Title: Training the Hero
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@femail.org
Rating: PG
Codes: K, fSummary: Kirk has a talk with one of his Academy instructors. Story contains references to "The Conscience of the King."
Archive: Yes
Feedback: Tell me all about it.
Disclaimer: Kirk, Tarsus, Starfleet Academy, and probably Tactics I-III all belong to Paramount the Mighty. I made up the instructor. I didn’t get paid for it.
Notes: This is partially a response to a recent thread about Kirk and heroism (and dissing Picard, but that’s another story) on ASCEM. It’s also based on Virginia Woolf’s definition of heroism - "botulism" - while remembering that there is more bottled up in everyone than is obvious to the casual observer.
Thanks to my betas, Islaofhope and T’Aaneli. The opinions in this story are not theirs, but mine. (In fact, the opinions in the story are gentler than mine, but I find I can't be too mean to a POV character.)
Training the Hero
Jim’s instructor for Tactics III: Planetary Simulations had called him to her office for an extra meeting. He thought, from the tone of her voice on the message, that he was in trouble, but for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what it could be. Hadn’t he been earning the highest scores, not only in this class, but - she said so herself - every Tactics III course she had everr taught? He didn’t get it.
When he walked through the door, she already had his latest assignment up on the terminal.
"Kirk," she said, unsmiling, "Come take a look at this with me, please."
Oh, shit, he thought. What now?
At first, except for her grim manner, it was like any other time she’d taken him through his work, something she did with every student at least once during the course, and had done twice already with him. They walked through the early part of the simulation together, and she told him where he had done well, and suggested other strategies he might have used, and in general confused the hell out of him. Finally, he asked, "Sir, would you say I had succeeded in the assignment goals?" He knew he had; it wasn’t a mystery; they were listed right in the assignment program.
"No," she said, and waited for him to absorb the shock, and then said, "You filled the objectives of the assignment. You didn’t succeed in the larger goals."
"I don’t see the difference," he said, controlling his temper.
"I know you don’t," she answered. Then she seemed to change the subject. "I know that most students run the simulation as far as they can, past the end of their own intervention. Do you ever do that?"
"Used to," he said, then added, "Sir. But I’m pretty pressed for time now. I’m assisting Commander Decker in his Intro Tactics classes."
"I was aware of that. Understand: I'm not faulting your work. You are an outstanding student, a mind the like of which I have never taught before."
Coming on top of what she had just said, this shocked him into immobility, and he simply waited for more.
"In fact, you are not here because of anything you’ve done wrong, but because I’m increasingly feeling that I am not doing enough for you."
She was so intense, some emotion rolling off her in waves, that for one awful moment he thought she was leading up to some personal approach. Although he was as randy as the next cadet, the idea made him absolutely squirm with distaste.
"Please don’t be embarrassed," she said, mortifying him. "I am determined that neither I nor the Academy will fail to give you what you’ll need to become the officer I know you can be. I knew you hadn’t run the rest of this simulation, Kirk, because I ran it. Watch."
On the screen, the planetary scenario played out farther, to her comments. "You got the shipment of medicinal plants, and the planetary government was satisfied with your trade agreement, due largely to this personal-gratitude debt you ran up with the four leading houses. Astute work. That’s a strategy only one other cadet even attempted, and he didn’t manage to get the debt from all four houses."
"I worked on that," he muttered. "I knew I could make it work."
She nodded. "Of course, you lost two officers, and there are some casualties to House Atriedes."
"That’s down," he pointed out. "In my earlier versions, I had up to twenty casualties, and I got it down to four without sacrificing the objective."
"Yes, good work. Understand, Kirk. You have the full point score for this assignment. You have it, and a commendation for original thinking. But keep going. Your intervention causes a shift in which of the four houses is in primary power..." and they kept watching. And things got worse.
"Widespread famine at ten years after the starship’s departure. Cannibalism at twenty years." Her even voice sent chills down his spine, and threatened to bring back memories he refused to think about, not now.
"I stopped the famine," he protested.
"The first one. Kirk, you can’t change the planetary ecology, for heaven’s sake. But you left the exploitation-farming lobby in power, and it never would have been but for your intervention. And I'm sure you knew that." She waited until he looked away from the screen, and then shut down the simulation. "You terrify me, James Kirk. I’m sure that twenty years down the road in real life, I’ll hear your name everywhere. You’ll be a galactic hero, and I’ll be worrying about secondary tenure review. But I want you to promise me this one thing, while you’re here: always run the simulation through."
He nodded.
"And please remember. The hero dies nobly or wins and goes off to his next bravery. But the rest of us have to stay in the same place and harvest the crops. Or not, as the case may be.
"Dismissed."
He got up, went to the door, turned around. She waited, and now he could see that what he had thought was another kind of personal interest was actually compassion. He realized he had no idea what to say, so he left. He didn’t want to go back to his room. He walked in the Academy gardens for a very long time. Remembered Tarsus. Punched and kicked some trees.
He wished, for the first time, that he had someone to talk to about things. But he wasn’t sure it would make any difference. Afterwards he would still be alone.
He checked the tree he had been kicking for damage, but couldn’t find any.
Then he went back to his room to run next week’s simulation again - all the way through. To see all the results that he knew, in real life, he would never see.
//end//