#ussphoenix

He lands with Chekov, thankfully, and that gives him reason not to fall into introspectiveness further. Where is Spock when you need him? Where is Spock, period. Bones. Where is anyone, everyone, someone who can take over and make this right again, who doesn’t kill everything they touch, not like Jim, and he shouldn’t fall into this depressive pit again but it’s everything he can think of because he failed them. His crew. Four hundred and thirty eight people, his mind supplies, and as far as you know, all but one are dead.

     “Vat do ve do now?” Chekov asks, and Jim wants to kiss him because somehow, that makes training kick back in and they scan for survivors and there’s a blip right next to them and it means something to do and that’s the best thing that could happen to Jim right now.

Chekov clips his phaser on a bit too enthusiastically, but they make their way through the trees. After ten minutes of walking in silence (and Jim isn’t that kind of captain, usually; he loves chatting with his crew, wants them to feel safe and happy with him, wants them to like him, wants to give them a voice, an ear, a shoulder to cry on if needed; wants to be their friend), they’ve lost sight of their escape pods, and the eerie sounds of an unknown forest on an unknown planet in an unknown part of the universe gets to Jim. They’re all alone. He never much liked forests as a kid, the Waldeinsamkeit pressing in on him sooner rather than later, constricting his breathing and forcing him to walk slower, check that he really is alone and there isn’t something else there, too. Chekov is in front of him, alternating between the scanner and the nonexistent path in front of them, there are birds (or other life forms) chattering and squeaking in the foliage, alien sounds surrounding them, and Jim realises that they might be the only ones left, him and Chekov, on this entire planet, because maybe this isn’t Krall’s base and maybe - 

It was a trap. Jim almost stops dead. Of course it was a trap. The alien, she knew of course she knew, she must have, and Jim’s so sure of that now, he doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before.

Maybe her people need to eat, too, his brain supplies, and vivid images of a crop failure and the panic that followed, the atrocities, the death rise to the surface of Jim’s mind. He tastes bile in the back of his throat because he’s always had an overactive imagination and the looks on his crew’s face as they - as Krall - as his people --

     “Ve’re almost zhere, keptin!” Chekov says, and Jim is so, so grateful.

A rosé head with a slight reptilian look shows through the trees, and Jim jumps past Chekov, ripping his phaser from his belt, thumb flicking the switch to kill and he shoves it in her face, demanding an answer. She knew.

She panics, explains with some bullshit lie that he can see right through, Chekov’s agitation almost palpable, vibrating through the air. He doesn’t understand, maybe doesn’t see it, but he’s always been a bit on the naïve side.

Jim tries, really tries to see past the red clouding his vision, so he pretends to believe her, holstering his phaser, and it’s one of the hardest things he’s ever done. There’s something in her eyes, now, that he wished he’d seen before, some kind of harsh cruelty that’s less alien to Jim than he wishes it were.

They make for the ship - or what’s left of her, anyways. She’s ... she’s looking bad. Abandoned. Betrayed. It’s a bit of an eyeopener, really, because god, Jim loved her. He loved her so much, and he’d forgotten that. And now she’s, well, gone.

Jim keeps running his hands over her walls when they’re inside, trying to keep her, her spirit, the home she’d given them, him, with him for a while longer. When had beaming up to her from an away mission or planetside shore leave stopped feeling like coming home? Why had she ever started to feel like an obligation instead of a gift, a vision of - of who he could be. Jim Kirk, semi-homeless drifting repeat offender, or Jim Kirk, pioneer, captain of the finest ship in the ‘fleet.

He thinks of it again after they’ve just escaped the ship flipping over. It’s starting to rain. The canopy above them is still holding off the worst of it, but Jim knows they’ll need to find shelter sooner rather than later. They’re both exhausted - Altamid’s atmosphere is just different enough to make everything a bit more strenuous, and then they’ve also both been awake for far longer than their bodies like, at least half of that time in situations of extreme stress, and it’s not like they passed a branch of Fontana’s anywhere here. Jim could really go for their calzones right now. Or a coffee. God, a coffee. It’s really unlikely they’ll ever taste coffee again, unless Starfleet sends a rescue operation that manages to defeat Krall and find all of them. 

Chekov veers off to the side, following a reading on his tricorder, and Jim follows him without a question, his tired body protesting the change in direction only momentarily. Yeah, he’s starting to feel the bruises of his fight with Krall. He almost runs into his navigator when he stops, crouching down to examine the stream he found.

     “It eez water, sir!” Chekov exclaims. “Regular H2O, completely drinkable and very purified.” He wastes no time ducking his head and drinking.

Jim takes a moment longer, because now that he’s not moving anymore, he doesn’t feel like he’ll ever do so again. His joints protest as he kneels down as well. The water is refreshingly cool, tastes a bit mossy, but maybe that just means there are extra calories in there, which they sorely need. Jim drinks his fill and then begins cataloguing his surroundings. They need a place to sleep or at least rest the night. There’s what looks like a tiny cave between a massive tree trunk and several large stone formations a few meters away.

He reaches out to nudge Chekov’s shoulder. “Found a place to spend the night. We need to rest and think of a good plan in the morning. We can’t scour the entire planet.”

It starts pouring just as they make it over to the shelter. It doesn’t look like there’s enough space for two grown men in there, but Jim has slept outside in the rain before, so he’ll be fine. He motions for Chekov to go in first and then crawls in after him. The ground is mercifully dry and there is enough space to stow their legs. A gap between the stones and the tree lets some rain through. 

     “I’ll take first watch,” he says, more out of reflex than anything else. He needs time to think, and he knows he should talk to Chekov, make sure he’s alright, take care of him, but he can barely breathe. Shock is probably setting in, and he’s cold and getting wetter by the minute. Some primordial fear sets in as well, telling him he’s going to die here, today, tomorrow, in a week, his ship broken, crew gone or dead, nothing left. He’s hungry, too, but the roaring of the wind and the rain through this massive, massive forest cloaks the growling of his stomach. Bones, he thinks. Spock, Uhura. Sulu. Scotty. Lieutenant Yasha, Ensign Ro, Doctor M’Benga, Nurse Phillips, Nurse Tripp, Junior Lieutenant Barrows, Yeoman Xe’ - Jim’d made it a point to know everyone on his ship by name, their favourite foods, shows, animals, colour, hobbies. He knew them. The first family he ever had. There’s a bruise forming on his left side, hip to just below his pectorals, spreading over his entire flank and probably half his back, too. He leans against the dull pain of it, forcing muscles to respond that beg him not to. He needs to stay awake, through the white noise around them.

He thinks of the Enterprise, thinks of her last minutes. She hadn’t wanted to go. It’s a bit stupid, maybe, but maybe Scotty is right. Maybe there really is something, some ... some kind of sentience in that ship. Jim stares at his knees. It’s ridiculous. Ships aren’t - they’re not - they’re objects, thousands of tons of steel and plasteel and tritanium and wires and electricity. They’re not alive, they don’t think, they’re machines.

And yet. And yet. There’s something about the Enterprise, a kind of presence that’s hard to explain. Jim can count on one hand how many people have hugged him, really full body hugged him in his entire life, and those sleepless nights aboard the Enterprise, when he’d grab a blanket and a padd and try to will away the nightmares in a tiny nook of tubing system, the humming of her engines in his ear - it’d felt like a hug. Like she was, against all logic and reason and science, a living being, sentient, feeling.

She was so beautiful. She’d shown them so much, been so faithful, so strong. Jim’s head falls back and he tells himself it’s raindrops that are rolling over his face. The worst thing is that he wanted to leave. God, why did he ever want to leave?

He remembers the mission when he lost her, him and Bones chasing over red sand between white trees, Spock’s voice from that volcano, the briefest glimpse of the Enterprise from the Narada, the weird sizzling sensation of beaming when their half quant spin stabilising neutraliser had been off by two degrees, that time everyone believed Spock had been turned into a cat, and the look on Bones’ face after he did an incredibly successful fifteen-hour-operation on the five year old daughter of the Horissian ambassador, and the stars, the stars on the bridge and through the windows and the shimmering of the transporter that time when ---

     “Keptin? Keptin!” 

Jim startles and chokes on his own spit.

     “Are you alright?”

Jim drags a hand through his wet hair. God, but he’s freezing. How long was he out? “’m fine, don’t worry. Think I dozed off. Sorry.”

Chekov settles back against his stone, and they’re silent for a while. It’s still raining steadily, but they’re not yet sitting in mud.

     “Are you alright?” Jim asks after a while, voice wavering only a little.

     “Yes sir!” Chekov’s response is too bright.

     “Are you alright, Pavel?” Jim repeats, gently. God, he’s only twenty-five.

     “I... ve...” There’s a pause, and Jim can hear him exhaling a harsh sigh. “Ve vill survive zhis, right? I mean ... ve vill go home, yes? Hikaru will see Ben and Demora again, and - right?”

Jim’s throat tightens painfully. What on Earth can he say now?

     “I - I’m sure that,” he clears his throat. “That if we don’t return, Starfleet will send - will send someone after us and trace us back here.”

     “Zhen zhey vill be destroyed, too.”

     “Maybe - maybe not.” It doesn’t sound convincing. “We’ll think of a way out of this. Maybe see what we can salvage from the Enterprise. We should maybe go back to her, see what we can find. Maybe someone else landed close to her.”

     “You zhink zhere are ozher one’s that survived?”

     “Sure! Why not?”

Chekov’s teeth glitter in the few rays of moonlight that make their way into their hideout. “Zhat eez a comforting zhought.”

Jim smiles too. “Yeah, I bet - I bet lots of people survived. So many smart heads, I bet there were all kinds of awesome ideas how to survive. And - and considering, considering how close to the impact zone we evacuated, it’s likely there are others very close.” He doesn’t really believe that himself - if there were others, they would have found each other, but then again they haven’t checked for any kind of signs from their environment, so maybe, maybe they’re not the only ones left out here.

A droplet of water sneaks past Jim’s jacket and settles ice cold on his clavicle. He already has goosebumps all over, and he kind of wants to check the time. There’s no telling how long they’ve already been sitting here, helpless, getting colder and wetter by the minute.

     “Do you believe in God?” Chekov asks after another long, rain filled silence, so softly Jim barely hears him over the thunderous rain in the huge forest and the rushing of his own blood in his ears.

     “God? No, I don’t think so. It sounds comforting, but it’s not quite up my alley. I believe in - I believe in people, maybe, and that they - that we’re a very resilient species, all of us space-goers. Do ... you believe in God?”

     “I used to.” The ‘I don’t anymore’ is plain as day.

     “We’ll get out of here, Pavel,” Jim promises. “We’ll find the crew, and we’ll bring them back to York Town. In the morning, we’ll try to find some food, and then we’ll ...” We’ll what? Go back to the Enterprise, a burned out husk, devoid of life, and do ... what? Walk miles and miles through the forest for a chance at finding someone, anyone? “We’ll think of something,” he says eventually. “We’ll figure something out. But we need to rest first.”

     “I vill take vatch.”

     “Nah, I’m good, Pavel, don’t worry about it.”

     “Vizh all due respect -”

     “We’ll both sleep, then. I doubt there’s anything in this forest.” That’s one of the most idiotic things Jim’s ever heard himself say.

     “Keptin -”

     “Don’t make me make that an order,” Jim says gently, and Chekov sighs. They don’t talk anymore, and Jim can feel himself drift off again. He hates to admit it, but he’s scared shitless. 

They spend a very cold and restless night in their little shelter. Jim is plagued by nightmares. Not surprisingly, but damn, there were some things he hadn’t wanted to see again.

He was a bit closer to tears than he thought he’d be when they find Scotty with his new friend the next morning, and they end up in a weird but good threesome hug. Both he and Chekov are completely dry after that weird trap they ran into, and then the first thing Jaylah does is offer them food, which she has an ample supply of in the ancient ship she wants to leave this planet with.

They scan for survivors next and sure enough, they find Spock and Bones, Spock badly hurt but nothing Bones can’t at least jury rig, and then once they’re fed, too, Bones pulls Jim into a bear hug and doesn’t let go for a long, long time. 

     “Thought you were dead,” he admits into the padding on Jim’s shoulder, and Jim’s fighting the tears with all he has. The world is clicking back into place a bit again. “It’s gonna be alright,” Bones says, and Jim doesn’t care that he should be the one reassuring people and being a captain, because as long as he holds onto Bones he knows it’ll be alright.

     “I know,” he says, and he’s not choked up at all. “I know. I got you, Leo. I got you. We can do this.”

Spock is next, and it’s weird because Spock is obviously in pain, and they don’t hug much usually, or at all, and Spock smells different, but it’s Spock alright, and Jim knows that with Spock and Bones at his side he can do anything.

A whole eternity later Jim sits on a cot in York Towns medbay, finally allowing himself to shut down. He’s safe, his crew (those that made it) are safe, Krall is defeated and he got to watch Sulu physically fall to his knees to hug Demora with Ben wrapping himself around them, there’s M’Benga who just spat curses at every other doctor who wanted to come close to Spock now bent over his patient, Uhura having moved aside but still holding on to her boyfriend’s hand, and there’s Bones, who, by the looks of it, just won his shouting match with another doctor about who gets to treat Jim.

He waves five different whirring gadgets around, muttering to himself and making notes on a padd.

     “So, the good news is that once I get my hands on a dermal regen and five minutes, you’ll likely be pretty again. The bad news is that you managed to catch the only strain of Hepetonolia flu that they don’t have a hypo against on this base, meaning you’ll get all the effects, likely starting tomorrow.”

Jim tries to smile, but he’s not sure his body is responding anymore. He catches a tech handing a regen over to Bones, and then the haze sets in properly and he’s not sure what’s happening anymore. At some point they cross a plaza and there are doors opening and closing, but their first meeting also replays itself in Jim’s mind, over and over, and seeing Bones again on Altamid, and then darkness takes him.

He wakes up slowly, the really good kind of becoming aware again after a sleep that your body has been craving. There’s cotton in his brain and someone is breathing comfortably close and he’s not alone. The sheets smell fresh and crisp and the mattress is good, the blanket fluffy and warm and the light not yet invasive.

He wakes up a second time when his bed partner moves, and the world is still dipped in the fuzz of sleep.

The third time wakefulness comes sharper with an insisting pressure in his bladder. Jim tries to wait it out, but his body is insisting, and so he rolls out of bed, feeling stiffer than he’d feel at ninety years. 

He relieves himself, and as he’s washing his hands he looks into the mirror and, wow. He looks ... tired. His face is mercifully unbruised, a half forgotten memory of Bones waving a regen around swimming to the surface of his thoughts, but his eyes tell a whole ‘nother story.

On his way back to the bed he strips his shirt and pants off as well, jacket and boots already gone somehow, discarded on the floor, and he falls right back into bed, wrapping himself into a cocoon of blankets like his bed partner, and he’s sleeping again.

The fourth and final time he comes back to consciousness it’s because someone is nudging his shoulder a bit ungently.

     “Jim, damnit, wake up.”

     “B’n’s,” he slurs, lips stretching into a lazy grin.

     “Yeah it’s me alright, and I’m starving. C’mon, kid, wake up.”

Jim pushes himself up onto his lower arms, whole body groaning in protest, eventually sitting up slowly. Bones looks just as done as Jim feels, hair standing up in all directions because it refuses to lay flat without gel, black shadows under his eyes and slightly unshaven.

     “I only got one key to this room, and if I don’t get any food within the next ten minutes, I think I’m going to faint.”

     “I need a shower,” Jim says absently, noting again how Bones’ hair is sticking up all cute.

     “A quick shower.”

     “A quick shower,” he acquiesces, slowly tumbling to his feet and making his way over to the head again. A quick sonic later he tugs on his survival suit again. It’s dirty and probably smells, but hey, he almost died a couple times in the past few days, so some leniency is in order.

Bones slumps against the wall in the turbolift, closing his eyes. He’s looking pale and done for, just like the two of them would look after finals during the academy.

The way they load up plates with food first and get a table second is probably not proper, but with a bowl of cereal, a second bowl of fruit salad and a plate of sausages, scrambled Zhetu eggs, hot Mmnmne, four slices of toast, ham, herbal quark, a muffin, three bits of goat cheese, olives, a croissant, chocolate jam, an apple and two glasses of orange juice, Jim already behaves improperly and just like Bones feels like he’s starving, so who cares, really.

They’ve only just managed to sit down and spread their loot over the table and stuff their faces for the first time when a waiter comes over and offers them coffee, and Jim generally makes a point of flirting just a liiiittle bit with every waiter, but he reckons it doesn’t work as well when he almost has food falling out of his mouth.

He turns down the post for Vice Admiral that same day, especially since the plans for the Enterprise-A have come through and man, he can’t think of a better thing to do than take to the stars again, with the Enterprise humming around him and his family. His family.

Spock not-smiles when Jim tells him the news, making a convoluted sentence to express that he’d be overjoyed to continue their mission, and they start building the new Enterprise immediately. Now that Starfleet knows how to build ships that big, the work is progressing with warp speed, and it’s only after a month that he and Spock set foot inside her for her first inspection.

And - it’s not what Jim expected. It’s not the Enterprise. She looks exactly the same, but she’s not. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, like someone poured ice into his guts. He toothily smiles his way through the inspection. Sure, she passes all the tests and there’s nothing wrong with her per se, but ...

Like a corpse, his mind supplies. Just the wrong side of inhuman, not alive, dead, stiff, cold. Part of him wants to throw up a bit at the unbidden memories it evokes, the other part of him wants to throw up because he can’t spend another two years inside this, this empty hull, this cold robotic shell.

But he can’t turn her down now.

So instead he watches, for another five weeks, watches the fine tuning, the final assembly of the hull, the last bolts and screws being tested and double tested and triple tested, and then his crew is boarding again, skeleton forces only, but they’ll get new people at their Earth flyby, and Demora and Ben Sulu, who’ll go home with the Enterprise, they’re there too, Demora barely being able to stand still because she can’t wait to see the bridge, and then finally, finally the bridge crew is boarding as well, Demora dancing her way to the turbolift, and there are smiles all around and maybe, maybe Jim can stand this cold, emotionless hunk of metal with his family at his side.

The chair feels almost familiar, except he never sat in this one before, but the buttons work just the same.

     “Mr Scott, ready to initiate the warp core?”

     “Aye sir, ready as I’ll ever be.”

Jim smiles. His family. “Start her up. Let’s see what she can do.”

The crackle of a starship being started up is something you hear about in the academy, but it doesn’t prepare you for the sudden bolt of static lacing the air, and they all collectively gasp in a breath, but there’s something else, too, something Jim recognises from sleepless nights in some nook in the tubing, from beaming up after a stressful away mission, from waking up and instinctively knowing where you are, that you’re alright, that she’s got you. This ship is the Enterprise alright.

Welcome back, she says. I missed you.

And Jim’s heart skips a beat.