Title: Never Leave a Man Behind
Characters: James T. Kirk
Word Count: 300; 3 true drabbles
Rating: K+ for implied character death
Spoilers: In order: Galileo Seven, By Any Other Name, The Wrath of Khan
Summary: Captain Kirk never left a man behind - until now.
I never leave a man behind, was the mantra drilled mercilessly into the heads of every man aboard. James T. Kirk's adamant insistence that he never abandon a crewman had cost him dearly more than once.
He squeaked by with a stern reprimand for his reluctance to leave the Murasaki Nebula before finding the passengers of the shuttle Galileo, and that had been only the first time in his five-year mission that he risked the Prime Directive, Starfleet's disapproval, and once the threat of court martial, to retrieve a crewman whom most captains would have given up for lost.
He had diverted course to return to the uncharted planet on which they had encountered the Kelvans, there to retrieve the remains of Yeoman Thompson, who had become no more than a frightened pawn in that deadly game.
"I will not leave her there, in that condition," he had snapped, cutting off all argument from even McCoy, who had recognized the futility of the gesture. But no one had dared argue, not even Spock, and the yeoman's room-mate and friends wept with gratitude when they retrieved enough of the polyhedra to scatter Thompson's remains in space following a memorial service.
More than a decade later, James Kirk stood, silently weeping in the darkness of the Observation Deck aboard the refitted Enterprise. No longer his Enterprise, no; she had been Captain Spock's ship for months, but he watched within her, grieved with her, now as the sun rose upon a new world below. Light and warmth shone down upon the new life being formed there; the miraculous genesis of precious life, created from nothing – and one precious life, that had been sacrificed for everything.
Admiral James T. Kirk stood alone; because for the first time, he had left a man behind.