Kor Hawke must confront the mounting losses in his life.
Mythos Origins – Season 01 / Episode 04
by Alan Tripp
2410
Starfleet Psychiatric Recovery Unit
Chapter I — The Quiet Between
The silence that followed the Mythos did not feel like absence.
It felt like something that had weight.
The Starfleet Psychiatric Recovery Unit had been designed for exactly that kind of silence. There were no harsh lights, no exposed machinery, and none of the constant low vibration that accompanied a starship pushed to its limits. Everything within the facility was controlled, deliberate, and intentionally still, as though it had been built not to treat injury, but to make avoidance impossible.
Kor had come there of his own choosing.
No order had compelled him, and no superior had suggested it as a necessity. He had simply submitted the request, signed his name to the intake, and allowed the system to place him where it believed he needed to be.
Two weeks had been granted.
Two weeks without command.
Two weeks without the expectation that he would decide anything at all.
The room assigned to him overlooked nothing of significance, and he understood immediately that this had not been accidental. There were no stars beyond the window, no ships passing in the distance, and no subtle indicators of movement that might allow him to orient himself by habit.
There was only stillness.
In the first days, he resisted it without ever acknowledging that he was doing so. He remained standing longer than necessary, moved through the room without purpose, and allowed his attention to drift toward things that were no longer present. The routines offered to him went largely unused, not because they lacked value, but because he had not yet decided to accept them.
Eventually, even that resistance began to fade.
When the sessions began, they unfolded with a restraint that he had not expected. The clinicians did not attempt to pull meaning from him, nor did they press him to articulate what he had already accepted internally. They recognized, without needing to be told, that there was a difference between someone avoiding truth and someone already carrying it.
“You made a decision,” one of them said during the third session.
“Yes,” Kor replied.
“You would make it again?”
He allowed the question to settle before answering, not because he needed time to consider it, but because the answer existed across more than a single moment.
“Yes,” he said at last.
The clinician regarded him carefully.
“And the cost?”
Kor’s gaze shifted, not toward anything within the room, but toward something that existed beyond it.
“I carry that,” he said.
The conversation did not continue beyond that point.
There was nothing left to extract.
Chapter II — The Weight That Remains
Sleep came unevenly, and when it did, it did not return him to the chaos of battle. Instead, it brought him back to the moments within it that had mattered most.
He remembered the way Voss had looked at him before the decision was made, not with doubt, but with understanding. He remembered the sound of the Mythos forcing itself into warp when it should not have been able to do so. Most of all, he remembered the stillness of the bridge after it was over, when the absence of movement had carried more weight than the battle itself.
One night, that stillness changed.
“You’re holding it wrong.”
The voice came from behind him, steady and familiar in a way that required no confirmation.
Kor did not turn immediately.
“You always said that,” he replied quietly.
Marcus “Gunny” Hale stepped into view beside him, not as a distortion of memory, but as he had always been—grounded, present, and certain in a way that did not need explanation.
“You always needed to hear it,” Hale said.
Kor allowed the smallest shift in expression.
“Maybe.”
They stood together in a silence that was not empty, but shared.
You’re trying to carry all of it at once,” Hale said after a moment.
Kor did not deny it.
“They were mine,” he said.
Hale inclined his head slightly.
“They still are,” he replied. “That doesn’t mean you stop moving.”
Kor exhaled slowly.
“It feels like leaving them behind.”
Hale shook his head once.
“It feels like that,” he said. “It isn’t.”
The space between them settled into something more stable.
“You don’t honor them by staying where they fell,” Hale continued. “You honor them by making sure what they stood for doesn’t end there.”
Kor met his gaze fully.
“And if I don’t get it right?”
Hale’s expression softened just enough to be seen.
“You won’t,” he said.
A brief pause followed.
“But you’ll decide.”
Kor almost smiled.
When he woke, the room had not changed.
The silence remained.
But it no longer pressed against him in the same way.
Chapter III — Return
Kor did not announce his departure from the facility.
He completed the required process, acknowledged the recommendations that had been offered, and declined any extension of his stay. The clinicians did not challenge the decision. They understood that what he had come for had not been resolution.
It had been continuation.
The message regarding the decommissioning of the Mythos had been waiting for him. He read it once, and that was enough.
The ship would be honored.
Then she would be ended.
He arrived with time to spare.
That, too, was intentional.
Chapter IV — The Warrior and the Admiral
The ceremony did not resemble a Starfleet decommissioning.
It could not.
The broken form of the U.S.S. Mythos remained in orbit above Qo’noS, held in place by a joint effort of Klingon and Federation engineering. She no longer resembled a vessel meant for travel. Instead, she carried the unmistakable presence of something that had given everything it had been built to give.
Warriors stood beside officers, and banners of the Klingon Empire hung alongside the Federation standard. No one attempted to reconcile the difference between them, because the moment did not require it.
Worf spoke first.
“This vessel did not seek the battle it found,” he said, his voice steady and measured. “It chose it, and in that choice, it defined itself.”
He allowed the words to settle before continuing.
“That is not alliance,” he said. “That is honor.”
When he stepped back, Ka’nej Hauk moved forward.
“This ship was not built for what it became,” Hauk said, his voice carrying clearly without force. “It was designed for command, for structure, and for the certainty that comes with known engagements.”
He lifted his gaze toward the Mythos.
“In the end, it had none of those things.”
A brief pause followed.
“It acted without certainty, accepted consequence before outcome, and chose to stand where failure would have meant the end of something greater than itself.”
He allowed the silence that followed to remain undisturbed.
“We will remember the ship,” he said at last.
Then, more quietly:
“But we will measure ourselves against what it asked of those who served aboard her.”
Chapter V — The End of a Ship
The final sequence unfolded without spectacle.
Systems that had resisted shutdown throughout the battle now accepted it without protest. Power grids disengaged, structural supports were allowed to rest, and the ship that had once refused to yield finally released what remained of its effort.
Kor stood apart as the final commands were issued.
He did not need to hear them.
He understood what they meant.
For a brief moment, as the last lights faded across the hull, the Mythos seemed almost whole again—not in structure, but in memory.
Then the darkness took her.
Chapter VI — The Last Search
There was one thing Kor had not yet completed.
The pistol.
He returned to the silent corridors of the Mythos with a clarity of purpose that did not require urgency. The ship no longer resisted him. It allowed him to move through it without interruption, as though recognizing that this final act belonged to him alone.
He reached the storage compartment without hesitation.
The panel opened slowly.
Inside, beneath the remnants of equipment that no longer held meaning, the pistol remained exactly where it had been left.
Kor did not reach for it immediately.
He allowed himself a moment to acknowledge its presence—not as an object, but as something that had endured alongside everything else.
When his hand closed around it, the weight was unchanged.
Familiar.
Certain.
“You took your time.”
Kor exhaled quietly.
“I had to,” he said.
Marcus Hale stood nearby, as steady as ever.
“You didn’t lose it,” Hale said.
Kor shook his head slightly.
“No,” he replied. “I didn’t.”
Hale studied him.
“What I gave you wasn’t the weapon,” he said. “It was the moment when everything else falls away.”
Kor nodded once.
“I know.”
“They stood because of your decision,” Hale said.
Kor’s expression tightened.
“They paid for it.”
Hale stepped closer.
“That’s not the same thing,” he said.
Kor let the words settle, not rejecting them, but allowing them to take their place alongside everything else he carried.
Then he secured the pistol at his side.
Chapter VII — Walking Forward
The path away from the Mythos did not feel like departure.
It felt like continuation.
Kor moved through the ship one final time, passing through spaces that no longer required his presence but still held his attention. He did not rush, and he did not linger. He allowed each step to be what it needed to be.
At one point, he stopped.
Not for long.
Just long enough.
“Goodbye,” he said quietly.
He did not say it to the ship.
He said it to what it had been.
Then he turned.
And he walked.
He did not leave the Mythos behind.
He carried it forward—not as memory alone, but as the weight that would shape every decision that followed.