[FIC] Don't Worry (i'm okay now) - Part 6/8
The room was dark and quiet around him, the consoles shut off and the view screen blank. Where a few hours ago the room had been a cacophony of panicked orders barked in desperate succession, now it was a calm and tranquil area. Where before he had been seated in the command chair, watching as the view screens showed the systematic destruction of his ship and the one he was supposed to have rescued, now he saw nothing but dormant controls. Where he had once watched his failure painted in the bright lights of explosions and the desperate screams of his command crew, he now sat in total silence, the only light coming from the green emergency exit above the door.
He'd known, coming into it, that the test was unbeatable. What self-respecting command-track cadet hadn't heard a nightmarish story or two about an upperclassman's experience with the Kobayashi Maru? But he'd been cocky. He'd been sure he wouldn't be like the rest of them, that he'd beat it, that he'd go against the best software ever to have been designed and that he would be the one to finally find the loophole that would let him beat the test.
But he hadn't.
Instead, he'd watched as the Klingon warbirds fired at his ship, first taking out the deflector shields, then evading his attacks, until finally his weapons banks were destroyed and he'd been forced to issue General Order 13: shipwide evacuation. And in a last ditch attempt, because if he was going down then he was going to take at least one of those fuckers with him, he'd tried to engage the autopilot on a collision course with what he'd assumed to be the leader of the ships. He'd hit the final command code to engage the ship and as he stood up to join the rest of his command crew to the simulated shuttles, the computer announced its dying message: // sys_alert: Manual Override Only.
He'd frozen.
When he was seventeen, in a bout of anger and teenage rebellion, he'd hacked into any and all databases that had contained information regarding his father and the circumstances surrounding his birth. He'd read Chris Pike's thesis and heard the voice recording of the last few seconds of his father's life (and promptly thrown up afterwards), and he'd read the last of the ship’s logs, the “black box”. So he'd known that his father had stayed on the ship because the system had crashed and all operations had gone to manual.
The fact that his father had traded his life for 800 others was immaterial. The fact that his mother was among the 800 saved was irrelevant. The fact he had been saved was inconsequential. The truth, no matter how Pike tried to spin it, was that his father had died, and 800 people had lived because of him. The truth was that his father had faced a no-win scenario and had lost. The truth was that there were such things as no-win scenarios, and no amount of brains would ever change that; no amount of willpower could ever change that.
Tarsus IV had taught him that.
A small noise from behind him startled him and on instinct he ordered the lights to fifty percent even as he swiveled the chair to face the door by the communications unit. He relaxed slightly when the red on green on red form stepped forward from the shadows; red hair against green skin against a red cadet uniform.
“Gaila,” he said, turning the chair back to the front view screen.
“Hi, Jim,” she replied. He could hear the heels of her boots hitting the simulation deck and wondered if those were regulation heels or if Gaila was toeing the line again.
He let her greeting go unanswered, choosing instead to continue his quiet contemplation of the blank view screen and the sequence of events that had lead him to be sitting there in the dark so many hours after the end of the test.
“Leonard told me where you were, in case you’re wondering how I managed to find you,” she chirped as she stopped to stand by his right shoulder. “Not that I haven’t thought about installing a locator beacon on you. It’d make my life easier, and I’m sure Leonard would help me with the surgery.”
“Yeah,” Jim replied absentmindedly. “I’m sure he’d love that.”
There was a beat of silence before Gaila took the extra step to bring her next to him. She placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.
“Why are you here, Jim?”
“Did you know that I’ve been able to hack into governmental servers since I was fifteen?” he asked her as he leaned to his left to dislodge her hand from his shoulder and rest his chin on his closed fist.
“Is that so?” she asked as she let her hand fall to her side.
“I failed the test, Gaila.”
It was a rhetorical statement and they both knew it. Even though the test had never been beaten, every command track cadet knew that the point of it was to judge your reaction when under the most extreme types of pressure. It was designed to evaluate a cadet’s use of all the resources he had access to and his command decisions in life or death situations. The point wasn’t to win, but to show the admiralty that you were ready for command; that you could be counted on to make the difficult decisions and that if need be you would carry them to the end. The test, Kirk knew, was a way for the admiralty to judge what you had learned and to see if you were ready for combat.
And Kirk had frozen.
Gaila stood silently next to him, forcing her hand to stay by her side and not reach out to Kirk in some form of physical comfort. She knew that’s not what he needed or wanted at the moment. Instead she let the silence linger on, watching as Kirk’s frown turned into a glare as he continued to stare at the blank view screen, replaying the sequence of events that had lead to the message’s appearance. As a science-track cadet specializing in software encryption and engineering, Gaila had been assigned to the Maru as an aid to the instructors who controlled the test’s environment. She’d seen the instructors change the test to adapt it to each cadet’s particular skills and reactions, and had seen every type of ending to the test imaginable. But it had been the first time she had seen the instructors command a system wide failure of the auto pilot. And there hadn’t been a single cadet or instructor present in that room that hadn’t known why Kirk had frozen in his tracks.
“They recreated the destruction of the Kelvin.”
She chewed her bottom lip for a second before sighing softly. “Yes.”
“They wanted me to die like my father did.”
“Jim,” she started, but stopped, unsure what it was she wanted to tell him.
“I’m not an idiot Gaila,” Jim said as he turned the chair around so he could face her. “I know what people say about me. That I’m arrogant, that I think I’m invincible.” Jim scoffed. “I’m not. I know that I’m not.”
“Jim, I know that-”
“I’m taking it again,” Jim said resolutely. “I’m taking it again and next time, I won’t freeze. I won’t let them win. I’ll find that loophole.”
“There is no loophole Jim. You know that. You’ve seen the code,” Gaila said.
Jim shook his head and stood up, stretching his back and plastering on a smile. “There’s always a loophole, Gaila.”
“Jim, you can’t beat it. It’s a perfect code.”
“There’s no such thing as perfection,” Jim said flippantly as he got up from the chair and made his way to the exit sign.
Gaila sighed softly as she watched him leave and shook her head. “Arrogant little ass.” She paused briefly and cocked her head to the side, a small smile spreading over her lips. “But it is a nice ass…”
***
McCoy could feel his blood pressure rising with each passing ring. He’d been up since the crack of dawn for his double shift and had performed more surgeries than he cared to remember, but he’d kept his comm on for a long as he could, hoping that Jim would call him as soon as the test was done. He had no great expectations that the kid would actually do as he had been asked, but McCoy was a secret optimist (how else could he have put up with Jim Kirk for as long as he had if he wasn’t?), but he was also a realist. The kid was going to fail the test again, and when he did, all McCoy could hope for was that he’d be invited to the bar where Jim was sure to get shitfaced.
But it was now late evening, and there had been no sign that the prodigal son would be returning any time soon. He’d commed Gaila earlier in the evening but she hadn’t seen Jim since before the test, and she’d already gone looking for him in all the usual haunts with no luck. So now here he was, comm unit open and trying to connect to Jim’s while he made his way to the small beach where he knew Jim liked to go to run. He just hoped he’d have more luck locating the idiot.
As he made his way around the bend, he could spot a figure sitting in the sand and he sighed in relief. He broke into a light jog until he’d almost reached Kirk and then slowed to a walk. Once he was next to him, McCoy dropped into the sand and sighed softly, his gaze on the water’s edge. He’d decided when he’d started his search to let Jim call the shots tonight. If the kid wanted to talk about it, then they’d talk about it. If not, they’d just sit there in silence until he decided what he wanted from McCoy and, if feasible, McCoy would provide.
For awhile it seemed like all they would do would be to sit there in silence surrounded by the sounds of the seagulls and the rush of the ocean. But then McCoy felt Kirk shift and he turned to look at his friend. That seemed to be the signal Kirk had been waiting for.
“I failed it again.”
McCoy hummed. “Did you fail it, or did you just not beat it?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Well,” McCoy replied, “if you failed it, that means you won’t be able to graduate the command-track and that’d put a damper on your three year plan. But if you just didn’t beat it, that doesn’t mean you failed it, so you can just put it behind you and move on.”
Jim scoffed. “I tried everything, Bones,” he said angrily. “I studied all the famous tactical maneuvers that have been used in combat since the 20th century and I mixed and matched them to the situation. When the shields and weapons began to fail, I cannibalized parts and power from other sectors to compensate for the loss of power and managed to boost the weapons’ energy beams to twice their original firepower, and with enough juice in the banks for one shot to each of the enemy ships. I had those fuckers in my sight, but they managed to evade and only sustained minimal damage. Minimal damage. From phaser banks at twice their capacity.”
McCoy watched as Kirk became increasingly agitated as he recounted the test and its outcome. He took in the flush painting Kirk’s cheeks pink, the sweat making his hair curl at its base and the shaking in his hands as he moved them about to emphasize his point. McCoy shook his head. Kirk had probably forgotten to eat again and now his blood sugar had dropped. Good thing he’d come prepared. He reached into his pockets and took out an energy bar which he slapped into Kirk’s outstretched hand as it made a pass by his face.
Kirk stopped mid-sentence and stared at the wrapped food dumbfounded. “What’s this?”
“It’s a power bar. Eat it,” McCoy ordered.
“Bones, what the hell! I’m trying to tell you something important and you slap food in my hand?” Jim said indignantly as he waved the power bar in the air.
“Don’t argue with me and eat the damn bar before you faint,” McCoy grumbled.
“Fine,” Jim sniped as he tore open the power bar and took a big bite, chewing it obnoxiously. “Happy?” he asked with his mouth full.
“God, you’re so disgusting, Kirk. Didn’t your mother ever teach you any manners?” he griped back, glaring at the blond.
“No,” Jim replied succinctly as he swallowed the food in his mouth and finished off the bar in two big bites.
McCoy couldn’t tear his eyes away. It was by far one of the most disgusting things he’d ever seen, especially considering how difficult it was to chew and swallow those bars. But Jim had always been a feat of nature when it came to food, shoveling it all in without taking a breather or time to enjoy what he was actually eating. Actually, it was a wonder McCoy hadn’t had to perform the Heimlich maneuver yet. But McCoy knew better than to say anything by now. The first time he’d noticed the way Jim ate, he’d told him to hold his horses lest he choke to death. Jim had frozen with his fork still in the air and had stared at him with wide, horrified blue eyes. It’d taken McCoy three weeks of intense persuasion to get Jim to agree to eat in front of him again.
He watched silently as Jim crumbled the empty wrapper and stuffed it in his pocket. He waited a few seconds as Jim sighed softly and wrapped his arms around him bent knees, resting his chin on his forearms and staring out at the foaming ocean. When it became clear that Jim wasn’t going to say anything more substantial than his previous rant, McCoy huffed an annoyed breath.
“Jim, did you fail the test, or did you just not beat it?” he asked irascibly.
Kirk bit his lower lip and looked down at the sand, his shoulders hunching down protectively. “Bones,” he whispered. “Don’t you see?”
McCoy frowned at the tone. He’d never heard the kid sound so… small. “See what?”
“This…” He paused. “This is what my dad felt. When he died.”
“Jim,” McCoy said softly.
“Helpless. Frustrated. Scared out of his fucking mind.” Jim shook his head. “The first time I panicked and I froze when I saw that message because it hit me, right there on that simulated bridge, that this was what my father had faced. But he didn’t panic, Bones. The records show that he paused just long enough to accept his fate because ten seconds later he was on the captain chair talking to the medical shuttle’s pilot.”
“Jim, you can’t-”
“My father didn’t freeze, Bones,” Jim said resolutely. He opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again and let out a small breath while shaking his head. “You know, Pike said my dad didn’t believe in no-win scenarios. Do you know what I said to that?”
McCoy shook his head.
“I told him that it hadn’t served him very well. Pike told me that it depended on the point of view. He told me… He told me that I was here, alive. That my dad didn’t see his position as a no-win scenario because he knew that he’d get my mom and me out of there.”
“He’s pretty smart, Pike,” McCoy grumbled. “It’s actually kind of unnerving.”
“Yeah,” Jim snorted. “But, you know, I didn’t get it. Not then, anyway. I only joined Starfleet ‘cause I was bored and I knew I was going nowhere fast and, well, he dared me. But now…”
Jim shook his head and sighed again. One more sigh out of him and McCoy was going to start checking for some kind of disease. He’d never seen the other man like this before, quiet and contemplative. Not that Jim didn’t have his moments of introspection, but they tended to be more intense, his whole being focused on the PADD, fingers flying over the console in search of his answer. This… This was low-key and, dare he think it, mature.
“I think I get it, now,” Jim continued softly.
Because now he saw what Pike had seen: the philosophy behind the heroic actions of a young George Kirk. He’d understood that George had believed in a cup half-full, and that as long as you were alive, there was always a solution, there was always a way to win. In his mind, in order to win, he was giving up his life in exchange for that of his wife and unborn son. Jim hadn’t understood that back then, in that bar in Iowa. He hadn’t known what it was like to have people for whom he’d die to protect, to give a chance at life. But now…
Looking at Bones sitting next to him, and thinking about Gaila who had left increasingly frantic voice messages on his comm, he smiled. Now he knew what his father had had, and he knew that he’d have done the same thing to save those he cared about. Now he knew that although he might not make it out alive, it wouldn’t be a no-win scenario because those who really mattered would live. He knew that, next time? He wouldn’t freeze.
“I’m taking it again.”
(Part 7/8)