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It was the middle of the twenty-first century, and La'an did not belong here. None of them did. Not her, not Captain James T. Kirk of the United Earth Fleet, and not the Romulan assassin pointing a gun at them.
Rage, at both herself and the imposter, nearly blinded La’an as the last twenty-four hours raced through her mind. How had she not known she was being lied to? She must have missed so many signs, she thought, but that was something to be analyzed and corrected when the situation wasn’t so dire.
Years of training and living on the knife’s edge of death propelled La’an forward, even as Kirk reached out a hand to stop her. It wasn’t the most elegant maneuver on her part, ducking and quickly launching herself into Sera’s midsection, knocking her to the ground on her back, La’an going down with her. The gun discharged, loudly but harmlessly, into the ceiling as they toppled, and La’an twisted it from the assassin’s grip when they had barely hit the floor. While she couldn’t see it, La’an would have been deeply gratified by the look of stunned awe on Kirk’s face.
From deeper within the building, alarms began to sound.
“Shit!” Kirk hissed.
Sera tried in vain to wriggle out from under La’an, but stopped when she felt the muzzle of her own weapon press into her chest. She looked at La’an with an anger so deep and anguished that La’an almost felt sorry for her.
A dozen lines of questioning spun half-formed in La’an’s head. Why was the assassin here? What in this facility was so important? She didn’t have time to ask anything before the Romulan’s hand shot up to her own neck, and she disintegrated in front of La'an's eyes.
She stared at the pile of ash in horrified disbelief, before pounding her fist on the ground once, and then again. “Damn it! Damn it!”
“La'an, we've gotta go!” Kirk said over the increasingly loud din of the alarms, taking her by the arm and hauling her to her feet.
“We don’t even know why she was here! We don’t know if we fixed the timeline!” La’an protested, but she started walking and then running at pace with Kirk.
“Priorities!” he said, and she didn’t try to argue as they sprinted through the exit and into the blessed anonymity of the city’s cold night.
+++
When they made it back to the hotel, La’an was still fuming. She kicked a small waste bin across the room at the same time that Kirk collapsed onto the sofa, letting out a long sigh that seemed to expel all of the tension from the last couple of hours from his body. He watched La’an pace and said, “I know you’re upset, but let’s appreciate that that could have gone so much worse.”
“I know!” That came out sharper than she meant it. She winced, stopping her pacing to rub her temples. “Sorry. I know, it’s just that there’s so much we don’t know, and I hate not knowing.”
“Really? I couldn’t tell,” Kirk said with a playful smirk, which made La’an’s heart jump, in spite of her frustration.
He continued, “Do you think it worked, at least? Did we save your timeline?”
La’an pulled the strange device that had set all of this in motion from her pocket, and she and Kirk both held their breath. Sure enough, the button was green again, and seemed to hum with energy and potential. “We must have,” she said. They were silent for a moment, the implications hanging heavy in the air. “I think... I think we can go back now,” she looked at the floor, “or, I can go back, I should say.”
Another heavy silence set in, before Kirk gave a nod of resignation. “So, my timeline is already gone, right? That’s… well it’s a lot to take in.”
“I’m so sorry,” said La’an. Kirk only nodded silently, his face giving nothing away. La’an recognized and understood this posture all too well: we still have things to do, I will deal with this later.
“Do you still want to come with me, to my time?” she asked.
Kirk nodded. “I do. I want to see what this better world is really like. What Earth and humanity might have become, if we’d had a better shot. And I’d like to see it with you, if that’s still what you want.”
La’an nodded, but something in her expression gave Kirk pause. “What’s up?” he asked, standing and taking a step closer. “If this isn’t what you want anymore, it’s okay. You can tell me.”
“I do want you to come with me,” said La’an. “A lot. And that makes me… afraid, I guess. I’m not good at being afraid.”
“What’s there to be afraid of?” asked Kirk.
She sighed and shook her head. “I’m not even sure.” Whatever this was, it was difficult to express. These last few hours had been packed with more emotion than La’an knew how to parse. Fighting for her life was one thing, but this was something else. She collected her thoughts before continuing, a little sheepishly, “This might be an odd question, but… why do you like me?”
Kirk’s brow furrowed. “I… sorry, what do you mean?”
“Look, I just… I just need to know. I mean, it's obvious why I would like you!” La'an said, exasperated by how difficult this was.
“Er, well, thank you.”
“No, Jim, I'm serious! You, you're all light and optimism, despite everything that's happened to you. You've learned to plan five steps ahead, but you can also live in the moment. Most people can't do that, you know. So, what I'm saying is... I like you so much after just a couple of days, and it scares me. That doesn’t happen to me. Plus, you seem to feel the same way about me, which really doesn’t happen to me, ever, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why you would feel that way.”
Kirk blinked, bewildered, before speaking again. “I… I could say that you represent the hope of a better world than the one I'm used to. That you’re beautiful. Or that you're strong, you care about people, and you're funny, even if you don't know it.”
La'an felt tears that she couldn't explain begin to sting her eyes and quickly blinked them away.
“And all of that would be true, but none of that is why,” Kirk took a step closer and placed his hands on either side of her face, his eyes gazing into hers with unwavering sincerity. “I just like you, La’an. A lot. You're worthy of… of like.”
La’an’s eyebrows went up a little, incredulous and, after a beat, they both laughed.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” La’an said, somewhere between laughing softly and starting to cry, “and a lot of it isn’t good.”
“You can try all you want, but you’re not scaring me away that easily. And, as a war-torn man from a now destroyed timeline, I’ve got some baggage of my own. But I think we can both handle that.”
La’an nodded, flooded with relief and still blinking away the last remnants of tears. “Yes,” she said, “yes we can.” She cleared her throat and straightened up, her composure more or less regained, and was glad to change the subject. “So, what’s it like, knowing that you’ll see Sam again soon?”
“God. Honestly, I’m nervous. I don’t know if he’ll be glad to see me. Well, probably not, since he’ll have two of me to deal with now,” Kirk said with a chuckle, before his eyes widened and a look of horror dawned on his face. “Oh, god… there’s going to be another me! Is your Federation going to be okay with this? I mean, is there some kind of precedent?”
La'an racked her brain, but time travel and temporal displacement were not her areas of expertise. She wasn't sure they were anyone's areas of expertise yet. “I honestly have no idea. I would imagine there isn’t.”
“How comforting.”
“We’ll find out. When we get back, we have to go straight to Captain Pike. He’s a good man, and a good captain. He’ll help us, however he can.”
Kirk raised an eyebrow. “Pike? As in Christopher Pike? In my timeline, he was a space pirate.”
“You’re kidding,” said La’an, but Kirk shook his head. “I… I can’t even begin to unpack that right now. I should warn you, in case you decide to tell my Pike about that, he has a pirate voice, and he isn’t afraid to use it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Kirk said with a wry smile. “I think I’m going to have a lot of fun on this other Enterprise.”
“I have no doubt of it,” La’an added, and she held up the device again. “Well, I guess there’s no reason to put it off anymore. Let’s go home.”
“It might take some time before I call it that,” Kirk said, but he smiled and his eyes softened as he looked at La’an, “but I know I will. Someday.”
The security chief surprised herself by leaning forward to kiss him. The world was suddenly lighter, and filled with possibility. Was this what it was like to have hope?
“Careful,” Kirk said as she pulled away, “I think you might be going soft on me.”
“I'm feeling softer all the time,” she said. “And it’s your fault.”
Kirk took La’an’s hand in his, and held a finger poised over the green mechanism that would send them to a time and place that was, in some ways, new to both of them now. La’an nodded, and they disappeared, still hand in hand.