This chapter is… well I think Jim's been building up to this for some time (read: his whole uber crappy life). It's…well I don't think it is OOC for this Jim and what he has been through, but likewise if you want your Jim Kirk to be the guy who never actually breaks down you might want to skip it. I spent a long (long, long) time trying to decide how best to do it – if he'd do it around Bones and Spock, or his mom, or whoever, and in the end I figured nope, this Jim is a stubborn little bastard and if he's going to have a breakdown there is only one way it can happen. That said I hope you do read it, even if you are a bit wary. This is THE chapter for Jim really, out of all the stories so far. This is his turning point! So here we are. No action, a whole lot of Jim, and a sprinkling of Klingons on the starboard bough!
Jim stepped into his quarters, surprised when the lights did not immediately flood the room. He supposed it was to be expected really. He was still officially dead and while Spock had not taken Jim's quarters as his own the ship was hardly running with a surplus of power. Scotty wouldn't have wasted any on maintaining the more superfluous requirements like powering a room with no occupant. The whole deck had life support, which was all that really mattered, and Jim stepped into the dark room, letting the door close behind him.
Suddenly engulfed by still blackness, Jim was unable to bite back the sob that clawed its way up his throat.
His crew had their orders. They were in orbit around Qo-noS, awaiting a response to their parlay, and Spock was at the helm should the Klingons simply decide to try and obliterate them. Jim doubted they would. He had his code of ethics, dysfunctional though they were, and the Klingons had their own. The two overlapped far more than Jim should probably have been comfortable with.
With Carol and Scotty studying the Dexalithium, and Bones back in sickbay with a hawkeyed Chapel watching over him, Jim had taken the chance to go in hunt of a set of his own clothes. He'd need a uniform and had messaged the Quatermaster to have one sent up to his quarters.
And in truth, he needed a moment alone.
He'd not planned it being spent in the dark, but the was actually something comforting about it.
In this room, on this ship, cloistered in the dark, he felt safe.
And in hindsight, he probably should have not come here. Another sob threatened to choke him and he forced it back angrily.
This wasn't the time for hysterics. This wasn't who he was. He was James Kirk, and he didn't break down.
He told himself that again as a sound, half a laugh, half a hysterical sob broke free, shockingly loud in the otherwise quiet of the room.
He didn't have time for this. He couldn't lose it. Not now. Not now.
But no matter how much he tried to deny the hysteria rising in side him, it seemed determined to burst forth and a moment later, he found himself on his knees, a scream which seemed to have been rising inside of him for sixteen years suddenly breaking free and echoing around the room.
No one would hear. No one would know. Just the dark.
There were lots of things that happened in the dark that never saw the light of day.
Suddenly Jim was sobbing. There were no tears and he wasn't crying, but his body shook with the force of the emotion that ripped through him and he couldn't think of any other way of describing it.
He was too raw, too exhausted, physically he'd been in no shape to go to Qo-noS the first time and emotionally…well Jim knew he was fucked up. He'd been fucked up forever, but he'd had ways of coping, methods to manage the insanity he knew lurked at that back of his mind, one that had Frank's hands and Kodos's eyes and smelled the like fires that burned on Tarsus. He'd been able to keep those monsters at bay, first with adrenaline, alcohol, sex and drugs, and then with challenge, with friendship and hope.
Those coping methods had been ripped away from him. They'd died with his body and though Bones had been able to bring him back, some things had stayed dead.
He'd been…well he hadn't been coping. Not before Cerberus, and certainly not after.
Spock was right. Jim survived. But he didn't live. Not really, despite what people might assume when they looked at him, wide smiles and not a care in the world.
He did what he had to, not to win for the sake of wining, but for survival. That is what it always came down to.
He knew people thought him lucky, to always bounce back no matter what.
No matter the horror, no matter the pain, Jim Kirk carried on. Always.
That wasn't luck. That was a curse. And it infected everyone he ever touched.
Every. Single. One.
It took everything Jim had just to keep ahead on his own, and now Kormac was dumping the entire weight of the war on his head. Another couple of billion lives depending on the calls he was going to make.
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair!
Why did he have to shoulder the weight of his family? Why was he expected to have all the answers? Why was he the one who had to find the solution?
Even as he thought that way, he knew he was being petulant, childish even, but that only gave rise to more anger, more bitterness, because why couldn't he be childish? It wasn't like he'd actually had a childhood of his own to enjoy. By the time he was thirteen he'd had no innocence left at all. Anything Frank and Kodos hadn't taken away he'd thrown aside when he'd made his first kill.
He had blood under his nails and death beneath his skin, and his body crawled with invisible touches that had nothing to do with Bones's nanites.
And he was Earth's hero. Their bright, golden hope. What a joke. They'd already turned on him by the time he'd decided to give himself over to the Klingons.
Let Starfleet fix their own problems. He wasn't responsible for them. It wasn't his fault Marcus had been crazy. It wasn't his fault his mom was even crazier. He wasn't responsible for her, or Sam, or the lies and betrayals both of them had performed over the last decade.
He wasn't even responsible for all that was happening with the Klingons. He was the patsy. He should have guessed Marcus's plan sooner, yes, but the fact that he hadn't didn't make it his fault.
Frank wasn't his fault. Tarsus sure as hell wasn't. The things he'd done after, okay, it was on him to take responsibility for that, and he did, he had, and he'd done his penance.
But the rest of it…
His bad luck, his black star, that put him in the paths of such horrific events, but he didn't make them happen.
He didn't, and it wasn't fucking fair.
He was just trying to survive. He was just reacting to the world around him, reacting, always reacting.
The last sob died in his throat as the realization washed over him.
That was his problem. He was reactive, not proactive. Defensive, not offensive.
And sitting in the dark acting like a scared child while his crew were out there, ready and willing to follow him into hell again because they trusted him to lead them through it.
His crew. His family. The one thing Khan had been right about. The one thing fate had not been allowed to take from him. The one thing even he hadn't been able to destroy.
They were his. This ship was his.
Everything worth having came with a cost. He'd paid his already, but that didn't mean he could sit back and expect to keep something so valuable without others trying to take it away.
The scales of his life were finely, finally balanced. His past for this present.
Now everything that happened, it was on him to keep those scales level.
Jim pulled in a steady breath, held it and counted to twenty, slowly breathing out until his whole body was still.
Then he rose to his feet, squared his shoulders, and exited the room, leaving the past behind in the dark, where it belonged.
Up on the bridge, Jim watched the people work around him, surprised by the peaceful, almost unnerving calm that had settled around him.
He knew what needed to be done. He didn't doubt, he didn't question. He just knew.
One way or another, this was going to end in blood. It was Jim's job as Captain to ensure that blood did not belong to his crew, or the civilian hostages his mother had taken.
It was his job as Jim, friend to Spock and Bones, Uncle to Joanna and Peter, to make sure that blood wasn't his either.
He would give it if he must, but that was his new Kobayashi Maru. It wasn't about wining, it was about surviving, and Jim was done atoning for the past. Anything he did owe was paid for in full.
They would survive this, all of them. Jim would make certain of it.
"How do you do it, Jim?" Bones asked him quietly as he and Spock stood at his side, their eyes on the vast Klingon Empire and the rapidly gathering forces that were circling around them. "How are you not afraid? How are you always brave despite everything?"
There was silence on the Bridge, and though his crew was working, he also knew their attention was fixed upon him, waiting for an answer.
Jim swallowed, unblinking as he watched their enemy collect before them. "Endurance, Bones." Jim said softly, allowing his voice to carry and hopefully give them all the spirit they would need to see this through.
"What?" He knew Bones didn't get it. He hadn't either, not for the longest time.
"Being brave isn't about not being afraid. When I went into the warp core…I was afraid."
"But you went anyway." Bones frowned.
Jim nodded shortly and turned his back on the Klingons to face his crew. He'd died for them once. He'd do it again if he must, but now it was time to live for them as well. "That's what it is. Courage. It's not the absence of fear, it's endurance. Just a little bit longer. And if there is one thing this ship and her crew know how to do better than anything else in this whole damn universe, it is endure."