Chapter Text
The first thing Jim learned in Starfleet Academy was that the other cadets didn’t like him much.
That wasn’t how he’d imagined it. In fact, when he’d imagined the Academy, he hadn’t thought about the other cadets at all. But if he had thought about them, he’d have assumed that he’d be — well, maybe not popular, but that he’d get along with people. That he’d have friends. He’d had friends all his life, after all, in Iowa and San Diego and on… but no, he tried not to think about the other place he’d lived, so for now let’s just say in Iowa and San Diego. It had never taken him more than a week or so, after moving to a new place, to make new friends. But a month into his first year at the Academy, Jim looked up from the interplanetary history textbook he was reading while he ate lunch, and finally realized that no one was eating with him.
Looked up from his book and finally realized that no one was eating with him. Do you buy that? That easy, elegant poetry? I don’t, and I wrote it. Maybe that’s the way Captain James T. Kirk, USS Enterprise would put it, but no. That’s bullshit. What really happened was this:
Cadet Jim Kirk walked into the Academy mess hall, a tray of food in one hand and a tablet in the other. Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of his attention was on his interplanetary history textbook, 0.01 percent was on not running into anything, and zero percent was on his fellow cadets. Which is why he didn’t see it coming when someone reached out from one of the long, high-density polyethylene mess tables and flipped his tray into his face.
Jim stumbled back, dropping his tablet. For a moment, he just stood there, blinking through the protein-enriched vegetable soup dripping into his eyes, too stunned even to figure out what had happened.
The upperclassman who had done it sneered at him. “Get your nose out of your book, plebe.”
Jim wiped the soup out of his eyes to get a better look at the guy. He had a wide, ugly face — not actually that ugly, really, but it was twisted into a smirk, as it would be almost every time Jim saw it, and well, you can forgive Jim this slightly skewed perspective, can’t you? — and a languid posture, and although he was sitting down, he looked like the kind of guy who would be short when he stood up. His name, Jim would learn in the coming weeks, was Marcus Finnegan.
Right now, Jim knew only one thing, and he said it: “You can’t do that.”
“I can and I did, plebe.”
“The Academy handbook forbids bullying—”
Finnegan and his friends laughed. “You think that’s bullying, plebe? You don’t know bullying.”
Jim did in fact know bullying, right down to the verbatim definition given by the handbook, but before he could tell Finnegan that, Finnegan reached down, picked up Jim’s tablet, dried it off on his sleeve, and handed it to Jim.
“You know what, plebe?” Finnegan said. “I think I’m gonna do you a favor. I’m gonna teach you what bullying is.”
For the space of a breath, rage overcame Jim. His teeth ground. His fingers clenched around his tablet. He wanted to reach out and smash it into this guy’s smirking ugly face until his smile was crushed, until he begged, until he begged for mercy
But then Jim counted to ten and breathed out, reminding himself that most of that anger had nothing to do with this guy, and that getting in fistfights over spilled soup was not in keeping with Starfleet principles.
“Give it your best shot,” Jim said, and walked away.
Not bad, right? I bet you wish you’d been that cool when you were dealing with bullies in school. There were only two problems:
1. Most of Jim’s fellow plebes weren’t paying any attention to his badassery.
2. Finnegan did, in fact, give it his best shot.
#
Jim paced in front of Lieutenant Finney’s locked office door. Finney was the Academy tactics instructor, Jim’s advisor, and seven minutes late for his own office hours.
“Computer, time,” Jim said to his tablet, for the third time in the last two minutes.
“The time is 16:07,” the tablet said coolly.
“Well, you don’t have to give me attitude,” Jim said.
Someone behind him laughed. Jim spun around and saw Finney approaching, a briefcase in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other.
“Lieutenant!” Jim sprang to attention.
“Oh, don’t give me that nonsense, we’re not in class,” Finney said. He handed Jim his sandwich. “Here, hold this, I need to get my keycard.”
Finney began patting his pockets in search of the card, while Jim stared, trying not to let any crumbs drop on his shoes.
“Um, sir…”
“I told you, we’re not in class, call me Finney.” Finney unlatched his briefcase and started to rummage through it.
“Finney, sir… I need to report a rules violation.”
“Hm?” Finney said, without looking up.
“I need to report a rules violation. Bullying.”
Finney looked up sharply, his hand still in the briefcase. For a moment, Jim thought he was going to be chastised — God only knew why — but then Finney sighed, his face softening, and pulled the keycard out of his bag.
“Why don’t you come inside,” Finney said.
Jim followed Finney into his office. He’d been inside once before, during his first week at the Academy, for his orientation interview. It had been a routine meeting — just an introduction, really, and an explanation of Academy rules and expectations that Jim had already had memorized from the handbook — and Jim had been too busy looking forward to his first classes to form any opinion of Finney, or to pay any attention to the man’s office.
Now, as he looked around for a place to put down half of a turkey club sandwich, Jim noticed the partially unpacked boxes forgotten in the corner, the digital photo of a pretty young woman with a wedding ring on the desk, the very recent diploma proudly displayed on a wall. It hadn’t occurred to Jim that Finney might be just as new around here as he was.
“Here, I’ll take that,” Finney said, holding out his hand. Jim dropped the sandwich into it, and Finney immediately took a bite. He sat down behind his desk, and gestured for Jim to take the seat opposite him.
“So,” Finney said after he’d swallowed. “You want to report bullying?”
“A pattern of repeated bullying, sir,” Jim said, echoing the language in the handbook. “Harassment.”
Finney nodded thoughtfully, because although he’d never personally read the Academy handbook, he could recognize the sound of official language. He put on a concerned face.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Jim felt the flinch coming, but couldn’t stop it. Tell me what happened. Firm, gentle, practiced. Did the Academy have a class on this kind of thing?
(They did have a class, Jim found out when he entered Command School. It was called “Social and Psychological Decision-Making,” and it was goddamn wrong about goddamn everything, but it was the best they could do.)
Finney noticed the flinch. “It’s all right, Cadet,” he said, firm, gentle, practiced. “You can tell me.”
This time, Jim dug his nails into his palms and his heels into the floor, and managed to stop the flinch. “You don’t have to talk to me like that.”
“Talk to you like what?” Finney said, surprised out of all gentleness.
“Like I’m a kitten you’re trying to coax out of a tree,” Jim said. “I’m not going to run away if you talk to me like a human being.”
Finney laughed, which drained some of the tension from Jim’s body. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You just told me you’d been bullied, and you seemed upset…”
“I am upset, but not like that.”
“Like what, then?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jim said, waving his hand like he could swat away the nightmares and the memories that made him flinch. “What matters is that it’s not right, and he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
“Okay,” Finney said. He looked Jim dead in the eye and shed every scrap of sympathy from his voice. “Tell me about it.”
So Jim did. He told Finney how, for the last month, Finnegan seemed to be waiting around every corner he turned, to trip him or dump water on his head or, once, pants him. How he’d had clothes go missing during athletics, the bolts loosened in his desk chair, ghost peppers slipped into his food. And always, just over his shoulder, Finnegan’s ugly, smirking face, waiting to see the results.
Practical jokes were not an uncommon occurrence at the Academy, but Finnegan’s campaign was personal and unrelenting, and even the most easygoing cadet would have found it hard to take. And as you’ve probably realized, Jim was not at all easygoing.
When he was done, Finney shook his head. “That’s rough.”
“Sure,” Jim said. “That’s why I’m reporting it.”
“James…”
“Jim.”
“Jim.” Finney sighed. “Can I give you a piece of advice that you won’t find in the handbook?”
“You mean, give me a line Starfleet didn’t feed you?”
“Yeah.”
Jim grinned. “Please.”
“What this guy Finnegan’s doing is definitely against the rules, but the rules aren’t gonna make him stop.”
“Not by themselves,” Jim said. “Someone has to enforce them.”
For the third time since he’d arrived, Finney laughed. Jim liked that. It felt like ages since he’d made someone laugh. Someone other than Finnegan, anyway.
“You’re a clever one, aren’t you, Jim?” Finney said.
“I think I have my moments.”
“Well, I’m not that clever, so I’m just gonna give it to you straight. I knew guys like Finnegan when I was in the Academy, and there’s not a thing that I or any other instructor can do that’ll make him stop, short of kicking him out. The only person who can stop him is you.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
Finney glanced around, as if looking for eavesdroppers, and lowered his voice. “Make peace, or… make war.”
It took a moment for Jim to realize what he was suggesting, and then it was his turn to laugh. “You want me to beat up another cadet? That really isn’t in the handbook.”
“Only if reconciliation doesn’t work,” Finney said, a little sheepishly.
Jim thought about it. He couldn’t deny that he badly wanted to punch the grin off Finnegan’s face. But…
“No,” Jim said. “I can’t.”
“You know that Starfleet isn’t actually a pacifist organization, right?”
“It’s not that,” Jim said. “Make friends, beat him up, it doesn’t matter. Even if it works, all it does is get him off my back. I don’t want Finnegan to stop bullying me, I want him to stop bullying. There has to be something the Academy can do. This is Starfleet.”
“Well, if you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.”
Finney nodded. “I’ll make the report.”
“Thank you, sir.” Jim stood up.
“Jim,” Finney said. “Anytime you want to talk, about anything, you stop by. Office hours or not. Consider it an order, if you like.”
Jim smiled. He liked Finney — liked that he had a sense of humor, liked that he didn’t make Jim feel like a kid. Mostly, liked that Finney seemed to like him.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Jim said. He walked out to the sound of Finney laughing behind him.
It was a big day in Jim’s fledgling career. In one short meeting, he’d doubled the number of friends he had at the Academy. From that moment on, there were two people on his side: Finney, and Jim’s girlfriend.
Oh, right. I probably should’ve mentioned Jim’s girlfriend.
#
To understand about Ruth, first you have to understand the exact nature of Jim’s unpopularity. People didn’t dislike him because he was mean, or awkward, because he wasn’t either of those things. They didn’t even dislike him because he got better grades than most of them, though he did. They disliked him because… Well, here’s an example.
The second day of Jim’s interplanetary history class, Professor Gill lectured on the establishment of the neutral zone between Romulan and Federation space.
“The Romulan Neutral Zone, though inconvenient, is probably the best outcome we could have hoped for,” Gill said. “It is, in some ways, a model of interplanetary conflict resolution.”
Jim’s hand shot into the air. His classmates shared a collective glance, some of them amused, many of them annoyed; after only two days, it was already perfectly clear to them that Professor Gill’s class was a lecture-only class, and that he disliked interruptions. Jim was also vaguely aware of that — he just didn’t care.
Gill cleared his throat and stared Jim down over his glasses, but Jim’s hand didn’t budge, so at last, Gill said, “Yes, Cadet…”
“Cadet Kirk,” Jim said, lowering his hand. “How can the neutral zone be a model of conflict resolution if we’re still in conflict with the Romulans?”
Gill considered this for a moment, then said, “It’s a nominal conflict. No shots have been fired in decades.”
“Because we haven’t seen each other in decades,” Jim said, not bothering to raise his hand again. “Is that really a resolution? ‘We won’t kill you as long as we can pretend you don’t exist?’”
This was the point when most of the class rolled their eyes and tuned out. They wanted to learn about the Romulan conflict, not endlessly rehash it.
But Gill, uncharacteristically, didn’t shut the conversation down. “You have a better solution, then? I’ll be sure to alert Starfleet Command.”
It was sarcastic, but underneath it was an honest question. Gill was, like Jim, an idealist — just an older one. Jim had been searching for a better solution for five years. Gill had been searching for ten times that.
“Contact,” Jim said. “Engagement, information, negotiation. It worked with the Vulcans, the Andorians…”
“The Romulans are not the Vulcans,” Gill said. “Context matters. The strategies that work in one situation won’t always work in the next. Study history for long enough, Cadet, and you’ll realize that some gaps can’t be bridged.”
That was Gill’s final word on the subject. He drew breath to continue his lecture, but Jim wasn’t done.
“How do we know?” Jim said. “How do we know the Romulans aren’t like the Vulcans? We’ve never even met them.”
Gill sighed. “We don’t know. We can never really know. We just do the best with what we have.”
And having argued his professor down to uncertainty, Jim finally let him continue with the lecture.
That right there? That last push, after Gill was so clearly done? That was why Jim’s classmates didn’t like him. Not because of that one argument with Gill, but because he did something like that in every class, with every instructor, on every subject. He was too serious, too intense, too eager, and he never let anything go — not even if it meant the entire class had to wait around biting their nails while he distracted the instructor with whatever his issue was today. There were smarter cadets than Jim (though not many), and plenty of cadets who were just as absorbed in the subjects, but all of them could give it a rest once in a while, and Jim couldn’t. So they made friends, and he didn’t.
Except that’s not entirely true, because like I said, there was Ruth. Ruth Falkner, a sweet, blonde, violently intelligent 17-year-old who joined Starfleet because she wanted to see the universe. Ruth was the kind of girl who had kept a diary since she was nine years old, dutifully writing in it every day even when nothing in particular happened, which was most days on Mars. She was the kind of girl who’d gotten obsessed with Greek mythology in sixth grade, and then Norse mythology in seventh, and then Vulcan mythology in eighth, absorbing all the drama and romance and memorizing all the names, and cheerfully glossing over the parts where the gods ate each other and the mortals burned in sacrificial fires. So Hercules died in agony, for no particular reason at all — what did that mean to Ruth, other than a good story?
Ugh, there’s Kirk’s poetry, again. The Hercules thing is from the end of their relationship, and to be fair, Jim never said it out loud. What I’m trying to say is that Ruth was smart and sheltered and a little ashamed of her idyllic upbringing, and when she looked at Jim, she didn’t see the annoying guy who was always holding up class. She saw a man possessed of knowledge and vision.
Which is why, a week and a half into Finnegan’s war on Jim, Ruth became the only plebe to cross the neutral zone.
Ruth was walking with her friends when she spotted Jim across the quad, headed the other direction. She always kept half an eye out for him, because seeing him unexpectedly gave her a pleasant little thrill. He was often reading while he walked, and she liked to imagine talking to him about whatever book it was, impressing him with her insights.
Today, he wasn’t reading. He walked, as Finney might say, with his head on a swivel, on the lookout for something. Ruth scanned the quad, trying to figure out what that might be — which is how she happened to be looking at Marcus Finnegan, who was walking twenty paces behind Jim, at the exact moment that Jim’s backpack fell apart, dumping all of its contents on the ground.
Finnegan’s face split into a grin, and he hurried to catch up with Jim, who had knelt down to collect his things. He said something Ruth couldn’t hear, then ruffled Jim’s hair. Jim angrily swept it back into place; Finnegan ruffled it again.
Well. You didn’t have to be in science track to figure out what had happened to Jim’s backpack.
“I’ll catch up with you,” Ruth told her friends. They followed her gaze to Jim, rolled their eyes at Ruth’s obvious crush, and moved on. Ruth power-walked over to Jim and Finnegan, thinking (incorrectly) that it would be less conspicuous than running.
“I think your hair looks good like this,” Finnegan was saying, ruffling Jim’s hair for a third time. Jim was staring steadily at his ruined backpack, but Ruth could see murder in his eyes.
“Go away, Finnegan,” she said.
Finnegan turned around. His eyes lit up when he saw Ruth. “Aw, plebe, you have a girlfriend!”
Ruth blushed. Jim, who was taking advantage of the distraction to fix his hair again, muttered, “She’s not my girlfriend.”
That could’ve deflated Ruth, but she chose to see it as an act of gallantry, and let it bolster her courage. “Who fucking cares whose girlfriend I am?” she said. “Go away, Finnegan.”
Finnegan laughed, ruffled Jim’s hair one last time, and left.
“Sorry,” Jim said. He started picking his things up off the ground.
Ruth dropped to her knees and picked up his tablet. “Here,” she said. “Let me help.”
At that, finally, Jim looked up. He smiled. Ruth had never seen him smile before, and oh, it was really something.
“Thanks,” he said.
There wasn’t actually all that much in Jim’s backpack — his tablet, his athletics uniform, a few protein bars — so it only took them a few seconds to gather it all together. When they were done, Jim picked up his ruined bag and looked at it forlornly.
“Looks like he split the seams and then trick-stitched them back together. Where does he even find the time?”
“He’s probably failing all his classes.”
Jim laughed; Ruth beamed.
“Property damage. That’s its own separate section of the handbook.” Jim sighed. “I guess I’m going to have to find a replacement.”
“I have a spare backpack,” Ruth said.
“You do?”
“I’m from Mars. My mom packed a spare everything.”
She immediately regretted bringing up her mom — they were cadets, in Starfleet, she should at least pretend to be an adult — but Jim laughed again.
“I’m from San Diego,” he said. “Well, Iowa originally, but San Diego most recently. I think my parents thought it would be easy to send stuff, but with all the Academy regulations, it might as well be Mars.”
“Why don’t you come by my bunk?” Ruth said, feeling very bold. “I’ll give you my spare.”
Jim grinned. “All right. Thanks, Falkner.”
They set off back the way Ruth had come, toward her bunk. As they walked, Jim checked his tablet to make sure it hadn’t been damaged.
“What are you reading?” Ruth asked, eyeing the text he was scrolling through.
“John Locke. Two Treatises of Government. It’s one of the works that influenced the founders of the United States when they were writing their constitution.”
“What’s it about?”
“The inherent rights and equality of human beings.”
Philosophy 101, basically, and a text that Ruth and Jim would both be assigned the very next semester, for their ethics class. But Ruth didn’t know that. And she’d never met anyone who read philosophy in their spare time. She was about to ask him what, exactly, the inherent rights of human beings were, but he surprised her.
“What are you reading right now?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said. “Um, Pride and Prejudice. It’s a little silly, I guess.”
“Oh, no,” Jim said. “Jane Austen was supposed to be a genius, wasn’t she? She was an early feminist. I haven’t managed to read anything by her yet. I keep getting distracted by philosophy, but I really should read more novels. Is it as good as they say?”
“Better,” Ruth said.
“Maybe you could give me a few recommendations.”
He wanted her advice. He didn’t think she was silly, he thought he should be more like her. Ruth could barely speak. “Definitely.”
I told you, didn’t I? Jim was not awkward.
By the end of their short walk, Ruth and Jim had agreed to study together the next day. Then they studied together the day after that, and the day after that, and within a week, Jim — who had realized very quickly that Ruth was interested in him — decided he was also interested in her, and kissed her, and that was that. Ruth’s friends grudgingly made room for Jim at their mess table, Jim spent less time reading while he walked and more time chatting with Ruth about fiction and philosophy, and it became slightly harder for Finnegan to get the drop on him.
But not much harder.
#
Just so we’re clear, I told the last few parts out of order. You got that, right? Jim showed up at the Academy, then he caught Finnegan’s eye, then a week later he started seeing Ruth, then a week and a half after that, he reported the bullying to Finney.
I’m just making sure, because for two weeks after Jim and Finney talked, nothing changed at all. Jim went to class and pushed everyone’s buttons; Ruth paid rapt attention to every word he said, and he lost himself in admiration of her wit and her memory and her hair; Finnegan planted bowls of cold soup in Jim’s bed. Every few days, Finney would suggest that Jim stop by for a chat, and they’d talk about almost anything: tactics (one of Jim’s weaker subjects), how Finney and his wife were adjusting to life in San Francisco (Belle loved it; Finney was less convinced); what deep-space travel was really like (Jim neglected to mention that he’d already spent considerable time off-world). At the end of every meeting, Jim would ask whether there was any movement on his report; the answer was always no.
Here’s a twist for you: Finney never actually made the report. What an asshole, right? But don’t judge him too harshly. He didn’t lie out of laziness or malice; he was acting in what he sincerely believed to be Jim’s best interest. And considering what happened when a report eventually did get made, you could argue that he was even right.
Oh, fine, go ahead. Judge him harshly.
Anyway, Jim didn’t and never would know that Finney was lying, so he assumed that his report had been lost, or that the bureaucracy was grinding its slow gears. He decided to speed things up a bit by reporting directly to Commander Grace Wei, the Director of Cadet Life.
Commander Wei was not Finney. She saw Jim at exactly his scheduled time, never wavered from her practiced gentle firmness as she heard his story, and definitely did not advise him to assault his fellow cadet. Instead she nodded, assured him something would be done, and sent him on his way.
A week later, something was done.
“Ahem,” Professor Gill said, as the final cadet filed into his lecture. He had his tablet out, which piqued everyone’s interest; Gill was usually the type to lecture unceasingly from memory. He didn’t even prepare slides. “Cadet Life has a statement that they want read out during the first lectures today. I told them I’m teaching history, not homeroom, but they were… insistent.”
The cadets leaned forward, intrigued. This was the first time they’d ever had class interrupted by a statement. (They would grow considerably less interested as their years in the Academy wore on, and their lectures were intruded on by statements about bunk cleanliness, talking during parade drills, how sure the Academy was that everyone would be on their best behavior for the visiting dignitaries, and, of course, the outbreak of the Klingon war.)
Jim didn’t lean forward. He had a horrible, and correct, suspicion that he knew what this announcement was about.
“It has come to the attention of the Academy,” Gill said, in an annoyed monotone, “that there have been recent incidents of bullying or hazing.”
As one, all of the cadets turned to stare at Jim.
“Such behavior is against the Academy’s code of conduct,” Gill continued, unperturbed. “It is unbecoming of a Starfleet cadet, and unworthy of Starfleet’s principles. Any cadet experiencing or witnessing bullying or hazing should report the incident to a commanding officer. Any cadet found to have engaged in bullying or hazing will be given a punishment tour.”
Gill put down his tablet, and Jim immediately raised his hand.
“Sir,” Jim said. “May I be excused?”
“What for?”
“Sick bay.”
Gill eyed him suspiciously, but apparently he didn’t find any evidence that Jim was faking. Not surprising. Jim really did feel sick, like his guts were burning and his lungs were about to quit in protest. He doubted sick bay would do him any good, though.
“Go on, then.”
Jim slung his bag over his shoulder and walked numb-legged out the door, horribly aware of the rest of the class staring at him as he went. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, just that he couldn’t handle sitting through the rest of that class, so turned right, headed toward his bunk on autopilot.
“Jim!”
Ruth burst out the door of the lecture hall, jogging to catch up with him. She took his hand in hers, and Jim squeezed it.
“You didn’t have to follow me,” he said.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I am,” he said, which was a lie, but one that Jim mostly believed. “Just… that’s what she meant, when she said they would do something? A statement?”
Ruth shook her head. “It’s not right.”
“‘Report the incident to a commanding officer.’ I already did that. They should be talking to Finnegan about this, not making statements for the whole Academy.”
“At least they left your name out of it.”
Jim laughed. “Everyone knows who it’s about. Including Finnegan.”
Which was absolutely true. Finnegan heard the announcement in his first lecture of the day, just like everyone else. It delighted him so much that he sought Jim out at lunch, to share his joy.
“Running to mommy?” Finnegan said, sliding into the seat across from Jim and Ruth, next to two of Ruth’s friends. He smirked and shook his head. “Tsk, tsk. No one likes a tattletale, Jimmy.”
“Shut up, Finnegan,” Ruth said, while her friends hurriedly tried to look like they were just sitting next to her, not with her.
Jim stared at his sandwich. He wouldn’t look at Finnegan. He couldn’t. If he looked at Finnegan, he might punch him, and Jim was determined not to punch him.
“Come on, Jimmy, talk to me. You’re not gonna hide behind your girlfriend, are you?” Finnegan reached across the table, plucked the sandwich out of Jim’s hands, and took a giant bite. He smiled even larger, crumbs falling from the corners of his lips. “Talk.”
Jim launched himself across the table. Before his brain even had time to catch up, he’d tackled Finnegan to the ground. He was kneeling over him, one fist tight around Finnegan’s collar, the other drawn back into the air, poised to strike.
Now, Jim looked into Finnegan’s eyes. He saw fear. He liked it.
“Cadet!”
An instructor whose name Jim didn’t know grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him off of Finnegan. After the first moment of shock, Jim didn’t resist. Finnegan stayed on the ground until he saw that Jim wasn’t coming back for him, then he pulled himself up, trying (and failing) to look nonchalant about it.
“Come with me,” said the instructor. “Both of you.”
Jim and Finnegan followed the instructor and waited without looking at each other outside Commander Wei’s office while she was briefed on the incident. It was the first time in Jim’s life that he’d ever been called to the principal’s office. He didn’t love the feeling, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined. After a few minutes, Wei called them in.
“Well,” Wei said, surveying them sourly, as they stood at attention in front of her desk. She didn’t bother to relieve them. “We have a situation.”
“Commander Wei—” Finnegan said.
“Did I tell you you could speak, cadet?”
Finnegan shut up.
“We have a situation. Cadet Finnegan, you were engaged in bullying, after a clear warning that doing so would result in punishment. Cadet Kirk, instead of reporting it, you—”
“I did report it!” Kirk said. “You didn’t do anything!”
“Do not speak until I tell you to, cadet.” Wei puffed out a breath — like a sigh, but angrier. “Instead of reporting the incident, you assaulted Cadet Finnegan. Which is also worth a punishment tour. So it seems to me that we have two options. I can give you both a punishment tour, and note this incident in both of your files. Or, you can agree to cancel each other out. No punishment for either of you. Nothing in your files.”
She eyed each of them in turn. “Well? Which will it be?”
“I’m fine cancelling each other out, Commander,” Finnegan said quickly. Finnegan already had plenty of marks on his file. He was worried that they were starting to hurt his chances for promotion.
Wei turned to Jim. “Cadet Kirk?”
Jim spared Finnegan a second’s glance, and saw that Finnegan was looking at him pleadingly. He realized that if he let this go, it would all be fine. Finnegan would never bother him again.
He lifted his chin. “No deal, Commander.”
Finnegan never did bother him again, nor did he bother anyone else. But Jim didn’t think it was because of the weekend they spent scrubbing every bathroom on campus, or the note in his file. Jim was pretty sure it was because of the look in his own eyes, every time Finnegan glanced over and saw him watching.
He was right about that.