The constant array of stars glittered against the large slab of glass wall in the recreational room, tis was a spectacle of calm, in times an escape for members of the crew to indulge the quiet before immersing themselves back into their duties. At night, it was bare of visitors, except for one tired and overworked crew member.

Jim sat leaning against a wall, with his head against the thickened glass looking out into the darkness that prevailed outside. His eyes and ears not coherent to the world around him, lost in his own domain of solitude was a welcome and was a much-needed break from the hectic schedule that had come before him.

After John Harrison and Admiral Marcus had created a mess as big as Earth's sun, all Starfleet resources had been relocated to fix the chaos that had been made.

The Starfleet hearings and meetings that had just been recounts of the same event over and over and had begun ringing in Jim's ear. The names and faces of the dead littered his mind, and there was nowhere to go to be free from this cage. Everything and everyone was focused on the devastation, and all Jim wanted to do was run away from it all.

He was caught in the middle, and there was nowhere to catch a breath. Which he really needed as he didn't really take to dying again. Anyway, his crew would kill him. His crew, his family, they were here with him, and he wasn't alone.

He had Leonard, his Leonard, the man who put up with the hectic life of Jim Kirk and always was there to welcome him home and console him. Jim wanted Leonard now, to hold him and tell him he's going to be alright, but he couldn't move from the silent room.

Although he thought his crew would be angry at him for taking one for the team and losing his life, momentarily, obliviously assuming that they weren't angry would be a grave mistake. But they were just overwhelmed with joy to be able to see their Captain living and breathing before yelling at him.

Even with the people he has stood by, nothing could temper the gnawing sensation of emptiness and loneliness. Feeling like he was looking at the world and not seeing himself in it, a ghost. He was a navigator with no map nor a captain without confidence and strength. And that was a useless captain in Starfleet's books.

Jim was suddenly not in the spacious area of the recreational room, he was swept into a distant memory. He was himself, but as a child. Blonde headed and blue eyed with a trembling figure hidden under his childhood bed. He felt the cold prickle his skin, and the wept tears trailing down his cheeks.

He was alone in a place he was told to call home, wanting his mother to be there and hold him tightly and never let go. To feel the warmth of her around him, protecting him, and singing him lullabies until he fell into a peaceful sleep in her arms.

But the warmth faded away into space as he tried to stay in the dream longer, to linger in the tranquility. The homeliness dissolved back into the monotonous scenery of stars, a bitter iciness had swept into the silent holodeck.

The feeling was familiar, the re occurrence of numbness entered his body, the impression left on his physique felt like he was back in the warp core chamber. With the senses returning to him so did the feeling. The feeling of separation from his reality. He was alone and lost once again.