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negativechill[ the last couple of years have been complete shit, but this takes the fucking cake. ever since jim couldn't save vulcan (saved earth by the skin of everyone's teeth, but even then—), things have been... spock didn't accept jim's requests to be his first officer. spock made it very clear he finds his duty to his people to be important, and it's not jim's place to try and dig him out of that even if jim can tell he's going to be miserable stuck on new vulcan like that. even though ambassador spock would've easily and happily taken up that mantle to free his other self for exploration.
jim's already done enough fucking meddling.
anyway, spock gave jim a list of recommendations for officers to be his xo in spock's stead, and jim's stuck to that. the first couple couldn't handle his methods longer than a couple of months and after a couple of official reprimands for his behavior in a crisis, they requested transfers.
the third stuck around, but maybe it would've been better if he hadn't. jim skated by on the shine of his brand new reputation as the federation's golden boy (again, over the debacle he still loses sleep over fumbling so badly) making sure people realized that whenever he bent or broke protocol it was for the best and got results. saved lives. after all this, he still doesn't understand why people don't get that saving lives is more important than the method, at least in scenarios like this. or that. or that other one.
and the last time, well...
jim doesn't regret it. he doubts there's any universe where he regrets doing something like he did. the consequences for jim don't matter in the face of saving over two thousand offshoot vulcan colonists. sure, he rerouted without permission. sure, he took on way more people than the enterprise could easily hold. sure, the temporary stopoff point tweaked the prime directive just a little bit. didn't break it! just tweaked it. to save lives. to save thousands of lives. it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter that the aftermath spiraled out of control, it doesn't matter that his fucking xo got so pissed that jim threw him in the brig for refusing to allow the reroute that he went right to command to bitch and misrepresent what happened and how because of unearned respect he was believed over—
—once again, jim doesn't care what happens to him if it helps other people. he agrees to step down voluntarily if it'll keep any of the others from getting court-martialed for their behavior during this whole debacle, for all the protesting they're doing, for all their reasoning that's falling on deaf ears.
he resigns his captaincy.
commander james t. kirk is stationed on some backwater planet supervising a science outpost in the sticks, and he's miserable. but the rest of the crew (not his anymore, but—) aren't grounded like he is. no one else got demoted. people who were on unfortunately thin ice beforehand like scotty are still out in the stars doing what they love.
bones is with him, though. happy enough to be on solid ground, but pissed as hell over what happened. jim just refuses to talk about it anymore. you do your best, you save people, and you move on no matter what that does to you. that's how life works.
that's how life works. that's how life's always worked.
it's spring and his allergies are fuckoff awful in this stupid place, so he's been cooped up in his office and quarters for the past week. he's in the former today, working on a kal-toh set he'd gotten as a gift from one of the vulcan scientists from the colony. he's solved it seventeen times in seventeen different ways since the incident, and he's working on an eighteenth now. it's the only thing keeping him sane, he thinks, if he's actually still sane at all.
he's not expecting any visitors, but bones wouldn't bother to knock, so when there's a rap on his door he speaks without even looking up. ]
Come in. Promise you're not interrupting anything.
jim's already done enough fucking meddling.
anyway, spock gave jim a list of recommendations for officers to be his xo in spock's stead, and jim's stuck to that. the first couple couldn't handle his methods longer than a couple of months and after a couple of official reprimands for his behavior in a crisis, they requested transfers.
the third stuck around, but maybe it would've been better if he hadn't. jim skated by on the shine of his brand new reputation as the federation's golden boy (again, over the debacle he still loses sleep over fumbling so badly) making sure people realized that whenever he bent or broke protocol it was for the best and got results. saved lives. after all this, he still doesn't understand why people don't get that saving lives is more important than the method, at least in scenarios like this. or that. or that other one.
and the last time, well...
jim doesn't regret it. he doubts there's any universe where he regrets doing something like he did. the consequences for jim don't matter in the face of saving over two thousand offshoot vulcan colonists. sure, he rerouted without permission. sure, he took on way more people than the enterprise could easily hold. sure, the temporary stopoff point tweaked the prime directive just a little bit. didn't break it! just tweaked it. to save lives. to save thousands of lives. it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter that the aftermath spiraled out of control, it doesn't matter that his fucking xo got so pissed that jim threw him in the brig for refusing to allow the reroute that he went right to command to bitch and misrepresent what happened and how because of unearned respect he was believed over—
—once again, jim doesn't care what happens to him if it helps other people. he agrees to step down voluntarily if it'll keep any of the others from getting court-martialed for their behavior during this whole debacle, for all the protesting they're doing, for all their reasoning that's falling on deaf ears.
he resigns his captaincy.
commander james t. kirk is stationed on some backwater planet supervising a science outpost in the sticks, and he's miserable. but the rest of the crew (not his anymore, but—) aren't grounded like he is. no one else got demoted. people who were on unfortunately thin ice beforehand like scotty are still out in the stars doing what they love.
bones is with him, though. happy enough to be on solid ground, but pissed as hell over what happened. jim just refuses to talk about it anymore. you do your best, you save people, and you move on no matter what that does to you. that's how life works.
that's how life works. that's how life's always worked.
it's spring and his allergies are fuckoff awful in this stupid place, so he's been cooped up in his office and quarters for the past week. he's in the former today, working on a kal-toh set he'd gotten as a gift from one of the vulcan scientists from the colony. he's solved it seventeen times in seventeen different ways since the incident, and he's working on an eighteenth now. it's the only thing keeping him sane, he thinks, if he's actually still sane at all.
he's not expecting any visitors, but bones wouldn't bother to knock, so when there's a rap on his door he speaks without even looking up. ]
Come in. Promise you're not interrupting anything.
