AUTHOR'S NOTES: According the Font of All Trek Wisdom and Knowledge (ie, Memory Alpha), Robert April is captain of the Enterprise before Pike and his wife Sarah is his CMO. I invented their relation to Pike for my story "The Good Shepherd" and it was an unexpected hit with me and many of you.
In the Catholic Church, absolution is part of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation in which the penitent confesses his sins and the priest forgives him.
Picture Jeff Bridges (with less unkempt hair) and Sigourney Weaver as the Aprils, if you will :).
ABSOLUTION
By Christina TM
Adm. Robert April had grown up in the high desert of Idaho, but it still amazed him how cold Mojave could get at night. Maybe because it gets so much hotter during the day, the gray-haired admiral mused.
That cold was the reason April was currently scavenging his wife's childhood home looking for a blanket. He'd been visiting the place somewhat regularly for almost forty years and his in-laws still didn't remember that his blood disorder made him sensitive to cold.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
April frowned. What's that? Sounded like it was coming from the living room. Momentarily abandoning the search for bedclothes, April rounded the corner in the sound's direction.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Ah. So that's what it is. Chris was stretched out in the recliner, staring blankly at the ceiling, and idly tapping his cane on the floor. The cane that symbolized his last link to his time spent under Nero's clutches. Chris complained that it made him "feel like a crotchety old fart" and said he couldn't wait to toss it off the Golden Gate Bridge. But Sarah had confided to her husband that she wasn't sure Chris would ever get rid of that cane. She just couldn't bear to tell him yet.
Without saying a word, April plucked the cane out of Chris' hand.
Chris started. "Oh," he said when his eyes fell on April's face. "Hi."
"Hi yourself." April sat in the chair opposite his brother-in-law. "You're up." In fact, it looked like Chris hadn't gone to bed at all. He was still wearing the worn-out Starfleet T-shirt he'd had since his cadet days and the blue jeans (how did anyone wear long pants in Mojave in August? Even April couldn't do that.) he'd been wearing that day.
"Uh-huh."
"It's late."
"Uh-huh."
"It's cold."
"Uh-huh."
April frowned. Chris was never wordy, but this was unusual even for him. "Are you all right?"
That earned him a near-glare. "Did Sarah send you down here?"
"Nope." April shook his head. "Sarah is sleeping like a baby. I just came down here to get a blanket."
"They're in the hall closet," Chris informed dully. "Maybe. I don't know. Mom moves them all the time."
April mentally assessed the situation. Most newly-promoted flag officers experienced a temporary letdown after giving up the stars. It was so common that the Starfleet lexicon had adopted a word for it: "Starsickness." April had a rather nasty bout with it himself.
And Chris had it even worse. There wasn't anyone in Starfleet who didn't know the brass had slapped that star on his shoulder because it was all they could do with a paralyzed captain not up for retirement yet. Chris certainly deserved the promotion, but he hadn't wanted it. Add to that decreased sleep quality due to the nightmares he wouldn't admit to but everyone knew he had, and April was surprised Chris was still functioning at all.
April was about to open his mouth and hit his friend with all this when Chris spoke. "I talked."
April blinked. "You…what?"
"I talked," Chris repeated, as if that solved everything.
"What do you mean?"
Chris sat up and dropped his hands in his lap. "When I was on the Narada, with Nero…I talked. I told him what he needed to know."
"Is that all?" April blurted.
Hurt flashed in Chris' eyes. "What do you mean, 'is that all'?" He nearly snarled. "The entire Federation almost disappeared because of me, Rob!"
April held up his hands, signaling for Chris to calm down. "I didn't mean it like that," he said slowly. "I just…" he shrugged. "I thought you were upset over losing the Enterprise and flying a computer console instead of your ship." Truthfully, he hadn't even considered that Chris might be struggling with talking to Nero.
Chris' temper was gone as soon as it had appeared. "You thought I was starsick?"
"Yeah," April answered dumbly.
"I am," Chris said.
"But this little late-night therapy session is about the slug and not starsickness." April deduced.
"I should have resisted." Chris looked up at the ceiling, eyes bright. April couldn't tell whether it was moonlight or tears. He really hoped it was the former. If Chris started crying, April was getting Sarah. He knew his limitations.
"How?" April sat forward. "The toxin forced it out of you. Nero used it because beating the snot out of you and strapping you to a table didn't work. It was his last resort. What could you have done?"
Chris looked down at his hands. "I don't know. Something."
"You could have done nothing," April said quietly.
"But I should have."
Oh, he can be maddening when he gets like this. April took a long breath. Few forces in the galaxy could compete with an introspective and melancholy Christopher Pike. Fortunately, April was one of them.
"Chris." April waited until the younger man was looking at him. "You hold yourself to a standard you can't meet. That nobody could ever meet. You wouldn't be angry with Kirk if he were in this position, would you?"
"Of course I wouldn't," Chris answered quickly.
"Then don't be angry with yourself," April counseled. "You have done enough things in your life that were your own stupid fault. Don't blame yourself for the one thing that wasn't."
Chris snorted humorlessly. "Was that supposed to make me feel better?"
"No," April said. "It was supposed to be the truth." He paused. "Did it make you feel better?"
"Not really," Chris admitted.
"But was it true?" April pressed.
Chris nodded resignedly.
"Good." April lightly slapped his knees and stood to go upstairs.
"Rob?" Chris called softly.
"Yeah?"
"Don't tell Sarah, OK?"
April smiled understandingly. "Not a word." It wasn't the first of his conversations with Chris April had to hide from Sarah, and he doubted it would be the last. If Sarah knew her baby brother was up at two in the morning mulling over his time on the Narada, she'd never be able to enjoy the rest of their leave. Which meant April and Chris wouldn't be able to enjoy it, either. "Good night, Chris." April handed Chris the cane back and stepped toward the door.
"Hey, Rob?"
"You know," April said with dry amusement, "when you get in one of your funks I always have to drag the first sentence out of you and then I can't get you to shut up."
Chris ignored the jab. "You said I shouldn't blame myself for 'the one thing' that wasn't my own stupid fault." He tilted his head up at April, and the admiral felt a small thrill of satisfaction as he saw the clouds lifting from Chris' eyes. "Are you saying every other dumb thing I've done was my own stupid fault?"
April shook his head. "Post-commissioning party, Chris. That's all I have to say."
"Hey—" Chris spluttered. "That was not my fault."
April decided to continue the teasing, as it was obviously helping Chris out of his valley. "Debatable."
"She was beautiful, all right?" Chris defended himself futilely. "And she was throwing herself at me. Surak himself couldn't have resisted her."
"Her?!" April burst out laughing. "She was a he!"
"I couldn't tell!"
"You kissed a space-age drag queen. And you weren't even drunk."
April was rewarded with a pillow to the face. "I hate you, Rob."
The older man laughed out loud. "That is a whopper and you know it. You love me." He tossed the pillow back. "Who else would sit here at 0200 while you angst and act pathetic?"
Chris caught it with a little smile. "Thanks," he murmured.
"Anytime," April gave Chris a brotherly clap on the shoulder. "See you tomorrow."
"Yeah."
April tiptoed up the stairs and left Chris to his thoughts. If he knew his wife's brother, Chris was probably having as much trouble dealing with his emotional reactions to talking as he was to the talking itself. Chances were he'd take the night to brood through it and be fine in the morning.
April decided his assumption was correct when he walked into the kitchen the next morning and found Chris bickering with Sarah over medication.
"I can deal with the pain," Chris was saying from his perch by the griddle.
"Well, I don't want to deal with you dealing with the pain," Sarah countered. She had a hypospray in hand and was wielding it like a weapon.
"Morning," April said dryly, moving to the coffee maker.
"Sarah, that stuff makes me feel like I have cotton in my head," Chris insisted as he leaned on the counter to try to open the bacon.
"I'll give you a half dose," Sarah bargained.
April took a sip from his mug. "Sure is good coffee," he commented, certain his observation would fall on deaf ears.
It did. "What, so I can feel like my head is only half full of cotton? I don't think so. Don't you have anything else?" The package slipped out of Chris' hands and landed on the floor.
Oh, no, April thought as Chris bent over to pick up the package.
Before he could so much as decide whether to issue a warning, Sarah pounced on Chris and jabbed the hypo into his neck.
"ACH!" Chris jerked upright, sending his sister reeling backwards. "Sarah!"
April hid a laugh behind his coffee mug. "Rookie mistake, Chris."
Sarah scurried out of the kitchen with Chris close on her heels. He kept up pretty well for a guy with a cane until Sarah jumped up the stairs two by two.
"Sarah!" Chris thumped the cane on the ground once. "Not funny!"
Sarah fired back a response, but April didn't hear it over his father-in-law declaring that his children were "making more noise than the Second Battle of Rotterdam"* and demanding to know what was going on.
Chris' body was still broken. But for the first time in far too long, his spirit seemed whole.
*The Second Battle of Rotterdam is, in my mind, some battle in World War III which took place in the 2250s according to Trek lore. I called it the Second Battle of Rotterdam because the real Battle of Rotterdam happened in 1940.
I feel kind of bad; I've smacked Pike around a good deal in my stories. I think I'll write something funny next. Stay tuned.