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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"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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