Nickleback: Just to get High
Protective was an understatement in regards to Jim Kirk. According to a certain elderly time traveling Vulcan the protective streak in this James T. Kirk even outstripped the one from the original timeline. Both Spocks theorized that the lack of a positive male role model that was the cause; Frank Warner, Jim's abusive step father, was not a positive influence on the young captain.
Chris Pike will always remember the fights, not that first one that Pike broke up but the ones where the then cadet had planted himself in front of some helpless drunken sod or put upon woman and screw anyone who thought they were going to lay a hand on his charge. These were always the most vicious, and Kirk never lost those fights. When Pike found Jim in an alley after one such fight comforting a sobbing woman with thugs unconscious at their feet he would never forget the look on Jim's face, equal parts protective and uncomfortable with a streak of desperation and some kind of deep bleeding loss hidden in the depths of his eyes. He was the only one not surprised when the admiralty learned that he jumped off a drill toward a disintegrating planet for someone he had barely met.
Nyota Uhura never forgot the mission to Rudden. A miscommunication left her standing on the sales block, the Prime Directive left the Enterprise with its hands tied, and she was looking at slavery in a very real way. The Captain stepped forward to speak with the chief of the village they arrived in, pulling something metallic and shiny from around his neck and after a few minutes of speaking back and forth handed it over to the man. A short barked order later and Uhura was released and the away crew was able to get to somewhere they could be beamed up. When they were back on the ship, miraculously unhurt, Uhura asked what happened. She and the rest of the command crew were flabbergasted when the captain explained sheepishly that he had bought Uhura for the price of his mother's wedding ring.
Spock simply remembered the young upstart of a cadet who, while on academic suspension, took the beatings of a Vulcan and two Romulans to protect a planet.
Chekov and Sulu refuse to talk about the prison on planet Cleay where the captain continued to lie to them; making sure they ate, saying he was being fed too when in reality he had traded half of his meager meal to ensure that the duo would get the rest of it. For the three days they were held this was the norm. There were other things that happened on that mission, but none of them should ever be remembered.
Leonard 'Bones' McCoy didn't have to be on the mission that still caused Scotty to go a pale green when he remembered it. He had, after all, patched the captain up from that round of torture. Scotty could barely speak about how the captain had offered himself, without a thought, in trade for the safety of the rest of the away team. The captain's bloody, broken limbs spoke about what the true cost of safety was.
It was Kevin Riley, though, that knew the true lengths Jim Kirk would go to protect those he cares about. Not as a captain but as a thirteen year old boy with the world crumbling around him. Then six, little Kevin had watched from the shadows as his big protector held a well fed woman at knife point. The ten kids of their camp could make the small basket of food last for a few weeks, not only that but this was the wife of a well know, particularly sadistic, officer in Kodos's army. Kevin watched the boy growl that this food is going to a much better place before grabbing the basket and dragging Kevin further in to the darkness.