Chapter Text
Dear Jim,
When Dr. McCoy recovered your journal, I was comatose in a military hospital in Saigon. You believed I was consigned to death. It was a fair assumption, given it was the Doctor’s initial prognosis, and for that, I cannot fault you.
Unfortunately, due to the war, I lost all contact with the surviving members of Team Enterprise until 1984, when Leonard knocked on my front door. I had recently purchased a house in San Francisco, and I did not anticipate the ability of former acquaintances to determine my whereabouts. Despite my father’s willingness to reconnect after the war (in part, I believe, due to my Purple Heart), I had decided to remain off the grid.
It was raining that day, and as I opened the door to such a familiar face I thought back to all those years ago, when you had entered our small barracks with what would be our second to last mission in a tour that should have lasted much longer than it did. I will never understand their willingness to task us with something so difficult. I know you did not see it at the time, but I believe that Chekov may have been on to something with what he said that day - that, despite the experience of other teams, we had something they did not.
We had you, Jim. You were the sun, and we were mere satellites. But I reflect on it now and realize - you could not have known. You could not have known your own gravity. But I am losing focus of what matters. That happens often, nowadays, as my mind tends to wander.
Leonard brought with him a black leather-bound journal, and I made him tea as he told me his story - returning to the barracks, to our abandoned camp outside of My Lai. (I am glad, in a way, that you did not learn to live of the massacre that had occurred there in 1968. You had already endured so much.) He told me the story of how he found your words, penned in water stained shorthand on crinkled pages. He told me that he had filled in what he knew, between your final entry and your final moments.
“It doesn’t belong to me,” he said when I insisted he keep it.
“You were his closest friend, Leonard,” I remember protesting, but he shoved the book into my hands without looking at my face.
“Maybe I was his closest friend, Spock, but you meant more to him than anyone else on our squad. And you - you deserve to have this. His story might be over, but there are still pages left to be filled.”
I took the journal, Jim. I was certain you meant to keep it secret, and I locked it in the top drawer of my desk, placed it out of sight because I could not bear to think about you in that way. I could not bear to look at your words - I had not seen you die, and so I could continue to believe, if just for a moment, that you were alive. That you were breathing and existing somewhere in this world, even if it was not at my side. I could not read your personal thoughts, violating your privacy, simply because you were buried six feet under the earth in Arlington with a flag draped across your chest.
And I continued living. There were others, over the years - of course there were. Your absence left a chasm in my chest, a deep well of loneliness, and I tried desperately to fill it, but I could never settle. I would wake to dreams of your cheeks, your lips, and I would feel guilt settle in my stomach, low and cold like stone. I know you would wish me to be happy, Jim, but I ask you - could you have gone on? Could you have learned to love someone else, when half of your soul was missing?
Perhaps you could. Perhaps you were always a better man than me, but we will never know, for I was the one who survived. It is curious, that you were the one to die. Your resilience, your absolute stubbornness and insistence at clinging to life, almost made me believe in luck. But that was it, was it not? The stars burned in your eyes, a galaxy of possibilities stretched out at your fingertips. Always ready to forge your own solution. You used to say that you did not believe in no-win scenarios, and I often wish you had remembered that, before charging into the fray, your gun hot in your hand.
If you had done so, would you still be alive?
It is these possibilities that haunted me, you see, and of course this is why I could not read your journal. But as the years wore on, as my body deteriorated with every passing day, I began to wonder what was documented in your words. What secrets, insights, your thoughts might hold. I reconnected with the surviving members of our Team Enterprise, and we meet in San Francisco each year and toast to Uhura, Chekov, Scotty, and you. Scotty died a year after the incident in a night raid; Sulu passed away four years ago from lung cancer. Doctor McCoy’s heart gave out in his sleep. His funeral was two months ago, and such a large crowd attended I was incapable of counting them all. He saved so many lives during his life, affected so many people.
Suddenly, Jim, I felt so very alone.
It was selfishness that drove me to unlocking the bottom drawer of my desk, to settling down on my leather sofa with a cup of spice tea in my hand. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine your weight next to mine, your thigh pressed up against my own, your light laughter in my ear.
Jim, I am glad I did not read it sooner, for I fear it would have broken me. We were all fragile upon return, shepherded to counselors that were just beginning to perfect their craft, turning all too often to drugs or alcohol to soothe the ache. I had pieced my soul back together with your image as my guide.
Even now, I find myself asking - what if we had been born in a different time? What if we had never been forced to be soldiers? What did they turn us into - could we have been more?
The government has recently repealed their law on gay people serving in the military. I attended the rallies, old man though I am, because I wonder what we might have been, had society not forced us to pretend to be something we were not.
I asked you, once, if you thought the world was too small. You told me that some people are too big for this world, but you did not include yourself amongst their kind. I have read your innermost thoughts, have seen you bare your soul, and I have come to the conclusion that you were wrong.
You said that most people were content to stare at the earth, to till their fields and sow their crops until they were buried in the same soil that gave them life. Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam—and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel?
I asked you, once, if you believed in fate. You told me that “shit happens.” You turned the question back on me, and I found I did not have a good answer. I said we each have a first, best destiny, and you asked me if this was ours.
I know now that we did not deserve this fate, as surely as I knew it then. But I also know that this was not our first, best destiny. I have long wondered what yours was, but I know that mine was to be by your side, in whatever capacity. I know that I have failed you, and that I have waited many years to rectify the issue. I know that I must wait a bit longer, before I can hope to see you again.
But I have found myself wondering what we might have been, in that life that is our first, best destiny. What would we have been, Jim? Would we have been good men? And I wonder - would we have found each other?
If my fate is to be by your side, I believe I would find you. Given any universe, any permutation of chances, of choices, I would find you, and I would not let you go. You could be a teacher, a priest, a killer, and I would stand by you.
But I do not believe you belong in those places, as those people, in those times. I am struck by something you wrote, back before we had ever met, back before the moon landing and decades before the first shuttle landed on Mars. On June 8th, 1969, you wrote about a meteor shower - I remember this passage in particular because I watched it, too.
You hoped, as Kennedy did, for a different future. One where the space - the final frontier - would be a realm of peace, of exploration. A vast stretch of undiscovered country that we could see as not something to exploit, but something to venture into for the sake of the new worlds and new civilizations that could be found amongst the countless stars. You wrote, Give it two, three hundred years, and I’d bet every penny to my name that there’s going to be some sap wandering the stars with the same romantic ideals, the same delusions of galactic peace.
After too many decades to count, Jim, I finally know the place where you belong. All you ever wanted was to taste stardust on your tongue, because you are too big for this earth. You once called me Star-Splitter, and you were right, for the Star-Splitter is a telescope, a means by which to examine the cosmos. And I would be there, for you, as your companion, as your partner, as we traveled the galaxy - because in the end, you are Brad McLaughlin. You are the man who would burn down his house just so that he could see the stars.
I would like to think that our family would be there, too - that we were destined for something greater than what we were given. We might have sailed the stars, like the mariners of old. With you as our Captain, we could have endured any hardship, any struggle. We would not only have been something great, but something truly good.
But soon, Jim, I will follow you over waves of glass to that green shore where the sun is swift to rise. And perhaps, if I am lucky, you will be there to greet me at the dock, a smile on your face and a compass in your hand.
I would not mind traveling with you, Jim, as our journey ended before it ever had a chance to begin. And, if I am being honest, it is not the destination that matters, as much as it is the journey to get there. I would like that second chance with you.
Perhaps the stars will be kind to us, but I do not know - I don’t know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.
I will see you soon, Jim. Until then - I love you. I have always loved you. And that is no different from the way it ever stood.
Love,
Your Star-Splitter