TEST DRIVE #1 - Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

You know how you were standing there, back in your home world, just minding your own business?

Time to forget all about that.

Instead of doing whatever the heck you were just doing, you're standing in the middle of this very stylish, sedate barroom. Happily, you're not alone there - in fact you're surrounded by people who seem to be as confused as you are...and some of them look a little, well unusual

Now would be a great time to do....well, something. Ask some questions of the person nearest you, throw a fit, stage a coup....maybe do a little exploring? No matter what you do, you're going to be here for a very long time.

For others might call it the USS Enterprise, but for the foreseeable future, you'll be calling it home.

[OOC: this test drive's open until the next app period.]

Comments

[daddy_kirk]

Okay so this was worse than a parallel universe, so to speak, going by his answer. But George just sat and nodded to Jane's reply, trying to wrap his head around everything being thrown at him. It was difficult to say the least but all things considered he was doing a good job at not freaking out. At least until Jane brought up this universe's Jim. How this Jim's father didn't die, or... whatever happened to him. He was going to comment on how she sat a lot like how he used to but the words die on his tongue. The Jim in this universe never lost his dad.

The laugh that leaves him is pitiful to say the least, the smile on his lips forced and rehearsed. Those blue eyes of his are much more telling—crestfallen and remorseful—as they well up. With a sharp sniff and a hand running over his mouth, George works up words again, though they shook if you listened hard enough. "So this universe, where my son had me around, was almost my universe." A beat. "How did this Nero disrupt my timeline, how did he take my f—" His voice wavers and before he can finish the question George cuts himself off.

Gathering himself with a quick swallow, the tension and upset in his voice is gone and he calmly continues: "Do you know how he did it?"

[punch_it]

"Yeah." Jane won't be sorry. She won't. He isn't her daddy. He definitely isn't her mom, and he deserves to know what happens when you ram your tiny little ship into the gaping jaws of a psycho Romulan. You don't get to keep your family. You kiss them goodbye and hope your kids don't live on to hate you every minute of their young adult life.

Which isn't fair. Exactly. Jane never hated her mom.

Just heavily resented her.

Jane cleared her throat and nodded. "Yeah, I do. Because she did it to my mom too."

[daddy_kirk]

In the academy he had taken all the classes that warned him about space and the inherit dangers that lied within it. George knew what could have happened to him at any time and he was okay with that. He thought he had been okay with it when he and Winona took that last routine mission together. He never thought his son would grow up and hate him.

He certainly didn't think he'd get to live and wallow over what he'd lost and what his family possibly could have gone through. So he doesn't understand what she says to him, not initially. There are too many things floating about his head for him to realize what she meant. Though When he does, just a few long seconds later, the knitted brow disappears and droops instead, eyes widening.

Something in his heart felt like it snapped and tears finally threatened to be more than mere glimmers. Jane wasn't a Kirk because she was his niece, she was Kirk because she was his daughter. ...In some strange, alternate universe way. And he—she?—had still been taken away from his family. When George smiles it's painfully, woefully apologetic, his voice degrees softer. "I'm sorry, Jane. I really..." His head shakes. "I just wanted you two safe."

[punch_it]

Jane dipped her head, swallowing. Yeah. She knows. Doesn't mean it made things any easier. For any of them. But she knows why it happened the way it did.

Hard to forget the reasons when your birthday is overshadowed by someone else's death.

"It worked."

To be fair to George, Jane is barely hanging on to her thinly established wall between her own feelings and the acknowledgment that this man was not her real father. Even if a battery of DNA exams would prove her own thoughts to be false.

It didn't help that he finally came to the right conclusion and was now looking at her like he wanted to apologize for the world.