Chapter Text
“The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.”
James had been outside with his neighbours’ son when the announcement came. He’d been on his way to one of the towns shops in the hope that the walk would settle the baby when the horrible words echoed around the planet. The screams started nearly immediately afterwards while he stood numb in the same place.
“Sentence you to death.” James was only fifteen. He wasn’t ready to die, certainly not because some governor thought that he should. By the time the soldiers got to where Jim had been stood, some survival instinct had kicked in and he’d run, still clutching hold of the child.
He’d been resentful when his Aunt had told him to help out their neighbours by looking after the six month old little boy, but as he ran to a nearby forest where he hoped to find safety, he was just glad that he wasn’t completely alone. Less than halfway through the forest, he all but ran into another group of kids; two girls and a boy.
“You speak any Standard?” James asked shakily. He knew that there were people from all over Earth on the planet.
“Yes,” the eldest girl answered. She had a foreign accent and all three of the children had tear tracks on their faces. “I am Melania Rosales and this is my little brother, Federico. The girl does not speak.”
“I’m James Kirk,” he introduced himself. “And this is Kevin Riley, my neighbour.”
“Our parents told us to run,” Melania sniffed. “I think they are dead.”
“I ran before I could find out,” James admitted, feeling the burning shame that he hadn’t even thought about his family before running. “Why don’t you stay with us? We could help each other.”
Melania gave him a watery smile, holding onto her little brother’s hand as she stepped closer to him. The little girl trailed behind her, still crying silently. James knelt down in front of her and smiled.
“Hey,” he soothed, pointing at himself. “James,” he said clearly before pointing at her.
“James,” she repeated with a strong accent before realization lit up her eyes and she pointed at herself. “Katenka Kozlov.”
James gave a sigh of relief and smiled before introducing the girl to the others. When he stood back up to keep moving, Katenka took a hold of the hand that wasn’t holding onto Kevin. Melania and her brother walked with them in silence, wincing when the screams for the towns echoed around the quiet trees.
Eventually, when they were drooping in sleepiness and James had decided they’d walked far enough, they started looking around for somewhere to sleep. Federico was the one to find the cave; the three year old had wandered away slightly and when his sister had gone to get him he’d been by the cave.
It was quite a deep cave, more than big enough for them. Silently, James passed Kevin off to Melania who settled the others into the cave while James started moving bushes and tree branches to hide the entrance to the cave.
Once settled, they shared out the small snacks that they had in their pockets while James managed to get Kevin to swallow some water. Melania told him that she was nine years old, while her brother was only three. Katenka held up four fingers when she realized what they were talking about and James already knew that Kevin was only six months, not even a full year old yet.
It was daunting to think that at fifteen years old, James was now the eldest of the group and in charge of keeping them safe and alive. The second oldest was Melania, but even she looked to him for help and was too young; they wouldn’t survive on their own.
After a restless night’s sleep, filled with nightmares and growling stomachs, James made Melania promise to stay in the cave and keep the others quiet while he went out to try find some food. She was nervous about it, but accepted Kevin from him and urged the other two to sit next to her.
Unfortunately, James knew that the best place to find supplies was going to be in a nearby town; he just had to hope that the soldier had cleared out or that they didn’t spot him. He started on the outskirts of one of the towns, confident that he could find his way back to the others.
The first items he stole were two backpacks that he immediately started filling one with food and water. He tried his hardest not to look at the bodies of the owners of the houses he broke into; he didn’t want to see what fate would await him if he got caught. Next, he hunted around until he found a couple of blankets that he put in another one, nearly shouting with glee when he found some baby formula in one of the replicators.
He was just sneaking back out of the town when he heard the crying. Ducking down in case the noise drew the soldiers he’d seen in the middle of town, he snuck towards the sound. All of his instincts were telling his to take the bags and run, but he couldn’t leave if the person crying was still alive; he had to try to help.
Somehow, he managed to find the source of the noise; a little boy was sitting by a woman’s body, his face was cut terribly on the left side and he was sobbing silently. Hearing that the soldiers were beginning to move, James dashed forward and picked the boy up, quickly turning and running back to the forest, surprised when the boy didn’t make a sound at being taken.
“Hey, my name is James Kirk, and I’m going to look after you,” James whispered to him as they went. “Do you understand?” The boy nodded against his shoulder, burying his head into his neck. “Right, good. What’s your name then?”
“Thomas,” the boy croaked, not lifting his head. “Thomas Leighton…I’m five.”
James nodded, too tired to try responding; he had the two backpacks strapped to his back and Thomas was barely balanced on his hip. By the time they made it back to the cave, James was completely exhausted and felt really sick; he’d walked a long way holding onto a lot of weight on an empty stomach.
The others were happy to welcome Thomas; they were glad that there were others who survived. James was just relieved that they were still too young to realize that every new person was another mouth to feed.
Over the next week, James managed to save three more children from being killed: Edwin Cavey, a seven year old French boy, Loretta Sarno, a five year old Italian girl, and Oliver Croft, a six year old American boy. They were the only ones to survive; James wasn’t sure how he knew it, but somehow he was sure that he wasn’t going to find anyone else. The small hope he’d kept that they’d find an adult died; if he wanted to keep the children alive, he’d have to be the adult.
After a month together in the cave, each child began to slowly learn words from each other’s languages. James and Thomas were the only ones to speak Standard fluently since James was American and Thomas was English. The others learnt Standard the quickest out of the need to understand what James said, though James also learnt the other languages as well.
Unknowingly, by trying so hard to be there for the children and providing for them, James was quickly replacing the male figure that they’d had in their lives. Their brains were slowly blocking out their past lives in an attempt to save themselves from further grief, and so they were focusing on the only one who reminded them of a protective figure.
Federico, as the youngest capable of speech, was the first one to address James as “Papá”, the Spanish for ‘Dad’. Both James and Melania cried that day but no one refuted it. Melania mourned the loss of her family for one final time before she too shoved the memories aside and began to address James the same way. The other children soon caught on; calling James their language’s version of ‘Dad’ until even James began to think of them as his own.
They survived like that for what felt like years but were in reality months. Each day they’d grow skinnier, but between themselves they forged unbreakable bonds that were stronger than that of blood families.
James organized for them to speak one language every day to help them learn it and to distract them. They changed the language every day until they knew that basics of Russian, Italian, French, Spanish and Standard. It had taken a while, but James had eventually learned that Katenka was Russian.
The face of the man that had ordered their deaths was burnt into James’s and Melania’s minds; it haunted their nightmares and made them jump at shadows. They were the only two old enough to remember what he looked like as he read out the announcement on every screen, but Melania promised that she’d find a way to show the others what he looked like so they would know.
In the end, she came with him once on a raid while they left Edwin in charge. She went straight to one of the government buildings while James kept watch and brought back a PADD with a photo of Kodos on it. She’d been terrified that he would find a way to trick the other children; apparently she’d been having nightmares that they’d trust him because he was an adult. They spent ages hammering it into the children’s head that if they saw him then they were to run, until even Kevin started crying when he saw the photo.
They continued like that for a long time; James learnt to hunt for animals and to find edible plants when he couldn’t find enough to steal. Impossibly, he managed to keep them alive. They were incredibly malnourished and far too skinny, but they were alive and loved and most of them couldn’t remember any other way of life.
They had no idea how long it had been by the time help arrived. All they knew were that these adults found them and put them on a ship, saying how they were going to take them home and find their families. They said they were with the Federation and they couldn’t understand why the children fought against them.
James and Edwin had managed to injure two of the people who’d come to hurt them, but when one of them found Loretta the others immediately surrendered so that they wouldn’t be split up. Once on the ship that was going to take them back to Earth, it was explained to them what was going to happen to them.
“They’re going to split us up,” Katenka whispered sadly, clutching onto Loretta’s arm. “We’ll be on different countries from each other.”
“No,” Melania growled fiercely, hugging Thomas and Federico closer to her. She wouldn’t be separated from her blood brother, but there was no doubt that the Federation would split them up from the new family they’d created. They were going to be sent to live with family on Earth.
“I don’t want to leave,” Edwin sniffed. “Papa, can’t we stay with you?”
James sighed and ran a hand through his hair; the other one was holding Kevin safely against his chest. “I wish you could, but they won’t let you.”
“Then we’ll run away,” Melania announced, the others perking up at the idea. “As soon as we can, we’ll run and find each other.”
James paled at the idea; none of them would get back to him, they’d get lost or worse. He couldn’t let his children take such a risk, just the thought of it made him sick. Thinking quickly, he had a quick look around the room they were in, making sure that there were no cameras before he pulled out the PADD that they’d stolen all those weeks ago.
The others gathered around him when they realized he had a plan, instinctively shielding him from sight while Melania took Kevin so he could use both hands. James had always been good with technology; he was considered a child genius for a reason, even if he didn’t act like it.
The Federation people had mentioned that they’d put some compensation credits into their accounts that only they would be able to access until they had official guardians again, so the first thing James did was hack into his own account and transfer everything in it to another account. He did the same thing with the others accounts, moving everything into the same account that only they would be able to access.
Once the credits were moved, the Federation wouldn’t be able to access it without going through many privacy laws. Since they now had money at their disposal, James began to lay out a plan for them, starting by buying nine tickets to Atlanta. He choose that city because they’d expect him to go home to Iowa and because it was far away from both his home town and from San Francisco where Starfleet had its base.
After their safe landing in San Francisco, they were ushered to a private hospital where they refused to have separate medical checks. Once it became clear that they weren’t going to change their minds, the doctors examined them all together and told them what James already knew: they were malnourished.
They were told to wait in the waiting room until someone came to collect them; their families had been notified and were most likely on their way. Nervously, James asked one last time if they were all sure they didn’t want to leave with their relatives before he picked up Kevin and snuck them all out of the building.
Somehow, they made it out. They’d almost been caught multiple times, but James had bluffed or charmed his way out of every meeting and succeeded on getting them on the shuttle, only feeling safe once it was safely on its way towards Atlanta.
“Are we safe now, папа?” Katenka asked sleepily, curling up with Loretta as they shared a chair for comfort.
“Nearly,” James promised, bouncing Kevin as he woke up and feeding him some milk that he’d pinched off the food trolley in the hospital. Kevin never cried anymore; he seemed to understand that his cries put them in danger.
Melania smiled, holding Federico on her knee as she watched Thomas, Edwin and Oliver make a game up using things they found around them like water bottles and tissues. James was just glad that they could still smile and play after everything that had happened.
As the shuttle travelled across the country, James set about buying somewhere for them to live where they wouldn’t be bothered and no one would look at their ages. He managed to find a place he thought was acceptable, but he was planning on going back to Riverside as soon as he was eighteen; by then he would be able to formally adopt the children.
Using more than a few black-market moves, they moved into their new apartment with no problems. James and Kevin shared one room while the three girls got one room and the four remaining boys got the other. After sharing a cave together for so long, none of them minded the close quarters, in fact they were sometimes found all camped out in the living room because the closeness made them feel safer.
No reports were made about them being missing; only the higher up officials knew that they weren’t where they should be. As the only nine people still alive that had seen Kodos, the Federation had decided that they had to be protected. Thankfully, they managed to disappear completely from the system, no one, no matter how high up, found anything even vaguely relating to them.
Until, that is, three years later when one James T. Kirk, now going by the name Jim, posted officiated adoption forms on his eighteenth birthday. As no one knew any differently, these forms were approved and Jim and his now official children moved back to his birth town before the Federation could even realize what had happened or try to stop it.