"There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared."

― Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow

Author's Note: This isn't going to be a pleasant fic. There are going to be dark twists and triggery events. It's slash. If you're looking for a "Jim and Bones are BFFs" fic or a "Pike becomes Jim's mentor" feel-good story, turn back now. You are forewarned.

Prologue:

Jim is twelve when he arrives on Tarsus.

After months in transit, his legs feel a little shaky and weak as he takes his first steps on the hard-packed dirt. Maybe it's because the gravity on Tarsus is just slightly above earth normal. The ground seems to be pulling at him, weighing him down.

It'll build muscles, he thinks. He likes the idea of Tarsus changing him, molding him into something stronger. (But for the first few weeks he doesn't feel stronger at all, just exhausted.)

And it's definitely time for a change. He's spent most of his life trying to please his mother, thinking that if he were good enough or smart enough, she'd be happy. Happy enough to stay. But she keeps signing on for longer and longer missions. She's been gone for over a year now, and isn't scheduled to come back for months. Which is why he's here, on Tarsus; the courts considered this fact when they decided to put him into foster care - after his wild act of reckless self-endangerment and willful destruction of property propelled him right into the juvenile justice system.

Sam's scathing accusations, that last day they were together, still make his ears flame in embarrassment. Always doing everything right! Good grades, obeying every stupid order…

I just want you to stay, he hears himself saying. He must've sounded pretty pathetic, but it wasn't enough to persuade Sam.

He hasn't heard from his brother since he left. Sam probably thinks he's still in the farmhouse in Riverside, washing Frank's car-no, their dad's car, that was the point, wasn't it?-every week and hiding in his room playing battle sims on the computer.

Tarsus is about as far from Iowa as he could have hoped to get. The alien landscape is rugged and dry, with steep reddish hills in the distance. The air smells different, too: he recognizes the sweet odor of freshly harvested grain, mixed with something bitter and acrid that he can't identify.

It sends a thrum of adrenaline through his veins. It's going to be an adventure. He's on his own for the first time-well, mostly on his own, since obviously he's going to be living with a foster family and they'll probably have something to say about how he spends his time-and it's time for him to start figuring out who he really wants to be.

The courts have a fancy name for his situation-Work-Study Custodial Care in a Developing Colony-but the reality is nothing like what he'd imagined (which, he's embarrassed to admit, was like something out of the American West, with somber-but-hardworking pioneer families and a one-room schoolhouse).

Of course, Frank had explained it to him in simple language, as Jim was being escorted out after the court hearing: "You're gonna work your butt off in that hell-hole, kid, and then maybe you'll finally appreciate how good you had it here."

But by that point Jim wasn't paying much attention to what Frank had to say, caught up in the heady satisfaction of I'm-getting-out-of-here coupled with the thrill of impending space travel. Pissing off Frank just added a smirk to his face. Frank always was a sore loser.

But the joke's on Jim. It doesn't take long for him to realize that he's been brought to Tarsus mostly as an unpaid child laborer.

On the whole, Jim's pretty sure it's still better than living alone with an alcoholic stepfather in Riverside, but Frank is right. The chores are endless. The colony is entirely dependent on the success of the crops, and everyone has to pitch in. All the kids, Jim included, rush home after school to help out at home and in the fields, and since they don't have many modern conveniences, just getting a meal together is a full-time occupation. (That part's actually pretty much like the pioneering West, he figures, except that instead of horses and oxen they use automated robotic harvesters and biosensors and the most important building in the colony is the genmod biolab.)

Jim's put to work with the livestock, feeding and cleaning and scooping poop. It's smelly and loud, and the chores are mind-bogglingly repetitive, but at least they're building muscles. He's getting taller and broader.

Jim's foster parents-Varda and Eli-are pleasant enough to him. They don't pry into what happened to get him thrown into the foster system, and they don't ask much about his family. As long as he follows their rules and does his chores, they leave him pretty much alone. They have a four-year-old son, Tommy, who's actually pretty cute. He likes to kick a ball around with Jim in the evenings, when they have some time. Jim doesn't mind.

His mother sends him a vid message which he gets after a two-month delay. "I want to know how they're treating you," she says. Her mouth pinches into a frown. "You don't have to stay. Tell me if you want to come home. I'll come back." She pauses, and Jim feels a stab of pain at her words. "I love you, Jim."

It guts him. It makes him wonder, for the first time, if he should have refused to go to Tarsus. All this time he's been thinking mostly of himself, and he never really stopped to consider how his mother would feel. He knows the court consulted with her and she must have given her permission, but maybe she only agreed out of desperation. She was out in the black, Jim was in trouble with the law, and Frank wouldn't take care of him anymore. She must have felt that she had no choice but to let him go.

He hates that he's made his mother feel guilty. And he doesn't really want to drag her back to Iowa for him. It's bad enough that Sam's run off; she'd be miserable (and resentful and depressed) if she had to cut short her tour of duty for him.

Still, he hesitates. She's made an offer and he considers it. He's not happy on Tarsus. He's lonely, and the constant struggle for basic things he took for granted is exhausting. Varda and Eli don't really care about him; nobody does. He aches for someone to want him, to need him.

But then he looks more closely at his mother's face, paused on-screen at the end of the message. She's turned away from the camera, and her expression has changed. A second before, she was looking into his eyes with concern and sympathy, and now, she's… different. The camera's caught her in a moment of metamorphosis.

A cold sweat breaks out on his neck as he scrutinizes the image. His mother's eyes are clear and calm, and there's a small smile at the corner of her lips. It's like she's turned her emotions off, just like that.

Jim plays the end of the video again. This time he's watching for it, and it's unmistakable.

Tell me if you want to come home. Jim bites his lip as his mother offers to give up everything for him, the worry and contrition evident in her gaze and in the downturned corners of her mouth. I love you, Jim. Then she turns away-he can see her hand reaching forward to press the screen and stop the recording-and as she does, the concern and guilt melt from her face. In an instant, her expression clears, and he can see that she's moved on. The professional mask of Lieutenant Commander Kirk is back in place. He can recognize it because it's the face she wears just before she leaves for each tour of duty.

He replays it five or six times. Each time he sees her turn away, the miserable ache inside him fades a little more, until it's been replaced by a different kind of hurt: something stubborn and bitter and cold.

Well. He's got masks, too, and he can move on, just like her. He's a Kirk.

"Record message," he says. "I'm doing fine, Mom," he says, putting on his most convincing smile. "Tarsus is great. Got a lot of chores, they keep us busy, but it's fine." He tells her all about Tommy and the cows.

As a parting shot, he adds, "Varda, my foster mom, says she doesn't know what she'd do without me!" He gives a little embarrassed laugh. "She says I'm part of the family now."

He doesn't hear from Winona again for over a year.

Jim's always been really smart. (Just like his mother. He's inherited more from her than just a talent for emotional detachment.) He's always been quicker than all the kids around him and half the adults. He soaks up new information like a sponge, remembers most of what he hears or reads, and he can make leaps of logical connection that most people are oblivious to. He devours everything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and tries to hone his observational skills whenever he can.

But here's the thing: he's smart enough to realize, from a very early age, that most people don't enjoy having a kid like Jim around. He's precocious and insatiably curious, and they find that unsettling. He doesn't need his teachers' overly simplified explanations or the hours of rote practice that the other kids seem to need. (Boring. And so slow.) Other kids think he's weird; adults are bemused, annoyed, or even threatened.

Bottom line: he draws too much attention.

So from the time he entered the public educational system, he's forced himself to dumb it down. He goofs off with the other boys during play time and copies the way they stumble over their first attempts at reading. He never raises his hand and sits quietly in the back of the classroom. His teachers tell Winona that Jim's shy and polite, and a little insecure. His grades are above average, but hardly perfect.

Jim thinks of it as his secret mission: a covert operation, keeping his real talents hidden. When he's in the privacy of his own home, he can flaunt his intelligence, do science and math tutorials on his PADD, and read whatever he wants. Sam, four years older, teaches him chess and Go, then gets pissed off when Jim keeps winning. But in their family, Sam's the smartass rebel, and Jim's the quiet one. No one really pays much attention to what Jim does in his free time.

Outside, in public, Jim keeps his head down. He wants to have friends his own age, and he knows that friendship comes with a price. He can't be seen as too different, except at sports, where he can try his best. Being a good athlete won't get him ostracized, but unfortunately, Jim's always been small and scrawny compared to the other kids his age.

Then Sam says some harsh words and leaves, and Jim crashes the Corvette.

By the time he gets to Tarsus, he realizes that trying to be good isn't a useful credo to live by. (Didn't stop Winona and Sam from leaving him, did it?) Fuck that, he figures. No more good, nerdy little Jimmy Kirk. He'll be who he is, and damn the consequences. He's alone now anyway, so what does it matter? On Tarsus, nobody cares how smart he is; he's there to shovel cowshit, babysit Tommy, and help Eli in the fields.

Then a few months after he arrives, Varda and Eli are called in to a special conference at the school. When they come back, they don't look happy. All they'll tell him is that starting tomorrow, he'll be having special tutors in math, science, and engineering, and he's not going to work in the cowshed anymore after school. He's going to work in the biolab as a research assistant.

That's when he first meets Dr. Rafael Kodos, head of the research division of genetically modified crops.