Kirk thought he'd changed fate when he saved Khan from execution and his crew from experimentation.
But maybe the wheel has come full circle, and it is the young captain who will pay in an indirect manner for Khan's crimes against the universe.
(Passed after the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, with some details changed such as Khan not being frozen.)

It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions.
(King Lear, 4.3.37)

Stardate 2259.321
14:17pm

He was dying.

He was sure of it. He must be.

That was what it had felt like the previous time. The burning, the pain and the fear.

The cold seeping into his bones even as he felt like his body was burning out.

Only, this time he was alone at the very end. No Spock beyond the glass, talking to him and keeping the fear at bay.

In the reactor he had managed to stay strong for Spock. He was so scared, but the sight of his friend looking so pained had given him the willpower to stay in control and talk to Spock. This time, he was all alone.

Well, not at first. At first, when the explosion racked the ship mid-inspection, the engineering section of the USS Vina had been full of cadets. He'd been going through the motions with the inspection, thorough in his work but bored to tears, only one thought in his mind, to finish it so that he could return to his own ship, to his beloved Enterprise.

And then came the accident, and the radiation. The pain of dying all over again, worse than before since now he knew exactly what horror to expect.

Even then, his instincts had been stronger than the fear, and he had found himself shoving the cadets towards the exit as fast as he could, dragging and carrying the ones who had fallen, rushing to get everyone out before the security doors closed.

Again and again he had rushed back in to help injured cadets, carrying those who could not walk. Kids, they were kids! Or so his sense of responsibility told him, but in truth they weren't that much younger than he himself. Past crises had given him a composure and strength he had not known he possessed.

He had gone above and beyond, but now it had been too much. The delta rays were searing his flesh, and he could barely hear the alarms blaring throughout the ship. Everyone was gone, it seemed, or at least he could no longer see or hear them.

With the absence of people in need of saving, Kirk's heroics bled out, the spike of adrenaline now gone. And with the newfound aloneness, the fear returned, terror gripping him in the very depths of his soul.

"Spock, help me..."

Chapped lips breathed out the words instinctively, but he was too far gone to realize anymore that the Vulcan wasn't there, or to notice the emergency responders in hazmat gear storming the radiation-flooded corridor.

The world was dark and made of pain.

Before he lost consciousness completely, Jim found that his last thought was a puzzling one. A memory of Khan, with those expressive green-blue eyes filled with gratitude, looking up at him while the augment knelt at his feet like an offering, telling Jim some crazy thing about being ready to die for his crew.

Jim wanted to refuse him, to shake his head in denial, but the pain was such he couldn't tell if his body was moving or not.

I never wanted that. I never wanted any of this. But there's no going back and changing it now.

Jim's heart was still beating when they put him on the gurney, but it stopped shortly after, giving way to hurried attempts to revive him as the response team prepared to beam him down to the medical facility.

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