Posted as part of the March Challenge - Failure.
Part of The Ancient Destroyer AU.
Summary : One day, Peter Kirk will stand with his heroes aboard the USS Enterprise and face the ultimate enemy. But this is not that day, and the young hero is going down hard.
The Battle Of Riverside
by Rob Morris
*There were ships of shapes and sizes
Scattered out along the bay
And I thought I heard her calling
As the steamer pulled away
The Invaders must have seen them
As across the coast they filed
Standing firm between them
There lay Thunder Child* - From Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of HG Wells' War Of The Worlds
RIVERSIDE, IOWA, 2268
In a world full of many questions with many levels, Peter Kirk still knew several things to be true. That his legal parents, his little brother and indeed everyone else on Deneva were dead was one of them, and in the case of little Marcus Kirk, aged one and a half and then not a single day more, this was perhaps a defining fact of his existence. Even a would-be hero knew he couldn't save everyone. But why he could not have saved just that one was a question that literally haunted him.
That his heroes aboard the starship Enterprise cared about him was another. Would he ever be able to tell them how those two months, two months of being just an ordinary kid, had saved his sanity, and possibly his soul? Someday, he swore that he would. Two already knew. Legally and by private ceremony, respectively, James Kirk and Nyota Uhura had become his new parents. That he felt closer to them than he ever had to Sam and Aurelan was not his fault, he reasoned. They had broken the parent-child bond, not Peter.
Another fact was that Grandma Brianna Kirk had changed, this time for good, and in both senses of the word ‘good'. Peter had run away, when the hitting wouldn't stop, and when she finally crossed the line and insulted Uhura. No one did that to his heroes. He slapped her, and ran off, first in the company of a former friend who badly misguided him, and then with Uncle Bill Kirk in Montana, where George Kirk's older brother raised horses and sang painfully bad covers of ancient songs, including one by Elton John that was legendarily bad. Bill had asked him to stay. As a former lawyer, he could use Brianna's violation of her rehab-parole restrictions to put her away for good.
Yet still he went back to Iowa, if for no other reason than to confront her, to call her out, and then ask her why she couldn't just be Grandma, and not an enemy. He returned to a woman who, he would swear, had been re-souled. He kept expecting her Janusian nature to assert itself, but in these last six months, the reversion to type had never come, and never would. In another time and place, Peter would learn that ‘re-souled' had been a far more accurate description than he had known. For the present, he gloried in the fact that, at long last, it was all right. Everything was finally going to be all right.
Yet even that happiness was tempered and nearly negated by the dreams that wouldn't stop. He would have horrific dreams of the Three-Skull, of The Ancient Destroyer Of Worlds, of King Ghidorah. In the boy's dreams, worlds and empires were chewed up, driven into dust and less than dust. Vast powers were called down to stop the menace, and to a one they all fell. The most heartbreaking dream involved a young couple sending their only child off from a doomed world, only for the beast target the escaping craft, as though the vile thing knew. Before the craft was destroyed, the infant looked into Peter's eyes and said chilling words: "It Falls to You, Now."
On this night, those particular types of dreams, and the other set wherein Peter saw cities crunched beneath his feet, did not come about. No, this was a joyous, wonderful dream. He walked through a door into his own personal paradise. For Peter Kirk was back on board the Bridge of the USS Enterprise. He had dreams of this before, but the Bridge had looked different. His heroes were older, and their uniforms were an odd shade of maroon. In this case, it was just as he remembered. He raced right for the command chair, and for the man three steps removed from God himself, so far as Peter was concerned.
"Uncle Jim?"
James Kirk looked his boy over, his usually expressive eyes neither cold nor warm.
"We welcome our peer. The Rock, who is called Petrus Claudius, son of Jacobus Tiberius, walks among us. The Rock meets with us at The Temple. The Rock is The Rock Of Prophecy."
Something was wrong, and not just with his uncle. Usually, Peter heard an odd ‘second track' with people, words spoken under their words. Most times, these words supplemented their spoken words. Other times, especially with people like Sam and Aurelan, the second track contradicted the first. He was still some years away from finding out the simple truth that he was hearing people's thoughts. This was a moot point in this instance, for unlike waking life or other dreams, this second track was not present at all.
"Aunt Nyta?"
The very beautiful woman he called his mother was no more engaged by his presence than was her lover.
"The Rock will leave the sight of the living, but shall not die. Those who are The Rock may never die. He who is the Rock awaits The She, and then shall both be free. The Three-Skull cried out when the Rock was made, and has done so again. Twice more again shall this be."
A man known for his emotion leaned against the divider railing, speaking without the emotion that marked even Vulcan healers.
"The Rock opposes the Enemy, who is called by some as Ghidorah. Whole galaxies are gnashed between those awful teeth. Lives of unique quality lost. They are dead. They are dead."
Peter would have almost called their tone stern, but when he saw the one that stood and walked as Hikaru Sulu, on whom stern ‘worked', in his opinion, it was still too distant to even be called that.
"Yet it is upon that Rock that those mighty teeth shall shatter like glass. Then, even dread Ghidorah is mortal. The Rock must be patient, until this should come to pass. To the Rock alone is given the knowledge of the place called Meggido."
Peter felt it. This place was not the Enterprise, nor even a dream of it. It felt timeless.
Now, the ones who looked like Scott and Chekov took their turns. Their accents seemed diminished to the point of nonexistence.
"This violation must cease. The universe is beyond its limits. It can bear no more."
"The Rock is the vessel for the power. The Rock is the egg. The Rock has a face, and this face is seen, as though over a hill. Craggy and scarred, this is yet the face of justice. And Justice, Like Lightning, Must Ever Appear, To Some As Hope, And To Others As Fear."
The barely-teen Peter had felt very close to the barely-adult Chekov. He felt none of that closeness to the entity that wore his image. Without realizing it, he reached out with his mind. In the forms they wore, each being stopped and grabbed at their heads, briefly.
"You are of Bajor. I can feel it. What do you want with me? Your Kai visited me aboard Enterprise. I've never understood why. Tell me!"
Peter closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were replaced by twin golden lights.
"TELL ME NOW!!!"
The place that was no place at all shook with his fury.
"Listen up! I don't worship you. I have my God, and I have his son. They've proven more than enough. I don't need a bunch of preening popinjays who think they're..."
Amidst the shouts of the confused, angry boy came a voice that finally sounded as it should. A man Peter had felt an odd kinship with, despite the distance he kept.
"Will You Fight The Enemy?"
"Mister Spock?"
"Will You Fight The Enemy? Will You Fight Ghidorah?"
Peter stood there, frozen. He was a boy who had survived the madness of a world, its nightmarish death, and the one-time wrath of a woman who should have always been the gentle creature she became, all without fear. But at the question posed by the Spock-alike, he became very afraid. As the vision ended, ‘Spock' spoke once more.
"An answer is required."
The boy awoke to a short but intense cry of pain.
"Grandma?"
He didn't feel like he'd been asleep, but of course that whole weirdness had to be a dream, right? Clear or foggy, Peter raced to be by his grandmother's side. The living room was dark, and before his vision could adjust, he tripped over something.
"No. Please, just no. You have Marc, you bastard."
He felt what he had tripped over, already knowing what he would find. The bastard, Death, had one more notch carved into its infinite stick. One more time, the young hero learned the harshest truth: You can't save everyone.
"Grandma, please. No. Things were good again. You were good. Please, don't be..."
"How does it feel, Peter Kirk? How does it feel to be made to fail your family?"
His vision now rapidly adjusted, much faster than he could account for, if he were paying attention. The red rage that was slowly seeping into his soul made certain that he was not.
"Madelyn?"
"This is it, you alien freak. Payback."
Madelyn Moonachie had been the friend who had misled Peter Kirk, and by misled, he meant betrayed. Back when Grandma had still been hitting him, he fled, and sought the company of his friend's family. She had snuggled against him, and made it clear that more could follow. More, Peter went with her family as their guest at a ‘retreat'.
"You want payback, you little bigot? Who lied to who?"
The retreat was a hate rally. Humans of low worth describing a coming ‘cleansing' of the ‘alien infestation'. The Rock Of Prophecy had been tricked into entering the lair of the Human worshipers of the Beast. Peter, like everyone else, had heard whispers of The Order Of The Ancient Destroyer. At that rally, as he heard hateful lies and genocide spoken plainly and as just common sense, he knew why people only whispered. Peter had left, but not before telling them all what he thought of them. In an uncharacteristically grandiose moment, he even told them he would find a way to stop them. Them and all their works.
"My father won't even speak to me. So now your precious grandma doesn't speak at all!"
Peter knew more. He knew why it was probably healthy for this girl not to be spoken to by her father, and how it would be even healthier for her to get out of his house entirely. But he was again past caring. Blood had to be repaid in kind.
"You join her."
Peter had only meant to backhand Madelyn, despite what she had apparently done. It was indeed the back of his hand that met her face. The wet, crunching noise that followed had not been his intent. Madelyn Moonachie, junior space bigot, a child of such massive abuse, she no longer knew what right even looked like, was flung against the living room's opposite wall. The impact was bone-jarring, to be certain, but the already-dead girl felt nothing at all.
"Why would you do this? And-how did I just do that?"
The first answer would come soon enough. Part of the second, regarding his strength, owed partly to the fact that Aurelan Sorel Kirk's father, Thomas Sorel, was once a high-ranking Romulan defector named Tasorel. But Peter knew nothing of that, and, to have it known, Peter had already been as strong as his full-grown grandfather when he was only three.
"Don't move."
There were weapons trained on the dazed boy, and he was surrounded by tall men in red shirts. If his head had been clearer, he might have more quickly recognized them as Starfleet Security. But his head was not clear at all, and the red rage now ruled him entirely.
"Why did you kill my grandma?"
In a slicing motion, Peter brought his right hand up, breaking through the phaser rifle of the man who told him not to move. As the arc completed, Peter's hand split the man's chin, straight through his jaw, and sent him flying into the ceiling.
"You monster! The commander was a good...."
Peter grasped the neck of the shouter, and squeezed, intending to ask questions about why they were there. But his lifeless eyes flopped upward in their sockets, and he fell as soon as he was released.
"Fire, you morons!"
The phaser rifles lashed out at him. Peter felt that he should have been surprised by his resistance to them, but somehow he wasn't. As each burst of concentrated, amplified radiation struck true, he only felt stronger. Three crumpled from leg kicks meant only to push them away. A punch to the chest on one of them became a punch through the chest. Revolted, Peter stared at his bloodied hand.
"I'm-strong."
----------------------
*Moving swiftly through the waters
Cannons blazing as she came
Brought a mighty metal War-Lord
Crashing down in sheets of flame
Sensing victory was nearing
Thinking fortune must have smiled
People started cheering
'Come on Thunder Child'
'Come on Thunder Child'*
Part of The Ancient Destroyer AU.
Summary : One day, Peter Kirk will stand with his heroes aboard the USS Enterprise and face the ultimate enemy. But this is not that day, and the young hero is going down hard.
The Battle Of Riverside
by Rob Morris
*There were ships of shapes and sizes
Scattered out along the bay
And I thought I heard her calling
As the steamer pulled away
The Invaders must have seen them
As across the coast they filed
Standing firm between them
There lay Thunder Child* - From Jeff Wayne's Musical Version Of HG Wells' War Of The Worlds
RIVERSIDE, IOWA, 2268
In a world full of many questions with many levels, Peter Kirk still knew several things to be true. That his legal parents, his little brother and indeed everyone else on Deneva were dead was one of them, and in the case of little Marcus Kirk, aged one and a half and then not a single day more, this was perhaps a defining fact of his existence. Even a would-be hero knew he couldn't save everyone. But why he could not have saved just that one was a question that literally haunted him.
That his heroes aboard the starship Enterprise cared about him was another. Would he ever be able to tell them how those two months, two months of being just an ordinary kid, had saved his sanity, and possibly his soul? Someday, he swore that he would. Two already knew. Legally and by private ceremony, respectively, James Kirk and Nyota Uhura had become his new parents. That he felt closer to them than he ever had to Sam and Aurelan was not his fault, he reasoned. They had broken the parent-child bond, not Peter.
Another fact was that Grandma Brianna Kirk had changed, this time for good, and in both senses of the word ‘good'. Peter had run away, when the hitting wouldn't stop, and when she finally crossed the line and insulted Uhura. No one did that to his heroes. He slapped her, and ran off, first in the company of a former friend who badly misguided him, and then with Uncle Bill Kirk in Montana, where George Kirk's older brother raised horses and sang painfully bad covers of ancient songs, including one by Elton John that was legendarily bad. Bill had asked him to stay. As a former lawyer, he could use Brianna's violation of her rehab-parole restrictions to put her away for good.
Yet still he went back to Iowa, if for no other reason than to confront her, to call her out, and then ask her why she couldn't just be Grandma, and not an enemy. He returned to a woman who, he would swear, had been re-souled. He kept expecting her Janusian nature to assert itself, but in these last six months, the reversion to type had never come, and never would. In another time and place, Peter would learn that ‘re-souled' had been a far more accurate description than he had known. For the present, he gloried in the fact that, at long last, it was all right. Everything was finally going to be all right.
Yet even that happiness was tempered and nearly negated by the dreams that wouldn't stop. He would have horrific dreams of the Three-Skull, of The Ancient Destroyer Of Worlds, of King Ghidorah. In the boy's dreams, worlds and empires were chewed up, driven into dust and less than dust. Vast powers were called down to stop the menace, and to a one they all fell. The most heartbreaking dream involved a young couple sending their only child off from a doomed world, only for the beast target the escaping craft, as though the vile thing knew. Before the craft was destroyed, the infant looked into Peter's eyes and said chilling words: "It Falls to You, Now."
On this night, those particular types of dreams, and the other set wherein Peter saw cities crunched beneath his feet, did not come about. No, this was a joyous, wonderful dream. He walked through a door into his own personal paradise. For Peter Kirk was back on board the Bridge of the USS Enterprise. He had dreams of this before, but the Bridge had looked different. His heroes were older, and their uniforms were an odd shade of maroon. In this case, it was just as he remembered. He raced right for the command chair, and for the man three steps removed from God himself, so far as Peter was concerned.
"Uncle Jim?"
James Kirk looked his boy over, his usually expressive eyes neither cold nor warm.
"We welcome our peer. The Rock, who is called Petrus Claudius, son of Jacobus Tiberius, walks among us. The Rock meets with us at The Temple. The Rock is The Rock Of Prophecy."
Something was wrong, and not just with his uncle. Usually, Peter heard an odd ‘second track' with people, words spoken under their words. Most times, these words supplemented their spoken words. Other times, especially with people like Sam and Aurelan, the second track contradicted the first. He was still some years away from finding out the simple truth that he was hearing people's thoughts. This was a moot point in this instance, for unlike waking life or other dreams, this second track was not present at all.
"Aunt Nyta?"
The very beautiful woman he called his mother was no more engaged by his presence than was her lover.
"The Rock will leave the sight of the living, but shall not die. Those who are The Rock may never die. He who is the Rock awaits The She, and then shall both be free. The Three-Skull cried out when the Rock was made, and has done so again. Twice more again shall this be."
A man known for his emotion leaned against the divider railing, speaking without the emotion that marked even Vulcan healers.
"The Rock opposes the Enemy, who is called by some as Ghidorah. Whole galaxies are gnashed between those awful teeth. Lives of unique quality lost. They are dead. They are dead."
Peter would have almost called their tone stern, but when he saw the one that stood and walked as Hikaru Sulu, on whom stern ‘worked', in his opinion, it was still too distant to even be called that.
"Yet it is upon that Rock that those mighty teeth shall shatter like glass. Then, even dread Ghidorah is mortal. The Rock must be patient, until this should come to pass. To the Rock alone is given the knowledge of the place called Meggido."
Peter felt it. This place was not the Enterprise, nor even a dream of it. It felt timeless.
Now, the ones who looked like Scott and Chekov took their turns. Their accents seemed diminished to the point of nonexistence.
"This violation must cease. The universe is beyond its limits. It can bear no more."
"The Rock is the vessel for the power. The Rock is the egg. The Rock has a face, and this face is seen, as though over a hill. Craggy and scarred, this is yet the face of justice. And Justice, Like Lightning, Must Ever Appear, To Some As Hope, And To Others As Fear."
The barely-teen Peter had felt very close to the barely-adult Chekov. He felt none of that closeness to the entity that wore his image. Without realizing it, he reached out with his mind. In the forms they wore, each being stopped and grabbed at their heads, briefly.
"You are of Bajor. I can feel it. What do you want with me? Your Kai visited me aboard Enterprise. I've never understood why. Tell me!"
Peter closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were replaced by twin golden lights.
"TELL ME NOW!!!"
The place that was no place at all shook with his fury.
"Listen up! I don't worship you. I have my God, and I have his son. They've proven more than enough. I don't need a bunch of preening popinjays who think they're..."
Amidst the shouts of the confused, angry boy came a voice that finally sounded as it should. A man Peter had felt an odd kinship with, despite the distance he kept.
"Will You Fight The Enemy?"
"Mister Spock?"
"Will You Fight The Enemy? Will You Fight Ghidorah?"
Peter stood there, frozen. He was a boy who had survived the madness of a world, its nightmarish death, and the one-time wrath of a woman who should have always been the gentle creature she became, all without fear. But at the question posed by the Spock-alike, he became very afraid. As the vision ended, ‘Spock' spoke once more.
"An answer is required."
The boy awoke to a short but intense cry of pain.
"Grandma?"
He didn't feel like he'd been asleep, but of course that whole weirdness had to be a dream, right? Clear or foggy, Peter raced to be by his grandmother's side. The living room was dark, and before his vision could adjust, he tripped over something.
"No. Please, just no. You have Marc, you bastard."
He felt what he had tripped over, already knowing what he would find. The bastard, Death, had one more notch carved into its infinite stick. One more time, the young hero learned the harshest truth: You can't save everyone.
"Grandma, please. No. Things were good again. You were good. Please, don't be..."
"How does it feel, Peter Kirk? How does it feel to be made to fail your family?"
His vision now rapidly adjusted, much faster than he could account for, if he were paying attention. The red rage that was slowly seeping into his soul made certain that he was not.
"Madelyn?"
"This is it, you alien freak. Payback."
Madelyn Moonachie had been the friend who had misled Peter Kirk, and by misled, he meant betrayed. Back when Grandma had still been hitting him, he fled, and sought the company of his friend's family. She had snuggled against him, and made it clear that more could follow. More, Peter went with her family as their guest at a ‘retreat'.
"You want payback, you little bigot? Who lied to who?"
The retreat was a hate rally. Humans of low worth describing a coming ‘cleansing' of the ‘alien infestation'. The Rock Of Prophecy had been tricked into entering the lair of the Human worshipers of the Beast. Peter, like everyone else, had heard whispers of The Order Of The Ancient Destroyer. At that rally, as he heard hateful lies and genocide spoken plainly and as just common sense, he knew why people only whispered. Peter had left, but not before telling them all what he thought of them. In an uncharacteristically grandiose moment, he even told them he would find a way to stop them. Them and all their works.
"My father won't even speak to me. So now your precious grandma doesn't speak at all!"
Peter knew more. He knew why it was probably healthy for this girl not to be spoken to by her father, and how it would be even healthier for her to get out of his house entirely. But he was again past caring. Blood had to be repaid in kind.
"You join her."
Peter had only meant to backhand Madelyn, despite what she had apparently done. It was indeed the back of his hand that met her face. The wet, crunching noise that followed had not been his intent. Madelyn Moonachie, junior space bigot, a child of such massive abuse, she no longer knew what right even looked like, was flung against the living room's opposite wall. The impact was bone-jarring, to be certain, but the already-dead girl felt nothing at all.
"Why would you do this? And-how did I just do that?"
The first answer would come soon enough. Part of the second, regarding his strength, owed partly to the fact that Aurelan Sorel Kirk's father, Thomas Sorel, was once a high-ranking Romulan defector named Tasorel. But Peter knew nothing of that, and, to have it known, Peter had already been as strong as his full-grown grandfather when he was only three.
"Don't move."
There were weapons trained on the dazed boy, and he was surrounded by tall men in red shirts. If his head had been clearer, he might have more quickly recognized them as Starfleet Security. But his head was not clear at all, and the red rage now ruled him entirely.
"Why did you kill my grandma?"
In a slicing motion, Peter brought his right hand up, breaking through the phaser rifle of the man who told him not to move. As the arc completed, Peter's hand split the man's chin, straight through his jaw, and sent him flying into the ceiling.
"You monster! The commander was a good...."
Peter grasped the neck of the shouter, and squeezed, intending to ask questions about why they were there. But his lifeless eyes flopped upward in their sockets, and he fell as soon as he was released.
"Fire, you morons!"
The phaser rifles lashed out at him. Peter felt that he should have been surprised by his resistance to them, but somehow he wasn't. As each burst of concentrated, amplified radiation struck true, he only felt stronger. Three crumpled from leg kicks meant only to push them away. A punch to the chest on one of them became a punch through the chest. Revolted, Peter stared at his bloodied hand.
"I'm-strong."
----------------------
*Moving swiftly through the waters
Cannons blazing as she came
Brought a mighty metal War-Lord
Crashing down in sheets of flame
Sensing victory was nearing
Thinking fortune must have smiled
People started cheering
'Come on Thunder Child'
'Come on Thunder Child'*
