Born to be a Hammer: Part Three
Masterpost here. Please read all warnings.
Part Three
At first Jim didn’t know what was happening.
He was walking through a dark room, freezing cold and surrounded by enormous lamps, a forest of huge columnar fixtures that were too wide to wrap his arms around and at least twice his height. They glowed dimly in the otherwise pitch blackness, vaguely reminiscent of warp cores. Dark and vast, the room’s walls and ceiling weren’t visible, and Jim got the distinct impression that they didn’t exist at all, that he could continue to walk through the forest of glowing blue columns for the rest of his life without ever reaching the edge.
When he had passed by one of the columns he paused, bathed in the blue glow, and squinted through the glass to see that it was filled with thousands of tiny jellyfish. None of the creatures were more than an inch wide, and they drifted languidly through the water that filled the tank, perfect miniatures that looked tissue paper thin and as light and fragile as spun glass. The jellyfish glowed, blue, and as Jim watched, two of them bumped together, tentacles intertwining for a brief moment before they separated, drifting away from one another. Jim shook his head, suddenly uncomfortable, and moved on.
He must have walked past hundreds of columns, the billions of tiny jellyfish inside of them, not knowing where he was or where he was going until he turned a corner that was not there and found himself in a bright white room. It was plain, featureless, and when Jim turned around there was no sign of the room with the jellyfish at all. But when he had turned back there was a shock of bright red feathers drifting weightless in the air. The feathers were unaffected by gravity, twirling in space but refusing to fall to the floor. They were small, fluffy, and although Jim could not see the bird that had lost them, he could clearly hear it chirping.
Chirping.
Jim reached out to touch a feather and opened his eyes in the dark of the bedroom. The ether of the dream was gone instantly, and Jim became aware of his surroundings immediately. The sheets tangled around his feet. The ceiling fan turning lazily above his head. The weight of Bones’ arm slung across his chest. The red glow of his communicator on the nightstand as it chirped.
Fighting the urge to groan, Jim reached out and snagged it. The tiny bedroom would have been pitch black if not for the glowing comm., and Jim had to squint as his pupils adjusted to the light. The upper left corner showed a glowing clock, cheerfully displaying the fact that it was two in the morning. An [URGENT MESSAGE] alert was glowing on the screen. Sender: Sp0ck.
(Jim had programmed the name like that on purpose, that first day, simply to annoy Spock. He’d gotten an eyebrow raise out of it and had considered the mission a success.)
The groan finally escaped, but Jim’s initial annoyance had been run through by undercurrents of worry. Spock wouldn’t have called him in the middle of the night unless it was important. Some type of emergency. After the events of the day before, Jim’s mind tumbled through scores of increasingly unlikely but horrifying possibilities.
A bystander had seen their car leave the parking lot. The cops had found Jim’s fingerprints at the crime scene. A corpse had disappeared from the colony morgue, leaving a trail of bloody blue footprints heading in the direction of Jim’s neighborhood.
Jim tapped the glowing alert with his thumb - there was no sense in postponing the inevitable.
Work cancelled today. 8am tomorrow.
After what Jim had been anticipating, it was the best kind of disappointment. He slid his thumb across the screen, closing the message, and tossed the comm back on the nightstand. Bones didn’t have to go in until second shift. Maybe they could actually eat a meal together for once or something. Within minutes Jim was back asleep, dreaming of nothing more than a soft, enveloping blackness and the promise of an unexpected day off.
Jim would sleep deep deeply for hours, undisturbed even when Bones slid out of bed and padded into the kitchen to make his morning coffee.
---
Solar days on Iankt Prime were longer than the standard Terran solar day by about six hours. Hikaru remembered learning about it in school, about how it had made the colonization viable in the otherwise difficult environment, how it wasn’t enough of a change to seriously disturb human circadian rhythms. After all, what was six hours compared to the seventy hours days on Simbi 8 or the endless night on Carrefor?
What Hikaru had never fully appreciated in school, however, was how uniquely employers could shoehorn bizarre work shifts into a thirty hour day.
Hikaru groaned as the ever-insistent beeping of his comm alarm roused him from his cold, dreamless sleep. Still in the process of waking up, he rolled to snag the device and jolted in surprise when, instead of knocking into his bedside table, his hand slapped ineffectively at floor. Sleep-dim, it took his brain a moment to process where he was, but by the time he fished his comm out from where it was wedged half beneath the mattress, Sulu remembered that he had stayed at Pavel’s again.
Pavel, who was nowhere to be found.
Wishing he could roll over and go back to sleep, Hikaru lurched up gracelessly, off of the mattress and into the bathroom. He twisted the sink handle, remembering a moment too late that Pavel’s dowser was completely shot, and was rewarded with nothing but a dry, angry cough of air from the faucet. Hikaru grimaced and grabbed the plastic jug of water from where it sat on the edge of the counter, taking a slug of the tepid, grainy water.
Some time later, after a quick sonic shower and a mostly successful collection of clothes (one sock was still at large), Hikaru wandered into what passed as the kitchen in Pavel’s tiny house. It wasn’t much more than a mismatched collection of appliances and a short, scorched countertop, but it worked. Except when it didn’t.
In the week that Hikaru had been all but living at Pavel’s they had only made one bonafide attempt to cook, a disaster that had ended with Hikaru ordering takeout. Still, it got the job done when it came to heating up the prepackaged meals that Pavel favored and Hikaru managed to choke down gamely. San Francisco had spoiled him for food, so much better than the bland, prepackaged homogeny he had grown up with, had been eating consistently since his return to Iankt Prime.
Adjacent to the kitchen was a small living room, a room that could have easily been cramped save for the fact that it was empty except for the lilting card table where they ate their meals and two mismatched futons sitting on the patchy carpet. It was on one of those futons - the red one with the questionable stains - that Hikaru found Pavel.
Pavel’s head was tilted back against the worn fabric, glazed eyes staring at nothing, and Hikaru could see his chest rising and falling as he took short, rapid breaths. It was still dark, but Hikaru’s eyes had long since adjusted to the low light, and he was able to see the details quite clearly, to observe with clinical detachment the way Pavel’s hands lay palm up next to his knees, fingers spasming, the way his works were spread around him like offerings at the shrine of some sallow deity.
None of it was shocking or new to him. Hikaru had watched his sister use throughout his senior year of high school, had grown accustomed to returning home after long afternoons at Pavel’s to find her sprawled on the couch, the floor, the lawn chair in the backyard where she would later go shuffling out of life.
Hikaru had gone through a not insignificant amount of training, but he couldn’t tell what, exactly, Pavel had been smoking. It was useless to try and guess without a scanner - the official Federation list of illicit substances was not so much a list as an enormous database, and that wasn’t even including the drugs used exclusively by non-humanoids. Leave it to Pavel, though, to get high in the most archaic way possible. Hell, half the homeless addicts Sulu picked up were carrying bootleg hyposprays. It was grimly amusing, like something out of an archaic holovid.
He stood in the doorway for a long time, watching as Pavel’s frantic twitching eased and his breathing evened.
Hikaru only turned away when Pavel eventually blinked and tried to focus his eyes, made a half-hearted attempt to raise his head. Hikaru went into the kitchen. He opened and closed the cabinets, and although he took a long time to study the labels on the few items he found there, he made no effort to eat. By the time he finished reading ingredients and made his way back to the futon, Pavel was sitting up and tapping more of the light brown powder onto his square of tinfoil.
Pavel didn’t pause so much as go still when he sensed Hikaru standing in the doorway, kept his eyes down. When Hikaru stepped forward, intending to do nothing more than walk across the room and out the door, Pavel flinched backwards, shoulders hunching together protectively.
It wasn’t as if the elephant in the room had ever been invisible to Hikaru, but he had been hoping that it wouldn’t turn green and start rampaging until he had his other business under control. The mission came first, he told himself, even though every instinct he had was screaming at him to go to Pavel and fight it out and somehow make him better, so that questions of who had left who behind ceased to matter and they could ride off into the sunset together.
Hikaru looked down at his watch - he was already going to be late getting to the station. He told himself that he didn’t have time to confront Pavel (to face what he had been steadfastly ignoring for weeks), so he was surprised when he heard himself say
“Fucking hell, Pavel” angry and low, following through on his original motion and striding towards the door.
It wasn’t far, the room too small to need any significant amount to time to cross, but it still seemed to take an eternity. Hikaru was about halfway to the door when he heard Pavel call his name. Pavel’s voice was perfectly clear, neither soft nor faint nor apologetic. None of the things Hikaru had been hoping for expecting. If anything, Pavel just sounded tired and a little bit empty when he said
“Can you pick me up from work today?”
“Yeah” Hikaru said, and then “What time?”
---
“What’s the news, Komack?”
To say that Pike had gone to work early would have been a vast understatement. Unable to sleep, the day the still been dark and the suns had not even begun to peek over the horizon when he had pulled into the parking garage. Uhura hadn’t even arrived yet, and that was perhaps the best qualifier of just how early Pike had gone to work.
The situation with Nero and the events of the day before weighed heavily on his mind, ruining any chance of sleep. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to worry about, what with running the casino and colony politics and all the little shit that bogged him down on a day to day basis. Nero visiting the colony would have likely been enough to give Pike another ulcer even if the Romulan’s behavior hadn’t grown increasingly neurotic and obscene during his stay.
A call from Komack was the absolute last thing Pike needed. He would have wondered what he had done to make the universe hate him so much, but Pike knew that the list was longer than he cared to think about.
“That’s my Christopher, always straight to business.” While Komack’s propensity for sarcasm hadn’t changed, his body certainly had. Long since gone to seed in the comfort of Starfleet bureaucracy, it was still slightly bizarre for Pike to see his old acquaintance looking so…old. And fat. “What, your favorite sector representative can’t just call to chat?”
“You could, but both of us know you never do. Plus, my assistant already told me you have information for me.” Uhura hadn’t even looked surprised when she had arrived to find Pike behind his desk, a good four hours ahead of schedule.
“Well, you know I have to look out for my favorite ex-Governor.” Pudgy and completely bald, Komack often dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief when he spoke. Something about it made Pike vaguely uncomfortable to watch.
“Why?” Neither of them was morally clean, but at least Pike hadn’t run off when things got difficult. At least he hadn’t given up his dream to ride on coattails and the bribes of lobbyists.
“What the hell do you mean, why? Don’t start your paranoid psycho bullshit with me Chris. I’ve known you too long.” Komack hated having his motives questioned even more than Pike did, and bristled at the implication. And wasn’t that just like him, thinking that Pike should kneel out of gratefulness for whatever measly scraps of information Komack decided to give him. As if Pike didn’t have his own informants.
“Yeah, Komack, we go way back, huh? That’s why you and Gretch let your visas expire without telling me.” Pike scowled, face thunderous “First George disappeared, then you two ran off…”
“You know why we left, Pike.” Komack’s round face quivered with anger and things left unsaid “And this type of overreaction is exactly why we didn’t tell you first.”
“I did not overreact. You know just as well as I do that having a steady population is key to the survival of a colony.”
“Because the best way to do that was to make all your residents permanent citizens, no visa renewal required!” Komack threw his hands in the air, out of the range of the viewscreen “How much does it cost for a visa’d citizen to get off Iankt these days? Hmm?”
Pike, who had been spoiling for the fight, suddenly found himself at a loss. Komack didn’t exactly have him by the balls, but he definitely had a point. This wasn’t the first time that they’d had this fight, and Pike suddenly wondered why he bothered at all. It was hard for Pike not to try to explain himself, to justify what he had done, but Komack had already heard everything he had to say.
The only thing he could have done was to tell the truth, but that secret had been buried for a quarter of a decade. Instead, Pike just bit his tongue and kept quiet. Stared at the viewscreen. Komack was already going to be wallowing in self-righteousness; Pike didn’t need to add even more fuel.
But instead of gloating, Komack just looked sad, sighing and steepling his fingers in front of his chest.
“I didn’t call to argue with you. Like I said, I just called to tell you something that I heard.” Komack paused, looking slightly uneasy before he continued “Rumor around here is that you’ve got another ‘Fleeter in the house.”
Everything went still. Pike didn’t think he had responded, but Komack kept talking. “People love to talk, Pike, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, sure.” Pike didn’t even know where to rank this new information on the scale of things that he needed to worry about. He was vaguely aware of continuing his conversation with Komack, but his mind raced as he tried to assess the situation. Unable to keep up with whatever Komack was blathering about (something about debauchery on Risa, unimportant), Pike hung up.
It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been spies before - Starfleet had been trying to bring him down even before he had actually done anything particularly bad. Hell, if anything it was Starfleet’s fault that Pike’s ambitions had turned out the way they had. Hearing that there was an informant wasn’t as bad as it sounded, not really, but Pike still felt his hands curl into fists beneath his desk
Pike had grown adept at catching rats. That didn’t mean that he ever felt any less betrayed, that the taste it left in his mouth ever got any less sour.
If this information was as recent as Komack was suggesting, then Pike’s investigation had already been narrowed significantly. Well, that was only if he didn’t consider the possibility of somebody previously loyal to him flipping. It was a lot to think about. Too much. He could put Uhura on the investigation after he figured out what to do about Nero.
Reaching for a PADD, Pike sent a message to his secretary , asking her to cancel all of his appointments for the day. He only hoped that the perpetually cheerful woman (Carol? Cheryl?) would be able to mollify them and wished, not for the first time, that Uhura could just handle everything. But Uhura was too valuable to waste her talents on clerical duties, and had told him so on the one memorable occasion that he had slipped up and asked her to call the beverage supplier that the Enterprise contracted with.
Pike sat there for a long time, turning his chair so that he could look out of the enormous window.
The silence in the office only disturbed by the bubbling of the fountain, the occasional wheeze from the chair cushion as Pike shifted his weight. Pike sat quiet for a long time, thinking. Just because his options were severely limited didn’t mean that it was an easy choice.
The suns had risen over the mountains by the time he called Uhura.
---
When Jim woke up for the second time that day, it wasn’t out of the efforts of any beeping alarm or communicator alert, but the slamming of a door. At first he was confused, not sure what had finally jarred him out of sleep, but then he heard the door open and slam again.
Confused, but not particularly concerned, Jim rolled out of bed. He yawned as he stretched his arms, and tried to shake the groggy feeling that had settled into him. If the amount of sunlight pouring through the curtains was anything to go by, Jim was willing to be that he’d gotten too much sleep. A quick glance at his comm. told Jim that it was almost 9:30.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled a clean pair of jeans from the laundry pile. Well, a clean-er pair of jeans at least. From the looks of things, Bones had collected most of his own laundry but had left Jim’s in its customary jumble. All in all it was a bit of a dick move, but Jim couldn’t help but smile fondly. Fog of grogginess aside, Jim was feeling good as he trudged into the kitchen, excited by the prospect of spending a lazy morning with Bones.
Slamming door already forgotten, Jim was feeling pretty damn great for the seven seconds it took for him to walk from the bedroom to the small dining area, and the additional heartbeat it took for him to notice the can of decaf coffee sitting on the counter.
There was only one can like that in the trailer. Jim hoped, suddenly and blindly, that they had been robbed in the night. But even though the lid was off, Jim could see the wad ofcredits still shoved inside.
“Well well well, look who’s finally up.” Under different circumstances, the words Bones spoke could have been lighthearted. Gruff but good-natured. Bones had said it before when Jim stumbled awake after a few too many, or slept in for hours on his one day off from working at the casino. It was usually followed by a kiss or a pinch on the ass, the easy routine after living together so long, but the cold accusation in Bones’ voice made it clear that he wanted less than nothing to do with Jim that morning.
Jim tore his eyes away from the can, wondered how long he had stood there, staring at it and forgetting to breathe. He hadn’t even heard the door open, but there Bones was, leaning against the frame and looking at him like... like nothing at all. Whatever hope Jim had been holding out took a critical hit when he saw the complete lack of emotion on Bones’ face.
“Bones, I-“ Jim wasn’t sure what he was going to say, how he was going to make Bones understand. He’d had a lie ready - something about gambling with his paychecks and hiding the extra cash - but really, it was just as well that Bones cut him off.
“Get out of my way, Jim.” Bones brushed past him easily, moving through the kitchen and into the small living area. There was a duffel bag sitting on the couch and Jim felt the floor drop out from underneath him.
“Stop it Bones, please, just let me -“ Jim’s voice was getting suspiciously desperate sounding but he didn’t care. Bones couldn’t leave. He couldn’t. Jim needed him.
“Let you what, Jim? Let you get your ass thrown back in prison?” Bones grabbed the duffel bag and roughly threw the strap over his shoulder, voice furious but face still blank. “You want me to stand by while you get yourself killed?”
“If you would just stop for a minute and let me explain,” Jim saw something in Bones’ eyes snap, but before Jim could flinch away, Bones had cornered him against the wall. They didn’t touch, but Jim still shrunk back, trying to fight down the panic that clawed at his throat. He didn’t think that Bones would hit him, not really, even as the other man’s hands curled into angry fists. Bones wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.
It was just that none of Jim’s previous experiences with getting backed against walls had ended particularly well.
“What was the first thing I told you when you got back?” Bones must have seen something in his eyes, because Jim couldn’t help but notice the way the other man’s furious tone suddenly colored with sadness and something else that Jim didn’t want to think about. Something that sounded a lot like disgust. “I told you that I’d be gone if you got mixed up in that shit again.”
“We’re not even going to talk about this?” Jim knew that Bones’ decree had been serious, but at the same time he hadn’t ever really believed it could happen. “Bones, don’t be mad. I was just -“
“I don’t fucking care what you were doing. And I sure as hell don’t care why.” Bones drew away from him then, leaving Jim’s back pressed against the wall. Jim watched, helpless, as Bones moved towards the door.
“I was doing it so we could get out of here! I was doing it for us!” Jim was past thinking about denying what he had been doing. If he could just get Bones to listen, to understand, to put the bag down and not walk out the door.
Bones paused for a second, one hand on the door handle, looking at the floor. Jim couldn’t see his face, not really, but he could see the landslide slope of Bones’ shoulders. For a second, Jim thought that he would stay. But then Bones stood up straight, how his stance solidified with each word he spoke.
“There’s no more us, Jim.”
Bones let the door slam shut behind him.
---
Pike was still looking out at the mountains when he heard the turbolift chime, the slight sigh of air as the doors slid open. The click of Uhura’s heels as she crossed the room seemed to last forever.
The anticipation did nothing to help the cold, slimy feeling that had settled into Pike’s gut. It was the same sensation he’d had when he had submitted the application to withdraw from the command track at Starfleet and start a colony, the same feeling that had curled through him when he’d discovered that one of his best friends had turned traitor. It was a feeling that Pike had come to associate with cusps, important turning points both good and bad. Whatever he decided, there would be no turning back.
There was no way to win, no way to handle the situation that wouldn’t result in some type of loss. Pike had known for a long time that the blacks and whites of morality were myths at best. He just had to hope that he chose the best thing, the lesser of two evils. In a way it was Pike’s own fault that everything had turned out like it did - after all, he had been the one to get Nero involved on Iankt Prime all those years ago. Things would only get worse if he waited longer.
Pike knew that he couldn’t salvage the situation, but he could at least hope to keep things from getting worse.
When he turned in his chair Uhura was standing in front of his desk, arms crossed. Pike could tell that she had something important to tell him, and Uhura never disappointed.
“I’m glad you called when you did. The tail I put on Nero just checked in, and they told me that he’s heading toward the beach. Do you want me to tell them to intercept him?”
Pike took a deep breath, hoping his surprise didn’t show on his face.
There was only one place near the beach that Nero would be interested in visiting. The prospect of Nero staging a repeat of his little performance the day before had been bad enough. Pike hadn’t imagined that the Romulan would strike someone so close to Pike’s business so soon.
Pike’s plan to arrange a meeting with Nero and agree desist his more illegal on-planet activities disappeared. Suddenly, he found himself wondering if it had ever really been a valid plan at all. Uhura was right - Nero had to be insane. He had to be insane to force Pike’s hand the way he was, to leave Pike with no other choice. It had taken Pike hours to come to his previous conclusion, to consider all the possibilities and the potential ramifications of each, but it only took him a second to discard.
Pike remembered how beautiful the landscape had looked when the suns rose mere hours before, black sands almost glowing as the colors painted the sky. He remembered how, when he had first set foot on Iankt Prime, he had seen all of the possibilities in the universe laid out before him in the craggy, un-terraformed deserts. He remembered going to visit Winona and her sons, how she threw a plate at him and chased him out of the house while the youngest watched silently from the couch with eyes had been so blue they looked chlorinated. He remembered the bodies in Nero’s room, the crime scene photos taken not even 24 hours before.
“No. Call your men back and tell them to take off.” Pike slid open one of the desk’s drawers. “I have to handle this myself.”
One way or another, Pike knew that he was going to get what was coming to him. He was going to get exactly what he deserved.
---
Twenty Five Years Ago
Pike was standing in the shadow of the cliff, absently kicking up clouds of dust, when George arrived. The sky was a mottled bruise of purple and yellow as the suns set, and the beautiful red and green of the canyon walls looked like smears of brown in the failing light. Darkness fell quickly on Iankt Prime, and the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees in the short time that Pike had been waiting for his friend to arrive.
Pike shoved his hands even deeper into the pockets of his heavy canvas jacket as George stepped out of his truck. It was futile as an effort to keep warm, but it reminded him of the phaser that was tucked into the small of his back. As if he could have forgotten. Its presence was like a hot brand, festering against his skin in a constant reminder of his purpose.
“Hey Chris” George said as he slammed the door of the truck, blowing hot air on his hands as he made his way over to the cliff where they had met so many times before, planned the future of the planet together. “Where’s everybody else? I thought we were having a meeting.”
Pike stared at him, face passive and blank. It was a look that he had been practicing in the mirror for days, expertly crafted to hide the thunderstorm of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him.
“Chris?” George didn’t sound guilty, didn’t sound like he was worried as he stopped only a few feet from away Pike, looking at him with an amused concern. Fucking bastard.
“I hope you at least struggled with it, George.” Pike said, his voice dark and furious “I hope it didn’t come easy.”
“What are you talking about Chris? What is this?” George sounded confused, taking a hesitant step backwards.
“You fucking well know what this is!” Pike felt his control slipping as took his hands out of his pockets, moving away from the cliff and stalking towards his lying Judas of a friend “What did they promise you? Money? Please tell me you didn’t do it for a free pass off this rock, give me that at least.”
“Listen, I don’t know what - “
“You’ve been snitching to the Federation!” His carefully rehearsed speech abandoned him as he looked into George’s open, honest, traitorous face. “I know it was you, George!”
“You’re fucking nuts, Pike!” George was yelling now, backing away in short measured steps as he judged the distance to the safety of his car. Pike realized, then, that George was going to try and make a run for it, that there was no going back.
“What did you tell them?” Pike pulled his phaser and trained it on George. Everything slowed down, and in that one eternal second Pike saw everything from the slight sheen of sweat that had broken out on George’s forehead to the almost imperceptible tremor of his own hands as he fought to hold the phaser steady. The air temperature was still dropping steadily, but Pike felt like he was burning alive. “What the fuck did you tell them?”
George changed trajectories suddenly. Before Pike could take the shot George was lunging towards him, face tight with unmasked fear and determination. Pike pulled the trigger a second too late, his shot arching wide into the side of the cliff as George tackled him. The phaser was knocked from his hands as he and George stumbled into the black sand, still so hot from the blistering afternoon sun.
The fight was short and brutal. George swept Pike’s legs from under him and Pike grabbed the shoulders of his jacket, snarling with rage. George was strong with desperation and fear but Pike had the advantage of size, of experience, and he rolled George underneath him as he fell. He had meant this to be clean, to be quick, but his phaser was too far away to reach and Pike clamped his hands around George’s throat.
Pike had been preparing himself to kill George from a respectable distance, to shoot him in the chest or in his traitorous back if George tried to run. He had thought that George would fall over instantly like they always did in the holovids, had assured himself that it would be easy. While Pike had been in his fair share of fights, nothing could have prepared him for what it felt like to hold another person’s life in his bare hands, to squeeze mercilessly and do his best to extinguish it by force.
He remembered the first time he had met George, how they had laid plans for the colony together, bright-eyed and young and unstoppable. He remembered being the best man at George’s wedding, making a toast to his future with Winona, remembered the look of pure joy in George’s eyes a month before when he told Christopher that she was pregnant for the second time. He remembered the call that he had received the night before, how he had felt when he learned that it was George Kirk who had turned traitor. Pike had expected Komack, maybe, but never George.
The suns sat on the rim of the horizon, twin balls of fire that set the sky ablaze with dying light. It was near freezing already and Pike could see the cold clouds of his breath as he panted, struggling to keep control. Despite the dropping temperature the sand beneath them simmered with a hateful heat, burning Pike’s knees as he looked out towards the horizon, squinted his eyes against the orange glow of the suns.
He grit his teeth as George struggled, bucking underneath him, tearing at his clothes and his hands, choking and gasping and making inhuman guttural sounds as Pike tightened his grip. George was young and strong and he was fighting for his life, but Pike bore down harder and ;slowly, so slowly, George’s struggles weakened, his body convulsing one last time before slowly going limp. His hands fell away from where they had been trying to pry Pike’s fingers from his throat, and Pike looked at those hands as George slowly stopped struggling, how they twitched and drew random, frantic patterns in the sand.
It was over. Pike’s face was a mess of snot and tears as he stumbled away from George’s motionless body and vomited violently into the fine black sand, his chest heaving as he took great whooping breaths of air. He felt like he was going to collapse from exhaustion. He felt like he could have run a marathon.
George Kirk was the first man that Christopher Pike ever killed. Pike had to strangle him for eleven minutes.
Standing over the corpse of what had been his best friend, Pike had sworn to himself that he would never kill somebody again. At the time, he actually believed the lie.
---
No sooner had Bones pulled away, fan belt squealing somewhere in the engine of the shitty little car, than Jim had hit the booze. Well, he had tried to at least.
Mind blank, running almost on autopilot, Jim had walked past the condemning can on the counter. He wasn’t thinking about it, wasn’t thinking about anything. He was thinking of nothing except, maybe, about getting shitfaced and going on a drunk-dialing spree from the discomfort of the trailer’s couch.
The whole thing had seemed somehow unreal, a bad dream that couldn’t possibly be reality, until he opened the cabinet where they’d always kept the booze.
Then Jim had laughed. He’d laughed so hard that he had to sit down on the linoleum floor, gasping for air and trying to wipe the water from his cheeks. He’d laughed even as he’d held his head in his hands and tried to keep the desperate, increasingly hysterical sounds from escaping.
He’d laughed until he choked on it.
Bones had taken every drop of alcohol with him. Jim figured that he’d probably stuffed the bottles into the duffel bag next to his clothes and his PADDs and the holo of him and Jocelyn that had sat on the shelf above the sink. It was such a Bones thing to do, and it made Jim hurt at the very core of himself.
Time seemed to pass with infinite slowness while Jim sat on the floor, head alternately in his hands or tilted back against the cabinets to look up at the window. But when he stood up, he saw that over an hour had passed since he had woken up and watched Bones walk out of his life and no. Jim was steadfastly not thinking about what had happened and how he had no one to blame but himself.
In fact, all he was thinking about was the nearest liquor store, and whether or not he thought he could walk there and back without getting heat sick. He needed a drink. Badly. He had a can full of credits and an empty trailer and when you calculated it all out then yeah, he was willing to make the walk despite the flat, baking heat. He reasoned that at least if he got sunstroke then they would take him to the hospital and he would get to see Bones.
Jim hoped that Spock would be proud of his logical thinking.
He’d made it about half way when a familiar car crested the rise of the hill in front of him. For a minute Jim had thought that he was hallucinating, that perhaps the heat had finally melted his mind. The car slowed as it approached and pulled to the side of the road next to him, one tinted window rolling down to reveal Spock - calm and pressed as always - sitting behind the wheel.
“Mr. Kirk, are you unwell?” Spock asked.
“No.” Jim said “Everything’s great.” As if it was standard operating procedure to walk along the side of the road in the middle of the day. That earned him a raised eyebrow, but Jim was a little too numb to gloat over the small personal victory. Instead, he just got in the car when Spock asked him to and kept his mouth shut as he basked in the wonder of air conditioning.
As it turned out, Spock had been trying to comm. him for the past half hour. Scotty apparently wanted them to take care of some business on the spacedock for a week while the heat from the homicide investigation faded. Not that Spock had said so directly, but Jim could read between the lines.
Jim realized half way to Scotty’ restaurant that he couldn’t remember whether or not he’d locked the front door of the trailer, but chased the thought away. It wasn’t like it really mattered, like he had anything worth stealing. And wasn’t it convenient, that Bones had walked out right before Jim was told that he had to lay low and go on a weeklong field trip. It was perfect, Jim thought acidly. Just fucking perfect.
Jim took a deep breath and forced the thought away. He had other things to take care of. The memory of Bones taking off without so much as a goodbye would just have to fester in his hindbrain until Jim found the cheapest bar on the spacedock.
Spock skirted the edge of town, maneuvering effortlessly through the scattered midday traffic. Jim was uncharacteristically thankful for the lack of conversation. The very idea of making small talk caused the bile to rise is his throat. Instead of trying to fill the silence, he rested his chin in his hand and stared out the tinted window, watching as the dilapidated buildings blurred by and gave way to slightly nicer areas as they neared the beach.
It was lunch time when they reached the restaurant, but the parking lot of Scotty’s was as vacant as ever. Jim had never seen more than a handful of cars parked in front of the diner, but the expanse of barren asphalt was somehow unnerving. In fact, the only other vehicle was Scotty’s sleek red hovercar, parked in its customary spot in the southwest corner of the lot. Spock didn’t bother with any such polite formalities, and swung into the spot closest to the door, close enough so that Jim could see the red CLOSED sign hanging in the window of the restaurant.
The sign may have said that the diner was closed, but Spock pushed the door open without effort and Jim followed him into the blasting air conditioning, hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans. Pavel stood at the console next to the door, wrapping silverware in napkins with a practiced ease, pale and drawn. He looked up briefly when Jim and Spock entered, an awkward jerk of the head, before returning his attention to the task at hand. The smell of burning tickled Jim’s nose as he passed Pavel but he ignored it. Not his business.
Scotty sat at a table not far from the door, partially obscured by the plain black briefcase that sat on the surface in front of him, lid open. Jim could see where his tongue had caught between his teeth, as Scotty looked intently at whatever the briefcase held. Jim couldn’t see what was inside the case. Found that he didn’t particularly care. He just wanted to be gone. Scotty made the universal wait-a-minute gesture with the hand that wasn’t busy jabbing at the screen of his PADD.
Jim wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or annoyed at having to wait - his emotions and the whole concept of ‘feeling things’ were pretty much a wreck - but he realized that he did have to pee. Badly. He left Spock standing stiffly with his hands behind his back and made his towards the bathroom.
“Toilet’s broken.” Scotty said, voice carrying easily in the quiet room. “We’ve making the customers use the public one. Down by the parking lot.”
Jim paused with his hand on the doorknob, looked back over his shoulder to where the other man was still staring intently into the briefcase. As he watched, Scotty shut the lid, turned to him and grinned at him, friendly and genuine. Jim smiled back, cringing inwardly at how fake it felt. He liked Scotty, he really did, but the last thing he wanted to do was explain why he was in a bad mood.
Either Scotty didn’t notice the forced quality of Jim’s expression or he misattributed it to the idea of having to hike down to the grimy public restroom, because he added
“Just go out back.” Scotty made a vague hand gesture in the direction of the kitchen “Door’s behind the cooler.”
Jim picked his way through the small, spotless kitchen. The fryers and ovens were cold and silent, and he could hear the distant sound of Scotty chatting with Spock in the dining room (well, more like chatting at Spock) and the faint grumbling of the air handler. He finally found the door right where Scotty said he would, partially obscured behind a large freezer - there was just enough room to crack it open and slip out into the back lot of the restaurant. A wave of boiling air assaulted him the moment the door opened, but after the too-cool interior of the restaurant it was almost a relief. The door clicked shut behind him, effectively silencing the faint murmur of Spock and Scotty’s conversation, and the last thing Jim heard was the loud crash of a tub of silverware being dropped on a tiled floor.
Jim rolled his shoulders against the dry, beating heat, and pissed into the pebbly sand, staring at the scrubby shore plants that encircled the back lot without really seeing them. He tucked himself away and cracked his knuckles. Cracked his neck. Scratched at his shoulder blade. The thought of making small talk with anybody, even Scotty, was more than he could take at that moment, so Jim kicked at the dirt and counted crumpled soda cans and wasted time until turning with a sigh and headed back through the kitchen and into the restaurant.
---
By the time Sulu finished his shift, he had all but forgotten about picking Pavel up from work. He’d ended up pulling an hour of overtime after a depressed Deltan with a mountain of gambling debts had taken a long walk off of a short roof while on lunch break. Sulu, who had been up since two in the morning and was running on fumes, had been put on crowd control until the thing that had once been a body but was now just meat had been scraped off of the sidewalk and into a body bag.
Suicides were never easy to deal with, and by the time Sulu was given the okay to leave he wanted nothing more than to scrub the grime of the day from his body and sleep forever. It wasn’t until he was sitting at the stoplight a block away from his apartment, trying to figure out what he was going to do about the situation with Pavel, that he remembered his promise to give the younger man a ride.
He considered blowing Pavel off, going home and zoning out and disappearing from Pavel’s life. Because as much as he wanted to help Pavel, to be there for him, to somehow fix him, the thought of ending it like that was tantalizingly easy. Hell, he’d probably never have to see Pavel again until the day when his car’s comm bleeped and told him to report to the site of a suspected overdose.
The black plastic of the steering wheel was hot against his forehead. When the car behind him honked impatiently, three quick blasts that let him know the light had changed, Sulu raised his head and pulled into the turn lane and turned back towards the beach.
---
Neatly wrapped bundled of forks and knives were scattered across the floor, not entirely unlike how Jim had pictured when he’s heard the clatter as he walked outside. That was where the similarities stopped. For a moment Jim simply could not process what he was seeing, and for the second time in as many days, Jim felt like he had walked out of reality and straight into a nightmare.
Pavel knelt on the floor a few steps away from the overturned bin, awash in a sea of red. The spreading pool of blood channeled in the grout between the floor tiles, soaked and stained the once white napkins that wrapped the silverware. Jim could only see Pavel in profile, but it was more than enough. The young man’s mouth was a silent O of pain and shock and he had his blood-slick hands pressed to the tear in his shirt, the rip in his stomach, trembling as he tried to keep his intestines from spilling out onto the floor.
Scotty lay sprawled backwards over a table, his head hanging off the edge closest to Jim. Blood bubbled up from his nose and cut wet tracks across his cheekbones, collecting in small pools in the corners of his blank, open eyes. Aside from the jerky rising and falling of his chest, Scotty didn’t move. One of his arms was twisted at several unnatural angles, but the hand at the end was still curled loosely around the grip of what Jim recognized as a highly illegal type of concussive phaser.
That, at least, explained the wide swath of green gore that decorated the once beige and inoffensive curtains of the restaurant. It also explained the mostly headless body that slumped in a lifeless heap on the tile. What it didn’t explain was why Spock was laying curled on the floor with his back to Jim, spasming quietly. There was so much green blood splattered from the decapitated body that Jim couldn’t tell if Spock was bleeding or dying or what, and fear filled him like molten metal. Pavel’s injury wasn’t necessarily a death sentence, and at least Scotty and Spock looked like they were still breathing, but Jim knew that he needed to get help, to get them to a hospital as soon as possible. He’d left his comm back in the trailer, but Scotty had to have one in his office and -
Too bad that nothing in Jim’s life was ever that easy.
Standing over Scotty was a tall Romulan holding a blade. He had been staring intently at Scotty, scrawling the tip of the knife lightly along the incapacitated man’s collarbones, but he looked up when Jim entered. Some faraway part of Jim’s mind wondered clinically at the facial tattoos but then the Romulan shifted towards Jim, adjusted his grip on the weapon. The blade was long and thin and bright with blood, but the alien who wielded it was alarmingly clean. Except for a smattering of green droplets that decorated the right side of his tattooed face and ruined ear, the Romulan looked just like he’d waltzed out of a business meeting.
“Ah, here’s the other one” the Romulan said, unaccented standard, talking to Jim like they were old friends. “Come over here, son.” He grinned around a mouth of broken teeth and took a step towards Jim.
Jim’s paralysis broke and he stepped backwards, started to shift into a defensive posture, but he saw the flash of movement in the corner of his eye too late. A second Romulan (well, third if you counted the dead one on the floor) came out of his blind spot and knocked him to the side with an effortless slap. Romulans a helpful, hateful part of his mind supplied are many times stronger than humans. He rolled, spat blood, and came up in a crouch to see the second Romulan, the one with the arrow tattoo, was advancing while the other stood back and fondled his knife. Weird.
Jim had been in his fair share of fights, but it was all he could do to deflect the blows as Arrow Tattoo drove him backwards towards a row of booths. Somewhere, beneath the harsh sounds of his own breathing and the pounding of blood in his ears, he heard Pavel whimper in pain. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Romulan with the knife take a few leisurely steps to the side. Aware that he was about to be cornered, he dropped to duck a blow and hooked his ankle around the leg of a chair, whipped it forward to catch Arrow Tattoo by surprise. The chair fractured, raining debris, and Jim surged forward to catch the Romulan off guard. It was a lot like shoving concrete, but Jim still managed to slide by.
He brought his hands up to deflect the knife he was sure was coming, and Jim had just enough time to realize how badly he had misjudged the situation before the fist connected solidly with his stomach. A solid wall of pain sent Jim crashing to his knees, gasping for air, and before he could recover a pair of hands pinned his wrists behind his back. Another hand carded though his hair, the touch oddly gently for the briefest of moments before the hand tightened and pulled, wrenching him upward by the roots.
They had been forced to keep their hair cut short on Tantalus. Ostensibly for health reasons, Jim had discovered during his first week on the penal colony that the buzzcuts served double duty in preventing enemies from having an easy handhold. Regardless, he had grown it out when he’d returned to Iankt Prime - Bones liked his hair, and, after all, Jim had assumed that those days of fighting for his life were behind him.
Jim didn’t go easily as he was pulled to his feet, jerking and thrashing as even more adrenaline dumped into his blood, taking whooping breaths of air as his diaphragm spasmed. Jim Kirk was young and strong and he had fought for his life before. Even in his winded state he could have probably thrown off a human enemy, but the Romulans holding Jim seemed less than phased by his efforts, the one that had pinned his hands going so far as to chuckle darkly, damp breath scalding on Jim’s neck. Jim’s breath caught in his throat, and he considered yelling for the briefest of moments before dismissing the thought.
Whatever the Romulans were planning to do to him, to Scotty and Spock and Pavel, there was nobody around to hear them scream.
The realization caused Jim to renew his struggles, mutely resisting until he felt the long edge of the blade press firmly against his neck. He stilled, eyes wide, and drew rapid breaths through his nose as the tip of the knife teased along the pounding pulse in his throat. He looked into the face of the Romulan that gripped his hair for a split second before making a concentrated effort to look everywhere except those eyes, wide and sincere and insane as he stared clinically at Jim.
“That’s no way to behave.” The Romulan said, breath acrid in Jim’s face “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Jim sincerely doubted that. In fact, of all the lies Jim had heard in his life, it had to be one of the most blatant.
The Romulan was close enough that Jim could see the line of pinprick scars that haloed his head, the way his eyelashes fluttered as he looked, no longer at Jim, but at the tip of his knife and the patterns it followed as it traveled from Jim’s throat to trace along his cheek. Jim clenched his jaw and made a low, animal noise when he felt it tickle at the corner of his eye.
“I want to talk to you about your future.”
---
Sulu drove slowly, distracted, and got caught at almost every stoplight. He didn’t bother to be irritated, not even when other most of the other vehicles on the road automatically decreased their speeds at his approach. A single glimpse of the silent sirens on Sulu’s roof, the knowledge of what they promised, was enough to slow the traffic surrounding his squad car to what seemed like a glacial pace.
He hummed along to an old song that wasn’t on the radio, tuneless and loud in the quiet interior of the car, and stared at the unblinking red eye of the stoplight, waiting for it to change.
Almost half an hour late, Sulu pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where Pavel worked. He turned off the engine and stepped out into the baking heat, feeling his skin tighten in the dry air. It wasn’t the best parking job, and if Sulu would have been careless he could have easily dinged the door of the car parked next to his, a dark tinted rental, the type of low-riding vehicle that only assholes drove. Sulu hadn’t been expecting to have to park next to anyone - the small lot had always been empty when he’d come in the past, and anyways, Pavel always stood outside when Sulu came to pick him up.
The doors of his cruiser locked with a cheerful beeping noise and Sulu crossed the simmering asphalt with his hands shoved in the pockets of his uniform, an oddly juvenile pose. He had his hand on the doorknob of the restaurant and was pushing inward when he heard the scream. It was too late to stop the motion, the halt his forward momentum, but Sulu had just enough time to pull the phaser from the holster on his belt before the door swung wide and he was inside the restaurant.
He couldn’t do anything more than watch, stunned, as Jim Kirk - who had been a junior when Sulu was a freshman, who had always looked cool and untouchable in his leather jacket even when the heat had been in the triple digits, who had dropped out quietly without a word to anyone a month before graduation - screamed again, his right eye disappearing in a raw blossom of red.
Sulu recognized Nero from months spent memorizing Pike’s file. Starfleet didn’t have anything so crass as a Most Wanted list, but should it have existed, the heavily tattooed Romulan would hovered somewhere around #12. Sulu’s superiors had told him that he would be unlikely to encounter Nero, that his infiltration wouldn’t be likely to expose him to the higher-ups in the criminal organization that Pike dealt with. Sulu’s superiors had also told him that it was advisable to cultivate old relationships in order to make himself seem integrated into the community. They obviously didn’t know jack shit.
It was almost too easy for Sulu to fall into cop mode, holding his phaser at the ready as he advanced into the restaurant as if this were another routine call, as if Jim Kirk wasn’t crying out hoarsely with blood running into his mouth, Pavel nowhere to be seen.
“Drop your weapon!”
Both of the Romulans looked up when Sulu shouted the command, but neither made an effort to follow the order.
Sulu kept his eyes trained on the assailants, watching for sudden movements as he took another step forward. Later, Sulu wouldn’t be able to understand how he had made such a stupid mistake, but in the heat of the moment his world had narrowed to include nothing more than the sight on his phaser and the Romulans in front of him and he hadn’t even thought to look at the floor before he set his foot down in the pool of blood, slippery on the tile, and felt the world slide out from underneath him.
Sulu squeezed off a shot as he fell, the phaser blast meant for Nero going wide and catching the other Romulan, the one that held Jim’s hands behind his back, in the head. If Sulu wouldn’t have been falling backwards into a bright sea of blood he probably would have reflected on how good of a shot it was, how lucky he had been. A few inches lower and it would have been Jim Kirk slumping backwards with a smoking hole in his skull. As it was, Sulu had no time to think before he was on his back, staring up at the particle board ceiling as his uniform shirt and the hair on the back of his head were soaked through with warmth, wet and sticky against his skin.
Sulu knew that he didn’t have the luxury of getting to stop and be horrified by what was happening to him, as he rolled to stand and planted his free hand against the tile in the warm red puddle. He knew that he had to contain the situation, assess injuries, call for back-up. He knew the procedure to follow, knew that he was running out of time before he would feel the shot in his back or the cold metal of the knife against his throat, but when his eyes found Pavel, Sulu couldn’t move. Not even to breathe. He could hear Jim calling out, somewhere, far away, and Sulu thought that he could hear booted footsteps approaching him from behind, but he couldn’t react, couldn’t look away from Pavel’s slack face, the ropey pink and purple intestines that glistened with fresh blood where they spilled from the jagged slice on his abdomen.
Then, without warning, the world went bright and Sulu jackknifed back down onto the tile as hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity coursed through his body. It was nothing like the shock he’d had to endure as part of his training at the Academy, completely unlike the hymns of pain that had reverberated across his neurons and left him spasming on the floor. Romulan shock weapons obviously weren’t designed for human physiology, but Sulu wasn’t coherent enough to worry about permanent neurological damage.
Soaked in Pavel’s blood blood that wasn’t his, cheek pressed to the slippery floor, Sulu though that he was breathing but he couldn’t be sure. Every muscle in his body was clenched tight with fiery pain, a throbbing sensation that left him feeling both far away and too, too close.
Moments later, he felt a strong, inhuman hand pry his fingers from where the electricity had caused them to clench tight around the grip of his regulation phaser. The weapon removed, Sulu’s hand clenched shut again of its own volition as his body continued to ignore his desperate pleas to move. He couldn’t turn his head to look when he felt the tip of a boot wedge itself under his ribs and roll his useless body onto it’s back, couldn’t blink as he lay staring up at the ceiling tiles and Nero’s looming figure standing over him, back-lit and haloed by the harsh overhead lights of the restaurant.
Sulu didn’t know what to expect, other than a slow and painful death, and was caught off guard when Nero said “I have no business with you, Officer. You can go now.”
Body still immobile, Sulu was helpless to do anything but watch as Nero lifted the phaser and trained it on his head. Sulu imagined that he could see the muscles in the Romulan’s finger tightening, infinitely slowly, as Nero squeezed the trigger. He knew suddenly and with an unquestionable certainty that he was going to die there, soaked in Pavel’s blood, unable to do anything more than watch helplessly as his life was taken. At least Nero seemed content to make his death quick, instead of prolonging it in an unending agony of metal and flayed flesh.
Sulu wished that he could close his eyes.
He couldn’t do anything other than watch as Nero squeezed the trigger of the phaser, that infinite moment, but before that last, most crucial pound of pressure could be applied there was a crash. Sulu couldn’t be sure, couldn’t move to see, but it sounded a lot like the door of the restaurant had just been kicked inward. From his place on the floor, Sulu watched as the phaser that had been trained on his head swung up towards some unseen figure as Nero’s attentions were redirected.
“Traitors and sons of traitors,” Nero said. Sulu heard the words very clearly the moment before he registered a faint flash of light from the direction of the door. Then another flash, a split second after the first.
Nero’s chest disintegrated, bits of bone and chunks of flesh and a spray of blood that exploded outward. The Romulan looked stunned, furious, but then he didn’t look like anything at all as the second shot caught him in the head, turning it into nothing more than a cloud of gore that rained particles of grey and white and green.
It was only then that Sulu heard the sound of the gunshots, an echoing of twin shuddering un-sounds that seemed to tear apart the very air itself as Nero’s body collapsed gracelessly on Sulu’s feet.
Part One :: Interlude - Chekov :: Part Two :: Interlude - Nero :: Part Three :: Epilogue