The Dare
A Star Trek: 2009 Story

Chapter One: The Shipyard Bar

He thought he had finally succeeded. He was – finally – his own man. Dad's shadow couldn't hang over him any longer, and he was celebrating that fact.

("You know, I couldn't believe it when the bartender told me who you are."

"Who am I, Captain Pike?"

"Your father's son.")

He should've walked out on Pike right then. He would have, if he'd been completely sober – or a little more drunk. Here was a man – yet another person in a long line of people he didn't even know and who, probably, had never known his father either, who thought they knew him – judging him by his father's spectre.

Sometimes, Jim hated his dad. He died so god-damn heroically, so perfect and noble and impossibly perfect. Every wrong he might ever have done was washed away by that day on the Kelvin. He's not a real person, George Kirk, he's a fucking saint, and no one can ever compare to a saint.

So he stopped trying, long, long ago.

("You know that instant to leap without looking? That was his nature too.")

It doesn't work, though. He should've have expected it to. He'll ever only be Jim, the poor Kelvin baby. Except for when he's Jim, whose poor mother died, which had led to him becoming Jim, the poor Tarsus IV survivor 'cause Frank was okay and all, but, given the choice between his stepfather and his aunt, he'd have picked his aunt every time, and Jim, who was too smart for his own good, though he'd been that one before Tarsus, as well as after. Sure, those smarts had saved him a couple times, but, for the most part, they were nothing but trouble.

So he tries his best to be as different as possible. Mom was a biologist, before the rad poisoning took her, and Dad was a pilot. According to Mom (in the one less-than-positive thing she'd ever said about her late husband, her first husband, the one who Frank could never compare to either, though Frank, at least, didn't seem to care he'd never measure up, and that equanimity was the one of the things Jim had respected about his stepfather), Dad had been awful with computers; he could pilot a ship, yes, but anything more complicated than a coffee maker was beyond his abilities, tech-wise. To this day, Jim doesn't know how that was possible.

But it was what is was, and so, when he got bored after Tarsus (which was a lot, that year he spent mostly in the hospital, more than usual) and they let him sign up for classes at the university the 'Fleet hospital was attached to, he took everything in computer science they offered. And there he was Jim, who was just too smart again. He couldn't explain how he knew so much math, so much science (not without telling them about the massacre, and it was one thing if the doctors knew, 'cause there was no way they couldn't know, but having his teachers and classmates know was something else entirely; he couldn't stand the thought of them looking at him, knowing) at fifteen, so they still looked at him, made up rumours about him that he was supposed to hear, but at least it was better than being Jim Kirk, George's boy. Better to be vilified for being Jim, who was such a failure to his father's memory than Jim, who tried so hard and never could compare.

("If you're half the man your father was...")

But it kept on, even after he got the bachelor's at eighteen, the master's a year later. He'd his bike by then, and would spend weeks on I-90, going back and forth between Ithaca and Riverside, getting arrested in Chicago and Cleveland and every city between between so often he's on a first name basis with half the cops on the route. And, when he's not spending the night in jail (and sometimes even then, some of the sheriffs knowing what a screwed-up fuck-up he is and knowing he – usually – won't cause them any trouble in lock up if he's given his padd), he works on his dissertation. Ithaca, 'cause he's spent so much time at Cornell by now that all the professors know him and will put up with his shit so long as he gets his work turned in on time and showed up once or twice a month to talk to his advisor. Riverside, 'cause Frank was the one they released him to after Tarsus ('cause he literally has no one left after) and even though the state emancipated him after he got out of the hospital, Frank still cares and puts up with his shit too, so long as he doesn't drag it into his house, and 'cause they're building the new Constitution-class starship there and his dissertation's on the ever-more-sophisticated VI-systems needed to run a ship of that size. The guys at the yard even let him help shake out the bugs on some of the programming, off the books, 'cause Frank heads security there and he's Jim Kirk, George's boy, but he enjoys it too much to really care about their motivations.

("For my dissertation, I was assigned the USS Kelvin.")

And then, today, six weeks after his twenty-second birthday – twenty-two years forty-two days after all this started, when life went to hell in a hand basket, though he only guesses that this isn't the way life is supposed to be, 'cause it's always been like this for him, 'cause life has only ever offered him shit – he's disovered that he has nothing left. He's supposed to be celebrating passing his B Exam tonight, 'cause he just got news that the university approved his dissertation and they'll be sending him another diploma to put with the rest, if he can remember where those are, but in reality he's mourning. He doesn't have the slightest idea what to do now that he has all the degrees a sane person can really need and, though he could go work for real on programming the ships in the yard just right behind him, he doesn't think he can take the whispers of Jim Kirk, George's boy all the time. He's settled nicely into his routine of bars and jails and nights in random hotel rooms along the I-90 and the idea of leaving it, of having to act professional and become Jim, who tried so hard and never could compare irks him in a way that nothing else ever could.

He doesn't even fight back – not really – when they start beating on him.

("'Cause I looked up your file while you were drooling on the floor. Your aptitude tests are off the charts, so what is it? You like being the only genius-level repeat offender in the mid-west?"

"Maybe I love it.")

It's not the the repeat offender part that he loves, though, and Captain Pike seems to know that. It's the lack of expectations. Oh, people still expect things from him, but his professors had long ago since given up comparing him to his father, and his stepfather was as easy going about his shit as he'd been about Mom's frequent off-planet deployments. It's the knowledge that, outside the university, he's not going to be able to hide from that anymore. He'll have to inure a whole knew group of people, wherever he goes, whatever he does, and, no matter how hard he tries, it'll be at least a year before they stop thinking of him as Jim Kirk, George's boy. That's how it went at Cornell. Perhaps he'd spoiled himself, staying at the same college all these years, but the idea of having to face the whispers anew is just so exhausting...

("Look, so your dad dies. You can settle for less than an ordinary life.")

Yeah, Pike knows all about the expectations, but he doesn't know jack shit about him. The only part of Jim's record he had to have looked at was the arrest sheet, 'cause, even in his book, a philosophiae doctor (which probably isn't in the file yet, having just come through today) and a magister in ingeniaria (which is definitely there, he's had it pointed out to him by one too many sheriffs for it not to be) at twenty-two is hardly an ordinary life. Pike thought he was nothing more than Jim, who was such a failure to his father's memory, and, though that was what Jim had wanted all along, though he was his own man at last (or should have been; should have been able to walk to the shipyards behind him in the morning when he'd sobered up and apply for a job that he knew he'd get programming their VI; should have been able to steel himself for all the whispers he'd never be able to avoid; should have been able to tell himself that the computers he would program in the ships they were building would be faster, smarter, more durable, and less likely to fail in when an evacuation order was given so no one else would have to be a hero), he couldn't shake Pike's words...

("Or do you feel like you were meant for something better? Something special? Enlist in Starfleet.")

He knew he'd not succeeded then. That, no matter what, he'd always be Jim Kirk, George's boy no matter what he did. No matter how hard he tried to be anything but the clean-cut, straight-and-narrow Iowa farm boy Dad had been. No matter how many degrees he got. He would never, ever, be anything thing but Jim, who could never compare.

("You could be an officer in four years. You could have your own ship in eight.")

That's when he knew what he had to do. Well, not exactly then, but as he was passing into Missouri hours later, having gotten on his bike outside the bar and just driving. He couldn't escape his father's ghost, not without beating him at his own game.

("You know, your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's. And yours.")

He knew it was stupid. But he turned around anyway.

("I dare you to do better.")

When he got to the shipyards, he should have walked into the main building. He should have walked into Frank's office, told him about passing the B Exam; made plans to meet up for a drink. He should have gone up a floor, talked to Sydney about that job. He should have done anything but find Pike's shuttle.

But he did.

"Four years? I'll do it in three."

It was the only way he could ever be his own man.

a/n: So, in attempt to break my writer's block of the last month or so, WarpGirl on Triaxian Silk suggested, instead of trying to force myself to work on "A Grief Shared," to work on something else. This idea sorta floated into my head. At some point, it may become a companion peice to "AGS", but by no means is that required reading. If you're familiar with ENT, just assume that TATV never happened. This probably won't end up being updated regularly either, at least not once I get back into the flow of "AGS," but reviews and comments are still appreciated.