Flickering Hologram
Summary: James T. Kirk is an enigma, an amalgamation of contradicting traits and ever-shifting masks. Five people who can't understand who he is, and one who can. A 5+1 oneshot that was written before Into Darkness.
One
Winona Kirk has never spent enough time with her sons, too busy burying her sorrows in the comforting vastness of space. She tells herself that it's because the sprawling fields of corn and soybeans remind her of years spent happily in Iowa, and it's not that Sam's mousy brown hair strangles her with memories or that Jim's smile pierces with the viciousness of perfect white teeth. When she's on a starship, flying through the emptiness of space, it's easy to convince herself that she's a grieving wife and not a cowardly mother running from her children and her responsibility.
It's harder to convince herself that sending Jim to Tarsus IV was a good choice, but hindsight is 20-20 and Jim wasn't fitting in with his classmates on Earth and Frank thought some time away would do him good. Frank would know; he interacted more with Jim, even though there was a strange, cold tension in their relationship.
She wasn't there when Jim stepped off the starship, all skin and bones, wariness etched in every line of his body and haunting sense of mortality following him like a shadow. She wanted, desperately, with all the motherly love in her body, to come to see her boy, but to keep the identity of the survivors secret, Starfleet forbade her to return until her mission was finished. She tries not to feel like a failure, but of all the things she has ever regretted, the one that hurts the most is watching impotently as her son steps out of Hell and finds himself utterly alone.
She talks to him later, after she has watched the video of his arrival (a good use of a favor) at least five times. Her heart aches at the distrust in his eyes, the cautious tone in his voice. She hasn't talked to him as much as she should, but she vows to be there for him now. This is her son, and he is fighting with the guilt of the survivor and the remorse of the murderer. She understands; her first mission with Starfleet had gone south and she had seen things that still plague her dreams to this day.
And then he smiles at her, and all her plans and promises evaporate instantly. This isn't the smile of his father, gentle and bright; this is nothing more than the baring of teeth, a wild, vicious, biting grin that screams of pain and anger and a bone-deep fear. There is no remorse or guilt in this expression and in his eyes, she sees the morality of a feral animal. Her experiences and Jim's are worlds apart, she realizes. She saw death, brushed her hand against it, but Jim has stared into its eyes, walked hand in hand with it, and any of her attempts to sympathize will fall woefully short.
She makes her excuses, watches the piercing blue eyes fade from the screen, and buries her head in her hands. It's not her fault, she tells herself, as thousands of pointed little teeth tear into her soul. It's not her fault.
Two
Christopher Pike would like to fancy himself an expert on George Kirk. Obviously, Captain George Kirk had never known Pike, but Pike knows probably more about the last ten minutes of George Kirk's life than anyone else alive.
When it comes to Captain George Kirk, Captain Pike has retained a childlike sense of hero worship, so when he sees James Tiberius Kirk laid out on a grungy bar floor, dripping blood and beer, his bile rises in his throat. Offering him a spot in Starfleet is more a knee-jerk reaction than anything, an attempt to push the George look-a-like where he belongs: on the bridge of a starship in full command regalia.
Jim's disregard of his own father and the institution he loved sends anger skittering along Pike's nerves. Blue eyes shouldn't stare at a Fleet officer with so much hostility, not when those eyes belong to the greatest captain that Starfleet has ever seen. He leaves, still keeping a lid on his bubbling rage and indignation, hoping that Jim, the bar-brawling, rebellious, young drunkard, stays firmly in Iowa, while James, the son of George Kirk, decides to join the Fleet.
Jim has George's eyes, so it's no wonder that George's greatest admirer failed to look deeper into them. And, even if he had, there was no guarantee that he would have seen past the illusions that Jim had wrapped around himself like a shield.
After all, Pike, having coached many cadets through their first missions, is very familiar with all of the forms of acute grief: the wild, unreasoning anger; the biting, soul-deep guilt; the creeping, insidious feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy. But Starfleet's force of therapists is dedicated to its mission, and so Pike had never encountered an untreated grief that had been left to fester in the darkest corners of the soul.
Consequently, Pike fails to see the rawness in Jim's eyes, the grotesque creature lurking in the blue depths that had been a boy, was no longer an animal, and was trying to be a man. He doesn't see the abyss that yawns deep in Jim's eyes, filled with pain, fear, rage, and a haunting sense of desperate despair.
All Pike sees is rebelliousness, and the blue eyes that look like they could have been plucked from George Kirk's face. So he dares Jim to join Starfleet, thinking that all he's dealing with is a teenage disregard of authority, and the abyss yawns wider.
Three
Jim Kirk is insane, Hikaru Sulu thinks detachedly as their intertwined bodies plunge towards the rich red surface of Vulcan. Only a crazy man would leap off a platform, faulty parachute rippling behind him, to grab a falling stranger with a desperate fervor.
Kirk's hands are fisted into his jumpsuit as Kirk screams into his com. There is fear in his eyes, Sulu notes, as he looks up at the face of this crazy, reckless, wonderful man, but it isn't the paralyzing fear of impending death. The hands grip his back harder, and Sulu is absurdly grateful for this anchoring feeling in the midst of this swirling chaos and terror.
Suddenly, the air is no longer rushing past his ears, hot and chokingly dry, and he is lying on a transporter pad, breathing in great, heaving gasps of the crisp, tightly regulated air of the Enterprise. He can feel Kirk's hands beneath his back, pressed into his shoulder blades by the cool, metallic floor. Kirk's face hovers above his, and as their eyes meet, Sulu is taken aback by the utter relief that is directed towards him.
Kirk, unlike any sane person, doesn't look like he's even remotely glad to be alive. He's not disappointed, upset, suicidal, but all the glee, the joy of breathing, that should be there is all directed at Sulu. No one, Sulu thinks, has ever looked so happy that Sulu is alive, and it's ironic that it should be a man that he met half an hour ago and to whom he hasn't spoken more than a couple of sentences.
When the shock has worn off and the men finally pull themselves off the floor, the hands disappear from Sulu's back, but soon make a reappearance when they both report to Medical as a steadying, possessive grip on his shoulder and a body that walks slightly closer than strictly necessary.
When Captain Spock maroons Kirk on Delta Vega, the crew sneers at the cadet: reckless, childish, petulant, they say. Better he's gone. When he sits in the Captain's chair, the crew murmurs in horror and the fear of a bold, stupid decision and the white heat of an explosion in the cold vacuum of space.
Sulu doesn't bother to correct them, content to let Kirk's actions speak for themselves. Kirk is insane and reckless and bold, and Sulu doesn't understand the mindset of a man who would take a flying leap for a stranger. But when Kirk grips the armrest with the hand that had clung to Sulu during their desperate plunge to Vulcan, Sulu feels the tension bleed away, because he knows that if the Enterprise falls, Jim Kirk will be there, hands locked tightly around his crew and battling fate with every scrap of his soul.
Four
Gaila's heard the stories about Jim Kirk. A womanizer, playboy, unable to commit, they say. But when he asks her out for a drink with that charming smile of his, she can't say no. Besides, he's a sweet boyfriend, considerate and romantic, and an even better friend. His devotion to Doctor McCoy (or "Bones", as Jim calls him) is humbling, and she tries not to be jealous. Jim loves her, she assures herself, although he has troubles expressing it.
The first sign that everything isn't fine in their relationship occurs three weeks after they start dating. Gaila's close friend who lived as an artist in Los Angeles died of an undetected infection from when she went off-world. She comes to Jim's room, bawling, looking for comfort and a warm, safe place to curl away from the world. Jim is… kind, the picture of a perfect boyfriend, but she notices the minute flicks of his eyes away from her when he thinks she isn't looking. He's staring at his books and she thinks she sees a bit of longing in his gaze.
She explains it away by his looming midterms, but she remembers later that when Bones stumbled into the dorms a year ago, vomiting from alcohol and sorrow, Jim Kirk abandoned studying for his finals, even going so far to miss his xenolinguistics final and subsequently fail the class. The tale of the incident spread like wildfire around the campus and she remembers the sneers of the students and the vague disapproval of the teachers. Starfleet officers can't let emotions rule them, but Jim has always been a rule breaker. But not for you, her mind whispers treacherously.
All the clues, the little twitches in Jim's expressions, the slight hesitations, the lips that refuse to say three simple, little words, all fall into place when Jim steps from the simulation room with a cocky smile playing about his mouth. He's won, she realizes with a sinking feeling in her stomach. He's beaten the Kobayashi Maru, the unbeatable test, and he's used her and her computer skills as a stepping stone towards his goal.
She didn't think he could do it, she admits to herself much later, when she's curled around her pillow in her bed, her roommate a silent presence in the armchair. She was fooled by his carefree persona, his sweet charm, and his devotion to Bones. She'd thought that he was a kind, harmless man, loyal to his friends, merciful to his enemies, and protective of all. It hadn't even occurred to her that he could stare into her eyes and smile brightly as he manipulated the strings behind her back.
She doesn't know what to think, and she sobs into the pillow as Nyota's hand appears as a warm and steady presence on her back. It doesn't make sense to her. Kirk is fiercely protective and self-sacrificing, but is willing to betray and undercut with a smile to accomplish some selfish goal. The contradiction boggles her mind, and she would try to puzzle it out, but all she can see is Kirk's mouth twisted into a triumphant grin as he basks in the victory that he built from the shards of her broken heart.
Five
If asked, Spock would state unequivocally that he knows Captain James Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, who has been, and always will be, his friend. However, he doesn't immediately recognize this world's incarnation of his closest friend when he enters Spock's cave on Delta Vega.
Spock always knew when Jim would enter a room, his trademark confident stride turning heads and enhancing his aura of command. Jim effortlessly instilled trust and devotion in both his crew and in the people he met during his travels, his bright blue eyes striking and sharp with intelligence.
This Jim's eyes are also sharp, but it holds a note of constant suspicion, unlike the Jim he knew. This one does not stride confidently, but instead slinks into the cave and eyes Spock with instinctual distrust. Something has given Jim these hollow eyes and cautious movements and Spock has to suppress the disgust and anger and deep sorrow that springs from within his boiling Vulcan blood.
Once this Jim regains his composure, a thin veneer of confidence slides over the raw, bestial fear. It is a pale imitation of the regality and assuredness that his Jim wore like a second skin. Spock can't imagine this Jim at diplomatic dinners, charming all those around him, but he can clearly see the vicious suspicion in this Jim's eyes, and thinks of desolated fields and piles of the dead. This Jim has never truly escaped from Tarsus, he realizes, and that makes him somehow both weaker and stronger than his Jim ever was.
He admits to himself later that the mind meld was as much for his benefit as Jim's. He had to prove to himself, stuck in this painfully familiar/unfamiliar universe, that this James T. Kirk is not as different from his as he appears. But when he sinks into this Kirk's mind, he isn't confronted by the bright, smooth, welcoming mind that he was accustomed to.
This Jim's mind is all sharp edges and unhealed wounds. It shimmers with anger and pain, and the only trace of his old friend that Spock can find is the core of determination at the center of Jim's being, the staunch refusal to ever give up. In his universe's Kirk, this quality was a remarkable attribute that was firmly rooted in Jim's steady confidence in himself and his crew. In this Kirk, the determination is all that is holding him together.
So Spock withdraws and quickly leads this Kirk across the barren landscape to return him to his ship. He looks so much like Jim, Spock marvels, but doesn't finish the thought, because he can't understand how his friend could have ever possibly been so broken.
And one…
Nero is a pragmatic man, a smart man, with greater perceptiveness and insight than many humans realize, blinded as they are by his "barbaric" tattoos and his pointy ears. He has planned this game for many years, and this intricate dance of battle between the stars is exacted with the precision of a professional, every movement calculated and devastatingly accurate. He takes pleasure in this mastery, as he is, first and foremost, a predator. He hounds his prey until it collapses and then taunts it with its failure, before consuming it in one triumphant moment. Everything else he has been is gone, torn apart in a long-ago instant.
After years of seeing insipid little creatures on the other end of the communication feed, he recognizes Kirk instantly. Of course he looks similar to his wildly famous counterpart in the other universe, but Nero's first impression isn't Captain James Kirk, but kindred spirit.
He's not Romulan, of course. His ears are rounded and his body is a soft, human one. But his eyes shine with primeval cunning, the plotting of an animal who has been backed into a corner one too many times and now refuses, with vicious intent and wavering masks, to ever be trapped like that again. Nero knows this state of mind intimately, as his crew has embraced it with the fervor born of memories of violent, futile death. He's never seen a human with it though, and it intrigues him.
He's never been a gracious loser, but he thinks it fitting that he's lost to Kirk. The captain's plan was audacious and reeked of desperation, but Nero should have remembered that there are few things more dangerous than a desperate man, especially one who plays the game like a Romulan.
But at least Nero's defeat didn't arrive at the hands of one of these soft humans that stand behind Kirk. Kirk at least moves like a feral creature, with tightly coiled aggression and a pervasive wariness underlying his actions. His hand is possessive and heavy on the shoulder of his Vulcan as he presents his back to Nero, and when he turns back around, the slight curl of his lips tells Nero he knows the slight he's given. The only enemy to which you can safely expose your back is a dead enemy. Kirk understands the rules of unconstrained battle, and his words of "surrender" are meaningless, half pandering to Starfleet and half mocking salute.
As his ship shudders with the force of the black hole at its center, Nero thinks that he and Kirk are more alike than anyone would like to admit. They are, at heart, daring creatures, who have faced impossible odds and crippling loss, and yet stand proudly, shaking their fists at the world. Death holds no fear for either of them, he realizes as he stares into deep blue eyes, and there is a certain recklessness to be found in that. The only thing that binds them to life, him and Kirk, are the people that surround and depend on them. Nero has lost all of his precious people in the conflagration of a dying star; he prays in this moment of utter clarity and uncharacteristic sympathy that Kirk will never learn the pain of losing his.
When the feed finally cuts out, static blooming from the black hole that churns beneath him, Nero finally allows himself to smile. He closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and dies with the knowledge of James Tiberius Kirk on his silent tongue.