Title: Can Old Dogs Learn New Tricks? (1 of 1)
Author: Paola
Disclaimer: Can Old Dogs Learn New Tricks? is based on characters and situations that belong to CBS and Paramount. No money is being made, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Considerations: Similarities to other stories/events/passages are purely coincidental unless otherwise cited, and beliefs and points of view found in the story do not necessarily reflect those of the author's.
Can Old Dogs Learn New Tricks?
What happens when the past catches up to you?
It wasn't exactly hubris when he rejected the premise of Kobayashi Maru and proceeded to change the rules of the game. In his mind, it was simple: find a way to win because losing was not an option. He was James T. Kirk, and he wasn't going to aim for captainship one day only to lose. Even on a test.
Or maybe it was hubris. Buoyed by his past successes and the immortality of youth, he couldn't accept the idea that there were limits to his abilities. Or that he was being told to accept whatever limit that was, ethical decision-making be damned.
And maybe, in his eagerness to prove he was better than some test, there was something he never learned. Lauded for his ingenuity by Starfleet when he basically cheated, it didn't necessarily come to mind that he missed the point of the test altogether. And for all the principles Starfleet wore on their collective puffed up chests like badges of honor, they seemed all too fine congratulating he who broke the norm just because he could and not because it was right.
There were fleeting thoughts about this tickling his mind every now and then as he moved up the ranks, but he'd been too busy basking in his achievements to have really properly entertained them.
But now that he's sitting here, in the dark, alone to contemplate the many choices he never really had, he deigns that maybe, he should have.
Because the Kobayashi Maru had meant to teach a leadership construct that he'd known very little of, a lesson that could have prepared him to face an actual no-win scenario where there was no lesser evil, no minimal bad consequences, just absolute, total destruction that he didn't expect would eat him from the inside.
Kirk takes a deep, defeated breath. And there is the crux of his problem.
Defeat. The concept so insidious he almost feels its hooks beneath his skin. How do you deal with losing when you've disabused yourself of the notion for so long that the very word sounds foreign?
He can still remember how brashly he'd responded then – I don't like to lose – and how ignorant that had been because who does anyway? Who likes to lose? No one. But the point then was not how to win, but how to move forward when the sum of all your efforts was ultimately zero.
The pounding in his head is a steady rhythm that counts every second that passes. This faux reprieve he's currently enjoying is a selfish whim his rank affords him, while his crew waits in the bridge – sullen, beaten, robbed of a future by the ultimate frontier – for a non-decision from a captain who lacks. It's a bitter pill to swallow.
But if there's anything that Kirk is at the heart of it all, it's that he's brave. Foolish in many things, but brave, even when fear tattoos a harsh drumbeat in his chest. Because courage, after all, isn't the lack of fear, but forging ahead in spite of it.
So with a prayer to a god he hasn't ever prayed to before, he stands and prepares to face the inevitable with his crew. Kobayashi Maru has finally caught up to him, across millions of stars, and while he may not be the last man standing, he will damn make sure that he will be standing until the last man falls.