[fic] Start Infinity Again (K/S, 4/13, NC-17)
Chapter Three
Four
2371 - Prime Universe
Jim spent several hours immersed in the history banks before someone at his door chimed for entry.
"Come," he called without looking away from the Starfleet biography of Admiral Leonard McCoy, which he'd be staring at for at least an hour. McCoy had only died four years ago at the ripe old age of 140, one of the oldest humans on record. It really said something for healthy living, but...four years. Jim had missed his best friend by four years.
The door slid open and Riker walked in. His eyes gleamed brightly and a smile kept pulling up the corners of his mouth.
"Am I disturbing you, Captain?" Riker asked, coming to a stop a few feet away.
Jim shook his head. "I was just bringing myself up to speed. What can I do for you, Commander?"
"Captain Picard would like to see you in his ready room. I can show you the way, if that's all right."
Jim inclined his head. Riker was very polite, but Jim knew the request of a captain on his ship amounted to an order, even for guests. Even for guests of an equal or higher rank. He could refuse, but he wouldn't without a good reason.
"Of course, Commander," Jim replied. As he followed Riker out into the halls, he asked, "How long have you been with Captain Picard?"
"Seven years," Riker said with a wide grin. "I've been given several opportunities for a ship of my own, but I've always decided to stay with the Enterprise. There's nothing quite like her."
Jim smiled. "No, there isn't," he agreed.
This wasn't his Enterprise. The lines and colors were different, as were the uniforms. The ship was much bigger, and had far more facilities and amenities. His first Enterprise hadn't even had a ready room for him, as useful as one would have been.
He'd love to see the schematics for this ship, though. Perhaps after he got himself caught up.
As they rode the turbolift to the bridge, Riker kept beaming at him. Jim was pretty sure his excitement came from a combination of pride in his ship and hero-worship, as discomfiting as he found hero-worship coming from a seasoned commander. Not that he hadn't hero-worshipped a few people himself, but being the recipient was always stranger. And he had not forgotten the way people had watched him in Ten Forward, once they'd heard his name. He should certainly look up his own reputation as well.
Finally the turbolift stopped and opened onto the bridge and Riker, grinning, gestured for him to leave first.
This bridge, like the rest of this ship, was much bigger than his own, with a lot of empty floor space in between the captain's chair and the viewscreen and only the helm and navigation consoles filling the space. The rest of the consoles seemed to be on the rise behind the captain's chair.
Jim had stood on the bridges of many ships in his time. He usually felt a pang for his own whenever he did, but the pang hit deeper here. This was the Enterprise, but not one he knew.
Riker led him down the bridge to a door near another turbolift and buzzed for entry. When Picard's voice called, "Come!" Jim walked in. He noticed Riker head to the captain's chair as he the door hissed shut behind him.
"Ah, Captain," Picard said, standing up and coming around to stand in front of his desk. "Thank you for coming. Is there anything I can get you?"
"I'm fine, thanks. And please, it's Jim," Jim replied. "You wanted to see me?"
Picard smiled. "Yes. I was able to contact Romulus for you, though I had to go through Starfleet, and they would like to debrief you themselves at some point. But Ambassador Spock is now on a fully sanctioned Federation diplomatic mission, and the Romulans are aware the Federation will occasionally need to contact him."
Jim could feel his heart speed up in his chest. "You contacted Spock?"
Picard nodded, still smiling. "I haven't told him anything but that I have a guest who would like to speak with him," he said. "He's on hold right now." He gestured at his desk, where the computer screen faced Jim and the visitor's chair. "I'll leave you to your conversation."
Jim slowly sank into the chair in front of him as Picard left the room. He hadn't been expecting results quite this quickly.
Almost on autopilot, his hand reached out to turn the monitor on. Immediately Spock's face filled the screen, in sharper definition than the viewers of eighty years ago. Jim could see every strand of gray in his hair, every line on his face.
Spock had grown old, visibly older than Jim now...and Jim had missed it happening.
"Spock," he whispered. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Spock." Almost without his volition, his hand reached up to touch the screen and trace the lines and angles of the new-familiar face.
Spock's face had held a trace of expression, curiosity in the lines of his mouth and warmth in the depths of his eyes, but all expression dropped off at the sound of Jim's voice. Jim could only see the blankness of utter shock.
"Jim?" If Spock's face was blank, his voice held traces of emotion. Jim heard a mix of surprise, disbelief, hope, and fear.
"Oh, Spock," Jim said, trying to hold his emotions back.
His breathing grew loud enough for him to hear it, and started coming quickly. He controlled himself, to prevent hyperventilation, but he couldn't stop the prick of tears in his eyes. He blinked them away.
"This is not possible," Spock said. His gaze fastened, unblinking, on Jim's face.
Jim chuckled wetly. "Is it logical to doubt the evidence of your eyes?" he teased gently. "It's incredibly unlikely, I'll grant you, but not clearly not impossible."
"How?"
"Have you heard of the Nexus?" Jim's fingers twitched against the screen, wanting to actually touch Spock's face.
Spock closed his eyes in a long blink. "I researched it, upon speaking to the survivors of the Lakul," he said softly. "But it was merely curiosity. You are saying you were trapped within the Nexus?"
Jim nodded. "That hull breach on the Enterprise-B must have sent me there. I don't even remember it properly. One minute I was on the ship and the next I was living a different life like I'd never had anything else."
Spock's eyebrow tilted up to a skeptical angle. "An extraordinary story, certainly," he replied.
Jim couldn't be surprised Spock didn't believe him immediately. He also couldn't entirely suppress the flash of pain at Spock's disbelief, even expecting it, but he tamped his reaction down in favor of logic. "It fits the facts as you know them, doesn't it?" he pointed out. "And surely you don't think that Captain Picard would go to the trouble of contacting you, all the way on Romulus, if he didn't think I was the real Jim Kirk?"
"Captain Picard could be mistaken."
"He could," Jim agreed, "but he seems pretty sharp to me. I don't think he would have contacted you if he weren't convinced."
Spock's eyes grew lighter, though he still controlled his face. Jim pressed his advantage. "My friend, I understand your caution. How many times have you curbed my own impulses? As many times as I have asked you to trust yourself, surely. What is your heart telling you now?"
Finally Spock seemed to believe him. His face relaxed, and Jim's spine relaxed as well.
"Your story fits the facts as I know them," Spock replied. "I agree Captain Picard would not have us converse had he been in any doubt as to your identity. And...I believed I felt your presence again, not long ago. Not the resumption of our bond, of course, but a renewed awareness of your presence. I dismissed it, but now I see I was in error."
Jim smiled. "I would have done the same thing," he said. They shared a warm glance.
"Tell me more, of how you came to be here?" Spock requested.
So Jim told him the story. He glossed over Antonia, and Spock let him, but he did not hold back on his disgust with himself.
"I didn't even realize, Spock," he confessed, running a hand through his hair. "I didn't even think about it. I existed there for eighty years, but I can't say I felt like I'd lived there for more than a day. Or else it seemed like I'd been there forever. But I'd had no idea the Nexus wasn't true reality until Picard came."
"Do not castigate yourself unduly, Jim," Spock advised him. "Perhaps it is simply a property of the Nexus. The Lakul survivors whom I'd spoken to were likewise unable to relate the exact number of years they had spent within the Nexus."
"Yeah," Jim said. He looked at Spock, tracing the cast of those features, memorizing them again with his eyes. "Oh, Spock. Has it really been eighty years?"
"Seventy-eight," Spock corrected. "But much time has indeed passed."
"I don't feel like it has. I feel like I'd only seen you a week ago, before you left for the conference on Qo'noS." He swallowed. "I missed so much."
Something seemed to twist in Spock's eyes. "I did not look," he said stiffly. "I felt the breaking of the bond, yet my only response was to speak to the survivors of the Enterprise-B and the Lakul. You still lived, and I did nothing."
"Spock, no. You couldn't have known. You had eyewitness reports that I'd been sucked into space, and you knew the bond was broken. You had no reason to think I was alive."
"You were not so sanguine, faced with my death."
"I had something to go on," Jim reminded him. "I went after your body on Genesis because Sarek told me your katra needed to be reunited with your body or it would go mad. Without Sarek, I never would have thought to do anything. It wouldn't have occurred to me there was anything I could do. Don't beat yourself up, my heart. If you need forgiveness, I forgive you."
Spock's eyes grew warm at the endearment before once again seeming to shut down. "I do not know if you have been informed," he said, his voice once again stiff, "but I have remarried."
So, it was time for this. Jim had been half hoping to ignore it, but he knew they couldn't. "I was told, yes," he replied. "To Saavik."
"Yes." Spock surveyed him with those soulful brown eyes, and if Jim had been angry with him, he would have forgiven him on the spot. Those eyes held too great a power over him. "I would not have," he said, "had my Time not continued to come, Jim. I promise you that. I never wanted another mate in my life, after you."
Jim shook his head. "I'm glad you did, Spock," he told him honestly. "How much worse would being free of the Nexus be for me if I came out to hear you'd died years ago? And you'd died because I was gone and you weren't willing to continue without me? You're alive, Spock. That's what matters to me."
"Your life matters to me as well," Spock murmured. One of Spock's delightful understatements, Jim knew -- or hoped. He knew how much he'd meant to Spock seventy-eight years ago, but now?
It was one thing to be pleased he was still alive, and another to be willing to take him back after having moved on decades ago.
But Jim couldn't keep silent any longer. He had to ask. "Spock," he said, forcing himself to remove any trace of hesitancy from his voice. "I know it's been a long time, and you've had to move on. But do you still..."
Even then, he couldn't say complete the sentence. Love me, he wanted to finish, but he didn't know if the words would come out the continuation of his question or a demand.
Spock's eyes grew even softer, more welcoming.
"Jim," he said, his voice deepening with a smokiness that sent heat spreading through Jim's body, "the universe could die through entropy and I could live long enough to watch it happen, and I would still love you. It would be my life's greatest impossibility for me to stop."
Jim couldn't stop the shaky exhale of relief. "I love you too," he replied. His words weren't enough, he knew, but they were all he had for now. "Always. I couldn't stop and remain myself. I hope you know that."
"I do," Spock replied, his voice still deliciously smoky, "but it is always welcome to hear again."
Far too much distance lay between them. Spock was on Romulus, and Jim didn't even know the Enterprise's current position, but at this moment, to be in the same room without touching would have been too much distance. To be standing next to each other with an inch between them would not have been close enough.
Parted and never parted, never and always touching and touched -- the Vulcan words of marriage ran through his mind, but with more of an undertone of bitterness than the contentment with which he usually recalled them. His bond was broken. They were parted and not touching.
"What about Saavik?" he asked before he could stop himself.
Spock's eyes grew masked. "I cannot answer without consultation with her."
"But...you would want to bond with me again? If you were free to do so?"
"Of course. Had there been no obstacles, I would even now be on my way from Romulus to meet you. But, Jim, my answer cannot be so simple at this time."
Yes, Jim acknowledged, discussing this without Saavik wouldn't be fair to her. But, dammit, Spock had been his husband first! Didn't he have prior claim?
He would be willing to challenge Saavik for Spock, even. He didn't care that the challenge was rare and not precisely in good taste, and usually a fight for the female besides. He'd acknowledged decades ago the only right way for him to be in this life was to stand at Spock's side, sleep in his bed, abide in his mind.
"When can we talk to Saavik?" Jim asked, trying not to sound like begging. Though he would, if that would make Spock willing to stay with him. He had never been above begging Spock for what he needed, and he knew Spock's susceptibility to that. Perhaps it would be a dirty tactic, but he didn't care.
"I will make arrangements to leave Romulus immediately," Spock said quietly, watching Jim with knowing eyes, as if he could feel Jim's rising desperation even without their bond. "And I will request Saavik meet us on Earth, if that is acceptable?"
Earth. How much would Earth have changed in nearly eighty years?
But Spock's choice of rendezvous did not reassure Jim. He could leave Jim behind on Earth, his home planet, and know Jim still had roots somewhere. He'd be less likely to leave Jim behind if he'd chosen a place where Jim had no ties.
Jim was probably being paranoid. Spock had already assured him he still loved him, that he still wanted to choose him.
What Jim needed to know was why Spock hesitated.
It didn't matter, though. He'd coaxed Spock into appreciating his emotions at least twice before. Whatever Spock's reasons, Jim knew he could find arguments to persuade him to take him back.
"Yeah," he said, equally quiet. "Earth is fine. I'll be interested to see how much it's changed."
"Jim..." Spock watched him, his worried look, the one that said he knew Jim was only putting on a good face and wouldn't he just talk to Spock and share his burdens?
"Spock. I understand, all right? You can't make me any promises right now. I don't blame you for that. The galaxy doesn't stop just because I leave the universe for a few decades."
Jim was reminded suddenly of a centuries-old poem. Stop all the clocks, he thought briefly. But they didn't stop. They couldn't. Oh, Spock. You are my north, my south, my east, my west. What will I do in a galaxy where I can't touch you?
"No, it does not." Spock paused. "But Jim, do not dwell too heavily on this. You do not realize what it means to me, to have you in this universe again. It has been so long for me, t'hy'la. Do not think I am ignorant of what a gift your presence is."
T'hy'la. Jim basked in the word. If Spock was still willing to call him that, then perhaps his fears really were foolish and premature.
But he could not forget Spock would not say what was going to happen one way or the other. There was more going on here than how much they loved each other -- that, after all, had never been one of the problems in their relationship.
They had always known how much they loved each other. The issue between them had always been how to handle that love. Handling it seemed as much a question now as it had been in the days before V'Ger and their bond.
"I know," he said. "It's just...difficult, being here like this. But I'll see you soon?"
"I will leave on the first ship I can arrange," Spock assured him. "I, too, look forward to seeing you. T'hy'la."
Jim let Spock go not long after that -- the sooner he made arrangements, the sooner they could see each other in person. His heart still contracted painfully as he watched the screen go dark, not knowing when they would next see each other again.
He went back to his quarters, waving off the invitations to dinner from Picard, Riker, and Troi. He didn't feel up to socializing with anyone right then, and even less so with people he'd only just met. And he was still so tired. What he wanted most -- besides Spock -- was an early night.
He had dinner by himself, which reminded him of his last night before the ceremony on the Enterprise-B. He couldn't help but dwell on it as he went to bed. He had been alone, with Spock at the conference on Qo'noS and Bones spending time with Joanna and her children.
Spock had adjusted so much better than Jim had to life after their retirement from Starfleet. He had had the beginnings of his diplomatic career to keep him busy. He'd invited Jim to go with him to Qo'noS, but while the festering boil of his hatred for the Klingons had been lanced by the events of the Khitomer conference, the wound still ached. He had not been ready to go to the Klingon homeworld itself.
And so he'd stayed on Earth with only the ceremony on the Enterprise-B to look forward to -- an event that would formally give the Enterprise to another captain. He'd missed Spock desperately, though he'd only been gone a week and they'd been separated longer before.
He'd been vulnerable, and lonely, and the Nexus had preyed on that. It hadn't even had the decency to give him Spock -- though it could have never replicated the true Spock. Perhaps that was why the Nexus hadn't tried. He would have known sooner or later Spock's representation wasn't real.
But he didn't want to think about the Nexus, and determinedly turned his thoughts away.
Deanna Troi had told him earlier he needed to make plans for his life, plans not dependent on Spock. He knew what she meant -- it would be unhealthy to build his life entirely around another person. Remove that person, and his entire life would fall apart.
Other than Scotty, who Jim would see if he could track down the next day, Spock was the only thing he had left. And as much as he cared for Scotty, the engineer was not his husband. Not the other half of his soul.
He knew he'd been desperate during their conversation today, and he knew Spock had noticed. What he didn't know was how not to be.
He fell asleep still worrying.
--
He had breakfast the next day with Picard and Riker, who had come to his quarters to offer a meal and a tour of the ship. Jim quickly accepted, not wanting to be left to his own thoughts any longer.
Throughout the meal and during the tour, whenever the Starfleet officers weren't pointing out things of interest aboard the ship, differences from the Constitution-class starship Jim knew, they were telling him stories about the things they'd encountered. He'd even told a few himself.
And though Jim missed his own Enterprise, he had to admit the Galaxy-class one looked pretty amazing. Starfleet allowed the children he'd noticed earlier on board because the saucer section could separate, leaving the senior crew on the battle bridge to handle the danger.
He was particularly intrigued at the idea of the holodeck -- something he would have loved to have on his own ship. He turned down Riker's offer to use it any time, though. "I've had enough of fake lives for awhile," he said. "Let me get used to reality first. Then maybe I'll try out the holodeck."
He hadn't been able to spend very long in Sickbay, when they'd arrived there. He had nothing against Dr. Crusher, and knew she had to be a superlative CMO to be serving on the Enterprise, but it was too difficult to walk into Sickbay and not hear McCoy's gruff tones grousing at him, not see McCoy's habitual scowl.
Talking to Spock yesterday made him miss Bones even more. The three of them had been family, as close as brothers. As deeply happy as he was to know Spock was still alive and still loved him, he felt even more off-balance with McCoy gone.
They ended the tour at the bridge, and invited him to stay as long as he liked as they took their seats.
So he stayed there for a shift fully as uneventful and boring as a normal shift on his own ship. They weren't even star-charting, only traveling through known space. Conversation ebbed and flowed around him, but frequently centered around topics he couldn't participate in. People he didn't know, planets he'd never been to, missions he wasn't around for.
The bridge crew made an effort to include him, but conversation inevitably turned back to the kind that wasn't purposely meant to exclude him but did anyway. Jim couldn't even last out the shift before he had to leave, citing his need to keep learning the history he missed.
Instead, he went to Main Engineering to track down Geordi LaForge.
"Commander LaForge?" he asked, drawing close to where LaForge stood by one of the consoles.
"Captain Kirk!" LaForge turned around. "What can I do for you?"
"You said Scotty -- Captain Scott -- was still around?" Jim said. "Would you happen to know how I can get a message to him?"
LaForge grinned. "I can do more than that, Captain," he replied. "He and I have kept in touch. He's been studying contemporary engineering on Earth. You can meet him when we get there, and in the meantime, I can give you his direction."
Jim closed his eyes. "Thank you. This...means a lot to me."
"It will mean a lot to him too," LaForge agreed, nodding. "He speaks very highly of you, you know."
Jim smiled. "Yes. And I think just as highly of him. I can't even tell you how many miracles he's pulled off for me."
Jim stopped by his quarters after leaving Engineering, but he could only leave a message for Scotty. Even this far in the future, this far out from a message's destination, real-time conversations were reserved for the most important communiqués.
So he went back to Ten Forward, looking for Guinan. She had also been in the Nexus, and wanted to speak to him.
He took a seat at the bar when he got there -- and damn, he still couldn't get over that. A bar on the Enterprise. It was either the best or worst idea ever.
"Captain Kirk," Guinan greeted from behind the bar. She wore a most intriguing style of hat. "What can I get for you?"
"Saurian brandy?" He grinned at her. "And call me Jim. It's like no one on this ship knows my name."
"Jim, then." She smiled. "And I'm out of real Saurian brandy. Right now I only have synthehol."
Jim grimaced. Synthehol never tasted as good as the real thing, which was why Bones had always smuggled aboard, ahem, medicinal supplies.
But it was probably just as well. A drink was likely to depress him further in this mood.
"Coffee, then, milk, no sugar." He smiled briefly. "Apparently it's been almost eighty years since I had any caffeine. I'm surprised I'm not in withdrawal."
Guinan smiled with him, but didn't say anything until she brought his coffee out from behind the bar and over to a table by the windows. He followed her to the table and sat when she gestured, taking the coffee. He took a moment to smell it, savor that scent, before taking his first sip.
Perfect.
"Are you a telepath, Guinan?" he asked, taking another sip. "It is just Guinan, right? You got my coffee exactly right."
"Just Guinan," she agreed. "And I've had some practice."
They sat in silence for a moment, Jim holding his coffee mug between his hands, enjoying the warmth emanating from it. He knew she wanted to talk to him about the Nexus, but he didn't know how to open the discussion. Part of him wanted to completely purge his experience, discuss it until it had no more hold on him. Another part never wanted to think of it again, and for multiple reasons.
He was both damned and saved when she began the conversation instead. "You said you lost eighty years of your life to the Nexus," she began, folding her fingers together and leaning forward. "Did you mean it like that? Lost?"
Jim looked down at his coffee, then back at her. "Out of all the people I loved, two are still alive," he replied. "One of them only by another trick of stasis. The other is my husband, who is now married to someone else. If not for the Nexus, none of this would be true."
"You're very fortunate," she said. The words were so incongruous to what he'd just said that he stared at her for a moment. She noticed, and smiled. "To already be able to focus on the life you have here, in the real world, I mean. It took me a long time to get to that point, and as you've seen, Soran never got there."
"You were in the Nexus?" He'd thought so, but he didn't even know why. He'd just...felt something from her.
She nodded, her gaze going distant. "I was on the Lakul," she told him. "For all this time, the galaxy has believed you sacrificed your life for me and mine. I'm glad to find you're still alive, Jim."
"How was the Nexus, for you?" he couldn't help but ask. Picard had been there so briefly he'd barely felt the effects, Jim had noticed.
"I don't like to remember often," she said softly, slowly. "And I don't really remember the details of the life I'd lived there. But I do remember it being like existing in pure joy, Jim. We'd never wanted to leave. Eventually I moved on, but I can understand how Soran couldn't."
"You and Soran, you're from the same people? Did you lose your world as well?"
She nodded. "We're El-Aurian, a race of listeners. The Borg -- they're a sort of collective pseudo-race who combine organic and cybernetic parts, on an eternal quest to assimilate everyone they come across and destroy the people who resist -- they came to my world. They destroyed it. We're all of us refugees now."
"I'm sorry," he replied. Guinan carried her sorrow well, but Jim could tell she still felt it.
She inclined her head. "Inside the Nexus, I could still feel my family, the love we had for each other. Being forced out of the Nexus was like I lost them all over again."
Jim shook his head. "All I got," he said, "was a woman I barely knew that the Nexus tried to convince me I loved. And it did. While I was there, I firmly believed I was in love with her. I believed what I wanted most in the world was to leave Starfleet and marry her and stay in an idyllic little cabin. When I was there, I was the person the Nexus made me into.
"I may never forgive the Nexus for that."
"You don't want those things? A peaceful life, someone to love?"
"I had someone to love," he snapped. "Someone I've loved for nearly thirty years! Only once did the Nexus show him to me, when I deliberately tried to call him forward, right before I left. Otherwise I barely remembered he existed."
She was silent, and he stared into his coffee again. "I have no objections to a peaceful life," he said, more gently, almost apologizing for snapping. "But I can never live it for long. It would drive me mad. My life has always been intense, and sometimes I need a break. But I also thrive on the intensity, and trying to just plop me into a peaceful, useless, meaningless existence has always felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole."
"I've never thought about how the Nexus gave us what it did," Guinan remarked. "For me, and for Soran, it seems to have been spot on. For you, the Nexus seems to have missed its mark."
Jim shrugged. "Maybe because it gave you what you'd already lost and wanted back," he suggested. "The kind of thing that would tempt you to stay. For me, it had to make me forget what I lost by being there in order to make me want to stay. Unlike me, you and Soran longed for something you could never get back. I think the Nexus used Antonia to distract me from wanting to get back to Spock."
"Do you think that was important to it? Trying to make us stay?"
He rubbed a hand over his forehead. "I don't know," he said. "I'd never even heard of the Nexus until Picard tried to persuade me to leave. You probably know it better than I do."
Guinan shifted so she could prop her chin up in one hand. "There was never much to find out," she replied. "I know what it did for me and the rest of us on the Lakul. I know how we felt after we left. I know the gateway is through an energy ribbon that travels around and rarely appears in this part of the galaxy. That's all I know."
Jim took another sip of his coffee. "What do you mean, how you felt after you left? How did you feel?"
"Depressed," she answered simply. "Listless, hollow. I wanted to stay in bed and dream of the Nexus all day, and I wasn't the only one."
"I was tired," he said slowly, "when I left the Nexus. I wouldn't call myself depressed -- at least, not because I left. But I was very tired."
"Is that significant?"
He shrugged again. "I can't be sure," he said. "But I have to wonder where the ribbon gets its energy, to spend its time traveling around the galaxy. What if it took that energy from us, the people inside it? It could keep us in a happy fantasy and we wouldn't even notice."
Guinan looked troubled. "It would explain a lot," she said. "But I have to confess I don't really like the idea."
A corner of his mouth pulled down in a half-grimace. "I don't like the idea either," he said. "And it's just a theory. But I think it makes more sense than my dearest wish and greatest happiness being to marry a woman I barely knew, despite being married to someone else when I met her, and where the most exciting part of my day was chopping wood at a rustic mountain cabin ad infinitum."
"You may be right," Guinan said, but she still looked troubled. "You...may be right."
--
Chapter Five
Four
2371 - Prime Universe
Jim spent several hours immersed in the history banks before someone at his door chimed for entry.
"Come," he called without looking away from the Starfleet biography of Admiral Leonard McCoy, which he'd be staring at for at least an hour. McCoy had only died four years ago at the ripe old age of 140, one of the oldest humans on record. It really said something for healthy living, but...four years. Jim had missed his best friend by four years.
The door slid open and Riker walked in. His eyes gleamed brightly and a smile kept pulling up the corners of his mouth.
"Am I disturbing you, Captain?" Riker asked, coming to a stop a few feet away.
Jim shook his head. "I was just bringing myself up to speed. What can I do for you, Commander?"
"Captain Picard would like to see you in his ready room. I can show you the way, if that's all right."
Jim inclined his head. Riker was very polite, but Jim knew the request of a captain on his ship amounted to an order, even for guests. Even for guests of an equal or higher rank. He could refuse, but he wouldn't without a good reason.
"Of course, Commander," Jim replied. As he followed Riker out into the halls, he asked, "How long have you been with Captain Picard?"
"Seven years," Riker said with a wide grin. "I've been given several opportunities for a ship of my own, but I've always decided to stay with the Enterprise. There's nothing quite like her."
Jim smiled. "No, there isn't," he agreed.
This wasn't his Enterprise. The lines and colors were different, as were the uniforms. The ship was much bigger, and had far more facilities and amenities. His first Enterprise hadn't even had a ready room for him, as useful as one would have been.
He'd love to see the schematics for this ship, though. Perhaps after he got himself caught up.
As they rode the turbolift to the bridge, Riker kept beaming at him. Jim was pretty sure his excitement came from a combination of pride in his ship and hero-worship, as discomfiting as he found hero-worship coming from a seasoned commander. Not that he hadn't hero-worshipped a few people himself, but being the recipient was always stranger. And he had not forgotten the way people had watched him in Ten Forward, once they'd heard his name. He should certainly look up his own reputation as well.
Finally the turbolift stopped and opened onto the bridge and Riker, grinning, gestured for him to leave first.
This bridge, like the rest of this ship, was much bigger than his own, with a lot of empty floor space in between the captain's chair and the viewscreen and only the helm and navigation consoles filling the space. The rest of the consoles seemed to be on the rise behind the captain's chair.
Jim had stood on the bridges of many ships in his time. He usually felt a pang for his own whenever he did, but the pang hit deeper here. This was the Enterprise, but not one he knew.
Riker led him down the bridge to a door near another turbolift and buzzed for entry. When Picard's voice called, "Come!" Jim walked in. He noticed Riker head to the captain's chair as he the door hissed shut behind him.
"Ah, Captain," Picard said, standing up and coming around to stand in front of his desk. "Thank you for coming. Is there anything I can get you?"
"I'm fine, thanks. And please, it's Jim," Jim replied. "You wanted to see me?"
Picard smiled. "Yes. I was able to contact Romulus for you, though I had to go through Starfleet, and they would like to debrief you themselves at some point. But Ambassador Spock is now on a fully sanctioned Federation diplomatic mission, and the Romulans are aware the Federation will occasionally need to contact him."
Jim could feel his heart speed up in his chest. "You contacted Spock?"
Picard nodded, still smiling. "I haven't told him anything but that I have a guest who would like to speak with him," he said. "He's on hold right now." He gestured at his desk, where the computer screen faced Jim and the visitor's chair. "I'll leave you to your conversation."
Jim slowly sank into the chair in front of him as Picard left the room. He hadn't been expecting results quite this quickly.
Almost on autopilot, his hand reached out to turn the monitor on. Immediately Spock's face filled the screen, in sharper definition than the viewers of eighty years ago. Jim could see every strand of gray in his hair, every line on his face.
Spock had grown old, visibly older than Jim now...and Jim had missed it happening.
"Spock," he whispered. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Spock." Almost without his volition, his hand reached up to touch the screen and trace the lines and angles of the new-familiar face.
Spock's face had held a trace of expression, curiosity in the lines of his mouth and warmth in the depths of his eyes, but all expression dropped off at the sound of Jim's voice. Jim could only see the blankness of utter shock.
"Jim?" If Spock's face was blank, his voice held traces of emotion. Jim heard a mix of surprise, disbelief, hope, and fear.
"Oh, Spock," Jim said, trying to hold his emotions back.
His breathing grew loud enough for him to hear it, and started coming quickly. He controlled himself, to prevent hyperventilation, but he couldn't stop the prick of tears in his eyes. He blinked them away.
"This is not possible," Spock said. His gaze fastened, unblinking, on Jim's face.
Jim chuckled wetly. "Is it logical to doubt the evidence of your eyes?" he teased gently. "It's incredibly unlikely, I'll grant you, but not clearly not impossible."
"How?"
"Have you heard of the Nexus?" Jim's fingers twitched against the screen, wanting to actually touch Spock's face.
Spock closed his eyes in a long blink. "I researched it, upon speaking to the survivors of the Lakul," he said softly. "But it was merely curiosity. You are saying you were trapped within the Nexus?"
Jim nodded. "That hull breach on the Enterprise-B must have sent me there. I don't even remember it properly. One minute I was on the ship and the next I was living a different life like I'd never had anything else."
Spock's eyebrow tilted up to a skeptical angle. "An extraordinary story, certainly," he replied.
Jim couldn't be surprised Spock didn't believe him immediately. He also couldn't entirely suppress the flash of pain at Spock's disbelief, even expecting it, but he tamped his reaction down in favor of logic. "It fits the facts as you know them, doesn't it?" he pointed out. "And surely you don't think that Captain Picard would go to the trouble of contacting you, all the way on Romulus, if he didn't think I was the real Jim Kirk?"
"Captain Picard could be mistaken."
"He could," Jim agreed, "but he seems pretty sharp to me. I don't think he would have contacted you if he weren't convinced."
Spock's eyes grew lighter, though he still controlled his face. Jim pressed his advantage. "My friend, I understand your caution. How many times have you curbed my own impulses? As many times as I have asked you to trust yourself, surely. What is your heart telling you now?"
Finally Spock seemed to believe him. His face relaxed, and Jim's spine relaxed as well.
"Your story fits the facts as I know them," Spock replied. "I agree Captain Picard would not have us converse had he been in any doubt as to your identity. And...I believed I felt your presence again, not long ago. Not the resumption of our bond, of course, but a renewed awareness of your presence. I dismissed it, but now I see I was in error."
Jim smiled. "I would have done the same thing," he said. They shared a warm glance.
"Tell me more, of how you came to be here?" Spock requested.
So Jim told him the story. He glossed over Antonia, and Spock let him, but he did not hold back on his disgust with himself.
"I didn't even realize, Spock," he confessed, running a hand through his hair. "I didn't even think about it. I existed there for eighty years, but I can't say I felt like I'd lived there for more than a day. Or else it seemed like I'd been there forever. But I'd had no idea the Nexus wasn't true reality until Picard came."
"Do not castigate yourself unduly, Jim," Spock advised him. "Perhaps it is simply a property of the Nexus. The Lakul survivors whom I'd spoken to were likewise unable to relate the exact number of years they had spent within the Nexus."
"Yeah," Jim said. He looked at Spock, tracing the cast of those features, memorizing them again with his eyes. "Oh, Spock. Has it really been eighty years?"
"Seventy-eight," Spock corrected. "But much time has indeed passed."
"I don't feel like it has. I feel like I'd only seen you a week ago, before you left for the conference on Qo'noS." He swallowed. "I missed so much."
Something seemed to twist in Spock's eyes. "I did not look," he said stiffly. "I felt the breaking of the bond, yet my only response was to speak to the survivors of the Enterprise-B and the Lakul. You still lived, and I did nothing."
"Spock, no. You couldn't have known. You had eyewitness reports that I'd been sucked into space, and you knew the bond was broken. You had no reason to think I was alive."
"You were not so sanguine, faced with my death."
"I had something to go on," Jim reminded him. "I went after your body on Genesis because Sarek told me your katra needed to be reunited with your body or it would go mad. Without Sarek, I never would have thought to do anything. It wouldn't have occurred to me there was anything I could do. Don't beat yourself up, my heart. If you need forgiveness, I forgive you."
Spock's eyes grew warm at the endearment before once again seeming to shut down. "I do not know if you have been informed," he said, his voice once again stiff, "but I have remarried."
So, it was time for this. Jim had been half hoping to ignore it, but he knew they couldn't. "I was told, yes," he replied. "To Saavik."
"Yes." Spock surveyed him with those soulful brown eyes, and if Jim had been angry with him, he would have forgiven him on the spot. Those eyes held too great a power over him. "I would not have," he said, "had my Time not continued to come, Jim. I promise you that. I never wanted another mate in my life, after you."
Jim shook his head. "I'm glad you did, Spock," he told him honestly. "How much worse would being free of the Nexus be for me if I came out to hear you'd died years ago? And you'd died because I was gone and you weren't willing to continue without me? You're alive, Spock. That's what matters to me."
"Your life matters to me as well," Spock murmured. One of Spock's delightful understatements, Jim knew -- or hoped. He knew how much he'd meant to Spock seventy-eight years ago, but now?
It was one thing to be pleased he was still alive, and another to be willing to take him back after having moved on decades ago.
But Jim couldn't keep silent any longer. He had to ask. "Spock," he said, forcing himself to remove any trace of hesitancy from his voice. "I know it's been a long time, and you've had to move on. But do you still..."
Even then, he couldn't say complete the sentence. Love me, he wanted to finish, but he didn't know if the words would come out the continuation of his question or a demand.
Spock's eyes grew even softer, more welcoming.
"Jim," he said, his voice deepening with a smokiness that sent heat spreading through Jim's body, "the universe could die through entropy and I could live long enough to watch it happen, and I would still love you. It would be my life's greatest impossibility for me to stop."
Jim couldn't stop the shaky exhale of relief. "I love you too," he replied. His words weren't enough, he knew, but they were all he had for now. "Always. I couldn't stop and remain myself. I hope you know that."
"I do," Spock replied, his voice still deliciously smoky, "but it is always welcome to hear again."
Far too much distance lay between them. Spock was on Romulus, and Jim didn't even know the Enterprise's current position, but at this moment, to be in the same room without touching would have been too much distance. To be standing next to each other with an inch between them would not have been close enough.
Parted and never parted, never and always touching and touched -- the Vulcan words of marriage ran through his mind, but with more of an undertone of bitterness than the contentment with which he usually recalled them. His bond was broken. They were parted and not touching.
"What about Saavik?" he asked before he could stop himself.
Spock's eyes grew masked. "I cannot answer without consultation with her."
"But...you would want to bond with me again? If you were free to do so?"
"Of course. Had there been no obstacles, I would even now be on my way from Romulus to meet you. But, Jim, my answer cannot be so simple at this time."
Yes, Jim acknowledged, discussing this without Saavik wouldn't be fair to her. But, dammit, Spock had been his husband first! Didn't he have prior claim?
He would be willing to challenge Saavik for Spock, even. He didn't care that the challenge was rare and not precisely in good taste, and usually a fight for the female besides. He'd acknowledged decades ago the only right way for him to be in this life was to stand at Spock's side, sleep in his bed, abide in his mind.
"When can we talk to Saavik?" Jim asked, trying not to sound like begging. Though he would, if that would make Spock willing to stay with him. He had never been above begging Spock for what he needed, and he knew Spock's susceptibility to that. Perhaps it would be a dirty tactic, but he didn't care.
"I will make arrangements to leave Romulus immediately," Spock said quietly, watching Jim with knowing eyes, as if he could feel Jim's rising desperation even without their bond. "And I will request Saavik meet us on Earth, if that is acceptable?"
Earth. How much would Earth have changed in nearly eighty years?
But Spock's choice of rendezvous did not reassure Jim. He could leave Jim behind on Earth, his home planet, and know Jim still had roots somewhere. He'd be less likely to leave Jim behind if he'd chosen a place where Jim had no ties.
Jim was probably being paranoid. Spock had already assured him he still loved him, that he still wanted to choose him.
What Jim needed to know was why Spock hesitated.
It didn't matter, though. He'd coaxed Spock into appreciating his emotions at least twice before. Whatever Spock's reasons, Jim knew he could find arguments to persuade him to take him back.
"Yeah," he said, equally quiet. "Earth is fine. I'll be interested to see how much it's changed."
"Jim..." Spock watched him, his worried look, the one that said he knew Jim was only putting on a good face and wouldn't he just talk to Spock and share his burdens?
"Spock. I understand, all right? You can't make me any promises right now. I don't blame you for that. The galaxy doesn't stop just because I leave the universe for a few decades."
Jim was reminded suddenly of a centuries-old poem. Stop all the clocks, he thought briefly. But they didn't stop. They couldn't. Oh, Spock. You are my north, my south, my east, my west. What will I do in a galaxy where I can't touch you?
"No, it does not." Spock paused. "But Jim, do not dwell too heavily on this. You do not realize what it means to me, to have you in this universe again. It has been so long for me, t'hy'la. Do not think I am ignorant of what a gift your presence is."
T'hy'la. Jim basked in the word. If Spock was still willing to call him that, then perhaps his fears really were foolish and premature.
But he could not forget Spock would not say what was going to happen one way or the other. There was more going on here than how much they loved each other -- that, after all, had never been one of the problems in their relationship.
They had always known how much they loved each other. The issue between them had always been how to handle that love. Handling it seemed as much a question now as it had been in the days before V'Ger and their bond.
"I know," he said. "It's just...difficult, being here like this. But I'll see you soon?"
"I will leave on the first ship I can arrange," Spock assured him. "I, too, look forward to seeing you. T'hy'la."
Jim let Spock go not long after that -- the sooner he made arrangements, the sooner they could see each other in person. His heart still contracted painfully as he watched the screen go dark, not knowing when they would next see each other again.
He went back to his quarters, waving off the invitations to dinner from Picard, Riker, and Troi. He didn't feel up to socializing with anyone right then, and even less so with people he'd only just met. And he was still so tired. What he wanted most -- besides Spock -- was an early night.
He had dinner by himself, which reminded him of his last night before the ceremony on the Enterprise-B. He couldn't help but dwell on it as he went to bed. He had been alone, with Spock at the conference on Qo'noS and Bones spending time with Joanna and her children.
Spock had adjusted so much better than Jim had to life after their retirement from Starfleet. He had had the beginnings of his diplomatic career to keep him busy. He'd invited Jim to go with him to Qo'noS, but while the festering boil of his hatred for the Klingons had been lanced by the events of the Khitomer conference, the wound still ached. He had not been ready to go to the Klingon homeworld itself.
And so he'd stayed on Earth with only the ceremony on the Enterprise-B to look forward to -- an event that would formally give the Enterprise to another captain. He'd missed Spock desperately, though he'd only been gone a week and they'd been separated longer before.
He'd been vulnerable, and lonely, and the Nexus had preyed on that. It hadn't even had the decency to give him Spock -- though it could have never replicated the true Spock. Perhaps that was why the Nexus hadn't tried. He would have known sooner or later Spock's representation wasn't real.
But he didn't want to think about the Nexus, and determinedly turned his thoughts away.
Deanna Troi had told him earlier he needed to make plans for his life, plans not dependent on Spock. He knew what she meant -- it would be unhealthy to build his life entirely around another person. Remove that person, and his entire life would fall apart.
Other than Scotty, who Jim would see if he could track down the next day, Spock was the only thing he had left. And as much as he cared for Scotty, the engineer was not his husband. Not the other half of his soul.
He knew he'd been desperate during their conversation today, and he knew Spock had noticed. What he didn't know was how not to be.
He fell asleep still worrying.
--
He had breakfast the next day with Picard and Riker, who had come to his quarters to offer a meal and a tour of the ship. Jim quickly accepted, not wanting to be left to his own thoughts any longer.
Throughout the meal and during the tour, whenever the Starfleet officers weren't pointing out things of interest aboard the ship, differences from the Constitution-class starship Jim knew, they were telling him stories about the things they'd encountered. He'd even told a few himself.
And though Jim missed his own Enterprise, he had to admit the Galaxy-class one looked pretty amazing. Starfleet allowed the children he'd noticed earlier on board because the saucer section could separate, leaving the senior crew on the battle bridge to handle the danger.
He was particularly intrigued at the idea of the holodeck -- something he would have loved to have on his own ship. He turned down Riker's offer to use it any time, though. "I've had enough of fake lives for awhile," he said. "Let me get used to reality first. Then maybe I'll try out the holodeck."
He hadn't been able to spend very long in Sickbay, when they'd arrived there. He had nothing against Dr. Crusher, and knew she had to be a superlative CMO to be serving on the Enterprise, but it was too difficult to walk into Sickbay and not hear McCoy's gruff tones grousing at him, not see McCoy's habitual scowl.
Talking to Spock yesterday made him miss Bones even more. The three of them had been family, as close as brothers. As deeply happy as he was to know Spock was still alive and still loved him, he felt even more off-balance with McCoy gone.
They ended the tour at the bridge, and invited him to stay as long as he liked as they took their seats.
So he stayed there for a shift fully as uneventful and boring as a normal shift on his own ship. They weren't even star-charting, only traveling through known space. Conversation ebbed and flowed around him, but frequently centered around topics he couldn't participate in. People he didn't know, planets he'd never been to, missions he wasn't around for.
The bridge crew made an effort to include him, but conversation inevitably turned back to the kind that wasn't purposely meant to exclude him but did anyway. Jim couldn't even last out the shift before he had to leave, citing his need to keep learning the history he missed.
Instead, he went to Main Engineering to track down Geordi LaForge.
"Commander LaForge?" he asked, drawing close to where LaForge stood by one of the consoles.
"Captain Kirk!" LaForge turned around. "What can I do for you?"
"You said Scotty -- Captain Scott -- was still around?" Jim said. "Would you happen to know how I can get a message to him?"
LaForge grinned. "I can do more than that, Captain," he replied. "He and I have kept in touch. He's been studying contemporary engineering on Earth. You can meet him when we get there, and in the meantime, I can give you his direction."
Jim closed his eyes. "Thank you. This...means a lot to me."
"It will mean a lot to him too," LaForge agreed, nodding. "He speaks very highly of you, you know."
Jim smiled. "Yes. And I think just as highly of him. I can't even tell you how many miracles he's pulled off for me."
Jim stopped by his quarters after leaving Engineering, but he could only leave a message for Scotty. Even this far in the future, this far out from a message's destination, real-time conversations were reserved for the most important communiqués.
So he went back to Ten Forward, looking for Guinan. She had also been in the Nexus, and wanted to speak to him.
He took a seat at the bar when he got there -- and damn, he still couldn't get over that. A bar on the Enterprise. It was either the best or worst idea ever.
"Captain Kirk," Guinan greeted from behind the bar. She wore a most intriguing style of hat. "What can I get for you?"
"Saurian brandy?" He grinned at her. "And call me Jim. It's like no one on this ship knows my name."
"Jim, then." She smiled. "And I'm out of real Saurian brandy. Right now I only have synthehol."
Jim grimaced. Synthehol never tasted as good as the real thing, which was why Bones had always smuggled aboard, ahem, medicinal supplies.
But it was probably just as well. A drink was likely to depress him further in this mood.
"Coffee, then, milk, no sugar." He smiled briefly. "Apparently it's been almost eighty years since I had any caffeine. I'm surprised I'm not in withdrawal."
Guinan smiled with him, but didn't say anything until she brought his coffee out from behind the bar and over to a table by the windows. He followed her to the table and sat when she gestured, taking the coffee. He took a moment to smell it, savor that scent, before taking his first sip.
Perfect.
"Are you a telepath, Guinan?" he asked, taking another sip. "It is just Guinan, right? You got my coffee exactly right."
"Just Guinan," she agreed. "And I've had some practice."
They sat in silence for a moment, Jim holding his coffee mug between his hands, enjoying the warmth emanating from it. He knew she wanted to talk to him about the Nexus, but he didn't know how to open the discussion. Part of him wanted to completely purge his experience, discuss it until it had no more hold on him. Another part never wanted to think of it again, and for multiple reasons.
He was both damned and saved when she began the conversation instead. "You said you lost eighty years of your life to the Nexus," she began, folding her fingers together and leaning forward. "Did you mean it like that? Lost?"
Jim looked down at his coffee, then back at her. "Out of all the people I loved, two are still alive," he replied. "One of them only by another trick of stasis. The other is my husband, who is now married to someone else. If not for the Nexus, none of this would be true."
"You're very fortunate," she said. The words were so incongruous to what he'd just said that he stared at her for a moment. She noticed, and smiled. "To already be able to focus on the life you have here, in the real world, I mean. It took me a long time to get to that point, and as you've seen, Soran never got there."
"You were in the Nexus?" He'd thought so, but he didn't even know why. He'd just...felt something from her.
She nodded, her gaze going distant. "I was on the Lakul," she told him. "For all this time, the galaxy has believed you sacrificed your life for me and mine. I'm glad to find you're still alive, Jim."
"How was the Nexus, for you?" he couldn't help but ask. Picard had been there so briefly he'd barely felt the effects, Jim had noticed.
"I don't like to remember often," she said softly, slowly. "And I don't really remember the details of the life I'd lived there. But I do remember it being like existing in pure joy, Jim. We'd never wanted to leave. Eventually I moved on, but I can understand how Soran couldn't."
"You and Soran, you're from the same people? Did you lose your world as well?"
She nodded. "We're El-Aurian, a race of listeners. The Borg -- they're a sort of collective pseudo-race who combine organic and cybernetic parts, on an eternal quest to assimilate everyone they come across and destroy the people who resist -- they came to my world. They destroyed it. We're all of us refugees now."
"I'm sorry," he replied. Guinan carried her sorrow well, but Jim could tell she still felt it.
She inclined her head. "Inside the Nexus, I could still feel my family, the love we had for each other. Being forced out of the Nexus was like I lost them all over again."
Jim shook his head. "All I got," he said, "was a woman I barely knew that the Nexus tried to convince me I loved. And it did. While I was there, I firmly believed I was in love with her. I believed what I wanted most in the world was to leave Starfleet and marry her and stay in an idyllic little cabin. When I was there, I was the person the Nexus made me into.
"I may never forgive the Nexus for that."
"You don't want those things? A peaceful life, someone to love?"
"I had someone to love," he snapped. "Someone I've loved for nearly thirty years! Only once did the Nexus show him to me, when I deliberately tried to call him forward, right before I left. Otherwise I barely remembered he existed."
She was silent, and he stared into his coffee again. "I have no objections to a peaceful life," he said, more gently, almost apologizing for snapping. "But I can never live it for long. It would drive me mad. My life has always been intense, and sometimes I need a break. But I also thrive on the intensity, and trying to just plop me into a peaceful, useless, meaningless existence has always felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole."
"I've never thought about how the Nexus gave us what it did," Guinan remarked. "For me, and for Soran, it seems to have been spot on. For you, the Nexus seems to have missed its mark."
Jim shrugged. "Maybe because it gave you what you'd already lost and wanted back," he suggested. "The kind of thing that would tempt you to stay. For me, it had to make me forget what I lost by being there in order to make me want to stay. Unlike me, you and Soran longed for something you could never get back. I think the Nexus used Antonia to distract me from wanting to get back to Spock."
"Do you think that was important to it? Trying to make us stay?"
He rubbed a hand over his forehead. "I don't know," he said. "I'd never even heard of the Nexus until Picard tried to persuade me to leave. You probably know it better than I do."
Guinan shifted so she could prop her chin up in one hand. "There was never much to find out," she replied. "I know what it did for me and the rest of us on the Lakul. I know how we felt after we left. I know the gateway is through an energy ribbon that travels around and rarely appears in this part of the galaxy. That's all I know."
Jim took another sip of his coffee. "What do you mean, how you felt after you left? How did you feel?"
"Depressed," she answered simply. "Listless, hollow. I wanted to stay in bed and dream of the Nexus all day, and I wasn't the only one."
"I was tired," he said slowly, "when I left the Nexus. I wouldn't call myself depressed -- at least, not because I left. But I was very tired."
"Is that significant?"
He shrugged again. "I can't be sure," he said. "But I have to wonder where the ribbon gets its energy, to spend its time traveling around the galaxy. What if it took that energy from us, the people inside it? It could keep us in a happy fantasy and we wouldn't even notice."
Guinan looked troubled. "It would explain a lot," she said. "But I have to confess I don't really like the idea."
A corner of his mouth pulled down in a half-grimace. "I don't like the idea either," he said. "And it's just a theory. But I think it makes more sense than my dearest wish and greatest happiness being to marry a woman I barely knew, despite being married to someone else when I met her, and where the most exciting part of my day was chopping wood at a rustic mountain cabin ad infinitum."
"You may be right," Guinan said, but she still looked troubled. "You...may be right."
--
Chapter Five