What's In A Name
She's three when she first asks Mama how she got her name. She knows that Sam was named George Samuel, after their Daddy and their Uncle (neither of whom she ever got to meet). And she also knows that she was named James Tiberius after her grandpas. But, just like everything else, she wants to know why.
It's one of the few times Mama is home. Sam woke Jimmy up this morning and said that it was a Good Day, that Mama was in a good mood. She even made fresh pancakes for them, and didn't mind when Jimmy begged her to cut their food into little miniature space ships. Mama is smiling, and Sam's telling funny stories, and Jimmy's feeling as light and warm as sunshine, as carefree as the motes of dust that swirl around in it.
So, after they've eaten and cleaned off the table, when Sam's retreated back to his room to play his video games and Mama's dropped into her favorite armchair with a good book, Jimmy decides that it's the perfect time to march up to Mama and demand an answer.
"Mama, how'd I get my name?"
It's like when the sun goes down, after all its warmth and light bleed away, and is replaced by the dulled, distant presence of the stars. A cold, unforgiving existence. That's how it feels, when the love from Mama's eyes drips away. When all that's left is the starlight. Brilliant and beautiful, but too far away to warm yourself in.
But, even with her eyes that look like glass and swim with all the secrets of the world that Jimmy doesn't know yet, Mama still scoops her up from under the armpits and plops her into her lap. It's Jimmy's favorite spot in the whole wide universe. In those rare moments that Mama holds her, it's like she's unstoppable, like she could move heaven and earth and everything in between.
Even so, Jimmy knows better than to lean into the touch. She sits up straight, so she can look at Mama's face, so that she isn't crushed beneath the weight of Mama's arms when it gets to be too much. So that, if one of their rare little Good Days becomes the one of the normal Bad Days, Jimmy can wiggle out and escape.
And it's like that when Mama begins her story.
"On the day your daddy died…"
Jimmy's only three, but she's bright for her age. She knows that whenever Mama says that, she means 'on the day you were born'. It's okay if she doesn't say that. Jimmy never minds.
"We had thought you were a boy. You surprised us when you popped out and decided to be a girl."
Jimmy wants to giggle. Wants to say that she didn't decide to be a girl. (She doesn't do either of these things. She's bright enough not to interrupt Mama.)
"I thought about naming you Tiberius, after daddy's daddy." Here Mama smiles, a wonderful smile that could light up the dark corners in their barn out back. She's not looking at Jimmy, she's staring off at the armchair opposite her, as if someone else were sitting there. Mama never glances at Jimmy. Jimmy doesn't mind.
"Your daddy thought that was a silly idea. He wanted to name you James, after my daddy. He wanted to call you Jim."
The arms around Jimmy suddenly tighten. Mama's lips thin out, her face pales, as if all the color leaks out of her.
"And then he- and then he-" Mama stutters.
Jimmy knows what comes next. She's only three, but she knows how this story ends every time. She wiggles until she slips down from Mama's lap, her bare feet hitting the creaking floorboards under her. Jimmy dutifully ignores the tears streaming down Mama's cheeks, the cracks in her beautiful face that make it look as if she's broken, the way her eyes stare longingly at the chair across from her. Jimmy ignores it all, and dashes up the stairs and into Sam's room.
He doesn't say anything, just gets up to lock the door, and lets Jimmy curl up next to him, watching him play the next level on his game.
Neither of them mention the sobs from downstairs.
It looks as if it were going to be another Bad Day.
Frank isn't the first boyfriend Mom's had. He is, however, the last.
They get married when Jimmy's only six and Sam's twelve. There isn't a ceremony, no loved ones gathered, no amazing cake. Just Mom showing up one day and telling Jimmy and Sam that they've got a new dad. Neither of them have ever met the guy, hardly know a single thing about him. Just that him and Mom went to high school together, and that when she went on to study engineering at Starfleet Academy and meet Dad, he went on to become some washed up alcoholic who took on-off jobs around the beat up town of Nowhere, Iowa.
Sam immediately hates his guts. (So does Jimmy.)
But Mom doesn't listen to Sam's complaints or Jimmy's whining, and not even a week later she's back up among the stars.
When Mom was around, it wasn't so bad. Frank was a bit rude, sometimes too harsh in how he would grab Sam or Jimmy, but it wasn't awful. That all changes when Mom leaves. Frank doesn't know how to cook, he doesn't feed them anything, and he won't let Sam touch any of the food left in the pantry. They end up having to sneak food every night, hoping that the cloud of booze that trembles around him will make him a heavy sleeper (Jimmy likes to pretend that it's a game, that she and Sam are heroic survivors of some disaster). Frank and Sam have screaming matches all the time, and Jimmy ends up sleeping in her closet, burrowed under blankets and jackets, while Sam holds icicles to his split lip and tells her stories about their dad.
Frank doesn't call her Jim or Jimmy. Her calls her little shit, slut, and bitch. A part of her hates him for it, for denying her even that little bit of freedom. Another part of her is glad. Glad that Frank isn't ruining what's left of her dad by using the same names he would've. Frank can steal their mother, can scream at them until his face is red and theirs are black and blue, can claim their farmhouse and barn and cars as his.
But Jim is what her daddy would've called her.
Bradley Fisher is a brat and deserves the black eye and bloody nose Jimmy gives him.
She's seven, her knuckles are scraped and cracked from where she'd been pounding Bradley's face in, and she's seated in the principal's office, kicking her legs and waiting for this stupid thing to be over with. Principal Chester is behind his desk, glaring down at Jimmy with a stern look and impatiently waiting for someone, anyone, to show up and take Jimmy off his hands.
(That's alright. Jimmy's used to seeing that look on people's faces.)
But Jimmy knows something that Principal Chester doesn't. No one's going to show up. Mom's off-world for another five months, Frank doesn't give a damn, and Sam's still in school. She's going to end up sitting in this chair for hours, kicking her feet and imagining that it's Bradley Fisher's face there instead of just thin air.
Bradley Fisher and his family show up. That idiot and both of his parents, cooing over him and worrying about the bandage wrapped around his nose. Jimmy wrinkles her nose and is glad there's no one there for her, no one to coddle her and make her feel stupid like that. She's tough, and even if she were as beat up as Bradley, she wouldn't need anyone crying for her and dabbing at her cheeks.
The Fishers demand an explanation, an apology, a payment for the medical bills.
Jimmy refuses.
It's perhaps the first time James T. Kirk gets into a situation like this.
(It's not the last.)
Even with Bradley Fisher glaring at her mutinously, and both his parents berating her, and Principal Chester threatening her with expulsion, Jimmy crosses her arms stubbornly and leans back in her seat. A lone tree, abandoned out in the middle of the field, patiently, resignedly, waiting for the storm to pass.
Because screw Bradley Fisher and his dumb insults. 'James is a boy's name, brat!'
It's not. It's not, because her name is James, and she's a girl, and that makes it a girl's name, dammit.
Eventually they all grow tired of screaming, and Jimmy grows tired in general, and everyone decides to go home. She's suspended for a week; she'll miss all that work, and her grades will go down, but she doesn't give a damn because Bradley Fisher deserved those knuckle sandwiches and Jimmy enjoyed the look of pure shock and anger that flashed across his stupid pudgy face.
She starts the long walk back home, her backpack almost empty against her shoulder and her feet scuffing the ground, kicking around loose pebbles and dirt. Her eye catches the sign denoting her school, the only thing younger than forty-years-old in this dingy, rundown town. 'George B. Kirk Elementary' it says, as if her dad were giving her this education himself.
He isn't.
He only ever lived to give her three things. Her life, some damn shadow to live in, and her name.
A hand ruffles her already messy hair, an arm snakes across her skinny shoulders, a passing comment of 'you've got a mean right hook, lil' sis'. Sam looks as scuffed up and ragged as she does, his hair is in a disarray, his jeans are ripped, and Jimmy knows he's wearing some of Mom's prized concealer. But he scoops up her backpack, laughs at her stupid jokes, and even lets her walk on top of the fences they pass, even though they're rickety and dangerous.
And Jimmy decides that, just this once, maybe she was wrong. Her dad didn't give her three things. He gave her four. And as much as she loves her name, she thinks that her stupid big brother might be a little bit better.
It's the tenth anniversary of what came to be known as the Kelvin Incident. The tenth remembrance of the eight hundred people who survived, and a memorial for the two captains who didn't.
It's Jim's tenth birthday.
(But no one sees it like that.)
Mom's home again, on leave for a few weeks in order to mourn her late husband and attend the annual ceremony. She'd forced Jim to sit still as she wrestled the girl's unruly hair into some semblance of order, twisting and tugging it into a semi-decent braided bun. Then she'd ordered Jim to wear some scratchy, uncomfortable black dress. Mom had even convinced Sam to comb his hair and get into his good suit.
They spend Jim's birthday in San Francisco every year to attend the ceremony. It's held at the Starfleet Academy, in front of the memorial that had been erected in George Kirk's honor. There aren't many pictures around the Kirk household, and every year Jim would look up at the stone carved visage of her father and wonder if that's what he really looked like. (She always liked to think that he had a kinder face; not frozen in stone, but animated and always smiling.)
And that's how Jim finds herself sitting in the very front row, her head hurting from how tight her bun is and awkwardly fidgeting in the unfamiliar dress. Mom's on her right, dabbing at her eyes and firmly avoiding looking in Jim's direction, not even so much as brushing against her. Sam's on her left, slouching in his seat and glaring forwards (he's always slouching and glaring now; he used to smile for Jim, but he doesn't anymore). Even so, she ever so slightly tilts to the left, subtly leaning against Sam's shoulder. Typically, such behavior would result in Sam shoving her away and snapping at her to 'quit being a baby'. Today, however, he tolerates his little sister. (Jim likes to consider this her birthday present; she thinks it's her favorite so far.)
Around them are a sea of strangers, faces turned towards the memorial and the podium with solemn and disquieted expressions. Jim's never felt so alone, surrounded by these people who knew and loved her father.
She swallows. Refuses to cry. She has no right to, not like Mom or Sam do. They miss her father. She only misses the idea of him. Jim has no reason to cry.
Even if her dad loved her enough to sacrifice himself to save her, as everyone likes to remind her. Even if her dad loved her enough to sing to Mom's belly when she was still pregnant, like Sam always tells her. Even if her dad loved her enough to call her Jim.
To these people, to these strangers, she's just some unfortunate Kirk.
She's eleven when she learns what it feels like to fly. It's not among the stars, lost in the outer reaches of space, but she thinks she kinda understands why her parents never stayed on the ground very long. There's something soothing, uplifting, freeing about the weightlessness of your stomach and that split second realization that you weren't going to die.
It starts with an argument. Sam and Frank at each other's throats, again. Frank reeks of cheap drugs and cheaper alcohol, Sam has a new shiner around his left eye, and Jim's lip is still bleeding a bit. She doesn't know how, but one second she's trying to join the fray, trying to get a word in edgewise, trying to just be heard for once, and the next second Sam's walking away, and Frank's kicking her into the dirt, and she's reminding herself to not cry, never let them see you cry.
She's not stupid. She's never been. Not when Mom would get upset and avoid looking her in the eyes, not when Sam would get angry and wrestle with her a bit too harshly. Not when Frank would smack her, or when she'd smile at the school nurse and just tell her that she'd fallen out of a tree (again). Not when she creeps next to Sam's bed and sees his shoulders shaking at night, not when he stops making her meals, stops coming home for days, starts packing bags and leaving one under his bed at all times.
Jim's not stupid, and she knows a goodbye when she sees one.
But as Frank shoves her into his car and tosses a wet rag at her, as she sits in the front seat and the keys fall into her lap, as she turns the ignition and speeds down dirt roads without a care in the world, she also knows how to go out with a bang.
She flies past Sam, screaming out the window all the while and trying to dare him to do better (he doesn't), trying to beg him to come back (he doesn't), trying to promise that she'll be whatever he wants her to be if he'll just stay with her.
(He doesn't.)
And then there's a cliff in front of her, and she's still speeding towards it, hurtling towards an inevitable doom. She's not scared, though. She hasn't been scared since she was a baby, and still believed that monsters hid in her closets (that's not right, though; closets were the best place to hide, the real monsters were the people right in front of you).
She's eleven, and she's going to die. She wants to think that it's how her dad felt, rocketing towards his death, willing to go down with his ship. Well, she's no captain, and this dusty old car is no ship, but it's the closest she's got, maybe the closest she'll ever get. She'll drive it right over the edge and die in some fiery explosion, just like the one she was born in.
Maybe then Mom will miss her. Maybe then Sam will come back.
(Except there's no reason, is there? She's not doing this to be a hero, not like Dad. There's no one here to save, no one who needs saving. She's going to go over that edge and die and absolutely no one will remember her.)
She's eleven, and she jumps. She lands on the rocky sand heavily enough to knock the wind from her, and she's scrambling up to her feet as if her life depends on it – it does – and there's no fiery explosion of heroism, no eight hundred survivors, no schools named after her, but she's looked into the abyss that is death and it's looked into her and there's no turning back after that.
So when that damn police robot finally catches up and demands a name, she gives it the same answer that her father gave her mother, eleven years ago.
The revolution is successful.
The other little kids Jim looks after call her JT.
Kodos calls her Jamie.
She doesn't go by either afterwards.
By the time she's seventeen, she's been through juvie twice. She doesn't mind. The detention facilities give her free food, free blankets, free education. She's even allowed to read old classical novels, and, after a few weeks of good behavior, she's allowed to have one in her cell at all times.
She's called many things during that time, most of which are variants of her name: Jimmy, Jim-Jim, Jimbo, Jimster. Someone only made the mistake of calling her Jamie once.
(The bastard ended up in the clinic for two days, and Jim in solitary confinement for three.)
But, all in all, juvie isn't so bad. She makes a few friends – or, in this circumstance, a few allies – and manages to stay on most people's good side, for the majority of the time. Aside from her usual snarkiness and the unusual depth of her comprehension, she behaves rather well and doesn't often have disputes with the guards.
Jail is a whole different world. In juvie, she'd been one of the oldest. In jail, she's the youngest, and a target. There are no friends, no allies, and she's pretty sure her cellmate is actually a murderer.
In all her time there, Winona never visits. Jim doesn't miss her.
No one calls her by name. There, in the slums of existence, the scum of the earth, she has no right to claim relation to the great hero, George B. Kirk. She's the fuck-up, a failure of a person, this mess of alcohol and drugs and sex that doesn't even seem human half the time.
In prison, she isn't James T. Kirk. She's just Jay.
When she's twenty-one, she's back at it again. Fresh out of jail, newly fired from her latest job (a dealer at some trashy casino), and with a just-illegally-acquired motorcycle. She's ready to take on the world. And, by that, she means the nearest bar.
It's a seedy ass place she's been going to since she was fourteen, sneaking past the bouncers or giving them blowjobs to get in. It's a sentimental place for her, a location of many of her fondest times: her first drunken escapade, many other drunken escapades, learning how to beat pool sharks by employing the use of basic geometry, and, of course, the bar fights.
So exactly zero percent of her fellow Riverside inhabitants are surprised when she swaggers up to some hot chick and sizes her up. Jim's disregarded, of course, for being some hick town slut. She grins through it, and subtly shows this beautiful – but mildly pretentious – cadet that she's not just about looks (although that's certainly a component).
And then she's riling up some over-stuffed meatball and being bashed around and laughing her ass off because nothing reminds her that she's still alive like the taste and smell of her own blood in the middle of a brawl. She doesn't fight back as much as she could – perhaps because she's curious what her new favorite xenolinguistic major is going to do, perhaps because her eyesight is blurry and she's tipping over every few steps.
Either way, Jim somehow finds herself sitting across from some self-important Starfleet Captain with tissues up her nose, blood on her shirt, and a cold glass of alcohol in her hand. He's Christopher Pike, according to his introduction. And she's 'I don't give a shit', according to hers.
But she doesn't need to give this guy her name. He knows who she is – or, at the very least, who she was supposed to be. Your father's daughter, he says, like that means a fucking damn to her anymore. Like it's some grand romantic notion, and that by being related to that self-sacrificing idiot, she has everything she needs to be successful in life. (It's never worked for her before.)
She immediately thinks of her birthday, every year, of being shoved into some uncomfortable dress, being forced to listen to the annual remembrance of her father. Instead of blowing out birthday candles and celebrating her existence with those who cared for her, she would pretend a solemn face and tolerate the endlessly droning hero-worship of the father she never knew, of the father she never got to love.
This Pike idiot reminds her of those times, of the people who thought they knew her simply because they knew about her father. Of the fools who worshipped the ground her father would have tread on (if, you know, he wasn't inconveniently dead). She thinks of all of them and decides that she hates this Pike guy, hates the very organization he works for. The ones who fucked up even more than she did, who sacrificed their captains and stole mothers and were several months late to emergency SOS calls.
Except…he doesn't say what she expects. Doesn't mention how she's a legacy, how she's desecrating her father's memory. He tells her that she leaps before looking. That Starfleet's lost that. That Starfleet needs that. Dares her to be what she never thought she could.
She ignores him. All but tells him to fuck the hell off. And then promptly snags a few more drinks and puts them on his tab.
But as she winds up – somehow – back at home, everything's different. It's all the same: Frank still calling her a slut and telling her to go do some shit job for him, Winona still out among the stars not giving a damn about her own daughter, Sam still gone without glancing back to the little sister that stole a car for him. But it's different.
She's Jimmy, who was never held enough as a child. She's the little shit who bit Frank and screamed at him and cried herself to sleep. She's JT, Jamie, that cockroach from Tarsus IV who refused to die and stared into the face of her murderer, daring him to stare back. She's Jay, who laughed when she got hit and always, somehow, managed to roll right back to her feet.
But her dad wanted to name her James. Wanted to call her Jim. Wanted her to live.
So, when she packs up her single bag and ditches that worn out old farmhouse for the last time; when she takes a note from Sam and doesn't look back; when she looks up at the stars and doesn't see the mother she never had but rather the chances she has; when she ends up next to some overly anxious doctor, the first ticket to this new life she's been waiting for ever since she'd taken her first breath, she introduces herself as just that.
Jim Kirk.