When Jimmy was ten he stole his stepfather's antique, cherry red corvette and drove it off of a cliff.
He jumped out at the last minute, his ears full of the sound of his own heart beat and his stepfather's pride and joy crashing to ruin, and, full of triumph, asked in what would be one of his most mouthy, confident, stick-it-to-the-Man moments asked
"Is there a problem Officer?"
He was out of breath and covered in dust but he managed to loudly proclaim his name.
"MY NAME IS JAMES TIBERIOUS KIRK!"
And that was the start and end of everything, because when his mother found out, three weeks after the incident, two weeks after frank beat him into unconsciousness and two days before his trial, he was sent to Tarsus IV.
Tarsus IV was beautiful but Jim was ten and hateful. He did not like it there. Where the hugs were plentiful but so wanted they were unwanted. Where he was allowed a dog and learnt he could sing but never want either gifts. Where he waited painfully for a mother who had never tucked him in at night.
But then he was eleven and in love with his best friend May, who danced to his songs with wild glee and whose brown eyes were always warm when they looked at him, like hot chocolate. They told each other stories, their own and everybody else's because nobody in the camp knew things like May did and nobody in the camp was as smart as Jim was. He was a genius.
Twelve brought changes. He became beautiful, tall and spry and muscled and golden. He laughed deeper and more and he loved the camp and Tarsus IV and his dog and May who loved him back. May's Aenarian ancestry became more pronounced in the blue of her skin and the way she told Jim to run – "Run, Jimmy, run! Get out of here!"- and never stop five minutes before the soldiers came.
Thirteen was when it really ended, when he looked Kodos in the eye and made sure (with spit and disgust and the words he had carved in to his heart since he had returned to camp and found May dead) that he would never forget him.
He was a man now, not a kid and he was out of hospital. They said he still had to be careful, that he was still weak and that it would take some time, but he went to the closest bar he could find, got pissed and started a fight. He felt better than he had in a long time.
He joined Starfleet, because when he died and he was back on that beach, next to the campfire and the only girl he ever loved, he wanted to tell her a new story. One that wasn't of him being an abused, ignored child. One of him being a somebody, a hero, somebody that would make his dad proud.
That and the fact, James Tiberius Kirk never could resist a challenge.