AN: I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am to finally share this story with you guys. This story has been my baby for nearly four years now, and it's a little overwhelming for it to finally be finished. This story is one of the main reasons this series (The Surprises of Captain Kirk, Graveyard of Stars, and Our Kind of Love, currently) even exists, and I've rewritten and reworked so much of it over the years. This work has been a journey for me, to say the least.

So, with that, I really hope you enjoy it! Thanks so much to everyone who has left reviews and who has supported this series over the years. It truly means the world to me, and I hope I can make your time worth it with this story and others in this series that are coming up. ;)

Jimmy

Jimmy hadn't realized that his name was actually James until he was around four. Until then, everyone he interacted with had called him Jimmy - Nana, Sam, and his mom. Even the rare occasions that he and his older brother Sam tried to play with the other kids, he'd been introduced as Jimmy. So it was a bit of a surprise when one of his preschool teachers called out James, and he didn't respond, only to find out that James was him.

His young, four-year-old self felt a little betrayed at the knowledge, and he sulked until Sam came to get him later that day so they could both walk home from school. When he grudgingly explained why he looked so down, Sam laughed. He laughed a lot.

"Sam!" Jimmy protested, with all the indignation a four-year-old could muster. "It's not funny!"

"Sorry, Jimmy, but it kind of is," Sam wheezed, catching his breath again. Upon catching sight of his little brother's distress, though, he sighed. "Look, if it means that much to you, what would you like to be called?"

"You can choose?" Jimmy breathed, stunned. Sam's lips twitched again, but he did his best to stay serious for his brother.

"Yeah. Some people like to be called by their full name with everyone but friends or family since it's a sign of how close they are. Others like to be called by their middle name because they don't like their first name, like me. Others go by a nickname based on their full name all the time, and other times it's a nickname that was given to them. Sometimes people even decide on an entirely new name, if they feel it suits them better. It's your choice."

He pondered his older brother's words while they walked in easy silence, choosing to ignore Sam's comment about his own name (Sam's name wasn't Sam?) for the moment. Despite the age gap of six years, he and Sam had always gotten along really well - even preferring each other's company to the rest of the townspeople. Nana was the only exception to that, as was their mother when she was on Earth.

Did that mean something? Was that special enough to be set apart from others, when referring to him?

"Jimmy is for family," he firmly decided out loud. "Everyone else can call me James."

"Okay, Jimmy," Sam said with a small smile. "I'll let them know."

For years, that was that, and Jimmy became James to everyone but his inner circle of people. He got used to hearing James, but only really cared about the Jimmys that came with less frequency throughout the day while he was in town or at school. At home, it was all he heard, and some part of him felt warm every time he did. His name was a sign of family, and how close they were to each other.

Then Nana died, his mom came back, and Frank entered the picture.

Jimmy did not like Frank, and neither did Sam. Ever since he'd waltzed in the door with a mean smirk and his tired mother, Jimmy had hated him. That was also not including the fact that the man called him Jimmy in a mockery of everything it had meant until then, despite Jimmy telling him not to.

Needless to say, the Kirk boys and Frank did not get along.

Their mom left for deep space again, and Frank was left in charge of them. Jimmy was smart enough to stay out of the house or in his room as much as possible with that asshole around, though he knew that Sam wasn't always able to. He could feel the tension growing in the household as the months wore on, but he didn't know what he could do to fix it.

He knew Sam was going to snap soon - had even figured out he'd come close to leaving several times already. He also knew enough to figure out that Sam couldn't - wouldn't - be taking him along when he finally did leave. He knew enough to hide how much that realization hurt.

Sam left about two and a half years after Frank moved in, and with that Jimmy's protective shell cracked. He and Frank started fighting all the time, and Jimmy locked himself out or away even more than he had before, but it didn't help. The tension had broken, and with it any semblance of peace they might have had.

Over the next several months, things between Frank and Jimmy got worse and worse, until the day Frank decided he would sell George Kirk's old car. The car had been the late Kirk's favorite possession, and he had loved Old Earth mechanics. It was one of the few things Jimmy knew about his father, and one of the things he had decided he would love as well. He had actually read everything on Old Earth transportation he could and had decided that when he was old enough he would get himself a motorcycle.

When Jimmy heard the news that his father's car would be sold, something finally snapped. He waited until Frank had gone into the bathroom then snuck into the garage. He found the keys on a hook near the door and used them to open the door of the car. There was a brief moment of hesitation until the reminder that Frank would only be so long in the bathroom made him slide onto the front seat.

He'd never sat in the driver's seat before. When he was younger, he would sometimes sit in the passenger seat or in the back of the car and imagine scenarios where his dad or both his parents and often Sam were with him going places normal families went. As he got older, he had stopped the imaginings. Despite stopping, he had never once sat in the driver's seat, and it made what he was about to do feel that much more real.

Jimmy glanced up at the garage door, and his eyes flicked to the opener. Once he hit the button to open it, he would have very little time to start the car and get it moving before Frank came out. On the other hand, starting the car first would make too much noise, and then he would be stuck on the wrong side of the garage when Frank came to investigate. Decision made, he took a deep breath, then raced across the room to hit the button.

The second his hand made impact with the piece of plastic, he was already beginning to dart back to the car. Within moments, he had the key in the ignition and was starting the engine as he shifted gears. He heard an angry shout from inside and anxiously waited for the door to be high enough to drive. The door to the house opened just as Jimmy had enough space to go. He pushed his foot down on the pedal and shot out of the garage.

It took him several moments to remember what he'd read about driving, but once he did, he wasn't swerving nearly as much. A glance in the mirror showed Frank running after the car for a ways before giving up. Jimmy sighed in relief, and for a couple of minutes, he allowed himself to focus on driving. Then came the call from Frank. The festering feeling inside him had been growing for ages, and all of it suddenly surged up within him, making him want to get under the man's skin as much as he could.

He removed the top of the car, letting it blow off and clatter to the rocky dirt road. He hoped it crunched like a tin can under a boot. Yelling his defiance to the rest of the world, still caught up in the rush of feeling from before, Jimmy floored it, flying even faster down the road. He was caught up in his rush until the sound of sirens arrived behind him. Driven by impulse, he spun the wheel and crashed through the gate leading towards the quarry.

Frank had called the police on him for taking his own father's car. The fury and indignation took over until Jimmy was vibrating with it. It was only after the initial wave passed that he realized that he had sped up, and was now racing towards the edge of a cliff. He braked hard, spinning the wheel for more time, and flung himself from the car. His father's favorite possession went over the cliff, and Jimmy nearly went with it. He almost believed he had.

The moment he regained his feet, the officer was in front of him, already beginning the questioning. He sent a quick glance behind him at the wreckage below and felt a numb surprise when he didn't see himself down there as well.

"Citizen, what is your name?" Jimmy was about to respond when he suddenly paused. He didn't feel like Jimmy anymore. He wasn't Jimmy anymore. Jimmy went over the cliff with the car as far as he was concerned. There was nobody even left to call him Jimmy if he'd wanted them too. Sam was gone, Nana was dead, and his mom was who-knew-where. And he'd never wanted Frank to call him Jimmy in the first place.

He wanted to be done with Sam's betrayal, his mother's absence, Frank's general asshole attitude. He just wanted to leave all of this behind him, and if losing a small part of his identity to finish gaining a new one was the answer, then that was what he would do.

"My name is James Tiberius Kirk."

James

His stunt with the car landed him on Tarsus IV with an aunt and uncle he'd never met and two cousins he'd never heard of. Of course, that didn't keep his aunt from insisting on taking care of him between processing data sets, or his uncle from greeting him cheerily every morning at breakfast and every evening when he came home from work. His two cousins were six and eight and were awestruck by his thirteen-year-old self. James barely said a word to any of them.

The festering feeling he had noticed because of Frank was still there inside of him. It was no longer growing, but it wasn't exactly going away either. He felt angry and sullen all the time, and that just made him even more irritated. He honestly didn't know how his sort-of family put up with him. Despite his anger, he didn't want to hurt them for something that wasn't their fault, so he decided to hole up in his room or wander in the fields by himself.

James's method worked just fine until he started school again. The first several days were awful. The terraforming research colony on Tarsus was relatively small by necessity, so everyone knew everyone else. Except for James, of course, who was new. God, by the end of the week, he never wanted to hear that word again. Every person he met was saying 'Oh, you're the new boy living at the Kirk house, right?' or 'This is James, he's new here.' or 'Hey, you're the new kid, right?'.

He snapped out his answers at the teachers and just plain avoided the other kids, but some part of him settled with the routine. Despite the too-easy material, mediocre teachers, and ogling looks, he actually enjoyed being able to learn things again. For a while, he was able to work around the simple material by 'borrowing' books from the higher grade levels, and then returning them once he'd finished reading them. He ran into problems again only once he had finished reading all of the higher-level books.

His newfound peace began to chip away, beginning to reveal his inner turmoil once again. It had never really gone away in the first place, just been pushed aside while he learned. As his peace of mind grew smaller and smaller, so did his patience at school. He continued to get perfect scores on every test despite never studying, making the other kids dislike him. He began to speak up more in class, more to correct or outsmart the teachers than anything, and that made him a troublemaker in their eyes. He began to seclude himself from his makeshift family again (not that a lot had changed, really – they were still nearly strangers, after all) earning him worried glances from time to time at the regression.

Things came to a head when he received a bad mark from a teacher, simply because the teacher hadn't understood what James had done. He had not only proved that he had understood Raulvner's basic equation for propulsion that they were learning about, but had improved upon it. He had even included a set of proofs for his improved results. Of course, he had used several concepts from the classes five grades ahead, and even one at the university level, but his teacher taught math and should have known about each of those. James was so frustrated by the teacher's lack of comprehension that he hadn't even realized that he'd been ranting aloud until a neighbor called out to him from her porch.

The neighbor in question was Hoshi Sato, an elderly lady with a history in Starfleet, though James didn't know which field she had been a part of. She had asked him what he was so upset about, and James had warily explained. The only reason he hadn't brushed her off and gone elsewhere was her ex-Starfleet status. He knew that Starfleet only took the best and brightest, so he allowed himself the slight hope that she wasn't as ordinary as everyone else on the colony seemed to be.

She had watched him intently as he explained what he had done and why he was upset. When he had finished, she had nodded slowly, then told him that his improvement was rather ingenious, given his age and resources. A tension within James released at her words. She understood, unlike all of the others on this stupid planet. She was like him. What she then said next impacted a part of him forever.

"That teacher is foolish for not seeing the potential right in front of him. Duhik sasu."

"What does that mean?"

"Figure it out. You are smart enough."

Thus began James's lessons with Hoshi Sato. It turned out that the woman had been a Communications officer, and was well versed in a wide variety of languages. With the new information being given to him so intensively, James's mood improved once more. He would go over to her house every day at four, where his neighbor would only speak in a foreign language for the duration of his visit. He not only had to figure out what language she was speaking, but also what she was saying. He loved every minute.

James absorbed the knowledge like a sponge, leaving each tutoring session with at least several additional sentences locked away in his mind, though it was usually a lot more. His genius intellect finally had an outlet, and for the first time in a very long time – if not for the first time ever – he was being challenged at a level that was appropriate for his brain.

Several months later, he was fluently speaking three new languages and was in the process of learning four more. His grades at school had improved again now that he no longer was trying to outsmart his teachers. James's flawless performance at school soon attracted the attention of the governor of the colony, Governor Kodos.

` The governor approached him one day during school and offered to provide an opportunity to learn more about the colony by shadowing him for several weeks. James was thrilled by the offer, and within several days was visiting the governor for a couple of hours before going to his lessons with Hoshi Sato. For the next several months, things were good for James. Then a fungus was found in the crops.

The amount of food available dropped drastically, and soon everyone looked more than a little thin. All of the kids were told not to worry, but James knew better. He saw the worried looks the adults gave each other and was smart enough to know what the lack of food meant. Besides, Hoshi Sato had never sugarcoated anything for him, and she had outright stated her thoughts on the matter. His thoughts were only confirmed when he found the file in Governor Kodos's office.

James had arrived a little earlier than he usually did when he shadowed the man and had gone into his office to wait for him. That was when he noticed the open file on the desk nearby. He had been uncertain for several moments, not wanting to invade the Governor's privacy, but soon enough curiosity overtook him, and he went to look at the file's contents.

Within he found dozens of pages recording experiments being done on local fungi and testing their resilience to various chemicals and poisons. It wasn't until he reached the final pages that he realized what was going on, and felt a bone-chilling horror sweep through him. The Governor had been creating the fungus that had killed the crops. He had caused the blight on purpose.

James almost couldn't make himself look any further, but the format of the packet behind the experiments was different than the other pages, and he made himself pick up the new packet instead of dropping everything and running. It was a two-column list of names, and every couple of names there was a red dot next to one of them. He was still confused when he reached the final three pages of the packet where each of the names with a red dot were compiled into several columns. At the top of the first page was the phrase 'The Chosen'.

Before he could piece together what that meant, he heard the sounds of the Governor's footsteps approaching the door and threw the pages back where he had found them. James raced across the room, and managed to sprawl himself into a chair and school his features just as the door opened. He was sure his expression was screaming fear and guilt, but the Governor seemed not to notice anything was wrong. He greeted James normally and, upon seeing the file out on his desk, put it away without a single moment of hesitation or suspicion that James had read it.

James did his best to act normally, but for the next week the file weighed heavily on his mind, and he tried to figure out what to do with the information. Who would he even go to, and what would he even say? Besides, nobody would believe a 'troubled teen' with a brain too smart for his own good over the leader of their colony, especially not without proof that James no longer had.

But he waited too long, and before he knew it, whispers were emerging about people disappearing without a trace, and purple growths in the fields. Most did their best to brush the whisperings off as rumors, but a heavy sense of unease was seeping its way in through the colony. A summons for a town-wide meeting was played over the radio and holoscreens, and an actual notice was posted around town. James couldn't help but feel queasy at the sight of it.

Everyone gathered in the town center, and the Governor made his way up onto the short platform that acts as a stage. His speech arrested everyone's attention, words soft and heartfelt, filled with passion. They were words of death, of genocide, and James felt a rushing horror fill his veins as Kodos continued to speak. He was not the only one, if the looks on the faces of those around him were any indication. The List of names started, and James suddenly turned in a panic, remembering from his own reading of the Lists the names of his cousins and his aunt marked with dots.

He pushed through the crush of people, who were beginning to realize that they needed to run, and sprinted as fast as possible back home. They had gone back right before everything started, having forgotten to grab some supplies to keep his cousins entertained, and now they were alone and in danger. James turned onto their street and saw multiple homes being broken into by Kodos's militia. He heard the sounds of screams that were abruptly cut off, phaser-fire going off from every direction, the shattering of glass, and he forced himself to run faster.

He burst through the gate to their house just in time to catch sight of his aunt facing one of the soldiers through the window. As he watched, he saw a streak of light coming from the phaser in the soldier's hand, and she crumpled out of sight. James ducked behind the bushes as the soldier did a final sweep of the house. He heard phaser-fire again, before the soldier made his way out of the house and down the street again.

After several moments, James darted inside and almost immediately tripped over his uncle, who, based on the kitchen knife by his hand, had tried to keep the soldier from entering. With a growing amount of horror, he made his way past his uncle's body and went into the living room where he found his aunt, spread out awkwardly on the ground. He stared at her for a minute, uncomprehending of what he was seeing, before he turned and sprinted upstairs to his cousins' rooms. He found them curled up together, tucked into a back corner between the bed and the wall.

He stared for a moment, hand hovering over them, unwilling to follow through with the initial motion and touch their rapidly cooling faces. A flash of light caught his eye through the window and James turned to see flames licking up the walls of the house next door. There were no sounds besides the crackling flames, and James realized that either the militia had already finished with them or they were in the town center.

He had to leave.

He turned and melted through the house like a shadow, slipping out the back door and vaulting over the back gate, slinking low to the ground as he made his way through the town towards the fields. He could hide there, could keep himself safe. He knew how to find food that grew on the planet, and he knew of places he could go where nobody would find him, places he had found when he couldn't stand to stay at school or in the house any longer.

The next street was filled with fire and destruction. James did his best to avoid notice, slinking low to the ground as he moved from one secure spot to another. He was just about to turn the corner onto the final stretch before the fields when he saw a kid of about eleven come running out from around the side of their house. A flash of his cousins' faces went through his mind, and before he even realized, his hand was darting out to grab the kid who he suddenly recognized as Tommy Leighton, the brother of one of the guys in James's class.

His arms came around Tommy's torso, one hand covering his mouth as he made them both hunker down out of sight. The kid struggled in his arms for a moment and James let out a quiet grunt as an elbow hit him in the stomach, followed by the boy's muffled shouts of panic.

"Shut up," he hissed, making Tommy go still. "Do you want them to find us? Stop moving." The kid's breathing was rapid, but more important was the fact that he had gone still and silent. From the place where he just came from, one of the militia emerged, looking around for any sign of the boy before continuing down the street in the opposite direction from them. James waited another moment before releasing him. Tommy shifted away, looking at him warily.

". . . Thanks," he finally said. James scanned the area cautiously, not looking at him, still feeling rather numb at what was happening. He watched the place where he last saw the soldier intently, making sure they weren't coming back.

"Don't mention it." He peered in the other direction then moved into a crouch. "They're gone for now at least. Either come with me or hide on your own. Just don't get caught." Tommy hesitated, but when James took off running again, he followed close behind.

They made it to the fields just in time to see a group of militia chasing after a young couple. As they watched from within the safety of the dead cornstalks, a phaser went off, and one went down in a twist of limbs. The other let out a haunting cry before being struck as well, hit off-center, the light slowly dying from their eyes.

James and Tommy watched, wide-eyed, before James shook himself back into survival mode and grabbed onto Tommy's wrist, dragging the other boy deeper into the fields. They slipped through the stalks, making as little noise as possible. Before long, they had a heart-stopping moment when they ran into another pair of children tucked as far back as they could be in the dead corn. They looked at James fearfully, recognizing him as both the oldest and the leader between him and Tommy.

"Who are you?"

James didn't answer the question at first, still reeling from the scene they had just left behind, everything beginning to sink in now that they were in relative safety. He felt empty inside, like a piece of him had been carved out and left behind with the others who had been shot down. He felt like there was a giant, gaping hole within him that was eating him alive. He wasn't James anymore, that was certain. James had died along with everyone else. After several moments of consideration, he responded dully, staring blankly ahead.

"I'm JT."

JT

JT was as different from James and Jimmy as night was from day. JT was a soldier, a monster, a machine. He was a wild animal willing to do anything and everything to keep him and his own safe and alive. If that meant a member of Kodos's militia (another person) would have to die, then so be it.

He was hardened whenever he needed to fight. He was gentle when he was with his kids. He was brave when the others were afraid, and he was cautious when they were reckless. Above all, he was always, always smart. They would never have survived otherwise. (They were unlikely to survive anyway, but he had to try.)

From the moment JT was born, he became exactly what was needed at any given moment. If the kids needed the comfort of having someone older with them, he became a caretaker. (Anything, he would give anything for them, and) If his kids needed a soldier to defend them, then JT became a warrior on the battlefield. No matter what he became, the boy he used to be was no more, and the person he was now was unrecognizable (would always be unrecognizable to him).

JT had caught sight of his reflection once when stealing food for his kids. He had seen the glinting reflection of the gun (enemy, danger, shoot or you're dead) in a window and instinctively fired, shattering the glass to bits (it was him, how could he have seen himself in that window?). The sound had drawn the militia to him and he'd had to run away soon after, but the brief moment before the glass shattered he had seen his face, and it stuck with him like a nightmare (James, Jimmy, gone and locked away).

His eyes were dead, a dull shade of blue (dark and dead and haunted) they had never been before. His face was gaunt, his cheeks hollowed and his skin sallow, scratched, and sickly. His hair was longer, brushing the bottom of his eyebrows, and it was as dirty and unkempt as the rest of him. The worst part was the ferality of the image (animal, monster, creature). He looked like a starving wildcat who was backed into a corner, ready to rip, kill, and tear for the promise of another meal.

Well, he had thought wryly, that was what he had become.

Since the day in the town square, he had done things that left him retching and shaking whenever he made the mistake of allowing himself to dwell on what he had done (and he had done so much to keep them all alive). He kept doing those things anyway. He had no other choice unless he wanted himself or his kids to die (starve, get shot, get taken away). He wasn't sure what he was anymore, but he knew that he was no child. He wasn't even an adult in a child's body. Sometimes he wondered if he was even human (animal, monster, machine).

The weeks passed without change, a struggle every day to survive (not enough, never enough). During that time, five of his kids had gotten sick, and one of the youngest had died (gone, gone, he was gone). JT could keep them from starving to death, but there was little he could do about illness – especially in the state they were currently in (weak, hungry, cold, scared). About a week after the boy's death, one of the older girls fainted onto the rocks outside the caves they were living in and broke her ankle and three fingers, and fractured her arm and a rib.

JT was getting desperate. He knew that it was incredible (unlikely, impossible, miraculous) they had made it as long as they had without something like this having happened already, and that it was only a matter of time until the rest of the group began to be in a similar state (he couldn't keep this up forever, was already failing).

The solution came when JT noticed an unusually short member of the militia starting to reach for their communicator before they were killed by a shot from JT's gun (danger, kill or be killed, why why why). The sudden realization that they could maybe be saved suddenly struck JT, and he darted out quickly to grab the technology off of the soldier's uniform (alert, always alert). He turned to leave once he had it, then hesitated and turned back to the person lying on the ground. Carefully, and almost gently, he removed the soldier's helmet (no, no, it wasn't supposed to be). He then dropped it in shock.

The slack face staring blankly back at him was that of a child (young, too young, were they all). He recognized her, too. She was the girl who sat in the front corner of the class at school, just before the blight hit (blonde hair, brown eyes, bright smile). The hardened shell around JT cracked for just a moment as he allowed himself to wonder just how many of the others he had killed had been his classmates (how many shot, how many killed, not killed yet). He wondered how many of them had been trying to do what he was attempting to do: stay alive and protect his own (defend, always defend them).

He felt sick.

Gunfire sounded nearby (danger, run, survive), and JT was off like a shot before the initial sound had even faded. However the image of the girl (bright smile, kind eyes), the child-soldier (classmate), never faded from his mind, and even years later he would find that the image still haunted him (blank eyes, blank face, blank smile, familiar).

He made it back to the caves safely (alive, everyone was alive), and forced himself to think only about tweaking the communicator (hope, salvation, escape) so it would reach much longer distances. If they had any chance of survival, it would require outside help (Starfleet, they could help).

It took him several weeks (another dead, faster, work faster) before he figured out how to accomplish his task. Once he finally managed it however, he didn't hear the expected static or airwave chatter (success, salvation) that he had anticipated. Instead, a shrieking buzz came from the communicator (why, why, why), alerting IT to the fact that a jamming signal had been put in place to keep any news from leaving the planet.

If he was going to disarm it, he was going to have to go into Kodos's (murderer) office himself to shut down the signal, and he was probably going to get caught doing it (worth it, always worth it for them).

JT left Tommy in charge with the altered communicator and, despite his kids' pleas for him to stay (don't want to leave, have to, stay safe), left for the government building in the center of the town. He was able to get to the building without getting caught (so close, almost there) and somehow managed to make it past all the guards into Kodos's office (where, where, where). He scanned the room for the device that was jamming the communications (it had to be here, nowhere else), taking care to keep as quiet as possible even as he was rifling through drawers and cabinets frantically (soon, coming soon, get out).

The device itself is small in a way that is almost infuriating, once he actually finds it. It seems almost unbelievable that something that can easily fit in his palm could possibly be such a major contributor to so much chaos (death, destruction, heartbreak). The crackle it makes as he steps on it and the feeling of it crunching beneath his boot is grimly satisfying. He relishes the sight of the mangled wires and its shattered shell.

His satisfaction lasts, even as guards burst into the room moments later, somehow finally realizing there was an intruder. It lasts as he is taken into the heart of Kodos's fortress, restrained by five guards after he managed to down another three. It lasts as Kodos looks him in the eye, his gaze filled with rage, surprise, and a hint of genuine confusion. It lasts as the Governor does his best to make JT talk, to spill the secret about where he's been hiding his kids all this time, offering everything from food to safety to freedom in return.

(JT imagines Kodos choking on his own words, his pretty speeches finally lodging themselves in his lungs, he imagines Kodos getting caught in the crossfire as he gives the orders for execution, he imagines his own kids catching him alone and unawares – some he hasn't been able to keep from the bloodshed, a couple have grown nearly as vicious as he is now.)

When false promises and gentle words don't work, Kodos turns sharp. His promises become darker and become real, and his voice is a stone-cold hiss as he demands his information. JT doesn't know how long he's kept within Kodos's grasp, doesn't know how many hours, days, months, years he's spent locked up in this room fading in and out of consciousness.

(All he knows is that Kodos hasn't found his kids yet, or he wouldn't still be asking. None of them have gotten caught yet, or he would be using them as bait, as motivation, as a new form of torture for JT. It makes it easier for the feral, furious, wild grin to form on his face every time the Governor visits, makes it easier to put on the act that drives the man to the point of frustration where he loses his composure. It makes it easier to bite his tongue until it bleeds instead of letting the words roll out. It is the only way he can fight back, and he'll be damned if he doesn't use it.)

Time is monotonous, the same thing day in and day out, until a string of beings rush into the room following shouting out in the hall, all wearing Starfleet's insignia. They take in his battered, bloodied form with horrified eyes, frozen for several shocked moments as they stare at the teenager, before several rush forward to free him from his restraints.

"Oh god, kid," one breathes, catching him before he falls to the ground, muscles weak after who-knows-how-long of disuse."Are you alright?"

JT looks at the man, Pike he heard one of the others call him, in silence for a long time. So long in fact that the officer has now begun to realize what he'd just asked, and is now more than a little embarrassed at his misstep. He looks at the man who looks so well fed, whose clothes are clean and pressed, whose world for the past several months has been so different from his own.

Then he laughs. He laughs long and hard, the sound tasting bitter as ash and sour as bile in his mouth. He laughs so hard he cries (that's the reason he tells himself), the sound manic and wild as it fills the room.

He doesn't know how he ends up outside, too out of it and exhausted to be fully aware of what is going on. The sunshine glints too-bright in his eyes and he is forced to squint. A wave of noise, of voices, greets him and it's almost overwhelming. A group of faces stands out from the rest of the crowd, and he sees Tommy, and Kevin, and Suranek, and I'lickt, and everyone else standing there. Their stances are proud and firm, not being pushed around by the Starfleet officers despite their ages, the oldest and most hardened protecting the youngest and most innocent in the center of their group, even still. Their faces light up when they see them, even as he sees the dismay that filters into the expression when they see the state he's in. (Not your fault, don't be sorry.)

Tommy comes over, trusting the rest to protect his back, and wraps his arms around JT despite the protests of the officers nearby. JT's slow to respond, but eventually his arms around Tommy too (thank you, thank you), hoping that the other boy can understand everything that JT can't say. He thinks Tommy gets it anyway.

His kids are all bustled onto the ship, adults and doctors and officials all frantically rushing around them. By some unspoken, unanimous decision, they make sure to reveal nothing about the others that hasn't already been said, united by their new distrust in authority. They give the bare minimum to those in charge, despite Starfleet's growing frustration at how closed off they are being, and refuse to budge.

Nothing is said about JT, and he himself gives them nothing more than his nickname. His kids catch on to his reluctance, and when asked to talk about him, the officers are met with either silence or increasingly wild stories. (He doesn't deserve them, never deserved them, glad they're alive.)

It takes them several weeks to get back to get to a space station capable of treating them fully, and JT is glad to see his kids' frames fill out as they get a steady supply of food again. They are still exhausted (world-weary, lost innocence), but there is no longer such a weight on their shoulders, and it's been doing them good. He's glad they made it out as intact as they did, glad that he managed to save as much as he did, despite all the odds.

When they arrive at the space station, the dock is packed with therapists, doctors, nutritionists, the media, and families. It makes it ridiculously easy for JT to slip past the officer assigned to him - the one who found him, Pike - and get lost in the crowds. He makes his way towards the shuttles bringing people back down to the planet and finds one that will take him in the general direction he needs to go. He walks through the gate separating the transports from the rest of the activity in the dock and is stopped by an officer making records of everyone entering the area.

He nearly slips past without incident, but a woman from the media drops her omnimage camera nearby with a loud bout of cursing that draws the Starfleet officer's attention to his area. JT does his best to walk away before he can be stopped, but the man manages to catch up before he can slip out of sight again.

"Wait, kid, who're you?" The unknown officer starts to reach out for him, the other clutching his PADD with a list of names, only to freeze a moment later at the look (dead, tired, cold, empty) JT gives him over his shoulder. There is a moment of silence, a long pause, before the teen responds.

"I'm nobody."

Nameless

He was actually nameless for a long time, though he responded to Jimmy. His mother didn't listen when he said that he hadn't been Jimmy in years, and he had no other name to give her as an alternative. She tried to mother him for months, but he was no longer the child she had left behind, nor the one she had sent away. He didn't need her anymore, and they both knew it.

When his mother began to look for possible missions in space again, he began looking for a way out. There was no way he was staying with Frank again. If he could survive Tarsus at thirteen, he could survive Earth now over a year older – possibly more by the time he finally left.

It turned out that by the time his mother had found another mission she deemed worthy enough to leave, he had finished packing what he needed and had saved up over several hundred credits. When it came time for his mother to leave again, they both pretended that he would still be there when she decided to come back.

Within minutes of her transport leaving he was grabbing his bag and his money and heading down the road towards the town. When he reached the only public transport station in all of Riverside, he paid for a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. If he was going to be able to find work at fifteen, he would have a much better chance in a city too big to care about a boy too young.

In Los Angeles, he spent around a week wandering around, learning the city by heart. He learned which places to avoid, which places were dangerous but had good information if you needed it, and which places were best to buy supplies from – even if it required a good amount of haggling to get a fair price.

It was just after he had finished haggling for some new shoes and had gotten the price down to a third of what it had been originally, along with a promise to fix the glitchy register, that a middle-aged man approached him. He scanned the man in an instant and saw that he was financially more than well off – so much so that it was likely he would never be in this store again. He could also tell that the man was intrigued by him, and based on the look on his face, about to offer him a job.

"That was some pretty impressive business skills you showed there, kid. Even my coworkers couldn't have done better. What is your name?"

He considered the man for a moment. He couldn't tell him his name was Jimmy, that was too young. He also couldn't say James or JT, because James was an angry teen and forgettable, and JT was a soldier and dangerous. He needed something impressive, something slightly flashy. Something that would keep people's attention and stick in their heads.

"Call me Tiberius."

Tiberius

Tiberius was a young man who knew a little about a lot. That not only made him a fast learner but also enabled him to get himself out of a bind. Those were definitely qualities the Proactive Intergalactic Cooperative Economy, PRICE, was looking for. Paired with his intellect and skills with languages, they snapped him up in a heartbeat, despite the legal risks of hiring him at all, much less for intergalactic travel before he was even eighteen.

He sped through their introductory training in a mere five months, and within a month of completing it, Tiberius was piloting his own ship loaded with goods heading for Klingon space. PRICE existed mostly outside of the Federation, as they were interested solely in trade markets and commerce, not the intergalactic boundaries. That being said, most of PRICE was still nervous about dealing with the Klingons.

Obviously, that meant Tiberius volunteered.

The heads of PRICE had been ambivalent about allowing a fifteen-year-old to go into dangerous territory alone, but they had never encountered a Kirk's stubborn nature before. A single meeting with Tiberius later and the teen had free reign over which jobs he chose to take, and Tiberius used that choice whenever he could.

When his ship was spotted by the Klingons on his first run, they surrounded him and . . . escorted him back to their home planet. When they forced him to land and exit his ship, Tiberius did so without complaint. He wasn't afraid of them, and he had flirted with death too many times to be afraid of it, so he had nothing to fear.

When Tiberius stepped out of the ship, the Klingons were clearly not expecting him to be, well, him. He knew how he appeared to them: a young Earthling wrapped in dark denim and leather wearing a look that dared to world to try and take him down. He looked like a cocky bastard, and he knew it.

"PRICE is sending us children now?" One Klingon commented angrily to the rest of the group, clearly not realizing Tiberius could understand every word he was saying. Honestly, did the Klingon think that the organization would send someone who couldn't even understand what their trade partners were saying? That was just asking to be cheated out of a fair deal, especially when dealing with a species not entirely fond of humans. "First those other spineless agents, and now this insult? What are they playing at?"

"Nothing," Tiberius said smoothly, smirking a little at their sudden surprise at hearing their own language fall from his lips so easily. "They are too big of idiots to consider using their position for anything but commerce. As for why I am here, I volunteered. As you can probably imagine, we don't get many people doing that, so we use them when we do. Now, did you want this shipment of Earth steel or not?"

Thus began Tiberius's relationship with the Klingons.

In truth, Tiberius actually liked the Klingons. Sure, they were more aggressive and violently inclined than most in the Federation, but not one of them was a liar, as they saw lying as weak and cowardly. If they wanted to keep something from you, they simply said nothing at all, meaning you could take everything they said as the truth.

This also meant that they were a very blunt people, and after Tiberius's past experiences with smooth-talkers, he appreciated that about them. He was also allowed to speak his mind and not have to worry about social repercussions, which was a new experience for him. Sure, it got him into more than a few fistfights, but the complete honesty was refreshing.

After about a year had passed by, PRICE began to notice his success with the volatile people and they began giving him larger and larger shipments of goods to take with him. After another two years of increasing loads, it had reached the point where he either had to stop increasing his load or get a bigger ship and a partner. Of course, he wasn't given the first option. PRICE was willing to give him a lot of leniency, especially after the degree of his success when calling the shots, but even they wouldn't let him decrease the amount of possible trade simply because he preferred to go solo on his assignments.

Within five minutes of meeting his partner, Tiberius became well aware that the blue-skinned, black-and-white-eyed male was an asshole. Serchivm was everything Tiberius hated in PRICE's agents, and from their brief interactions with several customers on the way to Klingon space, other species felt the same. He wasn't entirely sure why he was still an agent, as he couldn't believe the male had a good sales record.

Either way, they were stuck with each other until PRICE decided otherwise, meaning they both had to make the best of the situation. Somehow, Tiberius managed to put up with him for the next two years, taking over the majority of the negotiations and tricking the other male into doing more of the grunt work. He avoided Serchivm as much as he could on an enclosed ship and tended to apologize in advance for anything his partner did to whatever species they were interacting with at a given time, explaining that he really didn't have any control over the man and using his age to his advantage when making the claim.

Due to his growing frustration, it was only a matter of time before Tiberius snapped. In the end, what finally caused the split was the discovery of a new planet and a technology that could change life as they knew it. It was a tiny planet in the middle of the Neutral Zone between Federation space and Klingon space, and they had managed to make machines that were alive, essentially having created life itself.

Tiberius knew in an instant that PRICE wouldn't be the only people willing to kill to get their hands on technology like that, technology that didn't need any other fuel than what was needed to start it. He also knew that Serchivm was the type of person who would exploit that the second that he got ahold of the information, and warned the leaders of the planet accordingly. The leaders attempted to swear them both to secrecy, which Tiberius readily complied with, but it took threats from him to make Serchivm do the same – and the only reason they even worked was because Serchivm had been present the one time Tiberius had taken on three Klingon warriors at once and managed to win.

Things would have been alright enough after that, had PRICE not picked up on the fact that the two of them were leaving something out of their reports. Quite honestly, Tiberius blamed Serchivm for that, as he himself had taken a lot of care to make sure his report didn't so much as hint that there had been anything out of the ordinary on the trip.

What resulted from his partner's lack of tact was, to put it bluntly, a shitshow. After the last few years, Tiberius knew the other man well enough to understand that Serchivm would not pick a fight with anyone he didn't think he could beat. To take advantage of that cowardly nature, Tiberius made a point, before meeting with the Board and Bosses, to make various . . . implications about what might happen if Serchivm actually let slip what they'd discovered.

He didn't like using such methods, but the fate of a planet was at risk, and from Tiberius's own knowledge of the other male, Serchivm neither knew or accepted any other way of being.

The Board and Bosses were a problem of their own, too. They weren't complete idiots all of the time, so they knew that underneath the carefully crafted words there was more that the pair weren't revealing - and so they tried their hardest to get them to spill, pulling out every mind trick in the book to get them to talk.

Tiberius eventually had enough of the manipulation attempts and spoke out - predictably irritating the main people he should know better than to tick off. The resultant shouting match ended with three smashed water glasses, four people losing their voices, one black eye, and Tiberius quitting. That announcement had actually been what ended the entire conversation, as it had stunned PRICE silent.

He had walked out with his head held high, sputters and aborted protests of the officials behind him following him out.

Honestly, this had been building up for years, and if he was going to go out, then this was the way to do it. After all, he was only twenty, and there was so much more to the universe to explore and do than traveling the same trade routes over and over again.

With that in mind, he re-entered society, his persona of Tiberius getting him rides and jobs alike. He spent the next two years traveling the world, seeing everything from city slums to tucked away waterfalls to exclusive exhibits, and working as everything from a mechanic to an understudy actor to a circus performer for cash. He hitchhiked for most of his adventures, until he got too uncomfortable with several of the people who picked him up and remembered his dad's old car.

He couldn't do a car, there were too many memories associated with the vehicle. But he could do a motorcycle.

Tiberius ended up being pickier than expected, once he started trying them out. But working for PRICE had its advantages, and he knew how to spot quality and how to get a good price for it. Within a month, he had a beautiful new bike of his own.

The first thing he did was take it apart and rebuild it, to know how it worked. The second thing he did was drive it back to Riverside. It seemed only fitting that Nana's house see his ride too, and to bring it to the quarry where his father's car had made its last drive.

He spends an entire afternoon in his grandmother's house, going through the dust-filled rooms and trying to catch familiar scents that were long gone and remembering things he'd thought he'd forgotten. He spends the rest of the day at the edge of the quarry, staring out over the edge into the abyss and out across the land as the sun set in a gloriously Midwestern display of color that made him ache for his brother for the first time in years.

Unable to stay on that train of thought and its implications any longer, Tiberius decided to finally leave the cliffside and go to the only bar in the area worth going to, to try and either distract himself or forget.

Tiberius had only been seated at the bar for less than half an hour when the door opened, letting in dozens of Starfleet cadets-in-training on break. Most of them don't catch his attention, average or unremarkable for the most part. A few he could tell might be interesting if he decided to try his luck, but it wasn't worth the effort. Rarely did he properly seek out the kind of companionship he knew they'd expect if he entered into a conversation with them in this setting, so engaging with them would be a waste of energy.

"Hi, I'd like a Clabnian Fire Tea, three Budweiser Classics, two Cardassian Sunrises, and the Slusho mix. Thank you."

That caught his attention enough to make him straighten up. He'd recognize that precise inflection anywhere, after the training he'd had - she was a well-trained polyglot, something incredibly rare, even among Starfleet.

There had been a reason that his old mentor Hoshi Sato had been such a legend within the Communications track, and within Starfleet itself: most humans struggled with learning more than three languages fluently, and very few could learn more than five. Even most other species skilled at languages capped out at around ten to fifteen. Hoshi Sato had been able to speak nearly ninety languages fluently by the time she'd died, and Tiberius could hear the same precise syllables she'd had coming from the cadet who'd just arrived at the bar.

Before he could think better of it, he was already speaking up, settling in comfortably to enjoy the game of wits he hoped to draw her into. It was rare enough to meet a fellow polyglot, much less in his old town where, post-warp at least, all most people still in the area cared about were (occasionally) machines and (often) agriculture. It was also rare for him to meet someone who could keep up with his brain, as he suspected she could. It made him a little giddy, and he could already feel the hints of a budding nerd crush developing.

He was about to lay on the charm that Tiberius wore like a second skin, to smile winningly and make an impression as shallow and flashy as the reason behind the creation of his current name had been, when he paused. He didn't want his current persona of smiles, sharp-eyed attention, and almost-insincere charm to be her impression of him. This fellow genius and polyglot, he wanted her to see him. That was why, when introducing himself, instead of saying Tiberius, something else came out of his mouth, tasting of anticipation.

"The name's Jim. Jim Kirk."

Jim

He's holding back the entire fight.

Jim knows that if he were really fighting - actually fighting - then the cadets would be passed out on the floor before they'd even finished their first swings at him. But he didn't come here to fight, and he also doesn't really want to hurt them, not the way he knows he can. So he drops his guard against the wishes of his screaming instincts and lets himself get hit as he tries to figure out what to do.

A piercing whistle cuts through the air, and all action in the bar stops. Ti - Jim, lets his head loll back, and even upside down and tipsy he'd recognize that face anywhere. It's the officer who was put in charge of him when he was rescued from Tarsus. A captain now, apparently, if he's reading the stripes right. At the sight of him, Jim can feel the ball of sarcasm, stubbornness, silence, and sass that was his teenage self begin to rise to the surface again.

"You whistle really loud, you know that?" he says, acting both the part of the stereotypical dumb hick he knows he's not still and unable to silence the part of him that is still James at his shit-headed worst. The captain rolls his eyes in a surprising show of unprofessionalism, and from there it's a rush of movement as he handles the situation. People rush around the barroom, are ordered into the back, are ordered to leave.

Jim just grabs some napkins from a nearby dispenser and tries to stop his nosebleed.

He's doing a pretty good job of pretending he's unaffected by everything, even offering a shit-eating smirk at Cupcake and his pals as they leave (he'd unfortunately missed the wonderful polyglot No-First-Name Uhura in the earlier chaos, it seemed). They glare at him but obediently file out of the room, and before long the bar is nearly empty.

"You know, I couldn't believe it when they told me who you were." At Pike's voice, Jim's eyebrow rises just a tick as the older man approaches the table from behind. The now-captain sits down across from him, a new light of recognition in his eyes as he assesses Jim anew, and it's not the 'your father was a hero' look that sentence normally accompanies.

There's a whole world of things packed into that statement. There's the fact that Jim slipped right out from under him at the spacedock. There's the fact that Jim erased all information related to his stay on Tarsus, except a few files that were wrapped in so many firewalls and passwords that only a handful of people even knew they existed, much less had access to them. There's the fact that Jim was so off the radar until now that even his own mother and brother couldn't track him, and that he somehow ended up back in this too-small town again anyway.

There's the fact that he's a survivor at his core, and that the man across from him knows that, and remembers who he was at newly-fourteen, nothing but skin, bones, and lean muscle held together with only willpower and a refusal to die.

"And who am I?" he asks, truly curious as to what Pike's answer will be. He can feel himself beginning to bristle though, not entirely comfortable with the skeletons in his closet being put on display so plainly. It's been years, but that doesn't do much to dull the memories that are rising up just from this man being here.

Clearly, Pike is smarter than some of the other people he's known throughout his life since the now-captain diverts the conversation from there...

"Your father's son."

… but not as smart as Jim had hoped.

From there it's a whirlwind of bad decisions, slight tipsiness, and impulsivity. He meets a doctor on the shuttle to the Academy who's afraid of space. Jim tries to wrap his head around joining Starfleet when you're afraid of the void, but he's been afraid - truly afraid - of so little in his life that he chalks it up to something he'll never understand.

He also meets polyglot Uhura again, and that's interesting as well.

It's when he actually reaches the campus in San Francisco that he begins to wonder about his decisions. His classes are too easy, and he knows some of his bad habits from when he went by James are still coming through. He can't help it, he's bored.

So he acts out in some classes (though never enough to actually get in trouble), tries hard in others (he dives a little too deep and knows more than his teachers by the end), and tries not at all in others (still finishing among the top one percent).

Jim gets a reputation - gets several, actually - and less than half of it is actually deserved. Everyone wants to know the Kelvin baby who's looking like he'll be following in his father's deep footprints and his mother's lasting legacy. Everyone wants to save their unintentionally-wounded pride by claiming to sleep with the campus golden boy - literally, some leer disturbingly, eyeing his uncommon set of recessive traits, unusual and eye-catching in this day and age. Everyone wants to know the cocky genius who smirks at teachers and doesn't take notes in class, then outwits everyone around when he decides to open his mouth (ignoring that's only the case in a few of his classes).

Very few want to know Jim. He keeps them (Uhura, Bones, Gaila) close.

He's found some kind of equilibrium by the time he reaches his third year, between his classes, personal projects, and few friends. It's immediately thrown out the window when he takes the Kobayashi Maru for the first time. He breaks the record, score-wise, but it feels like a failure still. He failed to protect the fictional crew he was commanding, and he failed to save the crew he was rescuing. No matter what his score says, he needs to be better. He needs to do better. He needs to work harder until he wins.

He studies twice as hard this time, which is harder than he's studied anything at this Academy. He pours over past simulations for hours, taking note of what worked and what didn't, and reviews every reading and assignment he's ever had for his Strategy and Tactics classes.

Jim breaks his own score again, but it still is not enough.

He fails again, and this time it becomes personal. Jim researches everything there is to know about the Kobayashi Maru, from why it was suggested in the first place to who made it to its very coding. It's in the last two that he makes a breakthrough.

The lead programmer and one heading the entire project is a Vulcan. Half-Vulcan, but he was raised as a full Vulcan it seems, so really it's that half that matters at the moment. The name sounds familiar, but it's his thought processes and the simulation he cares about more. If the Maru was programmed with logic in mind, then the way to beat it is to be illogical. The best way to be illogical is to do nothing in the face of impossible odds.

Jim's plan works like a charm (he knows it will, he's copied the program's coding and run his own simulations, the coding glitches as expected). It works a little too well though, and several days later he is called up on academic misconduct. The half-Vulcan approaches to accuse him of cheating, and oh. Jim knows why his name is familiar now.

That's S'chn T'gai Spock, son of Dr. Amanda Grayson and Ambassador S'chn T'gai Sarek. Jim knows his work. Jim loves his work and has subtly been following his scientific publications for years now. (Oh god, he has a nerd crush on the person trying to get him potentially expelled for cheating. Why is his brain like this. Why is his life like this.)

Whatever he may or may not think about Spock, it's put on hold by the distress call from Vulcan. A bad feeling erupts in his gut, and he knows he has to get on one of those ships.

It isn't until he's standing, lost amidst a sea of moving cadets, that he realizes what has been taken from him - that he realizes he wanted anything more than to prove Pike was still underestimating him. He misses space like he misses air and how did he not realize this sooner? Why is it that he only realizes it now that he can no longer have it, and when he actually needs to be up there?

"Come with me," breaks him from his stupor, and Jim realizes that he maybe rubbed off on Bones more than he meant to as his friend risks his entire future career to help at least get Jim among the stars, even if it's under the influence of multiple allergic reactions.

"A lightning storm in space," breaks him from his fainting spell, and his brain whirls and clicks information together into a horrifying picture, and he has to get to the Bridge. Jim argues, and begs with every ounce of conviction he has that just this once Pike stops underestimating him and listens.

It's ironic that the moment the Maru is beginning to mirror reality, its creator is standing beside him as they drop out of warp into carnage.

He feels simultaneously like he's in a daze and the most alive he's ever been over the course of the next day. From jumping onto an imploding planet to getting kicked off the ship onto a hell-hole of an ice planet to time travel and insurmountable loss. To picking a fight with a Vulcan and choosing to let him win, because he never wanted this, but what he's wanted has never mattered in the long run anyway.

He takes control of the ship.

Jim's not afraid to face Nero directly, not like he can tell the rest of the crew is. This isn't the first time he's gone up against a genocidal maniac, and his odds were even worse the first time around. In the end, they're all the same, and the same way he took down Kodos allows him to take down Nero.

He just wishes it hadn't taken hurting Spock - and subsequently Uhura, by proxy - to do it.

But he's been either hurting or being hurt since he was born, and he ignores it all for the time being - the situation with Spock, Uhura's anger, the sting of Bones's lack of support, and Pike's near death. His own near-death experiences hover in his awareness as well, but he pushes that even further away than everything else.

Jim takes control of the Enterprise like he'd been leading all his life. He can feel himself thriving in a way he never has before, and it's as terrifying as it is exhilarating. Acting Captain whispers in his ears every time he starts getting too comfortable in his role, and he knows he won't be allowed to keep this. He'll be lucky if he can stay in Starfleet after all he's done in the last few days.

So he tries to control himself and focuses on performing as flawlessly as possible as they limp back home on thruster power until another ship can return to tow them home faster.

They make it back, and what seems like half the Federation is waiting for them. The Admiralty is also waiting for Jim.

"So let me get this straight. You discovered a formula for transwarp beaming, met multiple time travelers, picked a fight with your commanding officer, and created a massive black hole to destroy an enemy ship. All while being officially grounded due to academic suspension on accounts of suspected misconduct. Do I have that right?"

"Yes, Admiral."

"Right then. Kirk, go home. You've given us a lot to think on, and we still need to talk to the others aboard the ship before we decide what to do with you. We'll get back to you soon."

Jim doesn't hold out much hope and spends the next two weeks avoiding the press and sulking his way around San Francisco and his apartment trying to figure out what he's going to do after Starfleet inevitably kicks him out.

The anticipated summons doesn't come. Instead, he gets a doorbell and Pike in a wheelchair holding a PADD wheeling his way into the apartment past Jim's shocked form, before he can even offer any protest.

"The Admiralty has come to a decision," he says, spinning around suddenly once he reaches what's basically Jim's living room. "They sent me to be the messenger, said it was only fitting."

He holds the PADD out, and Jim wants to hit it to the floor. He wants to roll his eyes, sulk, throw a tantrum like a kid. Instead he sucks it up, because complaining about his lot in life has never changed anything for him, and takes the device from the captain.

Jim reads the orders once. Then twice. Then has to sit down, because he thinks he might faint.

"They're giving me the Enterprise?" he breathes, feeling like he's gasping. Is he pale? He thinks he might be pale. He's certainly clammy enough to have gone pale.

"Like I said," Pike says, eyes warm and finally seeing him, "they thought it fitting that I be the one to give you the message. Good job, kid. I'm proud of you - and you proved me wrong."

For the first time in years, Jim thinks he might cry. Pike says nothing in the silence as Jim's fingers clutch the PADD like a lifeline, head ducked and struggling to compose himself. After a moment Jim steels himself and looks up again.

"Thank you," he says, more sincere than he's ever been. After the following smile and nod from Pike, he changes the subject, unable and unwilling to continue on this track any longer. "They're making you an Admiral?"

"Yes," Pike admits, looking a little annoyed, but mostly accepting of his lot. "It was probably time, and with my injuries, probably the best option. But it still is a bit irksome to have it happen so suddenly."

"I'd imagine it would be," Jim responds quietly, glancing out his window towards the sky.

The next few months are filled with meetings and paperwork and visits to the shipyard where they're repairing his (his!) ship. All the crew he had with him for Nero get an offer to return, and all but one accept his offer. He refuses to find a replacement for the one, holding out hope that for once the universe will work in his favor. Whatever cosmic karma there is owes him this, even if his requested First Officer might not.

He holds out, even when the Admiralty pushes harder and louder, and even when his own worries start pushing their way up his throat. He holds out, until they are on the Bridge of his ship and about to take off, and he can't help but think that maybe he's made a big mistake, putting his faith in anything other than himself.

Then the turbolift opens to reveal the very person he was hoping to see, and Jim smiles as he remembers why he's so willing to jump before looking. These things have a way of working themselves out, in the end.

They go through the final motions of preparation, and Jim looks around at his Bridge crew. They all look as excited as he feels, though they're trying to stay professional. His gaze eventually locks with Spock's, and he can still feel his grin.

"Cut it a little close there, Mr. Spock," he says, eyes glinting playfully at the other officer. "All settled in now?"

"Awaiting your orders," Spock says, eyes glinting back, content. "Captain."

Captain

He doesn't know when 'Captain' begins to feel as natural as any of the names he's gone by over the years. He doesn't know when it becomes interchangeable with any of them either. He's grown used to donning and shedding names as often as personas, but when he thinks of the years ahead, he finds he's reluctant to let go of this one - even at the thought of this name being replaced with 'Admiral'. The captain's chair is a place he was born to be, and he never wants to leave his crew or silver lady until he has to.

It's with some surprise that he realizes that out of all the names he's tried out over the years that didn't stick, maybe he's finally found one that can stay. Only time will tell, and maybe he'll grow into another name eventually. But until then, he's satisfied with where he is in his life.

It's a happy thought, and he enters the Bridge smiling.