Fic: TOS:: And We All Fall Down
Title: And We All Fall Down
Words:2735
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Number One, Pike/Number One
Summary: In the wake of his death some things don't add up. Number One searches them out.
Notes/Warnings: Depressing. Death that is not death. This is TOS post 'Menagerie' fic. You have been warned.
It takes time for the news to reach her.
When it finally does there is not enough time to mourn or react, just nod and file the communication and go about her business. She has a ship to run.
It's late when she finally pulls it out. An official notice that Captain Christopher Pike has passed away. Signed and sealed and looking far too pristine to tell the story. She almost tears it up in frustration as she lets herself go and just react. Part of her knows she has only received a proper tangible notice because he listed her as kin. She had him down as well, it was one of the few official signs they could give. At the time neither had thought it'd mean getting any worse news than usual, just getting it faster. They had been young then.
Number One is in the safety of her quarters and they are steady on course and she can take a moment for herself. She can be weak for a half second because the man she loves is dead, really dead, not just stuck in that goddamn blinking prison but dead and gone and she's not even going to be able to attend the funeral.
Not that she thinks she could stand it. Trussed up in dress uniform and staring at a casket while someone drones on about duty and service. Another box to trap him in. No, she tells herself. It's better this way. A slip of paper, memories, silent tears and falling asleep restlessly still in uniform, staring at space. Chris belonged to the stars and that's how she would remember him. She'd remember the concept of the man and try to block out the pain of losing the reality.
Logically part of her has always known it might happen. Would happen eventually. Knew that someday his luck would catch up with him. She had always hoped that it'd be when they were old. Or after hers had run out first. Or that is never would because it was Chris and it was somehow not possible for him to die. When the accident happened was bad enough. But she still had him even then. It had hurt and she wanted to strangle the doctors who insisted the best they could do was a little blinking light, but he was alive and he was Chris Pike and Chris Pike never stopped trying. So she had resolved herself to never stop trying for him either. She thought the accident had been his toll. That he would be safe and they would find a way to get him closer to functioning because Chris Pike didn't die. He couldn't.
Except he could, he did. He was a man, a sometimes incredible man maybe, but a finite and vulnerable man who was only human at the end. Accepting that fact was going to take time.
Number One sinks into bed and shakes with silent sobs. She had known the risks down to the decimal, cataloged all the ways for everything to go wrong on lonely maudlin nights, but here in the present she wasn't ready for the ache. The hollow feeling in her gut as it forgot how to function and how many tears that she couldn't stop from racing out her eyes. She's not sure when she passes from mental exhaustion into sleep but eventually she succumbs.
In the morning she pulls herself together. Taking great care as she dresses and does her morning routine. She knocks the bottle of nail polish over as she touches up a finger. She's never clumsy, not like this, and it's the blue he always liked because it matches her eyes and now it's dripping out onto the floor before she can grab it. She curses and cleans it hastily before she has to go. She reports to the bridge pristine as always and goes about her duties. The stain on her desk the only indication anything is different. If anyone can sense her inner turmoil they don't let on. She keeps moving forward and goes about her business.
Because that is what she is trained to do. What she was born to do. What Chris would want her to do.
So she commands her ship and her crew and packs down the hollow feeling in her heart each time it rises. There is something that sits wrong about the whole issue that she chalks up to grieving. She doesn't examine the feeling until she sits down with Boyce three months later while on leave.
Boyce is fixing her a third drink and they're both painfully subdued. They can't talk about good times because it hurts. They can't talk about the end because it hurts more. They're two points of a triangle like this. Chris should be griping as Boyce pours his drink too heavy and One's not enough and he should be running fingers over her thigh whenever he thinks Phil isn't looking. Instead they're Phil, One, and the ghost in the room. Everyone's too far out, the old crew scattered and for not the first time she wishes them all back in the same room. They all could give Pike a proper send off, exorcise the ghosts together and be better for it. Cait looked too hollow when they spoke last. They could all use it.
Number One tries one last time to speak because damn if she and Phil don't need to talk it out before it eats them both alive.
"I never got to say goodbye. I should have been prepared for that," it's a terrible cliche and she's suddenly understanding why on levels she wishes she didn't. She'd been able to visit him once and only one after the accident. She'd left smiling and promising to return and that they'd have him talking in no time. Because she would have broken to say anything else, because she had wanted to leave him some hope. What kind of final words were those empty promises? One drank deeply, slightly disgusted with herself and her foolishness. At some point she'd started accepting Pike's veil of invincibility and she'd never questioned it. Of course they were both going to live forever and chase the stars. What else were they going to do? Die of delta radiation apparently she thought bitterly.
"He should've had a few more months at least. It was too sudden. We all thought...well, Spock said goodbye at least. He was there," Boyce doesn't look at her, just sort of stares at the wall and then at the bottom of his glass.
"What?" One sits forward and surveys Phil. Something clicks in her head and insists this is important. A gut feeling, like the ones Chris made such miracles out of.
She really needs to stop picking up traits from him. At least she'd infected him with her tidiness.
"The Enterprise was at the Starbase. When it happened," Boyce explains hollowly and takes a long drink from his glass. "Only one to be there is the one who probably needed it least. So it goes."
"So it goes," she toasts and drains her own. She and Boyce get no further in their revelations as they drink to the dawn but One has her next step planned when she leaves shaky and hazy in the early morning. Spock, Spock must know something.
And soon she would know it too.
-
She visits Spock the next chance she gets. The next chance being almost 6 months later.
Number One's not sure if she's looking for absolution or closing or what, but she's gotten the strength to look over Chris's records in the past few months and something feels wrong about the whole thing. All the numbers and words run through her head and continually come up short. But Spock was there. He'll know, he'll have the missing piece, the cipher.
Part of her knows it's foolish. That knowing every detail of his death isn't going to make it any easier. It won't bring him back. And getting suspicious over what is probably nothing is only adding to her stress.
By all reasons she should leave it alone. Digging up ghosts isn't good for her. She should get on and learn to live without him. But if there's one thing she learned from Chris it was that she should trust her gut more instead of just the cold facts. And her gut is doing backflips over this.
So she meets with Spock
"You saw him die?"
"No I was not present," his intonation as precise as always. They stood a careful two feet apart, diving into the conversation before bothering with the table and chairs in the room.
"Boyce said you did," she watches his eyes carefully.
"No, I was merely present at the Starbase during the time he was declared dead."
"And you saw his body?" she presses. She needs all the facts, every drop she can pry from Spock.
"I did not care to," there is only the slightest pause before he says it but it's enough.
"So that's a no," she translates.
"Yes. It is a 'no'."
One sighs and looks away, leaning too heavily on her hand on the table. There's something he's not saying and she can feel it. She draws in a breath and looks again to him. "What happened to him Spock? I've looked over the records and there was no reason for him to pass that suddenly."
"His radiation injuries would surely qualify as a reason. And his condition was detor-"
"Not that quickly it wasn't. Something's wrong about this Spock. What killed him that the files aren't telling me?" She's getting angry, knows she shouldn't, but has often had problems caring for rules when Chris was involved.
"Why do you persist? There is nothing that can be done."
"Because I need to know Spock," she can hear the emotion leaking into her voice which Spock likely picked it up three sentences ago. Wonderful.
"You are letting your emotions take over your reasoning."
"Yes I am," she replies honestly and admitting it feels unreasonably freeing. "Someone needs to. What are they sweeping under the rug Spock? You know don't you? What do you know?"
Spock pauses a long time before answering. Each second makes her skin itch and the room heat and Number One's screaming in her head for him to just say something.
"Yes."
"Tell me," she demands a little too harshly.
"I am under orders to tell no one," she'd taught him that. The steadfast listening to orders, early on she'd been skeptical of Pike's adventurer influence on the young half Vulcan and had encouraged his embrace of his Vulcan side over his human one. No surprise it was biting her in the ass.
"Tell me what happened to Captain Pike," her voice is steel. The same way she issues orders in an emergency. Spock's heard it plenty before.
"I cannot."
"You can. Spock, what happened to Chris and why don't the stories match up?" if she could just persist. She could win, he'd give in to his old friend. He had to.
Another too long pause and they're staring holes into each other. "If I tell you will you stop your search?"
"I will."
Spock considered her for a moment and she held his gaze sharply. He knew. He knew what happened and she wasn't going to leave until she knew too.
"He is on Talos IV."
For a moment all the air left the room.
"He's where?" her voice was low and dangerous. She's fighting from letting it sink in. No, no, no, no she thinks, not that, anything but that, don't let him be trapped there she thinks frantically but Spock's face tells her it's no use.
"He is on Talos IV," Spock repeats. Half of her breaks and half springs up for battle, rattling in her chest and demanding justice.
"Under whose orders? Why? Why would you let him go to that prison?" her voice is still sharp as her heart crumbles. Anything but Talos, why did everything always come back to that damned planet?
"I have told you what happened. Please desist in your search as agreed."
"No, no Spock, you told me where he is. Now you have to tell me why. Tell me or I'm stealing a shuttle and going there to ask him myself," she's raising her voice too much but can't stop. Won't let herself stop.
"You are irrational. I took Captain Pike there with the assistance of the Talosians so he could live out his life freely. It is what he wanted."
"There's no freedom to be found there. It's all lies and illusion. And you want to me believe he agreed to this? The man we both know would never want that. Even with that monstrosity he was in. He would have chosen death."
"It is only logical he chose the life that offered most. Talos offered that."
"Like hell it's logical," she spat before storming out.
-
The idea forms slowly. She's back on the Yorktown and it creeps up on her as she stews about the unfairness of it all. He's trapped. Trapped in a fake reality that he never wanted. Number One knows Chris's greatest fear was that he never escaped Talos. That maybe everything he did and felt meant nothing because he was still trapped in their cage. Sending him there was as good as torture.
She fights with herself. She fights it a lot. She knows what she wants, and she knows what healthy Chris would want, but what does current Chris wants? Maybe Spock is right, she thinks every so often. Maybe she's idealizing where she shouldn't. Maybe she should pretend he's dead and try to forget.
It'd be simpler if she didn't so desperately want to remember every inch of him. The sound of his laugh, the feel of lips and hands, the intensity of his stare. Little pieces are beginning to crumble away as time moves on and she's learning the limits of her 'perfect' memory in all the worst ways.
After 8 weeks of fighting and rationalizing and she hands in her resignation and there's no turning back.
-
"Are you sure?"
"It's a rescue mission Phil. I'm damned positive."
"You can't come back from this you know."
"...I don't really intend to," she says softly. Boyce sweeps her into a hug and doesn't let go. One's never been big on physical affection with friends but it feels so welcome she has to blink back wet eyes.
"Go to him," he says in her ear. His blessing is more than she could have asked.
-
She's almost shaking as she lands the shuttle on the surface. As if she's a cadet terrified of a test flight and it all seems so insanely absurd. Number One climbs out and there are two Talosions already waiting for her.
"Take me to him," she demands. Her voice is steady.
They nod and lead the way.
-
"One..." His voice is shaking and he looks ten years younger and she's frozen in place as he walks forward. He's part in awe. Part terrified.
So is she.
"Why..? You..." He can't quite string a sentence together and she can't even manage words because he's right in front of her even if the body is an illusion it's still Chris somewhere underneath. Her Chris. Christopher. And that is enough after too many months of thinking him dead.
"You're here. I never asked them for you and you're here and that means you're really here...I, I never wanted you trapped here too." His voice is a full of emotion as he rambles but he pulls her to him and hugs her close. "Why did you come here you idiot?" he asks but he's shaking and there's more disbelief in his voice than anything else.
She buries her face in his neck and it's the most perfect illusion she could have asked for. The smell is perfect. The feel, the fit of his arms. A perfect lie.
She whispers into his skin, "I had to come save you."
"You always do," he presses a kiss into her hair and the tears are coming. Rushing out traitorously. She can't tell if they're more or less real than the man in her arms.
A small part of her doesn't care.
Words:2735
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Number One, Pike/Number One
Summary: In the wake of his death some things don't add up. Number One searches them out.
Notes/Warnings: Depressing. Death that is not death. This is TOS post 'Menagerie' fic. You have been warned.
It takes time for the news to reach her.
When it finally does there is not enough time to mourn or react, just nod and file the communication and go about her business. She has a ship to run.
It's late when she finally pulls it out. An official notice that Captain Christopher Pike has passed away. Signed and sealed and looking far too pristine to tell the story. She almost tears it up in frustration as she lets herself go and just react. Part of her knows she has only received a proper tangible notice because he listed her as kin. She had him down as well, it was one of the few official signs they could give. At the time neither had thought it'd mean getting any worse news than usual, just getting it faster. They had been young then.
Number One is in the safety of her quarters and they are steady on course and she can take a moment for herself. She can be weak for a half second because the man she loves is dead, really dead, not just stuck in that goddamn blinking prison but dead and gone and she's not even going to be able to attend the funeral.
Not that she thinks she could stand it. Trussed up in dress uniform and staring at a casket while someone drones on about duty and service. Another box to trap him in. No, she tells herself. It's better this way. A slip of paper, memories, silent tears and falling asleep restlessly still in uniform, staring at space. Chris belonged to the stars and that's how she would remember him. She'd remember the concept of the man and try to block out the pain of losing the reality.
Logically part of her has always known it might happen. Would happen eventually. Knew that someday his luck would catch up with him. She had always hoped that it'd be when they were old. Or after hers had run out first. Or that is never would because it was Chris and it was somehow not possible for him to die. When the accident happened was bad enough. But she still had him even then. It had hurt and she wanted to strangle the doctors who insisted the best they could do was a little blinking light, but he was alive and he was Chris Pike and Chris Pike never stopped trying. So she had resolved herself to never stop trying for him either. She thought the accident had been his toll. That he would be safe and they would find a way to get him closer to functioning because Chris Pike didn't die. He couldn't.
Except he could, he did. He was a man, a sometimes incredible man maybe, but a finite and vulnerable man who was only human at the end. Accepting that fact was going to take time.
Number One sinks into bed and shakes with silent sobs. She had known the risks down to the decimal, cataloged all the ways for everything to go wrong on lonely maudlin nights, but here in the present she wasn't ready for the ache. The hollow feeling in her gut as it forgot how to function and how many tears that she couldn't stop from racing out her eyes. She's not sure when she passes from mental exhaustion into sleep but eventually she succumbs.
In the morning she pulls herself together. Taking great care as she dresses and does her morning routine. She knocks the bottle of nail polish over as she touches up a finger. She's never clumsy, not like this, and it's the blue he always liked because it matches her eyes and now it's dripping out onto the floor before she can grab it. She curses and cleans it hastily before she has to go. She reports to the bridge pristine as always and goes about her duties. The stain on her desk the only indication anything is different. If anyone can sense her inner turmoil they don't let on. She keeps moving forward and goes about her business.
Because that is what she is trained to do. What she was born to do. What Chris would want her to do.
So she commands her ship and her crew and packs down the hollow feeling in her heart each time it rises. There is something that sits wrong about the whole issue that she chalks up to grieving. She doesn't examine the feeling until she sits down with Boyce three months later while on leave.
Boyce is fixing her a third drink and they're both painfully subdued. They can't talk about good times because it hurts. They can't talk about the end because it hurts more. They're two points of a triangle like this. Chris should be griping as Boyce pours his drink too heavy and One's not enough and he should be running fingers over her thigh whenever he thinks Phil isn't looking. Instead they're Phil, One, and the ghost in the room. Everyone's too far out, the old crew scattered and for not the first time she wishes them all back in the same room. They all could give Pike a proper send off, exorcise the ghosts together and be better for it. Cait looked too hollow when they spoke last. They could all use it.
Number One tries one last time to speak because damn if she and Phil don't need to talk it out before it eats them both alive.
"I never got to say goodbye. I should have been prepared for that," it's a terrible cliche and she's suddenly understanding why on levels she wishes she didn't. She'd been able to visit him once and only one after the accident. She'd left smiling and promising to return and that they'd have him talking in no time. Because she would have broken to say anything else, because she had wanted to leave him some hope. What kind of final words were those empty promises? One drank deeply, slightly disgusted with herself and her foolishness. At some point she'd started accepting Pike's veil of invincibility and she'd never questioned it. Of course they were both going to live forever and chase the stars. What else were they going to do? Die of delta radiation apparently she thought bitterly.
"He should've had a few more months at least. It was too sudden. We all thought...well, Spock said goodbye at least. He was there," Boyce doesn't look at her, just sort of stares at the wall and then at the bottom of his glass.
"What?" One sits forward and surveys Phil. Something clicks in her head and insists this is important. A gut feeling, like the ones Chris made such miracles out of.
She really needs to stop picking up traits from him. At least she'd infected him with her tidiness.
"The Enterprise was at the Starbase. When it happened," Boyce explains hollowly and takes a long drink from his glass. "Only one to be there is the one who probably needed it least. So it goes."
"So it goes," she toasts and drains her own. She and Boyce get no further in their revelations as they drink to the dawn but One has her next step planned when she leaves shaky and hazy in the early morning. Spock, Spock must know something.
And soon she would know it too.
-
She visits Spock the next chance she gets. The next chance being almost 6 months later.
Number One's not sure if she's looking for absolution or closing or what, but she's gotten the strength to look over Chris's records in the past few months and something feels wrong about the whole thing. All the numbers and words run through her head and continually come up short. But Spock was there. He'll know, he'll have the missing piece, the cipher.
Part of her knows it's foolish. That knowing every detail of his death isn't going to make it any easier. It won't bring him back. And getting suspicious over what is probably nothing is only adding to her stress.
By all reasons she should leave it alone. Digging up ghosts isn't good for her. She should get on and learn to live without him. But if there's one thing she learned from Chris it was that she should trust her gut more instead of just the cold facts. And her gut is doing backflips over this.
So she meets with Spock
"You saw him die?"
"No I was not present," his intonation as precise as always. They stood a careful two feet apart, diving into the conversation before bothering with the table and chairs in the room.
"Boyce said you did," she watches his eyes carefully.
"No, I was merely present at the Starbase during the time he was declared dead."
"And you saw his body?" she presses. She needs all the facts, every drop she can pry from Spock.
"I did not care to," there is only the slightest pause before he says it but it's enough.
"So that's a no," she translates.
"Yes. It is a 'no'."
One sighs and looks away, leaning too heavily on her hand on the table. There's something he's not saying and she can feel it. She draws in a breath and looks again to him. "What happened to him Spock? I've looked over the records and there was no reason for him to pass that suddenly."
"His radiation injuries would surely qualify as a reason. And his condition was detor-"
"Not that quickly it wasn't. Something's wrong about this Spock. What killed him that the files aren't telling me?" She's getting angry, knows she shouldn't, but has often had problems caring for rules when Chris was involved.
"Why do you persist? There is nothing that can be done."
"Because I need to know Spock," she can hear the emotion leaking into her voice which Spock likely picked it up three sentences ago. Wonderful.
"You are letting your emotions take over your reasoning."
"Yes I am," she replies honestly and admitting it feels unreasonably freeing. "Someone needs to. What are they sweeping under the rug Spock? You know don't you? What do you know?"
Spock pauses a long time before answering. Each second makes her skin itch and the room heat and Number One's screaming in her head for him to just say something.
"Yes."
"Tell me," she demands a little too harshly.
"I am under orders to tell no one," she'd taught him that. The steadfast listening to orders, early on she'd been skeptical of Pike's adventurer influence on the young half Vulcan and had encouraged his embrace of his Vulcan side over his human one. No surprise it was biting her in the ass.
"Tell me what happened to Captain Pike," her voice is steel. The same way she issues orders in an emergency. Spock's heard it plenty before.
"I cannot."
"You can. Spock, what happened to Chris and why don't the stories match up?" if she could just persist. She could win, he'd give in to his old friend. He had to.
Another too long pause and they're staring holes into each other. "If I tell you will you stop your search?"
"I will."
Spock considered her for a moment and she held his gaze sharply. He knew. He knew what happened and she wasn't going to leave until she knew too.
"He is on Talos IV."
For a moment all the air left the room.
"He's where?" her voice was low and dangerous. She's fighting from letting it sink in. No, no, no, no she thinks, not that, anything but that, don't let him be trapped there she thinks frantically but Spock's face tells her it's no use.
"He is on Talos IV," Spock repeats. Half of her breaks and half springs up for battle, rattling in her chest and demanding justice.
"Under whose orders? Why? Why would you let him go to that prison?" her voice is still sharp as her heart crumbles. Anything but Talos, why did everything always come back to that damned planet?
"I have told you what happened. Please desist in your search as agreed."
"No, no Spock, you told me where he is. Now you have to tell me why. Tell me or I'm stealing a shuttle and going there to ask him myself," she's raising her voice too much but can't stop. Won't let herself stop.
"You are irrational. I took Captain Pike there with the assistance of the Talosians so he could live out his life freely. It is what he wanted."
"There's no freedom to be found there. It's all lies and illusion. And you want to me believe he agreed to this? The man we both know would never want that. Even with that monstrosity he was in. He would have chosen death."
"It is only logical he chose the life that offered most. Talos offered that."
"Like hell it's logical," she spat before storming out.
-
The idea forms slowly. She's back on the Yorktown and it creeps up on her as she stews about the unfairness of it all. He's trapped. Trapped in a fake reality that he never wanted. Number One knows Chris's greatest fear was that he never escaped Talos. That maybe everything he did and felt meant nothing because he was still trapped in their cage. Sending him there was as good as torture.
She fights with herself. She fights it a lot. She knows what she wants, and she knows what healthy Chris would want, but what does current Chris wants? Maybe Spock is right, she thinks every so often. Maybe she's idealizing where she shouldn't. Maybe she should pretend he's dead and try to forget.
It'd be simpler if she didn't so desperately want to remember every inch of him. The sound of his laugh, the feel of lips and hands, the intensity of his stare. Little pieces are beginning to crumble away as time moves on and she's learning the limits of her 'perfect' memory in all the worst ways.
After 8 weeks of fighting and rationalizing and she hands in her resignation and there's no turning back.
-
"Are you sure?"
"It's a rescue mission Phil. I'm damned positive."
"You can't come back from this you know."
"...I don't really intend to," she says softly. Boyce sweeps her into a hug and doesn't let go. One's never been big on physical affection with friends but it feels so welcome she has to blink back wet eyes.
"Go to him," he says in her ear. His blessing is more than she could have asked.
-
She's almost shaking as she lands the shuttle on the surface. As if she's a cadet terrified of a test flight and it all seems so insanely absurd. Number One climbs out and there are two Talosions already waiting for her.
"Take me to him," she demands. Her voice is steady.
They nod and lead the way.
-
"One..." His voice is shaking and he looks ten years younger and she's frozen in place as he walks forward. He's part in awe. Part terrified.
So is she.
"Why..? You..." He can't quite string a sentence together and she can't even manage words because he's right in front of her even if the body is an illusion it's still Chris somewhere underneath. Her Chris. Christopher. And that is enough after too many months of thinking him dead.
"You're here. I never asked them for you and you're here and that means you're really here...I, I never wanted you trapped here too." His voice is a full of emotion as he rambles but he pulls her to him and hugs her close. "Why did you come here you idiot?" he asks but he's shaking and there's more disbelief in his voice than anything else.
She buries her face in his neck and it's the most perfect illusion she could have asked for. The smell is perfect. The feel, the fit of his arms. A perfect lie.
She whispers into his skin, "I had to come save you."
"You always do," he presses a kiss into her hair and the tears are coming. Rushing out traitorously. She can't tell if they're more or less real than the man in her arms.
A small part of her doesn't care.