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Summary:

Jim's managing, alright? It's not exactly as if there's a guidebook on how to be a Protector--Sentinel--whatever it is he's supposed to be. He's had to figure it out as he goes and honestly, he's doing a pretty good job. He hasn't fallen into himself so far that he can't claw back out. And if he ever does? If he's ever so caught up in something (or nothing) that he can't find his way out?

Jim tries to steer his mind away from the nagging thought, from the threat of being so thoroughly lost. He's fine. He's managing.

Chapter 1: Too Much, Not Enough

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Ever since he was little, he noticed things. He knew when Frank came home smelling of perfume his mom didn’t wear, he knew the moment when his mom noticed. He could hear each raindrops impact on the roof, could feel every single hair stand on end when Frank came in smelling of alcohol. He knew when his mom was leaving again because of the way her whole body relaxed and her heart rate slowed, calm and pleased. He knew when Sam lied and when he told the truth.  

He also knew that he had pockets of time that just—went missing.  

At first it doesn’t mean much. He’s at school and then he isn’t. He’s at home in his room, and then he’s out in the field behind the house. He’s at the quarry, and then he’s still there—but three hours later.  

He doesn’t tell anyone. He doesn’t want to be different. He doesn’t want to be the space boy with a dead daddy and a mom that doesn’t stick around. But he is, so he isn’t going to add anything else to the list.  

It’s fine, no one really notices. Frank is a negligent caretaker on the best of days, Sam has his own worries, and Mom isn’t on planet long enough to know she has children, let alone that one is experiencing trouble. His teachers think him smart but lazy, and he doesn’t really have any friends.  

But then it starts happening more often—time passes him by. He starts to figure it out, find the triggers. One day it’s the shine of a mirror. The next a particular scent—honeysuckle, even though he knows there isn’t any honeysuckle for at least a mile. And then the hum of the replicator, the sound of the electricity running through the wires captivates his whole self. Once, a terrifying once, it’s his own heartbeat, and he’s so focused on it that time seems to slow, that the beats of his heart seem to slow until they stop all together and Jim is paralyzed by what must be his death. And then it’s over and Jim shakes until morning.   

He starts to go a little mad, maybe. One thing, catching his attention so thoroughly that he loses himself in it, that time goes by while he stands still. It’s not normal, not right.  

But Jim is a smart kid; his teachers were right about that. And just as he finds the triggers, he finds what keeps him here, keeps him present and moving in time like he should. If there’s enough going on, (but not too much, too much is bad and Jim has a lot of experience trying to find the balance; culminating with him in the hospital for three days unconscious from ‘unknown’ causes) he can’t focus on one thing, he has to trick himself into paying enough attention, into not becoming engulfed.  

So he chews strong flavored gum and has music almost constantly playing. He digs his nails into his palm, and he smells the lavender wash they use on their clothes. Always at least two senses engaged. Always something happening to pull him out of focus on another. His teachers call him disruptive, unable to focus. They seem unable to make up their minds.  

In a lot of ways this works; the pockets of missing time are less frequent, and shorter when they happen. And then he’s nine (and a half, thank you) and it doesn’t work so well. 


Since the moment Jim walked through the doorway, Frank’s been in a foul mood. He curses loudly but Jim can barely hear it over the sound of his music, even if the sound of drink sloshing in Frank’s cup cuts through the noise clearly. Frank’s been around long enough for Jim to know the drill. Don’t talk, don’t make eye contact, get out of whatever room Frank is in quickly. If he stays in Frank’s sight long enough the man will rouse himself to a fury, get up on unsteady legs and beat him with too steady hands,

Sam’s out most evenings now, and not through sneaking out liked he used to, now that he has friends and clubs and sports. Anything to keep him out of the house. He says it’s because he makes Frank angry. That when Sam’s not there, things are better—for all of them.  

But that’s not true. Frank is one of those people that likes to be angry. He doesn’t need a reason, and sometimes he won’t bother to come up with a fake one. He likes to be angry, to insight fear. Jim tries very hard not to let him, not to give in and flinch at the man’s hits. But he is afraid. Even if he wishes he weren’t.  

So Jim sticks to the plan, he ignores Frank, going straight to the stairs and into his room. He shuts the door, and even though there’s no lock, the physical barrier helps.  

The walls of his room are almost too white. He turns up his music, taps his foot in a double beat, feels the vibrations run through his body.  

Jim pulls a crumpled packet out of his pocket. He’s out of gum. Can’t go down and replicate any more right now, when Frank is in the living room like a gatekeeper to the rest of the house. He crinkles the wrapper further; hums along to songs he’s not really listening to but needs to fill the silence.  

Jim doesn’t hear the heavy footsteps on the stairs—and he knows they were heavy, Frank moves like he’s mad at the earth, trying to hurt it—or the door opening, but he feels the displaced air that makes the hairs on his neck stand on end. Jim turns as if struck, eyes wide and hands gone clammy. Frank’s in the doorway, hand white on the knob and face red. 

He stocks forward, lips moving but no sound coming out. Jim’s earphones get yanked out painfully and his music is abruptly gone.  

“—turn that shit down!” Frank bellows, but it’s like hearing him through cotton and Jim’s caught on the hue of his face, the glassy rage behind his eyes. Frank throws the music player on the ground and stomps on it. The crunch of small parts isn’t as loud as Jim would have thought it’d be, not for how hard Frank steps.  

Frank yells again, a wordless sound that Jim only slightly hears, even though he can see Frank’s neck strain. Frank slams the door, leaving as abruptly as he entered. The room falls back into stillness and Jim falls into himself. He hadn’t realized how still he had been holding himself until his body starts to shake, muscles gone past too tense with arbitrary fear. Jim looks down at the little player and has the presence of mind to be glad it wasn’t him.  

The frame is mostly intact, but parts are slipping out the side and the screen’s cracked through, barely showing the last settings. The volume is at its highest, something that never happens, with how much it can hurt. Jim touches his ear. But he’s just been able to hear it. It hadn’t been that loud; he would have noticed. It would have hurt.  

Without the music, the room is too quiet. Usually Jim can hear the TV through the walls, the leaves on the tree outside shake and the sound of power spreading through the house. He doesn’t hear anything—he hadn’t even heard the door slam, had he? It’s like his ears are turned off, but nothing else is distracting him, no other sense is drowning it out. Everything’s always been so ‘on’, vying for supremacy. Nothing has ever just stopped.  

Jim makes a distressed sound in the back of his throat. He can feel it, but he doesn’t hear it. It’s like the world is suddenly full of white noise—the fake sound the mind makes when everything’s too quiet to comprehend. 

“Ah” Jim lets out. He knows he said it, hand on his throat, feeling the sound vibrate. Nothing. He doesn’t hear anything.  

“Ah!” Jim’s hands go to his ears, covering them, pressing them hard against the side of his face, “Ah!” 

Is this it? Will he never hear again? After always hearing so much, the thought is terrifying. Will they all just stop soon? Will he stop seeing and tasting and smelling and feeling? Stuck inside himself with no hope for escape? 

He doesn’t realize he’s crying at first. Can’t hear it, and too lost in his head to notice the other markers—the smell of salt in the air, warm tracks down his cheeks, the blur to his vision. But then he hears it, little choked-off sobs. It’s him. He can hear again, for the moment.  

It makes him cry harder.  


Jim spends a lot of his life afraid—afraid of Frank, afraid mom will never come back, afraid of never doing anything worth his dad’s death—he’s not going to start fearing himself. If everything goes away, if one day soon he can’t hear or see or smell or taste or feel, well that’ll just be how it is.  

But that doesn’t mean he’ll roll over and accept defeat. This isn’t his losing battle. He can do something—he can be something. Be someone so full that he’ll never be empty, never be devoid of self, even if everything else leaves him.  

It’s like he’s always in warp, mind racing, world made to witness. He talks all the time now, exudes presence in a way that can’t be ignored. Instead of receiving stimulus, finding things that make his senses tick, he’s the catalyst. He makes friends and gets in scuffles and always looks for things that make him feel so alive that the concept of nothingness is almost impossible.  

But escape from nothingness hinges on others knowing his existence, Jim’s found. And though people know of him, very few people know him. Sam is one of the people that truly knows him.  

“You can’t go!” Jim yanks on the back of Sam’s jacket. Demanding. Pleading.  

Sam stops, looks at Jim and he can tell Sam’s not going to come back home. Sam will leave and he’s never coming back. Mom may leave for years at a time, but she always comes back, if only for a day or two. If Sam goes… 

“I can’t stay, Jimmy, I can’t,” his face is full of helpless anger and he shifts the backpack on his shoulder, “You’re a good kid, you do what Frank says, you’ll be fine.” Jim doesn’t need his enhanced awareness to know that not even Sam believes that.  

“Don’t go.” It sounds pathetic to his own ears, but he can’t stop from saying it, from begging. 

Sam’s already turned away, “Bye Jimmy.” 

Jim hears the gravel crunch under his steps as he walks away. He stares at the ground, but it’s that sound that’s constant, the regular crunch of dirt underfoot, getting further and further away, even if it sounds just as loud, just as final.  

Jim snaps out of it when his shadow falls to nothing below him, only the slightest traces showing it to be high noon. He blinks rapidly and looks up. The ground is so flat, he can see Sam, but he’s a small moving shape on the horizon. Jim’s neck and ears are hot from the sun. He can still hear Sam’s footsteps as distinct as when Sam first started away from Jim.  

Jim takes a hasty step back, dirt crunching underfoot, but not as loud as Sam’s steps—he can feel it, feel himself falling into that one sound. He can’t—he won’t let it happen. Not now. With Sam gone, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to come out of it. 

The red in the corner of his vision flashes with the sun. His dad’s classic car—his real dad, the one who is mentioned every Hero’s Day along with the rest of the dead too big for their graves—stands there proud in the sun.  

Jim gets in it, opens the visor and catches the keys that fall from their place. Turning it on drowns out some of the sound of Sam leaving him. Turning on the music and turning the dial on high helps more. Sitting like this, the bruise on his side throbs and Jim wishes if Sam couldn’t stay, he’d at least take Jim with him.  

Jim can hear Frank moving inside the house—he hits the gas and lurches onto the street. He holds the gas down harder and harder, going faster and faster until he can hear nothing but the whipping of the wind and fragments of music. When Jim passes Sam, he can’t hear him at all, and barely see him for how his eyes are watering up.  

The quarry comes into sight faster than he’d thought—and it isn’t until it’s in sight that he realizes he’s been heading for it at all. Lights flash in his rearview and then the cop is alongside the car, telling him in a tinny voice to stop the vehicle.  

Jim doesn’t contemplate giving in and instead focuses on the rapidly approaching quarry edge. There’s a second where he wants to send the car careening over and sail with it—he can almost feel the freefall, how terribly full it would make him—but the crash at the end slams into his mind and he slams the breaks, turning the car hard. The crash would mean nothingness, and Jim’s tamped down fear of trapped—empty—nothing—has him clawing at the quarry’s edge, relishing the grit under his nails even as his mind becomes all but blank in fear.  

The cop doesn’t pull him up, “What is your name.” It’s said as a statement.  

Jim thinks of lying, but he can see the gleam in mechanical eyes and knows he’s already being checked against facial recognition records for the town. There’s no use, and no real point, in lying. Frank already knows, Sam saw him drive by, and mom will have heard about it by nightfall, regardless of how many light years away she is. Though he’s not sure she’ll care.  

“James Tiberius Kirk.” He says; it feels like defiance.

Notes:

Thanks for deciding to click on this fic :) there's a lot more to come with this one. To that end, i hope to keep up a weekly cadence for new chapters.

I'd be remiss in not thanking PeaceLoveGeek for beta-ing this fic for me, including working on it over the holiday!--kudos for sure, especially for not calling me out on my lack of speed with giving her more content. She's also on A03 if you wanna look her up: ImHisGardener (previously PeaceLoveGeek)

If you're so inclined I'd adore a comment! I yearn for constant validation, as i assume most writers do.

also if you want to idk help me not be a social media hermit, feel free to reach me at my tumblr filthysweetie, or pillowfort kayzo where i am super new and haven't actually posted yet.