Fic: For You I Came This Far, Part 3 of 4
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Winona took a quick shower in his bathroom and redressed in her jeans and sweater; kissing him again, long and lingering, she left as he was shrugging into his jacket. There was something a little bit too obvious about leaving his apartment with him, although anyone who was paying attention would know she hadn’t spent the night alone, or in her own bed. She felt a broad smile spread across her face. Oh, man, she had it bad, which was ridiculous. Schooling her features, she walked a little faster down the hall to the stairway.
She exited the building and turned left to head to Kavandi Hall; she hadn’t gotten that far from Glenn when she heard a runner behind her. Instinctively she hugged the right side of the walkway, but the footsteps slowed and finally stopped a few feet behind her. “Mom?”
Winona stopped. It was Jim, of course; she turned to see him, dressed in shorts and a long-sleeved PT shirt. “Jim, hi,” she said. Really, she just had to brazen this one out.
“So,” he said, his inquisitive look turning into a smirk, “dinner with Pike turned into breakfast with Pike, eh?”
Her first response was, No, we didn’t have breakfast; we were too busy, but luckily she didn’t say that. She didn’t bother asking how he knew she’d had dinner with Chris, either. Instead, she said, “That’s really not any of your business,” hoping her tone was harsh enough to get him to let up.
Of course not, but he inexplicably softened. “You’re right,” he said, “and I’m going to try my damndest not to be grossed out by it, but I figured out Pike had a thing for you in the second conversation we ever had. So this isn’t really unexpected.”
That was . . . strange. “It’s still not your business,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Don’t break his heart until after I graduate and get my place on the Enterprise, okay?”
Oh, shit. She hadn’t known that Jim was trying to get on the Enterprise, although in hindsight, it seemed obvious. “We’re all professionals here,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “See you later.” He loped off, passing her and turning the corner ahead.
When she got back to her temp quarters, she sent a quick note off to Chris. Guess who I ran into on the way home. She downgraded the priority, though, so he wouldn’t feel compelled to read it during the meeting.
He did anyway, or at least there was an answer waiting for her when she got done changing. Jim. I’m sorry. I should have checked my chart.
--You have a chart of his running schedule?
It’s actually two charts--he has about seven routes, and he picks which one by some variation of the Fibonacci sequence. He picks what time of day by a variation on a Mandelbrot set, and no, if you were wondering, I did not figure this out on my own (Cait helped), but once we figured it out, I joined him for a couple runs. Needless to say, he was surprised.
Winona laughed out loud at that. I see why he respects you.
He thinks his rebellion is new. It’s not.
--Of course not. I’m sorry; I’m interrupting your meeting.
Cancelled. If I’d known that twenty minutes earlier, I would have had a much better morning.
Ahh. She hesitated, and then sent, At some point we do need to talk about collateral damage from this.
You mean Jim.
--He told me not to break your heart until after he has his place on the Enterprise.
Audacious, isn’t he. Yeah, we should talk about it. Not via textcomm, though.
--Sure. Dinner?
Can dinner turn into breakfast?
--Speaking of audacious. Winona smiled, though.
Tomorrow’s Saturday. I don’t have any meetings. I can cook.
--You can cook?
Well, I can make pancakes and bacon.
--Well, all right. Dinner at 1900 at El Loro?
See you then.
Well, now what? It wasn’t quite 0900; she’d had almost nothing planned for the day. She sat down and tried to catch up on bad holo programs but nothing held her attention for very long. Reading, same thing. She could probably pop over to the Academy, but that wouldn’t take her mind off of Chris or Jim. Frankly, it was time for coffee and a long conversation with a friend about all this, but who?
Whitney and Ros, the women she usually considered her best friends, were off on the Aquino. This wasn’t the kind of thing one discussed with one’s mother, or worse, one’s mother-in-law; Winona had only the one brother, but she hadn’t talked to Frank since she’d kicked him out of her house for his role in Jim’s destruction of George’s Corvette Stingray. Also, again, family members and sex lives didn’t mix. That left the senior staff of the Yorktown, and she really wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss Chris with his best friend, his best friend’s girlfriend, or his ex-girlfriend. Zel was wonderful, really, but she was Andorian, and her views on sex and relationships weren’t exactly congruent with Starfleet regulations, as inclusive as the ‘Fleet tried to be.
She’d never really felt like she was isolated or lacking friends, but in retrospect . . . she was. Maybe. Somewhat.
Damnit. Probably Number One was the best choice here. She may not have been raised Terran human but she knew the regs better than anyone else Winona had ever met, and she was well acquainted with all parties involved. So to speak. She shook her head at herself, and sent a message to One, asking if she could speak with her on a matter that was partially personal and partially professional.
You mean Chris. Yes, of course. How about at 1400? I’m particularly fond of the Pumphouse Creamery’s dark chocolate with roasted almonds and cocoa nibs.
Well then.
At 1400, she was standing in front of One’s door with a pint of the requested ice cream and a pint of butter brickle for herself. One answered the door holding spoons, and Winona laughed as she seated herself on one end of the tiny couch.
“Mmm,” One said a few minutes later. “I never had ice cream until I got to the Academy, and sometimes I still feel like I’m making up for the lack.”
“I had lots of ice cream,” Winona said. “My parents took me to some of the dairy festivals in the area, when I was a kid. It was amazing.”
One smiled. “But we aren’t here to talk about our childhoods.”
“No,” Winona said, and sighed. “I know you and he are close, and I know you used to--” She waved her spoon in a circle. “I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, but--”
“Don’t worry about it,” One said. “What’s going on?”
Winona took another bite of ice cream and sighed again. “Last night, we--well, we went to dinner, and then . . .”
“You can skip over that part,” One said, obviously amused.
“Right,” Winona said, flushing, which was ridiculous, as she was fifty-seven years old and should have stopped blushing about sex by now. “Anyway, I ran into Jim while--walking home--and he told me I shouldn’t break Chris’s heart until after Jim got his place on the Enterprise.”
“Oh,” One said. “Well, that makes it more interesting than I thought.” She paused for a moment. “Although, to be fair, I think the only thing that has changed in the equation is that you’re actually physically involved.”
That was a polite way to put it. But--“Wait, what?”
“Jim’s at the top of his class, from what Chris says. Since part of the deal is that Chris gets first pick of the Academy grads for the new ship, he’d likely be going to the Enterprise anyway. Everyone in the ‘fleet knows what Chris wrote his dissertation on, so no one is surprised that he’s picked Jim Kirk as a protégé.”
“Yes, all right,” Winona said, “but.”
One smiled. “Well, it only gets complicated if he asks you to be his chief engineer.”
“Oh,” Winona said. “Oh, crap. I didn’t think about that. You know I won’t--”
“I know,” One said. “If you want to go, though, I’d be fine with it. I’m keeping his CMO, after all.”
“No, I seriously--haven’t thought that far ahead.” She was actually getting a bit light-headed, and set down her ice cream on the table so she could rest her head in her hands. "I haven’t had to think about this sort of thing in years, or ever, really. What if it doesn’t work out?”
“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t,” One said. “We didn’t, he and I, but we still managed to be captain and XO for another three years after that, and we’re still friends. He’s still the person I go to if I’m having management problems.”
Winona looked up at One. “I’m not you,” she said.
“I know,” One said. “I’ve got faith in both of you, though.”
“I don’t even know how I’m supposed to extrapolate based on one night--one really, really good night, mind you--” Winona didn’t know why she felt compelled to add that, especially considering that of all the people she could be talking to in existence, Number One certainly already knew, and had the smirk to prove it. “--but I don’t--well, fuck.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not breaking any regs, and even if you’re the chief engineer and Jim’s, what, tactical officer or something, at best there might be some weird rumbles, but you’re both the top of your pools.”
Winona knew that, intellectually, but it was still strange. “I can’t possibly make any decisions now.”
“Of course not,” One said. “It’s not the kind of decision you should make lightly.”
“Last night might have been a fluke.”
“At the risk of oversharing, Winona, I highly doubt it.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I meant the way it--we--seemed to--I don’t know. Work.”
One sighed. “I still doubt it.”
“How long have you known?”
“About what? That you’ve been involved? Since you commed me earlier. The way he feels about you? Since he commed me to ask when exactly I’d gotten you as my chief engineer a couple years ago.” One shrugged. “Again, ten years of very close interaction. How do you feel about him?”
Winona blinked. “I don’t even know,” she said. “If you would have asked me, you know, first thing--well, second thing--this morning, I would have had an answer, but now, a few hours later, it seems less--less something.”
“You like him as a person.”
“Well, yes. He’s not uncomplicated, but who is?”
“You’re attracted to him.”
Winona rolled her eyes. “Do you even need to wonder?”
One smiled. “You’ve got a few months to figure the rest out. The Enterprise doesn’t officially set off until September, I think, although they’ll be finished with her in February or March sometime.”
“Okay,” Winona said. She took a deep breath, and sat up. “Okay. I can handle this.”
“Of course you can,” One said.
“I’m sorry,” Winona said. “I didn’t really mean to drop all that on you. I just--”
“I know,” One said. “I consider the ice cream perfectly sufficient repayment.”
Right now, Winona supposed she was supposed to give Number One a hug, but she’d really gotten out of the habit of touching people and she didn’t think One had ever been in the habit, so she just said, “Thanks,” and sat back in her seat.
* * *
She still wasn’t completely settled on anything by the time she met Chris for dinner. He greeted her with a kiss, but didn’t bring up anything other than the weather until they’d already placed their orders. “So, Jim,” he said. “The Enterprise.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I would never question your professionalism.”
“But,” he said.
“But,” she said. “I wish there were some way to guarantee that no one would look at the situation and give any of us a hard time about it.”
“In all fairness,” Chris said, “I was going to pick Jim for the ship anyway, and I’d decided that, pending future developments, after he finished his first semester with perfect grades. At that point, he barely respected me and certainly didn’t like me. Every interaction we had was a test, for one or both of us. You weren’t even part of the picture yet.”
“So what happens?” she asked, and she meant, if we work out, are you going to ask me to change ships?
And thank goodness he was bright, because he heard what she meant, she was pretty sure, and said, “Let’s hold off making any permanent decisions until commencement, okay? Besides,” he added with a grin, “we need to make sure last night wasn’t the exception rather than the rule.”
Winona rolled her eyes and asked the ceiling, “Is this what all younger men are like?”
Chris laughed.
* * *
It wasn’t, as a matter of fact, the exception.
Afterward, he wrapped his arms around her as she lay on top of him, still trembling, and murmured words she could barely hear over her own heartbeat.
At moments like that, she could hardly doubt that it was well more than just sex.
* * *
The three weeks before the Yorktown left went quickly; she spent Christmas with Jim and Sam and Aurelan and Peter, as she always did when she was on Earth, but New Year’s was with Chris, One, Phil, and Cait. Despite her closeness to the rest of the senior staff, Winona felt a little strange being demonstrably affectionate in front of them, but a couple drinks in and she was sitting practically on Chris’s lap, telling stories from her time at the Academy.
For that matter, One was curled up with Cait, making Winona wonder what exactly was going on there, but there probably wasn’t enough alcohol in the room to get her drunk enough to ask that question.
The ship left on the third, the day before Kelvin Day, for which she was nominally thankful--the last place she wanted to be was Earth, although it might have been less miserable than usual with Chris around.
Their good-bye was as low-key as they could make it, at least in public. “See you in May,” she said.
“I’ll miss you,” he said.
“I’ll miss you too.”
The night before had been a little more heated, but that was irrelevant.
She spent Kelvin Day with Phil as per usual, but somehow it hurt a little less.
* * *
The Yorktown was sent with a large portion of the rest of the fleet to the Laurentian system to respond to a distress call from the Klingons, of all people; unfortunately, as forty-seven warbirds had been destroyed by some sort of unknown vessel, it was primarily a cleanup mission. Winona and the rest of the crew were working twelve-hour shifts, and when the distress call came in from Vulcan, they largely ignored it.
Until One took her aside and told her that there were seven ships still on Earth that were sent out to respond to the distress call, including the basically-finished Enterprise, all staffed primarily by cadets. And that nothing had been heard from them since.
“Oh, God,” Winona said, and burst into tears.
When she got control of herself again, she pulled out of Number One’s arms, noting that the captain also had tear-streaks on her face, and said, “The best thing for me is work.”
“I think that’s true for most of us,” One said, and wiped her face with the back of one hand.
It was five days before they heard any more news, and Winona had been working between eighteen and twenty-hour shifts, against the advice of Phil. “It’s either long shifts or I go nuts,” she told him. “No one knows where Jim is.” She was worried as hell about Chris, too, but her son was an entirely different, and primary, matter.
Phil sighed and sent her away without saying anything else.
Once they heard news, though, it didn’t really make it any better. Vulcan destroyed, the Enterprise the only ship left, Captain Pike captured and tortured by the enemy--and the enemy was--oh God, Winona couldn’t even think about it. But at least Jimmy was alive, and fine, even if he’d had to take control of the ship, which--
No. She wasn’t going to think about it.
Mere hours after they’d gotten the news, though, One announced that the Yorktown had been rerouted to Earth ASAP. Winona was under no illusions that it wasn’t at least somewhat for her benefit, but it was a four-day trip, and she kept working at her nearly-fevered pace the whole time. They would be there a day or so after the Enterprise, but Winona couldn’t dwell on it.
* * *
When they finally got back to Earth, no one tried to cut in line ahead of Winona for the transporter down to the surface. She, Phil, One, and a couple of younger crew members who had siblings who were at the academy made up the first group, and wonder of all wonders, Jim was there to meet her.
“Mom,” he said, and a moment later they were hugging, and she was never going to let him go again.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked sometime later.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “Yeah, I think so. Do you have time?”
“I do,” she said, and they went back to his quarters, kicked out Dr. McCoy (she liked the man well enough but he was superfluous here), and Jim started talking.
It took more than an hour to tell the whole story, and Winona suspected there was some he was leaving out anyway, especially about how he’d known about the Klingon transmission. (She’d asked him once about Dr. McCoy and he’d deflected her comment at first, and then said, It’s not . . . a thing, really, by which she guessed it wasn’t exclusive or serious, but she was fairly certain that it could be if only one of them had the guts to say so.) Still, it couldn’t have been an easy story to tell, and it certainly wasn’t easy to hear.
Especially the parts about Chris.
“Wait, he had you space-jumping onto a drill?” she said.
Jim shrugged. “Well, that worked out fine, as I actually had a lot more space-jumping experience than anyone else on the ship, as far as I can tell.”
Briefly, she was furious; white-hot anger dancing under her skin. She couldn’t believe that Chris would send her son, a cadet, out on a suicide mission--
--before going on one himself. The anger retreated, banked like coals inside her. “And then he--he did what Captain Robau did, and went over to--” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“I know,” he said, and leaned into her side.
“Oh, my God, you’re alive,” she said, and buried her face against his shoulder.
“And so is he,” he said.
She sat up and looked at him sharply. “You are my priority here,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “Believe me, it’s nice, but I’m fine, mostly.” He’d had some damage to his face, he’d told her, but he’d gotten most of it fixed already. “I need another week’s worth of sleep and then I will be fine. Captain Pike, on the other hand, is not fine, and I think you should go see him.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Winona said, and felt a fresh bout of tears surge up. “Oh, Jesus fuck, I hate this.”
“I know,” Jim said. “Once, you’d think, is enough. But it happened again, sort of, and Earth is safe, and even though a lot of people are gone--” He blinked and looked away for a moment. “There’s nothing we can do but rebuild.”
“When did you get so smart?” she asked, after a moment.
“I think Pike beat it into me,” he admitted, and she laughed, a watery chuckle. “So, I’ll walk you over to the hospital.”
She frowned at him. “Now?”
“No time like the present.”
“There are a lot of times like the present,” she said. “There’s ‘after I’ve had food and a nap,’ and there’s ‘after Phil gets time to ream him out,’ and there’s ‘when he’s ready for visitors,’ et cetera.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “I assume I’m supposed to feed you lunch now?”
“Is it lunch-time?”
He rolled his eyes again, but with a grin.
An hour later, Winona’d gotten a sandwich that she’d eaten at least half of, and she’d made use of the Academy gym showers and even found a clean uniform, before she ran out of excuses and let Jim escort her to Starfleet Medical.
He kissed her on the cheek and left her at the door, citing ‘other things’ he had to do, but Dr. McCoy met her just inside and walked her up to the intensive care unit. “Jim told you what happened?” he said.
“With the bug, yeah, and he said that--” Fuck, when had she turned into a watering-can?
“He was physically tortured before that, yes.” McCoy pulled a tissue out of a dispenser on the wall and handed it to her. “I can’t tell you more without his permission, but I can tell you that he’s had five surgeries so far and we’re cautiously optimistic.”
“About what?” Winona asked.
Dr. McCoy blinked. “That he’ll be able to walk again.”
“Oh.” Oh, fuck. “I don’t know . . .” She let the sentence trail off.
He nodded and herded her into a small waiting room. “Take all the time you need, ma’am.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t call me that; I feel old enough as it is.”
He laughed. “Be right back.” He ducked out, and returned a few minutes later with a very tall blonde woman. “Dr. Dehner, Winona Kirk.” He stepped out and the door closed behind him.
Dr. Dehner smelled like a psych, but Winona didn’t say anything except, “Hello,” before the other woman said, “Oh, my goodness, Winona Kirk?”
“Yes, that Winona Kirk,” Winona said, pressing her lips together. She hated getting that, especially from women who could hardly be older than Jim.
“No, not that,” Dr. Dehner said, apparently reading her mind. “Captain Pike--Chris--asked for ‘Winona’ a few times while he was mostly out of it, but refused to identify you once he was cogent.”
“Oh,” Winona said. “Oh, fuck. Sorry.” The last was intended for her language, and Dr. Dehner just nodded. “I--this is--”
Dr. Dehner nodded again, and Winona had the strangest feeling that she did, actually, understand. Which was impossible, because she was, what, twenty-five? Thirty at the most. “You’re not listed on any of his paperwork,” she said. “Dr. McCoy told me he knew who you were but wouldn’t divulge any details. How long have you and Chris been involved?”
“Weeks,” Winona said. “Months, if we’re being generous. Since mid-December, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think I’m the person you want.”
Dr. Dehner shrugged. “What do you think I’m looking for?”
“Someone who’s known him a long time.”
“I’ve got Dr. Boyce for that.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Winona sighed. “Fuck. I feel like a--like a really horrible person for saying this, but, I mean.” She bit her lip. “If you want someone who will be able to--to rehab him, I still don’t know if I’m that person.”
“Oh, no--” Dr. Dehner said. “No, no. That’s way too much of a load to put on one person.” She patted Winona on the shoulder awkwardly. “I’m sorry if I implied that’s what we wanted. I just wanted to know what role you already play in his life.”
“I’m still chickening out about--about going to--to see him.” Damnit, she was crying again. This had better stop, and soon.
“That’s understandable,” Dr. Dehner said.
“I--I keep having to remind myself that--that at least he-he’s not dead, but Jesus fuck, I don’t--why, twice?” She sank into one of the chairs and buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after what felt like twenty hours. “You’re not my counselor. I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you.”
“Right now, we’re all doing what we can,” Dr. Dehner said. “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t handle seeing him right now--and I’m not going to lie; he doesn’t look any better than you’d think--then can you at least write him a note?”
“Oh, Jesus, that would make me feel worse.” She didn’t think she’d taken the Lord’s name in vain so many times in years, and she could feel her mother-in-law disapproving all the way from Riverside, but she didn’t really care. “Give me a minute. I can do this.”
“Do you want me to go with you, or anyone else? I can call your son or Dr. McCoy or anyone else you’d like.”
“No,” Winona said. “No, I think there’s going to be a lot of crying and I’m pretty sick of crying in public at this point.” She gave a short laugh.
Dr. Dehner smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot.” She shrugged. “Everyone’s still hurting, from the top on down.”
“Yeah.” She knew a couple of the admirals had children in the fleet, and that couldn’t have made their decisions any easier. “Okay, Winona. Time to put on your big-girl pants.” She took a deep breath, and said, “Let’s do this.”
Dr. Dehner paged ahead to warn Chris that he had a visitor, but Winona walked over to his room by herself, nerves steeled, lips pressed together, only acknowledging other people in the hallway with short nods if necessary.
She stood outside the door and waited for about five breaths, and then pushed forward close enough to get the door to open.
The first thing she noticed was that they’d shaved his head. It made him look--wrong. His face was also thinner than it had been, and the planes and angles looked harsher than before. But, oh, he was alive, and it didn’t matter. “Chris,” she said, and he looked up, opening his eyes.
“Winona,” he said, and started blinking rapidly. “Oh, Winona, I’m so sorry.”
“No,” she said, and it came out kind of strangled. “No,” she said, trying again, and this time it was strong, authoritative. “Don’t ever apologize to me for--for this. Any of it.”
He nodded. “Come here,” he said. “Please.”
She did, and stopped at the side of the bed. The need to touch him, to make sure that he was actually there, was almost overwhelming. It was--weird. She didn’t touch people. She just didn’t. But right now, she thought she might be in actual physical pain if she didn’t. “I want to touch you,” she said, “but I don’t know where I can.”
He smiled, at least partway. “Almost anywhere,” he said. “They’ve got me on the good stuff.”
He held out a hand, and she put her hand in it, noting that his fingers trembled and he had no grip, but she let him pull her in close. Close enough to kiss, and she pressed her lips to his forehead. “Can I hold you?” he asked, barely audible. “I’d . . . really like that.” His voice cracked on the last word.
She nodded, not sure she could speak.
It took a moment to shift him over in the bed, since he had no strength and his legs didn’t work very well. Soon enough, though, they made a space in the bed for Winona, and she climbed up carefully and fitted herself against his shoulder. “Does anything hurt?”
“No,” Chris said, and she was fairly certain he was lying but figured it didn’t matter.
She relaxed, just a bit, still not willing to rest all of her weight on him, and took a breath. He didn’t smell exactly like she remembered, and the overwhelming scent of hospital interfered, but it was close enough. Eventually her body remembered the position, even if it wasn’t quite the same, and she sank a little against him.
“Winona,” he murmured against her hair, and she felt tears leaking down her face. She sniffed, and that was that. His chest started shaking and his arms wrapped around her; she clutched a fistful of his robe, and held on.
She didn’t know when they slid from grief to sleep, but at some point they did, because she woke up when the biobed made some sort of ridiculous noise above her head. Chris stiffened under her, and she sat up as quickly as possible, so she wasn’t pinning any part of him down.
“I’m all right,” he said, but his eyes were showing a bit too much white and his breath was coming a bit too fast.
Winona nodded and let him tangle his fingers in her own. She scrubbed at the side of her face, where she could feel the creases from sleep, and before she could muster up the desire to say anything, the door swished open, and Dr. Dehner entered.
“Chris,” she said. “Commander Kirk. You’re awake.”
Winona blushed, but held her gaze steady, and Chris just chuckled. “Liz,” he said. “I assume you kept the harpies away?”
“I am one of the harpies,” Dr. Dehner said, returning the chuckle. “You slept for a couple hours. I did run interference; a couple of nurses wanted to burst in, considering that the presence of Commander Kirk messed up some of the readings on the biobed, but I pulled rank and refused.”
“Pulled rank?” Chris raised an eyebrow.
“Called in Dr. Boyce,” she said breezily, and sat down in the chair. “So let’s talk about this.”
“No,” he said. “My personal life is none of your business.”
“It is when it gives you the first natural sleep you’ve gotten in the last week,” Dr. Dehner said, and there was a core of steel in the statement that gave Winona a hint as to why this young woman was handed what had to be a very difficult case for the ‘fleet.
“No,” he said again. “It’s not--” He stopped, and shook his head.
Winona suddenly knew what the problem was--and she also knew she’d made her decision, sometime in the last three or so hours. Blast. She hated it when her heart made decisions without telling her. “Look, I’ll step out for a moment,” she said, and hustled out of the room before either could protest.
Leaning against the wall outside the door, she buried her face in her hands and tried to slow her pulse down.
“Something wrong?” she heard a couple moments later, and looked up to see Dr. McCoy standing in the hallway, a few feet from her.
“Ah,” she said, not sure if she wanted to discuss it with McCoy, of all people. “Not really, no.”
“Have a nice nap?”
She gave him a look, and he laughed. “Jim tries that look on me occasionally. It doesn’t work when he does it, and frankly, ma’am, you’re about half as scary as my grandma.”
Winona sighed. “Yes, I had a nice nap.”
“Looked pretty cozy to me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Stop acting like you didn’t know weeks ago, or I’ll start interrogating you on your intentions toward my son.”
Dr. McCoy gave a thin half-smile. “That, ma’am, is entirely up to him.”
Winona sighed, and slid down the wall to sit. “I knew it. Seems commitment-phobia runs in the family.”
He chuckled, and then sobered. “To be fair, this is a hell of a moment to have to make that sort of decision.”
“Yeah. It’s basically taking all I have not to run away to Risa or something.” She looked back up at him again, and said, “You’re secretly a psych, aren’t you.”
“It’s not much of a secret,” he said, shrugging and sitting down next to her. “He’s going to have a lot of work to do in the next few months and years.”
“I know,” she said, and furrowed her brow as she turned to him. “That’s not it.”
“You mean--”
“I mean I don’t care if he ever walks again,” she said, and the strangest part was that she had no idea that it was true until she said it. “I don’t care about the PTSD either.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Please. I really don’t. I just . . .”
“Am afraid of being vulnerable?” he said.
“Stop it,” Winona said.
McCoy inexplicably started laughing, full, deep belly-laughs. She stared at him a moment until he explained. “Jim stole that from you lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Considering it was about half of what he heard for his entire childhood, I’m not surprised,” she said. “Yeah, I don’t--for fuck’s sake, you’d think I’d have gotten this shit all figured out,” she said. “I’m probably giving you a bad idea of what Jim will be like in thirty-odd years.”
“He’s got his own set of issues,” he said, and shook his head. “I’ll wait.”
“He would be a blazing fool to lose you,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder.
“Thanks,” he said, and she distinctly heard a note of irony in there. “I’m not going to tell you that you would be a fool to give up Captain Pike, because my mama raised me better than that. And I’m not talking to you as part of the psych department, but as your son’s best friend and whatnot--”
“My future son-in-law,” Winona said. “Let’s call it what it is.”
“As family, then,” McCoy said. “It might be a lot harder to walk back in that room than to leave, at least in the short term, and I’m not going to tell you you have to ignore what you need, but honestly, ma’am--”
“Winona,” she said. “Stop calling me ma’am. Didn’t I tell you that earlier?”
“You did.”
She sighed. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you.”
“Force of habit,” he said, and she still heard the ‘ma’am’ even if he didn’t say it.
“Sorry I interrupted,” she said. “You were saying? Although I can guess what the end result is: you think I’ll be much happier in the long run if I go back in there and stop being a chickenshit.”
“Something like that.”
She sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Why is it so hard? And why am I asking you?”
“It’s always hard, and I couldn’t tell you, ma--Winona.”
She smiled. “It wasn’t difficult with George,” she said. “We were young, and invincible, and not terribly self-aware.”
“Yeah, well,” McCoy said, and his tone went dark. “Second time around, you know all the things that could go wrong.”
She laughed. “Practically everything that could go wrong already did,” she said. “It should be easy from here on out.”
“Well, then,” he said, and stood, an easy motion. Winona envied him his youth for a moment, and rolled her eyes at herself mentally. He turned, and held out a hand to her. “Time for your triumphant return, I think.”
“Yeah,” she said, taking his hand and using it to pull herself up. “Thanks, Dr. McCoy. Er. Leonard? That’s your first name, right? Jim always calls you ‘Bones.’”
“You can call me Bones, too, if you like,” he said, with a shrug. “Or Leonard, or McCoy. Doesn’t matter; I’ll answer to any of ‘em.”
“Leonard,” she said, and stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Maybe I’ll call you Bones when Jim calls to tell me that we’re officially welcoming you to the family.”
He smiled, and gestured to the door.
She touched her fingers to the annunciator, and the door opened automatically. “Do you need more time?” she asked.
Chris shook his head, and Dr. Dehner said, “No, I think we’ve come to an understanding.”
“Good,” Winona said. “What do you need from me?”
His face went blank; Dr. Dehner’s didn’t change from her normal expression. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said carefully.
Winona’s heart ached at his words, and she said, “Dr. Dehner, I think it’s your turn to step out for a moment.”
Dr. Dehner disappeared without a word, and Winona said, “It’s time.”
“What’s time?” he asked, voice still carefully neutral.
Winona took a deep breath. “It’s time I stopped running; time I stopped lying to myself. I’ll stay, with you, if that’s what you want.”
“Are you sure?” he said, voice barely audible.
“Of course I’m sure,” she said, maybe a little too sharply. “Again--if that’s what you want.”
“It is,” he said, “most emphatically what I want.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, but she was smiling and climbing back onto the bed to kiss him.
“How are we going to do this?” he asked, some time later; his arms were still around her even though he barely had enough strength to hold on.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Number One will let me transfer to Earth; that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s no way Command will deny me that, and if they do, I’ll apply for compassionate leave until Jim takes off again, to start. Do we need to sign papers?”
“Liz, I think, has a list of our options prepared,” he said, and sighed. “Should probably let her back in, anyway.”
“And right when I was starting to get comfortable,” she said. With one last kiss, she pushed herself off the bed and went to stick her head out the door.
Dr. Dehner was sitting on the floor where Winona had been, using a stylus on the screen of a padd. “Everything worked out?” she asked. The smile on her face made Winona think she already knew.
“Yes,” Winona said anyway. “Come back in?”
Dr. Dehner entered the room, and said, “I’ll support compassionate leave, even though you’ll be filing paperwork after the fact.”
“What would we need to sign?” Winona asked.
Dr. Dehner shrugged. “Anything more binding than a medical visitation agreement, I think, would work, but you have options.”
Winona nodded. There were five levels of registered relationships in Starfleet, from the simple declaration form that conveyed nearly no rights, all the way through marriage. “So a 105 would work?” she said, attempting to keep her tone light.
Chris sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything. Dr. Dehner nodded, and said, “Yeah, that would be about perfect,” her tone matching Winona’s carefully.
“And then what?” Winona asked.
“You apply for leave; it gets approved. You do what you can.” Dr. Dehner shrugged. “Soon, we’re going to have to lower the levels of drugs we’ve got him on. That’s when the difficult stuff starts.”
Winona nodded. “Okay.”
“Well!” Dr. Dehner said, and stood. She found another padd in her pocket, flipped through a few screens, and said, “Here’s the 105 form. I’ll just leave the two of you to that, although a nurse will probably want to come in shortly to make sure everything is all right.”
“Is Chapel on shift?” Chris asked, as Winona took the padd.
“I think so,” Dr. Dehner said.
“See if she can do the check,” Chris said, and he had a strange grin on his face that Winona considered for a moment and then ignored.
“All right,” Dr. Dehner said, and left.
Chris turned to Winona with both eyebrows raised and said, “Were you going to get down on one knee at some point?”
“What, do you want me to?” she asked. “It’s a one-year domestic partnership contract. It gives us everything we want and allows either renewal or automatic termination.”
And, out of the roughly five hundred issued by the ‘fleet every year, about ninety-five percent turned into permanent partnership or marriage. There was a reason its nickname was ‘the engagement form.’ She was well aware of that, but she--well, she needed something more permanent than a simple declaration and less permanent than marriage.
“For the record,” he said, “I would have been satisfied with a 402.” He meant the declaration of kinship form.
“Then we’ll do a 402,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You offered a 105.” Now he was smiling. “And I expect you on one knee.”
“If I get on one knee, you won’t be able to see my head over the side of the bed,” she said.
He responded by reaching over to the bed’s controls and lowering it until it was about a foot and a half above the ground.
Winona let out an exaggerated sigh, and sank down to one knee, holding out the padd. “Chris Pike, will you do me the honor of signing the 105 form with me?”
And suddenly all the teasing, all the sarcasm was gone, along with what felt like half the oxygen in the room. She was a woman, half-kneeling on the floor, vulnerable in a way she’d never been before, even if the conclusion was foregone, and before she could get too light-headed he’d leaned over and held out a hand. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, of course, Winona, always.”
Which wasn’t quite the answer to the question she’d actually asked, but maybe it was the answer to the question she meant to ask. Or should have asked. She took his hand, climbed back into the bed, and settled against his side. It was very convenient that she was right-handed and he was left-handed, because they could fill out the form without having to move or jostle each other, and if his handwriting was nearly illegible, she didn’t say anything.
She hit the submit button with the tip of the stylus, and leaned her head against his shoulder. He took the padd and the stylus from her and set them on the table. Pressing his lips to her temple, he kissed her for a moment before saying, “You heard Liz. This isn’t--going to be easy.”
“If all you wanted was unconditional support and warm fuzzies,” Winona said, “I’m a terrible choice. It normally takes large quantities of alcohol to get me to talk about anything important, and one of my old engineering departments didn’t call me the Hitchcock Blonde because I resemble Grace Kelly in any way. But I promise I’ll be here.”
“Is it because you stab people in the shower?” he asked, and she smiled. “No,” he said, “I know what I’m getting into. But I’m not sure you do.”
“I can piece it together,” she said. “Let me guess--you get frustrated when things don’t come to you easily because you’ve always been brilliant and effortlessly athletic, even though you’ve always worked hard at both; when you’re mad, you take it out on everyone with sarcasm, and end up saying a lot of things you don’t mean but that, nonetheless, are true.”
“Am I so obvious?”
“Do you think you’re the only one who learned anything during the interview?” she asked.
“Apparently not,” he said. “It’s not just that, though. The prognosis--they’re not entirely sure what will or will not happen, but once the swelling goes down, they’ll be able to tell whether I’ll be able to walk again or not. I’ll probably never dance again, but considering that I didn’t dance in the first place--” He huffed out a quiet laugh. “I won’t be much use in the bedroom for a while, between the paralysis and the likely psychological effects.”
“I know,” she said. “That wasn’t--I never hesitated because of potential disability--”
“I didn’t think you had,” he said. “I figured it was more basic than that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And you--I don’t know if you’ve forgotten but it’s not as if I didn’t have any experience with this sort of thing. With PTSD. I mean--what did you think I was going through when you interviewed me?” She didn’t like to call it that. She didn’t like to call it anything at all except maybe ‘going through a bad time,’ but post-traumatic stress and post-partum depression and the plain old grief from losing a spouse were an awful combination.
“A lot,” he said, and gave her a half-smile. “I didn’t forget. You came through it so well that I can only hope to be half as graceful.”
“I didn’t really,” she said, but before she could say any more, the room noise chimed. They both jumped a bit, and Chris said, “Yes, come in,” as Winona shifted off the bed and into the chair.
A blonde woman with her hair tied into a bun, tall and blue-eyed and human, walked in, and Winona did a double-take before asking, “Are you Ilyrian?” Because, other than the hair and about fifteen years of age, she was a dead ringer for Number One.
“No, sir,” she said, with a good-natured smile. “Christine Chapel--born and raised in New Orleans from about eight generations of good New Orleans stock. I apparently just look like Captain One through some weird quirk of genetics.”
“That’s . . . really strange.” Now that she took the time to look, she could see tiny differences, and hear them--Chapel had a faint accent that came out when she talked about her hometown, and Number One had no accent at all--but it was still uncanny.
“I’ve heard that before, sir,” Chapel said, “but I’ve yet to meet her.”
She checked the biobed, adjusted a few settings, made some notes on her padd, and headed to the door before she said, “And congratulations, sir. Sirs.”
“Thanks,” Chris said. Winona smiled.
“I’m afraid of what might happen if we got the two of them in the same room,” he said after the door shut behind her.
“Oh, dear.”
“I’m pretty sure if they joined forces, they’d probably be running the entire Federation in about six months.”
Winona laughed.
He put the bed back at standard height, and patted the space next to him; she climbed back in, and said, “I can’t stay here all the time. I need to shower occasionally, and that means I need to get someone to assign me temporary quarters.”
He laughed. “Don’t bother. Stay at my place. I never got rid of your access, so you can still just walk in.”
“Okay,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid of me redecorating?”
Chris laughed again. “I haven’t even managed to repaint the walls since there was a mixup with my original request. You can’t do anything to make the place worse.”
“Ah, so that explains it.”
He yawned and nodded, and she squeezed his hand.
Back to Part Two | Back to Master Post | On to Part Four
Winona took a quick shower in his bathroom and redressed in her jeans and sweater; kissing him again, long and lingering, she left as he was shrugging into his jacket. There was something a little bit too obvious about leaving his apartment with him, although anyone who was paying attention would know she hadn’t spent the night alone, or in her own bed. She felt a broad smile spread across her face. Oh, man, she had it bad, which was ridiculous. Schooling her features, she walked a little faster down the hall to the stairway.
She exited the building and turned left to head to Kavandi Hall; she hadn’t gotten that far from Glenn when she heard a runner behind her. Instinctively she hugged the right side of the walkway, but the footsteps slowed and finally stopped a few feet behind her. “Mom?”
Winona stopped. It was Jim, of course; she turned to see him, dressed in shorts and a long-sleeved PT shirt. “Jim, hi,” she said. Really, she just had to brazen this one out.
“So,” he said, his inquisitive look turning into a smirk, “dinner with Pike turned into breakfast with Pike, eh?”
Her first response was, No, we didn’t have breakfast; we were too busy, but luckily she didn’t say that. She didn’t bother asking how he knew she’d had dinner with Chris, either. Instead, she said, “That’s really not any of your business,” hoping her tone was harsh enough to get him to let up.
Of course not, but he inexplicably softened. “You’re right,” he said, “and I’m going to try my damndest not to be grossed out by it, but I figured out Pike had a thing for you in the second conversation we ever had. So this isn’t really unexpected.”
That was . . . strange. “It’s still not your business,” she said.
“Yeah, well,” he said. “Don’t break his heart until after I graduate and get my place on the Enterprise, okay?”
Oh, shit. She hadn’t known that Jim was trying to get on the Enterprise, although in hindsight, it seemed obvious. “We’re all professionals here,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “See you later.” He loped off, passing her and turning the corner ahead.
When she got back to her temp quarters, she sent a quick note off to Chris. Guess who I ran into on the way home. She downgraded the priority, though, so he wouldn’t feel compelled to read it during the meeting.
He did anyway, or at least there was an answer waiting for her when she got done changing. Jim. I’m sorry. I should have checked my chart.
--You have a chart of his running schedule?
It’s actually two charts--he has about seven routes, and he picks which one by some variation of the Fibonacci sequence. He picks what time of day by a variation on a Mandelbrot set, and no, if you were wondering, I did not figure this out on my own (Cait helped), but once we figured it out, I joined him for a couple runs. Needless to say, he was surprised.
Winona laughed out loud at that. I see why he respects you.
He thinks his rebellion is new. It’s not.
--Of course not. I’m sorry; I’m interrupting your meeting.
Cancelled. If I’d known that twenty minutes earlier, I would have had a much better morning.
Ahh. She hesitated, and then sent, At some point we do need to talk about collateral damage from this.
You mean Jim.
--He told me not to break your heart until after he has his place on the Enterprise.
Audacious, isn’t he. Yeah, we should talk about it. Not via textcomm, though.
--Sure. Dinner?
Can dinner turn into breakfast?
--Speaking of audacious. Winona smiled, though.
Tomorrow’s Saturday. I don’t have any meetings. I can cook.
--You can cook?
Well, I can make pancakes and bacon.
--Well, all right. Dinner at 1900 at El Loro?
See you then.
Well, now what? It wasn’t quite 0900; she’d had almost nothing planned for the day. She sat down and tried to catch up on bad holo programs but nothing held her attention for very long. Reading, same thing. She could probably pop over to the Academy, but that wouldn’t take her mind off of Chris or Jim. Frankly, it was time for coffee and a long conversation with a friend about all this, but who?
Whitney and Ros, the women she usually considered her best friends, were off on the Aquino. This wasn’t the kind of thing one discussed with one’s mother, or worse, one’s mother-in-law; Winona had only the one brother, but she hadn’t talked to Frank since she’d kicked him out of her house for his role in Jim’s destruction of George’s Corvette Stingray. Also, again, family members and sex lives didn’t mix. That left the senior staff of the Yorktown, and she really wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss Chris with his best friend, his best friend’s girlfriend, or his ex-girlfriend. Zel was wonderful, really, but she was Andorian, and her views on sex and relationships weren’t exactly congruent with Starfleet regulations, as inclusive as the ‘Fleet tried to be.
She’d never really felt like she was isolated or lacking friends, but in retrospect . . . she was. Maybe. Somewhat.
Damnit. Probably Number One was the best choice here. She may not have been raised Terran human but she knew the regs better than anyone else Winona had ever met, and she was well acquainted with all parties involved. So to speak. She shook her head at herself, and sent a message to One, asking if she could speak with her on a matter that was partially personal and partially professional.
You mean Chris. Yes, of course. How about at 1400? I’m particularly fond of the Pumphouse Creamery’s dark chocolate with roasted almonds and cocoa nibs.
Well then.
At 1400, she was standing in front of One’s door with a pint of the requested ice cream and a pint of butter brickle for herself. One answered the door holding spoons, and Winona laughed as she seated herself on one end of the tiny couch.
“Mmm,” One said a few minutes later. “I never had ice cream until I got to the Academy, and sometimes I still feel like I’m making up for the lack.”
“I had lots of ice cream,” Winona said. “My parents took me to some of the dairy festivals in the area, when I was a kid. It was amazing.”
One smiled. “But we aren’t here to talk about our childhoods.”
“No,” Winona said, and sighed. “I know you and he are close, and I know you used to--” She waved her spoon in a circle. “I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position, but--”
“Don’t worry about it,” One said. “What’s going on?”
Winona took another bite of ice cream and sighed again. “Last night, we--well, we went to dinner, and then . . .”
“You can skip over that part,” One said, obviously amused.
“Right,” Winona said, flushing, which was ridiculous, as she was fifty-seven years old and should have stopped blushing about sex by now. “Anyway, I ran into Jim while--walking home--and he told me I shouldn’t break Chris’s heart until after Jim got his place on the Enterprise.”
“Oh,” One said. “Well, that makes it more interesting than I thought.” She paused for a moment. “Although, to be fair, I think the only thing that has changed in the equation is that you’re actually physically involved.”
That was a polite way to put it. But--“Wait, what?”
“Jim’s at the top of his class, from what Chris says. Since part of the deal is that Chris gets first pick of the Academy grads for the new ship, he’d likely be going to the Enterprise anyway. Everyone in the ‘fleet knows what Chris wrote his dissertation on, so no one is surprised that he’s picked Jim Kirk as a protégé.”
“Yes, all right,” Winona said, “but.”
One smiled. “Well, it only gets complicated if he asks you to be his chief engineer.”
“Oh,” Winona said. “Oh, crap. I didn’t think about that. You know I won’t--”
“I know,” One said. “If you want to go, though, I’d be fine with it. I’m keeping his CMO, after all.”
“No, I seriously--haven’t thought that far ahead.” She was actually getting a bit light-headed, and set down her ice cream on the table so she could rest her head in her hands. "I haven’t had to think about this sort of thing in years, or ever, really. What if it doesn’t work out?”
“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t,” One said. “We didn’t, he and I, but we still managed to be captain and XO for another three years after that, and we’re still friends. He’s still the person I go to if I’m having management problems.”
Winona looked up at One. “I’m not you,” she said.
“I know,” One said. “I’ve got faith in both of you, though.”
“I don’t even know how I’m supposed to extrapolate based on one night--one really, really good night, mind you--” Winona didn’t know why she felt compelled to add that, especially considering that of all the people she could be talking to in existence, Number One certainly already knew, and had the smirk to prove it. “--but I don’t--well, fuck.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you’re not breaking any regs, and even if you’re the chief engineer and Jim’s, what, tactical officer or something, at best there might be some weird rumbles, but you’re both the top of your pools.”
Winona knew that, intellectually, but it was still strange. “I can’t possibly make any decisions now.”
“Of course not,” One said. “It’s not the kind of decision you should make lightly.”
“Last night might have been a fluke.”
“At the risk of oversharing, Winona, I highly doubt it.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I meant the way it--we--seemed to--I don’t know. Work.”
One sighed. “I still doubt it.”
“How long have you known?”
“About what? That you’ve been involved? Since you commed me earlier. The way he feels about you? Since he commed me to ask when exactly I’d gotten you as my chief engineer a couple years ago.” One shrugged. “Again, ten years of very close interaction. How do you feel about him?”
Winona blinked. “I don’t even know,” she said. “If you would have asked me, you know, first thing--well, second thing--this morning, I would have had an answer, but now, a few hours later, it seems less--less something.”
“You like him as a person.”
“Well, yes. He’s not uncomplicated, but who is?”
“You’re attracted to him.”
Winona rolled her eyes. “Do you even need to wonder?”
One smiled. “You’ve got a few months to figure the rest out. The Enterprise doesn’t officially set off until September, I think, although they’ll be finished with her in February or March sometime.”
“Okay,” Winona said. She took a deep breath, and sat up. “Okay. I can handle this.”
“Of course you can,” One said.
“I’m sorry,” Winona said. “I didn’t really mean to drop all that on you. I just--”
“I know,” One said. “I consider the ice cream perfectly sufficient repayment.”
Right now, Winona supposed she was supposed to give Number One a hug, but she’d really gotten out of the habit of touching people and she didn’t think One had ever been in the habit, so she just said, “Thanks,” and sat back in her seat.
* * *
She still wasn’t completely settled on anything by the time she met Chris for dinner. He greeted her with a kiss, but didn’t bring up anything other than the weather until they’d already placed their orders. “So, Jim,” he said. “The Enterprise.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I would never question your professionalism.”
“But,” he said.
“But,” she said. “I wish there were some way to guarantee that no one would look at the situation and give any of us a hard time about it.”
“In all fairness,” Chris said, “I was going to pick Jim for the ship anyway, and I’d decided that, pending future developments, after he finished his first semester with perfect grades. At that point, he barely respected me and certainly didn’t like me. Every interaction we had was a test, for one or both of us. You weren’t even part of the picture yet.”
“So what happens?” she asked, and she meant, if we work out, are you going to ask me to change ships?
And thank goodness he was bright, because he heard what she meant, she was pretty sure, and said, “Let’s hold off making any permanent decisions until commencement, okay? Besides,” he added with a grin, “we need to make sure last night wasn’t the exception rather than the rule.”
Winona rolled her eyes and asked the ceiling, “Is this what all younger men are like?”
Chris laughed.
* * *
It wasn’t, as a matter of fact, the exception.
Afterward, he wrapped his arms around her as she lay on top of him, still trembling, and murmured words she could barely hear over her own heartbeat.
At moments like that, she could hardly doubt that it was well more than just sex.
* * *
The three weeks before the Yorktown left went quickly; she spent Christmas with Jim and Sam and Aurelan and Peter, as she always did when she was on Earth, but New Year’s was with Chris, One, Phil, and Cait. Despite her closeness to the rest of the senior staff, Winona felt a little strange being demonstrably affectionate in front of them, but a couple drinks in and she was sitting practically on Chris’s lap, telling stories from her time at the Academy.
For that matter, One was curled up with Cait, making Winona wonder what exactly was going on there, but there probably wasn’t enough alcohol in the room to get her drunk enough to ask that question.
The ship left on the third, the day before Kelvin Day, for which she was nominally thankful--the last place she wanted to be was Earth, although it might have been less miserable than usual with Chris around.
Their good-bye was as low-key as they could make it, at least in public. “See you in May,” she said.
“I’ll miss you,” he said.
“I’ll miss you too.”
The night before had been a little more heated, but that was irrelevant.
She spent Kelvin Day with Phil as per usual, but somehow it hurt a little less.
* * *
The Yorktown was sent with a large portion of the rest of the fleet to the Laurentian system to respond to a distress call from the Klingons, of all people; unfortunately, as forty-seven warbirds had been destroyed by some sort of unknown vessel, it was primarily a cleanup mission. Winona and the rest of the crew were working twelve-hour shifts, and when the distress call came in from Vulcan, they largely ignored it.
Until One took her aside and told her that there were seven ships still on Earth that were sent out to respond to the distress call, including the basically-finished Enterprise, all staffed primarily by cadets. And that nothing had been heard from them since.
“Oh, God,” Winona said, and burst into tears.
When she got control of herself again, she pulled out of Number One’s arms, noting that the captain also had tear-streaks on her face, and said, “The best thing for me is work.”
“I think that’s true for most of us,” One said, and wiped her face with the back of one hand.
It was five days before they heard any more news, and Winona had been working between eighteen and twenty-hour shifts, against the advice of Phil. “It’s either long shifts or I go nuts,” she told him. “No one knows where Jim is.” She was worried as hell about Chris, too, but her son was an entirely different, and primary, matter.
Phil sighed and sent her away without saying anything else.
Once they heard news, though, it didn’t really make it any better. Vulcan destroyed, the Enterprise the only ship left, Captain Pike captured and tortured by the enemy--and the enemy was--oh God, Winona couldn’t even think about it. But at least Jimmy was alive, and fine, even if he’d had to take control of the ship, which--
No. She wasn’t going to think about it.
Mere hours after they’d gotten the news, though, One announced that the Yorktown had been rerouted to Earth ASAP. Winona was under no illusions that it wasn’t at least somewhat for her benefit, but it was a four-day trip, and she kept working at her nearly-fevered pace the whole time. They would be there a day or so after the Enterprise, but Winona couldn’t dwell on it.
* * *
When they finally got back to Earth, no one tried to cut in line ahead of Winona for the transporter down to the surface. She, Phil, One, and a couple of younger crew members who had siblings who were at the academy made up the first group, and wonder of all wonders, Jim was there to meet her.
“Mom,” he said, and a moment later they were hugging, and she was never going to let him go again.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked sometime later.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “Yeah, I think so. Do you have time?”
“I do,” she said, and they went back to his quarters, kicked out Dr. McCoy (she liked the man well enough but he was superfluous here), and Jim started talking.
It took more than an hour to tell the whole story, and Winona suspected there was some he was leaving out anyway, especially about how he’d known about the Klingon transmission. (She’d asked him once about Dr. McCoy and he’d deflected her comment at first, and then said, It’s not . . . a thing, really, by which she guessed it wasn’t exclusive or serious, but she was fairly certain that it could be if only one of them had the guts to say so.) Still, it couldn’t have been an easy story to tell, and it certainly wasn’t easy to hear.
Especially the parts about Chris.
“Wait, he had you space-jumping onto a drill?” she said.
Jim shrugged. “Well, that worked out fine, as I actually had a lot more space-jumping experience than anyone else on the ship, as far as I can tell.”
Briefly, she was furious; white-hot anger dancing under her skin. She couldn’t believe that Chris would send her son, a cadet, out on a suicide mission--
--before going on one himself. The anger retreated, banked like coals inside her. “And then he--he did what Captain Robau did, and went over to--” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“I know,” he said, and leaned into her side.
“Oh, my God, you’re alive,” she said, and buried her face against his shoulder.
“And so is he,” he said.
She sat up and looked at him sharply. “You are my priority here,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “Believe me, it’s nice, but I’m fine, mostly.” He’d had some damage to his face, he’d told her, but he’d gotten most of it fixed already. “I need another week’s worth of sleep and then I will be fine. Captain Pike, on the other hand, is not fine, and I think you should go see him.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Winona said, and felt a fresh bout of tears surge up. “Oh, Jesus fuck, I hate this.”
“I know,” Jim said. “Once, you’d think, is enough. But it happened again, sort of, and Earth is safe, and even though a lot of people are gone--” He blinked and looked away for a moment. “There’s nothing we can do but rebuild.”
“When did you get so smart?” she asked, after a moment.
“I think Pike beat it into me,” he admitted, and she laughed, a watery chuckle. “So, I’ll walk you over to the hospital.”
She frowned at him. “Now?”
“No time like the present.”
“There are a lot of times like the present,” she said. “There’s ‘after I’ve had food and a nap,’ and there’s ‘after Phil gets time to ream him out,’ and there’s ‘when he’s ready for visitors,’ et cetera.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “I assume I’m supposed to feed you lunch now?”
“Is it lunch-time?”
He rolled his eyes again, but with a grin.
An hour later, Winona’d gotten a sandwich that she’d eaten at least half of, and she’d made use of the Academy gym showers and even found a clean uniform, before she ran out of excuses and let Jim escort her to Starfleet Medical.
He kissed her on the cheek and left her at the door, citing ‘other things’ he had to do, but Dr. McCoy met her just inside and walked her up to the intensive care unit. “Jim told you what happened?” he said.
“With the bug, yeah, and he said that--” Fuck, when had she turned into a watering-can?
“He was physically tortured before that, yes.” McCoy pulled a tissue out of a dispenser on the wall and handed it to her. “I can’t tell you more without his permission, but I can tell you that he’s had five surgeries so far and we’re cautiously optimistic.”
“About what?” Winona asked.
Dr. McCoy blinked. “That he’ll be able to walk again.”
“Oh.” Oh, fuck. “I don’t know . . .” She let the sentence trail off.
He nodded and herded her into a small waiting room. “Take all the time you need, ma’am.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t call me that; I feel old enough as it is.”
He laughed. “Be right back.” He ducked out, and returned a few minutes later with a very tall blonde woman. “Dr. Dehner, Winona Kirk.” He stepped out and the door closed behind him.
Dr. Dehner smelled like a psych, but Winona didn’t say anything except, “Hello,” before the other woman said, “Oh, my goodness, Winona Kirk?”
“Yes, that Winona Kirk,” Winona said, pressing her lips together. She hated getting that, especially from women who could hardly be older than Jim.
“No, not that,” Dr. Dehner said, apparently reading her mind. “Captain Pike--Chris--asked for ‘Winona’ a few times while he was mostly out of it, but refused to identify you once he was cogent.”
“Oh,” Winona said. “Oh, fuck. Sorry.” The last was intended for her language, and Dr. Dehner just nodded. “I--this is--”
Dr. Dehner nodded again, and Winona had the strangest feeling that she did, actually, understand. Which was impossible, because she was, what, twenty-five? Thirty at the most. “You’re not listed on any of his paperwork,” she said. “Dr. McCoy told me he knew who you were but wouldn’t divulge any details. How long have you and Chris been involved?”
“Weeks,” Winona said. “Months, if we’re being generous. Since mid-December, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think I’m the person you want.”
Dr. Dehner shrugged. “What do you think I’m looking for?”
“Someone who’s known him a long time.”
“I’ve got Dr. Boyce for that.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Winona sighed. “Fuck. I feel like a--like a really horrible person for saying this, but, I mean.” She bit her lip. “If you want someone who will be able to--to rehab him, I still don’t know if I’m that person.”
“Oh, no--” Dr. Dehner said. “No, no. That’s way too much of a load to put on one person.” She patted Winona on the shoulder awkwardly. “I’m sorry if I implied that’s what we wanted. I just wanted to know what role you already play in his life.”
“I’m still chickening out about--about going to--to see him.” Damnit, she was crying again. This had better stop, and soon.
“That’s understandable,” Dr. Dehner said.
“I--I keep having to remind myself that--that at least he-he’s not dead, but Jesus fuck, I don’t--why, twice?” She sank into one of the chairs and buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after what felt like twenty hours. “You’re not my counselor. I shouldn’t be dumping all this on you.”
“Right now, we’re all doing what we can,” Dr. Dehner said. “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t handle seeing him right now--and I’m not going to lie; he doesn’t look any better than you’d think--then can you at least write him a note?”
“Oh, Jesus, that would make me feel worse.” She didn’t think she’d taken the Lord’s name in vain so many times in years, and she could feel her mother-in-law disapproving all the way from Riverside, but she didn’t really care. “Give me a minute. I can do this.”
“Do you want me to go with you, or anyone else? I can call your son or Dr. McCoy or anyone else you’d like.”
“No,” Winona said. “No, I think there’s going to be a lot of crying and I’m pretty sick of crying in public at this point.” She gave a short laugh.
Dr. Dehner smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that a lot.” She shrugged. “Everyone’s still hurting, from the top on down.”
“Yeah.” She knew a couple of the admirals had children in the fleet, and that couldn’t have made their decisions any easier. “Okay, Winona. Time to put on your big-girl pants.” She took a deep breath, and said, “Let’s do this.”
Dr. Dehner paged ahead to warn Chris that he had a visitor, but Winona walked over to his room by herself, nerves steeled, lips pressed together, only acknowledging other people in the hallway with short nods if necessary.
She stood outside the door and waited for about five breaths, and then pushed forward close enough to get the door to open.
The first thing she noticed was that they’d shaved his head. It made him look--wrong. His face was also thinner than it had been, and the planes and angles looked harsher than before. But, oh, he was alive, and it didn’t matter. “Chris,” she said, and he looked up, opening his eyes.
“Winona,” he said, and started blinking rapidly. “Oh, Winona, I’m so sorry.”
“No,” she said, and it came out kind of strangled. “No,” she said, trying again, and this time it was strong, authoritative. “Don’t ever apologize to me for--for this. Any of it.”
He nodded. “Come here,” he said. “Please.”
She did, and stopped at the side of the bed. The need to touch him, to make sure that he was actually there, was almost overwhelming. It was--weird. She didn’t touch people. She just didn’t. But right now, she thought she might be in actual physical pain if she didn’t. “I want to touch you,” she said, “but I don’t know where I can.”
He smiled, at least partway. “Almost anywhere,” he said. “They’ve got me on the good stuff.”
He held out a hand, and she put her hand in it, noting that his fingers trembled and he had no grip, but she let him pull her in close. Close enough to kiss, and she pressed her lips to his forehead. “Can I hold you?” he asked, barely audible. “I’d . . . really like that.” His voice cracked on the last word.
She nodded, not sure she could speak.
It took a moment to shift him over in the bed, since he had no strength and his legs didn’t work very well. Soon enough, though, they made a space in the bed for Winona, and she climbed up carefully and fitted herself against his shoulder. “Does anything hurt?”
“No,” Chris said, and she was fairly certain he was lying but figured it didn’t matter.
She relaxed, just a bit, still not willing to rest all of her weight on him, and took a breath. He didn’t smell exactly like she remembered, and the overwhelming scent of hospital interfered, but it was close enough. Eventually her body remembered the position, even if it wasn’t quite the same, and she sank a little against him.
“Winona,” he murmured against her hair, and she felt tears leaking down her face. She sniffed, and that was that. His chest started shaking and his arms wrapped around her; she clutched a fistful of his robe, and held on.
She didn’t know when they slid from grief to sleep, but at some point they did, because she woke up when the biobed made some sort of ridiculous noise above her head. Chris stiffened under her, and she sat up as quickly as possible, so she wasn’t pinning any part of him down.
“I’m all right,” he said, but his eyes were showing a bit too much white and his breath was coming a bit too fast.
Winona nodded and let him tangle his fingers in her own. She scrubbed at the side of her face, where she could feel the creases from sleep, and before she could muster up the desire to say anything, the door swished open, and Dr. Dehner entered.
“Chris,” she said. “Commander Kirk. You’re awake.”
Winona blushed, but held her gaze steady, and Chris just chuckled. “Liz,” he said. “I assume you kept the harpies away?”
“I am one of the harpies,” Dr. Dehner said, returning the chuckle. “You slept for a couple hours. I did run interference; a couple of nurses wanted to burst in, considering that the presence of Commander Kirk messed up some of the readings on the biobed, but I pulled rank and refused.”
“Pulled rank?” Chris raised an eyebrow.
“Called in Dr. Boyce,” she said breezily, and sat down in the chair. “So let’s talk about this.”
“No,” he said. “My personal life is none of your business.”
“It is when it gives you the first natural sleep you’ve gotten in the last week,” Dr. Dehner said, and there was a core of steel in the statement that gave Winona a hint as to why this young woman was handed what had to be a very difficult case for the ‘fleet.
“No,” he said again. “It’s not--” He stopped, and shook his head.
Winona suddenly knew what the problem was--and she also knew she’d made her decision, sometime in the last three or so hours. Blast. She hated it when her heart made decisions without telling her. “Look, I’ll step out for a moment,” she said, and hustled out of the room before either could protest.
Leaning against the wall outside the door, she buried her face in her hands and tried to slow her pulse down.
“Something wrong?” she heard a couple moments later, and looked up to see Dr. McCoy standing in the hallway, a few feet from her.
“Ah,” she said, not sure if she wanted to discuss it with McCoy, of all people. “Not really, no.”
“Have a nice nap?”
She gave him a look, and he laughed. “Jim tries that look on me occasionally. It doesn’t work when he does it, and frankly, ma’am, you’re about half as scary as my grandma.”
Winona sighed. “Yes, I had a nice nap.”
“Looked pretty cozy to me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Stop acting like you didn’t know weeks ago, or I’ll start interrogating you on your intentions toward my son.”
Dr. McCoy gave a thin half-smile. “That, ma’am, is entirely up to him.”
Winona sighed, and slid down the wall to sit. “I knew it. Seems commitment-phobia runs in the family.”
He chuckled, and then sobered. “To be fair, this is a hell of a moment to have to make that sort of decision.”
“Yeah. It’s basically taking all I have not to run away to Risa or something.” She looked back up at him again, and said, “You’re secretly a psych, aren’t you.”
“It’s not much of a secret,” he said, shrugging and sitting down next to her. “He’s going to have a lot of work to do in the next few months and years.”
“I know,” she said, and furrowed her brow as she turned to him. “That’s not it.”
“You mean--”
“I mean I don’t care if he ever walks again,” she said, and the strangest part was that she had no idea that it was true until she said it. “I don’t care about the PTSD either.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Please. I really don’t. I just . . .”
“Am afraid of being vulnerable?” he said.
“Stop it,” Winona said.
McCoy inexplicably started laughing, full, deep belly-laughs. She stared at him a moment until he explained. “Jim stole that from you lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Considering it was about half of what he heard for his entire childhood, I’m not surprised,” she said. “Yeah, I don’t--for fuck’s sake, you’d think I’d have gotten this shit all figured out,” she said. “I’m probably giving you a bad idea of what Jim will be like in thirty-odd years.”
“He’s got his own set of issues,” he said, and shook his head. “I’ll wait.”
“He would be a blazing fool to lose you,” she said, and patted him on the shoulder.
“Thanks,” he said, and she distinctly heard a note of irony in there. “I’m not going to tell you that you would be a fool to give up Captain Pike, because my mama raised me better than that. And I’m not talking to you as part of the psych department, but as your son’s best friend and whatnot--”
“My future son-in-law,” Winona said. “Let’s call it what it is.”
“As family, then,” McCoy said. “It might be a lot harder to walk back in that room than to leave, at least in the short term, and I’m not going to tell you you have to ignore what you need, but honestly, ma’am--”
“Winona,” she said. “Stop calling me ma’am. Didn’t I tell you that earlier?”
“You did.”
She sighed. “You’re not going to listen to me, are you.”
“Force of habit,” he said, and she still heard the ‘ma’am’ even if he didn’t say it.
“Sorry I interrupted,” she said. “You were saying? Although I can guess what the end result is: you think I’ll be much happier in the long run if I go back in there and stop being a chickenshit.”
“Something like that.”
She sighed. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Why is it so hard? And why am I asking you?”
“It’s always hard, and I couldn’t tell you, ma--Winona.”
She smiled. “It wasn’t difficult with George,” she said. “We were young, and invincible, and not terribly self-aware.”
“Yeah, well,” McCoy said, and his tone went dark. “Second time around, you know all the things that could go wrong.”
She laughed. “Practically everything that could go wrong already did,” she said. “It should be easy from here on out.”
“Well, then,” he said, and stood, an easy motion. Winona envied him his youth for a moment, and rolled her eyes at herself mentally. He turned, and held out a hand to her. “Time for your triumphant return, I think.”
“Yeah,” she said, taking his hand and using it to pull herself up. “Thanks, Dr. McCoy. Er. Leonard? That’s your first name, right? Jim always calls you ‘Bones.’”
“You can call me Bones, too, if you like,” he said, with a shrug. “Or Leonard, or McCoy. Doesn’t matter; I’ll answer to any of ‘em.”
“Leonard,” she said, and stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Maybe I’ll call you Bones when Jim calls to tell me that we’re officially welcoming you to the family.”
He smiled, and gestured to the door.
She touched her fingers to the annunciator, and the door opened automatically. “Do you need more time?” she asked.
Chris shook his head, and Dr. Dehner said, “No, I think we’ve come to an understanding.”
“Good,” Winona said. “What do you need from me?”
His face went blank; Dr. Dehner’s didn’t change from her normal expression. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said carefully.
Winona’s heart ached at his words, and she said, “Dr. Dehner, I think it’s your turn to step out for a moment.”
Dr. Dehner disappeared without a word, and Winona said, “It’s time.”
“What’s time?” he asked, voice still carefully neutral.
Winona took a deep breath. “It’s time I stopped running; time I stopped lying to myself. I’ll stay, with you, if that’s what you want.”
“Are you sure?” he said, voice barely audible.
“Of course I’m sure,” she said, maybe a little too sharply. “Again--if that’s what you want.”
“It is,” he said, “most emphatically what I want.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said, but she was smiling and climbing back onto the bed to kiss him.
“How are we going to do this?” he asked, some time later; his arms were still around her even though he barely had enough strength to hold on.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Number One will let me transfer to Earth; that shouldn’t be a problem. There’s no way Command will deny me that, and if they do, I’ll apply for compassionate leave until Jim takes off again, to start. Do we need to sign papers?”
“Liz, I think, has a list of our options prepared,” he said, and sighed. “Should probably let her back in, anyway.”
“And right when I was starting to get comfortable,” she said. With one last kiss, she pushed herself off the bed and went to stick her head out the door.
Dr. Dehner was sitting on the floor where Winona had been, using a stylus on the screen of a padd. “Everything worked out?” she asked. The smile on her face made Winona think she already knew.
“Yes,” Winona said anyway. “Come back in?”
Dr. Dehner entered the room, and said, “I’ll support compassionate leave, even though you’ll be filing paperwork after the fact.”
“What would we need to sign?” Winona asked.
Dr. Dehner shrugged. “Anything more binding than a medical visitation agreement, I think, would work, but you have options.”
Winona nodded. There were five levels of registered relationships in Starfleet, from the simple declaration form that conveyed nearly no rights, all the way through marriage. “So a 105 would work?” she said, attempting to keep her tone light.
Chris sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything. Dr. Dehner nodded, and said, “Yeah, that would be about perfect,” her tone matching Winona’s carefully.
“And then what?” Winona asked.
“You apply for leave; it gets approved. You do what you can.” Dr. Dehner shrugged. “Soon, we’re going to have to lower the levels of drugs we’ve got him on. That’s when the difficult stuff starts.”
Winona nodded. “Okay.”
“Well!” Dr. Dehner said, and stood. She found another padd in her pocket, flipped through a few screens, and said, “Here’s the 105 form. I’ll just leave the two of you to that, although a nurse will probably want to come in shortly to make sure everything is all right.”
“Is Chapel on shift?” Chris asked, as Winona took the padd.
“I think so,” Dr. Dehner said.
“See if she can do the check,” Chris said, and he had a strange grin on his face that Winona considered for a moment and then ignored.
“All right,” Dr. Dehner said, and left.
Chris turned to Winona with both eyebrows raised and said, “Were you going to get down on one knee at some point?”
“What, do you want me to?” she asked. “It’s a one-year domestic partnership contract. It gives us everything we want and allows either renewal or automatic termination.”
And, out of the roughly five hundred issued by the ‘fleet every year, about ninety-five percent turned into permanent partnership or marriage. There was a reason its nickname was ‘the engagement form.’ She was well aware of that, but she--well, she needed something more permanent than a simple declaration and less permanent than marriage.
“For the record,” he said, “I would have been satisfied with a 402.” He meant the declaration of kinship form.
“Then we’ll do a 402,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You offered a 105.” Now he was smiling. “And I expect you on one knee.”
“If I get on one knee, you won’t be able to see my head over the side of the bed,” she said.
He responded by reaching over to the bed’s controls and lowering it until it was about a foot and a half above the ground.
Winona let out an exaggerated sigh, and sank down to one knee, holding out the padd. “Chris Pike, will you do me the honor of signing the 105 form with me?”
And suddenly all the teasing, all the sarcasm was gone, along with what felt like half the oxygen in the room. She was a woman, half-kneeling on the floor, vulnerable in a way she’d never been before, even if the conclusion was foregone, and before she could get too light-headed he’d leaned over and held out a hand. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, of course, Winona, always.”
Which wasn’t quite the answer to the question she’d actually asked, but maybe it was the answer to the question she meant to ask. Or should have asked. She took his hand, climbed back into the bed, and settled against his side. It was very convenient that she was right-handed and he was left-handed, because they could fill out the form without having to move or jostle each other, and if his handwriting was nearly illegible, she didn’t say anything.
She hit the submit button with the tip of the stylus, and leaned her head against his shoulder. He took the padd and the stylus from her and set them on the table. Pressing his lips to her temple, he kissed her for a moment before saying, “You heard Liz. This isn’t--going to be easy.”
“If all you wanted was unconditional support and warm fuzzies,” Winona said, “I’m a terrible choice. It normally takes large quantities of alcohol to get me to talk about anything important, and one of my old engineering departments didn’t call me the Hitchcock Blonde because I resemble Grace Kelly in any way. But I promise I’ll be here.”
“Is it because you stab people in the shower?” he asked, and she smiled. “No,” he said, “I know what I’m getting into. But I’m not sure you do.”
“I can piece it together,” she said. “Let me guess--you get frustrated when things don’t come to you easily because you’ve always been brilliant and effortlessly athletic, even though you’ve always worked hard at both; when you’re mad, you take it out on everyone with sarcasm, and end up saying a lot of things you don’t mean but that, nonetheless, are true.”
“Am I so obvious?”
“Do you think you’re the only one who learned anything during the interview?” she asked.
“Apparently not,” he said. “It’s not just that, though. The prognosis--they’re not entirely sure what will or will not happen, but once the swelling goes down, they’ll be able to tell whether I’ll be able to walk again or not. I’ll probably never dance again, but considering that I didn’t dance in the first place--” He huffed out a quiet laugh. “I won’t be much use in the bedroom for a while, between the paralysis and the likely psychological effects.”
“I know,” she said. “That wasn’t--I never hesitated because of potential disability--”
“I didn’t think you had,” he said. “I figured it was more basic than that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And you--I don’t know if you’ve forgotten but it’s not as if I didn’t have any experience with this sort of thing. With PTSD. I mean--what did you think I was going through when you interviewed me?” She didn’t like to call it that. She didn’t like to call it anything at all except maybe ‘going through a bad time,’ but post-traumatic stress and post-partum depression and the plain old grief from losing a spouse were an awful combination.
“A lot,” he said, and gave her a half-smile. “I didn’t forget. You came through it so well that I can only hope to be half as graceful.”
“I didn’t really,” she said, but before she could say any more, the room noise chimed. They both jumped a bit, and Chris said, “Yes, come in,” as Winona shifted off the bed and into the chair.
A blonde woman with her hair tied into a bun, tall and blue-eyed and human, walked in, and Winona did a double-take before asking, “Are you Ilyrian?” Because, other than the hair and about fifteen years of age, she was a dead ringer for Number One.
“No, sir,” she said, with a good-natured smile. “Christine Chapel--born and raised in New Orleans from about eight generations of good New Orleans stock. I apparently just look like Captain One through some weird quirk of genetics.”
“That’s . . . really strange.” Now that she took the time to look, she could see tiny differences, and hear them--Chapel had a faint accent that came out when she talked about her hometown, and Number One had no accent at all--but it was still uncanny.
“I’ve heard that before, sir,” Chapel said, “but I’ve yet to meet her.”
She checked the biobed, adjusted a few settings, made some notes on her padd, and headed to the door before she said, “And congratulations, sir. Sirs.”
“Thanks,” Chris said. Winona smiled.
“I’m afraid of what might happen if we got the two of them in the same room,” he said after the door shut behind her.
“Oh, dear.”
“I’m pretty sure if they joined forces, they’d probably be running the entire Federation in about six months.”
Winona laughed.
He put the bed back at standard height, and patted the space next to him; she climbed back in, and said, “I can’t stay here all the time. I need to shower occasionally, and that means I need to get someone to assign me temporary quarters.”
He laughed. “Don’t bother. Stay at my place. I never got rid of your access, so you can still just walk in.”
“Okay,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid of me redecorating?”
Chris laughed again. “I haven’t even managed to repaint the walls since there was a mixup with my original request. You can’t do anything to make the place worse.”
“Ah, so that explains it.”
He yawned and nodded, and she squeezed his hand.
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