A/N: This is directed to Space Trio. Frankly, I don't normally acknowledge people like you, but sadly, you do not have an account or did not sign in, and I must address your idiocy in the public eye.
I don't give a shit if you stop reading it. Do not threaten me, do not tell me what to write, and do not think I care if you like it or not that I wrote in something of a more adult nature. This is rated for a reason. Pay attention to it next time. It's not my fault that you are a sheltered, stupid prude. Be glad I don't write smut, child-instead I chose a tasteful 'fade to black' effect, in order to KEEP THE RATING APPROPRIATE. (Also, there is a HUGE difference between sensuality and sexuality; you need to learn it. Shut up and sit down.)
When I wake up, she's gone. The scent of her lingers everywhere, combining with the scent of sex and myself. I stirr tiredly, pressing a hand through my hair and trying to figure out what woke me. I realize it a moment later at the familiar buzzing sound of the ship's comm, and reach over to slap it with the side of a fist.
"Kirk," I groan into it, aware that I do not sound at my best, nor that it particularly bothers me. I snap fully awake, though, as Spock's voice echoes into my room.
"Captain, are you well?" He asks, and under the bland tone I can hear both concern and aggravation. You have to know Spock to hear it, but I do and therefore, can. I flinch slightly, sitting up on my elbows.
"I'm fine, Spock." I reply, looking at the clock on my table. It shows me that I am exactly one hour and fifteen minutes late for my shift to begin. (Yes. Yes, even a captain has a shift. I am always the captain, but I have certain stretches of time where I have to be on the bridge. ) And I am an hour and fifteen minutes late for it.
"Captain, you are precisely one hour and-"
"-fifteen minutes late for my shift, yes, Mr. Spock, I've realized that." I'm scrambling up, blanket landing on the floor just the other side of my bed. "I'll be there in just a few-"
"Yes, captain." Spock says, interrupting me. "Doctor McCoy and I will discuss what caused your tardiness later."
"Spock, you don't need to know-" And there is no way I'm actually going to tell you-
"I believe we do, captain." His voice is quiet, insistent. "If it is for the same reason our disturbances have been of late."
I could pull rank on him. I could tell him that it was my business, and he had no right to pry into it. But Spock is my friend before he is my first officer, and I like for both my friends and my officers to argue with me for the same reasons I pointed out before.
"Later, then." I say calmly- for now, I need a shower. I click off the comm and grab a clean shirt and pants. A quick shower later and I am back on my bridge, head up and looking, thankfully, like I am not at all late. Spock's eyes follow me as I walk, but he's the only one that seems to notice or care that I'm tardy; unsurprisingly so. I take my seat, and let the day go by without anything out of the ordinary occurring.
And amazing, that is exactly what happens.
We meet for lunch in my quarters, Bones, Spock and I.
"Spock tells me you were late this morning, Jim." Bones says, when the subject finally rolls around to what happened last night- or, if you prefer, this morning, though frankly I think 'last night' is more appropriate. "Did she do something to you?"
I am, for one moment, incredibly glad I'm no longer a boy. Otherwise, I might not have been able to contain the laughter that wants to bubble up, born half of true amusement and half of pure tension. "You could…..say that." I manage tightly, and Spock's brow is on the ceiling again. This time, McCoy's has joined it.
"Well, are you okay?" Bones barks, half-rising. I lift a hand, motioning him to sit back down.
"Fine. I'm…..I'm fine, Bones." He stops, lowering himself back into his seat, his eyes filling with his typical healer's concern, but now there is something skeptical and knowing there, too.
"Jim. Ah, Jim, tell me you didn't." He groans.
And there it is, in Spock's other eyebrow, in the way he's suddenly ramrod straight. "I suppose it was inevitable, with her constant appearance to you as Edith Keeler and her scare after attempting to investigate into my own mind." He says calmly, fingers steepled in front of him. "The emotional intensity and your own lingering-" He stops, careful with his words as my usual blunt first officer is so rarely with me. "lingering feelings….for Ms. Keeler was a potent combination."
I take a breath and push my hand through my hair. I will always have 'lingering feelings' for Edith. I have been in love a very few times in my life; real love. Edith was one of those times. I would have brought her, or stayed with her, if I could have; I know without having to consider it that I would have married her, if I was anyone else, in any other world, or time, or even here, now, on the Enterprise. (I have one wild moment when I touch the table lightly as if in apology; there is 'another woman' in my life, and I don't doubt for one moment that if Enterprise was a flesh-and-blood woman she'd be dangerously possessive.)
"It's not anything to worry about." I reply, and even I want to hit myself the moment the weak tone is out of my mouth. I clear my throat, try again. "She wanted…..I don't know what she wanted." I finish rather lamely. "But whatever it was, she knew how to get it, and it was harmless, ultimately."
"We've been throwing that word around a lot lately." Bones mutters. "When we still don't know who or what she is or what she wants."
Me, apparently, or she did last night.
Spock's turn to clear his throat, softly, for attention. We both glance at him, and while he looks faintly pained around his eyes, he speaks. "She is not a life form. Not as we know it, in any case. We are in, as you once put it, doctor, a 'star desert'. There are no planetary bodies of any type within range of the Enterprise, and she simply does not register on any scanner sweep within the ship, or of the ship itself."
"When she pops up in sickbay, nothing registers her there, either." Bones chimes in, sighing. "Maybe Jim's right. Maybe she is a ghost."
"With butterfly wings?" Spock would be smirking, if he let himself. He wants to- I can see it in his eyes.
"Is there anything to say she shouldn't have them?" I ask, raising a brow at him in attempted mockery. I'm pretty certain I fail in my attempt. "We don't know what she is or where she comes from, so how do we say what she's supposed to look like?"
Spock's eyebrow is considerably more eloquent then mine. "There is a far higher chance she is some race we do not know of."
"One that doesn't register as a life form?" I ask. "One with no planet anywhere in this area capable of supporting life?"
"No planets, period, Jim." Bones says quietly, tapping out a rhythm on the table. "Nothing but stars and space."
"We have encountered races capable of transporting themselves and others incredible distances in the past." Spock points out, unmoving. His analytical mind will not allow him to consider the possibility of a 'ghost' until there is undeniable, irrefutable proof. "Need I remind you, gentlemen, of Triskelion?"
I chew my lower lip thoughtfully. It's something Bones gets at me for constantly-he jokes that if it isn't my lip, it's whatever's foolish enough to get within range of my mouth that gets chewed on. He's caught me with pins, pencils, my hands, and once, the edge of a communicator. (I hadn't even realized I was gnawing on the damn thing until he'd reached up and tugged it away. I had the taste of copper in my mouth for the rest of the day.) I've actually drawn blood from my own lip, and it's for that reason McCoy tries to end the habit.
Like now. His hands twitch, like he wants to stop me; I let my lip out of my teeth obligingly and he relaxes. I bite down on the urge to laugh.
"No," I say, "I remember Triskelion." And I do, and they had taken Chekov, Uhura and I from the ship to a planet miles away; so far away, in fact, that the crew had trouble believing we'd been brought there until they found us. Only Spock's relentless determination had discovered us- and isn't that funny, that Spock could be so set on finding us alive that he would track us to a planet we could not, to a logical mind, be on; and yet he denies fervently the possibility of a ghost.
Spock's a complex creature. Even now, almost two years into our mission, I haven't got him entirely figured out. I wonder if I ever will.
"I remember it, too," Bones drawls, "and if you would like to go searching for some distant planet she could possibly come from, Mr. Spock-"
"Then I would object very much to my ship being dragged all across the galaxy." I interrupt wryly, smirking. "And I don't think Starfleet would much care for it, either." Although, by this point, they should be used to the Enterprise being involved in the most unorthodox, tense, unusual, and downright strange situations imaginable. We're her flagship; if we're not the first crew to arrive in a new situation, it's only because the first crew died, or dissapered, or became raving lunatics, or interfered somehow in social development.
So, you know, because it went over so well the first time, they send us in next.
But then, all things considered, we're not your average crew. So I guess it makes sense. Still, sometimes…..sometimes I wonder why beurocratic paper pushers are allowed to pretend they know what to do in a bad situation instead of relying on the people who have been there. I don't often buck under Starfleet's saddle. I'm an officer, and in the end, I'm one that gets away with a damn lot most others don't, because myself and my crew are the best and Starfleet knows it. I take my orders, I do as I'm told, and when I think it's a bad idea I say so. Repeatedly, if necessary, and if the situation calls for me to jerk the reins away and go against orders I have a good reason for doing it and I do so fully prepared to take responsibility for it.
But sometimes I want to beat them all upside their collective heads with something heavy until I've banged some sense into them.
"Or maybe out of it," Bones grunts, jerking me from thought. I snort.
"Let's skip that, then, shall we?" I sit back, close my eyes. "It's not like she's hurting anything."
"You are not adverse to having some unknown entity on your ship?" Bones folds his arms. "Jim, are you sure she didn't do-" He stops, chokes, reconsiders his words. "didn't hurt you?"
I laugh. "She most certainly did not," I drawl, and he groans. "Bones, no, I'm not okay with her being on the ship when we don't understand what or who she is, or what she wants. But what can we do but wait her out? She wants something, anyway, and she'll make it known eventually."
"And what if that something is this ship?"
"We'll deal with that if it happens." I say, calmly. It's how I have to think. If I start letting my mind wander to every what if, every possible future event, I'll probably loose it. It's better to wait, and watch, and prepare. Better to react when something has or is about to happen, rather then over-react before anything has. And when there's not really anything you can do, worrying will only drive you mad.
Our question of who's side she's on, at least, is answered that night, when I wake to small hands shaking me, a low, concerned voice whispering my name. Lips on my cheek, on my own lips. "James Kirk!" Urgent, feirce. "James! Wake up, please, you must!"
My eyes flutter, and I know she's Edith by her smell and feel of her skin. I push her away, sitting up in the darkness of my room.
"Lights, fifty percent." I say calmly, and when they raise I can see her wringing her hands and pacing before my bed. She stops, chewing her lip.
"He's here!" She says, throwing herself at me. She latches onto my waist and presses her face into my chest. "I hoped he wouldn't come but he has and now he's here and you have to stop him!"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down." I say gently, pulling her off of me a few inches. She's crying again, and so help me, even knowing it's not her seeing tears in Edith's eyes breaks my heart. I push it away, down, hard, bringing the cool, hard place of me that is the Enterprise's captian to the forefront. "Who is here?"
"Him!"
That doesn't help me. I bite back the irriation and brush a hand over her face. I don't even know her real name.
"It's okay," I tell her softly, "we'll-stop 'him'. But you have to tell me who it is I'm trying to get." I say. "I can't do any thing to any one if I don't know who he is. Now just calm down."
She looks up at me with those beautiful eyes that are and aren't Edith's, and they shimmer and swim with unshed tears.
"The man who killed me," She whispers, "And who wants to kill you, too."