caelus | academy days ● with whistles

academy days ● with whistles_loudly

[jim had taken the dare from pike, of course he had. it wasn't like him to not take someone on when they challenged him in that way, even if he was a delinquent at the best of times. so the genius level repeat offender went to starfleet.

he divided his time between sex, pranking captain pike, and studies, exactly that order. things were good for a while, he aced his classes, became top of his class in survival strategies and tactical analysis, and was the assistant instructor in advanced hand to hand combat techniques. there wasn't anything he wasn't doing better than someone else if he gave himself the opportunity (at least that's how he saw it), until that time of the year rolled around.

it wasn't one he talked about, then again, it wasn't something he was supposed to really talk about. the events had been redacted, rephrased, and retold so many different times that sometimes even jim had a hard time keeping it straight for himself. he thought he could distract and distance himself. he thought he could deal.

but two days later, captain pike would be getting a call detailing the fact that jim had failed to show for any classes or meals over the past two days that could be told, and he was failing to respond to any attempts at communication. he hadn't been seen or heard from by anyone, not even his best friend leonard mccoy who was more than a little concerned. it wasn't like jim.

when his communicator goes off with a priority message, jim debates ignoring it too, but finally relents. he flips it open, voice a little rough from having not talked for a while.]

Leave me alone, man. I don't want anything but that.

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When Pike got the call about Jim he was surprised. Sure he'd missed the odd class every now and again, but never two days worth. That's what made Pike call Kirk personally. When he heard his voice though, he was sure something was very wrong.

"Jim...what's going on?"

God, was that worry he heard in Pike's voice? Damn. He can't remember the last time anybody honestly gave a shit about him before Starfleet. He didn't exactly come from a warm and fuzzy family. He reaches up, rubbing at his forehead, and shaking his head to himself. He couldn't fucking deal with this. It was a mistake.

It was all a fucking mistake.

"What didn't you get about wanting to be left alone? I'm done talking."

Except he didn't close the communicator. He stared at it, and the hand rubbing at his forehead went up into his hair, running through it in frustration.

"I'm done. Wash me out, ship me back to the middle of nowhere, I don't care."

"Yes, you do. When I picked you up off the floor of that bar you didn't, but now, you do."

Pike knew he was telling Jim something he already knew, but sometimes that kind of thing was made more real when someone else said it.

"No."

He doesn't want to care. He does, Pike's right, but he does. He wants to prove that he can do this, or at least he did two days ago.

"Tell me why. Why is it worth it?" To show up too late? To pick up the pieces and carry out two little boys who couldn't even hold their heads up they were so hungry and exhausted?

His throat feels tight, and when he speaks his voice is rougher, this time with emotion. "And no bullshit. If you're gonna tell me---you tell me straight."

When Jim asked Pike why, he realized that this wasn't a conversation that really should be continued over a comm unit. It needed to be done in person. So, he headed over to the dorms, and damn the looks he was going to get from the other cadets.

"Because," he began as he made his way across campus, "you have a chance to make sure nothing like that happens again."

He's in the general area of the dorms, but he's not in his quarters. He found himself the smallest, darkest space he could get himself into with a small bag of stuff, and sat there. He snuck out a couple of times, for obvious necessities, but this was---safe. It felt safe.

Then again, you couldn't get spotted that easy at night. Safer to move around.

'Course it was a supply closet that no one seemed to want to use ever, the spot he'd found, but it was good enough. If he'd gone back to his room, outside of getting a change of clothes, Bones would have drug him in for god knows what kind of tests to find out what was wrong with his head.

His first feeling is one of shock. Pike---did he know? How---why--- "What do you know about it? Nothing. Don't pretend you've got some idea cause you looked up my dad or read a report. You don't---

You just don't."

Pike actually had no idea what had Jim so upset. The events surrounding Tarsus IV was not something that stuck out in Pike's mind. Back when it happened, he was in command of the Yorktown and rumors of the events on the planet circulated through the fleet, but nothing was ever confirmed.

"No, I don't and I'm not pretending that I do. You do."

He didn't want to tell Kirk he was on his way there, the last thing that he really wanted was to have him go off to hide somewhere else.

No one would have pegged him for the type to hide. It isn't hiding out of fear, not completely, it's survival. People do a lot of things to survive when they have to. Jim knows that. Tarsus, it wouldn't stick out in anyone's mind really, except the people it effected; the ones there and the ones who came to help.

Jim only remembers a handful of names of personnel. Commander Robert April was one. He kind of wondered what happened to him. If he was still around. Would he recognize the scrawny kid he helped rescue in the man about to drop out of the Academy today?

Pike was right, though. He wasn't pretending he knew what Jim was feeling. He wasn't saying that he had all the angles figured cause of a data file someone pushed around for the public to see.

He gives a derisive snort. "You'd be the first."

His eyes are stinging, but he angrily blinks it back. Anger he can deal with. He's got anger in spades and a lot of stupid. Hell, repeat offender, right?

"Everybody thinks they know. Everybody's sorry."

"To admit I have no idea about whatever it is that's got you so worked up?"

That was obnoxious of everyone else, in Pike's book.

Once inside the dorm he made a quick detour to the front desk, trying his best not to speak too loudly. He didn't want Jim to be more upset. The cadet who was the attendant pointed to the supply closet, and helpfully supplied that she thought Kirk was waiting for a girl.

"Everyone wants to be understanding." They want to make up for all of the other bullshit.

Tell that to Jim's family, after he came back from that place.

He was going to have a talk with that cadet later on for ratting him out. Then again that depended on whether or not he was staying, too. Maybe if he didn't have such a reputation it'd be easier to keep himself hidden away.

There's a lot of traffic to and from the dorms at any given time of day, so Jim doesn't really clock the steps coming closer until the door is swishing open. He nearly drops the communicator, startling and shifting back as light floods the small space he's occupying. He makes a shocked noise despite himself.

"What didn't you get about me wanting to be left alone?"

He looks exhausted, bags under his eyes from being awake for too long. His knees are drawn up to his chest where he is sitting.

When he opened the door, he finally shut the communicator, "I'm a pain in the ass and I outrank you."

When Pike saw the state Jim was in, he immediately went to the least healthy way to solve the problem, unless it got him talking, then it would be productive.

"Get up. We're leaving."

"No shit, but you can't exactly outrank a civilian." He bites out. He wasn't even sure he was going to stay. He still figured on being sent back, not home, just back.

Maybe he's too tired to put up a real fight, but his head drops briefly as he closes the communicator, snatches his messenger bag off the floor, and stands up to face Pike.

"Well? Are you going?"

"We are going. And you are not a civilian, Cadet." His tone made it sound like and order.

As far as Pike was concerned, Jim was staying in the fleet. He needed to put himself to good use as this was going to do it.

And then Pike headed toward the doors of the dorm and to the bar closest to HQ. Not the one the instructors and the cadets went to. The one Pike often went to, out of uniform, just to have a few drinks.

He opens his mouth to protest, but he must still have a little bit of a self-preservation instinct going because he has enough sense to close it. He nods, trudging after Pike, and adjusts his leather jacket, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"Weird place for a pep talk if you're asking me."

"Who said I was going to give you a pep talk? Go sit at the table in the corner." It was another order.

Meanwhile, Pike went up to the bar and got two beers, in bottles for now, and two shots of whiskey. If Jim didn't believe him now, maybe that would drive his point home. He put one of the beers and one of the shots infront of Kirk, the other pair went in front of his seat.

Pike wasn't going to pressure him to talk yet, but he didn't think that Jim would refuse the drinks.

Jim makes a face at him, but heads to the table he'd indicated, sliding into the seat. He sets his bag next to him, watches him at the bar, and leans his forearms on the top of the table.

When Pike slides in across from him, and sets the beer and shot in front of him---he cocks a brow at him. He swipes the shot, and downs it, grimacing only slightly as he sets it down.

"So is it a heart to heart instead? I've never been good at those." Then again, he's not really tried. Nobody wants to hear that kind of a story, and he's not exactly the sort to share it. So he does what he's good at. He gives himself a few days to be a royal fuck up, and gets on with his shitty little life.

Only now he had an opportunity to do more, and here he was letting himself piss it away.

"It's a warning. If you want to be in command of a ship someday, you aren't going to be able to do this. You're going to be responsible for a crew."

And that was going to be the end of the lecture portion of the evening from Pike. It wasn't going to get him anywhere.

"And if you want to talk, we talk. If you want someone to listen, I'll listen. If you want a few more beers, I'll buy."

"You just missed everything I said about sending me back, didn't you? Whatever, man. I'm not captain material. Leadership isn't my strongest suit." He looked out for himself. He was good at that.

He looks up at him though, watching his face, and trying to see if there's something else. Some ulterior motive hidden that he hasn't picked up on, but he doesn't catch that at all. Course he had to find someone who was genuine. Who actually gave a shit. It only took a decade.

"You make it sound easy," he sets the shot glass down and swipes the beer up, holding it loosely. "You ever think it's something I can't talk about? Maybe I'm not supposed to?"

Maybe someone didn't want him, or any of the others to?

"If I do talk, and I'm not saying I will, okay? This isn't a feel sorry for Jim Kirk thing. I survived it, and it just---it messes with my head sometimes. It'd do the same to you."

And he puts the bottle to his lips with a scoff because he's already said too damn much.

"But that's still an if."

Pike was ignoring everything Jim said about going back, for a good reason in his book. Kirk didn't really want to go back, and Pike didn't really want to send him there.

"Jim, there are things in all our lives that we can't talk about. Someone had to put General Order 7 on the books."

But this wasn't about him, "So if you want to talk, I'm perfectly capable of keeping it quiet."

Maybe that assurance would help the younger man feel better about opening up a little bit. Chris would keep it quiet.

No, he didn't, honestly, but he could pretend he wanted to.

"Yeah. Everybody's got secrets." A swig of his beer. "Everybody's got their reasons."

Another swig, and he looks at Pike over the bottle, debating. He sets it down, staring hard at the bottle for a minute before he starts to talk.

"I met him once. Commander Robert April, the one you served under? You weren't there when I met him, least---not that I can remember."

He remembers hearing voices that didn't sound like guards. It wasn't the heavy tromp of tactical boots. The voices were desperate, shocked, and just that edge of hopeful. They were hoping they'd find someone, anyone from the section of the colony that had been cut off from the rest.

What other options do you have besides despair when you find out a maniac killed 4000 men, women, and children to save the rest because the others just didn't measure up in his books?

The way Jim looked at the beer bottle told Pike it was high time for him to drink that shot, which he did.

"I served under April about five years before you were born, so I wasn't involved in any of his later missions."

By the time Jim was born, Pike was already a captain in his own right.

"How did you meet him?"

"That would explain it." He says it with a slight shrug, and pulls in a breath, clearing his throat softly before he starts to talk.

It's funny. This---this is the first time he's talked about it to anyone.

"He and his crew came to the aid of a colony on the outer rim. He found me and my friend Thomas, he was hurt pretty bad, and we were both half-dead from starvation." What he's telling him now is in the reports. Anybody can look it up. It's the why and how that they redacted and changed. That they hid.

"I saw the uniforms. I knew they were like my ma's, but ---we'd been out there for so long. I--" He gives a soft, laugh that's just shy of desperate. "I tried to hit him with a pipe I'd found, but I couldn't even lift it."

He drains a bit more of the bottle. "But he was there the whole time, even though his crew looked like they were gonna get sick, and he or---someone else I can't really remember picked me up, and I don't remember a lot after that until I woke up in sickbay."

He looks up at Pike. "The colony was Tarsus IV."

Pike's eyes widened a bit. There were rumors of what April and the other ships sent out there found on Tarsus that circled through the captaincy. Pike thought they were all just that rumors. He thought that humanity as a whole was past doing all those kinds of things, things favored by dictators and men who thought they knew what was best for their people, and it never was.

He signaled the bartendeder for another few beers before he spoke, needing to buy a little more time to come up with a response. Instead of apologies or whatever else he could have said, Pike went with a little more information.

"How long were you there?"

The shock, however slight, on Pike's face didn't surprise him. If he knew, really knew, or had an idea of the horrors that were visited on that colony by a madman then he had every right to be. They didn't broadcast the survivor list. They didn't broadcast a lot at all.

"On Tarsus? Almost six months. My Uncle Frank sent me out there to learn what it was like to work for something for a change after I drove the antique car he claimed as his own into a ravine." It was his dad's, and if he was just going to auction it off then he didn't deserve it. It was the only piece of their dad still there and his ma wouldn't do anything about it while off-planet.

"To learn what hardship was," he bites it out. "So I stayed with my aunt. I, uh, I can't remember her name for the life of me, someone on my ma's side though, like a great aunt or something I think. She's was a hard woman, but she was kind. She's the only reason I'm alive."

"But aunt if they just want to talk then why do they have phasers?"

"Too smart for your own good, it's what Frank said, he was right, wasn't he? Jim, I need you to look at me and listen. You have to run."

"After Kodos gave the kill order? Two weeks at least. I took care of my friend Thomas, half his face was gone from the phaser blasts, and he was always hurting. I did what I could though, we were just kids."

Whatever he scrounged for food he gave Thomas the better parts of it, so he could keep his strength up and heal. It left Jim in a bad way, but he couldn't lose his best and only friend. Not after all that.

"He was a couple of years older than me, but I was only 13."

Thirteen years old, and Jim already saw all the atrocities that humanity could really commit. Suddenly, the rest of Jim's life, until his entrance into the Academy made more sense to Pike.

"I'd say you already knew what hardship was by the time you got to that colony." With a father he never met, a mother who wasn't around, and being forced to live with an uncle who apparently didn't give a shit about Jim one way or the other. It was a hardship, just not one that was the same as Frank's definition of it. Though, Pike was never planning on letting Jim drive his car.

"That takes a lot of bravery, surviving that long. Even as just a kid," there was a little bit of pride in Pike's voice. It said a lot about the type of person Jim really was, "Where's Thomas now?"

"I was spoiled according to him. Had it easy. My brother couldn't take it so he ran off. I don't even know where."

His expression darkens a bit at that. Bravery. He's not sure he'd call it that. Not after taking a life to save both his and Thomas'. He'd never told anyone that. He's not going to mention it to Pike either.

"It's not bravery. It's just survival. You do what you have to." Jim's face scrunches up in thought, and he reaches up with his free hand to scratch at the back of his head.

"Planet Q, last I heard. Thomas and I---we're a handful of the only ones who ever saw his face. Heard the orders. I still remember them. He gave it like you'd give a holo report on the fucking weather."

"He sounds like an idiot." Or someone who'd never known anything difficult himself.

If Jim did tell Pike about the person he killed, Pike would mention that it was survival too and he wouldn't view it as anything but that.

Two more beers appeared at the table and he slid a second one to Jim.

"From what I remember, they found a charred body they thought belonged to Kodos. I don't know what happened after that."

"He wasn't the brightest specimen of humanity."

He would like to think that's what Pike would say, but he isn't sure, so he won't. He takes the new bottle when it's slid over, but doesn't take a drink yet.

"Yeah. They found it. Apparently some of the other colonists had managed to storm the mansion to take control of what was left of the food and the guards themselves. There was a fight, I remember hearing the explosions, but at that point I was too exhausted to do anything but hide with Thomas. April found us just a while after.

They couldn't separate me and Thomas for days after that. Found us hiding a couple of times, cause we couldn't sleep without---" He watches a condensation ring start around the bottle from the water sliding down.

"It's why I was in the supply closet. I just---this time of year I can't. I don't feel safe around people. It's stupid but I-- It was always better to scavenge when it was dark. Less chance of being caught by patrols."

Pike nodded, letting Jim explain how it all ended. It was an awful set of circumstances but Jim made it out okay, if only barely.

Chris decided to give Jim another assurance that he might not really need to hear verbalized, "You're safe here. Right here, right now, you're safe here." He wasn't going to say what would happen in space, but now Jim was okay.

"And you know you're in a position to make sure it doesn't happen to anyone, ever again. Don't you?"

"It's hard to believe you'll ever be safe after something like that." He says it, and glances away. "But I'm trying."

He bites his bottom lip then, and then shakes his head a little. "I guess. How do you even come up against something like that though? What's the right decision? How can you know it's the right one?"

Pike understood that too, considering he'd gone through Talos IV. He still didn't know it was entirely over or if any of this was completely real and he supposed that he would never really know.

"I know."

He took another drink of his beer before answering, "You don't. In any situation, you can only make the best decision with the information you have at the moment. Sometimes, the best one is more important than the right one."

And Kodos did neither.

He'd heard rumors about that. It's the Academy, people talked. He watches him again when he says that he knows, and for once in a very long time, he believes that. If there's anyone, outside of Thomas and the small handful of survivors from the part of the colony that was abandoned to the whims of a madman, then it's Pike.

"I'm not sure I'm cut out for those types of decisions."

"I think if you thought you were, I'd be really worried about giving you a ship someday."

This sounded entirely too much like the talk he'd had with Phil Boyce, before Talos IV, and before accepting the position at the academy.

"I've thought about whether I'm cut out for those types of decisions more times than I can count. You're never really sure."

That actually earns a soft chuckle that isn't forced. He sniffs, and takes a sip of his slowly warming beer that he's just been staring at.

"How do you learn to deal with that then? I mean, those decisions---the lives of your crew---?"

"Sometimes, it's easier than you'd think. We all accept, on some level, that we could die out there. Space is dangerous. Everyone knows that the people that leave spacedock may not be the same people that come home. But it's always tiring."

The next thing he was going to admit, required another drink of his beer.

"And sometimes it's not. Sometimes you realize you need a break from deciding who lives, who dies, who's on the away team and who stays on board. Then you take a planetside position while you wait for your ship to be built."

So, Pike really was the last person to pass any judgement on Jim for having these thoughts, since he'd had them himself.

He listens, he's paying attention, closer to the Jim Kirk that just a few days ago was acing every subject thrown his way. His ma told him things, even though she was mostly on deep space science missions.

Jim never had a chance to meet his father, and he's found something of a surrogate dad in Captain Pike.

"I think---I think if I can manage to be half of the captain you are and my father was---then that'd be enough."

Maybe it's not much coming from a cadet that pretty much told you off for dragging him out of the dorms, but it's what he's got. He means it.

Seeing the change in Jim's attitude made Pike feel a little better. He was going to be okay, and that was comforting.

And when he mentioned that being half the captain he and George were, well then he felt touched and the smile on his face before he picked up his beer again said so.

"I think you're going to be a good captain. Maybe even one of Starfleet's best."

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academy days ● with whistles_loudly

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