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Improbability
by Penknife
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Pirates of the Caribbean is owned by Disney, etc. No infringement intended.
Originally Posted: 1/26/08
Dedication: For florahart.
Note: Six Degrees fic. Crossover - Star Trek/XMM/PotC.
Summary: Figuring out the degrees of separation between Spock, Will Turner, and Rogue gets a little complicated.
"This is getting ridiculous," McCoy said. "Many more of these close encounters with weird time travel devices and the space-time continuum is going to end up looking like Swiss cheese."
"That seems highly unlikely, Doctor," Spock said. "In fact, current astrophysics conceives of the universe as more resembling—"
"Spock," Kirk said, feeling that he's not in the mood to listen to a debate about the shape of the universe for the entire shuttle ride back to the ship. "Not right now."
"Yes, Captain."
"I mean, really," McCoy said. "What are the odds?"
Kirk gave Spock a warning look, and Spock refrained from telling them the odds of their being embroiled in yet another time-travel incident. Kirk was beginning to suspect that sometimes Spock just made numbers up, anyway.
"I wasn't all that sure you'd want to come back," McCoy said.
"Just because there was a beautiful woman involved—"
"I was talking about the ships," McCoy said, with a look that says that he saw through Kirk all too well when it came to either one.
"If we'd had a few weeks to spend ..." They hadn't really even gotten to properly go sailing, and the ships of the era really were lovely.
"We'd probably all have died of typhoid," McCoy said. "Or malaria. Or yellow fever."
"We could have at least tried our hand at sailing."
"And sunk."
"Help me out here, Spock," Kirk said, turning up his hands in appeal.
"Elizabeth Turner was indeed a remarkable woman," Spock said.
McCoy snorted. "He's got your number there, Jim."
"All right, all right," Kirk said, but he wasn't entirely sure Spock was referring to Kirk's taste in women. There had been that Romulan commander, and for that matter ...
"She reminded me strongly of you," Spock said.
McCoy grinned, the two of them now united in teasing him, which he generally liked to encourage. "You'd make a good pirate king, Jim. You should keep that in mind if you ever feel like quitting your day job."
"Avast, ye scurvy ... Klingons," Kirk tried experimentally. He wasn't sure he really had the knack.
*****
"They were very odd," Elizabeth said.
Will considered her, lying back lazily on his cabin bed wearing trousers and a man's embroidered waistcoat, her boots still on. He decided to make his point instead by glancing down deliberately at the long scar that ran the length of his chest. "Compared to who?"
"Well, I've never met anyone from the future before."
"Yes, but on the scale of strange things that have happened to us ..."
"All right, all right," Elizabeth said. She tangled her fingers in his, and he leaned back, his arm around her shoulders.
"So what were they like?"
"The one who said he was a physician seemed annoyed at everything, like he's used to living like a gentleman. The one with the pointed ears kept waving his little box at everything— I think he was some kind of natural historian."
"Why the little box?"
"I think it was some kind of instrument." Elizabeth shrugged. "It seemed to tell him the weather and directions and things. And the captain was very ..." She smiled and shook her head. "Well, a bit like Jack. Trying to charm everyone into doing what he wanted."
"They don't sound so odd. Except in the sense that anyone who resembles Jack has to be a bit ..."
"He wasn't odd like Jack is odd," Elizabeth said. "Just ... they all seemed so interested in everything. As if it was all so strange to them. I wonder what their ships are like."
"If they even have ships," Will said.
"Surely there'll always be ships."
"Surely," Will murmured. He glanced around the cabin, which he was trying to learn to think of as a home and not a prison. Elizabeth pressed her head against his shoulder, and he stroked her hair. "Well, I suppose I'll get to find out."
"If you meet them again, you must give them my regards," Elizabeth said. She looked up at him, and he loved her for the way she lifted her chin and smiled. "And see if they remember the pirate king."
"I can't imagine anyone forgetting you," Will said.
*****
"The Flying Dutchman," Rogue said skeptically.
"I'm not saying I believe in it, kid," Logan said. "I'm just saying I met this guy in a bar once who said he'd seen it. Came right up out of the water dripping seaweed, freaky as all hell. He said he watched the men in the water with him climb aboard that sailing ship." Logan shrugged. "Of course, you see some funny things floating around in wreckage, so who knows."
"Was this in some war?"
"Second World War," Logan said. "You might have heard of it. I was hanging out in this bar in Guam. Heard all kinds of stories."
"So he was a really old guy?"
"No, he . . . well, maybe it was some other war."
"Doesn't matter," Rogue said, because Logan didn't look like he was in the mood to try to figure out where that fragment of memory belonged.
"You hear a lot of weird stories," Logan said. He had his feet up on the coffee table, but Rogue figured it wasn't her job to tell him he couldn't. "I used to know this guy who swore he'd seen aliens coming down from a UFO, all surrounded by sparkly light."
"Logan," Rogue said.
He shrugged. "What, it's weirder than Mutant High?"
"There's no such things as aliens."
"You never know, kid. Maybe the Professor should take a look with Cerebro."
"You can't find space aliens with Cerebro."
"What are we talking about?" Hank said, leaning into the room. Rogue was just getting used to having someone large and furry interject himself into any conversation that tended toward the scientific.
"Space aliens," Logan said.
"Tell him you can't find space aliens with Cerebro," Rogue said.
Hank looked like he was considering the question seriously. "It's really highly probable that extraterrestrial life exists," he said. "But I don't think the range on Cerebro would be sufficient to contact them."
"See," Rogue said.
"Unless they were in orbit around Earth."
"All those UFOs," Logan pointed out.
"There might could be UFOs," Rogue conceded. "Maybe. But I still don't believe in the Flying Dutchman."
"Maybe it's extraterrestrial, too," Hank offered.
Rogue looked at him skeptically. "Ghost ships in space?"
"That one's not all that probable," Hank admitted.
*****
For a Vulcan, after death came the dim awareness of being carried toward one's place of rest within the mind of another, or else nothing at all, oblivion. Spock had never been sure what the human experience of death was, as human beliefs on the subject were contradictory and generally not based on empirical evidence. Nor had he ever been sure which experience he was likely to share.
He had never seriously entertained the idea that his experience of death would involve hallucinations, but he had nothing else to call the experience of seemingly hanging suspended in space wearing nothing but his uniform, watching a fantastic sailing ship covered in gears and clockwork and great brass sails drift ever closer.
The ship stopped, reeling out what looked like an anchor, though it was also made of brass and glittered in the starlight. It was many times too big to be a sailing ship, though that was what its metallic curves suggested. A man appeared on deck, seemingly not inconvenienced in the slightest by breathing vaccuum. He came to the rail, close enough that had Spock reached out his hand they could have touched.
The man looked young, but he had very old eyes.
"Spock," he said, as if they were friends. "Do you fear death?"
Spock raised an eyebrow. "It is illogical to fear the unknown."
The man smiled crookedly. "That's the spirit. Come aboard, then." He offered his hand, and after a moment's hesitation Spock let the man help him aboard. This could not be real, but there seemed little to be gained from insisting on its unreality.
"I expected to be dead," Spock said instead.
"You are," the man said a bit regretfully. "Well, mostly. That's the thing." He looked up, motioning to one of the crew to do something mysterious in the rigging, and Spock followed his gaze, taking in the high masts, the turning gears, and the wafts of smoke that hinted at steam at work, as absurd as the idea of a steam-powered starship was. The men who manned her wore everything from what he recognized as the Starfleet uniforms of his youth to antique spacesuits that looked hundreds of years old.
"What is this vessel?" Spock asked.
The man smiled. "Welcome aboard the Flying Dutchman."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "I know the legend. But surely that ship was believed to eternally sail Earth's seas."
"Old gods do new jobs," the man said. "And I can always use some good sailors. But I don't think you're for me." He lifted something in his fingers, showing Spock what seemed suddenly to be a silver cord tangled around Spock's ankle and leading back over the rail into the darkness. "Unless you'd rather go on with us?"
Spock took up a handful of the cord and held it. It seemed feather-light, but it was warm in his hand. "There must be an end to all voyages," he said. "I will return to my friends, and let them take me to my rest."
"I figured you'd say that," the man said. He smiled crookedly again, as if remembering something. "Oh, Elizabeth says to remember her to you. The pirate king? It must have been a while ago even for you."
"I remember the pirate king," Spock said.
"I thought you might," the man said. "People did." He shrugged one shoulder and held out a hand toward the rail. "You'd better go. We've got another stop to make before we get to the end of the world."
"There is no end to the world," Spock said.
The man smiled, his eyes once again seeming very old. "Trust me on that."
Spock hesitated, his hand on the copper-clad rail. "This seems very improbable," he said.
"Me meeting you?" The man looked amused. "I'd say that was practically certain. Sooner or later." Around him, gears turned, and the strange bright sails spread to catch a non-existent wind. "See you later, maybe," the man said, and the last thing Spock remembered was a brilliant flash of green.
*****
Note: The line "Old gods do new jobs" is stolen from Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. Pirate.
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