AN: This one was harder to write than I thought it was and I ended up having to edit it, rewrite it and edit it some more before finally going with this version.
After a long conversation with Sybok and Sarek, another conversation with Admirals Pike, Archer and Reed, and a thorough look though Alice Tanowitz-Parker's background, Jim decided to do an interview with the FNS correspondent. For the first part of the whole thing, Jim gave Alice and the video-imager operator a tour around the embassy. Now, they were getting set up to do the one-on-one thing in Sy's study.
"Don't be nervous," Alice smiled.
"I'm not nervous," Jim said with a small chuckle. This thing was going to air live, Alice was determined to get Jim's voice out there and the only way it couldn't be edited all to hell is if they did it this way. The part they filmed around the embassy would be used for later viewings. "This is better than all the stuff the fleet had us doing."
"I can imagine," the other woman said. "I've worked with Fleet PR on a few occasions. For a group of people that is supposed to make Starfleet look good, they have horrible people skills."
"That's what Scotty said," Jim laughed as the guy with the imager gave Alice a thumbs up. "Are we ready?"
"We are, Commander," Alice said.
"Please, just Jim," the Starfleet officer smiled.
"Okay. Jim it is," Alice said with a nod just before she was given the signal to begin. "Jim, we're gonna start off with an easy question. What put you on this path of being a Starfleet officer?"
"Christopher Pike. When most people meet me, they assume a lot about my life and usually they're wrong. Admiral Pike is one of the first people to see me and not a ghost of my father. He recruited me in a bar in the middle of nowhere Iowa and he just challenged me. I never had that before. I spent the whole night just thinking about what he said, knowing it wasn't going to be easy, wondering what my father would think or say and hoping that I could make a difference somewhere. I decided that even if I didn't like it or if I didn't make it, I would have at least tried. So, I got on the shuttle the next day and here we are, nearly four years later," Jim answered with a smile.
"Can you talk about your training?" Alice asked.
"I generally try not to. As a tactical officer and an intelligence officer, there's a lot of training that I can't talk about. Everything that's standard Starfleet training, everyone knows about."
"I suppose that's true. Tell me, what's your greatest inspiration? What kept you motivated?"
"There was a moment at the end of the Narada Incident. We just cleared the singularity and I think Spock realized it too because we shared a look. But there was this moment when I knew that everyone was safer because of something that we did. It wasn't about my father or the Kelvin or even Nero. It was this moment where we all realized that we just stopped someone, who had the technology to destroy planets, from destroying anything else. That is what Pike challenged me to do. He told me to do good and to be better. In that moment, I was sitting in his chair on his bridge being better than the bad guys. That's what motivated me and now that I've had that feeling, I want to continue to do good and be better. Every day."
"Being a Kirk, I'm sure people have tried to stand in your way, how do you overcome that?"
"For starters, I'm smarter than people think and Pike is quick to remind them of that fact. I let my actions and my service speak for itself. I rarely correct misconceptions but you mess with my family, then it's whole other conversation," Jim chuckled.
"Speaking of your family," Alice said, "There are many people wondering just how you ended up married to a Vulcan prince."
"We met on Vulcan at a diplomatic function two years ago. I was doing some diplomacy training he was there in his role as envoy. We talked philosophy and family, kept in contact after I had to return to San Fran and then his father assigned him to work from here. The rest is history," Jim said, a bright smile on her face.
"Every time you talk about your husband, you smile. Big and bright. I know some people think that this is a marriage of convenience."
"There's nothing convenient about it. It comes with questions and people wondering and there have been some messages sent to the embassy where people are upset that he married a Human and/or that I married a Vulcan. But you can't help who you fall in love with. I actually tried to talk him out of dating me once, we see how that turned out. Sybok is just… he's amazing and I don't have the words to describe him most of the time. I try and nothing comes out. I find myself in awe of him. He says the same about me, so…"
Alice nodded, "What are your personal ambitions? Yours and Lord Sybok's?"
"Right now, we're just focused on the baby. We intended to move but then Vulcan was destroyed and we decided that we'd rather be close to family, which is great because I get to spend time with Lady Amanda and Ambassador Sarek. We just want to embrace being with these people that we love. Blood, legal or otherwise, you shouldn't take the people around you for granted. As someone who knows all about losing family and not having those people growing up that I should've had, that's what I focus on."
"That leads into my next question. You have a long and storied history with Starfleet that many people don't know about. Especially with your family. What is it that people don't know about you that they should?"
"I was talking to Lieutenant Uhura a couple months ago and we ended up on the subject of my family. Uhura, like most people, thought that I was raised by relatives but many people don't realize that I don't have any. Other than my brother, everyone else is dead. He and I, and now his son and my child, are the end of the Kirk line. Hopefully, our children will have children and our family doesn't die with the four of us."
"Who raised you?"
"Umm… For the first six years of my life, I was with my mother but she didn't actually raise me. She hated me. She blamed me for George's death and she only did what was necessary so that I wouldn't die. I spent a lot of time in daycare. After that, she took an assignment and my grandfather, James, looked after me and my brother. He died about seven months before my mother did. Her brother, Frank, took us but we steered clear of him. He was angry and he was an alcoholic and he resented us more than my mother did. That's when my brother ran away; I was twelve. After an incident where Frank beat the crap out of me and put me in the hospital, I went to Tarsus Four to live with Hoshi Sato and her husband. Wasn't even a whole year later, Kodos massacred the place. I wouldn't say I survived, I just didn't die. After Starfleet showed up, and I found out Frank was dead, I bounced around by myself. I tracked my brother down but I didn't stay with him. I went to Tycho City got my first master's degree then bounced around some more. Eventually, I came back to Earth. One day, shortly after I turned twenty-two, walked into a bar, got into a fight, looked up and Pike was standing over me. He's been keeping me in line ever since. It gets to me sometimes that people don't bother to do a little research when they talk about my childhood."
"Well, I did do a little research and I know that people talk about your father, who you never knew, but I think the more appropriate question would be about you and Admiral Pike. I've heard some rumors about the two of you, like everyone who lives here, but I saw you guys interacting on Federation Day and all I kept thinking was he could be your uncle."
"I'm gonna call him that just to see his reaction," Jim chuckled. "Pike is like having a dad who's too cool to be your dad. He gives off a big brother vibe sometimes too. I guess uncle would work." The commander smiled. "I remember when we met on Tarsus. He was leading the away team and I don't know how but he knew who I was. If it wasn't for him, my identity would've been released back then. Which would've been really bad because I saved some kids and Starfleet wanted to keep our identities under wraps. Anyway, he let me lead his team to them. Now, some of those kids work for the Federation, one is in the Academy, some are parents. I'm about to be a parent. I realized last year that he kept tabs on me and he's very good at guiding but letting me make my own mistakes and just being there for me when I do. I don't know where I would be without him. When he was on the Narada, I kept having to push that out of my head in order to do my job, like he taught me. So, yea. That's me and Pike. There aren't a lot of people like him and I'm lucky to call him my friend."
"You mentioned Tarsus Four and Starfleet wanting to keep things classified. Now, they're doing it again with a lot of the Narada information. What are your thoughts on all of that?"
"My problem with the fleet hanging on to information isn't that they do it. I'm a tactical and intelligence officer, I know that you can't tell everyone everything all the time. My problem is when they hide things unnecessarily and then people are left to wonder after something bad happens. A little over a hundred years ago before the Federation was formed, people were upset that the Vulcans weren't telling Starfleet things and we weren't even sure who the Andorians were siding with. We created a divide between ourselves, the terrorist groups popped up and the Xindi killed millions. We were so busy hiding things from each other that we almost got obliterated. Now, people are saying that we could've stopped Vulcan from being destroyed if the right information was available. I wish I could deny that but I honestly don't know."
"That makes you sad?"
"It does. The idea of the Federation was always cooperation and I feel like we lost that somewhere. We're explorers, we weren't meant to be as militant as we've become. I know that Admiral Archer and Admiral Reed try to keep the original ideals alive and I wonder what will happen when they aren't here anymore. It's up to me and Pike and everyone we serve with to remember what came before. To be that ideal that Archer's crew fought for. I don't want to be politically correct or a stanch follower of orders, I want to do the right thing for the right reason. I want to know when I leave this life, that I made the universe better somehow. What's more, I know I'm not the only one who feels that way."