Work Text
James Tiberius Kirk is one hour old, and he might as well be an orphan. The doctors and the nurses (with their shiny white coats and grief-stricken yet faintly reassuring faces, calm and collected in the face of an utter tragedy) try to push him into his mother's hands, but ever since he opened his eyes (too blue, too familiar, and she will never see him again) she can't even look at him, can't face his too bright eyes and the little wisps of golden hair on his head.The doctors assure her it will get easier with time, that the loss will slowly diminish and get easier to live with, that life will go on, because they too have lost people (lovers, friends, colleagues, family) and they feel the need to console themselves as much as the grieving widow. But as she stares into space and remembers the blinding, crippling explosion that ended her world (that stole her love, broke her spirit, crushed her heart in one black pit of tendrils and twisted metal and sacrifice) she stays silent.It will never get easier, she thinks, and something irreparable in her shatters.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James Tiberius Kirk is four years old, and his teachers call him 'troubled'. He doesn't fully understand what that means (not yet, not truly) but he thinks it makes him sound important so he accepts it, embraces it, and now instead of being called "Poor, brave George Kirk's boy," or "The hero's son," most of the adults in his life (his mother hardly counts, not being away and off planet for the fifth time in a month) call him 'troubled', and that can only be an improvement.To James, the world (his world, of desert plains and wrinkled trees and the terrible overpowering boredom that he seeks so hard to discard) is bright and full of darkness at the same time, and James is only four but he (and his intense eyes, the blue, shining orbs that speak so eloquently about his heritage, his paternity, more than a birth certificate ever could) sees it all, and he loves looking up at the stars at night because stars are just there, and they don't get angry, or yell, or have expectations, and James can lie on the yellow grass and dust in Iowa for hours looking up at the sky before someone interrupts him. He's never still, never unmoving, always restless and coiled tense energy wrapped in a mortal body, but those times when he's alone with the universe are the closest he gets to stillness (moving his head to watch passing ships and falling stars and comets and whatever catches his eye because he can barely counts in the greater scheme of things).He sometimes wishes, against his will and far too young to know any better, that his mother would see him as Troubled too (his teachers call him that, trouble with a capital 'T', and he doesn't know what that means either but he says it anyway), because maybe then she'd come back and not yell at him, maybe being Troubled would make him different enough from whatever ghosts she sees when she looks at him for her to actually see him.Maybe she'd return and treat him like the other parents treat their children, rather than wavering between ignoring (shunning, avoiding, denying his existence) him and screaming at him. James doesn't understand (nor has he ever, really, understood) what it is about himself that makes her upset, and he doesn't want to make anyone upset, least of all his own mother, so he tries to be as good and polite and nice as possible, but he can't ever quite manage it for very long before it all seems so… so… pointless.So he still gets screamed at, and she nearly always cries when she sees him on her first day back from yet another diversion into the space he is so entranced by, and sometimes the moments when his mother is nice and motherly scare him more than when she's not because he knows (with that terrible certainty of youth and vague, unfiltered experience) that he's going to do something to make her mad or sad again before she leaves (inevitably and without fail).James is four, and he knows what 'abusive' and ‘negligent’ mean. But Sam (smarter, older, better Sam) tells him not to tell anyone, and Sam is ten, so he must know what he's talking about. And she never hits him, never raises a hand against him and instead occasionally (often) avoids touching him all together.
Sam takes care of him, like Granny takes care of them (old, and wrinkled but with a mischievous glint in her eye James inherited but Sam didn't, and a smile so wide sometimes James can’t help but think that if the sun weren’t in the sky it would be in his Granny’s smile), and they live in an old white house with three bedrooms and one bathroom. James and Sam share a room with twin beds, and when James has a nightmare (explosions and loneliness and childish fear; coupled with that inherited bone-deep craving for the unknown regions of space- because James is more like his mother than she will ever realise) Sam lets him crawl into his bed and they sleep curled around each other like they're all the other has because in some ways (lots of ways, in all the ways that truly matter) they are.Being Troubled apparently has something to do with him hacking the school records, even though he never actually does anything, and he's not completely sure why exactly he does it in the first place, apart from the fact he's so bored and it’s challenging for all of five minutes, but that’s five minutes that he has something to do.Being bored leads him to things (like 'exploring' online and learning secret Starfleet codes and listening in to high-priority secret transmissions- none of which he ever actually gets officially accused of, James is far too good at what he does for something so innocuous and common as getting caught), and Sam gives out to him and his teachers frown at him, and Granny shakes her head whenever she gets the call from the principal, and behind it all is the disappointed faces saying he's isn't as good as his father.The first time he realises his birthday is also a day of national (worldwide, galaxy-wide, renowned and bitter) mourning he’s four and his mom hasn’t yet commed him to say Happy Birthday like she did to Sam for his (he waits by the comm in anticipation and excitement for 6 and a half hours, until bedtime, but she still doesn’t call and he slowly feels like maybe she was never going to). He finds out later (much later, years later, when he’s all grown up and likes to pretend he doesn’t even have a birthday, let alone celebrate it) that she had actually gotten a leave of absence that weekend but spent the entire four days at the Starfleet base getting hammered, and he can’t quite find it in himself to feel surprised. He eventually emulates her technique, as there’s a lot to be said for being too inebriated to walk straight on the day he came into the world (premature and alone from practically the moment of his birth).But James is still deceptively, traitorously innocent at four, so it takes the ‘moment of silence for George Kirk’ announcement at school, and the sympathetic teachers, and the jeering of the other kids (with fathers, and mothers, and proper families) for him to actually see what was obvious and blatant right in front of him all along.He never makes the same mistake again (of thinking himself ‘normal’, of believing he was good enough to have his own birthday, of hope), and if his birthdays from the age of four just aren’t celebrated in their house (he still gets presents, all wrapped up in shiny paper, but he lacks the enthusiasm about his birthday that all his classmates possess so by the time he’s six even they stop) no one ever mentions it.James rebuilds an antique engine at four and a half, one that once belonged to his father (who he never met, but he's been told he was a hero; and there's always a bitter voice inside him that blames him for everything- his mother, and being alone, and being Troubled) in a few hours easily, the metal twisting beneath his nimble, too-dexterous-for-a-four-year-old fingers, and it all making sense just like computers and reading and maths do, and maybe even more, but even that bores him in the end, his attention caught by the newest prank, newest challenge.His classes are easy, his classmates slow and so very dull, and James spends a lot of time dreaming about what he will do once he's off planet and free.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James Tiberius Kirk is five, and now he's 'genius', not Troubled. He knows what genius means, because his teachers call him that with either blatant disregard or hereditary respect, so he looks it up on Starfleet's private server using a long string of code and his ten minute lunch break. It tells him that there are many genius' working for Starfleet, in every walk of life imaginable, and he learns that when people call him genius it's either a compliment or an insult (he's not quite sure of the difference yet, not really able to tell them apart, not fully aware that one day he might have to).He doesn't think he's much like a genius, because his mother is still off planet and Sam is still his only friend and the most he's managed to sit completely still in any one go is 3.4 minutes (he knows, he counted).
He rebuilds the engine again for the fourth time (this time adding some more of his own extras, own personal touches, that make the car purr, sending a delicious thrill of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated happiness through him for the first time since he realised how very different he was), and learns to speak Klingon (it's more interesting and challenging than learning any human languages, all harsh consonants and double meanings and feels to James almost like a secret code) from intercepting Starfleet transmissions, and in his spare time he teaches himself about particle physics and quantum mechanics and advanced engineering (anything he can get his hands on, really, anything to stave away the boredom) from online papers and notes.He downloads textbooks onto single files at the school port and stores them in his and Sam's room (small and cosy and it smells faintly of the dust that cakes the roads outside and the replicated soup he has when he gets home from school), so that in his free time- when he's not rebuilding and fixing old machinery, or slouching in his chair in class or hacking secure online databases- he can learn and teach himself anything he wants.
He finds science fascinating and languages amazing and engineering is something he can actually keep himself busy with, at least the practical side of it, and there's nothing he tries to learn that is truly difficult or hard for him to grasp, even when teaching himself.Some of his teachers allow him to read his own books in class, eventually tired of his constant interruptions and frequent arguments, but others don't (bitter and taking pleasure in the way they get to condemn him for speaking without first being spoken too, but they’re wrong and James knows it, so isn’t it better for him to correct them then let them teach false information?), so in those classes he ignores the rest of the world and retreats to his own head, imagining a life of adventure and exploration and learning with a ship and crew of his own.James is five when he nearly dies (for the second time, and by far the least memorable) from allergies, which is funny, because he survives the destruction of the Kelvin and being a five year old Troubled Genius but eating one bad choice of food at school nearly does him in. He's at the hospital, and he has to go under severe allergy and health testing for three days, and then is told he has to remain 'for supervision' for a further six, as if he's suddenly and spontaneously going to collapse under the weight of everything wrong with his body;- even if he hasn't yet, even if he’s managed to survive five years without being fussed over like some sort of delicate and fragile glass vase.
James finds that adults (or at least the ones he knows, and who else is there to compare them to?) can be very stupid, and even though Granny gave out to him the last time he called someone stupid he still uses the word, because it works so much better than many other words James can think of.He's still the only one who finds it funny though, so he spends one endless week in hospital (boring, and dull and there's nothing to do, so he steal-borrows one of the doctor's padds and uses it to commit all of the things wrong in his shitty body to memory (Granny sent him to his room the first time he said 'shit' but it's not like she can read minds) in case the information becomes useful later on, because James is five and lonely and a Troubled Genius but he doesn't really want to die).
James T. Kirk is five, and he's so much more than what people see.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James T. Kirk is six, and his mother has just returned home for the first time in nearly two years, and the first thing she does is yell at him (with tearful eyes and an anger-fitted mouth and a bitterness she doesn’t even try and evade, doesn’t even bother hiding).He vanishes into his room, and Sam comes to find him, later, when it's dark enough outside for James' tears to be invisible, when the only light is from the kitchen downstairs that comes up through the creaky old floorboards. His hands are agitatedly taking apart and rebuilding a junk piece of replicator he found outside, thumb rubbing the smooth metal lovingly, the small metallic clinks as he toys with the legally sanctioned equipment calming.It's like him; discarded and unwanted, but not irreparable, not unfixable.Sam sits at the edge of his bed awkwardly- even though they're pretty much all the other has they've never been terribly close- and sighs."You should try not to antagonise her so much." The twelve year old advises, and James curls closer around himself, because he doesn't know what he did to antagonise her in the first place, but he still says nothing. What can he say? Their mother hates him for something that happened while he was being born, hates him irrationally and illogically and all those big words that James loves to say because they make his classmates so confused. He doubts anything he could do would get her to look at him, and not his dead (haunting, still hanging over him even though he never met the man) father, who he’s told he looks like, who he’s told was a hero, and that’s what he always comes back to.
Because his father is dead, and his mother as good as (at least to him, and sometimes, guiltily, James wonders if it wouldn’t be better if she were), and the only person who actually loves him for who he is (Sam doesn’t count, can’t count, because sometimes James looks at him and sees that familiar twinge of bitterness and anger on his face, sees an echo of his mother’s grief and blame in his eyes, but he’s too afraid to mention it) is his Granny. The thought hurts, but no more than getting yelled and screamed at for just existing.Eventually Sam leaves the room, and James- James cries silently to himself, clutching his legs to his chest and head to his knees, because he knows big kids aren't supposed to cry, but there's this feeling in his stomach and a sick sort of block in his throat and the tears are beyond his control. And he promises himself angrily, scrubbing away the tears and the wet tracks on his cheeks- hiding the evidence, he calls it, and it’s a habit that will follow him the rest of his life- that he won't cry again, he refuses to cry again, not over his mom and certainly not over the aching, choking sensations of loneliness and rejection that was always seem to walk hand-in-hand.Winona Kirk stays for two more weeks (silent, and tense, and James barely speaks to anyone for the entire duration of her visit) before leaving again, and James is vaguely ashamed of the relief he feels when her car drives off, but he's six and a genius, and staying silent has never been easy, never been an option for him.Sam is twelve now, and he's leaving Jim's school for the older high school a few miles down the road, and James has no one to walk to school with but it's okay because he's learning chess (Granny is teaching him, showing him how the pieces move and the rules, and he picks it up so easy it's as if he's been doing it his entire life) and he's fluent in Klingon (can just as easily spout it off as he can Standard, and he doesn’t really understand why no one else understands him when he speaks it). So he's moved onto particle acceleration, which leads him to starships and how they're designed (and he almost loses it when he comes across warp cores, because, shit that stuff is amazing and sometimes he can barely breathe because it awes him so much) and xenobiology (aliens and all of the different species' are so interesting, and there’s just so much to learn and remember, so many different anatomies and languages and cultures) and teaching himself the language of the Romulans, Rihannsu.It's definitely interesting, and entertaining, and gives him something to do other than be a six year old Troubled Genius with a dead father and an absent mother (the teachers think he doesn't hear them when they talk but he's not nearly as unobservant as they like to fool themselves into thinking) and his Granny can't give out to him when he curses in Klingon because she doesn't speak it (which is silly, because James thinks it's important that people are able to communicate, and how are they supposed to do that if they can't speak to each other? Not everyone can be expected to have to learn Standard, they're only one very small part of a huge universe).All in all, his life, while not wildly exciting, is pleasant, and he loves Sam and Granny and his mom (even though he's not sure sometimes if she loves him, and the thought causes him a few sleepless nights before he dismisses it with all the skill his six years have taught him when it comes to unwanted emotions), and he's keeping himself busy with as many things as possible, as many different studies and philosophies and works as he can possibly cram into his head (it turns out to be a scary amount, though he doesn’t fully realise that at the time).Until he comes home from school one day a few short months shy of his seventh birthday to an officer in a navy uniform standing waiting in the kitchen with a grim look and bad (awful, devastating, apocalyptic) news, and his mom is dragged back from whatever spaceship she was on to care for them and school is cancelled for him and Sam, and suddenly languages and learning seems so unimportant in the face of his first true and conscious clash with someone else's death.He attends the funeral of the only loving adult in his life without shedding a tear, keeping them all locked up tight inside, and when he gets home (but it isn't home not really, not without his Granny with her open smile and bright eyes) he picks up the chess set and throws it at the wall in a fit of angry, emotional despair.The white queen breaks in half. James doesn't cry.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James Tiberius Kirk is six, still, (it feels like he's been six forever) and his mom's been back on Earth three months (but she’s starting to get more restless than usual, spending hours wandering the house, cheap bottles of whiskey or beer in hand and the toxic scent of alcohol seeping into the very bones of the house), and he and Sam are back in school once more- but James has stopped caring about something so trivial as school, so unimportant as people, and he resumes his own studies with an insane fervour.
He learns Orion and moves on to astrophysics, studies about space and black-holes and 'lightning storms in the sky' because it makes him feel like he’s more prepared, has more control (a bitter delusion, truly, but not something he’s willing to throw away just yet), and he's still learning about other cultures, other beings and planets.
He stores it all, recalls everything, joins in on interplanetary debates in Standard, Klingon, Romulan and Orion (just because he can, and because doing nothing means feeling, and feeling means remembering, and he just can’t do that).
He rarely leaves his room, eats the bare minimum to survive, and speaks so little he often wonders if he can actually speak at all. His mom doesn't notice. She never notices.Instead, she gets married to a big, burly guy named Frank (his second name doesn’t matter, nothing matters but the way he watches James with a vicious glint in his eyes and twisted lips), and the first time he and Sam meet him James hates him with a complete burning passion that rivals the hatred he has for his own father.
But he doesn't say anything to anyone about it, because his mom wouldn't believe him (would scream at him, would cry that doesn’t she deserve a little happiness? Hasn’t he taken enough from her?) even if he did, even if she deigned to look at him, even if (by some miracle) she stopped seeing his dead father look enough to see him.Winona marries Frank (but keeps her last name) four months after Granny dies, and two weeks before James' seventh birthday.
She's gone four days later (their honeymoon stage lasts the amount of seconds it takes them to walk down the aisle, because Frank was convenient, was useful; marrying him was easier than having to deal with her two underage sons herself, meant she could go back and fly off to wherever the hell she wanted without fear of legal repercussions), leaving them to get acquainted with their new guardian in a more expensive, bigger house where he and Sam don't share a room anymore, and everything's cold and grey and dismal.The first time Frank hits James (harsh and burning and leaving a bruise that feels like it’s a mile wide and a planet deep), he's just back from school and Sam won't be home for another hour, and all he said was hello in Romulan (sometimes the languages he knows get a little muddled up in his head, the words jumbled and coming out at the wrong moments- his young tongue hardly able to tell the difference anymore- and half the time when he's talking to Sam a string of Klingon or Orion will burst out instead of Standard. Sam's well used to it by now but his classmates jeer at him for it).
Frank takes it as a personal insult and jams his fist heavily in a drunken rage into James' cheek, before sending him to his room.He doesn't eat that night, and Sam doesn't notice, and things go downhill from there (he barely sleeps, barely eats, barely lives).
He quickly learns to pretend he can't speak anything but Standard, to pretend he's not fluent in any language but the one Frank speaks (to pretend not to be the ‘Genius’ part of Troubled Genius- which is surprisingly easier than it seems, especially when the punishment for failure is getting beaten).
The other languages (Klingon, Romulan, Orion, and he’s just started learning Beltazoid- just because he can’t use them doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel that same burning desire to learn as he did when he was younger) and all of his collected knowledge over the past three years- give or take- of his life gather dust in the back of his mind, unused except for when he listens in to Starfleet's transmissions or joins in on debates by hacking their system, and he doesn't do that anymore (not as often, not as fun, not as challenging as it was when he was four and five and still believed in happy endings).
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James Tiberius Kirk is eight years old (but sometimes it feels like he’s been alive for much longer), and he spends more time in his room than not, more time coloured purple-green-yellow-red than his actual skin tone, more time thinking up excuses to whatever injury of the week he gets to tell his teachers than he actually spends in school. He's back to being simply Troubled now, long since stopped caring about what his teachers think (they forget very quickly and easily that he was ever ‘genius’, ever anything more than just another cop-out- and it makes James wonder if they ever cared at all), has started starting fights just so he can have a plausible excuse for the shiners on his face and the almost perpetual limp he's never quite able to hide.The broken bones and torn muscles are harder, of course, more difficult to explain away, but James learns to bullshit his way out of death itself, to cheat and bend the rules and laws and his own morality until sometimes even Sam begins to doubt. It serves him well, that skill (to say anything and make it seem like the most reasonable thing in the world, to convince strangers with a laugh and a cheery smile that this, no! Nothing like that! I well, this is kind of embarrassing, I was messing around with a razor and my hand slipped, yeah I know I’m very young but I am mature for my age!, with a sheepish look on his face), and his too large, too blue eyes help convince even the most stoic of people, and he probably gets away with more than he should (definitely, without question or doubt) gets away with all his lies and excuses because he learns how to look and act innocent.Some people suspect of course, old teachers that can remember him from back when he was naïve and young and didn’t bother hiding his intellect (James can hardly recall the feeling, hardly remember a time before his façade of sharp, twisted arrogance and charm took over his natural inclinations to learn and help), the occasional person who sees in his startling blue eyes that deep blankness or intelligence (the two aren’t mutually exclusive, not now, not anymore, not when James has had over a year conditioning to simply hide) and random people on the transporters on the rare times James is allowed into the city occasionally give him searching glances or well-meaning looks, but he and Sam dismiss it carelessly and meticulously and put their bruises down to meaningless, brother-hood fighting.Sam gets hit too, more often than not, but James seems to be the primary target for no reason either of them can ascertain, although it probably has something to do with the fact that Winona still (James finds it impossible for him to think of her as 'mom' or 'mother' anymore, not since Frank and possibly not, if he’s being completely honest with himself, for longer), in her own confusing, crazy way cares about James' brother, and that James himself is the living embodiment of the man who Winona will always love a million times more than Frank. Sam tries to step in often when Frank starts up (usually with glass bottles of old alcohol or whiskey, and once, memorably, with a thin butcher’s knife), to take James' place, take his hits and bruises and cuts, but Frank's favourite time to go at him is when Sam's at that extra hour of school or one of his many extracurricular activities (Sam signs up to everything he’s eligible for, and James doesn’t blame him because he would too if he could, if he were able to escape this damned house for even a few more hours), and Frank's very careful to only beat him enough to scar, to hurt, (a few small broken bones and shoddily sewn wounds from thrown glass, and bruises, so many bruises, too many to count or bear thinking of), not enough to actually kill him.Turns out there's a lot you can do to someone without killing them, a lot of pain you can inflict on a person before their body gives out (and James is young, he’s strong, he can survive a lot more than anybody ever expected of him). James wonders... well, he wonders if life isn't just a little bit not worth it. But he can't leave Sam, can’t abandon his brother to the mercy (and isn’t that a funny word, mercy, the mercy of a man who takes pleasure in the pains and trials of others) of their sadistic step-father, because James is the reckless, impulsive one of their two, and if he goes then Frank won't have his favourite punching bag anymore, and then not even Winona's (barely there and flimsy) protection would keep his elder brother safe.So Sam notices Frank’s actions, and James notices how Sam steps in and takes the beatings for him (instead of him, because of him) whenever he can, when he sees the bruises and pain on James' face, the stiffness of his movements the next day- James notices how Sam goes and antagonises Frank purposefully (stupidly, in James' opinion, you don't pick fights with bullies; certainly not over him) just so James will have time to heal between injuries and beatings. James is eight, and he refuses to be the cause of anyone else's pain (not again, not when there’s something he can do to prevent it), so he takes the hits silently and willingly, and sews himself back together in the privacy of his own room when the sky goes black and his only light is the eerie luminescent glow from the moon (he doesn't dare turn on a light, not when Sam is right next door and might come to investigate and then go after Frank in some futile attempt at looking out for him).He never asks Sam why they don't tell someone (about Frank, about Winona, about life when all you have to live for is just one day more); it's obvious, because there's no one left to tell (no one left to care, no one left to trust, a mistrust of authority figures born from abuse and neglect preventing them seeking ‘proper’ help) and they refuse to be separated. So they bear the abuse (mostly James, once more, but it’s better that way, better him than Sam- he’s already broken and unlovable) and stick together and up for the other like they always have (and always will, because they’re brothers in a world of enemies).
Because they might not particularly like each other sometimes, might fight and argue and be completely different in every way that matters (have different views and opinions about everything, see the world in opposing ways), but James would do anything to keep Sam safe and the same can be said in reverse. They're steady, constant, unmoving and dependable like a rock in a river (a hammered iron slab in a sea of loose pieces), and the only ones left to trust and be trusted in return.But nothing last forever, and eternity is a joke.Sam eventually seems to believe James when he says Frank doesn't hit him anymore (doesn’t beat him or break him or scar him or bottles-and-beer-and-lingering-traces-of-bitterness-tinted-with-despair); his reputation for fighting and acting out (‘rebelling’ they call it, because they’re too blind and ignorant to see what’s flashing in front of their very eyes) catching up with him, and no matter how many times he tries to convince himself that this is a good thing, that it's better this way, that now Sam can sleep at night in peace and not worry about the beatings or the blood or the unnamed stains on James’ bedroom floor- every time he sits alone and awake at night with his back to the wall and arms tight around his knees he wishes that they could go back to when minding each other was their only priority.But Sam is growing up, and he has actual friends now, even a girlfriend or two (five, in total, over the short span of seven months, but James is in no position to judge for coping mechanisms (he might have been the one hated, but he wasn’t the only one abandoned)), and somewhere along the way their relationship, their brotherhood, their live-by-the-day and look out for each other attitude has dissolved into meaningless pleasantries passing each other by on the stairs- while James tries not to wince from his latest bruise and Sam lectures him about not fighting and not blackening his name (the Kirk name, the hero name, that Sam has suddenly and mysteriously started ‘taking pride’ in again).Sam is gone, out, more evenings than not, and James is left alone with Frank more evenings than not (shielding his face with his forearms and the soft, vulnerable parts of his body from brutal kicks and punches, cracked ribs and black eyes and split lips and tender limbs), but by the time Sam gets home and Frank has drunken himself into a stupor again (propped up on the couch, drool on his mouth and shirt stained unpleasant colours- sometimes, usually with James’ own blood) James has cleaned away all the blood from the ground, wiped himself down and wrapped torn pieces of old clothes around all his bleeding injuries so he can sew them later that night.
By the time Sam gets home, often sweaty and smiling and happy (James is glad, in those moments, of his deception- if only to keep that smile on the elder Kirk’s face), James has gathered all his torn and frayed emotions until he can hide behind his façade, and thought up excuses for his newly acquired injuries, proffered up with a cocky smile and amusing anecdotes. He avoids everyone until the next day at school, when he makes sure to tip his lunch over 'accidentally' on the meanest and biggest guy he can find, and this gives him plausible and fact-based reasons for the bloody nose and the shadowed stains of purple red blood beneath his skin. He does get at least four solid hits in before he makes himself black out (his most recent wounds needing more credibility than one measly fight), and he aims with animalistic brutality for the boy’s unguarded chest, waist and groin, silently and brutally learning all the places one strong hit will make someone twice his size bend over in pain (getting beat up on a regular basis is good for something, at least).No one notices or questions the bruises that he already sported, not even Sam, and that's exactly what he wanted but it can't help feeling like a failure (like it was inevitable, like he was only always going to be good for this, as a substitute and hidden guardian of his older, more normal brother).He stops even pretending to try in school, teaches himself Vulcan (he finished learning Andorii a month ago and Borg a few months before that), molecular chemistry, Terran history and anything he can get his hands on by night, learns how to stick an old-fashioned needle into his own skin without causing infection or non necessary pain (it’s mostly a case of trial and error, but he learns quickly. He doesn’t have a choice), how to sew himself back together and not pass out in the afternoons, and how to wake himself up at 4:25 in the morning on the dot so he can escape the house and learn the periodic table before school. Living with Frank is nothing if not informative.He takes an aptitude test at school at the insistence of his teachers (the ones that can remember him standing up and explaining, in detail, the faults with the education system starting with the unimaginative processes and the lack of any 'real science' at the age of five), sits in the hall along with Sam as the fourteen year old does his, and manages to score a 587 pointer without even really trying.There’s a request from Starfleet waiting for him, later, when he gets home from school to find Frank thankfully already passed out; which means he can escape another beating (those days are the lucky ones, when Frank’s away or too drunk to breathe properly let alone have any form of hand-eye co-ordination, and they are few and far between the older James gets).He doesn’t open the file or the note. Stares at it for a few minutes before deleting it, with only a small time allowed and given to hesitation. A brief moment to caress his curiosity (that little nub of reckless abandon and insatiable yearning for something more that even Frank with all his abuse could never erase). There’s nothing Starfleet could offer him that he would be willing to accept (not with Winona in Starfleet, and his dad the dead hero and Sam stuck in Iowa; he hated space with a fervour James- who dreams of new planets and spaceships and adventure- can’t hope to imagine).He and Sam might have fallen apart (drifted away, distanced, changed and evolved past who they once were), but James is certain of the fact that leaving his brother behind isn’t an option, and Starfleet aren’t going to take a normal fourteen year old kid along for the ride just for James (Sam does hate space though, so James doubts he’d go along anyway, even if given the option).James is eight, and broken, and damaged, and beaten, and has somehow turned into a liar-actor with a fake front he wears more often than the truth.It hurts more then he wants to admit.But James isn’t about to let anybody else see that.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James T. Kirk is nine, and alone.He’s alone.And yes, he has always been alone in a sense (different, separate, a round peg trying desperately to fit into a square hole), but there was always the lingering sense that his brother- that Sam has-had his back. Even when Sam still considered him as much of a waste of space as the rest of the world, even when James was hiding everything, he still thought, no he believed that Sam had his back.But he was wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong (like he was about everything, because hope was an illusion and you could count on no one but yourself) and Sam’s leaving had only proved that.Sam who had taken off without any hesitation, with only a murmured, “Goodbye, Jimmy.”, and a handshake as farewell. With his striped jumper and bag hanging tight on one shoulder, he could have been going to school, and James didn’t even realise anything was wrong until they got to the road and Sam began walking in the other direction (it was the first day in over two years that James hadn’t gotten up with the sun- or earlier- and he had wanted to savour it, walking alongside his brother, and the irony of it isn’t lost on him at all. So much so, that he wonders hadn’t he waited to walk to school with Sam, would his brother have said goodbye at all?).There is a split second as Sam walks away when all James wants is too call his name, to beg him to stay, to plead with him not to go, to explain it all, every bruise and scar and moment when James’ eyes looked more dead than a corpse’s (and wasn’t that just a perfect comparison, the eyes of a dead man, the eyes that Winona hated with such terrifying passion), when James wants- no, he needs to wrap his arms around his last living relative and hold on.But he doesn’t. And part of him watches in disbelief, watches keenly as if expecting his brother- expecting Sam to turn back around and laugh it off, to suddenly understand everything James had done for him, to stay, and when he doesn't, when he keeps walking, getting smaller and smaller along the horizon, it hurts. Sam was leaving him. Leaving him like Winona had, like their father had, like Granny had (and James hadn’t thought about her in years, hadn’t let himself recall the memories of a safe place, where he didn’t get beaten every day and didn’t have to hide), like everyone who James had ever loved has- and, if in that moment he honestly doubts anyone will ever stay, no one’s around to see or care.James thinks he might be cursed, and the universe doesn’t see fit to send him a sign to show otherwise. So James stands still and watches as Sam walks away, watches with vacant eyes as the last person he ever loved in some shape or form disappears over the horizon, because James has only ever wanted to make Sam happy, and it makes sense (in a twisted, callous, obvious way) that leaving James alone would serve that purpose.James doesn’t continue on the walk to school. He turns around and starts walking back to the house, numb and empty and silent, and he thinks that maybe he should just leave now, too. There’s no one holding him back, no latent and hidden sentimentality holding James to the bricks and stones he could never call ‘home’.There’s nothing for him here.But… but. James feels like there should be a ‘but’ there, and maybe it’s stupid, and immature, and hopelessly childishly naïve, but what if Sam comes back? What then? What if James leaves and when Sam returns it’s to an empty house and a vanished brother?And James, James is so desperate, so hopeful that maybe Sam will come back, that he retraces his steps back to the house and he sits on the porch (eerily reminiscent of a time when he was four and innocent and waiting for Winona- for his mother to call). The outcome now, whether it be to Winona’s continued and accepted absence or Sam’s sudden and painful departure, is the same.Neither of them come back. And James is feeling particularly reckless, feeling that same twinge of danger and irrational abandon, so he breaks into the shed and smooths his hands along the bright red paint of his father’s antique car an hour before Frank can even be expected to be awake.He slides effortlessly onto the smooth leather, and it doesn’t take him more than a few short seconds to hotwire the car into lighting up beneath his nimble fingers.The engine purrs beneath him, and James grins sharply, full of adrenaline and feeling self-destructive, before pressing his foot to the gas.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
James Tiberius Kirk is nine and the wind is whistling wildly through his thick blonde hair and the heavy music is pounding along with the erratic beating of his heart and the sun is overbearing, glaring, burning but the supple, soft leather is heaven beneath his hands and even Frank’s dark, threatening voice can’t pull him from this sense, this overwhelming abandon and adrenaline-cased whoop of glee that spills from his lips like it was always going to, like his entire life has led to this moment of quaking inevitability. And James is turbulent-ecstatic-giddy-terrified-alive in a way he has never dared imagine, and he’s driving towards the cliff, closer, closer, and he briefly entertains the idea of just going over, of experiencing that sudden, intense thrill of imminent death and elated, belated breath, of life and being alive for that one sudden, split, agonising moment just because he can, because his heart thuds in his chest and breaths that slip like quick-silver down his throat continually power the blood and bones that are his body. But he can’t, doesn’t, won’t, wants to be alive to see the look on Frank’s face, wants nothing more than to go out with a big enough bang to shake the cosmos, to shatter the universe, break apart the stars and paint the world with his blood, to be undeniably and unequivocally there, and he knows that driving this car off this cliff in this moment isn’t it. So he swerves, skids, knocks the stones and dust from beneath his archaic tires, shoves open the passenger door and leaps. There’s a breath, a pulse, a flap of a bird’s wing, a tremor in the earth, and in that eternity he’s flying, he’s dying, he’s everything and nothing all at once, and all he wants to do is chase that sensation until he falls, topples over it, feels the burn of the sand in his eyes and the pull of the wind through his hair and the slight scratch of his hands from the metal door, feels the burn on his ribs from injuries not yet healed and the bruises that this misadventure will inevitably form. James wants it all, but then the second is over and his shoulders burn from bearing his weight and his hands scrabble in the dirt because mortality and survival are catching up with him, and beneath him-behind him the car hits the bottom of the quarry and he thinks, ‘That could so easily have been me’, and there’s no fear or worry only blinding, over-powering triumph-laced excitement. James pulls himself from the ledge (but first he danced across it, rode it, dared it to take his life and mocked it past the point of simple arrogance, embraced it and held it close to his heart for the power it gave him) and stands on shaky feet, head tilted back and eyes squinted from the sun. He’s reckless, he knows this, reckless and troubled and genius and abused and abandoned and alive all at once, so much and so little and not nearly enough. He yells his name, yells the three words, six syllables, seventeen letters, and he dares the world to doubt him, dares it in a dangerous spark of defiance, because he isn’t about to be held back by simple things like possibility. James is nine, and he is so alive it hurts.