0Title: Stay With Me (#29, The Drabble Bin)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk
Summary: Friends should stay together.
When James Tiberius Kirk is a young boy, he feels like he can do anything: run the dusty farm road like a champion; take a leap from the loft of the barn and always find a soft landing; and rescue wild animals who became ensnared in forgotten hunter’s traps. The boy carries this self-assurance into adulthood, heedless of those telling him to slow down, to look before he leaped, and to accept that not every life can be saved. If he never stops persisting, he believes, he will never know defeat.
~~~
“Run!” cries the man ahead. “Run faster!”
Jim is thirty-seven and on the verge of winded. He cannot see whom he follows, can only barely can discern the forest path beneath his boots. But the panicked orders ring clear, and an instinct to obey them is ingrained in him.
A howl emanates from somewhere at his back, closer than it was moments ago.
Sweat steadily collects along his hairline. The burn from the sweat doesn’t distract the man as it finds his eye. Nothing can shake him from the narrow focus that comes with fleeing a great danger.
He has a damaged communicator. His phaser was wrested from him hours ago by angry men.
How dare you come armed into our facility! they had lashed out. We’ve had enough of you militants bullying the helpless!
Jim isn’t in the habit of bullying anyone, but he couldn’t deny the fear in the voices of the men shouting at the landing party. He isn’t so naive as to think Starfleet doesn’t have officers who lean into their authority brutishly. He met some of them at the Academy years ago: peers, superior officers, even visiting dignitaries.
But allowing no weapons on a research frontier outpost felt foreboding. Now that feeling has come to fruition in an awful way. Fellow officers are dead, ripped viciously from the line of duty by the very thing these scientists had made it their mission to study.
An innocuous native creature, recalls Jim bitterly, as read to him by the head researcher with pride from the latest batch of log entries. Appears mostly oblivious to the presence of its observers…
Concerning the outpost personnel, ‘willfully negligent in security measures’ is what Jim will dictate in his mission report to Command. ‘Idiots who led us by the nose into the tiger’s den.’
Whether or not he lives, Jim must take full responsibility for the death of his officers. The guilt cuts deep even now as he desperately wills his numb legs to be faster in order to preserve his own life. But he hasn’t the stamina he did a decade ago, no matter the regular gym training and the diet foods meant to keep his weight in check.
It takes Jim some time to realize he has lost his bearings. The cries of his scared companions have gone eerily silent. Jim slams to a stop and, in doing so, nearly loses his footing. His near-drunken stagger from the edge of the path into the underbrush lands him before an uprooted tree. Broken roots, no more than concealed ridges under the leaf-litter of the forest floor, trip him to his knees.
He quiets his breathing to listen. No other sounds of flight come, even faintly, of terrified humans tearing through the underbrush.
The howling has drifted mercifully almost out of earshot. Jim sinks back against the hollow made by the exposed root system and closes his eyes, which brings little relief. It seems ages before his chest aches less and the sweat has cooled on his skin.
Something touches his shoulder. Disturbed, he grapples with a large dead root.
Don’t look, he thinks, feeling a fog clearing from his head the more he repeats this order to himself.
Whatever started the flight of the search party has taken another direction. Other than the soft singing of some local insects, Jim is certain he should be alone.
Arms come around him from behind somehow, despite him being pressed into the wall of roots, and pull him tight to a cold chest. Jim tips his head forward to meet his knees, softening a quick inhale to a hushed breath. He doesn’t dare push back the arms or lift up. He doesn’t want to see the blue sleeves crossed over his midsection.
“I’m okay,” he says, more to soothe himself than his visitor.
“You will be,” floats past his ear. Then, “You know none of this is real, don’t you?”
Jim has known that for a while, of course, but knowing doesn’t make it easier to accept the truth, not while his body still buzzes from the adrenaline of being chased.
Another soft sigh whistles by his ear. “Jim, time to let go.”
Jim can’t relinquish his hold on himself or his imaginary friend. Doing either would lead to his death.
“Look, Bones,” Jim says instead, angling his face to scrub it against his mud-streaked uniform sleeve, “we have to stay quiet, or we’ll attract the beast.” He hesitates. “Just… stay with me, okay?”
“All right,” agrees Bones. “I guess being eaten alive isn’t the most pleasant way to die.”
Jim hasn’t the energy to acknowledge the remark.
He doesn’t know when or why but something in his life went very wrong without him being aware of it. At least, his friend seems to think so. Bones has been a part of Jim since Jim was twenty-four, freshly returned from a semester aboard the USS Farragut. Who comes back from an exciting adventure in space with an award of valor and a ghost?
Apparently Jim Kirk does.
It turns out that Jim isn’t crazy (if the psych evals are to be believed); Jim is just naturally extraordinary to attract a would-be-no-Jim-we-should’ve-been spirit that is simultaneously grumpy and amusing and also occasionally depressed about the circumstances of Jim’s life. Bones says they were best friends in his life, and Jim was his captain too.
Correction, thinks Jim sardonically, he is still a captain. For Bones to sound so pessimistic about Jim’s current career when Jim commands the USS Farragut, inherited from his predecessor Garrovick, is just ridiculous.
And yet…
And yet Jim cannot help but dream of Starfleet’s flagship—that beauty which is the USS Enterprise. Another Kirk’s ship in some other life.
So to Bones this life isn’t real, and while Jim would agree that it could be better (c’mon, why didn’t he get the flagship?), it feels real enough for Jim.
“Hate to disturb your morose thoughts, kid, but I think you’re about to be found.”
Jim snaps back to awareness, which he shouldn’t have lost to begin with (thanks so much for the distraction, Bones!). There is indeed a rank smell in the air, the stink of wet fur and blood, and an occasional ominous crunch of leaves underfoot.
“Did I get chased by monsters in my other life?” Jim asks.
“All the time.”
“And I did something heroic to survive them, right?”
“More like something stupid.” But Bones pauses, then adds, “I’d say it was a combination of luck and the refusal to quit.”
“Great.” Jim takes in his surroundings once more. “The only thing I remember about this animal is it being virtually blind such that it tracks prey by scent and sound. What do you say to taking a mud bath and holding our breath?”
“Just don’t drown—”
“—because you’re not around to save me, yeah I know,” Jim finishes easily. But truth be told, Jim thinks Bones has saved him plenty over the years. He just wishes they could have had this friendship in person—that Bones was real and present in a way that Jim would find far more comforting in a life-or-death situation.
Still, he would be remiss not saying, “Thanks for sticking around,” and meaning it. Oh, how he means it.
“I’ll stay with you for as long as I can, Jim,” Bones promises, like always.
Jim believes him. Why else would someone defy the universe to find Jim when that person shouldn’t—doesn’t—exist in it?
Because he is Jim Kirk’s best friend.
-Fini
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- An Ominous Setting (#28, The Drabble Bin) – from May 4, 2021
- Beyond the Call of Duty (#27, The Drabble Bin) – from September 24, 2020
- Have You Heard…? (#26, The Drabble Bin) – from September 20, 2019
- Who Wants to be a Doctor? (#25, The Drabble Bin) – from May 13, 2019
- A Tale of Some Debate (#24, The Drabble Bin) – from February 25, 2019
