For Nothing Left To Lose
An: This was originally undertaken with Star Trek TOS in mind, but I soon found that the 2009 universe allowed me more creative room. It's a bit stuffy with all the ancestral furniture filling up the fandom halls.
Throughout the universe, every creature somewhere deep within itself longs for a single thing: Freedom.
--
There were a lot of things that remained constant throughout the universe. Night time was one—stars and moon were optional, but the darkness was mandatory, the shiver of cool air and the cloak of black hours, the burn of artificial lights. Universal, also, was the bar—the shady place on the end of the street where the shadowy man behind the counter could always serve up something to drown your troubles. The need to forget, it seemed, was not limited to humans either.
Captain Kirk swiped his glass from the polished countertop, eyeing the blue liquid sloshing inside. The bartender swore it was safe for human consumption, and it had the side effect of clearing one's head—in small doses. In larger doses, it was a powerful stimulant. He sighed and swallowed as much as he could, the odd tangy taste buzzing on his tongue.
So many bars, so many planets… so many faces zipping by, stars all indistinguishable changing constantly around him, so many close calls and so many losses. There was nothing like a position of power to make and break a man, and there was nothing like responsibility to burn away your humanity. So many pretty faces, legs, voices, all paradoxically in and out of reach.
Someone slipped into the seat beside him and ordered a drink with too many consonants in its name. Her voice was musical and her black hair swished in the dim light, reflecting every glimmer. He looked up, and her black eyes met his own.
"So," the woman said, her accent remarkably like Korean tinged Standard, "Captain Kirk sits beside me, this evening?"
"Looks like it," he replied, voice soft. The alien drink was working its way into his system, and tonight he was tired of fighting.
"I am pleased to meet you," she told him, wrapping her dark brown fingers around the glass that had, suddenly it seemed, appeared by her side. "Your reputation, of course, precedes you."
Kirk hummed in response. He downed more of the blue liquid, focused on its depths—better than looking at the native woman's black eyes, which were too intelligent and too reminiscent of his troubles.
"But even if it had not," the native went on, "I have known that you are Captain, even in uniform. Others treat you differently. I saw, as you left the ship, the way they look to you… it is not the same. It is as if you were more than a man… I apologize, if I make little sense."
"No, no," he waved her off, a bit of a laugh in his voice, "I can't seem to hear enough about myself, so you might as well go on."
Her eyes twinkled. "Ah, then perhaps I should… It is like, it is like how we look at our high priests. They are but men, and still, they have averted floods and convinced the sun to return to us in winter. They are different, though they remain the same."
Kirk nodded, taken somewhat aback. "Being captain is a bit like that, I admit. No talking to suns, but a good amount of flood-turning."
"What is it like?" she asked him, dark eyes taking on a shine that make him feel both more and less comfortable—more, because they didn't remind him so much of someone else anymore, and less, because…
"What's what like?"
"Flying," she replied, as if it was the name of a God or an ancient hero. "Freedom. Being the captain."
Normally, he would have made a joke, or changed the subject, or even recounted a few of his more daring adventures—the time he really had averted a tsunami, or the Nero episode, or that time on Tantalus—but tonight… something was telling him to really answer the question. No evasions, no ego, no lies.
"Flying," he started, ticking off on one finger, "is like a very pretty Terran supermodel. Great to look at, but it gets dull quickly. Freedom," he ticked off another finger, "is unlike anything else in the universe. There's an old Terran proverb… 'freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose'. That's not entirely true, because freedom is beyond description, and men kill for it. I killed for it. And a ship—a ship is freedom, at its very core, and no amount of duties or near death experiences can change that."
The woman looked at him with an expression of such complete reverence that he suddenly felt like a preacher singing out sermons to the congregation. She had the sailor's spirit, he could recognize it, and it was a pity that her planet hadn't yet developed a space-faring vessel.
"Being the captain, though," Kirk went on, closing his fist and resting it on the bartop, "is complicated. It's responsibility and impossible descisions, and showing no fear. You can't be a true human—er, being—because people don't want leaders who are like themselves. People want leaders who are never wrong, and never afraid, and never hurt or angry or tired… I don't slip up…"
The native woman nodded gravely, sipping her drink. He wondered if she would understand him if he tried to tell her about sitting at the center of the bridge as order shattered into chaos, and his crew—his friends—looked at him with frightened, imploring eyes, expecting a miracle with every atom of their beings. Trusting, and the trust weighed on his shoulders till sometimes he fell to his knees. Would she understand the price he paid for his 'freedom'?
"But still," he repeated, "I wouldn't give up my job for anything. It's just so difficult sometimes. You know, I bet your priests understand; there isn't much left for you—of you—when you devote yourself to everyone else. Sometimes I think there's only one or two people I can really talk to. In a way, I'm a very lonely man…"
Smiling sadly, she pushed: "Who are they?"
"My first officer," Kirk responded, automatically. Somewhere in the back of his head, he was a bit startled at his own honesty. "Him and the ship doctor. I care about all my crew, but those two are more… personal."
"What are their names?" the native asked, surprising the captain. In his experience, women tended to wind down a conversation when they were exposed to too much genuine emotion.
"Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock. They don't know I'm here, actually. Sneaking off is surprisingly easy, particularly on a planet without door alarms."
"But why lonely?" she went on, wiping from her lips the same blue drink he had ordered for himself. "How can a man be lonely when he has the stars, and a ship, and a thousand planets to explore? Companionship is not so useful."
Captain Kirk only shook his head. "It's one of those things you don't appreciate until it's gone. Responsibility, on the other hand, you can't understand until you have it. I have to be so careful… I can't fall in love, you know. It's not allowed."
She looked puzzled. "By law?" she asked.
"Personal law." the captain responded, wryly. "My ship is the only lady I could ever live for. If I loved an alien, I'd have to leave one day, and then she'd be all alone… If I loved someone on the ship, they wouldn't have any choice. I'm their superior officer, I'm their… priest. It would be like an order, or an obligation."
"But what if they did love you?"
Kirk smiled bitterly. "I'd never believe it. The whole of Starfleet thinks I'm an egotistical cavalier, but the truth is, I have… deep doubts, about me, about my choices, about… everything."
They sat in silence for a moment, almost brooding, before the bartender returned with another glass of the blue drink, pushing it into the human's hand. What had the woman called it?
"You know," he sighed, eyes closed, "I've always had this strange ability to tell when I could love someone. Or get attached to them, at the very least. It's like this warning sign in the back of my head, a kind of… lockdown… and I could turn it off if I wanted."
"You can…" the native woman frowned, "control who it is that you love?"
"Yep," he answered, downing half the glass. "It's handy, I suppose. I can't afford to care about anyone to that degree. There's nothing out there for me but tragedy, and unlike the Greeks, I won't fight fate, not for myself. Still, some of them push harder than others. In my head, you know? They fight to get past the block."
"Someone on your ship," she guessed, tapping the counter with her sixth finger. He nodded, and she added, "One you feel comfortable to be with. One who knows how hard the captaincy weighs on you. The doctor?"
That startled a laugh out of the increasingly morose captain. "Bones? It's funny, I hadn't thought of that."
"Mr. Spock, then," she said, and with such finality that there was no arguing.
For a moment, her black eyes penetrated the darkest depths of his soul, and he almost shivered—too familiar, too intimate. Was he allowed no secrets? Was he allowed nothing? The looks that they traded, had traded since almost the beginning, the secret smiles and the jokes, the wit that barely broke the surface of their encounters: everything laid bare, not only to this alien but to another alien, and all the things Kirk had never said aloud seemed to fall open under his slightest touch.
"Sometimes it slips through," he found himself muttering, "and I have to fight so hard to reel it back in. When we just barely survive another battle, or escape another intergalactic prison, or when we're just standing on the bridge, waiting for a transmission…"
"Do you wish to know what I think?" the woman asked softly, pouring some of her drink into her companion's glass. He nodded. "Your block has already failed. You are in love with this Spock, and so you have been for a long time—you push it away, yes, but it has taken root and will not be ignored. You love him despite all your careful separation."
He blinked at her. That was a side of the dilemma he hadn't considered, and hadn't wanted to consider. It meant he had no power. It meant he had no choice. It meant he had no ability to change what was now inevitable. It also meant that he was only so much closer to making life incredibly difficult for his best friend, in the midst of an already taxing existence. What if he had, unknowingly, already begun to plant the seed of obligation in his first officer's mind? To expose the single weakness that no one—no one—should be allowed to see.
"I can't," he whispered, "I just can't. You don't understand, I can't. Spock, he's a man of duty. He's the best first officer in the fleet. I know him, he'll do anything for the ship, for me, he could no less be loyal than breathe. I can't do this to him."
"But you have," his companion replied, gently but with conviction. "You tell me that you have your ship, as you have no being. You tell me that you love no woman, or you must leave her. You tell me you love no one on your ship, or you will force them. It seems to me, that you have trapped yourself between the ocean and the desert. You love, but you will not allow yourself to love… it is, it is not a good place."
"I have no choice. I can't, I can't… the crew needs me, I can't be human, I can't have that kind of weakness. It's bad enough, what I do for him, the rules that I break for him, the chances I take—I can't love him, it'll break me, it'll kill me. A captain is not a man…"
The native girl looked at him, sharp black eyes softening for an instant, and she pushed her glass away with dark fingers, black hair falling in front of her eyes as she leant forward, looking away.
"I think I understand," she said, finally. "I asked you what freedom was like. But you are not free. No, Captain Kirk, you are the most caged of all men I have ever met. You have a beautiful ship, but it has given you no peace of mind. You have a loyal crew, but they have given you no liberty. You are in love, but it has not given you hope. You have not let it."
She turned to look at him, again, and there was a kind of ancientness in her gaze, a burning, wide-reaching thing.
"Your prison is the galaxy, and all galaxies. Your prison is heaven itself. You are not free, James T. Kirk. You are a prisoner. And even as the door is opened to you, you cling to the bars of your cell, fearful of the outside world."
Throat painfully tight, Kirk searched for the words to argue back, to prove that she was wrong, that he was free. All his life he'd searched for it, from the time he was a child living under his step-father's thumb to his days in the academy, fighting with all his immature power against the unbeatable system. A ship was supposed to give him that, a ship was freedom. And it was. But he could say nothing to the native woman, because… there was nothing he could say.
"You are not free," she repeated, and standing, murmured, "I am sorry."
In time, Captain Kirk came to find that the cobalt colored drink had been "Cthalxisl", which translated as "all truth". Sitting in the darkness of his cabin, he choked on his breath, remembering the words that burned in his head, like a brand across the back of a captive. And he remembered two sets of eyes, so different and yet both with that same look of perfect compassion and resignation. He couldn't bear it.
He wanted to be free, after all that he had gone through, all he had struggled for, all the pain and the places he had left behind him. Two sets of eyes scorched him. He wanted to be free.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
So… what did he have to lose?