kirktastic | [Need to Punch Something] -- [Kirk and Kirk]

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[Need to Punch Something] -- [Kirk and Kirk]

Between finding out about Alex, finding out about Spot, and finding out that the bridge had gotten something from the planet below, Kirk was... well, frustrated wasn't quite the word. Stressed was definitely it, and there was one thing (other then alcohol, and he was refusing to go that low right now) that worked to get him ... okay TWO things including sex, but that wasn't (amazingly) on his mind either.

He wanted to punch something. Hard. Jim sounded like a good idea for a sparring partner right now.

With a fast comm to Jim, he had himself a sparring partner as he got off shift. He went back to his quarters and pulled on the same basic clothing he had worn back at the Academy when teaching classes - no formal gi, just loose shorts and a tee shirt.

He glanced around the gym, wondering if he had beat Jim there. When he didn't spot his counterpart, he found a flat, open spot and started to stretch out. Briefly, he wondered if pulling out safety equipment would be a good idea. At least the gloves. It'd keep his knuckles from ending up with bruises... and putting any on Jim.

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"Hey." Jim reached out, a hand on Kirk's shoulder, concerned etched in his features. "Everything might have changed forever. Everything had the potential to change. A lot did. A lot--a surprising lot--didn't. Whatever you're comparing this, yourself, anything to, it doesn't matter. It's not certain. Some of it might go better, some worse, but it's all yours, right?"

"I wish I knew." Kirk admitted, looking to Jim, "Ever since I met Prime, and you, and your Spock, I've been wondering about that. How much of it is mine? How much is a fate... that I couldn't have escaped no matter how much I tried?"

Jim laughed dryly. "Imagine finding out your whole life has been played out for millions as fiction," he said. "But I guess you did, didn't you? Doesn't help that it was all on tape hundreds of years ago. I can't think that way, Jim. Fate, what's written--I can't operate that way. I have to believe it is our own, that we simply harbor qualities that push us in certain directions. There are likely infinite universes out there. Universes where we're farmers, or street musicians, or dictators. What if we're just more likely to intersect with those that share more in common with us?"

"Can't imagine you being anything but a captain." He teased a little, but shook his head, "I don't know what I can imagine yet. This just... all seems a little too like coincidence. I always believed fate didn't exist... until I ran into the hundred year older version of the Vulcan who hated my guts on a nearly lifeless ice ball."

Jim was silent for a moment. He had pondered this too, until his head hurt and a sort of vague panic he wasn't too familiar with anymore welled up within him.

"There are some things," he said slowly, breaking the silence, "I just have to agree with myself to believe despite not knowing for certain. I've never understood ancient religions. But maybe I'm not too far off when I profess my faith in certain things. The basic decency of human nature--or rather, or our ability to overcome our baser instincts. The value of compassion. And... that there's no such thing as fate. Without those three things, I can't operate in this world. So maybe, for me, it doesn't matter if they're true or not. It's how I have to order my world, or at least how I view it. Or I can't function."

Kirk looked at Jim in silence, then said quietly, "Some of the ways we're different, I guess. I learned a long time ago that people aren't all capable of decency and would rather protect themselves and those they're closest too and hell with everyone else in the world. How..." His fingers tightened, and he whispered, "How can you say everyone has compassion, when you lived through that?" Tarsus. "...Vulcan exploding... Earth almost doing the same... seven ships. Someone else that's lost any compassion they might have had."

Jim shook his head. "You misheard me," he said. "I said the value of compassion. I also said that it mattered more to me that I believed in decency than it being true. I believe that I bring more good into this world by believing it to be possible. Not because I make it so by thought alone, but because I, as a person, can't function if I believe there's nothing to be done about the evil I see.

"That doesn't mean I'm blind to the fact that not everyone is good. That not everyone means well. Do you think I'd be alive, be where I am today, if I went traipsing through the universe thinking no one ever meant me any harm? My point is that if I stop believing that we're capable of doing better, I lose something essential in me. My belief that I can make things better. My belief that people can change--not everyone, and maybe not enough. But I need to believe in something, even if intellectually I know it's not always true, so I can work towards making it true. 'Maddest of all--to see life as it is, and not as it should be.'"

He sighed.

"Would it help, Jim? For me to tell you about... him?"

"...maybe that's the difference between us." Kirk whispered, not looking at Jim for this, but across the room. "Maybe that's what's changed us. You still have that, and need it to function... and I don't."

He shook his head, "...I don't... I don't want to hear about him. He's dead, it's all happened, and nothing can change it. Evidently not even being in another universe."

He realized, suddenly, how wrong it would be to tell Jim Kodos was still alive. He could, maybe, discretely find out where he was now, try to guard against what had happened. The murders he would not commit, but would be added to his name anyway. Have him taken into custody, perhaps, Lenore saved from herself.

No. Kirk didn't need to know that.

"Then what drives you?" Jim said, a weird, sinking feeling in his gut, not wanting this to be true, not wanting something so fundamental to be between them. Because that was the core of himself, as much as he could tell. It was something he'd only really worked out recently, when questioned and challenged about the way he saw the world. When it came to writing his logs and reports and having to analyze what had been behind the decisions he'd made on the fly. "Without that, I don't think I've have joined Starfleet. After that... at 14, I was done, Jim. It was this, whatever it is I'm saying is so essential to my being, that let me overcome it. I know you have compassion within you. I've seen it work. I know you believe in a greater good."

"...Pike found me when I was right about twenty." Kirk said very, very quietly. "I had no intentions of ever joining until he found me in that bar. I joined because he challenged me, and I never back down from a challenge. What happened to you, after Tarsus? ...I ran away. I ran from them, the doctors who refused to leave me alone so I could think, who tried to drug me because I couldn't sleep, who kept telling me it'd be alright."

His fingers squeezed hard against each other, "I spent five years of my life learning how to live on the streets. I could tell you a lot of bullshit about how I lived, how I finally got my first cycle in a gamble that ended up with me in the hospital and then having to sneak out because I couldn't pay and wouldn't give them my information. About fights and trying to learn because I didn't want to be a bum for the rest of my life." His lips twitched - smile, frown, grimace, hard to say. "Took fifteen credits worth of classes before I even got into the Academy. At least that's what I tested out of."

"What drives me? Before the academy, survival. Before I got on this ship, proving myself. Now? ...Fuck if I know sometimes. Still want to prove myself, but I want to protect them all. This ship and its crew and anyone else who appears here." He closed his eyes, "Maybe this is still just one big challenge, and I'm determined to keep going at it."

Jim felt, curiously, both relieved and horrified. Horrified because he hadn't known about the intervening years between Tarsus and the Academy. Relieved because he felt that it was possible that Jim had no idea what drove him.

He didn't have to. There was still something, something within both of them, that had brought them here. And even if they were both wrong--it might be the same thing.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe you don't need to know, yet. Maybe what's important right now is doing it. I'm not saying you'll ever feel or believe the things I do. But maybe you just don't know yet why you're doing it. Maybe I don't."

It was now his turn to look off into the distance.

"I went home," he said quietly. "I went home, thinking I'd never be a child again, that all of that had been taken from me and anyway I didn't want it back because I knew too much, now, to ever be that innocent again. That trusting. But my parents seemed to think I was a baby. Mom hardly let me out of her sight and Dad, the way he'd look at me..." He looked at Kirk, focusing on him and smiling a little in chagrin. "I know it doesn't sound that bad. You probably wish that's how it had been for you. But at that age, I was insulted. They'd ordered everything around being there for me. Sam resented it, all that attention on me. It only made me feel like a freak. And they tried so hard to be good... I made it through school, kept my head down and studied so I could apply early to the Academy. I ran away to Starfleet, thinking, 'They failed 4,000 people. I'm going to make sure they don't fail more.' Got there at seventeen, resenting the whole system, until I realized that the system was people. And that people, Starfleet, basically wanted good things. And the only way to make sure those things happened was to be part of it. A huge part of it. Out there, where I could take action. Make things right again, so other people didn't have to go through what I did. Or worse. I don't know how you did it. I don't think I could have aced those exams, if I hadn't worked my butt off in school."

It hadn't helped him, socially, to be admitted early with such high scores--that had gotten leaked--but once again, this version had shown him up. It was a good thing he wasn't of a resentful temper. He didn't envy Kirk his past.

"...amazing, how... just how different all that is, even if we ended up in the same place." Kirk closed his eyes, bringing up a leg so he could wrap an arm around it. "I hated Starfleet for what I thought they failed to do. Sam... Sam I lost before Tarsus. He ran away from home when I was eleven.. didn't see him again until he appeared on this ship.

Being smart in school meant I got laid. A lot."

"I hated them too, don't get me wrong. But I saw what they could be. Later, I realized that they were just people who had done their best. But I guess I had to wait until I'd failed enough to realize that."

Jim chuckled.

"I guess it got me laid, a bit, but it also got me beat up and mocked. Okay, maybe 'beat up' was a little strong, and it wasn't just because of that, but... No, what I meant was, if you grew up that way, without finishing high school, you must have been pretty intimidating, intellectually." He grinned. "Wonder what happened."

Kirk smirked just a little, "I just learned how to fight back. I didn't go to high school, at least officially, but I was in schooling on Tarsus." For him, school itself didn't mean much anymore... but he loved to learn. "Never want to stop learning, though. I get classes from Starfleet that I take." He admitted, grinning just a little, "Working on another major... but don't spread the word."

Jim raised his eyebrows. "Your education must have been a lot better than mine. I sure didn't know what I needed to by 13 to pass the entrance exams. And don't worry. I won't breathe a word. What in?"

"By thirteen?" Kirk looked confused about that. "What do you mean by thirteen? And... well, I'd like to work towards a major in Helm/Nav, almost to a minor now." He shrugged a little, "I feel... weird if I'm not learning something new." A little laugh, "I guess... the bookworm I was as a kid never went away."

"If you didn't go to high school," Jim said, confused now. He frowned. "How old were you on Tarsus, Jim?"

"...I was eleven when I ended up there. I was fifteen when I got back to Earth." He said cautiously, "What about you?"

"I was only supposed to be there for a year," Jim said. "I was thirteen. Turned fourteen on the way home." He shrugged. "I was only saying, if you ran away after that, I was wondering how you learned enough to pass the exams. It was just an idle thought--mock-jealousy at you showing me up again." He grinned, to show it was indeed mock. "I'm impressed you did what you did, Jim. You should be really proud. Whatever your reasons."

Only a year? Kirk hesitated, then asked quietly, "Why were you on Tarsus at all?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but... had to ask.

"I was so antsy to go off-world," he said. "Always threatening to stow away on some merchant ship. I didn't mean it, of course, but my parents saw my interest was serious, and arranged for me to stay with some relatives who were colonists there. So I could see what it was like, traveling, living on another planet, being away from Earth." He looked away wistfully. "I loved it. Until..." He refocused on Kirk, shrugging off the memory. "You know." His brow furrowed. "Why? Why were you?"

Kirk felt a shiver go down his spine, "...Mom ended up marrying... this guy name Frank. He didn't know how to deal with Sam and I.. Not... a nice guy. In fact, he ended up hating us. He let Sam run away, never ever went after him. When Sam ran away... I.." He looked almost sheepish, "I stole my dad's antique car that Frank wanted to sell... and ended up driving it over a cliff in front of a cop. Got put in jail... because they didn't know who I was. Frank pretended not to know me, and they couldn't find Mom, so I ended up with relatives on Tarsus."

Jim started up, horrified.

"As punishment?" He couldn't keep the anger from his voice. "Jim..." His heart broke for the boy Kirk had been--he had been.

"Don't. Don't..." He gave Jim a look - he didn't want that. "I'm me, now. I deal with it."

Jim shook his head. "Just... let me be angry, for a minute," he said. "It's not pity to be pissed off. That's me."

He wasn't sure Kirk did deal with it. But that wasn't his business, right now.

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