TICKET
It's a long road to becoming James Tiberius Kirk. This is the beginning of that road.
A year and a half after Winona left Earth, Frank is asked to resign from Starfleet. There is no official reason given, but Frank knew he didn't have much choice, and signs the papers with a few brief rants. Though no one official says anything, the Starfleet grapevine is heavy with the true story. Frank had been asked to leave for being too brutal in his instructing methods. Several cadets had wound up hospitalized, one permanently injured. There were also rumors that he had been inappropriately involved with one of his students. Starfleet couldn't pull together a conclusive case against him, so they just got rid of him as quietly as possible. He slinks back to Winona's empty house in Riverside, and drinks himself into an angry stupor.
Jimmy and Sam are still living at Grammy Cleo's, though, so they don't really care much about Frank.
But then Granny Cleo gets sick. Really sick. And one afternoon when Jimmy comes home from school she won't get off the floor. And he keeps telling her she has to wake up, she can't sleep there, they have to go on their walk. He holds the wrinkly cold hand in his pudgy little one and he talks to her until Sam gets home. And Sam calls the hospital, and it's all sirens and uniforms and Time of Death was Ten AM and Sudden stroke; she died instantly. Jimmy just wants her to get up so he can tell her about the hummingbird he saw on the way home.
They move in with Frank.
Jimmy is six, now, and he feels very old. Sam is fifteen and he feels very grown up. Jimmy is quiet and more withdrawn than ever, spending his time reading or wandering outside. Sam is loud and rude and rebellious. Neither of them like Frank. Sam deals with it by never being home. The high school is within walking distance of the Kirk house, and he walks out the door at seven am and comes back well after nightfall every day.
Jimmy doesn't know what he does when he's not home; doesn't know if he even goes to school. Sam says it's none of his business and he's a nerdy little brat.
The elementary school is farther away, and Jimmy has to take the bus that picks him up at the end of his driveway every morning and drops him off there too. The bus is old and noisy, and Frank can hear it from the house. He waits for Jimmy to come inside. There is always something he has done wrong. He tries very hard to do things right, but Frank is never happy with him. He cries the first time Frank hits him, but Frank just yells at him and calls him a sissy. He says it's pathetic that he just cries and takes a hit like that. That he has to keep his guard up. You call that fighting? That's pathetic!
Jimmy sniffles and kicks him in the shins. Frank laughs (and Jimmy, a little horrified, thinks it sounds almost approving) and punches him so hard he blacks out.
Jimmy doesn't cry again.
Jimmy does well in school.
Too well, in fact. He does so well that they jump him three grades. He is the only seven year old in the sixth grade class. They don't like him. He gets in a fight on his second day with two of his bigger, stronger classmates. He wins. He is used to fighting Frank and loosing. He thinks it is weird feeling, winning a fight.
They suspend him. He doesn't tell Frank, just takes the schoolwork he was assigned out onto the trails he used to walk with Grammy Cleo. He spreads his textbooks under a red oak tree and munches on wild blackberries while he works. He sleeps under the tree at night, enjoying the last warm days of summer.
He finishes that year's coursework over the three days he is suspended.
When he turns the papers in, they sit him down and have him take more tests. They say these tests are more accurate, and ship him over to the high school. They don't want to deal with a tiny genius troublemaker, who stares at them with big serious blue eyes. He is a little bit terrified, but mostly he is numb. He's not a sissy. He doesn't cry and he doesn't whine.
Jimmy just does what he has to.