What Was Done in Capernaum (Kirk/f, Kirk/McCoy; ST:XI; NC-17) 2/3
Part 1
As the months passed, they began to categorize their successes; there were enough that they could not be easily remembered with a word or name. There were diplomatic missions, border skirmishes, first contacts, and a few that so thoroughly defied categorization, not to mention McCoy’s experience, that he didn’t try. There were a few failures, none serious, and fewer still resulting in loss of life. In less than a year, the Enterprise and its young captain had gone from risky long shot to reliable miracle worker. Scotty joked that they were sent on everything except the admirals’ laundry runs.
Kirk shouldered the ridiculously high expectations without losing energy or enthusiasm. McCoy watched him closely, because it was his job and he couldn’t have done otherwise, and saw no signs of stress or premature aging. Kirk was doing what he was born to do, and he carried his burden lightly, growing in experience but not gravitas.
So it had continued until Delta Cordria. Superficially, the mission was a shockingly easy success. Admiral Pike had called it a “hole in one,” and shown no remorse about assigning the Enterprise to ferry two hundred Federation delegates to a sector-wide trade conference immediately afterward. Yet there was no doubt in McCoy’s mind that some change had come over Kirk in the fewer than twelve hours they had spent planetside.
Again and again he rolled the events over in his mind. The homeworld of a closed system, Delta Cordria had refused all contact with outworlders until the Romulans had begun impinging on their territory. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy had made up the small landing party charged with convincing the Cordrians to accept a larger and more permanent cultural and scientific mission. They had gone unarmed and unbriefed by Starfleet, which had little information to offer, since the only other mission, thirty years earlier, had been summarily ejected from the planet.
The Cordrians, a tall, dour people, had demanded that Kirk, as their leader, submit to a mind probe with a device they were assured was harmless. McCoy had watched with trepidation as Kirk walked into a high-ceilinged chamber filled with what looked like luminous spider webs. He had emerged less than an hour later, pale and a bit shaky but apparently unharmed, complaining of nothing worse than a headache. The Cordrians had hailed their new allies and welcomed a contingent of Federation liaisons, who beamed down immediately.
McCoy and Spock had asked, repeatedly, about the exact nature of the mind probe, but Kirk had been vague, other than to say it had tested, by way of a simulation, his commitment and that of the Federation to the interests and security of Delta Cordria. But in the days that followed he had been uncharacteristically subdued, as if the edge of his enthusiasm had been blunted by some hard instrument. McCoy could fault nothing in his performance; he charmed the trade delegates, fulfilled his duties unstintingly, put in his by now traditional appearances sparring with Sulu in the gym or playing chess with Spock in the aft lounge. McCoy was left with nothing except intuition. Whether it was a doctor's or a friend's, he couldn't have said.
Two days after they had picked up the last of the Federation delegates, eight days after Delta Cordria, McCoy buttonholed Spock in the corridor after a senior staff meeting.
“Spock, have you noticed anything…different about the captain since the last mission?”
“I am afraid you will have to be more specific.” Spock clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head, a gesture McCoy generally found patronizing.
“I would if I could. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s as if he’s-subdued? Maybe brooding about something that happened down there?”
Spock angled his body slightly toward McCoy. “Do you have evidence that he suffered some sort of mental damage from the Cordrian mind probe?”
“No, his brain scans were normal.”
“Then have you observed any changes in his behavior that might affect his fitness for command?”
“Of course not.” McCoy began to bristle, aware that he was falling into one of Spock’s Socratic sand traps but helpless to do anything about it.
“I see. Then are you basing your supposition on information that you uniquely possess, as a medical officer with access to the captain’s psychological profile?” McCoy could have sworn that Spock was smirking.
“No,” he said testily, “I’m basing it on information that I possess as his friend, something that can’t be reduced to brain scans or equations. Something you clearly don’t understand.”
Spock looked at a point just to the left of McCoy’s ear, face more impassive than usual. “Perhaps it is simply that I have a different way of honoring friendship--in this case, by refraining from baseless speculation about the captain’s mental state, something I can assure you, as his friend, he finds quite irritating. Good day, doctor.”
+ + + + +
It took McCoy fewer than five minutes to decide that Spock was full of crap, but more than fourteen hours to find Kirk alone in his quarters. He waited-cleverly, he thought-long enough after the door closed that Kirk would not think he had been hovering, but not long enough for even an exhausted man to fall asleep.
Kirk answered the door in his dress uniform trousers and undershirt. He looked ordinarily tired but not in the throes of any type of mental distress.
“Ah. Bones.” he said. “Are you here to tell me one of the delegates broke a nail? Or maybe the stir fry didn’t agree with someone?”
“No.” He leaned against the door frame, hands in his pockets. “As far as I know, all the delegates are healthy as horses and perfectly capable of complaining on their own if they need to.”
“Good. That’s good.” Kirk ruffled his hair, a bit abstracted. “Well, come in, then, I guess.”
“Have they been running you ragged?”
“If I have to explain warp drive to one more farmer, I may have to reroute us through the Neutral Zone just to relieve the boredom.” He gestured toward the small galley. “Drink?”
“A beer if you’ve got one.” McCoy glanced around the room while Kirk fetched him a glass. The stateroom was spacious by ship's standards but not luxurious, Starfleet having strict ideas on aggrandizement of its captains. There were two rooms, a bedroom and a living area, divided by a transparent aluminum panel that could be darkened on command. The living area’s main attraction was a display screen filling the whole of the aft wall, a larger version of the one in all crew quarters. McCoy knew it was designed to show scenic panoramas as well as the ship’s vid library, but whenever he visited it was showing telemetry data, the main status panels, and a half dozen or so Federation news feeds. Above the desk hung an oil painting of old sailing ships, a gift from Admiral Pike, and near the door, a holo of unknown provenance showing San Francisco Bay. Of Kirk’s former life there was not even a photograph, and he had acquired little in the months he’d been on board.
Kirk handed him the beer and gestured to one of the comfortable armchairs in front of the screen.
“So are you here to talk, or to ‘talk’?” he asked, dropping into the other chair, drinkless. “If it’s the latter, you should know that Spock’s been here ahead of you.”
“Spock?” McCoy said, annoyed. “What did he want to ‘talk’ about?”
“He wanted me to tell him more about what happened on Delta Cordria. Offered to mind meld with me, if you can believe it. If it was too difficult for me to talk about.”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“That pointy-eared-“ McCoy halted abruptly, mid-rant. “Did you do it?”
“No, and I told him I’d have a much easier time believing it’s one of those Vulcan Things Of Which We Do Not Speak if he didn’t suggest it every five minutes.” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “If you want me to talk you’re going to have to make me a more exotic offer than that.”
“I’d suggest Centaurian slugs, but I’m fresh out.” It was a poor joke at best; Kirk didn’t seem to register it. “You know there’s nothing you can’t tell me. I’m not asking out of curiosity. It’s just that you have a screwy sense of what’s important sometimes. And I don’t mean to the ship.”
“Of course you’d have to put it that way,” Kirk sighed. “All right. But you have to promise not to get angry.”
“Remember who you’re talking to,” McCoy said, getting him to at least crack a smile. Kirk propped his long legs up on the coffee table and focused his attention on the ever-changing display. McCoy took a gulp of beer and looked away, letting him gather his thoughts.
After a few minutes of brooding silence, Kirk slumped down in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach, and said, “I’ve always known I’ll die alone.”
McCoy felt a thrill of superstitious fear go down his spine. “My god, man, don’t say things like that.”
“Sorry,” Kirk said unapologetically, still staring straight ahead. “I don’t mean that in a spooky, prophetic way. I mean that I’ve always known that if I did my job right, I could go out without taking anyone with me, and I’d have no regrets. Now I have factual, corroborating evidence even Spock would be satisfied with.”
“The mind probe?” McCoy guessed.
Kirk gave a twisted half-smile. “Very clever, those Cordrians. They wanted to know I represented the kind of people who would sacrifice whatever was needed to protect them, if it ever came to that. Of course just saying that I would wouldn’t be good enough. So they tested me. That mind probe thing simulated dozens of scenarios where they methodically went through every thing that I might ever be asked to give up. My life. My health. My physical comfort. Various limbs.”
“That’s horrible, Jim,” McCoy said, appalled.
“Oh, it gets better. When they didn’t make any headway with those, they started on the less obvious things-my career, my ship, the respect of my colleagues. My friends. And they didn’t just ask me if I’d be willing to sacrifice them, they showed me. I got to experience it. To know what it would really feel like to have everything taken away.”
“That’s nothing short of torture! It’s barbaric.”
“I disagree,” Kirk said tightly. “It’s a very practical way to gauge the commitment of your allies. Not particularly pleasant, but effective. And as a bonus, I got some very interesting insights.”
“Like what?” McCoy asked warily.
“Giving your life for your fellow man is easy,” Kirk said, almost off-handedly. “It’s losing everything and still being alive that’s hard. And it’s very, very possible. Not the way they showed me, which was some crazy scenario about being put on trial and sent to a prison colony. It doesn’t have to be anything so dramatic. I could make an enemy at Starfleet Command. I could take the fall for somebody else’s screw-up. I could get kicked upstairs.”
He shifted, sinking deeper into his chair. “But you know what? Even if none of those things happen, the day will come when I can’t do this anymore. I’ll be too old, too tired, too compromised in one way or another, and I’ll have to stop. They’ll give me some medals and put me behind a desk somewhere. If I do everything right, if I’m successful, that’s what I have to look forward to.” His voice grew very soft, and McCoy watched his eyes, scanning minutely as if they could find the answers they were seeking in the shifting rows of numbers from the heart of the Enterprise. “Bones, without this, who am I?”
McCoy felt the answer well up in him with such force that he was temporarily mute, the urge for physical contact so strong that he had to tense his muscles to repress it. “You’re the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. But you’re also a human being. Everyone faces that question sooner or later, just usually not when they’re 26.”
“Well, everyone’s always telling me I’m precocious.” Kirk leaned forward abruptly, elbows on knees, hands fisting at his temples. “I guess it’s best to know these things now. I’ll have to send the Cordrians a thank-you note.” The slight break in his voice was like a knife to McCoy’s heart. For once in his life he knew what to do with unerring certainty.
He put down his glass and rose, walked behind Kirk’s chair and dropped his hands onto his friend’s shoulders, rubbing the knotted muscles until he felt them begin to relax. “So you’re going through an artificial midlife crisis because a bunch of aliens poked around in your head looking for things that would make you feel like shit.” McCoy worked his way up to the strong trapezius muscles, running his thumbs along them, releasing the tension. “I’m not going to say right now what I think about Starfleet putting you in that position, or you deciding not to tell your friends about it, let alone your CMO. But I will remind you of what you’re always reminding me: the future isn’t written in stone. The Jim Kirk you think they saw in your head doesn’t exist yet. You may feel like it’s your destiny to die alone, but that doesn’t mean you have to live alone. Everyone has choices, even starship captains.” He was stroking his thumbs across the tender skin at the base of Kirk’s skull, letting the tickle of short hairs distract him from saying what was very close to the surface now. In fairness to Kirk, and for his own self-protection, he couldn’t make an offer when Kirk was so vulnerable, so predisposed to reach for a solution if one presented itself.
However little help McCoy had been with existential questions, Kirk at least seemed more relaxed. He leaned back, resting his head lightly against McCoy’s sternum, letting him slide his hands over Kirk’s shoulders to work on his pectoral muscles.
“Choices.” Kirk gave a mirthless huff. “It’s other people’s choices that I don’t control. And when they’re given a choice, I’m usually pretty far down on the priority list.” McCoy winced, unseen. He knew instantly what Kirk was talking about. It was as close as he’d ever come to complaining about the pattern of abandonment that McCoy supposed had set him on his solitary course in life. McCoy considered his words very, very carefully. He was not a risk-taker by nature, feared rejection perhaps as much as Kirk feared failure. He wanted to tell his friend what he needed to hear without conferring a sense of obligation.
After a few moments, he slipped one hand down to cover Kirk’s heart, let the other stroke the hair back from his forehead, and said, “You know, in case I never mentioned it, I hate spaceships.” It didn’t take long for the message to be received; this was Kirk, after all. His head turned suddenly under McCoy’s hand, and he looked up at him with an incredulous expression.
“Really!” he exclaimed. “Then I’ve been wasting a lot of credits sending drinks to women’s tables and saying they were from you.” He caught the hand still resting on his chest, native energy restored, and rose turning to face McCoy. “I’d chew you out for suffering in silence, but you probably enjoyed that.”
“I haven’t been suffering,” McCoy said smiling, almost weak with relief. “I didn’t let myself think about it, not consciously, anyway. Might as well set your sights on the Moon.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Kirk said, squeezing his hand a little, “we’ve been to the Moon. A couple dozen of them, in fact.”
“And do they all look the same after a while?” McCoy asked.
“That’s a conversation for another time,” Kirk said. “I don’t want to talk about other…moons right now.” He was as close to flustered as McCoy had ever seen him, looking at him with such obvious affection that McCoy couldn’t help laughing himself, feeling weightless, feeling the rush of air as doors opened to possibilities.
He expected Kirk to take control now. He didn’t. He waited, not quite with patience but with forbearance, as McCoy laid a hand against his cheek and leaned in to kiss him softly. His lips parted easily, without urgency, full and warm against McCoy’s own. They kissed for a few long moments, McCoy acclimating himself to the closeness of Kirk’s body like a swimmer to the water, the heat, the shape and mass of it, the scent of his skin.
Kirk pulled a few inches away, still so close McCoy could feel his breath. He ran his fingers lightly through McCoy’s hair, looking at his face so intently McCoy began to feel embarrassed, and said, “You have the strangest eyes. I can never tell whether they’re light or dark.”
“What are they now?” McCoy’s voice was husky in spite of himself.
“Dark. Very dark.” Kirk’s lips were moving toward his again when a sudden burst of light startled McCoy into breaking contact. Kirk laughed softly and glanced at the display panel. “Plasma manifold purge set off an alarm cascade. How’s that for timing? Jealous bitch.”
“Can’t you turn that damn thing off?”
“I’ve got a better idea.” Kirk had not released his hand; he nodded his head toward the open door to the bedroom, but didn’t move. A little uncertainly, McCoy took the lead, pulling Kirk, quite unresisting, into the darkened room.
Part 3