Jim stumbled blindly in the direction Ruhn had been facing the day before, when he said he felt that something was coming. That conversation seemed to have transpired a lifetime ago, when this planet was beautiful, when he could see anything other than the pulsing images flitting like bats through his head. Every step lanced through him as he followed the trace of an instinct he felt in the marrow of his bones, and this part of the forest was covered in dust or ash, he wasn't sure, but translucent clouds of shimmering silver kept rising around him, feathery and choking and for a moment it was like the start of the blight, when they burned all the bodies they could.

"How many kids were with you at the end, James?"

"Twelve."

"How many did you have at first?"

"Twenty-two, I think."

"What happened to them? The ones that died?"

"They starved. Or they were killed, or they gave up."

He fell to his knees once or twice, tripping over a stray root that seemed to be reaching for him, grasping with cruel, pale fingers, blanched with death and broken into knobbed, rough protrusions, but each time he stood and pressed on with a dogged determination to find some kind of relief, some respite from the hammering rhythm of voices in his mind.

"How many other kids saw his face?"

"Eight."

"Who were the others?"

"I don't know their names, except for Kevin and Thomas. Everyone else forgot."

"Why did they forget?"

"They were soldiers."

"Were you a soldier, too?"

"I would have been."

The trees were roaring beasts reared up on sky-high legs, their shaggy moss-like bark turning into wooly fur. Everything was a monster, Jim realized, everything was death and this beautiful planet was dying, just like a planet he'd known a lifetime ago.

"What happened to the other child soldiers?"

"They went through with their orders. They rounded up the surviving colonists and lured them to their deaths."

"How did you escape?"

"I don't think I ever really did."

Finally Jim stopped, as suddenly as he had begun running, frozen as a strange thrill moved up through his legs, ending in his fingertips. He gasped, feeling the world was dropping out underneath him, leaving him with this aching cold that tingled in his veins and forced him to his knees with a vice-like grip around his neck, choking out of him a strangled scream that was all at once agony and terror and adrenaline, a surge of terrible memory-

And then it stopped, and he could breathe again, and the world saw fit to right itself on its axis, lurching him flat on the dusty ground. For several long moments he stayed there, unable and unwilling to move, his every shuddering breath sending a gust of sooty earth swirling above his head. He could taste the grit of it in his mouth and feel it clinging to the sweat that slicked his face and neck and chest, and he imagined he was just one of those thousands of bodies left to rot upon the tattered remains of Tarsus IV.

His body curled in on itself and then could move no more, lost to this stagnant world.

After the long, arduous interviews and more medication and surgeries than Jim cared to count, the doctors finally left him alone in the Sickbay with the rest of his kids- told him to get some sleep, and not to disturb the other children whose slackened faces reflected none of the pain Jim felt. And feel it he did- the real injuries, the deep bruises and hemorrhages and lacerations, all of which would have to heal naturally ("His immune system is too compromised to risk any further operations…") as well as the ones that had long since healed but still ached.

Being around so many adults had left him shaken and paranoid like the animal he had been planetside, glancing over his shoulder and making sure he was facing the door at all times, warily eyeing the reaching hands and sympathetically twisted faces. They asked him a lot of questions and he answered them the best he could, dry-eyed and stoic-faced, telling them the complete and utter truth of what had transpired on that desecrated planet- several times, they told him to stop, because even the most experienced officers were fighting back sobs.

Jim returned to his kids and immediately did a headcount- and then another, and another, and another, reassuring himself that this was real, that his kids were as safe as they could possibly be. Even with these adults ("Stay away from adults, Riley. They don't want to help you, they want to... ") they were safer than they were with him.

So why couldn't he sleep? Why did he keep counting, again and again with the scars in his skin and in his organs aching and the brand on his leg itching and the fear of something in the dark haunting him? Why was he shaking with silent sobs because he was so afraid of the things in his head that he couldn't even close his eyes?

Not quite knowing what he was doing, he slipped off the bed, his bare feet hitting the cold ground and echoing too loudly in the room full of mechanical beeping. His arms wrapped around his chest, hugging himself tightly, he limped to where he knew Ki'one's bed was across the room. He halted at the foot of the bed, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. When finally he could see, the first thing he glimpsed was Ki'one's wide, dark eyes gazing back at him.

Jim opened his mouth to greet him, to express his relief that he was awake, but it died in the back of his throat. Instead a wheezing cry shuddered through him, an inhuman sound of glass-edged agony. Ki'one stared back at him, impassive as always, vulnerability obvious only in the translucent quality of his green-toned skin. "Jim," the Vulcan boy whispered, slowly raising one slender and gaunt hand.

Jim wouldn't understand it until years later, but Ki'one was well on the way to death long before that moment. The fever that swept their camp in those last few weeks hit him hard, and combined with the weakness from starvation and hopelessness, there was no way he would have survived the night.

With that shaking and feather-light hand, Ki'one touched Jim's face, and the older boy had to fight not to flinch away from him. "You should not have to bear this," Ki'one whispered, his dried lips curling around the words with difficulty. "You have done enough, Jim. When the time comes, I know you will be able to heal from all that has happened- I will give you the chance to find happiness first."

His fingers slid to Jim's meld points, a few words were whispered under his breath, and the fires of raw wounds that had blazed moments ago were doused in sudden, all-encompassing blankness- and all that was left was an empty crater of uncertainty.

The next moment, Ki'one was dead, the last of his energy devoured by the sweeping void left in the place of memory. Jim stared at him as the monitors screamed, knowing his name and knowing who he was and knowing the feelings attached to him, but not knowing the significance of it all.

Jim was shoved back by the wave of doctors rushing into the room, shouting to one another in words he couldn't begin to understand. For a long, long time he stared, blankly recognizing that the boy's death was probably his fault, Finally, tired of trying to comprehend what he was seeing, Jim turned away and limped back to his bed. One of the doctors called the time. Jim crawled into his bed and was asleep in moments.

When he next awoke, it was to a ceaseless pounding in his temples and a fierce yearning to find Jamie, to hold her in his arms, to keep her safe from the terrors that had traced such deep scars into his mind and body. The next second he ached for his mother, yearned for her ferocity and her wildness and her soft, broken smile and the surety of her judgment- until he remembered the times she had failed him, left him with a man who became a demon and then a planet that became dust.

He still missed her, though.

Movement blurred in front of his eyes, and he lurched, forcing himself into a sitting position despite the aching of his head. Ruhn and Kress crouched beside him, watching owlishly as he struggled to right himself against the world's spinning. "Wha-" he didn't manage to choke out any more before a tide of remorse slammed into him and his mouth clamped shut around the questions he wanted to ask. Don't you hate me? Aren't you angry? Are you here to kill me?

Ruhn spoke first. "We've been searching for quite a while, Jim," he didn't reach out, but it was obvious he wanted to. "Why did you run away?"

The question was too simple to embody everything it implied- that Jim's only wrong was running, that he should have stayed to bear the violence of accusing stares, that Kress hadn't awoken something in him- and Jim didn't know how to reply, so he didn't.

Kress pressed with a harder tone to her voice, once that would give way to viciousness if she dared look at Jim in the eye. "My sister is alright," if she was striving to be reassuring, it didn't quite show through. "She is angry with me, though."

Ruhn shot a chastising glance at the younger child. "You should have known better. The truths we see are meant not to hurt one another, but to help us in understanding."

Kress glared back defiantly, her lips curled back a bit to reveal the top row of her sharp teeth. "I understand him perfectly," she retorted. "I understand that he runs from his own truth and that it is disgraceful. I understand that he has no control over his anger and his fear because he never learned to, never attempted to better himself so he may understand his own limitations and in doing so not put others in danger!" The girl stood suddenly and turned around, obviously not thinking the situation worth her time any longer.

Ruhn stood as well, rushing to grab her arm before she could take another step away. His face was contorted in the same expression of anger, with white streaks of rage manifesting across his green skin. "Why do you insist on being such a fool, Kress? Why do you willfully refuse to see pain beyond your own? Canfir truly was the better part of you- I can see that now! All that is left is your senseless ignorance!"

For all his talk of not using the truth to hurt others, the rage he was inciting in Kress had to qualify as harm. Her ridged cheekbones rippled with animalistic intensity, like she was moments away from ripping limbs off Ruhn. The tension had obviously been growing between them for days, culminating in this final display of fire. Jim could do nothing but watch, entranced and terrified by the change in Ruhn.

"You say this man never attempted to better himself, as though he had control over the things done to his mind!" The boy's face and voice softened suddenly, his grip on her arm loosening marginally. "How could he face what he could not remember, Kress? How could he overcome that which hid behind a shroud?"

"Don't-" Jim stuttered, the children whipping around to look at him, Ruhn with suddenly remembered concern and Kress with barely disguised resentment. "Don't talk like it- like someone did this to me to- to hurt me, or whatever. He just, he was a kid, he didn't know-" the thoughts in his mind felt disjointed, becoming mixed up in his rush to defend his well-meaning friend. "He thought it was for the best, you know- he could have done it right if he was stronger."

Ruhn's wide, mournful golden eyes didn't so much as twitch, staring at him with a strange mixture of pity and understanding. Beside him, Kress didn't look quite so forgiving, but there was something on her face, too- she looked ill, like his words implied something much darker.

Unable to stand the horrified looks any longer, Jim pressed on. "The first time he did it didn't make me forget, it just made me- made me understand, made me see the bigger picture. The second time, right before he died, he made me forget, but it was for the best, okay? I could hardly function, I just- why are you looking at me like that?" The stares hadn't abated, if anything looking more and more agonized.

"Some truly horrible things must have happened to you," Kress muttered, glancing away, "for you to be able to justify someone tampering with your emotions."

Jim swallowed hard, remembering the man whose name he never learned but whose leer found itself into his most pleasant dreams, the guards who whipped him and left him the brand in his leg that was still there, couldn't be healed by any regenerators, the one he'd slashed at with a kitchen knife when he was fifteen because he couldn't bear the itching burn of it on cold days when he almost remembered everything and the way it made his mind ache when he didn't remember and now it was just a mass of parallel scars that still fucking itched and burned- but he blinked and he was back, gasping in a shuddering breath.

He'd told Bones that his fingernails had never fallen out, hadn't he? That wasn't a lie- the other kids had wasted away until they were nothing more than brittle bones and bloated bellies and their bodies just couldn't hold onto their nails any longer. Jim's had been ripped out, one by one, but it wasn't the same thing, hunger was the worst way to die, the man had told him so-

"We were just kids, both of us," he finally said when he could breathe again, glancing up to see Ruhn still staring with that pitying fervor that was going to give him a goddamn complex. "He did what he had to do, and I don't think I would've survived without him."

Ruhn looked at Kress again with a long, searching glance, as though analyzing an idea never before conceived. "And you would seek to blame him for pain that would have ended his life."

For once, the girl had nothing to say in response. She looked away grudgingly, conceding to him a point she had so vehemently defended moments before, as though struck by a truth she had never considered. Jim wondered what exactly he had said, what it was that so horrified the children. He hadn't meant to do that, to scare them more than he already did.

"Hey, I-" he started to speak, pushing his hands underneath him in an attempt to stand. His legs quivered beneath him and his head pounded, a strange lilting noise that felt slanted and broken behind his eyes. "I'm- I'm sorry for running away, and since I apparently can't give you an explanation that you haven't already figured out, I'll leave it at that." If he sounded annoyed, well, at this point it felt pretty justified.

"Did you go this way on purpose?" Ruhn asked, tactfully dropping the subject, though Kress obviously wanted to say more.

He had to think a moment before he remembered, in those white-hot moments of terror, going the direction Ruhn had been looking when the bombs fell. "Yeah, but I'm not really sure why. Guess I was going to fight Zlinzee's idiot brother on my own." He meant it as a joke, but it fell flat and perhaps resonated a bit deeper than intended.

Surprisingly, it was Kress who expressed abject disagreement. "Impossible. Janin is a manipulator," she spat the word like it was a curse. "The people under his control would destroy you with a single word from him."

"And he could destroy your way of life with just the inclination," Jim retorted. He suddenly felt very weary, and very much like he didn't want anyone else to die. "Look, guys, just because I'm feeling nihilistic and fifty shades of fucked up doesn't mean you had to- do whatever it is you're doing out here. Go home. Or- uh," he grimaced, "you know. Go to your families. I'll figure something out on my own, okay?"

Ruhn frowned deeply and shuffled his feet in a rare moment of uncertainty. "We've come with others, Jim," he said, holding his hands up placatingly when Jim looked around for the people who had accused him so viciously the day before. "Not all of them are so distrustful of outsiders. We figured you had decided to confront Janin on your own, and many did not wish to abandon you."

"So where are they now?" Jim asked, pointedly ignoring the use of the word "abandon" and all its annoyingly visceral connotations.

"Some are very old, and some very young. They stayed behind to rest a while back, and we went ahead to catch up with you. They'll be here in several hours, I'm sure."

Jim looked at the children- really looked at them, the fine nuances of their expressions and the softness of youth in their cheeks. He imagined himself, full grown and not starving, leading people on foot, pursuing only the hope of survival. He thought of Jamie and of his own innocence before the blight, and he thought of Mara when she stepped on a landmine and he awoke to find a fragment of her head, one eye intact and bulging, just in front of his face. He'd thought she was alive at first and had started laughing, because wow, how lucky are we- and then he felt a weight upon his chest and he looked down and couldn't quite comprehend the arm across his body, so he just kept laughing.

He's not sure if that was before or after the man in the room and the brand on his leg. Most likely after, that's when he really started losing people, and he laughed a lot so they wouldn't lose hope of survival. Jim Kirk, the boy who laughed and laughed and laughed except when he thought about food, because starvation wasn't funny. Jim Kirk, who pretended everything would be alright. Jim Kirk, manipulator.

So he smiled at the kids, genuinely. "Yeah, okay. You guys get some sleep while we wait, I'll watch out for them."

He was gone when they woke up.

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