anything else to say to you?"
"Yeah. He was one creepy old bastard," Kirk muttered. His tone became slightly more grim when he recounted, "I'd only met Spock that day of course...We were line-stepping all over each other even then. And then his counterpart told me that, depending on the type of man I chose to be, I would either be the closest man to Spock, or I would be his 'most bitter adversary.' His words."
"...And which did you turn out to be?" Spock asked at length.
"Oh..." Kirk grunted, a mix of rueful and amused as he recalled, "I knew even then that it was always gonna be both."
The turbolift doors opened before Spock could think what to ask in response to that; he continued showing him back to the brig in vaguely troubled silence.
>Wish You Were Here
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-06-04 12:09 pm (UTC)"I knew even then that it was always gonna be both."
DAMN. JUST DAMN.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-06 04:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-06 04:05 pm (UTC)