Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or its characters, only my original ideas.

Note: Well, this turned out very different than what I had first intended when I began writing this. It sort of took on a life of its own, as most stories tend to do, and this is the final result. Let me know what you think; reviews make my day and show me where I can keep improving! Thanks, and enjoy!

The End of Time Itself

Kirk didn't know how long he had been awake. He wasn't even entirely sure when he had become aware that he was awake. It almost seemed as if he had never been asleep, but that couldn't be true, because he lacked any memory of a Before.

It was dark around him, but it wasn't an empty, menacing dark. It was the kind of dark that comes when you turn out the lights in a place that you know like the back of your hand: comforting and full – even if you can't see what it is full of. In this case, Kirk wasn't entirely sure what the something filling the darkness was, but somehow he knew it wasn't like anything he had ever encountered before.

Are you ready to return yet?

The voice echoed about him, soundless, yet somehow bouncing off the empty spaces where things normally might have been. It sounded almost feminine, though there was just enough of a masculine tinge to it that determining the gender of the speaker was impossible.

Who are you?

Kirk's voice wasn't what it usually was, either. It was soundless, and yet made of sound. It was silent, yet the loudest thing he had ever heard. He supposed that the closest thing he could compare it to was an internal scream, if less violent. A burst of amusement went rippling through the blackness.

Who are you?

The voice parroted his question back at him, and Kirk was about to answer when he realized there had been a slight inflection in the question that completely changed its meaning. The voice wasn't asking for his name; it had asked who he was, not what he was called.

I don't know.

He felt inexplicably saddened at the admission, as well as slightly guilty, like he hadn't lived up to expectations and someone was going to be disappointed in him. There was a ripple of reassurance before the voice spoke up again.

That's okay, you'll figure it out eventually.

There was a momentary pause, and something about the full nothingness seemed to shift slightly. The shift could have lasted for a mere second, or for an eternity. There was no real sense of Time in the blankness, as everything seemed to move slowly, lazily, like a leaf drifting on a pond in the sleepy heat of summer.

You have to go back now.

The voice was solemn now, and slightly resigned. Kirk sent out a non-verbal question, asking without asking what had changed and what the voice meant. He could feel it shifting through the empty space, going on and on without end until he stopped it himself.

We will not meet again, even when you return for real.

Why not?

The voice's slight sorrow let up momentarily, and Kirk felt an easy contentment mixed with humor melt into him from his surroundings.

You mean you haven't guessed by now? I am everything that Would Have Been, and everything around us is the Future that Would Have Happened had you remained.

Remained?

You will be waking up soon. That is why this Future is no more. Now the reality remaining is the one that Is, your Present. It is where you will return to when you awaken, and where you will leave when you fall back asleep.

Kirk let that notion sink in for a moment, not entirely convinced that everything he heard had made sense. The voice remained quiet as he did so, letting him mull its words over in peace. There was another shift in the nothingness, and Kirk could feel the difference a lot more strongly this time. His sense of Time seemed to be coming back, and his lethargy seemed to be easing somewhat as parts of his memory began to return.

I'm dead, aren't I? I died saving – saving my ship.

In this Future, you would have been. In your Present, however, you were saved after you died. That is why this Future no longer exists, and we are here in the space that exists within empty places. Soon, though, even this will be gone.

You mean this was an alternate reality? And I'm responsible for it being destroyed?

He felt horrified at the thought of being the reason for so many lives being disintegrated in a single moment. A feeling of surprise washed over him from the voice.

Responsible? It's not your fault. Realities aren't constant; they come and go by the thousands, if not millions, constantly. This is simply one Would Have Happened, and I am one Would Have Been.

Would Have Been? What do you mean by that?

Exactly that. What do you think happens to all of the consciousness and energy in a reality that is coming apart? It has to go somewhere, and in this case, it created me. I won't be here long, though, as even I will disappear when this world falls apart.

There was a sudden tremor that spread through the space, and Kirk gasped as his memory returned to him all at once. The tremor lasted for only a couple of minutes, but it was enough to tell that the reality he was in at the moment was collapsing, and the feeling sent Kirk's mortal mind reeling. Something else shifted as well, and Kirk had no idea what it was until the voice next spoke.

"It appears that you will be able to witness the End of this world before you wake up."

The voice had changed to decidedly masculine, and in the seconds it took for Kirk to process that, he also realized that the words were no longer silent. He turned to the left just in time to see a mirror image of himself approach. The other him stopped when they were shoulder to shoulder, staring out straight ahead, and it was then that Kirk realized that they were both standing, and that he didn't remember how long it had been since he started, or if he had never stopped. The speaker of the voice then turned to look at him, and Kirk felt the strange sensation that comes from looking at yourself.

"This is what it means to say the End of Time."

A light grew from a point far off in front of them, and as they both turned to face it, Kirk realized that he had been able to see the speaker even before it arrived. It was a brilliant, white light that pierced through the dark as if it were nothing. It spread across the blankness, carving it up until it resembled a colorless stained-glass window that happened to be built in three dimensions, and not flat. A sudden tremble shook the world, and Kirk was able to watch as the white light split apart like fraying fabric into all the colors in existence.

Every color imaginable spread out across the remaining dark, and Kirk's mind struggled to comprehend the colors that his eyes normally couldn't see, the ones beyond the spectrum of color people were built to interpret.

The light filled everything, a colorful display of destruction – for Kirk could see the world being undone before his eyes by the light, in a way that he could barely comprehend. The light grew brighter and brighter, until Kirk might have looked away, only there was nowhere else to look where the light wasn't.

With the growing light came a sound that grew in size and intensity. It began as a quiet rumble, and grew to a crashing roar that had every instinct within Kirk crying out to run and hide, only there was nowhere to go. It caused the very fabric of reality around them to ripple, and in that moment the speaker of the voice turned to Kirk, and he saw with a slight shock that it had been covered by the light as well, and now appeared to be fracturing along with the rest of the universe.

"It is now time that you left. If you stay here, you will be stuck somewhere people were never supposed to be: the space In Between worlds. It will confuse your mind to the point of insanity, and it will hurt like nothing you have ever felt before as you experience things you were never meant to. It will completely destroy you, and so you must leave."

Before Kirk could respond, the speaker raised its hand and touched Kirk on the center of the forehead with a hand exactly like his own. It stared into his eyes with a slight smile, and paid no mind to the sudden rush coming from around them.

"Goodbye, James Tiberius Kirk. May you write a better reality than the one that Would Have Been without you in it."

With that, Kirk's vision began to fuzz and fade. From somewhere above them, pieces of reality were falling, only to wink out in small flashes of light. The speaker of the voice held his gaze with a small smile, and just before the reality disappeared from Kirk's awareness, he saw the speaker burst into fragments that disappeared in a flash of the brightest light he had ever seen.

He awoke with a gasp, opening his eyes to colors startlingly dull and suddenly hearing sounds that were shockingly muted. His gaze darted around as his mind tried to comprehend what had happened. After a moment where his body sucked in another stunned breath, his body began to relax as its primal fear slowly drained away. His memory of where he was and why he was there began to kick in again, and he looked around for more input as to what had happened after he had sort-of died.

The familiar faces of Bones and Spock greeted him, and something inside him relaxed even further. He didn't know what exactly had happened while he was out, but in that moment, he wasn't sure that it mattered. What mattered was that he was here, and that the reality that Would Have Been no longer existed.

All he could do now was see what this reality had in store for him, and maybe even shake it up once in a while. Remembering the speaker's words, he smiled slightly. He never could turn down a dare.