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]

Though he barely jumps at the touch, he doesn't get a chance to look at the young lady before he hears it: It's going to be all right.

'Everything's gonna be okay,'he said not minutes ago.

Save for the slight tremble it had, the cockeyed smile was wide and seemingly warm when compared to his squinted, watering blue eyes. The laughter that left him was worse off, sounding more like a breath just on the hinge of being a sob.

"That's— " George huffs out that breath, dropping the arm over his face before freezing, looking to her with a furrowed brow. She looked familiar. Still, he can't place her so he starts to lightly shake his head. "It's not. It can't, because I just—" died, he wants to say. But that scenario doesn't seem likely. "... lost my family."

[punch_it]

Jane winced and her hand dropped from his shoulder after a prolonged squeeze.

What was it Spock said? It always sounded so poetic and perfect in these situations.

"I grieve with thee."

She rubs the back of her neck after a moment and returns his kind smile with a small, uncertain one of her own.

And through it she still couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity that was tugging on her. Like she should know him.

[daddy_kirk]

That was a Vulcan expression in Standard, wasn't it? He knew it was, he'd learned it in the academy once and he could have sworn there was a reply for it, but he feels he can hardly stand. Instead of trying to dredge up something in the name of diplomacy George simply smiles softly back and nods, swallowing nothingness to keep his voice steady: "Thank you."

The words are sincere, evident enough by the added glimmer in his eye. It wasn't often strangers helped someone or bothered to check on them when they were just a few seconds from looking like they were about to lose it.

"I'm sorry," He laughs meekly, shifting away from the wall some so he can offer her a hand in greeting. "My name's George. George Kirk."

[punch_it]

Jane took his hand and froze. Her blue eyes widened in shock and if she whimpered slightly no one could hear it over the confusion and noise permeating the room. The sudden tremble in her steady hands? That George wouldn't miss.

And no matter what she told herself, she couldn't get it to stop. This wasn't her dad, no. Her dad was alive and well and doing who knows what kind of mad engineering on a different ship.

This was Jim's. This was Jane's mother in male form and he'd lost his whole world but knew he would have to grin and bear it because his family might just have made it out safe.

Only he doesn't know that. He has no idea that Jim and his mom made it away from the Narada alive.

And Jane doesn't know how to start convincing him of how she does.

Sammy might have been better at this. She had always been better at dealing with these things. No amount of diplomatic training taught you how to properly react to your dead parent from a different universe coming back to life.

"Jane Kirk," she answered weakly.

[daddy_kirk]

Though he’s shaking himself it’s still all too easy for him to feel her hand doing the same in his. And yet somehow he’s grateful for it because it pulls him from the spiral he was heading in, letting him focus on something else, getting him into the mindset that this—wherever this happened to be—was real and not some… afterlife.

No he can’t focus on that, or that he didn’t know the fate of his family even if he’s nearly sure they’re alive. George is trying with all his remaining might not to dwell on the smaller but still overwhelming possibility he didn’t save them at all. In fact, the only thing holding him together is that they’re in a public place.

Although her introduction does him one better, his eyebrows lifting high. “…Kirk.” He repeats not as quietly as her, the one wrapped in suspicion. “I’m uh. I’m going to guess that’s not a coincidence.” Swallowing the lump in his throat, George voiced the trailing question, “Are you…?” As he tried to think of a reason they could share the name.

When he does he eyes get a little wider and he finally lets go of her hand. “—I’m sorry. A-are you Jim’s daughter? ...Are you my niece?” She had to be, because that was just about the only thing that made sense to him right now.

[punch_it]

"No." She shakes her head and doesn't flinch at the silent accusation. "No, it's, it is definitely not."

Jane draws her hand back slowly and then runs it through her loose hair. Being Jim's daughter would be the sane explanation, but then again when was any of their lives sane? They were Starfleet. You had to be semi-insane just to join up.

"What do you know about parallel universes?"

[daddy_kirk]

Though he's not entirely sure if it's that he's just survived a collision or her answer that it's not just happenstance that they share a name, George feels lightheaded suddenly once his stomach feels like it falls a little.

"Do you, uhm." He starts by tucking his head in some, lifting his eyebrows and motioning to a table. "Do you mind if I sit down? I've uh, been through a lot in the last nine minutes, is all." Not that he waited for her answer, exactly, because he wouldn't be much use if he was unconscious.

"Just that they can make your head spin." He laughs, the sound light and teasing until he picked up the seriousness of the conversation again, his smile falling as he clears his throat and looks up to Jane. "Is that what this is, a parallel universe?"

[punch_it]

"Alternate. I think." She didn't get a lot out of Picard, but what she did made her suspect this was the parallel of older Spock's universe and wow did that sound crazy even in her head. Jane slipped in the chair opposite George and studied him curiously. She wasn't going to apologize for it. How could she?

"Same names different events."

Jane tilted her chin and slouched back in her chair. "The Jim in this universe never lost his dad." And the Jane never lost her mom and had to try and slowly lead her dad!mom to the least likely but most painful answer.

"Nero never disrupted his timeline."

[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.