Reset 2/3 (Draws XVI) Pike/Dael/Kirk/McCoy, NC-17
(Back to Part 1)
***Part 2/3*** Note: This story comes with a mindfuck warning. But all will end well :)
It's a strange night that follows, the air outside sticky and humid, and for the first time in months Chris dreams about the Narada. Thanks to T'Sol - and maybe Alain - her dark, high ceilings are mostly just that, flat images that don't emotionally move him a lot anymore. But when he wakes up, there's still a bad taste lingering on his tongue, and after briefly checking on Dael, who's sound asleep, he gets up and leaves the bedroom.
A glass of water and a cheese snack from the fridge are a good start to get rid of the taste, but now Chris is overly awake. Looking for distraction, he goes to his console and surfs through the internal Starfleet news… and there's just nothing important, no big events, no new scientific insights. It's almost too quiet in this part of the universe, and he finally goes back to bed, snuggling against Dael before drifting into another, now thankfully dreamless sleep.
His alert rings at 5.30 as usual (old habits die hard), and he gets up and has a shower, looking at his console in passing as it's still set to the internal news - and there the alert jumps at him, highlighted with a red frame.
The Enterprise is declared missing.
There's no further information in this headline, though he knows the implications; contact must have been effectively lost more than two days ago, and the first inquiries had resulted in no information about the ship's whereabouts. Chris isn't surprised to find a message in his box asking him to meet Captain Illyon first thing this morning, and he's dressed up and ready ten minutes later, his inner walls quite on the rise already.
When he walks into the bedroom again, Dael is still sleeping. He sits down next to her and strokes her forehead, reluctant to wake her with bad news after their lovely evening, but he'd rather tell her in person than let her see it on a screen. "Dael - the Enterprise is pronounced missing. I've got to report to the HQ."
"Oh." Her eyes open a little first; then the gaze is suddenly more alert. "Is that bad news?" she asks.
"Not really. You know the deal, they'll always raise that alert when they're out of contact for forty-eight hours. The Enterprise has been pronounced missing several times in the past, and she's always returned in one piece."
Well, a little banged up after the run-in with the Borg cube, but most people survived.
"She'll probably turn up in a day, with Jim jeering at Starfleet for being over-nervous asses who don't trust him to bring his ship back," Chris adds.
"That's Jim." She smiles.
"I'll talk to you later when I've got more information." He kisses her, then leaves home.
At Headquarters, he walks right into Ship Operations. In contrast to the usually calm, productive work atmosphere that rules there since his old friend Captain Mori Illyon had taken over the department, everyone seems to be on alert today, people rushing across the floor, hushed voices arguing intensely.
Mori instantly calls him into her office, making a minute for him despite the reigning stress, the two screens in front of her wildly signaling incoming messages for her to confirm. "Glad to see you, Chris, even if the reason for it isn't very nice. The public relations department has scheduled a press conference in half an hour, but so far we've got no information besides the official mission parameters, which was star-charting the unexplored sector 2479 PL. You'll find all information at your desk."
"What can I do to help?" Chris asks.
Mori shakes her head. "I didn't call you for that, I only wanted to tell you in person that we’ll do anything to find them and -"
"Stop that," Chris says, interrupting her. "I want to do something. Give me some job in this. I've once waited for news from the missing Enterprise while shuffling papers, and I'll be damned if I do that again."
Looking at him lost in thought for a moment, she slowly nods. "Well -" her eyes drift out of the glass walls of her office to the other side of the floor, where two people, a young man and a young woman, are busily speaking into headphones.
"Well need someone as 'fleet liaison to the families. Our usual team is a little depleted on that front, and while the two replacements work hard, they've only just begun. It would be good to have someone more experienced backing them up."
"I'd be answering calls?" Chris asks.
"For the officers' families only." Mori's expression turns serious. "Chris - I know this is personal for you. You know the Enterprise people, not just Kirk and McCoy, and I'm really not sure it's a good idea for you take this job." Especially with your history, she leaves unsaid, and she may be right. However…
"If that's the only way I can stay here and help, I'll do it," Chris states.
His friend frowns at him. "And don't you have someone to look after at home?"
"Dael will understand. She's Starfleet too," Chris replies promptly. "Please - anything's better than just sitting around and waiting for a call," he adds, a little desperate now that Mori appears close to retracting her original offer.
But at last she gives in. "All right. Well, for all we know, Jim Kirk's going to turn up in a day and laugh in our face for starting the whole routine," she says, but there's an edge to her words.
"What do you really think?" Chris asks, looking right into the captain's eyes.
"I don't know. It's happened before but… I don't have a good feeling this time." Mori shakes her head.
Chris nods. "Same here."
Mori straightens her uniform, gearing up to end their talk. "Well, we don't know a fucking thing yet, so let's just not think about it. There's no reason to cry wolf over the Enterprise. After all, she's got the luckiest captain in the whole fleet, and the best weaponry of the fleet."
The briefing is rather short. The last information before the lost contact included a reference to a possible magnetic storm, but Commander Spock's calculations had shown that it was approaching rather slowly and should pose no danger to such a well-equipped ship. The specialists at HQ have already surveyed the transmitted data and agreed with the Vulcan.
Chris watches the press conference on the console he's been offered in the room with the two young officers, who are quite in awe that they'll get to work with him. Assigning Asimov to speak to the press is definitely a declaration of trust by Illyon, and Chris smiles a little, glad to have been of service to the young man's career with his recommendation some months ago.
In his usual organized way, Lieutenant Asimov presents the basic information and answers many questions, always quick to emphasize that this is a routine sequence of events and that ships are reported missing automatically after a set time, no matter their actual status. He also informs the press that four ships are being rerouted towards the sector to embark on a search.
What Asimov doesn't tell them but Chris knows all too well is that search missions rarely succeed in finding missing ships - they either turn up by themselves, or other ships run into the debris by chance. Space is an endless, dark void, and circling around the last known position of the Enterprise is likely lost time, but they have to do it.
"I'll be here for a while," Chris says when he calls Dael afterwards. "I know this is bad timing, but -"
"I'll be fine," Dael says, her pale face filling his screen, her tattoos sharply angled in concern. "Arissa called me when the news went public, she'll be coming over. Hope that's okay with you."
"That's perfect!" Chris says in relief. He owes Arissa so much by now, there's no chance he'd ever be able to repay what this incredibly thoughtful woman and by now good friend has done for Dael and him. "I'm so sorry. I've been so wrapped up in the chaos here, I didn't even think of that."
"I understand. She understands. We'll be fine. Call me if you hear anything new." There's a quiet plea in Dael's voice, don't hide things from me no matter how terrible, and Chris nods.
The day goes over in a blur of phone calls and arrangements, and when Ambassador Sarek of New Vulcan, currently staying on Earth, invites himself to a late dinner with the Admiral, Chris has no choice but to call Dael once more.
"It's going to be late, probably after midnight," he says.
"No problem, Christopher. I can imagine that your day was hell," she says, placing her fingers on the screen. "We've been listening to the news all day - do you know anything more?"
"I wish we did, but all we know is that she vanished for no obvious reason." He's tired and high-strung. "See you later, Dael. And don't get too worried about it."
"You joking?" Dael makes a face. "Don't tell me you're taking it easy, because I know you aren't. I've been thinking about them all day."
"Don't do that. It only makes you go crazy," Chris states. He should know because he's done the same, of course. It makes him a good listener in the phone calls from the families he's getting in, like Chekov's mother or Scotty's sister, but it's slowly eroding his control, and he's got to keep a grip on the job at hand. It's strange - in contrast to his quickly raised protective walls when something emotionally threatening comes up, especially if connected to his past, this kind of slow-burning pressure and concern doesn't bring the same shifts to Chris' world. It means that the news reaches him much more unfiltered, and he's not quite able to distance himself the way he actually needs to.
Chris sorely wishes T'Sol was still on Earth.
Blinking, he notes that Dael is still on the line, quietly watching him. He clears his throat. "We're here, they're out there. We can't do a thing but wait and hope."
She nods and signs off.
The dinner with Sarek is even more strenuous than Chris would have thought. The Ambassador mostly speaks of Spock - that Spock should've stayed with the colony but returned to the Enterprise due to Selek’s interference, and that if Spock had done what Sarek wanted him to do, he would be married with children by now, keeping up the family tradition.
Chris knows Spock and even more, he knows Nyota Uhura, and he doubts she'd have let Spock go that easily. Besides, after a whole planet being eaten by a black hole, the concept of planets being safe is out of the window. But by now, Chris feels indebted to Vulcans in general, not only for his original failure to stop the disaster, but also for all the support various Vulcans had given him and Dael, some quietly, some openly, and so he does his best to endure the talk with the man. He hadn't seen Sarek during the week he'd spent at the Vulcan Embassy in T'Sol's care, but he's sure that she'd never been allowed to accept him as an in-house patient if not for the agreement of her superiors.
When Chris drags himself home, it's long after midnight. They're still waiting for him, a half-asleep Dael curled into Arissa's embrace on the couch, a blanket over them.
"Anything new?" Arissa asks hushed, nothing of her usual ease in her voice. Dael opens her eyes, her fear tangible.
He wordlessly shakes his head before leaving to drop his uniform and take a brief shower. They all end in his bed with Dael in the middle, their hands protectively laced together on her belly.
***
Sleep doesn't come easily to Chris, and after a few hours of half napping, half lying awake and thinking too much, he gets up and leaves for HQ without notifying the two sleeping women. They can use all the rest they can get, especially Dael, who's looking far too exhausted to his eyes.
The day brings more phone calls, and it's almost lunch time when one of the names Chris has been kind of waiting for pops up on his screen.
Jocelyn Farmer, ex. McCoy
The elusive Mrs. McCoy, he thinks and finds her to have a rather calm, gentle voice in the voice-only connection. She's not Starfleet, so she has a lot of questions about the process, and he explains to her that the search will go on for at least four weeks, and that nobody will be declared dead before some proof has been received.
"Normally I wouldn't have called," she says at last, "but my daughter keeps asking me questions about her father and I don't have answers. And of course, she wants to know whether he'll come back."
"Your daughter?" Chris asks a little confused.
"Yes," she says but doesn't elaborate. There's a pause and just when he wonders if she'd hung up on him, she suddenly asks, "Do you know him personally?"
"Yes."
"Is he happy?"
Something churns in Chris' stomach. "Yes. He's been married to Jim Kirk for many years, has a successful career… yes, he's very happy."
"Oh -" another long, drawn-out pause. "God, I didn't know that."
She must be living under a rock, Chris thinks with a frown, shaking his head. Good thing she can't see him.
"I attended their ceremony, and it's been all over the news ever since."
"I don't read that kind of celebrity gossip, especially not about Starfleet. I never knew he was… "
"Gay? He doesn't like labels - he just likes being himself."
"You know him really well, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Do you think he'll come back?"
Chris closes his eyes. "I don't know. I really don't. But my gut feeling is - no." He opens his eyes again. "I shouldn't have said that, Mrs. Farmer. I apologize. As I said, we don't know any more than the press does at the moment. I have your number now, and I'll call you back when we get new information, all right?"
"Yes. Thanks. And - I'm sorry for asking." She hangs up on him.
A daughter? Chris calls up the doc's personnel file, but there's nothing in it about the doc having a daughter. If Mrs. Ex-McCoy ever calls again, he'd definitely have to inquire about this…. because the only way her statement makes sense would be if it's Leonard's daughter about which his lover had never learned…
***
Chris thinks about going home at 2000 when the news comes in that a piece of debris had been found two light years away from the Enterprise's latest reported position. At 2232, they receive the confirmation that the recovered metal piece has been positively identified as a part of the Enterprise. It's not from the hull but from deck ten, deep within the Enterprise, and it carries a weapon signature Starfleet had recently encountered for the first time, on the devastated colony on Cestus III. The whole fleet goes to yellow alert because what looked like an isolated disaster at first suddenly appears to be the beginning of a conflict with a so far unidentified species.
When Chris gets home, feeling raw and tired, it's once more to the picture of Arissa and Dael on the couch. It adds sharp guilt to his emotional turmoil.
"I'm sorry for having left you alone all day," he says as he sits down heavily on Dael's other side, opening the top buttons of his uniform.
"Any news?" Dael asks, sitting up. His face apparently gives it away, because she freezes, inhaling sharply.
"Just a piece of debris," he says quickly. "They were definitely in a battle. But just one piece doesn't mean anything yet. Over Vulcan, the Enterprise lost some sections but was still able to fly." Though they'd mostly been outer sections, not an inner one like in this debris, but he can't bring himself to relate this detail.
Dael nods, visibly eager to believe him, but when Chris meets Arissa gaze, he can see that the older woman is much too perceptive. Her expression momentarily changes from concern to sad realization, then instantly back as Dael looks up at her. "Thanks so much for staying with me, Arissa. It's been of great help."
"You want me to leave?" Arissa asks Dael, startled.
"You need to depart for the concert tour with Mondrian in China in just six hours. I helped you plan it, remember?" Dael gets up. "They're waiting for you, you can't just cancel on them."
"True," Arissa concedes, unhappily looking at Chris. "I'm the tour manager, and I don't think they'll be able to pull it off without me, at least not for the first days. After that, it shouldn't be a problem."
"I understand," he says. "I'm glad you had some time at all for Dael."
"Always," Arissa says, telling him in a quiet moment when Dael is out of hearing range - "If any of you needs my help, call me, no matter the time or day. I'll always be able to arrange something, I promise."
"I know. Thanks so much." Chris kisses her cheek, and she returns the gesture, breathing into his ear, "Don't give up hope yet."
He nods, then steps back to leave the last moment to Dael, who clutches her friend in a tight, almost frantic embrace. When the door closes, they look at each other like lost children.
"Come to bed," Chris says. After stripping out of uniform, he curls around Dael in their much too large bed, the ghosts of their absent men lingering around the edges.
Not believing in a god of any kind, Chris has never prayed since the day he'd left home and he won't start now, but a part of him wishes he could, just to gain the illusion that some higher power would listen to him and care enough to bring their men home against all odds.
***
They are both barely able to sleep, so he's awake when further information comes in four hours later.
There's more debris, and it's from various parts of the ship, which destroys Chris's last hopes. The first emergency capsules have been recovered, but most are empty and the other ones only contain the dead. They are identified as Enterprise crewmembers.
This at last raises his walls, turning his world to black and white.
At his side, Dael sleeps, arms curled around her middle. He needs to leave, but he can't let her stay here alone.
"Bring her in," Mori says spontaneously when he asks for her opinion in a quick call. "We'll find a corner for her."
Not wanting to have Dael listen to the calls he receives, he's glad when Mori finds a useful job for Dael, assigning her to a small team that analyzes background data from the relevant area. It keeps her busy and still under his and Mori's watch.
Chris listens through the press conference and one too many meetings without really following the discussions, while taking more family calls that by now get more desperate in tone. Starfleet isn't ready yet to pronounce the Enterprise lost, so he can't say how hopeless it really seems, still tries to find comforting words while knowing he won't last much longer.
There's Jocelyn Farmer again, and she sounds resigned, more resigned than he feels.
"Any news yet?" she asks, once more in a voice-only connection, and he shakes his head.
"Nothing definite yet."
"But they've found debris. From inside the ship"
"Yes."
"Do you still have hope?"
He can't lie to her. "Frankly - no. I'm too much of a realist." Of course, there are minimal chances for survival, but he's seen to many ships getting lost to hang onto false hopes.
"Mrs. Farmer - may I ask you a question myself?"
"Yes, please."
"Your daughter - is it Leonard's child?"
There's a brief silence before she says, slowly. "Yes. I never told him. I didn't want him to know, but when the news about his ship being missing came in, she overheard me taking to my husband about him. Of course, now she's asking a lot of questions about him."
"Why didn't you ever tell him?"
"I was in the middle of a terrible divorce. He was unbearable to live with after the death of his father, constantly drunk, so self-destructive… and jealous and hurt by something I'd done wrong. I'm not apologizing for having gotten a restraining order against him," she says, sounding vaguely defensive anyway, "it was the only way to make him stay away from me."
Even after the many years, Chris can hear the pain in her voice. It's clear that the separation hadn't been on a whim but was hard fought for. Not that he'd ever really expected anything else; he remembers the state the doc was in when he joined Starfleet, barely sobered up and always quick to lash out with words. The man had mellowed a little over time thanks to Jim, but they had all had their experiences with Leonard's sharp tongue.
"It terrible to watch someone you've loved in a downhill spiral without being able to help… and worse, being part of the problem. But from what you've said… he's different now, isn't he?"
"Yes. He's become a wonderful man, who is loved and does love in return. Still not always easy to handle, but we manage." Chris stops sharply; he hadn't wanted to turn this quite so personal, as she doesn't seem to know or even want to know about McCoy's life in the 'fleet.
But this seems to have changed, as she replies without hesitation. "So it seems from what I could read about him… I'm glad about that. I really am." On the last words, her voice sounds suddenly off, and it takes him a moment to realize that she's possibly crying. "I need to sign off. It's been good talking to you once again. Thanks so much, Admiral."
"Same to you. I'll call you the moment I know anything more," he promises.
When she closes the line, Chris keeps sitting and staring at the screen, the letters of his many messages one blurred smudge. Listening inside, he finds nothing but blankness, any part that could hurt right now hiding behind the strongest walls he'd ever experienced.
***
An hour later he finds that his stability had been more due to Jocelyn Farmer's quiet composition than to his own control. Chekov's openly crying mother is on his line for half an hour and falling back into Russian most of the time, a language of which Chris doesn't understand more than bortsh and doswedanja. And vodka maybe, but he never liked that drink.
Thinking of drinking makes him think of Scotty at Jim and Leonard’s partnership ceremony and that's finally enough to fuck with his control and he takes half an hour off to shut himself into a toilet stall, doing nothing but sit with his face buried in his hands. The ever increasing feeling of doom permeates the kind of shields T'Sol had put in place for him, which had possibly been optimized more for momentary intervention than for dealing with this drawn-out, terrifying wait he's going through, and he wonders if they’ll hold and what might happen if they fall.
"Are you okay?" Dael asks when he returns, waiting for him coiled on his chair. They've found her a male cadet uniform, it's too large and the pants pool around her legs. Folded on the seat as she is, he's got a deja-vu of the cadet he'd gotten to known back then, always defensive and not trusting the world. Now she's looking at him much less guardedly, her fear showing in her eyes. "I missed you."
"I'm okay," Chris says. "How about lunch? I badly need something."
She shakes her head. "I'm not hungry."
"I'm not hungry either, but my body needs some food. And yours too." And the baby. The one thing left of them if Jim…
He stops this train of thought, relieved when she changes her mind and joins him for a brief lunch. It tastes like cardboard; the world looks like cardboard; he feels apart from everything, even connecting to Dael almost too hard right now.
"Don't mind," she states when he apologizes for his behavior. "I feel the same."
There's a call on his comm, Join me in my office asap, Mori writes and Chris delivers Dael to her team before walking into Illyon's office. By now, she's set the glass walls to opaque - a worrisome sign. Most people of her team are gathered in the room, an eerie silence above them all.
"You look like death warmed over," are her first words to Chris, and he frowns. "But I can relate. Gentlebeings - we've got the first pictures." She zaps on the large screen behind her and no matter how many images have played through Chris's mind over the last days, seeing reality is like a gigantic punch to his stomach. On a rather dark, irregular planet surface, there is the saucer section of the Enterprise, crash-landed head down and torn apart into several large pieces.
Like a cake fallen to a floor, he thinks.
"From what the specialists have gathered so far, the Enterprise was partly torn apart by the enemy. They're not sure yet if the separation was planned or not, but the saucer section was pulled into the planet's gravitational field afterwards. They had no chance."
I'd follow Jim into hell and back, Leonard's words are ringing in Chris's ears. Looks as if it had been a one-way-ticket. His world by now one flat frame, he barely manages to find a chair and take a seat, his legs too weak to carry this weight.
"The pictures will be on the news in an hour," Illyon says. "The search and rescue ships are on the way, but I doubt they'll find anyone alive."
Chris nods mutely. The camera angle has shifted and he can see that the saucer section has only about half its original height - everything in it would be smashed, cut to pieces by the torn metal. He tries not to think in images but he'd helped retrieve bodies from shuttle crashes and these memories come suddenly alive with the dead holding the face of his lovers. He turns his gaze away from the screen, closing one hand over his eyes.
"We haven't identified the attackers yet. The results from Cestus III didn't tell us a lot more than that they have warp capability and a high weapon power. They don't use Klingon or Romulan technology but come with their own…" Illyon's voice is floating away in his mind as she reorders the team, speaks about the upcoming press conference.
When he looks up again, the office is empty but for the two of them. Mori draws close, her usually composed face a valley of sorrow.
"I won't give up hope yet but…" She draws close, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Take Dael, go home."
"There's nothing to go home for," he says, his voice echoing in his own head.
"But you shouldn't be here either. You know that the search can take a few days, the way she looks."
Chris knows; the rescue teams will have to cut their way through every corridor and room of the Enterprise, slowly enough not to kill any unlikely survivor, fast enough to get through it all as soon as possible.
"Please, go home for now," Moris says, and he gives in at last.
The way Dael sits curled on a chair, staring into thin air, tells him that she knows.
Asimov draws to his side, quietly saying, "I tried to keep it away from her but of course everyone has seen the pictures by now…"
"She's got the right to know," Chris says. He just wished he'd been with her for the news.
"I'm so sorry," Asimov adds, and Chris only nods, then walks over to Dael. "Let's go home." Her eyes are blank, her voice flat as she reflects his own words of moments before. "There's nothing to go home for."
"There's the baby, Dael. This isn't just about us anymore, and we need to take care of him." Out of the corner of his eyes, Chris can see Asimov's shocked expression. "Come with me."
They go home, he can't even quite remember how, and there they sit down in the kitchen. They should do something, make food, but they're just two frozen figures, caught in emotional deserts in their own heads.
Day turns to night and they still sit there, the silence of space surrounding them like their own graves.
"Chris! Dammit, man, here you are."
Chris looks up from his stupor when he hears his name being called.
"Glad to find you at last. Why didn't you answer your comm?" John snaps at him. Eric stands next to him, the fallback keycard to Chris' apartment in hand. He'd forgotten that he'd given one of those to the couple.
"Why are you back?" Chris mutters. "Don't you have a mission to be on?"
"Applied for emergency leave when the first news came in," John says. He looks them over, momentarily watching Eric trying to connect with Dael.
"Here's the deal - either we stay here, or you come with us," John states commandingly.
"Which would be the better idea, I'd say," Eric adds.
Chris looks at Dael, and she looks back, unmoving. He thinks of empty rooms, all these ghosts residing here.
"We'll come with you."
The couple helps them pack everything they need for a few days, then takes them with them.
***
Watching John preparing dinner in the kitchen, while Eric is taking care of Dael in the living-room, Chris says without preamble, "Dael's pregnant with Jim's baby."
John freezes. "Shit," he says and drops the knife, turning around. "Does Jim know?"
"Yes. He was about to resign, take a position in Mori's team. They'd planned to be on Earth in two weeks."
"Shit," John repeats, his usual coolness down the drain. He sits down heavily opposite to Chris, taking both of his hands.
"It just can't happen now," Chris says blankly. "Not now."
"You know how Kirk is - if anyone can pull off a miracle, it’s him."
Chris mutely shakes his head.
Later the guys put them in John's large bed, promising to join them a little later.
"I've talked to McCoy's ex, twice now," Chris says. He's on his back, eyes to the ceiling. For the first time ever, the idea of curling around Dael for comfort is too much for him; distance is the more secure option.
"And?" She's apart from him, her voice barely recognizable.
"She was very composed, very gentle." He can't talk about the doc's daughter - it's the kind of story that only adds to their complete loss. Better settle on a subject that is making him angry.
"And Winona didn't even call yet. She really doesn't give a shit about Jim."
"Winona Kirk? Is she even still alive?"
"Yes, I've got her latest address." The distance breaks, brittle pieces that cut his skin. He curls to the side, burying his face against her shoulder, one hand on her belly.
Dael still stares at the ceiling. "We still don't know for certain. They might have escaped."
He just stays silent. She's been in command track - he doesn't have to tell her the chances of that.
"You know how lucky Jim's always been," she says.
He's run out of supportive verbiage; all he can do is to clamp his arm closer around her.
"Natasha was right," he says at last. "I've never lost someone that close to me in space."
Dael closes her eyes, lifting one hand to stroke his head in a helpless touch, and he can hear what she thinks, I've lost everyone close to me already once. He wonders whether that will make it any easier for her.
John and Eric join them and they switch off the lights but he doesn't fall sleep until the early morning hours, when it's almost time to get up again. He's got to leave for HQ, it's impossible for him to stay home, and they will understand.
Chris closes the last button on top, eyeing his ashen face in the mirror. If there's a scale for heartbreak, it has gone through the roof already yesterday. He can't imagine it getting any worse.
There's another press conference and more meetings and the screen in his office shows the numbers climbing as the search and rescue teams move through the crashed ship.
They reach the former sickbay on the late afternoon. When they send in a first list of identified bodies from there, he can't read it, is physically unable to open the message. He sits in front of the screen for half an hour, until there's a phone call and he takes it because anything's better than reading that list.
He recognizes her voice even after all those years.
"Winona."
"Christopher."
The silence is thick for a moment, then she asks, "Anything new?"
"What do you want to hear?" He'd sometimes imagined speaking to her, throwing all the things at her that she'd fucked up in his opinion, but he doesn't have the energy for that anymore. He's exhausted, and maybe he understands some of her reactions after George's death now.
"Did they find his body?"
"They haven't reached the bridge yet." He's not saying a word more than he has to. If you want to know anything, fucking ask, he thinks.
"What about his -" she struggles with the word husband, and he notices it - "Lord, it sounds strange - his boyfriend?"
Chris wants to say that he doesn't know either, he wants to keep pretending he doesn't have any information but then he opens the message whose bold subject line had stared at him for half an hour. He scrolls through it until he finds the line; the dead are sorted and numbered by their position in the ship, not by name.
"#351; McCoy, Leonard Horatio, M.D. - chief medical officer - identified by positive visual identification."
"Leonard McCoy is dead," Chris says. "His body was found and identified. I just received the message." He's irritated about how level his voice sounds; he hadn't noticed that he is completely zoned out until this moment, had possibly been in that state for a while.
Positive visual identification, he reads again, surprised that there was something to look at, wondering if he could ask for a last look, then wondering if he'd be really up to it if he got the chance. He's feeling sick and drained all of a sudden and she's still on the line and not saying a damn word.
"What do you want, Winona? You didn't care about them while they lived, so why do you call now?"
"He was still my son."
"You didn't call him once since he started at the academy. Not. Once."
"I left Starfleet. I wanted him to stay out of it too. He only joined because of you - and now he's dead."
"Yeah, right, my fault." Chris laughs grimly. "Tell you what? I also brought him together with McCoy - his official husband, and there's nothing wrong with that word. They were great people, and you missed the chance to meet them and talk to them and maybe find out what they might've been able to contribute to your life. So. Fuck. The. Hell. Off. Now."
Like a dam breaching, one emotion pierces through his shields from the inside out, creating a dozen holes through which his white-hot anger shoots, and he slams his finger onto the touch sensor to cut off the line, then bolts up from his seat, tearing his ear piece away and throwing it into the nearby wall. His fist is next to follow, and the pain that shoots up his arm reminds him that he's still alive, alive against all odds. It had been Jim rescuing him, the doc fixing him up afterwards, and now all he can do is sitting here, answering phone calls and reading the death rolls.
It's. Just. Not. Fair.
Chris sags down on one knee onto the floor, sucking in air so harshly that his throat hurts. The phone goes off again but he doesn't take it; it's enough to try and calm down without Winona getting a second chance of driving him mad.
The two young officers in the room stare at him in shock, and it's that look that forces him to pull himself together. He's someone these officers look to for guidance and support, and he can't lose it. He gets to his feet.
"My apologies," Chris says, his back straight and his voice calm, and walks into the corridor, much too aware of everyone's gaze resting on him, compassion and sadness bathing him with every step. He flees into the empty emergency staircase, sits down on the stairs.
The comm unit shakes in his hand, and it takes him a moment to call up Dael's number. He'd promised to tell her. He had.
The first question of Dael is, "What happened?", and he can't get a single word out.
"I've seen the news. They were approaching deck seven, right?" she asks, hushed. "It's Leonard, right?"
Just a single word. He can manage that. "Yes."
"No..." Her voice is trembling.
"Please, I can't talk to you now," Chris presses out. "We'll talk tonight."
"Yes. Yes, we'll talk." She's off the line so fast that he's thinking of calling her back, but what would they do but fall apart,, together and yet so distanced, and he really can't bear that now. He pulls himself up, straightening his uniform and returning to his desk.
Jocelyn Farmer's phone number is on top of his list, and for a moment he's close to asking someone else to phone her, but then he thinks, I'm doing this for Leonard's daughter, and lets the computer dial her number.
"Starfleet here, Admiral Pike," he says when a young voice answers his call. "Hi there…" He doesn't even know the girl's name, but this isn't the moment to ask either. "Can I please talk to your mother?"
"Are you calling because of my father?" the girl asks, and he comes to realize that phoning them might have been a bad idea. "Please give me your mother," he repeats gently but insistently, and she finally gives in and turns the phone over to her mother. When Jocelyn says hello, he can hear her voice vibrating.
"I'm sorry," is all he manages to say, all other words lost somewhere on the way between his brain and his tongue.
"I instantly knew that this would be the call," she says, her voice shaky. "Isn't it strange just to know? As if a phone could ring differently depending on the news." He hears her inhaling. "Thank you, Admiral, for calling me. It's been good talking to you. I was glad to learn that he had a happy life, after all."
Behind her, the girl starts crying, and he wish he could say something meaningful, anything that would ease the pain, but he's too busy dealing with his own devastation. Whoever brought up the shit about shared pain being less pain didn't know shit.
"Good-bye," she says and closes the line.
There's a cup of coffee on his desk, and he can't remember when it came in.
"Hey, Chris," Mori calls him from the door, and he's looking up. "Go home. Take a break."
"Not yet." They are four decks away from the bridge, and he won't leave before he knows.
"It'll take them some hours to get to deck one," she states rationally, drawing close to his desk. "Go home, see Dael. You won't help anyone if you fall apart."
Chris's endlessly tired but moving would cost a lot more energy.
"Get the hell out of here, and that's an order," Mori snaps. "I've called a cab for you, it's already waiting at the front door. I don't want to see your ass in here until tomorrow morning." She all but drags him out of the door and shoves him into the lift.
"And - I'm sorry, Chris. Really damn sorry," Mori says when the turbolift door closes between them.
John isn't home when he enters the apartment, but Eric waits for him,
"I'm so sorry," are the man's first words, before he takes Chris into a tight embrace.
"Thanks," Chris barely manages to reply. "Where's Dael?"
"I put her to bed. She's in bad shape." Eric looks concerned. "I tried to make her eat something but she didn't have more than a forkful of noodles before stopping."
Chris rubs his forehead. At last, one problem he could help solving. "You got any Romulan food here?"
Eric shakes his head. "No."
Unable to imagine going out for shopping, Chris calls the one restaurant in the city that offers some of her preferred dishes. They can't deliver at the moment due to a technical problem, but Eric promptly volunteers to pick up the meals.
After this last task, Chris feels drained. With the last of his energy he undresses and joins Dael in bed. He pulls her in his arms, holding her.
Her eyes on the ceiling, she doesn't quite acknowledge his presence for the longest time. "It can't happen. It can't," she whispers at last. "He was so happy to be returning to Earth. He loved you so much."
"I know."
"This is a dream, and we'll wake up."
Chris stays quiet.
She curls into his arm, and there's a slow tremor in her body that doesn't stop when she falls asleep next to him.
***
Onto Part 3
***Part 2/3*** Note: This story comes with a mindfuck warning. But all will end well :)
It's a strange night that follows, the air outside sticky and humid, and for the first time in months Chris dreams about the Narada. Thanks to T'Sol - and maybe Alain - her dark, high ceilings are mostly just that, flat images that don't emotionally move him a lot anymore. But when he wakes up, there's still a bad taste lingering on his tongue, and after briefly checking on Dael, who's sound asleep, he gets up and leaves the bedroom.
A glass of water and a cheese snack from the fridge are a good start to get rid of the taste, but now Chris is overly awake. Looking for distraction, he goes to his console and surfs through the internal Starfleet news… and there's just nothing important, no big events, no new scientific insights. It's almost too quiet in this part of the universe, and he finally goes back to bed, snuggling against Dael before drifting into another, now thankfully dreamless sleep.
His alert rings at 5.30 as usual (old habits die hard), and he gets up and has a shower, looking at his console in passing as it's still set to the internal news - and there the alert jumps at him, highlighted with a red frame.
The Enterprise is declared missing.
There's no further information in this headline, though he knows the implications; contact must have been effectively lost more than two days ago, and the first inquiries had resulted in no information about the ship's whereabouts. Chris isn't surprised to find a message in his box asking him to meet Captain Illyon first thing this morning, and he's dressed up and ready ten minutes later, his inner walls quite on the rise already.
When he walks into the bedroom again, Dael is still sleeping. He sits down next to her and strokes her forehead, reluctant to wake her with bad news after their lovely evening, but he'd rather tell her in person than let her see it on a screen. "Dael - the Enterprise is pronounced missing. I've got to report to the HQ."
"Oh." Her eyes open a little first; then the gaze is suddenly more alert. "Is that bad news?" she asks.
"Not really. You know the deal, they'll always raise that alert when they're out of contact for forty-eight hours. The Enterprise has been pronounced missing several times in the past, and she's always returned in one piece."
Well, a little banged up after the run-in with the Borg cube, but most people survived.
"She'll probably turn up in a day, with Jim jeering at Starfleet for being over-nervous asses who don't trust him to bring his ship back," Chris adds.
"That's Jim." She smiles.
"I'll talk to you later when I've got more information." He kisses her, then leaves home.
At Headquarters, he walks right into Ship Operations. In contrast to the usually calm, productive work atmosphere that rules there since his old friend Captain Mori Illyon had taken over the department, everyone seems to be on alert today, people rushing across the floor, hushed voices arguing intensely.
Mori instantly calls him into her office, making a minute for him despite the reigning stress, the two screens in front of her wildly signaling incoming messages for her to confirm. "Glad to see you, Chris, even if the reason for it isn't very nice. The public relations department has scheduled a press conference in half an hour, but so far we've got no information besides the official mission parameters, which was star-charting the unexplored sector 2479 PL. You'll find all information at your desk."
"What can I do to help?" Chris asks.
Mori shakes her head. "I didn't call you for that, I only wanted to tell you in person that we’ll do anything to find them and -"
"Stop that," Chris says, interrupting her. "I want to do something. Give me some job in this. I've once waited for news from the missing Enterprise while shuffling papers, and I'll be damned if I do that again."
Looking at him lost in thought for a moment, she slowly nods. "Well -" her eyes drift out of the glass walls of her office to the other side of the floor, where two people, a young man and a young woman, are busily speaking into headphones.
"Well need someone as 'fleet liaison to the families. Our usual team is a little depleted on that front, and while the two replacements work hard, they've only just begun. It would be good to have someone more experienced backing them up."
"I'd be answering calls?" Chris asks.
"For the officers' families only." Mori's expression turns serious. "Chris - I know this is personal for you. You know the Enterprise people, not just Kirk and McCoy, and I'm really not sure it's a good idea for you take this job." Especially with your history, she leaves unsaid, and she may be right. However…
"If that's the only way I can stay here and help, I'll do it," Chris states.
His friend frowns at him. "And don't you have someone to look after at home?"
"Dael will understand. She's Starfleet too," Chris replies promptly. "Please - anything's better than just sitting around and waiting for a call," he adds, a little desperate now that Mori appears close to retracting her original offer.
But at last she gives in. "All right. Well, for all we know, Jim Kirk's going to turn up in a day and laugh in our face for starting the whole routine," she says, but there's an edge to her words.
"What do you really think?" Chris asks, looking right into the captain's eyes.
"I don't know. It's happened before but… I don't have a good feeling this time." Mori shakes her head.
Chris nods. "Same here."
Mori straightens her uniform, gearing up to end their talk. "Well, we don't know a fucking thing yet, so let's just not think about it. There's no reason to cry wolf over the Enterprise. After all, she's got the luckiest captain in the whole fleet, and the best weaponry of the fleet."
The briefing is rather short. The last information before the lost contact included a reference to a possible magnetic storm, but Commander Spock's calculations had shown that it was approaching rather slowly and should pose no danger to such a well-equipped ship. The specialists at HQ have already surveyed the transmitted data and agreed with the Vulcan.
Chris watches the press conference on the console he's been offered in the room with the two young officers, who are quite in awe that they'll get to work with him. Assigning Asimov to speak to the press is definitely a declaration of trust by Illyon, and Chris smiles a little, glad to have been of service to the young man's career with his recommendation some months ago.
In his usual organized way, Lieutenant Asimov presents the basic information and answers many questions, always quick to emphasize that this is a routine sequence of events and that ships are reported missing automatically after a set time, no matter their actual status. He also informs the press that four ships are being rerouted towards the sector to embark on a search.
What Asimov doesn't tell them but Chris knows all too well is that search missions rarely succeed in finding missing ships - they either turn up by themselves, or other ships run into the debris by chance. Space is an endless, dark void, and circling around the last known position of the Enterprise is likely lost time, but they have to do it.
"I'll be here for a while," Chris says when he calls Dael afterwards. "I know this is bad timing, but -"
"I'll be fine," Dael says, her pale face filling his screen, her tattoos sharply angled in concern. "Arissa called me when the news went public, she'll be coming over. Hope that's okay with you."
"That's perfect!" Chris says in relief. He owes Arissa so much by now, there's no chance he'd ever be able to repay what this incredibly thoughtful woman and by now good friend has done for Dael and him. "I'm so sorry. I've been so wrapped up in the chaos here, I didn't even think of that."
"I understand. She understands. We'll be fine. Call me if you hear anything new." There's a quiet plea in Dael's voice, don't hide things from me no matter how terrible, and Chris nods.
The day goes over in a blur of phone calls and arrangements, and when Ambassador Sarek of New Vulcan, currently staying on Earth, invites himself to a late dinner with the Admiral, Chris has no choice but to call Dael once more.
"It's going to be late, probably after midnight," he says.
"No problem, Christopher. I can imagine that your day was hell," she says, placing her fingers on the screen. "We've been listening to the news all day - do you know anything more?"
"I wish we did, but all we know is that she vanished for no obvious reason." He's tired and high-strung. "See you later, Dael. And don't get too worried about it."
"You joking?" Dael makes a face. "Don't tell me you're taking it easy, because I know you aren't. I've been thinking about them all day."
"Don't do that. It only makes you go crazy," Chris states. He should know because he's done the same, of course. It makes him a good listener in the phone calls from the families he's getting in, like Chekov's mother or Scotty's sister, but it's slowly eroding his control, and he's got to keep a grip on the job at hand. It's strange - in contrast to his quickly raised protective walls when something emotionally threatening comes up, especially if connected to his past, this kind of slow-burning pressure and concern doesn't bring the same shifts to Chris' world. It means that the news reaches him much more unfiltered, and he's not quite able to distance himself the way he actually needs to.
Chris sorely wishes T'Sol was still on Earth.
Blinking, he notes that Dael is still on the line, quietly watching him. He clears his throat. "We're here, they're out there. We can't do a thing but wait and hope."
She nods and signs off.
The dinner with Sarek is even more strenuous than Chris would have thought. The Ambassador mostly speaks of Spock - that Spock should've stayed with the colony but returned to the Enterprise due to Selek’s interference, and that if Spock had done what Sarek wanted him to do, he would be married with children by now, keeping up the family tradition.
Chris knows Spock and even more, he knows Nyota Uhura, and he doubts she'd have let Spock go that easily. Besides, after a whole planet being eaten by a black hole, the concept of planets being safe is out of the window. But by now, Chris feels indebted to Vulcans in general, not only for his original failure to stop the disaster, but also for all the support various Vulcans had given him and Dael, some quietly, some openly, and so he does his best to endure the talk with the man. He hadn't seen Sarek during the week he'd spent at the Vulcan Embassy in T'Sol's care, but he's sure that she'd never been allowed to accept him as an in-house patient if not for the agreement of her superiors.
When Chris drags himself home, it's long after midnight. They're still waiting for him, a half-asleep Dael curled into Arissa's embrace on the couch, a blanket over them.
"Anything new?" Arissa asks hushed, nothing of her usual ease in her voice. Dael opens her eyes, her fear tangible.
He wordlessly shakes his head before leaving to drop his uniform and take a brief shower. They all end in his bed with Dael in the middle, their hands protectively laced together on her belly.
***
Sleep doesn't come easily to Chris, and after a few hours of half napping, half lying awake and thinking too much, he gets up and leaves for HQ without notifying the two sleeping women. They can use all the rest they can get, especially Dael, who's looking far too exhausted to his eyes.
The day brings more phone calls, and it's almost lunch time when one of the names Chris has been kind of waiting for pops up on his screen.
Jocelyn Farmer, ex. McCoy
The elusive Mrs. McCoy, he thinks and finds her to have a rather calm, gentle voice in the voice-only connection. She's not Starfleet, so she has a lot of questions about the process, and he explains to her that the search will go on for at least four weeks, and that nobody will be declared dead before some proof has been received.
"Normally I wouldn't have called," she says at last, "but my daughter keeps asking me questions about her father and I don't have answers. And of course, she wants to know whether he'll come back."
"Your daughter?" Chris asks a little confused.
"Yes," she says but doesn't elaborate. There's a pause and just when he wonders if she'd hung up on him, she suddenly asks, "Do you know him personally?"
"Yes."
"Is he happy?"
Something churns in Chris' stomach. "Yes. He's been married to Jim Kirk for many years, has a successful career… yes, he's very happy."
"Oh -" another long, drawn-out pause. "God, I didn't know that."
She must be living under a rock, Chris thinks with a frown, shaking his head. Good thing she can't see him.
"I attended their ceremony, and it's been all over the news ever since."
"I don't read that kind of celebrity gossip, especially not about Starfleet. I never knew he was… "
"Gay? He doesn't like labels - he just likes being himself."
"You know him really well, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Do you think he'll come back?"
Chris closes his eyes. "I don't know. I really don't. But my gut feeling is - no." He opens his eyes again. "I shouldn't have said that, Mrs. Farmer. I apologize. As I said, we don't know any more than the press does at the moment. I have your number now, and I'll call you back when we get new information, all right?"
"Yes. Thanks. And - I'm sorry for asking." She hangs up on him.
A daughter? Chris calls up the doc's personnel file, but there's nothing in it about the doc having a daughter. If Mrs. Ex-McCoy ever calls again, he'd definitely have to inquire about this…. because the only way her statement makes sense would be if it's Leonard's daughter about which his lover had never learned…
***
Chris thinks about going home at 2000 when the news comes in that a piece of debris had been found two light years away from the Enterprise's latest reported position. At 2232, they receive the confirmation that the recovered metal piece has been positively identified as a part of the Enterprise. It's not from the hull but from deck ten, deep within the Enterprise, and it carries a weapon signature Starfleet had recently encountered for the first time, on the devastated colony on Cestus III. The whole fleet goes to yellow alert because what looked like an isolated disaster at first suddenly appears to be the beginning of a conflict with a so far unidentified species.
When Chris gets home, feeling raw and tired, it's once more to the picture of Arissa and Dael on the couch. It adds sharp guilt to his emotional turmoil.
"I'm sorry for having left you alone all day," he says as he sits down heavily on Dael's other side, opening the top buttons of his uniform.
"Any news?" Dael asks, sitting up. His face apparently gives it away, because she freezes, inhaling sharply.
"Just a piece of debris," he says quickly. "They were definitely in a battle. But just one piece doesn't mean anything yet. Over Vulcan, the Enterprise lost some sections but was still able to fly." Though they'd mostly been outer sections, not an inner one like in this debris, but he can't bring himself to relate this detail.
Dael nods, visibly eager to believe him, but when Chris meets Arissa gaze, he can see that the older woman is much too perceptive. Her expression momentarily changes from concern to sad realization, then instantly back as Dael looks up at her. "Thanks so much for staying with me, Arissa. It's been of great help."
"You want me to leave?" Arissa asks Dael, startled.
"You need to depart for the concert tour with Mondrian in China in just six hours. I helped you plan it, remember?" Dael gets up. "They're waiting for you, you can't just cancel on them."
"True," Arissa concedes, unhappily looking at Chris. "I'm the tour manager, and I don't think they'll be able to pull it off without me, at least not for the first days. After that, it shouldn't be a problem."
"I understand," he says. "I'm glad you had some time at all for Dael."
"Always," Arissa says, telling him in a quiet moment when Dael is out of hearing range - "If any of you needs my help, call me, no matter the time or day. I'll always be able to arrange something, I promise."
"I know. Thanks so much." Chris kisses her cheek, and she returns the gesture, breathing into his ear, "Don't give up hope yet."
He nods, then steps back to leave the last moment to Dael, who clutches her friend in a tight, almost frantic embrace. When the door closes, they look at each other like lost children.
"Come to bed," Chris says. After stripping out of uniform, he curls around Dael in their much too large bed, the ghosts of their absent men lingering around the edges.
Not believing in a god of any kind, Chris has never prayed since the day he'd left home and he won't start now, but a part of him wishes he could, just to gain the illusion that some higher power would listen to him and care enough to bring their men home against all odds.
***
They are both barely able to sleep, so he's awake when further information comes in four hours later.
There's more debris, and it's from various parts of the ship, which destroys Chris's last hopes. The first emergency capsules have been recovered, but most are empty and the other ones only contain the dead. They are identified as Enterprise crewmembers.
This at last raises his walls, turning his world to black and white.
At his side, Dael sleeps, arms curled around her middle. He needs to leave, but he can't let her stay here alone.
"Bring her in," Mori says spontaneously when he asks for her opinion in a quick call. "We'll find a corner for her."
Not wanting to have Dael listen to the calls he receives, he's glad when Mori finds a useful job for Dael, assigning her to a small team that analyzes background data from the relevant area. It keeps her busy and still under his and Mori's watch.
Chris listens through the press conference and one too many meetings without really following the discussions, while taking more family calls that by now get more desperate in tone. Starfleet isn't ready yet to pronounce the Enterprise lost, so he can't say how hopeless it really seems, still tries to find comforting words while knowing he won't last much longer.
There's Jocelyn Farmer again, and she sounds resigned, more resigned than he feels.
"Any news yet?" she asks, once more in a voice-only connection, and he shakes his head.
"Nothing definite yet."
"But they've found debris. From inside the ship"
"Yes."
"Do you still have hope?"
He can't lie to her. "Frankly - no. I'm too much of a realist." Of course, there are minimal chances for survival, but he's seen to many ships getting lost to hang onto false hopes.
"Mrs. Farmer - may I ask you a question myself?"
"Yes, please."
"Your daughter - is it Leonard's child?"
There's a brief silence before she says, slowly. "Yes. I never told him. I didn't want him to know, but when the news about his ship being missing came in, she overheard me taking to my husband about him. Of course, now she's asking a lot of questions about him."
"Why didn't you ever tell him?"
"I was in the middle of a terrible divorce. He was unbearable to live with after the death of his father, constantly drunk, so self-destructive… and jealous and hurt by something I'd done wrong. I'm not apologizing for having gotten a restraining order against him," she says, sounding vaguely defensive anyway, "it was the only way to make him stay away from me."
Even after the many years, Chris can hear the pain in her voice. It's clear that the separation hadn't been on a whim but was hard fought for. Not that he'd ever really expected anything else; he remembers the state the doc was in when he joined Starfleet, barely sobered up and always quick to lash out with words. The man had mellowed a little over time thanks to Jim, but they had all had their experiences with Leonard's sharp tongue.
"It terrible to watch someone you've loved in a downhill spiral without being able to help… and worse, being part of the problem. But from what you've said… he's different now, isn't he?"
"Yes. He's become a wonderful man, who is loved and does love in return. Still not always easy to handle, but we manage." Chris stops sharply; he hadn't wanted to turn this quite so personal, as she doesn't seem to know or even want to know about McCoy's life in the 'fleet.
But this seems to have changed, as she replies without hesitation. "So it seems from what I could read about him… I'm glad about that. I really am." On the last words, her voice sounds suddenly off, and it takes him a moment to realize that she's possibly crying. "I need to sign off. It's been good talking to you once again. Thanks so much, Admiral."
"Same to you. I'll call you the moment I know anything more," he promises.
When she closes the line, Chris keeps sitting and staring at the screen, the letters of his many messages one blurred smudge. Listening inside, he finds nothing but blankness, any part that could hurt right now hiding behind the strongest walls he'd ever experienced.
***
An hour later he finds that his stability had been more due to Jocelyn Farmer's quiet composition than to his own control. Chekov's openly crying mother is on his line for half an hour and falling back into Russian most of the time, a language of which Chris doesn't understand more than bortsh and doswedanja. And vodka maybe, but he never liked that drink.
Thinking of drinking makes him think of Scotty at Jim and Leonard’s partnership ceremony and that's finally enough to fuck with his control and he takes half an hour off to shut himself into a toilet stall, doing nothing but sit with his face buried in his hands. The ever increasing feeling of doom permeates the kind of shields T'Sol had put in place for him, which had possibly been optimized more for momentary intervention than for dealing with this drawn-out, terrifying wait he's going through, and he wonders if they’ll hold and what might happen if they fall.
"Are you okay?" Dael asks when he returns, waiting for him coiled on his chair. They've found her a male cadet uniform, it's too large and the pants pool around her legs. Folded on the seat as she is, he's got a deja-vu of the cadet he'd gotten to known back then, always defensive and not trusting the world. Now she's looking at him much less guardedly, her fear showing in her eyes. "I missed you."
"I'm okay," Chris says. "How about lunch? I badly need something."
She shakes her head. "I'm not hungry."
"I'm not hungry either, but my body needs some food. And yours too." And the baby. The one thing left of them if Jim…
He stops this train of thought, relieved when she changes her mind and joins him for a brief lunch. It tastes like cardboard; the world looks like cardboard; he feels apart from everything, even connecting to Dael almost too hard right now.
"Don't mind," she states when he apologizes for his behavior. "I feel the same."
There's a call on his comm, Join me in my office asap, Mori writes and Chris delivers Dael to her team before walking into Illyon's office. By now, she's set the glass walls to opaque - a worrisome sign. Most people of her team are gathered in the room, an eerie silence above them all.
"You look like death warmed over," are her first words to Chris, and he frowns. "But I can relate. Gentlebeings - we've got the first pictures." She zaps on the large screen behind her and no matter how many images have played through Chris's mind over the last days, seeing reality is like a gigantic punch to his stomach. On a rather dark, irregular planet surface, there is the saucer section of the Enterprise, crash-landed head down and torn apart into several large pieces.
Like a cake fallen to a floor, he thinks.
"From what the specialists have gathered so far, the Enterprise was partly torn apart by the enemy. They're not sure yet if the separation was planned or not, but the saucer section was pulled into the planet's gravitational field afterwards. They had no chance."
I'd follow Jim into hell and back, Leonard's words are ringing in Chris's ears. Looks as if it had been a one-way-ticket. His world by now one flat frame, he barely manages to find a chair and take a seat, his legs too weak to carry this weight.
"The pictures will be on the news in an hour," Illyon says. "The search and rescue ships are on the way, but I doubt they'll find anyone alive."
Chris nods mutely. The camera angle has shifted and he can see that the saucer section has only about half its original height - everything in it would be smashed, cut to pieces by the torn metal. He tries not to think in images but he'd helped retrieve bodies from shuttle crashes and these memories come suddenly alive with the dead holding the face of his lovers. He turns his gaze away from the screen, closing one hand over his eyes.
"We haven't identified the attackers yet. The results from Cestus III didn't tell us a lot more than that they have warp capability and a high weapon power. They don't use Klingon or Romulan technology but come with their own…" Illyon's voice is floating away in his mind as she reorders the team, speaks about the upcoming press conference.
When he looks up again, the office is empty but for the two of them. Mori draws close, her usually composed face a valley of sorrow.
"I won't give up hope yet but…" She draws close, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Take Dael, go home."
"There's nothing to go home for," he says, his voice echoing in his own head.
"But you shouldn't be here either. You know that the search can take a few days, the way she looks."
Chris knows; the rescue teams will have to cut their way through every corridor and room of the Enterprise, slowly enough not to kill any unlikely survivor, fast enough to get through it all as soon as possible.
"Please, go home for now," Moris says, and he gives in at last.
The way Dael sits curled on a chair, staring into thin air, tells him that she knows.
Asimov draws to his side, quietly saying, "I tried to keep it away from her but of course everyone has seen the pictures by now…"
"She's got the right to know," Chris says. He just wished he'd been with her for the news.
"I'm so sorry," Asimov adds, and Chris only nods, then walks over to Dael. "Let's go home." Her eyes are blank, her voice flat as she reflects his own words of moments before. "There's nothing to go home for."
"There's the baby, Dael. This isn't just about us anymore, and we need to take care of him." Out of the corner of his eyes, Chris can see Asimov's shocked expression. "Come with me."
They go home, he can't even quite remember how, and there they sit down in the kitchen. They should do something, make food, but they're just two frozen figures, caught in emotional deserts in their own heads.
Day turns to night and they still sit there, the silence of space surrounding them like their own graves.
"Chris! Dammit, man, here you are."
Chris looks up from his stupor when he hears his name being called.
"Glad to find you at last. Why didn't you answer your comm?" John snaps at him. Eric stands next to him, the fallback keycard to Chris' apartment in hand. He'd forgotten that he'd given one of those to the couple.
"Why are you back?" Chris mutters. "Don't you have a mission to be on?"
"Applied for emergency leave when the first news came in," John says. He looks them over, momentarily watching Eric trying to connect with Dael.
"Here's the deal - either we stay here, or you come with us," John states commandingly.
"Which would be the better idea, I'd say," Eric adds.
Chris looks at Dael, and she looks back, unmoving. He thinks of empty rooms, all these ghosts residing here.
"We'll come with you."
The couple helps them pack everything they need for a few days, then takes them with them.
***
Watching John preparing dinner in the kitchen, while Eric is taking care of Dael in the living-room, Chris says without preamble, "Dael's pregnant with Jim's baby."
John freezes. "Shit," he says and drops the knife, turning around. "Does Jim know?"
"Yes. He was about to resign, take a position in Mori's team. They'd planned to be on Earth in two weeks."
"Shit," John repeats, his usual coolness down the drain. He sits down heavily opposite to Chris, taking both of his hands.
"It just can't happen now," Chris says blankly. "Not now."
"You know how Kirk is - if anyone can pull off a miracle, it’s him."
Chris mutely shakes his head.
Later the guys put them in John's large bed, promising to join them a little later.
"I've talked to McCoy's ex, twice now," Chris says. He's on his back, eyes to the ceiling. For the first time ever, the idea of curling around Dael for comfort is too much for him; distance is the more secure option.
"And?" She's apart from him, her voice barely recognizable.
"She was very composed, very gentle." He can't talk about the doc's daughter - it's the kind of story that only adds to their complete loss. Better settle on a subject that is making him angry.
"And Winona didn't even call yet. She really doesn't give a shit about Jim."
"Winona Kirk? Is she even still alive?"
"Yes, I've got her latest address." The distance breaks, brittle pieces that cut his skin. He curls to the side, burying his face against her shoulder, one hand on her belly.
Dael still stares at the ceiling. "We still don't know for certain. They might have escaped."
He just stays silent. She's been in command track - he doesn't have to tell her the chances of that.
"You know how lucky Jim's always been," she says.
He's run out of supportive verbiage; all he can do is to clamp his arm closer around her.
"Natasha was right," he says at last. "I've never lost someone that close to me in space."
Dael closes her eyes, lifting one hand to stroke his head in a helpless touch, and he can hear what she thinks, I've lost everyone close to me already once. He wonders whether that will make it any easier for her.
John and Eric join them and they switch off the lights but he doesn't fall sleep until the early morning hours, when it's almost time to get up again. He's got to leave for HQ, it's impossible for him to stay home, and they will understand.
Chris closes the last button on top, eyeing his ashen face in the mirror. If there's a scale for heartbreak, it has gone through the roof already yesterday. He can't imagine it getting any worse.
There's another press conference and more meetings and the screen in his office shows the numbers climbing as the search and rescue teams move through the crashed ship.
They reach the former sickbay on the late afternoon. When they send in a first list of identified bodies from there, he can't read it, is physically unable to open the message. He sits in front of the screen for half an hour, until there's a phone call and he takes it because anything's better than reading that list.
He recognizes her voice even after all those years.
"Winona."
"Christopher."
The silence is thick for a moment, then she asks, "Anything new?"
"What do you want to hear?" He'd sometimes imagined speaking to her, throwing all the things at her that she'd fucked up in his opinion, but he doesn't have the energy for that anymore. He's exhausted, and maybe he understands some of her reactions after George's death now.
"Did they find his body?"
"They haven't reached the bridge yet." He's not saying a word more than he has to. If you want to know anything, fucking ask, he thinks.
"What about his -" she struggles with the word husband, and he notices it - "Lord, it sounds strange - his boyfriend?"
Chris wants to say that he doesn't know either, he wants to keep pretending he doesn't have any information but then he opens the message whose bold subject line had stared at him for half an hour. He scrolls through it until he finds the line; the dead are sorted and numbered by their position in the ship, not by name.
"#351; McCoy, Leonard Horatio, M.D. - chief medical officer - identified by positive visual identification."
"Leonard McCoy is dead," Chris says. "His body was found and identified. I just received the message." He's irritated about how level his voice sounds; he hadn't noticed that he is completely zoned out until this moment, had possibly been in that state for a while.
Positive visual identification, he reads again, surprised that there was something to look at, wondering if he could ask for a last look, then wondering if he'd be really up to it if he got the chance. He's feeling sick and drained all of a sudden and she's still on the line and not saying a damn word.
"What do you want, Winona? You didn't care about them while they lived, so why do you call now?"
"He was still my son."
"You didn't call him once since he started at the academy. Not. Once."
"I left Starfleet. I wanted him to stay out of it too. He only joined because of you - and now he's dead."
"Yeah, right, my fault." Chris laughs grimly. "Tell you what? I also brought him together with McCoy - his official husband, and there's nothing wrong with that word. They were great people, and you missed the chance to meet them and talk to them and maybe find out what they might've been able to contribute to your life. So. Fuck. The. Hell. Off. Now."
Like a dam breaching, one emotion pierces through his shields from the inside out, creating a dozen holes through which his white-hot anger shoots, and he slams his finger onto the touch sensor to cut off the line, then bolts up from his seat, tearing his ear piece away and throwing it into the nearby wall. His fist is next to follow, and the pain that shoots up his arm reminds him that he's still alive, alive against all odds. It had been Jim rescuing him, the doc fixing him up afterwards, and now all he can do is sitting here, answering phone calls and reading the death rolls.
It's. Just. Not. Fair.
Chris sags down on one knee onto the floor, sucking in air so harshly that his throat hurts. The phone goes off again but he doesn't take it; it's enough to try and calm down without Winona getting a second chance of driving him mad.
The two young officers in the room stare at him in shock, and it's that look that forces him to pull himself together. He's someone these officers look to for guidance and support, and he can't lose it. He gets to his feet.
"My apologies," Chris says, his back straight and his voice calm, and walks into the corridor, much too aware of everyone's gaze resting on him, compassion and sadness bathing him with every step. He flees into the empty emergency staircase, sits down on the stairs.
The comm unit shakes in his hand, and it takes him a moment to call up Dael's number. He'd promised to tell her. He had.
The first question of Dael is, "What happened?", and he can't get a single word out.
"I've seen the news. They were approaching deck seven, right?" she asks, hushed. "It's Leonard, right?"
Just a single word. He can manage that. "Yes."
"No..." Her voice is trembling.
"Please, I can't talk to you now," Chris presses out. "We'll talk tonight."
"Yes. Yes, we'll talk." She's off the line so fast that he's thinking of calling her back, but what would they do but fall apart,, together and yet so distanced, and he really can't bear that now. He pulls himself up, straightening his uniform and returning to his desk.
Jocelyn Farmer's phone number is on top of his list, and for a moment he's close to asking someone else to phone her, but then he thinks, I'm doing this for Leonard's daughter, and lets the computer dial her number.
"Starfleet here, Admiral Pike," he says when a young voice answers his call. "Hi there…" He doesn't even know the girl's name, but this isn't the moment to ask either. "Can I please talk to your mother?"
"Are you calling because of my father?" the girl asks, and he comes to realize that phoning them might have been a bad idea. "Please give me your mother," he repeats gently but insistently, and she finally gives in and turns the phone over to her mother. When Jocelyn says hello, he can hear her voice vibrating.
"I'm sorry," is all he manages to say, all other words lost somewhere on the way between his brain and his tongue.
"I instantly knew that this would be the call," she says, her voice shaky. "Isn't it strange just to know? As if a phone could ring differently depending on the news." He hears her inhaling. "Thank you, Admiral, for calling me. It's been good talking to you. I was glad to learn that he had a happy life, after all."
Behind her, the girl starts crying, and he wish he could say something meaningful, anything that would ease the pain, but he's too busy dealing with his own devastation. Whoever brought up the shit about shared pain being less pain didn't know shit.
"Good-bye," she says and closes the line.
There's a cup of coffee on his desk, and he can't remember when it came in.
"Hey, Chris," Mori calls him from the door, and he's looking up. "Go home. Take a break."
"Not yet." They are four decks away from the bridge, and he won't leave before he knows.
"It'll take them some hours to get to deck one," she states rationally, drawing close to his desk. "Go home, see Dael. You won't help anyone if you fall apart."
Chris's endlessly tired but moving would cost a lot more energy.
"Get the hell out of here, and that's an order," Mori snaps. "I've called a cab for you, it's already waiting at the front door. I don't want to see your ass in here until tomorrow morning." She all but drags him out of the door and shoves him into the lift.
"And - I'm sorry, Chris. Really damn sorry," Mori says when the turbolift door closes between them.
John isn't home when he enters the apartment, but Eric waits for him,
"I'm so sorry," are the man's first words, before he takes Chris into a tight embrace.
"Thanks," Chris barely manages to reply. "Where's Dael?"
"I put her to bed. She's in bad shape." Eric looks concerned. "I tried to make her eat something but she didn't have more than a forkful of noodles before stopping."
Chris rubs his forehead. At last, one problem he could help solving. "You got any Romulan food here?"
Eric shakes his head. "No."
Unable to imagine going out for shopping, Chris calls the one restaurant in the city that offers some of her preferred dishes. They can't deliver at the moment due to a technical problem, but Eric promptly volunteers to pick up the meals.
After this last task, Chris feels drained. With the last of his energy he undresses and joins Dael in bed. He pulls her in his arms, holding her.
Her eyes on the ceiling, she doesn't quite acknowledge his presence for the longest time. "It can't happen. It can't," she whispers at last. "He was so happy to be returning to Earth. He loved you so much."
"I know."
"This is a dream, and we'll wake up."
Chris stays quiet.
She curls into his arm, and there's a slow tremor in her body that doesn't stop when she falls asleep next to him.
***
Onto Part 3