Disclaimer: nope, not mine.
Summary: James T. Kirk doesn't get saved.
**_**
when he's five and whole he asks his mother why she doesn't love him.
she takes him in her arms and whispers words of comfort, soft words that assure him she does love him, she loves him like the moon loves the night, and the Starfleet loves their space. she speaks of a love that transcends time and warps right past eternity into something infinitely greater.
she says she loves him more than that stupid monster upstairs asleep with his eyes.
she calls him George.
( he wonders what that breaking sound is).
--
he's nine and starting to crack a bit when he meets Frank.
his mother married Frank, a man with an angry lisp and a bottle of beer glued to his hand. Frank has large hands and Jim knows this thanks to the many bruises that splotch all over his still healing skin, he stares at the purple-green marks on his body and somehow they feel better than listening to his mother cry at night about a man who isn't coming back! Frank beats his mother, beats Sam, beats little Jim, but little Jim doesn't take it.
little Jim fights back, fights so hard and when he's fighting Frank laughs before showing Jim what Frank really wants to do, and Jim is almost sure this is hell.
Frank steals his innocence.
( Jim never gets it back).
--
he's all grown up, all thirteen and spunk and cracks in a spirit not meant to be broken, when he steals his first car.
it's a pretty red Mustang with powerful engine sounds and rubber wheels, it's a car Frank intends to sell and Jim Kirk would rather be damned to his ninth year of life for all eternity before he lets his father slip through his not yet grown fingers. he hops in the seat – smelling vaguely of spice and his mother's tears – and starts the car with the key under the mat. it runs perfectly under his hands and the feeling of utter control and power effuses itself to Jim and he's laughing and crying and grinning like a loon.
but the cop shows up and he doesn't know what to do. it's the first time he's been in this much trouble (unless you count Freddy Buffet but that fucker had it coming).
the car slides off the ravine and he's holding on for dear life, the officer asks what his name is, staring like he expects the name of a long dead captain that left his wife and family.
" My name is James Tiberius Kirk."
when he's home and being yelled at he looks at his mother with cold dead eyes and she hits him.
( he wonders when it became a crime to have blue eyes).
--
he's fifteen when he sees genocide.
it's just a normal day on Tarsus VI, his aunt is waking her son, his uncle is doing work, and he's being a brat. but something shifts in the air, something thick and angry (like a large meaty fist waiting for him back in Iowa), something that reeked a lot like blood. it starts slowly, what he decides is it wasn't meant to be quick and swift past him, and passes just as leisurely. Kodos is evil and running deep in vengeance Jim decides – only an evil man can just walk in a kill everything and make it bleed and scream.
his aunt screams at him to save her son and he knows it's just too fucking much to think anyone actually cares about a broken boy who never got the chance to be anything else.
he escapes eventually, saving himself like he'll always do and lost that boy with too many tears a long way back. he vaguely wonders if his cousin is OK but he knows the boy is dead, Kodos leaves no survivors.
too bad Kodos didn't know just who he was up against.
( James Kirk dies at Tarsus VI, all that's left is the broken shell).
--
he's twenty-five and broken when he finally falls in love.
there's been others, lots of them, so many women that dance in front of him but never linger long enough to know him past his name. but this is so different, so new, so wrong. his love is with another, his love is his first officer, his love is Vulcan, his beautiful love is male and that's so wrong. but he can't help it. he can't.
he loves him.
( love becomes his downfall).
--
he's twenty-six and dying.
he's lived enough lives to know death when he sees it. no one is there with him – only the captain was allowed on this mission due to the species strict code of negotiations. no one is there but people are over the communicator and their so scared that he's cryinglaughing and he hasn't criedlaughed since that car went away and the vestiges of his love for his mother faded into space with his father's body.
" hold on Jim! dammit someone fucking beam him back up!"
" captain, stay with us, c'mon you're not supposed to die here!"
" keptin, I'll have you beck here in no time!"
" you cannot die Jim, you are not meant to die t'hy'la. live."
he's twenty-six and three-quarters when he's beamed back to the Enterprise.
he's twenty-six, three-quarters, four seconds and dead.
( James T. Kirk doesn't get saved).
--
angst is a bitch. and that ending sucked…if anyone has a better one tell me and I'll change it. but in order to do that you have to review. (it's not that hard people.)
~AU