Ch 36: Broken

Callie did not want to feel any longer.

In fact she wanted to die.

If Jim was not apart of her world – a world where they would have their family together – then she just assume die long with him.

Yet he had died saving the Enterprise, all of her crew, and unknown to him – his unborn child. Her chest constricted at the thought that she had not told him that he was going to be a father.

Several hours eariler…

Callie along side Spock had raced from the bridge to the engineering deck and Scotty's request as soon as the Enterprise had gotten power after the attack by Khan and the subsequent detonation of 72 warheads thanks to the brilliance of Spock and Bones. Callie had known that Kirk had been down in engineering upon his return to the Enterprise only moments ago.

Had something gone terribly wrong?

Her worse suspicions were confirmed when she saw Scotty standing next to a transparent sealed emergency barrier with her husband laying motionless on the other side. She was immediately on her knees next to the door.

"Jim…" she whispered as tears rimmed her eyes, placing her hands against the glass.

Kirk turned to look at her. "hey…" he softly managed to say, forcing a smile.

Moving behind her, Spock took into the gravity of the situation. "Open it," he demanded to Scotty. When he failed to do as Spock had asked, Spock tried to do it himself. That was when Scotty managed to stop him.

"The decontamination process is not complete. We'd flood the whole compartment with radiation. I'm bringin' the radiation levels in there down as fast as is possible." Scotty explained, getting a bit choked up.

Turning back to the barrier, Spock moved closer and dropped into a crouch next to Callie. Kirk averted his eyes from his wife to his second in command. "How's our ship . . . ?"

Spock swallowed hard. "Out of danger," he heard himself saying. "You saved the Enterprise. You saved the crew."

Kirk managed a smile. Feeble, but recognizable. "And you…used what he wanted…against him, Spock. Nice move."

"It is what you would have done." Spock managed to say, trying to keep his Captain talking – trying to keep his friend from slipping away.

"Any… advice?" Kirk finally managed to get out.

"Captain?" Spock asked a bit unsure, as he quickly glanced at Callie, who by this time had tears streaming down her face.

Using every bit of strength he had left, Kirk raised his head so that their eyes met. "I'm…scared, Spock. Help me…not be. How do you choose…not to feel?"

Staring through the glass at his commanding officer— at his friend— Spock replied as straightforwardly as he could. "Vulcans cannot lie. I do not know. Right now I am failing. Because you are my friend." Reaching up and forward, Kirk just did manage to put his open palm against the inside of the barrier. Spock did the same on the opposite side. It was as close as one man could get to the other.

"Take care of our ship, Spock."Kirk managed to get out. "Take care of Callie…"

Kirk's hand held its position against the transparency for a moment longer. Then it slid downward, down, as the captain's eyes turned away from those of his first officer, to gaze upward. They stopped moving.

"Jim…" Callie softly said, tapping the glass. "JIM!"

Her entire world imploded around her.

Her husband. Her lover. The father of her unborn child was gone.

And there was only one person to blame for all of this.

Thankfully Spock summed it up for both of them.

"KHHAAAAANNNNNNNNN!"the Vulcan roared at the top of his lungs. It was because of him that all of this had happened.

The death of Admiral Pike.

The deaths of countless others.

And now the death of Captain Kirk.

Not being one for lots of emotion, Spock was quick to return to the bridge with Scotty and Uhura in tow. Part of Callie had wanted to head to the bridge as well to go after this bastard while part of her wanted to wait with her husband's body.

She ended up choosing the latter, but only until Bones had come to take Jim's body to medical. Then she would return to the bridge.

Once Bones had taken possession of the Captain's body, Callie turned and made her way out of engineering.

That was when her lower abdomen began to hurt. Chalking it up to stress, she continued to walk towards the lift yet soon found herself leaning against the wall for support. What if there was something wrong with the baby?

"Here, I gotcha," a familiar voice said as a pair of arms snaked around her and picked her up.

Callie turned her head up and looked into the face of her brother. "You know, twin bond. I felt you hurting a bit. Remember when we were kids?" he said carrying her towards the lift.

She smiled and nodded.

"Now let's get you to the Medbay."

"You were right to come to me," Bones said as he ran a scan over Callie's body.

"Is it the baby?" she softly asked.

"It could have been. You've been through too much. I feel that there are too many emotions right now aboard this ship for you to handle as well as all of your own."

"What can be done?" she asked.

"I can sedate you until I can get back down to earth and then I can move you to a Starfleet medical center for observation."

"Will it hurt the baby?" she worriedly asked. "It's all I have left of Jim."

"It shouldn't," he replied, placing a reassuring hand against her cheek.

"Do it."

The last coherent thing that Callie felt was the hypospray being pressed into her neck.

She felt the warm Iowa sunshine against her face as she sat upon the hill where Jim first kissed her when they were 16 years old. That had been so long ago and so much had happened since then. Off in the distance she could hear laughing voices – two sets of laughing voices.

Callie stood up to see Jim come up over a nearby hill with a little boy with dark blonde wavy hair that was a bit too long riding upon his shoulders.

"Faster daddy!" the little boy squealed.

She couldn't help but smile as she made her way towards her husband and son. Soon she found herself in Jim's protective arms as he kissed her lips softly before taking their son from his shoulders and allowing him to give Callie a slobbery kiss on the cheek.

Yes this was how life should be.

…yet sadly as Callie's eyes opened, she found herself lying in a biobed in the Medbay on the Enterprise. It had all been a cruel dream for her broken heart.

She had barely been married two months and now she was a widow.

Her and Jim's child would be raised without a father.

This was not how she wanted to live.

In fact she wanted to die.

"Well that wore off a bit sooner than I expected," Bones said appearing just in her field of vision. "I did not want to give you too much at once."

"Can I have more please?" she asked, not even caring about what happened to her any longer.

"In a second," he said, pulling up a stool to sit next to her biobed. "But something happened while you were sedated."

"What?"

Bones explained about how he had created a serum using a bit of Khan's blood on a deceased Tribble. Then several hours later, about the time they had brought Jim's deceased body into the medbay, the Tribble was alive and well.

"How does this relate to me?" she asked.

"Instead of killing Khan, I had Spock bring him back alive so we could get some blood from him. Hopefully if it all goes correctly we can save Jim."

Tears slowly fell from Callie's eyes. "Really? You can bring him back to life?"

"That's what we are hoping."

"Where is he now?"

"In a cryotube so that we could preserve his brain functions."

"Can I be moved next to him?"

Bones nodded as he prepared to move Callie's biobed, next to where the cryotube that held her husband's body lay. From her position on the biobed in the Medbay, she reached out and managed to place her fingertips along the cryotube where her husband lay.

She only prayed that this serum that Bones was devising using Khan's blood worked.

Turning back to Bones, she finally had a bit of a smile on her face. "I want to be sedated again."

"Again?"

She nodded. "I do not think that I can make it through any of what you are doing to Jim. I feel that its going to cause me too much stress. I almost lost this baby once. I do not want to loose it at all."

"I can not promise anything," he said. "but for now I can do as you request."

Callie sighed happily as she closed her eyes and allowed the darkness to take over once again.

Bones stood there for a moment, watching over the couple – the Captain in a cryotube, Callie sedated on the biobed next to him. for both of their sakes, as well as the rest of the crews, he hoped that everything would turn out alright in the end.

AN: I should be in bed...but I got started writing and couldn't stop! I promise next chapter is happier and guess what! It's half written (it has been for a while). So leave lots of love and it shall be posted soon!