[fic] time, tactics & furious despair - i
Author: rebel_quietude
Word Count: 3,583
Summary: Because Jimmy always was an odd duck, but he's really good at pretending. The first step of a grand adventure.
Warnings: implied child abuse (off-screen), language, not edited.
Disclaimer: Believe it or not, my job is often more interesting than I think making Star Trek would be. Less money, though - nor am I gaining any from the use of these copyrighted characters.
A/N: Genius!Jim. First official chapter of the greatness thrust upon them 'verse - directly follows the prolouge, posted on 14 Feb 2010. Again, not betaed - if I get a little more done and put it on AO3 or something I'll ask if anyone's willing to beta prior. This is a big project, and I make no claims as to update frequency- but if you don't mind that, enjoy!
It's hot. That's the first thing Jimmy thinks of, mundanely, as he steps off the transport, already feeling his skin start to tickle and sweat and rolling his eyes at his future of sticky shirts and smelly underclothes. The colony on Tarsus IV has summer of 136.5 days during which the temperature variates from 83.4 degrees to 119.3 degrees Fahrenheit and it's really not a good sign that Jimmy's already thinking of this place in terms of purgatory.
They step into the transit center, shiny and new, and Jimmy takes a minute to look out the window as the Kitowards shuttle begins turning around in preparation for liftoff. Abandoned, no chance of return. The coniferous trees surrounding the transport center landing padd loom back and toward the center windows as the shuttle takes off, and Jimmy tries to tell himself their seeming sentience isn't portentous even as he scuttles to catch up to his brother. Sam is already asking the lady at the desk about in-processing procedures, and if there's an Anne or Andy Mitchell around. Jimmy snorts once again - Anne and Andy, really - and decides to explore.
The center's tiny, scarcely bigger than the old one in Riverside before the shipyard went in. Everything's new and pretty and Jinny can feel his fingers itching to have a peek into the automated system he can see controlling major functions - probably planetary, no need for a colony of 3,872 to have more than one. He bets he can crack into it in less than twenty.
The lady at the desk is droning on about decontamination procedures and vaccines and school records - being quite sweet, truthfully, but Jimmy has no respect for anyone that falls for Sam's version of 'lost little lamb,' - as Jimmy finds a promising panel in the wall. He's distracted however when a pretty mid-thirties women enters through the door on the other side of the building, and he knows at once she's his aunt.
She flurries to the desk, just a little flustered and pink-cheeked, and Jimmy ducks behind a potted plant to observe. Sam is caught out in the open, and Jimmy can see him eyeing her from the other side of the desk as she makes a quick query to the desk lady and then notices the obvious - Sam, silent and calm, staring at her.
“Oh!” She takes long-legged steps around the big circular desk and stops three feet in front of him, making abortive little movements like she wants to hug him. Sam's giving off 14 year old death-rays, and she wisely refrains.
“You must be Sam. I'm so glad you're here. Was your trip all right? Do you have all your things? I'm so sorry I'm a little late, we got a subspace from your mother just as I was getting ready to leave, she's awfully worried and you know Winnie, it's got to be drastic if she's batting an eyelash. Can I tell her you're all right? Or would you like to tell her yourself? We have a decent comm tower here - not like the ones in Riverside, of course - but our family's scheduled time is on Thursdays so the Brady's across the road have already said they'd let you send a message to your mom during their time tomorrow and -”
Sam's eyebrows had been getting higher and higher during this deluge, and Jimmy could see the lady pause and take a breath.
“I'm sorry. I ramble when I'm nervous. I'm your Aunt Anne, and welcome, and I so hope you'll be happy here.”
With that, she smiles, and Jimmy thought simultaneously that this might not be so bad and also that he might be a little bestotted, and Sam didn't look much better for all he was trying to hold the skepticism on his face. Jimmy crept up sideways to the both of them, and though he catches Aunt Anne's flinch as she takes in the stabilization brace still wrapped around his forehead, the smile quickly spreads to include him.
The next half-hour is a whir of shots and fingerprinting and an initial colony entrance fee large enough to make Sam cough and Jimmy's eyebrows rise up his forehead. Their aunt doesn't flinch, though, and Jimmy's opinion of her climbs as she efficiently charms, corrals and browbeats the transit staff into having Sam and Jimmy's in processing done a full hour before the rest of the travelers have finished even the required information packets. Jimmy slips off to 'use the bathroom, ma'm' while Sam's getting the last of his immunizations, and thinks that Aunt Anne and mom are really quite a lot alike when he gets a skeptical eyebrow at the 'ma'm'.
Business done, the three of them gather he and Sam's belongings onto a cart as Aunt Anne explains that she hopes they don't mind her husband and daughter not coming to meet them, because their pre-schoool doesn't have child-care on weekends and Riley's only eighteen months and not at all patient enough for paperwork.
Jimmy also hears all the things she doesn't say, like not wanting to overwhelm them and being wary of another paternal authority figure and trying to be considerate of the poor abused kids and his guts twist with resentment - he's not a baby - and gratitude. He can't figure out which is stronger and feels pathetic for the turmoil, all the more out of place in comparison to the pristine, landscaped streets he stares at out the hover car window.
It's only twenty minutes or so before they're pulling up a driveway to a small yellow house set in a small, pristine yard and Jimmy knows he's going to walk in and break something. He and Sam haul their luggage out of the car despite Aunt Anne's protests that of course Mitch'll get it, and into a kitchen decorated with tile roosters and a white poinsettia on the windowsill. Aunt Anne shows them to their room - explaining that they're already applied for a larger house through the colony system, but it'll take at least a few months - and Jimmy catches his breath at the thought of living here, for good really surely, and knows he shouldn't have expected mom would give up the stars.
He manages to hide his face by looking around the room, blues and bunk beds and white curtains in the windows with sailboats on them, and tries to choke down the feeling he's entered the twilight zone.
Sam puts his duffel down on the bottom bunk - the fucker - as Aunt Anne says she'll leave them to get settled, and Mitch and Riley should be home from the park soon.
“The flesh-eating zombies should be making an appearance any minute,” remarks Sam as the door closes behind her, and Jimmy rolls his eyes as they grin at each other in a rare moment of perfect agreement.
“Did you get a load of the planetary operations system? Pretty slick - almost too much tech for a colony like this. Who's the multi-doc on their tech department, if there's a glich?” Jimmy's not going to admit he's drooling, just a little.
“Paid for by the truly astronomical new colonist fee. What the hell?” Sam flops down on his bed with his arm over his eyes, already looser out of Riverside, off of Earth. Jimmy thinks, maybe, he'll never go back.
“Stop groaning. It's not like it came out of your pocket.” Unsaid between the both of them was the added debt they were both under - it really was a lot of money, and it was for damn sure that mom hadn't thought to offer.
“I'll fix it,” said Jimmy, decision already made, and Sam shifted to glare at him.
“Might I suggest that larceny might not be the best first project here?”
“No worries. Not like they'd catch me, even if I did,” Jimmy's grinning at his brother, waiting for him to take him up on it - which he does.
“All right. What'd you do?”
“Just a little insurance. You know our luck.”
“Jimmy. Spill, or you'll be getting the mother of all wedgies.”
Jimmy doesn't really want to now, after that challenge, but the urge to crow wins out.
“James Tiberius and George Samuel Mitchell? Who on Earth are they? They're not in the colony DNA banks, or fingerprint records, or facial recognition database . . .”
By this point Sam is already chortling, hiding his guffaws in his elbow, and Jim imagines that might be some fondness in his expression as he shakes his head, much put upon.
“If it's found out, I'm blaming it all on you. How long?”
“Less than fifteen - bathroom. Somebody stupid put a direct line from the station to the main server.”
“Freak.” He says it with a smile, though, and Jimmy basks in his approval for a minute before they hear a door open and voices fill the house.
“What'd you think he'll be like?”
It's not that he's nervous. Really. It's just - he's seen pictures, and he looked a lot bigger than Frank, and Jimmy has really impressive bad luck.
“One way to find out,” replies Sam, and he levers himself off the bed, and they go down together to face the music.
. . . . . .
The answer is . . . not bad. Uncle Mitch is big, well-muscled, ex-starfleet and walks like a soldier. But he's also always smiling, and he teases Aunt Anne unmercifully, and when he plays with Riley he tosses her up 'til she giggles.
The first time Jimmy sees him do that is the first morning on Tarsus, first one in the kitchen in his PJ's. Aunt Anne had said to help themselves to cereal if they were up before her, so Jimmy's nosing around the cabinets when a yawning Mitch comes downstairs with Riley in his arms. Jimmy freezes - he's not scared, just prudent - and for a few minutes his uncle doesn't seem to notice him, getting the coffee from the fridge and blowing raspberries on Riley's exposed belly while holding her upside down. She giggles like anything, and Jimmy moves to stand from where he'd been crouched by the cupboards in the island.
“Shit!” Uncle Mitch startled, and then relaxes from where he'd shielded Riley with his arms. Jimmy can see him biting back his first couple sentences, opening and closing his mouth, before he takes a deep breath and smiles at him.
“Good morning, Jimmy. In the future, perhaps some noise?” He grins again, seeming to laugh at himself a little, but Jimmy just stares back.
“Breakfast?” Uncle Mitch asks, and seems determined to plow through the awkward. He proceeds to conduct a one-sided conversation about the kids in the neighborhood, and the park down the street, and apologizes in advance for Riley's occasional disturbed night as he finishes starting the coffee, and gets a couple cereal bowls from a cupboard out of Jimmy's reach and the milk from the fridge. Jimmy watches as he putters, until there's a full bowl of something fruity and kid-like in front of him and Uncle Mitch is waiting for Riley's toddler food to appear.
“Who's my girl?” he says, addressing his comment to Riley's nose, cross-eyed.
Jimmy freezes, caught in time as he then raises his arms and tosses her up towards the ceiling. In a flash his stool is tipped over and Jimmy's right in front of Uncle Mitch, his mind running through sines and rates of fall and the math of his universe as he sees simultaneous scenarios of consequence - the fall, the break, a different angle, collision with the table, and third rate of speed, arm instead- all of it proves unnecessary. Uncle Mitch smoothly reaches up to pluck his daughter from the air, big arms moving quicker than accounted for until Riley giggles in his arms while Uncle Mitch looks down to gape at Jimmy.
For the second time that morning his mouth opens and closes as Jimmy backs slowly away to his stool, and then understanding lights his eyes and his jaw clenches.
“Jimmy, I know you just got here, but I think we need to have a talk.”
Jimmy stares down at the kitchen island and runs through chess moves in his head, taking the Queen in one way and then another as Uncle Mitch slowing gets Riley settled in her high chair and then sits on the stool across from him, perfectly placed to catch flying morsels of food and not so close Jimmy'd have to move. Uncle Mitch seems to know exactly how close that is, he notices.
Jimmy can't read him yet - he's just not sure. He thought he might've been sure, once, but he's been wrong before. Uncle Mitch seems in no hurry to get started, spooning Riley's goop as she mouths cheerios. When he does speak, it's quiet, and solemn.
“Jimmy, I'll have this talk with your brother too, but you need to know - not just with your head, but eventually with your gut, and your heart - that no children, ever, will come to harm in my house.”
Jimmy looks up from the table to him, and his face is cold and angry and Jimmy's brain is smart enough to see it isn't directed at him, but he still fumbles with his spoon as he goes to pick it up.
“What that man did to you was wrong, and he will be punished for it. I don't know what your home was like in Riverside, Jimmy, but I can guarantee you that here you will be loved. Even if you don't believe me right now, and that's okay, I promise you that your Aunt Anne and I are going to do absolutely as well by you as we know how.”
Jimmy still stares down, not meeting his uncle's eyes, but he hears sincerity in his voice, the set of his shoulders, the nervous way his left hand twitches in his peripherals. Jimmy's looked up Uncle Mitch. He tries to put equal weight on all indicative data, but can't stop seeing the score records of the MMA tournaments he'd participated in at Starfleet Academy. It makes for intimidating breakfast thoughts, even if the guy is being condescending. Riverside's none of his fucking business.
“That doesn't mean you'll be able to do anything you want, of course; your mother says you're a brilliant young man, and there will be expectations so far as school work and chores - but you'll always be treated fair, and we Mitchells know how to play as hard as we work.”
Aunt Anne had come downstairs as he spoke, wrapped in a salmon bathrobe, and gives a kiss to Riley's head as she passes by enroute to the coffee.
“Mitch, love, do we have to have this conversation so early?” she says with a smile. “Seven am is time for coffee and small talk, not laying down 'expectations.'” She grins at Jimmy as she makes air quotes with her hands, and he can't help but return it. Mitch catches her eye, though, and looks significantly at Riley and back, and Aunt Anne sits down at the remaining stool with a look of confusion.
“The only corporal punishment - that's physical punishment, Jimmy- in this house, is a spanking, and the only cause for a spanking is putting yourself or others in real physical danger,” Mitch continues.
Jimmy looks down at the table to hide a smirk and wonders how long that would last. And seriously - physical punishment - does this guy think he's three?
“As far as school work, trouble there would lead to restrictions on where and when you go places with friends, and such. I doubt that'll be a problem, of course - what grade are you in now, Jimmy?”
“I don't go to school.”
Movement in the room stops, except Riley, who's still mouthing her cheerios. Aunt Anne and Uncle Mitch exchange a laden glance, and obviously the buck is passed.
“You don't go to school, sweetheart? Do you mean . . . after . . . the car?”
“Nope,” Jimmy smacks his 'p', inwardly relishing.
“Have you ever been to school, sweetheart?”
“Nope,” says Jimmy, trying to fight his grin.
Uncle Mitch looks at Aunt Anne with wide eyes, a horrified expression coming onto his face, but Aunt Anne narrows her eyes and looks at Jimmy.
“Jimmy. Did your mom teach you, when she was home?”
Busted.
“Yeah.” Jimmy wants to keep his answers monosyllabic, to see what she knows already. Uncle Mitch is clearly out of his depth, trying to fumble his way through awkward speeches and obviously nervous as hell - he's not that big really - but Aunt Anne is clearly made of sterner stuff. The corner of her mouth starts to quirk upward, and he knows she has him. She did grow up with mom, after all.
“Jimmy. Did your mother get you tested?”
“Nope.”
“I did, though.” Sam enters the room, smirking, and Jimmy knows his fun is done.
“Mom didn't want the cameras to catch her. I took him down to Iowa city when he was seven - we snuck out the back door, after, and laughed as they all scurried around to find him. Mega five, tactical.”
The room's silent for a moment as his Aunt and Uncle absorb this information, and Jimmy inwardly curses his brother with a thousand painful demises.
Riley throws a cheerio square at Jimmy's forehead and laughs. Fitting.
. . . . . . . . . .
It's not that he's eavesdropping, precisely. Forewarned is forearmed, after all, and Jimmy's nothing if not prepared. He listens to his Aunt and Uncle argue for forty minutes, trying to be hushed and speaking in strangled whispers in the kitchen, but the house is tiny, and it's not hard to sneak back into bed before his Aunt comes in to check on them. He mimics sleep - not convincingly, he knows - but she just smooths his hair over his not-quite-so-bald-anymore patch, and walks back out the door.
When all the footsteps have retreated to the bedroom down the hall, he gets up and opens his window. It's too easy, really - the tree is practically beckoning to him, and the chance of his falling is less than 12.3%. Excellent odds.
Scurrying out and up, he successfully catches the gutter on the roof, and pulls himself up to the gently sloping gable over their window. He low-crawls to the top of the roof and huffs a sigh as he flops onto his back.
The stars are different. He though perhaps he would be nostalgic for well-known constellations, but instead he finds himself plotting out solar systems and quadrant boundaries, and wishing he had a telescope so he could identify the trade routes through the Vexicali nebula. Tarsus IV was almost denied a colony permit, because the surrounding area makes it almost impossible to get to - completely cut off, during some astrological periods.
He understands, really, the fight. Aunt Anne grew up with a mega. A mega-II, and spacial, not tactical, but still - not so weird for her. To Uncle Mitch - who had obviously not know mom was a mega - it's something more of a shock.
He doesn't phase, though. At least, not that he remembers. Not that he would - when mom does it, she has absolutely no realization of how much time has passed since she went into her schematics. He thinks he might have used to, when he was a kid - but Sam broke him of it.
Megas were pretty much a recipe for dead during the eugenics war, but afterwards everybody for the most part came to their senses and it was seen as just another genetic anomaly - albeit one with some far, far reaching consequences. There was still a stigma, though, and a hole bunch of stereotypes, and Jimmy to this day hates the son-of-a-bitch who thought making it illegal for megas who phased to have sole custody of children in Iowa was a good idea. It's an ancient law - obviously persecutory, because seriously, how may megas are there? Something awful happens once, hundreds of years ago, and bamn - law's still there. Fuckin' Iowa.
But mom still got screwed, tested when she was little, and when Grandpa Kirk and Grandma Campbell both died mom married next-door-neighbor Frank so he could share custody on paper, which would have been fine if Starfleet hadn't found out. They did, though, the bastards, and rescinded her emergency separation, because she's a friggin' mega-II and they'd be crazy not to, and now she has to fulfill her original contract, which has three more years, and Jimmy just . . . hates everybody really.
The worst part is, he thinks - he knows - she's happier, up there.
So Uncle Mitch is freaked, and Aunt Anne is conspiratorial, and Jimmy needs to find out if there are any laws on the books about megas on Tarsus. Shouldn't be, but never hurts to be prepared.
Jimmy's nothing, if not prepared.