Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!prodigy.com!news.glorb.com!postnews2.google.com!not-for-mail From: a.q@gmx.de (acidqueen) Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative Subject: N2U TOS "Done Kirk?" [R] Kirk/Saavik Date: 5 Sep 2004 13:39:44 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 282 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.143.225.130 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1094416784 6203 127.0.0.1 (5 Sep 2004 20:39:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 20:39:44 +0000 (UTC) Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative:160646 X-Received-Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:39:46 PDT (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) Since Stephen just started his gorgeous challenges here (which made ASCEM go head over heels with writing and posting!), I thought I'd post this as a little encouragement :) But mind you, most challenge answers were drabbles, so you don't have to write big stories :) I'd also like to encourage folks to write Kirk/Saavik and post it to ASCEM, since we're acutely trying to give it its own category :) (McCoy/Barrows, too, if anyone feels inclined...) *** Title: Done Kirk? Author: Acidqueen Series: TOS Codes: Kirk/Saavik; Saavik/m (David) and Kirk/f (Carol) implied; challenge Rating: low R, angst Summary: Rumors and Truths. made. Archive: My own website at http://www.syredronning.de , ASCEM, all others ask,please. Acknowledgement: Thanks to Farfalla for beta'ing! All remaining errors are mine. *** "...done Kirk?" A sudden silence fell upon the men behind the corner when Saavik came around, and she knew the grapevine was still boiling high. She'd tried to openly refute the rumors in the HQ, which were borne on very little grounds, but like weeds, they grew despite - or maybe because of - her words. Because between the weeds of lies, there always were some truths. Granted, Jim Kirk had helped her when she had to come back to Earth since David's child could not stand the Vulcan climate and became ill. He'd found an apartment and a new part-time position for her in the HQ, and helped her out with money when her little savings ran dry. He paid many visits to the child, just as any grandfather would. And when she needed help, he was there or knew someone who could do the job even better. As single, working mother she could use that even in the 23rd century. And granted, the child was not born nine months after Genesis - a Vulcanoid pregnancy lasted three months longer usually. That she had to undergo heavy biochemical and microgenetic treatment to keep it for nine months, before it could further grow in an incubator for another two months, was not something to be found in her general file. In that one there were only the cold dates, telling everyone when the child was officially born. Count on humans to add one and one and end up with four. She clenched her jaw and went on with her duties, convinced that her persistence would win out in the end - and if not, there was always rising a new target for the grapevine, given time. * But it didn't, not yet, not with the small, overdue promotion she had been given. Nasty remarks about women sleeping their way through the ranks reached her sensitive ears when some human colleagues misjudged the distribution of sound waves in the corridors. She closed the door of her small office more often and concentrated on her work, which had been overly criticized by her superior lately. She stopped coming in with Kirk on days where he would be able to give her a lift. She also stopped eating with him at lunchtime. He accepted it without questions, and she wondered what he might have overheard himself; but Vulcan propriety forbade her to ask. Sometimes she found herself staring at grey walls, wondering when her world had turned into this emotionally unsteady chaos. She didn't know if this is what Spock alluded to as her own choices, and she couldn't ask anymore. The man he had been was gone, and the new Spock was as far away as the Delta Quadrant, although he sat only kilometers from her. And Carol Marcus...she was like a ghost, calling once a month, unable to stand pictures of the child, unable to say more than some empty sentences. This must be what "haunted" felt like. * "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" He stood in the door frame between the living room and her bedroom, where she was sitting on a chair with the child in her arms. Saavik shrugged; it was a gesture that spoke more to humans than many words, and as such was logical to use. "I could've done something against it," Kirk said. There was as a sublime note of irritation and pain in his voice, barely covered by his dominant stance. "What?" He opened his mouth and closed it again. She could see him thinking through the options and dismissing them. "I'll find a way," he finally stated. "I'm not going to let you be mobbed any further." He turned and left without asking if he should order in some food for her tonight from one of those places where he had an account and she didn't. She cradled the child on her knees. They would manage, with or without him. * She started having lunch with him again, because he asked her to. He was walking with her and the child on many evenings, parading along the beaches. He was at her side for all to see, and she realized that the remarks rapidly diminished because her colleagues took the rumors as accepted truth now and didn't want to cross Admiral Kirk, whose reputation was one of tactical brilliancy in every field. What her own reputation was, she didn't know. But she stopped caring. She glanced at Kirk, trying to see the man behind the Admiral and grandfather. If he were a wifeless Vulcan man, it would have been expected from him to marry his dead son's lover, ensuring that the heir would grow up as legitimate family member. But he wasn't. * "I'm so glad I finally came," Carol Marcus said with tears in her eyes, and hugged the child hard. "He's beautiful...and so much like David." Her voice trembled, and Saavik looked away, unable to deal with this overflow of emotions. Outside, Kirk was waiting for them, and Marcus' enthusiastic mood cooled down a measurable portion as she saw him. "Hello, Jim," she said with a brief nod, her eyes still on the child. "Hello, Carol," he replied, and gave Saavik a supportive smile before he started the engines. The tension in the car was tangible, with every spoken sentence measured and thought-through like a move in chess. Only the child with his babbling sometimes broke the suffocating atmosphere, constantly hugged by his grandmother. Kirk delivered them at the main door of Saavik's apartment house and then took his leave, not without squeezing her hand hard for a moment. * The uneasy truce lasted four days, until the tension between Marcus and Kirk accumulated to the expected conflict. But it wasn't about David's death. It was, far worse, about her. "...done her?" The words crept into her bedroom, although the door was closed. She craved another door to shut, another room to go to, but there was none. And so she remained in her chair, clutching the sleeping child and stroking his hair. "If I did, that's not your business!" Kirk's voice rose. "You're spoiling David's legacy. How could you dare to touch the mother of his child. You're destroying the family we could be..." "There hasn't ever been a family to begin with, and my family is she and the child. You're not in the picture, Carol." "We'll see." The door to Saavik's bedroom opened. "Saavik," Carol said, her voice trembling. "I've a great idea. I've got a house in Connecticut, where the child could grow up in a rural, healthy surrounding. What do you think about moving in there with me?" Carefully, Saavik put the child in his bed. "David would have wanted this," Carol's voice reverberated in her ears. "He would've wanted us to work together for his son's best." "I already have the best," Saavik replied, and turned to face her. But it was Kirk's gaze behind the woman's shoulder that she really met. "You..." Carol faltered as she caught the eye contact, but then she sprang back to life. "I'm not going to let you expose David's child to him! He'll never be a good father, this space-faring womanizer who's jumping every green alien girl he meets -" "That's enough," Kirk said in his steely command voice, and pulled her around. "You're not going to threaten Saavik. The child is hers, and you don't have a chance to get it." "Don't touch me." Carol shrugged his hands off. "You're not going to get this child either, Jim! Saavik, how can you sleep with him? Think about what David would say -" With veritable force, Kirk pulled Carol Marcus out of the room. Through a kind of haze, Saavik watched him throwing her even out of the apartment. It was an unthinkable act for a Vulcan, but she did nothing to stop it. In fact, she felt herself relaxing for the first time in days. Weeks even, maybe. * "I'm sorry. I never really asked if you liked my take on the rumor problem." He sat in the kitchen, opposite to her, clutching a cup of coffee. She held a cup too, although she didn't like the brew. She shrugged. "I would've complained, if I had a reason." He reached out for her across the table, and she gave him her right hand. His fingers were soft, with crinkles showing his age more then his face did. His fingers were sinewy as he began massaging hers, stroking her whole self into life with his touches. "I just couldn't come up with something better. Facing them head-on was always my best tactics -" "Explanations are unnecessary." She put her other hand upon his, silencing him. He nodded serenely. "Let's go to bed," she said. * The child slept, and her lover slept. The double breathing filled the room, and she filtered it out to concentrate on their heart beats. She had done Kirk. And it mattered, because it had been good. She knew she should rather call it "made love", but letting the insulting expression roll along her mind voice took away some of its sting and the pain connected to it. She got up, taking the child in her arms. He mumbled inscrutable syllables, some resembling Vulcan, some Standard, as he tugged at her t-shirt with his small hands. "My heart, my pearl, my Daavid," she whispered, and carried him out to the kitchen. *** NewMessage: