Nearly there. Then it's off to Asgard.
The cell was quiet after the removal. Kirk had finally let go of Reyne…but there was nowhere to go…except an empty apartment…a cold bed…a world that knew her pain but didn't care to understand it…Indeed they would mock her for it. Every year they would drag this out. Whether it was the anniversary of Khan's attack or his trial, she would never be left alone.
"Reyne?"
She blinked, her mind trying to reroute itself, to remind her heart how to beat.
"Reyne it's been two hours" Kirk said.
Reyne merely blinked in response. She wasn't even crying anymore.
"It wasn't my decision…But it was the only way without risk of further issue"
Strapped and drugged like a savage animal. Reyne knew what that was like.
"You…held me" She replied quietly. "You held me" Reyne said again, her voice shaking, gathering intensity.
Before Kirk could even respond, Reyne's fist slammed into his face, with such force that it sent him on his back to the floor. His nose steadily started to drip. It wasn't enough. She landed a second blow. It wouldn't reverse time. It wouldn't ease the ache. But the violence was at least something.
Even as Kirk's lip split, he remained where he was underneath Reyne, almost silently willing her to get it out with his sky-blue eyes. There was nothing he could say, nothing she hadn't already heard, nothing she wasn't already trying to tell herself.
Her fist tired out fairly quickly, her eyes burning as she slowly leaned down, muffling herself into the shoulder of Kirk's uniform. He merely coughed in response, relieved that she had stopped hitting him but not daring to touch her.
The only touch she wanted was frozen.
They remained like this for several minutes until the strangest sound; the voice of a child broke the ice.
"Daddy why is she crying?" A simple enough question with a not-so-simple answer, as children are wont to ask.
Reyne lifted her head, her stunned and aggrieved expression registering the presence of Alex, holding the hand of an estimated eight-year-old girl.
"I thought you…might want to meet your niece" he said
Reyne cleared her throat, hurriedly wiping her eyes and shoving a pillow over Kirk's bloodied face.
"Daughter… Yours?" she croaked.
"This is Jane. Well she looks more like her mother than me..." Alex bent down "Why don't you give your aunt Reyne a hug?" he said softly.
It was a few minutes before Reyne moved the hair back from her face and slowly, hesitantly opened her arms. It was the strangest thing in the world to have a child in her arms, a tiny little heartbeat.
"Kirk?" Alex said, his tone expressing his concern.
Slowly, the pillow still on his face, Kirk lifted his hand in a thumbs-up.