fic: five step program (stxi)
Title: Five Step Program
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Characters: Jim, Winona, McCoy, Spock Prime; future!K/S if you squint
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no profit; I’m only playing in the greatest sandbox ever.
Spoilers: STXI
Notes: The backstory to my response to this prompt at st_xi_kink. And, yes, there's a last part coming. Because Spock trying to deal with a five year old brings the LOLs. Alternate title of this fic? Proof that Star Trek will make Missy write anything so long as it looks interes -- OOH, SHINY!
Summary: How Jim became a father in the alternate reality.
1.
Jim's face looks like ground chuck and he’s nursing a hangover the morning he finds out, and he’s wired and jittery when he shows up at his home for the first time in a year two days later. In the kitchen, his mother’s feeding the baby gathered up in her arms, the baby wearing an extremely bright pink hat and an intense expression. Her forehead’s all wrinkled up, he can’t help but notice, and then he can’t help but wonder what the hell the bottle did to warrant that kind of deliberation.
Jim stares and keeps staring as his mother explains what she didn’t in their call, keeps staring as the feeding finishes and the baby is leaned against a shoulder to be patted. “-know she’s yours but my first thought was Abigail,” Mom says then, and he blinks and jumps and wonders what the hell he’s missed while he was watching the baby get burped. “I think it suits her, she’s a sweetheart, Jim, she’s perfect.”
Her. She. Daughter. “Abigail,” he repeats and he remembers stories about his grandmother on Mom’s side, grandpa James’ wife that Jim never knew. “That sounds like a pilgrim.” He looks at the baby, shakes his head with a certainty that makes no sense in regards to the rest of his mental state. “She’s not a pilgrim.” His daughter is not a pilgrim, will not be wearing those funny hats or the weird shoes. “Abby.”
She looks like an Abby to him, and he’s suddenly sure she’s better than any other baby-
Baby, Jim thinks, and the panic snaps back into his thoughts.
He can’t take care of her, can’t take the chance of screwing her up, of not being good enough for her.
Can’t take the chance of not being able to protect her.
Mom must see it on his face because her own falls just a little and she says “Jimmy” in a way that hurts.
It’s been a long time since Mom called him Jimmy, not since he decided he didn’t want to be Jimmy anymore because Jimmy was too easily beat up by everyone, thanks. His tongue probes the split in his lip and he watches Mom lay the baby down in the bassinet… thingy, tilt her head back to smile at him encouragingly. “You can come back when you’re ready, baby.”
He’s not sure what it means that she sounds so sure he’ll ever be ready.
She walks out of the kitchen to give him a minute, and he spends that minute staring at the baby that is already asleep again, lips pushed together and forehead scrunched up. After a long time staring, after seconds of silence that press down on him, he leans down to press a kiss to her forehead, unsure what to do but knowing at the same time that he wants what’s best for her.
And Jim doubts he’s what’s best for her right now.
“I’ll be back after I do better,” he promises and leaves her with his mother.
2.
Sam, who keeps his opinions quiet but doesn’t quite keep them to himself, is ashamed by him, offers to take the baby since he’s married and expecting a second baby of his own. (Jim doesn’t even know if they were ever close, doesn’t know how things would be if the Dad Sam loved had come back on the Kelvin in addition to Jim, but he’s long past the point of wishing things with his brother were different. Because they aren't ever going to be.)
Mom came back when she found out about everything, has proven herself over and over again no matter how bad things got. It’s not perfect or even always good, but he knows he can depend on her, knows that she’ll step up for Abby in a way he sure as hell can’t. Sam, well, Sam never came back and never proved himself, and for the second time, Jim thinks she’s mine and just wants to keep her safe.
Thankfully Mom spares them the confrontation that’s been building since they were young and refuses before Jim can even open his mouth to start ranting about how much he does not agree with Sam’s idea.
After Sam’s offer, Jim starts sending gifts when he’s got a little extra.
A teething ring even though he doesn't even know if she needs it yet, a few hats that he thinks might be cute on her, a stuffed dog because he never got to have one and he knows Mom is still allergic. One night he’s looking for a bar and instead finds a toy store, spots the same magnetic puzzle blocks he used to love when he was a kid in a window and spends everything he has on them. She’s too young for them, he knows, but he always loved the big box of blocks his mom had for him best, loved figuring out how to fit the pieces together in whole new ways.
When he calls Mom after he knows the gift has reached the house, his hands sweaty and his voice a little croaky, she greets him with a bright grin that promises she’s sly to his choice of gift. He can’t help his own laugh when she holds Abby up to the screen and the toddler slaps a candy-covered palm to the display, her forehead wrinkled up and her eyes narrowed as she stares at him curiously.
When she suddenly grins as if she realizes who it is, he somehow feels it.
Then Mom says thickly, “oh, Jimmy, George would've spoiled her rotten” and the moment is gone, the emotion gone sour, because he doubts Dad would have had to spoil her rotten if-
Jim says goodbye before his mother can see his reaction. Then he hops on his bike, finds the most crowded bar he can and sets out to get distracted and-or roughed up, he’ll take whichever happens first.
The next morning, still bruised, he's on his way to Starfleet.
3.
Jim spills to Bones long months after they first meet because Bones has a kid, a daughter.
Daughter is the magic word when he’s drunk and avoiding the call from Mom that’s waiting for him, the one that he knows will include an update and her pride over him heading to Starfleet, doing what she’s always known he wants to do. The word has been sitting in his head since he first met the man and then he just… blurts everything out in the middle of listening to the doctor rant about doctors who don’t know enough to have the hypo ready before the patient realizes the hypo is coming.
“My kid hates hypos,” Jim interrupts slowly, because he has to work to pronounce the words at this point, “but she goes with the program. I didn’t. I used to throw things at the doctor but she’s just… mellow, Mom says.” When he looks over, he’s getting a Look, one of those really weird ones that he’s learned Leonard McCoy makes when he really can’t think of what the hell to say. “She’s kind of tiny,” Jim feels the need to add, because she really is kind of… tiny. “I’m always worried somebody’s gonna step on her.”
Bones blinks. Glances at Jim’s drink and then back at Jim.
“Is one side going numb?” He grabs Jim’s face, twists it over and squints at Jim with furrowed brows and a curled mouth. “I can’t see in this damn light, is your face sagging?”
“My daughter is not a pilgrim,” Jim informs him, because somehow this is important and he’s starting to believe that Bones is the first friend he’s ever had. “And she knows how to do her shape puzzle.” Jim steals the drink Bones has forgotten about. “And I don’t have a picture but she’s really cute when she does this thing with her forehead,” he continues, unable to stop because he’s never gotten to talk about his kid before, ever, and he didn’t even know he wanted to talk about his kid.
And that’s how Leonard McCoy finds out about Abby.
4.
Bones nags. And nags. And nags some more. And then he adds some of his ridiculous expressions and eyebrow arches to the nagging and Jim gives up and goes back to Iowa during his next break. His first visit since he sent back the last gift but he's just going back once and just to check, that’s all.
Because Jim has long since decided that these Abby visits are odd: he never quite knows what to say and he always leaves feeling like her big brother instead of her father. But this time she bounces down the front steps when Mom opens the door and throws her arms around his legs, stares up at him like he’s the most important thing in the universe, and the feeling is completely different than anything he’s experienced before.
Because she’s gotten big, which leaves him stunned, and yet she’s still tiny, a little girl smaller than the other kids her age. She wanders around the house all day long, which is something he’s been told and yet is completely different to see because she really does explore every inch of the house, runs out into the backyard to show off her favorite tree and the playhouse Mom got her.
She’s always at his side or just a step behind during the weekend he spends in the house, shows off the box of rocks she’s collected that he has to admit are impressively, well, pretty. She curls up and sleeps in his lap on the couch the night before he heads back to San Francisco (he doesn’t sleep but he lies to his mom because I spent all night watching her sounds lame coming from him) and although she cries when he leaves the next morning after breakfast, the last hug he gets hurts a lot more in ways he doesn't know how to process.
Jim goes back a second time when he gets the chance, goes back a third or then a fourth time. The fifth time he gets back from Iowa, Bones doesn’t say I told you so but he smirks and the point is made.
5.
After Vulcan, before he and Spock beam aboard the Narada and handle things pretty damn well if he does say so himself, he has some grasp of what his father felt like in those last twelve minutes. Jim finally thinks about what is actually at risk, and finally, finally, he knows his father never had a moment of hesitation before it was over, knows his father would never have regretted it.
Probably fitting, he’ll think much later, that it’s the elderly Spock who causes him to have the realization.
“May I inquire about your Abby?” the elderly Vulcan who happens to be Spock (holy hell, his mind supplies helpfully for the hundredth time) asks as they’re walking through the snow. They’ve already talked about how this version of McCoy has a thing for hypos that’s new and how bright the new Enterprise apparently is (the little frown on elderly Spock’s mouth is more amusing than it should be) and Jim’s beginning to realize just how much this guy’s picked up from his head which is kind of weird and yet not at the same time. “I must admit I am curious about some aspects of her existence in this timeline.” He sounds almost like he’s trying to scientifically study Jim's kid which is also, well, weird.
Elderly Spock stops because Jim freezes, his heart constricting horribly in his chest because he hadn’t thought about it, he hadn’t realized, and she’ll be gone like six billion Vulcans-
Abby, waiting on Earth, where Nero is headed-
And Jim freezes, again, because he sees a wave of understanding pass over the Vulcan’s weathered features that he doesn’t expect. He shouldn’t be surprised because he’s still carrying undercurrents of an unspeakable grief not his own, because he’s already decided that Vulcans aren’t as unemotional as people insist they are because marooning somebody on a planet with too much ice and too many things with too many teeth when the brig would have worked just as well?
Was real fucking expressive from where Jim was standing. Literally.
None of that matters, though, because this Vulcan is staring at Jim with the most human eyes Jim has ever seen in his life, with a subdued level of emotion that he cannot compare to anything he’s ever experienced, ever known. And it’s… debilitating, almost, when he realizes what it means that he can see it.
“Your daughter will be fine,” the Vulcan says softly, confidently, and Jim stands silent for a long minute as he takes in the skim of something in old eyes, something calm and undeniable and sure.
Jim believes him, can’t help it, and the sick dread doesn’t abate but it lifts enough for him to shake himself and set off again, more determined than before. After a second, he’s aware of the elderly Spock falling easily into step beside him, apparently having decided that he will not pursue the matter but, hey, fuck it, it’s not like Jim’s got anything else to do until they reach the outpost. Distraction is a good thing right now. “What about the other Jim? What was his Abby like?”
A moment spent considering. “The James Kirk I knew had no daughter.”
Well. That was. Weird. “Oh,” he says uselessly, not sure how to imagine not having an Abby somewhere in Iowa and not sure how to handle the jerk inside him at the thought. He can’t think about it now. If he does, he won’t able to do what he has to do, so he tramples the thought down. “So I never had a kid.”
A beat. “You did. However, that child was not as visually endearing as this child.”
Jim stops again, blinks at the expanse of snow and ice around him. “Are you saying you think my kid is cuter than the other Jim’s kid?”
“I am afraid I do not know what you mean.”
Yeah.
Jim definitely likes this Spock better than the other one.
“I make cuter kids than the other me. The important stuff is right with this universe,” he decides after a few seconds, aware that he’s calmer than he’s been since before the younger, way-more-annoying Spock declared him a cheater and oddly comforted by how easily this Spock has brushed away his fear. He sets off once more, feeling surprisingly composed despite the fact that he’s cold, sore and in danger of losing everything he loves. “I’ll have to introduce you when all this is over, you two would get along great. She already collects rocks, runs around poking flowers. Plus, she does this thing where she scrunches her forehead when she gets annoyed. And, okay, she’s kind of tiny but she’s at the top of her kindergarten class, way smarter than the rest of kids. Cuter, too.”
“Indeed.”
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Characters: Jim, Winona, McCoy, Spock Prime; future!K/S if you squint
Disclaimer: Not mine, making no profit; I’m only playing in the greatest sandbox ever.
Spoilers: STXI
Notes: The backstory to my response to this prompt at st_xi_kink. And, yes, there's a last part coming. Because Spock trying to deal with a five year old brings the LOLs. Alternate title of this fic? Proof that Star Trek will make Missy write anything so long as it looks interes -- OOH, SHINY!
Summary: How Jim became a father in the alternate reality.
1.
Jim's face looks like ground chuck and he’s nursing a hangover the morning he finds out, and he’s wired and jittery when he shows up at his home for the first time in a year two days later. In the kitchen, his mother’s feeding the baby gathered up in her arms, the baby wearing an extremely bright pink hat and an intense expression. Her forehead’s all wrinkled up, he can’t help but notice, and then he can’t help but wonder what the hell the bottle did to warrant that kind of deliberation.
Jim stares and keeps staring as his mother explains what she didn’t in their call, keeps staring as the feeding finishes and the baby is leaned against a shoulder to be patted. “-know she’s yours but my first thought was Abigail,” Mom says then, and he blinks and jumps and wonders what the hell he’s missed while he was watching the baby get burped. “I think it suits her, she’s a sweetheart, Jim, she’s perfect.”
Her. She. Daughter. “Abigail,” he repeats and he remembers stories about his grandmother on Mom’s side, grandpa James’ wife that Jim never knew. “That sounds like a pilgrim.” He looks at the baby, shakes his head with a certainty that makes no sense in regards to the rest of his mental state. “She’s not a pilgrim.” His daughter is not a pilgrim, will not be wearing those funny hats or the weird shoes. “Abby.”
She looks like an Abby to him, and he’s suddenly sure she’s better than any other baby-
Baby, Jim thinks, and the panic snaps back into his thoughts.
He can’t take care of her, can’t take the chance of screwing her up, of not being good enough for her.
Can’t take the chance of not being able to protect her.
Mom must see it on his face because her own falls just a little and she says “Jimmy” in a way that hurts.
It’s been a long time since Mom called him Jimmy, not since he decided he didn’t want to be Jimmy anymore because Jimmy was too easily beat up by everyone, thanks. His tongue probes the split in his lip and he watches Mom lay the baby down in the bassinet… thingy, tilt her head back to smile at him encouragingly. “You can come back when you’re ready, baby.”
He’s not sure what it means that she sounds so sure he’ll ever be ready.
She walks out of the kitchen to give him a minute, and he spends that minute staring at the baby that is already asleep again, lips pushed together and forehead scrunched up. After a long time staring, after seconds of silence that press down on him, he leans down to press a kiss to her forehead, unsure what to do but knowing at the same time that he wants what’s best for her.
And Jim doubts he’s what’s best for her right now.
“I’ll be back after I do better,” he promises and leaves her with his mother.
2.
Sam, who keeps his opinions quiet but doesn’t quite keep them to himself, is ashamed by him, offers to take the baby since he’s married and expecting a second baby of his own. (Jim doesn’t even know if they were ever close, doesn’t know how things would be if the Dad Sam loved had come back on the Kelvin in addition to Jim, but he’s long past the point of wishing things with his brother were different. Because they aren't ever going to be.)
Mom came back when she found out about everything, has proven herself over and over again no matter how bad things got. It’s not perfect or even always good, but he knows he can depend on her, knows that she’ll step up for Abby in a way he sure as hell can’t. Sam, well, Sam never came back and never proved himself, and for the second time, Jim thinks she’s mine and just wants to keep her safe.
Thankfully Mom spares them the confrontation that’s been building since they were young and refuses before Jim can even open his mouth to start ranting about how much he does not agree with Sam’s idea.
After Sam’s offer, Jim starts sending gifts when he’s got a little extra.
A teething ring even though he doesn't even know if she needs it yet, a few hats that he thinks might be cute on her, a stuffed dog because he never got to have one and he knows Mom is still allergic. One night he’s looking for a bar and instead finds a toy store, spots the same magnetic puzzle blocks he used to love when he was a kid in a window and spends everything he has on them. She’s too young for them, he knows, but he always loved the big box of blocks his mom had for him best, loved figuring out how to fit the pieces together in whole new ways.
When he calls Mom after he knows the gift has reached the house, his hands sweaty and his voice a little croaky, she greets him with a bright grin that promises she’s sly to his choice of gift. He can’t help his own laugh when she holds Abby up to the screen and the toddler slaps a candy-covered palm to the display, her forehead wrinkled up and her eyes narrowed as she stares at him curiously.
When she suddenly grins as if she realizes who it is, he somehow feels it.
Then Mom says thickly, “oh, Jimmy, George would've spoiled her rotten” and the moment is gone, the emotion gone sour, because he doubts Dad would have had to spoil her rotten if-
Jim says goodbye before his mother can see his reaction. Then he hops on his bike, finds the most crowded bar he can and sets out to get distracted and-or roughed up, he’ll take whichever happens first.
The next morning, still bruised, he's on his way to Starfleet.
3.
Jim spills to Bones long months after they first meet because Bones has a kid, a daughter.
Daughter is the magic word when he’s drunk and avoiding the call from Mom that’s waiting for him, the one that he knows will include an update and her pride over him heading to Starfleet, doing what she’s always known he wants to do. The word has been sitting in his head since he first met the man and then he just… blurts everything out in the middle of listening to the doctor rant about doctors who don’t know enough to have the hypo ready before the patient realizes the hypo is coming.
“My kid hates hypos,” Jim interrupts slowly, because he has to work to pronounce the words at this point, “but she goes with the program. I didn’t. I used to throw things at the doctor but she’s just… mellow, Mom says.” When he looks over, he’s getting a Look, one of those really weird ones that he’s learned Leonard McCoy makes when he really can’t think of what the hell to say. “She’s kind of tiny,” Jim feels the need to add, because she really is kind of… tiny. “I’m always worried somebody’s gonna step on her.”
Bones blinks. Glances at Jim’s drink and then back at Jim.
“Is one side going numb?” He grabs Jim’s face, twists it over and squints at Jim with furrowed brows and a curled mouth. “I can’t see in this damn light, is your face sagging?”
“My daughter is not a pilgrim,” Jim informs him, because somehow this is important and he’s starting to believe that Bones is the first friend he’s ever had. “And she knows how to do her shape puzzle.” Jim steals the drink Bones has forgotten about. “And I don’t have a picture but she’s really cute when she does this thing with her forehead,” he continues, unable to stop because he’s never gotten to talk about his kid before, ever, and he didn’t even know he wanted to talk about his kid.
And that’s how Leonard McCoy finds out about Abby.
4.
Bones nags. And nags. And nags some more. And then he adds some of his ridiculous expressions and eyebrow arches to the nagging and Jim gives up and goes back to Iowa during his next break. His first visit since he sent back the last gift but he's just going back once and just to check, that’s all.
Because Jim has long since decided that these Abby visits are odd: he never quite knows what to say and he always leaves feeling like her big brother instead of her father. But this time she bounces down the front steps when Mom opens the door and throws her arms around his legs, stares up at him like he’s the most important thing in the universe, and the feeling is completely different than anything he’s experienced before.
Because she’s gotten big, which leaves him stunned, and yet she’s still tiny, a little girl smaller than the other kids her age. She wanders around the house all day long, which is something he’s been told and yet is completely different to see because she really does explore every inch of the house, runs out into the backyard to show off her favorite tree and the playhouse Mom got her.
She’s always at his side or just a step behind during the weekend he spends in the house, shows off the box of rocks she’s collected that he has to admit are impressively, well, pretty. She curls up and sleeps in his lap on the couch the night before he heads back to San Francisco (he doesn’t sleep but he lies to his mom because I spent all night watching her sounds lame coming from him) and although she cries when he leaves the next morning after breakfast, the last hug he gets hurts a lot more in ways he doesn't know how to process.
Jim goes back a second time when he gets the chance, goes back a third or then a fourth time. The fifth time he gets back from Iowa, Bones doesn’t say I told you so but he smirks and the point is made.
5.
After Vulcan, before he and Spock beam aboard the Narada and handle things pretty damn well if he does say so himself, he has some grasp of what his father felt like in those last twelve minutes. Jim finally thinks about what is actually at risk, and finally, finally, he knows his father never had a moment of hesitation before it was over, knows his father would never have regretted it.
Probably fitting, he’ll think much later, that it’s the elderly Spock who causes him to have the realization.
“May I inquire about your Abby?” the elderly Vulcan who happens to be Spock (holy hell, his mind supplies helpfully for the hundredth time) asks as they’re walking through the snow. They’ve already talked about how this version of McCoy has a thing for hypos that’s new and how bright the new Enterprise apparently is (the little frown on elderly Spock’s mouth is more amusing than it should be) and Jim’s beginning to realize just how much this guy’s picked up from his head which is kind of weird and yet not at the same time. “I must admit I am curious about some aspects of her existence in this timeline.” He sounds almost like he’s trying to scientifically study Jim's kid which is also, well, weird.
Elderly Spock stops because Jim freezes, his heart constricting horribly in his chest because he hadn’t thought about it, he hadn’t realized, and she’ll be gone like six billion Vulcans-
Abby, waiting on Earth, where Nero is headed-
And Jim freezes, again, because he sees a wave of understanding pass over the Vulcan’s weathered features that he doesn’t expect. He shouldn’t be surprised because he’s still carrying undercurrents of an unspeakable grief not his own, because he’s already decided that Vulcans aren’t as unemotional as people insist they are because marooning somebody on a planet with too much ice and too many things with too many teeth when the brig would have worked just as well?
Was real fucking expressive from where Jim was standing. Literally.
None of that matters, though, because this Vulcan is staring at Jim with the most human eyes Jim has ever seen in his life, with a subdued level of emotion that he cannot compare to anything he’s ever experienced, ever known. And it’s… debilitating, almost, when he realizes what it means that he can see it.
“Your daughter will be fine,” the Vulcan says softly, confidently, and Jim stands silent for a long minute as he takes in the skim of something in old eyes, something calm and undeniable and sure.
Jim believes him, can’t help it, and the sick dread doesn’t abate but it lifts enough for him to shake himself and set off again, more determined than before. After a second, he’s aware of the elderly Spock falling easily into step beside him, apparently having decided that he will not pursue the matter but, hey, fuck it, it’s not like Jim’s got anything else to do until they reach the outpost. Distraction is a good thing right now. “What about the other Jim? What was his Abby like?”
A moment spent considering. “The James Kirk I knew had no daughter.”
Well. That was. Weird. “Oh,” he says uselessly, not sure how to imagine not having an Abby somewhere in Iowa and not sure how to handle the jerk inside him at the thought. He can’t think about it now. If he does, he won’t able to do what he has to do, so he tramples the thought down. “So I never had a kid.”
A beat. “You did. However, that child was not as visually endearing as this child.”
Jim stops again, blinks at the expanse of snow and ice around him. “Are you saying you think my kid is cuter than the other Jim’s kid?”
“I am afraid I do not know what you mean.”
Yeah.
Jim definitely likes this Spock better than the other one.
“I make cuter kids than the other me. The important stuff is right with this universe,” he decides after a few seconds, aware that he’s calmer than he’s been since before the younger, way-more-annoying Spock declared him a cheater and oddly comforted by how easily this Spock has brushed away his fear. He sets off once more, feeling surprisingly composed despite the fact that he’s cold, sore and in danger of losing everything he loves. “I’ll have to introduce you when all this is over, you two would get along great. She already collects rocks, runs around poking flowers. Plus, she does this thing where she scrunches her forehead when she gets annoyed. And, okay, she’s kind of tiny but she’s at the top of her kindergarten class, way smarter than the rest of kids. Cuter, too.”
“Indeed.”