Chapter Text
Maybe in another universe, James Tiberius Kirk’s birth is not remarkable in the slightest. Born on a spaceship, yes, but promptly shuttled down to Earth to live in Riverside, Iowa for the majority of his childhood. He would be loved and cherished by both his mother and father.
Not this time.
George Kirk dies not even a minute after James’ birth. He dubs him “Jim” and flies himself into a Romulan ship and dies.
The Kelvin explodes brilliantly, causing damage where every weapon failed.
Winona Kirk looks at her baby – born too early, born with health complications, likely to not make it because of the lack of medical equipment on an evacuation shuttle – and thinks George is dead.
She’s shuttled back to Earth. Her newborn son’s complications force her to stay in the hospital far longer than she’d ever be comfortable with. She tries hard not to feel resentful, because her baby died and had to be revived multiple times on the trip over. She doesn’t quite manage it; all she can think is George is dead. His last words play over and over in her head like a broken record. He’d never gotten to truly finish his sentence. She wonders if it hurt to explode, or if it had been quick.
I love yo-
I love yo-
I love yo-
They let her take Jim home from the hospital. She picks up Sam from her sister’s – who had died many years ago from cancer – husband. He’s quiet on the ride home, despite the new member of their household she can’t make herself explain nor introduce, as if he can sense something is wrong. She can’t even be thankful, because Jim just screams and screams the entire time. She can’t bring herself to feel anything about it.
I love yo-
She sits down with Sam. She tells him his daddy’s not coming back. He sacrificed his life for the crew, for Winona. She hands him Jim. This is his brother, she tells him. He was born right before his daddy died.
I love yo-
Sam asks her to take Jim away so his daddy can come back. She doesn’t know how to explain that won’t work.
She tries to stay on the ground. Her house is empty. Sam cries in her arms often, begs her to trade Jim for his daddy, and she alternates between gently explaining she can’t and saying nothing at all. Jim cries and cries and cries in his crib, ignored perhaps more often than he should be. She just can’t stand looking at him; George is dead, and the sight of their youngest son has that knowledge aching painfully behind her eyes.
Winona tries everything to get better, to get over this terrible grief, to love her sons like she should. Ignoring it makes her apathetic, acknowledging it makes it impossible to get out of bed, alcohol makes her incompetent, smoking doesn’t do enough. There’s no family besides Frank, but Frank isn’t good with babies. Sam, for whatever reason, pitches a fit when she tries to take him there so she can just breathe for a moment – she loves Sam, but he’s trouble. George has no funeral because she can’t seem to get her shit together to plan it, but she hates that too.
I love yo-
The moment maternity leave is over, she’s packing them up and moving them onto a ship. At least there, it’s familiar, and she can pretend she’s okay.
Sam is still trouble in space, but there are locks on everything and the crew helps keep things from getting out of hand. He’s apparently adjusted to having a brother, because he gets up to feed Jim at night and carries him around the ship.
They spend a year in space; Jim’s first year alive. Winona and Sam don’t celebrate his birthday – can’t – because it’s George’s deathday. Jim’s birthday never occurs to the crew. Jim doesn’t know about his birthday, only knows that everyone seems a little sad that day.
Time passes.
Jim sits up far sooner than is normal. He doesn’t crawl at all. In fact, he hardly even shows interest in such a thing. Winona is starting to think it would be right to get him checked out by their doctor, but a little after seven months, Jim decides to just stand up and walk to Sam. Problem solved. After that, he takes to constantly holding Sam’s hand and following him everywhere he goes.
By the time they’re headed back down to Earth, Winona’s youngest son never cries. He’s as silent as a grave. She doesn’t know how to feel about that, but she never knows how to feel about anything these days. They’re old enough now that she can leave them both with Frank, so no matter how much Sam kicks his feet and throws a childish tantrum, she goes to space without them. She convinces herself that it’ll be good for them to spend some time on Earth in Riverside, where their dad grew up, and have some fun with their uncle.
Frank, to many, wasn’t a bad guy. Rude? Yes. Dislikeable? Yes. A bad person? No. He worked hard at the little crops he had, as his farmhands would say, though he was stingy with pay. He was not a good father, though. He was hardly even an uncle. He couldn’t give two shits about his sister-in-law’s kids, but Winona pays the rent and sends good checks, so he lets the kids live in his house. He yelled, he hit and pushed, he insulted, and he left them to their own devices the majority of the time, but he let them stay, so that’s where they stayed.
Jim spends the majority of his time toddling through their cornfield while Sam is at school. Though he doesn’t cry or talk, Frank says Jim’s too noisy, and makes him stay outside all day. Jim’s careful not to hurt any of the budding plants or, once they grow in the fall, stalks, because Frank yells at him and yanks his arm for it if he catches him. Sometimes he follows the farmhands around and watches them work.
There are three of them, and they come around on different days: Emma, Jonny, and John. They take days off of school to work, in accordance with a program at their school. Emma is always making fun of Jim, calling him annoying, but she’ll carry him if he lifts his arms up and gives him sunscreen she’s always snapping at him to put on every morning. Somehow, she seems to know when Jim hasn’t done it, even when she isn’t there. Jonny likes telling stories that Jim finds interesting, having one-sided conversations, bringing him several water bottles, and calling Jim “Jimmy.” John doesn’t talk much, hardly acknowledges Jim is present, but calls him his apprentices, gives him small tasks, and slips him snacks.
When Sam gets home after school, Frank yells at him to get to work on the field like a farmhand. They argue about it, but Sam always ends up doing it because he wants to have dinner and for his bedroom door to continue existing. Jim switches to following Sam at that point and listens to his older brother complain while he sweats all over the weeds.
Sometimes Uncle Frank yells at Sam to clean the old car they’ve got, so Sam turns ‘round and gives Jim a sponge, a bucket of soapy water, and tells him to get to work. Jim’s little, so Sam keeps an eye on him the whole time, but Sam refuses to clean that car himself and he doesn’t want the consequences of not cleaning it. Jim learns how to climb around the car and clean it without hurting anything or himself.
Saturdays quickly become Jim’s favorite days, because that means Sam, Emma, Jonny, and John are all out in the field with him. He alternates between all of them all day, tailing them as they do work on their own or sometimes partner up. Emma puts sunscreen on him, her gentle hands rubbing the cream into his chubby cheeks and on his shirtless torso. Sam tries for the umpteenth time to get Jim into a shirt for longer than three minutes. Jim gets to drink water from Jonny and eat snacks from Jon, so he never gets hungry or thirsty because Frank doesn’t let food and water out of the house.
Night is Jim’s favorite part of Saturday, even though he’s always sleepy. Emma picks him up and they all walk to the campfire in the forest, where Frank can’t find them. There, John pulls out the food materials, Jonny finds some sticks, Sam makes the fire, and they eat s’mores. Everyone always makes Jim as many s’mores as he can eat. They laugh and complain about Frank, Sam significantly more bitter about him but no one minding. Then, when Jim’s mouth and hands are sticky, his eyes heavy, belly full, he falls asleep in John’s arms because he is the most still. Jim never opens his eyes when Emma picks him up, but Jonny always giggles and tells a story. The farmhands walk him and Sam home, Sam struggles to wipe Jim’s face and hands off with a wet napkin while Jim pretends to be asleep, and then carries him to bed.
Halloween comes and the farmhands invite Sam to a cornmaze, so they decide to take Jim too because otherwise he’d be alone. They run around there all night, until it’s chilly, and then they decide to go into the haunted house. They take Jim in too, and at first Jim is so scared that two tears escape his eye and his throat makes sounds on its own. Jonny and John are both scared too, and then Emma gets scared so she hands Jim off to Sam to carry, and Jim realizes Sam isn’t scared. Sam breathes evenly the whole time, holding Jim with a little effort, and stares all the monsters in the eyes easily, even though he’s younger than all the farmhands. After that, Jim isn’t scared, because Sam isn’t scared and so everything is okay. When they get out of the haunted house, everyone laughs about how silly it was to be scared, so Jim giggles too. It’s scary to be scared. He decides he loves Halloween.
Thanksgiving comes and it’s starting to get cold outside. Not many people seem to remember what Thanksgiving even means anymore, other than a day to eat a lot. Frank doesn’t celebrate, but the next day the farmhands bring some leftovers for Jim and Sam to have. It’s delicious, even though it’s cold.
When winter comes, Jim gets Sam’s old winter clothes. They’re too big, or maybe Jim is too little, but either way they swamp his figure. Jim can never get all the layers on right, but Emma stops by every morning to bundle him up correctly and rub sunscreen on his face in the mornings (“Just because it’s snowing don’t mean it ain’t sunny!”), even though she doesn’t work in the winter. The layers are uncomfortable – he’d rather not be wearing a shirt at all – but Emma always makes it a little more bearable. Jim wonders if he could have multiple moms because he doesn’t really remember his own that well, but he thinks Emma would make a good one even if she makes fun of him sometimes and calls him annoying and makes him wear sunscreen. Jonny still stops by to bring him water bottles and John comes and gives him snacks. Frank makes Sam put salt down on the road instead of pick weeds. They all still get together on Saturdays.
He decides he doesn’t like the winter very much because it’s cold, he has to wear way more clothes, and because he’s alone a lot. The farmhands don’t work in the winter, but Sam still goes to school and Frank still considers Jim to be too loud to keep indoors. He wanders around a lot.
When it snows, it snows a lot. Jim has never seen snow before. Sam tells him they’re lucky because this much snow usually just misses Riverside, and then continues complaining because now Frank’s got him shoveling and salting the road. Sometimes he makes Jim shovel too, but he quickly gives up because Jim is “clearly too little.” Sam teaches him about making snowmen, building igloos, making snow angels, and having snowball fights, and Jim doesn’t cry when he gets hit in the face by a snowball, but it’s a near thing, so now Sam yells at him whenever Jim tries to sneak up on him with a snowball. There are a lot of snow angels around the farm and even more would-be snowmen who are simply three large balls of snow because he doesn't have the materials to give them faces; Jim is still alone during the day and has too much free time.
They no longer have a fire on Saturdays because everything is too wet for a fire, but they meet in the barn instead.
Christmas is fun. Their mom sends Sam and Jim both a gift. For Sam, it’s a new sweater that he scoffs at. For Jim, it’s a bracelet from another planet he can’t say the name of. He loves it. The farmhands spend the day with their families. Frank’s gift to Sam is more shoveling, and Jim doesn’t get anything from him, but at the end of the night, Frank has left some hot chocolate out for them. It’s been left out so long it’s cold now, and Sam doesn’t drink his at all, so Jim drinks the cups for both of them. The next day, the farmhands stop by with gifts too. Sam loves everything he gets from them, and so does Jim, who has a new leather necklace, a reusable water bottle, and a snack container. Jim thinks he likes Halloween more, but Christmas is good too.
On New Year’s Eve, Frank starts drinking adult drinks from the moment he wakes up, and tries to convince the both of them to drink too. Sam refuses and doesn’t let Jim try any. Instead, Sam takes Jim out of the house and they walk down the road for a long time. Jim remembers a long walk from Halloween, so he isn’t bothered, even if it is colder now. He’s used to the cold at this point. They eventually arrive and a very large bonfire with a bunch of teenagers, and Jim is quickly put to work grabbing sticks by Sam, even though he’s sure all the sticks must be too wet. Before long, the farmhands show up and Jim stays near them while he searches for sticks.
At the end of the night, they set the bonfire on fire and everyone cheers. It’s amazing and huge and a little scary, but Sam isn’t scared so Jim isn’t either. Many of the teenagers drink adult drinks. Everyone is laughing. Sam, Emma, Jonny, John, and Jim make s’mores. At midnight, everyone kisses and hugs each other. Jim gets a million kisses on the cheeks and forehead, even more hugs, and then all the teenagers toss him up and down in the air because he’s the smallest and the easiest to throw. Jim thinks Halloween and New Year’s Eve might be tied for the best holiday.
Spring comes ‘round. It rains a lot, so where the ground is usually dirt and dust, it’s now mud. Jim wears a pair of Sam’s old rain boots. He stops wearing a shirt because after the freezing winter, forty degrees feels perfectly warm. The farmhands start coming to work again, so Jim sees them all the time again, and he’s happy for it because he’s no longer alone. In the time they’re all preparing to start planting seeds again, however, Sam and Jim’s mom returns to Earth and comes to Frank’s house to pick them up.
When she gets there, neither Sam nor Jim are wearing shirts. They’re wearing shorts. Sam has work boots on, but Jim is barefoot. There’s mud all over both of them and their hair is wild. Jim’s knees are all scratched up because he’s not afraid to run even though he still toddles when he walks. There are bruises left over from Frank on both of them, but especially Sam. It’s thirty-eight degrees outside. She sighs at Sam’s angry expression and crossed arms, but when she looks at Jim all she can think is that George is dead.
They don’t stay on Earth. Jim didn’t get to hug Emma, Jonny, or John goodbye. A tear makes its way down his face against his will and something thick in his throat makes it hard to breathe right. Sam looks a little sad but mostly relieved.
The trip to their ship is unfamiliar. They have to get on a plane. The airport is very white. Jim’s never seen so much white in one place. The security is a little scary, but Sam doesn’t look scared, so Jim stops being scared too. His ears make his head hurt on the plane til Sam teaches him how to pop them.
San Francisco is very crowded. Jim’s never seen so many different people, can’t remember ever seeing so many aliens, has never seen some of the clothes the people wear. He holds Sam’s hand the whole time after that.
The crew, when they first meet them, coo over Sam and Jim. Especially Jim. They talk about his dad in a way that the teenagers in Riverside never did. Sam looks angry.
Jim doesn’t leave their family’s room on the ship for the first week. He misses Emma and Jonny and John. He even wishes Frank were here, if only because it’d be more familiar. His mom lets him, and instead it’s Sam who takes him by the hand and tugs him out of the room.
It’s familiar, after that. After two weeks of just holding Sam’s hand everywhere, he branches out on his own, and Sam isn’t bothered by it at all. Jim spent plenty of winter days alone and was just fine. It’s everyone else who seems concerned. Jim doesn’t understand why. He’s one, soon to be two, and he’s alone all the time. Sam isn’t bothered, so why should anyone else be bothered?
He takes to following some of the crew around, and they let him, if only to keep him in sight. He follows people around in engineering, watches people do paperwork, and observes them practicing security measures. Sometimes he sits quietly on the bridge. Sometimes he sits quietly while Sam yells at their mom and then gets in trouble. Sometimes he follows Sam around.
He isn’t alone, but he feels alone. Everyone is busy. His dad’s death day passes and he’s two, then Halloween passes, then Christmas, then New Year’s, then he’s three and everyone is talking about how his dad is dead again. He wishes he didn’t have to wear a shirt and shoes and long pants everyday.
His mom starts trying to get him to speak. Winona has started to think it might be concerning that Jim’s never said a single word. She started to think this after the crew seemed concerned about how quiet he was.
But Sam isn’t concerned. He just hears everyone worry and looks Jim in the eyes for a good, long moment, then shrugs and declares him fine.
“He’s three and hasn’t even said his first word yet,” his mother bites out, frustrated. “That’s not healthy.”
Sam just shrugs again. “Jim’s smart. He can talk.”
Winona raises a brow, eyes widening a little. “You’ve heard him?”
“No,” Sam scoffs, rolling his eyes. “I mean, he can talk. He just doesn’t.”
Their mom shakes her head, doubly frustrated, and continues trying to coax Jim into speaking. She continues to fail at that task until Sam and Jim are finally back on Earth, in Frank’s house, for the beginning of summer.
The moment their mom leaves, Frank celebrates their reunion by sending them to do work outside. Jim, still three, has been dubbed old enough to help. Sam disagrees, and sends him to do the most menial work possible. Uncle Frank tells them he needs someone to clean the car, he doesn’t care who, so Jim cleans the car. John is no longer in high school, so therefore he’s no longer a farmhand, and doesn’t come around half as often. They’ve got a new one named Annabelle now. She’s quiet, like Jim, but instead it’s because she can’t hear. They spend a lot of time staring at each other, but she lets Jim follow her around, and it’s not long before she’s teaching him sign language.
Jim is relieved to be able to only wear shorts now. No shirt, no shoes, no socks.
They still meet up on Saturdays, but now with Annabelle, and every once in a while John swings by too.
Jim is on Earth for the 4th of July this time. Unlike Halloween and New Year’s Eve, they don’t only meet teenagers. Instead, they head into the main part of town where everyone gathers to watch the big firework show, and adults bring all sorts of food and drinks and chairs. They drink slushies and lemonade and have ice cream and popsicles. They eat hotdogs and candy and popcorn and burgers and casserole and sweet potatoes and corn and beans and he eats it all until he’s past full. They run around with sparklers and throw pop rocks and the ground with other kids of all ages. Jim falls on his sparklers and gets burned many times, but Sam shushes him into not crying and continuing to play. He has fun.
The fireworks are bright and loud and Jim loves them. He wishes he could watch them every night. He thinks the 4th of July might be tied with Halloween and New Year’s Eve. At the end of the night, Jim signs Anabelle, “See you later, alligator.” She signs back, “In a while, crocodile.” Sam sees and smiles smugly.
Jim joins preschool this year. It’s interesting at first, but he becomes bored very fast. He wishes he was back on the farm with the farmhands. He gets in trouble for getting out of his chair and playing with toys and doing assignments before the teacher is done telling them the instructions. Everything fun is against the rules and the teacher goes over everything they’re learning a million times. Jim understood the first time and had it mastered by the second. He’s bored. He spends most of his time daydreaming. The teacher – Miss Sandstone – tries to get him to speak. He doesn’t.
Instead, he winds up speaking for his first time on Halloween. They go to the haunted house again, and this time he doesn’t let himself be held by anyone. He doesn’t even hold anyone’s hand. One of the monsters, after Emma and Jonny and Annabelle got scared and scattered enough to accidentally let Jimmy out of the protective square set up around him, comes right up to Jim and crouches down in front of him. The monster grabs his shoulders and screams in his face.
But Jim isn’t afraid. Sam is next to him, and Sam has never been afraid, so Jim is never afraid either. He stands there and stares the monster in the eyes.
“Aren’t you scared, little boy?” the monster croons. “I’m gonna kill you and I’m gonna eat you right up.”
“No,” Jim says. “I’m not scared.”
Sam and the farmhands go still for a moment. The monster blinks, apparently not knowing what to do. The monster isn’t so monstrous when Jim tells him he isn’t scared, which makes Jim tilt his head curiously and smile.
“Guys, come on, let’s go while he’s distracted!” Jonny says, and then they’re all running away and screaming their way through the rest of the house. Sam just grins at Jim all the way to the end. It makes him feel warm.
At the end, Jonny and Annabelle spend many minutes praising Jim for distracting the monster and being so awesome. Sam keeps his hand on Jim’s shoulder. Emma is nodding along with the other two and giving backhanded compliments. A few days later, John will stop by and give him a dessert for being “very brave.”
Jim decides he will never be scared of a monster ever again.
Time passes and school is boring, but his friends are fun. Annabelle makes him a bracelet to match the one he got from his mom last Christmas. The farmhands now call him a “chatterbox” because now Jim has a lot to say to them all the time, but his preschool teacher is still trying to get him to say his first words. They all think he’s very funny. It doesn’t snow quite so much this year, but that’s okay. Their mom picks them up for space again, and that’s less okay.
Jim wanders around a spaceship, wishing to be back in Riverside. He spends most of his time in engineering, watching them work and sometimes asking quiet questions, or silently sitting on the bridge and watching. The rest of his time is spent following Sam around. His mom becomes convinced his first ever word is “shit” because she heard him mumble it when he dropped something once. Sam just meets Jim’s eyes and grins about it.
Eventually, he discovers the observation deck. He starts spending a lot of his time there too. He decides that it’s not space he doesn’t like. He likes staring at the stars, being up in space. He likes engineering and the bridge. He just doesn’t like being alone.
Time passes. Jim works his way through school, and Sam is the one to attend all his parent teacher conferences. Or, really, Jim daydreams through school, and the teachers don’t really like that but ignore it since he gets all A’s. He’s intensely bored and his head feels fuzzy most of the day until he finally meets everyone at home. Sam gradually gives him harder work around the farm. Their mom continues occasionally picking them up to go to space. The farmhands get switched out until Emma, Annabelle, and Jonny no longer work at the farm. Frank starts only telling Jim to clean the car, ‘cause he knows Sam won’t do it.
Their mom starts taking them to space less and less. Frank gets more and more angry with them. Frank is always saying they’re useless, lazy, ungrateful, nobodies that will never get anywhere in life, but Sam argues back and says that’s not true, so Jim knows everything is okay.
“You know,” his older brother says one night, the both of them on the porch and looking up at the stars, “you’re the reason mom’s never around anymore.”
Jim thought about that. He didn’t understand, really. “Why?”
Sam doesn’t answer that. He just keeps talking. “Dad’s dead. He’s been dead for a long time. Did you know I used to ask mom to trade you for him, so I could have him back? She just drove us home, shoved you into my arms, and told me dad was gone forever. I didn’t understand.”
Jim still doesn’t understand. Jim’s eight, Sam’s fourteen and angrier than he’s ever been, and he gives Jim a nasty look.
“I understand now,” Sam says quietly. “You look just like Dad.”
JIm thought about all the people who cooed at him on Mom’s starships, all his teachers who said his Dad would’ve paid more attention. He thinks of how every year, his Dad seems to die again and Jim gets one year older.
“But you like Dad. Mom likes Dad.”
Sam’s face twisted up until he was speaking in the same tone who used while he sweats over weeds. “I hate it – I really do. I try real hard to pretend I don’t- I don’t care and that you don’t hurt me, but- but God, Jim. You look just like him–” he reached for the front door, ready to head to bed– “but you’re nothing like him.”
He looks back at his little brother for a moment, no longer so quiet about it. “That’s why Mom can’t stand you. It’s just- it’s- you’re awful. I still wish Mom never had you. I wanted Dad, not you, and you’re not him.”
Jim doesn’t talk for two weeks after that. He just does the weeds, takes care of the corn, sweats a bucketload in the summer heat until it gets a little cooler, so then he sweats a little less. Franks yells at them, lectures Jim, and when he tells Jim he’s a nobody, Jim doesn’t feel so confident that he isn’t.
He starts hating when people bring up his dad. He’s not his dad. He’s not George Kirk. His dad is perfect. His dad is noble. His dad is awesome.
Dad is dead, and he’s been that way for eight years. He sometimes wishes everyone would just get over it. He doesn’t say a word.
One day, Uncle Frank starts lecturing them both again, telling them they’re not doing good enough work and tells Jim he’s got to clean the car more often, and Sam talks back, so Frank starts yelling. This time though, Frank’s fired up enough that he doesn’t let Sam walk away, and Sam’s still angrier than he’s ever been, so he starts yelling back. Eventually, Sam gets mad enough that he does the complete opposite of what he always does and goes quiet. He goes upstairs to his room, Frank follows, and so therefore Jim follows, quiet as a shadow even as his heart pounds.
Sam grabs a backpack and starts shoving his stuff in it, and Frank’s eyes widen for a moment before he gets even angrier. He starts telling Sam to go right on ahead and leave, nobody will care if he’s gone. Then they’re at the front door, and Jim is so scared of Sam leaving he can hardly think.
“When your mom comes back, she can deal with you,” Frank raves, on and on, and Jim doesn’t want Sam to go. “Go ahead, go! Run away! You think I give a damn?”
Frank is still chasing right after Sam, and Jim can’t think, running after them. “Where are you going?” He says, speaking for what feels like the first time in forever.
“As far as I can get!” Sam says right back, still walking right on forward, sounding so mad he’s almost teary.
“Which won’t be far enough,” Frank continues, getting right up next to Sam as he speed walks, swinging his arms around as he gestures emphatically. “This is my house, not yours, not your mother’s.”
Frank whirls around on Jim, who stops in his tracks and stares at the ground, shoulders tensed. “What do you want, Jimmy?” he snaps.
Sam stops, too, looking at him.
JIm peers around Uncle Frank at Sam. “I just don’t want my brother to go,” he says, as calm and nice as he can, even as his breath comes too short.
Frank’s face twists up in a sneer, condescending and mocking at the same time. “Well, what you want doesn’t matter. You’re no one, and I asked you to wash the car.” Frank steps forward, and JIm leans back, face screwing up even as his eyes stay wide open, shoulders coming up, ready for the hit. “How many damn times do I need to repeat myself?” he asks lowly.
Jim looks down at the ground, shifting in place, and only looks back up when Frank turns to look at Sam again. “Go,” Frank warns before walking his way right back inside.
They both know Sam won’t be let back in.
“Please stay,” Jim begs immediately, even as Sam steps forward as if to try and yell at Frank one last time.
Sam whirls around. “I can’t take Uncle Frank anymore. Mom has no idea what he’s like when she’s not around– do you hear him talking like he’s our dad?” he rants, like sweating over weeds, but much louder and more emphatic. “That’s not even his car you’re washing! That’s Dad’s car.”
Sam starts walking away again and Jim hesitates a moment before running after him.
Eventually, he finds himself walking side-by-side with his still-angry brother, who is half complaining and half reassuring as he glares down at the ground. “You’re gonna be okay; you always are. Always doing everything right. Good grades, obeying every stupid order…”
He looks at Jim again before stopping and stepping in front of him, brushing his shoulder with his hand. “I can’t be a Kirk in this house,” he says, finality ringing through his words. “Show me how to do that and I’ll stay.”
Jim searches for something- anything- to say, mouth opening and closing like a fish as he fidgets awkwardly with his pockets. He just doesn’t want Sam to go. He doesn’t even know what it means to “be a Kirk.” He doesn’t understand; he just wants his brother.
When he can’t come up with something, Sam takes a step back, looking resigned. “I’ll see you,” he says, quieter, but it sounds like a lie.
Sam lingers a moment, then turns and starts the long walk to town alongside the road.
Jim walks slowly back to the house. He grabs the bucket, hoses the water in, then mixes in the soap. He goes to the barn and grabs the sponge from where he always leaves it. He walks back.
He lets the sponge sink into the water, then dips it under slowly. He rings it out a little. He slaps the soapy sponge onto the car and starts going over it. It’s a very familiar task. He’s been doing this as long as he can remember, since before he could reach the hood.
He thinks about Halloween. He thinks about corn mazes and haunted houses.
He unlocks the car, moves onto the inside. Dusting it, wiping it down.
A blurry memory comes to mind, so old he still sometimes wonders if it was a dream and didn’t actually happen.
Monsters aren’t so monstrous when you tell them you aren’t scared.
He opens the vanity mirror and keys fall into his lap. He looks at them a moment, picks them up, and looks at the road.
He isn’t scared. His breathing speeds up.
The keys go in his pocket. He goes inside and pads silently upstairs. He grabs Sam’s favorite shirt out of his closet and swaps out his own. On his way back out the front door, he stops to put on better shoes and grab his jacket, which was a gift from one of their many rotating farmhands.
Jim slings that leather jacket over his shoulders, yanks the jingling keys out of his pocket, slams the door to his dad’s car closed behind him, clips the seatbelt, and shoves the keys into the ignition.
This car? She makes the most beautiful roaring sound he’s ever heard in his life. At least his dad had some taste. Jim has to spend a moment figuring out the pedals and the gears, which accidentally sends him crashing into a garbage can. It clangs and the filth comes spilling out, but he only grins.
Then Frank comes running out the house. “The hell do you think you’re doing, Jimmy?” He half-stumbles his way down the steps, in a rush to get to the car. To get to Jim. “Get the fuck outta that car right now before you break something!”
Jim doesn’t have any words. Not for Frank.
Instead, he stares him right in the eyes while he’s running up, puts the car in drive, smiles, and pushes down on the gas.
He’s not scared.
The car rushes forward, Jim jerks the wheel so he doesn’t run Uncle Frank over, and then steers onto the dirt road and away from the man chasing him.
Before long, he’s swerving onto the real road, going fast and hardly able to see over the dash, must less reach the pedals without moving around. He adjusts for this by unclipping his seatbelt, sitting on the edge of the seat, and tilting his head back; now, he can reach the pedals and see the road at the same time. With his foot all the way down on the pedal, he’s pushing 60– 70– 80–
The car’s ringing at him. He’s got a call. He knows it’s Uncle Frank, doesn’t want to hear his voice or what he has to say, but he taps the screen and answers anyways.
“Hey, are you outta your mind? That car is an antique. You think you can get away with this just ‘cause your mother’s off-planet? You get your ass–” Frank has to take a quick inhale– “back home now. You live in my house, buddy. You live in my house and that’s my car.” Jim’s chest is all tight again. “You get one scratch on that car? And I’m gonna whip your a–”
Jim taps the screen to hang up, then pokes the button to turn on the music and looks back up at the road. His eyes find the clips for the roof, and he undoes the one above him, then reaches past his crooked review mirror to do the other–
The roof goes flying off into the sky, flipping around behind him as he continues to zip forward. The music thrums.
He yells, as loud and as long as he can, and the music yells with him.
“I can’t stand it, I know you planned it”
He’s pushing 100– 110–
“I’m-a set it straight, this Watergate”
He sees his brother, in the distance and getting closer fast, stick out his thumb–
“I can’t stand rockin’ when I’m in here”
Jim honks over and over again, loud, loud, loud, and his brother turns ‘round and stares. Jim grins and shouts loud as he can while he waves his hand back and forth, “Hey, Sammy!”
“‘Cause your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear”
He honks some more, zipping past Sam fast as he can, turning his head from the road to smile back at him and continue waving. Sam stares on, mouth gaped open.
“So while you sit back and wonder why”
This car is old, a classic, but it’s clearly been tuned up because Jimmy’s pushing 120. He holds her steady there, just feeling the wind in his hair, laughing, smiling. The music’s loud as he can get it, his hands slapping against the wheel and staying there.
“I’ve got this fuckin’ thorn in my side”
Then the sound of sirens come.
“Oh my God, it’s a mirage”
He fixes the review mirror–
“I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s a sabotage”
–and sees the cop on his floating motorcycle. The music goes into an instrumental, squeaking and drumming, and Jim doesn’t want to stop. He whips his head around, trying to think of some way out of here–
“Citizen,” the cop says, pulled up next to him, and Jim’s head snaps over to look at him with his mouth open like he’s gonna say something. The cop jabs a finger in his direction. “Pull over.”
Jim looks back at the road, puts his foot all the way down on the pedal, and yanks the wheel over.
“So, so, so so listen up, ‘cause you can’t say nothin’”
He’s zooming down a dirt road, and he knows exactly where it ends. He and his friends and Sam have been everywhere interesting around here, and he knows there’s only a giant gate waiting for him. He’ll have to bust through it to get out of here. He has to manhandle the wheel, because the car is fast but not made for off-roading.
“You’ll shut me down with a push of your button”
He’s pushing 140–
“But yo, I’m out and I’m gone”
The cop is still on him. Pushing 150–
“I’ll tell you now, I keep it on and on”
He smashes through the gate like it’s nothing. Another instrumental. Drums, squeaky guitar. He looks from the cop behind him to the road in front of him, laughing a little to himself and breathing hard. Pushing 160–
In front of him is a canyon. There is nowhere to go but down. He reaches down, shifts gears.
“‘Cause what you see, you might not get”
He yells at top of his lungs, louder than he’s ever been in his life, switches gears again, slams the brake, yanks the wheel, scrambles across the seat, opens the door, jumps–
“You scheming on a thing, that’s sabotage”
The music fades away behind him.
For a moment, he’s flying.
Then Jim catches himself on the ledge, fumbling for a grip, heaving himself up onto his stomach and clawing his way forward, grunting with the effort.
He looks up, and the cop is stepping off his motorcycle and lifting his visor off his helmet and stepping forward almost incredulously.
Jim stands, and it feels like it’s the first time he’s ever stood up in his life.
He looks down behind him, where his dad’s car is in flames at the bottom of the canyon, then back. “Is there a problem, officer?”
The cop just looks at him for half a second. “...citizen,” he says, voice metallic with the filters in his helmet, “what is your name?”
Jim tells him with his full chest. “My name is James Tiberius Kirk.”
Later, staring at the wall of his cell in the police station, he grins and doesn’t regret a thing. He knows who he is.