FIC: Win and Jim (STXI, PG13, Part 3/4)
Title: Win and Jim
Author: Danahid (danahid)
Beta: emluv
Fandom/Spoilers: STXI/Reboot
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Winona Kirk, Jim Kirk, brief Chris Pike cameo (Gen)
Wordcount: 2,148 (Part 3)
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by many people who are not me. No profit being made. No infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: January 22, 2010 (Part 3); (small edits 2.4.10)
Summary: In this part, Jim falls down a crack in the earth, there are many things he doesn't tell his mother, and Chris Pike does some recruiting.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2
Author's Notes: Complete fic summary in Part 1. Complete A/N at the end.
WIN AND JIM
A boy's best friend is his mother.
Part 3. No one keeps a secret as well as a child.
Jim's mother is an expert at losing things. She tucks pens and styluses into her hair and forgets them there. She frequently misplaces important papers and datapads around the house. She often has to buy new tools when she's working on the car because the exact tool she needs has somehow vanished from the barn. Jim's mother has a history of losing things, and people. Once she lost Sam in a Riverside grocery store. She lost Jim's real father on the Kelvin. She may be in the process of losing Frank.
The day after they arrive in San Francisco, she loses Jim in the thousand-year-old redwood forests above Palo Alto.
She loses him the day before her shindig, which she finally explains is a Starfleet memorial for the survivors of the attack on the Kelvin. One of the conditional items on her itinerary was: "visit prestigious Bay Area universities," so when they find themselves with one more unexpected day and she proposes they visit Stanford University, Jim isn't surprised. His mother has always been interested in higher education as something separate from Starfleet Academy. (She has never urged Jim or Sam to join Starfleet. "You need a real education first," she likes to say. "If you decide to go to Starfleet later on, that's fine. But you need to have a solid grounding before they get their hands on you.")
So they visit Stanford, and after their campus tour ends, Jim's mother suggests they explore the nearby redwood forest, and Jim isn't surprised by that either. "It's one of the great natural wonders of the American continent," she reads from the supplemental part of their itinerary.
They choose one of the easier hiking trails and are surrounded by the secret life of the ancient forest, by shadowed light and rustling darkness. Their trail winds through dense undergrowth and sharp needles until Jim's disoriented by the rough red-grey bark of the trees and the sense of massive tree trunks closing in around him. He stops to squint up at the sky, trying to determine their direction from the location of the sun, but all he can see is a fragment of blue that flickers and recedes behind the dark treetops.
Jim spins around, searching for his mother, but doesn't see her. "Mom?" he calls.
The towering trees murmur in reply, and that's when Jim realizes he's alone. He has no idea how or when he got separated from his mother. He has no idea what to do. He's not sure if he should shout for her again, or try to find her, or wait where he is, or try to retrace his steps, or find a new path entirely. He's shaking with indecision when he hears her voice.
"Jim?" she calls back. "Where are you?"
He twists his body to follow her voice, but moves too quickly. The trail crumbles under his feet, and he plummets down a crack in the earth.
*
Jim's mother has an engineer's hands. They're callused and dry, delicate and strong, perfectly suited to working with precise machinery. Her hands tremble as she runs them over Jim's body, checking for injury.
Jim is lying in the rubble at the bottom of a crevasse. He wants to push himself up, but his mother tells him to lie still. He tries to tell her that it hurts too much to lie still, but he can't get the words out. It also hurts too much to move, but he doesn't tell her that either.
One of his legs is caught under him, the other weirdly bent. When she runs her hands over his legs, fingers probing carefully, he bites his lip. It hurts so much he almost blacks out.
"I'm going to carry you back up to the trail, Jim," she says gently. "Hold on."
Jim closes his eyes. When she lifts him, he gasps in pain. His eyes fly open then roll back in his head, and he faints.
*
Jim's mother's eyes go flat and empty whenever anyone mentions Jim's real father, who has been dead for 3,812 days. Jim has no idea why he's thinking about his dead father when his mother's frantic voice wakes him.
Jim's mother usually has a quietest voice of anyone Jim's ever met. It isn't quiet now.
"Why is he having trouble breathing?" his mother is demanding. Jim can hear her pacing back and forth across what seems to be a small room. Her steps are too fast, too anxious. Jim concentrates on trying to breathe and counts her steps: one-two-three, one-two-three.
Someone stabs his neck with a hypospray. He winces and mumbles in protest but suddenly he's able to breathe again. "The anaphylaxis should subside now," the hypospray-wielder says. "It was an allergic reaction to the painkillers administered by the on-site medics--"
Jim's mother stops pacing. "An allergic reaction--?"
"The medics were unaware of your son's history," the voice (nurse? doctor? Jim can't tell) says. The voice sounds neutral and professional, but Jim can also hear reproach and a distinct lack of apology threading under the words.
There is a long silence. "My son's history?" Jim's mother asks dangerously.
"If they had been aware of his medical profile--"
"Bullshit," she snaps, and Jim hears a shuffle of steps, as if the owner of the other voice has actually stepped back in surprise, as if she hit him. "With all this modern tech, you should've been able to prevent this happening to a small boy."
"'m not small, Mom," Jim mumbles without opening his eyes.
Immediately his mother is at his side. "Hey, you. You're awake." Jim can feel warm lips brushing his forehead and fingers clutching his.
He opens his eyes, searching for her.
She smiles, and her eyes are shining with relief and no secrets all. "You do have the ability to get into trouble, don't you," she murmurs. Her hand flits across his shoulder, a breath of a touch, and she looks like she wants to ask him something or scold him maybe, but Jim can't keep his eyes open. As his eyes close, he hears her turn back to the medical person and say in a calmer voice: "Tell me what happens now."
Before he succumbs to whatever sedative was included in the epi-hypo, Jim hears a rapid set of taps on a datapad, then: "Your son has no internal injury, although both of his legs are broken. One break is clean. The other leg is shattered. We've stabilized him and are currently prepping Surgical Room 3..."
Jim drifts off.
*
Jim's mother has secrets, things she doesn't tell anyone.
When he wakes up after his surgery, Jim is alone in a standard hospital room. His body feels heavy and weird, like it isn't his. He can't feel his legs.
He can hear his mother's voice, but can't see her. He thinks she's in the hallway outside his room, but isn't sure. He hears her say: "I just don’t know, Chris."
"Starfleet needs you, Win. I couldn't believe it when they told me you were here. I knew I couldn't miss this chance to talk to you, to urge you to reconsider. Win. Re-enlist in Starfleet. With your skills and expertise, we could--"
"Please, Chris. My skills and expertise are hopelessly out of date, and you know it."
"I don't believe it. I know you, Win. I'm sure you never stopped reading the latest journals. I'm sure you've been tinkering with George's damn car for years, building and rebuilding the damn thing for practice as much as to keep yourself out of trouble."
She doesn't reply, but Jim knows her well enough to imagine her shrug.
"If some of your specific domain knowledge is out of date, that's understandable, but it's not a deal-breaker. Win. You're too good, have too many skills we need to not re-enlist. Starfleet needs you, and you know you want to. C'mon, Win. Are you happy being the only genius-level engineer buried in the backwoods of Iowa?"
"There are no backwoods in Iowa," Jim's mother says, and something in Jim's chest clenches at how quiet and thoughtful she sounds.
"It's been long enough, Win," the Starfleet officer (Chris?) says. Jim thinks his voice is soft, like he's gentling a skittish mare.
"It's been too long, Chris," she sighs.
"Not if it's something you want to do."
Jim waits for her to say no, to tell the officer that she can't, that she isn't ready to re-enlist, that she needs to stay with her family, with him. When she doesn't, Jim feels his eyes sting (he tells himself it's the woozy aftereffects of the surgical anesthetic). When he hears her say goodbye to the officer and she still hasn't said no, Jim closes his eyes and wills himself to fall asleep (he doesn't want to see her).
*
Jim's mother's eyes are grey like cat's fur. Her eyes are the first thing he sees when he wakes up next. She's sitting beside him, reading an ancient paperback. Jim's mother likes to read and collect antique books.
"There are secrets in all families," she murmurs, turning the book so he can see the cover. "I just read that in this book. It's Emma by Jane Austen, a good book although I'm not sure you'd like it." She smoothes his hair back from his forehead. "Our family's secrets are pretty well known."
Jim frowns in confusion.
"The Kirks have always been Starfleet. Your father, his parents, my father. Our family has always served."
Jim nods, still not understanding.
Her mouth quirks. "You heard me talking to Commander Pike, didn't you?"
And then Jim understands. He nods.
"I didn't want you to find out like this."
Jim lets his question hang unsaid in the air between them.
"I wanted to tell you myself. I didn't want you to find out through an overheard conversation that I've been thinking about re-enlisting." She sighs. "I've gotten offers for years. And I've missed it. I enlisted before I met your father because I wanted to be out there--" she gestures beyond the window-- "discovering new things, exploring new places, going where no one has gone before. Being a part of per aspera ad astra was all I wanted for so long--" she brushes her finger down his cheek-- "before you and Sam, of course. But you were right, Jim, you're not small anymore. And there's so much that I still want to do out there."
Jim doesn't say anything. He tries to smile, but it's hard to get his mouth to move right. So he nods, because he can understand even if he doesn't want to.
*
Jim's mother keeps herself to herself.
She misses her shindig because Jim is in the hospital. They leave San Francisco without going to Starfleet Academy even once. They take a shuttle back to Iowa, and Jim's mother arranges to transport his dead father's car back separately. Jim stays home from school for the next six months, and life mostly returns to normal, until his mother gets a call from Commander Pike.
Jim's mother re-enlists in Starfleet when the doctors pronounce Jim healed enough to go back to school. She's posted off-world almost immediately. Sam goes away to college, and Jim stays with Frank, and things are okay. Frank's a good guy and an okay fill-in parent, even if he's not Jim's mother, and Jim tries to be normal, he really does.
Five months into his mother's off-planet assignment, everything Jim isn't talking about gets the better of him, and he drives his dead father's car into the Riverside Quarry partly out of frustration and boredom, but mostly in protest.
Jim's mother isn't angry in the vid call later that night. She looks frightened and defeated and a little lost. She tells him that she's requested Earth-based assignments for the next few months, and Jim is happy to have her home again until he sees the regret in her eyes and realizes he put it there.
When she's assigned off-planet nine months after that, Jim and Frank see her off. Jim promises to keep up his grades, to listen to Frank, to not crash any cars into any quarries. He tells her to have a good trip and that he'll see her when she gets back.
He waves as she disappears into the shuttle and doesn't tell her that he'll miss her. He doesn't say that he's lost without her.
She waves at him through the shuttle window, smiling as if she understands everything he hasn't said. Jim's sure she doesn't, but he smiles back anyway.
There are some things they don't need to talk about, and he has secrets too, things he doesn't tell anyone. He's his mother's son, after all.
Part 4
Author: Danahid (danahid)
Beta: emluv
Fandom/Spoilers: STXI/Reboot
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Winona Kirk, Jim Kirk, brief Chris Pike cameo (Gen)
Wordcount: 2,148 (Part 3)
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by many people who are not me. No profit being made. No infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: January 22, 2010 (Part 3); (small edits 2.4.10)
Summary: In this part, Jim falls down a crack in the earth, there are many things he doesn't tell his mother, and Chris Pike does some recruiting.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2
Author's Notes: Complete fic summary in Part 1. Complete A/N at the end.
WIN AND JIM
A boy's best friend is his mother.
Part 3. No one keeps a secret as well as a child.
Jim's mother is an expert at losing things. She tucks pens and styluses into her hair and forgets them there. She frequently misplaces important papers and datapads around the house. She often has to buy new tools when she's working on the car because the exact tool she needs has somehow vanished from the barn. Jim's mother has a history of losing things, and people. Once she lost Sam in a Riverside grocery store. She lost Jim's real father on the Kelvin. She may be in the process of losing Frank.
The day after they arrive in San Francisco, she loses Jim in the thousand-year-old redwood forests above Palo Alto.
She loses him the day before her shindig, which she finally explains is a Starfleet memorial for the survivors of the attack on the Kelvin. One of the conditional items on her itinerary was: "visit prestigious Bay Area universities," so when they find themselves with one more unexpected day and she proposes they visit Stanford University, Jim isn't surprised. His mother has always been interested in higher education as something separate from Starfleet Academy. (She has never urged Jim or Sam to join Starfleet. "You need a real education first," she likes to say. "If you decide to go to Starfleet later on, that's fine. But you need to have a solid grounding before they get their hands on you.")
So they visit Stanford, and after their campus tour ends, Jim's mother suggests they explore the nearby redwood forest, and Jim isn't surprised by that either. "It's one of the great natural wonders of the American continent," she reads from the supplemental part of their itinerary.
They choose one of the easier hiking trails and are surrounded by the secret life of the ancient forest, by shadowed light and rustling darkness. Their trail winds through dense undergrowth and sharp needles until Jim's disoriented by the rough red-grey bark of the trees and the sense of massive tree trunks closing in around him. He stops to squint up at the sky, trying to determine their direction from the location of the sun, but all he can see is a fragment of blue that flickers and recedes behind the dark treetops.
Jim spins around, searching for his mother, but doesn't see her. "Mom?" he calls.
The towering trees murmur in reply, and that's when Jim realizes he's alone. He has no idea how or when he got separated from his mother. He has no idea what to do. He's not sure if he should shout for her again, or try to find her, or wait where he is, or try to retrace his steps, or find a new path entirely. He's shaking with indecision when he hears her voice.
"Jim?" she calls back. "Where are you?"
He twists his body to follow her voice, but moves too quickly. The trail crumbles under his feet, and he plummets down a crack in the earth.
*
Jim's mother has an engineer's hands. They're callused and dry, delicate and strong, perfectly suited to working with precise machinery. Her hands tremble as she runs them over Jim's body, checking for injury.
Jim is lying in the rubble at the bottom of a crevasse. He wants to push himself up, but his mother tells him to lie still. He tries to tell her that it hurts too much to lie still, but he can't get the words out. It also hurts too much to move, but he doesn't tell her that either.
One of his legs is caught under him, the other weirdly bent. When she runs her hands over his legs, fingers probing carefully, he bites his lip. It hurts so much he almost blacks out.
"I'm going to carry you back up to the trail, Jim," she says gently. "Hold on."
Jim closes his eyes. When she lifts him, he gasps in pain. His eyes fly open then roll back in his head, and he faints.
*
Jim's mother's eyes go flat and empty whenever anyone mentions Jim's real father, who has been dead for 3,812 days. Jim has no idea why he's thinking about his dead father when his mother's frantic voice wakes him.
Jim's mother usually has a quietest voice of anyone Jim's ever met. It isn't quiet now.
"Why is he having trouble breathing?" his mother is demanding. Jim can hear her pacing back and forth across what seems to be a small room. Her steps are too fast, too anxious. Jim concentrates on trying to breathe and counts her steps: one-two-three, one-two-three.
Someone stabs his neck with a hypospray. He winces and mumbles in protest but suddenly he's able to breathe again. "The anaphylaxis should subside now," the hypospray-wielder says. "It was an allergic reaction to the painkillers administered by the on-site medics--"
Jim's mother stops pacing. "An allergic reaction--?"
"The medics were unaware of your son's history," the voice (nurse? doctor? Jim can't tell) says. The voice sounds neutral and professional, but Jim can also hear reproach and a distinct lack of apology threading under the words.
There is a long silence. "My son's history?" Jim's mother asks dangerously.
"If they had been aware of his medical profile--"
"Bullshit," she snaps, and Jim hears a shuffle of steps, as if the owner of the other voice has actually stepped back in surprise, as if she hit him. "With all this modern tech, you should've been able to prevent this happening to a small boy."
"'m not small, Mom," Jim mumbles without opening his eyes.
Immediately his mother is at his side. "Hey, you. You're awake." Jim can feel warm lips brushing his forehead and fingers clutching his.
He opens his eyes, searching for her.
She smiles, and her eyes are shining with relief and no secrets all. "You do have the ability to get into trouble, don't you," she murmurs. Her hand flits across his shoulder, a breath of a touch, and she looks like she wants to ask him something or scold him maybe, but Jim can't keep his eyes open. As his eyes close, he hears her turn back to the medical person and say in a calmer voice: "Tell me what happens now."
Before he succumbs to whatever sedative was included in the epi-hypo, Jim hears a rapid set of taps on a datapad, then: "Your son has no internal injury, although both of his legs are broken. One break is clean. The other leg is shattered. We've stabilized him and are currently prepping Surgical Room 3..."
Jim drifts off.
*
Jim's mother has secrets, things she doesn't tell anyone.
When he wakes up after his surgery, Jim is alone in a standard hospital room. His body feels heavy and weird, like it isn't his. He can't feel his legs.
He can hear his mother's voice, but can't see her. He thinks she's in the hallway outside his room, but isn't sure. He hears her say: "I just don’t know, Chris."
"Starfleet needs you, Win. I couldn't believe it when they told me you were here. I knew I couldn't miss this chance to talk to you, to urge you to reconsider. Win. Re-enlist in Starfleet. With your skills and expertise, we could--"
"Please, Chris. My skills and expertise are hopelessly out of date, and you know it."
"I don't believe it. I know you, Win. I'm sure you never stopped reading the latest journals. I'm sure you've been tinkering with George's damn car for years, building and rebuilding the damn thing for practice as much as to keep yourself out of trouble."
She doesn't reply, but Jim knows her well enough to imagine her shrug.
"If some of your specific domain knowledge is out of date, that's understandable, but it's not a deal-breaker. Win. You're too good, have too many skills we need to not re-enlist. Starfleet needs you, and you know you want to. C'mon, Win. Are you happy being the only genius-level engineer buried in the backwoods of Iowa?"
"There are no backwoods in Iowa," Jim's mother says, and something in Jim's chest clenches at how quiet and thoughtful she sounds.
"It's been long enough, Win," the Starfleet officer (Chris?) says. Jim thinks his voice is soft, like he's gentling a skittish mare.
"It's been too long, Chris," she sighs.
"Not if it's something you want to do."
Jim waits for her to say no, to tell the officer that she can't, that she isn't ready to re-enlist, that she needs to stay with her family, with him. When she doesn't, Jim feels his eyes sting (he tells himself it's the woozy aftereffects of the surgical anesthetic). When he hears her say goodbye to the officer and she still hasn't said no, Jim closes his eyes and wills himself to fall asleep (he doesn't want to see her).
*
Jim's mother's eyes are grey like cat's fur. Her eyes are the first thing he sees when he wakes up next. She's sitting beside him, reading an ancient paperback. Jim's mother likes to read and collect antique books.
"There are secrets in all families," she murmurs, turning the book so he can see the cover. "I just read that in this book. It's Emma by Jane Austen, a good book although I'm not sure you'd like it." She smoothes his hair back from his forehead. "Our family's secrets are pretty well known."
Jim frowns in confusion.
"The Kirks have always been Starfleet. Your father, his parents, my father. Our family has always served."
Jim nods, still not understanding.
Her mouth quirks. "You heard me talking to Commander Pike, didn't you?"
And then Jim understands. He nods.
"I didn't want you to find out like this."
Jim lets his question hang unsaid in the air between them.
"I wanted to tell you myself. I didn't want you to find out through an overheard conversation that I've been thinking about re-enlisting." She sighs. "I've gotten offers for years. And I've missed it. I enlisted before I met your father because I wanted to be out there--" she gestures beyond the window-- "discovering new things, exploring new places, going where no one has gone before. Being a part of per aspera ad astra was all I wanted for so long--" she brushes her finger down his cheek-- "before you and Sam, of course. But you were right, Jim, you're not small anymore. And there's so much that I still want to do out there."
Jim doesn't say anything. He tries to smile, but it's hard to get his mouth to move right. So he nods, because he can understand even if he doesn't want to.
*
Jim's mother keeps herself to herself.
She misses her shindig because Jim is in the hospital. They leave San Francisco without going to Starfleet Academy even once. They take a shuttle back to Iowa, and Jim's mother arranges to transport his dead father's car back separately. Jim stays home from school for the next six months, and life mostly returns to normal, until his mother gets a call from Commander Pike.
Jim's mother re-enlists in Starfleet when the doctors pronounce Jim healed enough to go back to school. She's posted off-world almost immediately. Sam goes away to college, and Jim stays with Frank, and things are okay. Frank's a good guy and an okay fill-in parent, even if he's not Jim's mother, and Jim tries to be normal, he really does.
Five months into his mother's off-planet assignment, everything Jim isn't talking about gets the better of him, and he drives his dead father's car into the Riverside Quarry partly out of frustration and boredom, but mostly in protest.
Jim's mother isn't angry in the vid call later that night. She looks frightened and defeated and a little lost. She tells him that she's requested Earth-based assignments for the next few months, and Jim is happy to have her home again until he sees the regret in her eyes and realizes he put it there.
When she's assigned off-planet nine months after that, Jim and Frank see her off. Jim promises to keep up his grades, to listen to Frank, to not crash any cars into any quarries. He tells her to have a good trip and that he'll see her when she gets back.
He waves as she disappears into the shuttle and doesn't tell her that he'll miss her. He doesn't say that he's lost without her.
She waves at him through the shuttle window, smiling as if she understands everything he hasn't said. Jim's sure she doesn't, but he smiles back anyway.
There are some things they don't need to talk about, and he has secrets too, things he doesn't tell anyone. He's his mother's son, after all.
Part 4