Notes: This is a little... non-linear in style. Let me know what you think! It's also my first foray into Star Trek fanfiction since I was about thirteen so forgive me if I've fluffed some details here and there.

This is for my friend Katie, because she is awesome and she puts up with me. We'll go again this week!!

Disclaimer: Star Trek isn't mine but I would love to own a pair of Uhura's boots :D

James T. Kirk turns twenty-six, but he's stranded in a crippled shuttle and time is running out.

Twenty-Six

Today was his twenty-sixth birthday and all things considered, it was starting to look very much like it was going to be his last. James T. Kirk had fought long and hard this day but, as he struggled to draw in a breath deep enough to keep him alive, this was starting to look like the end. Slumped in the pilot's seat of the dying shuttle, the view in front of him was just black. There weren't even stars in this dark depth of the galaxy. Smoke from charred circuits drifted lazily around him, using up what precious little oxygen remained. All manner of warning lights and screeching alarms blared into his frayed consciousness but they were all useless. The noise and lights couldn't force him into any kind of action. There was no one left to fight, no one here to save him. The oxygen was as good as gone, the chill of space piercing every inch of him, the shuttle's engines utterly dead and the Enterprise too far away.

Twenty-six today, and he was leaving the universe with a whimper instead of the bang with which he had entered it. Kirk's vision blurred, his eyes sank and he felt his mind detach and drift into thoughts, memories.

“Damnit Jim! I'm a doctor, not a fighter!”

Kirk laughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. The rain soon obscured it. “You can do your doctoring later. Right now we need to get away from these bastards, and the only way to do that is to fight them.”

Them. More self-appointed Romulan 'freedom fighters'. Kirk should've known that Nero's quest, no matter how quiet he had kept himself for twenty-five years, would inspire others to start all manner of protests and even battles against the Federation. This particular group, not nearly as well-armed as Nero's crew but every bit as fanatical, had lured the Enterprise to a previously undiscovered world, going so far as to set up a fake culture in a hastily constructed 'town' claiming it desired to join the Federation, claiming the world had natural resources that were unsurpassed in quality and quantity. The group had even obscured their distinct features by using personalised holo-projectors to give themselves the appearance of humanoids with an extra set of arms.

They were pinned down in a large warehouse, crouching behind huge crates of supplies. The Romulans, disguises abandoned now that the trap had been sprung, had gone to great lengths to set up this trap.

“Seek out new life and new civilisations,” McCoy grumbled. “If this lot are civilised, I don't wanna meet the barbarians.”

A pair of Romulans were closing in, another pair guarding the one and only entrance into the building.

“We should've sensed a trap Jim,” Bones whispered. “Citing Starfleet regulations that meant we couldn't bring phasers to negotiations? We were fools to walk into this one.”

“Yeah well, we'll argue the whole 'no phaser' code when we get back to Starfleet Bones.”

“If we get back.”

“Man, you have got to lighten up. We'll get out. We've just gotta get back to the shuttles.” Kirk shoved McCoy to the ground and decked a Romulan that had crept up and attempted to shoot his friend at point-blank range. Pulling back bleeding knuckles, Kirk gave his friend a confident grin. “Easy.”

Bones managed nothing better than a scoffing laugh.

Grabbing the unconscious Romulan's phaser-rifle, Kirk placed a hand on Bones' shoulder. “You ready? Spock and the others are waiting for us.”

He didn't wait for a response. Jumping out of their hiding place, Kirk took down the three Romulans before surprise had a chance to register on their faces. Making sure Bones was behind him, Kirk ran back out into the rain and headed for the shuttle.

Kirk shivered, longing for the relative warmth of that rain-soaked world. The planet had been an absolute mess; constant storms tore through the atmosphere, blasts of lightning and roars of thunder enough to shake the ground. It was the perfect place for an ambush because rapid escape was impossible as transporters were rendered far too unstable for use.

“I know reckless is your thing Captain but you don't wanna see the mess it would make if your particles got scrambled in an electric charge and your head and your arse swapped places!” Scotty turned back to his console. “Take a shuttle if you want to go and come back in the same shape.”

They had taken two shuttles, five people in each. Of the ten Kirk had taken down to the surface, five had survived the Romulan trap...

...Although the way he was going, that rate was probably gonna go down...

Spock and the other two survivors of the team were waiting for them in a small hut, the last building before the open stretch of land on which their shuttles awaited. There were four armed Romulans between them and their shuttles, the odds most definitely in their favour. Kirk tossed the phaser-rifle to Spock. “Cover me. Shoot them if it looks like their winning but otherwise get to those shuttles.”

Kirk took off running, fuelled by rage and adrenaline. He took the first one down with a spinning kick Sulu had taught him. Grabbing the Romulan's phaser, Kirk took down another two.

The others had reached the shuttles by this point. Bones reached the closest shuttle, disappeared inside briefly but was soon outside again. “Sabotaged,” he called, loud enough for Kirk to hear.

The fourth and final got off a lucky shot and Jim's shoulder burnt with the pain of a phaser burn. He was lucky the weapon hadn't been set high enough for an instant kill. There was no time to question why he had been shot to wound and not kill. Pain turned to rage and Kirk, using his weapon as a battering ram, took down the last Romulan between him and the shuttles.

Even at a distance Kirk could see that pessimistic slump to Bones' shoulders as he emerged from the first shuttle. What he hadn't expected to see was the sudden uplift when Bones stuck his head into the second shuttle. “Damaged, but nothing we can't repair. If we move fast en- Jim! Behind you!”

Kirk threw himself to the ground to avoid a shot to the back. “Move, move, move!” He yelled. No one ignored him and they boarded the shuttle. Feet scrabbling, he stayed low and ran onto the shuttle. Spock was there and he slapped the hatch control, sealing them in.

“We need to get this thing off the ground,” Kirk said, fingers flying over the computer's touch-screen to assess the damage. Moments later he and his tiny crew were spread out, repairing all the damage they could before they were attacked...

“I've got the shields up,” reported Ambassador Reshva, the only surviving member of the diplomatic team assembled for this trip.

“Weapons remain non-functional,” Spock added.

“Engines online!” McCoy triumphantly declared.

But the Romulans hadn't left the shuttle out of the kindness in their hearts... Kirk looked out the cockpit and saw a group of Romulans standing, waiting. Kirk stilled, waiting for the inevitable.

“Captain, this is a trap,” said Ensign O'Hara, a blond-haired security officer whose eyes narrowed with anger. She looked up at Kirk. “The landing gear has been rigged with charges. If we take off without entering the correct authorization codes the shuttle will be ripped apart...”

That was when the Romulans made their offer: the Captain of the Enterprise, alone and unarmed, in exchange for the continued survival of his ship and her crew.

“No way Jim,” Bones said. “They'll kill you!”

“I'm not losing any more of my crew today,” Kirk shot back.

But he'd also had enough of unarmed for one day. His eyes landed on the emergency flare box. It wasn't much but it would do. He turned back to his crew and gave them their orders.

“This is how this is gonna work...”

In a life spent committing one death-defying feat after another, Kirk could admit to himself that on some level he had expected to come out of this situation swinging. Bloody and bruised, probably, but alive and well...

“You can't Jim! Don't you dare!”

“Captain, this path is not only illogical but foolhardy and reckless as well.”

Kirk ignored them. He couldn't allow them all to die here, not when there was a chance to get some out alive. Starfleet had to know of this threat. Kirk's mind was made up. Pike had told him his father's sacrifice had ensured he and his mother had survived, insisted that in some ways that too was proof of George Kirk's belief in the non-existence of no-win situations. Well, Jim was every bit his father's son.

Outside the shuttle, the Romulans were waiting. Kirk turned back to his crew. “Get to the Enterprise and get away. The Romulans are sure to have ships out there waiting to attack but the Enterprise is better than that. Take them out. Spock, alert Starfleet. This is a serious threat, one they need to be aware of.”

“I understand that Captain but you...”

“Jim, they'll...”

“There's no other choice!”

Spock stared at him, through him, and Kirk struggled to hide the fear.

A painful round of coughing brought Kirk back to the present long enough to see a computer screen tell him the last of the emergency oxygen was gone. He laughed, more from the effects of severe oxygen deprivation than any real amusement. Those Romulan bastards had promised him a lingering death for his 'crimes against the Free Romulan Empire', but suffocation and a slow freeze on a disabled shuttle? Now this was truly long-winded.

They had launched Kirk, battered and bleeding, into space in the damaged shuttle and then disabled all of its remaining systems until it limped far enough into dead space to be truly lost. This was a very grim death. No honour, no heroics; just a slow descent.

No heroics...

“Get out of here!”

Then he was gone, back out into that storm with his arms raised in the universal 'I surrender' gesture. The shuttle took off as Kirk, never one to genuinely surrender quietly, pulled the emergency flare gun out of the holster he had hidden in the small of his back and launched four flares, all of them catching their Romulan targets in the chest and burning through clothes and skin. But then he was out of ammo and the Romulans had numbers on him... He fought until he had nothing left to give and the next thing he knew he was drifting into space, the vidscreens full of a smug Romulan's face as he gleefully filled Kirk in on his impending death.

Kirk could feel himself sliding out of the chair, some tiny part of his just about functioning brain telling him to get below the smoke still drifting from his dead ship. It probably didn't matter any more, what with the oxygen gone, but self-preservation fought to the bitter end.

He tried everything he could think of: rebooting the homing beacon, trying to bring back any of the shuttle's broadcasting frequencies, re-establishing the shuttle's pilot controls, fixing the dying oxygen systems but no, nothing. The ship was dead and it was about to become his very expensive coffin.

Kirk sat down in the pilot's seat, staring out at space. Smoke from fused circuits coiled around him. Every breath was becoming more of an effort and his head was pounding. He punched the arm rest, ignoring the pain it shot through his broken fingers. This was it. Not no-win, he reassured himself, but a sacrifice nonetheless.

As long as his crew survived, that was all that mattered. The thought made him sit up a little straighter.

Kirk slumped onto his side, head falling under the cockpit's main console. Now there was no oxygen, he had no energy and everything had taken on a strange haze... With a final, burning effort, head thrown back in a desperate bid, Kirk dragged what air remained into his lungs, only to find that there was nothing to be had...

...And everything went black.

And suddenly he stood, in the middle of it all. The Enterprise, her bridge. Home. Organized chaos, as it always was in the heat of a mission. He thrived here, lived for this place. The deck thrummed beneath his feet.

The Enterprise. So powerful, so fast.

The likelihood of a human surviving in such an atmosphere for this protracted period is...

Damnit, try to have a little faith!

Faith in the light of fact is often considered delusional.

Oh for the love of...

But if there is a chance I may be able to help...

People streamed around him, calling back and forth, bathed in the incandescent light of the ship's systems and yet the sound... He held his hands to his ears. Why couldn't he hear anything? He stood alone, silent, in a storm of activity.

There's no response. Pass me that hypo!

Doctor if I may...

No! We are not losing him!

Faint... a distant sensation... He rubbed his neck, his eyes watching the people around him. They all looked strained but focused. What was happening?

There's got to be a way...

If I may suggest a course of action...

He looked at the viewscreen. The ship was at warp...

Something stirred inside him... was it in him? What was this feeling? Emotion, yes, but so strange a way to feel... whatever he was feeling...

Lights blurred his vision and when he could see again, everyone around him was still and staring. He looked too. They were no longer at warp... And there was a beaten up shuttle in space ahead of them... He recognized it just as agony fired into his chest. He fell to his knees as he felt a rib break. What the hell was happening to him? He tried to draw breath but it was too hard. Another rib went, pain ripping through him, just as something whispered in the air. What was that? He tried to look around but agony held him still. He closed his eyes, digging deep for some inner reservoir of strength.

Nothing. Damnit. Let's go again...

A voice across a great distance echoed dimly. “...captain...”

He looked up and it wasn't the bridge he saw but the transporter room. There were people on the pad but their figures were blurry, indistinct. One looked like its flat on the ground... His vision fractured. He was on his knees again. He was losing himself in the pain and he couldn't get any air...

“jim”

Who...?

“Jim.”

Okay, this is the best I've got. You better be ready... Damnit Jim, you're not...

“Jim, if you do not resume breathing you will die.”

What?

Wait... no... what? Not... he wasn't breathing? No damn wonder; his chest really...

Breathe you damn idiot!

And for the first time in far, far too long, James T. Kirk drew in the deepest, noisiest gasp of air. The force of it arched his back, his whole body desperate for life. His eyes sprung open. His heart pounded. Pain screamed through every inch of him. Emotions crashed over him in waves of fear and relief. Someone was touching his head... The hand pulled back. Spock. Bones was there too, sweaty and breathless as though he'd run fifteen laps of the ship. He ran a scanner over Kirk's body, the instrument chiming every time it located an injury.

“Just keep breathing Jim, in and out...”

Oh, yeah, that's just great, Kirk wanted to tell Bones. Have you ever breathed with broken ribs? It hurts. And how the hell did they get broken anyway? He hoped to convey all this with a single look but Bones was fiddling with something and every iota of Kirk's concentration was taken up with the basic functions of staying alive: i.e., breathing.

“That was a little too close Captain!” came a distinctly Scottish accent from somewhere above him.

“Mr Scott.” That was Spock's calm voice. “Inform the bridge we have the Captain and to resume the course for Starfleet Command.”

“Aye sir.”

Was this the transporter room? What... what had just happened? How had he gotten here? Kirk tried to ask but breathing was enough effort right now. He was dangerously close to hyperventilating; pain, shock and confusion threatening to overwhelm him.

“I'm going to give you a mild sedative Jim. It'll relax you. You'll do yourself more damage if you don't calm down. We can talk later.”

“N-no...” Kirk struggled to spit out. He remembered what Bones' version of 'mild' was...

“Don't argue with me.”

Seconds after the jolt to his neck, Kirk was out for the count.

The next time he came around, Kirk felt better; alive and not just because every inch of him felt pain. He recognized his surroundings as sickbay. The lights had been dimmed to a relaxing level and all was quiet.

“Jim?”

He turned his head and saw Bones. The man looked considerably less sweaty now.

“How you feeling?”

“Uh...” Kirk considered what was a surprisingly hard question. His thoughts swam out of reach, dashing away before he could grab them.

“Don't worry, I've got you on the good stuff,” Bones said, checking a few monitors. He released a sigh. “Hasn't anyone ever told you to not piss off Romulans?”

Blaming it on whatever the hell Bones had dosed him with, Kirk grinned. “They started it.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to chase away the drowsiness. “How'd you find me?”

“You can thank Uhura. She picked up some Romulan transmissions and used them to work out the most likely area you'd been dumped in. You're lucky they were a boastful bunch otherwise you'd be dead.”

“Comforting.”

Kirk moved to sit up but Bones held up a hypospray. “Move and you're out cold until I say otherwise.”

Kirk subsided.

Bones checked the pad in his hand. “Cuts and contusions, phaser burn, five broken fingers...”

“You should try punching Romulans.”

Bones laughed at the very thought.

Kirk winced as he eyed his bruised fingers. “Those bastards have titanium skulls...”

“Hypothermia, hypoxia, broken ribs...” Bones went on.

“How'd I get those by the way?”

“I had to use good old fashioned CPR on you, which is hard work by the way. Ribs don't tend to come out of that so well.”

“Right.”

“Although I'm pretty sure the only reason you're breathing right now is because Spock went up into that head of yours and told you to... Or maybe he told you not to, seeing as you've always done the opposite of what you're told.”

“A mind meld?” That explained the weird vision/dream/hallucination he'd had... and the headache and the lingering whispers of feelings that were not his.

“Whatever,” Bones said dismissively. “I don't like 'em but it saved you. You should commend him on his bravery. I wouldn't wanna climb into your thick skull.”

“And the Romulans?”

“The Enterprise easily outmatched the ships they had waiting for us and Starfleet's working the diplomacy. No one wants a war. Oh and Pike wants you to know he didn't hand the Enterprise over to you for you to be wasting her precious shuttles.” Bones stopped fiddling with the various bits of equipment monitoring Kirk and looked down at him. “It was a close call, you know that right?”

Kirk fiddled with the blanket that had been pulled over him. “I kinda thought I was dead this time.”

“What, you? Mr 'There's no such things as no-win situations'?” Bones looked at him. “You're damn lucky your crazy attitude has infected your crew. You owe them all.”

“Yeah,” Kirk agreed, “I know.”

“But right now you're staying here, resting. You can thank them later.”

Shifting under his blanket, Kirk settled himself to get some more sleep. However, a thought occurred to him and he was wide awake, calling to Bones. “Hey, can I get a drink?”

“What?”

“A drink! It's my birthday. Whiskey, on the rocks. Didn't they used to say it was medicinal?”

“Actually, your birthday ended about twelve hours ago and the only reason anyone ever though whiskey was medicinal was because people got so drunk they no longer felt ill.”

Kirk groaned. “Fine. But next time we're back on Earth we are celebrating my birthday.” He grinned smugly. “Captain's orders.”

“I think that qualifies as an abuse of powers. You know, there's something in the Code that will allow Spock to resume captaining the ship if you carry on like that.”

“Hey, speaking of that Code, did you tell Starfleet to rethink their no phasers at negotiations policy?”

“Actually no. I'm leaving that fight to you. Aaah, but not right now.” Bones batted Kirk's hand away from a nearby communicator. “Do I need to remind you who's in charge of sickbay? This part of the ship is like a little bubble where your ego does not hold any influence. You will rest or I will make you, got it?”

“Talk dirty to me Bones, it's hot.”

Shaking his head, Bones turned away. “You're gonna be fine, as always. Shut up and get some rest.”

“Bones?”

“What? Need something to help you sleep?”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” Bones even managed a faint smile. “Now, get some sleep. There's a lot of people you need to thank when I clear you for duty.”

Kirk settled down as Bones dimmed the lighting further. He closed his eyes, taking pleasure in the feeling of being able to breathe and the knowledge that he had a crew who had proved yet again they didn't back down in the face of death.

Twenty-six was turning out to be a good age.