Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made. Really, do I have to keep saying it?
A/N: This is the 5+1 fic I think every STXI writer finds themself doing sooner or later. That said, I did it my way, so it ended up more of a character study of Jim than anything. Sorry about the earlier confusion for anyone who saw this go up and then go back down about as fast, and if anyone knows how to edit a published story, please drop me a PM.
1.
It would be so easy to give up. Jim Kirk swallowed hard, huddled against the rubble that had once been a college before Kodos' men stripped it clean and then blasted the bones of it, supposedly to keep fugitives from hiding there.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Mom had sent him here after the new neighbors had called CPS when they'd heard Frank's tirade one night, and the sound of leather hitting flesh. They hadn't turned their backs and because they hadn't, Winona Kirk had been presented with clear, incontrovertible medical evidence of the abuse her husband had dealt her youngest son, abuse she'd turned a blind eye to for years and excused for longer than that. To Jim's disgust she'd not only kicked Frank out—she'd had to, by that point, it was all over town—she'd also kicked Jim himself off planet, all the way to Tarsus IV where his aunt and uncle had agreed to take him in.
It had been a Godsend at first. His aunt and uncle were strict, but the rules were clear and they didn't change based on moods; punishments were additional chores and restricted privileges, not a belt to the back. Their neighbor, Dr. Sato, had taken Jim under her wing and was teaching him a dozen languages. And best of all he had an entire planet to roam as he pleased.
But he was still a genius, and he'd paid attention to the news, noting the rumors swirling about crops starting to fail and not quite buying his uncle's assurances that they'd get it under control, it wouldn't affect the entire colony except maybe to drive prices up a bit here and there.
Jim hadn't been convinced; there was something wrong with Governor Kodos' bland smile, something that made his skin crawl as he watched the holo-news. His uncle had laughed when he'd said as much, patted him on the head, and sent him out to play.
Hoshi hadn't laughed. She'd looked thoughtful, worry creasing her eyes and tightening the corners of her mouth as she'd thought in silence, and Jim had remembered that she wasn't just the inventor of the Linguacode, she was also one of the senior crew aboard the Enterprise, the first Warp 5 ship Earth had sent into the black. She'd set him to studying Xindi as she vanished into her bedroom, and when she'd come out two hours later she'd been pale but composed. And from that day on, lessons had included hours of drilling with every weapon Hoshi could get her hands on, even simple slingshots.
He'd been at Hoshi's house when the edicts had come down condemning half the colony to death, when armed soldiers had dragged his screaming aunt and uncle away into darkened vehicles and more soldiers banged on Hoshi's door. He would never forget the grim look on his teacher's face as she'd stuffed a bag into his hands and shoved him towards the hidden trapdoor leading to the cellar she'd built beneath her house. She'd told him to hide for as long as he could, to hoard his food, and to survive. If he could, she'd said, he was to try to get a message out to Starfleet. He'd tried to argue and she'd cupped his face between her hands, tears in her eyes.
"Jimmy, listen to me," she'd whispered in Japanese, her native tongue. "I'm already dead. But you have to survive, little one. You're meant for so much more, you can't die here. Live. For my sake, if not your own. I love you, kid." And she'd pressed her lips against his forehead and shoved him down the hatch before he could argue. By the time he'd battered his way out again, she was long gone and so were the rest.
That had been months ago. And he'd obeyed Hoshi's final order and lived, even if it meant stealing food from others nearly as desperate, even if it meant killing soldiers. He'd done what he could, had gathered a ragtag little band of kids he was doing his damndest to protect, but it wasn't enough, wouldn't be enough if Starfleet didn't get the fuck off their asses and brought food and help.
It'd be so easy to give up, he thought, bag of stale, moldy rations clutched tight against his stomach, the ache of hunger so typical he didn't even remember what it felt like to go without it. All he had to do was make the wrong sound and they'd be on him, and it'd be over. He'd be away from the pain and the fear, could see his aunt and uncle and Hoshi again. He could meet his dad.
His hands tightened on the sack, and he set his mouth, determination flaring through him. No. He'd keep going, save the ones he could, and someday, he swore to himself as the soldiers' voices moved away, someday he'd see that Kodos paid for this.
But for today? He wasn't ready to die.
2.
He was fifteen the first time Starfleet tried to recruit him.
He'd put the time trapped in a med ward recovering from Tarsus to good use and fulfilled all the education requirements he'd found too fucking boring to bother with, before Hoshi. He'd graduated high school at the top of the grade they'd shifted him into, and the letters from universities were already pouring in, most of them offering full scholarships. He hadn't quite decided what he was going to do; the universe was too fascinating to want to tie himself down to one small, narrow little field like they'd want. How the hell was he supposed to pick one thing and then stick with it? He wanted it all, needed to learn as much as he needed air to breathe, and he knew it.
So college didn't have the appeal he'd half-expected. Even worse, everybody expected him to go, were just waiting for him to pick the one he wanted, and that pissed him off even more. Packing him off to Tarsus hadn't turned out quite so good, so they'd pack him off to learn instead, but in the end it was the same—he wouldn't be in their faces, wouldn't be reminding his mother of her dead husband every time she was dirtside, rare as that was.
Yeah, right. He didn't give a damn about making it easier on anyone else; look what had happened the last time when he had given a damn. Nope. It was his life and he was going to do what he damn well pleased with it.
The Starfleet recruiter could stand there in his command gold all he wanted, could tout his claims of glory and fame. Jim knew what Starfleet had done for him: his father had died saving his crew, and his mother spent more of her time in the black than she did planetside. And that wasn't even getting into the clusterfuck that had been Tarsus IV.
His gaze drifted to the shipyards and the ship gleaming in their depths. He loved flying, yes, and something deep inside whispered that he was as destined for the black as his father had been.
But not yet.
"No," he said, cutting off the uniform mid-platitude.
Starfleet wasn't for him, not yet. He wasn't ready.
3.
"I love you." A staple of most people's lives, offered by parents, blood kin, friends and lovers with varying degrees of sincerity.
It hadn't been a staple in Jim's life for a very long time. Winona Kirk hadn't been able to look at him without seeing the worst day of her life, and she'd loved the black too much to be tied down dirtside, even with a son to raise. She'd started by dumping her infant son with her parents, then branched out to aunts, cousins, and nephews. And then she'd fallen in love with Frank, married him, and left her son with him.
That hadn't worked out so well.
Tarsus…God. His aunt and uncle had been good people, but he'd found a kindred spirit in Hoshi, ready and willing to mentor a prodigy as young as she'd once been. She'd pushed him harder than anyone ever had before and he'd reveled in it. For the first time in his life, someone understood him.
He'd believed her when she laughed, ruffled his hair, and told him she loved him. That had died on Tarsus and he'd returned to Earth, bereft and alone yet again.
He'd gotten lots of "I love you" from his bedmates, so many he'd lost count, but he didn't mistake sex for love. Sex was fun, casual, everything love wasn't, and Jim knew it.
Which was probably why he was caught utterly off guard when Gaila gasped out that she loved him, because, seriously, what the hell? Gaila was Orion and they didn't even have the concept of monogamy in their culture. He'd thought she, like him, considered love to be sacred and while he loved her in a surprisingly platonic way, it was decidedly not with the depth and richness he would never settle down without. Gaila was a damn good friend, one of the few people at Starfleet with eyes as shadowed as Jim's beneath the carefree mask she wore that was nearly a match for his own, and he loved her all the more for it. But he wasn't in love with her, and that made all the difference.
He could've said as much and he knew it. Knew too that it was likely he was making too big a deal out of this, knew she'd take his affection and accept it. But the words "I love you" had a deep, resounding impact on his very soul. "I love you" meant a love so deep no sacrifice was impossible; his father had been the first to demonstrate it, and Hoshi had merely sealed his convictions in stone when she'd done the same thirteen years later.
He loved Gaila, but he didn't love her like that, and the words dried up on his tongue even as he tried to recover, tried to find other ways to ease the bewilderment in her eyes and the hurt growing beneath. It was stupid, he knew that; she'd understand if he'd just tell her because Gaila was pretty awesome that way. But he couldn't find the words, wasn't ready to spill some of the most ingrained truths of his soul into the open for another to hear, wasn't ready to bare himself to even someone he trusted far more than most.
He felt nothing but sheer relief when Gaila shoved him off the bed as footsteps sounded in the hall. Someday he'd say those words to the right person and he knew that too—but today, he wasn't ready to hear those words again, much less say them, and he was fine with that.
IV.
Destiny. Such a simple word that implied so very much. Destiny. Fate. The word conjured up the grandiose, sweeping visions that had filled the ancient Vulcan's mind when he'd melded with Jim.
He didn't have time to freak out over this. He had a ship to take over, a captain to oust, and a homeworld to save with the added plus of killing the asshole who'd murdered his father.
He bit out a moan through clenched teeth as his mind whirled with alien vistas he'd never seen, planets full of strange new lifeforms to explore, mysteries and wonders he'd unlocked in another world with other versions of Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty and even Chekov. And Bones, so very different from his Bones. Friendly, yes, and friends too, but not best friends, not so ingrained into each other's cores the way they were here. There, that epic friendship had been between him and Spock.
Spock, who despised him, who'd thrown his father's sacrifice back into his face and with it all Jim had suffered. And for what, really? Teaching green recruits that they could be defeated rather than prompting them to search for a solution? It wasn't the test that Jim hated; it was the fact that Spock had given no alternative but death no matter how hard one tried, and then claimed that was the viable solution.
Destiny. One absolute truth that couldn't be argued against or defeated.
Bullshit.
If old Spock was to be believed, Jim Kirk was destined to captain the Enterprise with Spock as his First, and the rest of his motley bridge crew.
Bullshit to that too.
Spock gave Scotty an equation he'd apparently invented in Spock's pristine alternate universe, and yeah, that'd work, Jim confirmed to himself. And then things were moving as they tossed together the bones of a plan, worked out equations, recalibrated the transporter rig of Scotty's, and prepared to go off and reclaim his rightful destiny.
He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready for that destiny where he treated Spock with affection rather than cool respect and borderline antagonism, wasn't ready for a destiny where he could work as flawlessly with Spock as he did Bones.
Wasn't ready to give that kind of trust to someone he barely knew.
That was why he chose the agonizing wound of a lost mother over the grief of a lost world, a pain he'd known all his life because he'd lost Winona as surely as he had George the day the Kelvin died. That was why he pushed and prodded and goaded until he was bent over a console, Spock's inhumanly hot hand wrapped about his throat.
If old Spock was right, if destiny was real and theirs was already set in stone, then someday this Spock would forgive him. But Jim wasn't ready to reach out, to offer compassion and friendship and sing the Kumbalaya, not yet. So he went with anger and violence, because right now?
He had a Federation to save, a murderer to kill, and the glimmers of a plan just desperate enough that it might work. He wasn't ready for a great and glorious destiny. That could come.
V.
It was temporary. That was what he told himself as he peeled himself off the console and staggered over to the chair that he'd just commandeered. It was temporary.
Someone had to be the Acting Captain, and while Jim wouldn't claim he was emotionless in the face of the future Romulan who'd damned him to a lifetime of misery from his very birth, he also wasn't as caught up in his agony as Spock was. Yeah, losing his father was a wound that would never quite heal, a little more painful right now because that other Jim Kirk with hazel eyes not as shadowed as Jim's had grown up with a father while he hadn't. But it was also an old pain, one Jim was used to living with and occasionally around; Spock wasn't there, not yet.
He sank into the chair he'd used once before, while he and Spock had argued over ideas right before he'd been kicked off the ship entirely on a trumped-up charge of mutiny because Spock wasn't in any frame of mind to stand argument. It was every bit as comfortable as it had been then, and even worse, it felt right. Felt like old Spock had been correct, that this was where he was meant to be, on this bridge, in this chair, with these people.
Even Uhura's snarl, edged with contempt and lined with fear, wasn't enough to blunt that feeling. Bones' lack of faith stung worse, but he put that aside too because right now, like it or not, he was all they had and his crazy beginning of a crazier plan was all there was to go on.
Captain, just like his father, anointed in the midst of a battle that would define his generation and the ones to come. Hell, it was even worse because if he fucked this up, there wouldn't be much of any generations to come, just whatever the humans on other planets could muster up. They'd be every bit as much of an endangered species as Vulcans now were.
Captain. Christ alive. He toggled on the shipwide intercom and alerted his new crew to the change in command and his own intentions, praying to a God he barely believed in that they didn't hear the panic worming through him. He meant it: they'd defeat Nero or they'd die trying, there were no other options. But that didn't mean he liked it.
When he'd accepted Chris Pike's dare, he'd known he'd end up in a captain's chair someday, but he'd never ever planned on this, fresh out of the Academy and charging blindly ahead. He was supposed to have years of prep time, of learning the ropes as a junior officer and testing his own ideas against minor issues under his own captain's guidance.
Except. His captain was somewhere in the belly of Nero's ship, assuming the lunatic hadn't killed Pike off already. And he'd taken over for the man intended to be the next Captain, so it was too damn late for bellyaching, as Bones might say.
He wasn't ready to be Captain. But this was just temporary. Defeat Nero, save Earth and probably the Federation with it, and things would go back to normal.
He wasn't ready, but that didn't matter right now, so he started barking out orders, galvanizing the rattled bridge crew. He had work to do.
+1
Jim closed his eyes and leaned back against the cool metal of the bulkhead, Enterprise's battered engines thrumming in quiet vibrations through the durasteel. The usual shielding was one more casualty of the fierce battle his lady had waged, but too minor of one to worry over. Not when they were limping home on impulse, just praying that the Fleet managed to piece itself together enough to send help before someone else found them. The backlash from the warp drives detonating had been a godsend, even if they'd put yet more strain on the ship that she could barely handle; it'd also given her a sorely-needed boost forward, acting as a solar tailwind that had shaved weeks off their trip home. The most immediate crises were over, the wounded had been treated and the dead returned to the black, and now Jim, off duty by medical orders for at least six hours, was hiding in Chris Pike's rightful cabin because he didn't have a berth of his own. He didn't think Chris would mind, and he needed the solitude, needed to think. Needed to simply be, except the damn Vulcan wouldn't shut up!
The chime of the door would've made him jump if he hadn't been so exhausted already. He lifted his head to peer at it, wondering who'd figured out his hiding place and more to the point, who'd dared Bones' already legendary crankiness to disturb him.
"Come!"
The door hissed open and a familiar figure stood silhouetted against the corridor lights before it shut again, leaving them in the near-complete darkness of space.
"Bones." He frowned a little, worry stirring itself to life. "What's wrong?" Something had to be for Bones to be violating his own orders, and that didn't bode well at all. Bones picked his way across the room and sank down next to him, long legs sprawled out before him in a way that spoke of his own weariness.
"You weren't in my quarters. Figured I'd better make sure you weren't on your fourth shift."
He'd considered it, but his impromptu command crew had all had at least a shift off already, which was enough to dent their exhaustion, and Bones had made it clear Jim would rest on his own or he'd be doing it in Sickbay, but either way he was getting some sleep. He'd wisely retreated while he could, and he said as much. Bones snorted, letting his head thunk back against the bulkhead.
"…I'm sorry," he said quietly, and Jim stilled beside him. Apologies didn't come easily or lightly to Leonard McCoy; he'd never heard one himself, but their apologies tended to come in the ebb and flow of favors and alcohol, not words.
"For what?" he asked lightly, unwilling to acknowledge the sincerity, because that meant acknowledging the hurt that his own lover hadn't had his back. He'd get over it; Bones had been there for him in the big way, had risked his career to smuggle Jim onto the ship. That was what counted in the end. It'd just take awhile for the rest of the sting to fade away, but they were still good.
Bones didn't take him up on the implied acceptance, didn't worm away, but then he wouldn't. He'd made up his mind and now he wouldn't yield until Jim had accepted his apology or denied it. Persistence was one of the things Jim most admired and hated about his lover.
"For not having your back," Bones said plainly.
"If you'd disagreed on the bridge, Spock would've marooned you too," Jim said bluntly, knowing he was right. Spock was a damn good second, or Pike wouldn't have picked him, but he was also too rigid. That, combined with his grief and his shock, had not been a pretty mix when he'd been challenged—and Jim hadn't exactly been diplomatic when he'd done the challenging. It wasn't a maroon-worthy offense, but it had been stupid to put it lightly.
"Not then. When you came back. I should've hypoed the green-blooded hobgoblin. More to the point, I shouldn't have doubted you."
Jim sighed. That was the crux of it, because Bones knew him better than anyone. Bones should've realized he'd had a plan going in, even if it hadn't been much of one at that point. And he hadn't.
"Don't do it again," he said quietly into the hush, and felt more than heard the soft, relieved sigh in the way the tension drained from the lean form that shifted more towards him. An arm wrapped around his shoulders, careful to avoid the worst of the lingering bruising, and he leaned into the solid strength Bones offered.
"You need to sleep," Bones murmured, voice rough. "I mean it, Jim."
"I know." And he was right. Better yet, with his presence the insanity in Jim's head was finally quieting down. It didn't matter what old Spock thought about this new universe he'd had a hand in birthing; what mattered was this man.
He loved Bones.
Jim blew out a slow breath because he'd known, of course, but he'd never admitted it, not even to himself. But now…he'd faced death unafraid, because he'd found something worth dying for. He'd proven himself as more than George Kirk's son in Starfleet's eyes. He'd accepted the destiny that would be his—but in his way now—and he'd even tasted his first command, and done a pretty damn good job of it too.
"I love you, Bones."
Yeah. He was ready.
FINIS