I'm Putting Out the Lantern (Find Your Own Way Back Home)
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Characters: Joanna McCoy, Bones, Jocelyn, Kirk, Demora Sulu, many OCs
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In which Joanna leaves home, only to realize that a starship is exactly like living in a small Southern town.
Notes: Title from Panic! at the Disco's "Folkin' Around", cut text from Tori Amos's "Big Wheel"
When she hears her mama’s voice, echoing down the brushy path from the house, Joanna’s fishing. Well-“fishing.” She’s got a stick of bamboo and a spiderweb strand of wire tied to it, and she’s got dirt in the crevices of her fingernails from digging for worms. But there aren’t any fish in the lake, haven’t been any since her great-great-granddaddy was a boy, if her daddy’s stories are true (and Jo has her suspicions).
Mostly, Joanna’s stretched out on a blanket stolen from the garage, enjoying the breeze on her skin, cooling the sweat that’s making her legs stick together. She clutches a PADD in one hand, reading her comics (she probably shouldn’t have her school PADD out here, but like hell she’s bringing any of her print comics out of the house). The fishing pole is balanced precariously on her thighs, the line lolling lazily on the lake surface.
“Joanna!” her mama calls, and Jo can imagine what she looks like, blonde hair clipped up away from her neck, apron draped absurdly over her work suit, sans jacket.
Joanna’s mama is amazing.
Jo loves her daddy, of course she does. (“She’s your daughter, Leonard,” Mama will say sometimes, exasperated. And sure, Joanna will own up to that.) And she does want to join Starfleet one day. (Her mama blames Daddy for that, too, but this one’s all Jo.)
Thing is, though, Daddy hates space, and someday when he’s happy and retired back on Earth Jo will be a starship captain like Uncle Jim. And when that happens, Jo wants to be just like Mama: kind of scary, but mostly smart and loud and strong.
---
“Nervous?” Uncle Jim asks, his hand warm and friendly on her shoulder. (Jo is never going to remember to call him Admiral; they’ve pretty much accepted it.)
Joanna straightens the collar of her red uniform jacket, giving Jim a crooked grin and putting her hands on her hips.
“I grew up in a small town, and you know my mother,” she says. “I think I can handle it.”
And Jim laughs, because he grew up in some podunk Midwest town-he gets it. (Also, Jo met Winona Kirk once; Jim knows about scary, badass mothers.)
“Shit, they should have just made you an admiral, kid,” he says, blue eyes bright.
“Giving you orders, Uncle Jim? A girl can only hope.”
He laughs again. “You’re gonna give ‘em hell, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
---
Jo’s girl is gorgeous, this sleek new Andromeda-class frigate who can outrun any piece of shit in the Alpha Quadrant.
She’s thirty-five; her First Officer is thirty-two. They’re the youngest crew on average since the Enterprise first shipped out. It’s a point of pride, even though Jim teases her about being a good ten years older than he was when he got his first command. Whatever. Fucking thirty-five.
Honestly, though, she doesn’t comm Jim nearly as much as she comms her mother.
“Peters and J’dali got into a fight in the mess hall today,” she says, running her hand over her face.
“You know,” Mom says absently, stylus tucked behind one ear, “You look exactly like your father when you do that.”
They’ll laugh about it, now, but Jo can’t help but remember when uttering her father’s name was blasphemy.
“Yeah, well, high-stress job, okay?” Jo says. Mom lifts an eyebrow, face morphing into her oh-I-know-you-did-not-just-say-that expression.
And okay, she was a high-profile lawyer and a single mom, and she’s gotten into politics since Jo’s been in Starfleet. But still. Some sympathy, or something.
Mom shrugs and goes back to whatever she was looking at on her PADD (probably case files; she’s the Atlanta District Attorney, and she’s an incurable workaholic).
They do this sometimes, working while on vidcom, pausing for random bits of conversation. It’s ridiculously expensive on subspace, but what the fuck else is Joanna gonna spend her money on? She’s a small-town Southern girl turned Starfleet captain; she doesn’t need much.
Speaking of, that’s what a starship is, basically: a small Southern town. You’ve got three hundred people in a contained area with little outside contact, and everybody knows everybody’s business.
Jo’s pretty sure she’s not captain because of Starfleet so much as she is because she’s used to small-town life and knows all the gossip. That, and she inherited her mother’s talent for putting the fear of god into people solely with the use of facial expressions. It’s like a revelation, or something.
---
“Oh my god, Jo,” Daddy groans, fingers twitching at the edge of the screen like he’s itching for a tricorder. “Could you please put some effort into staying alive for the next month? I’ve got tickets out to Frisco to see you, and those things are damn expensive.”
Jo laughs-more like a cough, but whatever. It wasn’t even that bad. She’s been hurt worse.
Daddy just rolls his eyes. “I swear, you are not my kid. Your mother fucking spawned you. And then Jim brainwashed you. Jesus fuck.”
Jo winks at him and smiles past scabbed lips. “I’m fine, Daddy,” she croaks. “T’Kaal is the best CMO in the ‘Fleet.”
Of course, she knows what his reaction will be. Daddy wouldn’t have made it as a Captain; he’s easy as fuck to read.
“Goddamn Vulcans,” he mutters, and reaches for his mint julep. Yup, Jo’s a genius.
She closes the call just in time to see her CMO standing in the doorway with a PADD, right eyebrow practically in the ceiling.
Jo shrugs, quirking a grin at her. “Parents, what can you do?”
T’Kaal gives the Vulcan equivalent of a resigned sigh. “Indeed.”
---
“Wait, she slept with who?” Jo leans across the table, PADD and paperwork forgotten as her eyes go wide.
Her XO sighs dramatically, as if this isn’t a normal occurrence, shen’s antennae twitching in vague annoyance. Whatever. Jo knows shen’s as much a gossiping old woman as she is. Shen just doesn’t like to admit it.
“T’Kaal,” shen says, deadpan, picking up shen’s stylus to attempt going back to shen’s paperwork. As if that’s going to happen.
“T’Kaal. Oh my god, you’re serious. Shax, you’re fucking serious. Demora fucking Sulu.”
Shax’s left antenna bends practically in half; Jo decided a long time ago that’s shen’s way of giving her a raised eyebrow and that she needs to limit the amount of time shen and T’Kaal spend around each other. One of these days, it’s going to kill her.
“Captain, you are well aware of Doctor T’Kaal’s sexual preferences, and I for one plan to get some sleep tonight. May we please continue?”
But there is no way Jo’s letting this go. It’s a Southern thing (which, granted, is her excuse for pretty much everything, but Jo will stand by it till the day she dies).
“Well yeah,” she says with a dismissive wave. “That’s old news. But Demora Sulu?”
“So it appears.”
“Well damn.”
---
The thing is, Jo totally didn’t mean her bridge crew to basically be all women-well, technically Shax isn’t female, being an Andorian and all, and her navigation and comm. officers are men, but really. There is one hell of a lot of estrogen in charge of this ship.
It makes department meetings really entertaining.
They really slept together? Jo pings to Shax, who’s sitting across the table. She eyes T’Kaal and Sulu, who are sitting across from each other further down the table, completely calm.
According to Orna. Shax pings back, antennae pointed toward Jo and head inclined toward Glasgow. He’s talking about some damn fool problem with his comm. station that probably doesn’t even exist. The man is a fucking hypochondriac about his machinery, and everyone knows it, but Jo’ll send Wolff to check on it anyway. Which Wolff probably knows, if the way she rolls her eyes behind Glasgow’s head is any indication.
Orna? And she’s sure?
Shax gives her a look like she should really drop it already and, you know, pay attention to the meeting. Which is basically all maintenance stuff and status reports, and Joanna is really good with crises but not so much with the minutiae. It’s why she’s got a ruthlessly efficient First Officer. She is never telling Shax this, but the nice thing is that Shax gets her better than anybody, so shen probably already knows.
Security Chief, Captain, Shax pings back, like that’s an actual answer. Except, it probably is.
Okay, but Sulu’s into girls?
Since when is that an issue?
Small Southern town, Shax.
Shax’s antennae twitch the way they do only when Joanna mentions her hometown. One day, that will stop being a viable excuse. And then what will you do?
I don’t know, die a horrible and bloody death?
Such dramatics. Need I point out five years at the Academy and two in Command School?
And yet…Jo pings back, biting back the urge to laugh.
So quaint, Shax replies.
And seriously? Joanna fucking loves her crew.
---
“Romulans. Really? Fucking Romulans. Way to be original, universe,” Jo groans, sinking back into the command chair. “Glasgow, what’cha got?”
“No response to our hails, Captain.”
Jo spins her chair around to look at Shax, who shoots her a wary glance. “Captain.”
Jo gives her a grin a mile wide. “Glasgow, tell Wolff I want her in the transporter room. And get Orna over there, too. You know how she gets. Shax, with me. Sulu, you’ve got the con. Maddox, give her nav; I want you on tactical. If they do anything, you’ve got clearance to give ‘em hell.”
There’s a chorus of “yes, sir” that’s swallowed by the slide of turbolift doors.
“What are you up to, McCoy?” Shax asks, antennae twitching in a mix of amusement and tension. It’s a fun interplay, and if there weren’t Romulans she’d probably play with it.
“Find me a piece of real paper and you’ll find out.”
Shax does that antenna bend/eyebrow raise thing, but five minutes after Jo gets to the transporter room shen’s handing her a piece of blank paper and an old-fashioned pen.
“This is why you’re my favorite,” Jo says.
“Somehow,” shen deadpans, “that is not comforting in the slightest.” Shen pauses. “Captain,” shen adds as a kind of sarcastic afterthought.
“Right,” Joanna says, pointedly ignoring Shax’s comment. “So. On to the not-dying part.”
She leans against the transporter console and scribbles something as legibly as she can in handwriting that has made her father the doctor cringe. “Wolff, can you read this?”
Her Chief Engineer nods, eyes widening. “Captain, you’re a genius,” she grins.
“Okay, new favorite. Sorry, Shax.”
“I’ll try to contain my grief, Captain.”
Jo grins at her. “Good. So. Let’s see them ignore this one.”
“Captain-”
“Next plans shooting at them, so, you know, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, okay?”
Shax mumbles something about Southern optimism, and Jo laughs, slinging an arm around her XO’s shoulders on their way back to the bridge.
The turbolift opens, and Sulu’s standing in the center of the bridge, eyes narrowed at a Romulan on the screen.
“Captain McCoy,” the Romulan says when she walks in. “I am Torvin, Captain of this vessel.”
Joanna sinks into the command chair, all smiles and swagger. “Nice to meet you. I see you got our little letter and thought you’d stop in for a chat. How very kind of you, Captain.”
Torvin stiffens a little, deliciously. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.
“I assure you, Captain, we have the capability to destroy your ship if we so desire. I do hope that will not have to be our chosen course of action.”
Jo crosses her legs and leans nonchalantly against the arm of her chair. “Oh, the feeling is mutual, I assure you,” she drawls, inclining her head just slightly toward Shax, who nods and moves out of Jo’s peripheral vision.
Oh yes, Romulans are fucked.
---
It’s a month almost exactly from the Romulan incident, which she’s technically not even supposed to talk about (except she totally told her mother, who thought it was hilarious). Wolff is in New Berlin with her family; Sulu’s co-teaching a class at the Academy with her father; Glasgow and Maddox have fucked off to a beach somewhere; and Jo basically forced T’Kaal and Shax into spending two weeks in Georgia with her.
They all love her, really.
Anyway, the old house is empty, so they stay there, and Mom comes in from Atlanta when she’s not busy running the fucking state (literally, though Jo personally thinks she’s actually running the world, she just doesn’t tell anyone because press makes her eyes bleed). And Daddy and T’Kaal actually get along really fucking well, which Joanna and Shax find hilarious, to the point of Vulcan Glare of Death.
A week and a half in, Jo’s lounging on a blanket, fishing pole resting on her thighs, reading this fantastic Andorian graphic novel Shax coerced her into reading. T’Kaal is meditating, like, communing with nature or some shit, and Shax looks asleep next to Jo but probably isn’t, shen’s white hair spread out on the blanket and blue skin the color of a cloudless Georgian sky.
It’s kind of perfect. And then she hears her mama’s voice, calling them all in for dinner.