"I hate funerals. No damn use at all, except making people feel worse. I threw my best dark suit out after the last one."

"I guess they think that misery likes to shop. Thank fuck for uniforms."

They had asked Jim to speak at the memorial, but his throat had closed up so quickly it was almost like anaphylaxis, and he could only shake his head no. There had been rumor that they had asked Pike in his stead, but that was either unfounded, or the man had been smart enough to say no. It was a good thing, because listening to Admiral Komack talk about duty, and valor and all things heroic while discussing his mom was bad enough. He wouldn't have been able to stomach it at all if it had been Pike wrapping his mouth around Winona's name like he had a right.

Duty. Valor.

He hadn't spoken because what he had to say wasn't what anyone here wanted to know. Nursing scraped knees. Herding two hyperactive kids through a grocery store and letting him ride in the hovering basket even though he wasn't supposed to. Teaching him to read from The Little Starship That Could when he was two. Then later, when she wasn't there, and he only had a shirt that smelled like her to keep him company for months at a time. The moisture on his face from smelling the honeysuckle of her when she hugged him in the aftermath of Tarsus, feeling his ribs and soaking his hair with tears. Pushing her away because he was a complete ass.

Funerals were for the living, and he was the only one there who cared about Winona Kirk, mother. Let the rest of them have Winona Kirk, hero and martyr.

He coughed to cover up a half-amused snort. Humanity supposedly wasn't much on big religion anymore, but it seemed like they had just replaced the Virgin Mary with an updated federation-approved, nondenominational one. Typical B.S.

Kind of made him wonder what that said for his role in this mess.

Bones is at his side. Not touching, but occasionally raising a hand to his back in a supportive I'm-here-for-you-man gesture. It's awkward, but kind of sweet. He'd tell Bones that later, and watch him go red, and probably smack Jim in the back of the head as he denied it with something like 'I wouldn't know sweet if it jumped up and bit me on the tail.'

Yeah. That sounded about right.

"I hate this guy." Bones was hard to hear, but Jim could still make it out, probably because it mirrored his own thoughts on the matter.

Jim nodded. "Pompous."

There was a grunt of agreement, even as they received pitying looks from a few ignorant people surrounding them. "Showboater. Don't know how we made it past the Van Allen Belt with guys like him in charge."

"We didn't. They were the ones that were too smart to get roped into speaking. See? Archer's practically asleep."

A large portrait of a young, smiling Winona Kirk was placed before a dais at the front of the room, something that she had been only occasionally, though nobody wanted to be reminded of a sad cipher when there were heroics to be discussed. They'd gone all out with calla lilies, and if Jim hadn't hated calla lilies before, he definitely did now. Winona had liked simple homespun blossoms, and yellow; daisies and sunflowers, but he supposed that they wouldn't have been stately enough for the propaganda production they wanted. Not enough gravitas.

No one had asked for much of his input, which meant that someone, somewhere had a brain cell because he probably wouldn't have been inclined to give it. Maybe Bones had run some interference for him. He'd have to ask when he started to give a shit again.

Komack stood at a podium behind and to the left of the portrait, surrounded by the Starfleet top brass. Jim would have been up there, but declined that as well as the speech. Instead, they had put him in the front row next to a few dignitaries, several Kelvin survivors, Christine and Jonathan Robau, and some scientists that had been his mother's colleagues. The only thing he'd asked for in the entire debacle was a seat for Bones at his side.

Jim tried not to look, really he did, but he couldn't help the way his eyes strayed to the far left. Captain Pike was seated, ridged and stone faced. Normally, the grey at his temples and smile lines on his face just made him more attractive, but when they combined with the purplish-grey bags under his eyes, and was that a bruise? He just looked old. When Pike turned his head slightly to listen to something Captain Garth was saying the bruise was thrown into stark relief, climbing up the curve of his jaw and edging into black eye territory.

"Looks like he ran into a wall."

"Shoulda given him another one so he could have a matched set."

"You?" Jim's mouth fell open.

"Uh huh."

"You did that? I thought you were a pacifist."

"Ah, bitchcakes. The Dalai Llama would have socked him one."

Jim sputtered as his face contorted and turned red. "You bastard." His voice was whispered and strained. "Don't make me the guy that laughed at his mom's funeral." Len just rubbed Jim's back as Jim tried to look like he was breaking down in tears of a more appropriate kind.

"Just sayin'."

He wheezed for another moment or two before he could speak again. "And he just let you?"

Leonard shrugged. "To be fair, he already looked rode hard and put away wet. I suppose that helped the cause."

"I won't say he ever handed my ass to me, but the man can fight."

"I'll keep that in mind if I feel like hitting him again."

As if sensing that he was being discussed, Pike turned to look straight at them. Jim quickly averted his eyes to stare over Komack's shoulder and gripped Bones' arm.

Leonard shook his arm to get Jim to lighten his grip. "I talked to him a bit."

"Oh?" Amusement colored Jim's voice. "Is that what you're calling it?"

"Talked at him might be more appropriate."

"Coffee after this. I don't want to stick around for fruit plates and platitudes. You can tell me about it."

"Sure. You're buying."

"Buying? You think I'm going to have to buy anything for the next few weeks? Look around. I'm surrounded by people who are dying to comfort me in my time of grief. I already have three pies back at the dorm."

Bones perked up at that. "What kind?"

"Key lime, Chocolate-peanut butter and rhubarb."

"Gimme the rhubarb and I'll get the coffee."

"Deal."

"Then later on we'll do this up right and go to a bar so you can tell me about her."

It was the only time that day that Jim felt anything, let alone close to crying. Oddly enough, it felt good. "You buying there too?"

Bones raised an eyebrow before turning towards the spiritual traffic accident in front of them. How Bones could look so insincere when Jim knew he was nothing but was anyone's guess. "Pax."

See, he knew this was why he loved Bones. The bastard just got it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"He said that? He actually threatened to?" Jim looked down at his hands, clasping at his coffee mug, lightly stained with excess cocoa and cream fluff. Girly, but good.

"Yeah. But he was kind of on the wrong side of me at the time. I don't think he meant it."

"Did he tell you why?" His voice was deliberately nonchalant, but Leonard had become quite good at deciphering Kirk-speak. He was nervous.

"Just that you hate Starfleet. Though I think he is reading more into that than there is." It wasn't quite a lie. Leonard laughed. "If you hated it that much, as smart and reckless as you are? You'd be some sort of swashbuckling space pirate taking on the whole federation."

Jim laughed too. "With you as my first mate."

"I don't swash, kid."

"I don't know. I think you could swash like a champ if you tried." Jim took another sip. "What did you tell him?" Foam had migrated to his upper lip, so he darted out his tongue to catch it. "He actually could have me drummed out. He has the stroke."

"He doesn't have squat, and I told him so."

Jim raised an eyebrow, but it was no match for Len's, and the little snot knew it.

"Don't ruin your career on my account."

"No fraternization between people who are not within two orders of rank. No fraternization between cadets and officers."

"Right." Jim smirked. "It happens all the time, and you know it. People just turn the other way and pretend it isn't happening. It's systemic."

"Yeah, true, but you're forgetting. It all rests on the one with the highest rank. If the other party, meaning you, complains, you've forced Starfleet's hand. They have to prosecute according to the fraternization protocols."

Frustration colored Jim's face. "I wouldn't do that."

"I know you wouldn't. But apparently he doesn't know jack shit about you, 'cause it shut him up right quick."

"You're a good man, Bonesy."

"I deserve a medal," he said, nodding with appropriate gravity.

Jim threw a stevia packet at him. "What else?"

"Nothing. I told him to do a lateral transfer of your classes and to leave you alone, and that was it. So you'll get to do it in three."

Jim found himself absorbed with the café décor, particularly the earthy brushed clay walls with their primitive stencils. "That doesn't matter so much anymore."

"Why not?"

Flushing red and ducking his head were atypical Kirk behaviors, but it looked good on him, like he was a little kid caught in some act of mischief. "The Enterprise. I wanted to make her maiden voyage."

"Pike's ship?"

"Uh. Yeah. It really doesn't matter now."

Leonard whistled. "You're a real fucked up guy."

"Fuck, I know. I get that a lot." Jim looked annoyed at his coffee, wrinkling his nose at the dregs in the cup. "I guess I just want to make sure I'm posted with you, now. I'll still get it done in time for that."

"I don't know if I want a ship, Jim. I might take a space station appointment if they have one open."

"I'm cool with that. I just need to make sure I'm in the top five percent of my class so I can get better dibs on posting."

"You're doing just fine."

"I'm always doing just fine. I can do better." Jim looked up and smiled. "Did you know that I used to be a perfect child?"

Leonard snorted.

"Really. Straight A, winning the science fair type stuff. Largest vocabulary and reading levels. Eidetic memory, whiz at math."

"You don't have to tell me this."

"But it was never good enough. If I made a 98 on a test, it wasn't 'good job'; it was 'why isn't this a hundred? After a while, you realize that you are never going to be good enough. I had it easy. Sam, he wasn't like me." Jim shook his head. "Then he left, and I didn't have a reason to be perfect anymore."

"No kid should be put in that position."

"I'm not looking for sympathy, Bones. I'm trying to say something here." He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm trying to say that I'm done with that." The empty mug was pushed to the side and he leaned forward on his elbows.

"No holding back. No playing the dumb shit. No fighting. No fucking up." Jim caught his eyes and held them. "I'm going to be a fucking star. Like a supernova."

Leonard sucked in a breath, because he could see for the first time the aesthetic quality that made Jim a magnet for some. "I know you could. But don't do this just because you're hurting. It'll eat you and spit you out. Don't do it just because Pike pissed you off."

"I would be mad at you for that, but I know I've given you cause." He closed his eyes and sighed. "I don't care about Pike. Not just Pike, anyway. I've let others dictate who I am for way too long. I'm sick of it."

"I know the feeling."

"I thought you would. So believe me when I say- not for Pike, not my mom, not even for George Kirk."

They were quiet for a while as a waitress came by with two more drinks, as Jim let Leonard chew on his words. When she left, he opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again. It was yet another minute before he actually said something, and when he did it sounded pained. "Hell. Make me feel like a jackass."

Jim pulled back in query. "Huh?"

"You need company with that?"

Confused wasn't Jim's best look, but it was growing on him. "With what?"

"My mother raised me to be a gentleman, but the wife wrung it out of me. I need to find the old me again too."

"Please. You're fine."

"Kid, you aren't blind, and you just got done telling me you aren't stupid. I've been a mess for a long time. "

The cheeky grin was back, and Len couldn't begin to say how much he had missed it. "A hot mess. Let you puke on me, didn't I? Don't sell yourself short."

"Like I said. You're a real fucked up guy."

"James Tiberius Fucked-Up Kirk."

"I like the sound of that. It's got a ring."

"Like my cock."

"Ok. We're getting out of here. I know you're better when you start on that shit." Bones signaled for the check and waited until the waitress brought a CHIP so he could transfer credits. They both stood up and headed to the front door. Leonard reached the door first and held it open for Jim. They fell into step together and let their feet carry them towards Bone's dorm as if by mutual accord.

"I'm in practice, you know. If I'm turning over this leaf thing, you're going to get the brunt of my childishness. The run off that I can't vent anywhere else. Just warning you."

"Rapture."

"Sarcasm. Lowest form of humor, my friend."Jim put his arm around Bones and gave him a squeeze. He held it for just a little too long before pulling back and sticking his hands in his pockets, looking anywhere that wasn't Leonard McCoy.

Jim had run the gamut today. Automaton. Slightly hysterical. Humorous, self-effacing, embarrassed, touch starved and disgusted in turn. Now he was working on sheepish and Leonard was having a hell of a time figuring out where the real Jim stood. Maybe some of it all. Poor kid.

Poor, wretched kid.

"Seriously. Thanks. I don't know how I would have gotten through this."

"You do all right."

"No. Not really. But I'm going to. " Jim shrugged as much as he was able as they walked together. "Uh. I know you wanted to go to a bar tonight, but do you think that maybe we could just stay in tonight and drink? Just you and me."

"Sure."

Relief flashed over his face for a moment, and then it was gone. "But none of that Saurian crap. I want vodka. And limes."

Len grumbled a bit. "Fine. But you pony up the chocolate peanutbutter pie too."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He had sworn that he wouldn't do this. That he was over it, that he didn't need to go looking for trouble, or interfere, or any number of things that amounted to the same thing. If he needed reminding he dug his fingers into his cheek, until the pain faded.

That lasted about a week. Even then, he tried to keep his curiosity contained by what was available on the internal network.

He held out for two more.

The information available on the network was sketchy and watered down, more palatable than it should have been, and still he felt like a voyeur as he pulled up grainy images and dry summaries. That was why he found himself in the library, feeling furtive and not quite knowing why, asking for a private study booth when there was nothing secretive about what he was doing.

But knowing something and feeling it are two different things, and he definitely felt like a peeping Tom or a sex offender as he input the holos into the viewer. He's seen some of them before, but not like this.

As a captain he'd had to make some tough, often brutal, decisions, but never anything so-

Dust. Dry. Everything was sepia toned and desiccated. Crops withered into kindling and then nothing at all as the topsoil was carried away in fierce winds that ate at everything in their path.

Bleak. So barren and alien, even after the deserts of his youth.

Buildings. Basic Terran terraforming PODs corroded beyond salvation. Yurts of local stone hastily erected with no sanitation and minimal skill. Rough barracks. Fenced yards. Tents for 'entertainment.' Grand government palace kept as free and clean of the riff-raff as possible. Photos of rooms filled with items taken from the homes of those savagely culled.

Let them eat cake.

Bodies. What was left of them. Sunken mass graves that contained bones covered in knife marks. Tooth identification. One pit. Then three. Then ten. A dozen odd huts with strange vents that turned out to be smokehouses. Salt stores and spits.

The faces. The faces got him the most. Sepia zombies, emaciated and without hope, shuffling in line. One small girl, so delicate, wrists so fragile looking on arms defined only by bone. Even as the relief ship had come, no hope sparked in the faces of the rescued. He had to look away when a ship doctor came into view and he could compare his moisture-lush, well fed flesh to the scarecrow he was treating.

Starfleet had rescued them in body only. And barely that.

He played the holo again. And again. Watching the faces as they went by, only about 200 in all in this holo. Wondering, with every child, if it was him. Is he the one? Impossible to tell, but trying anyway, to find some trace of Jim in khaki, sunken cheeks and haunted eyes.

And again.

A new holo. Another scene. A crowd of faces that all looked the same. Again. Pausing on every face, looking at every feature. Again.

Again. And again. And again.

He won't sleep that night. Or the next. He knows this, even after he loads the next holo. And the next.

After hours- days- weeks- When he finally got up it was full dark, and he was hungry, but the armchair shellshock left him unable to stomach the idea of food.

He may never feel like eating again.

When he left and caught the sight of Jim at a table, surrounded by PADDs and books, intent on an assignment, he had to stop himself from running, even as he averted his eyes and felt like a dirty thing. Bad luck or divine punishment.

And he hated the fact that he was right. He doesn't sleep that night. Or the next. Maybe he's a masochist, but he took comfort in it. Sleep was for a clear conscience.

And he was fresh out of that.