(Untitled)

[youwereameteor]

He's been thinking about the Enterprise a lot lately. To say lately implies that he ever really stopped, which isn't true. At some point during the enedless Starfleet mentoring sessions, Pike had told Jim that it must be Hell to be married to the Captain of a Starship. He'd made a joke about his ex-wife and Jim hadn't really understood what he

Comments

[leftwithmybones]

"If you're thinking that's what you're captaining from now on, I'm sending you to the doc for a mental exam, Jim," McCoy jokes mildly as he comes down to sit beside Jim and gives the tiny ship a little poke with his finger. "Hard to believe it's been as long as it has been since I've been onboard."

[youwereameteor]

Jim gives his friend a flat look that quickly blossoms into a rueful smile. He shakes his head, closing his fingers around the model. He shakes his head and glances across.

"Feels like years sometimes, doesn't it?" he asks, lips pursing. "Chekov's gone."

[leftwithmybones]

"Is he?" McCoy mutters, shaking his head. "Well, shit," is all he gets out after a moment of thinking about the ramifications of that. "His girlfriend know?" For all his teasing and prodding and poking, the last thing he wants is for Cassie to hear about this offhand from someone else. He wants to break the news, if anyone has to.

[youwereameteor]

"I don't even know," he says, ducking his head, digging his heels deeper into the sand. "I don't think I've ever even met her." His lips purse. "Is this what it's going to be like, Bones? One by one?"

[howto_submit]

"Well, that's a sour look, if I've ever seen one," she said in a light, clipped voice, but there was an edge of curiosity, perhaps even sympathy, in her tone.

She sat beside him in the sand, her skirt a little long today but her hair tumbling loose, close but not touching. Never touching.

[youwereameteor]

"One of my...One of the guys from the Enterprise went home," says Jim, without looking up at her, still turning the Enterprise between his fingers. His jaw tightens. If asked, he probably couldn't put it into words - why it bothers him so much.

Something about Captains and starships.

[howto_submit]

"That seems to be happening a lot, lately," she said, the stiffness in her words, her posture, warring with the rare look of empathy that settled on her face.

"Was he a friend, or just a colleague?"

[youwereameteor]

"Is it?" says Jim, almost far away for a moment before he looks at her. He lifts one arm and drops it around her shoulders. He rarely waits for permission from her.

"He was a friend," he says, finally. "He was only seventeen."

[and_prosper]

Why Spock approaches, he can not effectively pinpoint. Even from a distance, even for someone like himself, still so far from fully comprehending the human experience, he can read the emotion sitting upon Jim like a billboard. Without inquiring as to the source, he knows that the ensuing conversation is likely to be discomfiting for himself.

Yet still, he goes. Perhaps he has been in the company of humans too long.

"Something has happened," he observes, peering down at Jim, hands clamped against the small of his back.

[youwereameteor]

"Something has happened," echoes Jim, without looking up. He finds it difficult, sometimes, to know how to talk to SPock, and then he remembers Spock, the other Spock, and the way he'd looked at him. I am, and have always been, your friend.

They most both have been very different people, for it to be that easy. He's not so arrogant to think that all of the problem is Spock.

"Chekov's gone, Spock," he says, quietly.

[and_prosper]

Little reaction registers externally; the twitch of one eyebrow, the slight purse of Spock's lips. He had not been much more than colleagues with Chekov, but, like Jim, the boy had shared the distinction of having been present during the defining moment of Spock's life.

He could not have expected to be so profoundly saddened by the idea of such a seemingly arbitrary loss.

"Ironic that of the four who remained, one of the two most comfortably established would go," he remarks, not knowing what else to possibly say about it.

[youwereameteor]

"You know, that thought had occured to me." Jim's silent for a long moment, turning the ship over between his fingers. Things have not always been easy between him and Spock but the fact remains: Jim has come to trust him more than almost anybody else on the island.

"What's the point, Spock?" he asks, looking down at the model, letting it hold his attention. "What's the point in building lives here if, one day, you're going to blink and it'll all be gone?"

[fear_no_words]

Uhura was of the grin-and-bear-it camp, more often than not. She strolled over to her would-be, baby-faced Captain in a bikini, a sarong wrapped around her hips and a small tote bag over one shoulder, with a plan in mind to lose herself in a book, in the environment, in anything but the double ache that sat in her chest.

Pavel had been her best friend on the Enterprise. They hadn't gotten that far on the island. She didn't know what was worse: losing him or feeling like she'd never had him.

"Did you make that?" she asked with genuine curiosity, and sat herself down on the sand beside him.

[youwereameteor]

It would be difficult not to be cheered up by the sight of Uhura in a bikini and Jim looks up for a long moment before he smiles, but it's barely a flicker before he looks away. He nods, turning the ship over between his fingers.

"For Spence, when we were dating."

[fear_no_words]

"You made that in two minutes?" she joked lightly, pushing herself through it. The thought of her captain married to anyone other than the ship was also a hard one to swallow, but something that caused much less grief than departed friends. And, she reminded herself, he wasn't really her captain. Not the same man at all.

"I didn't know you were a wood worker. Where'd you learn how to do that?"

[youwereameteor]

"Funny," he says, and he does actually find a genuine smile for her. He rubs his thumb over the curve of the little thing in his hand as he turns his head and looks at her.

"Sometimes, I think he loves the idea of it more than me." He sets it down on the sand between his feet. "When I was a kid. Not a lot else to learn to do in Riverside, Iowa, before you're old enough to cause trouble."