AN: This is a Tarsus IV fic, set immediately following "Conscience of the King". Minor warning for Lt. Riley's mouth. He thought it was justified. Enjoy.

The Captain was an absolute bastard.

It wasn't that he was wrong – on the contrary, everything he said was, if not completely right, at least a hell of a lot better than the platitudes most people tried to offer him.

Those goddamn pretty words had cost him his justice.

The fact that Kodos had ended up dead anyway was irrelevant, he told himself. That goddamn bastard Captain with his stupid words had taken away any chance he had of seeing Kodos suffer. Suffer like Kevin's parents had suffered.

Kirk had the nerve to act like he knew what he was talking about when the man had never been anywhere like Tarsus, never come that close to dirty death. He had no right to tell Kevin what to do.

And on top of that, while his mind was busy fuming at the unfairness of life in general and his in particular, his body was sitting in Engineering.

Goddamn Engineering. The place he'd been promoted out of just two months ago, and now Captain Goddamn Kirk had stuck him right back there, and for no apparent reason. It was salt in the wound.

Lt. Kevin Riley was in a very bad mood.

A beep sounded from his console.

"Lt. Kevin Riley to bridge, please. Repeat, Lt. Riley to bridge." He stabbed the button with his finger.

"Acknowledged. I'm on my way." He finished off the instant coffee he'd been nursing all shift (damn that stuff tasted awful) and headed up.

The bridge was bustling with twice the normal activity when Kevin walked in, Alpha shift heading straight for the rec rooms and drink dispensers as Beta shift, all polished and pressed, took their stations. He paused at the threshold. There didn't seem to be any emergency, not that he could think of one requiring a junior communications – sorry, engineering – officer anyway. He turned to leave.

The hand on his shoulder was large and warm.

"Would you see me in my ready-room, please, Lieutenant?" At least the bastard was being polite.

"Yes, sir." Maybe now he'd finally get some answers as to why the hell Kirk had demoted him.

Captain Kirk's ready-room was small and unremarkable. It contained a desk and three chairs, two of which were soon occupied by Kevin and Kirk himself.

Kirk rested his arms on the tabletop and trained those oddly familiar eyes on Kevin's face.

"I'd like to apologize, Lieutenant." Kirk sounded exhausted.

"What for, sir?"

"For sticking you back down in Engineering. I was… I was trying to protect you." He swallowed. "I'm sorry I didn't do a better job at it." Kevin was stunned.

"Sir?"

"As of now, you're back in communications." Huh. Maybe the Captain wasn't so bad after all. "Report to Lieutenant Uhura at the beginning of Delta shift. She'll get you situated on the bridge."

"The bridge, sir?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. Unless you think you aren't ready?" Kirk's speech was clipped and cold, as though he didn't care what he was saying, as though he was thinking of something else.

Or trying not to think of something else.

"I'm ready, sir."

"Good." Neither made a move to stand. Kevin knew that if this had been the only thing Kirk had wanted to tell him, he would have done so on the bridge, or in the corridor.

"Why were you protecting me, sir?"

"Because you saw Kodos's face, Lieutenant." Kevin stared. No one was supposed to know that. Not even the whole of the Admiralty was privy to the identities of the Tarsus Eight.

"How the hell do you know that, sir?" Kirk chuckled – actually chuckled – and that quiet sound was enough to drive Kevin into a fury. How dare he laugh at him? How dare he laugh at what Kevin had survived?

If Kevin had been a bit more perceptive, or a bit less angry, he might have noticed the tickle of familiarity in his brain at the sound of Kirk's laugh.

"I know a lot of things, Lieutenant Riley." Kevin narrowed his eyes.

"Then do you know who the other seven are?"

"Eight."

"What?"

"The other eight," Kirk repeated. "Nine people saw the face of Kodos and lived to tell the tale. Seven have been killed. You are still alive, and one other." Kevin shook his head, his fists clenching under the table.

"No. You're lying. You're lying!" The man had the gall to smile.

"Why would I lie to you? Why does the idea that you were wrong make you so angry?"

"Because…" Because it meant he could have left a friend for dead. Because it meant J.T. could still be alive, and Kevin had left him, had taken the word of the goddamn Starfleet officers that came to the hospital and hadn't bothered to look for the boy who had saved them all.

When they had told him those eight names, himself among them, he'd found the older kids of their little band and they had told him what it meant: since J.T. had seen Kodos, and J.T. wasn't on the list, J.T. had to be dead.

"Who is the ninth?" he heard himself say.

Kirk didn't answer.

"Tell me! Tell me now!" His hands curled into fists at his sides. When Kirk spoke, his voice was quiet.

"I think you know, Kev." Kev. J.T. had always called him that.

"You're a bastard." Kirk smiled, slow and sad.

"Perhaps."

"He's alive, isn't he? He's alive, and you won't tell me where he is." Kevin stood and leaned across the desk. "Tell me now, you hear me? Now!"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I've told you everything."

"You… you…" Kevin stared into the Captain's eyes. His gaze traced the pale lines of old scars on the other man's cheeks and forehead, lingered on the laugh-lines beside the eyes that framed a slightly crooked nose. His voice shrank to a whisper. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I thought you were dead." He paused, staring somewhere in the distance for a long moment. "I was… I was in the hospital for a long time. No one could tell me what happened to you, to all of you. Then… it was months, before I knew the truth. You were all off planet by then, and I was headed back to Iowa… they, Starfleet, they didn't know I'd seen him. Not then. They found out eventually, but I've always been good with computers… no one connected Jim Kirk with J.T., no one but the admirals – I could raise the clearance on the files, but I couldn't delete them. Besides, it would have made people suspicious." He grinned. "I didn't trust Starfleet then, you see. I never thought I'd be… I just wanted to forget it, Kev."

"I think we all did."

"Can you… can you forgive me?" Kevin stared, surprised.

"There's nothing to forgive. You… you saved us all, J.T. I've never forgotten that."

"All?" Kevin smiled.

"You didn't know? We all lived. I see the others once in a while, and they're mostly happy."

"I couldn't find your records. I didn't know most of your last names. I knew you were alive, and Tom – I saw the list of witnesses." Kevin shook his head.

"I still can't believe… I mean, we all thought… I've got to tell them."

"They won't be angry?" Kevin let out a long breath.

"Captain, if I thought… if there was anything I could have done, to forget about Tarsus… I would have done it in a second. We all would have." Kirk smiled wryly.

"Take it from me, Kev, it doesn't work. Even if the computers don't know, you will. You'll remember."

"Yes, I remembered. I remembered you." Kirk's eyes snapped up to Kevin's face, but he didn't speak. Kevin took a deep breath and went on. "It's why I joined Starfleet, you know. I wanted to save people. Like… like you saved us. I was six, J.T. I didn't have a chance in hell of surviving on my own, and neither did any of the others. You're the reason we're all still alive."

"Not all. Tom… Tom should be alive. I should have listened, I should have seen! And you, I should have protected you better… she fooled me. I thought I could use her, get close to her father, make her tell me what she knew. I never dreamed… I never wanted her to hurt you."

"I know."

"I failed you."

"You saved me."

"I…"

"J.T... Captain… I wouldn't be alive without you. I'd be nothing but more dust on Tarsus, and no one would've been left to know that bastard Kodos's face." Kirk tilted his head and looked Kevin straight in the eye.

"You were angry. You thought I had no right to stop you from killing him." Kevin jerked back in his seat, surprised.

"Was I that transparent?" Kirk had read him as easily as a child's picture-book.

"No." Kirk offered no further explanation, and Kevin didn't push it. If Kirk really was as brilliant as people said, divining Kevin's intentions would be the least he was capable of.

After watching J.T. keep two dozen kids alive for months on Tarsus IV, Kevin thought any rumors of his capability were probably understatements.

"They'd like to hear from you, you know. The others."

"Hmm."

"I mean it. They'd want to know you're alive." Kirk snorted.

"Yeah, because they'd definitely believe it. 'Hi, my name's Jim Kirk and I'm actually someone you knew when you were a kid, on Tarsus, and you thought I was dead but I'm not. Surprise!'"

"I believed you."

"Yeah, why did you do that?" Kevin shrugged. To be honest, he wasn't really sure.

"I believe you, and they trust me."

"And you really think they'll be willing to listen?"

"One way to find out."

Asunción Lichtermann, née Lopez, was busily feeding carrots into the food processor when the communications unit let out a series of shrill beeps.

"Could you get it, Liesel?" Her daughter jumped up from where she had been studying at the dining room table and pressed the button to turn on the miniature video screen.

"Lichtermann house, Liesel speaking."

"Hello, Liesel. This is Kevin Riley. May I speak to your mother?" She turned and hollered over her shoulder.

"Mama! It's for you!" Asunción sighed.

"Yes, I could hear that." Wiping her hands on her apron, she hurried over to the video screen. "It's lovely to see you again, Kevin. How are things up in space?" He smiled, but there was something nervous in his eyes, in the way he kept pulling down the hem of his tunic. Reading people was a skill she had picked up on Tarsus, when she was seventeen and running every day, the oldest of J.T.'s little band.

At ten, her daughter didn't know why her mama cooked with every part of the animal, throwing nearly nothing away, or why the food synthesizer needed a fingerprint before it would give you any portion larger than normal.

That had been her husband Franz's idea, from before Liesel was born. He had come home one day to find her throwing up over the toilet after eating more than a dozen protein bars. The only explanation she could give was that you had to eat when you could – you never knew if there'd be food tomorrow. J.T. had told her that.

If Asunción had her way, Liesel would never know the fear or hunger that made someone that way.

"Great, everything's great." He took a deep breath as if steeling himself for some task. "Asunción, I've found him."

"Found whom…" J.T. He had to mean J.T. "I thought…" Kevin reached out and adjusted the angle of the camera. A man stood next to him, only a few years younger than Asunción herself. He wore Starfleet uniform, with three stripes on each sleeve - Kevin had one. A captain, then. He was not J.T. – J.T. had always hated Starfleet, had blamed them for Tarsus, for not getting there fast enough.

Then the man whistled, and she froze. Three short notes at the same pitch. One longer, slightly lower. Four short notes ascending. She translated.

I am back. It is safe. I am J.T. The whistle code. No one else knew the whistle code, no one but their little band, and not even all of them – Kevin had been only seven on Tarsus, much too young to learn, and others had been even younger.

"You… I… how?"

"Mama?" Liesel's voice sounded from behind her, quiet and confused. She turned.

"Could you give me a minute, mija? I need to speak to these men alone." She smiled. "Would you like to finish the carrots?" All of ten years old, Liesel's eyes shone with delight at being assigned such grown up responsibilities.

"Of course, mama." She headed for the kitchen, and Asunción activated the privacy screen, sealing off the living room from the rest of the house.

"You expect me to believe that you are J.T. simply on the basis of Kevin's word and an old whistle code?" The man brought his hand up level with his chest, extending his index and middle fingers. He moved it back and forth in a cutting motion through the air.

No. Asunción smiled.

"Apparently not." She looked into those eyes again, those familiar eyes.

Asunción had been raised Catholic, but those months on Tarsus IV had done more to strip away her faith than any teenage rebellion had before. Still, the word that came to mind as she stared at the video screen was milagrito.

Little miracle.

Another friend was alive, one whom she'd never thought she'd see again. It was incredible.

"So, what is your real name after all?" He smiled.

"James T. Kirk."