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Sometimes Jim wondered if he should just stop trying to be a good student sometimes. What’s he supposed to say when they ask for an assignment he doesn’t have? Sorry, my mom hasn’t been to the grocery store in weeks, and I couldn’t take another meal of beans so I had to get her to find the card carrying the credits we get from Starfleet for my dad’s death so I could go grocery shopping for us (again), and then make dinner to try to spice up our life, but my brother never showed up, he was off with his friends again—anywhere but the house. He can’t just talk about this stuff like that!
Eventually Winona married Frank and got Starfleet to ship her off so she wouldn’t be so constantly reminded of Jim’s father, wouldn’t have to look at Jim. When she came back it was like she fell back into her drunken depression.
Sometimes Jim wondered why Frank stayed when his wife was always off planet and he was stuck watching her bratty kids. (Jim knew he was bratty; not to everyone, albeit, just Frank when Frank tried to act knowledgeable about something Jim knew for a fact he was wrong about.) Once, when he’d been fooling around with the home computer system, he’d seen their text and video call history. They seemed to... be friends? In their texts? And they video called so often. Jim hadn’t spoken to his mother in weeks.
Unfortunately, this didn’t make Frank any better to Jim. His step-dad wasn’t some stereotypical horrible drunk, he was just an asshole. Sometimes he did drink too much and had Jim tensing in his seat as the car swerved home at night, honking when it got in the way of other headlights. But Frank didn’t need a drop of liquor to yell at Jim. When Jim finally got a trip off planet—a whole two years away!—he had been jolted awake one morning in this new environment because the building had creaked in just the way it sounded when Frank’s clunking steps were approaching Jim’s bedroom door.
Sometimes when people talked about Jim’s dad wistfully he wanted to pretend he remembered. He wanted to do or be anything they expected of him. But he was born when he father died. At first he was frank about it, but then that elicited crying and petting his hair and murmurs of “you poor thing!” So then Jim wished he could just give them what they wanted: he wasn’t sad! Really, look! Perhaps it was with too much vigor, but he acted as unbothered as he felt, he never had a dad to connect with. It was never the lack of parents that hurts a child, but rather all the consequent experiences. (Sometimes he wondered if those were really so distinguishable.) Eventually he settled on nodding solemnly, and maybe patting them on the shoulder as he sometimes saw older men do to comfort each other—this was often found disconcerting by adults though, since he was only 10.
When he comes home early from his two years off planet, he comes back changed. He’s reserved, keeps to himself. He doesn’t wait for Frank to do the grocery shopping. He seems so self sufficient. He’s so adult! So mature! You must be so proud for raising such a good mannered young man! Frank just smiles and takes the praise and boy who was once so angry he almost killed himself driving a car off a cliff stays buried.
He’s starting high school this year and he decides it’s time to be normal. That everything is fine, because it has to be. He can make friends and find a girlfriend and do his homework and talk about how His Dad Sucks and he has a curfew and whatever all the other boys his age are doing. He can be normal. (He can’t.)
He has no curfew, Frank wouldn’t notice if he didn’t come come home—currently, he doesn’t notice when Jim does come home. So instead Jim sneaks out to the Starfleet shipyard and watches the ships get pieced together and wonders what it would be like to be up there. He used to dream about space, to long for it so desperately he almost couldn’t bear it. And then he’d been able to go! To go to Tarsus IV.
But he survived. He’d seen how the place doesn’t make things better: on earth or in the black abyss of space he’d suffered, does it matter where? Does it matter if he’d hung onto that car as it went over the edge?
Then his brother leaves. He isn’t planning on coming back. Jim’s thrill-seeking creeps steadily more dangerous. Jim’s trip off planet was a special program for advanced kids, but had ultimately set him behind and now he’s back with his age group and a small town in Iowa doesn’t have classes his speed that can put him back where he was. His mom won’t let him travel to the programs around the single country they’re in just because his trip to another planet went... poorly. But Jim’s starting to realize he doesn’t care about this—he doesn’t care about any of this. He exceeds all exams and racks up marks on his permanent record and he can’t find it in himself to care. He decides he doesn’t need fancy courses and spends his leisure time reading about the things that interest him. And he only nearly dies a handful more times before he graduates. He’s happy to count this as a win.
And he’s busy contently throwing his life away a year after graduation, but then fucking Pike shows up. Captain Pike with his faith in Jim and belief he can do things, and Jim doesn’t want to let himself start to believe that again. And then the selfish part of Jim kicks himself because when the fuck did he loose self-confidence? He’s cocky, he‘s full of himself, ‘cuz he’s the greatest and he can do anything—and he apparently doesn’t actually believe any of that. So fuck it, live up to expectations, Jim. If they think you’re proud, be that self-important, if they nod at you grimly and say your dad was a hero, nod back solemnly. Jim’s always been one to rise to the occasion.