Kathryn was being honest when she said she didn't know much about that man's life. There were those who did, but she never took the sort of fixated interest some gained in command school in the life and times of James T. Kirk. She knew a great deal about his captaincy and the harder choices he had to make out in, what were at the time, the farthest reaches of the known universe, but otherwise the only prominent detail she knows about his life is a sad one. Something she's aware of more by proxy than anything else, as her initial background in quantum cosmology means she spent a great deal of her teenage years utterly fascinated with the Genesis Project.

The Kirk that lived in her time had a son. One who was killed unceremoniously during a struggle to control the secrets he had helped to unlock. It was an unfortunately tragic footnote to an otherwise sensational tale.

A tale she was going to keep to herself for the time being. Even if the alternate nature of his timeline opened up far more loopholes to her than were initial available, allowing her to sit more comfortable upon her throne of Federation principles and beloved Starfleet regulations while sharing information with him without feeling like she were betraying them somehow.

(Loopholes were her favorite, and she was damned good at finding them.)

"And you're still a fellow commanding officer," she says in a soft, almost strained tone that betrays how much that means to her. "Who am I to turn away someone who understands what most are incapable of fathoming unless they themselves are sitting in that chair solely on the basis that you're not from the same timeline?"