Here be a crossover between TOS and 2009. We'll see plenty of BOTH Captains James T. Kirk, and Spock Prime will show up in later chapters. Basically I took a What If scenario floating around in my head and put it down on paper: What if Jim actually did go into Starfleet Academy before the events of ST:X? What if he and Spock were friends already and DIDN'T hate each others guts? Well, here's what I think that might be like. Enjoy!
Chapter One
James T. Kirk had never believed in a no-win situation, and long ago had ceased to fear Death, so when his death finally came it was no cause for alarm. The fact that he woke up again, however, was plenty of cause for alarm. Apparently, Fate wasn't done with him. He knew something was wrong when he woke up in a hospital. A hospital! Of all places, he just had to wake up in the one institution he had always loathed most of all. Granted his opinion of them had softened over time, thanks in great part to his friendship with Leonard McCoy, but he still hated them and waking up in one did not make him happy. Especially since he didn't know what he was doing there in the first place. Fifteen minutes after he gained consciousness, a nurse came in. Or at least, he thought she was a nurse. She looked a little young for his tastes. When she noticed his wakefulness, she asked if he needed a doctor.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"You're in Riverside Community Hospital, sir. Don't you remember anything?" The girl looked confused. Oh he remembered plenty, but nothing she would ever understand. His blank expression must have given her a clue, she promptly informed him that there had been a terrible accident, the worst in two years she said. He had been among the victims brought to the hospital.
"Who else was involved?" he asked, desperate for anything that might give him a place, a time, anything. The nurse just pointed to the next bed over from his. He winced, wondering if there was a body under all those bruises and bandages.
"What's his name?" James asked.
"I don't know. I'll go get the doctor and let him know you're awake." The nurse smiled nervously and hurried away. James wanted to get up and go to the bedside, but he couldn't move. A tall, middle-aged doctor with messy brown hair strolled in and greeted him cheerfully.
"Good morning, Mr. Kirk! Are you feeling any better?"
"Do I look like I'm feeling any better?" he couldn't help himself, he'd always hated doctors save for one. His retort went right over the doctor's head. After a thorough exam, he was declared fit and discharged. After signing the proper papers and such nonsense as they demanded of him, the same doctor from before caught up with him.
"Mr. Kirk! Wait a moment, sir!"
"Yes?" He turned, wanting to get out of this depressive place before he went mad. The doctor held out a padd to him, looking a bit sheepish.
"I'm so sorry to bother you, sir, but would you mind terribly signing that form for me?"
"What is it?"
"It just says that we can contact you as next-of-kin to Jim Kirk." The doctor shrugged. He dropped the stylus.
"I'm sorry?"
"That's okay. Here." The doctor picked it up and handed it back to him. James signed without thinking.
"I'm sorry, but…what did you say?"
"Jim Kirk. The boy you were sharing that room with. You have the same last name, I assumed you were related."
"We are. Doesn't he have parents? Some other family?"
"His brother died a few years ago and nobody around here knows what happened to Winona." The doctor looked grim, he apparently knew the family history, "She just up and vanished one day, left Jamie all alone. The kid was twelve. He's fended pretty well for himself since then, gotten into a few scrapes that needed getting out of, but he's a good kid."
"Are you asking me to take this kid with me?"
"Can't you?"
"Look, doc, I may be relation, but there's a damn good reason nobody talked about me. Winona and I didn't quite get along all that well. Excuse me." He turned on his heel and walked out of the hospital. And kept walking. He didn't stop until he reached a familiar house on a familiar country road just off the main highway a few miles outside of town. The house was obviously empty, but he went right ahead and let himself in. He knew exactly where his mother had always kept the spare key above the door and found it without much hardship.
It was obvious this house had only one occupant, but that one occupant kept it very clean. There were some dirty dishes in the sink, some manuals were spread on the kitchen table opened to diagrams of engines and such mechanical interests, and upstairs one of the bedrooms was obviously occupied. Clothes lay in heaps on the floor, tossed aside carelessly. It was his room, but it belonged to a different person. Over the years, he'd acquired an appreciation for neatness and clean spaces, so he did some housekeeping without moving anything too far from where he'd found it. He did two full loads of laundry, including bedding, and cleaned up his childhood room. Exploring the house, he found the garage. Kept inside it, covered with tarps, were a motorcycle and a restored 21st century car. That explained the manuals spread out on the table in the kitchen, and on every available space in the garage. For some reason, the emptiness of the house didn't make him lonely. James found a photo-album and flipped through the pictures to get an idea of what he was up against in what was apparently an alternate past. There was no father in the picture, but there were several shady boyfriends. The pictures stopped around the age of twelve, when Winona had apparently ditched her only surviving son for god alone knew what. Why had she left him? Had he done something to make her angry? Had she gotten sick of being a single mother and just decided it wasn't worth the trouble raising a child? Going back to his room, he rummaged for a secret drawer he remembered stashing odds and ends in when he was twelve, and found stacks of unsent, half-finished letters. Some were crumpled up, others ripped to pieces so as to be unreadable. They all started much the same way: "Dear Mom. Why do you hate me? Why did you leave?" Sometimes that was all there was to a letter, sometimes were pages and pages of angst and grief. The letters chronicled mishaps, accidents, encounters of all kinds. Jamie Kirk was a soul in need of guidance, in need of someone who wasn't going to judge him or turn on him when he needed support the most. Then he stumbled across one letter that almost brought him to tears.
Dear Mom.
I don't know where you are right now and this letter will never find you, none of them have because I don't send them. I hitched a ride to San Francisco today with some friends. They forgot about me, of course, and I'm still here. But I went to Starfleet Academy today, just to see it. I didn't go inside, I wasn't brave enough. I don't think I'll ever go back, it doesn't seem like they'd take somebody like me. Maybe I'm George Kirk's son, but that doesn't mean they'll take me. I'm Jimmy Kirk, a loser, an outcast, a freak. I think the boys ditched me on purpose. I don't know how I'll get back, but I want to go home. I know there's nothing at the house for me, but I'm…homesick. Please come home, Mom! Tell me what I did to make you leave, and let me make it right! Tell me you love me anyway, no matter if I've done lots of stupid stuff! I don't want to be alone anymore!
Your loving son,
James T. Kirk
The letter was dated two days ago, which made it the most recent letter written. He did some math and realized that Jim Kirk was sixteen years old. In all his years in Starfleet, and just in life, James had learned a few things. For one, you never abandoned your loved ones, no matter how bad things got. And second, you did not treat your children like Winona had treated Jamie! Setting aside the letter, James hunted down keys and took the car. He drove straight back to the hospital, stopped at the nurse's station to check in, and asked to see Jim Kirk, the kid they'd brought in earlier.
"What's your name, sir?"
"Thomas. I spoke with his doctor earlier."
"Oh, here you are. There was no first name, just an initial. Thomas, you said?"
"Yes."
"There you are, sir. Third floor, room 337." the nurse on duty smiled sweetly at him, "Do you need anything else?"
"No, thank you, Becky." He glanced at her name-tag and offered a tired smile. He headed to the third floor, room 337, and knew knocking would not be necessary.
"Mr. Kirk! We weren't expecting you back so soon!" the same doctor from before called as he stood outside. He turned to the man.
"I'm sorry about earlier, I must have been rude."
"No, not at all. You're just lucky you got to walk out of here." The doctor stuck out one hand, "I'm Doctor McCoy." James's jaw almost dropped open. McCoy? But, no, he would have recognized his best friend no matter what century or reality they were in. This was not Leonard McCoy, but another doctor who shared his best friend's name.
"Pleasure. Has he shown any change?"
"No, but I have hope for him. He's lucky he didn't break anything."
"One of those, huh?" James chuckled, "Must take after me."
"Do you want to see him?"
"May I?"
"Of course. After you, sir." The doctor let him in and made sure he didn't need anything, showed him the call-button if he did, and then left him alone with his thoughts and his younger self. Had he been this helpless, this alone at sixteen? No, he'd had a loving family, he had been perfectly happy at sixteen.
He must have been sitting there for an hour before one of the monitors suddenly let out a piercing shriek. Years on a starship sparked conditioning and he jumped into action. Glancing at the monitors, he raced across the room to a set of drawers, shuffling through them to find what he knew would be there. Grabbing a hypospray and a vial of light blue liquid, he snapped the whole mess together and dialed in the proper dosage before injecting it directly into the neck. The reaction was immediate and he let out a heavy sigh as everything calmed down and leveled out. Doctor McCoy and three nurses crashed in, wild-eyed.
"What happened? What's going on?"
"Everything's under control. His pressures spiked unexpectedly, that's all."
"How did you…?" McCoy gasped.
"Try a little over three decades of service to Starfleet." He tossed aside the spent hypospray with a casual air that would have had Spock and Bones laughing their heads off and reached down to take the young Jim by the hand to find his pulse, "That should about do it. I think he'll be fine."
"I think he's coming around." One of the nurses whispered, peeking over Doctor McCoy's shoulder. James felt the fingers in his own flex and tighten. He reached down and rested one hand on Jim's shoulder, squeezing gently.
"That's it, Jamie. You're alright, son." He coaxed the boy to full wakefulness, prepared for any outburst that might come.
"W-where am I?"
"You're in the hospital, son, just rest easy." James didn't want Jim freaking out, knowing it was inevitable.
"The hospital? Why am I in the hospital? I don't need to be here!"
"Calm down, Jamie. You were in an accident, you got banged up real good. Just calm down, son, everything's fine."
"Why do you know my name?"
"Sir…"
"Not yet." he waved off McCoy and the nurses, who stood poised to intervene, "Jamie, look at me. Look at me, son, focus here." He got the boy's attention and held onto it, "Easy as she goes, Jamie."
"Who are you?"
"Would you believe I'm the uncle you've never met?" He had to smile, it was such a stupid lie, but it worked.
"Mom's side?"
"Nah, dad's. Your mom and I didn't get along well, didn't agree on a lot of things, and I just never got the invite to see my nephews." He looked over at Doctor McCoy, who took the unspoken hint and ushered the nurses out, "I sure wish she'd told me about you being alone out here, though, I'd have come out a lot sooner."
"Why would you care?"
"Because right now, I'm all you've got, kid." He fixed Jim with a stern look that had worked to subdue rowdy ensigns and break up a fight between Spock and Bones on many an occasion, "I'm not asking for much, just some cooperation and some respect." Jim sagged against the pillow.
"You're not gonna leave me, are you?"
"Just like I'm all you've got, kid, you're all I've got now. That makes two of us. We can do this civil-like and get along, or…we can make this hard. Your choice."
"You're not much of a negotiator, you know that?"
"I'll gladly find a middle ground if you'd like, but I've spent thirty years negotiating with all kinds of people, I think I can handle a sixteen-year-old loner." He shrugged and sat down, "So, how long've you been working on that old Mustang?"
"Couple years. Why?"
"That's a nice car. Did you do all that work yourself?"
"It keeps me busy. I worked with a mechanic to pay for the parts. You know cars?"
"Not nearly as well as some, but I know a good one when I see it. It drives nice."
"I should take you out on the back-roads, that baby can fly if you let her go." Jim beamed, and James knew he had found a common-ground. He stayed a few hours and they just talked, he shared bits and pieces of his history but nothing telling. There were rules, after all. When he left, Jim made him promise to come back the next day. James went home to an empty house, fixed dinner for himself, and read for a while before he fell asleep on the couch.
Over the next month, James visited the hospital twice a day to visit Jim, taking him some of the manuals lying around the house to keep him occupied, and in his hours alone he looked for teaching positions at Starfleet Academy. There were several openings in a variety of fields, he submitted those that interested him. After bringing Jim home, he laid down a few ground-rules but gave the kid a lot of freedom.
"My only request is that I don't have to go get you from the police station or watch them bring you home, kid."
"No problem." And he kept that promise, much to Jim's pleasure. He legally changed his name to Thomas, told Jim to call him Dad if he wanted after adopting the boy, and waited for a call-back from the Academy.
Well there, Jim gets the family he always wanted and never had. More to come! Click and review, but NO FLAMES PLEASE! The muses don't like them and the author thinks they're insulting.