A/N: *cough, cough* This is so NOT what I was planning on doing tonight, but... yeah... I was originally going to post "Enigma" part II next, which involves Spock's version of the prior chapter (different scenario of course), but I couldn't ignore this. Let me know what you think! :P

Running From Himself

If there's one thing James Tiberius Kirk is good at, it's running.

Hell, he's had a lifetime of practice; he's been running from his father's demons since before he could walk and from himself since he was old enough to understand.

First it was his mother's empty gaze. He avoided going home like the plague and stayed at school until he could hardly see his shadow against the pavement, a ghost lingering on the playground long after the other children had wandered home, worn shoes scuffing the Iowa dust as unearthly blue eyes stared up at the darkening sky. She never asked where he was and he was never inclined to share. Yet he always appeared at the back door before the stars came out.

Some days he was filthy and broken and bleeding- it happened with an increasing frequency as he got older- but she never asked, and he never told. The silence in the house was suffocating when she was there and haunted him when she was gone. Because his voice never matched what his mother saw in his eyes. So he ran.

Then Sam left him. Abandoned him to fend for himself with only Frank, who was hostile at best and brutally abusive at worst. Sam was never able to run as fast as he could, Jim realized in retrospect. So it was no wonder he decided to run farther that day rather than harder.

Jim sure showed him. He showed everyone in a massive spectacle that got him an embittered glare (although the spark of anger in his mother's eyes was better than the void) and a one-way trip off planet to an agricultural colony in the middle of nowhere (a temporary escape gone desperately wrong). But the only thing in his head as he tore down the Midwestern highway, pulse thrumming in his ears to match the throaty whirr of the engine under his hands and wind whipping through his hair was that maybe his father would understand. The cherry-red convertible accelerated towards the mouth of the ravine just as the Kelvin had hurtled towards certain destruction in the black iron maw of the Narada eleven years prior. Jim did not go down in a fiery blaze of glory as his lauded hero of a father did before him. You couldn't run if you were dead.

On Tarsus it's not only his father's memory that he runs from. He runs for survival; for himself, but mainly for his kids. Because God only knows they needed him like no one has needed him before. Even when it's over and Starfleet arrives on the scene to mop up the aftermath of the genocide (too little too late), Jim returns to Earth and keeps on running. It's instinctive now. What else can he do?

So he runs from his past, runs from the future, from responsibility, from memories both his own and not, from anything to tie him down to one place; that's what he fears most. From recruitment officers in particular, a manifestation of his oldest demons… Until one night in a bar.

It becomes a familiar pattern, and Jim sprints across the frozen tundra of a desolate planet alone. He has no idea what's chasing him, but part of him could care less. How is it any different from what he has been fleeing for all of nearly twenty-five years?

But there is a flash of flame, a familiar-yet-different face, and a mind meld that leaves Jim reeling. His feet itch to be moving, muscles screaming to run, but he turns and trudges behind the strange Vulcan through the snow, bound by a vague promise of boundless loyalty that he cannot place. It feels right in a way that nothing ever has before, and Jim has the strangest sensation that he has been running in circles, led to this time and place by forces beyond his control. But for once, he cannot bring himself to care.