Legacy
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Jim Kirk sat on the bench facing the giant window of the observation deck. He'd removed the mustard yellow of his uniform, opting for a simple set of black shirt and slacks. His feet were bare, chilled against the slippery veneer of the plastic floor.
He could feel the ship humming beneath his feet, a blatant and subtle reminder of where he was, who he was. Intellectually, he understood that the nacelles of the Enterprise were carrying him many times faster than the speed of light across the Milky Way galaxy to her destination. This he knew, as he knew the laws of thermodynamics. But his mind was consumed by the flashing stars he could see through the enormous window, watching in a primal wonderment.
Intellectually, Kirk knew that the stars were giant balls of gases, but in this moment, he could only stare at them as his kind had done thousands of years before, using the stars to tell their stories and explain their world. The ignorance those early scientists and shamans had displayed had irked Kirk to no end, but now he could sympathize. This ignorance was beautiful, and he was almost taken away by the simple awe. The wonderment, the curiosity, the lack of a need-to-know …
His fingers twitched, as if in remembrance. Remembrance of a thing to hold, a thing to fiddle with, a natural reaction to this numbing wonder. A pencil, he thought to himself, that which we don't need now, and never will again. Simple graphite, and yet so much.
So much the pencil must have been to the first writers, when story telling gave over to the parchment and the paper. Kirk had read Shakespeare, had been moved by the elegant and foreign speech that supposedly held so much. He didn't understand it, the grandiose phrases and colourful words. His world had taken too much to the efficiency of science. Even the Vulcans could honor their traditions with more grace than this new era of humans.
What the fuck is wrong with us?
Where they now held phasers worth half a pair of shoes in credits, others had held revolvers, flint-locks worth their weight in beaver skins. The weapons now lay in museums, and indeed, in his own private collection, but those who had held them. God, the life he could feel thrumming in his own pulse. They'd had it too. Now left of them was just the material things they had once touched, once valued, once used to prolong the life they so desperately sought.
At once, Kirk felt homesick. Homesick for his planet, the mother they all must give thanks to. He wanted to crawl the forests as the fur-traders once had, rifle in hand, so very aware of the life they had.
Earth had given them this, and they were abandoning their planet for the mystery of space where they were evermore infinitely ephemeral. Earth would at the very least remember their existence if not their names and stories. To Space, humans were nothing.
And Kirk wanted to go home, he wanted to gaze into a fire with the early man and the bustle through a market in Medieval Europe. He wanted to taste the humanity he felt so close to when gazing at the stars. He wanted to revel and weep and choke on the humanity of it all. If they weren't human, they were nothing, and even less.
His thoughts were interrupted as the familiar 'whoosh' echoed through the empty room. "Captain?" came his loyal First Officer's voice.
"Spock," he intoned, vainly trying to recapture the infinite essence he'd had such a brief time with. His heart ached.
"I believe it is time for you to eat," Spock, ever looking out for him. Looking out for the human, lost in space. He turned his head to face the Vulcan.
"Spock," he said again as he got up, moving slowly towards the alien, also lost in space. He wanted to clear his throat and speak, and ask what the fuck was wrong with both their species, and he wanted, in a flash of anger, to shake Spock and shake himself and everything that was just. So wrong.
Kirk paused as he reached his First Officer, looking him straight in the eyes. So brown, he mused, having never quite noticed before. Tonight he was feeling loopy anyway.
"Capt-," Spock began and was cut off as Kirk looked down at Spock's right hand and took it in his own, running his thumb across the smooth surface. Glancing back up at Spock's face, Kirk lifted the pale appendage up to his lips, kissing softly.
"Alright," was all he said as he slipped through the doors, knowing Spock would follow in his wake. But it really was alright, truly. As the hunter with the flint-lock, Kirk would conquer space, Spock and the Enterprise his two most formidable and precious things. This was humanity's legacy, and he would share it with a Vulcan and a twin-nacelled ship.
He wasn't homesick anymore, he decided, feet still barefoot, floor still humming and Spock still stepping lightly behind.