Notes: So much response! I'd love you guys, but...nah, fuck it: I love you guys!

Breaking the Ice

In the run between Spock's birthday and Christmas, Jim was very, very far from perfect.

Sulu was the first person – since the police – that he had told about the night of the eighteenth, and the fact that he hadn't run away screaming or called the cops to re-open the case and get Jim locked away for domestic abuse had given him a strange sort of confidence.

McCoy simply raised an eyebrow, said cryptically that 'why do men always have to be so damn difficult?' and handed him an official AA pamphlet.

"I don't much use them," he said, "but those are the original twelve steps to recovery. Now I don't tend to use them in the open meets – not everybody's into God, and despite what they'll push you, those things don't always work. And I think you could skip a fair few of them – but this one? This is what you need to do."

Make a list of the people you have harmed and make direct amends.

"Direct amends?"

"Usually seek 'em out, apologise, explain, and do something in penance. Very Catholic," McCoy snorted. "But a lot of people write letters the first time around. No use turnin' up on someone's doorstep to apologise if all they're likely to do is get the family shotgun and sort out your addiction issues for you, is there?"

"I guess not," Jim said quietly, fingering the pamphlet. "Do I…do I have to show you? Or send them?"

"You don't have to show anyone, and you don't have to send them unless you're ready. But it's part of accepting your flaws, and it's the hardest damn thing you can ever ask a man to do: accept he was wrong, admit to someone else he was wrong, and try to make amends for the wrong. It's damn hard, Jim, but I think you'd be surprised how many recovering alcoholics I've seen manage to rebuild their lives after that step."

Jim clutched the pamphlet tightly. "He…he won't want to hear from me."

"Well, it won't just be him, will it?"

"Huh?"

"Spock's the most obvious one with you, but what about the rest? That buddy of yours who kept you afloat – you don't think he never thought about walking away too? Your colleagues you let down, or the bosses you've cussed out over the years? Your neighbours, having to put up with your shouting arguments at all hours when you were in the depths of it? Your boyfriend's family?"

Jim swallowed. "Shit."

"Go on, Jim. Make your list, and start thinking about it."

Surprisingly, the first letter that he wrote was not to Spock, or to Sulu, or his mother, or even to the long-suffering, eye-rolling, shit-scary Janice.

It was to Amanda Grayson.

Jim had only met Spock's mother once, and when the relationship was already failing. Spock was the only member of his family in America for the whole time that Jim knew him, and the estrangement with his father meant that Jim had never so much as spoken to them over the phone – but then Amanda had apparently gotten tired of having no idea who it was (bar a couple of photographs and very vague descriptions) that her son was dating and had paid a visit.

She had not approved.

They had only just avoided a massive argument in her presence – and by that, read that the argument had been minor, by their standards – and she had cut the visit short with a dark look at Jim and insisted that Spock walk her to her rented car. Jim had watched them argue by said car, and knew damn well that his boyfriend's mother wholeheartedly did not approve of him – and it had added further strain to an already strained situation.

At the time, Jim had been indignant that she'd formed such a low opinion of him…but now he had to admit that she'd been right.

Still, he was surprised to find the first letter he wrote to be for her – particularly as he had never reached to make amends for that visit before. Ever.

Dear Amanda,

It's Jim Kirk here, and I'm certain that you remember me. I know I said I'd not bother you again, but I have to do this, and you're first on my list. I've rewritten this letter two or three times and it's never quite coming out the way I want it to, so I'm just sending what I've got and hope that it'll go some way to explaining what happened.

First off, I'm not making excuses for myself. What I did was inexcusable, and that's that. I can't ever hope that you – or more importantly, your son – will forgive me, but I owe you an explanation and more than that, I owe you an apology.

I am an alcoholic. That is the cold, hard truth and something that I will not deny again. My drinking destroyed my relationship with your son. My drinking was responsible for everything that went wrong, and my drinking drove him away. I didn't seek help until he was gone for almost six months, because I couldn't face the fact that I was wholly responsible for losing the best thing that ever happened to me. But now I am facing up to it, and I'm not going to hide from that truth again. I am an alcoholic: I attend weekly meetings, and sometimes I fall off the wagon, and I hate myself when I do, and this letter is part of trying to piece the remnants of my existence back together. I made a list of everyone I hurt, and your son was top of that list.

By proxy, then, I hurt you too. I know Spock didn't ever really discuss our relationship with you, but he talked to me about you. He kept pictures in his apartment, and then in our house, and he would tell me stories about you. He absolutely adored you, even if he never said a word about his father, and if you are even a quarter of the woman that he described to me, then you must have been sorely hurt by the way I treated – mistreated – him in the end. And for that, I am so sorry.

I hurt your son, but please believe me when I say that I never set out to hurt him. I love him. I still love him, even though he's gone, and I will always love him. I never set out to hurt him. I only ever intended to love him and build a life with him, and support him in every way that I could. Your son is the most important person in the world to me – he still is – and he made those four years of my life the best four years of my life.

I would also like to apologise to you. I don't know how much Spock told you about those last few months, and I won't tell you myself because that is his choice to make now. But I will say that I owe you an apology as well as him. You should have been able to trust me with his welfare, and you didn't – you couldn't. No decent mother would have trusted me with their son from that meeting, and I don't blame you for your reaction. I should have lived up to the reasonable expectations that you had of me, and I failed to do so.

I will say this: I wasn't always a complete prick to your son. I drank in the beginning but not badly; I wasn't usually drunk. But after I lost my job, I started drinking more and more, and I resented his success. I was uncomfortable being the unemployed stay-at-home idiot while he was off being generally brilliant and successful, and I grew to resent that. It was awful of me, and I knew it was, so I drank to forget about it.

Then, because I was drinking nearly all day and nearly every day except for the weekends when he was home with me, I stopped doing all the household stuff – chores, DIY, cooking, whatever. I stopped doing it, so he did it. And that made me feel even worse, like I was some useless invalid that he had to take care of like a child, even though it was my fault. So I would drink even more, and I resented him for it even though I shouldn't have done.

In the end, I was drinking all day and every day. I would argue with him, pick fights, and belittle him whenever I could – and I hate myself for that more than you can possibly know. I would put him and his work down; when we fought, I'd say I didn't need him even though it was completely untrue. I chipped away at his confidence and you have no idea of how much I absolutely hate myself for that now. More than you could ever hate me, I promise you. I destroyed him, I tore him apart, and I will never be able to forgive myself for that.

But I wasn't always like that. I loved him, and we had a good couple of years before it got really bad. Two and a half, actually, that you never saw. And they were the best years. I absolutely worshipped him, and I like to think I made him feel good and safe and happy for those two and a half years. Did he tell you about his birthdays? This year was the first I spent September seventeenth in Iowa since 2005 – we always went away. I'd take him away somewhere, and he'd just look at me like I'd given him the world, not a weekend break in a three star hotel somewhere. And he was my world.

And I wasn't completely stupid either. When I asked him to move in with me, I said it was just a test drive and that if we hadn't killed each other by the third year, I'd propose. I never did, because I knew it would be a stupid move when things weren't going well. I wasn't a complete moron – at least, not all the time.

He was my whole world, and when he walked out, he took it with him. And I've missed him every hour of every day since, and I can never repent enough for what I did.

I can't ask you to forgive me for any of it, but I can ask that you read this through and consider what I have to say for myself. It's not excuses because there aren't any, and I swear to you that if I can find him and apologise, I will do it literally on my knees. And if he forgives me, then I'll make him take it back because I don't deserve it – but he deserves to know that I'm so sorry. I don't really hope that you'll do it, but I'd like it if you could tell Spock I'm at least trying to get myself back in order. I don't expect you will – he is undoubtedly better off without me and my issues around – but I'm going to ask anyway.

I'm sorry to bother you, and I'm sorry for not being the man that your son deserved. And please vet anyone else as much as you did me, because he deserves someone who won't break his heart and destroy him. He deserves all that happiness and security that I should have given him. He really, really does.

Yours sincerely,

James T. Kirk.

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