Disclaimer: nope, not mine.
Summary: He runs for eternity.
runfasterharderdon'tstopnoonetheretohelp, his body is aching and broken and destroying itself from the inside out, but he doesn't stop running. running means safety, means home, means away from hell. away from broken green eyes staring at him like he's the devil and his eyes are the worst form of torture.
his name means blue eyes – not in meaning, but in stature, in promise, in anger his name means 'blueeyes' means 'monster'.
blue eyes mean hell.
(he refuses to stop running until green eyes stop staring at him like he has brought the world crashing around them, until they stop hating him for all their worth and letting him know how they feel every second of the days he's stopped counting.)
he runs for eternity.
glowing bright against fire, that is all one can describe his eyes as now. but he isn't used to blue eyes, he's used to brown eyes burning like the fire this angryblue reflects. he isn't accustomed to the anger and hate in this shade of blue, he isn't used to angryblue, he's used to warmbrown.
but he knows the posture, he knows the wording, he knows the voice.
this is James T. Kirk.
a broken James T. Kirk with a broken mother and a broken past, so broken, shattered and he can't pick up the scattered pieces from space where his father's disintegrated body floats and his mother's heart and love remain.
angryblue can never be happy, angryblue can only be broken.
he hates angryblue.
but he hates who made angryblue more.
anchor to another world, chain connecting souls, link to everything and the nothing in between. each describes his captain in ways he's never thought he could conjure within his paradoxical mindscape – where nothing exists within everything and everything is made of the nothingness that never existed.
his captain is of importance, his captain is of utmost importance in fact.
worth life, worth spirits ripped from bloody bodies lying on the floor, worth every ounce of his not inconsiderable strength.
his world, his soul, his heart, his everything. this is how he describes his captain.
captain prefers t'hy'la.
the inside of Jim's mind is cold. it should be warm and bright and quick silver thoughts dancing like fireflies, but it's cold and shut and darker than spirits driven mad by anger. it's still warm and bright but only on top, digging deeper he reaches the coldness and sheer agony that still haunts the captain. it's filled with a child's memories of a house that was never a home and a mother who was never a mom; but mostly its full of plans and rewinds and blind determination to find something – anything – his father could do to prevent his death.
pauses and rewinds and fixed positions and new plans that always end in death.
he tries again and again, 'stop. go back.' and nothing changes but the way his father dies. he's still crying, still a baby boy in a grown up man's charade – trying to dance the dance and not stumble all over the people he loves.
Jim Kirk is a broken boy inside a broken man.
he's all fire and charm, quipping lightly against Spock's infallible logic, hiding from her beloved doctor's hyposprays, he's all fire and charm. that's what she thought before she got to know him. it's only when Spock 'breaks her heart' that she sees into Kirk, when she sees into his blueblue eyes and grin and sees the bruised, bloody (but not beaten, never down for the count) boy cowering under the genocide at Tarsus VI.
they sit for hours in her room, playing meaningless Human games, wondering how these kept kids preoccupied, but enjoying every minute of it.
next thing she's vaguely aware of is the babbling she does as tears fall faster down her face, and each drop makes her just a little more aware of Jim's arms wrapping fast around her, surrounding her in his warmth and softness; murmuring soft words that mean little but make her feel better nonetheless.
then she's hugging him, and he's recounting all the pain in his life (motherneverlovedonlysawdad, auntonlylovedsonnotme, neverbeenheldpainpainpain) and she wonders how anyone could hurt this man, this strong man, but mostly she wonders if she's ever helped him, ever hugged him and meant it.
the answer breaks her heart.
she used to think he's all fire and charm, now she knows he's all anger and sadness and the remains of a boy who will never be.
she makes damn sure to tell Winona Kirk exactly what she thinks of her the next time she sees the woman.
he's eternally grateful for the brat, not only did the kid lead him to his beautiful girlfriend, but he saved him. he rescued him from that hell on earth and sometimes he doesn't think he can repay James T. Kirk for all he's done for the degenerate drunk he knows he is. hyposprays seem like a punishment to the new captain, but it's Bones' way of making damn fucking sure this brat lives long enough to see the next myriad of stars of their solar system.
but some scars not even McCoy can fix.
skin scars that bleed fresh every few years when Jim just can't take staring in the mirror and hating with a thunderous passion what he sees. a captain who only made it this far through the deaths of so many people.
(so many families, so many people, who will never see their kids again Bones. so many. so many wives and mothers and daughters and people who will never say hello to the family they never said goodbye to. I don't want this job, not like this.)
so he sedates the captain and watches the face of a man who never got to be a brat drift away into his subconscious.
Leonard McCoy loves Jim Kirk enough to tell him to shut up, but he loves him more to let him cry alone in his quarters.
the scars will never heal.
she regrets everything, she regrets staring at her baby boy and seeing the shadow of a man whose lost in space. she regrets not giving him a birthday because it's just another year she's all alone and that thing is there, stealing the air her husband should be breathing. she regrets scaring her boy by telling him not to look at her, that he can't love her because it's not right and he's a monster. she regrets looking into his eyes and only seeing George and never Jim, never her baby boy who did so much for such a waste of space such as her only to have all of it shoved back into his face.
she regrets living long enough to see him smile at the camera and saying, "my mother made me who I am today."
she regrets only feeling regret when his entire crew sends her one big message telling her to never attempt to contact their captain again.
Winona Kirk lives long enough to look at herself in the mirror and see a monster.
wow, I did all of this in one sitting after having an angst attack.
review please, I don't freaking do this for my health.
~AU.