Fic: our shoes make hard noises in this place [Star Trek: Reboot]
I finally wrote something! Probably isn't as nice as I'm letting myself believe right now, but whatever, it's been forever since I've finished anything I've started, so even this little piece is a Big Fucking Deal.It's nothing special, but it's me writing again, and for right now, that's enough.
Title: our shoes make hard noises in this place
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Pairing/Rating: gen, with implied George/Winona; PG for language, because I'm feeling prudish today
Word Count: 1,410
Date Completed: 8 June 2010
Disclaimer: These people? Aren't mine.
Author's Notes: Longer-than-I-intended gapfiller scene/Winona character-study combo. Title taken from Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars." Written for old_blueeyes, who is being kind enough to let me flail at her and infect her with half-developed crack!AU's (this is not one of them) until I maybe, just possibly get my writing mojo back. Thanks, dear. ♥
When Winona's phone rings, it makes her head throb. She'd been up again last night drinking, vodka shots and bourbon straight from the bottle, just like George used to do, while she sat up not waiting for Jim to get in. He's a grown boy, has been for years, and he can do what he likes. She knows this, the sharp feeling of recognition hitting her deep in her gut every time he turns and makes her see just how well he's grown into George's features. She still waits for him, though, just like she has since the first night he stayed out past curfew, even if she says she doesn't. Now, she slaps on a blank face and downs almost enough alcohol to equal what Jim has probably had at the bar and doesn't chew him out when he comes in late and drunk and still trying to be the responsible one who steers her up to bed. He makes her breakfast in the morning and she brings down the painkillers and they don't mention their mutual likely-a-serious-drinking-problem, and it's almost like they're a normal family.
This morning, the phone wakes her up. She fumbles for it, smears her fingertips across the touchscreen as she answers the call on speaker. "H'lo?" she croaks, her right hand coming up to press at her aching temples as her left hand drops the phone on the empty pillow next to her.
"Winona," she hears, and it's been fifteen years now, but she knows that voice, knows what that tone in that voice means. She blinks a few times, considers, breathes in to steady herself.
"Chris," she says, carefully giving him nothing. "What do you want?"
His sigh is strangely close for coming through a phoneline; she wonders how deep in his chest it must have started. She wonders what they've both done to warrant one so deep.
"Can't I call just to check in?" he says.
"No," she says, "you can't, because you haven't called in fifteen years. Not since you got that first-officer position and took off on tour."
"I did try to call," he says. "When I got back for shore-leave, about five years later. A man answered-Fred?"
"Frank," she corrects.
"Right, yeah," he says. "Told me you were out on tour and not to fucking well bother you again."
She closes her eyes as she inhales; that does sound like Frank.
"What do you want, Chris?"
He says nothing. She can hear him breathing over the phone, in and out, faint, and she knows to let him steady himself if she wants to get anywhere in the conversation. "Chris?" she says again after a minute.
"I ran into Jim last night," he says. His voice is detached-sounding, or his best attempt at that. It's the sort of voice she expects he uses in volatile diplomatic relations, or on the bridge of his starship; his Starfleet voice. George had one, too, even if Winona only got to hear it on occasion, the last of those when it was fraying at the edges and too desperate, too far gone to really qualify.
Winona hates that voice.
"You did," she says, using her own Starfleet voice, because two can play at this distance-ourselves game.
"At a bar," Chris continues. "He was drunk and fighting. I had to pull about three of my cadets off him before I could even get a proper look at him, let alone talk to him."
He sounds vaguely angry, and Winona knows the feeling. She has seen Jim fight so many times, schoolyard matches and bar brawls and that one stupid, stupid incident with the underground fight club. She knows what it is to see him bloodied and bruised, his lips broken and his eyes swollen until he squints. She knows what it is to see Jim twist his features-George's features-into something beaten, something snarling and hurt, and she knows what it is to ache at that sight, concern and frustration and fury churning sick in her stomach.
Winona says nothing.
"I did talk to him," Chris eventually says. There's an air of disappointment in his voice. If this were twenty-three years ago, Winona would elbow him and tell him his officer's tone could use some work, so study up, cadet; if this were twenty-three years ago, she wouldn't have an urge to say that Starfleet needed to better train its officers in tones of detachment and maintaining them in stressful situations.
"I told him he should enlist," Chris says. Winona again says nothing, and she's sure Chris didn't hear how her breath caught in her throat, lodged and stiff and heavy. "He's obviously intelligent, and he has the instincts for it, if not the attitude."
Chris sounds like he's apologizing now, only very faintly. It's creeping on the edge of his words, same with the hint of accusation she can hear, the one that says, And he's George's son, Winona, George's, and you let him become this?
Winona opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling. She doesn't need Chris to tell her this. She has lived with Jim for so long, spent so much time watching him grow up, all blond hair and blue eyes and spitfire, just like George. She has lived with the ache of Jim and George and all their similarities, their growing differences, and she has run from it, left Jim and Sam and Frank here to deal with each other and come back just often enough to check in on them as they broke each other apart and gave her a reason she didn't need to stay half a galaxy away. She has spent so much time, so many years that Chris hasn't, knowing Jim and knowing George in Jim, knowing that Jim is too much hers and not enough George's and that that is the fault of her and George and no one, too many people feeling too left behind.
"Winona?" Chris says.
"Yeah." She swallows. "Yeah, I'm here."
"There's no saying he'll even listen to me. He might not enlist."
"He will." She knows her son.
"I'm sorry." She knows Chris, too. She knows when he's lying, especially about George. In this case, George's son.
"Don't be," she says, but she can't help her voice from sounding just a little sad, just a little angry, just a little scared-to-death, and mostly just resigned. Starfleet never did train its officers all that well, at least not in this matter.
There's another minute of silence between them. Winona thinks she could, should say any of a thousand different things, Fuck you or How could you? or Thank you. She keeps her mouth shut tight against them all.
Chris sighs again. "I'll have him call when we get to San Francisco."
"Sure," Winona says. Jim won't call. Jim is out the door and gone, and while he'll have to learn to take orders some time, it won't be this one, not just yet. He is too much hers to forgive that easily.
"Sure," she says again, and then, before she can stop it: "Take care of him, Chris."
"I will." There's no hesitation, not even a little bit. Winona feels her chest ease a fraction.
The call cuts off. Winona's bedroom seems oddly quiet, even though it has been this volume for years since Frank left. She sighs again, resigned, then rolls out of bed. She shakes one painkiller out of the bottle on her night table, then thinks, Fuck it, and shakes out another one. Jim won't need it, she knows. Jim won't be there in the kitchen when she heads down, because Jim may be too much hers, too much a fuck-up and too much fucked-up, but he is still just enough George's where it counts. He is still just enough George's to make the right decision for both of them. He is still just enough George's to be destined for great, Starfleet-involving things. He is still just enough George's to leave her and think that it's okay.
Winona chokes down both tablets dry, thinks, Fuck it, again and heads downstairs. She walks into an empty, Jim-less kitchen like she has always known she someday would. She makes herself some toast and eats it spread with honey-butter, the same way Jim and George always loved, and she blames the bitter taste in her throat on the pills she swallowed down too soon.
Title: our shoes make hard noises in this place
Fandom: Star Trek: Reboot
Pairing/Rating: gen, with implied George/Winona; PG for language, because I'm feeling prudish today
Word Count: 1,410
Date Completed: 8 June 2010
Disclaimer: These people? Aren't mine.
Author's Notes: Longer-than-I-intended gapfiller scene/Winona character-study combo. Title taken from Dishwalla's "Counting Blue Cars." Written for old_blueeyes, who is being kind enough to let me flail at her and infect her with half-developed crack!AU's (this is not one of them) until I maybe, just possibly get my writing mojo back. Thanks, dear. ♥
When Winona's phone rings, it makes her head throb. She'd been up again last night drinking, vodka shots and bourbon straight from the bottle, just like George used to do, while she sat up not waiting for Jim to get in. He's a grown boy, has been for years, and he can do what he likes. She knows this, the sharp feeling of recognition hitting her deep in her gut every time he turns and makes her see just how well he's grown into George's features. She still waits for him, though, just like she has since the first night he stayed out past curfew, even if she says she doesn't. Now, she slaps on a blank face and downs almost enough alcohol to equal what Jim has probably had at the bar and doesn't chew him out when he comes in late and drunk and still trying to be the responsible one who steers her up to bed. He makes her breakfast in the morning and she brings down the painkillers and they don't mention their mutual likely-a-serious-drinking-problem, and it's almost like they're a normal family.
This morning, the phone wakes her up. She fumbles for it, smears her fingertips across the touchscreen as she answers the call on speaker. "H'lo?" she croaks, her right hand coming up to press at her aching temples as her left hand drops the phone on the empty pillow next to her.
"Winona," she hears, and it's been fifteen years now, but she knows that voice, knows what that tone in that voice means. She blinks a few times, considers, breathes in to steady herself.
"Chris," she says, carefully giving him nothing. "What do you want?"
His sigh is strangely close for coming through a phoneline; she wonders how deep in his chest it must have started. She wonders what they've both done to warrant one so deep.
"Can't I call just to check in?" he says.
"No," she says, "you can't, because you haven't called in fifteen years. Not since you got that first-officer position and took off on tour."
"I did try to call," he says. "When I got back for shore-leave, about five years later. A man answered-Fred?"
"Frank," she corrects.
"Right, yeah," he says. "Told me you were out on tour and not to fucking well bother you again."
She closes her eyes as she inhales; that does sound like Frank.
"What do you want, Chris?"
He says nothing. She can hear him breathing over the phone, in and out, faint, and she knows to let him steady himself if she wants to get anywhere in the conversation. "Chris?" she says again after a minute.
"I ran into Jim last night," he says. His voice is detached-sounding, or his best attempt at that. It's the sort of voice she expects he uses in volatile diplomatic relations, or on the bridge of his starship; his Starfleet voice. George had one, too, even if Winona only got to hear it on occasion, the last of those when it was fraying at the edges and too desperate, too far gone to really qualify.
Winona hates that voice.
"You did," she says, using her own Starfleet voice, because two can play at this distance-ourselves game.
"At a bar," Chris continues. "He was drunk and fighting. I had to pull about three of my cadets off him before I could even get a proper look at him, let alone talk to him."
He sounds vaguely angry, and Winona knows the feeling. She has seen Jim fight so many times, schoolyard matches and bar brawls and that one stupid, stupid incident with the underground fight club. She knows what it is to see him bloodied and bruised, his lips broken and his eyes swollen until he squints. She knows what it is to see Jim twist his features-George's features-into something beaten, something snarling and hurt, and she knows what it is to ache at that sight, concern and frustration and fury churning sick in her stomach.
Winona says nothing.
"I did talk to him," Chris eventually says. There's an air of disappointment in his voice. If this were twenty-three years ago, Winona would elbow him and tell him his officer's tone could use some work, so study up, cadet; if this were twenty-three years ago, she wouldn't have an urge to say that Starfleet needed to better train its officers in tones of detachment and maintaining them in stressful situations.
"I told him he should enlist," Chris says. Winona again says nothing, and she's sure Chris didn't hear how her breath caught in her throat, lodged and stiff and heavy. "He's obviously intelligent, and he has the instincts for it, if not the attitude."
Chris sounds like he's apologizing now, only very faintly. It's creeping on the edge of his words, same with the hint of accusation she can hear, the one that says, And he's George's son, Winona, George's, and you let him become this?
Winona opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling. She doesn't need Chris to tell her this. She has lived with Jim for so long, spent so much time watching him grow up, all blond hair and blue eyes and spitfire, just like George. She has lived with the ache of Jim and George and all their similarities, their growing differences, and she has run from it, left Jim and Sam and Frank here to deal with each other and come back just often enough to check in on them as they broke each other apart and gave her a reason she didn't need to stay half a galaxy away. She has spent so much time, so many years that Chris hasn't, knowing Jim and knowing George in Jim, knowing that Jim is too much hers and not enough George's and that that is the fault of her and George and no one, too many people feeling too left behind.
"Winona?" Chris says.
"Yeah." She swallows. "Yeah, I'm here."
"There's no saying he'll even listen to me. He might not enlist."
"He will." She knows her son.
"I'm sorry." She knows Chris, too. She knows when he's lying, especially about George. In this case, George's son.
"Don't be," she says, but she can't help her voice from sounding just a little sad, just a little angry, just a little scared-to-death, and mostly just resigned. Starfleet never did train its officers all that well, at least not in this matter.
There's another minute of silence between them. Winona thinks she could, should say any of a thousand different things, Fuck you or How could you? or Thank you. She keeps her mouth shut tight against them all.
Chris sighs again. "I'll have him call when we get to San Francisco."
"Sure," Winona says. Jim won't call. Jim is out the door and gone, and while he'll have to learn to take orders some time, it won't be this one, not just yet. He is too much hers to forgive that easily.
"Sure," she says again, and then, before she can stop it: "Take care of him, Chris."
"I will." There's no hesitation, not even a little bit. Winona feels her chest ease a fraction.
The call cuts off. Winona's bedroom seems oddly quiet, even though it has been this volume for years since Frank left. She sighs again, resigned, then rolls out of bed. She shakes one painkiller out of the bottle on her night table, then thinks, Fuck it, and shakes out another one. Jim won't need it, she knows. Jim won't be there in the kitchen when she heads down, because Jim may be too much hers, too much a fuck-up and too much fucked-up, but he is still just enough George's where it counts. He is still just enough George's to make the right decision for both of them. He is still just enough George's to be destined for great, Starfleet-involving things. He is still just enough George's to leave her and think that it's okay.
Winona chokes down both tablets dry, thinks, Fuck it, again and heads downstairs. She walks into an empty, Jim-less kitchen like she has always known she someday would. She makes herself some toast and eats it spread with honey-butter, the same way Jim and George always loved, and she blames the bitter taste in her throat on the pills she swallowed down too soon.