Chapter Text
Quite a few events took place during this particular mission. On the surface, it wasn't much more challenging than many others. In fact, it probably should be categorised as one of the least dangerous, considering how the worst outcome would have been Kirk's crewmen getting stuck in a paradise.
Nonetheless, it was one of the hardest missions for the Captain.
He was now lying in his quarters, unable to fall asleep for quite a while. All the light were out and it was only the faintest beam from the corridor, sliding through the slot in the door, that was a source of any sort of soft illumination in the room.
Jim found himself going through the events of the day once again.
- - -
There was something off about Omicron Ceti III from the very beginning. Something unsettling about this paradise that all the colonists claimed the planet to be.
And there was this... girl. This Layla that apparently had known Spock. Spock? Him? Why did he have a girl this time, how could that be? It was always Jim who had a girl, not the Vulcan.
But Kirk ignored her at first and directed his and everyone’s attention back to their mission instead. Or at least tried to.
However, when he heard his First Officer disregard a direct order he’d given him through the communicator, that was when he stopped having any doubts about his foreboding.
And then they found him with her and he was on the tree, and he was... smiling. Jim had never seen him smile before and at this sight, his heart skipped a beat. ‘Spock’, he cleared his throat to try and sound normal. ‘Mr Spock?’, he asked. But actually didn’t want an answer.
They were shown the flowers and told about the effects of the spores that suddenly burst and infected everyone. Everyone except for Kirk, for some unknown then reason.
But now Jim knew that he wasn’t affected by them because at the time he was so, so upset about...
Later he met with Spock and Elias Sandoval in the house. They talked more about the peculiar plant and its effects. ‘You don’t understand, Jim, but you’ll come around... sooner or later.’ they tried to convince him to stay.
And the Science Officer’s last words in the conversation almost did.
‘Join us. Please.’
He asked so softly that Kirk had to dismiss his first instinct to give in as quickly as possible. If he had started to wonder and deliberate he may have decided to actually comply.
‘I’m going back to the ship.’ and so he did immediately to avoid any further temptation.
Soon he was completely alone on the Enterprise. On his Enterprise, his beloved Enterprise, that he was almost ready to abandon and join the rest on the planet.
Until he was not. Until he had to do the awful, awful thing that he will regret for the rest of his days.
He had to hurt Spock, in the worst way imaginable.
‘All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerised half-breed, we’ll see about you deserting my ship.’
It was scary how fast the words came to Jim’s mind and exited his mouth. It was scary how easy it was for him to know which buttons to push to upset Spock. He wished it had not.
‘What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak, whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?’ Kirk eventually got to disrespecting Spock’s family, since it seemed that degrading him alone was not enough.
And he was right.
‘My mother was a teacher. My father, an ambassador.’ there was a great deal of pain to be heard in the Vulcan’s answer.
‘Your father was a computer like his son. An ambassador from a planet of traitors. The Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.’
‘Captain, please don’t-’
It was the second time that Spock begged Kirk that day. And, oh stars, was it hard to go on after that. But he did, nonetheless.
‘You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship... Right next to the dog-faced boy.’ Kirk couldn’t believe he actually had said that. He should have never said anything like that. That was just cruel.
And the punches he received afterwards felt well-deserved.
In the end, it worked, though. He got Spock back and although at the sight of the pain in his eyes and at the sound of sadness in his voice, now answering to the Captain’s orders as usual, all he wanted to do was to hug him and apologise for everything, they had no time to waste. And Kirk needed his help.
Together they fixed everything and got everyone back on the ship, back to their duties, back to normal.
And after all of this was supposedly over, as if Jim hadn't been through enough emotional turmoil throughout the whole day, there came this last conversation on the bridge.
'I have little to say about it, Captain, except that for the first time in my life... I was happy.' Spock said then, summarising the mission.
- - -
These words were what ultimately broke Kirk's heart. They broke his heart when Spock first said them and they broke his heart now when he was recalling them.
He knew his First Officer, he knew him even more than perhaps even Spock himself. There were things that the Vulcan wouldn't admit but were true, nevertheless. One of those things was how... unhappy he was.
Of course, Spock wouldn't put that in this terms. Heck, he wouldn't put that in any terms. He would rather just brush it off and say that he doesn't feel anything and therefore can't be "unhappy" or "miserable". Just "neutral", "adequate".
But Jim knew. He knew that Spock wasn't really this emotionless machine, he knew he did feel and he knew he repressed all that stuff. That's how he'd been able to break him by saying all those hurtful things in the transporter room. Because he knew that there were things that would actually hurt Spock, that he was suffering and hiding all this pain.
And it broke Kirk's heart hearing that he was happy just this once, under the influence of some weird spores.
That no matter how much Jim tried to show the half-Vulcan that he is accepted, and welcome, and doesn't have to be ashamed of anything, that he still couldn't let himself be open and feel all these feelings he had felt on Omicron Ceti III.
It broke his heart knowing that Spock was never happy on the Enterprise.
And that he was never happy with Jim.