Dirty blond hair a few shades away from being light brown shifted ever so slightly as a child of five stood on his tippy toes and plastered his hands up against the glass. His gazed fixated firmly on what lay beyond his reach and his yearning only grew. He was so close, yet so very far away from his current desire and he wanted so badly to be on the other side of the glass. He knew he was being rude, ignoring his mother who had finally came home after a six month mission, but his mother was ignoring him too. Well, at the moment at least, she was currently too busy talking to the other adults about "grownup stuff" and had shooed him away.
The small child was very disappointed that his mother wasn't paying him any attention, until he caught sight of exactly what he wanted in the first place. The moment hazel and blue locked for the first time, George Samuel Kirk knew there was not going to be anything in the world that would keep him from his new little brother. Well, nothing but a piece of glass it would seem. George remembered vividly the night his father told him he was going to have a little brother or sister, his dad had been so happy and the joy was contagious. The two of them had gotten up extra early the next morning to make his mother breakfast in bed; actually, his dad did most of the cooking, he just helped when he could.
His mother, Winona, was very grateful for their hard work; nevertheless, she chastised he husband for getting his hopes up because she wasn't quite sure if she was pregnant or not. The test she had taken had come back with confusing results and she was going to go see the doctor later in the month. Not that her contradictions had the two Kirk males any less jovial and the radiant smile on her own face disagree with her own words. From there on, his father was always talking about what was going to happen with the new baby when he or she finally came. That there were going to be changes and just because he wasn't going to be an only child anymore didn't mean he was any less loved than he was before. In all actuality, he would be loved even more than he was now, he would have the love of his new sibling in addition to the love of his parents.
George had just started to understand what having a new baby in the house meant, when his mother had come home from the doctor's and they had confirmed there was not going to be any new additions to the Kirk family. He was not going to have a baby brother he had been hoping for (not that he minded a sister, but he really wanted a little brother). Disappointment struck the household and the worst of it came not even a day later when his parents were both assigned a six month mission on the USS Kelvin to chart stars close to the Federation-Klingon border. Both his parents had promised him the six months they were gone he was going to be fine with his grandparents and before he knew it, they would be back.
The first month with his Grandfather Tiberius and Grandmother Lilith was okay, he had school to occupy his time and he could run around the Kirk family farm, but he missed his mother and father. George got to at least see them through videomail, but it wasn't the same. He could only listen to prerecorded messages and he didn't get to really chat with either of his parents. The boy was depressed and in a slump after his short dreams of having a baby brother disappear alongside with having his parents leave him within a single week. If his mother had been pregnant, then she could have asked for maternal leave and she could have at least been there for him. However, his depressing attitude changed on his first long distance comm with his parents a month and a half into their six month mission. His mother was in fact pregnant (none of the doctors could figure out why the tests had come back negative in the first place, not with the technology in this day and age) and he had a sibling on the way.
Since then, time still seemed to drag on, but for a whole different reason. George couldn't wait to have his parents back home, which meant the baby would be coming soon after they arrived. The doctors had said the baby should be born somewhere in the middle of March and his parents should arrive home at the beginning of February. Therefore, they had only a month to prepare for the baby's arrival. His mother had stated straight out that they needed to get a bigger house and she wanted something close to her father's place, Grandfather James. His father didn't look happy about that, but with the reminder of Grandmother Rajani having passed away recently and a not so discrete glare had the man shutting up. George always found in funny how much power his mother had over his father and this time was no different.
Then the unthinkable happened. He had been helping Grandpa Tiberius polish the '65 Chevy Corvette which had been passed down to his father (and would eventual be passed down to him one day), when his grandmother came running out of the house. Her old bulky PADD clenched tightly in her white wrinkled hands and tears streaming down her face. It was then, for the first time that George first realized how old his grandparents truly were, their real age showing over the grief and horror they felt. He himself had run into the tall steal farmhouse and flipped on the aged holoscreen to prove what he had read on the PADD to be a mistake, to be wrong. However, it was all over the news. The USS Kelvin had been destroyed, his dad–George Samuel Kirk, Sr.–killed saving the lives of over eight hundred crew members.
His little brother, James Tiberius Kirk, just happened to be one of them and he lay only inches away from him in the glass enclosure. Being born three months premature and exposed to copious amounts of radiation from space had him teetering on death's doorstep. George just wished with all of his might that his brother wouldn't die, not after their father did everything in his power to make sure he lived.
"Don't worry Junior; he's going to make it. I'm sure of it, he is a Kirk after all," the familiar male's voice spoke just to the right of the blond's ear, letting George know he wasn't so slight in his pleas. "And it will take a lot more than a little space radiation to kill any of us."
For a brief moment, George let his eyes stray to the right without moving his head away from the squirming form of his baby brother and looked at the tall lanky man kneeling by his side. The man had hair a few shades darker than his own–making his hair a light brown–cut short while the bangs were spiked up. He wore a tightly fitted blue shirt with black pants and a belt that had a communicator latched on to its side. In other words, a regulation Starfleet uniform of a Lieutenant Commander judging by the one thick and one thin strip bands on the long sleeve cuffs. Even though he hadn't been able to see the man's eyes, the five year old knew they were blue; almost the same exact vibrant blue as his brother's eyes.
George didn't need to see his father's eyes to know what color they were; he had memorized the color long ago. Not even death could change the color of those sky blue eyes.
"You promise?" George asked in a whisper, trying not to draw any attention to himself. He didn't want to go back to the psychiatrist his mother had sent him to. The man had just written off what he had said as an overactive imagination of a little kid and the "people" his mom had seen him talking to were just imaginary friends. Not once had the psychiatrist believed him when he told the guy he could see ghosts, all it was just delusions of a four year old. Thankfully, his dad had talked his mother out of sending him back there (he may love his mother very much, but she was a scientist first and foremost. She didn't believe in anything that wasn't tangible and could be measured). Better yet, his dad believed in him when he told him he was seeing ghost and it wasn't his imagination. His dad had gone one step further by taking him to get an ESP test done. A test he had tested off the charts on. Since then, he had kept his abilities a secret from everyone, except for his father.
"I promised to come back, didn't I?" This time, George took the time to turn his head and give his father the look that his mother used on him. It wasn't as effective as his mom's though, not when his father just laughed at him which caused him to pout. Although, he got a better look at his father and had to admit to himself that his father's ghost didn't look as beat up as he first imagined him to be. Actually, the man had no wounds to speak of on his body translucent body. "I promised to return and I kept my promise. It may not have been how either of us wanted me to come back, but I came back."
"I know," George said disappointedly, his gaze going back to the baby on the other side of the glass. He didn't let his eyes stray away from his baby brother this time, taking in every detail. All the wires and tubes and needles attached to his small form made it impossible for a blanket to be placed on the tiny figure without disturbing one of the many things keeping him alive.
"Worrying about little guy isn't something a child such as yourself should be worrying about, Junior," his dad said. He felt his father ruffle his hair in reassurance, although the once physical gesture now felt like a breeze ruffling his hair more than anything else now.
Looking up, hazel eyes looked passed the glass container holding his brother and through the other side to the looming form. The figure wore black ropes that reminded him somewhat of the Vulcan elders he had seen in his school PADDs, but the face couldn't be seen through the darkness of the hood and only the figure's bony hands could be seen under the ropes. Some kind of ancient time piece, an hourglass if he remembered correctly from his history class, and the way that the figure's feet were a half inch above the floor gave him all the information he needed to know what the being in front of him was.
"I know. I just can't help it." George didn't know if his dad could see the figure like he could, even if the man was dead, he just hoped that the sands in the hourglass didn't run out anytime soon. He didn't want the Grim Reaper to take his baby brother, his little Jimmy, any time soon.
First installment of JimmyGrim!verse. I think this fic will be a lot of little snippets of the young Kirk brothers' lives more than anything for the first couple of chapters. All from Sam's third person point of view.