Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or any affiliated characters. I'm just playing with them for my own amusement.

This is going to be an experiment of mine. Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Each chapter will be a character study of sorts. Mostly with oneshots style entries. I probably won't have a lot of dialogue in this story.

THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN EDITED AND EXPANDED

++SPOILERS for the new movie++

Jim Kirk-

We never think of the consequences of our actions until far too late; a harsh lesson to learn, but an important one nevertheless. I wish I could say that I learned this lesson the first time around, but I didn't. It took nearly 1/3 of my crew's deaths, the senseless deaths of my family, for me to open my eyes to the world around me and when I did, I wish I could have had that innocence still.

You would have thought that the death of a man who I thought of as a father would have spoiled me of that naivety that I still clung too; instead it just filled me with a mindless rage. When I look back to that time, I barely recognize myself. I would not, could not listen to what those around me were saying. It was just mindless rambling. It wasn't until I started to lose my family that I was stripped of all childish naivety. Yes I still believed that there was no such thing as a no-win situation, but for everyone to get out of this situation alive there would be a price to pay. One I would pay gladly over and over again. After all it was such a small price, my life was mine to give…wasn't it?

Granted if Bones ever heard that thought go through my head he would strap me to a chair so fast that I wouldn't have time to blink. It was a good thing that he wasn't a telepath. Spock, was a little harder to hide from, but not impossible. I learned he only ever saw things that he could understand and at that point in time, he truly didn't understand much in the way of human emotions. I confused him so it was easy to hide what I needed from him. But I digress…I saved them all and as I lay there dying, Spock on the other side of the glass with a tear running down his cheek I smiled. I saved my family. It was a good day.

I knew that there would be grief in my passing but I knew I could have rested easily knowing that my family was going to be okay. Spock, Sulu and Scotty would get them out of this mess that I got them into and everything would be fine.

With those last thoughts I remember it going dark and the next thing I know I'm waking up to blinding white and Bones face over my own.

What the hell happened? How am I alive? I knew I didn't say the words out loud for fear of the Lecture, and yes it deserves the capitol L, and that Bones was rambling on about being dead and a transfusion and then I was out again.

It was a few days later after the funerals that I started to think about what had happened and then stopped. There was no use thinking of things long past. We could only move forward from here.

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In retrospect I really should have dug into those thoughts of wrongness but everything was okay. We had mourned our lost family and had moved on. For the first year or so into our 5 year mission, nothing too exciting happened. We met new people on strange new worlds and created several lucrative trade deals for Star Fleet Command.

It wasn't until an away mission turned ugly that I remembered the feeling of wrongness I'd once had and forgotten about. A misunderstanding turned deadly and my security team was killed. I should have died that mission, instead I remember being beamed up with the bodies of my crewmen and seeing Bones looking at me with his mother hen worried look and then nothing.

I was in a coma for two days. Bones has said I was lucky not to have been hit with a direct blast from one of the guns the natives had had. I didn't correct him on his assumption. I however do remember very distinctly being hit dead on by one of their guns. I remember the blinding pain and I remember the shock on the face of the man who would be my murderer when I didn't die like the others.

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Granted I was rather freaked out by this incident, but tried to ignore it. It would do no one any good if their captain started to go around the bin. There was this instinctual terror there in the back of my mind that if I figured out what I already distantly knew, that nothing would be the same again. Sometimes I wonder if it was a cowardly thing to do, but I like to think of it as more of a survival instinct. They are some things that the human mind is just not meant to comprehend.

After all-what happens when you realize that you can't be harmed or killed? Do you turn into that monster that you fear or do you hide under the bed, hoping that a bigger better monster will come along and take you out in the event that you become what you fear? I didn't want to know and I truly wish I had never found out about it.

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There were other close calls, but I was able to hide everything. Bones even remarked on the continued health I seemed to have. He called it the Devil's Luck. Pike once called it Blind Luck. I was calling it a curse.

It was close to the end of our 5 year assignment, when everything changed. Actually everything went to hell in a fiery hand basket. Uhura, Spock and I were the landing party to great a new people who wanted to trade with Starfleet. It was meant to be a standard op. Uhura was there for language, Spock as my science officer and I was there for official negotiations. (We never did inform Starfleet that the landing parties usually consisted of the higher ranking members of the Enterprise. I do believe the admirals would have had a conniption fit or three. Thankfully Spock did learn to send me his reports before he sent them off. It caused fewer complications that way and fewer headaches for the both of us).

Everything seemed to go very well until we got down to the negotiations and trade agreement. They wanted weapons…apparently the world we had landed on had been at war with a neighboring planet for some time and wanted to wipe them out. They wanted complete genocide of another people. I firmly disagreed and told them that we would be leaving now, thank you very much.

That was when the guns came out. Guns that were far more advanced than our initial intel had originally indicated and they were not set to stun.

I quickly commed the bridge, to get Sulu's attention so that we could get off this rock, however I was unable to get through as the natives disagreed with my actions and the signals were suddenly jammed. Something else that we had not known they possessed. We were thrown into what amounted to holding cells. They attempted to torture me to get my agreement but quickly grew frustrated when they realized that I was not getting as battered as one should under rigorous torture. It probably didn't help that I was constantly insulting everyone and their mother. That earned me a couple of black eyes that healed too quickly. So they changed methods. They took Spock, but he too was resilient to the torture because of his Vulcan nature. Then they got smart. They took the both of us and chained us together and then brought Uhura in.

She was screaming when I snapped. I'd been hoping that Sulu would have gotten us out of here by now, but something must have been very wrong. I calculated the chances of everyone surviving and reached only one conclusion. Everyone that had laid a hand on my family was going to meet a swift end.

When I snapped everything seemed to come to a slow and then seemingly stopped. The chains had literally been snapped and were lying at Spock's feet. He was too stunned to react at first. I moved and within seconds everyone within my vicinity was lying at my feet either dead or dying.

Nothing was said. Uhura and Spock just looked at me and I told them that we needed to get out of here now. They nodded and I knew that there would be some hard truths to say later, but at that moment I was more focused on making sure that my family survived.

The actual escape from the tunnels went well. It's when we got away from the structures that things went south once again. More natives surrounded us and attempted to stop us. They were swiftly dealt with. We continued to run, but they kept coming. Somewhere along the way Uhura had gotten a gun and was shooting at them and Spock was providing back up. I forwent the gun completely. I didn't need it at the moment. Cold calculated rage fueled my adrenaline and I was unstoppable or so I thought.

Before he died, one native managed to get a really lucky shot in with a primitive throwing spear and I felt pain and then my legs giving out. Spock dispatched him and we were alone once more. He picked me up and we continued to run. I kept trying to black out from the pain, but managed to stay conscious the whole way. We found a more easily defendable area until we could get word back up to the Enterprise to beam us up.

Spock became lookout as Uhura attempted to see what she could make of my injury. I kept trying to get her attention, but the pain made me a little fuzzy. I finally was able to get out the words "get this damn spear out of my chest. NOW." Uhura lectured me for being an idiot and I remember growling at her or attempting too. "Get it out and I will explain."

She must have seen something in my eyes, because for the first time ever under my command she listened without complaint. Spock tried to stop her, but she managed to get it out of my chest before he could and instead of bleeding out as should have happen, the gaping hole in my chest began to clot and then started to close.

They of course demanded to know what the hell was going on and I tried to explain to the best of my ability.

See the thing is I should have stayed dead that night that I died from radiation poisoning. It was a good death. But when Bones did the blood transfusion he had to use a hell of a lot of blood from Khan. He replaced most of the eradiated cells before Khan's blood began to actually work and heal the others. As far as I could tell it was harder than hell to actually injure me and it had to be a nearly fatal injury to do me lasting harm. I didn't seem to bruise for more than a few minutes and I didn't actually know if I could die. Granted I was not in a hurry to find out if that last bit was true or not, but I didn't deny that I was curious about it. I was stronger and faster than I used to be and it was a distinct possibility I was smarter too.

They took the explanation better than I thought. It was Spock who said "We can't tell anyone." I remember laughing at the logical and precise way he said it. The next thing we know we are back on the ship and its business as usual.

However I was seriously dreading the conversation that I would have to eventually have with Bones….

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