A 5 Headcanons request from @littlestartopaz. “Okay, let’s see…. New Star Trek world, where old Kirk came through with old Spock.”

Oh my God I love it, it would be a mess, we’re gonna do double headcanons for it, I love these guys.  We’re gonna need a read-more on this sucker, and I swear to God that this is only ten headcanons, but it got so out of hand.

• Through methods unknown but probably involving the Nexus, ex-Admiral James T. Kirk got snatched off the bridge of the Enterprise just before the collapse that would have killed him, and between one blink and another he’s on a sleek silver-and-white ship with an elderly Vulcan at the controls, bursting out of…what, a black hole? Maybe he’s dead after all, because what the fuck.

• “Who the hell are you?” Kirk blurts before he can think it through, and the Vulcan spins around like…well, like a human, startled and alarmed.
• “Jim?” the Vulcan demands after a long pause, and that look of unsuccessfully repressed shock is familiar.
• “Spock?” Kirk half-shouts.  And then they’re being sucked into a giant tentacled ship and it’s suddenly very hard to figure out what’s going on, what with the swarms of Romulans and everything.  

• Actually Kirk figures it out pretty quick on the Nerada, because Nero cackles for three minutes straight upon the revelation that they have him on board.  So Kirk learns that he’s officially dead, has been officially dead for quite a while—no wonder Spock looked like he was having a heart attack, and no wonder even Spock, with the lengthy Vulcan lifespan, looks old—and he’s a Federation hero, back in that other universe.  This information is not terribly comforting, because all the laurels in the world won’t help the fact that he’s currently in the wrong universe, some hundred years in the past, on a ship full of unstable Romulans following their criminally insane captain headlong into trouble.

• When he orders them marooned on Delta Vega, the swell of Vulcan like a great red pearl in the sky, he leans close to Kirk’s ear and whispers, “I destroyed the Kelvin, did you know?  I don’t even know if you exist in this universe, Admiral.”  Kirk remembers the ship his parents served on when he was born, his earliest memories are of the Kelvin’s smooth walls and the time he managed to fall out of a Jefferies tube into the medical bay.  The news of the loss hits him so hard he feels like his ribs might break.

• Being marooned on a foreign planet with Spock, minimal supplies, and no options is frankly the most reassuringly familiar thing that’s happened to him today.  Spock catches him up on the events that actually landed them here, and Kirk offers the extremely minimal information at his disposal regarding his not-death.  They fall into their habitual rhythm with ease, and do all right for themselves given the circumstances.

• Standing in a cave, a fire casting bright light over the icy walls, Kirk pulls Spock into a hug, and for once in his life Spock goes willingly, and is brutally sincere when he says, “It has been a very long hundred years without you, my old friend.”

• Vulcan collapses before they’ve even had time to get their bearings, let alone get off the planet—Nero has been planning this for twenty-five years, not even James T. Kirk can stop it.  Kirk has seen Spock in a hundred thousand tortures over their time together, and he’s never seen anything like the agonized grief on his face now.  Spock sinks down to his knees in the snow as they stare up at the sky and Kirk kneels next to him.

• “All my people,” Spock whispers, and when Kirk reaches out to grab his arm in a mute show of sympathy, a brief brush of skin is enough to send a bolt of pain through Kirk like an iron bar, touch telepathy run rampant. Kirk has some experience with genocide, though, and just readjusts his grip so that his thoughts aren’t impinging on Spock’s mind.
• It occurs to him that he’s never seen Spock cry before, and it’s not something he particularly wants to see again.

• And then an escape pod crash lands and a kid in a Star Fleet issue parka comes screaming down a glacier with a blood-red beast on his tail and, well, Kirk and Spock have always been big believers in solving the life-threatening problems now so that they’ll be around to deal with the trauma later, or so McCoy always said.  (For a moment the lack of Bones’ dry remark is enough to make his throat ache—he’s dead, in Spock’s time, and Kirk is dead in his own time, and the Leonard Horatio McCoy here doesn’t know them.  It’s like losing him three times over, all at once.)  So they beat back the blood-red beast with a torch and pull the kid into the cave and the kid mutters a perfunctory thanks, pushing the hood of the parka back, and Kirk is staring into very familiar blue eyes.  Harder, darker, but still like looking in a mirror.

• Spock’s never been one for prayer—illogical—and he has bigger problems at the moment—Vulcan—but he takes a moment, looking at the two men, to wonder what he did to deserve this sort of disaster.  One Jim is like herding Klingon warbirds—just when you think you’ve got him, there’s a flashy distraction and he’s off again.  Dealing with two, one of them apparently a half-feral child who is both younger and angrier than any version of Kirk he’s ever handled, promises to be downright nightmarish.

• There’s a loaded pause where the new kid and Kirk eye each other.  This isn’t Kirk’s first rodeo, though, so he offers a wry smile and starts to say, “Nice to meet you, Jim.”  He only gets about a word and a half in before the kid says shortly, “I appreciate you two saving my life.  I’m Jim, Jim Kirk.  Who the hell are you?”
• Kirk’s mouth twists.  “I’m Jim Kirk, too.  From…”
• “The future,” the kid observes.  No one ever accused any version of Kirk of being stupid, after all. “So you’re me?  Then why didn’t you do something about Nero, if you knew what was going to happen?  And who the hell is that?”
• Spock’s perfect Vulcan mask is back in place when he holds up his hand in the traditional salute and says, “I am Spock, of course. It is very pleasing to see you, old friend, even if I am unacquainted with this version.”
• Spock seems like he’s planning to explain their temporal and universal dislocation, but the kid bursts out laughing before he has a chance, a harsh sound that echoes sharply around the caves.  “Spock?  Bullshit.”

• Spock and Kirk look at each other and negotiate terms for proof of their identities, and the kid has what looks like the edge of a panic attack under the mind meld—Kirk knows what one looks like, remembers having them—but handles it like a captain, which is to say he pulls himself together immediately once the connection breaks.  It comes out that the kid—Jim, Kirk thinks, and it’s uncomfortable thinking of someone else by his name, but it is what it is—was on the Enterprise against orders and has been marooned here too. By Spock.  Who is in command of the Enterprise.  After the destruction of most of the rising class and a good percentage of the Fleet.  And Vulcan.  

• “I hate this universe,” Kirk says to no one in particular.  The kid laughs again, a little more wry, a little more amused.  

• They find Scotty (Kirk lingers in the back with his hood up so that they don’t have to answer too many awkward questions, because even with thirty or forty years between them, he and Jim look too much alike to be anything but related) and they pack the kid off to the Enterprise with him and they wait. It’s surprisingly terrible, being forced to wait while their younger selves get into trouble.  Spock handles it best, naturally, managing to project his usual aura of calm while Kirk paces, does a few unsolved equations, and tries not to wish he was in the black with the kid.  When a ship finally turns up to collect them—on the orders of Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the Enterprise, no less—they go gratefully, and they reach Earth just in time for Spock to all but grab his younger self by the collar and keep him from abandoning Star Fleet.  

• Kirk, on the other hand, finds the kid sitting on a balcony well out of the way, overlooking a monument.

• “The Kelvin,” the kid says without looking up to see who it is.  “Eight hundred souls saved by Commander George Kirk’s sacrifice.” The words have the lilt of a familiar spiel, repeated back.  “I knew him, where you came from, didn’t I.  Or you did.”
• “I—yeah, I did,” Kirk says, sitting down beside the kid.  “He was a good father, he and Mom were really happy together.  I joined Star Fleet on his recommendation, youngest captain in history.  You’ve got me beat on that one, though.”
• “Yeah,” the kid mutters.  “I guess growing up a delinquent comes in handy sooner or later. You probably never got arrested, though.”
• “Not on Earth,” Kirk says wryly, but the kid doesn’t laugh, not even the hard bark from before.
• “I did,” the kid says, and he still hasn’t looked at Kirk. “Repeat offender.  From when I was fourteen until three years ago.  I was slated for expulsion from the Academy before this whole thing, too.”
• “Expulsion?” Kirk says, startled.  The kid is brilliant, might even give him a run for his money—he makes a mental note to see if the kid plays chess.  Might as well, Bones always did say that only Jim Kirk could handle Jim Kirk.
• “Cheated on the Kobayashi Maru.  You probably never would have done it.”
• This time it’s Kirk who laughs.  “I cheated, yeah.  Programmed in a bug to let me take out the warbirds.  I got a commendation for ‘original thinking,’ though, not a citation.”
• The kid’s lips press thin.  “Sounds like you’re charmed, Captain.”  He snorts, derisive.  “Spent my whole life not living up to my dad and now that I finally managed that, I’m going to not live up to myself.”  Kirk’s not sure what to say to that—the kid saved the Federation at twenty-five, if that’s not living up to the Kirk name he doesn’t know what is.  There’s a long pause.  It aches, the taut silence of someone dying to ask something, and the kid finally blurts, “Tarsus IV.  You weren’t there?”
• Kirk lets out a long breath.  Of course that’s what the kid wants to know.  When he was twenty-five he was still fucking haunted by Tarsus, and he’s obviously lived a downright cushy life compared to the kid.  “Yeah, I was. I was one of the survivors.  You ended up there too?”
• “Slated for execution for ‘delinquent behavior,’” the kid says.  “You manage to save anyone?”
• “Myself and eight others, yeah,” Kirk says, and the guilt still tastes like copper even though it’s been decades now, for him—only eleven years, for this Jim, though, and damn but that wound must be fresh, just off watching Vulcan’s destruction at the hands of his father’s murderer.  “You?”
• The kid smiles for the first time since they met, and it’s warm and surprisingly sweet given the bruises still mottling his skin, making his blue eyes gleam.  “Thirty. I was captured and Kodos was mad as fire, but they lived until Star Fleet came for us.”
• Kirk takes a deep breath and lets it out.  “Good,” he says, and wonders what he would want to hear, in the kid’s position.  “Thirty on Tarsus and some three trillion this week across the Federation.  I think I’ll try living up to you, instead.”
• The kid whips around to look at him, like Kirk’s said something terrible, and stares for a long minute.  Kirk stares back, offering a small smile of his own, and waits for the kid to shake his head and laugh, self-deprecating.  The kid does, and the tension uncoils until the two of them are sitting in silence, looking at the Kelvin memorial.  

• Kirk doesn’t rejoin Star Fleet.  It aches, to watch the Enterprise fly away without him, with Uhura tall and fierce at the comms, Chekov and Sulu working in perfect concert, Bones and Spock—both dark-haired and proud—at the kid’s side.  But he’s never been good at being selfish, not when it comes to the people he cares about, and damn it, he cares about the kid.  The kid needs to be Captain Kirk, and the galaxy needs him to be Captain Kirk, and he can’t take that away, so he politely declines the commission they offer him—it helps that they offer it with a look of apprehension, as if considering what a Jim Kirk with a lifetime of experience breaking the rules behind him must be like.  He goes with Spock to help ease relations between the Federation and New Vulcan, instead, and it’s strange.  He has people call him James, these days.  The kid can have Jim.