Author's Note—I rediscovered this story lurking in a lost folder recently and I thought I'd clean it up a bit and give it a go at publishing. This'll be in three or four parts—not sure how I want to divide it yet. At any rate—please leave a review if you liked it, or even if you didn't like it, I'd just love to hear from you as long as you're constructive!

Disclaimer: Don't own Star Trek, or any of its characters :)

Bedtime Stories

Kirk hated the waiting.

The only metaphor, overused though it was, that occurred to him was that it was like the calm before the storm. It would come and come inevitably, but waiting for it in the horrible stillness was the worst of all. The fear in the air around him was palpable. He saw a mother holding her child close to her, trying valiantly not to show the worry in her face as she stroked the boy's smooth blonde hair. A girl clutched her friend's hand so tightly that her knuckles shown white. A man with a graying beard and a scar across his face did nothing to hide the tears that streamed silently down his face. And above it all was a pervasive silence that no one—not even the smallest child—broke.

How many of these people will die? Kirk asked himself, surveying the faces, how many will I not be able to save?

He had prepared for the coming battle as best as he knew how, employing full use of his considerable tactical ingenuity, but the truth was that they were trapped and the only thing for it was to wait for attack to come and simply hope for the best and hope that his plan would work.

Unfortunately hoping did not save lives.

He sat on the bottom stair of the fortress carved in the rock deep in the caves, his elbows propped on his knees but his head held high. He would not drop his face into his hands no matter how much he wanted to; he was a leader and he would not show weakness when so many depended upon him for guidance. But could they depend upon him? Despite his outward appearance, he had second-guessed himself over and over in the last half-hour and a paralyzing fear had worked its way deep into his gut and couldn't be removed. His mind raced. He went over everything again and again—how they had come down to the surface to help the colonists in the midst of a bloody attack by their planetary rivals, the Amirites, how the Amirites had proved stronger and smarter than they had first appeared by driving the colonists into the cave before all of them could be transported out to the Enterprise and by dividing and scattering the rest of them despite Kirk and his small away team's attempts to keep them together. Kirk's group were the only people left as far as he knew; he had lost contact with the rest of them hours ago and he knew it was too much to hope that any of them had survived.

He let the air hiss through his teeth in fury as he remembered the screams and cries of the massacred colonists he'd heard their last moments over the faulty connection of the communicator. The Amirites had apparently spared no one, man, woman, or child.

Bastards, he thought bitterly to himself, fucking sick bastards.

But his thoughts were interrupted when a small red ball caught his eye as it rolled across the rough stone to come to a rest at his feet. He stared at it momentarily and retrieved it from the floor, tossing it deftly between his hands and looking around for where it had come from. The answer was short in coming: a little girl with brown pigtails approached him, her eyes wide as if in wonder at her daring, her empty arms outstretched a little in hesitant expectancy. He held the ball out to her as she approached and she shyly snatched it from his hand. She couldn't have been more than seven years old, Kirk thought with a pang. God, she was so little.

"Thank you, sir," she whispered in wonder backing away, her wide green eyes round as cherry tomatoes as she clutched the ball in her tiny hands. Kirk flashed her a grin. "Sure, no problem, kid," he said.

She blushed and smiled and turned to go back to whom Kirk presumed was her father sleeping against the cold stone wall across the enclosure. But as she made to step forward, she hesitated and peeked back at Kirk through her lashes. Seeing he was still watching, she looked away quickly, but after a moment seemed to think better of it and turned around timidly to approach him once more.

Kirk waited patiently, faintly amused. She stared at him with her huge innocent eyes and whispered something so quietly that Kirk could only see her lips move.

He leaned forward a little more, giving her a reassuring smile. "Sorry, kid I didn't catch that."

She tripped forward a few steps and said in a tiny voice, "Are we gonna be okay?"

Kirk's light amusement shattered. Her words made Kirk's chest contract so much so that he found it hard to breathe for a second. What could he tell her? That it was all going to be fine? That he could promise that she and her dad would make it out alive? That he would try to save her? That seemed so far from adequate that he felt dirty even thinking it. He wanted to reassure her but somehow he couldn't bring himself to lie to this child with eyes that bored into his in a way that made him feel like she could see right through him. He struggled on the edge of speech, searching for words that would comfort her, but he could find nothing.

"I don't know, kid," he rasped after a second, unable to speak properly against the lump in his throat. "I don't know."

She stared at him, her eyes lamp-like in the semi-darkness, clutching the red ball in both hands like it was a life raft.

"Hey," he said, in a low and urgent voice, fixing her with an intense stare, "Hey. I'm still gonna fight. And I'm not gonna give up—not now and not ever. I can't tell you what's going to happen, kid, but I'm never gonna give up. And you shouldn't either." He tried to put as much sincerity behind his words as he could and he looked straight into the child's eyes in sheer and utter determination.

She toyed with a loose bit of plastic on her ball. "I believe you, sir," she said to her ball. She turned to leave again, but Kirk called out to her. He wasn't sure why, but he felt compelled to speak to this girl, goaded by some inner force.

"Wait!" he said, "Wait. What's your name?"

"Charlotte Anne LeClair," she recited, "But my dad calls me Cal for short." She said it fondly as though she liked the way the name tasted in her mouth.

"Hey, Charlotte Anne LeClair or Cal for short," Kirk smiled holding out his hand to her, "I'm James Tiberius Kirk, but you can call me Jim."

"Jim," she repeated shaking his hand shyly, "I like it."

"Good. Me, too."

They smiled at each other for a moment. She seemed to be struggling on the edge of a thought, but didn't know if she could voice it to the young captain in front of her. She chewed on her lip a little bit and bounced on the balls of her feet, clearly on the verge of saying something. Kirk chuckled inwardly to himself at the sheer innocence of the child standing before him. She had a clear, intelligent look about her face and he felt drawn to her as if she had some inner electricity inside of her that crackled with its energy.

"Jim? Can I ask you something?" The words tumbled out of her mouth one after the other.

"Sure, anything."

She paused again, looking at him through those luminescent eyes. "How come you're not afraid?" The phrase was again whispered, but this time Kirk caught every word. Cal struggled with the next sentence, bravely fighting off the tears that had appeared in her eyes. "I've been trying and trying to stop—but I can't, and I'm just so afraid that they'll hurt everybody and—"

Kirk held out his hand to her once again. "Here—c'mere." She trotted forward and grabbed it, snuffling back tears. He plunked her down on the ground beside him and put his arm around her tiny shoulders and she sniffed a little as she leaned against his side. The ball lay forgotten on the ground beside her.

"Can you keep a secret?" he said quietly so that only she could hear him.

He felt rather than saw her head nod against his chest.

Staring out at the colonists huddled about the enclosure, he held the child a little closer. "I'm afraid, too," he said, "God, I'm scared out of my mind."

She stared up at him in wonder. "But—but you've been so brave. Even Dad says you're braver than everyone else here put together."

"Being brave doesn't mean that you can't be scared, too. Sometimes you're bravest when you're the most scared."

"But," she protested, rubbing her eyes, "But that doesn't make sense. How can you be brave when you're scared? They're opposites."

"Nah," he said smiling, "They're not, really. More often than not they go hand in hand."

She looked at him skeptically.

"Okay, fine," he said, chuckling, "I'll prove it. You wanna hear a story?"

She nodded.

"Okay, good. I've got this friend, yeah? Big guy. Taller than me, even. Grumpiest man you'll ever meet-but just wait until he gets around his daughter—he turns into a huge pile of goo. It's kind of gross, actually."

Cal laughed appreciatively. "He sounds nice," she said, grinning.

"Oh he's not. Trust me. Meanest doctor you'll ever get. Terrible bedside manner. But maybe that's only with me. See this little mark?" Kirk pulled down the neck of his uniform to reveal a small red circle just below the collar line on his skin. "That's from all the times he's jammed a hypospray down my neck."

Cal touched the mark lightly and eyed Kirk askance. "I'll bet you deserved it," she said shrewdly after a few seconds.

Kirk laughed outright. "You might be right, Cal. You might be right. But that's not the point of the story. We're talking about my friend, here. You see, he has this awful fear of flying. He's living in space and he doesn't like to fly. Crazy, right? Well, there was this one time when he had to save my skin and crash land in a broken shuttle at the same time."

"He did that?" she asked, her eyes growing rounder and rounder.

"Yeah, yeah, he did! And the shuttle was spewing flames and everything!"

"Really?" said Cal in awe. "What happened?"

"Well, we were on this planet a long way away from here…" And Kirk began to explain. He could remember it clearly in his mind's eye as if it had occurred mere hours rather ago rather than after a year and a half. He spoke as if it were a fairy tale, editing and changing some pieces to make it more suitable for Cal, but he could remember it exactly as it had happened…

To be continued...