Chapter Text
For as long as he could remember, his life had been one turbulent tumble after another.
He'd been destined for it; to be surrounded by a life of madness and chaos, starting with the moment of his very first screams. Cradled in the vacuum of space, he'd been too tiny to understand what as happening. Winona had been crying, and George had been filled with acceptance and sadness. His first breath had been one of the last his father had had, and then part of the world he would never know had ended in fire. His mother had been screaming, and the dark, starry expanse of space had filled with star ship debris, and even though she was still there, he'd lost a part of his mother then, and he would never know any differently.
His life had revolved around his mother and his brother: a loud household filled with screams of anger and cries of desperation, and he hadn't understood. He hadn't understood what was wrong, why Sam was screaming or why Mom was crying, and then Winona was just gone. She'd disappeared up into the black for months on end, making herself scarce and leaving them in the care of their grandparents.
Then she'd married Frank.
Frank hadn't been a horrible man, not in the way that old 21st Century television shows and movies liked to portray a stepfather. He'd had a temper, heavy handed like a drunken man could be, but when his mind had been his own he'd never once raised a hand against Jim or Sam. Frank had grown up with Jim's parents; his Mom and the man that she never talked about, that no one ever talked about, and he'd often say that Jim was too much like George.
Frank was the only person who would talk about George for the longest time; like he wasn't scared of the ghosts and the demons the name conjured up. He got it, in a way, understood that Jim wanted to know who the man that had given his life for him was. So, Frank would spend hours out in the barn with Jim, talking about what it had been like growing up with Winnie and George, answering any questions that he'd had. They'd built up the old cherry Corvette that his Mom had been hiding under a tarp, making it glisten and purr, and then when she'd gone up into the black that next time, Frank had left the keys out where he knew Jim could reach, and had turned a blind eye while Jim tried to exorcise his father's ghost.
Frank had tried to defuse Winona, when she'd finally gotten back, but she'd been too livid by that point, had stewed in her anger for too long, so she sent Jim to a colony with his aunt, uncle and cousins to keep him out of her hair.
Iowa had been boring and, in comparison to the corn fields and dust roads, Tarsus IV had been heaven. Heaven with a pastel green sky and faint, dainty, clouds. The grass had been blue, shifting and swaying with deep, dark cobalt strands that made everything look like the ocean. The crops had been a stark white color, like the Tarsus sun had bleached all the color out of them, and he'd liked to run through them until his clothes and his skin were covered in a faint white dust.
He'd gotten so used to being around them, his aunt and uncle with their smiles and their voices, his cousins with their laughter and their bright eyes. So used to them, in fact, that Jim had stopped looking up, had stopped trying to find a shooting star up in the pale green sky. He'd stopped waiting for his Mom to come back for him.
Then, spongy orange spores had started to appear on the snow white crops.
Everything had died, and then there was Kodos - the brilliant, benevolent Governor who had cared for them, who had held festivals and had personally come to their school, who had taken an interest in Jim. Saying he was bright, saying he was brilliant, that he was going to be somebody great someday, like Jim mattered. In the end, though, Kodos had taken matters into his own hands.
Four thousand dead, and Jim had disappeared into the dark blue and black forest with a small band of children. They'd been scared, all of them, and he'd been so hungry that he'd stopped actually feeling it, like the gnawing feeling had gotten tired of having nothing to eat so it had decided to eat him instead. And he'd been so scared, but he'd stayed as strong as he could, trading favors that his body didn't know how to give to guards in exchange for something, just anything for them to eat.
He'd cried himself to sleep and had whimpered for his Mom so many times that he just stopped believing Winona would come.
But then she had come, after all, with the rest of Starfleet, strutting down onto the planet and putting a phaser hole through the head of a guard that had forced him down onto his knees and stuffed his mouth full. She'd gathered him up in her arms, had held him close while he trembled, and even though he knew it had cost her that the first thing he had said had been about his babies, she had personally made sure that the kids, his kids, had been found.
Thirteen years old, and his mother had whisked him back to Earth where he'd been given to a therapist he didn't want to talk to, and a dietitian who made him behave like an animal. Everyone had treated him like he was made of that fine china that his grandmother had saved for Sunday dinners. They'd all given him a wide birth, handling him with kid gloves, and they didn't seem to understand that they were just making it worse for him.
Frank hadn't commented about how he would store food away though, and he'd even started getting the replicator to produce non-perishables, things that he would leave out that he knew Jim would take. He had let Jim scream about it when they were alone, had let him take his anger out on various things around the house, and then he'd showed Jim how to clean it all up, so Winona wouldn't know there had been a mess to begin with. When he'd noticed that Jim needed an outlet, something to do with himself, he'd taught him how to build a hoverbike. Frank had taught him how to feel sane again, had showed him how to focus on something when he felt like he was falling through thin air.
Then there had been the combine accident that Jim knew wasn't an accident, and Frank had died.
Frank died, Sam ran away, and his Mom disappeared back up into the black. His world bottomed out all around him and he was forever caught in a phase where he felt like he was falling. So he'd built things: hoverbikes; little robots that maneuvered around the house and did a majority of the upkeep because they were programmed to. He'd made scanners that kept people out and he reprogrammed the entire replicator so nothing had dairy or wheat in it, later taking out peanut oil too.
He got defensive, he got cocky, and then the bar fight happened. Then Chris Pike happened, and then he finally had a place to put his feet down again when he met a stranger with a thick accent and whiskey breath on the shuttle who looked just as lost, and world weary, as he did.
Then the Romulans happened; Vulcan was destroyed and the 'Bridge Incident' happened. He had captaincy by proxy; he rode a death drill and he saved a planet even though they lost one.
Somewhere in between all of this, he became friends with his First Officer, the same one who had caused the 'Bridge Incident'.
Then they were back on Earth, with the services and the memorial ceremonies, and he'd felt too big for his skin. He'd been itching to get out, to get away and just disappear somewhere, anywhere. And Spock had made a quiet throwaway comment,on how his family owned property in a rural part of Canada, since it used to be his mother's old house. He'd jumped at the chance.
He'd made a friend; someone who played chess with him, someone who challenged him, and who wouldn't let him get too ahead of himself. Someone who pulled him back in, and someone who wouldn't let him think lowly of himself, because Spock seemed to think he was better than that.
That friendship had transferred over onto their working lives, when he'd gotten the Enterprise, with the chance to hand pick his crew, because he wanted the same people he had served with when they'd lost Vulcan; he trusted them, knew them. And life had been good.
And then Nibiru had happened.
Then, Spock had written him up for going against the Prime Directive.
Then, Pike had died.
John Harris had happened.
Khan had happened.
And then he had died.
Except, he'd woken up, to the stark whiteness of a hospital room, so similar to the sickbay he was used to, and a wave of pain had washed over him as his body had tried to acclimate itself to being functional once more. He hadn't understood, because he had died, he knew he had died, and people didn't just come back from that. His father hadn't, Frank hadn't, neither had Amanda or Pike, so there was no reason that he should have.
But, Bones was there, calling him out for being over dramatic even though he hurt and there was a gruff concern, in that familiar voice, that had him relaxing back onto the bed. It was then that he felt a faint pressure on his hand, tracing soft lines along his veins, and his eyes shifted, searching even though he felt like he was falling, tumbling. His world was disappearing because he didn't understand.
Brown eyes were staring at him, and even though they were dark and bottomless, there was a brightness in them and the barest hint of a smile, on those full lips. His own twitched up in response, and even that hurt, and it must have showed, either from the biobed readings or from the groan that he no doubt let out. A grumbling sound came from Bones, and then he felt the barest of pinches to his neck, and the pain almost instantly receded.
Spock was still watching him, though, gazing at him like Jim was the center of the entire universe, and he flushed under the attention.
"Jim."
Spock said his name like it was a religion, like it was the air he needed to breathe, and even though he had the unshakeable feeling of falling upon him still, he suddenly felt like the world was completely under his feet for the first time in forever, and a smile bloomed across his face.
"Spock."