Work Text:
It’s almost funny, Jim thinks, how everyone assumes his rejection of no-win scenarios was fostered by the sacrifice his father made. When that obnoxious as fuck Vulcan brought it up—the sacrifice of a ghost that Jim has never and will never know—in front of the entire student body, Jim dug his fingernails deep into the palms of his hands. Pain has been familiar, and therefore grounding, to him for many years. It had hurt enough for him to respond in a way that befit his reputation, hotheaded and recalcitrant, and enough for him to refrain from flinching, refrain from screaming.
Jim is many things, but truthful is rarely one of them. If he were ever to speak honestly about no-win scenarios, he imagines it would go like this:
He doesn't believe in no-win scenarios because he can't, because he’s spent years convincing himself that, in the worst of ways, he won. He returned to Earth as a whole person. He survived. Admitting to the possibility of of defeat would be like tearing down the foundation he’s built himself back up on. It would mean acknowledging that there are parts of him that never came back from Tarsus IV.