Fic: Que Sera Sera (1/15)
Fandom: TOS/TNG/ST XI -slight AU where there isn’t a 16 year gap between the events of Generations and Star Trek 2009.
Beta: The wonderful Triskellion. Any remaining mistakes are all mine
Pairings: Kirk Prime/McCoy Prime/Spock Prime, Kirk/Spock/McCoy, Scotty/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: minor character death
Summary: Spock Prime went to save Romulus from a supernova and failed, leaving him in a universe that is similar and still so different from his own. Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy Kirk Prime was freed from the Nexus by Captain Picard and survived. Not believing that Spock Prime is dead Kirk Prime goes in search of him, and travels to the universe created when Nero went through the black hole. In that universe Kirk and Spock are starting on their five year mission, determined to write their own destinies after their encounters with Spock Prime. Unlike them McCoy doesn’t trust destiny as far as can throw it, and he has his own problems to deal with, like getting custody of the three year old daughter he didn’t know he had.
“Que Sera Sera
Whatever will be will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera Sera
What will be will be.”
Que Sera Sera
Picard rode his horse up quickly towards James T Kirk. It was both awe inspiring and yet disappointing. This was a man Picard had read about in so many books over the years. Picard had memorized all of Jim Kirk’s battle strategies and listened to every log entry he had made that Starfleet had on record. He had seen Jim as a man to be admired. Meeting him now this man was certainly not what he had expected.
Jim stared at the ground he had just jumped over with growing realization. He turned his head to Picard.
“I must have jumped that fifty times. It scared the hell out of me each time, except this time; because it isn’t real.”
Jim looked up into the distance to see a woman on another horse. Jim stared at her and
Picard gave words to his thoughts.
“Antonia.”
Jim nodded.
“She isn’t real either is she? Nothing here is. Nothing here mattered.” Even if it felt to Jim as though he had just arrived this place Picard had told him that that wasn’t true. Outside of this place time had gone on without him. For almost eighty years he hadn’t done anything. He, the man who was always going on about how people needed a sense of purpose, who always needed to keep pushing forward, chasing the next big thing on the horizon. He had let himself be idle.
Picard shifted in the saddle as he listened to Jim’s words, sensing that Jim seemed to be coming around. Perhaps he was that man history painted him as after all.
Jim moved his horse around Picard’s, trying to give his restless nature an outlet. “You know maybe this isn’t about an empty house. Maybe it’s about that empty chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. Ever since I left Starfleet…I haven’t made a difference.”
When he had left his time Sulu and Chekov had still been serving, and Jim was ashamed to admit that he was jealous of them. They had had a good two decades to go before command put them out to pasture too. Uhura and Scotty had been fixing up the boat they had purchased, a project that was sure to keep them busy for the next year at least. Then they had planned to go traveling with it. Meanwhile, McCoy had started writing a manuscript for a book he wanted to publish. Spock had thrown himself head first into a new career in diplomacy, having gone to a meeting at the Vulcan embassy instead of the Enterprise B launch. Jim, unlike the rest of them, hadn’t had anything lined up. Starship captains didn’t retire, he told himself. They died in the line of duty or were promoted to flag ranks where they sat behind desks until they died of boredom. Whenever anyone asked him about his plans, he always said he would think of something someday, while privately thinking that that someday would never come; and then it had.
Jim looked over at Picard. He looked to be about the same age Jim was, probably older, maybe he could do some good after all. He shifted his horse towards the other captain.
“Captain of the Enterprise?” Jim asked.
“That’s right.”
“Close to retirement?”
“I hadn’t been planning on it but…there are more days behind than in front of me now. In light of recent personal events it is something to be considered.”
“Well, then let me tell you something. Don’t. Don’t let them promote you, don’t let them transfer you. Don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you’re there…you can make a difference.”
Picard locked his eyes with Jim’s, his gaze firm and sure.
“Come back with me. Help me stop Soran. Make a difference again.”
Jim considered it. He could leave here and be of some use to someone. Knowing the way these things usually worked, the odds were probably stacked against them and the situation grim. If Spock were here he would probably say that Jim was being an irrational, illogical human being for even considering a mission like that.
To Jim it sounded like fun.
But Picard had said he was from the future, from the twenty-fourth century. Eighty years from when he had been taken into this Nexus. If Jim left that passage of time would be permanent. Spock, McCoy, all his friends and family, they would all be gone. Could he live in a world like that? Not being in Starfleet anymore was one thing, but at least almost everyone around him was going through it too. Putting that up against a world where he would know nothing and no one, retirement didn’t seem so bad after all. Well why not do that then?
“What if I went back to the Enterprise B?”
Picard’s eyes widened in shock.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said this was a temporal Nexus, and I encountered it when I was on the Enterprise B. Did Soran encounter it then as well?”
“Yes.”
Jim’s face lit up as a plan started to form in his mind.
“Then I can go back to the day I left and stop him there! The Enterprise B retrieved forty seven people from the Lakul before it was destroyed. He would be among that group. I could help him either get back into the Nexus without harming others or help him to move on from that event. Then he will never be a threat in your time.”
Picard shook his head.
“My history records that you died on that maiden voyage, Captain Kirk. If you went back in time and changed that, it could have untold consequences.”
“But you want to go back and change things don’t you?”
Picard stared at him and Jim elaborated.
“If you need my help to stop Soran he must have already succeeded in getting here. You wouldn’t have access to me otherwise. You would simply have used your own ship and crew to capture him. If you’re here then you want to undo the events that brought you and him here.”
“It’s not about me. The star that Soran destroyed was in an inhabited solar system, millions of lives will be saved.”
“Why go back to the planet then? Why not go back a week? Or a year? To a time when you have the upper hand?“
“The closer we can be to the events the less interference there will be.”
Jim glared at him. So letting a retired captain go back out to pasture could cause the time stream to collapse, but saving a solar system full of people wouldn’t?
“Then you do intend to interfere!”
“Only to change that event nothing more!”
“Why this event and not something else?”
“Because I won’t fail in my duty again!”
With those words the world around the two men suddenly shifted. Gone were the open ranges and scattered pine trees. In their place appeared a large vineyard that stretched out to the horizon, and in front of them two mud soiled old men were sitting in the dirt. Jim recognized one of them as Picard, but the other man was a stranger.
“They took everything I was. They used me to kill and to destroy…and I couldn't stop them! I should have been able to stop them! I tried. I tried so hard... But I wasn't strong enough! I wasn't good enough! I should have been able to stop them. I should,-I should…”
Jim watched the other Picard as he started to cry in shame at his words.
“So, my brother is a human being after all. This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc, a long time.”
Picard watched his past self and his brother as they got up and moved off to the house.
“I failed in my duty before, so many died because of me. He helped to come to terms with it.”
Picard sighed as he was reminded all over again that Robert would never be around to do that again.
“Believe me if I could go back and change other events I would…my brother, his son, his wife all gone.”
The Nexus shifted again to show another area of the vineyard. Picard and his brother were there again, and joined by a young boy and a beautiful woman.
Picard had to blink back tears as he looked at them.
“I’ll be leaving for my starship soon.”
“Well they’ll be plenty of time for that.”
No there wouldn’t.
“They were all the family I had. It was not even a week ago that I received the news.”
Jim looked at them. That boy was so young. He had his whole life ahead of him. As Jim looked at him Jim was reminded of how senseless death was, of how hard it was to cope for those left behind.
There was yet another shift, and this time it was for Jim and not Picard. Jim saw himself as he had been many years ago. His ship battered by fire from a Klingon Bird of Prey. His crew were surrounding him, consisting of nothing more than his friends, who had risked everything to perform a final duty for Spock and McCoy. In the smoke filled bridge, the comm crackled and Savvik’s voice cut through the air.
“Admiral, David is dead.”
The news did not carry the sting of shock anymore, and Jim just watched stone faced as his other self reached for his chair, falling back to the floor.
“You Klingon bastards! You killed my son!”
As he watched that old memory, Jim realized that he really was at a crossroads of sorts. If the Nexus was really a time gateway, where he could witness past events and leave to any point in time then he could go back and change that. He could go back decades in time and never leave Khan on Ceti Alpha Five. He could relive his whole life, knowing what was to come. He could avoid ever pitfall, change every mistake. What would it really be like to turn right somewhere in his life instead of left? To change what was? He knew that was dangerous of course, but he could save so many. Picard wanted to change one action by one man to save millions of lives, but not save three lives; the lives of those who were his family. It was only three people, why couldn’t they save them?
The world of the Nexus shifted once again at Jim’s question not to show Genesis or the Enterprise, but instead a 1930 New York street.
“No, Jim!”
Twin cries from Spock and McCoy filled the air and he stopped.
“Edith,” he whispered in agony.
In the next instant he was hugging McCoy to hold him back from doing what his heart told him to do.
Then there cane the squealing of tires and the scream he still heard in his nightmares.
“You deliberately stopped me, Jim! I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?!”
“He knows, Doctor…he knows.”
Picard turned to Jim, confused.
“Captain?”
“Her name was Edith Keller. She was one woman and her life changed history. That’s the risk in all of this. But we don’t know the fates of everyone everywhere, so how can we assume it must by bad and therefore do nothing?”
What kind of a philosophy was that? Things might change by saving people therefore they should assume the outcome would always be negative and so stand by and simply let it happen for the sake of history. He knew there was evidence to the contrary. He and his crew had brought Gillian Taylor to the twenty-third century and nothing had changed. They had brought an extinct species back, saved the Earth, and he had made a wonderful new friend. So if the change had been positive there why was it better to do nothing here for Picard’s family? Unlike with Edith there had been evidence that changing history would have terrible consequences. That wasn’t the case here. Why couldn’t he and Picard save a boy and his parents?
At those questions the Nexus seemed to be trying to respond. The street before them began to shift, and swirl, colours blending together like paints smeared together on a canvas. This time the world didn’t shift to show another past experience of either of the two men, but instead started to rumble and shake.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. You’re the expert on this place, Picard, not me.”
There was no chance for any more conversation as their horses suddenly reared up and they fell backwards…
And they landed hard into what Jim could only assume was a vineyard judging by the grape juice now splattered across his clothes from where he had crashed into a vine.
“Where are we?”
“This is my family’s vineyard.”
Jim sniffed the air. “Do you smell something burning?”
There was silence for only a second as Picard realized what was happening.
“Robert!”
In an instant Picard was up off the ground and running. He dashed towards the house, with Jim not far behind.
They could see columns of black smoke rising from the house as the approached. Jim was suddenly struck by how quiet it was.
“No alarms?” he asked, as Picard began trying to get the front door open.
“Robert is old fashioned. He doesn’t have any high level technology on the vineyard. Without it they didn’t have enough warning of the fire to escape in time.”
“Then I hope he’s all right, because I’d love to meet him. Here let me try.”
Kirk took a few good kicks at the door before it burst open for them. Pulling their shirts over their mouths they burst through the first door they came to and frantically looked around for Picard’s family.
They found them face down on the kitchen floor. Each man grabbed one person each and got the two outside of the house.
Soon the four of them crouched on the lawn, coughing and choking on ash and soot.
“Rene,” Marie choked out. “Where is Rene?”
“We didn’t see him. Where was he last?” Picard asked.
“He was upstairs.”
Jim turned around and started back to the house.
“Kirk, no it’s not safe!”
Jim ignored him and dove back into the flames.
“Kirk!”
Adrenaline coursing through him, Jim raced up the stairs and began checking every room he could find in the growing haze of smoke. In the fourth room on the left he found the boy pinned under a beam. Quickly Jim shoved it off.
“Papa?” Rene asked, dazed.
“He’s outside, he’s okay,” Jim said as he pulled Rene to his feet. Rene wobbled and Jim put his hands on the boy’s shoulders to steady him.
“It’s all right, son, I’ve got you.“
Jim grabbed Rene in his arms and ran for the nearest exit. The nearest exit turned out to be a nearby window and Jim threw himself at it, crashing through the glass. He landed hard on the roof of a room that stuck out from the first floor. Not bothering to figure out what bones he had broken, Jim picked himself up, Rene still secure in his arms, and continued his run to safety.
As he jumped off the roof to the ground Jim knew he had broken something in his ankle. Hobbling along Jim got Rene safely away from the house before exhaustion finally won out and he dropped to his knees. As shouts and running footsteps began to pound in his ears, Jim passed out cold.
Chapter 2
Beta: The wonderful Triskellion. Any remaining mistakes are all mine
Pairings: Kirk Prime/McCoy Prime/Spock Prime, Kirk/Spock/McCoy, Scotty/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: minor character death
Summary: Spock Prime went to save Romulus from a supernova and failed, leaving him in a universe that is similar and still so different from his own. Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy Kirk Prime was freed from the Nexus by Captain Picard and survived. Not believing that Spock Prime is dead Kirk Prime goes in search of him, and travels to the universe created when Nero went through the black hole. In that universe Kirk and Spock are starting on their five year mission, determined to write their own destinies after their encounters with Spock Prime. Unlike them McCoy doesn’t trust destiny as far as can throw it, and he has his own problems to deal with, like getting custody of the three year old daughter he didn’t know he had.
“Que Sera Sera
Whatever will be will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera Sera
What will be will be.”
Que Sera Sera
Picard rode his horse up quickly towards James T Kirk. It was both awe inspiring and yet disappointing. This was a man Picard had read about in so many books over the years. Picard had memorized all of Jim Kirk’s battle strategies and listened to every log entry he had made that Starfleet had on record. He had seen Jim as a man to be admired. Meeting him now this man was certainly not what he had expected.
Jim stared at the ground he had just jumped over with growing realization. He turned his head to Picard.
“I must have jumped that fifty times. It scared the hell out of me each time, except this time; because it isn’t real.”
Jim looked up into the distance to see a woman on another horse. Jim stared at her and
Picard gave words to his thoughts.
“Antonia.”
Jim nodded.
“She isn’t real either is she? Nothing here is. Nothing here mattered.” Even if it felt to Jim as though he had just arrived this place Picard had told him that that wasn’t true. Outside of this place time had gone on without him. For almost eighty years he hadn’t done anything. He, the man who was always going on about how people needed a sense of purpose, who always needed to keep pushing forward, chasing the next big thing on the horizon. He had let himself be idle.
Picard shifted in the saddle as he listened to Jim’s words, sensing that Jim seemed to be coming around. Perhaps he was that man history painted him as after all.
Jim moved his horse around Picard’s, trying to give his restless nature an outlet. “You know maybe this isn’t about an empty house. Maybe it’s about that empty chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. Ever since I left Starfleet…I haven’t made a difference.”
When he had left his time Sulu and Chekov had still been serving, and Jim was ashamed to admit that he was jealous of them. They had had a good two decades to go before command put them out to pasture too. Uhura and Scotty had been fixing up the boat they had purchased, a project that was sure to keep them busy for the next year at least. Then they had planned to go traveling with it. Meanwhile, McCoy had started writing a manuscript for a book he wanted to publish. Spock had thrown himself head first into a new career in diplomacy, having gone to a meeting at the Vulcan embassy instead of the Enterprise B launch. Jim, unlike the rest of them, hadn’t had anything lined up. Starship captains didn’t retire, he told himself. They died in the line of duty or were promoted to flag ranks where they sat behind desks until they died of boredom. Whenever anyone asked him about his plans, he always said he would think of something someday, while privately thinking that that someday would never come; and then it had.
Jim looked over at Picard. He looked to be about the same age Jim was, probably older, maybe he could do some good after all. He shifted his horse towards the other captain.
“Captain of the Enterprise?” Jim asked.
“That’s right.”
“Close to retirement?”
“I hadn’t been planning on it but…there are more days behind than in front of me now. In light of recent personal events it is something to be considered.”
“Well, then let me tell you something. Don’t. Don’t let them promote you, don’t let them transfer you. Don’t let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you’re there…you can make a difference.”
Picard locked his eyes with Jim’s, his gaze firm and sure.
“Come back with me. Help me stop Soran. Make a difference again.”
Jim considered it. He could leave here and be of some use to someone. Knowing the way these things usually worked, the odds were probably stacked against them and the situation grim. If Spock were here he would probably say that Jim was being an irrational, illogical human being for even considering a mission like that.
To Jim it sounded like fun.
But Picard had said he was from the future, from the twenty-fourth century. Eighty years from when he had been taken into this Nexus. If Jim left that passage of time would be permanent. Spock, McCoy, all his friends and family, they would all be gone. Could he live in a world like that? Not being in Starfleet anymore was one thing, but at least almost everyone around him was going through it too. Putting that up against a world where he would know nothing and no one, retirement didn’t seem so bad after all. Well why not do that then?
“What if I went back to the Enterprise B?”
Picard’s eyes widened in shock.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said this was a temporal Nexus, and I encountered it when I was on the Enterprise B. Did Soran encounter it then as well?”
“Yes.”
Jim’s face lit up as a plan started to form in his mind.
“Then I can go back to the day I left and stop him there! The Enterprise B retrieved forty seven people from the Lakul before it was destroyed. He would be among that group. I could help him either get back into the Nexus without harming others or help him to move on from that event. Then he will never be a threat in your time.”
Picard shook his head.
“My history records that you died on that maiden voyage, Captain Kirk. If you went back in time and changed that, it could have untold consequences.”
“But you want to go back and change things don’t you?”
Picard stared at him and Jim elaborated.
“If you need my help to stop Soran he must have already succeeded in getting here. You wouldn’t have access to me otherwise. You would simply have used your own ship and crew to capture him. If you’re here then you want to undo the events that brought you and him here.”
“It’s not about me. The star that Soran destroyed was in an inhabited solar system, millions of lives will be saved.”
“Why go back to the planet then? Why not go back a week? Or a year? To a time when you have the upper hand?“
“The closer we can be to the events the less interference there will be.”
Jim glared at him. So letting a retired captain go back out to pasture could cause the time stream to collapse, but saving a solar system full of people wouldn’t?
“Then you do intend to interfere!”
“Only to change that event nothing more!”
“Why this event and not something else?”
“Because I won’t fail in my duty again!”
With those words the world around the two men suddenly shifted. Gone were the open ranges and scattered pine trees. In their place appeared a large vineyard that stretched out to the horizon, and in front of them two mud soiled old men were sitting in the dirt. Jim recognized one of them as Picard, but the other man was a stranger.
“They took everything I was. They used me to kill and to destroy…and I couldn't stop them! I should have been able to stop them! I tried. I tried so hard... But I wasn't strong enough! I wasn't good enough! I should have been able to stop them. I should,-I should…”
Jim watched the other Picard as he started to cry in shame at his words.
“So, my brother is a human being after all. This is going to be with you a long time, Jean-Luc, a long time.”
Picard watched his past self and his brother as they got up and moved off to the house.
“I failed in my duty before, so many died because of me. He helped to come to terms with it.”
Picard sighed as he was reminded all over again that Robert would never be around to do that again.
“Believe me if I could go back and change other events I would…my brother, his son, his wife all gone.”
The Nexus shifted again to show another area of the vineyard. Picard and his brother were there again, and joined by a young boy and a beautiful woman.
Picard had to blink back tears as he looked at them.
“I’ll be leaving for my starship soon.”
“Well they’ll be plenty of time for that.”
No there wouldn’t.
“They were all the family I had. It was not even a week ago that I received the news.”
Jim looked at them. That boy was so young. He had his whole life ahead of him. As Jim looked at him Jim was reminded of how senseless death was, of how hard it was to cope for those left behind.
There was yet another shift, and this time it was for Jim and not Picard. Jim saw himself as he had been many years ago. His ship battered by fire from a Klingon Bird of Prey. His crew were surrounding him, consisting of nothing more than his friends, who had risked everything to perform a final duty for Spock and McCoy. In the smoke filled bridge, the comm crackled and Savvik’s voice cut through the air.
“Admiral, David is dead.”
The news did not carry the sting of shock anymore, and Jim just watched stone faced as his other self reached for his chair, falling back to the floor.
“You Klingon bastards! You killed my son!”
As he watched that old memory, Jim realized that he really was at a crossroads of sorts. If the Nexus was really a time gateway, where he could witness past events and leave to any point in time then he could go back and change that. He could go back decades in time and never leave Khan on Ceti Alpha Five. He could relive his whole life, knowing what was to come. He could avoid ever pitfall, change every mistake. What would it really be like to turn right somewhere in his life instead of left? To change what was? He knew that was dangerous of course, but he could save so many. Picard wanted to change one action by one man to save millions of lives, but not save three lives; the lives of those who were his family. It was only three people, why couldn’t they save them?
The world of the Nexus shifted once again at Jim’s question not to show Genesis or the Enterprise, but instead a 1930 New York street.
“No, Jim!”
Twin cries from Spock and McCoy filled the air and he stopped.
“Edith,” he whispered in agony.
In the next instant he was hugging McCoy to hold him back from doing what his heart told him to do.
Then there cane the squealing of tires and the scream he still heard in his nightmares.
“You deliberately stopped me, Jim! I could have saved her. Do you know what you just did?!”
“He knows, Doctor…he knows.”
Picard turned to Jim, confused.
“Captain?”
“Her name was Edith Keller. She was one woman and her life changed history. That’s the risk in all of this. But we don’t know the fates of everyone everywhere, so how can we assume it must by bad and therefore do nothing?”
What kind of a philosophy was that? Things might change by saving people therefore they should assume the outcome would always be negative and so stand by and simply let it happen for the sake of history. He knew there was evidence to the contrary. He and his crew had brought Gillian Taylor to the twenty-third century and nothing had changed. They had brought an extinct species back, saved the Earth, and he had made a wonderful new friend. So if the change had been positive there why was it better to do nothing here for Picard’s family? Unlike with Edith there had been evidence that changing history would have terrible consequences. That wasn’t the case here. Why couldn’t he and Picard save a boy and his parents?
At those questions the Nexus seemed to be trying to respond. The street before them began to shift, and swirl, colours blending together like paints smeared together on a canvas. This time the world didn’t shift to show another past experience of either of the two men, but instead started to rumble and shake.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. You’re the expert on this place, Picard, not me.”
There was no chance for any more conversation as their horses suddenly reared up and they fell backwards…
And they landed hard into what Jim could only assume was a vineyard judging by the grape juice now splattered across his clothes from where he had crashed into a vine.
“Where are we?”
“This is my family’s vineyard.”
Jim sniffed the air. “Do you smell something burning?”
There was silence for only a second as Picard realized what was happening.
“Robert!”
In an instant Picard was up off the ground and running. He dashed towards the house, with Jim not far behind.
They could see columns of black smoke rising from the house as the approached. Jim was suddenly struck by how quiet it was.
“No alarms?” he asked, as Picard began trying to get the front door open.
“Robert is old fashioned. He doesn’t have any high level technology on the vineyard. Without it they didn’t have enough warning of the fire to escape in time.”
“Then I hope he’s all right, because I’d love to meet him. Here let me try.”
Kirk took a few good kicks at the door before it burst open for them. Pulling their shirts over their mouths they burst through the first door they came to and frantically looked around for Picard’s family.
They found them face down on the kitchen floor. Each man grabbed one person each and got the two outside of the house.
Soon the four of them crouched on the lawn, coughing and choking on ash and soot.
“Rene,” Marie choked out. “Where is Rene?”
“We didn’t see him. Where was he last?” Picard asked.
“He was upstairs.”
Jim turned around and started back to the house.
“Kirk, no it’s not safe!”
Jim ignored him and dove back into the flames.
“Kirk!”
Adrenaline coursing through him, Jim raced up the stairs and began checking every room he could find in the growing haze of smoke. In the fourth room on the left he found the boy pinned under a beam. Quickly Jim shoved it off.
“Papa?” Rene asked, dazed.
“He’s outside, he’s okay,” Jim said as he pulled Rene to his feet. Rene wobbled and Jim put his hands on the boy’s shoulders to steady him.
“It’s all right, son, I’ve got you.“
Jim grabbed Rene in his arms and ran for the nearest exit. The nearest exit turned out to be a nearby window and Jim threw himself at it, crashing through the glass. He landed hard on the roof of a room that stuck out from the first floor. Not bothering to figure out what bones he had broken, Jim picked himself up, Rene still secure in his arms, and continued his run to safety.
As he jumped off the roof to the ground Jim knew he had broken something in his ankle. Hobbling along Jim got Rene safely away from the house before exhaustion finally won out and he dropped to his knees. As shouts and running footsteps began to pound in his ears, Jim passed out cold.
Chapter 2