Fic: Age
Title: Age
Author: sidhefaer
Fandom: Star Trek (XI)
Pairing: Gen. Young!Kirk.
Rating: G.
Length: 484 words.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Another alternate timeline reality exploration thing. Short n' sweet.
Notes: Sort of relates to this.
There’s a lot of dust that day, and a lot of wind, too, to blow it along. Iowa is the kind of state that changes constantly but doesn’t boast enough of a population to notice, all brown and dry and sometimes, at night, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen-but he wouldn’t tell you that, never. He likes it that he’s the only kid with a mile radius of nothing on all sides except rolling hills. And that he can walk all day and see nothing more than a clump of ill-tended farmland and corn.
Iowa’s old. Everything’s old. He knows enough about the planet to know that it’s not getting any younger, past its prime, and edging ever closer to death. And since comparisons are a tool of reason, it’s only rational to weigh his parents against the landscape, and try to come to terms that they’re getting older, too.
And-obviously, it's so obvious that kids his age either ignore it or forget-he’s aging along with them (his mother, still pretty, but wrinkles of age and care lining her eyes and mouth, and his father, stable and indulgent, withering a little in all of that vacuum), but he doesn’t feel it happen, only notices it. He’s eleven. He shouldn’t even care about age.
"Mom," he says, biting his way through a sandwich at the world turns outside the kitchen window, "how old are you?"
She looks pleasantly surprised. She's not sure if the question stems from something deep in her son's growing mind, or is a topic that he realized he hasn't covered yet, or is just one of those things a son asks when he realizes his parents aren't going to be around for forever. She knows if George were there, he would raise a rogue eyebrow at the two of them over his morning coffee and try to hide his smirk within an expression of serious interest. But he's working. Starfleet never sleeps, it seems, and neither does she, sometimes. "I'm thirty."
"So when I'm eighteen," he continues, mouth full of lettuce and mayonnaise and intelligence, when I'm legal to enlist, "you'll be thirty-seven?"
She laughs. He's smart. Maybe a little too smart. "Yes, but I'm not even halfway through life yet. A year is a long time, and there are a lot of them to go."
Winona's son peers up at her, lost in his own thoughts. Even if he remembers things that have happened in the past, he feels like his eleven years have gone by so fast he doubts even his dad's starship at maximum warp could possibly catch up with them. And even if it could, he's not sure he wants them back.
Time isn’t a variable and there’s only so much of it left. Jim Kirk wants to save the world, but he can only do so much in a lifetime.
Author: sidhefaer
Fandom: Star Trek (XI)
Pairing: Gen. Young!Kirk.
Rating: G.
Length: 484 words.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Another alternate timeline reality exploration thing. Short n' sweet.
Notes: Sort of relates to this.
There’s a lot of dust that day, and a lot of wind, too, to blow it along. Iowa is the kind of state that changes constantly but doesn’t boast enough of a population to notice, all brown and dry and sometimes, at night, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen-but he wouldn’t tell you that, never. He likes it that he’s the only kid with a mile radius of nothing on all sides except rolling hills. And that he can walk all day and see nothing more than a clump of ill-tended farmland and corn.
Iowa’s old. Everything’s old. He knows enough about the planet to know that it’s not getting any younger, past its prime, and edging ever closer to death. And since comparisons are a tool of reason, it’s only rational to weigh his parents against the landscape, and try to come to terms that they’re getting older, too.
And-obviously, it's so obvious that kids his age either ignore it or forget-he’s aging along with them (his mother, still pretty, but wrinkles of age and care lining her eyes and mouth, and his father, stable and indulgent, withering a little in all of that vacuum), but he doesn’t feel it happen, only notices it. He’s eleven. He shouldn’t even care about age.
"Mom," he says, biting his way through a sandwich at the world turns outside the kitchen window, "how old are you?"
She looks pleasantly surprised. She's not sure if the question stems from something deep in her son's growing mind, or is a topic that he realized he hasn't covered yet, or is just one of those things a son asks when he realizes his parents aren't going to be around for forever. She knows if George were there, he would raise a rogue eyebrow at the two of them over his morning coffee and try to hide his smirk within an expression of serious interest. But he's working. Starfleet never sleeps, it seems, and neither does she, sometimes. "I'm thirty."
"So when I'm eighteen," he continues, mouth full of lettuce and mayonnaise and intelligence, when I'm legal to enlist, "you'll be thirty-seven?"
She laughs. He's smart. Maybe a little too smart. "Yes, but I'm not even halfway through life yet. A year is a long time, and there are a lot of them to go."
Winona's son peers up at her, lost in his own thoughts. Even if he remembers things that have happened in the past, he feels like his eleven years have gone by so fast he doubts even his dad's starship at maximum warp could possibly catch up with them. And even if it could, he's not sure he wants them back.
Time isn’t a variable and there’s only so much of it left. Jim Kirk wants to save the world, but he can only do so much in a lifetime.