Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay again, but yesterday was my sister's birthday! Ironic considering the contents of this chapter. Thank you all for keeping me going, especially considering your responses to the 8th chapter! You guys are phenomenal! Also, special thanks to starsinger for the idea for this prompt! Hope everyone enjoys!
9. Fight
"Sir, one of the fugitives from Drele has continually been causing problems."
Jim raised an eyebrow, Spock style. "Which one of them?"
His Security Chief's eyebrow quirked. "Their leader. He refused to tell us his name, but he has blond hair and green eyes."
"Hmm, I don't think I've seen that one yet. Strange. Well, thank you, Commander; I'll go check him out. Can't have him disrupting the ship with those Jasprian ambassadors aboard." As he walked toward the brig, Giotto swore he heard the Captain mutter, "Could it be...?"
The leader of the criminals looked up as Jim appeared in front of their holding cell. Yep, it's him all right, the Captain thought grimly. I'll never forget his eyes. Though his hair has changed a lot...
"Fancy seeing you here," Jim said coolly. "I should have guessed you'd get yourself tangled up in something like this this long after you left."
The inmate's brow furrowed. "I'm sorry, do I... uh, know you?"
"Do I know you... Captain," Jim corrected him. "And no, you don't. Or at least, not anymore. After all, people do tend to change a lot after eighteen years, don't they, Sam?"
His words were like a punch to the gut; the inmate jumped to his feet and came closer to the Captain, staring intently at his eyes. Several seconds later, he flinched away from the glass separating them. "J - Jimmy?" he gasped. Then the shocked expression on his face gave way to unbridled anger. "You, a Starship captain?! After everything that's happened? Who the frick do you think you are, Jimmy?!"
Jim didn't deign him with a response, but instead turned to the squadron of guards outside the cell. "I apologize in advance for the disruption he is undoubtedly about to cause, gentlemen. He must have a lot to say after eighteen years, after all."
Then Jim was gone, and Sam was surrounded by his band of ruffians, all now curious about his connection to Starfleet's premier Captain.
"I can't believe it," Jim muttered. "Eighteen years, and he ends up as the leader of one of the Federation's most wanted smuggler rings. First off, I can't believe I didn't hear about him sooner. And now I -" he broke off, unable to go on.
Bones gazed at him sympathetically and poured him another shot. "Jim, I think he just needed some direction, a purpose in life, just like you did several years ago. You were lucky - Chris was the one who found you. Maybe - maybe Sam didn't get someone like that. Maybe instead -"
"A dark, twisted criminal mastermind found him and took him under his wing? Yeah," Jim snarled. Suddenly, the anger disappeared from his manner and he looked old, so old. "I just - the Sam I knew would never have stooped this low. Yeah, he could be kind of a jerk sometimes, but this? This is a whole 'nother level."
Bones sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "You've changed a lot in the past year, Jim. Imagine what the past eighteen have done to you and him."
A stricken expression came over Jim's face. "Bones, I - I was so cold to him. I treated him the way Winona -" he still refused to call her 'mother,' and probably always would - "used to treat me." He grabbed the glass and downed it, then set it back down, fingers trembling. "I see my brother for the first time in nearly twenty years, and all I can do is treat him like I did the Tribbles that infested the ship a year ago. And yet, after how much my words must have stung him earlier, I'm still so angry at him." He shook his head and let out a sharp bark of humorless laughter. "Just goes to show you what kind of a guy I really am, eh, Bones?"
"Shut up, Jim," Bones said quietly. "Shut up or I swear I'll hunt down every frickin' bastard that's ever made you think of yourself as scum. Starting with that son of a gun Frank. Dang it Jim, you are your own worst enemy. After all you've done for Earth, for everyone on this blasted ship, how in the frick can you still put yourself down so much? So you treated him like scum. Well, sometimes a stiff, polite reminder isn't enough, Jim. Just like how I'm talking to you right now, Jim, I'm not being all mushy or heartwarming, I'm getting in your face and telling you like it is. And after getting himself this deeply embroiled in large-scale criminal activity, he needs a wake-up call, Jim. You provided it, and very efficiently so, according to Lieutenant Hendorff. So in my mind, you did what you had to do and left it at that. It's like when you refuse to come down to Sickbay and I practically drag your unwilling butt down there and hypo you to the ends of the universe! Even though we're best friends, I refuse to shirk on my duties as CMO, Jim. Just as you refuse to do so as our Captain."
Jim stared at him for several moments, struck speechless for once. Slowly, a grateful smile spread across his face. "Thank you, Bones," he whispered. Without warning, the grumpy doctor was pulled into a bone-crunching hug for a few seconds, then Jim was striding purposefully down the hallway toward the turbolift.
He arrived back at the brig, and not a moment too soon, either. Sam and his gang were raising up a racket, complaining loudly and "tinkering" with every part of the ship that they could get their grimy hands on. The Science and Security officers nearby were visibly annoyed.
Hmm, he'd have to work on that bit of the picture with them. He refused to give their prisoners the satisfaction of knowing they'd rankled the best of Starfleet.
But in the meantime...
"What the frick is going on here?" he bellowed in his best stern Captain voice.
Everyone froze. If not for the seriousness of the situation, he would have doubled over laughing at the expressions on their faces. Even Sam's, because for a moment he'd looked like a naughty child that had just been caught stealing a cookie from the forbidden jar. Well, for a moment at least. Now he looked like he wanted to kill him.
"So the Captain has finally emerged from his lair," Sam sneered. "Thought you'd hibernate a lot longer, considering the huge monster from your past that just reared its big ugly head."
Jim threw his infamous Death Glare at him for several moments without speaking, and Sam felt sweat beginning to trickle down his neck. If there was one thing to know about Jim Kirk, it was that while he was frightening when he blustered and bellowed, he was at his most dangerous when silent. Sam should know - he grew up with him.
Eventually, the Captain spoke.
"Security. Let him out."
A less courageous man than Sam would have flinched - just like the others in his band of rebels and even some of the nearby Starfleet officers did - at the icy venom palpable in the Captain's words.
When the leader of the squadron hesitated to push the release button, Jim turned to face him. "That's an order, Hendorff," he snapped.
The instant Sam saw the Security officer push down on the button, he was out of there and lunging at Jim. But thanks to that niggling sixth sense of his that improved with every away mission they went on (though he has no doubt that past experience also taught him well), Jim anticipated the attack and dodged to one side at the last moment.
"Oh, you just pulled a Frank move, Sam. Better watch out," Jim commented drily, slipping back into arrogant infuriating bastard mode as he turned back toward his older brother, tsking.
"All right, now you're just begging to get beaten senseless," Sam snarled, launching himself toward Jim again.
"Me? I'm the one who deserves to be beaten senseless?" Jim chuckled darkly. "I don't think so." He caught Sam by the elbow and judo flipped him, Academy style, onto the floor (though perhaps a bit harder than necessary. Just a bit.). His older brother oomphed from the force of the impact.
The darkness that was in Jim, always had been and forever would be, had burst through his dam. There was no going back now.
He jerked Sam up on his feet again, and then his fists were a blur of motion, sending his older brother reeling and utterly powerless to defend against them. But with every major hit, Jim was growling another explanation.
"That was for leaving me with that son of a gun Frank. That was for never calling, not once, after you left. That was for never showing me how to properly deal with girls and, later, women. That was for not being there on Tarsus."
He'd wager more than three-quarters of the people in the area - yes, including the criminals - gasped at that last sentence. He paused, breathing heavily and glaring at Sam, whose face had paled more in the space of the last few seconds than Jim thought possible.
"Geez, Jimmy," his older brother whispered brokenly. "I - you were there? When he gave the order -?"
"Don't call me that! And yeah, I was sent there after I drove the frickin' car off that cliff," Jim retorted. "Amazing what background knowledge will do to someone's opinion!"
The sympathy vanished from Sam's eyes with that exclamation. "I could be saying the same thing to you, brother. Do you know why we did the things we did, why we committed all those oh-so-horrid crimes against your petty Federation?"
Jim gave a sharp bark of humorless laughter - the second time in as many hours, he mused. "Oh, that's an easy one. Because you're not the Sam I thought I knew. Not anymore."
And with that, Jim was stalking back toward the turbolift, tossing over his shoulder, "Get him back in there."
Sometime I'll have to explain more about Sam's motives, but I think this'll do for now. Thanks for your patience. Hope you enjoyed!