Chapter 31

Time moves forward, as it always does, and sometimes it feels like rocks in the pit of Kirk's soul, and sometimes it feels like he closes his eyes for a moment and, when he opens them, three months have disappeared. Another birthday comes and goes, and he's still the youngest Admiral in 'Fleet history, though he's catching up on his wife, who earned her braid three months shy of her fortieth birthday. Kirk spends the day on Luna, staring out at the black expanse of a skyless horizon from a windowed meeting room in AuxCom while decisions happen and progress is made, and, when he returns to Earth that evening, he makes his way to Ocean Beach and walks quietly on the sand as stars appear in the indigo vaults above.

Bones sends one of his infrequent comms in honor of the day, bluntly wondering if the powers that be have got Kirk in Nogura's chair yet and promising to bring home something worthy of the occasion when he's next on Earth. A message from his mother assures Kirk that he's never far from her thoughts; a message from Scotty promises to drink to his health; Uhura thanks him for the recommendation that has her seconded to the Communications array on Sulis II - the most beautiful place she's ever worked, she says - and hopes he'll have a pleasant day. Mass-market mail-shots offer unmissable birthday discounts; officers he's met once or twice at functions he can hardly remember wish him two dozen cultural variations on a theme; and Lori, who has reluctantly acceded to his requests that the day be left unmarked, has left a single red rose waiting for him on his desk when he gets home that night, accompanied by a two-line missive that reads, You said you didn't want a fuss. This is me not making a fuss. Happy birthday - I love you.

There's nothing from anyone else. He knew there wouldn't be. It has been almost a year now, and, in any case, Vulcans don't do birthdays.

But life is good. Life is fine. Life carries on, regardless. Heading Starfleet Operations gives him much greater autonomy and freedom to use his judgment as he sees fit, and there's a chance to make the kind of changes that the organization needs: the kind of changes that make life a little bit easier for the men and women filling the boots he used to wear. He can make sensible decisions about deployments, about tactics, about when a Captain needs to be left alone to make the best use of the resources available to them and when it's time to send in the cavalry, and how many reinforcements to send, and in what manner of ship. He can talk ambassadors and diplomats and Federal representatives down from their default assumption that they know better than anyone else how to run a mission, a starship, or, indeed, a bridge crew, and he can make sure that merit is recognized, rewarded, promoted - or left alone - as the situation demands. In many ways, he thinks, this was a natural progression for him. Nothing lasts forever, and, if summer's lease hath all too short a date, then the rational response is to look for ways to be content with fall.

Cochrane Day sees Starfleet host the delegation from Eremitis, newly inducted members of the Federation, and it's good, it's what he needs: something to focus his mind away from memories of this day last year. Nogura corners him afterwards, as Kirk is waiting for Lori to finish talking to a garrulous Eremitian attaché, and steers him over to a quiet corner by the bar to congratulate him on the anniversary of his promotion.

"I knew you'd excel at this, Jim," he says, eyes roaming the room with the watchfulness of an old hunter, drifting over scattered pockets of stragglers as they disperse into the night. "I've never been wrong yet."

"Thank you for the opportunity, sir," says Kirk carefully, but the angry ache is little more than a dull, background throb these days. Most of the time, he doesn't even know it's there. "I'm gratified by your faith in me."

The old man chuckles softly. "I'm not so sure you'd have said that this time last year," he says.

And Kirk makes himself laugh, makes himself slice straight through memories of a silent apartment; of the sensation of waking to emptiness where a body should be, pressed up tight against him; of opening his eyes and seeing a figure on the other side of the room, cold and still as marble, and knowing, knowing, that it was over… He says, "You may be right, sir. I guess I might have been blinded by my own… inclinations."

"I knew you didn't want it," says Nogura, and still his eyes don't leave the dwindling crowd. "But I also knew it was the way things needed to be. I hope you've forgiven the… ah… the manner of the announcement, so to speak."

He doesn't say anything, but Spock's eyes, pointed resolutely at the floor, lift to meet his - slowly, reluctantly, as though it takes all his energy to make this one tiny gesture and there's nothing left for anything else. And he knows. He knows.

"I knew a man," says Kirk quietly, "who was fond of saying, 'There is no offense where none is taken'." It's amazing, really, how easy it is to speak the words now, to bring them to mind and let them fall from his mouth as though they mean nothing at all. "I think that sentiment is appropriate here."

In profile, he sees Nogura's face crease into a faint smile. "Nevertheless, it was an underhanded move on my part," he says. "Do you know why I did it?"

Kirk feels his jaw tighten, but he keeps his voice light. "You wanted to make sure I couldn't refuse," he says.

But Nogura shakes his head. "I wanted to make it difficult for you to refuse," he says. "To tell the truth, I was only about 70% sure I wouldn't see your resignation on my desk first thing Monday morning. It was a calculated risk, Jim, but some things are important enough to take the chance." His eyes slide sideways. "Thank you for proving me right."

He sits up slowly, carefully, scrubs a hand across his face. The room has never felt so cavernous, so cold. He says, quietly, "It wasn't my intention to…"

But Spock silences him with a minute shake of his head. "The fault was mine," he says, like he always does, and Kirk can't help the bitter laugh that escapes before he can catch it, force it back inside where it can't do the damage it wants to do...

"Well," he says, resolutely, and he makes himself smile. "As it turned out, a change was exactly what I needed."

-o-o-o-

But the words stay with him, long after Lori finally extricates herself from loquacious Eremitian hospitality and her husband from a conversation that he'd really rather not have; long into the night, the restless morning that follows it, and the days beyond. Despite what Nogura thinks, resignation was never an option for Kirk, then or now: there were a couple of moments, in that dark week that followed, when the idea danced in front of his eyes like a mirage, a siren call, but it was always accompanied by a wave of nihilistic apathy so disturbing to his sense of himself that he dismissed it without examining it too closely. Because there is only so much a man can accommodate inside the confines of his own head, and upending whatever parts of the universe still appeared to function just seemed like a step too far.

It was a bad week.

Not this time, you stubborn son-of-a-bitch, he remembers writing in a moment of intemperate fury some time in the small hours of Wednesday morning, sixty-four hours after Spock had walked out of his apartment in a haze of regret and ill-considered words - sixty-four hours in which all messages, all comms, all attempts to contact him had gone unanswered. Not again. I won't permit it. If friendship means anything to you at all, be at Roselli's on Haight at 2000 hours Thursday. You don't get to hide from this.

It was 0500 before he finally managed to sleep, sprawled, fully dressed, on his untouched sheets, as the first fingers of dawn were struggling over the horizon.

That was the day that Bones arrived in his office, gray-faced and subdued, with a story to tell. That was the day Kirk knew for certain that he'd take the damn stripes, the job, the unending service, the chains that bind him to a planet he's long since ceased to regard as home: because there was, abruptly, nothing else left.

-o-o-o-

The new orders come through on Tuesday afternoon, and he forwards them to Ciana without a word, which is petulant behavior unbecoming a Rear Admiral, but it has been a trying few days and they're not exactly on the best of terms. Chief of Starfleet Operations - he has no idea why Nogura has chosen this particular brand of perdition, but this is how it is to be, and it comes with another new office and assignment patch, just as he was starting to get used to the look of the Xeno insignia on his chest where his goddamn ship ought to be.

Wednesday morning, then, he spends tying up loose ends, preparing a handover dossier for his successor, packing away his few personal possessions, and answering messages of congratulations in effusive terms that make him want to spit. And the worst, the absolutely most intolerable thing about this whole debacle, is that there is nowhere he wants to be right now less than his damn apartment, but he can't even hide out in work anymore. I've got this, his colleagues will say with a cheerful smile, or, You don't need to worry about that now, sir, and he feels like snatching the damn PADDs out of their hands and barricading himself in his office where he doesn't have to look at an endless parade of earnest good wishes reflected on the faces of people who genuinely think this is something he would ever have wanted.

Late-morning, Kirk is sitting at his desk trying to string another hour's work out of the 57 Camelopardalis A file, when he hears his door slide open and a soft, solitary footfall announce the presence of another body in the room. He doesn't look up. There is literally nobody in the world who has cause to be walking into his office right now who will not annoy him.

"Can it wait?" he snaps.

There's a pause. Then a familiar voice says, "Well, how 'bout I tell you what it is, then you tell me if it can wait?"

Kirk's head snaps upright, eyes widening in surprise and unexpected pleasure. "Bones!" he says. The chair slides backwards as his legs get him upright, hand stretching out to greet his friend. "Have a seat. What are you doing here?"

"Yeah," says the doctor, but he drops into one of the guest chairs in that comfortable way of his, like a marionette with the strings cut. "Funny story; you should hear it."

"Funny?"

"Well… no." McCoy glances up as his friend lowers himself into the seat across the desk. "Not really. I guess not."

"You want coffee?"

"Might need somethin' a mite stronger in a minute," says Bones. His lips curl upwards but his eyes abstain. "Got a comm from your CO this morning. Seems she thought it'd be a good idea if you and me had a chat."

"I'm between COs at the moment, Bones," Kirk points out.

"The one who signs your paycheck for the next two-and-a-half days," says the doctor. His fingers run distractedly along the edge of Kirk's desk, where a tiny notch has been split into the veneer by some ancient accident. "Thing is," he says slowly, "looks like she got her hands on some information that you oughtta know. I guess… the way things are right now with you and her… she didn't think she was the one to give it to you. Can't say I blame her, really. Just not sure I'm the one to give it to you either."

"Bones," says Kirk, in what he hopes is a philosophical tone, "they took away my ship and my crew and everything I ever worked for or cared about. I'm almost certain I'm bulletproof right now."

"I hope so, Jim," says Bones. He sighs, and his fingers worry at the dent, polished smooth by the years, eyes following the movement as though it's the most important thing in the world. "I sure hope that's true."

-o-o-o-

The letter arrived that afternoon: old-fashioned paper and ink, entrusted to the vagaries of an almost-defunct internal mail system in a manner designed to ensure that it was not delivered until the sender was safely out of reach. There's been a mistake, Kirk had told Bones that morning with a tight smile and a shake of the head, back in those final hours when it was still possible that this was true. He wouldn't leave without telling me. And he remembers the certainty in his voice as he said it, the unassailable conviction, because no matter what had happened, no matter how badly he had handled the single most important conversation of their friendship, no matter the words that had fallen out of his mouth before he could rein them in, he knew Spock better than that. He wouldn't leave in silence, without a backward glance. He would not leave without telling Kirk.

But Spock had told him, he realized, as his eyes scanned the elegant lines of Vulcan cursive: a single page of neat, familiar writing that closed the doors of denial and leached something cold and empty into his veins. He can't remember the words that were used, the specific declaration of intent, but he remembers that the decision was expressed, however obliquely, somewhere among the recriminations and the hurt and the verbal bruising. Spock had told him; Kirk just… hadn't heard. They'd both said a lot of things that day.

He sits alone in his office, cradling a glass of whisky against his chest in the thin light of a single terminal screen, staring blankly at the latest list of modifications to the Enterprise's proposed refit schedule. Decker is right to push for the best of everything - it's not as though Command is likely to refuse any reasonable request that ensures their flagship is as well-equipped as she can be before she sets back out into the great unknown - but waiting for the new offline warp power conservation relays to pass initial trials has now set them back so far that they'll be lucky to get started on the main body of reconstructive work before June is out. She should have been getting ready to receive her new crew by now, engines idling, sleek white corridors flushed with the faint scent of fresh paint, and the thought of her, tethered and broken, chained to a drydock while a sprawling backdrop of silky black spreads out behind her… unsettles him. He'll be happier when she's safely on the other side of the galaxy.

Decker was a good choice for her, though; the best choice, really, and Kirk was glad, in the end, to recommend him for the chair. He understands deep space travel at a kind of primal, instinctive level that speaks to a mirror impulse in Kirk's soul; he respects the responsibilities of leadership, he respects his crew, and, above all, he respects the ship. He was born to be a Captain, and Kirk finds something satisfying in knowing that he was able to play a small part in making the workings of the universe unfold as they should. It was a full four weeks into his admiralcy before Personnel approached him for his thoughts on who ought to command his former ship - he's not sure if that was the wheels of Starfleet bureaucracy turning with their habitual efficiency, or the hand of Nogura making sure that no salt was prematurely rubbed into open wounds, but he appreciates the hiatus, nonetheless. There was a lot to process in that month.

"I just need your signature - here, and… here," says Commander Garcini from across the desk. Kirk has refused her offer of a seat, on the grounds that the meeting is unlikely to last more than two minutes - just long enough for him to sign his acceptance of a promotion that closes the sky to him for good. Unfortunately, this has caused her to feel obligated to remain standing too, and now they're both bent awkwardly across the table, backs crooked at thirty degrees, peering at the same PADD.

"Fine," he says, with less chill than he feels. He knows she hasn't requested that he meet her in her office so that he can process a document that could just as easily have been sent on the cortex. Kirk has a number of theories as to why Nogura might have instructed her to have him here in person, but, as he catches sight of the uncomfortable look on her face as she straightens, he's realizes with a sinking feeling that it is, indeed, going to be Option A.

Well. At least it gives him a moment's grace to steel himself before she asks the question.

"While you're here, Admiral…" she begins, and it is a considerable effort neither to sigh nor to roll his eyes. But he's been practicing.

"Yes, Commander?" says Kirk, though he moderates his tone. It's not her fault. None of this is her fault. And she can't be expected to know.

"Yes, sir," she says. "It's only that you understand, of course, that your promotion now officially leaves the Enterprise without a commander. Admiral Nogura has asked me to look into rectifying that situation, and - well, sir, even without your own personal knowledge of the ship, as Chief of Operations, I'd be remiss in not asking for your input. If you have any recommendations, sir, I'd love to hear them."

Kirk purses his lips, sucks in a breath. "I do," he says, and does not look up from the PADD.

To her credit, she waits at least a beat past the expiration of common courtesy. "Well, sir," she says at last, "I'll be happy to pass on any names you have to Admiral Nogura…"

"Just one name," says Kirk. He scrawls his signature at the bottom of the contract, sets it down smartly on the edge of her desk with a muted clip. An upward glance fixes her with the sort of stare that has to be met, and he says, "Commander Spock."

Garcini's face blanks in consternation, and there's a moment where she's demonstrably trying to work out how to answer. Kirk can practically hear her lining the words up inside her head, testing them for errors and misapprehensions before she speaks.

"Sir," she says slowly. "Commander Spock is no longer in service with Starfleet."

"Yes. I know." Kirk slides the PADD across the desk to her with a nod and a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and crosses to the door at a brisk stride. At the threshold, he turns, looks back, meets her uncertain gaze. "Ask him if he'd come back for that," he says, and he walks away.

He won't tell Decker that his was the second name out of the hat, of course - the fallback option - and, in truth, he's not, not really: only the logical corollary of a very long shot. He's a good man - a smart man, the right man. Decker on the bridge of the Enterprise is the sort of compromise that makes this thing start to look all right, the sort of compromise that makes it possible to conceive of her setting her first course heading without Kirk giving the order that sets her free again. Because nothing lasts forever. You take what you've got and you run with it, and you make the best you damn well can of it, because that's life. And life is good. Life is fine.

Life carries on, regardless.

-o-o-o-

T'Kel releases his consciousness and sits back on her knees, folding her hands in her lap.

"The attachment is strong, Spock," she says again, though this is news to neither of them; they have both known for many months that it is the case. "However, it need not be insurmountable. Many pass through these halls seeking freedom from the bondage of immoderate ashaya. Yours is simply… more pronounced."

Spock says nothing, head bowed as he stares quietly at the abstract pattern of sand on flagstone. He awoke again last night with Jim's name on his lips and arousal burning in his belly. It is becoming intolerable.

She says, "Your Way will not be easy. You must labor hard to find the root of your partiality, so that you may begin the process of casting it aside." She looks up, fixes her eyes on him. "Are you prepared?"

Jim. He is Spock's constant shadow, the ghost at his shoulder, the whisper on the wind - the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes at night, the first thought on his mind when he greets the new day.

Spock does not meet her stare. But he says, "I am prepared."