Prompt: Eulogy
They want her to write a eulogy for Chris.
She sits in an office of the tenth floor, one she's been given randomly since hers is a pile of rubble. It overlooks what's left of the Vengeance and everything it has laid to waste, a front-row seat for the aftermath of an apocalypse. The sun is setting, and she's alone, which is a blessing because she's been hard-pressed to find more than five minutes to herself any time she's away. In this corner of the building it's quiet; everyone is exhausted and sleeping on conference tables or random hallway benches or office couches.
They want her to write it.
She knows why: Kirk is still in a coma from whatever unsanctioned procedure McCoy pulled out of his ass and the Augment's blood to somehow revive him, and Spock is thus de facto captain of a ship that's clinging to Starfleet 6 by its fingernails, making him one of the busiest people in all of Starfleet. Chris had other good acquaintances, of course, but she knew him best, even more so than his star cadets.
She suspects they would have asked her first anyways. Chris' kids only knew Spock in passing and Kirk not at all, and they would have drawn up the list and put her at the top.
She stares at the empty white display in front of her, trying to think of what to say that hasn't been said in a dozen private conversations since Daystrom. Or maybe that is what she should say; there will be people there who are, at the moment, in comas or tearing down the Vengeance or keeping crippled starships in space or saving the lives of the injured, and so won't have heard those exchanges.
She's never been morbid enough to wonder which of them it would be first, and now that she knows she thinks maybe she'd always suspected. The Universe just has it out for some people, regardless of whether or not they're good and kind and intelligent and honorable. (She is morbid enough to observe that Kirk seems to have this same problem, and feels a flash of pity for Spock and how he's no doubt going to be putting up with a lot of bullshit as a result.)
This is a good line of thinking, though. It brings to mind the good times. They very good ones, before the Nerada and Enterprise; and the still good ones after, when he was desk-bound and recovering and working through it by complaining about whatever he felt like. ("The least they could have done was rescue him so I could pound on him a few times," he'd complained after one particularly rough round of physical therapy. She'd wanted a crack at Nero herself, and so couldn't blame Spock and Kirk for leaving him to his fate, and sometimes she's afraid she would have done far, far worse.)
Of course, 'Khan' (she has her doubts about that) isn't being crushed into quark-gluon plasma inside a black hole (more's the pity), yet with Chris now one of hundreds of thousands dead or injured at his hands, she can't deny others their right to justice by taking it for herself. She'll be called to testify, no doubt, and will have to be patient in the mean time.
She turns on the desk lamp, because the sun's gone down and it's too dark to see anything but the display without it. The Vengeance is an inky blot between the lights of the other buildings. Even darkness fails to obscure it, and she thinks there's a comparison to be made between that and everything Marcus did for all the wrong reasons.
She decides the best way to start is just begin talking. She can edit the rough draft as much as she likes, but first, she needs a rough draft to edit.
"Christopher Pike was my dear friend, and an honorable man, and our lives were immeasurably richer for knowing him. And despite how he was taken from us, he wouldn't want us to dwell on revenge, because he could be a selfish jerk when he wanted to."
Like that time with the Tellarites. Or that stupidity in the Oracnus Cloud. Or the situation they'd found themselves in just after she'd been made his First Officer. Or-
"Goddamned selfish jackass, actually," she mutters, and the microphone picks it up. She almost deletes it, thinking, You're not calling him a jackass in front of his kids, then doesn't. She can run it by Spock, and he'll suggest she remove the profanity in that patient manner he adopts when someone is being particularly illogical. (If he's still comatose, she'll read the first version to Kirk, because then he won't be able to comment.) In the mean time, she can leave in the full measure of her memories of him-the frustrating right alongside the fond-so she has somewhere to start.
It turns out to be a very rough draft.
For those not familiar with TOS, 'Number One' is the only name given for the woman shown as Christopher Pike's First Officer in 'The Cage' aka 'The Menagerie'.