One Life to Live
by Starsinger
Prompted by HeartofFyrwinde. Jim and Carol come to grips with their pasts, recent, and not so recent. Don't own them.
Jim slept. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Khan's blood had done many things, but his body was taking its own sweet time in fully recovering. When he finally awoke he found Carol standing in the doorway of his room, watching. Jim couldn't help but smile, "Hi."
"Hi," she responded with a half-smile. "How are you feeling?" she asked as she walked over to some flowers from his crew on the table.
"I'm doing as well as can be expected, I suppose," Jim said. "No thanks to Khan, or your father. Jim watched as she stiffened at the mention of Admiral Marcus. He reached out a hand to her, "I'm sorry, but it's not hard to blame him for what happened. If he hadn't forced Khan into working for him…" Jim couldn't finish that statement. "How was it growing up with him as a father?" he finally asked.
"My mother reared me in England," she said slowly. "I saw him every other weekend and for two weeks during the summer. That was the custody arrangement. My Stepfather was more of a father to me than he was." She sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at him.
"I know about stepfathers. You know who my father was?" Jim asked. Carol nodded. "Mom remarried when I was five, his name was Frank. My brother, Sam and I hated him. Meanest son-of-a-bitch I knew. Well, on Earth," he amended. "He used to beat me and Sam up."
"What did you do?" Carol asked.
"Sam ran away. I…well, I drove the car my father had owned off a cliff," Jim admitted.
"A cliff in Iowa?" she asked.
"There are some quarries in Iowa. Make very satisfactory cliffs if you ask me," Jim said with a laugh. "I was arrested, and after some psychiatric evaluation, sent off to live with my aunt Olive and her family." Carol noticed he grew quiet.
"Oh, where did they live?" she asked with a smile.
"Tarsus IV," he spoke quietly. She recoiled in horror. Every Ethics class taught in the Federation included the cautionary tale of Tarsus IV and Governor Kodos. She'd taken it at the Academy and still couldn't believe anyone could be so cruel.
"Well, you survived, you were on his no kill list," she said.
Jim sighed. "No, I was listed to die along with the rest of my family. I was lucky, I was one of three kids who hid at the back of the square and slipped out during the chaos that followed Kodos' announcement. I killed for the first time when I was ten. He was a man who was looking for survivors. He had just found an eight month old girl in the house where everyone had died. I hit him in the head with a big rock and he never woke up." Carol looked at him in horror, "We went into places in shifts trying desperately to find food and survivors. Both were few and far between."
"You survived," she stated again.
"I survived. I was found and taken prisoner. They beat me, trying to get the location of the other kids. Neither Tom nor I would tell them. They blew off half his face, and he still wouldn't talk," Jim stopped, unable to continue. "Very few people know of my involvement on Tarsus IV, much less that I'm a survivor. I'd like to keep it that way," he told her.
Jim watched as she kicked off her shoes and wiggled in next to him. Lying on her side her head lay in the crook of his shoulder. She ran a perfectly manicured hand over his scraggly beard, "I'm sorry."
"About what?" he asked. "You didn't send me there." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, making her feel very safe and secure.
"About my father. I know he did some horrible things, but he didn't have to die like that," she told him. He could hear the tears in her throat.
"First time you saw someone kill a man up close?" Jim asked. He could feel her nod. "The first time I knew I'd killed someone like that I threw up. I'd stabbed him in the leg, and when he went down I managed to get him in the eye. For you it was personal," Jim paused. Carol started to sob. "It's never easy to see someone you love die," he whispered.
"Your Aunt and her family," she said quietly.
"Among many others," Jim told her. She continued to cry on his shoulder as he kept his arm around her. It felt good, almost natural…
…Bones peeked in to Jim's room. He full expected to find him asleep. He wasn't wrong, Jim was fast asleep, but he wasn't alone. Beside him slept Carol. They both slept peacefully. Bones shook his head. Some things never changed.