James Tiberius Kirk (
universal_charm) wrote2020-12-14 11:29 pm
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SANCTUM IC CONTACT

You've reached Kirk Industries, Inc.
Just leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
If this is personal, well, do the same - except you've called James Kirk.
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No, just him. Just him. Golf hadn't even known. Better that he didn't- not that he'd remember now. Better to carry that and many little nuggets quietly.
Talking about it again- it's. Difficult. He's always kept it vague because that hell? That'd been a highly personal hell. Something that he'd never thought could be any worse until he arrived home.
Home.
Where he thought he'd be safe. Where he thought he could get a good meal and tea and see hsi baby girl, his wife again. To walk in his home and sleep in his bed and breathe the recycled air and simply be Leonard McCoy again. Instead of the home he'd ached for, the wife he missed and prayed to see, the little girl he'd wanted to raise more than anything- there was ash.
Ash. Pity. And the bottle.
News from kind lips cutting unkind things into his heart, bleeding him out all over the street in front of the blackened shell of his home. No survivors. All's lost. Legally deceased. Climbing out of that hole- he was still working on it. He still has his darker days even now with jojo home and by his side. THey both did. Days where they curled up under a quilt from the farmhouse and held holos of Joyce and tried not to cry. Told stories.
"...The house was gone." A beat, he crumples the paper from his sandwich slowly, voice low and ragged. "Joyce was gone. Jojo was gone. Lost. Hid in the Immune housing, my smart girl. Knew not to trust anyone."
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Maybe he would get punched for it, maybe it would make Whiskey withdraw, but even so he reached out and laid his hand over Whiskey's. An offering of comfort if he wanted it, a show of solidarity maybe, a shoulder to lean on when he was ready for that or needed it.
He searched for something to say, but came up blank. What was there to say? So he left his hand where it was, letting the other take his time.
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"And I...had some rough times for awhile. Lived outta hotels till I got a flat. Fought with lawyers till I could prove I was me and got my shit back, but not much of it. Just what was left after it got put into the public archives or data logs back up at Bifrons." He pushes through. Skips to the part where shit ain't so awful- but it's always awful. That's just life here.
"Kieth died, I got the house- moved in. Moved Delta and Foxtrot and Golf it. Delta retired, got sent back with his family. Golf retired, headed back to work in the private sector in D3."
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A rarity for him, but he owed that to Whiskey. To listen to it. To hear it all and actually pay attention instead of turning to it with half an ear. In some ways he didn't want to hear it. Hearing it made him feel like he had somehow failed, like he should have been there when all this shit went down. But the rational part of him said no, there wasn't anything to do for it. Wishing to turn back time was pointless, and he already knew what going back in time could do to someone.
He wanted to say he was sorry, but that wasn't right. Well, he was sorry. He was sorry all of this had happened to Leonard, that he had to live that kind of life. But it wasn't the right thing to say, wasn't what the other would want to hear. He wouldn't want it from Leonard.
"And the rest is history?" he asked, though there wasn't a flippant tone to his voice. It was quiet, giving him an out if he needed it, realizing he had gotten quite a bit of a very difficult story out of the other already.
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Jim's heard enough. He's said plenty. All he wants right now is to just. Sit and listen to the flow of water, breathe in the scent of something green and remember what the stars looked like.
"Jim." A beat. "What's it like, sailing between them? The stars. What's it like in space?"
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"It's.... amazing," he said, thinking aloud as his thumb rubbed the back of Leonard's hand, more to help him think than anything else. Think and help him remember, because some days he worried he was forgetting, that it had been to long. Hell, it had been - years, even, and the reminder of that hurt in ways he had not expected.
A breath, turning his head up to look at the blank Dome overhead, hating it in that moment more than he ever had.
"Everywhere you look there are stars. They try and describe it as an ocean, but it's so much more than that. It's endless, and every light is a possibility for new life, for something wonderful. When you got into warp, they stream together around you, like you're rushing down a river. It feels like if you just reached out you could trail your fingers through the light stream and pull them back in full of stardust. You have no idea what will be on the other side, but that's the great thing about it. You can always be surprised. It's this great, vast, unexplored territory that we'll never be able to fully map - the possibilities of it endless."
A pause, blinking rapidly as the pain of missing the Enterprise - his home - hit him. Missing his family. Bones and Spock had said that they were okay, but the truth was he didn't really know anything for fact after he died. He needed to believe what they had said, or else he'd drive himself insane, but some nights he wondered. For a second his grip tightened, swallowing back those thoughts, that grief.
"It's the most beautiful thing you'll ever see."
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No matter how Ringer, how Jim, or how anyone else is so goddamn sure he'll live to see this shit fixed he knows he's gonna die trying. He's too banged up to make it and too used to this rock to matter if everything changes again. Better to hold out hope for his baby girl- for his friends and family.
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"I'd love to take her. She can sit with me on the bridge in the Captain's seat - get the best view on the ship," he promised him, hoping the other didn't notice the tightening of his hand as he thought back to that, the small shiver that passed through him. "She can even pick the next star we go to."
Whiskey could kick and throw as many fits as he wanted, Jim would drag him by the scruff of the neck into the new day if he had too, through the fires and the long nights, pull him back from the edge of the grave. One way or another, he'd see the people he cared about through, like he always had, like he always would.
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She needs to live. Not just survive, and that's all any of them are do'n under this fuck'n fishbowl, surviving. She needs to see the stars, to wonder and dream and not worry about the sky falling down or the air she breaths shredding her lungs.
Jim could give her that. And he'd love her just because she was Whiskey's. That's more than enough for him.
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Blue eyes watched Whiskey for a moment, thinking. He wanted to tell him so many things - the good and the bad. But he didn't know if this was the time for it. Or maybe it was. They were feeling each other, understanding what made them different from the men each of them knew. And as much as he wanted to be the shining beacon for Whiskey, it wasn't really a fair representation, was it? He should make his decision based on truths, all of them and not just the happy moments. He'd scraped it, sort of, that night, but....
"I wish I could show her Vulcan," he began softly. "I wish I could have shown her the people that made First Contact with us Earthlings, made everything I am possible."
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He knows the feeling.
They're sitting in the middle of a wall marked with his regrets. Sure he was only 12 at the time but he comes here to remember that he could always do more. Be more.
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"Yes, it was. Part of it was," he told him. "It was my job to go down to the drill and stop it. Me, Sulu, and another guy, a red shirt. We failed, and ten billion people lost their lives for that." It should have been simple and it wasn't. He didn't know that he'd ever forgive himself for that particular failure. People could tell him again and again it wasn't his fault, but he'd never believe them. Not entirely.
For a minute he hoped Whiskey didn't think he was trying to upstage him. He wasn't. The guilt for Vulcan was nothing compared to the wall in front of him. But Whiskey should know of his failures and judge him for those as well. He didn't want anything they might have to be built on half-truths.
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"Maybe," he acknowledged, but it wouldn't stick. He licked his lips, looking down at his hands, his next failure bubbling up, running through his very veins.
He shook his head, the old instincts rising up.
"Sorry. This is all heavy enough without me throwing shit out there too," he said, a part of him lashing out at himself, telling him it wasn't fair to expect Whiskey to share in these burdens he carried. Bones did. But Whiskey was not him and it was not fair to ask that of him.
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"They have a test for that, actually. You know what I did to it?" He looked at him, smiling a bit, missing those old days, his red uniform, missing when things had been innocent and the sky just full of stars. "I hacked it and changed the program."
There was no such thing as a no-win scenario. You could find a way to win, to pull everyone through that fire or die trying. Teaching people that sometimes you had to lose - fuck that.
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"I know. Believe me, I know that. I hacked it because I didn't agree with the premise of the test. Spock said it was to teach us fear, to teach us that some situations you can't find a way out of way, that they're hopeless. And I don't believe that. I don't believe that's what you should teach people. Teach them to think on their feet, to think outside the box, outside damn regulations and find the way out. Don't teach them to give up!"
He took a breath, his voice maybe haven risen a little, feeling like he was on trial again.
"If I had done that when Marcus turned on us - or, I guess, when I finally figured out he'd backstabbed us, my crew wouldn't have made it through that. We'd all be dead, not just me."
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"To late," he whispered.
He wiped at his mouth, thinking back to the days in that village, to listening to the people scream in the night, walking through the streets lined with their bodies the day after.
"We got got sent to this place call Zompania by the Malnosso - I've told you that before, right? We got told we had to fight the cultists or some new shit enemy that popped up and they wouldn't fight themselves. Somewhere along the way my phaser lost power cause I'd been shooting so much. In the end I took up an iron pipe, and I simply beat their heads in to keep moving, make it to nightfall and pull people along with me or back them up when they were stronger."
And he hated it. He hated the crunch of bone, the stink of blood, adding to the piles of bodies, the slickness of the mud. But he had to - because the people around him had needed it, because he couldn't lay down and give up. He had a job to do, and people to protect and people to get back to. He didn't necessarily feel bad about what he had done then, they weren't exactly human, and they deserved it for what they had done to that village. But it didn't mean he liked it. He had never been proud of himself for that day. He never would be.
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That's bullshit.
"Kid if it was 'too late' you'd be Hob motherfucking Ravani. Or me. Or my Jim. You ai'nt any of us, you're you. You still feel bad about what you had to do. The day that shit stops bother'n you? That's when it's too late."
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In truth he hadn't been looking for pity. He hated pity, really he did. A part of him had more been scared, admitting it, saying it. Afraid that somehow it would shift whatever foundation they had been building and scatter it. No, he wasn't proud of the things he'd done. He wasn't proud of sending Nero's ship into a void, he wasn't proud of how things had gone down with Marcus and Khan, he wasn't proud of surviving Zompania. He didn't want Whiskey to be proud of him for it either. He just didn't want him thinking him less for them.
"I can get messages without smacks to the head," he grumbled, reaching out and smacking his shoulder.
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