It's not your fault
Four words.
He desperately needs to hear them said.
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"Dad used too—" Jimmy starts to say .
His brother punches him in the shoulder and the expression on his face is mean. "Shut up, you didn't even know dad." He snatches the data Padd his little brother is holding pretending to be on a Starship and then growls. " 'cause of you, dad is dead."
Then Sam's walking away. Later he'll come back and apologise but the words have already been said.
Five days later his fifth birthday comes and his mom is staring at him when he wakes up in the morning. Her eyes are wet and when he says "mommy why are you crying?"
She doesn't answer, instead she says. "Get dressed Jimmy."
She walks out the room, without so much as a happy birthday. Sam is there now, scowling. Jimmy wonders what everybody is mad about and asks Sam. "Why is mom crying?"
"It's your birthday." Sam says and he sounds angry as he helps his brother lace up his shoes. "She always cries on your birthday. She always cries because of you.
Jimmy thinks about that ...It's the day he was born and his mother is crying. She must hate him.
And somehow it's his fault
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Frank hates his guts and pretty much every other part of him too...except when he doesn't. Jim likes it better when Frank yells and screams and hits and curses. It's better because there's something worse about when his mother leaves for a trip and Sam isn't home and Frank decides to punish him. He doesn't like the man's hands on him or the way he tells him that if he wasn't so bad he wouldn't need to be punished.
Jimmy tries to be better but Frank still "punishes him". He tells him that if he was actually a good boy his mother might not be so happy to get away from his sorry ass the first chance he gets. Frank threatens to hurt Sam if he tells him and so Jimmy is quiet.
Years later he's on another planet entirely when the memories of frank and sweaty hands in dimmed rooms come back to him and he feels sick.
He still feels that all that was his fault too.
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Sam leaves. He says he can't be a Kirk and Jim will be find because he does what Frank wants. Jimmy feels sick as he thinks of all that Frank has him do, he wants to run with his brother. He wants to be him not to leave him there, because not only will he be left at home, but he'll be left alone with Frank.
George keeps walking...until he's just a speck in the distance and Jimmy can't take it anymore. He can't live like this, George said he wanted to be a Kirk. Well he already is, he's making his own way, just like Jimmy imagines his father did. And Jimmy is still following Frank's orders and trying to be a good kid.
He doesn't want to be a good kid, he wants to be a Kirk. He wants George to see that he doesn't have to leave to be one. He drives down the road dust following him and music blasting in the air. The winds of freedom are whistling in his ears.
The cop pulls up alongside yelling for him to stop and Jimmy can only think of being taken home and what will happen when he gets there. He wrenches the steering wheel towards the quarry only deciding at the last moment not to follow the car down.
He stands there defiant yelling for all to hear. He's a Kirk,
Sam comes back just long enough to hear Franks yells it seems and then he goes for good, yelling "You can't be a Kirk here!"
Sam, his brother, is gone and that's his fault.
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It's over a year later and he's waking up covered in blood, spattered in gore and laying next to his families bodies. His classmates his friends, his neighbours, they're all laying nearby. He wasn't smart enough or he would have figured out what Kodos had planned earlier.
He was too scared or he wouldn't have been such a coward and waited to tell his aunt and uncle and all the rest of the colonists. And he didn't fight hard enough to make them believe him. He didn't make the right decisions.
Maybe if he hadn't outed Kodos the man wouldn't have decided to kill all those people...maybe it would have only been a few hundred instead of thousands.
Maybe if he wasn't so scared he could have saved a few more...
Maybe if he was faster, stronger, better...
Now countless people are dead, and more will follow before enough relief ships come.
He sits in the shuttle letting the mealy taste of a bitter apple burn his tongue. The others are enjoying the hastily divided snack. But as Kirk forces himself to chew his piece it sits like a stone in his gut.
There are eight others...only eight...thousands more are lying below forever silent on the barren grounds of Tarsus IV.
And it's his fault.
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He's so busy trying to finally do something right...be right...not fail at one fucking thing that he misses the big picture. He wins ...beats the unbeatable test at the academy. But he loses the very real war. The lightning storm, Nero, the transmissions Uhura picked up all fit a pattern and he misses it.
He barely saves the Enterprise but even that isn't important because what happens next is all because on him.
He should have known
He could have known
He had to know.
And yet thousands of people are lying dead or dying in the middle of space and a whole race is practically annihilated in planet wide destruction.
Of course he wasn't going to back out when Pike ordered him down to that drill. If Pike hadn't ordered him he would have gone himself anyway. He has to fix this.
In the end he saves one person, Sulu.
It's not enough.
One man , one life will never be enough to make up for all the deaths he was responsible for.
He watches a whole planet die and knows it's his fault.
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Her skin doesn't feel the right temperature. Her hair, her face, her body doesn't look the same. Burns cover her from head to toe, one leg is irreparably gone.
He used her. He realises that now, and if he's truthful with himself he realised that when he did it.
But there was something about the Orion woman that scares him. She said she loved him, and he didn't want, need, or understand that kind of love. So when he used the codes that were given to him in a moment of loving trust, he knew he was a bastard. He also hoped that maybe she would see and finally give up, his was James T. Kirk. Not something that she needed to fix, nothing something that she could love. He was all he needed, because he was all he had ever had.
He spit in her face and it felt good, because he never wanted to be vulnerable again.
And yet here he was still laid bare. Because just because he never said the words back to Gaila, didn't mean he didn't feel them.
She was on the Farragut because of him. It was a slightly lesser assignment than the Enterprise, a punishment of sorts for letting her privacy codes be stolen and the Academy simulation routines be hacked. It should have been his punishment.
But none of that matters. Gaila went to the Farragut. Kirk snuck on the Enterprise. Her ship was blown apart, people and metal scattered in space. Kirk's ship was intact.
And Gaila was left barely alive.
Kirk was a hero and she was half dead.
It was all his fault, and there was nothing he could ever do that would change what he had caused.
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The crew thinks he's crazy or at least he's sure most of the command staff does. He's blatantly ignoring the Prime Directive. And while he throws some crappy excuse together about the Prime Directive doesn't apply in this situation he knows that his senior officers aren't really buying it.
But they are loyal...most of them. He always feels Spock is trying to live up to something his elder self told him and not following Kirk's orders because he actually trusts him.
In the end none of that matters. Because now that he knows what is going to happen, he's not going to let thousands more people die just because of some law. He's not a murderer and that's what he'll be if he lets the inhabitants of Nibiru die to protect his career.
He can't do that again. He can't be the cause of so much death. If he doesn't save them he'll not have a career anyway, because he knows he won't be sane. He'll see alien faces drowning in pools of fire, he'll smell blood and burning flesh. He'll hear the cries of the dying.
And he'll go crazy.
He's pissed when the admirals take away his ship. He's even more pissed when Pike dresses him down for being irresponsible and acting like the rules don't apply. It's not that they don't apply...It's that he refuses to let them. Doesn't Pike understand why he had to do this.
But he's even more hurt when Spock turns on him. He's felt just a tiny bit of what they could have...he's clung to the knowledge that maybe he could ever be so close to someone in his life. And it looks like it's never meant to be. It happened somewhere in another universe. Jim and Spock inseparable, but apparently even though this Spock seems the same, the friendship...the more than friendship ...it isn't happening.
If Spock is fine then it must be him. To Kirk that makes sense. After all he's always been the cause of some problem.
He can't even make a friend of the one person who is supposed to be his other half and that's his fault.
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John Harrison is a terrorist.
John Harrison is a murderer.
And John Harrison is another facet of Kirk.
All he was trying to do was protect his people. He was awakened in a strange world, made to play by rules that weren't his own. Everything that made his life worth living was held above his head like a meaningless carrot that could be crushed at some admiral's whim. So was it a surprise when Harrison rebelled.
Kirk could understand that. He could have understood the need to do anything to protect the ones in your charge...the ones you loved.
Kirk should have seen it. He should have seen past that hate in his heart. He should have been faster in that conference room and saved Pike. He should have been their when his only father figure died. Instead he was off already chasing his own revenge.
Kirk should have put it all together, Admiral Marcus, the missile, the infinitesimalwarnings that all pointed to what was going to happen. Instead he was too late, too slow, too blinded by anger, pain, fear, guilt.
Pike was dead, Scotty had betrayed him (or at least that's what it felt like) and the rest of his crew was barely a hair from doing the same (he couldn't see their concern for what it was).
The whole world was against Jim Kirk...that was how it always was. How it always would be. Except this time things were different. John Harrison, or Khan as was his actual name wasn't his only enemy. Maybe under different circumstances the man wouldn't have been his enemy at all.
Instead, Kirk is left to fight a war against too. An enemy of Starfleet and the Federation. And the enemy that was Starfleet and the federation.
He didn't have a choice. The ship was going down, and he knew what had to be done. In that other Spock's brain glimpses had come. This was his time to die. His Spock would sacrifice himself because that was the logical thing to do...because his friend (who didn't even know he was his friend) was a goddamn masochist. At least that was what Bones would say.
Kirk tried to laugh but the radiation was searing his vocal cords. It hurt just to breathe. He stared at Spock watching the other man, his eyes closed and Kirk heard the Spock's scream as he faded into Darkness.
The raw pain that seared his mind , was Spock's own...and that was Kirk's fault.
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He awoke to pain, beeping, drugs, and Bones face. It could have been like so many other times except it wasn't.
Bones tried to hide it but Kirk found out...And Bones found him.
Crouched on the floor, skin slick with sweat, legs collapsed beneath him trembling.
What was wrong?
The ship had crashed. So many people were dead...so many people on his conscience again.
He hadn't stopped Khan in time. He hadn't stopped Marcus soon enough. He hadn't saved the Enterprise fast enough. So many deaths.
And it was all his fault.
XXXX XXXX
He was drifting in an out of a pained sleep. The painkillers Bones had given him didn't work half as well as he let the doctor believe. Kirk wanted the pain. He wanted to punish himself.
His was in the throes of another nightmare when the dream changed. It was a familiar voice; the presence in his mind was one he had experienced before, just different.
Spock?
He breathed the word and wasn't sure if what he saw next the answer to his one syllable question...or maybe it was all just a dream.
A man and a woman both with greying hair were embracing an ensign. Kirk couldn't see the face of either of them but he recognised the rank insignia as that of the Enterprise. The woman whispered, with a voice muffled with tears. "You made it back home."
A new clipping flashed in front of his eyes...Scientist Thomas Leighton has made another amazing discovery.
The air is hot, warm sandy dirt grits against his feet. A child with a faint greenish cast to his skin and small pointed ears runs past. All around him similar people move through the crowded market place. It's quiet, and orderly. And Jim knows without even knowing how he does that he's seeing New Vulcan.
Countless scenes flash past. Each one a conclusion... (or was it a new beginning)that he never had seen?
That voice is there again. Kirk feels calmer. There's a feeling of peace, and it's weird because he's never really felt that before. The words are gentle and spoken like a gift and more importantly an absolution. "These are your fault too."
He sees it all now. He's killed so many, caused so much death. But he's also saved so many lives too. Maybe in some way it evens out. He hopes it does.
As he falls asleep the face he glimpses through his half closed eyes is grave. Every hair hangs just right and a tear clings to one faintly green cheek.
...Spock
When Jim awakes he'll wonder if it's just a dream...before he would have been sure...but now he knows, Vulcans can cry and that's his fault too