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Tarsus, the planet that could've been.
Christopher Pike doesn't know what he was expecting when his feet hit the browned grass on the surface of what was once Tarsus IV. He doesn't expect the absolute silence or the burning sun or the almost desert like environment. He supposes that that's what happens when the ecosystem is ravaged by plight. Maybe he was expecting people, but only the vast dirt plains stretch on as far as he can see.
Tarsus, the planet that was but isn't anymore.
He doesn't know what he was expecting, but it isn't this, the solemn face of a war-torn child staring him down, his cheeks too sallow and his stance entirely too defensive to be anything but habit. He isn't expecting the steely voice that rings in his ears. "You're here, but you're too late. You're too late and they're dead." Pike isn't sure exactly who he's talking about, but is certainly isn't the 4,000 people who should still be alive. He can't help but wonder when exactly this child stopped being a child, but he knows it was here, on the surface of this planet.
The planet that should've been, but can't be and will never be again.
Christopher Pike should've known what to expect when that not-child became a refugee on the ship that saved him. He expected kicking and screaming, but this not-child has people to protect, eight little ducks all in a row, who follow his every order and refuse to be pried from his spindly malnourished arms. Pike doesn't know who this not-child is, but he hopes that he will fight like he fought that husk of a planet. He hopes he'll heal, especially now that he is allowed to be a child again.
A child that might've been once but hasn't been for a while.
Christopher Pike doesn't know what to expect when he walks into that bar in Iowa, in a seedy little town where nothing happens and dirt stretches as far as he can see, so much like that not-planet from all those years ago. He certainly doesn't expect to see a bloody young man with familiar blue eyes. He'd recognize those eyes anywhere, the eyes of James T. Kirk, the not-child who he never really knew, Pike doesn't second guess himself once when he decides that he has a duty to help this not-man like he helped him before.
James Kirk, a man who isn't yet but will be.
Christopher Pike should've known what to expect when he learns the circumstances of the Kobayashi Maru, he should've, but then again he never does. And when his not-son speaks to him in the same steely voice that he'd used during their first meeting on Tarsus, the not-planet, he knows exactly how important this is to him, and he stands down. Because the right choice and the best choice are never one and the same. He stares his not-son in the eyes and for a brief moment, he understands the storm that rages behind his eyes.
James Kirk, the man who always has been but refuses to be.
Christopher Pike never expected to see his son ready to wage war on the galaxy, prepared to fight everything to save a planet that isn't his. He knows why, knows exactly why James T. Kirk, the leader of the Tarsus Nine won't let Vulcan perish, even when he can't help at all. James T. Kirk, a caring man, father to eight other not-children just like him, will never willingly watch the birth of another not-child on a planet that couldn't hold against the pressure of fate.
James T. Kirk, a hero who has been for a while and will be continue to be, so help him, God.
Christopher Pike knows exactly what to expect when he wakes up from his torture induced coma. He's right this time. He's consistently underestimated Kirk, but this time he's right because James Kirk, his son, the boy that he'd unknowingly adopted on a dying planet so long ago, doesn't believe in no-win scenarios. If he had, a child would've died on Tarsus IV and Captain James Tiberius Kirk would never have been born, but Kirk is an inevitability.
Captain James Tiberius Kirk wasn't before, but he is now, and he always will be. It's written in the stars themselves.