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Consequences

Chapter 4

Eventually Jim left his ready room. He waited until Alpha shift had ended and those who knew him best had left the bridge. Janice had tried to speak to him at one point but he had snapped at her and she had taken the hint. Absently he wondered what he had said or how he had looked to make her back off so quickly. She had never left him alone before, even when he asked nicely.

While sitting at his desk his thoughts had spun out of control. He couldn't seem to comprehend what he had just been told. He just stared at the door and tried to let it sink into his stunned brain.

Out of the ready room he let his feet wander as they may. It was almost ship's night. Most of the crew was either at dinner or settling down for their evening activities. He knew where to go to avoid seeing anyone, or rather seeing anyone who might question him.

Ensign O'Donnell was pregnant.

Marissa was pregnant.

Eleven weeks pregnant and his responsibility. Not his responsibility because he was the captain and she was a member of his crew, but his responsibility because he had been the one involved with her. This was not a good way to start his career as captain of the Enterprise. It just didn't look good to the upper brass if he knocked up one of his crewmembers on his first mission. He wondered absently if, since it had happened before he was actually captain, they might not hold it against him. This trumped any of the demerits he had received at the academy.

Oh, god, she was pregnant. Why hadn't she been on any birth control? For a moment he felt a surge of anger and betrayal towards her. It was a simple thing. All his previous girlfriends and lovers had used something. Some had had surgery; others used an implant or got a shot of some kind or took pills. He didn't ask too many questions and didn't want too many details, but he knew the basics. Why hadn't she thought of that before coming to his room?

As quickly as his anger had flared it went away as he saw her face, her eyes glaring at him and he felt guilty. "I wasn't the only one involved that night. Why didn't you ask? Or offer to use something? I wasn't planning to sleep with you – I wasn't planning on sleeping with anyone!"

He was such an ass. She was right. He hadn't used a condom, or even bothered to pull out in time, he had been so wrapped up in her and the feelings that he was finally releasing he hadn't even thought of it.

He hadn't been planning on sleeping with anyone either. Now look where they were.

They were going to be parents. He was going to be a father.

Father, he repeated to himself.

He, Jim Kirk, was going to be a father.

For the first time in the three hours since Marissa had dropped her bombshell Jim felt a warm sensation surge through his body and the near panic seemed to recede.

It felt odd. He was twenty-five years old, almost twenty-six. He had just achieved a dream he hadn't even known he'd had five years ago and become the captain of a starship.

Until he had entered the academy he hadn't thought more than a week or two into the future. Starfleet had given him a dream. It had given him a goal – something he could reach for and achieve with hard work and perseverance. And achieve he had. But in all his dreams of being a captain and achieving glory and renown he had never thought of his personal life. He had never thought of a having a family; a wife and children.

Having a kid had never crossed his mind in anyway, except for the knee jerk reaction – "hell no!" Between his dad dying, his mom's depression and obsession with work, and his stepfather Frank, Jim didn't have many fond memories of his childhood. Life had taught him at a young age that having children was a burden. Children were nothing but nuisances and inconveniences. Why would he ever want to have any of his own?

He'd seen Bones with his daughter Joanna. He'd seen the pain in his friend's face after he'd had to end his monthly comm. transmissions. In the three years that he'd known Bones, the man had only seen his daughter twice. He watched the distance and separation tear his friend apart because his ex-wife was a royal bitch.

Because he couldn't imagine any woman wanting to commit herself to someone as emotionally messed up and crazily driven as himself, Jim figured if he ever had a child with someone it would end up like Bones and Joanna. Why would he want to put a child through that? It just wasn't worth all the pain if things went wrong as they had a tendency to do in his personal life.

But his parent's had thought that it was worth it, hadn't they?

Sam had been born when their parents were in their mid-twenties. He hadn't been on the Kelvin during Nero's attack because it was supposed to have been a short recon mission and his parents wanted him to spend time with his grandparents on earth. Until then, Sam had lived on the ship with his parents. If his dad had survived, or if Nero had never happened, would he have grown up on a starship with both his parents?

He had always tried not to think about the 'could-have-beens' in his life, they were a dark road to depression and anger, but maybe things really could have been different.

His mother had never taken him and Sam up into space with her. She said it was too dangerous and when they protested that it didn't matter to them, that they just wanted to be with her, she told them that it wasn't allowed. That had shut them up. They could argue and plead with their mother, but they couldn't change anything at Starfleet.

Jim now knew his mother's words had been a lie. A way of avoiding her children. He'd known since he was 14 and he met a kid who told him all about traveling with his parents on a Starfleet research vessel. Hell, he currently had two couples on board with 5 kids all together, and he was scheduled to pick up a group of xenobiologists which included 3 more kids. Children on starships were not out of the ordinary. It was possible.

Finding himself standing in a corner of the engineering bay, he leaned against the cool wall and let himself think of his father. What would his life have been like if his father had lived?

He'd heard the final transmissions from the Kelvin. He knew his father loved him and his mother, he could hear it in his voice. His mother had certainly loved his father; more than she loved her children, he often thought bitterly.

She had been totally devastated by his sudden death and unable to cope with two small boys on her own. She had taken to the stars by the time Jim was three. After his grandparents died she had come back for a couple years, but six months after marrying Frank when he was 10 years old she had left again. To do her job, he had been told. But she still had left.

Thinking of his father, of the pictures he had seen, if he tried he could almost imagine two little boys wrestling with him on the floor of a cabin similar to his now - one brunette, the other blond, both blue-eyed like their father. He would smile and toss them about the room, or carry them through the halls to the bridge during a slow shift. Maybe he would even let them sit in the captain's chair and watch the wonder in their faces as they watched the stars spin by at warp speed.

He would have grown up with the knowledge that he was loved and his dad would have told him that he was smart and that he was proud of him. He probably would have went into the Academy at 18 to follow in his father's footsteps like the other Jim Kirk had, the one that hadn't had the stain of Nero in his past. He was sure his dad would have been a wonderful dad. And now he had the chance to be that kind of father for his own child.

His own child.

The thought once again brought the warm glow to his stomach. He was going to be a father. More importantly, he was going to be someone's dad. He wasn't sure he was cut out for the job, but he wasn't one to back down from a challenge. Failure was not an option in his mind. He was scared, but that just made him want to work all that much harder.

Now he just had to find Marissa. He needed to apologize for his reaction and tell her that he was with her all the way. He wasn't thinking marriage. A kid was one thing, but marriage… that was just not in the cards for him, but they could be friends and they could raise this baby together.

When he put his mind to it there wasn't anything Jim Kirk couldn't do.