FIC: Contact (STXI, PG13)
This story is a response to a request on the STXI Kink Meme (Part 13): "Kirk, while bored and stuck in sickbay, or just those long dull stretches getting from point A to B, decides to start writing about his early years. (Anon is NOT requested to write the novel, though a few 'quotes' from the book would be nice)..."
Title: Contact
Author: Danahid (danahid)
Fandom/Spoilers: STXI/Reboot
Summary: The only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen (or maybe pre-slash)
Wordcount: 3,570
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by many people who are not me. No profit being made. No infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: September 18, 2009 (small edits 11.24.09)
The only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other
CONTACT
He's lying in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. The stars shiver, blue and bright in the sky above him. He can hear the highway breathing.
Jim sets his datapad aside whenever Bones steps into sickbay. He hasn't written anything before, at least not anything like this. But he spends a lot of time in sickbay, and it's boring, and he needs some way to entertain himself that doesn't involve harassing Bones to death. Writing starts as something to keep his mind busy while his body heals from the latest away mission fuck-up.
It ends up something else, but he doesn't want to talk about that. Just like he doesn't want to talk about what he's writing. Bones is too good a friend to ask, even if his eyes gleam with curiosity every time he notices Jim sliding his personal datapad underneath the other datapads filled with requests and reports that Rand drops off for him to sign while he's convalescing. The day-to-day management of a starship doesn't stop just because he's in sickbay.
He ends up in County General after that stunt with the car, though not because he threw himself out of a moving vehicle right before it went over a cliff. He's in the hospital because of what happened after his stepfather picked him up from the police station. Broken bones, black eyes, bruised ribs, a punctured lung: the doctors and nurses assume he got the injuries in the accident, and his stepfather has always been a clever, careful bastard.
He pulls his knees up to his chin, wraps his arms around himself, and says nothing to contradict his stepfather or otherwise disabuse the hospital staff of their assumptions. No one has ever believed him before, there's no reason to think they'll believe him now, and anyway he'd rather not talk about it. (Now that his brother's gone, who's he going to talk to anyway?)
All he wants to do is go home. He's waiting for his ride to show up, knowing it's probably not his mom since she's still off-planet, hoping it's not his stepfather even though with his luck he's sure that's who it'll be. He's waiting and trying not to think about his stepfather, and because he tells himself that he's bored, he's gotten up from the bed and is staring at himself in the mirror above the sink in his tiny hospital bathroom. The dermal regenerators have erased the outward signs of damage. What's left is yellow hair, thin cheeks, skinny arms, and blue eyes that look so fucking lost he can't stand them. He's eleven years old and he's miserable. (He wants to hate his brother for leaving him.)
Jim has always hated hospitals and med clinics and sickbays. He can never wait to get out of Bones' clutches and back to the safety of his own space, his own bridge. He's always been glad to leave every reminder of his sickbay incarceration behind him, but this time is different. This time he keeps his datapad with him when he leaves, and he keeps writing. He writes down everything he can remember in the order he remembers it. It starts out as a jumble of thoughts and images. Eventually it sorts itself out into some kind of chronological sense.
He doesn't know what it is, what it's becoming, what it will be. All he knows is that getting the words out of his head and down into his datapad calms the feelings that have always itched and ached under his skin, making him lash out at everything and everyone, like a wolf caught in a trap.
He tries not to think about why he's doing it as he stays up late to write after every shift. He refuses to think about it as some kind of long-overdue therapy. James T. Kirk is not so pathetic. The memories tumble out, fast and furious, and he writes them down. It is what it is.
It's his birthday and he's five, and he's can't help thinking about his father. He hates that his father isn't here. He hates that his mother looks at him with empty eyes. He hates his stepfather with his heavy fists and his lies. He hates the house and the farm and the barn and the sky and the cornfields. He hates everything about where he is. He hates so much that it fills him up. He overflows with hate, and it burns under his skin.
It's his birthday and he's five, and he wants to scream loud and long. He wants to scream and scream and scream, even though he knows it won't bring his father back and it won't make his mother see him with different eyes.
He's never asked his mother what she sees when she looks at him. It never occurs to him to ask, and anyway he doesn't need to. He's seen the faded holophotos of his dead father, piled against the ancient radiator in the attic near the box of old Academy textbooks.
Jim keeps writing. He's careful to keep his writing separate from his work. Everyone on the Enterprise pursues personal interests after their work is done and they're warping between points in space. Space is really big, and they need to be proactive about staying sane.
Jim decides writing is his new hobby. Instead of other non-Captainly things, he scribbles things down in his spare time; it's not a big deal, and he's careful never to let his hobby interfere with his command.
So he writes when he's off-duty and whenever he's stuck in sickbay. Sometimes the words come easily. Sometimes they get stuck, and he'll spend a few of those boring bridge shifts between missions and planets just staring into the vast emptiness of space, trying to figure out where the words have gone. But then he'll get back on track, and he'll write in every spare minute he has, and if he heads up to his quarters a little earlier than usual after shift, or chooses to stay on the ship for shore leave, or skips a poker night here or there, maybe Spock or Bones notices but probably no one else.
Being sent to live with his aunt and uncle is the best the thing that has ever happened to him, he's sure of it. For the first time in his life, there's no one to tell him that he's too wild, too loud, too argumentative, too wrong. He doesn't have to fight just to have his existence acknowledged. His aunt smiles at him and lets him tag along when she goes to her lab. She listens to him when he tells her about his day. She encourages him to explore and learn, and it's so nice it's kind of boring and he's sure he'll be tired of it before the end of the summer, but in the beginning he loves every minute of it.
The words dry up completely about halfway through the whatever-it-is that he's writing. For a couple of weeks, he's impossible to be around, he knows it. When he's not on the bridge, he stomps around the corridors and glares at unsuspecting ensigns. When he's on the bridge, he's short-tempered and impatient, but he absolutely did not make Chekov cry that one time. When he's off-shift, he shuts himself in his quarters and stares at his blank datapad. He's so frustrated that he kind of loses track of time, and if he misses a couple of buddy nights with Bones and chess nights with Spock, he figures they're probably grateful they don't have to put up with his irritating self off-duty too.
It's not like he can talk about his little problem with anyone, anyway. He doesn't ever talk about what he's writing, is always scrupulously careful to never leave his personal datapad lying around where someone might pick it up and start reading. It's not that Jim’s ashamed of his writing; he just really doesn't want to talk about it. And it's not that he has hidden depths that he's protecting either; it's that he's hidden parts of himself for so long, buried them so deep, so long ago, that he doesn't even know those parts of himself anymore. He doesn't want anyone else to run into his ghosts before he's had a chance to get reacquainted himself.
So he doesn't want to talk about what he's writing, which means that he can't ask anyone for help with his writer's block, so all he can do is hunker down and fight his way through it, the way he's always done.
He discovers that summer that he loves math and physics. Science is a source of certainty, especially to someone whose life has always held too many uncertainties. He's excited when he realizes that even Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which proclaims that the future cannot be determined from the past, gives a definite mathematical formula for containing uncertainties, like a soundproof room built around someone who's screaming.
Jim stops writing altogether about a year in.
Everything feels wrong. He feels wrong. He feels disconnected and alone, and it's hard to drag himself out of bed, and that's when it occurs to him that he's been so distracted by all the trouble he's having with his writing whatever that it's been a couple of weeks since he's swung by Bones' office for any non-ship-related conversation, and it's been at least that long since he played chess with Spock. He's cut himself off from everyone bit by bit as he's has wrestled with this thing that's taken over his life.
In the beginning, he promised himself that it would never affect his command, and it never has, but he can tell it will if he doesn't figure out how to fix this.
Spending time with his two closest friends turns out to be the perfect solution. It gets his head back on straight. He's able to refocus on his ship and his crew. It even helps him get over his writer's block.
For the longest the time, the words didn't come. And then they do.
They cover their ears when the screaming starts. He huddles close to the two younger boys and whispers: We'll find a way out of here, I promise. We'll go to the dockyards where the supply ships are going to land. We'll find food. Please, please don't cry.
They're alone. He's the oldest, and he feels responsible for the others. He scratches under rocks and bushes, searching for anything edible. On lucky days, he finds berries that aren't poisonous. He always gives what he finds to the younger boys. He's gone without eating long enough by now that a few blades of grass and some leaves are enough to ease the dizziness and hunger clawing his insides.
They're starving. It becomes more and more difficult to find any kind of food as the weeks wear on. He can't remember when he ate last, all he knows is that they need to keep going. They scramble through drought and darkness and traps. He finds it increasingly difficult to think clearly about each new trap and how to outwit it. The emptiness in his stomach is hard to ignore.
They're being hunted. That's why there are traps. He would've realized it sooner, that they're being hunted, but he's having trouble thinking. He feels lightheaded all the time. He urges the smaller boys to walk faster, but they can't because they're small and they haven't eaten and they're terrified.
He's terrified too, but he hides it better.
A year and half in, Jim comes to the end of the story, or at least goes as far as he's willing to go. After he finishes the book (he's finally willing to admit that's what it is), Jim has no idea what to do with it.
He requests a private channel to Admiral Pike and asks his long-suffering mentor what he should do. Pike stares at Jim, a muscle working in his jaw, looking like this is the last thing he ever expected to discuss with Jim Kirk. Maybe it is.
"Can you read it?" Jim asks when the silence drags out too long. "Then you can tell me what I should do with it." He hates how hesitant his voice sounds, hates the antsy feeling crawling up his arms, hates every minute of this conversation. He regrets comm'ing Pike.
Pike nods slowly. "Send me a packet. I'll read it."
He's sure it's a miracle when they finally reach the dockyards. He sees the supply ships, shiny and new in the waning light, and the ships are early and late, and it's all mixed up and so fucking wrong he can't think straight.
He sees people milling around, trying to identify bodies and survivors, and then he sees his brother. Joy pours through him because his brother is there, right in front of him, and he waves wildly -- here I am! I'm here! -- and he nearly falls over because he's so weak and all he can think is that he's alive and he's filthy and he's so smelly that he knows they'll need to burn his clothes, but his brother has come for him.
He collapses in his brother's arms and tries to croak out a laugh when his brother asks him if he wants to go home.
"I don't know what to say, Jim. Part of me doesn't know where this came from. Another part of me hates that I know exactly where this came from."
Jim stares down at his hands. He can feel a headache beginning.
Pike sighs. "We'll need to edit out anything that might compromise Starfleet, its operations, or its intelligence. There's classified information, you know that. It'll have to be published under a pseudonym."
"Pub-- what?" croaks Jim, looking up.
"Yeah, published. It's good, Jim. Too good for you to sit on it."
"I was thinking that maybe that was exactly what I should do. There's shit in there that I'm not sure I want anyone to read about." Jim pauses. "Besides you, I guess." He shrugs awkwardly.
Pike thinks about that for a minute then levels a look at Jim. "I dare you to do better."
And Jim remembers that Iowa bar and the antsy, uncomfortable feeling falls away, and he grins. "You know me and dares, Admiral Pike."
"I know you," Pike agrees. He nods at Jim, his eyes warm and wrinkled at the corners, and Jim holds the memory of that look on Pike's face long after he shuts down the comm link.
After they come home, he hides himself in silence. He sits in his childhood bedroom and rocks back and forth on his bed, listing all the elements in the periodic table in his head over and over again. He hides in his room, and his mother hides from him as much as he hides from her. His stepfather is gone, he doesn't know where or why. His brother has disappeared again.
The book is published on Terra and several Federation worlds to critical and public acclaim. It is a slim volume, printed in its first-run on real paper at the author's request. (Jim loves the smell of pulp paper, the feel of a bound book in his hands.)
The public is fascinated by the idea of the author. He is reclusive, lives off-world, and gives no interviews. His unavailability exponentially increases the word-of-mouth popularity of the book. (Jim is ridiculously grateful for pseudonyms and five-year deep space exploration missions.)
The book makes most annual top-ten lists, and is shortlisted for numerous literary prizes. It is hailed as profound but accessible, brutally honest and unexpectedly poetic. (That particular review makes Jim laugh out loud; he can just see Bones' expression.)
The book finds its way to the Enterprise in record time. (Jim has trouble coping.)
He runs away from home not long after coming home from the colony. He starts out wanting to find his brother. He finds other, less savory things. He buries himself in drink. And sex. And emptiness.
He's fifteen, and he does a lot of things that he doesn't want to think about later.
For a while they help him forget.
Jim takes to avoiding the rec rooms when reading groups spring up to discuss the novel. He actively avoids any conversation that might possibly be about the book, which means he has to start steering clear of the mess halls as well. He snaps at Chekov when his youngest officer asks him if he's read the book, and he actually heaves Uhura's copy across the conference room table during a senior staff meeting.
The book doesn't hit anyone, and he didn't mean to throw it so hard, just like he didn't mean to be so abrupt with poor Chekov. He apologizes to both of them, mumbling something about stress and something else about being a jackass and something else about replacing Uhura's book. His senior staff exchange worried looks, and the next thing he knows Bones is telling him that he needs to have a physical and Spock wants to speak with him privately.
He finds his brother once, just once. He crouches down beside him in a dirty room in a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere. There are bottles and worse on the floor, and he fumbles out words that he will regret later. He begins to tell his brother about his sleeplessness, about his dreams, about the emptiness and the hate seething under his skin. He tells his brother (hesitantly), I'm lost without you, and he wants to say something in the spaces between the words, something important about who he is, who he's been, who he might be, who he'll never be, things he's never told anyone.
His brother ruffles his hair, tells him he'll be okay, and passes out.
He sits in that dingy room for a long time after that, listening to the highway breathing, wishing he could get out, go somewhere else, be someone else.
When it's clear that Bones and Spock are planning to lecture him after the senior staff meeting, Jim gives in to the inevitable. He waves them back to their chairs, drops heavily into his own chair, scrubs a hand through his hair. He sighs and starts shuffling his datapads into teetering stacks. "You wanted to chat, gentlemen?"
"Jim," Spock says gently.
Jim freezes mid-shuffle because his first name is the last thing he expected to hear in this lecture. He looks up since Spock never sat down, squints at the book in Spock's hand, then looks down again. He rubs his temples, feeling another migraine starting.
"If your anxiety derives from your fear that you will lose the friendship and admiration of your crew," Spock continues in that same gentle, imperturbable voice, "rest assured that your fear is unfounded. No one who knows you well enough to recognize you in these pages would regret being your friend."
Jim feels his heart climb into his throat and has to remind himself to breathe. No one is supposed to know, no one. That's what the editing and the pseudonym were supposed to ensure. No one is supposed to know.
Bones reads his expression the way he always does and slides his flask of emergency bourbon across the table. "Figured you could use this, kid," he says gruffly. "You know I'm never gonna be as poetic as Spock, but I can tell you he's right, Jim. You are who you are. We wouldn't have you any other way." He shakes his head. "God help us all."
Jim laughs at that, and raises the flask in a toast before taking a swallow. He savors the smoky burn of the alcohol down the back of his throat, not trusting himself to speak. Jim's sure Spock and Bones have never agreed on anything before, and he's humbled that the one thing they can agree on is him.
After that, they sit quietly together, all three of them. Bones and Jim share the flask back and forth, Spock politely declines, and it's a good quiet, companionable and easy, the kind of quiet that soothes the constant buzz and hum under Jim's skin.
A comm request for "Commander Spock to the bridge" eventually interrupts the quiet. Spock responds to the call and gets up to leave. Before he goes, he lays the book on the table and looks down at Jim, and there's a kind of softness in his eyes when he repeats the words Jim heard once before on a frozen wasteland in the middle of nowhere: "I have been, and always will be, your friend."
Jim feels a warmth spreading in his chest and smiles in response. Spock nods back serenely before heading to the bridge.
Bones checks his comm and gets up to leave not long after Spock, grumbling about medical cadets needing babysitters and patients needing hyposprays. Jim winces in sympathy and is grateful he's a safe distance away on the other side of the table.
When he's alone again, Jim picks up the book Spock left on the table and flips idly through its pages. He doesn't regret writing it, just as he can't regret living it. It is what it is. It's part of him and who he is and who he'll be. He closes the book and sets it down gently, carefully.
END
"You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." -- Carl Sagan, Contact
Author's Notes: This story includes references to Talking Heads (the part about highways), Alan Lightman (the part about Heisenberg), and Kelly Link (the general mood, a couple of images), as well as some images/phrases from one of my previous stories in another fandom (it just worked here). The title, summary, cut-text, and inspiration for a key theme in this story are from Carl Sagan's Contact via indiefic (thanks, Indie!). The story also includes specifically requested wording from the Kink Meme prompt.
Title: Contact
Author: Danahid (danahid)
Fandom/Spoilers: STXI/Reboot
Summary: The only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen (or maybe pre-slash)
Wordcount: 3,570
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by many people who are not me. No profit being made. No infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: September 18, 2009 (small edits 11.24.09)
The only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other
CONTACT
He's lying in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. The stars shiver, blue and bright in the sky above him. He can hear the highway breathing.
Jim sets his datapad aside whenever Bones steps into sickbay. He hasn't written anything before, at least not anything like this. But he spends a lot of time in sickbay, and it's boring, and he needs some way to entertain himself that doesn't involve harassing Bones to death. Writing starts as something to keep his mind busy while his body heals from the latest away mission fuck-up.
It ends up something else, but he doesn't want to talk about that. Just like he doesn't want to talk about what he's writing. Bones is too good a friend to ask, even if his eyes gleam with curiosity every time he notices Jim sliding his personal datapad underneath the other datapads filled with requests and reports that Rand drops off for him to sign while he's convalescing. The day-to-day management of a starship doesn't stop just because he's in sickbay.
He ends up in County General after that stunt with the car, though not because he threw himself out of a moving vehicle right before it went over a cliff. He's in the hospital because of what happened after his stepfather picked him up from the police station. Broken bones, black eyes, bruised ribs, a punctured lung: the doctors and nurses assume he got the injuries in the accident, and his stepfather has always been a clever, careful bastard.
He pulls his knees up to his chin, wraps his arms around himself, and says nothing to contradict his stepfather or otherwise disabuse the hospital staff of their assumptions. No one has ever believed him before, there's no reason to think they'll believe him now, and anyway he'd rather not talk about it. (Now that his brother's gone, who's he going to talk to anyway?)
All he wants to do is go home. He's waiting for his ride to show up, knowing it's probably not his mom since she's still off-planet, hoping it's not his stepfather even though with his luck he's sure that's who it'll be. He's waiting and trying not to think about his stepfather, and because he tells himself that he's bored, he's gotten up from the bed and is staring at himself in the mirror above the sink in his tiny hospital bathroom. The dermal regenerators have erased the outward signs of damage. What's left is yellow hair, thin cheeks, skinny arms, and blue eyes that look so fucking lost he can't stand them. He's eleven years old and he's miserable. (He wants to hate his brother for leaving him.)
Jim has always hated hospitals and med clinics and sickbays. He can never wait to get out of Bones' clutches and back to the safety of his own space, his own bridge. He's always been glad to leave every reminder of his sickbay incarceration behind him, but this time is different. This time he keeps his datapad with him when he leaves, and he keeps writing. He writes down everything he can remember in the order he remembers it. It starts out as a jumble of thoughts and images. Eventually it sorts itself out into some kind of chronological sense.
He doesn't know what it is, what it's becoming, what it will be. All he knows is that getting the words out of his head and down into his datapad calms the feelings that have always itched and ached under his skin, making him lash out at everything and everyone, like a wolf caught in a trap.
He tries not to think about why he's doing it as he stays up late to write after every shift. He refuses to think about it as some kind of long-overdue therapy. James T. Kirk is not so pathetic. The memories tumble out, fast and furious, and he writes them down. It is what it is.
It's his birthday and he's five, and he's can't help thinking about his father. He hates that his father isn't here. He hates that his mother looks at him with empty eyes. He hates his stepfather with his heavy fists and his lies. He hates the house and the farm and the barn and the sky and the cornfields. He hates everything about where he is. He hates so much that it fills him up. He overflows with hate, and it burns under his skin.
It's his birthday and he's five, and he wants to scream loud and long. He wants to scream and scream and scream, even though he knows it won't bring his father back and it won't make his mother see him with different eyes.
He's never asked his mother what she sees when she looks at him. It never occurs to him to ask, and anyway he doesn't need to. He's seen the faded holophotos of his dead father, piled against the ancient radiator in the attic near the box of old Academy textbooks.
Jim keeps writing. He's careful to keep his writing separate from his work. Everyone on the Enterprise pursues personal interests after their work is done and they're warping between points in space. Space is really big, and they need to be proactive about staying sane.
Jim decides writing is his new hobby. Instead of other non-Captainly things, he scribbles things down in his spare time; it's not a big deal, and he's careful never to let his hobby interfere with his command.
So he writes when he's off-duty and whenever he's stuck in sickbay. Sometimes the words come easily. Sometimes they get stuck, and he'll spend a few of those boring bridge shifts between missions and planets just staring into the vast emptiness of space, trying to figure out where the words have gone. But then he'll get back on track, and he'll write in every spare minute he has, and if he heads up to his quarters a little earlier than usual after shift, or chooses to stay on the ship for shore leave, or skips a poker night here or there, maybe Spock or Bones notices but probably no one else.
Being sent to live with his aunt and uncle is the best the thing that has ever happened to him, he's sure of it. For the first time in his life, there's no one to tell him that he's too wild, too loud, too argumentative, too wrong. He doesn't have to fight just to have his existence acknowledged. His aunt smiles at him and lets him tag along when she goes to her lab. She listens to him when he tells her about his day. She encourages him to explore and learn, and it's so nice it's kind of boring and he's sure he'll be tired of it before the end of the summer, but in the beginning he loves every minute of it.
The words dry up completely about halfway through the whatever-it-is that he's writing. For a couple of weeks, he's impossible to be around, he knows it. When he's not on the bridge, he stomps around the corridors and glares at unsuspecting ensigns. When he's on the bridge, he's short-tempered and impatient, but he absolutely did not make Chekov cry that one time. When he's off-shift, he shuts himself in his quarters and stares at his blank datapad. He's so frustrated that he kind of loses track of time, and if he misses a couple of buddy nights with Bones and chess nights with Spock, he figures they're probably grateful they don't have to put up with his irritating self off-duty too.
It's not like he can talk about his little problem with anyone, anyway. He doesn't ever talk about what he's writing, is always scrupulously careful to never leave his personal datapad lying around where someone might pick it up and start reading. It's not that Jim’s ashamed of his writing; he just really doesn't want to talk about it. And it's not that he has hidden depths that he's protecting either; it's that he's hidden parts of himself for so long, buried them so deep, so long ago, that he doesn't even know those parts of himself anymore. He doesn't want anyone else to run into his ghosts before he's had a chance to get reacquainted himself.
So he doesn't want to talk about what he's writing, which means that he can't ask anyone for help with his writer's block, so all he can do is hunker down and fight his way through it, the way he's always done.
He discovers that summer that he loves math and physics. Science is a source of certainty, especially to someone whose life has always held too many uncertainties. He's excited when he realizes that even Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which proclaims that the future cannot be determined from the past, gives a definite mathematical formula for containing uncertainties, like a soundproof room built around someone who's screaming.
Jim stops writing altogether about a year in.
Everything feels wrong. He feels wrong. He feels disconnected and alone, and it's hard to drag himself out of bed, and that's when it occurs to him that he's been so distracted by all the trouble he's having with his writing whatever that it's been a couple of weeks since he's swung by Bones' office for any non-ship-related conversation, and it's been at least that long since he played chess with Spock. He's cut himself off from everyone bit by bit as he's has wrestled with this thing that's taken over his life.
In the beginning, he promised himself that it would never affect his command, and it never has, but he can tell it will if he doesn't figure out how to fix this.
Spending time with his two closest friends turns out to be the perfect solution. It gets his head back on straight. He's able to refocus on his ship and his crew. It even helps him get over his writer's block.
For the longest the time, the words didn't come. And then they do.
They cover their ears when the screaming starts. He huddles close to the two younger boys and whispers: We'll find a way out of here, I promise. We'll go to the dockyards where the supply ships are going to land. We'll find food. Please, please don't cry.
They're alone. He's the oldest, and he feels responsible for the others. He scratches under rocks and bushes, searching for anything edible. On lucky days, he finds berries that aren't poisonous. He always gives what he finds to the younger boys. He's gone without eating long enough by now that a few blades of grass and some leaves are enough to ease the dizziness and hunger clawing his insides.
They're starving. It becomes more and more difficult to find any kind of food as the weeks wear on. He can't remember when he ate last, all he knows is that they need to keep going. They scramble through drought and darkness and traps. He finds it increasingly difficult to think clearly about each new trap and how to outwit it. The emptiness in his stomach is hard to ignore.
They're being hunted. That's why there are traps. He would've realized it sooner, that they're being hunted, but he's having trouble thinking. He feels lightheaded all the time. He urges the smaller boys to walk faster, but they can't because they're small and they haven't eaten and they're terrified.
He's terrified too, but he hides it better.
A year and half in, Jim comes to the end of the story, or at least goes as far as he's willing to go. After he finishes the book (he's finally willing to admit that's what it is), Jim has no idea what to do with it.
He requests a private channel to Admiral Pike and asks his long-suffering mentor what he should do. Pike stares at Jim, a muscle working in his jaw, looking like this is the last thing he ever expected to discuss with Jim Kirk. Maybe it is.
"Can you read it?" Jim asks when the silence drags out too long. "Then you can tell me what I should do with it." He hates how hesitant his voice sounds, hates the antsy feeling crawling up his arms, hates every minute of this conversation. He regrets comm'ing Pike.
Pike nods slowly. "Send me a packet. I'll read it."
He's sure it's a miracle when they finally reach the dockyards. He sees the supply ships, shiny and new in the waning light, and the ships are early and late, and it's all mixed up and so fucking wrong he can't think straight.
He sees people milling around, trying to identify bodies and survivors, and then he sees his brother. Joy pours through him because his brother is there, right in front of him, and he waves wildly -- here I am! I'm here! -- and he nearly falls over because he's so weak and all he can think is that he's alive and he's filthy and he's so smelly that he knows they'll need to burn his clothes, but his brother has come for him.
He collapses in his brother's arms and tries to croak out a laugh when his brother asks him if he wants to go home.
"I don't know what to say, Jim. Part of me doesn't know where this came from. Another part of me hates that I know exactly where this came from."
Jim stares down at his hands. He can feel a headache beginning.
Pike sighs. "We'll need to edit out anything that might compromise Starfleet, its operations, or its intelligence. There's classified information, you know that. It'll have to be published under a pseudonym."
"Pub-- what?" croaks Jim, looking up.
"Yeah, published. It's good, Jim. Too good for you to sit on it."
"I was thinking that maybe that was exactly what I should do. There's shit in there that I'm not sure I want anyone to read about." Jim pauses. "Besides you, I guess." He shrugs awkwardly.
Pike thinks about that for a minute then levels a look at Jim. "I dare you to do better."
And Jim remembers that Iowa bar and the antsy, uncomfortable feeling falls away, and he grins. "You know me and dares, Admiral Pike."
"I know you," Pike agrees. He nods at Jim, his eyes warm and wrinkled at the corners, and Jim holds the memory of that look on Pike's face long after he shuts down the comm link.
After they come home, he hides himself in silence. He sits in his childhood bedroom and rocks back and forth on his bed, listing all the elements in the periodic table in his head over and over again. He hides in his room, and his mother hides from him as much as he hides from her. His stepfather is gone, he doesn't know where or why. His brother has disappeared again.
The book is published on Terra and several Federation worlds to critical and public acclaim. It is a slim volume, printed in its first-run on real paper at the author's request. (Jim loves the smell of pulp paper, the feel of a bound book in his hands.)
The public is fascinated by the idea of the author. He is reclusive, lives off-world, and gives no interviews. His unavailability exponentially increases the word-of-mouth popularity of the book. (Jim is ridiculously grateful for pseudonyms and five-year deep space exploration missions.)
The book makes most annual top-ten lists, and is shortlisted for numerous literary prizes. It is hailed as profound but accessible, brutally honest and unexpectedly poetic. (That particular review makes Jim laugh out loud; he can just see Bones' expression.)
The book finds its way to the Enterprise in record time. (Jim has trouble coping.)
He runs away from home not long after coming home from the colony. He starts out wanting to find his brother. He finds other, less savory things. He buries himself in drink. And sex. And emptiness.
He's fifteen, and he does a lot of things that he doesn't want to think about later.
For a while they help him forget.
Jim takes to avoiding the rec rooms when reading groups spring up to discuss the novel. He actively avoids any conversation that might possibly be about the book, which means he has to start steering clear of the mess halls as well. He snaps at Chekov when his youngest officer asks him if he's read the book, and he actually heaves Uhura's copy across the conference room table during a senior staff meeting.
The book doesn't hit anyone, and he didn't mean to throw it so hard, just like he didn't mean to be so abrupt with poor Chekov. He apologizes to both of them, mumbling something about stress and something else about being a jackass and something else about replacing Uhura's book. His senior staff exchange worried looks, and the next thing he knows Bones is telling him that he needs to have a physical and Spock wants to speak with him privately.
He finds his brother once, just once. He crouches down beside him in a dirty room in a rundown motel in the middle of nowhere. There are bottles and worse on the floor, and he fumbles out words that he will regret later. He begins to tell his brother about his sleeplessness, about his dreams, about the emptiness and the hate seething under his skin. He tells his brother (hesitantly), I'm lost without you, and he wants to say something in the spaces between the words, something important about who he is, who he's been, who he might be, who he'll never be, things he's never told anyone.
His brother ruffles his hair, tells him he'll be okay, and passes out.
He sits in that dingy room for a long time after that, listening to the highway breathing, wishing he could get out, go somewhere else, be someone else.
When it's clear that Bones and Spock are planning to lecture him after the senior staff meeting, Jim gives in to the inevitable. He waves them back to their chairs, drops heavily into his own chair, scrubs a hand through his hair. He sighs and starts shuffling his datapads into teetering stacks. "You wanted to chat, gentlemen?"
"Jim," Spock says gently.
Jim freezes mid-shuffle because his first name is the last thing he expected to hear in this lecture. He looks up since Spock never sat down, squints at the book in Spock's hand, then looks down again. He rubs his temples, feeling another migraine starting.
"If your anxiety derives from your fear that you will lose the friendship and admiration of your crew," Spock continues in that same gentle, imperturbable voice, "rest assured that your fear is unfounded. No one who knows you well enough to recognize you in these pages would regret being your friend."
Jim feels his heart climb into his throat and has to remind himself to breathe. No one is supposed to know, no one. That's what the editing and the pseudonym were supposed to ensure. No one is supposed to know.
Bones reads his expression the way he always does and slides his flask of emergency bourbon across the table. "Figured you could use this, kid," he says gruffly. "You know I'm never gonna be as poetic as Spock, but I can tell you he's right, Jim. You are who you are. We wouldn't have you any other way." He shakes his head. "God help us all."
Jim laughs at that, and raises the flask in a toast before taking a swallow. He savors the smoky burn of the alcohol down the back of his throat, not trusting himself to speak. Jim's sure Spock and Bones have never agreed on anything before, and he's humbled that the one thing they can agree on is him.
After that, they sit quietly together, all three of them. Bones and Jim share the flask back and forth, Spock politely declines, and it's a good quiet, companionable and easy, the kind of quiet that soothes the constant buzz and hum under Jim's skin.
A comm request for "Commander Spock to the bridge" eventually interrupts the quiet. Spock responds to the call and gets up to leave. Before he goes, he lays the book on the table and looks down at Jim, and there's a kind of softness in his eyes when he repeats the words Jim heard once before on a frozen wasteland in the middle of nowhere: "I have been, and always will be, your friend."
Jim feels a warmth spreading in his chest and smiles in response. Spock nods back serenely before heading to the bridge.
Bones checks his comm and gets up to leave not long after Spock, grumbling about medical cadets needing babysitters and patients needing hyposprays. Jim winces in sympathy and is grateful he's a safe distance away on the other side of the table.
When he's alone again, Jim picks up the book Spock left on the table and flips idly through its pages. He doesn't regret writing it, just as he can't regret living it. It is what it is. It's part of him and who he is and who he'll be. He closes the book and sets it down gently, carefully.
END
"You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." -- Carl Sagan, Contact
Author's Notes: This story includes references to Talking Heads (the part about highways), Alan Lightman (the part about Heisenberg), and Kelly Link (the general mood, a couple of images), as well as some images/phrases from one of my previous stories in another fandom (it just worked here). The title, summary, cut-text, and inspiration for a key theme in this story are from Carl Sagan's Contact via indiefic (thanks, Indie!). The story also includes specifically requested wording from the Kink Meme prompt.