Title: That Cold Place (1/2)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Pike
Summary: Christopher Pike returns to haunt his protégé, Jim.
A/N: October is the time of year when we celebrate all things spooky. Of course, y’all know I love a good ghost story. Though I didn’t finish this in time to post on Halloween, here is the first half of it.

In the hushed pre-dawn darkness, a man journeys through a closed marketplace. His pace is unhurried, plodding almost, like his limbs are not quite as awake as the rest of him. Halfway down a zigzag line of empty stalls, his momentum finally peters out. As he raises his head and stares at nothing, between two stalls the shadows begin to rearrange.

A cold line glides across his wrist and lingers there like an absent finger seeking contact. Then something shifts in that gap, drawing his attention—a flap of ragged cloth caught by a gust of wind. From behind the old curtain, a face leans out.

Suddenly the man is aware of his heart drumming against his ribs.

“Come and sit, son,” the man within the shadows says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

The staring visitor—of the given name James Tiberius Kirk, formally known as Captain and of the preferred name Jim—hesitates only a moment before sliding through the gap.

The interior of the old tent is the same as the first time Jim saw it: dark cloth walls, so thick only the edges of the tent glow faintly where it meets the dirt floor; not furnished or decorated except for two chairs near the entrance; of no welcoming warmth. He swallows a mouthful of bitter air and seats himself beside the man patiently watching him.

“You came back,” the man says.

Jim finds his voice. “Had to.”

“Why?”

He meets the other’s gaze. “To see if this is real.”

The man gazes down at his hands resting on his knees as if in serious contemplation, lifts one and flexes it open, palm up. “Seems real enough to me.”

“You died,” Jim states flatly. “It’s not like I expected to meet you again. Not here, on some remote planet during first contact.”

The dead man studies Kirk curiously. “Did you think our meeting again would have to wait until the afterlife?”

Jim presses his mouth flat.

Christopher Pike huffs out a soft sound. “Tell me, who truly understands how our existence works? I certainly never claimed to.”

“I’m dreaming.”

“Try pinching yourself.” Pike looks like he might laugh. “Or would you prefer a whack upside the head?”

Jim instinctively touches the side of his head, catches himself, and smooths his hair down instead. “Pass,” he says, feeling a bit childish, and drops his hand back to his lap. “I have questions.”

“More?” grumbles Jim’s old mentor lightly. Then, “All right. I have nowhere else to be.”

Jim bites the inside of his cheek at that dry tone. Pike looks expectant, so he tucks both hands between his knees and leans forward, wondering if he is prepared enough for this conversation—or any conversation, truth be told, with the dead.

Especially a person he admired, respected, and cared deeply about.

He keeps his gaze fixed on the sun turning the dark sky to light pink, a picturesque view through the tent’s opening. For some reason, when Jim is inside this place, he doesn’t worry about matters beyond it. He hasn’t decided whether or not that is a boon.

“You said you were waiting for me. Where do you go when you’re not here?”

Pike raises an eyebrow. “As I said, I have nowhere else to be.”

“You mean you only show up for me,” surmises Jim. He makes a noise of unhappiness. “Then… not dreaming but crazy.”

“Son, you’ve never been normal but I wouldn’t call you crazy.”

Jim counters without thinking, “That’s not what you said the time I—” He cuts himself short at seeing Pike smile at him. “Do you remember that?”

“You always had a knack for finding trouble,” Pike reminisces before his smile fades away. “I understand you found serious trouble after I left.”

Oh no, Jim does not want to talk about that particular event. He tries for the flippant arrogance he’s so good at, straightening up in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “I handled it.”

Pike says nothing.

It doesn’t take long for Jim to squirm under the weight of the man’s stare. “It’s nothing.”

“I’m not here for ‘nothing’.”

Kirk feels something knot in his throat and tries to breathe through it. Any feeling of awkwardness vanishes at the first tinges of emotional pain.

Pike sighs through his nose then and shakes his head slightly. “Do you know how lucky you are to have survived?”

Jim can think of all the reasons why he did survive and none of them had to do with his own actions. He was accepting of his death when he walked into that warp core—in a way Christopher Pike could not have been when death came to claim him.

Jim fights back old anger and old painful memories. “I don’t want to talk about this, and I didn’t come here to be scolded.”

“Still the same,” comes the rueful murmur. “Well, change the subject if you’re uncomfortable. What’s your next question?”

Jim watches the stirrings of the marketplace, sellers arriving and setting up their wares, as the sky brightens from pink to gold. After a time, he wonders, “Is this going to last?”

His companion appears to understand the concern, inclining his head ever-so-slightly. “You will find me tomorrow if you wish to.”

That, it seems, is enough of an answer to satisfy Kirk.

Traveling through the darkness feels like exploring the unknown, which Jim is used to. Though his body is sleep-fogged and dragging, his mind notes all the familiar things about this special journey, having taken the same path three days in a row now. Maybe he is more self-aware each time he goes, from the sudden shock of seeing Pike again to deep caution to the not-quite complacency that accompanies the anticipation of engaging in something he wants badly.

As promised, Christopher Pike is standing just within that strange place, as if having kept a watchful eye out for his protégé’s return. Together, they sit down facing one another.

This time Pike looks approving. “You’re not upset.”

Jim rubs his thumb against the side of his opposite hand. “More curious than upset, I guess. Is this a spell?”

“As in magic?” Pike barks out a laugh. “You’re creative, I will give you that.”

“I’ve been through some unusual—” and disturbing, he doesn’t add, “—adventures, sir.”

“But you enjoy the challenge,” Pike remarks with a knowing look.

Jim isn’t certain of how much truth to share. In the past, he wouldn’t have hesitated to speak openly with Chris, who always seemed to have the right response to make him consider the many facets to his concerns. But this… this is time he shouldn’t have with a man he wasn’t supposed to know again in life, and so it seems almost wasteful to express the doubts that have weighed upon him recently. But if this is indeed the Christopher Pike Jim knows well, then those doubts will eventually surface.

His heart aches thinking of it.

Time passes without his being aware of it. Not until the sun is nearly at its apex in the sky does Jim blink and recall his surroundings. He raises a hand as a shield for his eyes against a strong white glare—sunlight which doesn’t seem to penetrate the shadows of the tent.

“Are you ready to go?” Pike asks, as though the pause in their conversation may be a dismissal of some kind.

“I—” Jim starts, then stops with a sharp inhale, leaning toward the view of people bustling about in the world out of reach as he spies something of interest. “Wait.” Focusing harder, he identifies what he has seen and snaps back as if slapped. Then he half-rises from his chair, twisting around in the sudden silence of the tent to demand of Pike more fiercely than in days past, “Is this real?”

“That question has already been asked and answered.”

Jim grips the back of his chair. “Do you see them? Sulu. Spock and McCoy. Others. They’re out there.”

“You can see them,” Pike says, like Jim acknowledging their existence is all that matters. “They’re searching for you.”

“I didn’t know I was missing,” Jim protests a bit sharply. Then he takes a minute to contemplate what he remembers of this planet and his reason for being there. “Something happened.” His hand finds a spot, healed but still tender, on his torso. “I was injured?”

“It is not common on this planet,” Pike remarks, “to sacrifice oneself for the greater good.”

Kirk frowns. “I wouldn’t say ‘sacrifice’. It was my duty.”

“The meaning of a word depends upon the perspective of the speaker.” Pike points toward the figures in the marketplace, uniformed officers and natives alike. “What is a duty to you may be a gift to them.”

Feeling dismayed, Jim looks away. “Or a burden.” When he turns back to Pike, his decision is made. “While healing, I would have been under the care and surveillance of my team. How did you manage to bring me here?” His gaze narrows. “And how long have I been gone?”

The older man relaxes back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. The gesture is one which usually proceeds a lecture of which said recipient wouldn’t care to hear and is so Pike-like that abruptly Jim’s eyes start to burn.

“Recall that you came to find me.”

“The fact that I’m even talking to you makes me question why.”

“Kirk, in your heart, didn’t you wish we could meet again?”

Jim’s throat closes up at the same time anger flares inside him. “Unless I’m in the afterlife, whether I wanted this or not, it can’t possibly be. This is manipulating what I want!” He ends that statement with a solid thump of his fist against his chair arm.

Pike snorts and challenges Jim in exactly the way Jim would expect him to: “Then why are you still here?”

Many reasons, all of which he cannot give voice to: because he does wish this apparition—delusion, whatever it is—to be the person he lost; because there is so much to tell the man who left him behind, if only a simple goodbye; because the pain of missing a loved one is ever-present; and because Jim is so used to beating the odds to make the impossible possible and at this very moment is desperate enough to believe in miracles.

He hangs his head with this knowledge of his vulnerability and his vanity. The hand falling upon his shoulder startles him. It feels real enough to be a miracle.

Pike’s advice is soft and grave but not unkind: “If this upsets you, you shouldn’t stay.”

The understanding in Pike’s eyes is almost too much to bear. Kirk runs a hand across his face, brushing at unshed tears, allowing only his voice to hint at the emotion weighing him down. “I don’t think I can leave this place,” he admits.

After a moment of silence, Pike says, “You are hidden here until you desire it otherwise… but would that be fair to those who hope to find you?”

Guiltily Jim’s gaze tracks the progress of the officers meticulously working their way from one end of the thoroughfare to the other, scanning every direction, inspecting every stall, stopping shoppers in the street with questions. Sulu looks grim. McCoy is clearly exhausted and worried. Spock’s intense focus on his tricorder is a telltale sign of him suppressing some unpleasant determination.

“What if I don’t want to go back?” Jim asks. Knowing this would happen, would be unavoidable in Pike’s presence, nonetheless, the words burst out of him in a rush of relief and urgency. “What if I gave up the ship, the job, all of it?”

Pike says nothing.

Jim doesn’t need him to. He barrels on, rubbing at his forehead to dispel a lurking headache. “What if being a captain isn’t for me? Okay, so I haven’t been on the bridge a tenth of the time of some of my peers have, but isn’t that long enough to know what I want for myself?”

“Does your family know?”

Jim jerks his gaze up to Pike’s. “Family,” he repeats, tone sharp. “Like who? My mother?”

Pike raises an eyebrow, amending, “You should know well that blood relations are not the only kind of family.”

A muscle twitches along Kirk’s jawline. “No, I haven’t told any of my crew. I haven’t told anyone.”

“Because you are afraid of advice that might change your mind,” Pike contends before chuckling softly. “Don’t fool yourself. You would never alter your decision if you were certain of it. You want to be persuaded.”

Jim stiffens.

Pike goes on, “Just as you wanted someone to challenge you to join Starfleet.”

“That wasn’t your challenge,” Jim counters, despite having grown very still.

“It was not,” Pike agrees. “I challenged you to be a better captain than your father. Is that why you want to quit? Because I’m no longer here to watch—and encourage—your achievements?”

With so little effort, those words gut Jim.

Pike pushes forward, bringing himself to the edge of Kirk’s personal space. “You didn’t use to give up so easily.”

Jim thinks, Going forward wasn’t this difficult before.

“You believe what happened to me made you change, but you’re wrong. The death of one person does not change who you are. You change yourself. And, son, I can’t believe you would want to be less than the great man I always knew you could be.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” Jim half-demands, half-cries.

Pike sits back, then, to observe his protégé’s expression. When Jim repeats the question, truly disarmed and upset, he explains, “The dead only speak when the living are willing to hear them.”

“You shouldn’t have died!” Jim jumps to his feet. “It could’ve been prevented! I could’ve—”

“No,” Pike says implacably. “You don’t make that call.”

“I hate this.” Both of Kirk’s hands fist at his sides. “I didn’t know my father, but I knew you, Chris, and I hate missing you.”

“Well, what else can you do?” responds Pike, sounding oddly more like Jim than sounding like the person Jim knew. “You cared about me.”

Jim thumps back into his chair as the fight abandons him. He asks after a long minute, “Will you be here tomorrow?”

“I can be here,” Pike confirms before adding gently, “one more day.”

A warning and a line drawn—Jim understands him well. This offering is a chance to make peace with himself, not with the man whom he feels he failed.

Wordlessly, he watches Pike. The man rises to his feet, moves to the edge of the shadows and then through the gap into the daylight, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Left behind, Jim waits in that still, cold air, thinking and drifting, until the market closes after dusk. Then he too rises and returns to his place.

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• That Cold Place (2/2) – from November 20, 2019