Chapter 44
Spock departs the ship at Sigma Cilicia IV with as little ceremony as marked his arrival, and Kirk does not see him off. They have said as much as can be said for now, he thinks, and he doesn't want this to become some grand farewell. This is a temporary separation between friends—an au revoir, not a goodbye—and he wants to attach no significance to the parting. And if it's the last time they see each other… well. Every leave they've ever taken could have been their last; it shows, he believes, a certain lack of faith to make a production out of this one.
So he stays on the bridge and nods his acquiescence to Uhura when the transporter room signals their readiness to energize, and contents himself with a brisk, "Good luck, Mr. Spock," as the beam engages, too late for any reply. At his right shoulder, he hears a tight intake of breath, the shifting of weight from one foot to another as Bones telegraphs his wholesale disapproval, but Kirk offers neither explanation nor counter to the steely glare that he can feel on the side of his head. Spock will either return or he will not; Kirk's trust is either misplaced or it is not, and nothing now can alter the way that things will play out. And he doesn't feel much like talking about it.
He waits long enough to receive confirmation that beam-down has been successful, then orders Sulu to plot a course heading for Earth, warp 6, and sends a missive down to Engineering to have Scotty gather his shakedown notes into a report for presentation at the Centroplex when they dock. It is fewer than twenty-four hours since they left Starfleet in a flurry of vague promises and borderline insubordination, but it's time to go home. Wherever home might turn out to be.
Kirk is not naive enough to imagine that retiring to his quarters to compile his mission debrief is likely to be a productive use of the day after last night's conversation, with or without the five hours of sleeplessness that followed, but there's movement enough in the officer's lounge to sublimate the urge to over-think, and this, he hopes, may be enough to keep his recalcitrant mind on track. He settles himself in a chair by the window, sipping from a bottomless cup of coffee, and tries to find the words to compose an account of the days that have just passed: clinical words, words of disinterested detachment, words that fail to acknowledge the thick undercurrent of loss and redemption and vindication and need that flows beneath the surface of every thought. In a few hours—half a day, maybe more—they will re-enter Earth's gravity and Kirk will stand in front of his superior officers and find some way to speak abstractly about the things that he has seen, the things that he has done, and then it will be over, consigned to history, along with the names and, for a while, the faces of the men and women who died. So much destruction, so much loss, but he can live with that, because this is command and these are the decisions they all agreed to make. He knows that it only feels as though it's personal, because he's allowed himself to think of it at such; he knows that the world does not turn on the pleasure of James T Kirk any more than it turned for Lori Ciana or Will Decker or Sonak or Ilia; he knows that, to the men and women of the admiralty in whose presence he will stand and speak of their loss, this is just another mission brought safely home again, object accomplished with minimal fuss. And he knows that they are right. It's just that he can't help but feel as though, in the final analysis, the equation is fundamentally unbalanced and that James Kirk gained too much where others have lost.
It's just that all of these things, like everything else in his life, simply make more sense when Spock is here.
Bones finds him in the early afternoon, a couple of hours after it becomes clear that Kirk is not going to break for lunch, and slides, unspeaking, into place alongside him at the viewing port. They stand quietly for a while together, warp-streaked starlight striping their faces in the shadow of the void, Bones sipping placidly from the mug in his hands, Kirk's arms folded across his chest. Last night's sickbay conversation hangs heavily between them, scattered among the unspoken accusations, the consternation, the air of general exhaustion, and Kirk knows that, for all that he could try to explain what has happened and why it had to be this way, there is some fundamental part of his friend that cannot accept his decision because he cannot reconcile himself to the promise on which it hangs.
He could try to explain it, but he won't. Because he knows that his own confidence is entirely too fragile to survive the doctor's scrutiny.
So instead, as Bones opens his mouth to break the silence, Kirk breaks it for him: strong words that brook no contradiction, soft but assured and woven through with a certainty he doesn't feel. "He's coming back, Bones," says Kirk quietly, but he doesn't turn his head, doesn't meet his friend's eyes. He doesn't need to see what's reflected there.
-o-o-o-
The day dissolves, light years sliding past the ship like ghosts in the darkness. Kirk stands on his bridge as they break warp on the edge of the Sol system, as an off-white speck on the viewscreen softens and spreads, yellow sunlight flaring against the black curtain of space, and thinks of another journey from another time, another Kirk who stood where he stands and watched the firmament fall away, and knew that the life he'd known was coming to an end. Scotty's report is on his PADD, a litany of minor inconveniences and negligible shortcomings that stretches to more than thirty pages, and Kirk's not sure if it's a figment of his chief engineer's obsession or the next phase of the alibi that his crew has conspired to construct around him; frankly, either is possible, and he doesn't think he really wants to know. One way or another, the Enterprise is going back into drydock for another few days, and days are what Kirk needs right now.
He has been vaguely expecting to be greeted by a clamoring circus of media corps, holocams and an adoring public screaming their thanks to Starfleet Best and Greatest, and has locked himself down in preparation, but Nogura, it seems, is far too good at this to make a performance out of a mission over which death hangs so recent and raw. Instead, they're met by Admiral Bernstein, somber-faced and decorous, who snaps off a polished salute which Kirk returns with gratitude and thanks them for their service. Admiral Nogura is waiting for them, she says, in his offices in San Francisco, and Kirk just bets he is.
They beam down to the Phoenix Building in respectful silence, directly into Tactical Command's private transporter array, and Kirk falls in behind Bernstein and Admiral Chavez, whose waiting presence does not bode well for the continued absence of the press, as they make their way the short distance to Nogura's office. Five days have passed since Kirk last walked these corridors. Five days in which the world very nearly ended, in more ways than one; and he thinks, as he walks, that he can feel the shadow of the man he was close at his back, ready to claim him once again. Whatever Bones may think, whatever the truth may be about what James Kirk can and can't live without, there's more at stake in the conversation to come than the fate of a ship and the question of who will command her now that her captain is gone. It was easier to be confident in the privacy of his own head, with the Enterprise still firmly beneath his feet. It was easier to be confident in the indigo shadows of a sickbay at rest, fueled by liquor and the certainty of his friend. It was easier to be confident, in fact, at every stage of this journey right up to the part where he stands beside Admiral Bernstein at a wood-paneled door and buzzes for entry, and waits for the answer to come.
And so, in the end, there's something almost inadequate about the ease with which they give her back to him again. There's no need for careful arguments or quick thinking, he doesn't have to cajole or bargain or persuade: Kirk asks for the Enterprise and Nogura accepts, on the basis of a couple of provisos that cause nobody any lasting pain, and then it's done. It's over. The black cloud lifts and it turns out that the sun had never ceased shining in this little corner of the universe; it was only a passing storm, and the skies are quiet once again. James Kirk is now the first admiral in 'Fleet history to have active command of a starship, and all he can think about is the fact that, if it were always this simple, then what the hell have the past three years been for?
Bernstein's smile is wide and open, her hand on his shoulder warm and full of understanding. There are handshakes and congratulations, solemn words of thanks and muted, understated joy, and arrangements are made for handover, mission assignments, selection of crew. And through it all, Kirk finds himself absurdly grateful for the fact that he's running on empty, that fatigue has now shut down all but his primary functions, because the whole damn thing feels so disturbingly unreal that it's almost a relief to have to wait until later to process it all.
Debrief is set for 2030 hours: time enough for Kirk to eat a warm meal, find a shower and a dress uniform for the holos, and Chavez is already pulling out his communicator to make arrangements as the meeting breaks up. Kirk knows a dismissal when he hears one, even if etiquette advises against an overt eviction from the office, given the tone and content of the meeting just past, and he turns to leave with a head full of white noise and static, but Nogura calls him back before he's got two steps towards the door.
"Jim," he says quietly, perfunctorily, "wait a moment, will you?"
Kirk turns back towards the desk, and they know each other well enough these days that it is acceptable to let one raised eyebrow ask a question as he meets the old man's eyes, but Nogura never says anything he's not planning to say, and so he simply nods, folds his hands behind his back, and waits for the room to clear, the door to close, sealing them in silence.
Alone, he gestures to the ring of armchairs in the corner of his room, set permanently for coffee with the great and good, and follows Kirk towards them, lowering himself onto a well-stuffed cushion with the ease of a much younger man. He allows Kirk to follow suit before he folds his hands at his chest, leans back, fixes him with the easy stare of the powerful.
"So," he says. "Jim. Tell me: how are you holding up?"
The question is so unexpected that Kirk's not entirely sure what he's being asked, and he's obliged to take moment to sift through the events of the past days in order to filter out a shortlist of possible candidates. It's not particularly short. "I'm fine, sir," he says carefully.
But Nogura only nods, as though he's been expecting the answer. "She was a good woman," he says quietly, "and an excellent officer. One of the best I've worked with."
Lori, of course. He really ought to have got that one. In his mind's eye, Kirk sees the shade of his ex-wife roll her eyes in good-natured exasperation; feels his throat tighten. "She was," he says, and voice sounds rough. Raw. But there's nothing he can do about that, even if he cared to try.
"I wanted you to know," says Nogura, with the gravity of a man pronouncing words to change a life, "that she was given full honors. Her name was added to the memorial wall alongside her grandmother's. Only that her parents wanted her laid to rest in the family plot in San Diego, she would have taken her place among our fallen heroes at the Golden Gate." A beat. "I wanted you to know that, Jim."
There has been little enough time to spare for the woman he once thought he loved, these past few days, though she has been a constant presence at his side, a wry smile and an arched eyebrow watching from the shadows, waiting for the moment when he can allow himself to miss her as she deserves. Kirk isn't sure what he was expecting, really, but, if he's thought about it at all, he doesn't think he ever imagined that he'd come home to find her already gone, returned to the earth and vanished forever.
He doesn't know what to say. So, in the absence of the questions he wants to ask, he says, simply, "Thank you, sir."
"You understand, Jim," says Nogura gently, and Kirk is not sure if it's a question or a statement, "why the family didn't want to wait?"
He thinks he does. "Of course."
"Under the circumstances…"
"Yes, sir." The words are brisk—too brisk, perhaps—but it's increasingly important to get this conversation finished, to leave this room and find somewhere to be alone for a while. His head is starting to ache. "I told Admiral and Commodore Ciana that I'd visit when I could."
Nogura nods. "Give them a couple of days," he says, slowly, carefully. "I'm not saying don't go. I'm just saying… give them a couple of days."
Kirk thinks of his wife's blue eyes, framed beneath her father's soft white hair; her golden smile set against the gentle lines of her mother's face, and he wonders if, in the end, he might have felt any differently in their place. The world was ending and the man who broke their youngest daughter's heart was headed out into the void on the ship that had caused her death. So, yes, he'll give them a couple of days. He'll give them weeks, if that's what they need. It is, quite literally, the very least he can do.
"Understood, sir," he says, and, though Nogura has made no effort to end the conversation, Kirk gets to his feet. It's a breach of protocol, certainly, and if Bernstein were here he'd be in for a raised eyebrow or two, but he's fairly sure he has the latitude today, and, more than that, he thinks the admiral will understand. "If you'll excuse me, sir," he adds, safe in the knowledge that there is now no unobtrusive way that his CO can demur. "I've got a busy evening coming up, and I'd like some time to get ready."
"Of course," says Nogura, all solemn consideration, though there's little chance he's mistaken Kirk's impatience to leave for anything other than what it is. But he stands with his officer, hands folded neatly at the small of his back, and, though Kirk knows him better than to think that whatever is written on Heihachiro Nogura's face is the same as what's going on behind Heihachiro Nogura's eyes, it looks like they can pretend for now that they're a couple of old colleagues united in loss, nothing more, and, as far as the illusion of privacy goes, that's as good as he's likely to get. There's a reason, after all, that Lori Ciana rose so quickly through the ranks under the watchful gaze of their Commander in Chief: Nogura, like Kirk's ex-wife, misses almost nothing.
But Nogura stands with his officer, and, if he's guessed that there's an emptiness where the sense of homecoming should be, if he reads equivocation in the firm handshake that answers his, there's no sign of it in his face. "I'll see you in a couple of hours, Jim," he says, kindly Uncle Hei and his battle-weary protégé, and he walks him to the door.
-o-o-o-
In the end, it's long after midnight before Kirk steps through the door of his apartment, cold and stale with three weeks' disuse, and then it's only because, about fifteen minutes earlier, he finally and abruptly ran out of reasons to avoid it. He ought to remember that this is what it's like in the dead zone between the issue of new orders and the part where they come into effect: a sort of No-Man's Land punctuated by jocular smiles and congratulations and the quiet appropriation of his entire workload, bit by cheerful bit. There's been barely a moment of Kirk's evening that has not been an exercise in re-discovering exactly how much he has chosen to forget, and he wonders if it will always be this way for him, now. If homecomings and personal success will always feel so heavily qualified as they do tonight.
The apartment is dark, lit only by the moonlight drifting like dusty silk through the uncurtained windows. Exhaustion is like lead in his bones, like gravel behind his eyes, and he knows that there are things he needs to do—like food and sleep, though mostly sleep—before they just go ahead and happen to him anyway, but he can't shake the uneasiness that skitters through his veins, and these rooms, unchanged by the passage of days that have seen the universe inverted and the world spin off its axis, feel less like a link to a more coherent past and more like a museum or a crypt, haunted by memories that they've no right to hold. He needs to sleep, but needs to is not the same as likely to happen, and if anyone has cause to recognize the truth of this, it's James T Kirk.
He commed Bones before the press conference, figuring that, regardless of what has and has not registered as fact in the privacy of Kirk's head, it doesn't get much more official than a live announcement on national holo, and his friend deserves a heads up at the very least. He wasn't expecting unrestrained delight or ebullient congratulations, but there was a warmth in the doctor's tone that told Kirk all he needed to know, and a quiet, thoughtful pause after his told you so that told him even more. And so, when Bones speculated aloud about the suitability of a bottle of blue brandy to the occasion, and whether the billet of the former Chief of Starfleet Operations might be a more appropriate venue for its consumption than the temporary lodgings afforded to a lowly CMO cooling his heels until his new assignment comes through, Kirk heard the question buried beneath the acerbic good humor, the understanding, and he knew that he wasn't the only person in the whole of Starfleet for whom the whole damned thing rings hollow. It made it possible to laugh quietly, thank him and refuse, in the knowledge that Bones will also understand why tonight is not the night for toasts. And it made it possible to imagine a time when he'll be able to raise a glass and drink to what's happened today, and that's… better than nothing, Kirk guesses.
It doesn't help right now.
To hell with it. He thinks he knew in Nogura's offices what he was planning to do, but it's not until now, surrounded by unpacked boxes and darkness and a complete absence of any signs of habitation or care, that Kirk understands that there is nowhere in the world less suited to his present state of mind than where he is right now. He's debated his way through two hours of debrief in the presence of allies and enemies and colleagues whose opinion of Kirk changes according to how useful a friend he can be on any given day; he's smiled for the cameras and spoken with quiet feeling about the courage of his crew and his return to deep space, and voiced elaborate panegyrics on the infinite wisdom of Starfleet Command in tones of effusive praise that nobody could question or fault. He's sat behind his old desk and poured coffee into the weary crevices of his conscious mind while he's scrolled through files left half-finished, correspondence unanswered, tactics unplotted, until Kaplan turned up at somebody's quiet suggestion, sleep-ruffled and unimpressed, and reminded him that her ability to manage Fleet Ops in his absence remains unchanged by the revelation that he's not, now, coming back again. He is done, in more ways than one. To hell with it.
The box is not difficult to find, in the end: it's one of a dozen or so crammed into a corner of what's recognizable as his home office only by the presence of a desk, a chair, and a terminal screen in a room otherwise stripped of ornamentation. This is where he stored the detritus of his old life, packed into crates when he moved into Lori's apartment, as though it could be buried beyond the reach of thought with cardboard and polystyrene peanuts, and in all of the fourteen months that have passed since the end of his marriage, he has never seen any reason to disturb them. A scrawled note on the side of each hints at their what's inside, and this is how he knows which box to open. It's the only one where the contents are unlabelled.
There's a hook on the wall above his couch, relic of an earlier occupant with a better-developed sense of interior decorating, and the glazing flares white in the moonlight as Kirk carries the picture through to the living quarters. It feels solid in his hand, a comfortable weight, and two years out of sight have not erased the image beneath the glass from his memory. Paper and ink, perhaps, or charcoal; mounted against a dark hardwood that's been lacquered to a high shine by hundreds of years of care, with a brass plaque inlaid into the frame inscribing a familiar name in curling calligraphy:
HMS Enterprize, 1705
Kirk comms in a brief instruction to his office, leaves word for Bones at the front desk of his lodgings house, and taps out a message to Nogura via his assistant, explaining how he can be reached. His overnight bag is still sitting on the floor by the entryway where it was deposited by a yeoman some time in the hours after they docked at the Centroplex, and Kirk grabs it and slings it over his shoulder as he walks out the door. To hell with it. He's done what he can, and Starfleet is done with him, for now at least.
And he's still on his goddamn vacation.