Chapter Text
Captain James Tiberius Kirk stood in the Transporter room entirely alone aboard the Starship Enterprise.
The faint buzzing, whirrs and hums of the starship, as familiar to her as her own breathing patterns seemed so much louder than they had ever been before. Was it the isolation that enhanced these ordinary sounds, or the rising guilt about what it was she knew she had to do to save her ship and its crew?
___
Omicron Ceti III had seemed at first like a miracle. A planet, upon which any humanoid life should have perished within weeks, was home to a thriving colony of forty-five survivors. The Berthold Rays, which should have proved so entirely lethal, had failed to extend their fatal grasp on the colony that had lived there for almost four years with no deaths.
Indeed the colonists were in perfect health.
They were in perfect health, perfectly happy in this perfect little slice of paradise. Yet James Kirk was never one not to trust her instincts and her instincts were telling her than underneath this wondrous, miraculous and faultless existence the agricultural colony claimed to be the ideal, there was something that didn’t feel quite right.
She was correct.
But it was already too late.
When Kirk finally realised that the pink flowers which grew freely around Omicron Ceti III were expulsing mind altering spores, her entire crew had been affected. There were thousands upon thousands of microscopic spores within those flowers, just biding their time and awaiting the opportunity to inhabit a human body.
Kirk had given them more than that. She provided over four-hundred bodies as her crew descended one by one, abandoning their posts and joining the colony on the planet down below.
Kirk was powerless to make them stop their teleportation planetside. Her persuasions, her orders, even her pleading was met with indifference. Her words fell on deaf ears. Kirk and her starship were to be abandoned.
What could she offer against paradise?
So the ship had grown silent, and empty, and the corridors felt longer than they had ever been before. The sliding doors from chamber to chamber sounded offensively loud in the almost silence of the Enterprise and Kirk, the sole survivor, was alone. The single blip of a fading pulse, the last of a waning heartbeat on a ship usually so voracious and energy-filled Kirk could swear it had a life of its own.
When she was at her most low, the spores took her. She had no place in the command chair when she no longer had anyone left to command. So Kirk sat behind the helm, lost and entirely isolated. She felt beaten. Utterly beaten. The spores which exploded from the stamen of the blasted flower which had caused this to happen in the first place, covered her, and she had no choice but to breathe it in and let the spores take hold. Their effect wiped away Kirk’s mourning as easily as crumbs swept off a table.
How had I felt so defeated before? She wondered.
It was all so clear now.
The ship was dying, but the planet below? Why it was perfect! With her friends, her crew and everything she could desire down there, what could a life in the sky provide to her now?
Kirk had packed her meagre suitcase, eager to leave this too empty and cold starship and transport to Omicron Ceti III. When her bag was packed, the last thing she needed to retrieve was her medals. They had always meant a lot to her, another perfectly happy memory to bring down to the planet below.
She opened the drawer she kept her medals in and pulled out a sleek black box. The medal the box held appeared so shiny and pristine, Kirk observed with some emotion. This medal in particular had been hard earned. She and her crew had worked in the most difficult conditions and had emerged battered but ultimately victorious. The Enterprise and the crew who served her could often be tried, pushed and battered but they could never be beaten. Pride swelled in her heart, as she recalled those precious moments of victory. But they were stilled when a cool thought settled in her mind.
Is this what I will be leaving behind?
The adventure? The exploration? The danger? The intrigue?
Her heart beat heavily in her chest and like waking from a dream for just a second she found the delusion weakened its hold, but the spores soon took back control, their grip on her mind was ironclad.
This was doubt and nothing more, Kirk reasoned. On Omicron Ceti III I will have nothing to doubt about. I will be happy there.
Kirk picked up her suitcase and hurried to the transporter room.
Soon she’d be reunited with Bones, who was sipping on an ice cold mint julep, with Sulu who was so eagerly exploring the beauteous nature the planet had to offer, and even with Spock who was reunited with his long lost love. She was human girl whom he had met many years ago. It was long before he had met Kirk.
They were in love.
‘No,’ she said aloud suddenly, her thoughts suddenly becoming clearer.
‘No!’ she repeated louder, as if anyone could hear her when she was so entirely alone.
Wouldn’t that be how it stayed? While Spock and his lady-love Leila Kalomi frolicked and laughed and kissed and lived in a life of pure and perfect enchantment, wouldn’t Kirk still be alone?
What hurt more, the loneliness and isolation, or the knowledge that Spock had found love, perfection and paradise on a planet without her?
‘I… Can’t… Leave!’ Kirk choked out. Her mind was turbulent. Anger, rejection, sadness and regret formed an acidic presence in her mind and with an ignition of doubt the spores could survive no longer.
This was madness and Kirk could allow it to go on no further.
These emotions, raw, violent and angry -visceral emotions- freed her.
She knew what she had to do.
But she knew the cost it would have.
So now Kirk found her mind once again her own, she the Captain of a dying and lonely starship, crewless and against insurmountable odds, in the transporter room, hoping that her plan, as extreme as it was would work. Kirk had worked against worse odds before.
‘Anger,’ she said to herself with a grin. Then with more authority, Kirk addressed the ship’s computer. ‘Captain's log. Supplemental. I think I've discovered the answer but to carry out my plan entails considerable risk. Mister Spock is much stronger than the ordinary human being. Aroused, his great physical strength could kill. But it's a risk I'll have to take.’
Kirk straightened her back, once again feeling like control was returning to her hands. This was a dangerous plan at best and reckless and potentially deadly at worst. It was the perfectly human plan that would work best against aliens, spore and Vulcan alike.
‘Enterprise to Spock,’ Kirk said, careful to keep her voice light.
‘Spock here,’ was the reply.
‘It’s Jim.’
‘What’s keeping you, Jim? We’ve been waiting.’
‘I’ve been packing some things, and I realise there's some equipment here that we should have down at the settlement. You know we can't come back on board once the last of us has left.’
‘Do you want me to beam up a party?’ was Spock’s response.
How remarkable that even in an altered state Spock could still seem so practical.
‘No,’ Kirk said easily. ‘I think you and I can handle it. Why don’t you beam up now?’
‘Just a moment,’ Spock replied dutifully.
A moment passed.
‘Ready to beam up, Jim.’
Kirk observed the Transporter desk, a large iron bar in her hands, ready for the return of the Vulcan.
Now James Kirk was not a woman of inconsiderate strength. Gender was as little a concern aboard the starship as species or planet of origin. She sparred with her male counterparts and trained on her own regularly enough to find comfort in her own strength.
Yet, like many of her crewmates aboard the Enterprise, she was somewhat hindered by the limitations of her human strength. She would never be able to overpower a Klingon singlehandedly and she could never face a Gorn in a fair fight and live to tell the tale.
She certainly could never take a Vulcan on in a fight and expect to emerge unscathed.
But that was currently just what she had to do.
On Omicron Ceti III Kirk had seen the happiness in Spock’s eyes. The openness and freedom of emotion- almost like that of a human- in the body of a Vulcan was impossible for her not to have noticed.
Was it fair to take away such freedom of emotion from Spock?
Who gave me the right to remove such apparent happiness?
Such thoughts made her hesitate as she looked at the transporter table, but she soon steeled her nerves. It may be unpleasant, but this was her only option. Kirk needed to get Spock to the point where he could help her regain control of her crew and free them of the spores.
For that to happen she needed Spock to be her second in command again.
Kirk hardened her heart and concealed her feelings in a way that even the most emotionally repressed Vulcan would have found impressive in a human. She was hurting yes, but she was the Captain of this starship and she put its needs and needs of her crew before her own.
‘Energising,’ Kirk said, her voice finely controlled.
Spock energised into the transporter room and it was no longer time to worry. It was the time for action.
‘All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerised, half-breed, we'll see about you deserting my ship,’ Kirk said with some venom to the unsuspecting Vulcan. The iron bar in her hand was a threat and she meant it as such.
Spock looked at his captain, so steely eyed and stern.
‘The term half-breed is somewhat applicable, but computerised is inaccurate. A machine can be computerised, not a man,’ Spock corrected easily, there was humour in his voice.
‘What makes you think you're a man?’ Kirk continued to goad. ‘You're an overgrown jackrabbit, an elf with a hyperactive thyroid.’
Spock wondered if this was one of those human jokes, a practical joke, the nuances of which often escaped his understanding.
‘Jim,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘I don’t understand-’
‘Of course you don't understand,’ Kirk interrupted. ‘You don't have the brains to understand. All you have is printed circuits.’
It was easy to put an angry edge to her tone. Spock’s gentle smile, directly only towards her and her alone had been a worse jolt of pain than a dagger’s blade piercing through something vital.
A moment passed between the two officers as Spock passed by Kirk and walked towards the transporter controls. Spock had grown tired of Kirk’s instigation and provocation and he was not going to rise to the challenge.
The good-humour left his tone.
‘Captain, if you'll excuse me-’
‘What can you expect from a simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopaedia?’ Kirk interrupted once more as she rushed up the steps to the teleportation chamber effectively blocking Spock’s path back towards the teleportation area.
She let the venom she felt towards herself poison each word she spat.
‘My mother was a teacher,’ Spock said, his tone carefully even. ‘My father an ambassador.’
Kirk knew this; Spock had spoken to her about his parents countless times. Why now was she claiming ignorance about his life?
‘Your father was a computer, like his son,’ Kirk said with maliciousness. ‘An ambassador from a planet of traitors. A Vulcan never lived who had an ounce of integrity.’
She could see in his eyes Spock was losing his cool, easy and relaxed demeanour. His face was impassive, and despite the power of the spores altering his mind, the Vulcan’s control over his emotions was notable.
Kirk knew she had to push him further, further, further and make him break.
Spock’s voice was finely controlled, too finely controlled.
‘Captain, please don't-‘
‘You're a traitor from a race of traitors.’ Kirk was practically shouting now and her aggravation was clear, ‘Disloyal to the core, rotten like the rest of your subhuman race. And you've got the gall to make love to that girl.’
A cool second of silence passed in the room.
Kirk’s heart was pumping adrenaline through her body and her awareness was at an all-time high. She knew those words would hurt Spock because they had hurt her to say, each word a mallet strike further deepening the stake of regret embedded in her heart. But her anger was present and clear. It was anger that Spock would choose Leila, a woman he knew from six years ago over the Enterprise, leaving it to die. It was anger that Spock would so recklessly disregard the fate of his crew to be with Leila on Omicron Ceti III. And the most anger-provoking of all, was that Spock had so easily chosen Leila over her.
Kirk’s chest was heaving angry breaths.
‘That’s enough,’ Spock warned.
But it wasn’t enough. Kirk had to do more. She had to hurt Spock more.
‘Does she know what she's getting, Spock?’ she asked. ‘A carcass full of memory banks who should be squatting in a mushroom, instead of passing himself off as a man? You belong in a circus, Spock, not a starship… right next to the dog-faced boy.’
Spock had turned from Kirk, and so she could no longer see his expression but her rejection of his place on the starship and the callous remarks had to have been enough.
There was a pause. The room seemed to stand still.
Then Spock span around, arm raised, infuriated. Kirk’s had pushed and prodded and goaded enough. It was clear she wanted to anger him and anger him she had. That measly iron bar that she held in her hands was no match for the superior Vulcan strength and it only took one hand to practically fling her smaller form to the other end of the transporter room where her body hit the wall with a thud, the now crushed iron bar discarded in a useless heap.
Kirk’s reactions were lightning fast though and she managed to quickly get out of the way of Spock’s incoming punch. It made impact with the wall, easily smashing one of the monitors, glass cracking, smashing and falling to the ground. But Kirk was no longer there. Where the Vulcan’s moves were slow and strong, fuelled with unbridled rage, Kirk’s moves were quicker and more nimble. She flashed underneath Spock’s swinging arms and landed a quick punch to his gut.
Spock’s responding blow packed more of a punch and Kirk was flung once again towards the wall. Spock could throw her about as if she weighed less than nothing and she was a ragdoll beneath the rage of the Vulcan scorned.
Disorientated from being pushed with great force Kirk’s legs buckled and she fell to the ground. She just needed a second to gain her bearings but she didn’t have the time, the figure of Spock loomed ominously above her, a giant and a mouse, Samson and Goliath. In his hands, raised high above his head was a metal stool, an impromptu weapon that would be much more of a danger to Kirk than the iron bar had proved to be for him.
Kirk’s breath caught in her throat. She had no escape, caught and at Spock’s mercy. She raised her hands in surrender but the madness stayed in his eyes.
This human before him, so small and frail, she had riled him to the point of madness, like a matador waving a red flag at a bull she had managed to push every button of aggravation in his being. As the commander of this ship she knew its every secret and it’s every power. This woman, James Kirk, knew him just as well, his every weakness, fear, and concern and she had used them against him.
Why?
Anger, rage, fury, ego and confusion grew together in the half-Vulcan in a way he had never experienced until now.
No woman- no that wasn’t correct, no human or any other creature in these great galaxies could make Spock feel like this. Know him to his very core and expose his every vulnerability with the skill of a master surgeon.
Kirk could see the light dim in Spock’s eyes, back to their familiar intelligence.
‘Had enough?’ Kirk asked cautiously. Her hands were still raised in surrender in case he had not.
‘I didn't realise what it took to get under that thick hide of yours,’ she said with an almost smile.
Spock lowered the stool suddenly conscious about the madness that had been in his actions.
‘Anyhow,’ Kirk continued easily. ‘I don't know what you're so mad about.’
She bounced back up into a standing position, rolling out her aching joints and muscles.
‘It isn't every first officer who gets to belt his Captain…several times,’ she said, rolling her jaw.
There was a heady mix of gentle humour and ill hidden concern on her face, though it was now harder for Spock to read her expressions.
‘You did that to me deliberately,’ he said.
Kirk found Spock’s expression equally as hard to read.
‘Believe me, Mister Spock, it was painful… in more ways than one.’
Kirk braced her shoulder. She wouldn’t have been surprised from the pain in the joint if Spock had made a halfway decent attempt to rip her arm from her socket. He had not held back in that fight and Kirk had never better understood the Vulcan’s desire for ridding themselves of rage and violent emotions until now.
‘The spores,’ Spock said slowly. ‘They're gone.’
He paused then sighed.
‘I don't belong anymore.’
Kirk’s heart ached at the pain in the Vulcan’s tone. It was more subtle than when he was affected by the spores sure, but it was more earnest. Kirk knew that she could provide no comfort to him, so she remained sombre.
‘You said they were benevolent and peaceful. Violent emotions overwhelm them, destroy them. I had to make you angry enough to shake off their influence. That's the answer, Mister Spock,’ she said, more emphatically than she had intended.
It was an excuse, but it was all she had.
‘That may be correct, Captain, but trying to initiate a brawl with over five hundred crewmen and colonists is hardly logical.’
‘I had something else in mind,’ Kirk said easily, as she guided him to the door of the transporter room. ‘Can you put together a subsonic transmitter? Something we can hook into the communications station and broadcast over the communicator?’
Spock paused in momentary thought.
‘It can be done,’ he agreed.
‘Good. Let's get to work,’ she said as she left the transporter room with a feeling of purpose and urgency.
Spock lingered for a second.
‘Captain,’ he called.
Kirk stopped and turned to face him again.
‘Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offence,’ he said cautiously.
Kirk looked thoughtful for a moment, rubbing her hands idly.
‘Well,’ she said eventually. ‘If we're both in the Brig, who's going to build the subsonic transmitter?’
Spock paused in thought once again, then quirked a brow.
‘That is quite logical, Captain,’ he replied.
Kirk smiled. It was the easiest smile she had made in days at the Vulcan man before her. His return to normalcy was more perfect than that pitiful excuse of paradise of Omicron Ceti III could dream of providing.
She and Spock, once again easily falling into stride with each other, made their way swiftly to the helm, ready to retrieve their crew.
---
The subsonic transmitter created an aggravating sensation that was enough to bring the crew and the agricultural settler’s back to their right minds once again, but for Laila, Spock’s beau, the rejection of Spock and his reversion back to his usual state was enough to break the charm that the spores held over her without the need of the transmitter.
Spock could no longer empathise or comfort Leila as he had once been able to do, so the duty fell to Kirk to soothe the heartbroken girl on their journey to Starbase Twenty Seven, all while nursing a heartbreak of her own.
Kirk had seen how Spock acted on that planet, how he had smiled and kissed and laughed and loved.
Loved someone who wasn’t her.
She knew that she had to break him out of it, for the good of the planet and the good of the ship. He was the only one who could help her, he was her second in command, but the guilt she felt in ripping away Spock’s chance to experience happiness was unequalled to anything she had ever felt in her life. It felt perverted and selfish that she had deemed it her right to remove such a thing.
As Leila wept in her arms, Kirk stroked her hair gently and let her express her sorrow.
‘I love him,’ she cried. ‘We were happy there. We could have still have been happy there now but he changed once again, to the Mister Spock who I knew from before. He’s returned to the man who I loved who wouldn’t even touch me, who couldn’t kiss me or put his arms around me. We can never return to paradise, and I shall never be happy with him again.’
Kirk shed tears too, and continued to hold Leila close.
‘Oh James,’ she sighed between the tears. ‘I love him. I still love him and on Omicron Ceti III he told me he loved me. He told me he could love me.’
The guilt, the heavy, stomach-wrenching guilt was Kirk’s punishment. The regret and shame that she still envied Leila’s mourning was her retribution. She was the one who separated them, who meant they could never be together, and Leila was still the one who Spock loved. That knowledge was a bitter pill but it would become her cross to bear. The jealousy she felt seemed obscene.
The knowledge that Spock could love on Omicron Ceti III, and he had not loved her, tore out Kirk’s heart and stomped on it with Starfleet-issued heavy-soled regulation boots.
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,’ Kirk had quoted to Leila.
Leila in her grief had scoffed at Kirk’s comforting words, though Kirk knew over time they would begin to ring true. To Kirk they already held much value, though the thought made her heart ache anew.
Upon arrival at Starbase Twenty Seven, when the settlers were sent on their merry way, and their presence faded to just a memory, Kirk found the pain in her heart began to fade. She tried to forget what had happened on that dreadful planet and over time the sharp stabbing pain of jealousy, envy and rejection faded to the dull pain of heartache.
It was a pain that Kirk found never quite truly went away.
Regardless, Kirk worked just as efficiently as before. Her relationship with Spock did not change in any way and any discomfort that could have been felt between her and her commander was put down to the fact that Kirk still regretted having to insult Spock so greatly to get him to return to his usual self. Spock however had let it be known to Kirk that he knew that she did what had to be done. If the roles were reversed he would have been willing to do the same.
Bones was all too quick to quip that it would be a lot easier for Spock to rile someone up than the other way around. He already riled Bones up into a rage at least three times a week.
Within a few months the mission to Omicron Ceti III had been all but forgotten and within the year it was a distant memory. The only reminders of their time there was Kirk’s broken heart, Bone’s regrown appendix and whatever pollen and clipping samples remained from the mysterious pink flowers that lay in the botany section of the life sciences department for the science officers to further research their usage in protection against Berthold rays and its radiation.