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AN: Vague spoilers for Star Trek: Beyond. This story isn’t exactly an AU but it does change up some stuff (I can’t usually stay canon with relationship drama). Nyota/Jim, but it’s not technically a romance. I'm sorry to those of you who read this before i figured out the spacing/format, but it's fixed now! Hope you enjoy, and I also hope it makes sense… Also, PLEASE comment. A writer's most favorite thing is feedback.
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The most important thing to know upon entering Starfleet Academy is that the Federation is not always right. Don’t ever forget it. Even the initial, just-the-basics guidebook they issue on day one has three typos (just goes to show that the smartest people are the stupidest – they can send a starship into space but they can’t catch simple grammatical errors like using the article ‘an’ before the word ‘general’).
They’ll push your limits and twist your words and make you question everything you stand for and everything you’ve stood for in the past. This won’t be the case if you spend your time fusing wires in a cramped engineering room, but I’m just going to assume that your aspirations are bigger than that.
They’ll say “Hey Kirk, order your crew to fire this uninspected torpedo on a man who has the right to stand trial”, except they won’t call you Kirk, and it will be presented much more convincingly. In actuality, an admiral or someone of that position will wait for a moment of grief – when you’re angry and hell-bent on revenge. He’ll offer you that revenge, making it sound like you’re doing everybody a great service, that you can bring the man who killed your first and last father-figure to justice.
But you’ve been hanging around Vulcans, and morality is beginning to look a lot more black and white than you originally thought it was – it might take you a couple burnt bridges and bad decisions, but you’ll do the right thing (in case you haven’t caught on, that means you won’t torpedo the man who attacked Starfleet single handedly. Instead you’ll take him prisoner and it will be horrible, and it will be even worse when the consequences start, you might die and then get brought back to life with the blood of a man who tried to destroy Starfleet, but it’s all in a day’s work).
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Avoid Vulcans at all cost. Stay away from them. They are the most unfeeling, soulless monsters you’ll ever meet. And did I mention they are unwavering rule followers? In other words, they are completely incompatible with everyone around them.
But if somehow you end up as a captain and a Vulcan ends up being your first officer, there are ways to make it work. Keep lots of coffee warm and ready – caffeine makes their aloofness drop by almost three percent, if my calculations are correct. Just make sure it’s hot.
Your Vulcan first officer will drive you crazy and he’ll question you constantly, because if you’re the captain of a starship, you probably didn’t get there by rattling off syllogisms and mathematical laws. Your gut and his head will always be at war, but the last thing he’ll risk being is insubordinate (that means you’re always the one on top, even if he can prove you’re wrong).
Basically, having a Vulcan around is almost a safety precaution, since they’re fountains of unbiased informational analyses, but they’re also nagging pain.
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You are going to look death in the face and you are going to do it on a regular basis. It’s space we’re talking about, the unpredictable enigma that envelops all of us. If it had a mind to, it could swallow us up – it helps to think as though space has a mind. This is going to sound really weird – but look at space the way you look at your girlfriend on her menstrual cycle. You love her and she’s pretty much your whole life, but she’s moody and you never know if she’s going to hold you or throw a book at you. Only in the case of space, it could be an asteroid belt or something much more deadly. But you get the picture.
Anyway, back to looking death in the face. It’s going to be awful. Thinking you’re about to die, feeling as though you’re watching your death approach you in the form of an enemy armada or swirling black hole, is going to shake you to your core. I mean, it’s really scary to think “This is it” and be powerless to stop it (In my case, something, and I don’t know what that something is, usually stops it. I guess a coincidence of physics, or a lucky shot fired right where it needs to go). But I’m not dead yet, so I think I can truthfully say that starship captains have at least nine lives, and you have a whole crew who’s fighting for survival right along with you – your chances of braving the storms of space are pretty good.
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Don’t hit on pretty linguistics students out for drinks on their last night of freedom before Starfleet Academy becomes their life. If you do see a pretty girl, and you do happen to make a pass, don’t push it. You’re already in trouble, because this girl is probably going to end up going to the same academy as you and hating your guts because of that one night, and you two will always struggle to get along even when you’re her captain and she sort of likes you. Don’t fall for her, either, because she’s going to fall for somebody else (a Vulcan, your first officer, the guy you hate but you’d die for in a second).
It might confuse you, why she prefers the other guy. Their relationship will be absolutely void of chemistry. If there’s one thing you and the pretty girl have between you, it’s chemistry. That’s just one of those things that will bug you incessantly, and drive you to do stupid things like sleep with women you don’t love and make her dislike you even more.
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To take your mind off the pretty linguistics expert, you’ll focus on becoming the best captain they’ve seen in a century. Or be the best captain ever, that’s even better. Another thing – it’s not childish to want to be the best, no matter how many times your best friends tell you that it is. Just ask the nearest Vulcan – they’ll tell you that it’s actually logical.
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Don’t become best friends with an MD – if you even get a paper cut, he’ll get mad at you. He’ll also be a hypocrite. You know, one of those people who blows up at you for putting the lives of your crew over your own, when they’d do the exact same thing in your shoes. He’ll never forgive you if you lock yourself into a room with nuclear contamination or some other deadly science thing after literally kicking your ship back into motion (the moments where you save everybody all the while knowing that you’re about to die are foggy, and hard to articulate properly once they’re over). Even though you don’t stay dead, he’ll hate you for dying. You’ll wonder if he’d yell at your carcass for being too stupid to live if he was unsuccessful in his magical blood transfusion. I could be wrong about this, though, since I’m assuming that all MDs are grumpy, angry people who care about their friends so fiercely that they hate them whenever they get a scrape.
In your line of work, you’ll get hurt a lot – so much, in fact, that it won’t even faze you anymore. But nobody else seems to get used to it quite like you do, so when you shrug off your injuries, prepare yourself for lots of lectures (all from hypocrites who would act the same way you had in whatever situation got you hurt).
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The linguistics expert will fight with her Vulcan boyfriend who’s also your first officer and you’ll hate yourself for enjoying it. There’s something about the two of them together that you won’t be able to accept (probably the fact that a woman so full of life and potential shouldn’t be stifled by Mr. Logic Is All I Need).
A conversation with her during one of these times might go as follows:
“I don’t understand. Do you want me to play devil’s advocate here, or agree with you? It’s like no matter what I say, you say the opposite.”
“I don’t know! I’m waiting for you to say something like ‘Spock is a good man, he’s a Vulcan and you can’t blame him for not being emotional’ and I’ll agree with you and go ask him to tell me more about Vulcan ancestry.”
“That is what you want? You want to hear about Vulcan ancestry then eat that weird Vulcan rice dish with him while he reads his almanac and doesn’t speak?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What is it like, then?”
“…I’m not sure I should discuss this with you, Captain.”
“You came to me, Lieutenant.”
“Well it was a mistake.”
See? She’ll be impossible. I mean, you love who you love, but you’ll seriously doubt that she’s actually truly in love with the Vulcan. It doesn’t click. Also, on a side note, when someone calls you by your rank, the conversation is officially over or about to lose all personality (both equally irritating).
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I’m ninety-five percent positive that your biggest problem with your starship will be its utter lack of entertainment. Sure, it’s fun to mess with wiring and have some PhD from engineering yell at you until they recognize you as the captain, and even more fun to watch the nurses in the med bay get flustered while conducting your mandatory monthly physical. The latter activity is a nice reminder that women do like you and Nyota (the beautiful Lieutenant who’s dating your first officer) (except your “Nyota” could be Linda or Suzanne or Lakeisha or I don’t even know) and her inattentiveness is not something to focus on, because she’s clearly an odd ball.
Anyway, I think I was talking about boredom. Scotty from engineering gave me a helpful suggestion when I was pestering him during a complicated electrical fusion process: bring a couple cans of paint, find a room that Starfleet won’t kill you for possibly ruining, and watch the paint dry onto the walls. I have a much better suggestion: eavesdrop.
Eavesdropping is a wonderful thing – since you’re the captain, your crew will strive to maintain professionalism with you more so than with anyone else, leaving you uninformed and generally ignored (not disrespectfully, but in an “Oh, we can’t go say hey to him, he’s the captain” sort of way). Most captains appreciate that barrier. If you’re anything like me, you’ll hate it. There’s nothing quite as irritating as being out of every social loop there is, unaware of drama that even Dave from the janitorial staff knows about, because nobody tells you anything unless it pertains to asteroid belt navigation or scrambled communications.
You might overhear a conversation like this:
“Nyota. We must speak.”
“Look, Spock, I’m not mad. There’s a big difference between being mad at you for something and realizing that our relationship isn’t working.”
“And you want me to defend myself?”
“If you have something to say in your defense, please say it.”
“I do not think that my actions require defense. I simply–”
“Okay, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to hear it. You think it’s okay to basically tell me that our relationship is experimental and you don’t see it progressing, that you view it more as an inter-species study than a relationship? That you don’t want a wife and kids, you want a partner who you sort of care about? That it’s okay because you’re a Vulcan, and Vulcan’s can do no wrong?”
“There’s more than that, Lieutenant. Vulcans also notice nearly imperceptible behavioral indicators. It has not escaped my attention that your affections appear divided.”
“What are you talking about, Spock?”
“Who am I talking about is more fitting. You clearly favor the captain.”
“I do not. I can’t stand him, usually! You know that!”
“You treat him coldly – more than you do anyone else you have expressed that you dislike. Your indifference towards the Captain Kirk appears to be a denial of your feelings for him. It makes complete sense. Your personalities create what humans call “chemistry”, and his biological makeup makes it logical for you to be attracted to him.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I beg to differ – of the two of us, I have a much better understanding of this situation. If you so desire, I will oblige to the termination of the current state of our interactions.”
“What?”
“As the humans would phrase it, “we are over”.”
Those conversations are hard to catch, because they usually occur in hallways where there’s nowhere to hide. But if you happen to be exiting the facilities, crack the door open and listen for a second before revealing your presence or you might interrupt something interesting. Try not to reveal your knowledge.
When you do this, you also run the risk of overhearing much less intriguing (and, admit it, satisfying) conversations. I’ve heard about bad experience with Colby jack cheese, women’s panty-hose preferences, and I heard one guy named Jacques tell his friend about his grandmother’s nasty episode with hemorrhoids.
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Anyway, you’re going to get into a comfortable groove (you now have inside intelligence that your own personal Nyota actually does have the hots for you, even if she’s in denial about it, and your crew is finally beginning to not look terrified to follow your orders.) (In their defense, you didn’t have the best reputation and you jumped from cadet to captain in about five minutes). In my very experienced opinion, this is the calm before a storm. You know, that horrifying moment when everything’s going smoothly and you realize that all your luck’s being spent all at once and pretty soon none will be left. The scary thing is, you know something’s about to go wrong, but you don’t know what it is, or how bad it’s going to be.
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Unease aside, life should treat you pretty well during this period of time. You’re a successful, even celebrated, Starfleet captain. You’ve got an exceptional crew. The ladies love you. Did I mention that a captain’s paycheck is rather satisfactory? (What I’m saying is, don’t settle for a lesser position if you can help it).
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But remember that thing I told you about psychopathic, manipulative war criminals and last minute plans to save everybody that ultimately end in your traumatic, albeit temporary, demise? Well, that was nothing.
You’re going to experience some crazy shit. In my case, I discovered an entire civilization that had slipped under Starfleet’s radar and had the technology and strategic prowess to wipe us all out (thankfully, we happened upon a useful resource named Jaylah and those of us who weren’t slaughtered in the initial surprise attack from said civilization managed to band together, play some awful music from the 21st century, and save almost everybody).
But your trial could be some rampaging psychopath who hates everybody because the love of his life died fifty years ago in an airstrike and actually has an ingenious plan to facilitate a super nova and wipe out every planet he can, or something worse.
But don’t worry, you’ll pull through – I did. At least, I’m assuming you’ll pull through (just like I’m assuming you’ll make it as a hotshot captain, and that there will be a beautiful woman under your command who denies her attraction to you) (It’s not impossible, trust me).
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You’ll reach a point in your life where you have saved the planet/galaxy/universe from ultimate destruction multiple times (My crew and I have eliminated three mass-destruction level threats, not that I’m counting).
Mid-life crises can come early when you’ve done a hundred years’ worth of living inside of thirty. You’ll consider hanging up your uniform and turning in the Starfleet issued coffee mug you’ve used daily ever since day one of captaining, maybe opening up a bakery or a tackle and bait shop. But you won’t – you can’t.
You can’t just walk away from your life – it’s not like you have anything to go home to, because nobody with a fulfilled, worthwhile life gives it all up for a consuming career like active duty on a starship. The thing is, you’ll hold on for too long, even when they’re offering to make you an admiral, and eventually they’ll have to pry your wrinkled old hands from the captain’s chair.
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But you have a long way to go before it all turns to nothing. Don’t forget about the girl (if the word “girl” is even appropriate). She won’t come easily, and she’ll brush off tense moments where she’s between you and a wall and you’re unaware of everything but the sound of her breathing and the feeling of your heartbeat as if they never happened.
There will be times when you’re both on the bridge and you each open your mouths to say something, anything, but nothing comes out. Times when you’re both in a cramped room that ought to be called a box, trying to find a blown fuse or an unplugged cable while your engineer barely holds the engines together, and you somehow find time to stare at each other’s lips and wonder what it would be like to sneak off to a place like this and make out like teenagers.
You’re probably wondering what’s keeping you apart. It’s one stupid word: professionalism. It means the world to her (probably) and even though you’d love to throw caution to the wind, the willingness has to work both ways (also, you’ve never voiced your feelings to her, and she never has either, so there’s still that speck of uncertainty holding you back).
You have chemistry and you have feelings, but what you don’t have is ideal circumstances.
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If you’re lucky, the psychological effects of your job will be things like semi-frequent insomnia, nagging survivor’s guilt. If you’re unlucky, you could face anxiety attacks, PTSD, spontaneous breakdowns. The thickest skin is still only made of flesh, and you might not believe it at first, but you aren’t immune to the normal responses to traumatic, life or death experiences.
I got lucky. You won’t know if you will until it’s happening.
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A captain’s work is never really done, and you’ll never be satisfied. You’ll feel a hole when you aren’t sitting in the captain’s chair, calling out orders and smelling like Starfleet issued peppermint soap.
You’ll wonder how to be just Jim Kirk when you aren’t being Captain James Tiberius Kirk (insert your own name, of course).
Then one day your answer will walk into the breakroom where you’re getting your second fix of reheated coffee, wearing a uniform that seems oddly short to be Starfleet regulation (not that you’re complaining). This time something will come over you, and apparently something will come over her, too, because after you spend the next fifteen seconds kissing her as if you’ve just declared your undying love for her, she won’t slap you (if things go as well as they did for me, that is) (not that she’s one to slap; if she were mad, she’d deck you with her fist).
It’s times like those when life as a Starfleet captain looks up, for just a second, before she hardens her face and sighs exasperatedly just in time for your Vulcan first officer to walk in. She’ll ignore you indefinitely after that, but don’t worry – you’ll get another shot.
You always will.
End.