Disclaimer: Star Trek characters belong to Gene Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana, and some other gifted script writers. They might also technically belong to Paramount. I'd check.

Author's note: Take 1 on the end of the first five-year mission. Concerning prior-TOS events, I do not accept apocrypha as canon, and I reserve the right to interpret everyone's background in my own way.

Note: This story is best suited for shippers.

Beta/Editor: SLWatson. All remaining mistakes are mine.

Acknowledgements: To SLWatson, whom I cannot thank enough. I don't know if this story is a caravel or a frigate, or maybe a humble schooner, but I do know that Steff was the wind in her sails.

Codes/Rating: K S M, C, Sc, U, Su. Drama. Strong R. A few scenes might be disturbing to people under 17.

Summary: The first five-year mission ended with the most successful Starfleet Bridge crew scattered to the winds. Was it fate? Was it a choice? Or was there a layer to this occurrence which an outside observer could not perceive?

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Absolute Horizon

By

Anna Amuse

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In general relativity, an absolute horizon is a boundary in spacetime, defined with respect to the external universe, inside of which events cannot affect an external observer. Light emitted inside the horizon can never reach the observer, and anything that passes through the horizon from the observer's side is never seen again. An absolute horizon forms when a star is ready to collapse into a black hole.

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Prologue

A blast of thunder split the night, its thick low vibration reaching deep into the core of buildings and beings.

Jim Kirk woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright in his bed. His heart was thumping in his chest. It took him several moments to realize where he was. His apartment, Russian Hill Tower, San Francisco. Not that icebox of a lockup on Tarsus, though there were distinct similarities.

Then, like now, he was alone. And it was raining.

With a groan, Kirk disentangled himself from the blankets, and stood up, his bare feet luxuriating on the smooth cool surface of the floor. In a moment, he would be cold, but right now he was feverish. He walked, rather unsteadily, towards the table and poured a glass of water; drank it in several large gulps, never minding the drops falling to his chest.

Feeling a little better, he refilled his glass and strode over to the large ceiling-to-floor window and gazed at the storm-swept city.

Six, maybe seven knots, he reflected, watching the trees, bent almost to the ground, flattened by the wind. Wind obviously reigned this ball, using the cold water with combat force and lightning to enhance the effect.

There was something savage in this force, which demanded compliance in no uncertain terms and was disinclined to wait for it to be given freely.

Kirk took a small sip of water, watching the power play. There had been no thunderstorm forecasted... what brought on this one? Maybe someone got sloppy at the weather control station. At that thought, he narrowed his eyes; this storm arrived so conveniently, throwing him right back into the embrace of one overly familiar nightmare when he had managed to live an entire week evading it.

It wasn't even a nightmare, so much, as it was a memory. A memory of almost twenty-four years ago that had reoccurred from time to time in the form of a vivid, tangible, colorful dream. That dream hadn't bothered him for years.

But now it haunted him every night for almost four months, ever since Spock had left him standing alone on that Bridge.

Kirk closed his eyes and took another small sip of water. It was completely irrational and yet so completely obvious. Sigmund Freud would have had a field day. The thought made him grimace and open his eyes in time to catch another flash of blinding light cutting the skies open.

He was thirteen; he had just lost his father, and he didn't need to witness numerous people being killed to feel that the world was fading, slipping through his fingers like sand. He didn't need to be thrown into a cell in an empty prison for twenty-eight days without even an overseer for company.

For twenty-eight days, he tried to catch a sound, an echo, anything, which would tell him that there had been living creatures still in the same physical universe with him. He would have been so grateful for a rat or a spider as a neighbor.

For twenty-eight days, he watched the rays of sun scratching their way from one corner of the high ceiling to another.

Nobody knew this. He had never told anyone. They had all assumed that it was the executions that had made such an impact on him. They thought the executions were the hardest part. Compared to witnessing the massacre, solitary confinement must have seemed to most as a relief.

Not to him.

He remembered his utter terror when he heard footsteps on day twenty-nine. He was so afraid he was hallucinating. He sat on the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees, like a live ball of tension. The door opened slowly. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut, too scared that his mind was playing tricks on him. But he couldn't.

There was a woman standing there. A short red-haired woman in blue Starfleet uniform. She smiled at him, kindly and sadly, and then she spoke and waved for him to come out.

He couldn't take his eyes off of her. If he so much as blinked, she would disappear. But then in the doorway, he turned and looked back at the room where he had spent twenty-eight days alone. And he knew then:

Whenever happened, the next time he would find himself completely alone like that, he would die. Locked up or free, he would die alone.

In his dream, the door opened sometimes on its own volition. He would walk out into the empty corridor, and then into the open, and see no one there, and he would know that there were no other living beings in the entire galaxy. Sometimes, he would hear footsteps passing by without stopping and would beg for them to come back. Sometimes it was Spock who opened the door, instead of the red-haired woman, whose name he had never found out.

He hated when it was Spock behind that door, because those dreams had the worst ending of all. Spock would close the door in his face and walk away without saying a word. And somehow, after that, he would feel more alone than he had ever been before.

Another blast of thunder hit the window. Kirk flinched, then sighed and lifted a hand to massage his stiff neck. It had been a while since he had a good night's sleep, but it didn't bother him. He gazed upon the beautiful ancient city violated by the ruthless storm and felt life all around him. Those lit windows were life, and the sounds of ground cars, the commercial on the roof two buildings away, and the tractor beams seizing the flitter and navigating it to the parking lounge. The city was breathing with life all around him, enjoying its struggle with the storm, almost as if it was an affirmation of its rebellious spirit.

And he was free. He could go anywhere, talk to anyone, do anything. He could return to his office and check the status of the new Security protocols. He could activate the comm and call that woman—what was her name again?—and spend the rest of the night in her company. He could look up a couple of old friends. He could even go to Iowa for a good ride.

He could.

He wouldn't.

That closed door. He knew it would stay closed for the rest of his life and he had to get used to it. He had learned to live with it, hadn't he? He adapted, he was always the one who could adapt to anything. The dream would return, of course, but James T. Kirk, the youngest Admiral in Starfleet, decorated numerous times by Starfleet Command, wanted dead or alive in over a dozen star systems, was not the kind of man who would allow his life to be directed by bad dreams.

This night would pass, as would the others. And the variation that he had seen tonight would fade, replaced by the usual patterns. Somehow he knew that the twist the familiar nightmare had taken tonight was unique and would not come back again.

Footsteps in the corridor. The door opens slowly, and Spock is standing there, distant and silent. As always, he jumps to his feet and rushes to the door. Suddenly the image of Spock vanishes in a blur, and it is Jim Kirk himself who stares back at him from the dark corridor. Two pairs of identical hazel eyes bore into each other across the threshold. And then, the Kirk from the corridor pushes the door closed in the other Kirk's face, leaving him alone. No footsteps, no movement, no nothing.

The world breaks.

Kirk finished his water and turned his back on the window, heading for the bathroom. When he emerged from the shower, the storm had moved away to find a new victim, while the slightly ruffled city smiled a tender greeting to the rising sun.