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The USS Farragut was docked at Starbase 15 when he found out.
After a year of war, most Constitution Class ships had been ordered to report to the nearest base for desperately needed repairs and retrofitting before receiving new missions. The Farragut was later than most, having spent several months post-treaty ferrying refugees stranded at the edge of Klingon space to the three planets that had agreed to receive them. There had been a hum of excitement in the air, anticipation for the first shore leave in a year and a half. They had been granted two entire weeks by Starfleet Command, and even famous workaholic Lieutenant James Kirk had to admit he was a little excited.
“So, how does Lieutenant ‘married to the job’ plan to spend his shore leave?” Shiri, Jim’s Andorian gunner’s mate on Phaser Station 4, poked their head around the doorway to his quarters.
Jim grinned.
“Heard about my argument with the captain, did you?”
Shiri snorted, stepping all the way into the room and throwing themself down on the neatly made bed of Jim’s roommate. They were already dressed to disembark in civilian clothes and hauling a duffel, which they dropped to the floor.
“Not every day someone asks Sharpe for less shore leave rather than more. Can’t imagine what possessed you. How you can possibly want to hang around here cleaning phaser cannon barrels and recalibrating the launch system when you could be flirting with anything that moves in the 4th best bar in the entire Starbase system?”
Jim glanced up from where he was tucking shirts into a bag of his own, a smile still twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“Ra’tak is going to kill you for messing up his sheets, I hope you realize. He’s the only man I know who irons his sheets after the autowash is done with them.”
“All the more reason to get our asses out of here and into a bar!” Shiri leapt to their feet and swung their hands expressively towards the door, antennae swaying along to emphasize the point. “Whole phaser crew team got assigned to bunk together, but you are literally the last one off this ship. If Mara and Jes are already drunk by the time we get there, I’m blaming you.”
Jim crammed the last of his belongings into the old duffel that had once been his father’s and stood up, scooping Shiri’s bag off the floor and chucking it at their chest.
“Lieutenant Shiri, you and I could have disembarked an hour before both of them and Jes would have still managed to get drunk before you or I touched a drop of liquor. And,” –he ducked out the doorway and smirked back at the gunner’s mate–“if you think flirting is the limit of my abilities, you have sorely underestimated the prowess of James Tiberius Kirk.”
After a 20 minute wait for the transporter room—despite Shiri’s dramatic proclamations there were still over half the crew onboard, all hoping to disembark as fast as possible—they beamed down to the courtyard outside of Starfleet headquarters on the starbase. A yeoman pointed them in the direction of shore leave quarters after checking their names off against his list.
As they set off around the headquarters building, Jim glanced back at where the docked Farragut was still visible through the clear triangles of the atmospheric containment dome, brow furrowed. Shore leave never felt right to him, like he was abandoning the ship.
“I still think the captain should have let me stay aboard to help with the recalibration process.”
“Fucking hell, Jim, you are unbelievable.”
“Yeah, yeah. I taught a class on hyper-power circuits when I was a cadet, I’ll have you know. I’m sure I would have been of use.”
Shiri only snorted and grabbed him by the shoulder, shoving him forward. “Beautiful people. Alcohol. No circuitry allowed.”
For probably the fourth time that day, Jim tried to resign himself to the fact that he was on shore leave, like it or not, and allowed the Andorian to push him further into the depths of the station.
They were halfway to the bar when the news came through.
Shiri had managed to convince Jim to go to the bar with them, but hadn’t managed to extract him from his Starfleet uniform. They were in the middle of a long commentary on the ridiculousness of this fashion choice when the high alert bell sounded, stopping them both in their tracks.
“Attention all Starbase 15 personnel: This is Admiral Park speaking.
"We have just received word from Starfleet Command that yesterday afternoon the crew of the USS Discovery lost their lives when the ship was destroyed in the course of her mission. This is a great tragedy…”
The admiral had more to say, but Jim didn’t hear it. His ears didn’t seem to be able to produce anything other than a fierce ringing as his stomach fell endlessly towards his toes, his face burning. He reached out into what felt like an endless void before his hand made contact with the wall beside him, against which he leaned heavily.
That was her ship. She was on the Discovery, that was her…
It couldn’t be possible. That ship was top of the line, cutting edge technology, only a few years out of the dockyard. She had gone on and on about how incredible the opportunity was, her first long-term assignment off-world on the best research vessel in the fleet. Surely a ship such as that couldn’t be gone. Surely, she couldn’t be gone.
Far away, he heard someone speaking way too fast and loud. She speaks like that, when she’s nervous. He remembered right before they had a big astrophysics exam…
“…shit, Jim, you gotta answer me! Come on, man, please tell me you’re ok.”
Shiri’s worried face swam back into his vision, worried diatribe cutting off his spiral, slamming a door closed on the horrible endless sinking feeling. Everything still felt fuzzy at the edges, like a film from hundreds of years ago, back when they were just being invented and nothing looked quite real. Nothing felt real either, like the announcement was some horrible joke and he was the sole intended victim.
He straightened up from the wall, pulling his shoulders back to attention.
“I’m sorry, Shiri, I just…” He wasn’t sure what else to say, how to even begin to let the words escape his mouth, but he was blessedly cut off as Admiral Park concluded her announcement.
“A remembrance service will be held this evening at 20 00 hours in Einstein Park. And now, if I could ask for a moment of silence as we honor those so tragically lost in the line of duty.”
Jim stood in the sudden echoing hush, ignoring with all of his strength the enormously concerned look on the Andorian’s face. Slowly, painstakingly, as the initial lightning bolt of unreality faded, he forced a neutral look onto his face. 20:00. It was 19:09, plenty of time to make it to the park on the other side of the base. They’d read the names at the service and then…he had to know. He had to be sure.
“Thank you. This is Admiral Park, signing off.”
Jim checked his watch again, even though he already knew what time it was, and turned to Shiri.
“ I should go, Einstein Park is…” He trailed off again, somehow unable to locate the ends of his sentences.
Shiri’s antennae were tense with distress, worried eyes refusing to release Jim from their gaze. He couldn’t do this right now. Why couldn’t they see that he really truly couldn’t do this right now?
“Jim, the Discovery, did you lose…”
“Shiri. I am fine, goddammit.” The ability to finish sentences seemed to be coming back, so long as he kept them short and didn’t meet the Andorian’s concerned blue gaze. “Look, I’ll see you later. Right now I have to…” Gone again. He couldn’t say it. Waving a hand vaguely in their direction, Jim took his leave of the gunner’s mate.
A voice somewhere far away, buried down at the bottom of a deep, deep well, insisted that he wasn’t being very professional--and was this really the way to treat a friend?
The voice sounded like it was spoken by someone with curly red hair and the friendliest smile you ever saw. The voice was the smartest person he knew and she was…
He couldn’t even say it to himself. The memorial. He had to get there.
It suddenly was the most important thing ever to get there. Maybe they would read the list of names and she wouldn’t be…
He took off back the way they had come, something pushing him into a jog, and then an all-out run.
The service seemed to drone on forever. Admiral Park spoke, and then Sharpe, the only Starfleet captain currently on-base. There were lists of battles, a mercifully short captain’s roll, and then Park was back to speak about Discovery’s role in ending the Klingon War.
She had been so proud of that, spent an hour on the com-link waving around her Medal of Honor and then looking guilty when she almost sent it flying across the room. She was right to be proud. He had been so happy for her, finally promoted to Ensign and accepted to the Command Training Program. Someday, she was going to be a captain, just like they had both…
“And now, the names of our fallen crewmembers will be read in alphabetical order.
“Lt. Commander Joseph Aaron. Yeoman Cynthia Aerie. Ensign Ya’al Agath…”
The names continued.
Jim found himself hanging onto every name, tension building as the names were read, tracing inevitably through the alphabet towards the letter T.
“Commander Ronald Altman Bryce. Commander Michael Burnham.”
Michael. Her roommate. She had been so excited for Jim to meet her, insisted they would love each other…or kill each other, she hadn’t been sure which, she admitted with a laugh.
He had seen Michael once, entering their shared quarters.
She had said she was sorry, she had really better end the call, it was late in their sector and oh, Michael, this is my best friend from the Academy—Jim Kirk! He had grinned a bit and waved, the serious looking science officer had nodded back, and then she had promised to finish the story about the love triangle that was happening in Engineering the next time she called before hanging up.
She hadn’t ever told him the end of that story, hadn’t ever had a chance to introduce him to Michael. And now…
The admiral had made it to the ‘Rs’.
“Lieutenant Zaki Rashid. Yeoman Joey Redman. Lieutenant Gen Rhys.”
Jim wanted to leap onstage and grab the list off the podium. He wanted to shake Admiral Park for taking so long. Vaguely, he was aware that his shoulders were starting to cramp with the effort of holding himself at attention, at keeping his face still.
“Ensign Ruth Ti’ji.”
Fuck. Maybe she wasn’t… Maybe she wouldn’t…
“Ensign Sylvia Tilly.”
A harsh breath exploded out of him that he hadn’t even realized he had been holding in. Now he could think it, could scarcely stop the same thought crashing through his mind again and again.
She was gone.
Sylvia Tilly was gone.
His best friend was gone.
It felt inherently incorrect, like there was a blank space in the fabric of the universe where she had just been standing, grinning at him and ready to take on Starfleet together.
He spun around, violently, ignoring the side eyes from the other officers standing in rows around him, pushing through the crowd. Suddenly, he had to do something. There was nothing to fucking do, she was gone and he couldn’t save her, he could never save any of them, but he had to do something to stop his brain from echoing gone, gone, gone in his ears.
He didn’t even realize that he was heading back to the transporter pad until he got there.
“One to transfer to the Farragut.”
The engineering officer, a short and sturdy man with a moustache that reminded him of his brother—why the fuck was he thinking about Sam right now?—sent a doubtful frown in the direction of the insignia on his chest.
“Lieutenant, I’m not supposed to let anyone below commander rank back onto the ship without authorization for the duration of the recalibration. Captain Sharpe’s orders, I’m afraid.”
“Goddammit, I have to get back to the ship. They need me to help with the launch circuitry. One to fucking transport.”
The other man fixed him with the stare of a man who really did not want to deal with this. Jim couldn’t find it in himself to care. There was one fucking thing he could do right, and this guy wasn’t letting him do it.
“Lieutenant, as I said, you are not on the authorization list to return to the Farragut this evening. If you would like to speak to your superior officer, I would be happy to reconsider. As it is, I am going to have to ask you to please remove yourself from the transport pad, or I will not hesitate to call a security officer.”
Before he could stop himself, Jim slammed his hands down on the edges of the console that stood between him and the engineer. Retorts blossomed in his mind. Who did this guy think he was?
The other man jumped back nervously, then glared, starting to reach for his communicator. He didn’t get it, he didn’t understand that she was gone and she…
She would kill him for behaving like this. It went against everything they had promised to each other, every cram session for every exam, every horrible theory class suffered through.
“Goddammit!” He drew himself upright, forced his aching shoulders back to attention. “Lt. Commander, I apologize. I’m not feeling myself this evening.”
Before the building tension in his shoulders could snap back, like a rubber band, he spun on his heel and strode off in the direction he and Shiri had been walking earlier. He needed a fucking drink.
He didn’t go to the 4th best bar in the starbase system, certain that he had just used up the last of his professionalism on that fucking engineer. Shiri, Mara and Jes really didn’t deserve how he was about to behave.
Instead, he ducked through the doorway of the first seedy-looking civilian bar he saw. No Starfleet officers sat at this sticky bar top, mostly populated by transport vessel crew and independent traders.
He swung onto a stool.
“A shot of whatever’s cheap and strong. Actually, make that two.”
The bartender gave his uniform a skeptical look but duly poured out two shots of something in a disturbing green color. Jim downed them both in succession, barely registering the taste. The alcohol burned his throat, but didn’t do much to the need to move scraping along under his skin, barely softened the sharp edges of she’s gone, she’s gone. It was getting annoying, a rhythmic chanting in his head that his mind was clinging onto, like if he said it to himself enough times it would stop feeling so impossible, so utterly wrong.
He ordered another drink, downing it as fast as the first two. It didn’t seem to be having much effect so far.
Fingers dug into his uniform-clad shoulder from behind, a vicious twist that begged for attention.
“Hey Starfleet, what brings you here? Trying to see how the other half lives?”
Well, it was as good a distraction as any.
The first punch landed solidly, connecting with his upper cheek and eye socket, sending him reeling back. The edge of the bartop introduced itself solidly to his spine, almost knocking the breath out of him. That was gonna bruise.
It hadn’t taken much to wind the trader up, already clearly resentful of Starfleet, particularly the uniformed officer who had dared to trespass in his bar. A few carelessly pointed retorts as he downed a fourth shot, and with a windup Jim could have seen coming from the observation deck of the Farragut, the Orion had snapped.
He didn’t block the punch, didn’t even try, despite the fact that he could have had the guy laid out flat on the floor in less than a minute.
The alcohol was finally taking effect, fuzzing out the corners of his reflexes and making the pain in his cheek and back even more shockingly sudden. Why should he save himself? He didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t been able to save any of his own fucking crew, and now Sylvia was gone too. He pushed himself off the bar, countering with a halfhearted swing that connected with the Orion’s ribs and mostly just served to anger him further.
The next punch connected with his lower jaw and launched him sprawling over the top of a table. He felt blood burst in his mouth. Split lip, maybe a busted tooth. What the guy lacked in speed he certainly made up for in strength.
Five minutes later and it was over. The trader, satisfied at the success of his assault on who was probably the only Starfleet officer on the base to let it happen, had dumped Jim on the floor and headed out into the artificial night.
Face pressed into sticky metal, Jim wanted nothing more than to pass out, let the pain wash over him. His whole body fucking hurt, but at least it was better than the endless unreal emptiness that had been all he could feel since the admiral’s words first came over the loudspeaker.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t stupid enough to think the bartender wouldn’t have called base security, and that meant Starfleet, officers who were going to recognize him and who wouldn’t look too kindly upon his conduct, particularly in uniform.
Fuck. Why did he even care about anyone seeing him? He deserved to be court-martialed, a guilty man somehow still free to walk the streets. Maybe security should find him. He let his non-swollen eye fall shut and relaxed into the gritty metal. He’d been holding it all together so hard these past few months, clinging to the professionalism he had so egregiously lacked when Garrovick, his own captain, and all the others had died thanks to his own unforgivable negligence.
He had held onto it so hard, clung to what she said to him, but now he would never hear it again.
Never hear her…
“Ok. Jim. We’re too much of the same person for me to try and tell you that you did nothing wrong, because I know you won’t believe me. I mean, I wouldn’t believe me if it had happened here on the Discovery. Maybe that’s a flaw,” her voice echoed in his probably-concussed brain, sounding far realer than the outraged murmurings of the denizens of the bar. “but I think it’s a good thing! You and I care so, so much—there’s no way we won’t make captain, because a captain cares about their ship and crew more than anything in the universe. You feel like it’s your fault because you care, Jim. A lot more than most people. I just…I just think you should hold onto that. You can’t make amends, not the way you think you should, but what you can do is just be the absolute fucking best Starfleet officer there is, so you can make sure it never happens again.”
It had been right after the court-martial. She hadn’t been able to be there, but she watched the whole broadcast, even though it was 3 AM on Discovery. She had known how he would feel. She had said the exact right thing.
He was drunk and devastated and in a hell of a lot of pain, but she had been right. And she never, ever gave up, so he wasn’t fucking going to either.
With a throbbing effort, he flipped himself over onto his back, discovering in the process that he had definitely broken a couple ribs. Good. Broken bones took a while to heal if you did it the old-fashioned way, and the stabbing discomfort was the only thing keeping him focused, keeping him from losing his mind.
He patted at his chest in a random sort of way until his fingers met the edge of his badge. As he shoved it into a pants pocket, he hauled himself to a sitting position, beginning to unsnap the fasteners of his uniform jacket. Without the bloodstained bright yellow, he was just another beat-up drunk in a bar. He’d make it back to quarters, let the unconsciousness that was pulling at the edges of his vision overcome him, let sleep bring to a close just another day that could be classified as the worst of his life.
“Holy shit!”
“Mara, my head is splitting. I’d just as soon you didn’t…oh fuck.”
Consciousness arrived in waves, manifesting itself first as a pounding ache that centered itself in his ribcage and eye socket, at first muffling the sounds of his crewmates exclamations like he was wearing earplugs.
Damn. They hadn’t been back from their night out when he dragged himself into their quarters by way of the back stairs, and he had sort of forgotten that he was going to have to deal with them.
All of a sudden, the realization that his best friend in the world was gone came crashing back down onto him, pinned him to the still neatly-made bunk bed he had collapsed onto, fully clothed, like a Klingon warrior was sitting directly on top of his bruised and throbbing spine. He wondered if this was going to happen to him every time he woke up now, for the rest of his life.
“Shiri, wake up. Something happened to Jim.”
A rustling noise, then: “You better have an amazing reason to wake me up right now. What the…”
“Mara woke up and he was just sleeping on the bed like that. You were with him before he ran off, and I’m way too fucking hungover for this.”
The sound of footsteps and the pneumatic hiss of the door. Jes would be heading for the showers and then as much coffee as she could consume. Shiri and Mara were speaking in lowered voices. Jim still didn’t move.
“I told you last night, he freaked out when Admiral Park announced the Discovery disaster. Ran off in the direction of the park they were doing that memorial in. I have no idea how any of…this happened.”
So they were already calling it ‘the Discovery disaster.’ Great. Another historically catastrophic event attached to him, like a lead weight tied to his wrists.
“Do you know if he was close to anyone on the ship? He must have known someone.”
“I mean, you’re right, but I really don’t know. Not exactly an open book, our Jim.”
They were talking about him in such concerned tones, every worried sentence digging deeper into his back. He was going to have to face their anxious looks when he sat up, and he honestly didn’t know if he could. He had made a decision last night, plastered onto the floor, but facing his friends didn’t exactly fit into his plan to move on.
But he owed it to them to allay their fears about him, he owed it to her to sit up and prove to them both that he could keep going.
So he did.
Later in the day, after he had reassured Mara and Shiri that he was fine, he promised, and it looked worse than it was, after he had deflected what was sure to be questions he couldn’t answer because he really didn’t want to talk about it guys, after he had replicated a new uniform jacket to replace the bloodstained one still decorating the floor of a dive bar, he called Bones.
“Goddammit Jim, it’s the middle of the night here! What on earth…”
He trailed off on seeing Jim’s face.
“My god, man, did you pick a fight with a Klingon?”
Jim couldn’t help but smile. Of course, this introduced his face to a whole new host of interestingly painful movements, so he stopped almost immediately, wincing and gently touching the bruising around his eye.
“Actually, he was Orion. I…may not have been making the best decisions last night.”
“Jim Kirk admits to foolish behavior? May wonders never cease.”
Jim chuckled. Bones smiled along with him, but he could see the concern in the other man’s face.
“Bones…did you hear?”
“About the Discovery? Yes, I did.” The lines in his friend’s face seemed to fall even deeper.
“They didn’t read the entire roster out, but I just assumed Sylvia…”
Jim grimaced, welcoming the pain this time.
“She’s gone, Bones.”
The doctor sighed heavily, like hearing the confirmation just proved what he already knew.
“Hell, I’m going to miss her. Most talented bioengineer I ever met. Jim, I’m so sorry.”
Jim tried for another smile, but he somehow couldn’t quite get there.
“We’re docked at Starbase 15 for shore leave. I heard that announcement and I just…it wasn’t real. The whole damn starship! How does that even… I didn’t exactly handle it well.”
“Oh, is that so? Funny, I really couldn’t tell.”
Bones’ mouth twitched upwards, but Jim couldn’t feel the mirth.
“I just keep thinking…was there anything I could have done? I know that’s not…I know I couldn’t possibly…but even so.”
The doctor’s lips pressed together and he could see Bones’ expression shift to the face he always made when giving advice to unwilling patients.
“Jim, you’re a good man, and a damn good officer. But you can’t save everyone, and you’ll burn yourself out in no time if you can’t learn to live with that. Nobody’s going to promote you to captain if you keep letting yourself get kicked to shit.”
Jim started chuckling weakly. “You know, Sylvia said just about the exact same thing to me one of the last times we spoke.”
“She always was smarter than you.”
“She sure was. I still remember the first time she met you, we were half an hour late to class because she was so insistent you were programming that genome-mapping system wrong she made you go over the whole thing line by line on our dorm room floor.”
“I was wrong! All those years at UMiss and I ended up completely changing my research on the insistence of a girl barely out of high school.”
“You’re telling me! I’d never be so good at hyper-power circuitry without her insisting we both take that class first year…”
Normally, on Starfleet Remembrance Day, each officer wears one pin representing a loved one or crewmember lost. Lieutenant James Kirk always wore two, USS Farragut and USS Discovery glinting beside each other on his chest, and would for the rest of his career. Very few ever knew the reason for this unusual breach of protocol, but the two who did wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the day he made captain, Jim took a moment before the ceremony to pour out two drinks and raise a toast to the stars.
“We did it, Syl.”