I'll Dream You, Wide Awake

by Heroes Can Save You

Title comes from the song Dreaming Wide Awake by Poets of The Fall and this story was inspired by this amazing video that you can watch here: watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O2Qc_JHU6Ug

Though it isn't necessary for the story really.

I own neither Star Trek nor the song.

Rated M for later chapters.

Chapter 1: Another Space and Time.

James Kirk suspected that the smile on his doctor's face was supposed to be encouraging, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. The more his doctor smiled, his chin resting on his long pale fingers as he observed him carefully, the less inclined James felt to talk to him. He shrugged and he watched as the doctor made a little note of the response.

"So James, since the last time we spoke have you had anymore of these dreams?" Dr. John Harrison asked, watching his patient carefully.

"They aren't dreams, I've told you it's like they are memories. The memories of another me," Jim informed him, staring out of the window past his doctor, bored at repeating the same statement week in and week out. His doctor nodded and smiled that thin-lipped smile again.

"Well why don't you tell me about any new ones you have experienced? Is the same man still present? This – what did you call him? Vulcan?"

"He's half – Vulcan," Jim snapped, answering before he really knew why. Did it matter that much? He wondered to himself. His doctor nodded and Jim sighed, leaning back and folding his arms behind his head. "He's nearly always in them. He was in some kind of suit, inside a volcano and I was trying to save him even though when I asked Bones he said he wouldn't save me if it was the other way around,"

A twitch of his doctor's eyebrow, the last comment had interested him.

"Why do you not think he would save you? You have expressed that, at least in these visions, he is your friend isn't he? So surely he would want to?"

Jim shook his head.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," Jim muttered for a moment, the words causing that strange tugging sensation, as if his mind were trying to get him to remember something that he couldn't quite grasp. "I can't remember why – it wasn't one of the clearer memories," he explained, with a casual shrug. His thoughts were wandering back now, piecing together his, or at least some other James Tiberius Kirk's memories of the dark haired Vulcan. In some of them he wasn't even doing anything with his crewmember, he was just watching him from across the bridge as he worked or sitting quietly and working while the other meditated. There were emotions connected to the memories, a strange sense of longing but Jim was never sure if it came from him or from the dreams.

"But you don't remember his name? You know the names of everyone else," His doctor clarified, and Jim shrugged.

"I guess its not important then, didn't you say you felt the people in these delusions and what they represented were more important?" He asked, fixing sharp blue eyes onto his doctor.

Rather than feeling uncomfortable over the accusation in his voice Dr. Harrison simply smiled, tapping his notepad.

"Yes, but I don't think I said those things to you,"

He didn't raise his voice, or look anything other than polite but Jim always felt an undercurrent of coldness in his doctor, just enough that he never felt fully relaxed in these therapy sessions he was forced to take.

Jim just raised his chin and cast a look of defiance at his doctor, who simply settled for staring back at him. The rest of the session dragged on, Dr. Harrison continually asking him questions about the version of himself in his dreams, asking questions about the people in them compared to the people in his life – had he ever met any of them for example? Jim gave his usual brief, curt answers, reclining back on the sofa as if they were chatting as friends rather than patient and doctor.

He couldn't remember how long he had been having these flashes, these glimpses of another glittering life as a Starfleet Captain in the future but what had started out as dreams had begun to creep into his everyday consciousness. Sometimes he would be walking down the road, or sitting on a bus and it would come to him – an image flickering up, a memory that he knew couldn't be his coming from nowhere. Sometime while the images were coming to him he could simply sit there, as if watching the events playing out on the screen. Small bits of information had started to seep in, and he had realized important things about this other version of himself – he was confident, happy, arrogant and important. He had friends he would die for and people, who trusted him, trusted them to lead and protect them. He was a hero.

It seemed a far cry from the person he was now. As a child he had been noted as being exceptionally intelligent, and this had lead to him having been accelerated through school. Always being younger than his peers, he felt like he never really fit in – especially not when he managed to complete an undergraduate degree in engineering and physics in a fraction of the time it took normal students and at only 19 years old. After he had completed a further degree he had lost all interest in studying anymore, and found himself wondering what on earth he should do with his life. He wasn't unattractive, and he was intelligent, and hell, when he wanted to he could be pretty damn charming, and Jim found that he never really had to work for anything he wanted. It all just seemed to come so easily.

Now here he was, 25 years old, working in a small run down cinema that no one ever came to and seeing a therapist at his parent's insistence, who were convinced he suffered from depression – after all why else would anyone throw away a glittering academic career for the life he led?

He had overheard Doctor Harrison telling his parents when he had first started visiting him that it was probably Jim's high intelligence that had caused him to create a fantasy world as a form of escape from the elements of his life he had disliked. He had researched it one night, noticing that children with exceptionally high IQs would create fictional worlds where they could feel accepted in a way they couldn't in normal society – this could, if not picked up at a young age, continue to effecting them until they were adults and – as Dr. Harrison clearly believed had happened with Jim, become an alternate reality that the unhappy adult would retreat to.

Perhaps that was it, Jim thought, perhaps he had just created this world to comfort himself, but sometimes it seemed so real. Laughing with Bones as they overheard some scandalous rumor about him spreading around the academy, driving in that car with the roof down and Jim could remember even the feeling of the wind in his hair and the sensation of flying as he threw himself from it.

Jim had no idea what to do about the situation, and he was suspecting that his doctor didn't have much idea either. He had been visiting the sinister Dr. Harrison for a year, and all he had noticed was that these visions had gone from being simply dreams when he was sleeping to affecting him when he was awake. Which didn't seem much like treatment to him. Still, he kept this little fact to himself for the moment, not sure what to do with the revelation.

It had been raining when he had left the therapists office, and by the time Jim had ran back to the dingy cinema he was soaked through. His boss barely glanced at him from his spot at the ticket counter and he simply pointed to the projection room. Jim wondered why his boss even bothered opening most of the time, and stripped his wet jumper off in the comfort of the dim projection room. He stood, bare-chested and carefully eased open the roll of film and slid it into the old rickety projector. He glanced at the title, and tried to remember what the film they were showing that day was, some old black and white detective movie maybe? Not that anyone would be coming to see it.

The thick heavy velvet curtains that could be drawn over the screen were already pulled back, and the house lights – bare bulbs hanging in elaborate glass chandeliers had been lowered. There was still a small section of stage visible under the screen from when the cinema had been a theater back in the 1930s. The owner, probably out of laziness, had kept the art deco decorations to the place, and while there was some chipping plaster and crumbling stairs, the place held certain nostalgia. The screen itself and the equipment was decent enough given that they were still operating 35mm film in a digital age, and they had a few dedicated film goers who would still come along – usually because the old guy who ran the place seemed to prefer showing old fashioned rare sci-fi gems that could pull the younger, geekier crowd in. At this time on a Monday afternoon, however, it would probably be a film showing just for Jim – something the owner seemed perfectly content to let him do.

He threaded the film through carefully, squinting in the dim light. He flicked the button that turned the film on, and the familiar whirring sound started. He settled down, feeling around for a tub of sweets he knew he had left in the room. He ate them slowly, half watching the film, half thinking about the dark haired man who his visions were focusing on with surprising frequency. He knew a few things about the man, and his face seemed to haunt him – he was shockingly beautiful to Jim, with his strange pointed ears and eyebrows, and such perfect, silky looking hair.

The two images that really stuck with him were the image of the man, leaning over him furiously as he choked him after the other Jim, or rather he, had goaded a reaction from him by speaking about his mother. But it wasn't just that image, although he would be the first to admit that even as he felt for sure the other would kill him, he'd felt some strange pride at being able to get a reaction from the emotionless man. The other memory that kept coming back to him again and again was the image of the half Vulcan stood on the transporter, arm outstretched, staring in heartbreak and confusion at the place where his mother should have stood. For some reason he found himself constantly faced with that image, time and time again – as if he wanted to engrave the others pain and heartbreak on his own mind.

A movement from the seat below snapped him from his daze and he sat up, leaning out of the projection booth to look down. The fluctuating light coming from the cinema screen picked out a single figure, sat amongst the dark empty chairs. Jim almost let out a noise of surprise, and he wondered who on earth had wandered into the old fashioned theater. He wore a simple plain white shirt from what Jim could see from his position, and he watched the man for a few minutes. He was sat with his back very straight, his hands placed flat on his knees in front of him, but had leaned forward slightly in his seat, as if anticipating something that was about to happen in the film. Jim felt himself smiling at the stiff posture, and it reminded him of someone else for some reason, although he wasn't sure why – after all it wasn't like he had many friends. At least not in this reality.

He must have moved and cast a shadow over the stream of light coming from the projector, because the man turned suddenly and looked straight up at him with a shocking familiar face. He wore plain black-rimmed glasses, but Jim felt that even from this distance that he could see deep into those dark, dark eyes that had locked onto his. His hair was longer than the image in Jim's head, but still neat and ordered and he held himself in the same stiff sort of way. They sat staring at each other for a while before Jim offered a hesitant smile, and raised his hand in greeting.

As far away as he was, Jim was sure he could see a tiny upward flickering of the others lips, and a hand rose to return his greeting before the other man turned back to the film.

Chapter 1 is done – it may be confusing at first. It's sort of meant to be until the story gets going – let me know what you think and I'll write more! Promise! I'm never sure about writing AU's. Also, there is something romantic about meeting in some kind of old fashioned cinema – don't you think? Erm, so yeah – there you have it!