A Familiar Grave
by Rob Morris

Richard Daystrom shook his head.

"Thomas, I don't go near cemeteries. End of discussion. M5 filled up enough of them to last me a lifetime."

Thomas Sorel shook his head.

"Richard, you are being a total bit---"

"If you use that word again, you and me, we're done! I'll meet you back at the transport. Peter, tell your grandfather about how people should treat one another--do you and Saavik play these kind of sick games?"

"Doctor Daystrom, I'll give you the same answer Granpa Tom gave me when I asked him about you two--Its None Of Your Business."

Thomas watched Daystrom walk off, and the powerful man hung his head. At times like these, he wished he were secretly Vulcan instead of Romulan.

"Peter, I have to go after him. He makes it all so much more difficult than it has to be. Lately, he is barely worth the effort."

At the cemetery gates, Peter walked in alone. There were real ghosts here, but Peter didn't bother their rest. He wished other ghosts would return the favor. Then, he reached for her, but she wasn't there. He nearly panicked, til he remembered that T'Pau had annulled his marriage to Saavik, using her Psi to sever their bond. After a vicious fight, Peter hopped a transport to Earth, hoping to forget his adopted sister and knowing he never would. His grandfather had suggested paying respects at the Kirk family plot in Riverside. Passing a great many Kirks, O'Reillys, and others, he came to the most recent set of graves. He spoke in turn to each one.

GEORGE SAMUEL KIRK, SENIOR
2200-2255, STARFLEET

"I'm really sorry I never met you directly, sir. But I know you're with Dad in The City. Know this--you will be avenged. The Beast will fall--even if I have to do it without my heart. I can beat Ghidorah without her--I think. But living? That could be a real problem."

BRIANNA O'REILLY KIRK,
2203 - 2268

"I'm sorry to be bitter, Grandma--but those were two difficult years, living with you. Jim-Dad--says its because I reminded you of him. Well, screw that. How dare you work out your generational issues on me? I loved you, and never gave you grief. You chained me to my damned studies---I had no social life. Saavik is my first--for everything! Grandma, I Love You. But sheltering me and trying to control me only helped the Hall to break me, on that night. I'm sorry for causing your death. But that doesn't mean you had the right to try and raise me like Dad and--er, Dad."

He hadn't caused her death. But he was in a place of regrets, and he felt that quite keenly.

GEORGE SAMUEL KIRK, JUNIOR

AURELAN SOREL KIRK

MARCUS AURELIAN KIRK

DENEVA 3, 2266
 

"You guys are with me, always. Marc--when you were only twelve months old, I woke up in bed with your little head on my stomach. That is a moment so special and precious to me that I couldn't even fully transmit it to Saavik. I hope you like her--cause I sure do. She--she was my wife. I was married. Now I never was. Like T'Pau has a time machine or something. Mommy--Daddy--it hurts. I used to fantasize about us being husband and wife. Now I get to do it again!"

Peter then let out a roar like that of a hundred bull elephants played backwards.
So great was this roar, it knocked the covering off of a last, oddly hidden grave. Peter walked over to it, and began to shake uncontrollably.

"Its alright---its only logical. Heh. They---would do this, right? Its what you do, when someone is dead. Right? They just forgot to take it down. Or did they? Maybe I'm not really here--Maybe--I'm still in that cryo-chamber. Or maybe this is just Hell."

Just then, a voice as familiar as his own breathing spoke up.

"Peter? Why are you here? Why would you come to this awful place?"

"Maybe, Saavik, this is where I belong. I'm a dead thing. See? Says so right there."

Indeed, it seemed to say just that.

PETER R. KIRK
2255 - 2268

Saavik took note of something.

"They got your middle initial wrong."

"Saavik, who cares if they---my middle initial--PETER R. Kirk? Those morons! I----Saavik-kam, why did I come here?"

"Perhaps to find answers. Perhaps to find Peter Kirk. But your reasoning was flawed.  For the dead yield slippery answers. As to finding Peter Kirk, well, to seek the living among the dead - is not logical. Logical is spending the weekend with me--at Uncle Jim's
apartment in San Francisco."

"What about the lack of a proper bond?"

"That bond, my love, is no more dead -  than you were. But like you, it needs time to shake off its assault. Like me, it needs to find its center again. Or have you failed to notice that our tie becomes stronger off of Vulcan?"

Peter would leave confronting T'Pau to his thy'la. For now, though, he uprooted the stone with his name on  it and crumbled it to powder.

"I won't be needing that, anymore. Thanks, sis. Any way I can repay you?"

"Yes. Fetch me a glass of strawberry juice."

"Saavik, you're allergic to strawberries."

"Then I will need large doses of calamine lotion applied--who knows where?"

As the luck-challenged couple begin to play once again, Peter Kirk left his personal tomb behind once and for all, to try and prepare for victory over Death itself.