Chapter One: A Rock and a Hard Place
Disclaimer: No money made here. Free fun!
Jim Kirk leans forward, his hand hovering over the Send button of his personal computer console in his quarters. The application for promotion to vice admiral, written weeks ago but still unsent, is on the screen.
He's read it so many times he has it memorized. This is what officers do, right? Mark off the days in one job with an eye on something better. Onward and upward, the youngest captain in the fleet, soon to be the youngest vice admiral, his promotion almost certain if he wants it. One for the books, if things like that mattered to him.
They don't. If they did, he would have applied for promotion a year ago when he was first eligible.
Instead, here he is 960 days into what should be a plum assignment on the edge of Federation space, doing battle with an uneasiness that feels like a rock in his shoe. If the journey is at times routine—if falling asleep reading upcoming mission briefs about Teenaxian protocols and Fabonian artifacts isn't enough to stave off the old restlessness—well, then maybe he isn't the man for this job after all.
So far he's shared those musings with no one but his log.
And Carol, of course. Before she left the Enterprise two months ago, he confided his misgivings to her.
"Routine is good," Carol said without hesitation. "Predictable isn't the same thing as boring. Chaos is vastly overrated."
They were in his quarters, in his bed, and Jim was in no mood to be serious. "Chaos is fun," he countered.
"You don't believe that," she said. "The only people who do are adrenaline junkies."
"Guilty as charged." He ran the palm of his hand over her shoulder. Carol ignored the invitation and pulled away slightly, turning her gaze on him.
"You appreciate order more than you think you do. You want your departments humming along without incident."
With a sigh, Jim crooked his elbow and pillowed his head. They've had this conversation before. Many times. "Carol—"
"I've decided to accept the transfer."
He sat up then, more dismayed than surprised. "I thought we agreed—"
Again she cut him off. "The dean called today. She said the Academy gig was just for one semester, that if I took it I could have my choice of postings. Both Riverside and the new shipyards at Yorktown will need weapons experts when the Poseidon-class phasers come online."
Carol is, first and foremost, a designer, a visionary engineer of tactical matter/anti-matter weaponry. Doing maintenance work on a starship is a wheel spin, a time out while she runs in place. Jim gets that, understands her own restless need to move on.
"Don't you see?" she added. "As head of installation at one of the shipyards, I'll have first crack at customizing the armaments for each ship."
"Your dream job," Jim said, not meeting her gaze.
He heard her take in a breath and let it out slowly. "You could come with me."
He laughed then, thinking she was joking, and he looked up. Not laughter but serious purpose in her expression, and something else—an unspoken appeal.
"You really mean that? Give up the Enterprise? And do what?"
"Apply for a promotion. Do what vice admirals do. Sit at a fancy desk and push papers. Stay out of trouble." She gave a tentative smile. "Come home at night for dinner with your wife and children."
For a moment Jim was too stunned to speak.
They've talked around the subject but neither has dared to say the words out loud before. Always the future was like some distant planet that he intended to visit some day, a speck on the horizon small enough that it barely registered.
Yet here it is, suddenly looming overhead. Is he ready, at 29, to make that sort of commitment?
At his age, his father was already raising one son with another on the way.
Of course, George Kirk had more options than Jim does. After the destruction of the Kelvin, Starfleet stopped outfitting large multi-generational ships, the kind George and Winona Kirk had called home. Now service personnel who want to raise children are forced to leave them behind when they ship out, the way Sulu does.
Maintaining a long term relationship shipboard is difficult enough. Not everyone is like Spock and Uhura, gracefully navigating the tensions unique to co-workers who are also lovers.
"I don't know what to say," Jim stuttered at last.
Carol leaned forward, kissed him softly, and stood up.
"Your silence says all I need to know," she said.
A few days later she was gone.
For the first month after they parted he felt her absence everywhere—in the empty chair at the captain's table, in the chill of the sheets on his bed. More than once he saw her at the end of a crowded corridor only to have the image resolve into someone else as he drew closer.
The second month was even harder. Carol Marcus was the only woman he'd ever told his secrets to—his lingering resentment toward his abusive step-father, his teenage years spent in juvenile detention in Sioux City, his fantasy that his father would show up one day, alive and apologetic for his long absence. He's told her that he wakes up afraid every morning that he can't live up to Christopher Pike's belief in him. Confessed his conviction that without his junior officers he would be at a total loss.
She's the only woman he's ever said I love you to, or at least said it and meant it.
If he's honest, she's the only woman he's ever let walk away and regretted it, the only woman he assumed, somehow, was going to remain in his life.
Then two weeks ago he filled out the application for promotion. More than once he opened his mouth to say something about it to Spock or Bones but then fell silent, certain they would not understand or approve, though he can't articulate why, not even to himself. It feels too much like a betrayal of sorts, an admission that their faith in him was misplaced after all.
The door chime sounds and Jim tabs the application closed.
"Enter," he says over his shoulder.
"Thought you were meeting me for a drink," Bones says. A glass appears on the desk and Jim picks it up and swivels his chair around.
"Cheers." Bones lifts his own glass up in salute and settles on the chaise lounge in the corner of the room. "For God's sake, Jim," he says, taking a sip of what Jim decides is better than decent bourbon, "when are you going to stop moping around? No woman's worth all this."
Jim eyes Bones over the rim of the shot glass. "That's how you did it after your divorce? Just told yourself to stop being lonely?"
"I didn't say you wouldn't be lonely. But you can stop being sad about it. It just didn't work out. Time to move on."
"What if I'm tired of moving on? What's wrong with settling down somewhere?"
Bones lets out a snort. "And do what? Push papers in some boring desk job? Play it safe and grow old and rusty? Hardly sounds like the Jim Kirk I know."
"Maybe you don't know me that well."
"I know you better than you think I do. Okay, so right now you're feeling sad and lonely—wait, hear me out—and you think you always will be. But you're surviving. And if you wait a little longer, you'll see that you're not just surviving, you're okay. Better than okay. Captain of the best damn ship in the fleet."
Jim takes another sip of bourbon. "But what if that's not enough? Don't you ever want something more?"
Bones frowns into his glass and shakes his head. "I'm a doctor, Jim, not a philosopher."
"Next time I need some pearls of wisdom, I'm going to Spock instead."
"Good luck with that," Bones says. "I don't think he'll be handing out relationship advice much longer."
"What do you mean?"
"Don't mind me. Just a feeling."
The intercom whistles and Jim reaches up to toggle it open.
"Captain," Lt. Uhura says, "there's a transmission from San Francisco for you."
"Starfleet?"
"Negative, sir. A private message on subspace. Do you want me to send it to your quarters?"
He darts a meaningful glance in Bones' direction. Draining his glass in a single motion, Bones stands up and nods. "I'm outta here," he says as he moves to the door.
The message is a prerecorded packet from Carol. The time stamp shows that she made the tape twelve hours ago—which at this distance means she must have sent it soon afterwards.
"Hello, Jim," she says into the camera, and Jim feels the familiar lurch in his stomach. "The Academy is fine and some of my students are brilliant, so no complaints here. I just wanted you to know that I've put in for a transfer to Yorktown when my time here is up. At least that way when you make your regular resupply runs, we can say hello in person. If you want to. I understand if you don't."
Her tone is not whinging or manipulative but as straightforward as she always is. He blinks twice, surprised to feel his lashes wet. Leaning forward to click off the recording, he sees Carol tilt her head slightly and hears her add, "I miss you." Then the screen goes black.
Looking down, he sees the empty glass on the desk.
Bones was wrong. He isn't okay. He's sad and lonely and afraid of growing old alone.
He tabs open the application for vice admiral. Lifting his hand, he hesitates only a moment before pushing Send.
Author's Note: So, my Muse has been on vacation for far too long, but she stopped by recently and whispered the ghost of an idea in my ear.
"What about a missing scenes story to go with Star Trek Beyond?" she said.
So here's the first chapter. I hope you enjoy it—and if you do, thanks for letting me know!