now i am craving heartbreak [open]

[goldn_boy]

WHO Jim Kirk and OPEN
WHAT Jim is reasserting himself in all the wrong ways
WHERE CGM, the station, a police action, bars, or anyplace you can think of
WHEN After the breakup with Raylan Monday afternoon, and let's say any night this week
NOTES Find Jim anywhere and feel free to find his behavior strange. If you have questions about things you want

Comments

CGM Kitchen, whatever evening works best for you

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

There was a dragon running through the mansion's corridors. Not loose; he was still leashed, though it was a longer leash than he was used to. And he was chasing a tennis ball, with Scott at the other end of the leash following along behind him. For the first time in a while, Scott looked content. Relaxed. He even smiled once or twice as he watched Laphroaig, and eventually the two of them made their way into the kitchen.

[goldn_boy]

Jim probably would have been more sympathetic than Scott thought. As it was, he listening with a faint frown.

"Of course it matters," he said. "They should be brought to justice--they shouldn't be allowed to just kill with impunity. I really did admire that list, Scott. I wish I'd thought of it."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

"They didn't kill the lad. Got him in the leg," he clarified, before adding, "An' I told you. Heard they died. Freak accident sort o' thing." He sounded a bit more defensive there than he meant to. Shouldn't have brought that up. Owen knew about it, and Owen had looked the other way, but he wasn't so sure about Jim. And he wasn't sure what to make of Jim's comment about the list he'd written up. Wasn't sure what to make of the realization that he'd done something admirable in the eyes of someone from the Federation.

[goldn_boy]

"Even so," Jim said. "They shouldn't get away with it." That list--the original--had made him angry. Just the memory of it had him frowning deeply. "Sometimes I don't know what people are thinking."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

"I do," Scott said, quietly. He pushed his plate away, the last half of the last pancake uneaten. He couldn't quite bring himself to look at Jim now. That list had been all too reminiscent of the Empire's way of looking at things, and Scott - who'd never been, as Jim had correctly surmised, very politically-minded, Scott who'd been working at Hellsing side-by-side with nonhumans who were better people by far than most of the humans he'd worked with back home - had found he didn't much like that way of thinking.

[goldn_boy]

Jim was quiet for a moment, watching Scott as Scott looked away.

"I guess you do," he said. And that made it all the more important, all the more impressive, that Scott did and thought as he did. He cleared his throat. "Still," he said, trying to move the focus away from Scott, for his comfort. "I can make a difference here, and I intend to."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

Scott just shook his head. He'd felt justified in killing the men who shot Zero at the time he'd done it; they were a threat, and needed to be eliminated. But the way Zero had looked at him when he'd mentioned that they were dead, the way Jim was talking about making a difference now... "You're a better man than me," he said, just as quietly as before.

[goldn_boy]

"I think we've already established than in your place, I really am not," Jim said. "But it's not a competition."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

"It doesn't have t'be." He glanced over at Jim then, wondering why, exactly, he'd let this conversation take the turn it had. "Doesn't make it any less true."

[goldn_boy]

"But that's just my point," Jim said. "It isn't. In your world, Scott, I'm a monster. All the things that look like ambition and conviction and leadership in me become genocide and tyranny." His brow furrowed at the admission, knowing all this lay inside him. "I know what I'm capable of."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

"Just because you're capable of it... That's the difference, though, isn't it?" He looked over at Jim again. "You didn't let it turn into genocide an' tyranny. We did."

[goldn_boy]

"That wasn't me," Jim said. "That's what I'm trying to say--I grew up in a world where the norm is peace and tolerance and personal growth. I'm a good person when the going is good--I'm not when the influence is negative. But you... You're not the Scott I know. But I'm telling you, if you were the Kirk from the Empire I visited? We would not be standing here eating pancakes. And what that tells me is that the man you are is nothing close to decided by the place you're from, or the things you've done."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

Scott didn't quite believe that; just because he could stand there and have a civil conversation over a plate of pancakes didn't mean he was any better than others from the Empire, not to his mind. "An' if you were the Scott from the Federation we'd no' be standin' here either," he said, because although he'd never met the man, he was deeply and bitterly jealous of him, for having the chances he'd never had in the Empire.

[goldn_boy]

"I think that's a different matter altogether," Jim said. "Most of the Jim Kirks I've met haven't liked me much, either." Of course one of those lived within him, the memory of hating himself, his other half, still there. But even that was inaccurate--it was him, as much as the half he preferred was. "It's hard to see yourself as someone else."

[lt_cmmdr_scott]

He didn't answer. Just went back to eating, because the food was there and there was a shortage on and it wouldn't be a good idea to leave food uneaten.

[goldn_boy]

Jim let him finish in peace. He knew he was probably overwhelming the man; Jim had trouble doing anything by halves. His own pancakes done, he began to clean up.