The Enterprise had docked back on Earth, its inhabitants glad to be home, glad to feel true gravity once more. The security of a planet was welcome to all, a collective sigh of relief washing over them as they stepped out of the ship that had become their home, and into the light day of their true home.
It was a warm day, early autumn gracing them with a warm orange sun that spilled over the leaves, encouraging them to change their colour. There was a softness about the world, a delicacy in its transition between seasons. The shift from summer to autumn left the natural world vulnerable in an inexplicable way; the freshness of summer still lingered, but underneath lay the bitter aftertaste of decay that heralded the approaching winter days.
Hannah was the last but one to leave the Enterprise, this only being her second time on this planet, in this time. A shiver ran through her, despite the warmth of the afternoon light. Her blood chilled in her veins, dreading stepping on the ground, coated in a sticky-looking tarmac. It seemed to swirl below her, a pool of oil waiting to swallow her, drag her down slowly into the depths of this world's politics. Her soul circled her feet, trying to trip her up as she continued to leave the ship she loved behind. She could feel the rhythm of her heart changing, increasing, becoming more and more erratic, a fear pounding, pounding, pounding. Her stomach contracted itself, pulling and straining, trying to stretch back to the ship, to go back to where it was safe. She didn't trust this world, she didn't understand it, she couldn't live here - go through that trial once more. She could be decreed a war criminal once more.
She gripped her fingers in her fist, crushing them with a tight grip that ground her joints together. Her very bones crumbled into dust, compacted again, and drove her nails into her palms. She could feel the blood welling up under her nails, putting pressure on them, forcing the nail away from the nail bed, but still she walked. She lifted her head, looking straight forwards, eyes hard, staring into the bright sky to excuse her eyes, which grew damp against her will. She blinked. And the dampness was gone. Turbulent blood tossed itself around her body, taking new pathways. She felt as though all her body had switched places. Her heart was in her throat, her blood and lymph had traded places, she couldn't breathe - her lungs weren't working. Her throat closed - the heart blocking its pipes - something pressed on her windpipe, crushing it, stopping air from moving through into her lungs.
Still, she walked the plank.
She walked on to the Earth that lay beneath her, and joined the crew waiting at the bottom. An unfamiliar face, and an all too familiar uniform screamed at her. Hannah kept looking straight ahead, ignored the demand in her skull to turn around, to look, to acknowledge the officer until she drew level with her. Hannah finally, finally, dragged her gaze around to look at the woman in front of her.
She stood, feet comfortably apart (a shoulder's width apart, weigh balanced between the two feet), her hands loose at her sides (allowing her to move with freedom quickly), watching Hannah move with a cautiously guarded expression.
"I presume you're here for me?" Hannah asked, looking the woman straight in the eye. A curt nod. It was a sharp movement, no denying its existence, but it did not linger. There was no pity here. Hannah loosened her grip on her own fingers, and let out the breath she didn't realise she had held. "Lead the way."
Kirk found himself pacing outside the room, not permitted entry to the hearing. It was not like his 'cheating' hearing had been - the whole of Star Fleet seemingly assembled in one room to hear his digression from the well-trodden path. No. Hannah sat on the other side of the door in a small room, a conference room, being interrogated no doubt by several different Ambassadors and Admirals. He couldn't hear the words being spoken, but equally, couldn't help but to strain his ear, trying desperately to learn what the outcome was decided upon.
Hannah didn't know he was there. He had merely seen her disappear into the room by accident, and decided that he couldn't leave her alone - maybe his proximity would somehow be a comfort to her?
He was fooling himself by thinking he would do any good by wearing holes in the carpet with his pacing. He had stuff to do after all. Meetings to arrange. Places to be. People to see.
You know. Captain stuff. Be a Captain, Kirk. Go. Leave. Go do your job. Don't creep in the corridor like a… a creepy person.
Kirk looked once more at the room, hoping it might open, but it remained shut, blinking back at him with its unturning handle. He dragged his head back around and then slowly, slowly, walked away from the door.
Three Admirals and their First Officers stood and stared down the apparent-mutinous woman, their decree made. The details of her remaining punishment had been decided. Admiral Fitzpatrick had announced to the room at large as though it were a great chamber, demanding enunciation, along with pomp and circumstance, not a small conference room. He was amongst the last to leave the room, held back by a choked out ask, a single word held in the air on a thread of gratitude:
"Admiral?"
He turned to look back at Hannah, and steadily held her gaze. A raise of the eyebrow invited her to continue speaking but she faltered. Upon being given permission, she found the words choked in her throat, strangled together into an incoherent mesh of incomprehension.
"Yes, Cadet?" He encouraged. Hannah nodded and continued speaking.
"I want to thank you for your generosity. Allowing me to, you know," Hannah fumbled over her words, gesturing wildly at the room and floundering hopelessly. She looked away from the Admiral and rubbed the back of her neck vigorously. It turned red raw within seconds of her touch, her discomfort screaming from the back of her neck, the faint wisps of hair tumbling from the knot she'd fastened them into hours earlier barely covering the red flesh. She swallowed, hard. She nodded once more. "Thank you. Admiral. I appreciate what you've done for me."
The Admiral broke his convention and smiled at the young woman. It was a warm smile, filled with compassion and forgiveness. It was what Hannah needed to see in that moment.
"Do you have a place to stay whilst we sort your accommodation?" He asked, concern furrowing his brow. Hannah nodded, a smile finally gracing her own lips.
"I'm sure one of the crew of the Enterprise will be willing to host me."
McCoy was sat in the closest bar to Headquarters as possible, a glass half drained, and a contentedness filling his stomach; content to be back on solid ground. The tension that had lived with him for years seemed to have vanished from his shoulders, relaxed at the existence of real gravity, not something generated by a magnetic field. He sighed contentedly into the glass as he raised it to his lips, the dark liquid spilling towards his mouth before it was jostled. The liquid swilling in the tall glass as Hannah threw herself on to his shoulders. She leant forwards, causing him to tilt too close to the bar for comfort, his free hand slamming on to the sticky wood in order to balance himself.
"I'm a doctor, dammit, not a walking stick," McCoy grumbled, as Hannah slid off him and sat in the empty stool next to him. She grinned her apology, kicking his ankles like a small child demanding attention.
"I need a place to stay," She announced, before softening her tone and face. "You wouldn't happen to have a spare room would you?" Hannah grasped his hand, tearing it away from his glass, pleading with him.
"No." The answer was curt, abrupt, very typically Leonard McCoy. McCoy pulled his hand free gently, not unkind in his gesture. "But Jim does - not that you'd need a spare room if you stayed with him."
The night was dark, all lights quenched under the blanket of night, no glimmers of streetlights to reveal the secrets of the night. The dark night was made darker still with its silence. It was unnervingly silent and a villain walked the streets, skulking in the deep shadows of the night. Hidden under his cloak of shadows, masked in darkness, his dark intentions hidden deeper still, the villain darted from alley to alley. He moved on foot and left no trace. He was hidden carefully, his will was enacted in secret, and his face covered. This was a moment lost to time, unnoticed, undocumented. No one saw the villain, no one remembered his movements.
But his intent lingered through history, propelling itself into the future and changed the very course of the timeline.
Far above, in a dimly lit apartment that gazed over the city like a proud parent watching its child play in a park, a woman got out of bed. Hannah padded out of the spare room, her footfalls so soft they were almost imperceptible even to herself. She felt like a ghost, displaced in time, moving without cause, without reason, simply drifting through the apartment for the sake of drifting. Untethered, she meandered into the small kitchen, plates still sitting by the sink. She moved towards them, looking out of the window that gazed across the city. Her eye fell to the horizon, looking at the wider world, and missing the darkness directly below. The only light that emitted out from within the apartment itself was the gentle glow of a replicator, still humming slightly as it would never switch off properly. A malfunctioning piece of equipment lighting her way around the dishes as she washed up, the gentle run of a tap echoing loudly in her ears.
She placed the last dish in the rack, and placed her hands either side of the sink, a sigh falling from her, sinking her back down to earth. She shut her eyes to the world and let herself breathe. She let herself grieve.
Her lower lip trembled despite herself, and she pressed it together, holding the sob inside her. Her shoulders shook with the effort of keeping her tears silent as they slipped from her eyelids and tumbled down her face, a torrent of a river wreaking its course where it willed. She stood there a long time. She stood and cried for all that had happened to her and all that hadn't, she wept for the life she had deserved and been denied.
When the tears finally stopped flowing, Hannah relaxed a tension in her shoulders, the muscles loosening back into their covering of skin, no longer standing to attention, demanding to be seen. Catharsis had not been a thing she had believed in until this moment, when the tears had taken the weight of the pain with them. She would never be free from the pain that resounded through her every time she was reminded of her ordeal, but she felt, just here, just now, that she didn't have to carry it close to her chest all the time. She could let it rest, settle against her wherever it fell and not strain herself trying to hold herself together - her hand had holding back the ebb of blood over a wound, and finally it had scabbed.
Her relief was such that she didn't see Kirk leaning against his doorway as she delicately padded back into her room.
Sleep came easy to her that night, and when she awoke, the morning was bright, the air fresher and crisp. The day welcomed her as warmly as the night had sheltered her.
And then the warmth grew and the day exploded into chaos.
