#mutineer

The books are as follows:

Into The Dark

Mutineer

The Little Ships

HMS Nightingale

Privateer

The Queen’s Pardon

Dune: Part One Prompts

Jim turns at the sound of her voice, almost as if he's not sure for a moment if it's real. Since stepping foot on this ship, it was hard to truly know, but it had all been chalked up to space playing tricks on them. It happened sometimes on longer expeditions, going stir crazy, or some other colloquialism that Bones chose to throw at them. As if he, himself, wasn't one chicken short of the coop.

But even the Captain had to admit something was amiss here - aside from the sheer impossibility of it. He was emotionally compromised, everyone knew it, but no one had the gall to tell him to stand down. Or more like, everyone knew the probability of him listening was minimal, and it was let him do what he did best, or throw him in a cell and watch him slowly unravel right before their eyes.

Neither were particularly favorable options.

"Why? Preliminary searches confirm the vessel is empty." It doesn't stop him from sounding disappointed by it. Jim knew the facts, most of the Kelvin's crew had been ushered to pods and escaped, his mother included. Those that were left were dead or dying - and his father. Captain for twelve minutes. Captain who was supposed to pilot this very ship into the heart of Nero's, yet somehow, here it was. Perfectly intact. Running. Empty.

Though it was better than finding the bodies, but that was the thing about impossibility. It bred some type of hope.

Jim sighs, reaching for his temple to rub away a forming headache. "I don't like this, but I can't fully explain why I don't like this beyond the obvious."

Dune: Part One Prompts

There is defiance in the words that causes Kirk to tilt his head and narrow his eyes. There is an attempt to determine if defiance is laced with pain, but it is hard when it comes to Michael to truly know.

She is human, but she is not.

She keeps her cards close to her chest and the fact she is saying anything at all should be a tell to him, if only he would reach out and accept it. But he is afraid to. Afraid of what it would mean.

Everything he is, everything he has, he owes to her father.

Sarek took him in when he was a boy, freshly freed from Harkonnen enslavement. When he was filled with nothing but grief, pain, and ill tempered. He had tried to impart Vulcan ways, and to an extent, Kirk had been open to it, but it had done nothing to calm the storm that raged beneath his skin. He had needed an outlet, and Pike had seen opportunity in that. It was him that urged the head of the S'Chn T'Gai household to put a blade in his hand and teach him the ways of war.

But no one had stopped to ask if he wanted it. He'd just learned that want was not a luxury handed out to them, and stopping to think about the things he truly wanted left him feeling gutted, raw, and aching.

Want and hope held hands in his mind, and there was no place for either.

Still, the reunion had been unexpected, and there were more questions than time. So why was his mouth awash in bitterness? Why did his words, when they finally did come bleed with it. "Is that why you ran?"

What else was there to think? Present one moment, gone the next.

"Did you ever once stop and think what that would do to him?"

Not her father, not Sarek, but Spock. Because it is always Spock that is at the forefront of his worried mind.

Kirk attempts and fails to rewet his lips, tasting only granules of sand as they catch between his teeth. There is a curse, beneath his breath, one word: selfish.