Title: where's my sweetheart?
Fandom:Star Trek 2009
Rating: T
Pairings: Winona/George, OC/OC others
authors notes: updates will be irregular if continuted
Winona Jessica Quinn-Kirk left Riverside as a wife and came back a widow and a newly single mother.
That, just- wasn't fair.
She has the option of maternity leave but refuses it; the mandatory leave of a year for all survivors of the Kelvin more than enough. Being dirt side isn't her style, neither is being domestic but George wanted a family. George would be a great father-
Would have. Past tense. She is going to have to get used to that. God, she didn't want to get used to that.
Tiberius Samuel Kirk is god sent.
She's lost her –husbandbrotherloverfriendfamilyeverything- George (Lost, what a stupid term. George fucking died the asshole) but Tiberius lost his eldest son. He's also been a widower for the past four years and a father to three (two) grown men; his house just too big for one lonely, old man.
He takes care of James; he's retired now (far too early because Starfleet Intelligence isn't all that intelligent apparently) and has the time. He doesn't dote on James, doesn't latter the infant in affection and Winona never pictured him as the sort of man to use baby talk on children or animals. She respects him, can relate and approves of his parenting methods.
Tiberius cares for Jimmy in practical ways; bathing, bottles, clothes- that sort of thing. If he were anything like the nurses, fresh from Med-school all enthusiasm and no experience, that doted on James for the first three months of his life then she wouldn't even consider letting him care for her son. The last thing she wants is to be deemed a hopeless mother from someone whose opinion she actually cares about.
She helps when she can but there's something wrong with her. Her wirings wrong, there some sort of bypass in her circuits that makes it incapable for her to have mothering instincts. Winona looks down at James a sees a small infant and instead of cooing in adoration all she sees is how vulnerable he is, how little effort it would take to harm him and there lies a cold shame in the pit of her stomach. What kind of parent thinks about just how easy that would be? What kind of mother?
She's more equipped for the shipyards; engineering can be done anywhere really, it's the Space Age after all.
She's a mother now and it feels like a lie.
Everyone brings her casseroles; she doesn't understand this fascination with casseroles.
There's little condolences after Sandy McGill; Winona stands by her actions and believes they were entirely justifiable. Scorch marks litter the front garden, and the white picket fence has pickets that were blown off but no one was seriously injured and she made sure the phasor was set to stun. White picket fences don't offer any security or protection anyway, hardly a worthy any security investment.
Tiberius looks at her in the disapproving parental way that she and George had been on the receiving end of ever since they were five, grass stains covering their clothes and twigs tangled in her hair, and Winona does then what she has always done.
Winona straightens her spine and her shoulders become squared, she raises her chin defiantly and met her accusers gaze.
George's devil may care smile was a ghost at her side that she cannot shake.
George has a military funeral and she doesn't bother going. She doesn't feel guilty because George would have hated it anyway and it's not like there's an actual body, just an empty casket, a prop. (Propaganda, Starfleet has turned her husband into a fucking recruitment poster. Jesus Christ.)
It's televised for the whole planet to see, this world and any other. She doesn't go and she doesn't cry about it. Thousands are going in her place and millions are watching from all corners of the universe and she fucking hates it. She hates everyone and if today were her last day alive she would be inclined to make the clocks move faster.
(All she wants his for George to wrap his arms around her and call her sweetheart again)
James' only a baby, it'll be years before he starts to realise how stifling small towns can be, how much of a small town Earth really is. She and George were the only ones that felt the itch to leave- most of the people born in Riverside, stay in Riverside.
They were not most people; in fact, they were ten when they made their first getaway. She is in-ordinarily proud of this.
George suggested it idly one day in May, and Winona ran with it. By the start of July everything was planned out. Duffle bags were packed, George scraped some allowance together and Winona had downloaded all the best recommended apps she thought she needed onto her PADD. For days they had a giddy, heady childish excitement in every breath. George's impatience was catching and they were both so eager but Winona had decided before everything to wait until school was officially over, because while neither of them were exactly great students there was a reason they didn't skip school and that reason was one Tiberius Kirk.
So, George was driving his father's red antique car (like an actual car from before the Eugenics War, 21st or 20th century and such a beauty) or speeding more accurately, whooping as they crossed the state border and distantly she'll remember thinking that it'll be a miracle if they don't get arrested but, God, she felt alive.
She wonders if she'll ever feel that way again, wonders if she can.
In the end, Winona goes up into the Black just before James' second birthday.
She's posted as Engineering Officer of the starship USS Nottingham and is to serve under a Captain Pratt- human, male, late forties and of African descent- a minimal risk, maximum caution, by the books sort of leader according to his files. Three percent of the crew will be Vulcan, a grand total of twelve. Eighty eight Beltzoids and thirty Tellirates. The rest will be curious mix of Terrans of all kinds.
There's a three-year mission that frankly sounds rather boring to Winona, diplomatic and scientific missions mostly but she's seen those engines. If Nottingham is being wasted, it's not her problem. Staying in explored territory, within com-range, is hardly a problem, per say. Deep space is still space and she'll be able to talk to Tiberius and eventually James when he's able to properly by exchanging holovids.
Shore leaves are usually unpredictable and short lived, Winona knows she'll be busy, but she'll make time for her family.
She very firmly does not think about how she'd rather be responsible for a bunch of strangers rather than her own son. She needs this, she's selfish and she needs this. James will be fine without her, or Tiberius would, by sheer force of will, make him.
Three years is a long time in space, especially if there's people landlocked and waiting for you. Starfleet may have peaceful intentions but at the core it is a military operation, there are risks that every cadet must remember for their exams and risks even the lowliest crewman to the highest ranking officers can't forget for their own safety and the safety of others.
Co-operation is key for space travel so that, well, so no nobody dies a horrible, ugly death in the black, endless vacuum of space where no one can hear you scream. With this in mind, it pisses her off when little things- things easily avoided- get screwed up.
Two diltherium crystals crack in first three months and the Chief Engineering Officer does jack shit about it. Winona goes to a high ranking senior engineering officer, a Vulcan by the name of Syruk and together they go to Captain Pratt.
Syruk informs the Captain of the inferior quality of the crystals; she informs Pratt unless he wants to live up to his name, he should get better quality crystals for her ship, or else. Syruk lists Starfleet's most reputable suppliers and she questions his capability as a captain, that he would carelessly endanger the lives of a crew of four hundred and twelve lifeforms.
"Your ship?" Pratt questions her sceptically and she growls, a primal noise from the back of her throat.
In Medbay, Syruk defends her actions to the Beltizoid Chief Medical Officer in complete monotone with astounding clarity, explaining that giving Captain Pratt a black eye was obviously the most logical course of action given the circumstances.
(It's difficult to explain just how awesome this was to her at the time. No one but George had ever stood up for her, defended her. )
It brings them closer together -sort of, he's Vulcan so she can't read him well- at least he seems unperturbed when she joins him for meals and starts spending more free time with him. Winona's quite confident if Syruk was in anyway bothered by her then he'd say so. Vulcans, generally, are blunt like that.
They don't talk about their families or their pasts and that's fine, they'll learn each other through other means.