It had been five years since Maria's shuttle had gone missing, but there wasn't a day that Pike hadn't thought of his beloved wife. Whether she was alive or dead, Pike didn't know, part of him always thought if she was dead he'd know somehow. But he had never got that feeling, never once thought she wouldn't come back home.
Despite all this, when he got the visit from Admiral April, telling him that the shuttle had appeared and now its passengers were now being debriefed at starbase near the moon. Not wanting to get his children's hopes up until he knew Maria was with them, he took off on the next available shuttle and headed to the base. Once there, a nurse came up, "Admiral Pike!" She said with a smile, waiving at him, "We were told to expect you."
"Where is she?" Pike asked as the nurse gave him a data padd with all the necessary intel.
"Right this way sir." She guided him to the observation rooms, she said, "She's in that first room on the left."
"Thank you," He said as he headed to the door, putting his hand on the data lock to open the door. It slid open and he slowly walked in.
She was there, just as beautiful as the day he lost her, he could feel suddenly every ache, pain, grey hair he had developed in her absence. Trying to keep it together he smiled at her and said, "hey beautiful."
@darehearts "Did my existence ever matter to you?"
What he wants to say--what he's wanted to say for a long time--is of course you matter to me, Jimmy. Everything I did was for you.
But he doesn't really have a right to say that, does he? Because he ran away when he was a stupid kid and had gotten it into his mind that, if he were gone, everything would be fine. That Sam had been the reason their stepfather got so angry. It was because he still had memories of his real father that he had latched onto so hard that he wouldn't let their stepfather feel like he belonged in their house.
That's what Mom had said, anyway. It didn't turn out to be true. Instead, Sam had just abandoned his little brother and left him with a monster. Who knows where he'd be if it weren't for Christopher Pike.
"You're my brother," he says, and it sounds stupid in his own ears. Not enough. "I know I messed up. I want to fix it. Please let me fix it.."
Engineering on the U.S.S. Enterprise (2009 Star Trek) has a maze of coolant pipes which of course lead to a giant blender
The classic movie Enterprise-A has a 78 deck turbolift shaft, numbered bottom to top when she ship should really only have 20something decks, numbered from top to bottom
There's an entire swamp on the deck beneath the arboretum on the U.S.S. Cerritos (Lower Decks), full of hallucinogenic spores
The U.S.S. Franklin (Star Trek Beyond) has 3 decks on the outside, but an infinite turbolift shaft on the inside
But the U.S.S. Discovery NCC-1031-A tops everything with The Great Turbolift Carverns hidden between her decks, stretching off into infinity and full of what look like giant electrical transformers and entire buildings