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The trouble is, kiddo, I am beginning to think you and I are not destined to meet.
* * *
We tried to make the world safe for you, but we tried all the wrong things
and nothing worked. The sky is full of terror and the world is falling down. We tried
and we failed, but we didn’t mean it to end this way, I swear to you. I swear to you.
[Doug, "Hour of Arrival"]
It's the last day of his father's life when Jimmy senses that it's time to come into the world. Neither of them know it yet, of course.
Sweetheart, listen to me
One day, Jimmy will learn that his birth meant the end, that his cry stole his dad's breath. That by the time he opened his eyes to see what the world was like, he was already gone forever in an explosion that was going to haunt his family for the rest of their lives.
(It's not really true, of course, he's not responsible for all that, but by the time the psychologists get to him after Tarsus it's been too late for a long time. He's the trade that George Kirk made. A soul for a soul, wasn't that fair? Wasn't that right—
His dad loved Harry Potter too. Jim hasn't read them again since he found out. At least Harry had been able to come back from the dead.)
A boy?
Jimmy will never know the sound of his father's voice, except in a recording he finds when he's fifteen and drunk, trying to find something to hold on to in the slowly spinning murk that is his world. He's awake, and about as far from sober as you can get, and the only thing lighting his face is the PADD screen that reflects on the pupils of his eyes in miniature. Like he does, on the surface of the memories that everyone else has of his father.
Let's call him Jim.
Well, Jim Kirk looks at the bottle he holds in his hand. He can barely see the edges of it, glinting in light from the PADD. Well. Hey, Dad, thanks for the save there. He takes a drink. Closes his eyes.
Jimmy tries hard not to think about the irony of that double meaning. Jim finds he's okay that it's just...there.
Jim. Jim. He rolls the name around on his tongue. Tastes the speed of it, bites its sharpness, feels its edges on his teeth. Jim. There's a solidity to it, like it's grounded. Like there's a rock at it's foundation and he's never had that before in his life. Maybe the missing rock was his Dad. Maybe this name can bring a part of him back.
Jim. He hears his father say it, and no one else. He pictures the freedom of a new name, reserved as his by the only one who hasn't actually been around to mess things up so far. A name no one else has used for him. And it's from George Kirk, sure, but for the first time in his life it's a thing he can choose to take from his dad, instead of having it thrust onto him. Jim, huh?
He'll give it a try.