Fic: Breaking Orbit | STXI | Joanna McCoy, others | PG-13 | 1/6
Title: Breaking Orbit: I. Initiating Launch Sequence
Author: saavikam77
Artist: team_fen
Fanmixer: bonesofyou
Beta Reader: acroamatica
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Character/Pairing(s): Joanna McCoy, with Jim Kirk/Leonard McCoy, Jocelyn Treadway, Gaila(/Scotty), Chris Pike, Spock, Winona Kirk, Sulu(/Chekov), and an OC (Teva) all in supporting roles
Rating: (this chapter) PG-13
Word Count: (this chapter) 4,744
Summary: Joanna McCoy has big plans for herself, and she isn't about to let anyone hold her back. She'll do things her way, even if it means breaking the rules and burning bridges behind her. Five times Joanna ran away, and one time she didn't.
Chapter Summary: Age 11. Joanna's trip to meet her Daddy in San Francisco doesn't quite go as planned, but she won't let that stop her.
Disclaimer: Paramount and CBS own everything but Teva (she's all mine!). I'm making no money off this story. Darnit!
Master Post | Next Chapter
I. Initiating Launch Sequence
Hefting the pack higher on her small shoulders, Joanna McCoy tried to hurry up the sidewalk toward the Greyhound station. The first step of her plan should have been an easy one: with her bus ticket already bought over the world-net, the information routed through five different proxies to keep her Momma from being alerted to the purchase, she shouldn't have had any problems getting on the bus and making it out to the shuttle port in Atlanta. Easy as pie, really. Heck, it wasn't even like this was the first time she'd run away. It was practically old hat for Joanna by now, after having high-tailed it to the neighbors' when she was eight and hidden under the porch for a whole day, and taken a cab into town from the ranch to spend a day with her school friends last summer.
Problem now was, it was a ten-block walk to the bus station from the apartment they were renting for the winter so her Momma wouldn't have to drive in the bad weather to and from work every day. And it was currently raining. Or icing. Or whatever this slushy mess was that was slicking up the sidewalk and Augusta roads. She was pretty sure there wasn't any actual snow in it―not that she'd ever actually seen snow―but that didn't stop it from making everything slippery as all get out, hard to walk on, and downright miserable.
And of course, she wasn't wearing her winter boots, not having expected this to be the worst darn winter day ever. Nope, all she had was her worn tennies, so there was no way to get traction in the thin layer of slush. She'd already fallen on her butt twice, and now her coat and her jeans were all soaked through. Blech!
At least she'd had enough brains to wear the red knitted gloves and crocheted cap her Great-Granny McCoy had made her last year since it was so danged cold. No way was she leaving without those in the middle of winter, even if it wasn't much likely the day would've wound up like this, and she was headed all the way to San Francisco, where it probably wouldn't be cold anyway.
Another block down, and she could finally see the sign for the Greyhound station. She pulled up the sleeve of her heavy woolen coat and over-sized sweater to check her watch―a Christmas present from her Daddy, its silvery face with the Starfleet Medical insignia beneath the hands was huge, and its bright blue leather wristband was way too big for her―and saw she had about twenty minutes until her bus was scheduled to leave. Well, she'd be on time, at least, assuming she didn't fall on her butt again.
Stepping carefully through the slush, she kept on down the sidewalk.
~*~*~*~
At the counter inside the station, Joanna waited for the man behind the window to run her ticket under the little hand-scanner, check it against the passenger list on his computer terminal, and pass it back, but instead of gettin' right to it, he stared down at her, peering over an old-looking pair of reading glasses.
“Aren't you a little young to be ridin' the bus alone, Miss...” he looked at the ticket again, “McCoy?”
“No, sir, I'm eleven! And I'm headin' out to see my Daddy,” she smiled sweetly in return, her lines memorized to the 'T'. Then she turned on the pout. “Everything's all right with my ticket, ain't it? Momma said I was all accounted for.”
“Hmm,” the old man grumbled, his mouth twisting like he wasn't sure he believed her. “Well, yes, everything's accounted for. You're supposed'ta have an adult accompany you, but I see here that that's been waived,” he went on, glancing at the ticket again. Frowning briefly, he scanned the ticked and handed it back through the slot under the window. “All right, you go on, then. Bus forty-two, seat sixteen, just like it says here on your ticket. That's the last bus to the back of the lot.” Hooking his thumb over his shoulder as he gave her directions, he harrumphed like he was annoyed with her, but Joanna knew better; his eyes said she'd charmed him, and Momma always said the eyes were the only thing you could believe about a person.
“Thank you, sir,” she smiled again, looking just as relieved as she felt. Oh yeah, she knew what she was doin'.
With a little wave back at the man at the window for good measure, she headed outside to the bus lot behind the building, careful of the slush again. Just like he said, her bus was all the way at the end of the row, and when she climbed aboard, she counted her way back to her seat, then went straight for the little bathroom at the back. No way was she gonna spend an hour in sopping wet pants from all that slushy mess.
Of course, the bathroom turned out to be what her Daddy might call filthy and disease-ridden, covered in God-only-knows-what, with a sticky floor, grimy little sink, and a downright nasty-looking plastic toilet. About the size of the tiny hall closet at home, the compartment stank like throw-up and old, rotten boy-pee.
After changing into clean, dry jeans and stowing her cap and gloves in her pack, she'd be holding it until they got to the shuttle port for sure. Even if the rest of the bus seemed clean as a whistle, no way was she touching that gross, closet-sized bathroom again.
~*~*~*~
Turned out getting through the shuttle port was even harder than the bus station, which just made no Earthly sense. The lady at the ticket counter gave her the same speech that the Greyhound guy did, only with a sappier-sounding voice and eyes that bored right through her, and for a second, Joanna thought it was all over, that she'd been caught red-handed, and wouldn't her Momma just love that.
But then there was the scanning of her ticket, same as before, and the lady told her to be careful and gave her precise directions for how to get to her shuttle.
Thanking her with another beauty-queen smile, Joanna made for the security check in a hurry. Her bag got scanned while the uniformed security people checked her out with a human-size scanner and a little wand-like thing, checking her ID again, just to be sure she was who she said she was, and again, she was through.
It was just as she was headed down the long tunnel to the shuttle gates that her cell went off. Her stomach flipped in a crazy loop and she felt her cheeks heat up quick as she fumbled through her pack for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She should have turned it off, but totally forgot. And now....
The name on the little screen kinda made her want to throw up.
Momma.
Seriously, could this trip get any worse?
As far as her Momma knew, she was at her friend Darlene's house for the day, and wouldn't be home until four, just long enough for her to get most of the way to San Francisco. But she hadn't counted on her Momma calling her. Her thumb hovered over the button to accept the call as she thought about it, her guts all twisted up and her throat tight with fear. If she answered the call, she'd have to pretend she was still at Darlene's, but what if her Momma had already talked to Darlene or Darlene's mother and knew Joanna wasn't there? There was no way she could lie about where she was. Sure, she'd lied to the ticket people, sort of, and had given her Momma the impression that she'd be somewhere else, but... but this was a whole different level of wrong. Lying like this just wasn't done. At all.
So, with her mind made up, Joanna took a deep breath and pressed the button to turn the phone off, her insides churning like some kind of nasty stew, and with the little face finally blank, she slipped it back into her pack and started back down the long tunnel. Well, she'd have to turn her cell off for the shuttle ride, anyway, not that it made her feel any better; no matter how this trip turned out, her Momma was gonna kill her.
She just hoped her Momma didn't figure out she was gone until after the shuttle was airborne. A half-hour or so should do it, and by then, there would be no way for her Momma to stop her.
All those thoughts flew away, though, as she emerged from the big tunnel and was met with the sudden sight of the shuttle waiting outside the gate, larger than life right on the other side of the huge windows. She'd learned in history that there used to be huge airplanes waiting out there, with long wings and turbine engines and long, sleek bodies with rows of seats just like the bus, but this... this was the coolest thing she'd ever seen!
With the call from her Momma all but forgotten, she rushed to the tall windows and pressed her nose and palms to the glass, peering out at the shuttle. Nothing like the old airplanes at all, it had a wide, tapered body, not too huge or long, and two swept-back wings running along its belly, twin impulse engines at the back already half-way to fired up with a red-gold glow. It was gorgeous.
She was so lit up with excitement that with the tingle pushing her forward and the full bladder from holding it in all the way from home to here, she almost couldn't get on-board fast enough.
~*~*~*~*~
Okay, so seeing the shuttle through the windows at the gate wasn't the coolest thing she'd ever seen. As it turned out, watching out the window of the shuttle as they took off had to be, hands down, the most awesome thing Joanna had ever seen in her entire life. The way the ground just fell away beneath them, the shuttle port shrinking and disappearing into the distance as they climbed higher into the sky, faster, the red-gold glow of the engines tinting everything just a little bit pink. Even when they hit a little air pocket and the shuttle swayed and dipped before the inertial dampeners could kick in, sending her stomach for another crazy loop and forcing a laugh to bubble up out of her chest. It was all so cool.
And so she might have drooled against the tiny window a little 'cuz she was too busy staring out at the world to care, big deal. It wasn't like she was some kind of crazy or anything. And she wasn't hiding in the bathroom, either, even after she'd been, and decided her Daddy was right, after all.
Well, not so much right about wanting to spend the trip in the bathroom―she wasn't about to throw up from air sickness or anything―but that the bathroom was clean, putting the bus's to shame. She supposed the United Earth Shuttle Service kept their craft shiny all over; she would, too, if she had something this cool to fly. As many credits as she'd dumped to get on this flight, she wouldn't have expected anything less.
With all that considered, she supposed her Daddy had been a little bit wrong. He'd gone on enough about how space travel just wasn't safe, that it was all disease and danger and death, but frankly, Joanna didn't see it. With full harnesses, thick-looking seals around the doors, thick windows she knew were transparent aluminum, and a clean inside, this shuttle felt pretty darned safe to her.
That is, until they reached the upper limits of the visible atmosphere―she couldn't remember if it was the mesosphere or thermosphere―and Earth's gravity lost all its hold on her for just that brief second before the gravity generators kicked in, sending her stomach all the way to her mouth. Unable to resist a look out the window at the blue, green, and brown so far below her, she tried to suck in a gasp at the beautiful, terrifying sight.
And that's when her breakfast decided to make a reappearance.
~*~*~*~
It was her worst nightmare. It had to be. Not only had she managed to ruin her shirt before she could get to a sick bag and the shuttle's bathroom, and had missed most of the supposedly-best part of the flight to trying to steady herself in the small space after that not-fun experience, now she had the attendant giving her funny looks.
They were only about ten minutes from landing, so whatever it was, they weren't turning around to try to take her back to Georgia. That had to be good, right?
“Joanna McCoy?” the tall woman knelt next to her in the aisle, giving her that soft look like she was trying to coax a puppy from under a bed.
“Yes, ma'am?” she smiled back weakly, sure that her luck had run out.
“Are you okay, sweetie? You look a little green around the gills.”
Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. “Um, yeah, I'm okay. Just threw up a little. But I cleaned it all up, I swear!” she finished quickly, eyes wide.
The attendant laid a gentle hand on her arm and smiled sympathetically. “That's all right, honey. Your mother will be glad to know you're okay. We got word she's been looking for you.”
She couldn't help her groan at that, dropping her head back against the seat and staring at the ceiling. “Oh, no. She's gonna have my hide.”
“I take it you decided to get out of Dodge, and neglected to tell your mother where you were headed,” the attendant said as she slipped into the seat next to Joanna and fastened the harness around her for their imminent landing.
Joanna heaved another heavy sigh. “Pretty much.”
“You know, I'm surprised you got as far as you did. The system should have alerted your mother as soon as you checked in at the shuttle port.”
“I bypassed the system,” she admitted, figuring it wouldn't do her any worse harm at this point. Her life was basically over, anyway. “But I must've messed up somewhere.”
“You really got past the security system?” the woman asked, sounding impressed.
Joanna almost couldn't resist the chance to gloat, but then remembered how much her Momma was gonna skin her alive. “Yeah. I guess,” she murmured.
“That takes talent.”
“I suppose so.” Not that it much mattered. She already knew she was gonna be a doctor like her Daddy when she grew up.
After a long moment of silence as the shuttle began to descend through the atmosphere, inertial dampeners doing their job the whole way this time, the attendant finally asked, “Is there anyone else we can call to pick you up?”
Joanna blinked. “Um. Yes, ma'am. I was gonna call my Daddy when I got off the shuttle. He's at Starfleet Medical.” She could only hope and pray that they got her Daddy to pick her up before her Momma could get there; with the ease of getting a transporter ticket, anything was possible.
“What's his name, sweetheart?”
“Doctor Leonard McCoy, Lieutenant Commander and CMO of the Starship Enterprise,” she couldn't resist beaming, always glad to show off her amazing Daddy.
“That's some resumé! I bet he's pretty proud to have such a bright daughter.”
Ducking her head and unable to keep herself from blushing, Joanna glanced out the window and realized that they'd landed at the San Francisco shuttle port without her even noticing.
After a moment spent watching as shuttle bridge extended from the gate toward them, she finally answered. “I really hope so.”
~*~*~*~
She must have been waiting outside the little security office in the hard plastic chair for an hour, her pack and coat in a heap on the next seat over and her stomach all knotted up and unhappy, when the familiar shout pulled her attention away from where she was picking at her cuticles and hating life and her Momma and the universe in general.
“Joanna! Thank God!” the voice cried out over the low roar of the crowded shuttle port, the sound of it the best and worst thing she'd heard all day.
When her eyes landed on him, her Daddy was hurrying down the short hallway towards her with wide eyes and a panicked expression, his bright blue uniform all wrinkled and crooked, and she was up and out of the chair with her own shout of, “Daddy!”
Launching herself up into his arms, she clung to him as he nearly squeezed the life out of her, and finally gave up on holding in the tears that she'd been trying to choke down since the shuttle attendant came to talk to her. A sobbing wail escaped her, and it was all she could do to keep from losing every bit of composure she had left as all her gut-twisting fear seemed to be pouring out her eyes and nose. All she'd wanted was to come see her Daddy, and now... now he was probably gonna kill her, too! What had she done!?
“Daddy, I'm so sorry,” she heaved, trying to stop her sobs. “I just wanted to come see you so bad! And, and I was so scared Momma was gonna come by transporter and take me back before you could get here!”
“Shh, I'm here, Baby Girl. I've got you,” he soothed, his voice warm and low as he rubbed circles over her back with a big hand. “It's all right, Joanna. Breathe, sweetie.”
Trying to do just that, she took a slow, deep breath, hiccuped, then took another, and another, calming down after what seemed like a long time. She didn't want to let go, but knew her face was a yucky mess of tears and snot, and she was too big to be held like this anyway, so when her Daddy let her slip back down from his arms, she went willingly, and took the handkerchief he pulled out of a back pocket for her to clean up with.
Sitting in one of the plastic chairs, her Daddy helped her wipe away the mess, and looked at her with a soft expression. “You want to tell me why you decided to up and run away from your Momma?” he asked quietly as she blew her nose.
When she was finished and he made the hankie disappear somewhere, she started in a small voice, “Momma wasn't gonna let me come see you while you're here. At all. She said that if you wanted to see me that you'd have to come to us. And it's already been two years, and I think she just wants me to forget all about you, 'cuz she's datin' that guy, Clay, and I think she's gonna try to marry him, and pretend he's my daddy, except he's not. You are, and it ain't right!”
She wasn't sure where the tirade came from, but once she'd started, she just couldn't stop until it was all out of her. Now she finally felt like she could breathe right again.
“Jesus Christ,” her Daddy mumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face. Looking at her with the same hazel eyes she'd inherited, he went on, “Okay, Baby Girl. I understand. We're gonna have a talk about why what you did was wrong, but I understand. Now, how's about you let me use your cell, since I don't keep one anymore?”
With another heavy breath of relief, the knot in her stomach loosening a little bit more, Joanna nodded quickly and grabbed up her pack from a few seats over to fish out her shiny, bright pink cell and hand it over.
She almost wanted to laugh at the sight of her Daddy using her pink phone as he entered the number and held the little thing to his ear.
“Jocelyn? It's Leonard,” he said into the cell. “What do you mean, 'have I got her'? What name came up on the ID?” There was a long pause, during which her Daddy's face sort of scrunched up like he was sucking on a lemon, and then, “Yes, she's fine. Made it in one piece, looks like.” Another pause, and Joanna could hear her Momma's voice rising on the other end. “Calm down, Jocelyn,” her Daddy said sternly. “Yeah, I know how she did it. She's a smart kid, that's how. Got more brains than you and me put together, and she wasn't about to let you run me off again.”
Standing up, he pointed at Joanna with a look that clearly said 'you stay right there', then turned and stepped a few paces down the hallway. Not that it stopped her from hearing what he was telling her Momma over the cell; he wasn't exactly subtle, even trying to keep his voice down.
“I don't care what the damned papers say. She's here now, and I'm damned well not about to put her back on a shuttle when she just got off one, and smells like she got air sick on the way!”
Oh man, she thought she'd gotten that stink off herself by washing up in the little bathroom on the shuttle and changing into a clean shirt! Sniffing at her hair, she had to admit she did still smell a little funny. Great, now she'd have to put up with lectures about shuttles and air sickness for however long. Just what she needed.
“Don't you dare lecture me on how to take care of my own daughter, Jocelyn. Jo needs a day or two to cool off and recover before you come hunt her down and I have to throw her back to the wolves.” Running a hand through his hair, he sucked in a deep breath. “Well, if you had any clue why she ran off, we wouldn't be having this conversation, now would we? And don't you even start on how you know her best....”
Air sickness aside, Joanna's guts felt like a ton of bricks at the stuff her Daddy was saying, the knots tying themselves up all over again; she didn't remember him ever being this angry... ever.
When he finally took the cell away from his ear and pressed the button to shut it off, he turned back to her looking for the world like he'd gotten ten years older and lost a fistfight. “I'm sorry you had to hear all that,” he said quietly as he stepped back to her and gave her the cell to stow away. “You're old enough to understand that your mother and I don't get along real well.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured,” Joanna murmured, trying to not roll her eyes and failing.
Sitting in the plastic chair again, her Daddy patted the seat of the one next to him and took another deep breath like he was trying to calm himself down. Totally understanding, she sat down beside him, and he asked gently, “How long did it take before you threw up on the shuttle?”
“It was after we got out of the atmosphere, and everything kinda lurched before the gravity generators kicked on,” she admitted.
“You're a chip off the old block, kiddo, you know that?” he said then, smoothing down her long, dark hair with his big hand.
“I guess.” As far as the throwing up went, she didn't feel so much like it was a compliment; she was supposed to be more cool and collected than that.
“And I meant what I said about you being a smart kid. How on Earth did you manage to get here without your mother finding out sooner, anyhow?”
Unable to resist the excitement of all that that question brought up, even as everything else felt like a weight tied around her middle, Joanna launched into the story of how she'd pulled a fast one on her Momma, a real grin spreading over her face for the first time that day.
~*~*~*~
A half-hour later, after a stern lecture on misuse of the world-net and the danger and inherent wrongness of running away like she had, and one fantastic sandwich at a cheese-steak place in the shuttle port, her Daddy handed her his real, official Starfleet communicator from his belt as they sat in the cab on their way back to Starfleet Headquarters. “Why don't you give Uncle Jim a call and let him know you're okay, Baby Girl? I'm sure he's been pacing a hole in the carpet waiting to hear from me.”
“Really?” she asked, ignoring the tenth time he'd called her by that old nickname as she held the communicator gently and looked up at him with wide eyes; she'd missed Uncle Jim almost as much as her Daddy, even though she'd only actually met him the once, after the big graduation and promotion ceremony at Starfleet Academy two years ago.
“Yes, really,” he answered. “Since we're all about breaking rules today, might as well add one more to the list. God knows I'm used to it with Jim, anyway,” he finished, muttering and rolling his eyes at no one. “Just flip it open―”
She did as he said, and waited for the rest of his instructions. Not that she didn't already know all about how to use a communicator―she wasn't stupid; a little research went a long way―but there was probably some kind of... of... protocol with these things, beyond what she'd read.
“―press that button there,” he pointed out the unmarked 'send' button, over which her finger was already poised, “and say 'McCoy to Kirk', and you'll get him.”
Grinning, Joanna hit the button, getting a high-pitched chirp in response, and repeated in her most serious, lady-like tone, “McCoy to Kirk.”
“Kirk here!” came the almost instant response, and Joanna could swear it sounded like Uncle Jim was grinning on the other end of the connection, too. “Is that you, Joanna McCoy?”
“Hi, Uncle Jim!” she greeted him happily. “It's me.”
“I take it you're all right, then. Your dad's got you?”
Meeting her Daddy's eye roll with her own, she answered, “Duh. What line did I just call you on?”
Uncle Jim laughed loud on the other end, then said, “Well, where are you two, then?”
Her Daddy cut in, “On our way back to Starfleet Medical so I can finish up with the resupply, and then up to the ship. Best alert the quartermaster we'll be having a guest for the next two nights.”
“Seriously?” Joanna and Uncle Jim squealed―okay, Joanna squealed―at the same time.
“Lord help me,” her Daddy murmured with another eye roll, smiling crookedly. “Yes, seriously. The long and short of it is that deals with the devil―I mean, her mother,” he amended quickly, looking only a little guilty at the barb, “―were made, and after a brief, two-day visit, Joanna will be going home via transporter to avoid any potential... digestive issues on the trip.”
“Chip off the old block, huh?” Uncle Jim teased from the other end.
Too excited to be really angry that they seemed to be ganging up on her about throwing up on the shuttle, Joanna only huffed halfheartedly, crossing her arms in front of her and lifting her nose even as she still held the communicator in one hand. That her Daddy only smiled beside her with an answering nod and a crack of, “Like lookin' in a mirror,” was just the icing on the cake.
“Well, at least I ain't afraid of flyin' or using the transporter, like some people who shall remain nameless. In fact, I like space, I think it's amazing,” she teased back pleasantly before tossing her hair over her shoulder and looking out the window.
“Oh, you do, huh?” her Daddy asked, teasing in turn.
“Yes. I do. It's exciting, and awesome, and a million other adjectives that do not include 'disease', 'danger', 'darkness', or 'death'.” She'd heard the space lecture at least a dozen times over, enough to know it by heart, but that didn't mean she believed it, not for a second.
Expecting more teasing then, she really didn't anticipate the tickle attack that got her square in the sides, or the peal of laughter that bubbled up from her belly as her Daddy made growly noises at her and Jim cracked up at the other end of the comm, but it was totally worth it, even if she was eleven, and way too old for that kind of stuff anymore.
And so what if she'd have to face her Momma eventually, and was in enough trouble with her to earn a six-month grounding, easy? She could still have fun with her Daddy and Uncle Jim and their friends for now. She'd missed her Daddy way too much not to.
~*~*~*~
Author: saavikam77
Artist: team_fen
Fanmixer: bonesofyou
Beta Reader: acroamatica
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Character/Pairing(s): Joanna McCoy, with Jim Kirk/Leonard McCoy, Jocelyn Treadway, Gaila(/Scotty), Chris Pike, Spock, Winona Kirk, Sulu(/Chekov), and an OC (Teva) all in supporting roles
Rating: (this chapter) PG-13
Word Count: (this chapter) 4,744
Summary: Joanna McCoy has big plans for herself, and she isn't about to let anyone hold her back. She'll do things her way, even if it means breaking the rules and burning bridges behind her. Five times Joanna ran away, and one time she didn't.
Chapter Summary: Age 11. Joanna's trip to meet her Daddy in San Francisco doesn't quite go as planned, but she won't let that stop her.
Disclaimer: Paramount and CBS own everything but Teva (she's all mine!). I'm making no money off this story. Darnit!
Master Post | Next Chapter
I. Initiating Launch Sequence
Hefting the pack higher on her small shoulders, Joanna McCoy tried to hurry up the sidewalk toward the Greyhound station. The first step of her plan should have been an easy one: with her bus ticket already bought over the world-net, the information routed through five different proxies to keep her Momma from being alerted to the purchase, she shouldn't have had any problems getting on the bus and making it out to the shuttle port in Atlanta. Easy as pie, really. Heck, it wasn't even like this was the first time she'd run away. It was practically old hat for Joanna by now, after having high-tailed it to the neighbors' when she was eight and hidden under the porch for a whole day, and taken a cab into town from the ranch to spend a day with her school friends last summer.
Problem now was, it was a ten-block walk to the bus station from the apartment they were renting for the winter so her Momma wouldn't have to drive in the bad weather to and from work every day. And it was currently raining. Or icing. Or whatever this slushy mess was that was slicking up the sidewalk and Augusta roads. She was pretty sure there wasn't any actual snow in it―not that she'd ever actually seen snow―but that didn't stop it from making everything slippery as all get out, hard to walk on, and downright miserable.
And of course, she wasn't wearing her winter boots, not having expected this to be the worst darn winter day ever. Nope, all she had was her worn tennies, so there was no way to get traction in the thin layer of slush. She'd already fallen on her butt twice, and now her coat and her jeans were all soaked through. Blech!
At least she'd had enough brains to wear the red knitted gloves and crocheted cap her Great-Granny McCoy had made her last year since it was so danged cold. No way was she leaving without those in the middle of winter, even if it wasn't much likely the day would've wound up like this, and she was headed all the way to San Francisco, where it probably wouldn't be cold anyway.
Another block down, and she could finally see the sign for the Greyhound station. She pulled up the sleeve of her heavy woolen coat and over-sized sweater to check her watch―a Christmas present from her Daddy, its silvery face with the Starfleet Medical insignia beneath the hands was huge, and its bright blue leather wristband was way too big for her―and saw she had about twenty minutes until her bus was scheduled to leave. Well, she'd be on time, at least, assuming she didn't fall on her butt again.
Stepping carefully through the slush, she kept on down the sidewalk.
~*~*~*~
At the counter inside the station, Joanna waited for the man behind the window to run her ticket under the little hand-scanner, check it against the passenger list on his computer terminal, and pass it back, but instead of gettin' right to it, he stared down at her, peering over an old-looking pair of reading glasses.
“Aren't you a little young to be ridin' the bus alone, Miss...” he looked at the ticket again, “McCoy?”
“No, sir, I'm eleven! And I'm headin' out to see my Daddy,” she smiled sweetly in return, her lines memorized to the 'T'. Then she turned on the pout. “Everything's all right with my ticket, ain't it? Momma said I was all accounted for.”
“Hmm,” the old man grumbled, his mouth twisting like he wasn't sure he believed her. “Well, yes, everything's accounted for. You're supposed'ta have an adult accompany you, but I see here that that's been waived,” he went on, glancing at the ticket again. Frowning briefly, he scanned the ticked and handed it back through the slot under the window. “All right, you go on, then. Bus forty-two, seat sixteen, just like it says here on your ticket. That's the last bus to the back of the lot.” Hooking his thumb over his shoulder as he gave her directions, he harrumphed like he was annoyed with her, but Joanna knew better; his eyes said she'd charmed him, and Momma always said the eyes were the only thing you could believe about a person.
“Thank you, sir,” she smiled again, looking just as relieved as she felt. Oh yeah, she knew what she was doin'.
With a little wave back at the man at the window for good measure, she headed outside to the bus lot behind the building, careful of the slush again. Just like he said, her bus was all the way at the end of the row, and when she climbed aboard, she counted her way back to her seat, then went straight for the little bathroom at the back. No way was she gonna spend an hour in sopping wet pants from all that slushy mess.
Of course, the bathroom turned out to be what her Daddy might call filthy and disease-ridden, covered in God-only-knows-what, with a sticky floor, grimy little sink, and a downright nasty-looking plastic toilet. About the size of the tiny hall closet at home, the compartment stank like throw-up and old, rotten boy-pee.
After changing into clean, dry jeans and stowing her cap and gloves in her pack, she'd be holding it until they got to the shuttle port for sure. Even if the rest of the bus seemed clean as a whistle, no way was she touching that gross, closet-sized bathroom again.
~*~*~*~
Turned out getting through the shuttle port was even harder than the bus station, which just made no Earthly sense. The lady at the ticket counter gave her the same speech that the Greyhound guy did, only with a sappier-sounding voice and eyes that bored right through her, and for a second, Joanna thought it was all over, that she'd been caught red-handed, and wouldn't her Momma just love that.
But then there was the scanning of her ticket, same as before, and the lady told her to be careful and gave her precise directions for how to get to her shuttle.
Thanking her with another beauty-queen smile, Joanna made for the security check in a hurry. Her bag got scanned while the uniformed security people checked her out with a human-size scanner and a little wand-like thing, checking her ID again, just to be sure she was who she said she was, and again, she was through.
It was just as she was headed down the long tunnel to the shuttle gates that her cell went off. Her stomach flipped in a crazy loop and she felt her cheeks heat up quick as she fumbled through her pack for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She should have turned it off, but totally forgot. And now....
The name on the little screen kinda made her want to throw up.
Momma.
Seriously, could this trip get any worse?
As far as her Momma knew, she was at her friend Darlene's house for the day, and wouldn't be home until four, just long enough for her to get most of the way to San Francisco. But she hadn't counted on her Momma calling her. Her thumb hovered over the button to accept the call as she thought about it, her guts all twisted up and her throat tight with fear. If she answered the call, she'd have to pretend she was still at Darlene's, but what if her Momma had already talked to Darlene or Darlene's mother and knew Joanna wasn't there? There was no way she could lie about where she was. Sure, she'd lied to the ticket people, sort of, and had given her Momma the impression that she'd be somewhere else, but... but this was a whole different level of wrong. Lying like this just wasn't done. At all.
So, with her mind made up, Joanna took a deep breath and pressed the button to turn the phone off, her insides churning like some kind of nasty stew, and with the little face finally blank, she slipped it back into her pack and started back down the long tunnel. Well, she'd have to turn her cell off for the shuttle ride, anyway, not that it made her feel any better; no matter how this trip turned out, her Momma was gonna kill her.
She just hoped her Momma didn't figure out she was gone until after the shuttle was airborne. A half-hour or so should do it, and by then, there would be no way for her Momma to stop her.
All those thoughts flew away, though, as she emerged from the big tunnel and was met with the sudden sight of the shuttle waiting outside the gate, larger than life right on the other side of the huge windows. She'd learned in history that there used to be huge airplanes waiting out there, with long wings and turbine engines and long, sleek bodies with rows of seats just like the bus, but this... this was the coolest thing she'd ever seen!
With the call from her Momma all but forgotten, she rushed to the tall windows and pressed her nose and palms to the glass, peering out at the shuttle. Nothing like the old airplanes at all, it had a wide, tapered body, not too huge or long, and two swept-back wings running along its belly, twin impulse engines at the back already half-way to fired up with a red-gold glow. It was gorgeous.
She was so lit up with excitement that with the tingle pushing her forward and the full bladder from holding it in all the way from home to here, she almost couldn't get on-board fast enough.
~*~*~*~*~
Okay, so seeing the shuttle through the windows at the gate wasn't the coolest thing she'd ever seen. As it turned out, watching out the window of the shuttle as they took off had to be, hands down, the most awesome thing Joanna had ever seen in her entire life. The way the ground just fell away beneath them, the shuttle port shrinking and disappearing into the distance as they climbed higher into the sky, faster, the red-gold glow of the engines tinting everything just a little bit pink. Even when they hit a little air pocket and the shuttle swayed and dipped before the inertial dampeners could kick in, sending her stomach for another crazy loop and forcing a laugh to bubble up out of her chest. It was all so cool.
And so she might have drooled against the tiny window a little 'cuz she was too busy staring out at the world to care, big deal. It wasn't like she was some kind of crazy or anything. And she wasn't hiding in the bathroom, either, even after she'd been, and decided her Daddy was right, after all.
Well, not so much right about wanting to spend the trip in the bathroom―she wasn't about to throw up from air sickness or anything―but that the bathroom was clean, putting the bus's to shame. She supposed the United Earth Shuttle Service kept their craft shiny all over; she would, too, if she had something this cool to fly. As many credits as she'd dumped to get on this flight, she wouldn't have expected anything less.
With all that considered, she supposed her Daddy had been a little bit wrong. He'd gone on enough about how space travel just wasn't safe, that it was all disease and danger and death, but frankly, Joanna didn't see it. With full harnesses, thick-looking seals around the doors, thick windows she knew were transparent aluminum, and a clean inside, this shuttle felt pretty darned safe to her.
That is, until they reached the upper limits of the visible atmosphere―she couldn't remember if it was the mesosphere or thermosphere―and Earth's gravity lost all its hold on her for just that brief second before the gravity generators kicked in, sending her stomach all the way to her mouth. Unable to resist a look out the window at the blue, green, and brown so far below her, she tried to suck in a gasp at the beautiful, terrifying sight.
And that's when her breakfast decided to make a reappearance.
~*~*~*~
It was her worst nightmare. It had to be. Not only had she managed to ruin her shirt before she could get to a sick bag and the shuttle's bathroom, and had missed most of the supposedly-best part of the flight to trying to steady herself in the small space after that not-fun experience, now she had the attendant giving her funny looks.
They were only about ten minutes from landing, so whatever it was, they weren't turning around to try to take her back to Georgia. That had to be good, right?
“Joanna McCoy?” the tall woman knelt next to her in the aisle, giving her that soft look like she was trying to coax a puppy from under a bed.
“Yes, ma'am?” she smiled back weakly, sure that her luck had run out.
“Are you okay, sweetie? You look a little green around the gills.”
Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. “Um, yeah, I'm okay. Just threw up a little. But I cleaned it all up, I swear!” she finished quickly, eyes wide.
The attendant laid a gentle hand on her arm and smiled sympathetically. “That's all right, honey. Your mother will be glad to know you're okay. We got word she's been looking for you.”
She couldn't help her groan at that, dropping her head back against the seat and staring at the ceiling. “Oh, no. She's gonna have my hide.”
“I take it you decided to get out of Dodge, and neglected to tell your mother where you were headed,” the attendant said as she slipped into the seat next to Joanna and fastened the harness around her for their imminent landing.
Joanna heaved another heavy sigh. “Pretty much.”
“You know, I'm surprised you got as far as you did. The system should have alerted your mother as soon as you checked in at the shuttle port.”
“I bypassed the system,” she admitted, figuring it wouldn't do her any worse harm at this point. Her life was basically over, anyway. “But I must've messed up somewhere.”
“You really got past the security system?” the woman asked, sounding impressed.
Joanna almost couldn't resist the chance to gloat, but then remembered how much her Momma was gonna skin her alive. “Yeah. I guess,” she murmured.
“That takes talent.”
“I suppose so.” Not that it much mattered. She already knew she was gonna be a doctor like her Daddy when she grew up.
After a long moment of silence as the shuttle began to descend through the atmosphere, inertial dampeners doing their job the whole way this time, the attendant finally asked, “Is there anyone else we can call to pick you up?”
Joanna blinked. “Um. Yes, ma'am. I was gonna call my Daddy when I got off the shuttle. He's at Starfleet Medical.” She could only hope and pray that they got her Daddy to pick her up before her Momma could get there; with the ease of getting a transporter ticket, anything was possible.
“What's his name, sweetheart?”
“Doctor Leonard McCoy, Lieutenant Commander and CMO of the Starship Enterprise,” she couldn't resist beaming, always glad to show off her amazing Daddy.
“That's some resumé! I bet he's pretty proud to have such a bright daughter.”
Ducking her head and unable to keep herself from blushing, Joanna glanced out the window and realized that they'd landed at the San Francisco shuttle port without her even noticing.
After a moment spent watching as shuttle bridge extended from the gate toward them, she finally answered. “I really hope so.”
~*~*~*~
She must have been waiting outside the little security office in the hard plastic chair for an hour, her pack and coat in a heap on the next seat over and her stomach all knotted up and unhappy, when the familiar shout pulled her attention away from where she was picking at her cuticles and hating life and her Momma and the universe in general.
“Joanna! Thank God!” the voice cried out over the low roar of the crowded shuttle port, the sound of it the best and worst thing she'd heard all day.
When her eyes landed on him, her Daddy was hurrying down the short hallway towards her with wide eyes and a panicked expression, his bright blue uniform all wrinkled and crooked, and she was up and out of the chair with her own shout of, “Daddy!”
Launching herself up into his arms, she clung to him as he nearly squeezed the life out of her, and finally gave up on holding in the tears that she'd been trying to choke down since the shuttle attendant came to talk to her. A sobbing wail escaped her, and it was all she could do to keep from losing every bit of composure she had left as all her gut-twisting fear seemed to be pouring out her eyes and nose. All she'd wanted was to come see her Daddy, and now... now he was probably gonna kill her, too! What had she done!?
“Daddy, I'm so sorry,” she heaved, trying to stop her sobs. “I just wanted to come see you so bad! And, and I was so scared Momma was gonna come by transporter and take me back before you could get here!”
“Shh, I'm here, Baby Girl. I've got you,” he soothed, his voice warm and low as he rubbed circles over her back with a big hand. “It's all right, Joanna. Breathe, sweetie.”
Trying to do just that, she took a slow, deep breath, hiccuped, then took another, and another, calming down after what seemed like a long time. She didn't want to let go, but knew her face was a yucky mess of tears and snot, and she was too big to be held like this anyway, so when her Daddy let her slip back down from his arms, she went willingly, and took the handkerchief he pulled out of a back pocket for her to clean up with.
Sitting in one of the plastic chairs, her Daddy helped her wipe away the mess, and looked at her with a soft expression. “You want to tell me why you decided to up and run away from your Momma?” he asked quietly as she blew her nose.
When she was finished and he made the hankie disappear somewhere, she started in a small voice, “Momma wasn't gonna let me come see you while you're here. At all. She said that if you wanted to see me that you'd have to come to us. And it's already been two years, and I think she just wants me to forget all about you, 'cuz she's datin' that guy, Clay, and I think she's gonna try to marry him, and pretend he's my daddy, except he's not. You are, and it ain't right!”
She wasn't sure where the tirade came from, but once she'd started, she just couldn't stop until it was all out of her. Now she finally felt like she could breathe right again.
“Jesus Christ,” her Daddy mumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face. Looking at her with the same hazel eyes she'd inherited, he went on, “Okay, Baby Girl. I understand. We're gonna have a talk about why what you did was wrong, but I understand. Now, how's about you let me use your cell, since I don't keep one anymore?”
With another heavy breath of relief, the knot in her stomach loosening a little bit more, Joanna nodded quickly and grabbed up her pack from a few seats over to fish out her shiny, bright pink cell and hand it over.
She almost wanted to laugh at the sight of her Daddy using her pink phone as he entered the number and held the little thing to his ear.
“Jocelyn? It's Leonard,” he said into the cell. “What do you mean, 'have I got her'? What name came up on the ID?” There was a long pause, during which her Daddy's face sort of scrunched up like he was sucking on a lemon, and then, “Yes, she's fine. Made it in one piece, looks like.” Another pause, and Joanna could hear her Momma's voice rising on the other end. “Calm down, Jocelyn,” her Daddy said sternly. “Yeah, I know how she did it. She's a smart kid, that's how. Got more brains than you and me put together, and she wasn't about to let you run me off again.”
Standing up, he pointed at Joanna with a look that clearly said 'you stay right there', then turned and stepped a few paces down the hallway. Not that it stopped her from hearing what he was telling her Momma over the cell; he wasn't exactly subtle, even trying to keep his voice down.
“I don't care what the damned papers say. She's here now, and I'm damned well not about to put her back on a shuttle when she just got off one, and smells like she got air sick on the way!”
Oh man, she thought she'd gotten that stink off herself by washing up in the little bathroom on the shuttle and changing into a clean shirt! Sniffing at her hair, she had to admit she did still smell a little funny. Great, now she'd have to put up with lectures about shuttles and air sickness for however long. Just what she needed.
“Don't you dare lecture me on how to take care of my own daughter, Jocelyn. Jo needs a day or two to cool off and recover before you come hunt her down and I have to throw her back to the wolves.” Running a hand through his hair, he sucked in a deep breath. “Well, if you had any clue why she ran off, we wouldn't be having this conversation, now would we? And don't you even start on how you know her best....”
Air sickness aside, Joanna's guts felt like a ton of bricks at the stuff her Daddy was saying, the knots tying themselves up all over again; she didn't remember him ever being this angry... ever.
When he finally took the cell away from his ear and pressed the button to shut it off, he turned back to her looking for the world like he'd gotten ten years older and lost a fistfight. “I'm sorry you had to hear all that,” he said quietly as he stepped back to her and gave her the cell to stow away. “You're old enough to understand that your mother and I don't get along real well.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured,” Joanna murmured, trying to not roll her eyes and failing.
Sitting in the plastic chair again, her Daddy patted the seat of the one next to him and took another deep breath like he was trying to calm himself down. Totally understanding, she sat down beside him, and he asked gently, “How long did it take before you threw up on the shuttle?”
“It was after we got out of the atmosphere, and everything kinda lurched before the gravity generators kicked on,” she admitted.
“You're a chip off the old block, kiddo, you know that?” he said then, smoothing down her long, dark hair with his big hand.
“I guess.” As far as the throwing up went, she didn't feel so much like it was a compliment; she was supposed to be more cool and collected than that.
“And I meant what I said about you being a smart kid. How on Earth did you manage to get here without your mother finding out sooner, anyhow?”
Unable to resist the excitement of all that that question brought up, even as everything else felt like a weight tied around her middle, Joanna launched into the story of how she'd pulled a fast one on her Momma, a real grin spreading over her face for the first time that day.
~*~*~*~
A half-hour later, after a stern lecture on misuse of the world-net and the danger and inherent wrongness of running away like she had, and one fantastic sandwich at a cheese-steak place in the shuttle port, her Daddy handed her his real, official Starfleet communicator from his belt as they sat in the cab on their way back to Starfleet Headquarters. “Why don't you give Uncle Jim a call and let him know you're okay, Baby Girl? I'm sure he's been pacing a hole in the carpet waiting to hear from me.”
“Really?” she asked, ignoring the tenth time he'd called her by that old nickname as she held the communicator gently and looked up at him with wide eyes; she'd missed Uncle Jim almost as much as her Daddy, even though she'd only actually met him the once, after the big graduation and promotion ceremony at Starfleet Academy two years ago.
“Yes, really,” he answered. “Since we're all about breaking rules today, might as well add one more to the list. God knows I'm used to it with Jim, anyway,” he finished, muttering and rolling his eyes at no one. “Just flip it open―”
She did as he said, and waited for the rest of his instructions. Not that she didn't already know all about how to use a communicator―she wasn't stupid; a little research went a long way―but there was probably some kind of... of... protocol with these things, beyond what she'd read.
“―press that button there,” he pointed out the unmarked 'send' button, over which her finger was already poised, “and say 'McCoy to Kirk', and you'll get him.”
Grinning, Joanna hit the button, getting a high-pitched chirp in response, and repeated in her most serious, lady-like tone, “McCoy to Kirk.”
“Kirk here!” came the almost instant response, and Joanna could swear it sounded like Uncle Jim was grinning on the other end of the connection, too. “Is that you, Joanna McCoy?”
“Hi, Uncle Jim!” she greeted him happily. “It's me.”
“I take it you're all right, then. Your dad's got you?”
Meeting her Daddy's eye roll with her own, she answered, “Duh. What line did I just call you on?”
Uncle Jim laughed loud on the other end, then said, “Well, where are you two, then?”
Her Daddy cut in, “On our way back to Starfleet Medical so I can finish up with the resupply, and then up to the ship. Best alert the quartermaster we'll be having a guest for the next two nights.”
“Seriously?” Joanna and Uncle Jim squealed―okay, Joanna squealed―at the same time.
“Lord help me,” her Daddy murmured with another eye roll, smiling crookedly. “Yes, seriously. The long and short of it is that deals with the devil―I mean, her mother,” he amended quickly, looking only a little guilty at the barb, “―were made, and after a brief, two-day visit, Joanna will be going home via transporter to avoid any potential... digestive issues on the trip.”
“Chip off the old block, huh?” Uncle Jim teased from the other end.
Too excited to be really angry that they seemed to be ganging up on her about throwing up on the shuttle, Joanna only huffed halfheartedly, crossing her arms in front of her and lifting her nose even as she still held the communicator in one hand. That her Daddy only smiled beside her with an answering nod and a crack of, “Like lookin' in a mirror,” was just the icing on the cake.
“Well, at least I ain't afraid of flyin' or using the transporter, like some people who shall remain nameless. In fact, I like space, I think it's amazing,” she teased back pleasantly before tossing her hair over her shoulder and looking out the window.
“Oh, you do, huh?” her Daddy asked, teasing in turn.
“Yes. I do. It's exciting, and awesome, and a million other adjectives that do not include 'disease', 'danger', 'darkness', or 'death'.” She'd heard the space lecture at least a dozen times over, enough to know it by heart, but that didn't mean she believed it, not for a second.
Expecting more teasing then, she really didn't anticipate the tickle attack that got her square in the sides, or the peal of laughter that bubbled up from her belly as her Daddy made growly noises at her and Jim cracked up at the other end of the comm, but it was totally worth it, even if she was eleven, and way too old for that kind of stuff anymore.
And so what if she'd have to face her Momma eventually, and was in enough trouble with her to earn a six-month grounding, easy? She could still have fun with her Daddy and Uncle Jim and their friends for now. She'd missed her Daddy way too much not to.
~*~*~*~