Chapter Text
Jim is nearly two decades when he finds himself fighting for a pair of defiant brown eyes for the second time in two lives.
Over the years there had been many women but, for all his trying, none have ever compared to his wife. He has never forgotten her and so none of these girls ever experienced more than a few hours of his company and even less of his attention.
Her name is Nyota Uhura, a student at the Starfleet Academy, and she reminds him painfully of her.
She has the same spark, the same iron will, and the same dignity. Her rejecting him is only the icing on the cake.
Padme would not have liked an arrogant Jim Kirk very much either.
He does not actually hold any feelings for her, she is only a child to him, after all. But her resemblance to his lost love is...compelling.
He wanted to see how far it went. How close she was to his Angel. How much of Padme she could bring back into the world before he could not bear it anymore.
He’s probably become a bit of a masochist.
And then he sees those men come up behind her: grouped together close with red cheeks and gleaming eyes like slavering beasts. He’s never seen their faces but he knows their type: big men with dark hearts, wandering hands, and a mean streak from here to Coruscant. Alone they are like rats but in a group, they are wolves, emboldened by each other’s cruelty.
For good reason, really. He would lose if he confronted them on his own.
He would lose but...so would they. While he played drunk brawler and town idiot, the girl and her friends could escape. They called him the hero with no fear once and, though it is one of the more untrue titles he has ever borne, it also rather aptly describes his approach to strategy.
They end up breaking his nose, bruising his right eye and he’s pretty sure their commander ruptured his eardrums with that whistle of his, but he’s left all four of them nursing broken fingers and bruised ribs.
It’s worth it, he decides calling for another drink, it’s worth it to save Padme’s eyes.
“You alright, son?”
Anakin wonders if he is forever doomed to meet fragments of his past in the people of this universe.
Qui Gon’s face stares back at him with the same warmth and the same compassion buried deep in the laugh lines around his mouth. It seems fitting that the eyes of the first man to see him as more than a slave lie in the face of the man who sees him as more than some drunk hick.
“You know I couldn't believe it when the bartender told me who you are,”
He almost laughs out loud, the alcohol, head trauma and the complete ridiculousness of the situation making it even funnier than it probably should be. And who am I, Captain Pike?
“Your father's son” The chosen one
He hears it loud and clear, the echo in his mind in two voices, Qui Gon’s and Pike’s.
He will never be just Ani or just Jim.
In escaping one master he gains another: fate, prophecy, everything dooming him forever to the slavery of destiny.
He definitely needs another drink for this.
“For my dissertation I was assigned USS Kelvin...Something I admired about your dad,
he didn't believe in no-win scenarios,”
Jimmy, the boy who he could and would have been if not for famine and memory, automatically flinches away from any mention of his father, of George Kirk.
But Anakin has been smiled at by the same men who kicked his mother. He has shaken hands and bowed his head to senators, queens, and emperors and been the dutiful slave to many masters, not the least of which is death itself.
He does not flinch.
The drink is bitter in his hand and it tastes like iron from the blood dripping from his nose. He does not waver when he meets Pike’s (Qui Gon’s) eyes. “Why are you talking to me?”
“That instinct to leap without looking, that was his nature too,” He pauses as Anakin remains unmoved, not even to wipe the blood from his mouth.
“Your aptitude tests are off the charts, so what is it? You like being the only genius level repeat-offender in the Midwest?”
The shadows in his eyes rise up in challenge as he bares his teeth in a parody of a smile. “Maybe I love it,”
“Or do you feel that you were meant for something better? Something special?” Pike either does not see or does not acknowledge the darkness in Jim Kirk’s eyes, the years that should not be there, could not be there.
He stares hard at the boy with blood stained teeth with nothing but conviction in his expression.
“Enlist in Starfleet. If you’re half the man your father was, then the corps could use you.”
This time Jim does laugh, “Enlist?”
Rex’s face flashes across his eyes (allmyfault) and then Ashoka’s (allmyfault) and then the faces of the whole 501st, his men, his brothers, his family.
The lance of pain through his heart twists. AllgoneallgoneallgoneAllDead- he forces himself to stop and carefully sets down the glass in his hand.
He absently wipes the blood from his mouth, the sight of it making him curl his lips bitterly.
“You guys must be way down on your recruiting quarter for the month,” he manages from around the sudden lump in his throat.
He’s choking on the sudden influx of faces and voices, drowning in memories and he hates it. If he wasn’t so afraid of tapping into the Force again he would have shattered every bottle in the bar (he still might).
And Pike is still talking.
“You can be an officer in 4 years, you can have your own ship in 8. You understand what the Federation is, don't you? It's important, It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada,”
Yes. He’s definitely heard all this before. The speech mirrors the ones he had heard in the Krech.
Anakin jerks away from the thought as if burnt, and perhaps he is/was. It is not an unfamiliar feeling.
He stands up. “We done?” Anakin doesn’t wait for a response. He’s already out the door and running for his bike.
He ignores the captain’s voice echoing behind him. He doesn’t want to hear anymore.
It feels like his entire body was back on Mustafar, back on fire- dying for the first time.
He has to get away. He can’t be around here anymore, around these people, these ghosts.
It is too much. First Padme and then Qui Gon. Jim feels haunted and hunted.
Why could they not just leave him alone? Had he not done enough to them already? Is he not already damned?
It seems like hours, hours spent driving with no destination beyond Away (anywherebuthere) before he can finally bring himself to pull over on the side of the dirt road.
He’s shaking.
He hadn’t noticed until now, but now that he no longer has the numbness of alcohol and the chill of the wind to fall back on it’s painfully obvious.
There is salt on his cheeks and his nose aches something fierce.
All in all, he feels like shit.
Jim slumps against the side of his bike, fisting his hands in the dirt and grass (so different from the sand he so often finds himself expecting).
The tears come slowly but once he starts cannot seem to stop.
He’s drowning with nothing to grab onto.
Anakin bites his lip hard, trying to contain the harsh sobs that threaten to escape. He’s trapped with no way out.
He releases a guttural scream of anguish, of grief, and bites his fist hard. He is burning.
In some ways this is worse than the suffering of his dreams and the agony of his charred flesh. Because it is something that is not real.
In this life, in this universe, all his memories have never happened and all of his grief means nothing.
Everything he had known- everyone he had fought for, fallen for, died for- has never existed here.
The knowledge is damning, the despair dragging him under until he can fight no longer.
So Jim cries, alone on the side of a deserted road a universe (a life) away from everyone he weeps for.