Impromptu Family Meetups

[smartass_captain]

It's that time of year. Holidays around every corner, family and friends dropping in unannounced, needing to be entertained and fed and plied with stories of how you've been, how is work, and all sorts of things. The thing is, for most of Jim Kirk's life he's never known any of that. It's hard to have sudden family visits when you don't have much in the way of family and aren't speaking to damn near all of them.

Which makes this day exceptionally stressful.

No Starfleet uniform today--even if Jim wanted to he's not allowed to wear any of his own clothes for where he's about to be headed. Instead he's dressed in a soft wool tunic in his preferred golden color and simple linen pants beneath the fur lined cloak he's got pulled over his clothes. Gloved hands fidget with the ties on all of this, a nervous habit he can't quite stop himself from making.

He stops his pacing when he nearly stumbles over a passer-by with how lost in thought he is and it's only then that the captain looks up at whomever he's nearly trodden upon.

"What's the best way to impress your in-laws? What's the etiquette for meeting someone's family for the first time?"

Comments

[mr_enterprise]

He can't exactly deny he regrets that this young Jim will never know the same closeness with Spock that he does, the bond that's kept them together through all their years of service and beyond, defying even 'til death do us part.' Deprived of the same loving family that he himself had, the fires of youth have forged him differently, not quite a stamp of the exact same mold. The earlier a course is diverted, the less of a change is needed to have far-reaching consequences.

But despite that, he still has the makings of an excellent starship captain, someone who's finding his place in the galaxy on his own merits rather than the memories of a man he'll never fully embody.

So neither can Kirk disagree with young Jim's assertion, and he smiles faintly, but sincerely. "As long as you've found your own happiness, that's what matters. It took me a lot longer to find what I really wanted in life, so you're ahead of me, there."

[smartass_captain]

There's much this Jim is lacking when compared through the lens of his older counterpart. So many social nets that this young captain doesn't have. How alone must he have felt? How has he carried the burdens they must with no one to support him? And yet, Jim Kirk is here now. Standing tall, surviving so many of the same things the elder Kirk has.

He's had to do it all so much younger but he's still done it.

"Time was never a luxury any of us have in my world. You'd have done it sooner if there wasn't a choice. After all. I did."