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fate

chapter 1:
lost

He knows his communicator is still on.
They can hear every word.

"At least I know who I am, Captain."
His breathing stops for a second, his enemy knows, his tone is giving it away, but how when he has not even told Bones about it?!
It's just a second he wastes a thought about it, but Krall has not been a hero up until now for nothing. He is a trained soldier above all else, so he jumps forward and smashes Jim's head against the console behind him so hard that he nearly kisses the ground. More out of instinct than anything else really he kicks forwards and is able to get Krall off of him for several seconds, so he can evade the next punch and take a deep, exhausted breath.

"I read your logbooks. Do they know that you crave another life? Do they know that you're sick and tired of them, Captain?"

His words are enough to kick the exhaustion aside and with a roar he rushes towards Krall – he refuses to call him by the name Starfleet still admires– and manages to get the upper hand in the fight. He is ridiculously close to the weapon, when a single words rips him forcefully out of the tight knot of concentration he managed to bury himself under.

"What?"
It's not Spock, whom he wanted to make Captain.
It's not Bones, who would try heaven and hell to stop him.

It's Chekov and even though his voice is barely audible over the rushing noise in his ears, Jim is still able to make out the utter disappointment and exasperation. It hurts more than he thought it would, but this is family, a fact he heavily disregarded before when he sent in his application.

Maybe it's not always easy, maybe it sometimes is confusing and leading him in the wrong direction, he muses, while Krall pushes him through the glass wall, but it'll always be worth it. As it had been, when he had given his life in order to save his crew from certain death tumbling towards earth.

"He's wrong," Jim screams into the comm. with absolute certainty and he knows it's enough to reassure them, his crew, his family, and then he lets himself being taken by the gravity and doesn't even feel fear, as he rushes through the air with no kind of protection.
His angle is perfect and when he flies back towards the glass room Krall is climbing into, he braces his head with his arms as best as possible, before he smashes through the wall with an ear-deafening noise and grabs Krall tightly, as the force carries them back out into the open together. This time the gravity is not able to catch them and together with the weapon grabbed tightly in Krall's hands they tumble towards the ground in neck-breaking speed.

Jim wants to scream at his enemy and face him with his obvious defeat, but the wind and noise are too loud. "Give us a second Jim, we'll catch you." He has no fucking clue where exactly Bones managed to learn to fly those things, but the mere thought of the stubborn doctor saving him like that pulls a high laugh out of his raw throat.
Before he is able to bring himself into a better position and confirm the crazy idea though, something pulls at his leg. Krall. In his free hand he holds the activated weapon, while a black mass swarms around it furiously.

"Stop Bones, don't!"
The urgent tone in his voice – the one he uses as a Captain – is unmistakable and in the last second the doctor veers off and misses them by a hair's breadth. Krall tries to shove the weapon towards him and the black smoke already licks at his boot, when Jim gets one of those short-circuited and utterly stupid ideas that Bones hates with a passion.

"Oh no asshole, you're going down with me!"
There are furious protests in his ear, all talking at once, but the damage is already done. At one go he turns the tables, pulls Krall towards his falling body and into a deadly embrace with the activated weapon captured between their trembling bodies.

He shoves and pushes and trashes, but Krall is not able to get him off of him. He might survive the fall with his enhances body, but even he won't outlive the terror he himself unleashed. So Jim clings onto him, throws a last look up to the ground rushing towards them in rapid speed, before he closes his eyes.

He is not lost. Not anymore.
He is the Captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise and proudly serves at the side of his family.
Until the end.

Which doesn't come as quickly as expected. A harsh jolt goes through his body, as something smashes into Krall full force. His body absorbs some of the impact, so Jim isn't killed asap, as their intertwined bodies separate and he flies over the top of the enemies' ship, until a hand grabs him tightly and refuses to let him go. It's Spock.

And while his first Commander pulls him inside into safety, the broken body of Krall tumbles towards the ground. Even before he hits it, his body disappears together with the black smoke and all that remains is the harmless looking weapon, which destroys whole worlds.

"What would the Enterprise be without its Captain?" Spock teases – actually teases him – and then Bones tries to crash-land the thing without killing them, as fear and uncertainty finally fall off of the Captain's shoulders.

He is not lost. Not anymore.