Chapter 5: Friday Night

He hadn't even realized that his shoes were still on his feet, but it was one less thing to worry about. Up off the bed, out the door, down the path to the central quad, and on his way to Golden Gate Park, that was Jim's plan, and he was a man who liked having a plan.

Seriously.

Almost.

Or not.

He was a man who-well . . . hell, when it came right down to it, Jim was a man who let his feet and instincts do the thinking, which is why he really had no control over the situation when his feet dragged him by the main quad on their way to the other side of campus. No control whatsoever.

"Hey Jim!" Bones waved him over to a corner of the quad where a crowd of familiar cadets had grabbed a dinner to-go. It was a bad idea to attempt conversation right now, Jim knew with certainty. He didn't want to be around anyone, and no amount of social niceties was going to change that. But . . he'd been blowing Bones off all week. And as much as he hated himself now for failing his friends of the past, he suspected he would only hate himself more if he was now an ass to the only friend he had left.

His classmates, sitting on various walls, steps, and benches, were discussing the hottest topic this week for just about all first year, 2nd semester cadets. Jim understood rationally that this is what they did every week for many of their classes – discuss the subject matter as a group so their essays would be easier to write – but that didn't make it any less difficult to suppress his irritation and discomfort. He felt his palms begin to sweat and his heart beat faster. He should walk right past, dammit. Yet in that split second in which he weighed equally anxiety ridden options, his conscience ultimately forced him to chose what he presumed was the moral ground: he approached the group.

Jennifer was mid sentence when he came in hearing range . ". . . stelnet article by one of the colonists who survived. The victim described the execution as brutal and cruel – not scientific. Not, ya' know, like, government sponsored. Bottom line, Kodos didn't seem like a nice guy."

"I am inclined to agree with you, but I must point out that first person accounts are known to possess heavy skew, as strong emotions distort the memory making process, leading to false memories. It is possible for this phenomenon to occur even in my own race." Trust the Vulcan to take the emotion out of an emotional subject.

There was really no need for this argument to continue. Jim felt more tired than angry when he plowed heedlessly into the ring, "Kodos was a bad guy. End of discussion. Even Starfleet agreed."

Uhura rolled her eyes, as did Bones, but his comment was not out of his norm, and so the others merely launched forward with counter arguments. "But it's very likely that just as many would have died had Kodos not commanded the executions. Maybe more, due to infighting over food, and food wastage in general." Akmeed protested, "It's not all black and white. Someone can be a bad guy and still commit acts that result in some good. And, from what Captain Carter said, many of the guards were exonerated. Shouldn't that tell us something?"

"That's not exactly what she said," Bones drawled.

"Isn't it?"

Bones shook his head and rolled his eyes. "There's a big difference between a few stray guards going free for a rare act of kindness, and exonerating half the bloody militia! I'm pretty sure she was describing the former, or were your ears too full of wax to listen properly? That's a medical condition, you know."

"Dr. Gevertz said one of our prompts could be to think of Tarsus from Kodos' perspective-you're taking this way too personally McCoy."

Bones mumbled something unwholesome under his breath, but Jim took the bait. "Too Personally? Two-thousand people died, and you don't think that's personal?" There was a threatening seriousness to Jim's voice that effectively stilled the group. Uhura, Jennifer, and Bones looked genuinely confused by his intensity.

A rather stagnant pause followed.

Akmeed, still mulish, heedlessly built off the comment, "Kodos made his selection based off of his best understanding of genetics and colony infrastructure. I'm not saying he did a good job, but it wasn't personal. That's my point!"

Jim gave him a glare that could melt a phaser.

Bones, beginning to regret calling Jim over, felt an obligation to make a consoling gesture, "I think Akmeed just meant that we need to stay objective, Jim. He's being a right ass about it", he glared at Akmeed in tandem with Jim, "but that's because he's kind of an ass in general. None of us were there-we don't need to let emotions dictate our opinion-" He paused in thought, than appeared to think of yet something else to worry about and mumbled in his usual rasp, "-or worse, our grammar. The man's positively obsessed with sentence structure!"

Jim's face clouded further, but his gaze shifted from Akmeed to bore into Bones. "You might not have been there, but a lot of people were-even some people on this campus. You think they'd wanna' hear the bullshit coming out of his mouth?" He gestured violently to Akmeed.

Bones again glared at Akmeed in support of Jim's assertion. "Some of us could be a damn sight more considerate. But I don't know if Akmeed's ever been that."

Jennifer chuckled at that statement.

"I for one could use a little less death today and a little more hard liquor." Bones concluded, "And I'm sure he—", he gestured to Akmeed, "—could too. Hmmph." He grunted and glared at nothing in particular, hating the world generally—on principle, really.

"Do you know a survivor, Kirk?" Jennifer asked with genuine interest and a hint of concern. Uhura rolled her eyes at the impossibility.

Jim shifted his glare from Akmeed to Jennifer. "Uhura here is certain I don't-why don't you ask her?"

It was a statement, not a question, and Jennifer frowned in annoyance. "You don't have to be a dick about it."

"Whatever," Jim mumbled under his breath, and his feet had him turning around and away from the study group before anyone could properly object. He heard Bones sigh almost expectantly as he did so, and Jim couldn't restrain the slump to his shoulders at the sound. I really am a dick.

Self-flagilating or not, Jim's feet knew their way around campus, and in particular they knew their way to the Lily Sloane Hospital. They began trekking that way without any necessary oversight, allowing Jim to keep his eyes on the paved walkway before him, not at all in the mood to make eye contact with passerby.

No, he had left his room to think about an old friend, only to further disappoint the one friend he had left, and after that farce of a dinner debate, his feet would not allow him to stew in avoidance any longer. Why not find Tom now and have done with?

In a span of time that could have been 5 minutes or 5 hrs, he found himself before the front entrance of the Lily Sloane building. He took a deep breath, palmed open the door, and went straight to the lift, pushing the turbo lever to the 23rd floor. Tom, if he was like most grad students, would very likely be working late in whatever lab or clinic or office he did his work.

Jim's stelnet hacking had given a specific room number, and he went directly there, only to encounter a locked door and an unlit office.

"Stars!" he mumbled to himself, turning to survey the other offices in the hallway. Guess he'd have to do this the hard way, which is in fact what he'd expected. A room number was, after all, just where your official 'chair' was - not where you actually accomplished anything. He had no doubt this would require peeking his head in a few doors, asking an office assistant or 10, following some dumb signs up stairs and through corridors, only to get yelled at, and locate a fortifying flask, before he found his target.

50 minutes and two scoldings later proved him right, but he had what he needed. Which is to say he had a new destination. The Bitter End.

An appropriately named bar after a day like his.

stststststststststststststststst

Knock. Knock. "Captain Pike?"

A distinctive and familiar female voice echoed from outside Christopher Pike's office. He couldn't help the smile that naturally rose to his face.

"Come in!"

Leanne Carter was the best damn first office he'd ever had. A little green, but intelligent, competent, and with a sense of humor. Didn't hurt that she was easy on the eyes. She still was, he saw, as she entered the room with a big smile on her angular face. "Captain, good to see you!"

"It's Chris, Leanne, Chris! You don't work for me anymore."

"I may not work for you, sir, but you will forever be my Captain." She smiled sideways in a mock nostalgic airy voice.

Pike leaned his head back in an exasperated laugh. "Sit down, before you make me feel old."

She did, with a smile, and they shared a silent moment of mutual enjoyment. Leanne, of course, was the first to speak.

"So – how's life? Anything exciting happen in the past five years?" She looked down for a place to sit and chose the chair closest to the corner of his desk.

"Has it been that long?" Pike asked, genuinely surprised.

"Mmm Hmmm. A few long range explorations here, a few trade missions there . . . you know how it is." Pike did. He really did. "I was back on Earth two years back, but it was for quick leave to see my brother married. Didn't get the chance to swing by. You really been at the academy all this time?"

"Yep." He said with obvious exasperation. "I had some family obligations at the beginning, but now it's just a waiting game." He didn't hide his frustration. "I'm holding out for the Enterprise, but it's completion date keeps getting pushed out."

Leanne snickered. "You always were a snob. They announced that thing three years ago and your telling me it's still nowhere near done?"

"Perfection takes time, Leanne. You know it used to take us 10 years just to build a bridge over the bay?"

"The bay bridge lecture again? Really?" she raised a brow, her eyes flashing in tolerant amusement. "You and I both know this isn't about perfection, it's about the Tech Division wanting to prototype every damn widget they can dream up using your ship as a canvas." She smiled, because it was such an ingrained part of Starfleet construction that it had become a running joke. "Is it confirmed you'll be the captain?"

"Unofficially," Pike couldn't help but reply smugly.

She smiled, but shook her head. "Not sure it's worth taking the bench for 8 years, or whatever it'll end up being, but I'm happy for you. I think maybe I'm just more prone to boredom."

"Academy life's not so bad." She raised an eyebrow. Pike continued blithely. "Ahemm. I mean it. I complained about low standards and officer training so much while I was in the captain's chair – it feels good to contribute to the solution, instead of spending egregious lengths of time lecturing young, overly ambitious first officers about it while in the field."

She tilted her head to the side in doubtful acceptance.

Pike grasped for a change in topic, "Why are you here, anyway? I assume it's not just to mock me and my austere Academy position?"

"Gevertz asked me to come speak to his class about Tarsus - Intro to Ethics. You know. My ship is docked at Sol station getting serviced, and Gevertz has been watching the ship registries. Tenacious man." Leanne avoided Pike's eyes. It was a foregone conclusion that Gevertz would have asked Pike to speak before asking Leanne, and Tarsus had been a rough time for them both.

"Hhun." Pike brought his eyes to the ceiling in thought for moment. "How did it go?"

She shrugged, but it was a tense motion. "The students were engaged, and asking questions, which is a nice step up from what I remember of some of my own time here." She gave him a tight smile.

Pike rolled his eyes.

"They didn't like hearing about soldiers going free after the trials." Her mouth twisted wryly, "Not that I did either, at the time. I would never tell a class of cadets this, but-" she paused, her eyes moving to the window, "I often wonder how many guilty men went free due to lack of witness accounts. I'm sure some cases never even came to light."

Pike cast his eyes anywhere but at his friends face, nodding morosely. He might never know whether Jim's account would have added anything new to the official record, but he had gone against every tenant of Starfleet's regulations and code of honor to keep it quiet. He felt certain the guilt would be written on his face.

"Chris . . .", Leanne hesitantly broke the long silence, and Pike stirred at the use of his first name. "Whatever happened to that boy you rescued? the one you spent so much time with, back on the Yorktown? I . . today brought up a lot of old memories and . . . well . . I've thought about him, and all those other kids, more than once over the past 10 years."

She paused, her eyes going into the distance as she thought.

"When I'm feeling uplifted I'll imagine them happy and healthy, just starting University, or taking their entrance exams out of high school. I'll see them working at a restaurant and eating themselves sick. But sometimes . . . I wonder if we did enough for them. When they got home, I mean. I . . . I want to say that we did everything we could - that Starfleet did everything it could for them. But — I'm not sure we did. That Earth did. We just sent them back to any families that were left, funneled the rest through foster homes, and moved on. It all leaves me wondering, mmm, how they are, I guess. You know what I mean? I haven't been able to get it out of my head."

Pike cleared his throat somewhat painfully, as if his sinuses were being influenced by his mood. "Yes. I do know what you mean. I do."

She waited, clearly wanting more from him.

But Pike turned away, his eyes resting on a distant point outside his window. They sat like that for several moments, in not quite awkward silence. It was dark outside, which was somehow surprising. The sun must have been near to setting when Leanne had knocked on his door.

"Ahhemm." He cleared his throat again, thinking, then coming to a decision. "Do you wanna catch a drink?" He turned to look her in the eyes as he voiced the question, and waited but a second before continuing, "I think we need some whiskey. No synthahol."

Leanne smiled. "Lead the way, captain."

stststststststststststststststst

Jim's eyes immediately picked out the cluster of blue shirts in the back corner of The Bitter End. There were three of them - two with their backs to the door, and one facing him, all with a pint of what looked like an ale of some kind. The face he could see did not look familiar. Not that he would expect Tom to look familiar per-se, but . . . he didn't see any resemblance to the boy he had known. No doubt Tom had his back to the room.

Time to turn on the Kirk charm and wind his way over there. Maybe. Jim took a deep breath. No, this definitely requires a drink.

His eyes swung back to the bar to look for an open slot. He spotted one just between a noisy Andorian and a red shirt and began angling that way. He was more than halfway there when a yell cut the noise, echoing a name that seemed to resemble his own.

"Jim! Jim!"

Jim reluctantly turned his head towards the sound.

"Jimbo! Jim! Stars man, did you burst both your ear drums when you were a kid? A man could go hoarse trying to get your attention!" Bones' familiar irritability would almost have been refreshing if it hadn't been so unwelcome at that moment, in that bar, with Tom just a few tables away and Jim already struggling to summon the courage for a very private mission.

He sighed, but remembering Bones' disappointment of earlier, he began to feel the competing anxiety of not wanting to further alienate his friend. He plastered a fake smile on his face and turned to meet Bone's searching eyes.

"Bones! What are you doing here?"

McCoy looked tolerantly affronted, "Same reason you're here, I assume - to drink! You know how hard it is to get a solid, non synthahol based, honest to god milk stout in this god forsaken town? You'd think cows and roasted malts had been banned out-right, the way they try to push that overly hopped bullshit they're calling an IPA these days." Bones rolled his eyes for effect, and Jim made a mental sigh. Bones had an opinion about everything, but most especially his alcohol.

"You know, Jim," Bones said after a pause, watching Jim turn back to the bar and ask for just such a one of those overly hopped monstrosities California was calling an IPA. "Somehow I feel like my passion for fine beverages is lost on you, kid," his voice dropped into a grumble, "and apparently everyone I've ever met, if my ex is anything to go by."

Jim shifted uncomfortably as he struggled for a response while waited for his drink, credit chip in hand. He finally quipped with admirable levity, "What ever happened to the Bones I used to know? the one who kept a flask of whatever was handy in his pocket and didn't give a damn?"

Bones mock-glared, (though, with him it always a little hard to tell to be honest). "I never said I wasn't a pragmatist, kid - when your bank account looks like a desert in a drought, you gotta take what you can get. But when a man has choices, he choses wisely." Bones meant it as a joke, but it came out more sagely. Almost prophetic sounding. Jim certainly didn't think it was funny. His smile slipped, and he fell into thought.

Bones sighed once again, but for once Jim knew it was entirely out of frustration. The doctor was in the unenviable position of battling between the better of two evils - hovering by an incommunicative Jim or returning to what Jim guessed was the group of cadets from dinner, which Bones no doubt found more annoying then they were entertaining. Jim's stoicism sealed the deal, however, and Bones finally turned to withdraw. "We've got a table by the door, if you're joining us," he stated as token invitation.

Jim shifted his jaw forward and nodded his head in an expression of acknowledgement, and retrieved his drink from the bar tender. At last he was alone, with a drink in his hand and precious little room to think. He took a deep, fortifying drink from his beer, leaned his back against the bar counter, and re-assessed the room. Bones and their group of fellow students were, as stated, sitting at a small table by the door; the blue shirts were still sitting in the back corner to the left as he faced the door; a rowdy group of what he pegged as local, non-Starfleet college kids was laughing to the far right; and assorted pairs of people from different walks lined the bar. Pretty typical, all in all.

He focused his peripheral vision on the table to his left. If the assistant he'd spoken with was correct, then Tom had to be one of those two officers with their backs to him. The one on the right had thick, curly black hair, while the one on the left had short, brown hair. Did Tom have black hair? brown? did it curl as a kid? He couldn't remember. How could he not remember? He remembered greasy, matted hair, but that was true of all of them.

He caught another blue shape out of his right eye. Who did I miss? A tall shape moved toward the back table with intent and Jim barely contained his surprise when he finally registered that it was Bones. Bones?

Sure enough, McCoy was quickly lifting his glass towards the small group and smiling with surprising congeniality. They knew each other. Or . . . no - maybe he just knew one of the others in the group? Maybe they shared a class? It should not have been surprising. They both worked in the medical field, and while Jim knew, from reading his file, that Tom was much more research focused than Bones, there was really no reason for them not to know each other. Weird.

Still, this was an opportunity for introduction that he couldn't ignore. He took a deep breath, holding tightly onto his beer, slapped a wide smile onto his face, and marched over.

"Hey Bones! Who ya got here?" He patted McCoy's shoulder roughly in imitation of jovial emphasis.

Bones immediately rolled his eyes, "Changed your mind, I see? Well if you'd've used your eyeballs, you might 'of noticed that we're all in blue, Jim."

Jim raised an eyebrow in dumb innocence, giving the group a quick once over. His smile nearly fell when he recognized his childhood friend. A scar ran from his left temple down past his eye, only somewhat masked by his dark curly hair, and there was no mistaking the crooked smile, the shape of his pointed jaw, and the somewhat bushy eyebrows. He wouldn't have thought he'd recognize him before that moment, but it was plain as day.

Tom wasn't looking at him during this brief inspection - he had looked down at his glass while smiling at McCoy's antics. Jim therefore caught the full change of expressions when he finally looked up for the real introductions.

"This, my ignorant friend," Bones was saying, gesturing to the men in blue, "is a collection of the smartest damn people on campus, if you ask me - which of course no one ever does." He pointed to each in turn, "This is Arun Kaiser, Tom Leighton, and Derek Deshinks, all researchers up at Medical. And this, my sorry colleagues," he grabbed Jim by the shoulder, "is my friend and permanent pain in the ass, Jim Kirk."

Tom's bushy eyebrows had begun frowning ever so slightly as soon as his eyes landed on Jim, as if being presented with a puzzle he was struggling to solve, as is often the case when you're trying to place a face that you think you've seen before.

"You a cadet?" Derek stated the obvious to continue the conversation.

"Uhh - yep." Jim held tightly to his sloppy grin. "Command track. Met poor Bones here on the transport up, puking his guts out." Bones glared, but Derek and Arun laughed.

"'Bones'? that's a great nickname for ya' Leonard. We're gonna have to start callin' ya that, aren't we Tom?" Arun joked, looking over at Leighton. Tom, however, was still frowning slightly, unwilling to ignore his puzzle for social niceties.

"Uh . . where did you uh . . . grow up . . . Jim?" Tom managed to get out.

The noise in the bar was starting to increase, as more people began trickling in after work. Jim had to strain a bit to hear the question, only to see Bones roll his eyes yet again, and exclaim "Don't tell me you grew up on a farm, too, Tom? I only need one 'butter-on-a-stick' eater in my life."

Jim laughed uncomfortably, then forced himself to be loud enough for the others to hear, "Iowa, mostly. I was off-planet for a stint when I was younger, lived in San Francisco for a short span, but . . uh . . . mostly Iowa."

Tom's eyes narrowed further.

"Stupid question-", Arun interjected, "-Iowa is a state, right? I'm still trying to figure out the geography down here — I grew up on Europa."

Europa was a lunar colony, Kirk knew, but that was all he knew. "Yep, or former state, really, after Earth unified. But uh, you're not missing much - a lot of corn fields, shipyards, and manufactories." Jim shrugged with a closed lip half smile, as if to say 'that's that'.

Arun was smiling with at the brusque response when the background hum suddenly increased exponentially, and Jim felt the warm air of several bodies surround them.

"Hey Jim! McCoy! We decided to come see what you were both up to over here, with all these boys in blue!" Jennifer was shouting in his ear. Uhura loitered uncomfortably, while Akmeed and Kalem hovered in conversation, and another cadet - Chad Li - sipped a beer uninterestedly.

Jim couldn't completely hide a cringe at the crowd's arrival. His false smile fell into a grim expression, and he looked towards Tom from the corners of his eyes – the object of his mission so close and yet so distant. He was surprised, however, to find matching eyes on his. They were dark brown, Tom's eyes, intense and unabashed. There was nothing in Tom's mask of an expression to indicate that he knew Jim's secret, and yet something in those eyes said otherwise.

Kirk abruptly turned his gaze away. He felt unexpectedly overcome by a wave of cold insecurity, and fought the urge to excuse himself and flee from the bar. Did Tom want to meet JT? a boy most assumed long did? Want to have the horrors of his youth dredged up? Want to, worst of all, have this surprise sprung upon him in public surrounded by friends and colleagues? Jim sure as hell didn't.

He'd always had a problem with not thinking before he acted. And coming to this bar was following terribly true to form.

". . . Delahoy looked ready to shoot someone, and I'm not talking about on stun – I mean, this is what, the 3rd time you've ditched her class in the past month, Kirk?"

Jim forced his increasingly morose thoughts to his ever-present classmates. He shrugged, having no desire to enter the conversation. Again his eyes were drawn to Tom, but he forced them down to look at his feet instead. Sweet stars in a spiral arm, but when had he grown so cowardly?

Bones was giving him 'the eye' again – that look that meant he knew something was wrong, but wasn't going to call Jim out on it, except through unusually intense eye contact that communicated something perilously close to pity . . . which pretty much did amount to calling Jim out on it, so really the man should probably amend his approach. In any case, it did mean that the conversation was about to be quickly redirected.

"If you guys came over here to talk about class you can just turn right back around. Over here," and Bones pointed to the circle of blue shirts around him, "you can talk about the fascinating intricacies of the medical profession, or the etymology of a good beer. Everything else is off the table."

Jim did smile ever so slightly at that. He loved that man.

Kalem, surprisingly, seized both those topics with enthusiasm, which gave Kirk time to decide that his awkwardness could best be assuaged by fetching another glass of beer.

He had a second IPA in his hands, and one rather inspired shot of bourbon in his belly when he found himself once again angling toward the table of blue shirts.

It was only to be stopped short by Tom himself blocking his path. Jim blinked in surprise, but Tom's face remained impassive. "I was gonna step out for a breather — care to join?"

Kirk looked at the glass in his hand, and back up to Tom, then back to the glass.

"Sounds good. Let me just, uh, take care of this."

He brought the beer to his lips and chugged. It was something of a surprised he could still down a beer in full, but, as Bones had said, when a man has choices, he chooses.

He put the glass down on the nearest table and followed Tom out.

Tom led them out the front door and some 20 ft down the block before stopping. Jim expected him to immediately launch into questions, but instead the young doctor leaned against the wall and let his eyes drift up to the stars above them, hands falling into his pockets. Jim stood awkwardly on the sidewalk listening to his slow, enviously relaxed breathing, before indecisively stepping up beside him and mimicking his pose, back against the wall.

He fought the urge to fidget.

"Took you long enough."

Jim almost started in surprise, his face swinging towards Tom, who wore a slight smile, "What?"

"It's been 10 years, JT. You couldn't have picked up a comm unit?"

Jim blushed. "I—I um . . . I was living under a rock, what can say?" The retort was awkward, but somehow Jim, too, found himself smiling.

"You were hacking interstellar communication grids before the age of 12, man, I don't buy it. How much chocolate cake was under that rock?"

"Chocolate cake? pft. I wouldn't settle for anything less than a chocolate fountain. With strawberries." Jim was all out grinning now, as was Tom.

"I can't believe you're alive." Tom almost whispered, then clasped Jim's arm and pulled him into a hug. Jim returned it with his full strength, desperately happy to find this lost friend once again. "I can't believe you're alive."

They parted and gave each other a solid look over. The endeavor was intentionally over-exaggerated by both parties, ending with a nod, and a verbal "Looking good" . . . except their timing was such that they spoke in tandem, and then of course had to laugh at their own parroting.

"You really do look good, you know," Tom was meeting Jim's eyes, but Jim shied away. "The last time I saw you was in a holovid, being carried out of Kodos' dungeon." Tom was looking Jim right in the eyes, and so Jim felt the full weight of that painful image caught in time. He dropped his gaze. "Most of the kids thought you'd died from complications, after the rescue and all that; I didn't want to believe it, but . . . after a few years . . . I . . . avoided thinking about it, to tell you the truth. I should have looked for you." Tom's eyes were on the sky now, but no less serious. "I've thought about you a lot—our cave a lot. I'm sorry I never looked for you, JT. I should have looked for you. I'm sorry."

Jim's eyes were wide in disbelief, and for a rare moment he found himself completely speechless. There was a long silence then. Not quite awkward, not fully comfortable.

Jim struggled for any sort of matching apology—something to convey just how wrong Tom was and awful Jim himself was, but, unable to hold the silence any longer, he only managed a quiet, "We need whiskey."

Tom let out a breath, "Amen, brother."

Authors Note: Hey guys, major apologies for the continued delays in postings. I'd like to give a sob story of life, travel, work, etc and finish with an aspirational claim that 'it will never happen again'. . . but really, the muse if fickle, I'm busy, and it just . . . didn't happen! *tear* *sad face* :(

All I can say now is, I'm super happy to get this chapter out, and I don't plan on abandoning. I'm aware that is poor consolation. *sigh* *alas*

Your reviews serve as tremendous reminders of my duty to the readers and a prod at my muse, so thanks SO much to those of you who've left reviews! Despite my radio silence, they really were appreciated, and left me with a warm and fuzzy and inspired feeling that definitely powered some of this chapter. :)