"For those of you who were born in the wrong century"

Prologue

Dyer, Esmeralda County, Nevada: July 4, 1996 (Federation Stardate: 1996.50/ Galactic Stardate -298671.0567)

A small boy a little older than six was running through open desert, kicking up red dust behind his small bare feet. His gait was lopsided. The long white robes that were swaddled around his body were soaking wet and far too large, weighing him down on one side where he'd tossed them to avoid tripping. But, water weight wasn't the only added cargo: an infant was wrapped up in his arms, crying and coughing for air, wrapped only in a yellow shirt sized for an adult male. It wouldn't stop squirming, much to the running boy's chagrin. A few minutes prior, the boys had been underwater, the six-year-old dragging the infant to the surface, out of the mangled wreckage of a large metal ship that was now sinking into the waterhole. The baby had instinctively held its breath, but it was choking on water nonetheless.

"Shut up!" the six-year-old hissed, shaking the infant. It did nothing to stop its crying- of course.

The running child was confused and scared, couldn't remember anything before impact with the water, had no idea where they were, who he was, or what planet this was, but he knew he couldn't be seen with the wreckage. It felt dangerous. He could be seen anywhere near the waterhole where they'd crashed, and the wreckage would kill him somehow.

The boy reached a long stretch of desert highway, barren on both sides besides some large rocks and the occasional patch of desert brush. He slowed his pace to breathe and tripped over his robes when the ground shook and a loud explosion erupted from behind him. Massive flames kicked up and dust billowed out into a mushroom over the waterhole. The boy turned back to the wreckage, scrambling backwards away from the flying shrapnel. "Dammit!" he cried, the profanity sounding strange in his young voice. He collected the infant again and got back to his feet, his massive white robes now covered in red dirt.

The boy's breath was ragged and the heat was unbearable, the sun practically crackling, but he kept running, clutching the baby to his chest. It would not. shut. up. The boy collapsed after running for five more minutes in the heat, the sound of some sort of vehicle approaching from behind was both a comfort and a reason for fear. He simply could not get up again to flee from it.

Dyer, Esmeralda County, Nevada: July 4, 1996 (Federation Stardate: 1996.50/ Galactic Stardate -298671.0549))

"Let's get those wet robes off you," someone was saying when the boy woke. He stared at her with wide eyes, pulling away, frightened, but he couldn't get far. He found himself restrained in the seat of the vehicle, strapped down, breathing heavy again in alarm. "Where are you boys from?" the woman said, pulling her hands away genially back to where she was turned around in her car seat. She didn't want to scare him but he was frightened, clutching the screaming baby tightly to his chest.

"Are you human?" the boy said instead of answering. He didn't know where he was from, so he discarded her question.

"Yes…I'm human. My name's Amanda" she said carefully, brows drawing together, but a patient smile steadily in place. "Why do you ask?"

"And we're…we're human, right?" the boy said hesitantly rather than answering. He was still panting for breath, his mouth dry and hot. "Are we human?"

Amanda raised a brow, gentle smile still present. "Yes, of course we're all human. I don't know what you boys were doing out there, but I saw the explosion all the way from my house. It didn't look like fireworks…" It was the reason she'd driven out into the desert. "I'd like to know what happened to you."

"Me too," the boy said, shifting the baby in his arms. It cried on no matter what he did.

Amanda fixed the boy with a look, beginning to understand. Did the boy had amnesia? She wondered how much he could remember. She started the vehicle and put on the air conditioning, wanting to cool her passengers off, not liking the red flush in the child's cheeks. He was dehydrated and probably suffering heat exhaustion. It didn't seem right to offer water, the boy had probably been taught not to take food or drink from strangers, so Amanda just sat behind the wheel, trying to figure out what to do. The police station was just on the edge of town, and she'd found the boys on a long stretch of desert highway with no soul in sight for miles. If their parents had accidentally lost them, there was no way they could've gotten all the way out there without dying of dehydration. Besides, what was that explosion?

"I'm taking you two to the police station," she said after a moment of consideration, speaking over the crying infant.

"Police?" the elder boy said, confused.

So he really had amnesia. And it was some serious amnesia…most young boys knew what Police were. "Men and women who will take care of you two, find your parents and get you where you belong," Amanda explained."I know you've probably been told not to trust strangers, I'm sorry for picking you up," she apologized, she started the car, and she began driving down the flat stretch of land.

It was probably not politically correct to ask a lost child personal information, but the boy didn't even know he was human. Amanda was too curious not to ask anything. But, the child was too frightened for her to work up the nerve to speak to him, so she gave him some time to calm down and concentrated on the road. The desert rushed by outside the window, flat and red and forbidding, the air rippling with heat. If she hadn't found the boys, they would've died out there... So maybe she was speeding a little bit, but this situation as putting her on edge. A few minutes later, she glanced in the mirror at the boy. "Are you brothers?" Amanda asked as she turned the car into town, finally breaking the silence.

The boy looked down at the baby, calm now but still steadily dripping onto her car seat. He honestly wasn't sure, he'd just had the infant in his arms when they'd hit the water, and he'd swam out of the waterhole with it. "Yes," he said nonetheless. They were brothers because he said so. That was that.

"He's very cute," Amanda said gently. "I think he might be scared."

"He is," the boy said.

She smiled at the surety of the six-year-old's diagnosis. "I'm sure there's people out there going out of their minds looking for you."

"Where?" the boy said naively.

Amanda smiled at him again through the mirror, driving quickly but carefully since she didn't have a child seat. "The police will help you find where. Do you two have names?"

"Names?"

"What do you call each other?" Amanda clarified.

The boy stared out the window in a trance, really concentrating on her question since he'd been asking himself the same thing since he'd woken up underwater. Something was there. Something was on the edge of his tongue, something old and instinctive, from another life. He couldn't tell what it was or what it meant, but it was there, and he spoke, barely a whisper and it came out shocked. "Dammit, Jim..."

Amanda's eyebrows shot up at the six-year-old's profanity, really starting to wonder who these boys' parents were- that they were running from an explosion in the middle of a desert and using words like 'damn', but it wasn't her place to address foul language in someone else's kid. "Jim?" she repeated instead, "Your name's Jim?"

"No," the boy said, his dazed stare drifting down to the infant in his arms which was making noises somewhere between whimpers and mewls now. His wet brown hair dripped down onto the baby, but it didn't seem to care. "I'm not Jim."

"Your brother?"

The boy looked up at her, taken aback like she'd accused him of something, pursing his lips childishly. She took that as confirmation to her question. So, the baby's name was Jim. "I get carsick," the boy mentioned bitterly, back to ignoring her questions. And, he remained silent for the rest of the ride to the police station. She tried to coax him into talking several times, but he resisted, giving her clipped avoidant answers that usually didn't even address her questions.

Amanda dropped the boys off with the police, filling out a report as an officer tried to get the little boy out of his damp robes and take the infant from his arms. There was a lot of screaming and profanity involved and the officers looked more than a little agitated. "No, he's mine!" the little boy was screeching. "You can't, he's mine!"

"What will happen to them?" Amanda said curiously as the boy struggled with the officers, watching Marshal Leeson typing on the computer.

The Marshal just turned in her chair and clicked a pen for Amanda to sign the forms with, "We'll check all recently-filed missing child reports and see if they match any descriptions. If not, the boys will be filed as neglected and we'll put them into child protective services. They'll find them a day home or foster care."

Amanda frowned, looking over to the boys who were now being outfitted in clean clothes by a deputy. The man was checking over the tags of their clothes, looking for names. It seemed he couldn't get names out of them either. "Will they be able to stay together?" she said, worrying with her lip.

"It's hard to say…" the Marshal admitted. "It all depends on if there's openings at local facilities. If their legal parents claim them, they'll stay together with them unless we find a legal way to press charges for neglect- which I'd really like to in this case," she added bitterly. "It's hard to say anything for sure right now, but we'll keep you posted."

"Thank you…" Amanda said gratefully, picking up the clip board, but lingering at the desk.

"You did the right thing, Ms. Grayson," Marshal Leeson said reassuringly, fixing the stiff collar of her uniform. "Whoever those kids belonged to probably left them out in the desert. They'll get better treatment somewhere else."

Amanda sat down to finish filling out the forms to release herself from liability for the children. She listened to the officers' conversations as she wrote. "These little insignias, what do you think they mean?" the deputy trying to dress them was saying. He'd given the brunette boy a cup of water and gotten the dirty white robes off him, leaving him in a massive blue shirt similar to the yellow one wrapped around the baby. When he'd un-swaddled Jim from the yellow cloth, he'd stopped to pick off a rounded metal triangle from the shirt, cradling the infant in one arm

An officer helping him with the little boy stopped to study the symbol with him. "The blue shirt has one too, but it's got a different symbol in it…" he noted, turning over the metal chip. "Leonard H. McCoy- M.D.," he read off, knitting his brows. Amanda looked up at them now, hand going still against her clipboard. The officer looked down at the little boy, "Is that your dad?"

"No! Me, mine," the boy said, grabbing for the metal chip.

The officer placed the chip in the boy's little palm, smiling at him teasingly, "You're a Doctor of Medicine?" he humored him.

"Yes, mine," McCoy repeated childishly, clutching the pin to his chest. Amanda smiled, watching the display before exchanging knowing looks with the policemen.

The officer looked over at the deputy with the baby and the yellow shirt. "What's that one say?"

"James T. Kirk- Command."

This whole fic will be based around the concept idea of a Youtube video by Morra Morgenstern found here: watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=O2Qc_JHU6Ug.

It's obviously slow-build. But, the rating may go up in later chapters. I mean, Spock's eventually going into Pon Farr, there's not much escaping the M. Yes, this is essentially a Pon Farr-fic with a ton of plot around it.