A/N: Okay, so I'm not totally sure where all this crackishness is coming from, but I thought I'd try my hand at an actual chaptered ST fic. These damn plot bunnies won't leave me alone, so this is the result.

Summary: To hell with 'Generations'. Reboot!Kirk and the Enterprise encounter a mysterious force called the Nexus, and Jim comes face-to-face . . . with himself. SHENANIGANS ENSUE.

Warnings: T for Jim's love of profanity; slash of the Kirk!Prime/Spock!Prime variety. DON'T DISS THE OLD PEOPLE LOVE. Oh, and maybe a little bit of nu!K/S too.

Anyway, this is for everyone who hated the travesty of a movie 'Generations', likes Kirk!Prime, or just wants Spock!Prime to get some.

Short summary of 'Generations' for those of you who've never seen it: Kirk gets sucked into this time-vortex-thingy and stays there for a very long time wearing plaid and riding his horse and being all rustic 'n shit, and then Picard finds him and convinces him to leave his imagined 'paradise' so he can save the world, and then he gets squished by a bridge. And there's no Spock. Ever. For TNG, it's not a bad movie. For TOS, it's a great big wad of OOC suckage.

My apologies for messing with the timeline and pretty much bringing Kirk back from the dead. C'mon, consider who we're talking about here -- getting wiped out by a bridge really isn't enough to kill a Kirk.


TWO KIRKS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

I. Mirage

In Which Jim Has a No Good, Very Bad Day

This really shouldn't have surprised him. Frankly, Jim Kirk was learning that days in which universe-ending paradoxes didn't threaten his crew or fuck with his mind were mere anomalies. Still, one could never truly be prepared for this level of insanity.

He was floating. Okay, maybe not floating, exactly, since his feet were pretty firmly planted on . . . whatever it was, but it felt like he was floating, and that's all that mattered. It was dark too, as though someone had locked him in an anti-gravity chamber and turned off all the lights. Or maybe he really was locked in an anti-gravity chamber with the lights off. Had he pissed anyone off badly enough this week to merit it? Jim wracked his brain but couldn't think of anything he'd done to deserve it; he hadn't even irritated Spock all that much. No more than usual, anyway.

Lifting up one leg slowly, he tried placing it back down. His foot dangled for a moment before dropping onto the ground and rebounding again, like he was standing on a sheet of elastic.

Well, this was weird. He wished he had a light so he could see what was happening, but he hadn't exactly packed up an emergency kit before he disappeared. One minute he'd been standing on the bridge, reading through a stack of reports Rand had brought him -- damn Rand and her slave-driving paperwork obsession -- and the next he was trapped in some sort of rubber force field/cloud/particle conglomeration. He was alone, with no way of knowing where the Enterprise was or how to contact her, and he hadn't taken anything along with him except his clothes and the wallet he kept tucked in his boot. He had no food, no water, and no weapon.

This really had to stop happening to him.

"Hello?" His voice echoed eerily in the darkness, but the silence was disturbing. It was quiet, unnaturally still, and he wondered with sudden interest if he was suspended out in space. Of course if that was true, he'd be dead, but then again, he might very well actually be dead at this moment. Stranger things had happened.

No one answered him, but Jim didn't think he could take the oppressive nothingness much longer. "Um, not to sound rude or anything," he called, "but I would like to get back to my ship now."

No reply -- not that he was expecting one. Mysteriously inscrutable and possibly sentient forces weren't usually that hospitable.

He supposed it made sense, in an old-fashioned karmic way, since the Enterprise's last few missions had been astonishingly peaceful and pleasant. There hadn't been any outbreaks of mind-altering viruses, diplomatic shit-storms, or accusations of witchcraft. Even shore leave had been uneventful: no one had gotten into a bar brawl or married somebody by mistake or "accidentally" smoked an alien doobie and ended up filling the mess hall with hundreds of replicated sandwiches to combat the ensuing attack of the munchies.

No, it had been a serenely boring three months, and it stood to reason that the chaos had just been waiting for the right opportunity to shake things up a little.

Well, he couldn't stay here long, as much fun as this was. He had things to do, people to see, places to visit, and heaven knew he couldn't leave Spock in charge for long under these circumstances. The Vulcan was a kickass science officer and an efficient commander, but he tended to go a little crazy when Jim got himself kidnapped. Which happened way more than it ought to, statistically speaking.

By now Spock had probably raised the red alert and torn half the ship apart in search of him; Jim had vanished straight off the bridge, so he didn't have to worry about his absence being overlooked, like that one time he'd been taken by slavers on Ervidius Ipsil. Everyone had assumed he was on shore leave at first, and it'd taken the crew three weeks to track them down when it became obvious that he wasn't shacking up with some babe in the mountains or hiding out in a bar. And once they'd found him . . . God, it'd been a nightmare. Spock wouldn't speak to him for days and Bones had hit him with more hypos than he could count for being a careless idiot.

First things first -- if he could push himself out of this containing cloud, or whatever it was, maybe he could find a source of light. He needed to know where he was.

Lifting up his foot with a little more force, Jim kicked at the rubber platform; his heel rebounded again, but the surface seemed to give way. Stretching out his arms, he jumped up . . . and promptly fell straight through the ground.

He was free-falling, colors whirling past his eyes, wind screaming in his ears and filling his mouth until he was choking for breath. His body turned, spinning head-over-heel, as he plummeted down and down and down . . .

And then, just as suddenly, he was lying against something cool and scratchy. Cautiously cracking open his eyes, Jim found himself staring at a patch of grass -- wheat-colored scrub-grass, like the kind that dotted the farmhouse yard back in Iowa. He sat up, a clump of wet earth clinging to his chin, and took in his surroundings.

It looked exactly like the Terran Midwest -- everything, down to the gently rolling slopes and soft muted tones of brown and green vegetation -- except . . . except somehow it was more. More and less, at the same time. It looked like an idealized portrait, a Kincaid painting when it should have been a Picasso. It didn't fit.

Digging his fingers into the soil, he pulled a handful up, studying it; even the smell was familiar, a dark tang of dead plants and salty water. Jim let the dirt sift into the grass and sat up, groaning at the stiffness of his back and shoulders. Apparently he'd taken a good hit, even if he hadn't actually felt the impact.

It wasn't silent here: bird-calls and wind and rustling grass swirled around him in a familiar cacophony that should have been soothing but wasn't. Every sound was just the slightest bit off, ringing false to his ears in the same way that the lay of the land seemed a little too perfect.

Shivering despite the heat -- which was odd in itself, as Jim didn't see a sun -- he rose and took a few staggering steps. His knees were weak, folding as he tried to walk, and he had to sit down for a minute and regroup.

At least he hadn't been attacked by anything yet; that was a definite first. Usually he had to tangle with some sort of creature that seemed hell-bent on turning him into a part of the local food-chain. On the other hand, it would have been nice to know what exactly had kidnapped him in the first place. Surely there was some reason that he'd been snapped up off his ship in the middle of a supposedly secure sector of the quadrant.

There didn't seem to be anybody else around; the view stretched on for miles, but Jim couldn't see any hint of civilization -- no buildings, no roads, no sign of sentient life.

Great. Anyway, he wasn't going to get anything done sitting here; Jim willed his legs to work as he stood and started down the little slope toward the creek that bisected the valley just below him. If he walked long enough, he might find some sort of clue, some sort of key that would lead him back to the Enterprise.

The grass crinkled underneath his boots; the wind ruffled the short strands of his hair, seeming almost to propel him forward. It was . . . pleasant, and that only made Jim wary. The old Terran adage 'Too good to be true' had survived so many generations for a reason.

Circling around a patch of oak trees, he batted aside a few low-hanging branches and froze.

On the other side of the stream was a log cabin, tucked into the side of the hill. No, it wasn't a cabin -- it was an honest-to-god storybook cottage, complete with a thatched roof and little carved shutters over the window and a shaft of sunlight picturesquely illuminating the house. Jim half-expected cartoon animals to pop out of the door and start singing.

"Seriously, who the fuck do you think I am?" he demanded of the universe at large. "Snow White?"

Of course no one answered, and Jim noticed a line of flat stones jutting up from the creek-bed from one bank to the other like a bridge. At least the cabin -- he was not going to call it a cottage -- would provide some sort of shelter, and maybe whoever lived there wouldn't want to kill him.

Stepping off the bank, Jim put his foot cautiously on the first damp stone, but it didn't collapse, so he moved on to the next one.

"Hello?"

The voice startled him -- one boot slipped, he fell, and his head exploded. Or at least that's what it felt like. Jim clutched dizzily at his skull, inching over just enough to stop himself from tumbling into the water. His eyes were watering and he didn't dare move anymore for fearing of making it worse.

Shit. Oh, shit, it hurt. He wanted Bones here; he would take fifty hypos in the ass if it meant the pain would go away.

The sound of tramping feet made him crack open his eyelids just enough to see a pair of boots next to his face. A moment later the footwear was replaced by a face that made Jim forget the pain for a few seconds. It was a stranger's face, but somehow it seemed achingly familiar. His breath caught.

"Dad?" he slurred.

The man's eyes widened, and suddenly Jim decided that he'd been conscious quite enough for today. Strong hands gripped his arms just as he rolled off the rock into the river. Cold water rushed over his body, and then . . . nothing.

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