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He wishes it would all just go away, either drift out his mind like a bad nightmare that fades into the darkness or vanish like the shock of amnesia but either way he doesn’t want to remember.
It’s a few weeks after he’s came home and he’s more tired, exhausted, miserable than he ever felt. He wants to forget and yet every memory is clinging. So instead of trying to hold it back anymore he just let’s it go.
Trying to act normal and hold Tarsus at bay is a delicate balancing act that he can’t handle anymore and he stops trying.
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It wasn’t a sudden thing and it took a while for his mother to notice. It was one month since she had brought him back and things were still almost the same as the day he had stumbled into her arms. She tried to be there for him like the doctors and therapists suggested she should. They said to wait for him to open up, but he hadn’t said a word about his time on Tarsus. She would have liked to think he had forgot it, but Winona Kirk knew from the nightmares followed by screams, the sense of alertness and all the little different stuff that had changed that it wasn’t a lost memory but a very present nightmare he just hadn’t shared.
In a way she was grateful. Maybe talking would help him heal. But knowing what had happened to her so—what she had been at least partly responsible for—would only open up the her own wounds even more. It was easier to pretend it hadn’t happened. It was easier to just think that her son—Jimmy had just been away for a few years off-planet, it was better than thinking of him running, hiding, scared, tortured. It was easier to just think a lie.
Winona moved around the kitchen making dinner. They had modern amenities but sometimes she liked taking the time away from synthesizers and technology and doing stuff the old-fashioned way. The task ate away some of the time that she would have spent thinking and nowadays that was what she needed.
Kirk was lying sprawled out on the couch. His eyes were half-closed, not exactly asleep but not awake either. It was the only way he tended to rest for days at a time, he would spend hours each night in that half-kind of twilight until after a few days his body succumbed to the sleep deprivation and fell into a nightmarish slumber.
He seemed to be shivering, it was cooler in the house now that night was falling. She grabbed a blanket draping it over him, he flinched automatically as the cool cloth touched him, but otherwise didn’t react. Normally his eyes would have jerked open and fear would have drifted across his face at the mere movement but this time , there was nothing.
She attributed the lack of reaction to exhaustion finally setting in.
At dinner that night he barely ate, even the bites she coaxed him into swallowing were done so robotically. That wasn’t so abnormal his appetite was next to nothing on most days anyway.
When he went to sleep, she expected to hear muffled screams drifting down the hall but for one of the very few nights since he came back, the house was silent. Winona was relieved to think that his nightmares were finally calming down.
The next day started with the same behaviour. It wasn’t until late morning that she truly began to suspect that something was wrong. Jim was sitting in the exact same chair at the table as he had at breakfast. His hands were resting on the wood, and he was breathing but for all the movement or signs of other life he showed he could have been just as easily dead.
“Jim, I’m going out now but I’ll be back in an about half-an hour.” She grabbed her wallet and started towards the door when she realised he hadn’t said a word in response, he hadn’t even looked at her. His eyes were fixed straight ahead staring blankly like there was something only he could see.
Winona turned back, her heart speeding up slightly as she stared at her son, wondering what new fresh hell was being conjured in his mind at that very moment. “Jim? Jimmy, sweetie what’s wrong.”
Usually even now he would have at least managed to pull himself from whatever reverie he had fallen into long enough to at least look her way but he didn’t. She set her bag down and walked over, gently so as to avoid startling him she placed a hand on him not really sure whether she was hoping to provoke a reaction or expecting to discover what was wrong with him.
Either way her pressure on his arm made no difference, it was like as far as he was concerned she wasn’t even there. “Jim, stop this now!” She hardened her voice wondering was he trying to worry her intentionally.
He still didn’t move. Cautiously she waved a hand in front of his face and after hesitating she slipped into another room and grabbed her comm. Five minutes later she was bundling him into the air skimmer and on her way to the hospital at his therapist suggestion.
The doctors at the hospital ran scans, and took blood and never once did Jim even act like he was aware of where he was or who they were. The doctors finally give him a clean bill of health physically that is, but between his therapist who arrives and a psychiatrist they call in, it’s quite clear that mentally he’s not well.
Catatonia is the definition they use. They’re not sure how long it will last or what caused it . The suggestion is for him to be admitted to the psychiatric ward but Winona overrides their suggestions and insists on taking him home. The hospital psychiatrist tries to argue but the therapist pulls him to a side and Winona watches as the man’s face changes as he hears the words classified and Starfleet orders. She can imagine the thoughts going through his mind, but to her none of that matters. All she wants is to take Jim home and try to get through this.
They arrive home mid afternoon and he still hasn’t spoken. He’ll follow basic commands, most of the time and she knows from the doctors tests he sometimes will react to pain, or heat or cold. But other than that it’s like he’s lost inside his own mind.
Winona goes to change and when she comes back just far gone he is becomes more evident. He’s sitting where she left him, posture unchanged and face blank, but an acrid smell reaches her nose . A quick glance confirms the cause as she sees the front of his pants damp and a slowly spreading puddle dripping off the chair onto the floor.
A tear starts down her cheek and more join that one. She cries silently as she fills the tub, her tears mingle with the bathwater as she washes and then dresses her fourteen year old.
The days develop a rhythm. Thankfully Frank is out of town, she doesn’t know how he would react to Jim, but she knows it wouldn’t be well. Instead she’s left to handle him on her own. And it’s both easy and hard. He doesn’t complain, protest or even resist, for once she finally gets his full cooperation. But at the same time, it’s all wrong to be taking care of her teenager like he’s a little child. It’s all wrong for him to be so yielding to her every action.
It’s amazing how all the small things are an ordeal when he can’t complete anything for himself. He has to be told to eat and sometimes fed, several accidents remind her of the necessity in regularly ordering him to go to the bathroom. She has to dress him because half the time he’ll start too but falter halfway through with one arm in a sleeve or a trouser leg partially on. He’ll follow her around when she tells him or sit when she tells him to.
She’s finally gotten his complete obedience but she never wanted it this way. Because he’s not yielding to her authority...he’s just too broken to resist.
It’s almost a week and a half after it all started and Winona finally can’t take it anymore. It’s too much. Halfway through slipping a shirt over Jim’s head Winona stops and sits down on the edge of his bed. The tears come hard and fast, quiet sobs at first and then louder.
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Jim feels the doctor poking him and hears the conversations at the hospital but it’s like a distant grainy movie with bad audio. He can’t really react to it and he doesn’t want to anyway. He feels numb and trapped within his own body...or maybe it’s his own mind. But it’s better this way because even though real life is indistinct and blurred so are the memories too. It’s all more manageable because he doesn’t have to deal with it.
Eating , drinking, dressing, relieving himself all fall away in importance. He sinks more and more into himself and each day it gets a little easier. He’s disappearing and he wishes they would let him go.
He’s vaguely aware of someone cleaning, dressing, bathing, feeding him and a small part of him feels like he should be embarrassed but that emotion soon fades. Nothing really is important now. Days seem to drift by and he realises time is becoming more indistinct, minutes, hours, days all run together.
He can live like this he thinks...it doesn’t hurt this way. He comes back to himself for the first time in over a day...or maybe it’s an hour. The sound of crying makes a tiny crack in the thick wall he’s building around himself, and as he hears the deep broken-hearted sobs he realises it’s his mother.
He’s somewhat surprised to hear her. A part of him expected her to ship him off somewhere and then make an excuse to leave him behind...it’s what he’s come to expect. He comes out a little more, his awareness shifting out and is surprised to find himself in his own room instead of seeing the impersonal walls of some facility.
His mother is crying so hard now, her breathe is catching in her throat and her body rocks against him as she quivers with the force of her sobbing. She’s whispering something over and over again and it could be something like “I’m sorry.” But he isn’t sure, because the words are muffled and indistinct in between gasps and sniffles.
Jim wants to go back in and not have to deal with this. He wants to be safe where nothing hurts and the only place that’s like that is inside himself. But he realises now that he can’t live like that. Because it’s not living.
He finally pulls out, leaving the beckoning numbness behind. He finishes pulling his shirt on unnoticed by a still sobbing Winona. His voice is scratchy from diuse, as he reaches out to tentatively touch his mother’s shoulder. “Mom.”
She freezes at his touch and slowly her face lifts until red ringed eyes meet his own. “Jimmy?” It’s a question, a promise, and an answer all in one and before he can decipher all those disparate meanings, she’s reached out and hugged him.
He pulls back at first, it feels weird. She’s never hugged him before, not like this, not even when she first saw him after Tarsus. Not like she actually wanted, loved, cared about him.
He hesitates a second longer and then hugs her back. She whispers something and this time he’s sure of the words. “I missed you.”
It sounds real, and he wants her to actually mean it. And for the first time he actually believes her too.