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One of the two A-minuses that La’an got at the Academy was, ironically enough, in temporal mechanics. Try as she might to contort her mind into causal loops and grandfather paradoxes and the twisting tendrils of the multiverse, she found the subject matter hopelessly tedious and frustrating. She was just too pragmatic for the counterfactuals, the conditional tense; for how every sneeze of a louse fractured the universe into a billion trillion new threads constrained only by the arbitrary confines of logical possibility. She resided in the here and now of this universe, never longing for the La’an of some nearby possible world who had an easier life than her, whose family was never captured by the Gorn, whose seemingly every intimate connection was ripped away sooner or later. She’s not that girl - has no way to be her - so she’s never stopped to wonder, because hope is, as they say, a dangerous thing.
But now the barriers between timelines and pasts and futures seem so flimsy, so muddled, gossamer veils to shift between, possibilities as clear in her mind's eye as what she ate for breakfast. A universe where Kirk doesn't die. One where they stay together in the 21st century. One where Jim follows her home.
One where, on a quiet fall night in Toronto, the barest dusting of snow on the streets, she gets up from the hotel room bed that’s too plush to be restful, energy thrumming through her limbs, muscles flexing of their own volition, words threatening to spill out of her mouth where they usually are so difficult to form. She gapes like a fish, both terrified and exhilarated, wanting simultaneously to run away but also to show Kirk the darkest and most intimate parts of herself.
In another universe, instead of turning around to go back to bed, La’an opens her mouth and says, “James.”
He doesn’t answer immediately, and she wonders if he’s really asleep, though the just too-quick cadence of his breathing gives him away. Just as she turns on her heel to go back to bed, cheeks burning with rejection, she hears, “You know, my friends call me Jim.”
The La’an of that universe just scoffs in return.
He pushes himself up with one arm, turning his head to look at her and blinking inscrutably. Her eyes track the thin blanket covering him as it falls to his waist, a sliver of his pale torso illuminated by moonlight. “Can’t sleep?” he asks.
She opens her mouth, closes it again, fists curling and uncurling at her side. She’s apprehensive, afraid of the old sting of rejection, but she needs to purge the words from her mouth like a fever. “That couch… doesn’t look very comfortable,” she settles on, brusque, factual - her armour.
She watches the sleep clear slowly from his expression, to be replaced with something like curiosity - not unkind. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?” One corner of his mouth lifts into his trademark roguish smile. She’s emboldened by his response.
“I’m asking if you’d like to come sleep with me.” She stares him down, daring him to call her bluff.
Kirk’s eyebrow raises. “Ok, now I’m really not sure what you’re asking. Can you spell it out for me?” He teases, but he’s already standing and taking slow steps towards her, like he might spook a wild animal.
She rolls her eyes even as her breath catches in her throat. “Don’t be a child, James.”
“Does that mean we’re not friends?” His quip has no bite. He’s close enough now she can see that his blue eyes are dilated almost black, can smell a hint of mint and sweetness as his breath puffs softly across her brow. He raises a hand - still slowly, so slowly - and trails the tips of his fingers down the sides of her face.
“Not only,” her voice cracks, "Jim." All she has to do is tilt her head up a little and - there.
In that universe Jim’s kiss starts just like the one on the street - a more tender, chaste touch than she would expect of a man who exudes such brash confidence. She’s sure he has no trouble getting whoever he wants in his bed and is a little annoyed that she isn’t more immune to his charms. But then his mouth opens under hers and it’s much more what she would have guessed - firm, sure, a little aggressive, his hand wrapping around her jaw and holding her open to him.
They break apart and La’an is sure that he can hear her heart pounding. The hand cradling her face trails suggestively down the side of her torso until their fingers tangle. She shudders and looks down as his fingertips caress the inside of her wrist. “Ok?” he breathes, like that's the only word he can manage.
La’an responds by pulling him backward into the bedroom, fusing their mouths together once more. The kiss turns hungrier, and she lets the momentum she creates flow into him as he gently herds her back towards the bed. The back of her knees hit something soft and a hand at the small of her back keeps her landing controlled. Tongues tangle heatedly, their gasps reverberating in the room. La’an reaches her hand under the hem of Jim’s sleep shirt and yanks upwards, their mouths disconnecting momentarily as he pulls it over his head. She makes a pleased noise as her hands find the smooth plane of his chest, not burly but pleasingly lean.
He responds in kind by pushing her robe over her shoulders and dragging his palms over her clothed breasts, eliciting groans from both of them. She pulls her tank off herself, breasts heaving with her breath and nipples pebbling in the cool air. Jim pauses for a moment and just gapes, struck dumb.
“First time seeing a pair of tits?” she ribs, breathless.
“Seems like the first time,” he responds, and it somehow manages to sound genuine. He leans down and closes his warm mouth and sucks, rolling the nipple between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.
La’an gasps and winds her fingers into his short hair. “Don’t stop,” she orders.
“Yes ma’am,” Jim mumbles into her chest, switching his attention to her other breast. Her arms aren’t long enough to reach down and palm the erection she can feel pressed against her thigh, but she relishes the low grown he emits when she rubs her leg up against it.
“Take off your pants,” she gasps.
“You’re bossy, aren’t you?”
“You like it,” she says, watching intently as he does what she asks, his briefs going with his sweats.
“I’ve always had a thing for powerful women," he palms his cock unashamedly, eyes raking over her almost-naked form.
As if to illustrate the point, La'an clamps her thighs around his waist and rolls them so she's sitting on top of him. Jim looks up in wonder, eyes half lidded and a little winded. He hums, his thumbs hooking into her panties and pulling down.
She gets off him for a minute to pull them off the rest of the way, and he sits up on his elbows to watch. "Can I help - oof!"
"Don't move," she says, shoving him back down and settling herself astride him. They groan in unison as she rubs her wet centre along his hard cock, back and forth a few times until the head catches on her entrance and she reaches behind to guide him the rest of the way in.
For a moment, neither of them moves - they just breathe, eyes locked on each other, adjusting to the feeling. Then, she raises herself up on her knees, first slowly, finding the angle where he hits that spot inside her just so. He curses, his hands grasping her hips with bruising intensity. It doesn't take long for the feeling to build inside her, and she reaches down to rub her clit in between their bodies. "Jim - I'm going to -"
"Yeah," he breathes, taking over the rhythm as hers falters, "Yeah, just like that." She keens and squeezes her thighs around him as her orgasm overtakes her. He isn't far behind, hips bucking up into her with a groan as he spends himself inside her.
When they finally gain control of themselves, a fine sheet of sweat making them shiver in the cool air, Jim rolls them over and cages La'an in his arms and pulls the blanket over them. They gaze at each other a while longer, wondrous, unflinching, and La'an wants to ask do you feel it too?
Jim just pushes her hair out of her face and kisses her deeply, cheek cradled in his palm, and she knows that he does.
-
In her own timeline, La’an wonders where it went wrong, why all her security training failed to kick in. She should have known better than to play chicken with a Romulan, didn’t think a primitive projectile weapon could be so deadly, should have tried to disarm Sera sooner…
In the timeline where she and Jim make love, it goes like this:
“A hell of a job on the disguise,” Jim says, so cool and assured for someone staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Still not quite used to the ears yet,” Sera replies. “Now get in.”
“Not a chance,” Jim says. “You want to shoot us? Go ahead. You have to know that if you do, the building's alarms will go off. Security will lock this place down and your plan will fail.”
“You’re bluffing,” Sera challenges.
Jim turns to La’an, the barest of smiles on his lips. The glance they exchange says together, we’re unstoppable. Lovesick and vulnerable and stupid.
“Try me,” Jim says, with finality. And that’s when La’an realizes their mistake. Jim is just trouble Sera doesn’t need. Sera only needs La’an to open the door to Khan’s prison. And La’an knows what she has to do, not because of any sense of any moral demand, idealistic selflessness, or because of her security training. But because the last twenty four hours were all it took for someone to really see her, to accept her without judgment. Because last night she fell a little bit in love with Jim and she would rip out Sera’s throat if it meant keeping him safe. But it doesn’t mean that, not in this timeline. In this timeline it means that La’an sees Sera tense her trigger finger a moment before Jim can even really register it and she steps in front of him and -
The world upends itself around her and she can see dust floating across the dim fluorescent lights of the university building. The ground is cold under her, so cold, and is that a struggle she hears? The rattling sound of someone being suffocated and the ground is so cold, and wet, why is it wet?
Jim’s face floats above hers, seemingly disembodied. She smiles. Jim's ok. He looks alarmed but she can’t tell why. He’s shouting something but she can’t hear it for the ringing in her ears. His face is so beautiful. She keeps smiling, and wonders why he doesn’t smile back. She’s glad that she’s going to sleep to wake up to another smile of his tomorrow when he forgets all about whatever it is that's making him upset, and then they’ll find a way to go home together. Then she closes her eyes and fades into the darkness, Jim's forehead against hers and his hands stained with her blood.
But that’s not what happens in La’an’s timeline. In La’an’s timeline, Jim is the one dead on the ground and all she wishes for is that it were her instead.
-
Back in her quarters on the Enterprise, La’an screams into her pillow and smashes a fist into the wall so hard that later Christine will have to wave the osteoregenerator over her metacarpals with a worried look. Her emotions spin past her ability to contain them, like she’s a pure conduit for every possible facet of sentient experience - the most profound sadness and the most ecstatic joy. It threatens to rip her apart at the seams, and she laughs as tears stream down her face. She wonders if this is what it’s like to be mad, or dead, or simultaneously every pinprick of consciousness through the infinite loop of time.
Eventually, the feeling passes. The choking sobs subside. The loss remains but something pure and small and new has taken root as well. She wipes her face.
She carries on.