Jim is twelve when Winona dies and he's laying on the floor of the observation deck with a brand new PADD under his nose. Around him, a group of children, aged six to eighteen, are working on their homework assignments, but he'd finished his far quicker than the rest of them and has turned now to reading the latest letter from his cousin Emily.
He doesn't think anything of the faint chill he feels—it's probably just Alison having fiddled with the atmospheric controls again—though he does actually put on his hoodie rather than continuing to lay on it, before continuing to read the latest in Pike family news.
Then the door to the deck opens and his father is standing there. His face is grim and Jim tries to think if he's done anything lately to cause trouble, though he doesn't think he has. (Seriously, getting a talking to from Number One was the most uncomfortable moment in his life and he's been actively trying to avoid getting another. Not that Alison and Rob have been helping with that.)
"Jim," Chris calls, gesturing Jim over with a hand.
"Dude, what did you do this time?"
Jim turns wide eyes on his friend and shakes his head because he's got no clue, but he has no intention of making it worse. He grabs his PADD and his backpack, steps over Nathan and Savek, and takes the hand Chris holds out to him; he's pulled into the corridor and then into the lift.
"Dad?"
Chris shakes his head and Jim quiets, worried now.
It's a short trip to quarters from the lift, and there, Jim drops his bag and sits down in the chair he'd claimed for himself at the start of the tour eighteen months ago. Chris sits down too, on the coffee table which sets off alarm bells in Jim's mind because no one is allowed to sit on the coffee table. Jim's not even allowed to put clean feet on.
"Jim, a little while ago, Jason Hughes called."
"Mom's 'fleet lawyer?"
"Yes."
Jim swallows. This isn't good and his mind gets moving, coming up with bad scenario after worse scenario and before Chris can get a word out, Jim's convinced himself that he's about to be taken away from his father.
He feels relieved when he's told, "Jim, your mother died this morning."
"Oh."
Chris lays a hand on Jim's knee. "You want to talk about it?"
"What's there to talk about?" Jim blinks and admits, "Dad, to me, she died a long time ago. I mean, she never even tried to talk to me, not even on my birthday and she could have. If she really wanted to, she could have and she didn't."
"She was still your mother."
"And I can barely remember her." Jim shrugs.
Chris leans forward, elbows on his knees and his hands hanging between them, and asks, "Do you want to go to the funeral?"
This Jim thinks about for a few moments: it'd be closure, seeing her for the last time, knowing that the spectre in one of his nightmares cannot come back. That she can't take him away from his father. But as he'd said, she'd died a long time ago in his mind and all he has now are a few fuzzy memories of blonde hair and hazel eyes and a sad smile. She's just not real to him anymore.
"No."
"If you don't want to go because I can't, Jim, Aunt Lauren already said she'd..."
Jim shakes his head, drawing a leg up onto the chair after kicking off his slip-on trainers. "It's not that. I just... don't need it."
"Okay, son," Chris tells him and thinks to himself, This is his choice. You promised him that he could start making some of his own choices and this one has to be his.
Chris lets the silence linger for a few seconds, waiting to see if there's anything else Jim wants to say. Instead of anything about Winona, he's asked, "Can we have pizza for dinner?" and the conversation is clearly over.
He gives a little grin at the question. "Oh, god, not another growth spurt—you're going to eat us out of ship and home soon!" Chris teases, getting up and tossing the command golds into the laundry chute.
Pizza is Jim's ultimate junk food, something he only craves at the times when he's about to grow a damned inch overnight.
"I'll settle for chocolate cake."
"You'll settle for something with a vegetable."
"No broccoli!"
(This is the routine they are going through several nights later when Jason sends through the last bit of paperwork, the death certificate, the prison record. There's a few pictures from the Warden, and a note that a package with her personal effects from the cell will be sent to their apartment in San Francisco.
Chris waits until Jim is eating the burger they'd brought back to quarters from the mess to open the documents and begin reading; his got his glasses on, and it's as he rolls over a picture of Winona on the PADD that he notices Jim's furtive glances.
"Do you want to see her?"
Jim hesitates, and Chris puts the PADD, screen side down on the table, before getting up. "I'm going to take a shower before I eat," he says, ruffling Jim's hair as he walks by, "Next shore leave, you're getting a hair cut."
When he returns, the PADD is in Jim's hands; he blinks up at Chris and asks, "Did she love me?"
"So much, Jim, that I don't know if she knew how to deal with it." He pulls Jim to the couch, sits beside him, and tells him, "Your mom... she loved your brother and he died, and she loved your father and he died, and I think for her, in the end, the only way she could show how much she love she had was to protect you no matter the cost."
"I said I don't want to go to the funeral and I mean it, but maybe one day I'd like to see where she grew up."
"You tell me when you're ready and I will make it happen, Jim."
"Thanks, Dad." He bites at his lower lip, worrying the skin, then asks, "Are there any pictures of my brother on here?"
They spend the rest of the night looking at every picture Chris can find from the Kirks and the Lawsons.)
They finish out their research and short-range exploration mission and arrive back at Earth right on time for the crew to go through debrief, pack, and get the hell home for the holidays. For Chris, this means the annual battle of getting Jim to get a haircut before taking off for Lauren's house in Mojave.
"You know, Aunt Lauren doesn't care if I've got shaggy hair."
"You know, I don't care if Aunt Lauren doesn't care. You're getting a haircut or I get the window seat on the shuttle."
"You fight dirty, Dad."
"One day you will have a teenager to deal with, and on that day, I will take great delight in listening to you argue about haircuts with him," Chris replies from his room, where his bed is covered in a mess of clothing, duffel bags, toiletries and linens.
They spend the next little while packing, Jim trying to decide between the Academy hoodie he'd lifted from Chris's closet and the zip up with the guitars on it that Uncle Rich had bought him for his last birthday instead of whether or not to pack his good pants along with his jeans. (For the record, he'll forget and Chris will want to bash his own head, once again, into a wall when the rest of the family wanders off to put on their formal wear for pictures and Jim's dressed in a dress shirt and jeans.) At least, that's what he's doing when there's a knock at their door.
Jim shouts, "I'll get it," as he takes off down the hall.
But Chris is right on his heels, saying, "No, I'll get it."
"Too old, too slow."
Chris trips him for that remark, not even sorry when Jim hits the area rug. "What was that?" he asks as he unlocks the door and opens it for the Starfleet Officer on the other side.
"Captain Pike?"
"Yes?"
The courier holds out a PADD for him to sign, then passes over the case for a data chip. There's the For Your Eyes Only marker on top and he groans.
Just great. The 'fleet has seriously piss-poor timing.
"Sorry, sir. Happy holidays."
"Yeah, you too."
The door closes and Chris hits the lock, wondering what the hell Starfleet has planned that couldn't wait until after he'd had leave. He flips the case in his hand and, nope, nothing else on it besides the FYEO marker, which means this is classified.
Great.
"Jim..."
"Yeah, I know," he says, giving the case in his father's hand a dirty look before returning to his room and his packing; he shuts his bedroom door as Chris had taught him to do whenever something comes in with that marker, and he crosses his mental fingers that they'll at least get to make the trip down to his Aunt's house.
(The datachip holds a file, just one. It's instructions and a time frame and a list of names of those who will accompany him on this mission. And Chris really, really hates the 'fleet when he spies the date and realizes that he's going to miss Jim's birthday because their ship-out date is the day before.
He sighs, getting a flash of Starfleet Law in his head: If everything seems to be going well, don't be happy—the 'fleet's timing will quickly turn that around.)
They pack, they spend the holidays with Chris's sisters, and when it's over and Melody and her family board a shuttle that will take them to the transport which will then head back to Tarsus IV, Jim is set to board with them. He's jittery though and not entirely sure why he feels like something bad is looming on the horizon; he clings to Chris for a few extra seconds when they hug goodbye, as if something is telling him to take the strength he can from his father right now.
"Hey, what is it?" Chris asks when he tries to pull back from the hug only to be gripped tighter.
"It's..." Jim shakes his head. "I don't know."
Chris kisses Jim's temple, then pulls back and grips his son's shoulder. "It's going to be fine."
"I know."
"Be good for Aunt Melody, all right?"
"Yes, sir."
"I love you, son, and I will see you in ten weeks," Chris tells him, then adds, "But if you need something—anything—call Uncle Rich. Or Admiral Archer."
"Okay." Jim blushes a little at the declaration of love since he's at that age, but nods and steals another hug before racing up the ramp into the shuttle.
Chris will never tell Jim that in that moment, he too felt an overwhelming moment of dread, but he'd brushed it off, thinking to himself that he's just being overprotective.
Later, he will regret this very much.
(This is where the news media will finally get something right.
The disaster on Tarsus IV is not the sole reason Chris decides that he will take a job at Headquarters for a time. It really isn't. But it factored into the decision just a little bit, and they're right in the reports when they say that Jim's health had been the deciding factor in the end.
Granted, they don't know that it had also been Boyce, looking at him with concern, and Number One's calm reciting of reality that had tipped him over the edge. That this last thing had pushed Chris into spending most of ship's night making calls to other Captains and Admirals, trying to find a way to stay on Earth for a little while because otherwise he'd have to leave Jim behind and that simply was not going to happen.
The media, of course, does get some things wrong: they say the disaster had affected him with the deaths of his sister and brother-in-law, that identifying his nephew's body had left him with anger toward Starfleet; Archer will send out official memos on Starfleet letterhead correcting them, because this part Chris wants corrected. It wasn't Starfleet he blamed then, and he still doesn't hold them responsible now.
He reserves all that for himself.
But before all that, there is a mission to Risa and Chris doesn't think much of the fact that he hasn't heard from Jim in too long. The kid's fourteen, he's a teenager, and he's been good but starting to push his boundaries, which Chris absolutely understands.
Still, he figures he'll call today and check in.)
There's no communication coming out of Tarsus, and getting something in is taking everything Starfleet can manage. Blackwell is having fits and Barnett is all but tapdancing his way to his ship with Archer sneaking clearance to Space Dock; the clamps are off and they're at warp before anyone even realizes his heading. There's a dozen messages about insubordination and decorum and under it all, Rich easily reads the undercurrent of Get there. Get there as fast as you can. We don't know how many are dead.
He swallows thickly, squeezing the arms of the chair as he processes the names not only of Jim Kirk through his mind but of dozens of other Starfleet dependents: the colony had been built through Starfleet channels with Starfleet engineers and Starfleet families. It was a Starfleet experiment, honestly, a chance to see if they could actually build this type of colony on land that had to be terraformed in order to grow crops; it's a research colony in the end, created with hopes of finding ways to advance their current pool of knowledge.
To say it came out of the Kelvin isn't entirely right, but after the destruction of the ship, so much in Starfleet had changed. They were exploring further and funding more research, upgrading weapons on some of the ships and there were even whispers of building ships purely for combat.
It's terrifying.
"Sir, we'll be in orbit over Tarsus IV in three minutes."
"Yellow alert," he orders, forcing the bile down and sitting up straighter.
"Yes, sir."
If the next three minutes are the longest of Rich's life, then the ones after are the fastest and he fights to keep his head in the game. It all comes so fast and furious, from the second the landing party beams down: there's a security team that's racing through compounds, hunting Kodos, and the medical staff is nearly overrun by dying mothers with dying children; there's barely a moment to breathe as his communications officers start sending out message after message telling Starfleet to send whomever they can, and someone reports from the mess what they have and what they can feed the starving and there's rations and protein nibs, and there's a comm chiming somewhere and...
Rich holds his hands out to stop the onslaught. "One. At a time," he says, proud when his officers take a second to huddle and determine what's more important and line up in that order. "Okay. Take me through it."
The situation, they tell him, is dire. A fungus had destroyed the crops and Kodos, rather than contact Starfleet within days of the failure, had instituted martial law, then quietly gathered his most loyal and outlined a plan of eugenics. Of who would live and who would die.
"There's less than four thousand down there and no one is in good shape. Doctor Caine says we need every person Starfleet Medical can spare," Janet, the senior nurse, explains.
Duncan, a wet-behind-the-ears security ensign, adds, "The number is a rough estimate too, sir. Apparently there's a ton of people who took off when the death squad came and are hiding out in the plains—there's a whole cave network that we're going to have to search."
This is a catastrophe. Pure and simple.
"All right. We'll have reinforcements here in a few hours. Until then, Medical, get a triage area set up and do whatever is necessary within the confines of our current supplies. Duncan, tell Chief Alexanders that we need to get a secure zone set up. Start with the main compound and work further out. Make sure there is a team searching for Kodos at all times. I want this bastard found yesterday." He looks over to Rustico and dismisses the others, then seals the Bridge and tells his Lieutenant, "Get me Admiral Archer."
It doesn't take long for the man to pop onto the forward viewscreen. He looks drawn and pissed off, and it takes Rich a minute to realize that Archer isn't at HQ but on a ship himself. "That bad, sir?"
"I'm headed to the Endeavor." He doesn't say that he's trying to reach Chris and Derek Anders on their mission before this shitstorm comes out publicly. "How bad is it?"
"I don't think there's a word in Standard to describe it accurately."
"Death toll?"
"Over half the colony. We don't have solid numbers and we won't for a while due to several factors, but as soon as I know, I'll pass it on to Admiral Blackwell." He settles into his chair, saying, "We haven't been given the names of ships being sent yet."
"Right now, it's the Armstrong, the Yorktown, and the Farragut. They were the first three that could be fueled and loaded. I'll have the Endeavor and the Truman a few hours behind." Archer rubs his eyes. "We've contacted Vulcan and they're prepared to lend whatever help they can should we need it."
"We may need their help with the critically ill."
"Ambassador Sarek is standing by for any requests."
Rich nods. "ETA on the other ships?"
"Twelve to fourteen hours. So do what you have to in order to stabilize things down there for now. Once the Armstrong arrives, get your crew on disaster protocol."
The wince is held back by an act of God, because really, disaster protocol... that's not just triage tents and getting people out of there, it's getting a working hospital up and running and doing things in waves. It's contacting family members, getting psych staff in here, social workers, and organizing housing.
This is long term.
This is going to be hell.