Title:The Life-Book of Captain Jim
Rating: T
Word count: 943
Warnings: spoilers for The Conscience of the King – and schmoop in barrels. Barrels, I say.
Pairings: none
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek. ("Computed and recorded, dear.")
A/N: First (and titular) in a series of unconnected oneshots. Also, this may seem like a crossover, but it really isn't – it's just me using a certain book to facilitate the aforementioned barrels of schmoop.
A/N 2: I am so sorry for disappearing, and I'm working on This Above All, I promise! It's just that Real Life's being a bit of a pain. I'm so sorry, and thank you all for bearing with me (and for your wonderful, encouraging reviews - and KCS for adding it to her favourites, thank you so much)! While I get on with This Above All, here are the first two oneshots of a projected nine. (At least).
The revolution is successful, but survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.
The words echoed through Leonard's mind, chilling and unforgettable. How often had he heard those very words only to shudder and turn off the newscast, never imagining how much more they could come to mean?
How had they sounded to a teenaged, furious, terrified Jim Kirk?
"Do you play God?" he'd demanded."Carry his head through the corridors in triumph? That won't bring back the dead, Jim!"
"No," Jim had replied, jaw set, deadly quiet, "but they may rest easier."
Justice was logical, vengeance was not; yet it was Jim Kirk's burning sense of justice that had led to his equally burning desire for revenge. And Jim would not be deterred, for his was not the kind of desire that flared and died, but that which flamed and festered until satisfied. The desire for vengeance not for oneself, but for countless innocents – countless loved ones – countless lives taken and countless ruined.
Kodos had died, though not by Jim's hand – Jim whose sense of fairness had driven him to make absolutely certain of the man's identity before bringing any accusation against him. Lenore Karidian had collapsed and eventually come to with lacunar amnesia, and the CMO had gone up to the bridge to give the captain her medical report.
After his shift, Jim had disappeared entirely.
Leonard had found him curled up in his quarters with a migraine so severe it had him almost delirious.
Five minutes later, as he tucked a heavily medicated captain under the covers and decided to stay awhile in case he awoke, his hand brushed something hard under the pillow.
It was a book – an honest-to-goodness real-paper book. He'd heard rumours before of Jim's eccentricity when it came to them; here, in his hand, was proof.
Anne's House of Dreams, said the cover – and Leonard had just delightedly classified it as blackmail material when he caught sight of the numeral '5' on the spine.
Book five…of, said the blurb, the Green Gables series.
He had read Anne of Green Gables himself when young – it was a classic – and he certainly remembered liking it; curiously he began to read. So Anne, delightful redheaded Anne, had grown up, had she – grown up and become a teacher, then married Gilbert Blythe!
The book was not overly intellectual, but with each chapter Leonard realized more and more why Jim liked it. The ethereal charm possessed by Anne had also belonged to the author, and her very phrasing of thoughts and ideas had an oddly calming quality. There was depth to her observations of Canadian country life, the nuances of which she brought daintily and elegantly to the surface, and lines here and there revealed a mildly sardonic sense of humour not unlike Jim's own. The characters were strong and deftly sketched, even those that appeared but briefly – from Marilla and Diana to Doctor Dave and his wife, and – Leonard felt his heart ascend to his throat – from page twenty-six onward, the charming, boyish old sailor, Captain Jim.
'Captain Jim was a high-souled, simple-minded old man, with eternal youth in his eyes and heart'. He had a way – a gentle, gracious way – with the ladies, but his eyes 'sometimes looked out seaward with a wistful quest in them, as of one seeking something precious and lost'; 'lost Margaret' had been and was his one true love. He had a cat called the First Mate – how Leonard laughed at that, what with the ship's resident Vulcan! And Captain Jim had a life-book: an imperfectly written collection of his adventures – adventures in which, though he never said a boastful word, 'it was impossible to help seeing what a hero the man had been – brave, true, resourceful, unselfish'. A man with a collection of curios, a knack for storytelling and the sea in his blood.
"I wonder why he never married," said Anne. "He should have sons with their ships at sea now, and grandchildren clambering over him to hear his stories – he's that kind of a man. Instead, he has nothing but a magnificent cat."
In that moment, Leonard 'Bones' McCoy was certain of what he had probably known all along – that, though fighting it tooth and nail, that was the way Jim Kirk would age. He would spend his life with the Enterprise as his lover; there would come a time when one would speak of him as Anne of her own Captain Jim – he would transition from young, dashing, debonair and handsome to an aging, still charismatic legend. He would have a magnificent Vulcan (and an old country doctor). And, as he had once murmured while morbidly loopy on Bones' red pills, Captain Jim Kirk would die alone.
And the Lenore Karidian Incident had served to inform his friends of how close he had been to it on Tarsus IV.
That if Kodos had had his way, there would have been no Jim – no Jim with his golden eyes and his radiant smile and his brilliant mind and his annoying habit of sneaking out of Sickbay; there would have been no Jim.
The thought was so overwhelming that Leonard reached over and scooped his sleeping captain into the closest hug he could manage.
"And dammit, Jim," he muttered grumpily, "if you dare to remember this when you wake up, I'll whack you over the head with a tricorder."