Chapter Text
“Captain’s Log, Stardate 2269.348. We just managed to evacuate the last of the Ankdorian people from their self-destructive planet before it broke apart. My first officer, Mr. Spock assisted me with the severe complications we faced on the planet’s surface and deserves full accommodations for his work in helping bring peace to the Torbuli and Malokhai families. Without his logic, reason, and personal sacrifice, a full-scale evacuation would have proven impossible.
I also recommend the grant approval for my Chief Medical Officer, Leonard McCoy, whose fast thinking and admirable understanding of his field led to the safe extraction of a deceased symbiotic-parasite from the Malokhai leader’s body and the introduction of a new Palworm into his system. Without the doctor’s efforts, it would have been impossible for the mission to prove a success.
And to the entire crew of the Enterprise, I want to go on record once again as stating my complete satisfaction and overwhelming appreciation for their quick and proper response to the situation. There is no captain more proud or more indebted to the crew he leads and no man more fortunate than me to have them stand with me through each mission and loyally prove time after time to be the finest crew in all of Star Fleet.
We are now heading for Ometrap 5 where we will deliver the Ankorians to their relocation with the Slavadours. Estimated arrival time, three-days. Further details will be provided in my final report. Kirk out.”
James T. Kirk rubbed the bridge of his nose with a single digit before running the tip of his finger over his lower lip. He lowered his hand, shifted in his seat, then leaned forward and clapped his hands together.
“All right! Mr. Sulu…”
“Aye, Captain,” Sulu smiled as he turned only a bit in his chair to face Kirk.
“Warp three and keep her steady. I want to get these good people to their new home on time and without complication.” Kirk stood and turned to leave before balancing on one foot and turning back. “Oh! And, I’ll be in my quarters if anyone needs me.”
“Aye Aye, Captain.”
Kirk smiled and nodded as his leaving gesture.
“Great, I knew I could count on you.”
With that, the captain headed for the exit. Spock would have watched the Captain closely and followed him out if the Vulcan had not still been trapped in sick-bay after he had mind-melded with Mother—an enormous Palworm who had eventually offered her only female offspring to the leader of the Malokhai clan to preserve both species from extension on the dying planet—to learn the nature of the creature and discover the whereabouts of her protective egg sack. Spock had suffered emotional damage from experiencing the loss of Mother’s life and her grief and hope for her children. He had also suffered physical damage after pulling the egg sack from the creature’s underbelly that was protected in acidic mucus that burned through his shirt and arms.
Kirk was now rushing down to the med ward to check on his dear friend and his beloved doctor, who just a few short hours before had preformed a nerve-wracking surgery that had never been attempted before. He knew better than to think the doctor would still be shaken by the event. After all, McCoy had succeeded in his efforts to save two races and billions of lives by preforming the alien transplant successfully and triumph rarely brought despair in cases like these. Still, Kirk worried.
When the blond finally arrived he was surprised to see Spock sitting up on his medical bed and actually arguing casually with the good doctor.
“Jim!” McCoy breathed a sigh of relief. Then, with his eyebrows lifted in fascinated irritation, he walked over to his superior officer. “Great! Maybe you can talk some sense into this stubborn green-blooded patient of mine.”
Kirk looked Spock over and smiled. Spock’s arms were already healing quite nicely and he looked like his old self. Jim smiled and shook his head slightly. His eyes focused back on McCoy who looked much less than amused.
“What seems to be the trouble, Bones? Looks to me like you did an excellent job fixing my commander up.” He knew what the matter was, but he couldn’t help but tease his dear Leonard. He was so relieved the mission was almost completed and his two best friends were healthy enough to bicker at one another.
“Well for starters,” McCoy started again. He was holding his clipboard in one hand and waving his sterilizer in the other. “He refuses to lay back down or admit to the severity of his injuries and let me care for them. He’s demanding that I give him a clean bill of health when he just woke up from the anesthetics. Now he’s trying to tell me he can do my job and determine the amount of time necessary for him to recover.”
Jim grinned and tried not to laugh a little as Spock interjected his two-cents.
“I never claimed to have a higher understanding of your position, Doctor. I simply explained that I am capable of returning to work on the basis that I have made nearly a complete recovery and what remains to heal can do so while I resume my post.” Spock took in a deep breath as though he was about to sigh, but he refrained from the non-Vulcan display. “You should accept it as a compliment, Doctor.”
“A compliment?” McCoy asked Spock with his jaw tight and his head lightly nodding. Then, Leonard turned his head back to face Kirk. His eyed him in disbelief then added, “A compliment.”
Jim patted McCoy on the shoulder.
“It is a compliment, McCoy. Thanks to you, Mr. Spock is already his sassy old self. That’s no small feat. You really are a miracle worker, Bones.” Jim moved away from the doctor, who was now stalled between compliments, and positioned himself by Spock’s side. “And as he is such a brilliant doctor, I trust that you’ll listen to his good reason and stay in bed to rest more.”
Spock looked at Kirk with slightly turned eyebrows that expressed his discomfort in the med ward and his favor for forgetting the entire ordeal and returning to the bridge. Kirk sympathized with the expression and the man who made it, but he didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances with the Vulcan’s health.
“That’s an order, Commander.”
“Understood, Captain.”
Spock laid back down, showing very little of his internal reluctance as he did so.
“Good man. Don’t worry, with the doctor’s help, you’ll be up and back at your science station in no time.” Kirk gave Spock his kindest expression then moved back towards the door. “You should consider it a nice restful vacation. You deserve to take your shoes off for a while.”
Kirk knew Spock didn’t understand the expression fully, and that just made him happier that he’d said it. However, before the Vulcan could make a retort, Kirk and McCoy exited the room.
“I don’t know how you always do that,” Leonard said with some skepticism. “You always manage to make that pointy-eared devil do what I can’t.”
Kirk laughed at the comment.
“It’s not that hard, Bones. You just have to speak to him in terms of reason.”
“Oh, yeah? So it has nothing to do with the fact that you’re the captain and he just doesn't have the same respect for me?”
“He has respect for you,” Kirk reassured playfully. “He just also loves to give you a hard time.”
“I think you enjoy giving me a hard time, Jim.”
“That sounds about right.”
Kirk teased his lover with a shrug then changed the topic to a more pressing matter that was bubbling up in his stomach.
“Isn’t it about time for your lunch break, Bones?”
“Well,” the doctor seemed to contemplate his schedule for a long moment before tossing his things on a counter, ordering a nurse to keep an eye on Spock, then pressing his shoulder against Kirk’s in a playful nudge. “I suppose I could use a break. But only a short one.”
“Right,” Kirk chuckled. “Wouldn’t want to enjoy yourself too much.”
The two men walked out of the med ward and into one of the main corridors. They shared a look of hidden underlying passion and Jim smirked and turned his head back to the hall.
There was a moment of pleasantly tense quiet as they headed towards the cafeteria. Then McCoy made a strange quirky laugh deep in his chest.
“Well now, would you look at that. I had practically forgotten.”
“Hmm?” Kirk entered the cafeteria after his companion and it took him a moment before he placed just what Leonard was referring to. Then, he saw it. A small six-inch Christmas tree was sitting in the center of one of the dining tables. It had only a few small built-in bulbs of glowing light that glimmered in the hues of the primary colors and a handful of small ball-like ornaments that dangled from the evergreen branches. “Is that a Christmas tree?”
“Well it sure looks like one.” Leonard sounded like he was tickled pink. Kirk looked at his companion with some fascination. It wasn’t often that the doctor smiled when romance or bourbon wasn’t involved, but he was sure grinning now. “It is nearly Christmas, Jim. I’m surprised someone remembered.”
“Yes,” Kirk was a little less enthusiastic about the decoration. “I suppose it is easy to forget things like that when you’re out in space.”
The Enterprise, like all federation ships, had policies about celebrating many holidays aboard the vessel. One could always celebrate their religious, cultural, or personal events within the privacy of their own quarters. However, it was considered unprofessional to celebrate holidays and the like openly due to the very personal nature of each one. In the Federations, hundreds of planets with thousands of species and millions of traditions and belief systems came together to unite under a simplistic ideal that all worlds are equal in their worth and no group of life forms should be belittled or overshadowed in their ways of thinking or behaving on a cultural level that is non-threatening. This meant that everyone had a right to celebrate whatever they wanted, but it wasn’t appropriate for one celebration to be pushed off on everyone. This, of course, included Christmas.
For the first time in the Enterprise’s travels, someone had reminded the crew—both Earthborn and not—that it was only a few days until Christmas. Kirk himself hadn’t celebrated the holiday since he was in the academy, and then his version of celebrating had been taking advantage of the good holiday cheer of lonely academy girls with a fondness for mistletoe. He hadn’t truly celebrated the holiday since he was much younger and his brother had demanded the event before he left the planet on his first expedition. For the still quite young James Tiberius Kirk, that placed Christmas as a marker for one of the last times he ever saw his brother in person.
That hardly seemed like reason to celebrate.
“You all right, Jim?” Leonard asked, still exuding a kind of happiness Kirk didn’t know what to think of.
“Yes.” Jim looked around the room to see if there were any more decorations or any sign of the one who had put them there.
“Well you look like you’ve seen something gross.” Leonard waited and watched his lover carefully. It was clear to him instantly that something was honestly wrong. “Jim,” Bones laughed shyly. “It’s just a Christmas tree.”
Kirk looked at his partner with something Leonard couldn’t read, and then made his serious captain face and said, “It’s just not something I think should be out here in the cafeteria.”
“What?” McCoy looked like Jim had just confessed to something unbelievable. “Oh, come on, Jim. It’s just a little holiday spirit. It’s not hurting anyone.”
Kirk looked at the tree and shook his head.
“Regulation states that celebrating Christmas or any other cultural holiday on a starship is meant to be contained to individual quarters.”
“I don’t think anyone in the crew is going to get upset over something like this, Jim. Christmas is a time to be with those you care about. It’s a celebration of the New Year and life. If anything, I think the message of Christmas is just a celebration of what we do on the Enterprise everyday.”
Kirk looked unsure.
“We constantly make it through what seems to be the darkest hours of our lives just like how every year the sun still rises and the world keeps turning.”
“What about on Ankdor 3? Their planet is gone. I don’t think they’ll be celebrating the new dawn while their trying to put their lives back together on an entirely new planet.”
Leonard hadn’t seen Jim like that in a very long time. Usually the captain was the most upbeat and optimistic individual on the ship. Before the doctor could say anything though, another voice spoke up.
“On the contrary, Captain Kirk.” It belonged to the Ankdorian ambassador, Shamil Toruli.
“Ambassador Toruli,” Kirk said startled as he bowed his head. “My apologies, I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
It was clear Kirk was nervous that he had offended the alien leader, but Toruli did not seem upset. Rather, he looked at the Christmas tree that had caused the brief fuss and smiled warmly.
“My people are all marking today as the Day of Sacrifice. We had to give up our selfish desires for all of our material belongings and our bitterness towards our brothers who we had fought with for so very long for petty advantages in order to save the one thing that matters most…” Shamil paused and looked at Kirk with respect. “Our lives, Captain Kirk. The very lives we owe to you and your people.”
Kirk shifted his weight from one foot to his other and listened as the Ambassador continued.
“When we reach the new world, we would like to call the days we traveled as the Time of Repentance. Then, once my people are safe in their new home, we shall celebrate the Day of New Fortunes. It will be the start of a celebration that will be remembered throughout the generations. It will mark the eve of our rebirth as a peaceful and knowledge-filled race and our new freedom. We will remember you and your crew, and we will remember one another. It will in fact be a new dawn for us all.”
Kirk was at loss. He wasn’t sure what he could say that would be deemed a proper remark. The Ankdorian smiled and brushed his fingers over the surface of one of the small tree’s branches.
“If this tree can represent something as wonderful as a new day, then my people welcome its beauty. The customs of our friends are welcome.” The ambassador turned towards Kirk again and bowed his head slowly. “A symbol is regional, Captain. However, it has been my experience that a pure idea is universal.”
Oddly enough, the ambassador ventured away after that. Kirk decided not to take the little tree down. He was both moved and confused by what the ambassador had said. Still, there was no law that said there could not be small decorations for the holiday in the common corridors or areas. It merely urged caution and respectfulness. It seemed more disrespectful to remove the object. Though, Kirk still wasn’t sure he would be celebrating Christmas that year.