Chapter 38

December blows itself out in watery grays and browns and a series of vacuous, self-important Fleet parties at which Kirk's attendance is not optional, but, on the whole, he considers, it could have been worse. It has been a strange sort of year, and he won't be sorry to bid it farewell in a couple of days, but, he thinks, though the past twelve months have seen the sands shift again beneath his feet, the shape they've formed as things have settled feels like something he can finally get a handle on. Marriage was a mistake, that much is clear, and the fallout has been predictable: silent acrimony that stretched into black and sullen months, a hollow pit of loneliness and regret, a series of questionable decisions made too late at night, and a tension strung so tight that, for a while, people stopped inviting them both to the same meetings. January was a bad month: the initial relief at finding himself cut loose from conjugal ties that had begun to feel like a noose turned out to be short-lived, and, as the practicalities of separation — a new billet, the packing and unpacking of his things, the legalities of moving from married to unmarried — faded into the background, suddenly there was just silence and solitude and the creeping suspicion that what he'd wanted, after all, was not an end but a change, though he had no idea what that was supposed to look like.

The truth was, he missed her. Not the marriage, not the intimacy, not the company, but Lori: her care, her concern, the security she represented. He's not so self-absorbed that he can't see that what he was prepared to offer her in return wasn't precisely of equal value, but he guesses he'd gotten used to the idea that, whatever happened, he still mattered to at least one person. He missed that, after it was gone. He missed her. And Kirk was just so tired of missing people.

But there were courtesies to be observed and there was work to be completed, and their joint Xeno/Fleet Ops projects didn't disappear just because their relationship did. The more they practiced pretending that everything was all right, the more it began to feel as though it might be, and, besides, their pattern was drawn long before they made it official. Advance, erupt, retreat and rectify; they'd done it before, and, he realises now, he just assumed that, one way or another, they'd find a way to do it again. But January rolled into February and on into March and nothing was better, nothing was different; they maintained an air of basic professional civility during business hours, but that was all. It wasn't until the middle of the month, when she still hadn't made a move towards a more substantial reconciliation, that it suddenly occurred to Kirk to wonder if it was, perhaps, neither sensible nor legitimate to expect her to make all the effort again this time, just because she always had done in the past. It was different this time, and that was, in no small measure, his fault: he might not have broken the marriage, but he'd certainly been content to let it fall apart, and, in his ex-wife's shoes, he's not so sure he'd have even felt like meeting him halfway, let alone reaching out the lonely hand of friendship. And so, after a series of internal debates, second-guessing and equivocation, he sent her a short message, deliberately casual, asking if she'd be prepared to meet for drinks at the Casa Lavanda after work on a day of her choosing.

Her reply was six words long and took twelve hours to arrive. What the hell, she wrote. But you're buying.

Later, weeks later, once they'd fallen back into a kind of wary entente, she told him how close she'd been to refusing. I wanted to tell you where to stick your drinks, she said, and her smile, though gaining in conviction now, did little to gloss over the residual anger in her eyes. The Casa Lavanda, Jim? Really?

In vain, Kirk tried to protest that it had seemed appropriate: once upon a time, they'd sat in those same jacquard-covered seats and toasted the tentative beginnings of a new friendship, but that, it seemed, was her point. He's not a whole lot clearer now than he was then about where he went wrong, but he's played it safe since then. The next round he bought them was in Trombino's.

She's likely to be at tonight's reception, he knows, and, if not, she certainly can't avoid Nogura's New Year's Eve shindig, where the appearance of the Chief of Starfleet Operations is also mandated by convention, politesse, and the deceptively affable smile of their commander-in-chief. But this is no longer the source of any particular consternation.

This time last year, Kirk might have found himself inclined to concoct some lengthy reason to be elsewhere based solely on the fact of her presence, but things are better now, and they've spent the months between then and now carving out a space between them that's not quite friendship, not quite collegiality, but something undefined, somewhere in the middle. They've got to a place where it's possible to seek out each other's company without artifice or expectation, to be honestly pleased to see one another again, to spend time together because they once enjoyed spending time together and it looks like they've managed to claw that back. She's better at it than Kirk is, as he'll freely admit, and so he'll let her take the lead when he sees her tonight, let her dictate the pace and the terms of their interaction, let her decide when to approach and when it's time to retreat. But he knows how it will go, because they've done it before: she'll be there already when he arrives, and she'll smile that golden smile of hers when she catches his eye, sweep over to him with a couple of drinks and raise a glass to his health with an enthusiasm that, as far as he can tell, is, these days, entirely genuine. She'll see that he's alone, and she'll make her joke, the one she always makes, because her ex-husband's continuing solitude makes her uncomfortable and it colors their conversation unless she allows herself to address it up front, and the only way to do that is with humor. Jim Kirk, she'll say, one of these days you're really going to have to get over me, you know. And he'll laugh, and she'll laugh, and the tension will break a little, and, though she'll introduce the man on her arm — you remember Arne Ostergard, right, Jim? — she won't call him her date, and nobody will know where to look until Kirk sticks out a hand for the young Commodore to shake with an air of manifest relief. And Kirk will feel her gaze on him — liquid with some kind of unnamable sadness — but she'll look away when he meets it, take a sip from her glass and smile brightly, tell him he's looking good and that they have to do lunch some time, and she'll mean it, enough to have her Yeoman make arrangements with his office some time in the New Year, on a day she'll know he has no excuse not to be there. Because she's better at this than Kirk. She's the reason they get to be okay, and he's glad of that, even if, every time he sees her, all he can think about is how simple things used to be between them before he went and screwed it up with marriage.

He hopes Ostergard is better for her than he was. She deserves that much at least.

Kirk leans back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head, and lets his gaze fall on the darkening city beyond his office window. In a few weeks, he thinks — early spring, maybe — he's going to take a vacation: a real one, the kind with a destination and an itinerary and a PADD full of guidebooks; the kind that's going to and not running from. It has been a long year, and it's time to get out of San Francisco for a while, find somewhere to make a whole new set of memories that have nothing to do with the shadows that wait for him here around every corner. He remembers, years ago, in an old copy of Homer that he found on the shelves of his uncle's cabin, reading Tiresias' instruction to Odysseus to walk inland, carrying his oar on his shoulder, until he found a place where the people knew nothing of the sea and mistook it for a winnowing fan. Kirk wonders if there's anywhere left, now, where he might be able to say the same of his Starfleet insignia. He doubts it, but he'd like to maybe see about finding out for sure.

In a few weeks. March, maybe, for his birthday, or April; God knows, he'd rather not spend another Cochrane's Day on his own, drinking more than he intended to in a bar he didn't even particularly like just because there wasn't one damn thing in his apartment that day that didn't make him think of things he'd rather not remember. He doesn't like his chances of convincing Nogura to let him go incommunicado for the day of Starfleet's biggest annual PR opportunity, but that's another problem for another day. For now, he has three more painfully political soirees to grin his way through, sweeping him neatly past the dying hours of one year and into the first breaths of the new, and then a grateful Admiral Kirk will have a half-dozen perfectly legitimate and scrupulously professional reasons to make his way off-world for a while, into the black oceans above where feels like he can finally catch his breath. He's been asked to officiate the graduation ceremony at the Academy on Psi Upsilon III; he has a seat at a week-long negotiation program on Mareotis VI; and he needs to spend some time at the Utopia Planitia shipyards with a red pen, Admiral Heng, and about six dozen PADDs of biannual fleet-readiness reports. And, somewhere above him, one shimmering point of light in a sea of industry, a ship named Enterprise is nearing the end of her refit: computers sparking, life support systems breathing oxygen into freshly painted corridors, antimatter chambers humming with latent energy. It's about time her former commander paid her one last visit before she's finally set free.

Funny how things change. Three years ago, he would never have imagined that this would be his life. But, he thinks, he's found his rhythm at last in this brave new world of his, and that's all it takes: one small shift of perspective, and things start to slide into place, and suddenly you wonder what you were fighting so hard against for all those months. Stripped of the constant hum of discord and the sense that everything was one misplaced word away from falling apart, it turns out that life is better than Kirk thought. Heading Starfleet Operations is not deep space command, but there's a lot to be said for membership of Nogura's inner circle, and it certainly doesn't hurt to wake up every morning absent the threat of explosive decompression, warp core destabilization, or death by photon torpedo. His ship will continue the work he started, and that's what matters. Kirk carries his old life with him like a locket around his soul, an old lover who left their mark in a scar that won't quite heal, but it's easier, now, to run into reminders of days past, and the Admiral's smile, which used to stretch so tightly across his face sometimes that it left his jaw aching, feels less like artifice now and more like the gesture of a man who's made his peace with the world.

What is, is; the past is out of reach. There's only what comes next, and Kirk is ready to let go.

Night is falling on his city: a rich mantle of indigo and gunmetal gray. Kirk pours a fresh cup of coffee and carries it to the window, where the first stars are pricking through the velvet skies above the bay, scattered among the flash-burn of propulsion engines, the glint of the last rays of sunlight on sparkling metal, the flicker of headlights in the hazy twilight. Low on the horizon and almost invisible against the dusk, Eridanus is rising, a serpentine coil of light against black, ghosted by wisps of winter cloud. Kirk sips from his mug and stares into the dark vaults above, and, just for a moment, he allows himself to wonder, briefly, if anyone looks back at him from across the void.

Sometimes it feels as though he's never further away than the shadow at Kirk's shoulder; sometimes it feels as though he never knew him at all, as though he's faded into the shadows of history, like the heroes of the books on his uncle's shelves. It could be that it's easier that way: a face without a name, part myth, part fantasy. He belongs to another life.

Find a way to live with it, Lori told him as she left that night, but there's only one way to do that. Kirk does it every day.

Alone and unseen, he allows his head to drop forward so that it's leaning against the chill glass in front of him. It's late: too late to be at the office, too late to have time to go home and change before the reception, but too early yet to make his way over to the Pacific View for martinis and pleasantries. He ought to sit back down at his desk, open up a few files, make a few calls before everyone ranked Commodore and above simultaneously checks out for the night, but there's nothing on his desk right now that isn't going to require the application of diplomatic patience under extreme duress, and he just doesn't have the energy to dive back into that kind of fight this evening. What he wants, what he really wants, is to go home, lock the door, pull the drapes, and crack open the bottle of Armagnac that Bones managed to find on some godforsaken outpost at the tail end of the sector and send back to San Francisco in time for the holidays, along with a sardonic little note speculating on how much more in need of fine liquor Kirk might be than a man not currently chained to his desk as per Starfleet Regulation 24-7-365. He may have a point, though Kirk's not likely to admit as much any time soon. But, since brandy and solitude are two things that are not going to happen this evening, it's possible that his response to a buzz at his door — the only thing standing between Kirk and a ninety minute exercise in personal karmic growth — might be a little more enthusiastic than the situation necessarily warrants. It's certainly the impression he gets from the slightly startled expression on the face of his second-in-command as the door slides open to admit her.

"Commodore Kaplan," says Kirk pleasantly, because there is something comforting in the knowledge that, if the hours he keeps are somewhat unhealthy, he's not the only person keeping them. Although, he supposes, as he moves away from the window, gesturing to her to take a seat as he drops into his own, there's probably something to be said for pastoral care and example-setting. It's just that he remembers how well that used to work for his former CO back in his Xeno days, and he can't really see the point of insulting anyone's intelligence by pretending to try. "What can I do for you?"

Kaplan has been Kirk's Deputy for a little under a year, ever since her transfer mid-February from Material Supplies: smart, capable, ambitious, and, he suspects, increasingly resentful that her CO's workaholic reluctance to ever leave his office affords her little opportunity to show what she can do. But she's far too practiced at the Starfleet game to let it show, and, besides, Kirk's gotten to know her well enough during their months together to understand that, goal-oriented and industrious as she may be, she's also, in the final analysis, someone he can trust.

"Sir," she says, lowering herself into a leather armchair and folding her hands neatly in her lap. "I've just come from a meeting with Admirals Strong and Boudin and Commodore Pelton."

Kirk nods. "The upgrades to the communications array."

"Yes, sir," says Kaplan. She hesitates, turning her gaze towards the floor, and Kirk can see her brow furrow as she considers her next words. "Sir," she says at last. "This is… a little delicate."

Delicate. Sometimes Kirk wonders if the whole damn organization doesn't run on delicate: whispers, gossip and rumors, back-scratching and favors and friends in the right places. He smothers a sigh.

"Very well, Commodore," he says. "Rest assured that, if anyone asks, I didn't hear it from you."

"Due respect, sir," she says, "but I think it's best if you carry on as though you haven't heard it at all for now. Admiral Boudin wanted me to make it very clear that he was passing it on as a matter of professional courtesy, but that the decision had been taken at the top level to keep Fleet Ops out of the loop for now."

"Is this about 47 Tucanae?" says Kirk, who has already spent more hours than he cares to count this week trying to explain to a non-governmental attaché with the Department of the Exterior why rumors of an insurgency on the sister planet of a Federal protectorate aren't sufficient cause to scramble a Dreadnought-class warship to investigate. "Because I would have thought Admiral Boudin was in no position to comment on the situation right now. I've made Fleet Ops' position very clear. There is absolutely no justification for…"

But Kaplan is already shaking her head, even before he's finished speaking, and there's something in her expression that brings him up short.

"Ilion, sir," she says quietly. "It's Ilion."