[Star Trek Reboot] Hold Me Down (This Starless City): Part 1
Title: Hold Me Down (This Starless City)
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot
Pairings: None. Well, Jim Kirk/OMC for part of it, but really not the point. It... it's not even pre-slash. I feel faint.
Genre: Serious
Word Count: 44,437
Notes: Written for startrekbigbang, 2009. Enormous thanks to my wonderful fanartist renquise and fanmixer thebunnyknows, and to corialis, littledust, lazulisong and beckerbell for helping out with beta-type things and putting up with my endless whinging. :D Title is taken from Tiffany Blews by Fallout Boy (dear gravity, you held me down in this starless city). In my head, this is part one of a trilogy which will ultimately be Kirk/Spock, but it stands alone and any sequels will be at least a few months in coming.
Warnings: minor character death, non-graphic reference to child abuse and mental health issues
Art: here
Mix: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PAMR4LJ0
Summary: Iowa is a cage with invisible chains, and Jim is living in captivity. (Or, The Epic Tale of James Tiberius Kirk, from the ages of 5 to 22.)
1.
The part of Iowa where Jim lives is flat and hot and dusty, stretching out for miles and miles of scrubby grass and sparse, broken down farmsteads and not a whole lot else. The earth is hard and cracked and burns the soles of his bare feet when the sun beats down on it in summer, orange stretching out forever under the endlessly blue sky. Sometimes Jim feels like he could see the edges of the world from here if he squinted hard enough, it's so flat.
Of course he knows he can't really. Jim's five, but he's not stupid. For a start, the Earth is round.
“Hey Sam, how far away d'you think the horizon is?” he asks idly from his perch on top of the gate when he hears his older brother coming out on the porch.
“I dunno,” Sam says, sounding a little grumpy and sullen like he does whenever it's hot and their grandmother makes him run errands. “Grandma says you have to come in now or you'll get sunburnt.”
Jim pouts, kicking his legs so the mesh of the fence rattles. “Don't wanna,” he declares rebelliously. If he goes inside he'll have to do homework. There's not that much to do in the front yard, either, but at least it feels a little like what freedom must be like with all that sky around him.
“Don't be a brat,” Sam tells him. He's only three and a half years older than Jim, but he likes to act all superior. “Mom's not coming back 'til tomorrow.”
Jim shrugs. He knows that; it wasn't like he was really waiting, anyway.
“Grandma'll be mad if you don't do what she says,” Sam says shortly. The porch door clatters in its frame when he slams it shut behind him, and Jim sighs, climbing reluctantly back down to the ground. The metal is searing hot from the glare of the sun and he yanks his palms away before they can get burnt, jumping most of the distance. He stumbles the landing a bit and skins his knees on the sharp rocky ground. It stings a lot but he bites his lip, determined not to cry. Jim has a lot of practice falling over, so he's getting better at being a big boy and not acting like a baby about it.
He doesn't really want to go inside. It always feels so small and stifling, like he has to be careful not to breathe too hard. If he doesn't go, though, Grandma will yell at him, and Jim's a little scared of being scolded by her. She's not mean, exactly, but she's pretty strict. Some of the other kids at school have grandmothers who bake them cookies and buy them lots of stuffed toys. Jim's Grandma's not like that. She's tall and thin and stern and always cooks healthy food and makes Jim study and read lots of books. She's teaching him to play chess. It's not that Jim doesn't like books or chess, but sometimes he feels trapped in his own body and he just wants to run and yell and ride his bike forever until he reaches the edge of the horizon. Grandma doesn't like rowdy, active children, but he finds it really hard to contain himself.
For a place with so much sky, Iowa feels pretty cramped to Jim. He imagines that he can feel the gravity holding him down. He doesn't really know that much about gravity yet, but he thinks he doesn't like it.
What Jim really wants is to go out into space and be surrounded by all that limitless night sky, inky black and sprinkled with brightly shining stars. Jim knows from school that the universe is infinite, which means it never ends. You could fly forever and just keep on going. Jim likes that idea, longs for all that freedom.
Jim and Sam aren't allowed off-planet, though, even though their mom spends almost all her time a few galaxies away. Jim's never even been outside Iowa since he was born, no matter how much he yearns for something bigger and better. He's jealous of Mom, who can just fly off whenever she feels trapped and never takes them with her. When Jim feels trapped, he's still just stuck in Iowa.
“How come Sam and I can't go off-planet too?” he complains loudly as he thumps his way into their small weatherboard farmhouse, banging the door shut more forcefully than Sam had a few minutes before him. “It's not fair.”
He's treated to his grandmother's tight-lipped frown, and he feels a bit bad for a moment. He knows why he's not allowed; he's had tantrums about it before, and everything always gets tense and awkward whenever he brings it up again. He doesn't want to make Grandma unhappy, exactly, but sometimes he just feels so antsy and irritable in his own skin that he's ready to burst from it and he doesn't want to be good.
“James Tiberius Kirk,” Grandma begins sternly, “I don't remember raising you to be such an ungrateful boy. You stay at home because it's safe here and your mother trusts me to take care of you while she's working.”
Jim knows he should just say sorry, but he's sick of behaving himself, just like he's sick of Iowa. “If it's so dangerous out there how come it's okay for Mom?” he demands, and Sam hisses, “Shut up, idiot!” from the doorway of the kitchen.
Grandma draws herself up to her full height, cold and distant and gaunt-faced in her anger. “Your mother is an adult,” she says, in a voice that brooks no argument. “She goes off-planet for her work, which she does so she has enough money for you and Samuel, and I would thank you not to forget that.”
“No she doesn't,” Jim says stubbornly, crossing his arms and ignoring Sam's glare. “No one else's parents have to do that. There's lots of jobs in Iowa. She just wants to.”
Grandma's expression sours, as though she'd bitten into a lemon or something. “Go do your homework, James, or I'll revoke your television privileges,” she says instead of arguing with him, and Jim bets that means she actually agrees with him and just doesn't want to say so. He doesn't want to be banned from watching television, though; it's an antique and it's practically falling to bits but he doesn't have a holo-center like all the kids in his class because his grandmother thinks they rot brains and television can be pretty fun too, so rather than answering back he trudges off to the kitchen to do his work.
Jim kind of gets sick of doing homework all the time. He likes learning things, but he gets bored having to sit still and write down all this repetitive stuff he already knows he can do instead of learning something new or going out and seeing all these things for himself. Homework never seems to end and he's fairly sure he studies way more than the other kids in his class, even though they're all a year older than him, but Grandma says he's gotta use what God gave him. Jim isn't really sure about where God figures into this whole thing since nobody but his grandmother seems to believe in religion anymore, but Grandma says if he studies hard then one day he'll be able to do and be whatever he wants. Jim figures that means that if he ever wants to be able to get out of Iowa and explore the universe, he's gotta work hard, no matter how boring it is.
He finally gets reprieve when it's time for dinner and Grandma tells him and Sam to clear and set the table.
“Pack up your books, James,” she says, apparently forgiving him for his earlier misbehavior. “We can play chess after dinner, since you've been good.”
This is intended as a treat, and in some ways it is. There are a lot of things Jim likes doing better than playing chess, but he thinks he's getting better at it and it's pretty fun sometimes. He knows it's really another kind of lesson- his grandmother doesn't really believe in non-educational forms of entertainment- but it's a lot more exciting than writing out answers to obvious questions. Jim already knows the names of all the Federation planets; he'd rather go and see them than write them in a list. Chess is always different, though, and he has to think about what he's doing, which makes it exciting, kind of like having a fight with your brain instead of your fists.
It's a lot harder than anything he does in school, and he hasn't actually managed to win yet, but he thinks he's getting closer. Tonight he manages to chase Grandma into check three times before she traps him into checkmate, and she even smiles at him and calls him a clever boy. Jim's pretty proud of himself, even though he lost.
“You're a freak,” Sam tells him afterwards while they clean up, although not meanly. “Normal kids aren't that good at chess.”
“Maybe Grandma's going easy on me?” Jim suggests, tipping the chess pieces off the board into their container. “Or maybe she's just not that good?”
“Grandma has prizes for that stuff, dumbo,” Sam says, rolling his eyes, but he doesn't sound that annoyed. “You're just weird.”
“Oh,” Jim says. “Is that bad?”
Sam shrugs. “Nah,” he says. “It's just you.”
Sam says he doesn't like chess much, but he always watches when Jim and their grandmother play. Jim wonders why Sam watches them playing if he doesn't enjoy it, but he generally doesn't point it out because then Sam might stop. The one time he asked, Sam said that sometimes you could enjoy watching something without wanting to do it yourself, like sports. Jim doesn't really get it- for a start, he always wants to try out anything he sees someone else doing if it looks interesting- but chess is more fun when Sam's there too, even if Grandma won't let him help because she says it's cheating, so he accepts it.
“Don't forget Mom's coming home tomorrow,” Sam says after a moment, even though they both know there's no way Jim ever would. “You should go to bed, you don't wanna be too tired in the morning.”
“It's not that late yet,” Jim objects, even though technically it's past his bedtime. Bedtime exists more in theory than in practice for him; Grandma tries to enforce it but Jim hates going to bed and always finds ways to wheedle his way out of it or sneak out of his room or read under the covers using an old-fashioned pen-light. Sam's always ratting him out, and it makes Jim mad 'cause it's not like Sam's that much older than him, so how come it's okay for him to stay up?
“Is too,” Sam says, and crosses his arms. “If you go to bed it'll be tomorrow sooner and Mom'll be here.”
“Getting up early won't make Mom get here sooner,” Jim argues. “I'm not even tired.”
“That's not the point.” Sam glares at him. Jim glares back. “You're meant to go to bed at 8.30. That's almost an hour ago.”
“You go to bed too, then,” Jim says, crossing his arms to mirror his brother, and Sam scowls. “Or I'm not either.”
“You're not old enough,” Sam says snottily, like the fact he's turning nine in a few weeks makes him that much better. Before Jim can come up with retort to that, though, their grandmother comes back into the room and she must have looked at the clock, because she says, “It's time for both of you to go to bed, go on.”
Jim still doesn't really want to go, but he decides it counts as winning 'cause Sam has to go too and sticks his tongue out when Grandma isn't looking. Sam smacks him hard on the arm, which hurts a bit, but not so much that he doesn't feel a little guilty when Grandma snaps, “Samuel, if you don't behave yourself you certainly won't be going out with your friends on this weekend!” and Sam sulks off to his room.
Jim didn't mean to get Sam in trouble, not really. Sometimes he can't help being bad and he ends up upsetting everyone. He knows Sam will have forgiven him by tomorrow, though; he always does.
Besides, Mom is coming.
James Tiberius Kirk was born aboard Medical Shuttle 37 of the Kelvin in March 2233 to Winona and George Kirk (deceased) on the same date that his father took over as captain of the starship and died to save 800 people, including his wife and newly born baby.
This is the immutable underlying truth of Jim's existence. For as long as he can remember, he has been aware of this unavoidable fact shaping everything around him, like a gaping black hole that sucks everything in. Sam was only three and a half when Mom came home with a new baby brother and no Dad, so he doesn't remember much, and Grandma doesn't like to talk about it, but Jim's picked up things here and there from what Sam's told him and what he overhears. In a small country town like Riverside, everyone knows everyone else's business, and adults tend to think that Jim can't understand what they're saying just because he's a kid.
What he's heard is this: Winona Kirk's body came back from the Kelvin to her family farm where her mother was taking care of George Jr with her new-born baby, but her spirit stayed off somewhere in space. For months and months, Sam says, she was always crying. She'd ignore one son and almost smother the other with too-tight hugs, until her mood would change and she'd yell and curse and cry some more and couldn't bear to look at either one of them. She'd even tried to drown Jim in the bathtub once when she was supposed to be giving him a bath, and she'd only stopped when Sam had beaten at her with his little fists and screamed until their grandmother had come running and pulled her away.
The adults talk in hushed tones about something they call “post-natal depression”; Jim knows this has something to do with having a baby, but he thinks it's got a lot more to do with Dad dying and leaving them alone. He'd be sad too, if he'd been old enough to remember.
That's what Jim has heard. What he knows is this: Mom is never really there, even when she is. She's spent almost all of her time since Jim was old enough not to need to be breast-fed anymore somewhere off in space, traveling through all that wide-open emptiness and visiting all those far-off planets that Jim can only dream of. When she comes home, she's always sad and distant and not quite right. Jim can't ever remember seeing her smile like she's really happy. He thinks she loves him, and she tells him so whenever she calls and holds him close when she comes home, so warm and sweet-smelling and fragile, but he can see in her eyes that it hurts when she looks at him.
Mom doesn't come home very often, and when she does she never stays for long, usually a few weeks at most. Jim can tell she doesn't really like coming back to Riverside, even if she honestly does care about him and Sam. She always looks trapped, just like Jim feels, except unlike Jim she can fly off again whenever it gets too much. Jim thinks that when she leaves it's never really so much about where she's going as it is about getting out of here.
Grandma says it's complicated. Adults say that a lot, Jim finds.
But today it doesn't matter, because today Mom is coming home, and he and Sam have been hanging out by the gate all morning hoping to get a glimpse of her hovercar in the distance. Jim bets you could see it half an hour before it'd reach the farm, but Sam doesn't believe him.
In the end Sam's right, but it's probably just 'cause hovercars are so much faster than land cars, or something. If it'd been Dad's old corvette, Jim totally would've won. As it is, he first spots the tiny form of the hovercar on the horizon only a few minutes before it arrives. The heat haze turns it into an unidentifiable blur, and Jim has to squint and shade his eyes from the sun to really make it out. By the time he's sure it really is the hovercar, it's practically there already and Sam is yelling and waving his arms, calling out. Jim jumps down from his favorite perch on the gate, knees still stinging a little from yesterday's half-scabbed scrapes, and runs after his brother. His feet send little clouds of red dirt in their wake, ratty sneakers thumping hard against the ground as he sprints to catch up, and his voice rises over Sam's when he hollers Mom's name.
Mom looks cool and refreshed as she gets out of the car, so out of place in the hot, dry dustiness of Riverside, and Jim's sure that there isn't a more beautiful lady in the whole universe.
“Hey, little men,” she greets them, kneeling down to catch them both in her arms and stroke her fingers through their messy blond hair. “How are my boys?”
She smiles, small and understated and a bit wistful, but still genuine. Jim beams back at her with a gap-toothed grin (he's lost some of his baby teeth since the last time she came home), determined to smile wide enough for both of them.
“Grandma's teaching me to play chess,” he says proudly. “Sam says I'm good at it!”
Mom's hand tightens slightly in his hair and she looks sad again for a moment before she covers it up, acting like nothing happened even though Jim can see her eyes are a little dimmer. “That's great, baby,” she says. “Is that right, Sammy?”
Sam shrugs, a little awkwardly. Sometimes he seems like he doesn't know how to act around their mother. “He's pretty good,” he mumbles. “He almost beat Grandma last night.”
“You're Mommy's little genius, aren't you?” Mom says, and when other people say that kind of thing they say it like it's a good thing, but Mom squeezes him a little too hard when she presses a kiss to his cheek and he feels uneasy, wondering if he's upset her again somehow. “How about you, Sammy? How's school?”
“'s okay,” he says, still stiff and uncomfortable. “Everything's okay.”
“That's good, sweetie,” Mom says, but it sounds distracted, like she's just saying it on auto-pilot and hasn't really noticed the way Sam is holding himself back. She lets them both go and stands up, and Jim thinks about reaching out to take her hand but doesn't, just stays still beside Sam as Mom places a hand on each of their heads and ruffles their hair before she starts walking towards the house. Grandma must have heard all the yelling, because she's standing on the porch waiting with her back perfectly straight and her hands folded in front of her like always.
“I'm home, Ma,” Mom says, already looking a bit weary. “Just for a week this time, we're flying out again soon.”
Grandma's lips thin, but all she says is, “How was your trip?”, distant and formal. Jim thinks maybe Grandma doesn't get Mom, even though they're mother and daughter.
“Not too bad,” Mom answers, shrugging. “The drive was pretty smooth- flat land is better for the hovercar. You know what they say, Iowa's real flyover country.”
“Winona!” Grandma says sharply, but Mom just sighs and says, “Give it a rest, Ma,” brushing past her into the house without apologizing.
“I don't get it,” Jim whispers to Sam. Sam shrugs.
“Mom doesn't like Iowa,” he concludes. Sam probably doesn't really know what Mom said to annoy Grandma either, but they both know Mom hates it here.
“Me either,” Jim says, and grabs Sam's sweaty palm in his smaller fist. “Hey, Sam, d'you reckon we'll ever get to go with Mom?”
Mom always says when you're older, but Sam's older than Jim and he's never even been outside Riverside.
“Maybe,” Sam says, though they both know he really means no. Mom's afraid they're gonna die in space like Dad. It doesn't stop her going, but maybe she's not scared of dying when it's her.
“When we're bigger we should go by ourselves,” Jim decides, squeezing Sam's hand. If he studies hard enough, he and Sam can go wherever they like and see the universe too. “Like Grandma said.”
“Sure, Jimmy,” Sam promises, and squeezes Jim's hand back. Jim wonders why Sam sounds a little sad, but he's probably just imagining it anyway.
“Maybe Grandma can come too,” he suggests, head filled with a future where him and Sam travel through space together and maybe go visit Mom sometimes, but Sam makes a face at him.
“Don't be dumb, Grandma hates space,” he says dismissively, and tugs on Jim's hand. “C'mon, let's go inside, Grandma's probably cooking lunch already.”
“Okay,” Jim agrees, and follows Sam obediently back inside the house where Mom is waiting.
Whenever Mom comes home, she always tries hard to be an ordinary mother just like all the other kids' moms. Generally she keeps it up for a week or so before the strain gets to her; Jim sometimes wishes he had a mom just like everyone else, but he changes his mind when he gets one. The Mom who cooks and cleans and offers to help with homework and tries to smile all the time isn't really Mom at all, and Jim doesn't like it. He and Sam have never really talked about it before so he doesn't know how Sam feels about it, but he probably agrees. Usually they do.
This time, they only make it through three days of stilted domesticity before her composure cracks. Jim had thought she'd been doing okay this time, if a bit brittle- she'd packed him and Sam lunches in the morning and picked them up from school in the hovercar and hadn't even fought with Grandma at dinner- but maybe that's because she was trying too hard to be normal and had tired herself out. She'd just been washing the dishes while Jim did his math homework at the table and everything had been fine, but then there's the sudden loud sound of crockery breaking and Jim's head jerks up in shock.
He doesn't know whether she dropped it by accident or on purpose, but there's soap suds and shards of plate scattered on the ground and Mom just stands there staring at her hands for a moment before she starts to cry, little hiccups that soon grow to loud wracking sobs that make her shoulders shudder and tears spill down her cheeks.
“Mommy?” Jim says, childish and scared, because it's not even close to the first time he's seen her like this but he never knows what to say or do. “Mommy, what's wrong?”
Mom kneels down and tries frantically to sweep the pieces together with her bare shaking hands, but she just makes the mess worse when a sharp edge cuts her palm and the dishwater on the floor turns a thin pink with her diluted blood. She cries out in frustration and dumps the bits of broken china roughly back to the ground, scrubbing her wrist angrily against her wet eyes. Jim stares at her helplessly, torn between going to her and calling for Grandma or Sam, but after a moment he slides out of his chair and crawls over to her, tugging at her sleeve. Mom sniffles and pulls him into her lap, wrapping her arms around him so tightly it's a little hard to breathe.
“I'm sorry, baby,” she whispers, rocking him slightly as she peppers tiny kisses all over his cheeks and nose and eyelids, and he can feel the hot splash of her tears and thick stickiness of her blood against his face. “Mommy's so sorry.”
“It's okay, Mommy,” Jim tells her, even though it's kind of not, because Dad's dead and Mom's sad and Jim can't make any of it better.
They're still sitting like that five minutes later when Sam comes into the kitchen to get something, Jim clinging to Mom while she whispers a litany of sorry into his hair like some kind of prayer until her voice is hoarse and half-gone.
“Mom?” Sam says uncertainly, stopping short in the doorway with wide eyes as he takes in the scene. His gaze locks with Jim's, and maybe he finds some kind of answer there because a second later he's running off down the corridor screaming for Grandma.
“So sorry, Jimmy,” Mom's still whispering, cheek pressed fiercely to the top of Jim's head. “So sorry, I'm so sorry I can't be a good mother. My beautiful baby, so beautiful, just like your father...”
Sometimes Jim hates the way Mom looks at him like she's staring right through him, like he's not even there, like he's just a stand-in for Dad. I'm not him, he wants to tell her; I'm not him, Mommy, I'm just me.
The words always stick in his mouth like toffee, though, and he doesn't say anything at all until Grandma is there, pulling him carefully from Mom's arms and ordering Sam to take him to his room. Mom's a mess and so is Jim, and he can hear Grandma trying to calm her down as Sam leads him out of the kitchen.
“I didn't do anything!” he tells Sam, a little hysterically, because he's afraid he did, somehow. “It wasn't me, I swear!”
“Mom's just having a bad day,” Sam tries to comfort him, but he's just a scared kid too and Jim can hear the false bravado in his voice, knows that Sam doesn't really believe that either. “It'll be okay tomorrow, you'll see.”
Jim doesn't answer, just sticks close to Sam's side and curls his bony little fingers in the hem of Sam's t-shirt, grateful to have his big brother beside him. Sam's always there for him, so even when Mom's not around, Jim is never really alone.
It's okay, he thinks, so long as they've got each other.
Mom isn't better tomorrow, or the day after that. Jim isn't really surprised. Usually when Mom gets like this, she stays that way until the next time she comes home and she's back to acting normal until it happens again. Then she leaves again, and eventually comes back, and the whole thing repeats. Jim can remember enough of Mom's visits to be able to spot the pattern.
The pretence at functionality has been abandoned. Mom seems like she's too tired to try to smile now; the blue of her eyes looks somehow faded and washed out, and she spends most of her time sitting by the window staring blankly out at the cloudless sky, ignoring Grandma when she tries to lecture her. Sometimes Jim crawls into her lap, but Sam tends to hover awkwardly at the other side of the room even when Jim calls out to him.
“You know, Jimmy,” she says on the fifth afternoon she's there, resting her cheek lightly against his but still staring blankly out the window, “it used to rain in Iowa.”
Jim twists in her lap to try and look at her, even though she's not looking at him. “When you were a kid?”
“Not really,” she murmurs, stroking her long elegant fingers absently through his hair. “Even before Grandma was born and the world got hotter.”
Jim's learned about that in school, sort of, although he doesn't fully understand why it happened. Sometimes even teachers act like kids aren't smart enough to understand, so they just tell them a bunch of facts and don't even try to explain what they mean.
Jim's seen rain before, but not that often. He wishes it would rain now. Maybe Mom would like that. It doesn't rain in space.
It doesn't really rain much in Iowa, either. That's probably not why Mom hates it here, but Jim thinks it probably doesn't help.
“Where's Sammy?” she asks after a moment of silence, and Jim sighs, a little forlorn.
“Out,” he mumbles. “At the pool. With his friends.”
Sam's old enough to go out by himself, according to Grandma, so long as he doesn't go too far. Sometimes he takes Jim with him, but a lot of the time he hangs out with kids from his year at school and most eight-year-olds don't want to play with a five-year-old like Jim. Jim is jealous that Sam can go out and leave the stifling confines of the house without him; he's jealous of the other kids who take his big brother away from him. It's worse when Mom isn't here and it's just Jim and Grandma in the house, because it's not that Jim doesn't love Grandma but aside from the occasional chess game she never wants to play, just tells him to do chores or finish his homework.
Mom hums in acknowledgement and looks like she's thinking for a moment.
“Go and get your chessboard, Jimmy,” she says finally. “Show me how good you're getting.”
Jim squirms out of Mom's lap and runs to get the board and the container with all the pieces in it, not needing to be told twice. Mom has never asked him that before, and he's anxious to please her so maybe she'll do it again next time. She doesn't want to play, though- instead she asks him to show her his last game with Grandma.
Jim wrinkles his nose a little because he's never done that before, but if he concentrates it's not so hard. I did this, he thinks, moving the pieces, and then Grandma did that, and then...
He looks up, and Mom is watching him intently. The smile she gives him is wan and paper-thin, but it's the first he's seen since her break-down two days ago. “You're so smart, baby,” she tells him, a little wistfully. “So smart, just like Daddy.”
Jim doesn't really know what to say to that, but he's saved from answering when the front door bangs open and Sam yells, “I'm home!”
A moment later he comes to the sitting room where Mom and Jim are, and he stops in the doorway, eyes flicking between them and the chessboard. An odd look crosses his face and Jim wonders what he's thinking.
“Hi,” he says, after a beat.
“Aren't you going to come give me a hug, Sammy?” Mom asks, but the attempt to be casual sounds stilted, a little too serious for what should be a joke. Sam hesitates for a moment before he says, “Sure,” and crosses the room to wrap his arms around her shoulders.
Jim kind of wishes he could get a hug too, but Sam isn't really that into hugging and Jim is old enough to feel uncomfortable about asking, so he doesn't.
“Mom wanted to see me and Grandma's game,” he says instead, when Sam extracts himself from Mom's arms. He figures Sam is probably curious, since he'd scrunched his face up a bit when he'd glanced down at the board again.
“Cool,” Sam says, but he doesn't sound that enthusiastic. Maybe it's because he doesn't like playing chess; maybe it's not that interesting looking at old games that have already happened.
For a moment Jim isn't sure what he's meant to do now, somehow a little bit lost even though he's still right there in the middle of the sitting room. He's not used to feeling like this- Sam's his best friend. Jim always knows exactly what Sam's thinking 'cause he's thinking the same thing, but this time Jim thinks he's missed something somewhere.
“I remember when your father used to play chess with Ma,” Mom says, half to herself as if she hasn't even noticed the awkward silence.
“Mom?” Sam says tentatively, and Mom sighs.
“Mommy's tired now, boys,” she tells them wearily, sinking back into her chair and retreating back inside herself. “Why don't you go play together, okay?”
Sam and Jim look at each other, silent communication with no need for words.
“Okay, Mom,” Sam agrees, and takes Jim's hand when they leave the room, which means everything's okay, even though it's not.
“I hope Mom feels better soon,” Jim tells Sam when they're in the hallway, voice small, and Sam's hand tightens around his.
“Yeah, me too,” he says quietly, and Jim thinks that as much as he doesn't really want Mom to go away again, he sort of does at the same time, because maybe that way she won't be so sad anymore and then Sam and Grandma would be happy, too.
Mom leaves on the morning of the eighth day, according to plan. She packs all her things into the hovercar with Grandma's help while Sam and Jim watch from the porch, and she's crying when she kisses them both goodbye and tells them how much she'll miss them, but Jim can see how relieved she is to be leaving. He doesn't blame her; he thinks Mom doesn't do too well with all that gravity on Earth. Iowa weighs her down and makes her sad, and that makes Jim sad too.
As Grandma helps Mom carry the last of her bags out to the car, she stops to catch her breath, hand pressed against her chest, and Mom frowns, reaching out to her.
“Ma, you know what the doctor said, you shouldn't overdo it.”
“It's just heartburn, Winona, quit your fussing,” Grandma says, smacking her hand away irritably. “I do exactly as much as needs doing, and you'd do well to remember that.”
Jim's not exactly sure what Grandma means by that, except Mom flinches and opens her mouth like she wants to say something before she hesitates and then just sighs.
“You boys be good for your Gran, you hear?” is all she says before she hugs them fiercely and gets in the car, and Jim nods, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. He thinks if he tries to say anything he'll start bawling, and that'll make Mom feel bad so he bites down hard on his lower lip and keeps it in.
“Winona,” Grandma says, holding herself back in a way that makes her look stiff and pinched and Jim really thinks for the first time that it must be pretty hard for Grandma, too. “I suppose we won't be seeing you again for some time?”
“Sorry, Ma,” Mom apologizes, not looking her in the eye. “I don't know when I'll have shore leave again. We're scheduled to make a delivery in a pretty distant quadrant on this run, so it'll probably be a while.”
Grandma's face tightens, but all she says is, “I'm not the one you need to be apologizing to.”
Mom looks really guilty when she bends down to give Sam an extra hug. “I'm sorry I won't be here for your birthday, sweetie,” she says. “I'll get you a super special present while I'm gone, okay?”
Sam just nods. He'd probably never expected Mom to be there anyway- it's pretty hard to get shore leave to match up with specific dates like that. She's only managed to make it for one of Sam's birthdays since she started going off-planet again, and this'll be the fourth one he's had. Mom hasn't come home for any of Jim's birthdays, but they never talk about that.
Mom straightens up and offers them an attempt at a smile, ruffling their hair one more time before she gets into the hovercar. Grandma comes up behind Jim and Sam and puts a comforting hand on each of their shoulders, drawing them close.
“I love you both so much,” Mom says, from the driver's seat. “Take care of them for me, Ma.”
“Bye, Mom,” Sam says. Jim clings to Grandma's leg and buries his face in her side, still not trusting himself to speak even though he wants to tell her he loves her too.
“Goodbye, Winona,” Grandma says formally, and the three of them watch as the hovercar speeds away and turns into a speck on the horizon, leaving only a cloud of red dust in its wake.
The weeks and months following Mom's visit pass with the treacle-slow creep of mundanity. To Jim the days stretch out to eternity and a week seems endless; school never teaches him anything interesting and Sam's busy with his friends a lot, and sometimes Jim is so bored he feels like he could die from it. Eventually, though, time does creep forward; the dry crackling heat of summer drought mellows to the golden glow of fall, Sam's ninth birthday coming and going along with it, and then comes the freezing cold dreary gray of winter. Before Jim knows it it's already going into spring again and he's faced by the surprise of it almost being his birthday. The time had seemed to pass so slowly that part of him felt like it wasn't moving at all and so it's a bit of a shock to realize that soon he'll be another year older.
It's not really the excited anticipation other kids seem to feel about their birthdays. Jim's never really had much cause to think of it as being that special. He's never had a party, since he doesn't really have any friends at school and Grandma would probably find it too much to deal with, and while he does get presents, they're just small things. There's no talk of Mom being there for it; it's Jim's birthday, but it's also the anniversary of Dad's death, and that's a cloud that hangs over them all every year. It's the last time she'd ever want to come home.
There's still the promise of becoming a year older and being able to say he's six now, though, and sometimes Jim wants so badly to be grown up that he can taste it, so he waits for the day to come with an odd combination of impatience and dread.
When the day finally dawns there's a subdued mood settling over the house like a heavy cloud. Grandma makes bacon and eggs for breakfast instead of porridge, but Sam is quiet and sullen. Jim spends most of the day trailing Sam around the house 'cause they don't have school and Grandma said Sam's not allowed to go out with his friends and Jim kind of hopes that means Sam will play with him instead, but Sam just keeps ignoring him and eventually gets mad when Jim follows him into his room.
“Quit following me!” Sam snaps, and tries to shove him back out into the corridor. Jim can feel his lower lip sticking out in a pout and trembling a little when he tries not to cry.
“I just want you to play with me,” he complains, his voice scaling up in pitch and volume without him really meaning to. “You don't have to be so mean, Sam!”
“You don't have to be so annoying! Go play chess with Grandma or something and leave me alone!”
“Boys, what's all this noise about?” their grandmother says severely, coming up the hall from the kitchen, but they both ignore her, too caught up in their fight.
“You always just ignore me for your friends!” Jim yells, stomping his foot.
“Yeah, well it's your fault Dad died and Mom's never here!” Sam yells back, and he and Jim are both shocked when their grandmother slaps Sam hard across the face, lips pursed so tightly they're turning white. There's the red imprint of her palm on Sam's cheek, and he stares at her in wide-eyed betrayal. Grandma has always been really strict but she's never hit either of them like that before, not even when Jim's being really bad.
For a moment Jim is actually scared, even though it's not him she's angry at.
“George Samuel Kirk,” she says, almost a hiss. “You take that back and apologize to your brother right now!”
Sam can't meet her eyes and doesn't look at Jim either, just stares sullenly down at the floor. “Sorry,” he said grudgingly, and Grandma still doesn't look happy about it but Jim just nods. Even if Grandma says that, Sam's kind of right; it is Jim's fault, sort of. He thinks if he were Sam he'd be pretty mad at him for messing up their family too, but Jim's got no one to blame so he just has to live with it.
“'s okay,” he says, and blinks back the burning prickle in his eyes. He's not going to cry. Only babies cry at things like that, and Jim's six now.
“Would you like to have your cake now, James?” his grandmother asks, changing the subject awkwardly, and Jim nods again, because he doesn't get cake often and it's the only really good part about his birthday.
“Please,” he adds, conscious of not wanting to make Grandma mad again, and she gives him a small smile in reward.
“Good boy,” she praises him, and goes to the kitchen to take it out of the oven. Sam still is refusing to look at him, and Jim scuffs his shoe against the floorboards and tries to convince himself that he doesn't care. Sam's always weird on his birthday; it'll be okay again tomorrow, he thinks.
“You should come too,” Jim tells his brother tentatively. “Or else you might not get any.”
Sam shrugs. “Yeah, okay,” he mutters, and things still aren't right but at least he follows Jim into the kitchen.
Later that night Sam comes into his room when Jim's pretending to sleep and crawls into bed with him, wrapping his arms around Jim's smaller body and hugging him close.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” he whispers into Jim's hair, and Jim feels warm and sheltered. “I'm sorry. I didn't really mean it. It's not your fault, okay?”
“Okay,” Jim mumbles against Sam's shirt, and snuggles into his brother, because Sam isn't usually very tactile and that makes it a treat when he is. Jim's pretty sure Sam did mean it, at least when he said it, but it doesn't matter. It wasn't anything Jim didn't already know, and they can all just go back to not talking about it once his birthday's over.
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