Chapter 41
Kirk's hand is tingling.
It's something of a surprise to find that he's aware of this small fact, buried as it is beneath the strata of chaos that have layered over these past three days of triumph and confusion and discovery and loss. If he's honest with himself, there's something fascinating about the way that of everything that has happened since he took back his command, it's this in particular that his conscious mind has chosen to fixate upon: not Lori, not Decker, not how close they almost came, but the memory of cool fingers closing around Kirk's; of dark eyes that locked onto his; of a grip that latched their hands together like an anchor. He doesn't know what to make of that, and so he's let it slide into the background: one long note in an orchestra of white noise and voices that's clamoring for attention inside his aching skull. But it's dark now, though the lights are dialed up to full in this room that he doesn't recognize, and he's alone with far too many thoughts, and one of them—a particularly vociferous and insistent one; the Leonard McCoy of thoughts, if you will—is demanding that he pay attention to the network of nerves that stretch beneath the skin of his left hand. Because they are alive with remembered touch.
The ship is quiet now: the thick, focused silence of post-mission exhaustion, with only the thrum of warp engines echoing through the bulkheads and the occasional fragment of conversation from the corridor outside to break through the hush. It's both vaguely familiar and completely unknown, and this unsettles Kirk in a way that is itself disturbing: this ship has a heartbeat, but it's not the one that he remembers. All this time, all those many nights when he lay, sleepless, in an Earth-bound bed and stared through his window into the black depths above him; all those hidden, furtive dreams; all the memories he pretended to store in some disregarded archive of his mind—they were for another vessel, he thinks; both Enterprise and not. Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: maybe you really can't ever go home again.
He left Sulu in the center seat, returned to the bridge after a medically mandated eight-hour recharge break that probably ought to have included Kirk as well, but for the fact that everyone's circadian rhythm has been thrown out of whack these past few days and, so long as he wasn't quite ready to fall face-down onto a mattress and drop like a stone into thick, dreamless sleep, Kirk preferred to stay where he was and wait for the senior crew to get back before he left his ship in someone else's hands. As avoidance strategies go, it's failed to exhaust him quite as much as he'd hoped, but it has achieved the dual benefit of keeping him away from his quarters and unwelcome introspection for a little while longer, and of introducing him to the bewildering array of new faces that make up what's going to be, he guesses, his new beta shift. There is virtually no chance that Nogura's going to say no, now, when he asks for the Enterprise back, though the longer he stretches out the shakedown, the more trying that conversation is likely to be. Truth be told, Kirk was somewhat surprised to encounter so little resistance from his CIC to what was, in all honesty, something of a harebrained scheme; he blames an excess of adrenalin and not enough sleep, and to be fair, it's at least partly Nogura's fault that Kirk's not used to this combination anymore. They were in Low Earth Orbit when the intruder disappeared, with a ship that had almost wormholed them out of existence the day before yesterday; it was not only reasonable to expect that her captain would park her in the nearest drydock for a proper check-up, it was, in fact, the only rational course of action. And instead Kirk sat back in his seat and ordered the least-specific course heading in command history, and not only did his entire crew not look at him like he'd lost his mind, they have, to Bones' poorly feigned exasperation, actively colluded with him.
Oh, sure, he'd said with one of his patented McCoy scowls as the warp field coalesced into bright white ribbons of starlight across the viewscreen. Don't anybody ask what in blazes we think we're doing…
Another communication from Starfleet, sir, said Uhura, and, though her face was perfectly composed, her eyes were dancing. They're requesting clarification on your report, Captain.
I'll bet they are, muttered the doctor, close by Kirk's ear, and Kirk, whose head was presently feeling light enough to escape terrestrial gravity all by itself, opened his mouth to reply, though he had no idea what he was planning to say. In truth, he wasn't sure what more he could say—that's correct, Starfleet; request for immediate beam-down and debrief is denied. We're taking your ship out for a joyride; see you in a couple of days…—but he'll never know the answer to that one now.
Because Spock answered for him.
Spock.
Spock, who should be on Vulcan right now, surgically excising the last traces of Kirk from his thoughts and stitching over the scar with a web of logic and denial. Spock, who turned away from Kirk in a haze of acrimony and words that couldn't be taken back and disappeared into another life, another world. Spock, whose name has not passed Kirk's lips in almost three years, whose shadow has followed Kirk's every footstep, whose memories poured into the cracks of Kirk's marriage and broke it into tiny pieces. Spock of Vulcan, acolyte of Gol and almost-Kolinahru, who was, absurdly, unbelievably, gloriously standing on Kirk's bridge as a decorated admiral of several years' standing prepared to make off with the flagship of the fleet—and he went ahead and lied to Command as though he'd been doing it all his life.
Starfleet Control, this is Acting First Officer Spock, he'd said with that quiet, regal dignity of his, and, just like that, it was as though they were back in those easy, mid-mission days when what they had was well-defined and stable, before Vulcan, before Cochrane Day, before the whole stupid mess of years had ever happened. They'll have to have a word about the Acting First Officer thing, thinks Kirk, but it's for the show of things, and he's not going to bother pretending to himself that it's not. Vessel status is fully operational; however, warp core status remains precarious and I have requested a full space trial in order to collect further data. It is my opinion that this maneuver is essential to the maintenance and ongoing space-worthiness of this ship, which, as you know, was untried and operating at sub-optimal efficiencies when it was scrambled to meet the Intruder known as Vejur.
And Kirk knew without Bones' acerbic eye-roll or Chekov's blank-faced disbelief that his own eyebrows had reached for his hairline, because, no, Spock had not requested any such thing, nor was the warp core operating at anything below maximum capacity, and even if it were, the most logical course of action would be to put in at Spacedock, let the engines cool, and tell Scotty to go nuts. Starfleet know this too, of course, and their next question was a very reasonable enquiry as to why the Enterprise wasn't doing exactly that, but it cut off halfway through with a clipped acknowledgement of their coordinates and warp trajectory that essentially legitimizes the entire madcap endeavor and strongly suggests that, whatever may wait for Kirk back on Earth, Nogura is humoring him for now.
And Spock… Well, that's a little more complicated. What Spock is doing, Kirk is not entirely sure.
When he stepped, unannounced, onto the bridge two days ago, it was as though someone had switched off the sound inside Kirk's head. Nothing about that day feels entirely real. He knows he caught three, maybe three and a half hours' sleep that night because Bones made noises about nervous exhaustion and command fitness and the incompatibility of the former with the latter, until the captain gave in and took himself to this new bunk that ought not to be his, decorated to another man's specifications, but of the seven hours that he was off the bridge, he knows that no more than half of them were spent in anything approaching actual rest. He'd opened his eyes to Mediterranean sunlight more than twenty-four hours earlier, sheathed in 800-thread Egyptian cotton sheets and swallowed by an ocean of thick, downy pillows, and his future had been painted in uniform shades of gray, one day after another: a series of small compromises and smaller victories that carried him further and further from the man he used to be. And somewhere in that day, a crack had opened up in his world that let the light back in, and it was like he was waking out of a long and restless dream. Enterprise, command, purpose, desire; it was as though somebody had lit a fire in his blood, and he's not even clear about what he said to Nogura to convince him to let Kirk take his ship back, he only remembers the certainty—absolute and unassailable—that it was the right thing to do. This at least hasn't changed in the hours that followed: it was the right thing to do. It wasn't only Kirk who needed the Enterprise, he thinks; the Enterprise also needed him.
That part he can rationalise. Just about. It takes a little chewing over, but he thinks it's sunk in: he has his ship back. That trembling beneath his feet, that's the restless hum of an engine at warp. If he switches his viewscreen to exterior, it's going to show a starfield disappearing into infinity. The mattress he lies on can only have come from the sadistic fever-dreams of the soft-furnishings experts in Material Supplies, and the faint trace of ozone on the air speaks of oxygen that's been through at least one set of lungs already. This thing that was gone forever, this impossible fantasy that could never come to pass, it's here, it's back, it's all around him once again. That in itself is plenty of unthinkable for one mind to wrap itself around.
He has no idea how to process the rest.
Because Spock stepped, unannounced, onto Kirk's bridge two days ago and it was like someone had switched off the sound inside his head. He remembers standing, he remembers finding his voice from somewhere and speaking a name he never thought he'd speak again, and he remembers feeling as though a missing piece had slotted back into place, as though he'd been cold for so long that he'd ceased to notice until he felt the sun on his skin again. He remembers this now, but only because of what happened in between. Spock turned away again so quickly that whatever it was that Kirk felt in that moment was gone before he could look at it properly, locked down and buried with the closing of the turbolift door.
He thinks that he decided that the hollowness, the emptiness that hung like lead in his chest as he fought a losing battle with wakefulness that night, was for Lori, and he's still not sure he was wrong, not completely. At some point, he's going to get back to Earth and find that a woman called Alisoff is in charge of Xeno; that Ostergard's arm is empty at the Polemius Conference ball; that the light has gone out of the eyes of an old Admiral and his wife with the golden smile that can light up the room, just like her daughter's used to do. She never did get her deep space assignment, and he never did find out why. He had nearly three years beside her and not all of it was fighting; there were many, many months in which she was the only bright point of color in a washed-out wasteland, and, he thinks, in the end, she knew him better than any woman ever has. He wishes he'd thought to ask her why. He wishes it didn't feel, now that it's much too late to change this, that he never really knew her at all.
Newton's third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Push and pull. Attract and repel. Friction and motion. If Kirk has learned anything at all from his long years at the very limits of Human knowledge, it's that love is the universal constant that underpins all sentient thought: call it comradeship, call it family, call it friendship or brotherhood or eros — it defines the bonds that bind consciousness to consciousness, that create cities out of sand, that reach out into the black vaults in search of connection. And if love is just another force, then maybe it has to be lost on one hand to be regained on another.
He doesn't know. All he knows is that, two days ago, he watched one ex-lover die on a transporter pad and another appear out of the vacuum as though they were different sides of the same equation, with Kirk as the equivalency that shackles them together. And there was no time for either of them, no time to let his breath catch in his throat, to feel the sharp burn of grief both old and new, to miss his footing and collapse into a wall on legs that wouldn't hold him; there were moments, nothing more—a stiff twist of the head, a name breathed out on the edge of amazement—quickly contained by the pressing need for action, the mantle of command, and he knew even then that a part of him was glad of this. He has no idea what to do with it. And now that the anger is gone, the outrage and the purpose, he realizes that he just… doesn't know how he's supposed to feel anymore. For either of them. He has no idea at all.
Kirk considers pulling on a fresh uniform, striding down the corridors like he knows where he's going in the hope that he'll find himself at the doors of sickbay before anyone notices that he's lost, banging on Bones' office door and baptizing his new ship in whatever violent shade of liquor his friend has managed to smuggle aboard. It's a plan that has Guaranteed Psych Eval scrawled in watermark across every hastily scripted page, but he's not completely sure he cares about that right now. For the first time in his life, he thinks, he might actually be prepared to voluntarily allow someone to sluice out the darkest corners of his soul; this constant hum of potential energy, rattling through his blood with nowhere to go, is starting to make him uneasy. It's not, he's painfully aware, Bones that he wants to talk to, nor is it the want of Bones' company that's dancing across his weary brain on stilettoed feet, but he can't—he just can't go there right now. This simple feeling is all very well, but he has three years' worth of regrets to remind him that feeling, simple or not, is capricious: it's uncontrolled, it's ungovernable, and it's dangerous. He knows what he wants, what he'd like it to mean, and, if he closes his eyes and feels those long fingers curled around his, cool skin pressed tightly to Kirk's, he can believe that it does, but that's always been their problem: wanting has never been enough.
He crossed a line before and the world dropped out from underneath his feet. He needs to be very, very sure that Spock's simple feeling is the same as Kirk's before he risks crossing it again.
And what are the chances of that, really? Spock ran away once—more than once—from what was offered; he has made himself very clear. He's back now, and this has to be enough: Kirk's world just doesn't work the way it ought to unless Spock is by his side, and if it's a choice between having him and wanting, and not having him at all, then that's hardly a choice at all. He has done this before and he can do it again—he just needs to handle it better this time, that's all.
And yet… He reached for Kirk's hand, fingers closing around his bicep, sliding across his forearm to fix their hands together, and he clung to him like a man waking from a long and fevered sleep. Kirk's skin burns at the memory, as though the touch has branded itself into his flesh, and he remembers the words, low and clear and certain, and the way Spock's eyes searched for his, locked their gaze together, refused to look away. He knows what was written into his face then, because, no matter that he'd spent three years trying to carve it out and burn it, no matter what else may have passed between them, he knows—he knows—that he saw it written into Spock's. He has never been so certain of this: not on Vulcan, not in his apartment on Cochrane Day, not in the long months that followed when he was hollowed out, lost and empty, trying to walk on ground that shifted beneath him with every step and determined not to know that half his world had been cut away.
He remembers being so certain in that moment—but then that moment ended. And now? Now Kirk is acutely aware that he probably ought to be calibrating their conversation for the proximity of a recent brain injury, and that, consequently, he has no idea how to interpret the soft words and comfort that have flowed between them since then without a clear understanding of what the revised baseline might be. Now all he can see is that there are a hundred ways he could have misread what happened in sickbay, a hundred ways he could be mistaken, and the only thing he's certain about any longer is that Spock left once before and he could do it again, and pretending not to need him when he's gone is not a viable option anymore. The odds are stacked against this one; they always were. The only difference is that, this time, he knows what he stands to lose if he's wrong.
And yet…
And yet…
Kirk sits up, straightens, stretches, stands. A couple of steps take him towards the head, a couple of steps take him back towards his desk, another couple move him towards the door, restless energy rattling in his veins, skittering through his muscles, buzzing just below his skin. Goddamn it all to hell. He's going to have to go and talk to Bones. He has no idea what to do next, no idea what any of it might mean, and, if he's going to make a decision, he needs some answers first.
He just hopes he doesn't have to ask any actual questions in order to get them.