#burned out phasers

[isagrimorie]

Star Trek Voyager, 4x08 - Year of Hell, Part 1

Captain Kathryn Janeway as a Brilliant Tactician, part 1, 2, 3 (version 1) (version 2)

[ssweetleaf]

set phasers to stun.

summary: joel wants you to sit on his face— you think you’re far too heavy for something like that.

pairing: joel miller x fem!reader

includes: SMUT 18+, face sitting/cunnilingus, dom!joel, i wrote this with an age gap in mind, but it isn’t really specified so make it up girlies, a bit of spanking, slight insecure!reader, pet names (honey, girlie, baby, babygirl, sunshine) a tad of a daddy kink (i’m sorry, it’s me, what do you expect?)

a/n: sorry i’ve been gone again, i’m back in my pedro pascal phase and this just came out of nowhere lol. let me know what you think. dividers credit goes to @saradika-graphics <33

“Quit your whinin’ and sit the fuck down.”

You were hovering over Joel’s face, thighs twitching and burning from their position, careful not to bump any part of yourself into him— too scared to fully sit yourself upon his face like he had so desperately asked for earlier in the day.

“Joel— m’too heavy,” you muttered, cheeks heating, shifting your weight from knee to knee and hands on the headboard, knuckles whitening from your firm grip.

He lifted a big palm against the cheek of your ass in a sharp, searing slap, quelling your whirring thoughts for just a moment, the burn of his hand print thick and heavy upon the globe of your ass.

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” he growled, teeth clenched, eyes boring into yours from underneath you and you would’ve frowned at the sight of the protruding pudge of your belly when you looked down, but the constant smoothing of his callused hands against the soft rolls and swells of your body had you stifling it.

“Now listen here, honey,” he huffed, shifting his face to the side to press a few spongy kisses to the thickness of your thighs. “I ain’t gonna tell ya again.”

Joel was firm with his words, the low timbre shooting throughout your core and flooding your folds with a surge of arousal.

“Y’gonna take a seat, and y’gonna ride my fuckin’ face till I say you can stop, y’hear?”

“Joel, I—Ow!”

Another spank, on the other cheek this time, but just as hard, the print blooming in the shape of his calluses and the ring on his finger.

“Girlie.” The fond pet name was now a word of warning, almost daring you to disobey him. “Sit, now.”

You swallowed thickly, and with a shaky breath you lowered yourself down, easing onto his handsome face, the broad slope of his nose prominent against your slit, and you gasped at his deep inhale, breathing your scent deep into his lungs, almost savouring it before nudging your clit with the tip of his nose.

Your lashes fluttered, threatening to close once he mouthed a kiss to your pussy lips, teasingly sucking your folds into his eager mouth, careful to avoid your poor, puffy clit and keep you on edge.

“Look at this pretty cunt, hm?” he cooed, gruff and thick, muffled slightly from between your thighs and beneath your soft belly. “She’s been beggin’ for this, baby and you’ve been keeping her from me.”

His tongue peeked out from between his lips, swiping a long, fat stripe from your slick, fluttering hole, to the engorged jewel of your clit.

“Oh!” You whined, threading your fingers through his thick curls, tugging slightly once his lips enveloped your pearl, suckling it into his mouth, humming into your heat, the vibrations sending shockwaves throughout your cunt and you moaned out at the feeling. “Joel, fuck.”

He pulled back only slightly, brow raised and eyes dark and glistening— a big palm squeezed at the fat of your ass. A little warning.

“Language.” he clicked his tongue, turning to nuzzle into the thickness of your thigh, biting into it with dull molars and sharp canines, urging another wave of slick to surge your poor cunt.

“S-sorry!” You squeaked out, nails scratching against his scalp the way he liked as a little apology. “Keep going, please.”

You could feel his smirk against your flesh, tongue swiping at the marks he bit and sucked into the sensitive skin of your thighs.

“There she is,” he hummed, “now ya beggin’ for it, aren’t ya, baby? Knew you’d come around some time.”

Joel dove back into your cunt, lapping crudely at your hole, picking up silver strings of arousal on his tongue before lolling it over your peaked clit— smacking kisses to it, practically making out with your poor pussy whilst humming happily into your heat.

“Just needed some persuadin’, huh, sunshine?” he spoke into your pussy, voice muffled and barely legible through your hazy brain. “Just needed your ol’ man to eat this pretty pussy from down here, didn’t ya, babygirl?”

You cried out, nodding profusely at his filthy words and personification of your cunt, tears ebbing at your waterline and slowly easing over.

“Been havin’ so much trouble with my damn back— just layin’ here while you ride my face is so much better, sugar.”

Knowing your man wasn’t in pain, that his usual achy back and knees were quelled and sated by his current position, instead of the place he so often took between your legs with a hunched back and sore knees, had you relaxing somewhat.

‘Makin’ y’daddy a happy man, baby,” he groaned, fisting at the fat of your hips, leaving you tight and secure against his face. “fuckin’ dripping down my throat.”

You could feel the tightening in your belly, coiling throughout your insides, warming you up and leaving you panting, fisting at any part of him you could find.

“J-Joel,” you panted, chest heaving up and down, up and down, nails in his scalp, in his shoulder blades, even reaching behind you at his thighs. “so close.”

Your speech was clipped, lips stuttering and drool slipping from the corner of your mouth.

“Ah ah,” he shook his head, lips still suckling at your clit after every other word. “None of that, you ask for daddy’s permission— you know what to do.”

You whined again, long and drawn out, bucking your hips and huffing out— there was a warmth upon your cheeks that blossomed, creeping down your neck and teasing the tips of your ears, all shy now when asking your man to cum.

“Please, Joel,” you sighed out, thighs squeezing at his ears, clamping him tight underneath you. “can I cum? Pretty please?”

“Please, what?” He huffed, gruff and quick, tongue lolling and rolling over your spit-slick clit before thrusting the pink muscle into your quivering hole. “Ain’t got all day, hon.”

“Daddy— please, daddy! Need’a cum.”

“Atta girl, such nice manners— taught you good, baby girl. Cum f’me.”

[love0nstrike]

☆彡He’s a D*ck, So She’s Tess?

Bill Dickey x Reader

Summary: A new girl transfers to Eltingville high and Bill writes her off as another bimbo who’ll hardly look at him. Until he spots her Dick Tracy comics. He’s in over his head after that.

TW: literally all kinds of misogyny. This is Bill Dickey we’re talking about. I might’ve made him a little nicer than usual, but that's just because I think if he was ever with a girl he had a real chance with he’d be too shocked to actually be an asshole. At first at least.

“Captain, are you alright?” buzzed a serene voice from Bill’s radio.

He set his phaser rifle down and sends a transmission over, “I’m alright, sweetheart. I’ve always got things under control.”

He puts a hand above his eyes as he surveys the area. He had just landed on an unknown planet with his crew of bombshell broads. The power cell on his phaser rifle was fully charged and he still had some kiss marks from the crew.

He was ready to conquer any potential threats.

The ground beneath him was hot and sand-like, but firm enough to act like gravel. There wasn’t much he knew about this strange planet. The sun was much stronger out here, and it was evident on the ridiculous amount of sweat that had begun accumulating on him. These damn Starfleet uniforms weren’t made for this kind of weather. Fighting against the glare of the sun, he squinted for some sort of sign of life.

He had been wandering for quite a while, and yet he hadn’t seen a single moving thing beyond the particles of sand he kicked as he walked. Sick of the overbearing weather, he sighs and gets ready to head back.

Until he spots it. Not too far in the distance is a figure. Immediately back on alert, he lifts his rifle and stomps toward it. The form gets clearer, but the shine of the sun prohibits him from seeing much.

It was a girl, that much he could make out. Oh.

It’s a girl.

A smirk immediately plasters itself on his face as he holsters his rifle and confidently walks forward. He would never miss an opportunity to add another fine woman to his ship.

When he feels close enough he puts his hands on his hips, “Need any help, princess?”.

The figure stays quiet. He puts a hand above his eyes in an attempt to shield the sun. He still can’t fully see her and it’s really starting to get on his nerves. Part of her ankle comes into view, which is enough to satiate his impatience, for now.

He could tell that she was wearing a loose dress. What kind, specifically? How was he to know? He didn’t care for that girly bullshit. It was short enough for him to see her beautiful legs. While his eyes hungrily raked over them, he noticed that she wasn't wearing any shoes either.

“What the hell?” he muttered, furrowing his brows. He motioned toward her feet with his hand, “how aren’t you fucking melting out here?”.

As if at the mention of it, he suddenly realized just how hot he had gotten. His sweat was leaving pools in his uniform and he felt much, much weaker. His vision wavered as he tried to keep his balance. He looked back up at her but the figure was gone. Before he could search for her, the alarm on his ship started to blare. His head shot up and turned to see the emergency lights shining. He reached for his radio but it was gone.

It was then that he realized just how close the sun had gotten. Way too close. And way too fast. And somehow it was getting even closer. Fuck. He abandoned any visions he had for the girl. She was probably ugly anyways. He had more than enough women to keep him company onboard. He realized if he wanted to keep his crew and his life, he needed to head back immediately.

He dropped his rifle and ran for his life. The sun was moving impossibly closer and his skin felt like it was burning up. As he neared the ship, his heart dropped at the sound of the engine starting. It was going to lift off without him!

Had even his beautiful crew decided to abandon him?

His despair was interrupted at the sight of the figure from earlier. The girl was alive. And on his ship.

She stood on the edge, holding her hand out. Bill could hardly breathe as the sun overtook half the sky and his skin ached. Yet, he kept running. He would be damned if he let his ship of beauties leave him to die like this.

As he neared the ship, he heard the girl scream at him to jump and it gave him one last kick of energy. As the ship lifted, it kicked up a flurry of sand that blinded him. Moving blindly, he jumped forward as she caught his hand. She held onto him as the spaceship lifted and he dangled by one hand. He looked down as the planet below him burst into a grand ball of flames. The flames seemed to get closer and closer and closer till—

He woke with a start.

Panting and sweaty, his eyes were wide open. He immediately groaned and threw his hand across his face. The sun was beating down on his face through his curtains, and he felt like he was back in his dream. Another stupid dream about imaginary women, and this time he doesn’t even get to see the damn broad. He can even still hear the stupid alarm. Wait. Alarm? Christ, it’s his alarm. He furiously rubs his eyes and sighs. If he’s tardy again, that’s his 4th absence of the month. He’ll get another call from the attendance office and his bitch mom will ground him right on time for the Star Trek marathon on Friday.

He quickly rose, staggering toward his drawer. No brushing or washing today, not like he cared for it usually. He shoved the first shit he could find on and walked to the bathroom. His clock glowing an angry red as he walked past. 7:30. Fuck, not even enough time for a morning sesh. He shoved his porn mag to the side and walked right up to the sink. Splashing cold water on his face, he ran his hand through his hair. Eh, good enough. He slipped his bag on and hurried out the door. What a shitty start to the day.

—----------------------------------

There was one thing he would never get over. He was on his 4th year of high school and there was one question he could never answer. Why was everyone so fucking loud in the morning?

A pack of stupid broads in the corner, laughing and huddled together, throwing glares at the rest of the class. The nerdy, but boring freaks at the front. The sounds of zippers and books slamming as they prepped for class unusually early. Try-hards. Deep laughs hit like nails on a chalkboard in front of him as he watched the meathead jocks shadow box each other and leave a whiff of axe body spray as they moved. At the very front sat his old hag of a teacher who was probably too close to a retirement home to hear a damn thing anymore.

He sighed, trying to look away. Sat in his usual seat, it felt like he never woke up as the bright sun hit him right in the eyes as he turned. He dropped his head into the safety of his arms. Between the usual chatter and the blinding light, he felt like his head would explode. So caught up in feeling like shit, he hardly noticed the new silence.

Shifting in his now unusually loud seat, he finally caught up to reality. Slowly lifting his head, his eyes followed the still class to the front of the room.

There was a girl.

With the glare of the sun, he could hardly see more than her outline. He shoved his hand up like a shield, and finally, he saw her clearly.

Had he died and gone to Valhalla?

Surely, he died in his valiant dedication to fandom and was finally being rewarded for his efforts. With a heavenly glow surrounding her, there stood the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. His eyes raked her top to bottom, from her shining eyes to her shifting feet. Christ, she was a wet dream reincarnated.

As his jaw hung slightly open and his eyes stayed glued to her form, he finally noticed his teacher motion her forwards. There was movement from the girl’s beautiful lips. Only it was too late. He had no idea what she said and she was walking right toward him. He forced his jaw to close and stood up in his seat slightly. Don’t wanna look like a pussy. He gulped as she got clearer and prettier. There was an empty seat next to him and he was certain she was gonna take it.

Visions overtook him of suavely talking her over as she laid her head on her hand, looking at him with the most desperate fuck-me eyes.

He’d hand her a pencil, maybe an eraser too. She’d flutter her lashes at him and laugh at his jokes. She’d put her hand on his shoulder as she laughed and she’d follow him as class ended right to the band room. He didn’t even take band, but he heard from Josh that kids got up to some freaky shit in the closets over there. He’d undress her slowly and– Nope, can’t think that far right now. Think of something else.

As his hopes soared, they were smashed into the fucking ground with the force of Mjölnir as she turned left. Oh, Fuck off. The stupid popular bitches were waving right at her, motioning her towards them. Just like that, he knew it was over. He felt like the world's biggest moron. Every bitch is the same, he knew it. He dropped his head in his hands again. It was going to be a long morning.

The bell brutally tore him from his nap and he immediately scrambled to get out. He speed walked toward the bathrooms, aching to get his one moment of peace going over Pete’s "Sci-fi’s Hottest Whores" scrapbook he made with magazines he stole from the supermarket. Obviously, hanging out by the bathrooms that had an air of shit from the broken plumbing wasn’t his favorite, but it was the club’s only safehaven from bullies. He felt his tense shoulders relax as the club came into sight. As he nodded towards the boys and set his bag down, Jerry asked him how he was doing.

Bill groaned and his eyes narrowed. Jerry immediately regretted asking, but Bill already began his (first) rant of the day as he opened his leaky lunch bag. The club all brought their own lunches to school. They knew better than to go to the lunchline, where they’d get robbed before they even got a glimpse of the food.

Bill ate and spoke at the same time, dropping crumbs everywhere. As he got to the part where he saw the new girl, he set his sandwich down and paused his messy bites. “I’m telling you, she was the most beautiful bitch I’ve ever laid eyes on. I almost bent her over my desk and took her right there,” he grumbled as Pete raised an eyebrow and smirked.

Bill sighed and looked down, “For a second, she looked just like the girl in my dreams. I really thought I had a good premonition going on there.”

Josh was scarfing down his mom’s meatloaf, not entirely interested in the conversation. “So?” he muttered through his mouth full of food.

Bill slammed his hand down as he continued, “She was walking right to me! Till the stupid cheer whores motioned her over. And of course, she took the bait. Just like that, the love of my life is gone.”

Pete rubbed his hands along his knees, ”She might not be yours, but if she’s that hot she might be mine. Send her my way, ya’?” he smirked.

Bill sent him a deep glare, “Over my dead body. She won’t want your shrimp dick, freak.”

Josh laughed, again with his mouth full, “Like she’d want yours. She’d need to be Bionic-1 to see a thing on you.”

Jerry sighed, “She won’t want any of ours if she joins cheer. She’s gonna get passed around the jocks like a football.” He fumbled through his magic cards, trying to sort his sliver deck. He was half listening to the conversation, too distracted by the task in front of him.

Bill kicked the cards right out of his hands, “Don’t say some shit like that around me. You got a cuck fetish or something?” he sneered.

Jerry scrambled to pick up his cards, now definitely too distracted to listen to the conversation. Bill hardly had an appetite after that, realizing how right Jerry might be. He shoved his sandwich down his bag and wiped his hands on his pants. He took Pete’s scrapbook from Josh’s hands, “Gimme that. Like you can see it over your fat fupa,” he grumbled. Josh protested for it back but it fell on deaf ears.

______________________________

He hadn’t thought about her again for the rest of the school day. Once he was free from hell, anything school related trickled right out of his mind. He was walking out the main gate with the club, arguing about the X-Men Age of Apocalypse comic that made a totally bullshit turn in his opinion. His day had seemed to finally even out.

With a gentle breeze flowing through the trees and his jacket tied around his waist, he felt much lighter in the moment. The clumsy steps of the group against the pavement was all he could hear as he passionately continued his rant. He had just finished slapping Jerry across the head and cackling with Pete when a movement in front of him caught his eye.

He almost bit down on his tongue as he realized who it was. He felt a sudden lump in his throat and didn’t even notice the pause in his steps till the rest of the group were a few feet ahead of him.

It was her. She was walking in the opposite direction as the group, straight toward them. He stood in the middle of the path and anyone with an ounce of awareness in the moment would notice that he was in her way. Luckily, he was the dumbest motherfucker in the world at the moment. He failed to move out of the collision course and her gaze was too busy with her bag as she fumbled to get something out.

She rammed right into him and they fell with a thud.

He took note of her heavenly scent before anything else. It was almost good enough to distract him from how much of a fool he had just made out of himself. He didn’t have much time to ponder over it though, as he sat up on his knees and noticed her bag’s contents littered along the ground. His eyes lazily raked over the pile in his daze.

Until he spotted it.

If he was dazed before, he felt on the verge of a stroke now. His blood rushed to his head and his heart thundered like it would burst out of his chest. He started breathing manually as he felt himself break out in a cold sweat. His hands fumbled at his sides in a desperate attempt to ground himself.

Comics. Not just any comics. Not the stupid, girly romance kind. Dick Tracy comics. It didn’t take a detective to realize what that meant. As if his body was moving on its own, his hands shakily picked up the comics and he turned toward her.

The angel rubbed her shoulder as she looked up at him with a small smile on her shiny lips. Her eyes were soft and glittered as she looked at him. At least he thought so.

“I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking at all,” she said sheepishly.

Her voice felt like warm honey and the light seeping through the trees enveloped her in a beautiful glowing frame. Her head tilted and he felt as if he could see the gears turn in her mind. “We have a class together, right? I remember you,” she said with a smile.

At his newfound discovery that he had just gone mute, she continued. “I remember you because of your Magik shirt, I think you’ve got good taste.” His mind short circuited as he looked down. He had no memory of even picking it out this morning and it was slightly stained… wait, how did she know who Magik was?

He felt like he was going to pass out and struggled to find his voice. It cracked as he choked the question out, “Are these yours?” he questioned as he held out the comics. Her eyes widened and she quickly reached out for them.

“Oh fuck, yeah, those are mine. Hope I didn’t scratch them up, they were in mint condition when I got them,” she said as she squinted and flipped them around to inspect them.

And he was a goner.

He smiled at her. A real, albeit shy, smile. Maybe he had never woken from his dream after all.

Still in amazement, his thoughts stumbled out of his upturned lips, “You’re heavy.” She tilted her head at him with a blank expression. Oh. Wait, fuck. “I. I meant your bag. It looks heavy. Ya need help?” he stammered as his face burned.

She smiled softly and nodded “Yeah, thanks.” She dusted her knees as she rose, “so, you like Dick Tracy too?” she asked.

He nodded, suddenly growing uncharacteristically shy. Fuck. How the hell do you talk to girls? He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants as he rushed to pick up the rest of her things. It was the only thing he could think to do as his mind scrambled to think of a pick-up line. Should he tell her he had a 10 pack of condoms ready if she could handle it? He wiped the thought from his mind, he didn’t even know where to get condoms or how they worked. Although, obviously she liked him if she was keeping up a conversation with him for this long. Maybe it was worth looking into. He hurriedly stuffed her things back in her bag before putting it on. Was he seriously gonna carry a girl’s bag for her? He looked up, ready to protest.

His words died on his tongue when she held her hand out and smiled at him. Christ, l need to see her in some erotic cosplay. As his shaky hand touched hers, he felt like he was born again. Her soft skin made his heart throb and he felt like he just came down with a fever. I’m touching a real life girl. His knees felt weak as he attempted to rise. Any issue he had with carrying her bag was gone.

He’d kick a kid into oncoming traffic if she asked, as long as she’d keep touching him like that.

____________________________

Unbeknownst to Bill, his friends stood frozen in place a few feet away. The club was too shocked to do anything but watch. A cold, eerie feeling washed over them all. A girl being nice to Bill. And Bill being nice to a girl. They’ve got to be in hell. The world has to be ending. Someone’s gotta call the fucking police.

“What the fuck,” muttered Pete.

Jerry stood slack jawed and Josh hadn’t even noticed he dropped his brand new Superboy comic.

A cold breeze carried their silence. Yet, Bill had never felt warmer.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW TO DESTROY A BLACK HOLE??

Blog#460

Saturday, December 7th, 2024

Welcome back,

Black holes want to absorb all matter and energy in the Universe. It’s just a matter of time. So what can we do to fight back? What superweapons have been devised to destroy black holes?

Black holes are the natural enemies of all spacefaring races. With their bottomless capacity to consume all light and matter, it’s just a few septillion years before all things in the Universe have found their way into the cavernous maw of a black hole, crushed into the infinitely dense singularity. If Star Trek has taught us anything, it’s that it’s mankind’s imperative to survive against all odds.

So will we take this lying down?

Heck no!

Will we strike first and destroy the black holes before they destroy us?

Heck yes!

But how? How could you kill a black hole?

This… gets a little tricky.

For a black hole, any matter entering the event horizon is added to the mass. Shoot bullets at a black hole, and you just make a slightly more massive, slightly more dangerous black hole. Detonate a nuclear bomb inside the event horizon, and you only make the black hole more massive.

Fire your forward phasers at the black hole, and that’ll still make it even more massive. Swap those bullets in for lasers and black holes don’t care. Within the event horizon, energy and matter are one, and those very same black holes can convert that energy into mass. So all your projectiles and energy weapons inevitably just make it more dangerous.

What if we crashed a star into it? Would that fill it up, or burn it out? Nope. It would just gobble that star up, and go on with its business. If we smashed another black hole into it? Would that tear it apart? The cause is also the cure? Not even maybe. As soon as black holes get within each other’s event horizons, they’ll just merge into a more massive, and even nastier, meaner black hole.

Number 1, it’s time to bring out the big guns. Reverse the particle flow, flood the dilithium chamber with exotic particles and route it through the main deflector dish, and construct your own black hole out of antimatter. Then kamikaze this new antimatter black hole right into a the black hole you want to destroy. Would that do it? Would that solve our problem?

As you probably know, when you crash matter into antimatter, you get an explosion of pure energy. It’s the most perfect energy weapon we can envision. Unsurprisingly, this brings its own set of complications. It’s not entirely clear you’ve still have antimatter in your antimatter black hole. It’s possibly been converted into a regular flavour black hole.

Still, if you *could* crash an antimatter and regular matter black hole together, you would get an incomprehensible explosion. Converting that entire dense and gigantic mass into pure energy, as calculated by Einstein. As soon as you did, all that energy would be immediately converted… into more black hole.

Nothing, not even light itself can escape a black hole. That includes all your magnificent explosion energy from your antimatter impact. You wouldn’t even see it happen. You’d just end up with a black hole with twice the mass. And that might be just what it wants.

As we learned in a previous episode, we can extract angular momentum from a black hole. By dropping material into the event horizon, we can remove energy and slow its rotation. We can even bring it to a stop. So we can slow down its spin, but that won’t make it go away.

So, is that it, are we out of options? Good news, we have one last strategy, and it’s so crazy it just might work. According to Stephen Hawking, black holes can actually evaporate over enormous periods of time.

Virtual pairs of particles are constantly popping into existence all around us. Then they recombine in a flash and disappear from the Universe. When one of these particle pairs appears right on the edge of a black hole, one particle falls into the black hole, and the other is free to fly off into space. And here’s the amazing thing. This might actually reduce the overall mass of the black hole.

So, over an incomprehensible period of time, even the most supermassive of the black holes will have evaporated away into a harmless soup of particles. It turns out, in order to defeat the black hole menace, all we need to do is ignore them, and they’ll go away all on their own.

Originally published on https://www.universetoday.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, December 11th, 2024)

"HOW ARE BLACK HOLES CREATED, AND HOW DO THEY GROW??"

[patches-and-potions]

anyone want to hear about my cursed timeline Kate AU where the Daleks invade Earth and everything is fucked? Kind of jumping off from my previous post about a nuwho take on Inferno (3+Liz era story)

no? Too bad.

The world:

Earth, circa ‘73, the Daleks invaded and turned the entirety of the human population into a labor force, turning Earth into a construction planet for their galaxy-conquering weapons and ships, the Doctor was killed/imprisoned on Gallifrey in the War Games instead of being banished to Earth

Around ‘97, the Daleks find a better planet, abandoning Earth after killing nearly 6 billion people. Earth is left a dystopian hell world, new unstable governments popping up all the time and prominent gangs controlling what’s left of the continent (the Daleks recreated Pangea for more convenient world domination, the tectonic shift is was originally killed half the world’s population.)

UNIT is reformed in response to people finding out how to utilize leftover Dalek tech to build weapons and dangerous equipment, which has led to more gang warfare. Unfortunately, it lacks the strength and resources it once had, so has begun to rely on shady tactics to gain power. There is constantly fighting in the ranks, and it becomes known for being the most vicious and power hungry gang of them all

Kate:

Katherine Lethbridge-Stewart, better known to her subordinates as Erin Lethbridge-Stewart. She kept her father’s name from the beginning of her career to legitimize her claim to UNIT leadership. She goes by Erin because it’s not as friendly-sounding as Kate, nor as long as Katherine. (sorry Erins of the world for calling your name unfriendly. I have my reasons for disliking the name but I shan’t overshare on Tumblr. Not today, anyways)

Erin is known as a harsh, authoritarian commander, who rules with a repertoire of cruel discipline and zero second chances, even for her closest friends. Hair-trigger temper, do not piss this woman off if you value your life. She’s long since sacrificed her morals to keep her authority, in a twisted idea of protecting her loved ones. Essentially canon!Kate if she let the Shreek eat Conrad instead of just biting him

She despises aliens, and has a shoot on sight rule for any non-human beings that get too close to UNIT HQ. That being said, she despises the Doctor most of all. Alistair raised her with the hope that the Doctor would come and save them, but seeing as that never happened, her resentment became hatred and disgust

She’s also not dissimilar to the Rani, and UNIT does have many unethical experimentation programs led by Erin herself. Her new goal is to enhance humanity’s defenses and the human body itself, in case of another alien invasion

Really messy doodle of how I imagine her looking (done digitally how exciting)

Her hair is her natural chestnut-ish brown, and is visibly greying in streaks. Ponytail because I think it’s cute, for her it’s easier to keep out of her face. She’s a bit too vain to chop it shorter than her chin even though she could totally pull off a pixie cut

Obviously she has glasses I’m a woman of taste. She’s tried several times to perform laser eye surgery on herself but she always immediately strains them before she can recover, so she’s permanently fucked up her eyesight

Human technology kind of stagnated and progressed at the same time in a paradoxical sort of way, which is why UNIT still wears their old green uniforms (also it’s a damn shame we never see canon!Kate in a UNIT beret and fatigues)

Vampire pale due to stress, both mentally and due to her constantly putting her body through experiments to see how much of the human genome she can tweak before it starts shutting down

She has a massive burn scar over her stomach from a repurposed-by-human-gangs Dalek phaser. It shot a hole through her and she has serious PTSD. She is easily triggered by sudden bright lights because of it

Up to viewer interpretation if it’s a mole or a piercing on her upper lip. Personally I am a got-a-tongue-piercing-in-uni-that-she-regrets-but-still-kept Kate truther, do with that as you will

(also if anyone is interested, I’m taking the advice of a friend and might start writing x reader fics for Kate. My asks and dms are always open for requests. I haven’t made a rules/limits post yet so just ask if you’re unsure! <3 Might dust off my AO3 account as well)

[edupunkn00b]

The Space Between Thunder and Light

Stranded on a derelict ship on the very edge of the galaxy, at least Logan and Janus have each other.

Written for @pas-de-duex as part of @tss-camp-and-coffee's Camp Cartoon event. Prompt: Loceit in space. WC: 1655 - Rated: G - CW: Peril, mentions of blood and injuries, happy ending - My other Camp stories

“And what is on the menu for tonight's dinner, garçon??" Janus asked, accepting the insulated cup Logan offered him with a grateful nod. He sniffed at the steam pouring off the top and poked dubiously at the contents.

Logan chuckled. “I decided to go with the dark grey slop as a complement to this morning’s light grey slop,” he said, slipping beside him in the oversized navigator's chair.

“Mm, slop. My favorite,” Janus muttered before digging in. He scooped up a spoonful and blew on it briefly before popping it in his mouth. The risk of minor burns was worth the reduction in taste and smell at higher temperatures. He ate another spoonful and rested his head on Logan’s shoulder. “Thank you for dinner,” he said, eyes again trained on the console before them.

“You’ve always told me how much you enjoy these exclusive, off-the-beaten path venues,” he deadpanned, stirring his nutritional substrate as he looked out at the fuzzy star scape.

Janus laughed and took another bite. The console beeped and he shot forward, spoon still in his mouth.

Logan held his breath and watched his husband’s fingers fly across the controls. His eyeglasses had broken eight weeks ago, giving him little choice but to leave the finer gauges in Janus' more than apt hands.

He tapped at the screen for a bit then sat back, shaking his head. “False alarm,” he murmured, scraping up the last of his meal.

“Have we had many while I was working on the engines?” He frowned down at his own cup and dutifully scooped up another bite.

“A few,” Janus murmured. “Our proximity to the Kuiper belt is throwing a lot of flotsam in our orbit.” He stabbed at the controls before returning to his spot curled against Logan’s side. “I just hope our beacon doesn’t look like more of that flotsam to passing ships.”

One arm wrapped around Janus’ shoulders, Logan nodded. “One can hope.”

~

The ship's klaxon roused both of them. Logan was first to fling back the reflective blanket off their shared bunk. Logan was first to reach the console.

Logan was first to see the blast.

The vidscreen went white, then died. Phaser energy peaking the sensors and controls, their ship sat blind before it was rocked by the blast several seconds later.

“What the hell—“” Ship listing hard to port, Janus steadied himself on the back of a chair. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Logan muttered, poking at the console. He flipped switches back and forth, attempting a hard reboot. His hands knew these controls, so the crude task didn't require much from his eyes. Giving up on the interface, he dropped to the floor and pulled off the panel beneath. “Hand me a—”

The ship jerked again and sparks sprayed millimeters from his face.

“Lo!” Janus dragged him out but Logan batted his hands away.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, reaching deeper into the access hatch. “Hand me a coupler, will you?”

Janus hurried to find the multi-pronged tool and place it in his waiting palm. He smiled, briefly, when Logan squeezed his hand.

“We shall get through this,” he promised before returning to swearing under his breath at every jolt of the deck.

“I know,” Janus purred. “We have to so you can gloat about how you fixed the ship blindfo—“”

Another blast struck the ship and Janus flew back. The cold deck rushed up to catch his fall.

~

A buzzy whine filled Janus’ hearing and the whole world had gone sideways. He tried and failed to blink away the fuzziness before him, reaching up to scrub his eyes. His hand came away cold and wet.

And red.

“Lo?” he called. His throat was raw and he could barely hear his own voice past the roaring in his ears. Wedging his hands beneath his shoulders, he pushed up off the ship’s deck. He’d landed in the corridor, half-way to their sleeping quarters.

And Logan was nowhere to be seen. “Lo?” he called again, the word scraping its way out past his lips. He managed to get his feet under himself but just as soon dropped to hands and knees, gagging.

It wasn’t fuzziness obscuring his vision but thick, noxious smoke filling the air. Finally, the acrid, choking scent of burning insulation reached his brain. “Lo! Lo, where are you?” he shouted between coughs. Crawling on hands and knees, he zig-zagged over the warming deck, feeling for Logan’s hand, his leg, his anything. “Lo! We have to—“” He choked, gasping for air even as he continued his search. “We have to evac—“

Janus’ hand had just closed on Logan’s sleeve when the tearing, scraping sound of metal on metal cut through the air. Atmosphere squealed through the breach, popping his ears. Janus closed his eyes and forced himself to exhale normally. Decompression of up to 90 seconds while the emergency systems kicked in would be painful but survivable, if he was ready for it. Fighting to hold his breath while he waited for the shields to engage would do him no favors.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand

“Lo…” Lips and tongue formed his love’s name as the vacuum of space stole the oxygen from his lungs, from his blood. “Lo, I’m here…” His vision had blackened at the edges but with the smoke sucked out with the rest of their atmosphere, he could see enough to determine Logan was blessedly unconscious and unaware.

Six-one-thousand, seven-thousand, eight-one-thousand

His mind wouldn’t even let himself consider Logan might be worse than merely knocked out.

‘Leven-one-thousand, twelve-one-thousand, thirteen-thousand

“Lo, hang on…” Grip tight on his sleeve, Janus drug himself across the deck to lay across his chest.

Twenty-thousand, twent’-one-thousand, twent’-two-thousand

“Lo, I’m here…” His mouth wasn’t moving anymore but since when did he need to speak for Logan to hear him? “Hang on, Lo… Almost there…”

~

“Lo!” Janus shot up, eyes wide and blind in the glare. His head banged against something hard and he fell back against the soft surface beneath him, hand to forehead. “Fuck,” he muttered, a fresh ache shooting through his skull. “Lo?” he called when the rest of his senses caught up with him and he realized he was, once again, breathing in big lungfuls of recycled air. Every breath burned, so he couldn’t’ve been out for that long.

But he’d been out long enough for someone to have taken him from Logan’s side. And that was long enough. “Lo!” he tried again. “Logan!”

Pushing at the blankets draped over his body, he listened for a response. Bright white halos danced over his vision, obscuring everything but the dull grey hull and bunks surrounding him.

And utter, complete lack of Logan.

He’d thoroughly tangled his legs in the blanket and its tight, efficient weave had little give. Abandoning his first attempts, he tucked his arms close and rolled off the bunk. He landed hard on the deck below and lay there, stunned and panting, as he listened to the sound of the engine beneath him.

They were moving. Fast.

Between the breach and the dead engines, he didn’t need the unfamiliar bunks to know he wasn’t on their ship. The only real question was whether they’d been rescued.

Or captured.

He needed to find Logan now. The fall had managed to dislodge most of his confinement and he kicked to work his feet free. A wave of nausea slowed him and the dull, deep ache of decompression sickness left sprinkles of cold sweat over his skin. After taking a short rest, he breathed into the ache and struggled with the last clinging strip.

Janus wasn’t confined and someone had gone to great lengths to change his clothes, to bandage his head and his hands. Logan had to be somewhere on this new ship. He just had to find him. He would find him.

He wouldn’t allow himself to consider any other possibility.

Janus had just pushed up onto his hands and knees when the door slid open.

“Jay!”

Logan’s worried voice broke the dam of his denial and Janus could hardly see past the tears filling his eyes. “Lo,” he managed one more time before a sob stole his words. Logan dropped to his knees and helped him half-sit, half lay against his chest.

“I was afraid—” Janus clung to him, fisting his hands in the loose, soft overalls he was dressed in.

Logan rocked him, lanky, family arms drawing him close. “I was, too,” he whispered when Janus’ sobs eased. “You were…” Logan swallowed hard. Janus gripped him tighter. “The medic had begun to… prepare me when you finally started breathing again.”

“How long…” Janus pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. They shone behind his new lenses, glossy and red-rimmed.

“You’ve been out a week,” he said. The shadows under his eyes told Janus how little he must have slept in that time. “The Captain had just convinced me to report for my own exam when, well…” He huffed out a laugh that sounded too much like a sob for Janus to find it comforting. “When you woke.”

“Well, of course,” Janus tried to smile. “You’d abandoned me to my own devices on a strange ship.”

This time Logan’s breathy chuckle was real.

“A watched gauge never moves?” Logan began.

Janus curled close, face buried in his chest. “But step away and your warp core will breach.”

Humming softly, Logan nodded and stroked his hair. “We appear to have proven the adage twice over.”

As if on queue, the engines shifted, their low whine dropping down a quarter note. “You said Captain?” He looked up and tapped Logan’s new frames. “Is that who I have to thank for these?”

“We can go meet him and the rest of the crew when you’re ready. And, yes…” Logan smiled down at him, head tilted adorably. “Do you like them?”

“Meh,” Janus shrugged, his laughter swallowed by Logan’s soft kiss.

[anonymousewrites]

Logos and Pathos (Book 4) Chapter Ten

TOS! Spock x Empath! Spouse! Reader

Chapter Ten: Genesis Experiment

Summary: Khan's plans go into motion, but the Enterprise crew isn't done yet.

            “You have done well,” said Khan to Terell.

            “I knew it! You son of a bitch!” said David, anger burning.

            He lunged, and Saavik tackled him as Terell fired. The phaser fire hit the last man, disintegrating him. Khan’s eyes widened, and he stepped forward toward David and Saavik on the ground.

            “Don’t move! Anybody!” said Terell.

            “Captain? We are waiting,” said Khan. “What’s the delay?”

            (Y/N) shifted their weight slightly. If they got an opportunity…they’d stop this.

            “All is well, sir,” said Terell. “You have the coordinates to beam up Genesis.”

            “First things first, Captain.” Khan gave a long-suffering sigh at the “incompetency” of Starfleet officers. “Kill Admiral Kirk and Commander (Y/N).”

            “Sir…I try to obey…but…” Terell couldn’t get the words out. His mind and heart were at war.

            Chekov’s hands shook, and he gripped the phaser tightly. He desperately wanted to stop; he didn’t want to hurt his friends. Terell shakily held his phaser.

            “Kill them!” ordered Khan, and Chekov and Terell flinched.

The momentary distraction was all that was needed. (Y/N) lunged.

            “(L/N)!” shouted Kirk.

            (Y/N) hands clasped Terell and Chekov’s wrists. They grabbed onto their fear and pulled. Utter terror shocked through them, and Terell and Chekov cried out. Chekov’s grip on his phaser faltered, and (Y/N) pulled it away.

            As they let go of Terell to do so, he fumbled for his phaser, but Kirk tackled him, grappling him.

            “Kill them!” shouted Khan as he heard the fighting.

            Terell held the phaser up, and Kirk held him back while (Y/N)’s empathic abilities kept Chekov from completing his “mission.” Terell pushed down towards Kirk, and Kirk fought back valiantly. However, Terell’s eyes widened, and, fighting against himself, he turned the phaser around. He closed his eyes and fired.

            Terell disintegrated, leaving Kirk free. Abruptly, pain took over Chekov’s mind as Khan took control of the parasite. It screeched within Chekov’s head, and he screamed, falling to his knees.

            “Bones!” said (Y/N), using all their power to subdue the extreme shock of pain Chekov was enduring.

            Bones scanned Chekov. “The parasite is still in him!”

            “Then I’m going to scare it out,” said (Y/N) decisively. Touching Chekov’s arms, they focused on the entire body before them—parasite and all, and forced more fear in. Chekov jerked, going unconscious as blood dripped from his ear.

            “My god,” said Bones as an insect wiggled out.

            Kirk raised his phaser and fired on it. The parasite disintegrated. Kirk let out a breath, and Bones’s shoulders relaxed slightly. (Y/N) felt Chekov’s pain subside slightly and let go.

            Their eyes narrowed, and they grabbed the small communicator Terell had held and dropped in his death. “Khan,” they said.

            Kirk and Bones exchanged looks as they spoke. Saavik furrowed her brow.

            “If you want us dead, do it yourself!” snapped (Y/N). “Do you hear me?”

            “You’re still alive,” said Khan. Once again, (Y/N) and their empathy had defeated his plans.

            “You keep missing your targets,” hissed (Y/N). “Next time you try, you better succeed or the cost is going to be your life.”

            Khan was silent for a moment. “Perhaps I no longer need to try.”

            In front of them, the Genesis machine shimmered as it dematerialized. Khan was stealing it as they spoke.

            “Oh, no,” said Kirk.

            “No!” David moved forward, but Carol grabbed him and held him back. “Let go! He can’t take it!” It was too late.

            “Khan,” said Kirk, stepping up next to (Y/N). “Khan, you’ve got Genesis, but you don’t have us. You’re going to kill us, aren’t you? You’re going to have to come down here.”

            “I’ve done far worse than kill you,” said Khan. “I’ve hurt you…and I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet. Buried alive.”

            “And then we’ll survive and return to defeat you,” said (Y/N), completely calm and absolutely certain.

            “No. You’ll die.” The communications cut off.

l

            “This is Lieutenant Saavik calling the Enterprise. Can you read us?”

            An hour later, the group on Regula I’s situation seemed as Khan said. Chekov lay recovering on a cot. Saavik was attempting communication. Kirk was pacing. David and Carol Marcus stood to the side worriedly, and (Y/N) was thinking intently.

            “He’s coming around,” said Bones, tending to Chekov.

            “Pavel, can you hear us?” sai Kirk, kneeling down. (Y/N) joined the group.

            “Admiral, it’s no use. They’re jamming all channels,” said Saavik.

            “If Enterprise followed orders, she’s long since gone,” said Bones. “If she didn’t obey, she’s finished.”

            Spock, please have left…Be safe, thought (Y/N), focusing on the marriage bond. They were thankful as they felt it still alive. “They’re alive. I can feel it.”

            “But for how long?” said Bones grimly.

            “I don’t understand,” said Carol. “Who is responsible for all this? Who is Khan?”

            “Well, it’s a long story,” sighed Kirk.

            “We appear to have plenty of time,” said David.

            Kirk lowered his gaze. He wasn’t sure how to begin.

            “We found a ship of cryogenically frozen men and women,” said (Y/N). “Upon boarding it, the captain woke up.”

            “Khan,” said David.

            “Yes,” said (Y/N). “He studied our ship quickly, and, once we learned his true identity as a dictator during the Eugenics War on earth, he awoke his crew and attacked. We barely defeated him. He wanted to create his own society, and so we gave him a chance to have his own life where he couldn’t hurt anyone. At least, we thought so. Apparently, the planet died while he lived there, and he blames us for his hardships since his defeat. He is a cruel, vengeful man. He is strong and intelligent. The fact we are still alive is the only advantage we have. We have to use it.”

            “…Do we have anything to eat?” Kirk spoke. “I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m starved.”

            “How can you think of food at a time like this?” exclaimed Bones.

            “First order of business, survival,” said Kirk. “As (L/N) said, we can’t find a way to get away and defeat Khan if we’re dead.”

            “There’s food in the Genesis cave,” said Carol, smiling slightly. “Enough to last a lifetime, if necessary.”

            “We thought that machine was Genesis,” said Bones, frowning.

            “This?” Carol looked at the lab and scoffed. “It took the Starfleet Corps of Engineers ten months in spacesuits to tunnel out all of this. What we did in the cave we did in a day. David, why don’t you show the Commander, Doctor, and Lieutenant our idea of food?”

            “We can’t just sit here,” said David, frustrating winding like fire through his emotions.

            “Oh, yes, we can,” sighed Kirk.

            “This is just to give us something to do, isn’t it?” said David. Still, he sullenly got up and walked towards the tunnel. “Come on.” Saavik, Bones, and (Y/N) followed.

            “What are they talking about?” said Bones, knowing Carol hadn’t told Kirk to go for a reason.

            “I have my suspicions,” said (Y/N). The emotions between Carol and Kirk hadn’t gone unnoticed by them. David looked familiar, too…

            “Oh, great, you sound like Spock,” groaned Bones.

            (Y/N) smiled. “That’s a compliment.”

            “Here,” said David, rounding a corner.

            Bones, Saavik, and (Y/N) were rendered speechless. The so-called “dead” and “empty” center of Regula I was alive. Mountains covered in trees rose before them. Water sparkled in sunlight(?). A breeze floated by them. Small animals scuttled around them. This was a paradise of pure, untouched nature.

            “My god,” breathed Bones.

            “This is Genesis,” said (Y/N), not speaking of the machine.

            “It is,” said David, speaking of the device itself. “The matrix formed in a day. The life forms grew at an accelerated rate.”

            “A device created this?” Saavik furrowed her brow. She hadn’t seen the reports like they had, so this was more a surprise to her.

            “It did,” said David. “The matrix formed in a day. The life forms grew at an accelerated rate.”

            “This is…beautiful.” Kirk and Carol emerged from the tunnel.

            “It is, isn’t it?” said Carol.

            “Jim, this is incredible!” said Bones. “Have you ever seen the like?”

            “Can I cook or can’t I?” said Carol, smiling.

            Kirk slowly walked forward and sat at a bonfire clearing. Carol sat beside him. All eyes remained on the nature and life spreading out before them.

            “Sirs, may I ask you a question?” said Saavik, hands behind her back as she faced Kirk and (Y/N).

            “What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?” said Kirk.

            “The Kobayashi Maru, sir,” said Saavik.

            “You think we’re playing out the real scenario here and now,” said (Y/N). They knew how Vulcans’ minds worked.

            Saavik inclined her head. “Additionally, will you tell me what you did on the test?”

            “I failed,” said (Y/N). “But I learned the right lesson of dealing with fear.” They smiled bitterly. “It’s a necessary lesson.”

            “And you, Admiral?” asked Saavik.

            “Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario,” said Bones.

            “How?” said Saavik, her brow creasing in suppressed expression of curiosity.

            Kirk smiled, and amusement laced his emotions, a pleasant change to the darkness hanging over them. “I programmed the simulation so it was possible to rescue the ship.”

            “What?” Saavik couldn’t help completely furrowing her brow at the answer.

            “He cheated,” said David incredulously and disgusted.

            “I changed the conditions of the test,” said Kirk. “I got a commendation for original thinking. I don’t like to lose.”

            “Then you never faced that situation, faced death?” said Saavik.

            “We’ve faced death more times than you can imagine,” said (Y/N). “It’s the no-win scenario we cannot accept.” They paused. “And Kirk’s methods are an important lesson. If you cannot win a game…Play a new one and win that.” They looked at Kirk. “I think it’s been two hours.”

            Saavik furrowed her brow.

            “Right.” Kirk opened his communication. “Kirk to Spock. It’s two hours. You ready?”

            “Right on schedule,” said Spock. “Just give us your coordinates, and we’ll beam you aboard.”

            Kirk smiled at Saavik. “We don’t like to lose.”

            “So we decided to play our own game instead of Khan’s,” said (Y/N).

l

            “—we were immobilized,” said Saavik as the group materialized in the Enterprise. “Captain Spock said it’d be two days.”

            “Come, come, Lieutenant. You of all people go by the book,” said Kirk.

            “Spock,” said (Y/N), smiling as they saw Spock standing in the Transporter Room. Unprofessionally, they ran him and threw their arms around him. Spock held them close, not caring about demonstrating affection in front people because his T’hy’la was back in his arms and still safe.

            “T’hy’la,” he said, holding (Y/N).

            “Excellent timing, Spock,” said Kirk. He gestured to the scientists with him. “You know Dr. Carol Marcus.”

            “Of course,” said Spock.

            “Hello, Mr. Spock,” said Carol.

            “I’m taking this bunch to Sickbay,” said Bones, supporting Chekov.

            “By the book?” repeated Saavik.

            “Regulation 46A. ‘If transmissions are being monitored during battle—’ ” said Kirk.

            “And we could assume Khan had at least left mics on Chekov and Terell even if not still controlling them,” said (Y/N).

            “—No uncoded messages on an open channel,” finished Saavik. She looked at Spock. “You lied.”

            “I exaggerated,” said Spock.

            “Hours instead of days,” said Kirk. “Now we have minutes instead of hours.”

            “Then let’s get to work,” said (Y/N).

            “The elevators are inoperative below C-Deck,” said Spock as they all headed out of the Transporter Room.

            “What is working around here?” sighed Kirk.

            “Not much, Admiral,” said Spock. “We have partial main power.”

            “That’s it?” said Kirk, breaking into a jog.

            “Best we could do in two hours,” said Spock.

            Kirk opened a hatch to Enterprise’s ladder. He led the climb, and (Y/N), Spock, and Saavik followed.

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@jac012

[youngpettyqueen]

for prompts, might I suggest a number 14 with Julian takin care of Kira, and a ‘it feels worse than it looks—no wait-‘ with Julian being a bad patient?

oh my god I finally fucking finished it.

I am SO SORRY this took so long I got hit with. the most violent writer's block ive had in a HOT minute and this had me fighting for my life. I dont even know how many times I wrote and rewrote this. I went through so many different ideas it was actually ridiculous. at one point I had something finished but it Was Not Good and I dont believe in posting writing I dont like so I scrapped it and started again

I keep waffling on whether or not I like this, but thats entirely because ive spent way too long staring at it. im sure in a few days ill actually really like it, cause I really like the dialogue, which was what I wrote out first. pulling myself out of my perfectionism, I do think I like this, and at the very least im proud of getting it down when it gave me so much trouble

again, im so sorry it took so long, but writer's block is a bitch and ive had a lot going on lately, so I hope you understand <3

for the readers- 14 on the list is "Stop pretending that any of this is ok. It's not." I did adjust that one a bit cause I was having trouble making it flow. but, without further ado, here's what I've got! 

Kira slides down with her back against the wall, grinding her teeth as she clutches at her wounded shoulder. The pain is still hot, the hole burned into her skin practically still smoking. She hisses as her palm makes contact with the sticky, raw flesh, but she still clamps down. 

“Anytime you wanna get over here, Julian!” She calls, her voice strained. 

“Doing my best, Major!” Julian calls from where he is, hunkered down behind some debris as a makeshift shield against the barrage of disruptor fire. 

This is, in eloquent terms, a right fucking mess. Getting into a fight with a bunch of Jem’Hadar soldiers is never a good thing, even when they’re prepared. When they’re not prepared, it’s even worse. And this time, they weren’t prepared. Because there weren’t supposed to be any Jem’Hadar on this planet. This was supposed to be a quick pit stop for the Defiant, replacing some whatsit that O’Brien said was damaged in their last firefight, but then there were Jem’Hadar soldiers and they’ve managed to land themselves in a whole different firefight. 

It really just hasn’t been a great week. 

Kira inches closer to the wall’s edge. Her grip on her phaser isn’t stable, but it’ll have to do. She takes a deep, steadying breath, and then she twists over so that she’s peering out from behind the corner. She spots the Jem’Hadar pinning them down, quick count tells here there’s 3 of them, and she snaps her phaser up to hit them with some fire of her own. The motion pulls at her injured shoulder in a way that makes her want to scream, but she bites down on it. 

Julian, bless him, takes the opportunity to lunge out from behind the debris. He scrambles across the gap, barely dodging the returning fire from the Jem’Hadar, and manages to throw himself down behind the security of the wall. He plasters himself up against the wall beside Kira, right as she ducks back behind cover as the Jem’Hadar’s fire intensifies. 

Kira looks at him. He looks at her. He’s breathing hard and heavy, his hair a mess and dirt and blood staining his face. She musters up a grin to tell him, “You’re late.”

Julian gives her a flat look as he turns to her. “Forgive me, it’s a bit difficult to make house calls in the middle of a battlefield,” He replies, sounding very, very tired. But then his eyes flick to her bloody hand, still clamped over her wounded shoulder, and she watches his expression shift as he clicks back into what’s affectionately referred to as doctor mode, “Let’s see that shoulder, then.” 

Kira moves her hand, letting Julian get a look at the wound. She winces as he pulls aside the burnt fabric, taking a deep breath in through her nose and resisting the reflex to jerk away. “How’s it look?” She asks, mostly just to distract herself. 

“Like it needs more than what I’ve got,” Julian replies, frowning, “The dermal regenerator I have will do for now, but this is deep. I’ll need to immobilize your arm,” He tells her, giving her an apologetic look, “If you move it too much, you’ll risk tearing it open again.”

“Just do what you have to,” Kira tells him, “Won’t be the first time I’ve had to shoot myself out with only one arm.” 

Julian nods, and returns his attention to her wound. “Right,” He pulls his kit up and rifles through it for a second. The first thing he pulls out is a hypospray, which he quickly sticks into her neck. Kira relaxes fractionally as the painkillers immediately start to work, dulling some of the burning in her shoulder. Then he’s pulling out the dermal regenerator, and bracing his hand against her shoulder again, “Try to hold still.” He advises.

Kira just gives a tight nod, already gritting her teeth and bracing herself. She feels the dermal regenerator start to work. The hypo helps, but it doesn’t take away that burning, itchy sort of feeling of muscle and nerves and skin stitching itself back together inch by inch. She clenches her fists tight, breathing hard through her nose as Julian works. 

“Sorry, I know this stings,” Julian says, “I’m doing the best I can. This regenerator wasn’t meant for a wound like this.” 

Kira grunts a wordless acknowledgement. If she says anything, it’s just going to be a string of curses. Instead, she focuses on keeping her ear on the sound of disruptor fire, making sure it isn’t getting closer. If the Jem’Hadar decide to come after them, she wants to be ready. 

“Done,” Julian pipes up. She looks over as he puts the regenerator back in his kit, taking the worst of the pain with it and leaving her with a dull ache, “That’s the hard part done. I’m going to move your arm now,” His hands are gentle, taking her arm and carefully easing it away from her side, “There we go. Alright, hold it there, please.” 

Kira does. Julian sits back, and unzips his jacket to get at his undershirt. “This will have to do,” He tells her, tearing a couple of strips from his undershirt, “These won’t be the most comfortable, but they’ll have to do. I’m out of bandages.” He leans back in, starting to bind her arm with the torn fabric.

“Sorry about your shirt.” She cracks weakly.

“I’ll get a new one.” He replies, without so much as a smile.

She hates how flat his voice is. Hates how… unlike him, it is. Quiet, with no bite. “C’mon, Julian, where’s that boyish optimism of yours?” She asks, “I could really use a hit of it right about now.”

Julian secures the bandage around her arm. “I must’ve dropped it when they started shooting at us,” He says, not meeting her eyes, “Do me a favour, Major. Don’t pretend any of this is ok,” He sits back again, still not meeting her eyes, all caught up in taking in his work, “Cause it’s really not.” He does look her in the eye, then. And he looks so… tired.

But then, he’s looked like that for a while, hasn’t he?

Kira gives him a smile. A sad, quiet little smile. “I never said any of this was ok,” She corrects, “I’m just… used to it, at this point.” Very, very used to it. Used to it in a way she hopes he never is. 

Julian considers that for a moment. His expression is hard to read- sad, maybe. Sympathetic. Then he sighs, and breaks eye contact. “Well, I suppose I’m getting used to it, too,” He scrubs a bloody hand through his hair, “We should get going. Can you walk?” He asks.

No time for sentiment, then. Kira nods. “It’s just the arm,” She assures him, “I can do a hell of a lot more than walk.”

“Good,” Julian starts to push himself up to stand, “Let’s-“ He doesn’t get far. He wobbles suddenly, his eyes widening slightly as he nearly topples right over. He barely manages to catch himself, bracing a hand against the wall before he can fall against it.

Kira quickly reaches out to steady him. “Julian?” She sits up, frowning, “What’s wrong?”

Julian frowns, confused. “I… don’t know,” He says, looking down, “I can’t feel my-“ He cuts off, suddenly, his eyes fixing on something, “Ah.”

Kira’s brow furrows. “Ah? What’s-“ She follows his gaze, and comes to the same abrupt halt as she sees just what he’s found, “Ah.” 

Julian has a substantial wound in his thigh. A chunk of his pant leg has been burned away, revealing a raw, painful-looking burn that’s steadily oozing blood down his leg. Kira’s eyes widen at the sight of it. That doesn’t look good. That really doesn’t look good.

“Well,” Julian says, “That’s not ideal.” And then he sways alarmingly, nearly crumpling right to the ground.

“Julian!” Kira lurches forward, manages to catch him by the arms. He grimaces as he eases himself down, taking his weight off his injured leg, “Damnit, Julian, what were you thinking ignoring this? Gimme that tricorder-“ She reaches for his medkit, not waiting for him as she rummages through it herself.

“I wasn’t ignoring it!” He exclaims, “I couldn’t feel it! Honest!” 

Kira finds the tricorder and pulls it out. “Don’t tell me they augmented the ability to feel pain out of you,” He shifts again, adjusting his position to give her a better angle to scan him, and it draws a painful hiss out of him, “Guess not.” She hums.

Julian manages a weak chuckle, the first one she’s gotten out of him all day. “Not as such,” He confirms, “I’ve just been- gah!” He grinds his molars as she pulls the burnt fabric away from the wound, “Preoccupied.” He growls.

Kira huffs softly as she reads the results on the tricorder. It’s not a fun wound. “So busy trying not to get shot that you didn’t realize you got shot?” She asks, arching a brow at him, “I’m almost impressed.”

“Only almost?” Julian asks, all mock indignation, “I’d hate to see what I’d have to do to actually impress you,” He mutters. His eyes drift down, then back up at her. He looks worried, “How bad is it?”

Kira puts the tricorder down. “How bad does it feel?” She dodges. 

“Pfft, this little thing?” He scoffs, gives a weak little wave that’s probably went to ‘wave off’ the pain, “It’s nothing. Just a scratch. It feels worse than it… no. No, wait, that’s not right,” He blinks, and she can almost see the gears in his head turning as he tries to figure out the order of the words, “I don’t mean to alarm you, Major, but I think the shock might be setting in.” He tells her.

Kira can’t help but roll her eyes. “No kidding,” She says, “This isn’t my first time, Julian. Hand me the regenerator, I’ll do what I can with it.” She holds her hand out expectantly.

Julian hands it over. “Now who’s being serious?” He asks.

Kira adjusts how she’s holding him, making sure she’s holding the burnt edges of his uniform away from his skin so that she doesn’t accidentally fuse any fabric to him. “Oh, so you can make jokes,” She takes the dermal regenerator and adjusts her hold on it, making sure it won’t slide out of her hand, which is slick with blood, “I thought you dropped that along with your optimism.” She gets the regenerator going, doing what she can with the wound.

Julian chuckles again, grins at her. “I told you, the shock’s setting in,” He replies, all charm, “I’ll say anything just to say anything. Apologies, but I’m going to be talking your ear off until we get out of here.” He warns.

Kira keeps her eyes on her work, keeps her hand braced on his thigh to hold him still. “As opposed to when you don’t talk my ear off.” She counters. After a few seconds, she can see that the burn’s healed as much as it’s going to. She switches the regenerator off and hands it back to him.

“Rude,” Julian huffs, taking the regenerator and putting it back in his medkit, “How’d the regenerator do? I don’t want to look.” He’s looking even as he says it, like he can’t help himself. 

“It’ll hold,” She tells him, not seeing any point in sugar-coating it. He would see right through her in a second, “For now. I’m gonna bandage it, just in case,” She adds. Now it’s her turn to get at her undershirt, tear it up for strips of fabric, “I liked this shirt, you know.” She informs him as she does.

“I suppose we’re even, then,” Julian cracks weakly, “Have I ever told you you’d make a great medic?” He asks.

There’s the Julian she knows. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” She tells him. Satisfied with her bandages, she gets them ready, “I do have one question for you, Doctor.” 

Julian frowns, confused. Yeah, the shock really has set in if he can’t see what she’s doing. “Go ahead.” He invites.

Kira starts wrapping his leg. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?” She asks.

He looks even more confused. “What are my-“ She yanks the bandages tight before he can finish, and he cuts off with a pitched yelp, “Fuck!”

Maybe it’s a bit mean to chuckle, but Kira can’t help it. She doesn’t often get to hear him curse. “Oh, language,” She tuts as she finishes tying the bandages off, “There. Nice and tight. That oughta hold you together till we get out of here.” She gives his knee a pat. 

Julian pouts at her. “You enjoyed that.” He accuses. 

“I did no such thing,” Kira replies smoothly as she pulls his medkit closer to her and starts rifling through it, not bothering to ask him, “Want a hypo?” She offers.

“No,” Julian shakes his head, making her stop short and give him an incredulous look, “I’ve only got the one left. Save it for someone who needs it.” He reasons. 

Her look quickly flattens. “Don’t start with the heroics, Julian,” She advises, “You’re not gonna be treating any patients until after you’ve been treated. On the Defiant.” She doubts he can even stand on his own, let alone treat people.

“I can hold out till then,” He insists, “Someone else might-“

“Julian,” Kira cuts in, not giving him any room to argue, “Take the fucking hypo.” 

Julian’s brows shoot up and he looks a little stunned. Just for a moment, though, before he huffs a bit of a laugh. “Now who needs to watch their language,” He says, his tone light and teasing, “Alright, go ahead.” He nods.

Kira takes the hypo out of his kit. “Oh, thank you,” She replies, making sure her own tone savours strongly of sarcasm, “You’re a terrible patient, you know that?” 

There’s that grin again. All charm. “So Nurse Jabara keeps telling me.” He replies, like the pain in the ass he is.

“You should listen to her. She’s always right,” Kira sticks the hypo in his neck, and watches his shoulders instantly sink down a notch. She didn’t even realize how tense he was, “Better?” She asks. 

Julian takes a deep breath. Probably the first one he’s taken all day. “…Much,” He admits, with the decency to look a little sheepish, “Thank you, Major.” His smile’s a bit less charm now, a bit more sincere.

Kira finds herself smiling back. “Anytime,” She says. She shoots a quick look around, regaining her bearings a bit now that they’re both taken care of. She can still hear blasters firing, but not as close. They might’ve moved off somewhere else. Or they could be waiting, “We should probably get moving.” She suggests.

“Probably,” Julian agrees, “Just one problem, though. I don’t think I can walk.” He tells her.

Kira figured. “Can you limp?” She asks, “I’ve still got two good shoulders, both perfectly good for leaning on.” She offers, patting her shoulder for emphasis.

There’s that glint in his eye. First time she’s seen it today- stubborn determination, or, in another word, cocky. “I think I can manage that.” He says.

Kira grins. “Great,” She ducks in and gets her arm around his waist, pulling him in snug against her as he wraps his arm around her shoulders, “Alright, lean on me. Steady. And…” She pushes herself up, and brings him with her. He leans heavy into her side, and she tightens her hold on him to keep him steady, “Up we go. Ready?” She asks.

Julian takes a moment to find his balance, shifting most of his weight off of his injured leg and compensating on Kira’s shoulder. “As I can be,” He tells her with a nod, “Let’s go.”

And they’re off. Making quite the sight as they hobble back into the action, pressed hip to hip and clinging tight to each other. But, hey, they’re still kicking, and they’ve still got their phasers, so they’ll make do. They always do. 

[whumpypepsigal]

Hey there whump-fellow! I was wondering if you might help me out a bit. I'm writing an original superhero story for Camp NaNo this year and I want the main character's superpower to come with whumpy side-effects, but I am having a hard time coming up with anything even slightly original in that regard. Do you have any suggestions or examples I might play off of? Also, I am going to ask around to a few whump blogs to cast a wider net! Any suggestions as to whom I should ask?

hi there! that’s awesome… wish you all the best.

im not very good with coming up with good/original ideas and articulating them lol but let me try-ish;

a superhero resistant fighter with lack of sense of touch/pain + super-fast metabolism : can’t feel when he’s injured till he passes out due to blood loss or fully conscious during surgeries as he feels no pain AND burns through anesthesia within secs.

there are so many awesome whump blogs who can help you out, im gonna tag a few but if any of my beautiful fellow whump blogs see this post please feel free to help our dear anon here

@deepwoundsandfadedscars @set-phasers-to-whump @fyeahvulnerablemen @aceofwhump @99point9percentwhump @whumpty-dumpty @whumpappreciation @of-wounds-and-woes @whumpslist

[aquarterpastfour]

the reprogramming of an expendable asset [4/7]

Crossposted: AO3, ff.net

Fandom: Star Trek Voyager

Event: Voyager Week, Day 4 Prompt: Time Travel

Summary: Seska goes undercover for Admiral Janeway

Asset remains unwaveringly loyal to the cause and considers death an acceptable outcome.

Their odds were worse than a dabo game rigged in favor of the house. Seska would laugh, if it wasn’t completely absurd that she was about to be phaser-canon blasted into the pre-warp age by her own people.

A lesser agent would try to find a way to indicate to the Glinn and his troopers that they were firing on an undercover Cardassian. A lesser agent would have washed out of training and tainted their future children with the mark of weakness.

Seska had graduated with highly classified distinction, thank you very much.

She fired at four troopers blocking their exit from the depot. One went down with a severe phaser burn to his abdomen, another dropped when she caught him with a beam to the face. The first would live, if he received proper medical care quickly; the latter was probably dead already.

“Six more incoming,” Torres slid behind the cargo crate beside her, looking unseeingly at the corpse of Rolans, who just seconds ago had perished at the end of a phase-disrupter blast.

Rolans should have kept his head down.

Seska fired another volley before ducking low, “How did they know we’d be here?”

The question was sincere. She hadn’t been able to meet with Holtat in four weeks.

The half-Klingon was out of breath, but formidable, firing shots in between trying to rig a site-to-site back to the Val Jean. Without looking up from either task, she did her best to hypothesize.

“My bet is the Federation. Ayala thinks they’ve found a way to track cell movements. Then they let the Cardassians do their dirty work for them.”

Most likely.

The Federation excelled at pretending it was above the moral failings of non-member species, whatever morality meant to them, but it was just another organization made up of arrogant men and women at the end of the day. One where someone wearing admiral pips could easily justify letting their once-enemy pacify terrorist cells.

“Ghuy’,” B’Elanna swore, slapping the transceiver she was trying to siphon power from.

“What do you need?” Seska demanded, monitoring a gap in the Cardassian offensive created by Ayala and Tuvok. This was a munitions depot, one the Cardassians were meant to leave unguarded (what a joke), but it should have something Torres could work her magic with.

“A miracle.”

“Come on B, give me a request I can actually work with.”

There was a glint in the engineer’s eyes. True fear, the kind that Torres liked to pretend she never felt but would sometimes share with Seska. When she needed Seska’s bravado to see them both through.

“Anything with power.”

Seska cast her eyes around and spotted an active terminal ten meters away. It wouldn’t have a lot of juice, but it might just be enough.

“That, I can do. Cover me.”

Running, half bent over while dodging phase-disrupter rifle fire was a skill hard earned, and Seska excelled at it. Twice, a pulse passed too close to her head for comfort — once it seared the skin of her ear — but she was able to duck behind the terminal and begin prying into its guts.

“You’re going to owe me one,” she muttered darkly, just before doing the dumbest thing she possibly could.

The thing about Cardassian engineers was that they never thought through safety guidelines the way the Federation’s did. If time with the Maquis had opened her eyes to anything, it was that her people could learn a thing or two about the safety life cycle of systems.

All of which meant that Torres’ power relay was going to come at a cost.

Seska bit the inside of her cheek and ignored the smell of burning flesh as she pried it loose.

End Game

Federation parties made her itch. A mandated counselor had told her once that it was a physiological response to being surrounded by people she thought were better than her. Seska thought that the man didn’t know how the Cardassian mind worked. It was clearly a physiological response to being surrounded by people that had or would look at her and decide if she had redeemed herself enough to be included in polite company.

That they thought this was their right — no, their moral obligation — would call her to violence if she was still a relic of the bygone era of imperial political thought that had defined her people.

She wasn’t. Over twenty years on Voyager had changed her, enough to see the error of her old ways.

Thinking of the shame gave her indigestion, which in turned annoyed her. She was still Seska, after all. Compared to the average Starfleet officer, she had the moral depth and clarity of a puddle of mud in a desert.

“Your wife is too young,” while the woman in question went off to mingle with the Wildmans, Seska took the opportunity to pick on the Doctor.

The alternative would be to insult Paris, but there was no fun picking on a man whose life had soured.

Besides, the hologram liked her well enough to take the jab for what it was, a plea for momentary distraction from the other party goers.

“Technically, I’m only in my thirties,” he smiled at her in greeting and handed her a flute of champagne.

“Has she even graduated college yet?”

“Graduate school, in fact. A PhD in cultural xenogeography. She’s on faculty at Oxford,” he was almost laughing at her now, silently challenging her to do better.

Seska realized she was scowling and threw back the entire glass. To hell with waiting for a toast. The dead weren’t going to be deax for long, and the living didn’t need their egos stroked.

He clinked his own glass against hers and followed suit, “Not bad for a piece of dung who refused to change himself, hmm?”

“Stop bragging, before I find a way to shave another inch of your height.”

“Another?” this time he did laugh.

Then, after savoring the fine vintage of a second glass of champagne, the Doctor decided their once a year tête-à-tête was over, “The Admiral is looking for you.”

“Better let her find me, then,” Seska ignored the attendant walking by with a tray to collect cast offs and pushed her empty crystal back into the Doctor’s free hand.

She smirked when he huffed at her retreating back, but the expression melted off her face when she spotted Harry. Despite being ten years younger than her, he didn’t look it. Time in the captain’s chair had grayed him — it had added a few more wrinkles too.

He nodded at her as he moved away from the friendly grasp of the woman she was looking for.

“Admiral,” she greeted.

Once, Janeway had asked Seska to call her Kathryn. That had been years ago, when they were nearing the end of their return to the Alpha Quadrant, back when Seska was one left who regularly challenged her.

Seska had never complied. They weren’t peers. Admiral had none when she was the Captain, and she certainly didn’t have any now. The only candidate had long ago started scribbling demented conspiracies on his room walls.

“Seska, I’m glad you could make it,” Janeway did look happy to see her. Perhaps it was due to genuine — hard won — fondness. More likely it was because she expected to receive good news.

Well, who could say no to that?

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Seska’s tone implied the opposite, but Janeway laughed and guided her to a loud corner with a gentle hand on her arm.

“It’s done,” Seska muttered, faux smile on her face as the Admiral regaled her with stories of the latest generation of brats the crew and their children had popped out. As always, no one was looking, but someone was watching.

Despite the overlap in their talking, Janeway heard exactly what Seska meant her to. The chrono deflector was hers, courtesy of a Cardassian once again taking on the facial ridges of another species.

Klingon this time. Which had been about as fun as interrogation resistance training. Remember the teeth alone was enough to make Seska shudder.

At least this time it had only been for eight months.

When the Admiral had asked her to steal the device, she didn’t say what it was for. Seska wasn’t an idiot. She knew what it looked like to drown in regret and self-blame, and what it would take to make it all go away. Janeway planned to risk her life on some pipe dream of changing the past

Good riddance.

Maybe this time she would get Voyager home with her pet drone — with Torres — alive.

If that meant Seska disappeared in a puff of timeline collapse or spent the rest of her life in a Federation penal colony, then so be it. At least then she might be able to say she’d settled her debts with the woman who’d let her choose the better path.

[mythictold]

“  you’re not fine. and you don’t have to pretend that you are with me.  ” chakotay @ janeway

she weaves between crew members in the mess hall-turned-triage, connecting with those who are conscious and checking on those who are getting medical attention. a small handful were in sickbay proper, having emergency surgeries or other invasive procedures to ensure their survival - and even that was touch and go. she's made sure every injured member of the crew has been seen to and is being treated as needed; neelix has been passing out rations to those in the mess while the ones still on their feet take inventory of the ship and what systems are damaged or lost entirely.

the attack had blindsided them. species 8472 taking offense to their passage through a section of the delta quadrant and retaliating harshly before voyager had been able to detect them. they'd barely been able to repel the attack, but the ship had taken severe damage. entire decks unusable until the hull was repaired, engineering had taken a beating . . . a damn mess, frankly. it's out of pure adrenaline and spite and determination that she's still on her feet - she's perhaps the only one who hasn't seen medical attention for the cuts and bruises and phaser blast to her side, but she doesn't quite feel it. not yet at least. not until chakotay speaks and she's suddenly reminded that she's human, and allowed to be vulnerable. only then does the burning pain settle into her ribs. damn.

"about which part?" she asks lowly, flinching as she finally stops near the bar that leads back toward the actual kitchen, leaning against it for support. they're still running on emergency power until generators can be repaired, too. the ship is in terrible shape and while they're limping along at a pitiful warp 1, she doesn't know how long it will be until they're sitting ducks. she's hoping it doesn't come to that.

"i'm not alright that we keep getting attacked. i'm not alright that i'm injured. i'm not alright that we keep losing people. should i give you the full list?"

frankly the only reason she hasn't completely lost her mind is because she knows kolo and kieran are safe and unhurt, though terrified. she aches to go to them, to comfort them, but they're both lightly sedated and sleeping against harry kim against the far wall.

"i'm not alright that we could have lost them." she says, lower. "they were safer on new earth." and it's the truth. the worst enemy there was a rogue monkey or annoying gnat, not a species hell bent on killing them. her gaze snaps back up to chakotay; she's faltering somewhere between captain and kathryn - two separate parts of her, professional and personal. her hand moves to touch his shoulder instinctively, ensuring he's alright.

"i'm going to send some officers down to help be'lanna. any hands to help get them back up and running. tuvok's agreed to lead the security teams in investigating every hull breach, and repair them as they can until we can get the proper repair teams on them." her mind focuses to work, to the task at hand, though her gaze strays back to the boys. "i may not be alright, chakotay, but i've got to focus on something. if i give in to any ounce of myself, i'll lose my mind."

@stcrdate

[kuriboo]

for the yugioh ask meme: Yudias!!!!! >:3c

YUDIAS! BNUYY BOY! disclaimer: i am only through episode 101 of go rush

tall bnuyy boy

Why I like them/why I don’t

Yudias is in-tune with himself, unfailingly kind. He's a bit stubborn about it, in a good way. He does not stop supporting his friends. He believes in the power of Rush Duels like they're a higher power, which, to be fair, they kind of are in the text. He has a collection of 8.88 million emotional support catboy countrymen who follow him around everywhere in a tiny spaceship (i miss them dearly). He stopped an intergalactic war with the power of card games. Even when he's faced with extinction and genocide, he puts on a brave face for his friends, gives his boyfriend his last wish, and when he breaks down, it's because everything hits him all at once when he witnesses rush duels being disrespected.

He's also got self-confidence issues. I love me a guy with self-confidence issues, because, same.

What I like about their appearance

His human-like appearance would be perfect if it weren't for the UTS orange. I do not like the UTS orange. But. His hair is beautiful. Look at his little horns under his hat. I also really like his hat, when it's not orange. The pink shirt is SO funny. The scenes where he's wearing a middle school uniform are 10/10 in appearance.

Above is a perfect boy.

As for transformed? His shorter hair is cute, too, though I'm surprised I don't prefer it. I usually prefer shorter hair on characters because longer hair characters just remind me how much I hate it when my hair gets too long and it just feels so wrong... Maybe it's the headset that isn't doing it for me. I do love the bnuyy parts of his hair most when transformed, but I do like his hair, just slightly less than when he's not transformed.

Do I prefer their dub names or original names?

He's a protag, so... yknow. I will say I tend to type out protag/related names as Yu instead of Yuu, but that's a me thing.

OTP

I know that Zwijo/Yudias is the canon and most popular ship, and I do like them! However! My otp has to be Yudias/Yuhi

Please look at them. That is all. Thank you

NOTP

Idk about this one? I've never seen a ship thrown out there that I like, hated, for Yudias. Oh, wait, I have one

Yudias/Chupataro

If you mention Chupataro in my presence I will eye beam you. I hate that guy.

OT3

Zwijo/Yudias/Yuhi for sure. I am a sucker for ot3's like this and then taking the characters that interact the least and going insane about them. Once I've caught up on go rush, I will be going insane about Zwijo/Yuhi. They are both Yudias' boyfriends.

Tonight the group chat is selling me on Zwijo/Yudias/Yuhi/Phaser. I see the vision. I think it's cute. Let's add more boys to this polycule.

Favourite card they use

Definitely, her. She's gender, she's pretty, she's the moment.

Favourite moment they were in

It's really hard to pick one. Burgalarly was so funny. Any time Yudias uses eyebeams is a classic. I am very fond of the moment he played his new Maximum against Phaser.

HOWEVER, the best moment, on further reflection, HAS to be the galaxy cup finals

PROBABLY THE MOST HYPE DUEL BEFORE EPISODE 100, though 100 may have surpassed it. But god I loved this duel so much. The switching off of Yudias' opponents. Yudias being the guy we're cheering to lose. GOD this duel was insane. I wanna rewatch it again sometime. Cannot wait to rewatch this when it's dubbed.

Least favourite moment

this entire episode can go burn in hell

Would I fuck, marry or kill them

Marry in a heartbeat. He's not my go rush overall favorite (that's Yuhi rn, if we look at Yuga as a sevens character) but Yudias is very high up there.

thank you everyone for listening to me talk about yudias. in conclusion, you should watch yugioh go rush.

[bedlemboy]

Worf the Spy

Shortly after realizing the position of ambassador and envoy to the Klingon Empire was going to require a tad more subtlety than even he was anticipating; Worf, son of Mogh, Bane of the House of Duras and Slayer of Gowron sent a back channels message to his ex-wife, who passed it along to her husband, who passed it along to his boyfriend, and in short order found himself on Cardassia across a cafe table from Elim Garak.

Garak's anti-surveillance devices are excellent, and Worf refuses to talk about it, so no one knows exactly what was said that caused both to end up in the medical clinic twenty minutes later with six broken bones, three phaser burns and two kinds of poison ingested between them. Garak says they were "practicing."

From their clinic beds, they agree to meet next month, settling on chamomile tea as a reasonable compromise and agreeing to leave their phasers behind.

The next month, its is eleven broken bones, three poisons, two phaser burns and a knife wound. From their clinic beds, Garak gives Worf pointers on concealing weapons from hand-held sensors for next time. Worf grumbles the Garak stabs 'like a Hom Ha'DIbaH.'

Thirty years later, they still meet every month; discussing opera, theater and their mutual loathing of the Third Taylor Swift Renaissance more than spy-craft these days. They have long since moved on from concealed phasers to subspace micro-explosives, sometimes planted up to a month in advance (Garak was very impressed). They've finished their chamomile tea exactly twice.

Worf is basically immune to poisons, and can lie like a Tal Shiar. Garak has several genial contacts in the Klingon Empire (which he has leveraged into a prosperous post-occupation Cardassia), and is a member of House Martok whether he likes it or not.

They are best friends.

Julian still has the scars from the time he pointed that out.

[indeedcaptain]

Regulatory Relations, chapter 17: The Therapist

Hello!! Thanks for your patience with how long this chapter took!! Real life was lifing. Hope you like it.

Also posted on AO3 here.

☆☆☆

Section 31. 

Kirk could hear the soft shuffle of boots on metal grating, the gentle beeps and whistles of a starship at work, but all he could focus on was the sway of Elise’s silver hair in front of him. He walked between four armed officers in the unluckiest four-leaf clover he could imagine. One of the officers behind him prodded him in the back with a phaser rifle every time he slowed his pace, making it impossible to get a good glimpse of anything beyond the black and chrome hallways. It was dark, unfriendly compared to the easy gleaming white of the Enterprise, and the agents’ night-black uniforms swallowed all of the remaining light. 

Elise did not look back at him. 

She was smaller than he remembered. Of course, he had still essentially been a child when he had met her: she had been larger than life compared to everyone else, the first person after Tarsus who did not treat him like he was breakable. But in her light-filled office with the tree-lined windows on the Academy grounds, she had always worn soft khakis, a cardigan, a blouse with evenly spaced buttons. Those clothes had been shed like snakeskin in the intervening years. The angular black Section 31 uniform fit her too well, elegant like a tailored suit, and it made Kirk ache to see it. He could not look away. Her boots struck the metal walkways with ringing surety, and every passing crewman nodded formally at her. She did not acknowledge them.

April trailed a step behind her. In the dim ambience of this forbidding ship and next to the titanium set of Elise’s shoulders, the man seemed to shrink. They followed her up into the rest of the ship until they arrived at a turbolift. Finally Elise turned around again, and her pale eyes gleamed in the fluorescent lighting. She looked at the officers. 

“Dismissed,” she said, and her voice was gentle. Kirk’s mockery of an honor guard nodded, turned sharply, and departed down the hall. The turbolift door opened, and she stepped inside. April took one of Kirk’s arms and steered him into the lift. His hands were still bound behind his back, and his shoulders were starting to cramp. His gold shirt was tacky with Spock’s blood, clinging to his skin and cooling uncomfortably. He itched with it: with knowing that Spock had been hurt, had been dying, with not knowing if Bones had been able to staunch the bleeding and repair the damage. But Scotty had been able to beam him out, and that was better than nothing. 

The lift doors closed, and Elise turned those gentle eyes on him. Her skin creased deeply at the corners of her eyes, and even her eyelashes were gray now. “I’m so glad you’re here, captain,” she said. She smiled, inviting him to join in her good humor. “Goodness, you’re all grown up now! And so accomplished. A captain of a starship, just like you always wanted.” Her voice was smooth, warm and familiar, the cadence of her words soothing and easy. Kirk held her gaze and let his lip curl, his eyes burning. But his anger didn’t seem to phase her in the slightest. 

“Deck seven, please,” she said to the lift, and it started to move. She continued conversationally, “I’ve watched your career with no small amount of interest, dear.” Bile rose in the back of Kirk’s throat. “You were so serious all the time when you were young, so studious. But it paid off, didn’t it? Youngest captain in Starfleet, and on the flagship itself. I was so proud of you.” She glanced at him, a smile playing around the corner of her lips as she considered him. His hands shook with anger behind his back, and he clenched them into fists. The doors slid open, she stepped out, and April pushed him forward with one hand on his elbow. They followed her down the empty hallway, their footsteps echoing eerily. “Your resilience has always been one of your greatest strengths, and you don’t even seem to realize you have it.” 

There was one door at the end of the hallway, and Elise led them directly to it. She pressed her hand to a plate embedded in the wall. It whirred and beeped before the door swished open, and she stepped inside. Kirk and April followed. A harsh white light blinked on as they entered, illuminating the dark space in front of them with unforgiving clarity.

Kirk stumbled backwards in horror. April’s unyielding hand against his back kept him from escaping before the door slid shut. It locked with a musical chirp. The room was all gray metal, with one single reclining chair in the center, upholstered in an uncannily cheerful mint green. The color burned his eyes, or maybe it was what was anchored into the ceiling above it: a device that Kirk had not seen in over a year, since he had returned to a similar room to find a dead doctor beneath an unholy light. 

The neural neutralizer winked at him from the ceiling. 

“You were the one to report the situation with Dr. Adams to Starfleet, were you not?” Elise’s voice echoed off the plain metal walls. 

“The machine was destroyed,” Kirk said, and his voice came out hoarse. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the haunting shadow of the chair alone in the center of the room, the painful illumination of the neutralizer above it. Something in him cringed away from it, remembering what it felt like to be trapped beneath it.  

“We rebuilt it, and improved it,” Elise said, as though it should have been obvious. “As soon as I read your mission report, I knew I needed it.” She crossed the room to an unobtrusive door set into the wall, and nodded to April, who shepherded Kirk forward. “Relying on trust, obedience, on discipline and loyalty… those things might work for you, captain, but they don’t work for me.” The door before her opened. She stepped inside before drawing Kirk towards her by the elbow. He ripped himself from her grasp.

April stepped forward to join them in the tiny room, but she placed a gentle hand in the middle of his chest. It was a possessive gesture, a disrespectful one. “Why don’t you go take a seat, Robert?” April’s eyes widened. 

“I---”

“Take a seat, Robert.” The door slid shut. Elise depressed a button, and the aluminum wall in front of them slid open, revealing a tinted plexiglass window. Through the glass, Kirk saw April cross ponderously to the chair and drop into it. As he placed his wrists on the arms of the chair, two thick metal cuffs snapped down around them. Kirk and April both flinched. 

“I used to rely on the natural plasticity of the brain,” Elise said, and she turned to Kirk to wink at him. His shoulders ached in earnest now. “When we worked together, for example. The human mind is so susceptible to suggestion, to persuasion… it didn’t take a lot to convince someone of what would be best for them, especially when they are so young.” Kirk’s stomach clenched. “But thanks to your helpful efforts, we’re able to assure almost one hundred percent reliability.” She smiled down at the control panel at her fingertips, and tapped at a sequence of buttons with a causal confidence that implied frequent repetition. The computer in front of her booted up and she selected a program, too quickly for Kirk to read any of what the screen displayed. 

“Almost?” Kirk asked. She turned to look at him again as the computer whirred, scanning his face intently. 

“There is something about you, captain, that makes even the best soldiers hesitate,” she said. She shook her head, disappointed, and some young and vulnerable part of Kirk still hated to see it. “The admiral is useful, but he relies too much on regulation. Not checking you for that second device, assuming you only carried standard equipment… he should have known better than to underestimate you. And now I’ve got another loose thread to tie up.” She sighed. “I must say, I’m not a fan of loose ends.” 

The computer in front of her read: PROGRAM INITIATED. RUN? 

“He said you wanted me for something,” Kirk said. His mind wheeled as he hunted for an angle that he could exploit, to get himself out of his bindings, to get back to the hangar and steal a shuttle. “Is that true?” 

Elise leaned her hip against the computer table. Over her shoulder, through the window, April stared unblinkingly at the ceiling. The neutralizer had not yet come on, that horrible yellow-white light not yet bathing the room in its terrible illumination. 

“You’re special, Jim,” she said again, and her face was earnest. “I knew it before, and I know it now. I need someone special at the helm of this ship.” 

“I would prefer to remain on the Enterprise,” he said, and she laughed like he had made a terribly clever joke. It was light, and airy, and her eyes twinkled when she looked up at him again before tapping a key on the console. The neutralizer blinked on. 

The admiral in the chair roared, throwing his head from side to side. “Robert is skilled in many ways, but he’s best at the diplomatic side of things. You marrying the telepath was a threat to our security, but I recognized it as the opportunity that it was. Are you bonded, by the way?”  

Kirk blinked at the question, but before he could even decide to lie or not she nodded calmly. “I had thought not,” she said. Her steady flow of one-sided conversation, her familiar and comforting cadence, felt like it was filling his head with cotton fuzz. He was thirty-five, captured with his arms behind his back. He was eighteen, sitting on her couch, desperate for a friend. He was twenty-two and terrified that someone would look at him and see behind his confident facade. His shoulders ached, and his mind was near-numb with disbelief and shock.

April’s screams trailed off in the room in front of them. He stared slackly at the light, which whirred as the intensity of the illumination rose and fell. Kirk could just barely hear the gentle murmuring of a recording--- Elise’s own voice?--- playing in the room. 

“For my own curiosity, dear, would you mind elaborating on how, exactly, you were able to tell your Mr. Spock about your past?” Elise said, as if she were asking about something as casual as the weather. “You were zipped up tight when last I saw you.” 

“Uncuff me and we can talk,” Kirk said. Elise clasped her hands in front of her.

“I would, Jim, but at this point I’m just not sure if I can trust you yet.” Her eyes were analytical as they scanned over his face. Even despite the years, the wrinkles that she now wore, the silvering of her hair, she was so familiar to him. And she thought that he was familiar to her; familiar enough that she knew him, understood him, could read him. She had watched him through the years, and wanted him now. 

And there it was--- Kirk found his angle. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, and the glass wall in his mind slid down between the half of him that screamed for Spock and the Enterprise and the half that was going to do whatever it took to get back home. He hesitated, like he was going to say something else, and crumpled his face for just a second. 

“It’s not like I could hurt you,” he whispered, and his eyes dropped to the floor as his voice cracked. “I could never hurt you.” 

Even as April whimpered near-inaudibly in the next room, Kirk kept his eyes downcast as Elise took a step towards him. His shoulders slumped and his spine bent, as if he were revealing the depths of his exhaustion. She reached out for him, pushing his chin up with one bent finger to meet her eyes, and he laid down his mask. He let it all shine out of his face: his fear for Spock, his anger at her and at Section 31, and beneath all of that, beneath the years of Starfleet and exploration and the Enterprise, the fury and fear and grief of the child that had witnessed the annihilation of his home on Tarsus. 

“Oh, my dear Jim,” she said, and her eyes lit up with a horrible joy. “You really couldn’t.” She placed her hand gently against his cheek, and he closed his eyes and leaned his head into it. “What have you been feeling, all these years?” 

More love and joy than I ever expected to find. “I’m so tired,” he said. “I’m tired of hiding. Tired of feeling the way I do.” 

“I’m sorry, Jim,” she said. “I really am. I hope it brings you comfort that it’s all been for the greater good.” He fought to keep his face neutral, and failed. He screwed up his face instead and pushed it further into Elise’s cool hand. Her skin was soft, papery with age. “Did you tell anyone but Mr. Spock?” 

Kirk shook his head. Technically, Spock had been the one to tell Bones. He lifted his face from Elise’s hand and opened his eyes.

“Good,” Elise said, her voice soothing. “That’s good. You’ve been so strong, Jim.” His heart clenched in his chest. He turned to look at April through the window, lying quietly under the neutralizer. If he played his cards right and convinced Elise that he would come quietly, he could keep himself from ending up in the same position anytime soon.

“What does Section 31 do?” 

Elise turned to look at him curiously. He put a little bit of himself back into his face--- just a hint of the fire that burned in his stomach, that moved him forward. “If I’m going to be your captain, I need to understand the mission.” 

“The consummate professional,” she said approvingly, and smiled. She tapped the console controller, and the faint strains of the recording faded away as the light over April dimmed. Once the light was completely off, the cuffs around April’s wrists snapped open. “You were my proof of concept, did you realize that?” 

“No,” he said, and he did not have to fake his surprise. “What does that mean?” He followed her as she opened the door between the control booth and the neutralizer room and strode to April’s side. He stared up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. 

“Robert,” she said gently. “How do you feel?” Slowly his eyes flicked towards her, and finally focused after several moments of struggle. 

“Fine,” he said. 

“You seem a bit tired,” she said. “Why don’t you go lay down?” April sat up and swung his legs down over the side of the chair. He blinked a few times before refocusing on her. 

“I think you’re right,” he said, and shook his head lightly. “I think… I think I’m feeling a little under the weather.” 

“Go rest,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Certainly,” April said. “Thank you.” He stood and departed without ever once acknowledging that Kirk was there. He wasn’t sure that April would have recognized him if he had.

“What’s his role in all this?” Kirk asked, once the door had slid shut behind him. 

“He’s the big man around here,” Elise said, playful, and Kirk followed her as she turned to leave the room. 

“It seemed like he answers to you, though,” Kirk said, and Elise nodded. 

“Oh, yes, he does,” she said easily, and Kirk’s stomach sank. As an admiral, April could easily have been instated as the formal head of any branch of Starfleet, and should have had oversight of it. But that would have required him acting under his own agency, and Kirk was rapidly coming to the deeply unpleasant conclusion that April might not have been his own man for a long time. 

“So he’s the head on paper, and you…?” 

“Clever boy,” Elise said, and gave him another approving smile as he shadowed her down the silent hallway and back into the turbolift. “No one knows 31 better than I do, or understands the needs of the Federation like I do. And no one can politic better than April. When I had the opportunity to work with him, I leapt for it. And the rest, as they say, is history.” They rode the turbolift in silence until the doors slid open, and he followed her out. His shoulders were cramped painfully. He breathed around the ache the best he could, and he tried not to think about the hole in Spock’s ribcage. They walked down another hallway, each blank-eyed crewman they passed stopping to nod to Elise, before she lifted her hand and pressed her eye to a dual scanner system and opened a door. 

“My office,” she said, and swept him in with a magnanimous arm. It was a small room, but elegantly outfitted; a neatly organized desk, a chair, a small couch, and a table. She had a window. Through it, Kirk could see the stationary stars that surrounded them. Given enough time, he thought he could figure out where in the galaxy they were. She entered behind him as the door closed and crossed to sit on the desk, one leg dangling down off of it. 

He looked from the small couch to the chair across from it, and the table between them, and gave Elise a wry half-smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes. 

“Come sit with me?” Kirk asked plaintively. “Like old times?” Despite the strain on his wrists, his whole arms on fire now with discomfort, he sat on the little couch and leaned back as best he could. She smiled and took the chair across from him, crossing her legs at the knee. The sense of deja vu was dizzying.

She pulled out her padd and tapped a button. Behind his back, the two cuffs linking his hands together unlatched. His shoulders loosened with a painful jerk, and he exhaled harshly. 

“In front of you, please, Jim,” she said, and he did as he was told. As he brought his wrists back together, the magnets in the cuffs reactivated, locking them together. He rolled his neck and shoulders out as the blood flowed painfully back through his arms and into his fingers. “Better?” 

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.” She studied him, and he let her. His shirt was still stained with Spock’s blood, dried to a near black, and he could feel the fine grit of Kindinos VI on his skin, in his hair. Spock’s blood had dried in the wrinkles of the palms of his hands, under his fingernails, and he could feel the tight tackiness of where Spock’s bloody hand had landed on his neck. 

Spock had promised to come for him. All he had to do was stay out from under the neural neutralizer and, if he was lucky, steal a shuttle. But Spock would find him--- his crew would find him. They would not abandon him. Through this litany of hope and prayer, he kept his face on the tired side of neutral.

“If you want me to work for you, I want to know what you’re doing,” he said, after two minutes of Elise’s careful scrutiny. 

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” Kirk said. He gestured at the ship around him as best he could with his hands bound. “All of this--- it’s followed me since Tarsus. I know 31 was on Tarsus. I want to know why.” The familiar nausea that came from talking about the colony rose in his esophagus, and he swallowed hard. Elise watched him carefully. 

“Alright, Jim,” she said. “I’ll make you a deal. I want to ask you some questions, and in return, if you answer honestly, I’ll answer some for you.” 

Kirk settled back against the couch, the angry muscles in his back unclenching with the support, and crossed his legs at the knee. He laced his fingers together in his lap and gave her another tiny, tired smile. “That works for me.” He met her eyes. The intervening years since their last session hadn’t dulled their clever light. She leaned forward, pen in one hand, padd in the other, and for a half-second Kirk felt like he was eighteen and utterly alone in the world again. But he inhaled, and he leaned in towards her too, forcing his body language to be open and trustworthy. He was not eighteen, and he was not alone. His crew and his husband would find him. All he had to do was lie, and he had plenty of practice. 

“Does speaking about the colony still distress you?” 

“Yes.”

“What physical reactions do you experience when you discuss your experiences on Tarsus IV?” She watched him as she said the name, and his slight twitch wasn’t entirely faked.

“Nausea is the big one,” Kirk said. “Lightheadedness. Erratic heartbeat and difficulty breathing. Difficulty speaking. General panic.” 

“Any loss of consciousness?” 

“No,” Kirk said, silently adding, Thank goodness! “Why did 31 save Kodos?” 

“That’s curious,” Elise mused, tapping her stylus against her padd. “It was never about Kodos. 31 only went to the planet to see if any of his research was salvageable. Finding him alive was a happy accident.” Kirk felt a little thrill at the confirmation that Spock’s hypothesis had been correct, a little pride in his husband’s sharp mind. “Would you mind elaborating on how you felt when you divulged your experiences to the Vulcan?” 

“All of the above,” Kirk said. “It was… unpleasant is a bit of an understatement. I never was able to say it out loud. In the end, I just showed him. In a mind-meld.” 

“Ah,” Elise said, a horrible curiosity on her face. “Such a fascinating edge case. I knew the telepathy was a threat to our secrecy, but I did not consider the forms it might take before a marriage bond. That’s clever, Jim, very clever.” She nodded at him like he’d accomplished something important and looked down at her padd before meeting his eyes again. She smiled sadly. “But you are not bonded.” 

“No.” 

“And why is that, Jim?” 

Kirk swallowed and looked out the window, away from Elise. The shuttle that had taken him to this ship had been traveling at sublight speed for the last section of their journey; even if it had been able to achieve warp, they couldn’t have gone too far from Kindinos. “I didn’t want him in my head full-time,” he said quietly. “I didn’t want him to know… how bad it still was. For me. Or for him to have to feel what I felt.” 

“Oh, Jim,” Elise said, and her face shone with concern. Kirk wanted to hit her. “That must have been hard for both of you. I understand those bonds are important.” 

He thought of Spock’s steady surety, thought of ad astra per amorem and no caveats, and held them in his heart even as he said, “It was. It is.” He cleared his throat. “What experiments were being run on Tarsus?” 

“Oh, those,” she said, and flapped one hand dismissively. “They didn’t end up leading anywhere useful. The governor had a background in genetic manipulation and bioengineering. He was the primary investigator for our attempt to create a biological weapon that could be used against some species while leaving others unharmed.” 

Kirk stifled the part of him that screamed at the injustice of the idea and lifted an eyebrow sardonically. “Was it supposed to be used against humans?” 

Elise gave him a warm, bemused look. “No,” she said. “It was nowhere near complete when waste material broke containment and got into the water system. It got into the reservoir, which contaminated the irrigation system, and…” She made a light, floating gesture with one hand. All that pain and suffering and death, reduced to a hand wave. Kirk’s lungs felt like they were filled with cement. “Experiment failed, and the PI revealed some… unfortunate beliefs once he though his career was ending. The only loose end after Kodos burned it all down and we grabbed him and the data was one kid who refused to die, and those that he saved.” She smiled at him, and it was like ice. I must say, I’m not a fan of loose ends. 

“You’re only alive because one of our soldiers made a mistake,” she said kindly. “A happy accident for you, but one that never should have happened.” 

“What did you mean, that I was your first?” 

“I think it’s my turn, Jim,” she said, tutting at him and frowning theatrically, and he gestured in front of himself in a ‘go ahead’ movement. “What is your relationship like with your parents these days?” 

Kirk actually laughed out loud. It was involuntary, and too loud in the quiet office, and hurt his throat. “I asked you for Federation secrets and you want to know how things are at home? After all these years?”

“It’s important, dear,” she said earnestly. “For the both of us.” 

“It’s fine,” he said, and she tutted at him. 

“Be honest, Jim, or this won’t work out.” On ‘this,’ she flicked her stylus back and forth between the two of them. Just Jimmy and Elise against the world. He could be honest. He just had to tell her what she wanted to hear until his crew came for him. 

“Did you know that Sam died?” Kirk blurted out. Elise slowly set her stylus down on her padd. 

“I did not,” she said.

“The Enterprise got the call that something was wrong on Deneva. But by the time we got there, Sam was already gone. We lost his wife shortly after. His son survived, but it was a close thing.” Kirk closed his eyes. “I was the one to tell our parents. I haven’t talked to them since.” It had been a horrible call. Winona had stared at him with that haggard thousand-yard gaze, and George had stepped out of frame without muting the mic. Kirk had heard his muffled weeping across thousands of lightyears and had been unable to do anything to help. They disconnected the line. Three hours later had found him slumped in a Medbay chair, positioned so he could keep an exhausted, protective watch over both Spock and Peter as they lay their biobeds.

“Oh, Jim,” Elise said. “I know how much he meant to you. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Thank you,” Kirk said, and closed his eyes to collect himself before opening them again. “Without him around, I don’t keep up with my folks much.”

“I see,” Elise said, and took another note on her padd. “That’s quite the loss. Have you been able to share that with anyone?” 

Had he talked about it? No. But he had spent late hours silently tinkering with Scotty in the engines when he couldn’t sleep. He had played chess with Spock when he couldn’t bear to sit in his quarters alone, listened to Uhura explain her translation work when his mind was too loud, drank with Bones in his office when he had forgotten how to laugh. 

He hadn’t spoken about it. But he didn’t have to. His friends had supported him anyway.

Kirk met her gaze. “No,” he said. “I haven’t.” 

“Why not?” 

“Don’t you remember?” Kirk asked quietly. “I have to be the bulkhead.” 

Elise’s eyes lit up. “Very good, Jim,” she said. She leaned back in her chair and tilted her head gently. He refused to let it remind him of Spock. 

“What did you mean, that I was your proof of concept?” 

“I don’t think you understand, Jim, just how dangerous you were when you returned from Tarsus. The youngest son of George and Winona Kirk, half-dead, and telling a story about how a mysterious black shuttle whisked away the man responsible for the death of an entire colony? Not to mention that you could have refuted the entire mission report if you had ever seen it.” 

“I was just a kid. No one listened to me,” Kirk said.

“You would have become a symbol,” Elise countered. “Tarsus itself was bad enough for our reputation. We couldn’t allow the damage to be multiplied. Every splinter group that wants to weaken us would have used you to slander the work of the Federation.” 

“I don’t think it counts as slander in a court of law if it’s true,” Kirk said mildly, but Elise’s hawkish eyes speared him through. 

“It doesn’t matter if it was true. The Federation is only as strong as people believe that it is. One of 31’s most important mandates is to protect that image. Once the Valiant picked you and the other kids up, I received my orders.” 

His kids. Their faces spun through his mind. He owed it to them to keep her talking, and to find the truth. “And what orders were those?” 

Elise smiled, pressing her lips together. “To keep you silent. All of you. To ensure that none of the details that you witnessed and remembered could be compiled to disprove the official Federation record of what occurred on Tarsus. It gave me the opportunity to test a theory of mine, and the success of that theory changed the trajectory of my career and 31.”

Whatever expression Kirk was holding on his face dropped off. “What theory?” 

“The extent to which brain plasticity could be manipulated through cognitive behavioral therapy. This general concept has been known for centuries, of course. Trauma rewrites the neural pathways in the brain; healing requires rewriting them again. I simply…” She picked up her datapen again and twirled it in her wrinkled, dextrous fingers. “It sounds unkind when I say it now, but it was what was best for you, and best for the Federation.” She met his eyes. “I do hope you’ll believe me.” 

“What did you do to us?” His voice was flat. He had to keep himself calm, keep her thinking that he was considering staying. He unclenched his hands and smoothed his hands down his thighs.

“I was able to link your physiological post-traumatic stress response to the idea of sharing what you had seen. If sharing details about the colony triggered a post-traumatic episode, you were less likely to do it. But I did not believe that alone to be sufficient; there also had to be a positive reason. Not just ‘I don’t want to do this because X,’ but ‘I want to do this because Y.’ For you, of course, that meant linking remaining silent to being a good captain.” Elise smiled at him, warm and familiar, and his stomach heaved. He stared at blankly her in horror as she continued. “And for years, you did beautifully. You’ve done so well for yourself. But then your star kept rising, and you became more and more well-known among Starfleet.” 

She tapped her datapen firmly against her padd. “And then a little bird told me that you and a certain telepath were more than friends. Your public profile, and Spock’s ties to Vulcan, and the possibility of you bonding… surely you can see why you together became a threat to be neutralized.”

Kirk’s throat was as dry as that desert planet. “Our marriage, a threat to the whole Federation? Because I witnessed one crime twenty years ago? I can’t believe…” 

“Jim,” Elise interrupted, infinitely patient. “Can you even imagine the political upheaval if T’Pau claimed you as a son of her clan and then discovered that Starfleet had tried to develop an androphobic bioweapon and nearly killed you in the process? You could have destroyed everything we’ve built since 2063.”

If it can be destroyed by the truth, then it deserves to be. He looked away from her smiling, lying face, out the window. White stars, black space. Everything she had told him roiled within his mind. 

“I imagine you have a lot to think about. I’ll let you get some rest,” Elise said. She tapped something into her padd, and her office door unlocked. “We have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow.” 

“What happens tomorrow?” The door slid open to reveal two black-uniformed officers, standing at attention, staring blankly forward. Their faces were slack in an uncanny way, no shifting eyes to indicate their attention was drawn in any direction.

“Your treatment begins.” 

Tomorrow. The idea of being subjected to the brutal loneliness of the neutralizer again encased his heart in ice. But the wait gave him more time to find a way out, and he had already endured it once before. He could survive it again. He nodded, as if the fact that she had brainwashed an entire crew of Starfleet officers into silence was in any way less than abhorrent.  

She flicked her hand at him, and the guards each seized one of his arms. 

“So what next?” Kirk asked. She nodded at the guards, and they started marching him backwards out the door. 

“Your first mission will be cleaning up the mess you made on Kindinos VI.” 

He blinked. “You didn’t get the dilithium?”

“Of course we did,” she said. “But April’s mission was to ensure that Spock could not relay any information to his family. Your actions have only prolonged the inevitable.” She followed him to the door and laid one hand on his shoulder, peering up into his face. Her hand burned like a brand, even through his shirt. 

“I’ll use that wonderful machine to ensure your compliance, and then your first mission will be to tie up our little loose end.” Kirk’s stomach dropped. She smiled gently at him. “I really am so happy that you were able to confide in someone, Jim. Your resilience is truly admirable. I just wish it had been anyone else.” She stepped back and the door slid shut. Kirk stared at the closed door as the guards manhandled him in the opposite direction. 

She was going to wipe his mind clean and send him to hunt Spock down. He, who knew Spock better than anyone, understood the way he thought, would be able to find him no matter where he hid. 

Waiting passively for rescue was no longer an option. He had to warn his crew. 

☆☆☆

The two officers marched him down the oddly silenced hall and then into the turbolift, where one of them ground out, “Deck three.” Both were men of indeterminate complexion, sallow from lack of sunlight, with eyes that never seemed to lose focus on the wall in front of them. They were about his height, and carried themselves with the comportment of fighters. They both carried phasers, and had comms at their hips. 

He would have to steal their comms. One, definitely, but both if possible. But how?

“Work here long?” Kirk asked conversationally, and tried to catch the eye of the one on his right. Their grips were painfully tight. 

“Ten years,” he said, and shoved Kirk forward when the turbolift opened. Kirk stumbled slightly. The sliding doors revealed not a deck of quarters, as Kirk had hoped, but a nondescript hallway so long that he could see the curve of the ship far ahead. 

“A long time,” Kirk agreed, and turned to the one on his left. He started dragging his feet as they walked; he didn’t think it unreasonable for him to be sluggish after the day he’d had. He wasn’t sure what time it was, or how much time had passed; it seemed impossible that he had been kissing Spock in their quarters only earlier that day. Lefty redoubled his grip on Kirk’s arm, dragging him forward. He let out a semi-stifled groan. 

“Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, yawning hugely. “I’m sure you can forgive me for being dead on my feet after today.” As they passed down the hallway, he noticed that every twenty paces there was a rectangle embedded in the wall, like the outline of a doorway. This couldn’t be the crew’s quarters--- there would be far more people around, and he had yet to see a single soul besides his escort.

But if they were taking him to the more likely and less desirable location, the brig, and this ship was built the same way that most Starfleet ships were, they would be coming up on---

There. Stairs. Kirk braced himself as they continued their inexorable march, keeping pace with their steps, until---

He flung his foot out into empty space. He let himself drop. The gravity of the ship caught him and dragged him downward, and with his weight came his guards. The three of them dropped down the four stairs, and he twisted them all until one was nearly in front of him. Kirk tried to brace his fall with his hands in front of him, but all he managed to do was tangle them in the officer’s uniform in front of him. They all crashed to the ground in a graceless heap.

“Sorry,” Kirk wheezed, ankle and wrists throbbing, as he disentangled himself from the guard groaning beneath him. In the gap between their bodies he liberated the comm from his belt and slid it into the waistband of his pants. It rested on the flat of his hip. The other officer flipped him over and yanked him to his feet without a word. Even when his face was only inches from Kirk’s, he didn’t seem to really see him. There was a distance behind his eyes that Kirk couldn’t bridge, even looking intently into them. 

“Where were you posted before this ship?” Kirk asked. But the officer just shook his hands free of Kirk’s soiled shirt and grabbed his arm again. The other staggered back to his feet and took the other. 

“Where are you taking me?” Kirk asked. But neither officer responded. Their footsteps echoed down the hallway. The rectangles in the walls grew further and further apart. If this ship was similar to the flagship, there would be another set of stairs that descended to the lowest level of this deck. But he didn’t think the stairs trick would work so neatly the second time. And it wouldn’t have; as they approached it, the officers slowed, tightening their grip on his elbows and steering him down the stairs first. If his suspicions were correct, they should have been approaching a checkpoint where another crewman would be stationed; but there was no one in sight. The hallway curved gently ahead of them and they proceeded down it until there was only a blank white wall in front of them. 

“Looks like we ought to turn back now,” Kirk said, but his jocular tone did not seem to have any effect on the statue-like men. Their silence and focus unnerved him. One officer nodded to the other, who stepped behind Kirk and grabbed both his arms from behind. The now-freed one laid his hand against the blank wall, on the outside of a faint etched outline. A square glowed around where his hand rested, blinking red and then green. Then the outline deepened, recessing further into the wall, until a door removed itself and swung inward to reveal a dimly lit, square room with no windows. 

“I’m alright out here, actually,” Kirk said. He had thought that they were taking him to the brig; he had expected the familiar energy shield, an officer operating said shield, a situation where he could rely on human error and his own human ingenuity to get him out. He bucked against the hold of the officer, spinning over his shoulder, and realized in a flash that he had, in fact, been on the brig deck the entire time. He recognized the rectangles for what they were. 

The whole deck was lined with solitary confinement cells. 

He needed that second comm. He had no idea where in space he was, how far he was from the Enterprise, and if his crew had any idea where he had gone. He was going to need a second battery.

The officer who had opened the door still had his comm clipped to his belt. Kirk needed him to chase him down and get him close, without losing the comm he’d already taken or getting beaten senseless. 

“Please,” he said. “I get claustrophobic.” 

The man blinked. “Rough for a starship captain,” he said, sounding almost for a second like a person with thoughts and feelings, before the light in his eyes shuttered again. “Get in.” 

“No, thank you,” Kirk said, and he stomped hard on the instep of the man holding him. The officer hissed, his grip loosening, and Kirk spun out of his arms and ran. The other one dashed after him. 

Six steps--- turn--- fake a stumble--- and he leapt for him as Kirk turned to face him, wrapping both arms around him as they both hit the ground. Kirk’s head bounced against the floor painfully, his arms trapped between himself and the other man, but his hands were exactly where they needed to be. 

He slid the second comm from the belt and palmed it as the officer flipped him unceremoniously from his back onto his stomach, smashing his hands between his body and the floor. Painful. Perfect. Kirk could feel the other comm pressed against his forearm by his body weight, and the sharp edge was comforting. The man grabbed him by the collar of his uniform and yanked him to his feet, and he heard the familiar sound of the seams snapping by his ear as he snuck the second comm into his pants. 

“Careful,” he wheezed, and his voice was weak from having the breath crushed out of him. “This is my only shirt.” 

The officer stared impassively at him. He pulled his phaser from his belt and leveled it at Kirk. “Inside.” 

Kirk raised his bound hands in a placating gesture. “I got the message, thanks.” The officer pressed the muzzle of the phaser against the back of his neck and pushed him forward. Kirk kept his hands in the air as he walked towards the cell. The one whose foot he had stomped on glared sullenly at him. 

“Nice working with you, gentlemen,” Kirk said, when he was fully within the cell and turned to face them. One man tapped the wall next to the cell and the door swung shut, leaving Kirk in the dim red light of solitary confinement. 

He stood, waiting, but he heard neither returning footsteps nor the quiet swish of the door mechanism. He didn’t want to risk pulling out the comms and having them confiscated immediately. Instead, he stood, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, taking stock of his injuries. 

There was a scorched section of his back; likely where he had been stunned by the phaser on Kindinos. His head throbbed, both from the stunning and from unpleasant bounce against the tile floor moments ago. His shoulders and back ached from the hours he had spent with his hands bound behind his back. His wrists chafed against the smooth metal of his cuffs. 

And the worst wound; Spock’s blood on his hands, caked in his shirt, beneath his fingernails, the dirt of that God-forsaken planet in his hair and on his skin. He closed his eyes and breathed. Spock’s ribs, exposed to air; Spock’s unfocused eyes, the deep brown that he loved most; Spock’s weak voice rasping, “Ashayam.” For one second, Kirk let himself think of his husband. He let the memories wash over him, of being awoken that morning by Spock’s hand against his face, Spock in his arms in the shower the night before.

He pulled his mind away from home and instead thought of the Spock rule: on any dangerous away mission, Spock would be where Kirk was. Spock had promised to come for him. His fear and love for Spock threatened to overwhelm him; he let it fill his chest, and he held it in his heart. Then he gently put those feelings behind the glass wall in his head, pulled the two comms out of his waistband, and settled into the corner of his cell to take them apart. 

Stealing both comms had been the right decision. Kirk spent the first chunk of time fiddling with just one of them, listening to chatter on different channels, before discovering that the comms of this cursed ship were on a closed radio band; they were designed to be on a discrete circuit, not used to communicate outside of their unit. 

Not an insurmountable challenge, but an inconvenient one. He tore one fingernail prying the cover off of the comm’s housing, and stuck it furiously in his mouth when it bled. The salty tang of it turned his stomach and forced him to remember that he had not eaten since breakfast that morning, and the fact that he didn’t have to use the bathroom meant that he was probably nearing dangerous levels of dehydration. Working with tiny pieces of machinery, with his hands bound together, in dim red light, was giving him a headache. But his alternative was gambling that his crew would find him before Elise stuck him beneath the neural neutralizer, and the cost of being wrong would be Spock’s safety. He pressed on. 

An hour of solitary confinement later found him hearing Scotty’s voice in his mind, explaining how he had used a separate battery to boost the comm’s range. Scotty’s goal had been to keep the comm locked to the transporter, but maybe the same concept could be used to send a message out into the great vast beyond. He hadn’t heard a single sound from outside his cell, though whether that was because he was on the farthest edges of the row of cells or because it was soundproofed was anyone’s guess. 

Despite the fancy dark exterior of the comm and the closed-circuit programming, this was still just one step away from a standard-issue Starfleet comm. He squinted as hard as he could at the tiny insides, ignoring the tension headache that the red light was giving him, and eventually overrode the limiting factor. He listened carefully, but heard nothing. Nothing to indicate that there was a ship nearby; nothing but silence on all channels around him. It was almost a little eerie; not even static crackled over the radio waves. 

He methodically opened the second comm up, ignoring the fact that he bled a little bit onto it, and removed the battery and power cable from it. He pinched the tiny cable between his fingers and threaded one end onto the other battery’s cathode and the other onto the anode. 

A tiny spark arced between the battery and the wire, lighting his corner of the cell with pure white light for just a second. Kirk rolled his neck and shoulders out for five glorious seconds, holding the connected comms carefully in his lap. 

Now his message. He needed something that wouldn’t disintegrate into jibberish as it soared through space, something that wouldn’t get caught up in background noise. Something Uhura would recognize. Uhura, who loved languages and codes, who had spent nearly as much time learning dead Terran languages as live alien ones. Kirk bit the inside of his lip as he smiled and began tapping his message onto the comm’s signal pad. 

Three short taps. Three long holds. Three short taps. 

Three taps. Three holds. Three taps. He sent his SOS in Morse code out into the universe and prayed that she would hear it among all the other noise. He tapped it over and over again, remembering the letters of Morse code, before switching to N-R-L N-T-R-L-Z-R. He sent that message a few times before switching back to SOS. His stomach grumbled in earnest, and the exhaustion of the day swept over him. 

Kirk laid down on the cold tile floor, facing the back corner, with his jerryrigged comms between him and the wall. He alternated between sending SOS, SOS, SOS and NRL NTRLZR over and over again until the power light on his little miracle machine finally went out. He patted it gratefully, slid his hands under his head, and fell into an uneasy sleep. 

☆☆☆

There was a tiny beep in Kirk’s cell. Wakefulness and exhaustion slammed into him in a one-two punch as the door hissed open. He held himself still, curled on his side and still facing the wall, as two sets of footsteps entered the cell. 

“Stealing, Jim?” Elise’s sugar-sweet voice dripped with disdain, the rotten core of a candied apple. “And I thought we were finally getting to be on the same page. I hope you enjoyed communicating with the rest of the ship and not much else.” 

Kirk rolled over and pushed himself up. His wrists had swollen while he slept, chafing against the skin-warmed metal of his cuffs, and his neck ached from the uncomfortable angle. 

“Your officers make for poor conversationalists,” he said. His voice was rough from sleep, and his shirt was veritably glued to his skin with an unpleasant mix of bodily fluids, both his and Spock’s. He didn’t think he was ever going to be able to wash the smell of blood and grime off of himself. 

“They know better than to talk to the uninitiated,” Elise said.

“So that’s what you’re calling it? An initiation?”

“Sure.” She smiled. Kirk could feel the little comms experiment pressing into him, where it was hidden from view. “Nearly everyone here joined 31 voluntarily. The neutralizer only makes mistakes less likely. I think you’ll find the process much more pleasant than before.” 

“Well, there was a lot of room for improvement,” he said. Elise made a sharp gesture, and the officer who stood behind her came around and inspected the ground of the cell. His movements reminded Kirk of a bloodhound. He stalked to the back corners of the small room, and his eyes alighted on the comms behind him. He swept them up, carelessly knocking his knee into Kirk’s shoulder, and the tilting movement made every taut muscle in his body ache. 

“Both retrieved,” the officer said, and then his brow furrowed. In the dim red light, the wrinkles in his forehead made him look positively devilish. He held the comms out to Elise, cradling them as they were connected in both hands. She looked down at them, tilting her head in curiosity. For a moment she stared blankly, eyes tracing the connections between the two comms. As emotions flitted across her face, Kirk wondered if she would strike him where he sat. Then she sighed. 

“Such a clever boy,” Elise said. “I am so looking forward to seeing what you can accomplish for me.” She made a lifting gesture, and the officer pocketed the comms and hauled Kirk to his feet. 

“Clear my schedule,” Elise said to the officer. “I see no reason to delay the captain’s appointment with the neutralizer.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer said, and shoved Kirk forward through the door. After hours in the dim light of the cell, the standard white light of the hallway pierced through his head like an ice pick. His legs felt oddly disconnected from his body, and an aching emptiness permeated his belly. He fought to keep his eyes open against the overwhelmingly bright lights.

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” Elise said to him as he staggered down the hallway and up the stairs. “You may have gotten your little message out, but this ship has a unique cloaking capability that will make it look like it came from nowhere.” 

“It seemed pretty visible to me when we arrived,” Kirk croaked. He was parched. 

“Visible to the eye,” she said. “Invisible on scanners.” 

That got Kirk’s attention. “This ship can’t be seen on sensors?”

“Not at all,” she said. When she caught Kirk’s eye, she smiled co-conspiratorially. The discrepancy between her actions and her demeanor gave Kirk whiplash. “It’s quite interesting, really.” 

“I’d love to learn more,” Kirk said, and he groaned as the officer jerked his shoulders up as they climbed the second set of stairs. “Please, tell me all about how Section 31 is using secret technology that could be shared with the rest of the Fleet.” 

Elise frowned at him. “It will be shared,” she said. “This agency and this ship serve as the final testing ground for many of the technologies you have come to rely on, captain. All we do is for the security of the Federation, even if you don’t approve of the methods. I hope you can remember that.” 

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. The cell-lined hallway seemed shorter upon exiting than it did entering. He was running out of time--- as they approached the turbolift, his heartbeat kicked up in tempo. 

“How does it work?” The look Elise gave him made it clear that she recognized that he was stalling for time, but she indulged him. 

“The cloaking, or the neutralizer?”

“Both.” 

She laughed lightly. “The cloaking is just a matter of overwriting the ship’s natural signal emissions--- comms, engines, light, heat--- with a pattern that looks like nothing. As soon as we can figure out how to replace nothing with an imitation of the background noise of the galaxy, it will be virtually flawless unless in visible range. I am so looking forward to having your engineering capabilities at my disposal, captain.” The turbolift soared upwards, taking them back to the deck where she had punished April upon their arrival. “The neutralizer, though… that’s my proudest achievement. Can you imagine, captain, the end of punitive measures for disobedience? A galaxy without prisons? A one hundred percent success rate for rehabilitation?”

Kirk stared at her as she placidly watched the deck display of the lift. “All you’re doing is turning the mind into a prison,” he said. 

“Please,” she said, turning to him. She met his eyes without hesitation, without any sign that she felt remorse at all. “Captain, I understand that this is a difficult proposition for you. But you interacted with April for years without ever realizing that anything was different about him. He maintains his career, his marriage, and most of his own agency. The only thing that I have asked him to change is his priorities.”

“And I’m sure you asked him so politely,” Kirk said acidly. Elise lifted one shoulder and dropped it in a dainty shrug. 

“I believed then that I knew what was best. His success as an advocate for 31’s work within the admiralty has proven me right.” 

“If you’re doing what’s right, why not let people work for you of your own accord? Why use the machine?” The doors opened and the officer shoved him forward again. Elise walked quickly down the hallway towards that ominous door. 

“You are not listening,” Elise said, her words sharp and staccato. “I am simply removing human error from sensitive decisions. The officer who didn’t shoot on Tarsus; April trying to separate you and Spock instead of simply eliminating him like I asked. And there are a hundred different examples that I could list that aren’t about you.” 

She pressed her hand to the panel in the wall and the door slid open. The reclined chair with its open metal cuffs waited for Kirk, waiting to swallow him whole. 

“You’re not removing human error,” Kirk said desperately, digging his heels into the tile and pushing backwards against the officer holding him. “You’re removing the humanity.” The officer threw him forward into the room and he toppled to his knees, muscles screaming as he fought to remain upright with his hands still bound. 

“We will have to release his current restraints to secure him in the chair,” the officer said to Elise. Kirk staggered to his feet. She considered him, padd held gently in front of her in both hands. 

“One hand at a time, perhaps.” The officer nodded, and approached him. 

Kirk fought like a hellcat, thrashing and kicking and full-throated yelling, but the officer moved inexorably, unphased by any of his attacks, and in less than five minutes he was cuffed into the chair beneath the neutralizer. The officer’s broken nose dripped blood and his eye was already blackening from where Kirk had been able to land a few good hits, but an entire day without food and water made him weak and dizzy. Elise watched carefully. 

“Imagine how strong you’ll be when your impulsivity is finally tempered,” she said. “You could have learned a thing or two from your Vulcan.” He closed his eyes. The cuffs on the chair were looser than his restraints, but bumping his abused wrists against the metal was excruciating. He couldn’t pull his hands through. 

“Do not be afraid, Jim,” Elise said, and came to stand next to him. Her pet officer stood bored by the door. She laid her hand on Kirk’s shoulder and he thrashed again, just to see her flinch away. She looked at him, disappointment in him clear on her face, and he let his lip curl back in a snarl. This was the woman in whom he had put his trust? He had allowed her guidance to keep him blind for too long. The scales had fallen from his eyes. She was a shell of a person, seizing every drop of control she could because she feared everything around her. 

The worst thing, Kirk thought, was that she completely, one hundred percent believed in what she was saying. She truly believed that what she was doing was right for her crew and the Federation. Her fear had blinded her completely.

He held her gaze, and for a moment he thought that she would delay further, try again to convince him to join her voluntarily.

Then the blaring siren of a red alert split the air. 

Elise sprang to the comm unit in the wall, tapping at the button. “Captain here, situation report, now,” she snapped.

The voice coming out of the speaker crackled. “Something just dropped out of warp and is hiding in our blind radius, sir.” 

“Identify.” 

“Unclear, sir. We couldn’t get a read on it; it was too fast. It might have been a shuttle.” Kirk closed his eyes as sharp-edged hope flared to life inside his chest. 

“Find it and destroy it,” Elise commanded. “Battle stations. Commander, you have the conn. I am not to be disturbed.” 

“Yes, sir.” The officer ended the comm, and the screaming siren of red alert continued until Elise stalked to the control room and hit something on the console that silenced everything that wasn’t Kirk’s own breathing. Through the plexiglass window Elise gestured at her officer, and he slid out into the hallway beyond. For a moment the distant sound of the red alert bounced down the hallway and into the room; as the door slid shut, everything fell quiet.

“This is normally a gradual process, but your actions have unfortunately made that impossible,” Elise said. “It may be painful, but you’re strong. You’ll be fine.” Kirk strained against the cuffs, pressing bruised skin against the metal, but there was no give. He heaved his body off the chair, arching up, but there was no escape. His bones would break long before the metal did.

“Calm down, Jim, please,” Elise said, her voice low and soothing in a way that he remembered from a thousand afternoons in her office. In his mind’s eye he saw her creased khakis and soft cardigans, her understanding eyes and smiling mouth. The control booth’s door clicked shut and he heard something whir to life above him. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away from the neural neutralizer. Even from behind his eyelids he could see the illumination increasing, slowly intensifying like a sunrise. Over an intercom came Elise’s voice, gentle, coaxing, undeniable. “It’s going to be okay, Jim. It’s all going to be okay. Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to lay down some of your burden?” Something in him was responding to her voice, turning towards it like a moth to flame, but he locked it down and kept his eyes screwed shut. The light outside of his eyelids was blinding, even with his eyes closed.

“No,” he said aloud. “Thanks, but I do not. I’m not listening.” The volume of Elise’s voice increased, and he could barely hear himself think. 

“You’re so tired, Jim,” she said. “Tired of hiding, tired of lying, tired of having to be in control for every minute of every day. Open your eyes and you can rest.” 

“I’m fine, thank you,” Kirk said, but he could no longer hear his own voice over the rasping of the intercom’s static and Elise’s gentle voice. She was right, though--- he was tired. He had been tired before he thought he was going to lose Spock to another ship, the mundane fatigue of labor and responsibility, and the past week of revelation after revelation had done a number on him. The past day alone would have exhausted him. What if he did open his eyes? 

Almost the second the thought materialized, his eyelids started to open without his permission. He shook his head fiercely and redoubled his efforts. He was not going to become the captain of this dark and horrible ship. He was not going to let Elise take his agency from him. She might think that offering mercy was human error, but he did not. He never would.

“Your old crew would understand, Jim,” Elise called. It felt like she was in the room with him, bending over him, speaking directly into his ear. He felt her voice crawl over him, sinking into him, pushing everything else out. “They would be happy for you if you just gave in. They know that it’s only a matter of time until you make a mistake, or crumble under the pressure, and none of them want to be there when it happens. They wouldn’t trust a captain like you if they knew what you really felt. Open your eyes, Jim.” Her voice, the glare and hum of the neutralizer, were stripping away his fortitude. He was exhausted, starving, dehydrated, and afraid. The cuffs around his wrists burned. The light cutting through his eyelids felt like it was draining something vital and warm and alive from his chest--- everything that made him who he was. Her voice was a time machine that took him back to when he was eighteen and friendless, sitting on her couch for the first time with shaking hands.

“If you open your eyes, you can let all that go,” she said. “I can make you perfect, Jim. Isn’t that what you want? Open your eyes, and you’ll never have to fear letting your crew down again. You would be unassailable, impenetrable, infallible. All you have to do is look up.” 

He tried to yell out, but his jaw was clenched so tightly that he couldn’t open his mouth. His teeth ground against each other. His mind whirled through a maelstrom of his worst moments, each of the days that had threatened to break him: Sam’s death and Spock’s blindness, Edith’s death, Gary’s death, Kevin suffering in silence to protect him, every time he had lost a crew member on his watch, every time he asked his bridge crew to endure the unendurable in the name of their mission, every time he had made the wrong decision in a life-or-death situation. How could he be so vain as to think that they would grieve if he were gone? Beneath the light of the neutralizer, a yawning cavity of loneliness opened in his chest. It devoured his heart whole.

His eyelids were slowly opening against his will. She was right. He was so tired. He didn’t have the strength to keep fighting. The light that peeked around his eyelashes was so warm and inviting. He hadn’t felt the sun on his face in so long. If he opened his eyes, maybe the loneliness would go away.

“You’re doing so well, Jim,” she said. “I want you to listen to me.” 

He was listening. He didn’t want to be alone.

“Open your eyes. Let go of your old crew, your old life. Let go of Spock. Let go of everything that isn’t right here.” 

He obediently pulled their faces into his mind to say goodbye. He saw the bridge of the Enterprise in his mind, his crew stationed around it, and for one heartbeat, time seemed to freeze. The light outside of his eyelids was searing him now, but for a second, the depths of his loneliness disappeared. 

He was Jim Kirk. His crew was coming for him. He was not alone. 

“They mean nothing to you now,” Elise said, and Kirk squeezed his eyes shut again. Elise did not know him anymore. She never could have understood who he had become. Someone like her could never understand the power that came from putting your trust in hands of the people around you. The light of the neural neutralizer burned and burned like the sun itself hung above him, but Kirk ignored it. Elise turned the volume up on the intercom, spilling hatred and fear and isolation into the room, but Kirk ignored it. In his mind was the bridge, and the crew who had become his friends who had become his family. 

He sat in the center chair, legs crossed, hands unbound, and Chekov and Sulu turned around to smile at him. Sulu, who had been the first to joyously respond on the day that Kirk announced his wedding, and Chekov, who had been the only person on the ship to see and understand what lay between the captain and the commander. 

Uhura sat at her console with padds scattered around her, one elegant hand pressing her earpiece tighter, her warm brown eyes alight with mischief as she waved a graph of subspace comms usage at him, as she explained to him what he had been too complacent to understand. He remembered her kindness even after he and Spock had fought, years of friendship and trust summed up in the handover of a single cup of hot coffee. 

Bones leaned against the bannister that ran around the upper level of the bridge, a stalwart presence even when he wasn’t supposed to be there. His Georgia drawl, his shrewd blue eyes, his unflagging faith that Kirk could and would get better someday--- Kirk saw all of it in the careless wave of his hand.

Scotty lay on his back beneath a console panel, and when Kirk looked at him, he raised his wrench in a salute with a smile and lowered himself again. Kirk remembered Scotty’s silent company whenever he needed a moment to think, his unflagging acceptance of the captain’s presence deep in the heart of the ship, the ingenuity that allowed Kirk to save Spock when he had been mortally injured.

Kirk turned over his shoulder to look at Spock, and flowers grew over the place in his chest where loneliness had taken up residence. Spock turned away from his sensors to meet Kirk’s gaze, and Kirk inhaled sharply. In the warm ambience of his mind’s eye, Spock glowed. Everything from the sharp dark lines of his hair and eyebrows, to the deep woodsy brown of his eyes, to his soft lips, to the set of his shoulders felt like sunshine. The light of the neural neutralizer was a pale comparison, a shameful imitation of what Spock was to him. Spock tilted his head slightly, and Kirk’s eyes traced the elegant lines of his jaw and neck. 

“For better and for worse,” Kirk said. 

“No caveats, ashayam,” Spock said. Beloved. He was beloved, by Spock and by his crew, and he loved them too. Regardless of his secrets, regardless of his failures, he was loved. Nothing and no one could take that from him.

Outside of his mind he could hear Elise’s voice going higher in frustration, and he became suddenly, brutally aware of someone’s hands on his face. He snapped out of the comfort of his mind to find Elise’s officer with his hands on Kirk’s eyes, trying to pull his eyelids open. Kirk roared, thrashed his head from side to side, and snapped at the man’s hands, trying to bite him. 

Elise cried, “Sedate him!” The light of the neutralizer still burned above him, and his face ached with the effort of keeping his eyes shut. He heard the door into the hallway open as the guard ran for something. The red alert siren still shrieked through the air. 

Then, over the ship-wide intercom, someone shouted, “Security to engineering! They’ve---”

There was a thud, and a muffled thunk, and someone with a familiar brogue cried, “Oh, no ye don’t! Now!” Something clicked. 

Somewhere in the center of the ship, there was a frisson of electricity. A circuit closed. Then a thunderous shockwave exploded outward, shaking every single one of the millions of tiny pieces that made up the ship. The neural neutralizer went black, plunging the room into darkness. Kirk felt the pulse of energy through his body, through the chair, rattling his bones and pressing him up against the cuffs. 

For three full seconds, Kirk heard exactly how quiet the galaxy was. No humming engine, no background roar of life support; the only sound in the room was his heartbeat in his ears, and the enormity of the vacuum of space outside a ship that had just gone entirely dead. 

Oh, no ye don’t. There was a Scotsman on this ship, one that had just done something absolutely heinous to the engine, and Kirk couldn’t help himself. He laughed out loud in relief as the quiet drone of the backup life support kicked on. He had outlasted the neutralizer with his heart and mind intact, and his crew had come for him. 

From the hallway he heard footsteps at a rapid clip, and the thick clunk of an automatic door being manually forced open. Elise’s last words before the blast rang through his head again, and fear exploded in his chest. If they sedated him, he could do nothing to help his crew. He would be defenseless against Elise. They could take him wherever they wanted. 

“Stun him!” Elise’s voice was high and harsh with panic in the darkness. Kirk heard someone fumble a phaser, then heard it hit the ground, and he was filled with savage pride as the officer in the hallway yelled, “It’s shorted out! Everything’s out!” 

The footsteps grew closer as Elise fell silent in the darkness. He were nearly at the entrance to the neutralizer room, and a syringe would work even if the phaser didn’t. Kirk needed a way to defend himself, and his hands were still cuffed to the bed. If he could get even one hand free…

The officer was nearly to him. He was out of time. He gritted his teeth, and thought of Spock, and with an almighty roar he pulled backwards with all his strength. One of the bones in his hand snapped. With an awful dragging underneath his skin and his hand and wrist on fire, his right hand slid free of the cuff. The footsteps halted, just to his right. He closed his eyes, even though it made no difference in the pitch black, and listened. 

The officer’s flight down the hallway had increased his respiration, and Kirk could hear him breathing. He was only five feet away. 

The officer took a tentative step towards the chair, his pants swishing gently, and Kirk thought he heard him extend a cautious arm outward. If he was reaching out with his fingertips--- 

Kirk counted to three before the officer took another step. 

One, two, three. Another. 

As the officer took one last step, the whisper of cloth on cloth unbearably loud in the silence, Kirk rolled over the side of the chair. His wrist rotated terribly inside the cuff, and his breath came out in a hiss as his feet hit solid ground on the other side of the chair. 

He heard the officer lurch forward, heard his hands slap desperately against the now-empty chair. Kirk clenched his fist, counterbalanced against his cuffed wrist, and lifted his leg. He snapped out at the knee as hard as he could over the chair. 

The top of his foot connected with awful solidity, and the only noise the officer made was a soft exhale as he stumbled away and crumpled to the ground. The syringe that had been in his hand, hidden by the darkness, clattered on the tiles, rolling away into a corner. 

“Tyler?” Elise’s voice was querulous with fear, high and sharp in the dark room.  

“Not Tyler,” Kirk said, and he bared his teeth. 

“A neat party trick,” she said, trying and failing to hide the disquiet in her voice. “Are you planning on breaking your other hand now, too?” As the adrenaline of the brief fight wore off, the ache in Kirk’s thumb intensified from mildly uncomfortable to a sharp, stabbing pain. 

“Maybe,” Kirk said. “Depends on if you intend to try sedating me again.”

“I might,” she said. “This would be easier if you would just come with me, Jim. I don’t understand why you resist so. I could give you everything you wanted.” 

“Everything?” He just had to keep her talking, now. He heard her moving around, pressing the comms button, running her hand along the wall for something. But he knew ships, and he knew Scotty: if his madman of a chief engineer truly had set off an electromagnetic pulse from within the ship itself, nothing that wasn’t set up with three or four redundancy systems would be coming on anytime soon. There was a metallic clicking. Kirk was still on his feet, but unable to turn to keep his face to her. She circled the room like a shark around a meal, one hand still dragging against the metal wall panels. 

But then, so inhumanly quiet he almost missed it, there was one single footstep in the hallway beyond. “You know nothing about what I want,” he said loudly. There--- in the second after he stopped speaking, one more quiet footstep, and then nothing. 

“I know you, James Kirk,” Elise hissed, and her voice came from across the chair, on the side of the room near the door. It sounded like her foot was sliding around on the floor, but he couldn’t tell. Was that sound just his heartbeat pounding in his ears, or was someone approaching with leopard grace? “I have known you since the day you were picked up from Tarsus and I will know you until the day you die.”

“Your memory is finally failing you,” Kirk said. “We didn’t meet until I enrolled at the Academy.” He was talking louder than necessary, he knew--- half to cover the sound of whoever might be approaching, and half out of fear. 

Something struck the wall with a musical glass tinkle, and Kirk heard the shifting of her clothing as she bent to pick it up. The sedation syringe---

“Sweet boy. Naive boy,” Elise said. “You met me when you enrolled. But I already knew you.”

“What are you talking about?” 

“I was already assigned to your case by the time we met in person.” Kirk said nothing, and Elise laughed softly. She had said that earlier, and his brain had skipped past it to the more important details: she had received her orders even before Kirk and his kids had made it back to Earth. “You had figured out so much of the rest that I had thought you had figured this out too.” 

“Not this time,” Kirk said. “What did you do?” Right outside the door, Kirk heard something; a semi-familiar two-part slide. It might have been nothing. But it might have been the sound of someone settling into one of the four defensive Suus mahna postures. He heard Elise move slowly towards the chair in the center of the room. It stood between Kirk and her like a bulkhead. 

She sighed, and he heard the subtle click of a syringe cap popping off. “You never questioned how your parents managed to do every single thing wrong?” 

Kirk stood up straight in shock, the cuff yanking him back down by his bruised wrist. 

“I was the one who guided them through welcoming home their traumatized boy. I was the one who told them that you needed to be kept close, that you needed to see your friends, that you needed to be treated like nothing had happened. And when those things failed, I convinced them that the best thing they could do for you was to let you go.” Her hard voice got closer and closer, and he edged away as far as he could. He was unsteady on his feet, his head spinning with this last betrayal.

“I know you, Jim. I know you because I made you. And I know that you have always been, and you will always be, alone.” There was a flurry of movement, and Kirk flinched backwards, trying to dodge but still expecting the prick of the needle.

Then Elise choked.

“He is not alone.” Spock’s voice in the dark was quiet, ragged, vicious in its fury. Kirk had never heard anything so beautiful in his entire life. He heard the sound of continued struggle, clothing against clothing, a thump as if Elise had been lifted off the ground and had kicked the chair between them. 

“Jim, are you well?” 

They were on a near-dead spaceship after Kirk had almost had his mind wiped and Spock had almost been shot to pieces. The question was so inappropriate, so one-hundred-percent pure Spock understatement, that it snapped Kirk out of his fear for the moment. Kirk laughed, and his voice broke. “Better now,” he said, as his throat swelled with relief and gratitude and love. He heard Elise coughing, struggling to suck in air. 

“What are your orders, captain?” Spock’s tone was serious, his voice soft and low. In the quiet of the room Kirk could hear Elise fighting for each breath, and with a rush of gravity he knew that, if he asked, Spock would kill this woman for him without question. For an awful, dizzying second, the cold and calculating part of him considered it. If Spock killed her right here, she would never be able to hurt him or his kids ever again. It would weaken Section 31. He would have revenge for what she had done to him and his family, both blood and chosen. 

But revenge was not justice, and he was not her only victim. Her death would only erase the evidence of her crimes, and he was not convinced enough of the existence of Hell to bet that she would atone for her sins in the next life. But he could make damn sure that she paid for them in this one. 

“Incapacitate her,” Kirk said. “I want her to stand trial for crimes against the Federation.” 

“Certainly, captain,” Spock said, and with another swish of fabric the sounds of Elise’s struggles stopped and Kirk heard her body slump to the chair. “Are you restrained?” 

“Yes,” Kirk said, the word hissing out as the shock wore off and his wrist and hand throbbed anew. Spock swept around the chair and his hands found Kirk’s shoulders. As Spock’s hand reached him, pressing against him, Kirk’s heart settled a little further. Spock had come for him. The nightmare was almost over.

“Ashayam,” Spock said hoarsely, the endearment breaking over him like a wave as Spock’s thumb traced a line down his neck, and Kirk threw his free arm around Spock’s waist, burying his face in his shoulder. They stood for a moment, as close as close could be. Kirk inhaled the scent of Spock’s skin; not his normal spice and incense, but antiseptic and copper. But he was solid, and alive, and standing of his own volition in the half-circle of Kirk’s arms. His blood flowed. His heart beat. He lived.

“I was so afraid for you,” Kirk murmured, his lips against Spock’s shoulder. 

“I promised that I would come for you,” Spock said. He stroked one hand over the back of Kirk’s head before following the path of his shoulder and arm to find the cuff that bound him to the chair. “Please remain still.” Kirk did as he was told as Spock wedged his narrow fingers into the cuff and tore it open. It broke off from the chair and clattered to the ground. The blood flowed uncomfortably back into his fingers, prickling like a dermal regenerator, but the cool air against his chafed wrist was soothing. Spock ran his hands over Kirk’s shoulders once more, as if assuaging his own concerns about Kirk’s well-being. 

“We should depart with haste,” Spock said, and his voice was gravelly. 

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Kirk kept one hand on the small of Spock’s back as Spock hoisted Elise’s unconscious body over one shoulder and led them back into the hallway. “How did you get up here? The lifts are all down.” 

Without answering, Spock led him down the dark hallway towards the lift. But as they walked further from the neutralizer room, Kirk saw a warm orange glow emanating faintly from a low point in the hallway wall. They pulled up even with the entrance to a Jeffries tube, and Kirk looked down. Zip-tied every ten rungs was a glow-stick, and Crovath, the Andorian security officer who had attended Spock’s hand-to-hand sessions, sat comfortably on one of the rungs. 

“Good to see you, captain,” Crovath said agreeably, and Kirk’s face crumpled with emotion as he reached down to pump the other man’s hand. 

“You have no idea how good it is to see you,” Kirk said. At Spock’s insistence, he climbed into the tube first. Crovath led the way, he proceeded in the middle, and Spock with Elise’s body slung over his shoulders brought up the rear. Kirk used the elbow of his right hand to grab the rungs, rather than messing with his broken thumb, and his wrist throbbed with every grip. He had never been happier in his life to be in such pain. They climbed down through the semi-darkness for at least ten minutes before Crovath put a hand against Kirk’s calf. 

“Wait here, sir,” the officer whispered, and he clambered the rest of the way out of the tube. Kirk and Spock waited in silence until the man’s antennaed head poked back into the tubes. 

“All clear, sirs. Mostly.” Kirk finished climbing down and shook out his left hand as Spock followed him out into the dimly lit engineering bay. Glowsticks rested on every available surface. 

“What does mostly mean?” But he turned over his shoulder to wait for Spock, and his stomach dropped out of his body as Spock stepped out of the tube. The front of Spock’s shirt, grayscale in the dim light, was soaked to black. “Put her down!” 

Spock did as he was told, allowing Elise to slide gracelessly to the ground, and swayed on his feet without his burden. Kirk braced him, one hand on his back, one on his side, and gaped in horror at the blood leaking through his shirt, dripping down onto the floor beneath him. 

“Spock!” 

“It is unimportant,” Spock said, and his eyes were focused and flinty when Kirk looked up at him, aghast. Crovath picked up Elise in a fireman’s carry and nodded to Kirk. 

“We tried to keep him from coming, sir, but he would not have it.” His antennae twitched as he gestured for them to follow deeper into Engineering. “We are nearly there.” Kirk pulled Spock’s arm over his shoulder to take more of his weight and wrapped his arm securely around his waist. They turned a corner, and Kirk beheld one of the most welcome sights he had ever seen: One and Two guarding a pile of zip-tied Section 31 engineers, Scotty at the manual controls of an airlock, and Laila guarding one unperturbed Robert April, who sat in the chief engineer’s chair with his legs crossed and his hands bound. Not a single one of them carried a phaser; they prowled around their captives empty-handed with a nearly Vulcan level of grace and power. 

The front of the airlock opened as Scotty turned and beamed at them. “All according to plan, Mr. Spock?” 

“Just so, Mr. Scott,” Spock said, but there was a burble of liquid in his throat, and he coughed. Then a hurricane of blonde and blue appeared, and suddenly Christine Chapel was standing on his other side, delicately tugging at Spock’s shirt. 

“You said you would try not to pull the staples,” Nurse Chapel said, and her tone was only slightly accusatory. 

“It was unavoidable,” Spock said, but he acquiesced to her pulling his shirt up slightly to peer beneath it. 

“Staples?” Kirk asked faintly, redoubling his grip on Spock’s waist, but no one listened to him.

“Let’s get on with it, then,” Scotty urged, and Kirk and Chapel bundled Spock towards the airlock as Scotty passed through it to the dark and silent shuttle anchored on the other side. Scotty cycled the airlock and dove into the shuttle as One and Two made a circle around the officers, ensuring that those unlucky enough to be on their warpath were still unconscious, and Laila backed carefully away from April, never taking her eyes off of him. Crovath met them by the door as April watched impassively. 

Beyond the airlock window, the shuttle lit up. The warm light of the Galileo was so comforting that a wave of exhaustion swept over Kirk. His crew had come for him. Spock had come for him. They had prevailed against an entire ship of Section 31 officers through their ingenuity and courage.

Then a flurry of angry motion caught his eye, and he turned to see Elise squirming hard against Crovath’s unmoving grip. 

“Unhand me!” Her scream echoed off the Engineering machinery and the cold, still engine. “Robert! Robert!” 

Admiral April looked at her across the deck with cold apathy in his eyes. “Yes?” 

“Help me!” She shrieked in anger and wriggled harder, but Crovath was inhumanly strong and an experienced security officer. He only clamped his hands harder down around her wrists and ankles. “Help me! I am your commanding officer!” 

April closed his eyes as the airlock door cycled open again in a rush of cool air. Kirk watched in sick fascination as he bent double where he sat, wheezing hard, before throwing himself backwards. His head tilted up to the ceiling. His throat twitched and clicked. He jerked his head hard to one side, his legs uncrossing as if to propel him across the room, before they crumpled beneath him. April knelt for a moment, head bowed, before he stood and considered her coldly, as still as if he had been carved from marble. 

“Starfleet regulations prohibit the captain and the first officer from leaving the ship at the same time, except in extraordinary circumstances,” Admiral April said. He looked from Elise to where Kirk stood, Spock leaning heavily against him, and he inclined his head. “I don’t believe this circumstance qualifies.” 

Kirk grinned broadly as Spock reached out with a trembling hand and pinched Elise’s neck again. She fell still and silent as they crossed over the airlock threshold and into the shuttle. Scotty cycled the airlock again as Crovath strapped Elise into the furthest bench seat and stepped up to claim the pilot’s seat. Scotty took the navigator’s chair as One, Two, and Laila strapped themselves onto the benches. 

“Lay him down,” Christine demanded, and Kirk obliged. As Crovath steered the shuttle away from that cursed ship, Kirk slid himself and his husband down to the floor as Christine pulled a travel medbag from beneath one of the benches. Kirk sat with his back against the wall, Spock’s head pillowed on his thigh, as Christine brought out a pair of shears and clipped Spock’s shirt open. She sighed, hands on her thighs as she surveyed the damage, and Kirk’s breath was sucked out of him in one painful gust. 

Spock’s chest was a battlefield. The entirety of his ribcage and both pectorals were bruised a deathly purple-black. The burned skin puckered painfully, weeping clear liquid and green blood. Leading in a train-tracks trail from his stomach to the top of his sternum were at least fifty tiny metal clips. Some of them held the phaser wound closed, but some of them had torn through his skin, leaving the wound open again and bleeding freely. Christine tutted at him as she bent over the popped staples with pliers and antiseptic.

“Spock,” Kirk said, horrified and awed at Spock’s sheer resilience, and ran his hand over Spock’s hair. His hand trembled, and his body ached. In the light of the shuttle, his wrists were rubbed raw, and his broken hand was swelling like a balloon. Spock’s eyes were closed, his breathing even and undisturbed but for the slight gurgling in his throat and lungs. His eyelids twitched as his heartbeat slowed, and Kirk looked up at Christine. She held the pliers in one hand as she pulled out her tricorder with the other and scanned Spock.

“Healing trance,” she mouthed, and her eyes crinkled as Kirk exhaled. He adjusted himself to ease the angle between Spock’s neck and the ground. He bent over, against the protestations of his body, to press his lips against Spock’s pale forehead, right between those pointed eyebrows.

“For better and for worse,” Spock murmured. 

“Against all dangers, as long as we both live,” Kirk said, smoothing his swollen hand over Spock’s hair as Christine worked, and he fell asleep upright with Spock’s head in his lap as Scotty flew them home. 

[anonymousewrites]

Logos and Pathos (Book 4) Chapter Thirty-Five

TOS! Spock x Empath! Spouse! Reader

Chapter Thirty-Five: Damning Proof

Summary: The mystery begins to unravel, and (Y/N) faces a traitor.

            “This is the Bridge,” announced Uhura while (Y/N), Bones, Spock, and Kirk walked through the corridors of the Enterprise. “We are still in Klingon space. Deck 9. Remain at battle stations. Deck 9. Remain at battle stations.”

            “Hopefully, we’ll be out of here soon,” said (Y/N).

            “Indeed, since we will not know when an opponent is approaching,” said Spock.

            “What?” said Kirk.

            “The Klingons have a new weapon,” clarified Spock. “A Bird of Prey that can fire while cloaked. She torpedoed Gorkon’s ship.”

            “So, that’s it,” said Kirk, pursing his lips.

            “However, we have reason to believe Gorkon’s murderers are aboard the Enterprise,” said (Y/N).

            Kirk paused and nodded. (Y/N) saw very little surprise in his aura, and they tilted their head.

            “I have something to say about that,” said Kirk.

            Did he realize or learn something while on Rura Penthe? According to Bones’s complaints as they got blankets and uniforms, someone had been sent to murder them upon orders, but they had been beamed out before getting the name.

            “Has the peace conference begun?” asked Kirk.

            “Likely,” said (Y/N). “But the location is secret.”

            Kirk grimace. “There’s always something.”

            “Captain! Mr. Spock! (L/N)!” Scotty ran up the hall behind them, and the group paused as he approached. He held up white uniforms stained purple. “I’ve found the missing uniforms with the Klingon blood on them!”

            “Excellent work, Scotty,” said Kirk.

            The next doorway slid open, and (Y/N)’s eyes widened. Two men lay dead on the unmoving. Bones solemnly knelt next to them to feel their pulses, but (Y/N) could sense no emotions coming from them. They were dead. (Y/N), Spock, and Kirk looked at one another. This plot went further than two assassins. Someone was aboard the Enterprise helping orchestrate this plot against peace.

            “But the uniforms belong to these two men!” exclaimed Scotty. “Burke and Samno!”

            “Not any more,” said Bones with grim wryness. He examined the dark burn marks on their foreheads. “Phaser on stun at close range,” was the cause of death.

            “First rule of assassination,” said Kirk to Spock and (Y/N). “Kill the assassins.”

            “Now we’re back to square one,” said Scotty, disappointment running through his aura.

            “Can I talk to you two?” said Kirk.

            Spock and (Y/N) exchanged curious looks and nodded. Just what had Kirk discovered?

l

            “Now hear this,” said the computer’s voice in a ship-wide announcement. “Now hear this. Court Recorder to Sickbay. Code Blue, urgent! Statements to be taken at once from Yeoman Burke and Yeoman Samno. Repeat. Court Recorder to Sickbay. Code Blue, urgent! Statements to be taken. Repeat. Statements to be taken from Yeoman Burker and Yeoman Samno.”

l

            In the darkness of the Sickbay, two figures lay beneath the blankets on cots. In the silence, the door slid open and closed again. A figure crept slowly towards the cots. In the blinking lights of monitors, a phaser glinted brightly. The person approached the edge of one bed.

            The light switched on. Spock gazed evenly at the figure above him.

            Valeris’s lips parted in surprise upon seeing her superior. No words fell from her as she stared into the face of Spock, her mentor.

            “You have to shoot,” said Spock. He sat up, and Valeris backed up. Spock stood, and Valeris’s legs hit the edge of the other cot. “If you are logical, you have to shoot.”

            “I…do not want to,” said Valeris.

            “What you want is irrelevant,” said Spock harshly, disappointing rendering him colder. Valeris held her phaser loosely, and it pressed to his chest. “What you have chosen is at hand.”

            “I’d rather you didn’t shoot.” (Y/N) sat up from the other cot, phaser in hand.

            Valeris looked from them to Spock and back again. She was caught. Spock wrenched the phaser from her, and Valeris stood stiffly before them.

            From the shadows, Bones and Kirk emerged.

            “It’s over,” said Kirk.

            “This operation is finished,” said Bones.

l

            Valeris stood in the center of the Bridge. The crew looked upon her with a mixture of disappointment, shock, and anger at her actions that had harmed so many and the possibility of peace. She remained calm and collected.

            (Y/N) glanced at Spock. His gaze was hard, serious, even more than usual. They knew he was disappointed not only in Valeris’s actions but in himself. He had taught Valeris, saw potential in her, and considered her as someone who could take his place on the Enterprise. And she had turned out to be a killer capable of sabotage. Spock hadn’t seen through her himself, and it had cost people their lives.

(Y/N)’s gaze softened. They knew all that Spock was feeling, and they wished he wouldn’t be upset at himself. No one could have seen this. (Y/N) brushed their fingers against his. Spock glanced at them, and his heart filled with love at their support. At least he could always count on them.

            “I did not fire,” said Valeris, speaking clearly. “You cannot prove anything.”

       ��    “Yes, I can,” said Kirk, voice clipped. “At my trial, my personal log was used against me.” (Y/N) saw Valeris tense minutely. “How long did you wait outside my quarters before I noticed you?”

            She had leaked the information to the Klingons and gotten Kirk and Bones blamed for a murder. “I tried to tell you.” She looked at Spock. “But you would not listen.”

            That evening when she and Spock had spoken. She had talked of “turning point” and “is this logical?” She had attempted to show honesty. It made her decision to follow through all the more disappointing. Although she would claim logic, her doubt was clear.

            “Neither of us was hearing very well that night, Lieutenant,” said Spock. He wished sincerely he had listened to (Y/N)’s assessment that Valeris did not understand anything beyond facts and logic. He stepped down towards her. “There were things I tried to tell you. About having faith.”

            Valeris’s gaze was as cold as a Vulcan’s could be, and her tone contained a harsh edge. “You have betrayed the Federation.” She looked at everyone gathered on the Bridge. “All of you.”

            “And what do you think you’ve been doing?” snapped Bones.

            Valeris lifted her chin. “Saving Starfleet. Klingons cannot be trusted.” She stepped forward. “Sir…” She looked at Kirk. “You said so yourself. They killed your son. Did you not wish Gorkon dead? ‘Let them die,’ you said.”

            Kirk’s eyes widened as he heard his own words. Shame wove its way through him, and he sank down into his chair.

            (Y/N) narrowed their eyes. Kirk had said that in a confidential meeting. Someone from it had orchestrated this and instructed Valeris to assist in Chancellor Gorkon’s assassination.

            “Did I misinterpret you?” she said. “And you were right.” Her voice neared a scoffing tone. “They conspired with us to assassinate their own Chancellor. How trustworthy can they be?”

            “You murdered two men in your plot, two Starfleet officers,” said (Y/N). Valeris tensed, and (Y/N)’s eyes narrowed. “What does your logic say about that display of untrustworthiness?”

            Valeris’s lips parted and closed again. She had no response to that. (Y/N) had pointed out a flaw in her reasoning.

            “Klingons and Federation members conspiring together,” murmured Bones incredulously.

            “Who is ‘us?’ ” questioned Kirk. He was disappointed in himself, Starfleet members, and a whole host of other things, but he needed to pull himself together to prevent more tragedy. If this went higher up, then the peace conference was in danger.

            “Everyone who stands to lose from peace,” said Valeris.

            “Names, Lieutenant,” said Kirk.

            “My comrades will make sure all your ship-to-ship transmissions are jammed,” said Valeris.

            “Names,” repeated Kirk, harsher.

            “I do not remember,” said Valeris evenly. She turned her back on the group and looked out at the viewscreen.

            “A lie?” said Spock.

            Valeris glanced back. “A choice,” she said, using his own tricks against him.

            “Valeris,” said (Y/N).

            Valeris didn’t face them.

            “You act from logic, correct?” said (Y/N).

            “Always,” said Valeris.

            “Then why did you choose to instigate war?” asked (Y/N).

            “Starfleet stands to lose,” said Valeris.

            “Does it?” (Y/N) stepped down from their station. “Or do you believe it will?”

            “The Klingons will betray us. We will be harmed,” said Valeris. “People will die.”

            “If peace is achieved, no one has to die,” said (Y/N). “And yet by your actions, people have died. You have betrayed Starfleet’s trust.”

            “No, I acted on its behalf,” said Valeris, facing (Y/N). “I was chosen because I follow Starfleet loyally.”

            There. “Someone asked you to do this, someone within Starfleet,” said (Y/N).

            Valeris’s jaw clenched slightly.

            “Obviously, someone from the confidential meeting we attended, judging by your knowledge of Kirk’s words,” said (Y/N). They were employing logic, breaking Valeris’s story apart step-by-step. They shook their head. “They chose you because with a presentation of facts, they could sway you. But Spock is right. Faith is as important as wisdom. You are young. An officer used your naivete against you.”

            “I am a Vulcan. I am not naïve,” said Valeris.

            “Yes, you are,” said (Y/N). “You understand how the world works but not how people do. So you did not see the blindness of the person manipulating you. You did not see that they could not understand that peace should always be strived for to allow for the betterment of our societies. That is what Vulcan did by embracing logic—sought peace in its people.” Valeris’s gaze flicked to the floor. “That is what we did with the Romulans. And now it is time to do so with the Klingons. But the only way we can do that is with names.”

            “I…do not remember,” said Valeris, though her voice halted. (Y/N) had made logical points, and now the words that had swayed Valeris to this course of action seemed to dim in tehri logic.

            “I will remind you, then,” said (Y/N).

            “(Y/N), do you know?” said Bones, confused as everyone else.

            “I have guesses,” said (Y/N). “Obviously, ambassadors from various Federation planets are involved. There had to be support for this course of action for Valeris to believe the facts she was presented with. And for the Klingons, the obvious perpetrator is General Chang.” Valeris tensed and looked at (Y/N) in a bit of surprise. “You took the recording of Kirk’s log, Valeris. And it ended up in his hands. It’s obvious.”

            “But what about Starfleet?” said Kirk, leaning forward.

            “I have a theory. Valeris, if I remind you of the name, do you think you’ll answer?” (Y/N) would know whether she spoke or not. “Alright. There was one person in that meeting who showed vehement dislike of the Klingons. His emotions were strong enough for him to act, I believe.”

            Kirk’s eyes widened, and Spock furrowed his brow as they recognized who (Y/N) spoke of.

            “Lieutenant Valeris. Does the name Admiral Cartwright rings any bells?” said (Y/N).

            “I—He—” Valeris could not answer honestly without giving the truth away. It didn’t matter. (Y/N) had it.

            “Thank you,” said (Y/N). They turned away from Valeris, leaving her to unravel everything they’d told her and all the perspectives and facts they’d pointed out. They took their spot beside Spock again, who was gazing at them, impressed (and thinking how sexy his spouse was, if he was honest, though it was not the best moment for it).

            “Lieutenant Valeris,” said Kirk, calling her attention. “Where is the peace conference?”

            “I do not know,” said Valeris.

            Kirk looked at Spock and (Y/N). “Is she lying?”

            “If she isn’t, we’re dead,” said Scotty, grimacing.

            “I’ve been dead,” remarked Spock. “Contact Excelsior, Captain. She’ll have the coordinates.”

            Kirk’s eyes widened, and he turned towards Uhura.

            “I’ve already got her, sir,” said Uhura.

            Kirk grinned, glad his friends were as good at their jobs as they were. “Viewscreen, Uhura.”

            “Aye, sir,” said Uhura.

            Sulu’s face appeared on the viewscreen. “Standing by, Captain Kirk.” He smiled.

            “Sulu!” said Kirk, glad to see another friend. “You realize that by even talking to us, you’re violating regulations.”

            Sulu smirked. “I’m sorry, Captain, your message is breaking up.”

            (Y/N) smiled. They were lucky to have such loyal friends.

            “Bless you, Sulu,” said Kirk. “Where’s the peace conference? They’re going to attempt another assassination.” If one death didn’t break peace talks completely, this one would.

            “The Conference is at Camp Khitomer, near the Romulan border,” said Sulu. “I’m sending exact coordinates on a coded frequency.”

            “I’m afraid we’re going to need more than that,” said Kirk apologetically. “There’s a Bird of Prey that’ll be on the lookout for us. And she can fire while cloaked.”

            Sulu frowned. “Surely not.”

            “Hold on.” Kirk looked at Valeris. “How any of those things are there?” She remained silent. “Come on, Lieutenant!”

            “Valeris,” said (Y/N) harshly.

            “Just the prototype,” said Valeris, speaking with as few words as possible.

            “Do you hear that?” said Kirk.

            Sulu nodded. “I’m getting underway now. We’re now in Alpha Quadrant. The chances of our reaching the conference in time are slim.”

            “When does the conference start?” said Kirk, worry clouding him.

            “According to my information, today,” said Sulu.

            (Y/N) grimaced. That wasn’t good. They needed to work as quickly as possible to stop another assassination. Even if they had proof it was premeditated by a group of people who wanted war, another death could not be overcome. The peace conference was their last chance to rescue peace itself.

            “Thank you, Captain Sulu,” said Kirk, pursing his lips.

            “Don’t mention it, Captain Kirk,” said Sulu. He would always support his friends and the people seeking peace.

            The Enterprise was the last stand for hope and peace. It always would be.

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[stellarred]

IS DEANNA TROI PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR QCARD???

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Q really didn't like Deanna Troi after Encounter at Farpoint, because near the end when Picard made that "bargain" with Q, pleading him to allow him to reach his Away Team, while they were on the attacking ship (jellyfish), we had this conversation:

Picard: My people are in trouble over there, Q...Please let me help them.

Q:

Picard: I'll do whatever you say.

*The Away Team fizzles onto the Bridge.*

Q: You'll do whatever I say...*Q leans forward, gazing intently at Picard.*

Picard: *looks at the Away Team*: Seems as though I did make that bargain.

Troi intervenes by saying, "It was not Q that saved us!"

Q then exclaims, "She lies...Make phasers and photons ready!"

Picard, of course, refuses to do what Q says, and then he procedes to put the pieces of the Farpoint mystery together as his Away Team colleagues share the new information that they'd learned through their comparison of the two alien structures.

But to think that Q almost had a chance to have Picard all to himself, with Picard doing whatever Q said, if Troi hadn't opened her mouth about the attacking ship saving them and not Q.

Perhaps in that moment Q thought, "Maybe he won't notice that the Away Team appeared on his Bridge in a purple, swirling light instead of my standard Q flash?"

Picard, for a moment, didn't take notice of that detail.

Darn that Deanna Troi and her Betazoid senses!

Alas, Picard manages to wriggle out of his little bargain with Q, as the entity allows Picard to solve the Farpoint puzzle and unite the jellyfish creatures.

Side note: I love how Q, standing behind Picard, kept looking at him. I wish I knew what he was thinking.

And then, Troi had to have her sappy moment with the whole "A feeling of great joy! It's so wonderful!" (Q: 🤢)

Poor Q. Skunked in the first episode.

We know it was for the best, though. Q was definitely in his jerky, self-serving phase of TNG, with his lessons to teach Picard (and his other expressions of love for Picard) coming later.

Neither of them were ready for a relationship at this point, and we very likely wouldn't have had any Qcard canon had Picard kept his deal with Q. It might have been amusing on Q's part to have Picard doing whatever Q said (with "whatever" being who knows?) but, Picard wouldn't have liked it.

A potential hookup with the one, who just put you and your entire race on trial?

Perhaps in that moment, and I'm reeeaaalllyy stretching it here, Troi had a slight hand in starting the evolution of Qcard.

Qcard has been a slow burn from the very start, and if Picard thought that Q had indeed saved his crew, and he joined him, the slow burn very likely wouldn't have even had a chance to catch fire at all.