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indeedcaptain · 2 months

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Regulatory Relations, Chapter 21: The Survivors

Also posted on AO3 here!

Holy shit yall, there's only one chapter left after this. I'm gonna lose my mind. hope you're still having fun <3

☆☆☆

The courthouse that the united government of Vulcan had deemed fit to loan Starfleet for the court-martial was part of an enormous sandstone complex in the center of ShiKahr. Kirk stood outside of it, early enough in the morning that the silver nightbirds still called to each other and the heat had yet to tighten its stranglehold, and knotted his fingers in an angry tangle behind his back.

His dress uniform felt ill-fitting; his body had not changed since the last time he had worn it, but he had. He compulsively smoothed his badges down once more to feel that they were still in their proper places.

Spock looked over at the movement, and leaned closer, so that his shoulder pressed against Kirk’s, the drapery of his civilian robes wavering between them. Counselor Ketoul stood at his other side, as stalwart as a general, and together the three of them and the Vulcan judicial clerk who had shown them here awaited the arrival of the prosecution and the panel that would determine Kirk’s fate.

They did not wait long. The panel arrived in a swish of robes and the general air of importance. There was Admiral Morrow, a man Kirk had met a few times at ceremonial functions and tended to think highly of; one of the chief justices of Vulcan, T’Lona, a stern and angular woman; and Admiral Drake, a woman Kirk had only seen in holos and knew only that she had been promoted during the war. Kirk met each of their eyes and nodded politely. From around a large doorway came the last of their retinue for that day, as the witnesses would not be called until after opening remarks and testimonies: the prosecution. Admiral April was tall and stoic, face impassive and revealing none of the stress that it had the last time Kirk had seen him, in the dark underbelly of the 31 ship. Next to him was a tall, blonde, slender woman that Kirk recognized immediately. His eyebrows flew up.

Areel Shaw spoke first. She greeted everyone by name as the Vulcan clerk led them into the dark and waiting room, and as Kirk passed her, she said, “It’s good to see you again, Captain Kirk.” He flashed her an uneasy grin.

“You as well, Counselor Shaw—but I wish we’d stop meeting like this.” She grimaced at him sympathetically before dropping back to walk next to Ketoul.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Ketoul said. “Do you come here often?”

“I was surprised to see your name on the docket, Neera. Court-martials aren’t usually your style.”

“No,” Ketoul agreed. “They aren’t.”

Spock halted by the door, and brushed his fingers against Kirk’s in one last stolen kiss. He was integral to everything that had happened, to all that Kirk was and had become--- and yet, because he was only acting as a witness, he would not be allowed to participate that morning. Kirk met his eyes. The variegated brown of his eyes caught the early morning sunlight, and in them Kirk could see his surety and cool control--- and his love. He pressed his fingers to Spock’s once more and then let the door swing shut behind him.

The courtroom they were in was intimidatingly large, clearly built for a much more populous audience—but with the trial closed to the public, the list of witnesses would barely fill the first row of seats. The panel was seated at a long table at the front of the room, and across from it were two shorter tables: one for Kirk and Ketoul, one for Shaw and April. There was one imposingly austere chair catty-corner to the tables; it would be for the witnesses, seated where they could address both panel and counsel.

Kirk swallowed hard. The quiet shuffle of their feet and clothing, the murmured conversation of the Vulcan clerk and the panel ahead, were swallowed entirely by the abnormal acoustics of the hall. His ears rang with the silence.

The clerk wasted no time installing the three honored guests at the front table, gracefully gesturing the prosecution and the defense to their places. Then he took an unobtrusive position near the exit, and Morrow stood.

“All rise,” he said, and the small group present came to their feet. He looked around, eyes settling uncomfortably on Kirk and April, before he said, “Thus begins the court-martial of Captain James T. Kirk, of the USS Enterprise, charged by Admiral Robert April with the crimes of disobedience of a superior officer, assault and battery of a Starfleet advisor, and refusal of a legitimate order of transfer without grounds. How do you plead?”

He looked directly at Kirk, not Ketoul. Kirk said, voice rough, “Not guilty.”

“Your plea is noted,” Morrow said. “Counselor Shaw, you and your client may present your opening remarks.” Areel stood and paced to the center of the room.

“Admiral Morrow, Admiral Drake, and Justice T’Lona, I thank you for your presence. I hope that you will hear our evidence, and the logic of Admiral April’s decisions, and come to a just decision.” It seemed heavy-handed to Kirk to invoke logic in her opening salvo, but he couldn’t blame her for going straight for the wildcard in the panel.

“Captain James Kirk has served the Federation honorably for many years, and is known for his creative and unusual style, but he has finally gone a step too far. He may love being captain, and he may love the Enterprise, but the chain of command and the integrity of the service must be preserved. Though he may not have wanted to give up command of the Enterprise to obey the orders of Admiral April, it was his duty to do so--- a duty that he refused to discharge. Then, rather than remain and explain what had occurred, if he had truly seen a reason to refuse, he ran to Vulcan to avoid the consequences of his rash actions. I ask the panel to charge him guilty on these counts, and hand down punishment as it sees fit. If any captain were able to ignore the orders of the flag officers, for whatever reasons they desired, Starfleet’s integrity would crumble.” She stood proudly before the panel, her voice bouncing off the rock walls and making it sound as though she were standing right in front of Kirk. She looked evenly between each of the panelists. He ran, repeated a cruel little voice in the back of his head. Like a coward. He tried to ignore the voice. He had done the best he could with what he had at the time.

Areel turned and raised one hand to April. “Admiral?” April stood, bracing himself on the table with both hands.

“This is an open and shut court-martial,” he said. His voice was gravel. All the exhaustion that had been wiped from his face was apparent in his voice. “Captain Kirk may find the secrecy and shadow work of Section 31 to be distasteful, but his skills are too valuable to the security of the Federation and all the planets that comprise it to be wasted on exploration. We needed, and need, his ability to think laterally. Someday it may be the difference between peace and war. He refused an order of transfer, to the detriment of our common cause and for his own purposes, and broke numerous other rules to do so. I ask that you find him guilty, and, rather than lose his skills to a rehabilitation colony, consider his punishment to be transfer to Section 31, effective immediately and for the rest of his career.” April slowly sat back down, hands still on the table in front of him.

Areel turned back to the panel as Kirk silently gagged in nauseated horror.

“The prosecution rests,” she said, and she took her seat. The faces of the panelists were unchanged; Justice T’Lona perfectly Vulcan and the two human admirals stonily concerned.

“Counselor Ketoul, you and your client may present your remarks,” Morrow said. Ketoul stood and strode to the center of the room. Her heels clacked assertively on the stone floor, but the echoes were eaten by the acoustics.

“Honored panelists,” she said. She inclined her head politely to each admiral, and raised an elegant ta’al to the chief justice. Score one for Ketoul, Kirk thought. “I thank you for hearing us, and I am confident that together we will find the truth, and justice in its shadow. Captain Kirk, as stated, will plead not guilty.

“This is not because he did not disobey Admiral April’s orders; we do not contest that this occurred. Instead, Captain Kirk is not guilty because Federation law and Starfleet regulation supersede any and all commands given, and to agree to serve Section 31 would be to agree to break Federation law as a matter of course. Captain Kirk refused the transfer of command because he is an honorable and trustworthy Starfleet officer, and a faithful citizen of the Federation.” One of Morrow’s eyebrows crept slowly up his face as Ketoul spoke. Drake frowned. T’Lona remained unmoved.

“As submitted in response to the summons to trial, Captain Kirk will countersue, on the grounds that Section 31 has been breaking Federation law and Starfleet regulation for at least twenty years. I turn now to the captain, who can provide more illumination on the scale of criminal conduct.” She turned to Kirk, and he straightened under her burning gaze. He knew what was coming. He could do this.

“Captain Kirk, when you arrived on Kindinos VI, you, Admiral April, and your first officer, Commander Spock, discovered a tunnel system beneath the largest home on the planet. What did you find in the tunnel?”

“Section 31 had beaten us there,” Kirk said. “They were removing the dilithium that had already been mined.”

“Dilithium is critical to the propulsion system of a starship, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“So it’s an important resource.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So what’s wrong with Section 31 removing the dilithium after the mine ceased operations?”

“As a matter of course, nothing. But the Enterprise had received a distress signal on an open channel about ten hours prior. We warped to Kindinos VI earlier than scheduled because of it. And we did find the miners and were able to rescue almost all of them. So 31’s presence meant one of two things. Either they missed the distress call and didn’t search for survivors upon arrival, or they heard it and ignored it to prioritize the dilithium. Both break one of the most basic tenets of Starfleet regulation.”

Ketoul’s eyes flashed as she turned back to the panel. “And what tenet is that?”

“Sentient life over resources. Always.”

Ketoul let his statement float in the chamber for a moment before moving on. “In preparation for this case, I searched for any and all public information on Section 31– and there’s very little. For obvious reasons, nearly all of its work is classified--- even within Starfleet they are an enigma. I was not able to find a single public image or description of their uniforms. How did you recognize them?”

“I had seen their uniforms before, a long time ago.”

“When did you first encounter Section 31, Captain Kirk?”

Kirk swallowed hard and said, hands clenched in his lap, “When they extracted Governor Kodos from Tarsus IV after the massacre.”

Morrow’s padd hit the table with a sharp clack. Ketoul clasped her hands behind her back and said, “Section 31 has dogged the steps of Captain Kirk since he was a child, breaking Federation civil rights law and Starfleet regulation to keep him and the other Tarsus survivors silent. Captain Kirk refused the transfer order because he knew exactly the types of decisions he would be asked to make if he were to take command there. We charge Section 31 with obstruction of justice, attempted creation of a biological weapon, attempted extrajudicial killing, and three violations of the highest order of the Federation constitution: the rights to one’s life, one’s family, and one’s mind--- and these are only the charges that Captain Kirk personally witnessed. I ask that you find Captain Kirk not guilty, and instead use this case as an opportunity to remove the shroud of secrecy from this department and align Starfleet once more with the values upon which it was founded.”

If Kirk thought the justice’s face had been blank before, he was wrong: it was a ceramic mask now. The lines between Drake’s eyebrows had deepened, and she was frowning, hunched over her padd. Morrow stared at Ketoul like she had grown a second head before his eyes flicked to Kirk.

“You were on Tarsus?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re trying to connect something that happened twenty years ago to your disobedience charge?”

“Yes, sir.”

Morrow sat back and wiped a hand across his face. “And you’re charging Admiral Robert April with these crimes?”

“If he is fit to stand trial, yes,” Ketoul said easily. April’s eyes snapped to her, narrowing as she continued, “As he brought the charges against Kirk, he must be the defendant in the countersuit.”

“Yes,” Morrow said, half under his breath. He looked down at the padd again. “And your witnesses, Counselor Ketoul?”

“Captain Kirk, first. The rest of the Tarsus survivors,” she said. “Captain Kirk’s first officer and husband. His chief medical officer. And his therapist from his time at the Academy.”

Morrow set the padd down and placed his hand on top of it. “Section 31 is a hugely valuable research organization, with an enormous role in the public safety of the Federation. I must say, Counselor, this is a hell of an accusation.”

“It’s a hell of a crime,” she said. She bore his scrunity for five seconds, ten---

He sighed heavily. “Your countersuit is accepted. Counselor Shaw, you may proceed with testimony.” Areel stood, shaking her shoulders back, stalking to the center of the room to meet Ketoul.

“In light of the gravity of the charges against us, I request the right to call additional witnesses.”

“Request granted, Counselor,” Morrow said. “If they need time for travel, or dispensation to call over subspace, it will be allowed.”

“Thank you,” she said, nose in the air, as Ketoul took her seat again by Kirk’s side. She caught his eye out of the corner of hers and gave a tiny nod. They were over the first hurdle. Areel said, “I call Admiral April to the stand.” April stood and crossed to the witness’s seat, seating himself heavily into the upright and austere chair.

“Admiral April, place your hand upon your heart. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as an officer of Starfleet and a citizen of the Federation?”

“I do.”

“Admiral, will you please state your name and tell the panel what occurred between you and Captain Kirk on the Enterprise and on Kindinos VI?”

“My name is Robert April,” he said. “I had originally traveled to the Enterprise with two goals: to convince Commander Spock to take his own command, and to ask Captain Kirk to join Section 31. Though they are married, I thought that Spock’s logic and Kirk’s sense of duty would at least provide me with the opportunity to explain the necessity of the request, and allow us to come to some sort of agreement. I had hoped for more time for that discussion, but the distress call from Kindinos preempted that. It was during the mission, however, that I began to have doubts about Kirk’s objectivity, and the reliability of that sense of duty.” Kirk’s blood boiled. So that would be April’s play: casting aspersions on his ability to lead, to ruin his reputation and then hide him away in 31’s clutches.

“He and Commander Spock both joined the away mission, though it was against regulation. The commander seemed comfortable in his explanation that the captain would attend for diplomacy’s sake, but it did not seem so square to me. What I learned, just in twenty-four hours on the ship, is that where the captain is, so too is the commander. And vice versa. Kirk should have remained on the ship; yet, because his husband was going, so was he.” Kirk ground his teeth.

“We transported down to the surface, and Kirk continued to choose remaining near the commander rather than tasking him with leading one of the security teams, as would have made more sense. I believe that he didn’t want to leave Spock alone with me, as I had not made a secret of the fact that I thought and think he is wasted as a first officer. Maybe he thought that I could talk Spock into leaving. Maybe he just values Spock’s life more than anyone else’s on the crew, and trusts only himself with guarding him. Regardless of the reason, it was the three of us that discovered that there was a tunnel system below the mine owner’s home, and we decided to see if there were survivors down there.

“As I was on the Enterprise, and on Starbase 27 before that, I cannot speak to whether or not the 31 unit broke protocol intentionally, or if it was truly an accident that prevented them from rescuing the miners first. That will be a matter of investigation when I return. I thought it serendipitous that we stumbled across them, though. I had hoped, once we found them, that Kirk would be intrigued by their work or interested in their mission, and I could talk to him and the commander about the transfer.”

April hesitated, lips parting as he paused for breath. He said, “Then there was a tragic accident.” Kirk clenched his hands in his lap, willing his breathing to remain steady. “I will spare you the terrible details, but we thought Commander Spock had perished. Captain Kirk--- well, he went ballistic. I have never seen a man more out of control, especially not a Starfleet officer of his caliber. We had to stun him for everyone’s safety, and took him back to the 31 ship to care for him. When he awoke, he harmed several officers, kidnapped my advisor, and damaged Starfleet property--- all to escape. Somehow he convinced a small contingent of his crew to come get him, and then he and the commander fled here. We were all very relieved to learn that Commander Spock had not been killed,” April said, his eyes glinting in the light. “However, Captain Kirk’s response to the commander’s injury makes me question his capacity as a leader. I believe that Spock compromises the captain’s integrity, his objectivity, and I doubt the wisdom of allowing them to serve together in the future.” He smoothed his hands over his thighs. “I welcome any further questions.” A low, seeping dread started to creep through Kirk’s stomach. April told beautiful lies. What if they couldn’t catch him out?

Areel stood immediately. “Thank you, Admiral April. Is it true that you are the leader of the Starfleet entity known as Section 31?”

“Yes,” he said.

“How long have you held that position?”

“A little over four years.”

“Have you ever heard of or witnessed activities related to, say, the creation of biological weapons?”

“Not in my tenure as head,” he said. It was a seamless evasion. Kirk clenched his fists beneath the table as Areel nodded in acknowledgement.

“Did you know that Captain Kirk had been on Tarsus IV?”

“I did,” he said quietly. Kirk schooled his features to neutrality.

“Do you have any knowledge regarding operations that Section 31 may have conducted on Tarsus IV?”

“The tragedy on Tarsus IV occurred long before I joined 31. I cannot be expected to know every experiment 31 has ever run.” It still wasn’t a no.

“Captain Kirk argues that Section 31 has violated his civil rights over the past twenty years,” she said. Her voice was steely and blank; when Kirk had known her well, many years before, he had called it her lawyering voice. “Do you have any evidence of Section 31 taking particular interest in the Tarsus survivors, or any explanation for why that interest would lead Kirk to refuse a transfer of command?”

“It would be highly unlikely,” April hedged. He paused and licked his lips. “It would be highly unlikely for any branch of Starfleet to take such particular pains to follow civilians.” Areel waited, but that was April’s entire answer. She blinked and backed off.

“Regarding the charges of violating the constitution of the Federation, have you personally witnessed such violations occurring?”

Kirk clenched his teeth. It was a lowball question, and so easily sidestepped. “I have not.”

Areel turned away. “The prosecution rests.” Ketoul stood and took her place, looking to Morrow for permission. He nodded.

“Admiral April,” she said. Her voice was sweet like poisoned fruit.

“Counselor Ketoul.” His response was dry, acerbic; there was a familiarity there that Kirk didn’t understand.

“I can’t help but note that many of your responses are about your ignorance of the inner workings of your own organization. I’d like to focus on what you do know.” April’s mouth turned down at the corners, but he inclined his head. “You knew that Captain Kirk and his first officer were in a relationship?”

“I did.”

“When did you become aware of that fact?”

“I suspected as such when I recommended Spock for promotion when Captain Bergara retired, and he refused it. They married shortly after that.” As they moved back to safer ground, April’s voice grew in strength. The shadow of his original annoyance grew.

“What was your goal in transferring Spock?”

“Spock is too good at too many things to be a first officer forever. Bergara had run a science ship. I thought to offer him an opportunity while filling an open position.”

“But you didn’t think to order him to transfer, the way you did Captain Kirk? I can’t help but notice your willingness to override my client’s wishes, but not Commander Spock’s.”

April huffed a breath through his nose, and laced his fingers together in his lap. “Commander Spock’s transfer was a matter of his professional development. Captain Kirk’s was and is a matter of Federation security. Captain Kirk also informed me, on multiple occasions and very strong terms, that nothing will kill morale faster than an unwilling leader. If Spock didn’t want command, there was nothing I could do about that. But Kirk does want command, loves it, and there should have been no objective reason for him to reject one command for another.”

Ketoul nodded, absorbing his words and ceding his point, before changing tack. “You’re married, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” April said.

“Would you be upset if your spouse were seemingly killed in front of you, only days after you had finally married to ensure that you could stay together?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Yes.”

“Could you please elaborate on the tragedy that you thought had killed Commander Spock?”

April shifted in his seat; the first real sign of his discomfort. At the table across from Kirk, Areel’s hands tightened on the arm of her chair. “He was struck by an inadvertent electrical discharge.”

“With Commander Spock’s permission, I have entered his medical records from the past four months into evidence. You may wish to spare us the terrible details, Admiral, but I do not.” Ketoul waited, watching the panel turn to the correct section on their padds. Drake reeled back in disgust.

Ketoul said, “Am I understanding you correctly that Commander Spock was shot, with a phaser, by accident?” A vein in April’s forehead started to throb. He gave a jerky nod.

“Dr. Leonard McCoy is Spock’s primary medical provider, as CMO on the starship Enterprise. It was his professional opinion, notated and signed in the file, that this phaser had been set to kill. It was also his opinion that if he hadn’t moved just so, and if he hadn’t been a Vulcan male in peak health, he would have died almost immediately.”

“Objection,” Areel said. “Conjecture.”

“Sustained,” Morrow snapped. Ketoul settled her shoulders back. “Fine. It was his opinion that the phaser had been set to kill. Is it not against Starfleet regulation to leave an unholstered weapon set to the highest power?”

April nodded again, one sharp movement.

“Could you please explain the context surrounding Commander Spock being shot, almost fatally, by friendly fire, during a situation in which you were hoping to convince Captain Kirk to join your branch voluntarily?”

“Accidents happen,” April said, and his voice, previously staunch and confident, dropped to an uncharacteristic weakness. There it was--- the inconsistency in his story, the unerasable hand of Elise in the outcome of that day. The only thing April had seemed to regret, in the last minutes in the tunnels on Kindinos: he hadn’t wanted to kill Spock. Morrow’s gaze, previously focused on Ketoul, shot to him.

“Your reputation precedes you,” Ketoul said. “You are a man of exacting standards. Did you report to HQ or otherwise punish the officer who, through reckless handling of a dangerous weapon, almost killed a fellow officer?” There was an unbearable pause. April studied his hands, turning them over to look at his palms. Then he looked back up at Ketoul.

“No,” April said. Morrow frowned.

“Why not?”

April said nothing.

“Was it because this officer was following orders? Your orders, maybe?”

“Objection,” Areel said again. “Leading.” Nobody responded. Ketoul forged on.

“If you are court-martialing Captain Kirk for refusing an order transfer, and First Officer Spock is his lawfully wedded husband, entitled to serve alongside him and protected from separation by Starfleet regulation, why is Commander Spock not here as a defendant as well? If you truly respect his abilities so highly, why not request him as well?”

April’s hands clenched in his lap as his breathing rate increased. For a second, it looked as though he wanted to respond; he looked up at Ketoul, and then his gaze flicked to Kirk for a half-second. In that brief blink, his exhaustion leapt to the surface, the strain apparent. Then it was gone.

“If you had wanted Captain Kirk to transfer to Section 31, wouldn’t it have sweetened the deal to bring his husband with him? One of the most effective command teams in the quadrant could have been a huge asset to your organization.” Ketoul had seen that moment and she took one step towards him: she had smelled the blood in the water. April watched her with an unidentifiable expression.

“In your own characterization of the situation, you could have rectified Spock’s underutilization and gotten Kirk to agree to almost anything, if you had just offered for both of them to go.” Ketoul took another step towards him. “Unless Captain Kirk’s marital status no longer mattered by the time you actually asked, or ordered, Kirk to transfer, because you believed Spock to be dead. I ask you again, Admiral: how did Commander Spock get shot?” Kirk’s palms felt wet, once again drenched in Spock’s lifeblood in that awful cave, Spock’s body heavy and falling in his arms--- he forced himself to unclench his fists and settle into himself. In the silence of the stone room, he could hear April’s raspy, unsteady breathing.

“A man of exacting standards,” Ketoul said again, softly. April’s gaze flicked to her; there was a desperation in his eyes. “It’s hard to believe that someone like you could be accused of either ordering a subordinate to shoot a fellow officer, or that, if it was an accident, that you would let the matter lie. I ask you again, admiral. How did Commander Spock get shot?”

Silence. Then, Kirk heard it: a nauseating clicking, timed with the jumping of April’s throat. Ketoul took another step towards him. “Maybe the better question is why was Commander Spock shot,” she said.

“Objection,” Areel said. “Conjecture.” But April turned his head hard to the side, eyebrows pulling together in a pained expression, the tendons of his neck trembling, before he turned mechanically back to Ketoul.

“It seems out of character for you, Admiral,” Ketoul said. Her tone slid from accusing to something softer. “Tell us. Why was Commander Spock shot?”

April’s head tipped back before snapping back up. Then his eyes slid to Kirk’s, and Kirk saw what he had been hoping for: fear, remorse, and, beneath those, a new determination that he thought he understood. He held April’s gaze, and he did not look away. He held the ugly, warped connection thrumming between them as April shifted forward and said to Ketoul, in a low, choking voice, “Because--- because--- because---”

He collapsed forward, out of the chair and onto the ground.

Areel screamed. Drake and Morrow leapt to their feet. Kirk skidded from his chair to April. He dropped to his knees and rolled the other man onto his side. His eyes were open, blank and unseeing, as he craned his neck back and spasmed, and there was a bloody scrape across his nose and cheekbone from hitting the ground. Kirk stripped his dress uniform tunic off, bunching it up to stuff beneath April’s head, and yelled to the clerk by the door, “Call a medic!”

By the time the Vulcan medics arrived, the seizure had stopped, and April lay unconscious on the stone floor, breathing shallowly. Areel and Ketoul hovered nervously nearby, the admirals and the justice watching intently. The medics carefully loaded April onto a stretcher and lifted, carrying him out into the unforgiving mid-morning sun. Kirk sat back on his heels and reclaimed his now-wrinkled dress uniform, buttoning it slowly over his black undershirt as an oppressive silence sank down over the courtroom.

“What,” Morrow eventually asked, “the hell was that?”

Ketoul glanced at Kirk as he stood. He settled into parade rest and said, “Evidence of Section 31 violating the right to one’s mind.” T’Lona’s lips pursed, eyes calculating and cold. Morrow’s eyes narrowed, and he looked back at Kirk.

“You have thirty seconds to explain what just happened.”

“Section 31 rebuilt Dr. Adams’s neural neutralizer from Tantalus and has been using it on its own agents to control them. Sir,” Kirk said. “I saw the advisor put April under it when I was on the ship. He might be the head on paper, but he isn’t the one making command decisions.” Morrow shook his head, turning away from the group, before swinging back to point one finger at Ketoul.

“You specified, earlier, that you would charge him if he was fit to stand trial.”

“Yes, sir,” Ketoul said.

“You knew this would happen.”

“We had an idea, sir,” she said, and she withstood the brunt of Morrow’s furious scowl. He turned away from the group, wiping one hand over his face, before turning back.

“What a mess,” he said. “Counselor Shaw, who did April list as his first officer?”

Areel’s eyes slid to Kirk and Ketoul before she said, voice low, “The security advisor that Captain Kirk kidnapped, Admiral. Her name is Joanne March.”

“A retired advisor as his first officer,” Morrow said, mostly to himself. Then he said, louder, “Put her on the court-martial forms and have her beam down.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Ketoul said.

“What.”

“Is this the advisor you’re referencing?” Ketoul held up her padd, with Elise Darling’s staff photo displayed. Morrow nodded. “I reached out to request that she serve as a witness for Captain Kirk, but she never responded.”

Morrow turned to Kirk. “You asked the woman you kidnapped to testify in your own court-martial? Kirk, are you insane?” Morrow’s composure looked like it was hanging on by one single thread. He planted his fists on his hips.

“She was my psychologist when I was at the Academy,” Kirk said. “But I knew her as Elise Darling.”

Morrow stared at him for five full seconds. He inhaled and exhaled twice. Then he said, in the stillest voice Kirk had ever heard from him, “I recommend we adjourn for the day. We try this again tomorrow, with this Joanne--- Elise--- woman representing Section 31. Counselor Shaw, call whatever witnesses you like. We’re not waiting, we’ll beam them in through subspace. Counselor Ketoul, bring all of yours in.” He wiped a hand over his face again. Then he leveled a shrewd glare at Kirk and Ketoul. “You’ve made this case very, very complicated. You’d better have the evidence to back it up.”

Kirk nodded. Ketoul said, “We do.”

Morrow sighed. “Dismissed.” Then he turned back to Admiral Drake and T’Lona. Areel, Ketoul, and Kirk left the courtroom as silently as they had entered it, emerging into the bright sunlight. Areel turned to them, as if she might say something--- then she decided against it, and split off from them to head in the direction of ShiKahr’s city-center.

Spock emerged from a zen garden in the center of the courtyard, his light robes billowing around him. His eyes searched Kirk’s face for evidence of how it had gone, and Kirk let him read his face and his nerves, only extending his hand for the comfort of Spock’s fingers kissing his.

“It worked,” he said, and Spock nodded. They wound through the justice complex, Kirk trying to avoid analyzing which of the sandy footprints on the paths might have been the medics carrying April, until they arrived where they had parked. Spock drove them home, soaring through the streets of ShiKahr, and they escaped back into the blessed quiet and cool of Sarek and Amanda’s home.

Kirk and Spock stayed in the main house for most of the day. They sat in silence as Ketoul reviewed her notes and occasionally asked a clarifying question. Kirk twined his fingers together in increasingly painful configurations until Spock took one of Kirk’s hands and pressed it between his own. Dinner later was a somber affair.

If this goes right, Kirk kept thinking as he half-heartedly pushed cubes of vegetables around his plate. If this goes right, tomorrow we could be with the others, with my kids. We could celebrate together. We could be free of all of it. If this goes right.

Kirk rolled over in bed long after the nightbirds had started to sing, pulling Spock by the hand. Spock rolled with him, pressing his chest to Kirk’s back, his breath ruffling the hair on the back of Kirk’s neck.

“Share what troubles you,” Spock ordered, his voice quiet. His fingertips brushed over Kirk’s wrist in a gentle back-and-forth.

“April had it so much worse than I did,” Kirk said. He stared into the darkness, remembering the seizure, the scrape across April’s face. “It was awful. I can’t help but wonder now if we did the right thing.”

Spock’s hand settled on Kirk’s forearm, pulling him close against him. “I am sorry, k’diwa. But he will receive the highest level of care that the VSA can offer, and you have given him the same opportunity that you received.”

“The opportunity of passing out somewhere on Vulcan?”

Spock was silent for a minute, a warm presence enveloping Kirk. Then he said, “I believe that Admiral April could have remained silent, or further prevaricated, if he so wished. But by forcing the issue in public, far from the neutralizer and Elise, he now has the opportunity to defect from 31.” Spock was quiet again before he said, “It will remain to be seen how many of his actions were his own, as opposed to those programmed into him. The man I knew during the war was cynical and hawkish, but he never would have worked for such an organization of his own free will.”

Kirk lifted Spock’s hand from his arm and pressed it to his face. Spock’s palm was smooth, cool and dry, and he curled his fingers lightly against his forehead, his temple, his cheekbones. Even through the light contact Kirk could feel a spark of something between Spock’s fingertips and his psi-points. He wished, suddenly, that they were melded, that he could feel that comforting presence inside his head and not just pressed against him. But until he was certain that he was not going to be sold to Section 31 and its secrets for the rest of his life, he would not ask. Instead he rolled over inside the circle of Spock’s arms, breaking the connection, and pressed his face instead to Spock’s neck. Spock put his chin on the top of Kirk’s head, and they breathed until Kirk fell into a restless sleep.

☆☆☆

Kirk, Spock, and Neera Ketoul walked again through the winding pathways of the ShiKahr judicial complex in the early-morning quiet. There were very few people around; only a handful of Vulcan clerks moving purposefully from building to building, and their own, who led them back to the same building they had occupied the day before. They were early, and the first people there; the other survivors would be checking in at the front gate any moment. Kirk was jittery despite the calm of the morning and the lack of caffeine in his system. Today he would face Elise and publicly testify about his time on Tarsus. Only time would tell if it would be worth it.

In the center of the courtyard, the air began to shimmer with gold resonance. Spock pressed the back of his wrist to Kirk’s, a steadying presence at his side. But the body that materialized was not Elise; it was a dark-haired southern gentleman, one who started moving towards him nearly before he had finished beaming.

Kirk threw his arms open to hug Bones for the first time in four months. His friend collided hard with him, gripping the back of his shirt tightly. They held onto each other; subspace calls were a weak substitute for the joy of seeing him in real life. Bones pulled back, patting his shoulder hard and scanning his face. Kirk held his gaze, and his first genuine smile of the day started to pull the corners of his mouth up as Bones gaped at him.

“My God, Jim,” he said. “You look like a new man!”

“I feel like one,” Kirk said, and grinned in earnest as Bones slapped his back.

“We’ve missed you,” he said, nodding to Spock and falling in on Kirk’s other side.

“The feeling is mutual,” Kirk said. Bones and Ketoul shook hands as they met in person for the first time, and from the other side of the courtyard Kirk could see a young Vulcan leading a group of humans towards them: the twins, Kevin, and Tommy. Mira waved enthusiastically as they approached.

As the clerk let them into the courtroom, where the panel of judges already sat waiting, Kirk changed his mind. His husband, his best friend, and his childhood chosen family--- a veritable army of people who loved him--- were all in the same room. They were safe and whole, prepared to testify for and with him, despite time and distance. No matter the outcome, this moment alone was already worth it.

Kirk sat again at the table reserved for the defendant, and the other witnesses filed into the row of chairs behind them. Ketoul set down her padd and bag before leaning down to him.

“We got them,” she said.

He looked sharply at her. “I thought you didn’t hear back from anyone else.” She shrugged.

“I didn’t, at first,” she said. “But since Morrow offered Areel an option for her witnesses to testify virtually, I asked if we could have the same offer.”

“You just… asked him for it?”

“Yes,” she said, as if asking favors of admirals was all in a day’s work to her. “I thought those who wouldn’t or couldn’t travel might be willing to call in.” He hid his smile at her audacity in his hand and looked down at the table instead.

The door in the back of the room opened, and an icy finger drew a line down the back of his neck. He felt, even before he turned to see her, the chilling presence of Elise Darling. The quiet chatter of the room fell silent as she entered, striding confidently down the center aisle with a furious Areel on her heels.

He turned. There she was. Gone was the black Section 31 uniform; instead, in juxtaposition to her military bearing and demeanor, she wore a soft pair of khakis and a pink cardigan. Her hair was a softer gray in the warm lighting of the room, more raincloud than gunmetal, and the soft wrinkles of her face feathered across her cheeks and forehead. She looked almost exactly like she had when he knew her.

She found his eyes unerringly, and she smiled gently at him, as if to say, now what’s all the fuss about, Jim? Then her eyes flicked to the row of witnesses behind him, his army, and the kindness faded from her face. A wave of protective fury rose within him, one that urged him to hide his kids from her poisonous tongues, shove her backwards out of the room so that she did not get to see what they had grown up into. He glanced quickly at them, gauging them, ready to intercede. But where he had expected fear, or trepidation, he saw only the steel of their resolve. He looked at his husband, and felt a little thrill of delicious fear. The trappings of Spock’s civility had all but melted away at her entrance; his eyes were night-dark and burning, posture threatening and angled towards Kirk, one hand slowly fisting and unclenching at his side. When Elise looked back at Kirk, her eyes were cold, but he did not look away.

Then she settled gently into the seat that April had occupied the day before as Areel stood next to the table. Morrow looked up at her from his padd and, frowning, said, “You didn’t submit any more witnesses, Counselor?”

Areel’s lawyering voice was back. “The plaintiff has refused to provide any.”

Morrow said, “Excuse me?”

“The plaintiff informed me that she will not be calling any other witnesses to testify.” Areel’s hands were clasped behind her back, so tightly clenched that her knuckles were white. “As her counsel, I advised her otherwise, but she remains firm in her decision.”

Morrow looked at Elise. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice was warm, friendly; it floated through the air like a dust mote. Kirk clenched his jaw. Morrow stared between her and Areel before sighing. He settled both hands onto the table, leaning forward, and said, “All rise.” They stood. “Thus continues the court-martial of Section 31 versus Captain James T. Kirk, and the countersuit of Captain Kirk versus Section 31. As the original plaintiff and countersuit defendant has been found medically unfit to stand trial, his first officer will stand for him. She will testify, and then the counselors may call witnesses and submit evidence. Counsel was given dispensation to call witnesses via subspace. Counselor Shaw, you may begin.”

Areel stepped forward again. Her quiet self-confidence from the day before had been replaced by a bubbling frustration. “I call the plaintiff to the stand.” Elise stood carefully, smoothing her hands down her khakis, and walked to the witness chair without a single trace of concern or remorse. This courtroom was just one more deck on the ship of her obsessive control.

“Advisor, place your hand upon your heart. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as an officer of Starfleet and a citizen of the Federation?”

“I do,” Elise said, laying a wrinkled and sun-spotted hand over her chest.

“Please state your name for the court.”

Elise smiled gently at Areel. “Does it matter?”

“Does it---” Areel stuttered, her mouth dropping half-open in shock. Kirk almost felt bad for the Herculean task she had been assigned. “Yes, it matters!”

“Why, may I ask?”

“It matters because Admiral April gave the court one name, and Captain Kirk gave another, and it seems as though both of those names are yours. Please state your name.”

“My legal name is Joanne March,” Elise said. Areel gave a sharp nod.

“Has your legal name ever been Elise Darling?”

“Oh,” Elise said, and gave a self-conscious little laugh. “Not for a long time. But yes.” Her eyes found Kevin, seated behind Kirk, and Kirk fought to keep himself still in his chair instead of putting his body between that gaze and Kevin. “At one point it was Siobhan Murphy.”

“Ms. March, what role do you play in Section 31?”

“I’m just an advisor now,” she said, crossing her legs at the knee. “Before I retired, I spent a long time in 31, and in its predecessor.”

“Its predecessor?”

“Intelligence and Information Operations, dear,” Elise said. Her voice was patronizing, as if she were giving Areel a lecture on a topic she should have already known. “In the years before the Klingon War, more and more departments were folded into I and I until it became what you now call Section 31.”

“What role did you play in Captain Kirk’s transfer order, and in the events on Kindinos VI?”

“I was the one to suggest the transfer,” Elise said, and Morrow and Drake’s faces blanked out in surprise. “Admiral April expressed frustration that very few of our commanders had the improvisation and creative thinking that other Starfleet captains displayed. I suggested that we transfer the best to our staff, in order to provide learning opportunities. I had hoped that Captain Kirk could, as they say, show them how it’s done.” She turned her head away from Areel then to meet Kirk’s eyes, and when she smiled he heard her words in his head: I always knew that you were going to be special.

“And Kindinos?”

Something closed off in Elise’s face. It was as subtle as a door slamming shut. “Dilithium is a finite and necessary resource for the Federation. Kindinos VI is strategically valuable.”

Areel stared at her, waiting for her to provide something more concrete, and Elise looked politely back. She changed course. “When Captain Kirk refused the transfer order, what was your next plan of action?”

“I was unwilling to accept no for an answer,” Elise said. She looked at the panel then, directly at T’Lona. “As the Vulcans say, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” T’Lona held her gaze, face unchanging.

“Who are the many, in this case, Advisor?”

“The citizens of the Federation, of course,” Elise said. She frowned slightly. “I don’t know if you had noticed, Counselor, but the galaxy is a dangerous place. Section 31 is frequently the only line between order and chaos. It would have been better for having Captain Kirk.”

“Would you mind returning to the events on Kindinos, Advisor? I’d like you---”

The door in the back of the room swung open. A woman with graying red hair burst through, a flustered clerk on her heels. The other clerk blinked in surprise, catching the door before it could bang against the wall.

“Excuse me,” Morrow boomed. “This is a closed--- Sarah?” The indignation in his voice faded as the woman approached. “Announce yourself.”

“My name is Dr. Sarah April,” the woman said. She slowed as she approached the tables, a data card clutched in her hand. Elise watched her with a vague disinterest as Areel backed away, allowing a clear sight-line between Dr. April and the panel. “I’m acting on behalf of Admiral Robert April through power of attorney, and I want to submit his medical records as evidence.”

Everyone in the room turned to the petite woman. She held up the data card in her hand, breathing hard through her nose. “Robert is in a hospital bed right now because of what happened here.” She snapped the card into her other palm and her voice turned desperate. “I read the countersuit. I am a doctor. I know my husband. I want to submit this scan as evidence of what Captain Kirk said.”

“Sarah April,” Elise said, an odd light coming into her eyes. She tilted her head to the side. “I’ve heard so much about you from Robert.”

“Do not talk to me about Robert,” Dr. April hissed, pointing at her with one finger. She marched to the table and slapped the datacard onto it. “This is an MRI of his brain yesterday.”

Morrow reached across the table, taking the card. Dr. April took a shuddering breath, meeting Morrow’s gaze--- then she turned and marched back to the row behind the survivors, where she remained standing.

Morrow said, “Counselor, I’m sorry. Do you mind?”

The look on Areel’s face said that this day could not possibly get any worse for her, but she said, “By all means.” Morrow slid the card to T’Lona, who inserted it somewhere beneath the table. There was a click, and a whirring, and a panel in the wall across from the witness stand slid into a hidden pocket to reveal a holoscreen. T’Lona pushed a few more buttons, and the holoscreen began to glow. The screen glowed for a few more seconds before the brain scan loaded completely. Kirk registered it blankly: it was just a picture of a brain.

But Bones leapt to his feet, hands gripping the back of Kirk’s chair hard, and cried, “My God!” He stared at the image, his face paling, before he stalked closer. He pressed a hand to his mouth as he inspected the scan, eyes huge and luminescent in the glow of the holoscreen. He turned back to the room at large, opening his mouth to speak---

“Objection,” Areel said, through gritted teeth. “I want an explanation from a doctor unaffiliated with the countersuit.”

There was a painful silence. “Sustained,” Morrow bit out. He turned to T’Lona and they had a harried, whispered conversation.

“Counselor Shaw, please continue. Advisor March, your testimony?”

Areel turned back to Elise, where she still sat patiently in the witness’s chair. She said, hesitant at first before regaining her momentum, “Kindinos VI, Ms. March. Yesterday, Captain Kirk implied that Section 31 had broken regulation during its mission to reclaim the dilithium that had been left on-planet. What was your role in that mission?”

Elise considered Areel for a moment, twinkling eyes calculating. “No,” she eventually said. “I don’t think I’d like to talk about that.”

“Advisor, I strongly recommend---”

“Counselor Shaw, your client---”

Elise stood. Areel fell silent, and Morrow said, “Advisor, if you step down now, I’m holding you in contempt of the court.”

Elise tilted her head, looking for all the world like someone’s kindly grandmother, and said, “That’s fine.” Then she crossed the room, only her footsteps interrupting the shocked silence, and took a seat.

Morrow stuttered for a second, then leaned over to T’Lona. They exchanged a few brief words before she swept down the center aisle, catching the clerk in her wake, and disappeared. Morrow said, “We will take a brief recess. Sarah, a moment.”

Kirk turned from the debacle in front of him to find Elise watching him. Her eyes scanned over him and the army of witnesses behind him, and she gave him a what can you do? kind of smile. Then she turned back to Areel, saying something to her too quietly to be heard, and patted her arm.

Kirk turned around in his chair to find his kids talking quietly to each other, Kevin’s eyes flicking uneasily to Elise every few minutes. Spock sat statue-still, unblinking alien gaze locked on Elise as well, his lip twitching closer to a snarl with every passing second. Kirk scooted his chair closer just to bask in the company of his people, content to let their voices roll over him, Spock pressing one knee protectively against his.

Sarah April had submitted the admiral’s brain scan as evidence for his countersuit. Elise was going to be held in contempt of the court.

He tried not to let his hope get ahead of itself, but he thought the tide of the war had just turned.

A chaotic hour passed before T’Lona, the clerk, and an older Vulcan doctor returned to the courtroom.

“Order!” Morrow shouted, and the room fell silent once again. “Justice T’Lona, if you please…?”

“I introduce you to S’Ren, a neurologist at the Vulcan Science Academy. He is of the clan Archenida.”

Areel rose and lifted a ta’al. “Greetings,” she said formally. Then she glanced between T’Lona and S’Ren. “You are not--- related to anyone represented in the countersuit?”

S’Ren inclined his head. “Correct.”

Areel nodded. “Thank you.” Then she gestured back to the holoscreen. Morrow tapped something, and the screen lit back up as the room dimmed. “Please.” S’Ren approached the screen, hands clasped behind his back much in the same way that Spock held himself, and peered at the MRI scan. He studied the date and time at the bottom before continuing his assessment. For three minutes this continued, and the audience watched him in silence as he paced before the holoscreen. Then he nodded once to himself and turned back to T’Lona.

“I have gleaned all that I can without further detail,” he said.

“Will you testify to your observations?”

“I will,” he said, and crossed to the witness’s chair. He sat, his robes draping down over it and hiding it entirely from view. Areel stepped forward once more.

“Dr. S’Ren, please place your hand on your heart.” He did so. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as a citizen of Vulcan and the Federation?”

“I do,” he said, and she nodded. Then she asked, “Will you share your observations of this image with the court? In layman’s terms, if possible.”

S’Ren looked back at the MRI on the screen across from him, slanted eyebrows pulling together thoughtfully, before he said, “This is a scan from a magnetic resonance imaging machine. The name of the patient is known to me, as I was present when he was brought into care yesterday afternoon. I understand him to be a human male of between fifty-five and sixty-five years. I must state before any further observations are made that it is difficult to make concrete diagnoses without further information from the patient or his caregivers. I cannot guarantee that what is shown in this image depicts the entirety of his health.”

Areel nodded. “Your point is well taken, Doctor. Please continue.”

S’Ren said gravely, “There is scarring within the patient’s brain. The presentation and formation pattern is consistent with reactive astrogliosis, which is a defense mechanism of the brain in many bipedal species. Reactive astrogliosis is,” and here he hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “a response to brain injury or infection. The scar tissue creates a barrier between the wound and the rest of the brain to prevent the spread of either bacteria or inflammation.”

“Is there a certain part of the brain that shows this reaction, doctor?” Areel’s voice was measured.

“The entire thing,” S’Ren said, and Dr. Sarah April stifled a little wounded noise into her clenched fist. “Scarring presents between each lobe and between the hemispheres.”

“What kind of injury or infection triggers this response?”

“It is difficult to say without knowing the patient’s full medical history,” S’Ren said. “Though, if I were the diagnosing physician and did not have access to his history, I would proceed under the assumption that it was an injury, rather than an infection.”

“Why?”

“Because of the even spread of scar tissue. An infection in the brain typically blooms in one section; one lobe, or perhaps the brain stem. Reactive astrogliosis would then spawn to create a barrier between the point of infection and the rest of the brain. This image, however, indicates that whatever caused such damage did so to the whole organ at once.”

“Is it possible to tell when this injury occurred? So we might compare it to the patient’s medical history later?”

“It is not possible to tell how old the scarring is without a biopsy,” S’Ren said. “However, I can say that there were multiple injuries.”

Areel’s voice was sharp. “What do you mean?”

S’Ren held her gaze. “There are layers to the scarring.” His eyes slid past her to focus on the holoscreen again. With two fingers, he traced in the air the thick white lines along the brain in the image. “The scarring has formed along the same lines again and again. It is thinner, more transparent at the edges; those are new scars, more recently formed. Where the scarring is thickest is the opaque section in the middle.”

Dr. April started to cry in earnest. She stifled the noise in her palm, but her shoulders shook. Mira tapped Ellie on the thigh before she shuffled around her, claiming the empty seat next to Robert April’s weeping wife. Then she slid her hand into that of a perfect stranger, holding onto it with both of hers. Dr. April gripped her like a lifeline.

“Is there anything else that you believe relevant, Dr. S’Ren?”

“I see no fractures of the skull, or any other indication that the damage has a physical source,” S’Ren said, and his voice hardened. “The even distribution of the astrogliosis in conjunction with a lack of blunt force trauma…” He trailed off, and in its wake Kirk saw horror crack through T’Lona’s stoicism. Then S’Ren said, words harsh and tripping off his tongue, his perfect Standard accent slipping, “Something was repeatedly done to this brain that this brain fought against, and fought hard.”

Areel took one small step backwards. “The prosecution rests,” she said unsteadily, and returned to her seat. She did not look at Elise.

Morrow, aghast, said, “Counselor Ketoul?” Ketoul shook her head, her hand pressed to her mouth. “Thank you, Doctor. I believe you are free to go.” S’Ren, composure regained, stood. He inclined his head to the humans, raised the ta’al to T’Lona and Spock, and departed--- but not before one last long, searching look at the holoscreen and the damaged brain on it. The door swung shut behind him with a click.

Justice T’Lona had become a marble statue of a Vulcan woman, staring ahead unblinkingly. Her hands rested on the table, framing the padd of information before her. There was a beat of silence before she slowly turned to Morrow and Drake.

“We continue,” she said. Morrow nodded once, twice, before he turned to Ketoul.

“Counselor, you may begin.” She stood immediately, shaking off the stillness and horror from Dr. S’Ren’s testimony over the two steps that took her to the center of the room. She turned back to Kirk where he still sat at the table, and met his eyes. In her gaze there was a question: Are you ready for this?

He pressed his palms to his thighs. He allowed himself one steadying breath. Then he nodded.

“I call the defendant Captain Kirk to testify.”

He stood, straightened the bottom of his dress tunic, and took the witness stand. He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. Like in my chair, he thought, picturing his bridge in his mind. He held the image of his ship and his crew in his mind as Ketoul said, “Captain Kirk, place your hand upon your heart.” He looked at the bench of witnesses, his family, and his eyes found Spock’s. Spock’s gaze was steady, firm, comforting; he was here with him, had made all of this possible, and would not leave him now. Kirk made the ozh’esta with his hand and laid it over his heart. Across the room, silently, Spock mirrored him, and laid it over his.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as an officer of Starfleet and a citizen of the Federation?”

“I do,” Kirk said.

“Captain Kirk, can you please state your name and tell the court how you came to know Section 31?”

Kirk inhaled to speak, and nausea rose up within him. Elise’s quiet presence was like poison in his veins. She had haunted his steps, dogged him his entire life, had hurt him and his family in ways he was only starting to understand, and now she sat across the courtroom from him and watched him with detached curiosity. He could spill his testimony across the room like lava, fueled only by how much he wanted to hate her, and let it burn everything in its wake. She would probably understand. She would say something like, “You have so many reasons to be angry, Jim,” and then push him to isolate himself further, until all he had left was his rage and his empty hands.

Kirk let the wave pass through him. He had his fury, and probably always would, but it was far from the most important thing about him. He looked at the others: Tommy and Kevin, Mira and Ellie, Spock and Bones. The people he loved most in the galaxy, all seated side by side in a courtroom so that he could finally lay the ghosts of Tarsus to rest. So instead it was love that swallowed the nausea, that expanded his tunneling vision, that settled his shaking hands. He looked back at Ketoul, waiting expectantly.

“My name is Jim Kirk,” he said. “I survived the genocide on Tarsus IV.”

In the end, the only detail that Kirk left out was that he and Spock had not technically been dating when they got married. His throat was dry, and his eyes had stung with tears at some points in the telling, but he made it from the beginning at Farm School up to leaving for Vulcan. Mira, halfway through, had returned to her seat next to Ellie, and she clutched her and Kevin’s hands as they listened. When Kirk had talked about the neutralizer, and what Elise had done to April, Dr. April’s tears started again. Ketoul was impassive, unsurprised by any of the revelations; Spock, quietly and righteously furious. But Bones, even after helping them put together the countersuit, stared straight ahead at the stone wall behind Morrow’s head as tears dripped silently down his cheeks.

“Thank you, Jim,” Ketoul said softly, when he had finished. “I have no further questions.” Morrow blinked, shaking his head as if to clear it, and then turned to Areel.

“Counselor Shaw, you may cross-examine the defendant if you wish.”

Areel refused to look at Elise, and said, “The prosecution rests.” Morrow raised his eyebrows, but nodded.

Kirk stood, unbearably light. Twenty years of silence, of censorship, over. The rest was out of his hands. He reclaimed his seat at the table as Ketoul said, “I call Lieutenant Kevin Riley to the stand.”

Mira released his hand so that Kevin could take his seat. He moved with more confidence than he had when Kirk had last seen him, and when he turned to the side, there was the undeniable curve of a tummy behind his dress uniform where before there had been ribcage. Kirk couldn’t stop the flush of pride that spread through him at the undeniable proof that Kevin had followed his orders, had gotten help, had tried to see his recovery through this time.

Kevin swore on his honor, and then he began.

Kirk’s story had been focused on his panic attacks and his need for secrecy; Kevin’s was centered on his need for control. He had returned from Tarsus, separated from the children who had loved and protected him, to slide back into anonymity in a big extended family that never had quite enough space or time for him. His eating disorder had started as a manifestation of that need; Elise, under the name Siobhan, had seen it and teased it out of him. She enabled that obsession with control to take over everything, leveraging it to make sure he never talked about Tarsus.

“Jimmy stepped in when he realized that something wasn’t right,” Kevin said, his arms crossed over his chest. “If he hadn’t, I’m not sure if or when I would have ever done anything to get better, myself. That changed everything.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Riley,” Ketoul said, and she looked over her shoulder to Areel and Elise. Areel shook her head, and Ketoul turned back to Morrow.

“Continue,” he said, and she did. She called Mira to the stand, who turned around and lifted her shirt to show the shiny, scaled skin of her back; some of the burns had resisted the regenerator, and instead had grown with her over time. Mira was all energy and bounce: she tapped her feet and shifted in the chair, her hands flying with her words as she explained the Starfleet doctor who had replaced their pediatrician, who had insisted on being present at every single appointment no matter the specialty, who had so insinuated himself into their lives that he became their parents’ best friend. They had run away on their eighteenth birthday, the only way they could see escaping his ever-tightening grasp. They had gone to school, and they had become teachers.

Ketoul turned to Areel again; Areel shook her head.

Ellie went next. She was still where Mira was restless, quiet where she was loud. But their cadence, their vocabulary, were eerily similar.

“He was obsessed with Tarsus,” Ellie said frankly. “And that turned into an obsession with us. We left before he could dig himself any further into our lives.” Areel’s lower lip was white with tension, pulled between her teeth. Drake sat with her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes closed, and Morrow had bowed his head into his hands. Only T’Lona still sat upright, looking intently at each witness. She was drawn as tight as a bowstring; Kirk would have paid a lot of money to see what happened when she snapped.

Then it was Tommy’s turn. Tommy, whose deep voice still held traces of the child he had been, in his up-talk and turns of phrase, said, “I don’t think we need to hear the same story again.” He looked around the room, and when his gaze landed on Kirk he smiled that same sweet and sad half-smile, only part of his face moving.

“Part of why I stayed away was because I didn’t want you to see me like this,” he said. “I wanted you to remember me how I was.” Then he looked back at Ketoul, and to the panel. “We supposedly all had mycotoxicosis from the fungus that killed the harvest. But no one could ever explain this to me.” He bowed his head, both hands on one side of his face. Then he released the seal on his mask and lifted his head without it.

Kirk shot to his feet. There were a few audible gasps. Tommy smiled wryly as he turned his head, inviting them to stare. The eye that had been covered was a dark blue, from iris all the way through the sclera. The color glistened wetly under the lights, like the ocean at night. The eye did not move in his skull with the other, the pupil remaining pointing stubbornly ahead. The skin that had been beneath the mask was a gray-blue, almost periwinkle. It sagged and bunched unnaturally. Across his scalp, hair refused to grow where the skin was stained. “Fusarium graminearum isn’t supposed to do anything like this,” Tommy said. Kirk sat heavily back down.

Kirk stared at Tommy, at the stained skin, and his stomach threatened to rebel in his body at the memory of the dead gray guards in the town. Tommy reattached his mask to his head, sealing away the damaged skin and his unseeing eye. He patted it once self-consciously and said, “Good thing my wife likes blue, huh?”

Tommy reclaimed his seat when Ketoul dismissed him, but as he passed by, Kirk reached out and grabbed his wrist. Tommy looked down at him. Kirk squeezed as he thought of everything he wanted to say--- but instead, he said quietly, “You were just too handsome, huh? The universe had to balance things out for the rest of us.”

Tommy let out one loose laugh and smacked Kirk on the shoulder. “I’m still better-looking than you, mister. Don’t get too worked up about it.”

Ketoul continued to call witnesses, an inexorable wave of evidence breaking over the panel. When she called Spock, he swore to tell the truth with the ozh’esta over his heart; Kirk mirrored it over his. He skimmed over his entire history with 31 with a brief, “That information remains classified,” but discussed in detail what had truly happened to the crops on Tarsus, a tense anger building in his voice with each memory recalled. When he had talked about Tarsus, his focus remained on Kirk; but when Spock told the court how he had found Kirk on the Section 31 ship, what Elise had said about his parents, his broken wrist, his dehydration, his phaser burn--- Kirk shivered at that cold, inhuman intensity, the absolute lack of compromise in his voice. Spock stared down Elise in a promise of what he would do if they ever went head to head again; in the end, she looked away from him, unsettled. When he was done and stalked back to his seat, Elise flinched, almost imperceptibly. Kirk couldn’t hide the vicious delight that he felt in her fear. The Spock rule applied everywhere; Spock would never let anyone harm him again.

Bones took his padd to the stand with him, and put that bloodhound mind on display: he held the rapt attention of the court as he walked the panel through every lie and misdirection in Kirk’s medical file from his return from Tarsus up until he had been handed over to McCoy’s care on the Enterprise.

“Cleared for duty, my ass,” Bones snarled at Elise, padd in one shaking hand as he thrust it in her direction. “Not even a licensed medical professional, and you have the nerve to---”

“Thank you, Dr. McCoy,” Ketoul said loudly. McCoy chewed on his lip for a second, looking like he was considering whether or not it would be worth the contempt of the court if he threw himself at Elise, but in the end he nodded, acquiescing to Ketoul’s legal advice, and sat.

“Esteemed panel,” she said, turning back to them. “I know that it is atypical, but I would like to submit additional evidence for the case.”

“What do you have, Counselor?” Morrow’s voice was exhausted.

“The witnesses that I called that could or would not attend--- three of them sent a holovid testimony after I contacted them again. I would submit that, if you’ll allow it.”

“Which other witnesses?”

“The last of the Tarsus survivors.” Behind Kirk, Ellie and Mira sucked in simultaneous gasps. Kevin said, low and shocked, “There were more?”

Admiral Drake wiped angry tears from her eyes, and when she and Morrow looked at each other he nodded. “We’ll allow it. Counselor Shaw, any objections?”

Elise sat behind the table, watching her life’s work crumble with nary a blink. But Areel sat next to her, roped into defending this monster by both career and duty, and Kirk had never seen her so furious.

“No objections,” she said, the words coming out in a hiss, and Ketoul nodded gratefully. She took a data card from her bag and brought it to the panel.

“Thank you,” she said, and handed it to T’Lona. Then she took her seat next to Kirk again while T’Lona loaded the card onto the holoscreen.

Kirk leaned towards her and whispered quietly, “Just one? I thought there were four others.”

She looked sympathetically at him. “I’m sorry, captain. One passed away a few years ago.” Then the holoscreen flashed back to life, and the thumbnail of a holovid file appeared. Three adults sat side-by-side; Kirk would have pegged their ages as between sixty and seventy. They looked solemnly at the camera. The man on the left looked as though he had been crying. All three of them were varying shades of gray-blue. The holovid juddered to life.

“My name is David Eames,” the man in the middle said. His voice was deep and even. “This is Deirdre Eames.” He gestured to the woman. “And Elias Molson.” This, the man on his other side. David took a deep, unsteady breath. Then he said, “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as a citizen of the Federation. We worked for the colony government on Tarsus IV, and survived what happened there.” He paused, gathering his thoughts; then he began.

“We’re chemists; we managed the wastewater system. On a new colony like that, everything gets recycled. At first, it was a usage problem. There was a building in town that was using far more water and producing far more waste than we expected. I thought it might have been a pipe break, or that the building had been incorrectly zoned; there are always a few hiccups like that in the first thirty years of a colony. But I started to investigate, and I got blocked. Tarsus had a security force, but they were municipal staff like us. I had never had any reason to think that their loyalty lay somewhere else until I tried to enter the basement of that building and they threatened to shoot me on sight if I ever came back.”

He coughed, looking somewhat ashamed of himself, before he said, “So we broke into it later. I don’t think people realize how close new colonies are to failure at all times. For a new one, especially in one as isolated as the Tarsus system, you’re one system failure away from a catastrophe for a good fifty years. Without clean water, everything else breaks down. I thought I was protecting the community.” His gaze, anchored out past the camera, went somewhere a thousand lightyears and twenty years away. He started to say something, but lost his momentum. Diedre stepped in and said bluntly, “We found a laboratory. It wasn’t registered anywhere in the colony manifest, and there were no files or names for anything; nothing to imply who worked there or what they were doing. The only thing we could find was a locked walk-in freezer with paper across the window that said ‘radio blue.’ But then we heard someone coming, so we left.”

Her voice strengthened as she spoke, and she gestured with her words. One hand was gray, her palms crossed with darker blue lines; the other hand, and the wrist that disappeared into the sleeve of her shirt, was the luminescent black of a carbon fiber prosthetic. “We couldn’t do anything about the usage levels without controlling water access for the whole town, but we could monitor the wastewater. And that’s what we did. We didn’t know what we were looking for, but in the end we didn’t need microscopes or tests to see the problem.” She gave a harsh laugh. “You see a lot of stuff in wastewater. But we had never seen this before. It was blue, and metallic, and moved like mercury. We raised the flag immediately. We went all the way to the top, to the governor, and he promised that he would call Starfleet for help.”

“We monitored, and alerted, and went to the governor’s house to talk about it,” Elias said. His voice was quiet, and he sat perfectly still with his hands cradled in his lap. “He told us Starfleet was on its way, and that everything would be fine. But the harvest started dying, and nothing we tried would remove the blue from the water. It was unresponsive to chemical intervention, and structurally unsound. We were so desperate to keep it from getting back into the reservoir that we tried to set up a filter to catch it. But when the blue hit the filter, it popped like a bubble and dissolved.” He fell silent.

“A month after we first discovered it and brought it to Kodos, we received a summons from him. We had hoped…” David trailed off. “Well, it doesn’t matter what we hoped anymore. We went, and then we tried to leave, and his guards hunted us through the streets. We pretended to die and hid with the other bodies, and then we ran south that night. There was a sewer entrance down there. We hid for a month, only coming up to steal food when we could, which wasn’t often. We missed the fire completely. And we missed the arrival of the Valiant. We only found out that Starfleet had arrived because it was my turn to scavenge and I walked straight into the middle of the investigation.”

“We stayed on the Maddox until the CMO declared us stable. They kept calling it mycotoxicosis, saying it was a fungal infection, but what we had was nothing like that. A month down in those tunnels, walking through the wastewater, absorbing radio blue through our skin… Let’s just say the shit they were pulling out of us didn’t look like any fungus we had seen before. Then they declared us better and sent us on. We went back to Luna, but…” Elias looked at David and Diedre, and when he turned his head it revealed the odd gray mottling of his hairline behind his ear, and the tinges of blue in his sclera.

“Turns out people only don’t mind blue skin when you’re born with it,” David said, and Elias nodded. “We found another colony to work on, one of the stable quiet ones out near Beta VI. We’ve been there ever since.” He paused before looking straight at the camera. “I hope that this is what you needed.” He reached out to turn off the camera, but Elias stopped him with a hand to the wrist.

“We asked about other survivors,” he said, and his voice shook. “When we were on the Maddox. They told us the Farm School children had all died.” He took a quavering breath. “Getting word that some were alive, that some made it out…” He blew out his breath. “It means a lot. It means everything.” He dropped David’s wrist, and David shut off the camera.

There had been others. There had been other survivors. If they hadn’t been lied to, if they hadn’t been played off each other to hide the failures of someone else, maybe they could have--- Visions of a life that Kirk and his kids could have had played in front of his vision as his blood boiled. Then his mind cleared, leaving behind only crystal clarity, and the memory of the first thing that Kirk had ever learned about the real Elise. Kirk looked across the room to Elise, sitting placidly, and said, “You used to serve on the Maddox, didn’t you?” Morrow let out a disgusted noise. Ketoul stood.

“I’d like to call Elise Darling to the stand.”

“I already testified, dear,” Elise said.

“As Joanne March. I want to talk to you as Elise, and Siobhan too.” Elise inclined her head, like Ketoul had made a particularly clever remark, and stood. She slowly made her way to the witness chair again and sat.

“I swear to tell the truth as an officer of Starfleet and a citizen of the Federation,” she said, before Ketoul could ask her to do so, and crossed her legs.

“What division did you serve when you were an officer?”

“Security,” Elise said. “Information, specifically.”

“So why were you masquerading as a psychologist to a vulnerable teenager?”

“Masquerading,” Elise repeated, laughing. “It was no mask, I assure you. I am a psychologist. I simply used that understanding as a means to a different end.”

“You knowingly provided Captain Kirk and his parents with false medical information to secure your own objectives, isolating a traumatized child from his family and harming his recovery.”

“He wanted to become a captain and I helped him do it,” Elise said. Her voice was a mockery of gentility. “I heard no complaints about my methods until he decided that he wanted something else.” On ‘else,’ her eyes slid from Ketoul, to Kirk, and then to Spock behind him.

“You still violated his civil rights and Starfleet regulations in doing so.”

Elise’s smile turned sharper, a vicious scythe across her face. “Tell me, Neera Ketoul,” she said softly. “You haven’t always been such a fan of Federation civil rights. When your people were rejected from Federation inclusion, would you have argued so passionately for Federation laws? Would you have defended the validity of its constitution?”

“Some ideals are universal,” she said. Her voice was steady.

“When the Klingons come knocking at your solar system’s boundary, or when the Romulans smite an unarmed civilian ship out of existence, will those ideals mean anything to you?” Elise seemed to grow in size with every breath, a nightmare made flesh. Her words rang through the courtroom, filling Kirk’s head, smothering him. He fought to breathe. “Will you be proud that you stood on principle, or will you wish for a tool that would have prepared you for the wolves at your door?” Elise leaned forward, her eyes locked on Ketoul, her face curling in a snarl.

“Yours is a false dichotomy,” Ketoul said serenely. “And I reject it. Did you know about the experiments occurring on Tarsus IV?”

Elise sat back in her chair, equal parts amused and annoyed at Ketoul’s refusal to play with her. “I held little responsibility at that point in time.”

“That does not answer the question.”

“Here is my answer, to this question and all others. Everything I have done, I have done to protect the Federation. There is no one who cares more for its citizens than me. There is no one more willing to sacrifice than me. The difference between me,” she said, and she looked at Morrow, Drake, and T’Lona, “and you, is that I care for the pragmatic, and you hide behind the symbolic. The strength of my organization comes from its willingness to do the hard thing for the right reasons. You can make whatever decision today that soothes your conscience, but I think you’ll find that snipping one thread will not unravel the whole knit, and someday you’ll be grateful it didn’t.”

Ketoul stared down Elise, and Elise refused to look at her. Her eyes crawled disdainfully instead over the panel, over Areel, and over Kirk and his witnesses.

Ketoul said quietly, “Your organization?” Elise’s attention snapped back to her, and when Ketoul smiled at her it was all teeth. “The defense rests.” When she turned away from Elise, there was a victorious fire burning in her eyes, and when she caught Kirk’s gaze she grinned. Then she sat back down as Elise slowly rose from the witness stand and returned to the prosecution’s table.

Morrow cleared his throat. “Counselor Shaw, would you like to offer closing remarks?” Areel stood, straightening the padd on the table in front of her with agitation.

“I…,” she said, looking down at her padd. Then she looked back up at the panel. “I believe that we have all seen today that breaking the law can be the just thing to do.” Her voice was blank, oddly level. “I trust that this esteemed panel will determine how justice can best be served.” Then she sat.

“Thank you, Counselor,” Morrow said softly. “Counselor Ketoul?” She stood.

“I had thought to argue Captain Kirk’s rationale again, but I think that would be unnecessary after the evidence brought forth today,” Ketoul said. “Instead I will read to you his own words, something that he said to me when we were preparing for the case.” She cleared her throat and lifted her padd, and Kirk bowed his head to look at his hands as she spoke.

“He said that he didn’t join Starfleet only to pay lip service to the ideals enshrined in the constitution. He said, ‘We have to be accountable to the people we’re supposed to be serving. We have to be accountable for the face we show to the rest of the galaxy. If the Federation is going to say it cares about the values in its constitution, 31 has to go down.’” She looked up from the padd, setting it down gently. “Even after Captain Kirk was so profoundly betrayed by the organization that he pledged his life and loyalty to, he still acts in its best interests. I ask that you now also consider the best interests of Starfleet and the Federation, and the balance between what is legal and what is just. Thank you.”

“Thank you, counsel,” Morrow said. His voice was dry and quiet. “We recess to deliberate.” Kirk’s stomach clenched. He closed his eyes in one silent prayer as the panel stood and vanished behind a back door. They sat in silence, not even their breathing audible in the muted acoustics of the Vulcan architecture.

One minute passed, then two. Then five. As a cold sweat began to trickle down Kirk’s back, the panel returned at the same time that the stoic Vulcan clerk in the back opened the main door. Morrow returned to the center of the room, his eyes crawling over Elise before landing on Kirk. Justice T’Lona and Drake stood at his shoulders, impossible to read. The silence was like a knife between his ribs.

“We, the panel agreed upon jointly by Starfleet Command and the United Government of Vulcan, do find Captain James Kirk not guilty of the charges of which he is accused.”

Kirk dropped his head into his hands. Relief flooded every corner of his body. His friends leapt to their feet behind him, one grabbing his shoulders as they stood. “Section 31, as represented by Joanne March, is found guilty of severe violations of the Starfleet Regulatory Code and the Federation Constitution.” Armored Vulcan guards in desert-red uniforms marched down the aisle. “You will be returned to Earth for sentencing.” Morrow continued speaking, but Kirk’s brain stopped processing it. The four guards, one at each corner, surrounded Elise, and without touching her urged her from her seat towards the aisle that would take her away. She came towards him, her silver hair glimmering under the lights, her fingers lacing together in front of her in the posture that always reminded him of a schoolteacher. That cardigan, her khakis, that smile--- it was all he could see. He was on his feet without realizing he had moved.

He was eighteen again, standing in her office for the first time. She watched him, kind eyes twinkling, asking him, “Do you like Jimmy? Jim? JT?” She was almost within arm’s reach now, in the cage of her guards, eyes on him. He pulled himself back into his body, and met her gaze. He put down the mask. He let her see him for all that he was now: whole and strong, his mind, for once in his life, utterly his own. For a moment she looked at him, not as a pawn to be moved, but finally as the player on the other side of the board. When she tilted her head sideways, and one corner pulled up and deepened the wrinkles along her cheek, he saw her pride in him and thought, despite everything, it might even have been genuine. Checkmate, game to Kirk.

The guards marched her past him, and the moment was over. The sounds of his friends and Ketoul and the panel broke over him, crashing into him. The circle of their arms surrounded him, his kids under his arms and Tommy at his back, Bones pounding his shoulder as Spock watched with a nearly invisible smile. He let his head hang and let them take his weight.

There was work to be done, somewhere. But not by him, and not tonight. He lay the ghosts of Tarsus down and followed his family out into the hot desert evening.

☆☆☆

Kirk did not think that Spock’s house had ever been so full of humans and their noise before. The Tarsus survivors, Spock and his parents, Bones, and Neera Ketoul sat on every available surface in the largest room, Vulcan and human foods and beverages on every table. Amanda and Mira were discussing early childhood language acquisition theories, Mira hanging on Amanda’s every word. Ellie sat on Mira’s other side, arguing with Spock about the applicability of Grafftner’s equation to astronometrics. Upon learning that he was Kirk’s husband, the twins had adopted Spock into their confidences. Martha and Tommy sat with Kevin, talking quietly. And Neera, to Kirk’s great surprise, posted herself next to Sarek with a glass of fruit juice and silently observed.

Bones sat on a low ottoman next to Kirk, their shoulders pressed together comfortably. Amanda had pressed a glass of some kind of liquor on Bones. Vulcan didn’t produce any, and when Kirk asked about its source she had only smiled at him and handed him one of his own.

“I’m proud of you, Jimmy,” Bones said, looking at the room full of people. “You moved mountains today.” Kirk took a sip of Amanda’s mystery liquor. It burned pleasantly, and reminded him of honey.

“Part of me doesn’t believe it’s real,” Kirk said. “Part of me is still looking for her over my shoulder.”

“I think that might take a while to shake.” Bones was silent for a minute before he said, “Hey, wait. Have you told the others yet?”

Kirk grinned. “What shift is it?” He grabbed Spock from Ellie’s side, leaving apologies in his wake as she frowned, and dragged him and Bones into a quieter room. He flipped open his long-abandoned comm and fiddled with the dial.

“Kirk to Enterprise.” There was no response. “I repeat, Kirk to Enterprise.”

There was a crackle. “Captain!” Uhura’s pleasure was unmistakable, and Kirk grinned as her voice washed over him. “It’s so good to hear from you! We’ve been thinking of you.” He heard the tenor of Pike’s voice in the background, and the chatter of others, and his smile grew.

Chris shouted, loudly enough to be heard through Uhura’s earpiece: “Put him on audio!” There was a fizz and a pop, and then suddenly the ambient noise of the bridge was audible. Kirk was struck with a wave of longing so powerful that it threatened to take his feet out from under him. He was going back. He was going home.

“How’d it go, son?”

Kirk breathed through the lump in his throat and found his voice. “Not guilty.” The explosion of celebration from his crew, waiting for him in orbit, was the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. Spock’s arm snaked around his waist as he closed his eyes. He leaned back against Spock’s chest, smiling, as Chekov shouted, “I knew it!” and Sulu said something quiet and cutting in response. The three of them basked in the raucous joy from the crew, and when they said their goodbyes, Kirk knew it was only for a little while longer.

When they returned to the main room, Mira scooted away from Ellie and patted the couch between them. Kirk sat as commanded, and Mira immediately laid her head on his shoulder. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and breathed in the smell of her hair. It wasn’t familiar; she was an adult now, one that he hadn’t seen in twenty years. But it was clean and vibrant, vaguely floral. It seemed right for her.

“What are you thinking about, Jimmy?” Mira asked. Ellie tucked her feet under her and turned to look at them both. Kirk looked from one sister to the other, wrapped one arm around each, and squeezed them both to him.

“That I am very, very grateful,” he said, voice low with emotion, “to have the chance to get to know you again.” Mira hummed in agreement, and they sat together for a few moments more.

Then Mira said, “Your Mr. Spock is very handsome. Does he have a brother?” The surprised laugh that burst out of Kirk was too loud for the quieting room, and he tried and failed to stifle the rest of it in a fist.

“You are too much,” he said. “And out of luck.” Mira frowned, mock-disappointed, but Amanda made a funny little ‘hmm’ noise and looked between Kirk and her son. She looked… amused? Benevolently annoyed? Spock, however, had replaced himself with a marble statue of a half-Vulcan and refused to meet Kirk’s eyes. Kirk looked between his mother-in-law and his husband, and remembered with a start their conversation about Michael Burnham.

“Honey.”

“Captain.”

Kirk jerked to his feet, displacing the twins. They giggled as they tumbled into each other. “Do you---”

“I believe I am needed elsewhere,” Spock said, turned on his heel, and marched directly into the back garden. The room dissolved into howls of laughter behind him as Kirk chased him out into the night.

When the last of the food had been consumed, Sarek and Amanda had slipped away to their room, and Mira had fallen asleep on the arm of the couch like a child, Kirk’s family said their goodnights and goodbyes.

“We won’t be leaving for a while yet,” Tommy said. “We’ll see you again.”

“Please,” Kirk said, and hugged him firmly. Then he hugged Martha for good measure. An idea blossomed in the back of his mind, and he put it aside for later consideration as he hugged the twins and Kevin and watched them call aircars or walk back to where they were staying. Kirk and Spock watched from the doorstep until the silhouettes of his kids had been swallowed by the darkness and then shut the door behind them. They installed Bones and Ketoul in spare bedrooms. Then they crept through the now-silent house, through the backyard, and into the guesthouse they had inhabited for the past four months. Even in the dark, it was familiar and comforting to him; this was where he and Spock had built a life and a routine while he put himself back together. Part of his heart, he realized, would always be here on Vulcan, just as part of Spock’s was.

Spock’s hand found his wrist and slid up his arm, leaving goosebumps in his wake. There was electricity in his fingertips everywhere he met Kirk’s skin, as they scaled from the soft skin of his inner arm up to his shoulder, then over his neck. When Spock pulled him closer, Kirk met him halfway, mouth already opening to accept Spock’s.

Against Spock’s lips he whispered, “Will you come somewhere with me?”

Spock breathed, “Kwon-sum.” Always. Kirk pulled him by the hand to their bedroom, and Spock went willingly; then Kirk dropped his hand to pull out their running clothes and Spock’s eyebrow charted a doubtful course up his forehead.

“Trust me,” he said, stepping into his tights. Spock’s dark eyes hungrily followed the lines of his exposed thighs, but he acquiesced, and when they had dressed he followed Kirk out into the Forge.

They ran. They left ShiKahr far behind them until they were bathed solely in the light of T’Khut, the only sound their feet against the packed sand and the life of the desert around them. Kirk breathed in hard, relishing the burn in his lungs and the ache in his side, the sharp edges of the thin air against his throat. This was the desert where Spock had endured his kahs-wan, had lost I-Chaya, had come to meditate when he couldn’t bear to be in his parents’ house anymore. This was the desert where Spock had taken him when he had spent too much time in his mind, where he had spilled his secrets in the dark and then left them behind.

Kirk slowed to a walk, catching his breath. Spock walked a few steps ahead of him, rolling his shoulders back, looking out over the Forge. Kirk admired Spock’s lanky frame in his tight running clothes, the span of his shoulders and the taper of his waist, the way the light sharpened the alien angles of his face.

Butterflies erupted in his stomach as he braced himself. He had only done this once before, and never imagined for a second what it would come to mean; he had stood across Spock in his quarters and asked him a question that would change both of them in ways that he never could have predicted. It had been strategic, then. It had only been means to an end. This time, it would be different. Everything was different because of the man who stood before him now.

Kirk got down on one knee.

“S’chn T’gai Spock,” he called. Spock turned. His eyes swept over Kirk where he knelt in the sand, and shock softened the shadows of his face.

“Jim,” he said, and came closer. “What are you doing?” When he was close enough to touch, Kirk reached out and snagged Spock’s hand where it hung by his side. He cradled it in both of his own, smoothing his fingers over the lines of Spock’s palm, and pressed his lips to the back of Spock’s hand. T’Khut hung low in the sky, casting them both in shadow and light.

“Taluhk nash-veh k’du,” Kirk said, and kissed Spock’s fingertips. “Will you take me as your bondmate?” Spock’s hand tightened around his, and he looked up: his husband looked back at him like he was more precious than water in the desert. Spock pulled him to his feet, one hand twining in his as the other came around his waist and pulled Kirk tightly to him. Spock’s heart thrummed in his side, and as he pressed their foreheads together, his eyes slid shut. Kirk wrapped his arms around his waist and swayed them, T’Khut the only witness to the dance.

“Yes. Ha, ashayam. Yes,” Spock said, and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.

#spirk #spirk fan fiction #k/s #k/s fan fiction #my writing #regulatory relations #fake married #no longer fake married #lol

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