my little dream, working the machine
Title: For the emptiness you leave behind
Author: eonism
Rating: R (for references to child abuse and Tarsus IV)
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just here for the lulz.
Characters/Pairings: Kirk/McCoy (AOS), Kirk/Spock (TOS)
Word Count: 4,794
Author's Notes: Betaed by tracker_lucifer, all other mistakes are my own.
Summary: These are the five times that Jim Kirk has been left behind.
His mother leaves them just after Jim’s fifth birthday, her departure date falling just days after they unwrap presents and eat the last birthday cake they would ever eat together. Winona Kirk packs her bags for the stars and a research outpost on the edge of the galaxy that Jim can’t pronounce, slurring the words and licking his lips whenever he does. Sam can say it right, and teaches it to Jim the night they crawl up onto the rooftop from Sam’s bedroom window and trace the stars with their fingertips.
“Hang a right at Venus, straight on past Jupiter,” Sam says, and smiles quietly at his little brother. “That’s where Mom’s going to be.” He pulls Jim to him tightly, keeping the smaller boy close. “Just look up and she’ll be there.”
Somewhere in Iowa George Kirk’s sons huddle together under a thin blanket to count the constellations, and wish their mother goodnight.
When their mother leaves they have to leave Riverside too, to drive to Michigan to spend some time with their grandparents. Just until their mother comes home, Winona swears at the end of every message, in an old creaking farmhouse in a town too much like Riverside. From that point on there are no more birthdays, not like before. It’s only vids and belated gifts in the post, and Winona’s messages and smiles and “Maybe next year, Baby” coming over the connection, delayed by solar flares or signal decay. “I’ll be back in time next year, I promise.”
It’s hard to argue when your mother is a million, million miles away, and just a smile on a vid screen. So after a while, Jim doesn’t bother.
By Jim’s eighth birthday his mother comes back and he and Sam get to come home to meet her new boyfriend. Her boys needed a father, after all. That’s all anybody has to say about it, even though Sam and Jim had both been fine without one so far. Sam gives a stiff upper lip, says “He’s not our father,” makes Jim swear never to call him that. Jim doesn’t know his father. He just knows his name and his face, and where his headstone is. George Kirk was buried in the stars, but it still matters when this other man starts sleeping in their mother’s bed.
Frank is tall and stout, quiet and with steady hands. He has a stable job down at the shipyards, and makes decent money, and has no children of his own, and everybody tells Winona that’s a good thing. He’s a keeper. Frank’s fingers are meaty and he smiles whenever Winona’s there. When Winona leaves again, with two tight and tearful hugs to take with her back to her commission, Frank never smiles. Jim isn’t even nine yet when he first feels Frank’s fist in the meat of his cheek, between his ribs and under his sternum.
“Miss you, Baby,” Winona smiles over the connection, and Jim says nothing about the bruises. “I’ll be home again soon.”
By the time he’s ten, Jim stops looking out for his mother all together, and he forgets about the stars.
--
“I’m getting out of here. And if you were smart you would be too.”
That’s what Sam says the day he leaves home, packing his things into the suitcase he picked up from the thrift store in town with the last of his paycheck. Sam is eighteen, long and lean like Winona; he has a scholarship to a college in Washington and a perfect grade point average. Jim is fourteen, tall and sturdy and blonde all over like George; he already has two stints in juvenile hall under his belt. Frank is downstairs and their mother is screaming at him. Neither of them will ever call him “father.”
Somewhere in the house a plate breaks; maybe it’s a window or a photo frame. They say nothing about it in any case.
“What, so I can be like you? Run off to college?” Jim asks. Arms folded at the door, throat tight. “And do what exactly? There aren’t a lot of options out there for kids with rap sheets, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I don’t know, Jim,” Sam sighs and shakes his head, stuffing a pile of neatly folded clothes into his luggage. “Do something. Do anything but kick around in this piss-ant town and drink yourself to death. I’ve had enough of it.”
Jim shakes his head. Suddenly he’s five-years-old again, all elbows and knees and baby teeth.
“You’re a fucking coward, you know that?” There’s no fire in Jim’s voice but he says it anyway, wants to mean it. Makes it sting and stick in Sam’s skin like a burr. “Leaving me here with them.”
“I got a scholarship, Jim,” Sam says like he doesn’t feel it, snaps his suitcase shut. “Full-ride. You know how hard I’ve worked for this. What do you expect me to do? Just sit around here, working the same shitty job down at the fueling station? Wear a nametag for the rest of my life and come home to slap my kids around until I feel better about it?”
“You could fucking wait for me,” Jim spits, and uncrosses his arms to make fists of his hands. “Now I have to stay here with them.”
“Jim, don’t be like this-”
“Fuck you, you get to leave.” When Sam gets close, Jim moves away, turning his back. Downstairs he can hear Frank calling their mother a cunt. Jim doesn’t care about that. “I get to stay here in Crackerville and watch Mom and Frank kill each other.”
“Jim-”
“You said you wouldn’t leave.”
“Look, I have to do this. If I’m ever gonna get out of here, I have to go now.” Sam puts a hand on Jim’s shoulder, but Jim just shrugs it away. “I’ll be back for holidays and breaks. And I’m not leaving you, Jim; I just have to think of myself for a change. But I will come back for you, Jim, I promise.”
“You’re just like Mom,” Jim hisses like the words are poison. Tomorrow he won’t mean it, but for now he does, and with all his heart. Sam looks hurt, but he says nothing about that.
“See you around, Jim,” he says instead, gathers up his things (a suitcase, duffle bag and pillow) and walks to the doorway.
“No,” Jim promises, “you won’t.”
--
Kodos said it would be a cleansing.
There was no order, no pattern in the chaos; nothing to hang a name on or pin down for solace. Soldiers kicked in doors, burned down houses, dragging men and women through the streets while their children stumbled behind them, screaming and crying. Jim remembers the screaming most of all, louder than the gunfire. He remembers it like he remembers the smell of dank earth and Cousin Sarah’s fingernails digging into the skin of his arm, making him bleed into his shirt when he held his hand over her mouth.
She was only twelve, huddled in Jim’s arms, too small and shaking like a dying animal. He was sixteen, and could do little to help her except to keep her from screaming. There was nothing else to be done, as they cowered in the cellar and waited to die.
Jim was just supposed to be on Tarsus IV for the summer. With his father’s Cousin Barbara, her husband Richard and their daughter Sarah, in the cottage they kept on the hillside overlooking their tiny farming parish. Just until Winona got Frank out of the house and served him the divorce papers, as she swore over and over in every Saturday afternoon’s vid message. Only a little while longer, she promised, like she always promised, then he could come home again. Jim didn’t believe his mother then, and hearing the distant crackle of fire coming from above their heads, the hiss and the burn and the screaming, he would never believe her now.
Barbara had promised they would leave together. She promised it like she was whispering a prayer, wiping the streaks of mascara (and sweat and tears) from under her eyes and swearing that they would be on the next shuttle out. They would all leave together just as soon as her husband came back, because he was only going out to check on the Townsends up the road, with their twin freckle-faced boys. He had to come back, she said, over and over, he had to come back because they couldn’t leave without him. Jim knew he’d been shot and dragged off, but he didn’t say anything about that. He just held Sarah tighter and tried not to let her scream.
Barbara promised even after the soldiers kicked the door in and found them hiding downstairs, heavy boots making thunder through the walls and floorboards. They pulled her away from Sarah, who fought and screamed and bit Jim’s fingers. Just until a soldier closed a glove around her throat and dragged her away too, out of Jim’s bloodied arms and hands. He doesn’t remember fighting, or clawing at them with gritted teeth. The butt of the gun connecting with the back of his head doesn’t register in his mind, nor the horrible crack it makes before the world collapses under starlight.
When Jim wakes again there are constellations behind his eyes and the house is empty. Empty and hot. He smells dirt and cooked meat; it’s in his skin and under his clothes, like the screams ringing in his ears. Sunlight creeping down the cellar stairs brings him up on watery knees. Muddy boot-prints carry him through the broken front door, down the path of river pebbles that leads to the mail box. It’s then that he sees that the entire village had been burnt to the ground, smoldering, smelling of blackened meat and charred wood.
Kodos said it would be a cleansing. He’d smiled, too. Jim will remember that forever.
The supply shuttles come, sometime before nightfall. Or maybe it was sunrise. Jim doesn’t know what time it is; it doesn’t really matter anymore, walking down empty dirty streets in his bloodied clothes, staring at the marks Sarah left on his arms and hands. He only knows that more soldiers flood the village soon after, wearing Federation uniforms, asking him his name, calling him Son. “Everything will be alright, Son,” they all say, “Everything will be fine now.” Jim doesn’t hear them, and covered in a blanket is ushered off by two soldiers towards the refugee shuttle.
Winona and Sam come to claim him at a space station orbiting a nearby moon. He’s been questioned, checked over by doctors, given a pat on a back and sent to go stand in line for processing. It’s hot like Barbara’s house was hot, overrun by a small city of cots and tents and shaking, crying, bloodied people. His mother and brother grab him, crush him in their arms. They hold him and cry, and swear they’ll never leave him again. Jim can still smell the burnt meat in their clothes, in their skin, under their breath. He can still hear Sarah screaming when they tell him it’s time to go home.
Jim never talks about Tarsus IV.
--
On Jim’s 23rd birthday, he decides he’s going to get drunk.
Yosemite is empty this time of year, the tourists and campers all gone home for the fall. That’s how Jim likes it. Right now he’s lying back on a wool blanket in a little green clearing, nursing his eighth beer and watching the sun come up. Bones is sitting beside him, cross-legged, squinting through the sunlight coming between the trees and licking the taste of beer from his bottom lip. His hair is still wind-blown from the ride in on Jim’s bike, but Jim doesn’t say anything about it. It makes him look…whatever.
Bones is his best friend, even though he swears he isn’t most days. Jim hasn’t had very many of those that he can remember, and none that he kisses sometimes, and fools around with on others. It just sort of happened that way, and they don’t talk about it. Bones is fucked up from his divorce and drinks too much and complains about everything, although he’d still give you the shirt off his back if you asked for it nice enough. Bones is different, and good. Jim likes that about him. He doesn’t ask about the nicks and scars (especially the ones that come in the shape of Frank’s fist) he spots when Jim’s dressing for class or undressing for a shower. Jim finds that he likes that about him, too.
Bones doesn’t usually drink beer, so he isn’t as buzzed as Jim is, but who cares. They both lost their shoes somewhere between midnight and dawn, and the grass is cool when Jim lets his toes slip between the blades. It’s kind of good like this.
Their uniforms and text books and lives are tucked away back at their dorm rooms in San Francisco. Bones didn’t ask too many questions when Jim popped up over his shoulder while he was leaving his Field Surgery class the day before, and told him they were leaving town for the weekend. Jim was grateful for that much.
“Why?” Bones did ask that. He always does.
“Because it’s my birthday on Sunday,” Jim said and slung an arm around Bones’ shoulder, hanging there like an ornament. “And we need to get drunk.”
“Happy birthday. And why can’t we get drunk in San Francisco?”
“Because,” Jim says, and he doesn’t care that half the first-years outside the medical building are staring at them, “we get drunk in San Francisco every weekend. We need a change of scenery. Also I need to conduct an experiment.”
“And that is?”
“If I blow you in the woods and nobody’s around to hear it, do you make a sound when you come?”
“Well,” Bones says. If Jim didn’t know any better, he would say Bones was blushing. But that never happened. “I guess we’re going to the woods, then.”
Jim never got around to actually conducting his experiment, and Bones didn’t ask him too either. He just packed up his things and got on the back of Jim’s bike and let him lead the way. Jim’s grateful for that too.
“I hate birthdays,” Jim announces out of nowhere, and scrunches his toes in the grass. The thought starts in his head but travels to his belly, where it tightens up in a ball before falling out of his mouth for no good reason.
Bones looks over, blinks, and shrugs lazily.
“I don’t really care, myself. They stop being important when you’re around twelve. After that nobody gives a shit. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Jim lets out a snort and takes a slow sip from his bottle. “Birthdays are like the plague at the Kirk household,” he says. “All I’ve ever gotten was a dead father and a mom who couldn’t get away from me fast enough.” He swallows theatrically, lets out a grunt. “Happy fucking birthday to me.”
Bones takes a drink, licks his lips again. His brow furrows. “I thought Frank was your dad.”
“Nope,” is all Jim has to say on the subject, and drags a knuckle across his bottom lip to swipe at stray drops of beer.
“Oh.” At that, Bones just shrugs.
“My dad died when I was born.” Sometimes Jim forgets Bones isn’t psychic, or hangs around with Pike. Bones wouldn’t know who George Kirk was. He wouldn’t care, either. Right now, Jim’s glad. “I never knew him.”
“My mom died when I was eight.” Bones says, flatly, as though just to fill the space between them with conversation. “Then my dad died three years ago. Pyrrhoneuritis.”
“Oh.” Jim didn’t know that. He feels a little stupid for starting the conversation now. “Sorry.”
“Hey.” Another shrug and Bones tips his bottle back in a long swallow. “Shit just happens sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, and looks forward to watch the sun come up over the horizon. “I guess it does.”
--
When Jim sleeps, he sees Vulcan.
He doesn’t see it so much as he feels it, under his feet and over his head and in the webbing of his fingers. It breathes around him as he sits and waits, watching night climb into its moonless sky, and feeling the dry wind sweep across the rocky red deserts, over his skin and face. He sees his mother here, but she is not his mother; his mother is blonde with strong hands (and how long has it been since we’ve spoken? he asks himself, almost panicked. I’ll call her tonight.). This mother has large brown eyes and soft hands. She always tells him that he’s perfect the way he is, even though the card of her long fingers across his scalp is as foreign as the thin air whenever he closes his eyes.
She’s dead now; at least she is in this time, this place, swallowed up like Vulcan was swallowed up. It hurts, and Jim doesn’t know why.
But when he wakes up, alone in his bed (and sometimes not, if Bones is still snoring softly against his shoulder) to the sound of the computer’s low chime, he sometimes sees himself, and Spock. They’re older, steadier and not quite themselves, setting foot on alien worlds they’ve yet to visit and sharing days that they’ve yet to see. This Spock is not his Spock but someone else’s, some other version of Jim Kirk that knows his voice and his mind and his touch. He sees them growing older together, on a tall starship, somewhere far away from his dorm room in San Francisco, watching sunlight filter through the window across the room and listening to Bones breathe against his hair.
Spock disappears after they get back to Earth, with Nyota and his father close at his side. Jim finds he’s okay with that; he doesn’t quite know what to say to him yet, anyway. Ambassador Spock seems to vanish all together, off to speak with Federation councils and surviving ranking Vulcan officials on where to begin preparations for the new colonies. He leaves behind him three thousand questions, rippling over Jim (what did he call it, emotional transference?) in waves, hot then cold, and Jim finds that’s what hurts him most of all.
It’s another party, in the long string of ceremonies and commendations that have followed since Nero’s ship was destroyed. Earth was saved and Vulcan was lost; Pike gets a wheelchair and a promotion, Spock’s still mourning somewhere in private and Jim gets a brand new starship. It all feels a little strange, a little cold, but Jim puts on his best party face, calls his mother to tell her the good news and accepts his new commission. The Enterprise had been good to him, and he wanted nothing more than to be good to her, after all. So Jim just buries his memories of Vulcan behind two glasses of brandy, and pours himself another while he watches his bridge crew enjoy themselves.
“Not enjoying the party?”
Bones finds him when the party winds down around nine o’clock. Nyota had already gone; Sulu and Chekov had wandered off a half-hour before, the whiz-kid a little drowsy and red in the face as Sulu shot Jim an incomprehensible look and aimed him for the door (to which Jim waved and warmly cautioned “Use a condom.”). Scotty and Keenser disappeared some time ago in their small ruckus of Aberdeen pub songs and debates over theoretical physics, leaving Jim alone at their table, opening up his uniform jacket and nursing his fourth drink.
“It’s a great party. Social event of the year, I’d say,” Jim answers blithely as Bones pulls up an empty seat beside him. “Beats Gary Mitchell’s parties by far. Even though he is really good at card tricks, I will give him that.” Taking a sip, he studies his newly promoted Chief Medical Officer for a moment, and then licks his lips. “Where’ve you been?”
“I hate parties.” Bones shrugs, looks around the ballroom like he’s taking inventory. “And I was just about to ask you the same question.”
“I’ve been here,” Jim answers strategically, noticing where this is headed. Clearly they need to spend less time together.
They’ll work on that later, Jim decides.
“You’ve been hiding at your table during a party held in your honor. I figured I’d have to peel you off the walls and talk you into putting your pants back on by now,” Bones says and leans back into his seat, sizing Jim up the way he always does when he’s making a point. “I just thought I should come and check up on you. You’ve got everybody a little worried.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I’ve got it,” Jim dismisses. It’s stupid but the word itself makes him think of Spock’s mother, with her big caring eyes and warm little smile. He closes his mouth and says nothing more of it, feeling stupid for ever saying it.
“Don’t give me that. You’ve been acting weird since we got back.” Bones gives him his best doctor’s voice, talking to Jim like a patient, staying far away from the way he speaks to him as a friend. Or a lover, or whatever the hell they were these days. “I know how badly you wanted to make captain; I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am happy, Bones, I just.” Jim’s chest suddenly feels heavy. It feels like there are hands on his face, in his hair, and he drags a knuckle across his brow to brush the feeling away. “I don’t think you’d get it even if I told you.”
“Try me,” is all Bones says. It makes Jim sigh.
“It’s just. Something happened on Delta Vega. Spock - well, the other Spock - he, I don’t know, he just did something to me. And now I can’t get these memories out of my head.”
“You once said being a starship captain was my first, best destiny…”
“The mind-meld?” Bones supplies, still sounding way too clinical about all this. It sets Jim’s teeth on edge. “I glanced at the report you turned in. I didn’t know they still actually practiced those; people always made it sound like Vulcan urban legends.”
“If that’s true, then yours is to be by my side.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out they’re not.” Jim scoffs reflexively. He shakes his head. “It’s like there’s a whole other universe inside my brain right now, trying to claw its way out. I just keep seeing his life before he came back in time, over and over. His family, Vulcan, us…”
“If there’s any true logic to the universe…”
Once it’s out of his mouth, Jim immediately regrets saying it, because Bones looks a little hurt. He shouldn’t be, the same way Jim shouldn’t feel hurt, but he is. The room is suddenly too small, the air too thin. It makes his chest feel heavy and his eyes sting, like being in that cave in Delta Vega, watching Vulcan vanish behind his eyes.
“Us?” Bones repeats. “What us?”
“…We’ll end up on that bridge again someday.”
“In another time, or place I guess, I dunno,” Jim says, and swallows thickly on the words, sticky in his throat, “we were all different people, and he and I. We just - we just were, you know? And it’s in my head now, and I’m stuck with all these memories that don’t belong to me. And I just feel like-”
“You miss him.” Bones’ voice is dry but without reproach or blame. It doesn’t make it any easier.
Jim just nods.
Bones swallows. “So, I suppose this means you and Spock-”
“Don’t.” Jim sits forward, closes a hand around Bones’ wrist. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“I think it means a whole lot, Jim,” Bones says, and looks at the hand on his wrist rather than at Jim. “If that’s what you want, it’s none of my business.” For a lie, it’s convincing enough, but Jim doesn’t try to call him on it. “You do what you need to do.”
“Whoever that guy was, I’m not him,” Jim says, and squeezes Bones’ wrist a little harder than he should. “We’re all different people now, Bones - you, me, all of us.”
“And where am I in all this?”
Jim sighs, trying to come up with something clever, and licks his lips. “You’re there, but, you’re not you. You’re not the you that I know, and that’s the only one I’m counting,” he says, and means it. “Look, either I’ll forget about this or I won’t, but this isn’t my life I’m remembering, it’s Ambassador Spock’s. And whatever might’ve happened in his time, I wouldn’t trade this - you, the ship, this crew - for anything.”
Another swallow, tight and hard, and Bones slants his eyes to meet Jim’s. “And what exactly is this?” he asks. “What’re we not trading for?”
Jim wants to give his best friend an answer. Instead he drags a thumb of the doctor’s knuckle and lets out a breath between his teeth.
“It is what it is,” Jim says, and shrugs. “We’re just us, Bones.”
And for tonight, it seems, it’s good enough.
--
B77 X5 dies quietly in the night, falling asleep between the dusts of stars.
From the ship’s Observatory Jim watches from his front-row seat. This is his favorite part of the job most days; sitting in the black, playing voyeur to the beauty and the terror of it while the Enterprise’s instruments record the star’s death throes from a safe distance, Spock watching from the con. It pulses, spinning, tighter and brighter. For some reason it makes him think of his father’s antique red drop-top, when he was three and their mom used to take him and Sam into town on Saturdays. It used to rattle and shake right before it ran out of gas, since so few fueling stations carried gasoline anymore, like it was coughing as his mom pulled into the station to refill. Cough, sputter, shake.
Everything dies the same way, from stars to drop-tops, trembling as they take their last breath. It’s kind of beautiful and scary and that’s the part Jim likes best.
Bones finds Jim here, standing by the bowed viewing portal, like a child with his face pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass and handprints sweaty with anticipation.
He doesn’t bother to check Jim’s location with the computer, just follows his footsteps through the usual hiding places until he finds him there. The same way he says nothing at the door and just moves to stand beside Jim instead, shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the viewer’s wide screen, and watches.
“See? I take you nice places,” Jim chirps.
“So I guess I’m the only one who finds this depressing then, right?” Bones says lightly, folding his hands behind his back. “Watching stars die?”
“It’s not depressing. We evacuated the neighboring planets, saved the day. I’ll probably even get a medal.” Jim’s smirk is small but not without a certain satisfaction. “You have to enjoy the little things, Bones.”
The star pulses, shivers, swells, waiting to die. Bones tips his chin thoughtfully.
“I guess it’s something.”
Silence settles between them, warm in this space lit up the star’s dying glow. Days like this, when it’s quiet and calm, Jim can’t help himself.
“Glad you’re here,” he says simply, and means it. Bones just lets out a snort.
“Are we having a life-affirming moment?”
“Fuck you,” Jim fires off in a smirk, “I’m trying to be romantic over here.”
“Don’t. It makes me nervous when you do that,” Bones answers, to which Jim just rolls his eyes. “And besides, it’s not like you gave me much choice in the matter.”
Jim almost takes affront to that. “What, like you regret it?”
Bones looks at Jim, which immediately steals Jim’s eyes from the view screen. He should hate that Bones still has that effect on him, but he doesn’t. If anything, it makes the space around them feel warmer, because the way Bones looks right now, lit up as he is by yellow and white, gives Jim pause.
“What else can I do, Jim? Where you go, I go,” Bones says, like it’s just a matter of textbook knowledge, plain as day and air and gravity, “That’s the way it is.”
“For good?” Jim doesn’t need to ask, but he does anyway, just because he likes to hear Bones say it. It just sounds better when he does.
“Yeah,” Bones says, and reaches out to squeeze Jim’s hand firmly. “For good.”
The italics are lines from Kirk's final message to Spock, before his death, according to the original script of Star Trek XI.
Author: eonism
Rating: R (for references to child abuse and Tarsus IV)
Disclaimer: Not mine. I'm just here for the lulz.
Characters/Pairings: Kirk/McCoy (AOS), Kirk/Spock (TOS)
Word Count: 4,794
Author's Notes: Betaed by tracker_lucifer, all other mistakes are my own.
Summary: These are the five times that Jim Kirk has been left behind.
His mother leaves them just after Jim’s fifth birthday, her departure date falling just days after they unwrap presents and eat the last birthday cake they would ever eat together. Winona Kirk packs her bags for the stars and a research outpost on the edge of the galaxy that Jim can’t pronounce, slurring the words and licking his lips whenever he does. Sam can say it right, and teaches it to Jim the night they crawl up onto the rooftop from Sam’s bedroom window and trace the stars with their fingertips.
“Hang a right at Venus, straight on past Jupiter,” Sam says, and smiles quietly at his little brother. “That’s where Mom’s going to be.” He pulls Jim to him tightly, keeping the smaller boy close. “Just look up and she’ll be there.”
Somewhere in Iowa George Kirk’s sons huddle together under a thin blanket to count the constellations, and wish their mother goodnight.
When their mother leaves they have to leave Riverside too, to drive to Michigan to spend some time with their grandparents. Just until their mother comes home, Winona swears at the end of every message, in an old creaking farmhouse in a town too much like Riverside. From that point on there are no more birthdays, not like before. It’s only vids and belated gifts in the post, and Winona’s messages and smiles and “Maybe next year, Baby” coming over the connection, delayed by solar flares or signal decay. “I’ll be back in time next year, I promise.”
It’s hard to argue when your mother is a million, million miles away, and just a smile on a vid screen. So after a while, Jim doesn’t bother.
By Jim’s eighth birthday his mother comes back and he and Sam get to come home to meet her new boyfriend. Her boys needed a father, after all. That’s all anybody has to say about it, even though Sam and Jim had both been fine without one so far. Sam gives a stiff upper lip, says “He’s not our father,” makes Jim swear never to call him that. Jim doesn’t know his father. He just knows his name and his face, and where his headstone is. George Kirk was buried in the stars, but it still matters when this other man starts sleeping in their mother’s bed.
Frank is tall and stout, quiet and with steady hands. He has a stable job down at the shipyards, and makes decent money, and has no children of his own, and everybody tells Winona that’s a good thing. He’s a keeper. Frank’s fingers are meaty and he smiles whenever Winona’s there. When Winona leaves again, with two tight and tearful hugs to take with her back to her commission, Frank never smiles. Jim isn’t even nine yet when he first feels Frank’s fist in the meat of his cheek, between his ribs and under his sternum.
“Miss you, Baby,” Winona smiles over the connection, and Jim says nothing about the bruises. “I’ll be home again soon.”
By the time he’s ten, Jim stops looking out for his mother all together, and he forgets about the stars.
--
“I’m getting out of here. And if you were smart you would be too.”
That’s what Sam says the day he leaves home, packing his things into the suitcase he picked up from the thrift store in town with the last of his paycheck. Sam is eighteen, long and lean like Winona; he has a scholarship to a college in Washington and a perfect grade point average. Jim is fourteen, tall and sturdy and blonde all over like George; he already has two stints in juvenile hall under his belt. Frank is downstairs and their mother is screaming at him. Neither of them will ever call him “father.”
Somewhere in the house a plate breaks; maybe it’s a window or a photo frame. They say nothing about it in any case.
“What, so I can be like you? Run off to college?” Jim asks. Arms folded at the door, throat tight. “And do what exactly? There aren’t a lot of options out there for kids with rap sheets, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I don’t know, Jim,” Sam sighs and shakes his head, stuffing a pile of neatly folded clothes into his luggage. “Do something. Do anything but kick around in this piss-ant town and drink yourself to death. I’ve had enough of it.”
Jim shakes his head. Suddenly he’s five-years-old again, all elbows and knees and baby teeth.
“You’re a fucking coward, you know that?” There’s no fire in Jim’s voice but he says it anyway, wants to mean it. Makes it sting and stick in Sam’s skin like a burr. “Leaving me here with them.”
“I got a scholarship, Jim,” Sam says like he doesn’t feel it, snaps his suitcase shut. “Full-ride. You know how hard I’ve worked for this. What do you expect me to do? Just sit around here, working the same shitty job down at the fueling station? Wear a nametag for the rest of my life and come home to slap my kids around until I feel better about it?”
“You could fucking wait for me,” Jim spits, and uncrosses his arms to make fists of his hands. “Now I have to stay here with them.”
“Jim, don’t be like this-”
“Fuck you, you get to leave.” When Sam gets close, Jim moves away, turning his back. Downstairs he can hear Frank calling their mother a cunt. Jim doesn’t care about that. “I get to stay here in Crackerville and watch Mom and Frank kill each other.”
“Jim-”
“You said you wouldn’t leave.”
“Look, I have to do this. If I’m ever gonna get out of here, I have to go now.” Sam puts a hand on Jim’s shoulder, but Jim just shrugs it away. “I’ll be back for holidays and breaks. And I’m not leaving you, Jim; I just have to think of myself for a change. But I will come back for you, Jim, I promise.”
“You’re just like Mom,” Jim hisses like the words are poison. Tomorrow he won’t mean it, but for now he does, and with all his heart. Sam looks hurt, but he says nothing about that.
“See you around, Jim,” he says instead, gathers up his things (a suitcase, duffle bag and pillow) and walks to the doorway.
“No,” Jim promises, “you won’t.”
--
Kodos said it would be a cleansing.
There was no order, no pattern in the chaos; nothing to hang a name on or pin down for solace. Soldiers kicked in doors, burned down houses, dragging men and women through the streets while their children stumbled behind them, screaming and crying. Jim remembers the screaming most of all, louder than the gunfire. He remembers it like he remembers the smell of dank earth and Cousin Sarah’s fingernails digging into the skin of his arm, making him bleed into his shirt when he held his hand over her mouth.
She was only twelve, huddled in Jim’s arms, too small and shaking like a dying animal. He was sixteen, and could do little to help her except to keep her from screaming. There was nothing else to be done, as they cowered in the cellar and waited to die.
Jim was just supposed to be on Tarsus IV for the summer. With his father’s Cousin Barbara, her husband Richard and their daughter Sarah, in the cottage they kept on the hillside overlooking their tiny farming parish. Just until Winona got Frank out of the house and served him the divorce papers, as she swore over and over in every Saturday afternoon’s vid message. Only a little while longer, she promised, like she always promised, then he could come home again. Jim didn’t believe his mother then, and hearing the distant crackle of fire coming from above their heads, the hiss and the burn and the screaming, he would never believe her now.
Barbara had promised they would leave together. She promised it like she was whispering a prayer, wiping the streaks of mascara (and sweat and tears) from under her eyes and swearing that they would be on the next shuttle out. They would all leave together just as soon as her husband came back, because he was only going out to check on the Townsends up the road, with their twin freckle-faced boys. He had to come back, she said, over and over, he had to come back because they couldn’t leave without him. Jim knew he’d been shot and dragged off, but he didn’t say anything about that. He just held Sarah tighter and tried not to let her scream.
Barbara promised even after the soldiers kicked the door in and found them hiding downstairs, heavy boots making thunder through the walls and floorboards. They pulled her away from Sarah, who fought and screamed and bit Jim’s fingers. Just until a soldier closed a glove around her throat and dragged her away too, out of Jim’s bloodied arms and hands. He doesn’t remember fighting, or clawing at them with gritted teeth. The butt of the gun connecting with the back of his head doesn’t register in his mind, nor the horrible crack it makes before the world collapses under starlight.
When Jim wakes again there are constellations behind his eyes and the house is empty. Empty and hot. He smells dirt and cooked meat; it’s in his skin and under his clothes, like the screams ringing in his ears. Sunlight creeping down the cellar stairs brings him up on watery knees. Muddy boot-prints carry him through the broken front door, down the path of river pebbles that leads to the mail box. It’s then that he sees that the entire village had been burnt to the ground, smoldering, smelling of blackened meat and charred wood.
Kodos said it would be a cleansing. He’d smiled, too. Jim will remember that forever.
The supply shuttles come, sometime before nightfall. Or maybe it was sunrise. Jim doesn’t know what time it is; it doesn’t really matter anymore, walking down empty dirty streets in his bloodied clothes, staring at the marks Sarah left on his arms and hands. He only knows that more soldiers flood the village soon after, wearing Federation uniforms, asking him his name, calling him Son. “Everything will be alright, Son,” they all say, “Everything will be fine now.” Jim doesn’t hear them, and covered in a blanket is ushered off by two soldiers towards the refugee shuttle.
Winona and Sam come to claim him at a space station orbiting a nearby moon. He’s been questioned, checked over by doctors, given a pat on a back and sent to go stand in line for processing. It’s hot like Barbara’s house was hot, overrun by a small city of cots and tents and shaking, crying, bloodied people. His mother and brother grab him, crush him in their arms. They hold him and cry, and swear they’ll never leave him again. Jim can still smell the burnt meat in their clothes, in their skin, under their breath. He can still hear Sarah screaming when they tell him it’s time to go home.
Jim never talks about Tarsus IV.
--
On Jim’s 23rd birthday, he decides he’s going to get drunk.
Yosemite is empty this time of year, the tourists and campers all gone home for the fall. That’s how Jim likes it. Right now he’s lying back on a wool blanket in a little green clearing, nursing his eighth beer and watching the sun come up. Bones is sitting beside him, cross-legged, squinting through the sunlight coming between the trees and licking the taste of beer from his bottom lip. His hair is still wind-blown from the ride in on Jim’s bike, but Jim doesn’t say anything about it. It makes him look…whatever.
Bones is his best friend, even though he swears he isn’t most days. Jim hasn’t had very many of those that he can remember, and none that he kisses sometimes, and fools around with on others. It just sort of happened that way, and they don’t talk about it. Bones is fucked up from his divorce and drinks too much and complains about everything, although he’d still give you the shirt off his back if you asked for it nice enough. Bones is different, and good. Jim likes that about him. He doesn’t ask about the nicks and scars (especially the ones that come in the shape of Frank’s fist) he spots when Jim’s dressing for class or undressing for a shower. Jim finds that he likes that about him, too.
Bones doesn’t usually drink beer, so he isn’t as buzzed as Jim is, but who cares. They both lost their shoes somewhere between midnight and dawn, and the grass is cool when Jim lets his toes slip between the blades. It’s kind of good like this.
Their uniforms and text books and lives are tucked away back at their dorm rooms in San Francisco. Bones didn’t ask too many questions when Jim popped up over his shoulder while he was leaving his Field Surgery class the day before, and told him they were leaving town for the weekend. Jim was grateful for that much.
“Why?” Bones did ask that. He always does.
“Because it’s my birthday on Sunday,” Jim said and slung an arm around Bones’ shoulder, hanging there like an ornament. “And we need to get drunk.”
“Happy birthday. And why can’t we get drunk in San Francisco?”
“Because,” Jim says, and he doesn’t care that half the first-years outside the medical building are staring at them, “we get drunk in San Francisco every weekend. We need a change of scenery. Also I need to conduct an experiment.”
“And that is?”
“If I blow you in the woods and nobody’s around to hear it, do you make a sound when you come?”
“Well,” Bones says. If Jim didn’t know any better, he would say Bones was blushing. But that never happened. “I guess we’re going to the woods, then.”
Jim never got around to actually conducting his experiment, and Bones didn’t ask him too either. He just packed up his things and got on the back of Jim’s bike and let him lead the way. Jim’s grateful for that too.
“I hate birthdays,” Jim announces out of nowhere, and scrunches his toes in the grass. The thought starts in his head but travels to his belly, where it tightens up in a ball before falling out of his mouth for no good reason.
Bones looks over, blinks, and shrugs lazily.
“I don’t really care, myself. They stop being important when you’re around twelve. After that nobody gives a shit. I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Jim lets out a snort and takes a slow sip from his bottle. “Birthdays are like the plague at the Kirk household,” he says. “All I’ve ever gotten was a dead father and a mom who couldn’t get away from me fast enough.” He swallows theatrically, lets out a grunt. “Happy fucking birthday to me.”
Bones takes a drink, licks his lips again. His brow furrows. “I thought Frank was your dad.”
“Nope,” is all Jim has to say on the subject, and drags a knuckle across his bottom lip to swipe at stray drops of beer.
“Oh.” At that, Bones just shrugs.
“My dad died when I was born.” Sometimes Jim forgets Bones isn’t psychic, or hangs around with Pike. Bones wouldn’t know who George Kirk was. He wouldn’t care, either. Right now, Jim’s glad. “I never knew him.”
“My mom died when I was eight.” Bones says, flatly, as though just to fill the space between them with conversation. “Then my dad died three years ago. Pyrrhoneuritis.”
“Oh.” Jim didn’t know that. He feels a little stupid for starting the conversation now. “Sorry.”
“Hey.” Another shrug and Bones tips his bottle back in a long swallow. “Shit just happens sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Jim agrees, and looks forward to watch the sun come up over the horizon. “I guess it does.”
--
When Jim sleeps, he sees Vulcan.
He doesn’t see it so much as he feels it, under his feet and over his head and in the webbing of his fingers. It breathes around him as he sits and waits, watching night climb into its moonless sky, and feeling the dry wind sweep across the rocky red deserts, over his skin and face. He sees his mother here, but she is not his mother; his mother is blonde with strong hands (and how long has it been since we’ve spoken? he asks himself, almost panicked. I’ll call her tonight.). This mother has large brown eyes and soft hands. She always tells him that he’s perfect the way he is, even though the card of her long fingers across his scalp is as foreign as the thin air whenever he closes his eyes.
She’s dead now; at least she is in this time, this place, swallowed up like Vulcan was swallowed up. It hurts, and Jim doesn’t know why.
But when he wakes up, alone in his bed (and sometimes not, if Bones is still snoring softly against his shoulder) to the sound of the computer’s low chime, he sometimes sees himself, and Spock. They’re older, steadier and not quite themselves, setting foot on alien worlds they’ve yet to visit and sharing days that they’ve yet to see. This Spock is not his Spock but someone else’s, some other version of Jim Kirk that knows his voice and his mind and his touch. He sees them growing older together, on a tall starship, somewhere far away from his dorm room in San Francisco, watching sunlight filter through the window across the room and listening to Bones breathe against his hair.
Spock disappears after they get back to Earth, with Nyota and his father close at his side. Jim finds he’s okay with that; he doesn’t quite know what to say to him yet, anyway. Ambassador Spock seems to vanish all together, off to speak with Federation councils and surviving ranking Vulcan officials on where to begin preparations for the new colonies. He leaves behind him three thousand questions, rippling over Jim (what did he call it, emotional transference?) in waves, hot then cold, and Jim finds that’s what hurts him most of all.
It’s another party, in the long string of ceremonies and commendations that have followed since Nero’s ship was destroyed. Earth was saved and Vulcan was lost; Pike gets a wheelchair and a promotion, Spock’s still mourning somewhere in private and Jim gets a brand new starship. It all feels a little strange, a little cold, but Jim puts on his best party face, calls his mother to tell her the good news and accepts his new commission. The Enterprise had been good to him, and he wanted nothing more than to be good to her, after all. So Jim just buries his memories of Vulcan behind two glasses of brandy, and pours himself another while he watches his bridge crew enjoy themselves.
“Not enjoying the party?”
Bones finds him when the party winds down around nine o’clock. Nyota had already gone; Sulu and Chekov had wandered off a half-hour before, the whiz-kid a little drowsy and red in the face as Sulu shot Jim an incomprehensible look and aimed him for the door (to which Jim waved and warmly cautioned “Use a condom.”). Scotty and Keenser disappeared some time ago in their small ruckus of Aberdeen pub songs and debates over theoretical physics, leaving Jim alone at their table, opening up his uniform jacket and nursing his fourth drink.
“It’s a great party. Social event of the year, I’d say,” Jim answers blithely as Bones pulls up an empty seat beside him. “Beats Gary Mitchell’s parties by far. Even though he is really good at card tricks, I will give him that.” Taking a sip, he studies his newly promoted Chief Medical Officer for a moment, and then licks his lips. “Where’ve you been?”
“I hate parties.” Bones shrugs, looks around the ballroom like he’s taking inventory. “And I was just about to ask you the same question.”
“I’ve been here,” Jim answers strategically, noticing where this is headed. Clearly they need to spend less time together.
They’ll work on that later, Jim decides.
“You’ve been hiding at your table during a party held in your honor. I figured I’d have to peel you off the walls and talk you into putting your pants back on by now,” Bones says and leans back into his seat, sizing Jim up the way he always does when he’s making a point. “I just thought I should come and check up on you. You’ve got everybody a little worried.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I’ve got it,” Jim dismisses. It’s stupid but the word itself makes him think of Spock’s mother, with her big caring eyes and warm little smile. He closes his mouth and says nothing more of it, feeling stupid for ever saying it.
“Don’t give me that. You’ve been acting weird since we got back.” Bones gives him his best doctor’s voice, talking to Jim like a patient, staying far away from the way he speaks to him as a friend. Or a lover, or whatever the hell they were these days. “I know how badly you wanted to make captain; I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am happy, Bones, I just.” Jim’s chest suddenly feels heavy. It feels like there are hands on his face, in his hair, and he drags a knuckle across his brow to brush the feeling away. “I don’t think you’d get it even if I told you.”
“Try me,” is all Bones says. It makes Jim sigh.
“It’s just. Something happened on Delta Vega. Spock - well, the other Spock - he, I don’t know, he just did something to me. And now I can’t get these memories out of my head.”
“You once said being a starship captain was my first, best destiny…”
“The mind-meld?” Bones supplies, still sounding way too clinical about all this. It sets Jim’s teeth on edge. “I glanced at the report you turned in. I didn’t know they still actually practiced those; people always made it sound like Vulcan urban legends.”
“If that’s true, then yours is to be by my side.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out they’re not.” Jim scoffs reflexively. He shakes his head. “It’s like there’s a whole other universe inside my brain right now, trying to claw its way out. I just keep seeing his life before he came back in time, over and over. His family, Vulcan, us…”
“If there’s any true logic to the universe…”
Once it’s out of his mouth, Jim immediately regrets saying it, because Bones looks a little hurt. He shouldn’t be, the same way Jim shouldn’t feel hurt, but he is. The room is suddenly too small, the air too thin. It makes his chest feel heavy and his eyes sting, like being in that cave in Delta Vega, watching Vulcan vanish behind his eyes.
“Us?” Bones repeats. “What us?”
“…We’ll end up on that bridge again someday.”
“In another time, or place I guess, I dunno,” Jim says, and swallows thickly on the words, sticky in his throat, “we were all different people, and he and I. We just - we just were, you know? And it’s in my head now, and I’m stuck with all these memories that don’t belong to me. And I just feel like-”
“You miss him.” Bones’ voice is dry but without reproach or blame. It doesn’t make it any easier.
Jim just nods.
Bones swallows. “So, I suppose this means you and Spock-”
“Don’t.” Jim sits forward, closes a hand around Bones’ wrist. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“I think it means a whole lot, Jim,” Bones says, and looks at the hand on his wrist rather than at Jim. “If that’s what you want, it’s none of my business.” For a lie, it’s convincing enough, but Jim doesn’t try to call him on it. “You do what you need to do.”
“Whoever that guy was, I’m not him,” Jim says, and squeezes Bones’ wrist a little harder than he should. “We’re all different people now, Bones - you, me, all of us.”
“And where am I in all this?”
Jim sighs, trying to come up with something clever, and licks his lips. “You’re there, but, you’re not you. You’re not the you that I know, and that’s the only one I’m counting,” he says, and means it. “Look, either I’ll forget about this or I won’t, but this isn’t my life I’m remembering, it’s Ambassador Spock’s. And whatever might’ve happened in his time, I wouldn’t trade this - you, the ship, this crew - for anything.”
Another swallow, tight and hard, and Bones slants his eyes to meet Jim’s. “And what exactly is this?” he asks. “What’re we not trading for?”
Jim wants to give his best friend an answer. Instead he drags a thumb of the doctor’s knuckle and lets out a breath between his teeth.
“It is what it is,” Jim says, and shrugs. “We’re just us, Bones.”
And for tonight, it seems, it’s good enough.
--
B77 X5 dies quietly in the night, falling asleep between the dusts of stars.
From the ship’s Observatory Jim watches from his front-row seat. This is his favorite part of the job most days; sitting in the black, playing voyeur to the beauty and the terror of it while the Enterprise’s instruments record the star’s death throes from a safe distance, Spock watching from the con. It pulses, spinning, tighter and brighter. For some reason it makes him think of his father’s antique red drop-top, when he was three and their mom used to take him and Sam into town on Saturdays. It used to rattle and shake right before it ran out of gas, since so few fueling stations carried gasoline anymore, like it was coughing as his mom pulled into the station to refill. Cough, sputter, shake.
Everything dies the same way, from stars to drop-tops, trembling as they take their last breath. It’s kind of beautiful and scary and that’s the part Jim likes best.
Bones finds Jim here, standing by the bowed viewing portal, like a child with his face pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass and handprints sweaty with anticipation.
He doesn’t bother to check Jim’s location with the computer, just follows his footsteps through the usual hiding places until he finds him there. The same way he says nothing at the door and just moves to stand beside Jim instead, shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the viewer’s wide screen, and watches.
“See? I take you nice places,” Jim chirps.
“So I guess I’m the only one who finds this depressing then, right?” Bones says lightly, folding his hands behind his back. “Watching stars die?”
“It’s not depressing. We evacuated the neighboring planets, saved the day. I’ll probably even get a medal.” Jim’s smirk is small but not without a certain satisfaction. “You have to enjoy the little things, Bones.”
The star pulses, shivers, swells, waiting to die. Bones tips his chin thoughtfully.
“I guess it’s something.”
Silence settles between them, warm in this space lit up the star’s dying glow. Days like this, when it’s quiet and calm, Jim can’t help himself.
“Glad you’re here,” he says simply, and means it. Bones just lets out a snort.
“Are we having a life-affirming moment?”
“Fuck you,” Jim fires off in a smirk, “I’m trying to be romantic over here.”
“Don’t. It makes me nervous when you do that,” Bones answers, to which Jim just rolls his eyes. “And besides, it’s not like you gave me much choice in the matter.”
Jim almost takes affront to that. “What, like you regret it?”
Bones looks at Jim, which immediately steals Jim’s eyes from the view screen. He should hate that Bones still has that effect on him, but he doesn’t. If anything, it makes the space around them feel warmer, because the way Bones looks right now, lit up as he is by yellow and white, gives Jim pause.
“What else can I do, Jim? Where you go, I go,” Bones says, like it’s just a matter of textbook knowledge, plain as day and air and gravity, “That’s the way it is.”
“For good?” Jim doesn’t need to ask, but he does anyway, just because he likes to hear Bones say it. It just sounds better when he does.
“Yeah,” Bones says, and reaches out to squeeze Jim’s hand firmly. “For good.”
The italics are lines from Kirk's final message to Spock, before his death, according to the original script of Star Trek XI.