The past 24 hours had probably been the most bizarre in Jim’s 30 years and that was really saying something. Waking up naked hadn’t even been the highlight of his day yesterday, although he’d asked as many questions as he’d been asked during the day’s interrogations. Even now, after essentials like a shower, getting some clothes - basic as they were - and some sleep - he wasn’t completely convinced that he wasn’t still drunk. After the number of people who’d been vying to buy him drinks the other night, it wouldn’t be surprising if he was and it was a lot more plausible than any other explanation for this, even after the experience of waking up in Tumbleweed, Texas.
He was in San Francisco, apparently, light years away from Yorktown Starbase, miles and years away from Tumbleweed, but it was a city he was very familiar with all the same, This wasn’t his San Francisco, though. Nothing he’d seen was familiar. At least, nothing was until he caught sight of a familiar brunette emerging from the room next to his.
“Jaina?” he asked, taking a tentative step closer. He remembered the prevalence of face twins, as they called them, in Tumbleweed and knew if this was at all a similar situation he could be mistaking someone else for the woman he’d known. “Jaina Solo? Is that you?”
Practical logic be damned, his heart leapt at the hope that there was at least someone or something in this damned place that wasn’t completely foreign to him.
Jaina had been more than a little pissed to wake up naked in a strange place. She’d also threatened a few people but they weren’t impressed with her. Finally they explained things, at least as much as they were going to tell her and after getting some clothes and something to eat, she was taken to what seemed to be similar to the place in Tumbleweed that everyone was quarantined in when they first arrived. It was bigger and more comfortable though. The one thing that bothered her about this place was the fact that her family wasn’t here. There had been several in Tumbleweed and then on the ship but she was the only one here. She would have even been happy to see Kylo but no such luck. If you could call having a conversation with her brother from another timeline luck.
She had just stepped out into the hallway when she heard someone call her name and she turned to see Jim Kirk. “Yeah, it’s me. And you remember me so that means we are more or less from the same general vicinity. Nice to see someone I recognize.” Jaina also remembered a few other things about him, like kissing him at midnight on New Year’s Eve but she wasn’t going to bring that up in case he might have popped in before that happened.
Her recognition of him earned Jaina a grin and he nodded an agreement. “Likewise,” he said as he stepped a little closer. This was far from the worst situation he’d ever found himself in, but it would be a whole lot lonelier without a friendly and familiar face. The fact that it was a face he’d done some kissing with at midnight only a week or so ago didn’t make that any more or less true, but he had to admit she was easy on the eyes, too.
“They say we’re in San Francisco, but it’s not like the San Francisco I know,” he commented, making small talk. “They treating you all right?” Jaina might not be his crew, but she was familiar and that meant he was going to feel a little protective or at least try to look out for her the best he could.
“We measure time differently but from what they say, it’s the 24th century or something like that? And Tumbleweed was the 21st? I remember seeing and hearing things about San Francisco but I never went there.” she smiled when he asked her if they were treating her all right. “Yes, they are. I haven’t been here long. I was kind of handful when I got here so I’m surprised they don’t have me locked up somewhere besides this. I wasn’t too happy when I found out that none of my family came with me.” She missed them all but especially her brothers. Back home Anakin had been gone for a few years and Jacen had changed so much she didn’t feel as if she knew him anymore but they had been themselves in Tumbleweed and she had loved that.
Nodding sympathetically, Jim reached out and gave her hand a quick squeeze. He kind of hoped there was enough familiarity between them that the gesture wouldn’t get his ass kicked. “I’m sorry your family didn’t come with you,” he offered. He was here without his “family”, too, but it had been the same for him in Tumbleweed. He knew it had to feel worse going from a place where she’d had so much of hers to a place where she was alone.
She didn’t mind the touch at all. Before her adventures in interdimensional travel, she would have. Jaina had turned inward after Anakin’s death and Jacen’s kidnapping. Once she’d found herself at Mount Weather and then in Tumbleweed, she’d changed, become more like the person she’d been before and she was glad about that. “Thanks. Did any of your crew come?” There had been some in Tumbleweed if she remembered correctly and she knew that Jim had been close to them.
Jim shook his head. He hadn’t had any of them in Tumbleweed, at least that he remembered, so it wasn’t much of a surprise to learn they weren’t here, even if it was still disappointing. As he understood it, Spock, Bones and even Christine Chapel had been in Tumbleweed at some point, when another version of him had also been there, but that was a time he had no memory of.
“Not as far as I know. They didn’t have a record of any of them being here.”
“It shouldn’t feel so strange to me since let’s face it, a lot of people would think I’m insane if I said I came from another galaxy but I’m actually starting to accept this whole multiverse thing,” she shrugged. “And at least we have each other so we can muddle through whatever this place throws at us together.”
Jim smiled at that. It was good to have at least one familiar face and the knowledge that he might not be entirely alone here as he navigated his new reality. Just then pair of men entered the corridor, one motioning to each of them. Sighing, Jim supposed their short break between interrogation sessions was over.
“See you around the galaxy, Miss Solo,” he murmured to his companion with a quick wink and a smile.