An Imperfect Woman

by InnocentGuilt

Life after the death of George is an experiment in life. Winona muddles through as best she can, balancing Starfleet and motherhood to the best of her ability and learning that it isn't always enough to love a child. It isn't always enough to try.

A/N: This was supposed to be done for my Big Bang on LJ, but I totally failed, having several evils that attacked me over the summer and fall. Needless to say, I missed the due date and so have dropped out of the Big Bang. But as this story is still perfectly good, I have decided to post here and just try again with a different story next year.

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if anyone has noticed…but I don't own this. Like…I am so far from owning this, it is ridiculous. Don't sue me…just play some good music with me!

+ststst+

She didn't cry for a while after that first time.

Winona knew that she wanted to but she never really did. She thought the first few days after they were on the rescue ship that it was because everyone always expected it of her, and she had always had problems doing what was expected of her. They wanted to see the broken woman, the leftover of a husband too brave for true words, and she wouldn't give them that.

She wasn't the broken woman. She wasn't the leftover. She was Winona Kirk, and her husband was dead. It hurt. Damn it all, but it hurt like hell. She felt the fire of that anguish licking at her heart the week it took for their rescue ship to reach a space station, where passenger ships would wait to take them back to their respective homes, be it Earth, Vulcan, or Andoria. She wasn't shattered though.

The crew of the Kelvin visited. They watched her and stepped on eggshells around her, like at any moment she would fly apart, like she would thrust her son, her son, into their arms and just crumple to the ground like so many cards. She refused them that. She stared at them with expectant eyes, wanted to know what they wanted. She sent them on their way.

She didn't cry. She held Jim to her chest. She watched him sleep in his makeshift crib. She woke him up with the sole intent of seeing his blue eyes. She smiled at him, and she wiggled his toes. She was strong for him, because it was bad enough that she had cried not a minute after he was born.

When Jim was asleep, she allowed herself to wallow, to curse George for that short second, to wish she had never met him. It never stayed that way for long, though. She wanted to hate George, and some part of her did. But she knew whose fault it really was.

It wasn't George's fault.

It wasn't Captain Robau's fault.

It wasn't even that crazy Romulan's fault.

It was hers.

She shouldn't have been on that ship. She was five months pregnant when she boarded and had trouble balancing on land let alone in space on a ship that was subject to gravity loss when she came on as Chief Engineer. But Robau had called, and then George had called, and before she knew it, Sammy was with George's mother and she was on a shuttle up to Earth's spacedock where the Kelvin was waiting.

She shouldn't have been there, though. Tibby, Tiberius when he was in trouble with Ainsley, always said, 'Pregnant women shouldn't be in space. It invites complication.' Of course, Tibby also said, 'Pregnant women shouldn't conceive in space.' He wasn't the most collected person when it came to speaking. He had told her to stay behind, told her they could find someone else.

The Kelvin was only supposed to be in space for another month and a half, though. She had thought she would dictate to her underlings for a month and a half and then they would come back to Earth where she would have their second son and she and George would take turns going into space. She had told Tibby they'd all be fine.

If she had listened George wouldn't have stayed on the ship. He would have gotten off the ship and he would have been at the spacedock waiting for the passenger ships to take him home where she and Sam would have been waiting for her, with hands on her belly, caressing Jimmy and telling him through her skin that daddy was home.

It was her fault, and maybe that's why she didn't cry.

She had killed the love of her life.

She would never love again.

+ststst+

She didn't go to George's funeral. She wanted to, but his family was there, Tibby, Ainsley, and George's older sister, Shannon. She couldn't face them after what she had done to their son, so she stayed at home for the day, distracting Sammy and feeding Jimmy in between naps. When she thought it was about time for his casket, his very, empty casket, to be lowered into the ground, she took a shot of whiskey, and that was her funeral for him.

She was getting ready for bed in a way. She was actually tidying up a bit of Sammy's messes and toys while wandering around in one of George's t-shirts and a pair of her sleeping shorts, which also happened to be George's, when the door opened. There weren't that many people who had a key to her house. Her, only her now, her mother, Alice…and Shannon. They were all the key holders, and since she had told her mother not to come around today since she had never liked George, it could only be her sister-in-law, her best friend.

She wandered out of the living room where Shannon would be waiting in the hall. She felt a little self-conscious when she saw Shannon dressed in a black suit that made her look years older than she actually was and Winona, herself, was only dressed in her pajamas. She felt like she had, in some way, besmirched George's memory.

"I'm sorry," she said, devastated.

Shannon's brows crinkled and her frown, if possible, became sharper. "What for?"

"I'm so sorry," she said again and again and again, a hurt bubbling up in chest, worse than what it normally was. For the first time in weeks, for the first time since that day when she had held Jim close to her chest, burning hot tears sprang to her eyes. She wiped them away furiously, but more just came to replace those.

"Winona…" Shannon said, walking swiftly towards her.

Arms encircled her shoulders and she sank into them, her head resting against her best friend's shoulder. "I shouldn't have been there!" she gasped through her sobs. "This wouldn't have happened had I not been there. Tibby tried to tell me…but-but I didn't listen. I didn't listen and I should have!"

"Oh, no," Shannon shushed, one hand coming up to pet at her scalp soothingly. "Winnie, no!"

Winona nodded furiously against her shoulder and Shannon continuously told her 'no' in a calming voice that Winona had only ever heard her use on Sammy. She collapsed further into the arms encircling her, letting them hold her up as she cried into her sister-in-law's shoulder. Shannon rested her head on top of hers; letting their two different shades of blond hair mingle together.

Just a short hour later found the two of them in the kitchen. A bottle of whiskey was on the table, half-gone, in front of them, a mason jar in each of their hands. Winona wasn't supposed to be drinking. Her babies were just upstairs and at any second something could happen, but Shannon had assured her. Tibby and Ainsley were under a mile away, the old Kirk farmhouse being put to use while they were all in Riverside. They could be here in an instant if something happened.

A silence had stretched between them at glass two, but it didn't feel tense. Well, it did, because George was gone, dead, but other than that Winona could almost pretend that George had just gone out for the evening, leaving her and Shannon for a girls' night.

Winona, her head on the table so that she could soak in its coolness, broke the silence. "You know what the suckiest part of all this is?"

"Hm?" Shannon moved her hand up further between Winona's shoulders, rubbing her neck.

For a moment, she didn't want to say it. She didn't want to sound selfish or petty. But she thought it and if there was ever anyone alive who would understand it, it would be the woman next to her.

"He was never supposed to leave me," she said petulantly, lifting her head from the table so that she could fall into Shannon's shoulder, switching the coolness of the table for the comfort of her best friend.

Shannon snorted into her drink. "You've always been so convinced that you would leave him. Do you remember your wedding day? Right after…"

"Right after I said 'I do'?"

"You said you were going to divorce him the next day! And what did he say? What did he say?" she asked while laughing, trying to capture the exact words her brother had told his new wife.

"He said, 'Go ahead, Winnie. Divorce me anytime you want. I will get myself stationed on whatever ship you are just to piss you off.'" She laughed too, for a few seconds, remembering their wedding day and every day with him in the short span of less than a minute.

Then it faded, and the silence was back again, leaving them both with the taste of whiskey ashes in their mouths.

A small sniffle sounded in the quiet of the kitchen.

"I was supposed to leave him!" Winona said, nuzzling her nose into Shannon's neck. "He was never supposed to leave me. He was never supposed to leave our babies! Shannon, if I hadn't been there…"

They were spared a repeat of their earlier conversation.

Jim started crying from her room.

+ststst+

Three years went by quickly. Her boys grew up before her eyes, Sammy almost six and Jim just having turned three. She stayed at home with them, living off the checks that Starfleet sent to her in the wake of her husband's heroic death. It was good, content.

But it wasn't enough.

She had her boys, and her mother and older brother lived about an hour's drive away. Tibby and Ainsley had returned to San Francisco and Shannon was now hovering in the outer reaches of space, living on Tarsus IV, where little to no one could contact her due the constant atmospheric disturbances. Not that Winona tried to contact her. She hadn't tried to contact any of the Kirk's really. She called Tibby and Ainsley when she was taking the boys to San Francisco for a week and she let them keep their grandchildren for four or five days before they went back to Iowa, but she never really spoke to them otherwise.

She was alone, or close enough to it. Her mother and brother were decent, but they really weren't her family, not really. So, it was just her and her boys. They played together, worked together, gardened together, and learned together. They lived together, though it was sometimes a bit more of a struggle for Winona. Raising two boys had never sounded easy, but it had always sounded more doable than Sammy and Jimmy sometimes made it. It was just sometimes easier to entertain the thought of staying in her bed for the day.

It was easier to entertain the notion of heathen children who raised themselves and played with monsters instead of her.

Like Where The Wild Things Are. That had been her favorite book as a child before her own daddy had died.

She never let the boys play with the monsters instead of her. Always she would pull herself out of bed, or pull them into bed with her and spend the day pretending that her bed was a pirate ship and her scant pieces of clothing on the floor were sharks to hide from. Sometimes she even made her jewelry box a treasure chest. But she never let the boys play with monsters instead of her.

It wasn't enough and she supposed that was where her contention came from.

She had applied for active duty the day before. If she was granted a position, she would likely be leaving Earth. The higher ups in Starfleet would obviously take into consideration her two boys and the fact that she was a single parent. They wouldn't send her into space for much more than six months, if that, and she would probably be stationed on a freight ship or something equally as simple.

But she was still leaving her kids for the first time in three years. She would likely leave them with her mother or, god forbid, her older brother.

She could stay home. She knew that, but she didn't want a life that was comfortable because of George's death. She wanted the boys to have a comfortable life because of Winona's work. She wanted to be in charge of that now, and she felt they were old enough to understand that. Well, Sammy was at least. Jim would just smile at her with a big Kirk grin and ask her three million questions about space.

Warm dust hit her arm and shrieks of laughter filled her ears. She twisted on the porch step she was seated on to see Jimmy cackling in a way that he had inherited solely from her. "I got you!" he yelled victoriously. "I got you!"

From around the corner of the house, she could see Sammy poking his head around the side to watch festivities he had probably thought up.

Winona looked down at her arm to see a thin shimmering sheen of dirt sticking to her skin. She looked up just in time to see Jim release another handful at her, this dusty bomb catching her shorts. "Oh, you little snot!" she cried out as she stood from her step. Jim's grin only grew and he took a few steps back. "Don't throw dirt at mommy!"

Jim took off and Winona gave chase, keeping her strides short enough that Jim appeared to have a slight advantage. He ran straight to his brother, and then they were both running, through the gardens they so meticulously kept up with and into the back yard where a lawnmower would shudder to even look at. Winona kept sight of both of them, even though Jim was mostly eclipsed by the tall grass.

At the end of the game, Winona had both of them around their chests, though it was getting harder to do with both of the boys, and she swung them around in the air, their two shades of blonde hair glinting in the afternoon sun.

+ststst+

"Tell us a story, mommy," Sammy said as she tucked him into bed at her mother's house.

"A story?" she asked with a laugh. "Why would you want a story?"

She always told them stories before bedtime, a story about how she and George's life together wrapped up in fairytales and fantasies.

She tucked him more firmly in, all but mummifying him with the homemade quilt her mother used to make before James had died as Jimmy, from the other side of the bed the three of them were sharing, asked in his tired, little voice, "Please?"

She smiled at the two of them, sitting between their bodies and ignoring as Sammy kicked his legs around, hitting her with his bony little knee, to find a more comfortable position. She wiggled her way up the bed, sitting between the two and resting against the headboard.

"Mommy was the White Witch," she began, watching as both her boys smiled, "and daddy was the Pumpkin King. He lived in a castle made of pure chocolate and had frogs that served him dinner. But he was unhappy. The frogs never talked to him. They only served him and then hopped away to gossip in their frog tongues while he sat upon his pumpkin throne all by himself with no one to talk to. One day, while the Pumpkin King was riding his ostrich, he happened upon the White Witch tapping on one of his pumpkins, turning it into birdhouses and piñatas. He was curious and so approached her.

"The White Witch, having never seen the Pumpkin King and therefore not trusting him in the slightest, turned his ostrich into pure gold dust, a warning of what would happen to him if he came closer. It was only after he asked her to turn his pumpkin into a bluebird that she trusted him, knowing that if he wanted her to continue he couldn't be a bad man. She turned his pumpkin into a bluebird, watching him delight as it flew away.

"The Pumpkin King was thrilled with her powers, and so asked her to join him in his castle of pure chocolate and be served by his frog-waiters. He asked for her company, telling her how lonely it could be to be the king of pumpkins. He told her how he had no one to talk to, and how it would be wonderful if she would come and rule with him as well.

"The White Witch, having only ever had her tricks to keep her happy, agreed to his proposal, moving into his chocolate castle…" She stroked Sammy's cheek, and brushed Jimmy's white-blond hair away from his forehead. They were both asleep. She sighed and finished her story, letting herself have one bittersweet moment. "And they lived happily ever after, for a time."

She watched them sleep for a little while, still playing with Jimmy's light hair and stroking Sammy's soft and ever narrowing face. When she was sure they wouldn't awaken, she crawled slowly off the bed they were all sharing for the night, and went about packing a light bag for when she left tomorrow morning.

Starfleet had approved her request to go back on active duty, and she would spend two weeks at the moon colony fixing some mechanical problems they were having with their ventilation systems and docking equipment. If she finished with enough time, she had been asked to update the computers, but it wasn't as important to the Admiral who had given her the orders.

She had been reinstated with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, the rank she had been given after George had died.

Packing the last of some of her trinkets away, she looked at her sleeping boys.

It was only two weeks, like a mini vacation; they would hardly notice her absence until she arrived home again. She couldn't help but feel like she was ditching them, though, placing them in the closest hands available and running off into space. It wasn't like that; she had a legitimate reason and both the boys had understood, though Sammy had been reluctant to okay her plan of action. Jimmy had been completely fine with it, which worried her somewhat. He was the younger of the two and, for all intents and purposes, the one who was closer to her, but he had just smiled and nodded, his long blond hair falling into his face.

She bit her bottom lip, lightly, keeping the emotions at bay. She would be back in two weeks and then she would have at least a month to her and the boys before Starfleet would call for her again. It didn't stop her from grabbing her camera, though. She snapped a picture of them and loaded it to her padd.

It didn't make her feel much better, but at least it was something.

+ststst+

Within her first day at the moon colony, Winona was elbow deep in the guts of the ventilation system and cursing up a storm. It wasn't really her specialty, ventilation or docking equipment. Really, computers weren't her forte either. She was specialized in warp cores and Jeffery tubes, but those were mainly found on ships, not sedentary colonies. It was only her versatility that brought her here. She knew the basics of almost every machine she could get her hands on, and if she didn't she would find out quickly.

Still, that ventilation system... Something was wrong with the fan and she couldn't get it out to replace it with the new one. She had an entire team of underlings helping her try to wiggle it out of place so the giant pulleys straps could carry it off, but it wouldn't budge. The previous Engineer hadn't put in the correct fan, so this one, while it had worked for three years without problem, was too big for the slot it was in.

"God dammit, move you cocksucking little shit!" she grunted as she and eight people shoved and shook a giant fan. Some of her subordinates gave her odd looks, but they didn't say anything about it. She didn't know how they weren't screaming the same things as her, but after another group effort to shove it, hearing only the slow, pitiful grate of metal against metal, she didn't care enough to think about it. She stepped away from the fan, red faced and seething. Looking at her crew around, she yelled, "Who was the cum-guzzling dipshit who put this in? I am going to have his head on a platter!"

They looked uncomfortable, didn't say anything. She supposed it was a good thing they didn't indulge her anger. She looked back to the fan, still stubbornly stuck in place. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.

"Lieutenant Commander?" a male voice called from behind her.

She spun on the heel of her shiny new boots to face her addresser. He was one of the civilians. In fact, he had been the one to request Starfleet's help with the system, because apparently the crew up here didn't do maintenance checks.

"Yes?" she asked, ire still coloring her tone, but not to the extent it had been.

He let the anger wash over him like it wasn't even there. "What if you tried to lubricate the fan? Maybe it would help to push it out of the holding."

She was really out of practice when she couldn't even think of lubricant. She resisted the urge to smack her hand to her forehead. Instead, she whipped around to face one of the ensigns. "Marx, get two gallons of oil, lickety-split."

The use of 'lickety-split' didn't even receive a raised eyebrow from anyone after everything she had yelled at the fan. The ensign ran off to find two gallons of oil somewhere, her red ponytail the last flicking trace of her as she rounded the corner of the hall.

Winona looked back to the rest of her crew, all red-faced and panting. "The rest of you get a drink of water or something."

They mumbled thankfully to her, dispersing quickly to grab bottles of water from a dispenser. Winona stayed by the fan with the civilian who had given her the idea. When she met his eyes, brown-almost-black from where she was standing, he shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Quite a colorful vocabulary you've got, Lieutenant Commander," he said with a slight smile.

She rolled her eyes. "If this piece of junk isn't out within the next hour, you'll probably be treated to just how colorful it is," she groused, glaring back at the fan. When she looked at the man again, she saw the smile had gone from his face and he looked at her with curious eyes.

"I was a little shocked when word got out that Lieutenant Commander Kirk was coming to fix up our little colony," he said conversationally, though his eyes still watched her with interest. "I thought they may have been talking about someone else."

"The only other Kirk I know serving in 'Fleet is Shannon Kirk, but she's a Lieutenant stationed on Tarsus IV," Winona said, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. So far, she hadn't received any questions about being the widow of the great George Kirk. She had foolishly been hoping it would stay that way.

He backed off, but she wasn't sure if it was because of her defensive posture or the fact the three of her crew had come back and were looking between them inquisitively. Ensign Marx was the last one to arrive back, and Winona sent her off to grab a bottle of water while the rest of them slathered the fan with oil. The civilian man stayed to watch, offering no service at all, but no longer speaking.

"Alright, take two," she said to her crew. "Hopefully this time without my volatile vocabulary."

A few of them chuckled, but on the word they pushed against the fan. There was no awful grinding of metal against metal this time, and the fan actually gave a little, but not enough to use the pulley to lift it out. She looked back at the civilian, who was leaning against the wall. He offered her nothing, and so they pushed again, cheering when it finally moved enough to use the pulley.

By the end of the day, she and crew had the new fan in and the ventilation was working again, pushing warmer air through vents to counteract the normal cold of the moon.

She sent her crew off, and for a moment she just stood outside the room that held the enormous fan and all of its enormous friends that help it run smoothly. She put some codes in the computer outside the door, telling it to run scans on the ventilation system every hour and to send the results to her personal padd.

When she finished that she turned around, intent on going back to her quarters and showering.; Iit was nice to feel the grime that came with being an engineer, but after a few hours the novelty wore off and she felt like she had bathed in the oil instead of used it to loosen the fan. Her plan was halted when she saw the civilian from earlier heading down the hall towards her.

She pulled in a deep sigh before addressing him. "Thank you for your help, Marlon."

"It wasn't like I did anything amazing," he denied. "And it's Ben."

"Winona," she said out of habit. "But you knew that." She shook her head with a small roll of her eyes. "Well, I'm gonna shower. See you around."

"Wait," Ben called. She turned around. "Do you want to grab dinner?"

Before she could stop it, a small laugh fell from her lips. She was so not ready for anyone pining after her. Shaking her head in a small apology, she told him, "You're cute, but I'm only here for two weeks."

A small smile graced his lips. "I'm not asking for your hand in marriage. Just dinner."

"Just dinner?" she echoed.

The small smile turned charmingly playful. "Unless you're up for a little more."

She stared at him for a moment. It had been a long time, almost eight months since the last time she had been without her boys. Sure, it wasn't what she was expecting when she took this mission, but what could it hurt? She bit her lip before nodding a little. "As long as you realize that it doesn't mean anything," she said warningly.

He shrugged. "Sure it does…just nothing romantic. Just two adults having a little fun."

And the way he said it made her feel better. She smiled back at him for the first time. "Alright," she said definitively. "Let me shower and I'll meet you back here."

Her two weeks with Ben were the most fun she had had with a man, or any adult, since George had died.

+ststst+

The boys grew and grew like weeds. At eight, Sammy came easily to Winona's chest and no longer needed kisses to make any of his hurts go away. He didn't ask for stories or much of anything really. He did his homework quietly, only struggling with things like the grammar of Standard. His darker blond hair had become even darker until he almost looked brunette and his mood seemed to follow the shift in his hair color until seeing him smile was like seeing a meteor streak across the Iowa sky.

Jimmy was five and he came up to her bellybutton. He, unlike his older brother, couldn't seem to get enough affection from her and she was happy to give it to him, hugging him and kissing his hurts and settling him in her lap when he wanted to sit with her. He asked for stories and did his 'homework' in the comfort of her presence. His blond hair stayed as light as most of the Kirks but she could see gold lacing through it already, something purely Slydell. His mood kept up with his hair color as well. He smiled brilliantly at everything, even when she was up in space and talking to him from her computer.

When she was home she was home for no less than a month, sometimes going five months on Earth before Starfleet would scrounge up another assignment for her. They would stay in their home and Winona would take them to school early in the morning and play with them far into the night. Sam sometimes complained, but Jim was always happy to play hide and go seek in the dark.

Tonight, she had brought a few blankets out of the house and threw them on the ground next to her garden, which suffered with the way she would leave it and come back to it randomly. She took the boys out and together they looked at the stars, Winona pointing out the constellations and planets when she saw them.

"That's the big dipper. And just there…" she said quietly, pointing to the sky around Jimmy, who had settled into her lap. "That's the little dipper."

"Is that where you work?" Jimmy asked while playing with the blanket she had spread over their legs to ward off the cooler October air.

She shrugged. "I work all over space."

"Do you ever wanna stay home?" Sammy asked sullenly from his place beside Winona. He was actually as far away as he could be from her without lying in the grass. His own blanket was kicked down his gangly legs to only cover his feet, like he was too tough to actually get chilled.

"Of course I do!" she said indignantly. She settled Jim next to her and lay down next to her older son, scooting closer to him, despite the fact he looked like he may actually try to bite her.

He closed his eyes and heaved a deep breath. "Then why don't you?" he asked bitterly, his mouth tight.

She felt her eyes tearing at his tone. She knew he didn't like it when she left, but she hadn't been aware how angry he was about it. She bit her lip to ward off the tears. "Because I have to work, Sammy," she told him calmly. She put all of George's checks, the ones that Starfleet still sent her, into accounts for her boys. That way, when they were older, they could follow whatever dreams they thought would make them happy, but she didn't tell him that. For now, they would think that she left them on Earth because she needed to keep a roof over their heads.

When Sam didn't react, she tried for a different tactic. "Oh, but I wish I could take you little heathens with me!" she yelled, throwing herself over Sammy and tickling him. He may be too tough to get cold, but he was still ticklish, and he howled when she assaulted him.

From behind her, Jimmy jumped into the fray, trying to tickle Sam.

For the first few seconds, Sammy yelled at them to get off of him, but eventually he gave in. He laughed when she tickled him, trying to fend her off. When he succeeded, he turned the battle against Winona, tickling her with the help of Jimmy.

She laughed until it hurt to breathe, and she caught them both in a one armed hug. Jimmy laid his head down on her shoulder, while Sammy rested his head on her arm. She kept her arms around them; one lay across Jimmy's back and the other rubbing, or rubbing as best she could from the awkward angle it was at, Sammy's arm. They stared at the stars for a while longer, until she noticed Jimmy was asleep against her.

She stood up, wobbling a little with the effort it took to stand while holding her five year old. Sammy grabbed the blankets from the ground, shaking them out as best he could. Inside the house, she put Jimmy in his bed, now in his own room with all of his toys scattered about the floor. Sam had gone to throw the blankets into the wash. She kissed his cheek gently, smiling when Jimmy turned into the touch.

With him in bed, she went to settle Sam into his bed. She tucked him in and for the first time in a long time, he didn't tell her to 'knock it off.' Then on impulse, she laid down next to him, running her hand through his short hair. "I love you. You know that, right?"

He nodded, staring up at her with George's bright blue eyes. "I know. I love you, too, mom."

She smiled. "You better, you little brat," she said teasingly.

He smiled as well. "Night, mom," he said, signaling for her to leave him in peace.

Winona stood from the bed, returning his sentiment.

When she got to the living room, she paced for a few minutes. She wanted to call Starfleet and have her next mission delayed for a few more months, but at the same time she couldn't do that. It felt wrong to her to stop going on her missions. They were never long and they brought in good money, despite the fact they could easily live off of George's check. She thought maybe she could take them with her, like she said she wished she could. If she was sent to the moon colony or to a space station for a few years it would be feasible, but a part of her, buried deep but still loud, was afraid of that. She knew it was irrational, but she feared that if she took them into space something terrible would happen and she would lose her boys to space just as she had their father.

She sat on her sofa, rocking gently and biting her bottom lip to keep the emotions from tumbling out of her. She wanted to call Shannon, and maybe Tiberius and Ainsley because Tibby had been in Starfleet as well, had inspired George and Shannon to go, but she hadn't talked to them, really talked, in five years. It was too late for anything now. She couldn't call them up just to make them tell her what she should do. It was unfair and selfish.

In the end, she just laid down on the couch, holding a throw pillow to her chest and staring off into the darkest corners of the room.

+ststst+

Sammy became more distant over the years, while Jimmy still delighted in her when she was there, playing with the toys she brought him and twisting himself tightly in the stories she told of her time away. When she called home to her mother, it was with Jimmy that most of her time passed by. Sammy would only say a few words and then claim he had homework to do, claim he had chores that needed to be done before he went to bed, or simply that he was going to bed, despite it only being eight at night, Earth-side.

She tried not to let it get to her. He was pre-teen and she was sure his hormones were doing evil things to his body. Instead, she spent her time talking to her younger son, letting him tell her about himself and Sammy, and sometimes his grandma and Uncle Frank. Most the time, he only talked about himself and Sammy.

She still never stayed away for more than six months. Most of the time, her orders were only three or four month assignments, which were still hard, especially when she missed one of the boys' birthday, or an important holiday. She tried to make it up to them when she was home, but sometimes she could tell it wasn't enough to really forgive her and she understood that perfectly. She would have been pissed if her mom or dad had missed her birthday as a child, and she wasn't even going into missing multiple birthdays and Hanukahs.

Jim was nine and Sam was twelve the first time she ever received a call from her mother.

Jim had been in a fight at school.

Her mother raged at her for nearly an hour, telling her that she was ruining these boys by going off into space every ten minutes. Winona could only nod at her, never really having argued with her mother, especially not with the woman her mother had become after Winona went off to Starfleet. When Alice had had enough of yelling at her daughter, she allowed Jim to speak to her.

Jim had a bruised cheek and a split lip and that was just what she could see. He didn't meet her eyes, barely looked at the computer at all.

She sighed when she saw him her heart clenching painfully in her chest at the fact her boy was hurt.

She could only see him on the screen, but she wanted to make sure. "Is your grandmother gone?" When he nodded, she sighed. "What was the fight about?"

Jim was silent for nearly a full minute. Then glancing up at her and around the room, he mumbled, almost too quiet for her to hear, "They were making fun of Sam."

"Jimmy, words are no reason to start hitting people," she tried, tried being the good mom who actually scolded her child when he did something that was generally considered immoral.

For the first time Winona could remember, her younger son looked up with blazing eyes that were too much like George's when he was pissed off. "You didn't hear what they called him," he snapped at her, anger and indignation coloring his tone.

Winona put her hands up placatingly. "What did they call him?" she asked calmly.

His lips tightened into a sneer and his eyes against flickered around the room he was in. He looked like had tasted the foulest thing in the known universe. His silence stretched, even longer than the last one until he spat out, "They called him a fag and a brown-noser. They said the only reason he ever did so well in science was because he was crushing on his teacher."

She felt anger boil up in her, too. The twenty-fourth century was supposed to be enlightened, and snot-nosed little brats still said things like that? She took a few silent, calming breaths. When she felt like she wouldn't explode at Jim she asked, "Did you break their noses?"

"What?" he asked incredulously, his entire angry face collapsing instantly.

"You heard me."

"You're not mad?"

A sarcastic laugh escaped her before she could contain it. Shaking her head, she said, "I'm pissed. I'm furious that they would say that about Sammy and that you got hurt. I understand why you did it, though. I don't recommend you continue this behavior, but I remember being protective of my older brother and I remember that he was protective of me at one point."

She paused, remembering how she and Frank had been before she went off to Starfleet. How they had all but guarded each other. He was five years her senior and had made sure no one ever said a word against her. And when she was fifteen, she remembered punching a few girls who had dared call him a freak. Of course, he was a freak. Even at forty-two he was a freak, freakier than he had ever been at twenty. But it hadn't mattered then. He was her brother, and no one, except for her, got to call him anything.

"I know I shouldn't have picked a fight," Jim said, quietly.

"No," Winona agreed, "but it was the heat of the moment. I get it, Jimmy." They sat in silence for a few moments, before Winona asked in full mother mode, "Where else are you hurt?"

"I dislocated my thumb," he said with a shrug. He held up his right hand for her, but with the dislocation fixed it only looked a little red to her.

Still, he was careful not to move it, so she asked, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it twinges a bit, but it was worth it."

She nodded, before asking curiously, "How'd you dislocate your thumb?"

Another shrug. "Doctor said I probably tucked it under my fingers when I was punching Mick."

Well, that would not work at all. "I'll teach you how to throw a proper punch when I'm home again. Okay?"

He tried to smile, but it pulled his lip and he flinched. "Okay."

She smiled for the both of them. Leaning back in her chair, she crossed her arms over her chest contentedly. "So, who won the fight, snot?"

"No one. Teachers pulled us off of each other after the first couple of hits," he said with a heavy roll of his eyes. "But I woulda won. I had Mick on the ground before Mr. Collins grabbed me, and he's twelve!"

She laughed a little, impressed with Jimmy for his tenacity. He had taken on twelve year olds? That was really nothing to shake a stick at. She clapped her hands a few times for him, enjoying how he puffed up his chest. She knew she shouldn't encourage him, but she couldn't help it. She was proud of him for defending Sammy and for getting the better of an older boy.

When they had sobered up some, Winona asked, "How long did your grandmother ground you for?"

Jim hunched in on himself at that. "Two weeks."

She really should just have let it be. Her mother knew what she was doing, but still some part of her felt that was too much. Jim had been standing up for Sam. He didn't need two entire weeks of being grounded. She leaned forward in her seat, saying, "Well, just do everything she says. Be a good boy for her and I'll see if I can talk her down to one week."

"Thanks, mom."

"No problem, Jim," she said with a small smile. "You go do your chores, and get your grandmother to come back to the computer."

He nodded. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she told him, watching him head out of the room where the computer was stationed.

A few seconds later her mother entered the room. They spoke together for nearly thirty minutes, Winona reasoning with Alice about how it may have been wrong all together, but the intentions were good. At the end of the conversation, her mother had agreed to let Jimmy off the hook after a week if he did his chores like a good boy and didn't get into anymore fights.

Jimmy called her a week later to thank her and even made Sammy talk to her for more than five minutes.

+ststst+

Jim started or ended a few more fights over the next two years. Sam stayed quiet. Winona kept going back into space every few months.

She tried to spend more time at home, but when she thought about it, in twenty-four months, she had only spent about ten months home. There were several times over the two years that she thought that maybe she should leave Starfleet again. She had been giving her service for seven years, and that was a long time to go when kids were waiting at home.

She never turned in her resignation, though it sat in her padd waiting to be sent. When she thought of her boys, how they were often so far away from her and how Sam barely spoke to her and how many fights Jim was in, she would pull it up, and it was always such a close thing. She would hover with her hand over the send button, just waiting for the nerves to press the damn button.

She never really knew what kept her from doing it.

She loved her work. She loved working on machines and tinkering with engines, especially when she was assigned to a freight ships, but she knew that wasn't what really kept her. She thought it could have been her love for George and their combined love for space that kept her in service to Starfleet, but that wasn't it either. George was a deep part of her, her heart only ever having been outsourced by her love for Jim and Sam, but he didn't keep her wandering into space.

Even her promise from so long ago, when Jim had been throwing dirt at her and Sammy had still loved her stories, her promise that her boys would live by her work and not George's death seemed brittle in her head.

One day, shortly after the third Hanukah she had missed, communications called her to her office in the bowels of a freight ship that was bringing supplies to an Earth Colony on the outskirts of the Sol Quadrant. She had an incoming call from her brother. Briefly, she thought that if Jimmy had jumped into another fight she would send him to live in the desert with not more than a well and a communicator. She just really couldn't handle it today.

She sat down in her seat, the hard planes of plastic doing nothing for her aching back after she had been wiggling around inside one of the many Jeffrey tubes that seemed to have formed a union to malfunction at the same time. Groaning and rolling her shoulders, she told the communication officer to patch it through to her office. The screen remained blank for a few moments, only the Starfleet emblem lighting up the background, and then suddenly Frank's pudgy and unshaven face came onto the screen.

"Hey, Frank," she said tiredly. "What's going on?"

She braced herself to hear about Jim's fight, about how he was suspended from school, or he had been reprimanded by the police yet again. It was honestly a miracle that her youngest wasn't in juvie.

Instead, Frank said, gruff and nearly uncaring, "Mom broke her hip. Says the doctors messed up healing it. She can't watch your kids anymore."

She leaned forward at the mention of their mother being hurt. "Is she okay? How'd she break her hip?"

Frank rolled his eyes, ever the immature shit that he was. "It's winter in Iowa, Winona. She went to yell something after your kids and slipped on the ice."

"How did the doctor's mess her hip up?"

"I don't know. She didn't tell me. I have Jim and Sam until you get back, so you'll have to call my apartment if you wanna talk to them." The way he said it made it simple to understand that he was not at all thrilled about having to take the boys; however, he had agreed years ago that if something were to happen to their mother that he would watch after them while she was off planet.

"Do you have enough space in your apartment?" she asked doubtfully.

"I have enough to last them the month you're gone. We can talk about more suitable arrangements afterward."

And that was the end of it. He said he had to go see if there was something suitable for 'your kids' to eat, and then he ended the call.

She felt irritation at that. More than irritation, she felt a twinge, momentary yet lingering, of apprehension.

Her brother was a good man…as long as you never compared him to any other good men.

Slowly she pulled herself out of the chair; her muscles making her feel every one of her thirty-nine years, to go back to work.

It would only be a month…and then maybe she would finally send in her resignation.

+ststst+

Sam was more distant than ever when she returned home, and even Jim seemed tethered.

Jim, more than ever, worried her. He moved quickly, all of the energy any twelve year old should have. It was different though. Instead of his usual inability to keep still, his movements had morphed into something…else. The need to stay one step ahead of something dogging the empty spaces he left behind.

Frank said that he hadn't noticed anything while holding his mason jar of beer in front of him. He said that maybe it was just because she hadn't been around in a while.

It made her feel like a terrible mother and at night, when she had her boys at home with her and Jim was watching the holoscreen while Sam burrowed away in his room, she would stay in the kitchen cleaning up the mess she had made while cooking dinner, and just stare at her demolished garden that she couldn't even pretend to keep up with anymore. Her children had grown so quickly and she had missed all of it, seeing only glimmers of it through a computer screen and catching photographs when she came dirtside. She wondered if it was time to give up the ghost, to give up her claim on them because she really wasn't their mother.

Sam stayed in his room for most of the two weeks she was there. Jim couldn't stay still long enough for her to have a decent conversation. By the end of her stay at home, when she told them that Frank would be moving into the farmhouse, she felt that she was little more than a social worker telling two angry orphans about their next halfway house.

She still didn't send in her resignation.

She wished that the Romulan craft had taken her and left George for the boys.

She was positive that he would have been able to handle all of this much better than she was.

+ststst+

Over the next year, Winona went back and forth between her boys and several of Earth's spacedocks. She fixed up freighters, cruise ships, and even a few constitution class ships. It was nice work, especially the constitution ships. That was where she was actually meant to be, fixing warp cores and wiring and making engines purr like a giant kitten.

But each month that she returned home for a week, sometimes two if she was lucky, the boys changed more and more. They stared at her with guarded eyes, even Jim, who had been her boy for so much longer than Sam had been. They toiled away her time home with chores that Frank thought up for them, speaking quietly amongst themselves with fleeting glances back at the house. Sam's face grew angry in place of his normal passive face, having already etched scowl lines into his smooth fifteen year old face. Jim's face grew subjugated, his once bright blue eyes, so much like George's, dull and getting duller each time she saw him.

Jim's fights increased rapidly and she was surprised to hear that Sam had helped him in a few of the scrapes, too. The two of them began fights between teenagers of all ages, normally older and supposedly for no reason other than they were there. It was worrisome and each time she went home she would try to speak to them about the fight, but they wouldn't speak of them. Sam's angry eyes glared at her while Jim just looked at the floor, his bright blonde hair flopping in front of his eyes.

She gave up on that. If they wanted their fights they could have their fights. She supposed it was better than holding in their frustrations.

In turn, she let her frustrations out through work and a few people that she met at the spacedock. It was odd and she felt strangely dirty for it despite the fact that she usually slept with a few people when she was away from her kids on her missions. It was different, though. Instead of doing it for the physical satisfaction and the ability to connect with another humanoid for a few hours, she was doing it to forget that her children were no longer really hers, to forget that they were strangers in a shared house now.

She was with one of her one night stands when she received a call. She usually didn't bring them to her quarters, but the person she was with had a roommate on the spacestation so they had gone to her room. He was halfway undressed and she had her shirt pushed up to her bra when the computer started pinging wildly to get her attention.

"Ignore it," he said, his lips against her stomach.

She pushed his head away from her, fingers sliding and tangling in red hair as she pulled her hand away. "I can't," she growled. "It could be important."

She stood up from her bed, pulling her orange shirt, which Starfleet had randomly decided would be the Operations color, down over her stomach still wet with saliva. She ignored the slight feeling of disgust just as she ignored the whining that came from her man of the night. At her computer station she accepted the call, surprised when a stern looking African woman stared back at her.

"Lieutenant Commander Kirk speaking," she said briskly to cover her shock. "May I ask how you acquired this console number?"

"Lieutenant Commander Winona Kirk?" the woman clarified, her sharp, dark eyes looking at her disheveled appearance with distaste.

Winona hastily ran a smoothing hand over her hair. "Yes. What can I help you with?"

"I'm Doctor Reese. There's been an incident with your son, James Kirk. We need you to return to Iowa as soon as possible."

Her heart stuttered.

"What happened?" she all but gasped, her hand flying out of seemingly nowhere to steady herself against the desk. "Is he okay? Is Jim alright? Where's Frank?"

Her teeth bit at her lower lip nervously.

Doctor Reese stared at her without pity, accusations in her dark eyes. Her lips thinned in a barely concealed show of annoyance. "Mr. Slydell is unavailable. We have your son here at Riverside General Hospital." She paused for a moment, glancing away from the screen before she said, "Jim attempted to drive a car into a local ravine."

Her entire world shattered around her.

She hardly heard the man leaving the room behind her as her hands flew to contact the commanding officer of the spacedock.

+ststst+

Frank was nowhere to be found when she hit dirtside again. Sam was gone, runaway. Her mother couldn't leave the house due to her never-properly-healed hip. Jim was alone in the hospital.

Her mind raced between everything, a whirlwind inside her head as she tried to scrape together some semblance of a plan to get a larger search group together to find Sammy and a way to get to Jimmy faster. In the cab she had too many thoughts and not enough hands as she thought of all that she needed to get done while speaking with the higher ups about continuation of assignments, leave of absence, and anything else. She spoke to four captains and three admirals and none of them helped her until finally at the end of her rope she yelled:

"Dammit Archer, I swear if I don't make progress in this fucking conversation, I'll give you my resignation and we can talk when I have this shit settled! I have a kid missing and a kid in the hospital. I don't need this bullshit!"

She wasn't sure if it was the strain in her voice, the anger in her words, or over all just the depressing situation, but when Archer's old and soothing timbre filtered through her comm. he only said, "Take as much time as you need, Lieutenant Commander. Call me, only me, when you're ready to continue work."

She barely had that settled when her cab pulled up to the hospital entrance and she ran in, still in orange shirt and black pants.

The same woman from the video conference was at the nurse's station with a group of people in suits, one in police uniform. When she caught sight of Winona, her mouth dropped of its own volition and Winona could only imagine why. She probably looked like a freight train had run her over in her long attempt to get back to Iowa and that was probably being kind.

She scrambled up to the doctor, words tumbling out of her mouth before she even knew she was speaking. "Where's Jim? I want to see him."

"Ma'am," Doctor Reese started but Winona cut her off quickly.

"Don't 'ma'am' me. I want to see my baby!" she all but yelled, using the same tone she used when dealing with a few of her underlings.

Reese somehow looked both calm and apoplectic. She held up her hand, "We will get to that, but first we have some questions for you."

She led a begrudging Winona to the group she had left.

They were two social workers and the sheriff of Riverside police force.

They wanted to take her children away from her. She was not home often enough and Frank was abusive.

Doctor Reese showed her pictures of muscular bruising and x-rays of bones with hairline fractures healed without any medical help to corroborate what she was saying, giving her bold proof that her brother, her own flesh and blood, had hurt Jim.

She felt her stomach drop out. "I never saw bruises," she breathed out in horror.

For a moment she wanted to say that Jim was a fighter; that Frank had nothing to do with it, but her boys' eyes were only ever shadowed after Frank came around. Their scrapes only increased after Frank came to live under her roof.

And Frank was gone now, couldn't be found.

In her mind it all fell into place without her express permission and she realised that the creepy boy she had thrown punches for as an adolescent had grown into an abusive man that threw punches at her adolescents.

Doctor Reese pursed her lips. "Most of these bruises are in the muscles," she said. "They wouldn't have appeared on the skin."

Winona didn't understand how that worked and she didn't care. She stared at the pictures and x-rays with horror eating at her stomach, a slow but visceral rage taking over her mind, and fear freezing her heart. They wanted to take her babies away from her. They were charging her with negligence and they were going to take Sam and Jim away from her.

"No!" she argued against them. "No, he is my son! They are both my children! I can take care of them. I didn't know what was happening, but I can fix it now that I do!"

The social workers didn't look convinced and even the sheriff looked skeptical. She glared at them with a promise in her eyes until she turned her attention to Doctor Reese. It seemed that after so long, Reese had started to believe her. She looked back to the other three.

"I make mistakes, but I'm not negligent," she said, angry and scared for the future of her children. "I'm gone so much because I'm trying to give them a future they can be proud of, but I'll think of something to where I'm with them more. Just don't, don't take them away from me. They're all I have."

The social workers looked at each other with stony faces. When they looked back at her, one of them spoke with clipped, unfeeling tones. "We'll be conducting interviews. Until a decision is reached James Kirk will remain under your supervision, as will George Samuel Kirk if he is found." The way he said that made her heart stutter. "You are not to leave Earth, Iowa, not even Riverside. If there is a breach of this, your children will be placed in the custody of the Federation. Do you understand, Lieutenant Commander Kirk?"

"Yes, yes! I understand," she told them eagerly before they could change their minds. She looked back to Doctor Reese. "Can I see Jimmy now?"

She nodded. "I'll take you to his room."

Reese led her through a set of doors, and when they were firmly shut, she began speaking quietly. "We have him on suicide watch for the next forty-eight hours, and have scheduled him to talk with a psychologist. He says he wasn't trying to kill himself, but after driving a car off a cliff I thought it best to make sure."

Winona nodded emptily, processing the information but too shocked by the last day and a half's events to really give any meaningful response. Doctor Reese watched her for a moment, her dark features crumpling in a brand of worry all her own. She looked like she wanted to have Winona scheduled for a few psychological sessions as well.

Instead, when they pulled up to the door Winona assumed Jimmy was behind, she laid a comforting hand on Winona's shoulder. "I know this can't be easy for you…"

Winona cut her off. "Whatever I'm going through, my boys had it ten times worse. Save your comfort for them."

Doctor Reese nodded and opened the door for Winona. Jimmy was on the bed, a padd in his hand, and bandages covering almost all of his exposed body. His hands all the way up to his arms, his chest, even his chin had bandages. He looked like a mummy half-prepared for his tomb and it made a small noise fall out of Winona's mouth.

Jim's head whipped up at the sound and a smile spread over his face. "Mom!" he cried jubilantly, as if they were at home and she had just surprised him for his birthday.

"Don't act so surprised, Jimmy," she said with a small brittle laugh.

Doctor Reese shut the door behind her, a nurse that Winona hadn't noticed following her retreat. She realised that she wasn't really alone with Jim. They had a surveillance system set up in the room to make sure that Jim didn't try to kill himself, not that he would. At least, she hoped he wouldn't. She came closer to her son, her hand reaching out almost of its own accord, until it wrapped loosely in Jim's longish hair.

Jim didn't bat her hand away; almost never had except for the rare few times she did it in public. "You look awful, though," he said bluntly, giving her an onceover that looked chocked full of horror. "What happened to you?"

She honestly couldn't tell him. The last thirty-six hours had been a blur to her. She may very well have rolled around in a bath of oil and she wouldn't be the wiser. "That's rich coming from a boy dressed mostly in bandages," she croaked, her voice thick with emotion.

"Just some cuts and bruises," Jim said with a callous shrug, as if it was nothing. It wasn't like he had just drove a car off a cliff or anything. It wasn't like her brother, her brother, had been beating him or anything. Then he looked at her and his face fell. She thought that it may have been because he realised everything that she had put him through, or just everything he had gone through on his own, but then his mouth opened and his sweet voice said the most perplexing thing.

"Mom…mommy, stop crying."

Her hand flew to her face, and sure enough tears came back on her calloused, dirty fingertips. With a growl of frustration she wiped them away only for them to be replaced by more tears.

"Don't tell me to stop crying, snot!" she demanded in the best 'mom' voice she could muster up. "You're covered in bandages and…and…oh my god!"

Her hand tightened in his hair imperceptibly and she brought the other one up to touch his face, careful of the bandage there. "I'm sorry, Jimmy. God, had I known…"

"You weren't supposed to know," he said quickly, cutting her off.

A flash of anger and disbelief coursed through her. "Why the hell not?"

"Sam said he would deal with it."

"Sam is not your parent, Jimmy. I am."

He gave her a strangled look and she realized with a cold start that she wasn't his parent, not really. Though she had promised herself that her children would never raise themselves or play with monsters, it had happened regardless. While she had been off planet, her children had grown up, not with the help of her mother or her brother, but only with themselves and they had played with her when she was home. They had played with the monster that she had become while she was off losing herself in wires and springs and one night stands.

+ststst+

Sam was found in San Francisco, or, really, he had been picked up in San Francisco by Tiberius and Ainsley. Tibby had called, his face grim and disappointed as he relayed to her what she already knew. Frank had been beating on her boys. Sam had told his grandparents all about it, how he had taken the brunt of it for Jimmy and worked odds and ends jobs until he had saved enough money to catch a transport to San Francisco. He went to them, not her.

Tibby asked her if she was coming to get her son, and it was really all she could do not to hang her head with shame when she told him that she couldn't leave Riverside and why. She tried to tell him that she would send the credits to get Sammy back, but then Ainsley popped her head into the viewscreen and said in that no nonsense tone she had always had that they would be there by the end of the week.

She wasn't sure how it all happened so quickly, but she found herself constantly biting her bottom lip as she tried not to let everything overwhelm her.

She stayed with Jim when she could and tried not to think of what her life had come to, what her children's lives had come to. When she was with Jim, she tried to focus on him and everything that he chatted about. He never told her what happened with Frank, didn't even bring it up. It was like he had never been there, like Jim and Sam had lived in the house by themselves, at least in Jim's mind. It was like they had been heathen children who raised themselves…

When she couldn't see Jim, when he was with a psychologist or one of the social workers or Doctor Reese getting a sponge bath, she spoke with Starfleet, with Admiral Archer like he had told her to do. She filled him in on what was happening, and he said that he would keep her off active duty for the next three months, and afterward if it was conducive he would find her something closer to Earth, maybe on Earth.

She had never thought she could love a man who was over one hundred years old as much as she did at that moment.

She sat in Doctor Reese's office while Jimmy was speaking to a social worker for what had to be the eighth time in the last three days. She knew they had to be thorough, but she felt as if that could have been pushing it to a new extreme.

Doctor Reese was out doing rounds. She didn't know why the woman had let Winona use her office, instead of making her sit in the waiting room like regular family members. Doctor Reese had been increasingly nice to her over the last three days, her distaste from the day she had called Winona simmering down into a sort of pity.

So, Winona stayed in Reese's office, in one of the admittedly plush chairs, trying to decide what she was going to do. She kept hoping that she would be able to keep her boys, couldn't see a reason to go on if they were taken from her. She gave herself no other alternative and so began planning for what she would do when she went back to work.

She didn't want to leave them at home anymore, not without her anyway. She realized it was probably too late, especially for Sam who would likely hate her even more for deciding to stay now. She wasn't sure if Archer could get her a job in Iowa, though. Most of the work done dirtside was spread in some of the bigger state. She would have to move, relocate her entire family. That was if Archer could help her.

If not, there was always resignation, though it still seemed like the wrong thing to do. She knew logically that it would be the right thing, but she just couldn't imagine not working.

She could always…

She looked up at the ceiling, feeling disbelief and anger well up in her chest. "Now?" she yelled at the stucco above her. "You couldn't have given me the strength to do this years ago?"

No.

The answer from God, whether real or imagined in the recesses of her mind, didn't shock her. She knew that she couldn't regret her life. Her boys whether raised by a mother or the monster she imagined herself to be, were strong and they were perfect. Though one was silent and angry and the other was outrageous and possibly bordering on crazy, they were perfect. They were turning into men she felt that she could be proud of.

What shocked her more than anything else in the world was that God, real or imagined, sounded exactly like George.

She closed her eyes and took a deep, deep breath.

She could take her kids into space with her, to the moon colony or a space station. She didn't necessarily want to, but it would keep them with her. She could make sure nothing like this ever happened again and if she brought it up with the social workers, perhaps it would help them to decide she could keep her children. That was what was important.

As long as they weren't taken away from her…

She took another supposedly calming breath.

"Shannon," she said to herself, her voice shaky. She hoisted herself to her feet to walk through the hospital towards the lounge on that floor. She needed her best friend now more than she ever had in the past years.

She found the closest free computer console and entered a number she had never forgotten, not even after twelve years. She sat in one of the plastic chairs, her heart racing. She wasn't sure how she would be received after twelve years of hazy contact that could barely be construed as useful. It didn't matter, right now she would get down on her knees if she could talk to Shannon again, just for thirty minutes, if she could just hear her voice again.

"Hello?"

There was static due to the distance between Earth and Tarsus IV, so the picture that the computer would normally provide her was barely visible. It didn't matter, though. Her voice was still as clear as it had been the morning she had left for Tarsus IV.

"Shannon? Shannon!" she all but yelled, her voice watery. "I missed your voice so much!"

There was hardly a pause. "You should call more often, you evil hag."

The words were a bit accusatory, but it was nothing that Winona didn't deserve. Shannon took a deep breath, audible over the transmission.

"Ainsley told me what was going on…" she said tentatively. "Is everyone okay?"

Winona didn't know if those were the words she would have chosen, and so she didn't give the question an exact yes or no. Instead, she began talking, spewing the details of their lives for the previous year. Shannon didn't say much, only the occasional question, but it helped Winona feel more together, like there was some semblance of Earth beneath the soles of her boots.

"Winona," Shannon started when she had run out of words. "Just breathe, okay? You're working yourself into a frenzy, and what everyone needs to see of you right now is someone who is calm and collected. You'll get through this, I promise you. If they get to know the you I know, there won't be a chance in hell that Sammy and Jim won't be left in your care. And Ainsley and Tibby are on their way. They'll fight for you, too. Just breathe."

Winona nodded, even though it was unlikely that Shannon could see the motion. "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Thank you, Shannon. I know you didn't have to listen to me."

She could hear the smile in Shannon's voice when she said, "Even after all these years, nothing makes me happier than hearing your voice."

"I'll call more often," Winona promised.

"You better, you dumb bitch."

The transmission ended with those words and Winona laughed at them, shaking her head.

She headed back to her son's room, ready to wait for the social workers to leave so that she could spend more time with him and wait for Tibby and Ainsley to arrive with Sam.

+ststst+

Tiberius and Ainsley arrived in Riverside with Sam in the late of the night, just a few hours after she had talked to Shannon. They arrived with, of all things, smiles, and Sam was laughing at something Ainsley had said. It stung a little, because she couldn't remember the last time Sam had laughed in her presence, let alone at something she had said. The quiet angry boy she was used to seeing looked light and carefree for the first time since he was nine. It was a stab to her heart, especially when his smile faded at the sight of her.

They stayed with Jim for a while, all four of them crowding around Jim's bed and trading stories around. Winona stayed quiet, watching them interact, watching them be happy.

They stayed at the Old Kirk farmhouse for a while, until Jim was seen fit to release from the hospital. After that, Winona shuffled some things around, and everyone stayed at her house. Ainsley and Tibby stayed in her room, while she slept on the couch. The boys stayed in their original rooms, although Sam looked like he would have preferred to sleep outside before reentering his room.

Sam played nice with her, spoke to her in a civil tongue, but she could tell that he only did it for his grandparents. He wanted nothing to do with her, and if they were alone in the same room, he would quickly leave, no excuse, not a single word to her.

Jim delighted in being home with so many people. Even at twelve he still couldn't get enough attention. It was all she could do to actually get him to go to bed at a decent hour. He couldn't seem to be in enough places at once, flitting from room to room as he always had done. At least this time there was nothing wading in the empty spaces he left behind, well, at least nothing as ominous as it had been previously.

Doctor Reese suggested upon Jim's exit from the hospital that he continue to see his psychologist, that lingering trauma was apparent from his sessions.

Finally, after a month, social services declared her fit to continue raising her sons.

She had never felt so much relief from so few words.

It was short-lived, though.

Sam's sneered at the words and his hasty retreat into his room had her following him before she even knew her feet were moving.

She found him thrown on his bed, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes, his mouth pinched and his breathing heavy.

Winona looked to the floor, momentarily biting her lower lip. When she picked her head up, Sam was staring at her with angry eyes. She sighed, shutting the door behind her.

"You're not happy that I get to keep custody of you," she said, a statement, no question in her voice.

He scoffed and turned away from her. "No, I'm totally fine with it," he said sarcastically. It broke her heart more, word by word. "I mean, I love sitting here week after week waiting for you to come home. It's the fucking light of my life."

"Sammy…"

"Don't even start!" he yelled. "You haven't been here enough to offer whatever useless platitudes make you feel better!"

She didn't look away from him. "I did it for you."

"Is that what helps you sleep at night?" he spat, his words more violent than fists could ever be.

"I'm not lying!" she defended. "Everything I have ever done was with the hopes of making your life easier! Yours and Jimmy's!"

"Well it worked, didn't it?" he yelled. "Gramma Alice and Frank…gee, they made the world glide by. And you! Well hell, you just made everything easier, running off into space every few seconds. Not bad enough I don't have a dad thanks to space, but I don't get a mother because of space, too? Have you been chasing him all these years?"

His words were meant to hurt and dammit it all to hell if they didn't. Each syllable cut further into her heart like a knife. She swallowed hard, glaring at him. "You know I haven't. I just…I wanted you to have a good life because of me…"

Sam cut her off. "Well, you fucking failed. I've had a shit life because of you!"

She couldn't even be mad at him for the way he spoke to her. He was right. She was so intent on letting him have a better life due to her machinations that she had ruined his childhood. It didn't matter though, because she was going to make it up. It was within her power now. Winona could do it. "I'm sorry," she began.

"It doesn't matter now, mom." He said her title snidely, as if it were the most fowl word in the universe.

She ignored him. "I'm going to make it up to you. I've spoken to a friend of mine up in the Admiralty. He says he can get me up on a spacestation. You can come with me."

"I don't want to go with you. I don't even want to look at you." As if to punctuate his statement, he stood from the bed, stalking towards the window to look out at the overgrown lawn that had once held a garden that they worked on together, back when she was mommy and not a monster, back when he listened to stories about White Witches and Pumpkin Kings.

"Well, what do you want?" she asked, pressing her face into her hand to inconspicuously wipe away tears.

To say Sam disliked her would never have shocked Winona, but she didn't know that he despised her so. She thought that he would be angry that they would have to move, but he was angry that he had to be in her vicinity at all. She would go as far as to say that he hated her in that moment.

"I want…" He cut himself off, taking a deep breath. Then turning on heel to look her in the eyes with that same angry face that he had bestowed on her for the past several years, he said, "I want to live with Tibby and Ainsley."

"Sam…" she breathed out.

"You said you wanted me to have a good life because of you!" he yelled. "I don't like you! I don't like you and I don't like living with you! I want to get away from you!"

She pulled out the last card she had left in her arsenal. She felt like a bitch, but she was desperate. She wanted Sam to at least consider staying with her. "What about Jimmy?"

"If he wants to stay with you, fine," Sam said with a careless wave, turning back to look out the window at the Iowa sunset. "Good for him. He's been dependant on you for years. Stupid kid probably isn't even mad that you get to keep us."

"Don't call him 'stupid.' I don't care what you call me, but don't talk about him like that. He looks up to you."

He shrugged. "He shouldn't."

They sat in silence for what seemed like hours. Sam continued staring out the window, and Winona stood in the center of the room where she had slowly worked her way to during their argument. He didn't even glance at her one. It was as if she wasn't there in his mind. A pest, that was all she was to him. Something to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible.

She wondered if it wouldn't be better for their relationship to let him get his way on this. Her heart clenched. She had only just won custody of him back and she was going to hand him off again.

If it made him happy, though…

She bit her bottom lip, taking in a shuddering breath. "Do you really want to live with Tibby and Ainsley?"

Sam's response was quick and without doubt. "More than anything in the world."

With all the grace she could muster, which was enough to fill a pinprick, she nodded. "Then I'll talk to them about it." Walking over to where he still glared out the window, she kissed his head, having to stand on the tips of her toes to do so. "I love you, Sammy. No matter what, I always did and I always will."

+ststst+

They had looked at her with sad eyes, when she told Tibby and Ainsley that Sam would rather live with them, but neither of them was against it. They had enjoyed having a child in the house again, and admitted that Sammy was a delightful child. She would have to take their word for it. The Sam she knew was angry and withdrawn.

She asked them- if Jim decided he would like to live with them, as well- if they would be willing to take him in. With heavy nods, the told her that if that was what the boys wished then they would take both boys.

It was two weeks after Tiberius and Ainsley agreed to take Sam back when she entered Jim's room. He was already prepared for bed, sitting on the mattress reading some brilliant thing from a padd, when she sat down on his bed.

"Hey, mom," he greeted calmly, tossing his padd beside him. "What's up?"

"I wanted to talk to you about something." Her voice sounded defeated to her own ears. "You know your grandparents are going back to San Francisco in two weeks, right?"

His eyes narrowed suspiciously in a way they never used to before Frank. "Yee-ah," he said, drawing the word out.

She held his gaze for a moment, letting that suspicion wash over her, holding it close to her skin like a prickly blanket. "Sam is going with them."

"To visit?"

"To live."

Jim's face crumpled in confusion. "Why? I thought you got custody of the both of us."

"I did." She nodded. "But your brother doesn't want to live with me. He would prefer to live with your grandparents."

She let him digest the information, but his face remained disturbingly blank as he continued to stare at her. After a few moments, she pressed forward, pushing the next words out of her mouth painfully. "If you wanted…if you don't want to live with me…I would," she paused to run her hands over her eyes, "understand. You could continue to live with your brother."

She had planned to continue, but he cut in quickly. "No!" he all but yelled his eyes wide and staring at her pleadingly. "No, I wanna live with you. Please…"

She swallowed. "We would be living on a spacestation," she said, wanting him to understand what that would mean.

He didn't care. "Cool!" he exclaimed, his eyes still round. "I've always wanted to visit space. Living there would be awesome!"

"We wouldn't see Sam as often…"

"Mom! I don't care." He looked around the room briefly, and her heart broke to see his face so tormented. "I love Sam. He's really cool, but I want to stay with you! It's all I've ever wanted."

Briefly it crossed her mind that he really was a heathen child more intent on playing with monsters. Sam had been a good boy who wanted parents, parents he knew would be home all the time for him. Jim, though, Jim was always happy to play with her, even after she had left him on Earth for so long, even after she had left him with Frank.

She scooted closer to him, pulling him in for a hug. "I love you, baby. Now and forever," she whispered to him as she pet his sunlight hair.

+ststst+

Papers were filed; lawyers were contacted; bank accounts switched primary holders. Ainsley called a moving service and with the help of the moving men, they packed away all of Sam's belongings, sending them on their journey west.

At the same time, Jim packed up some of his things, mostly padds. Winona had never really noticed how much that boy read, but it seemed like there were boxes upon boxes of nothing but padds and even a few antique books. It was almost like that was all he did. He breathed in knowledge and held it under his skin, removing organs and bones so that he could fill the free spaces with information. His clothes hardly even filled half a box, and he barely brought any knickknacks.

Winona hardly packed at all. She and Jim were leaving the day after Sam and his grandparents left, and normally she never packed until the day before she left.

She wandered around, going from room to room, noting with a heavy heart the bareness of Sammy's room, only to have it spring marginally upward when she saw Jimmy's room, still bare, but for a different reason. Tiberius and Ainsley made well of their time with Jim, taking both of the boys out and about Iowa to see whatever they thought was worth seeing, while Winona spoke with Archer and a few more of her commanding officers. She would call Shannon every couple of days, telling her about everything that had happened in the previous week.

She had stopped calling her mother, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she was hiding Frank's whereabouts.

Finally, when the time came for Jim and Winona to see the elderly Kirks' and Sam off on their shuttle, they all piled into two taxis. Tiberius with her sons. Ainsley with Winona.

Sam and Jim were happy to be sharing a cab with Tibby. Winona almost felt like she had been handed the death sentence.

She sat stiffly beside her mother-in-law, or once mother-in-law. Even after twelve years without George, she was unsure of how to refer to Ainsley and Tiberius in relationship to her. Once upon a time, and still now, they were closer to her than her mother had been after her father had died. After George had died, though, even when she finally accepted that there was nothing she could or couldn't have done, it was too late to make amends. She brought the boys by every year for a week and some days, but she hadn't been able to speak to them again, not the way she had once been able to.

Ainsley, beautiful and relaxed against the backseat of the cab, only sighed, holding her hands in her lap. With a slight smile that had always spoken of sincerity, she told Winona, "It was lovely to see you again, Winnie."

She hadn't heard that name in ages. Even Shannon had been hesitant to use it.

Nodding stiffly, she returned the sentiment. "It was better to see you. I didn't even mind you heckling Tibby."

She shrugged with a gentle chuckle. "If I didn't heckle that old man, he would think I didn't love him anymore."

Winona smiled painfully, before she looked down at her lap, staring hard at her hands, small and stained with oil and grease. Slowly, she admitted, "I thought about calling…all the time. I know it probably doesn't matter now, especially since I didn't do it, but…" She glanced up at the woman sitting beside her. "It wasn't that I didn't care. I just didn't know how to speak to you. After George died, I thought…I thought you would never want to see me again…"

Ainsley watched her with steady, blue eyes, eyes that she had given George, who had given them to Jim and on some level Sam. After Winona had run out of words, she shook her head. "We never blamed you, Winnie. Ever. We knew there was a chance something like that could happen. We were just so sad. When George died, it didn't just feel like we lost our boy, but one of our daughters, too. We're so happy to have you back, baby."

She reached her hand out, grabbing Winona's dirty, oil-sodden hand in a vice grip. "We love you and we hope you come visit as often as possible."

Winona gave a subtle squeeze of her hand. Then the cab halted and the two women crawled out, rearranging themselves into their two small groups. Jim hugged his brother and his grandparents. Sam boarded the shuttle immediately afterward, but Ainsley and next Tibby gave her a tight hug.

Before he let go of her, though, Tibby whispered in her ear, "A parent's love never fades, not even for children who aren't their blood."

He pressed a kiss to her temple and she hugged him tighter. Then he stepped away, grabbing his wife by the hand and heading toward their grandson, Winona's son who would be leaving with them.

Jim and she both watched as they entered the shuttle, and stood by the cab until the shuttle was far from their sight. When it was gone, she slung an arm around her boy's shoulder, noting that he looked just as sad as she felt to see them go. With a light jostle, she said, "Come on, Jimmy. We get up early tomorrow."

+ststst+

In some ways, they were just like any other mother and son. They fought. They laughed. They spent hours apart and they spent hours together. Jim studied on a program designed by Starfleet for children who accompanied their parents into space. Winona worked on random jobs around the spacestation and on random starships that requested her help.

After about four months, Jim stopped seeing the therapist aboard the spacestation. She had said she had given Jim all the help he would take from her, and from the look on her face, Winona got the feeling that after a few sessions Jim had just become a pain in the ass. When she later asked Jim why his therapist had said 'Jim will no longer take any help from me,' he gave her a completely innocent look that was so much like George she had almost collapsed in fits of giggles. She had her doubts about Jim's state of mind for a while, but when one of Jim's many stories ended laughingly in 'Frank beat my ass for that one,' after which he gave her a look that said 'if I can laugh so can you,' she supposed he was well enough.

As often as Winona could get away with, she took herself and Jimmy back to Earth to visit Tibby and Ainsley at their San Francisco house. Over the year that Sam was no longer in her custody, he seemed to forgive her marginally. He still didn't go out of his way to spend time with her, but he didn't glare at her every time he saw her and once smiled when she was telling a story.

Most of the time, it was only Jimmy and her. He even came to find her every so often when he finished with his day's schoolwork, which was almost always well before any other person would have been able to. He read his books and padds in the company of her foul language and learned tools and schematics of engines when her machines were actually behaving.

Which was where they were now: Jim sat against a bulkhead, a padd in his hand, while Winona lay under one of the large engines straining to loosen a bolt. She pulled with practically all her weight, her muscles straining.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" she exclaimed, her face red with exertion. She gave one last burst of energy to loosen the stubborn bolt, but to no avail. She collapsed onto the hard floor beneath her back, breathing hard staring up into the gray and black engine above her.

From his seat a few feet away, Jim said distantly, too wrapped up in his readings to really give her his normally exuberant tones, "I've heard they don't listen to Jewish people, mom."

She blinked, running her dirty hand over her forehead to rid herself of sweat. "At this point, I don't care if they listen or not. Just yelling at them will make me feel better until I have the strength to get this damn bolt out." She took a few more deep breaths before shimmying out from under the hulking engine. When she saw Jim, he had his nose literally an inch away from his padd. He didn't seem to be paying attention, but after nearly a year with him constantly around her, she knew he would hear her when she said, "I swear the ass-hats who put this baby together made sure she never came apart."

"Good for durability," he said, just as distant as before. "Bad for maintenance."

She gave a tired nod and tilted her head back to fully capture her breath. After a few moments, she picked her head up. Jim was still deep in his reading, but his face was scrunched with distress. Worry took over her and she reached out with her boot to nudge him. "What are you reading?"

"Just going through some articles," he said tritely.

"About what?"

"Just…some stuff." A careless shrug accompanied the statement.

Winona didn't buy it, but she left it be. One of the main things she had learned about Jim was that he talked about things on his own time, if he talked about them at all. She nodded, grabbing her wrench again to continue cursing at that stubborn bolt.

She was halfway back under the engine, when she heard Jimmy ask, "Do you ever miss my dad?"

Her answer surprised even herself, but it stumbled off of her lips as she pushed herself along the floor. "Nope. I never have to." She halted in her slow slide along the floor to think about her words, to weigh them in her head.

She did miss George. Loving him the way she had it would have been hard not to. He had understood her in a way no one ever had, not even Shannon. Yet, at the same time, she didn't miss him the way she thought she would when he went crashing the ship into that alien craft. It wasn't as bone-crushing. Missing him was almost like breathing, running just under her subconscious. When she thought of him though, like when she did about breathing, it never really keeping her from living. It wasn't like thinking of breathing would make her stop breathing, and thinking of George didn't make it hurt more than the dull ache she felt all the time. But she didn't miss him, not the way most people thought she missed him.

Winona reversed course, pulling herself out from under the engine. Jim was where she had left him, but he stared up at her with troubled eyes that screamed at her to prove her words. Heaving a sigh, she pulled herself to her feet, wiping her hands on her orange shirt before offering her hand to him. "Come with me, snot."

She tugged him to his feet, noticing not for the first time that he was nearly as tall as she was and probably already working his way to be as tall as his father. "Ugh," she groaned, "I can't believe you're almost as tall as I am. I'm gonna cut you off at the knees."

A small smile worked its way to his face. "Get a ladder."

She rolled her eyes and began dragging him away from the mess of her 'work station' towards a set a bathrooms not too far away. She pushed her way into the 'mens' room, nodding briefly to one of her bewildered staff as he passed her on his way out. Jim stumbled along after her, his eyes wide with shock. "Why are we in here?" he squeaked, probably due more to her actions than to the fact his voice was changing.

"I'm gonna tell you why I don't miss your dad." She pulled him up to the sinks and tilted his head to look in the mirror. When he met her gaze through their reflection, plain blue eyes that sometimes looked green staring into uncompromising azure, she smiled. "You have his eyes."

"Everyone says that," Jim snapped.

"Yeah, well…" She shrugged in a 'what can you do' motion. "You also have his high cheekbones, his jawline. You have my nose, though, sloping monstrosity that it is. You have his smile…his big goofy ears." She tugged on said ears, just because she could. "You have his stupid height." Winona turned her son around to look at him directly, so that he would see it from her lips and not her reflection's. "I don't have to miss your father, because he left pieces of himself behind."

"That doesn't hurt?" he mumbled, looking like he had when he was four and in trouble because he had broken the necklace her father gave her.

"It's bittersweet." She sighed dramatically. "I always held tight to the hope you'd be shorter than me." A hint of a smile ghosted across his face, but nothing more. She bit her lip momentarily, bringing her dirty hands up to encase his clean face. "I loved your dad, Jimmy, but my life was never hinged on him. There are days I still hear him, still feel him…still feel the need to yell at him for leaving the coffee pot on, and if that isn't some sign of crazy, I don't know what is. But I don't run into space to chase him, if that's what you think," she said, remembering Sam's words for barely a year ago. "I work in space. I live here." She tapped his chest, just above his heart.

When her hands dropped from his face, grease marred his skin, but he made no attempt to wash them away.

+ststst+

"How did you and dad meet?" Jim asked some weeks after their conversation in the men's bathroom.

They were in the living area of their quarters. Jim sat on one side of the small coffee table, disassembling one of her old communicators and she curled up in a small but mostly comfortable chair eating an apple while she read through some reports the spacestation commander had sent her.

"Me and your Aunt Shannon were roommates in Starfleet Academy," she answered around a mouthful of half-chewed fruit.

Several moments passed by, before Jim spoke again, the roll of his eyes tangible in his spoken word. "Care to expound on that, mom?"

"Oh, did you want a story?" she asked mordantly. At his glare, she smiled winningly. She put her padd down on the small coffee table, careful of Jim's mess, and with another bite of her apple, she began the short tale of how she and George had crossed paths. "Well, Shannon and me were roomies, and your dad was a jackass." A snort of amusement met her statement. "One night, he got drunk and his roommate locked him out. So, he decided that he would go to his big sister to bail him out and he would just sleep it off on our couch." He nodded, a small smile on his face.

"Well, Shannon was down at the botany labs, so I was alone and getting ready for bed when he fell through the window in our dorm. I was wearing my mask; you know, the one I still put on my face at night?" He nodded, knowing the white faced monster she became just before she went to sleep. "Anyway, he looks up and just starts screaming 'what the hell are you?' I was freaked the fuck out. I thought he was breaking into our room, so I grabbed my bat and hit him."

"You hit dad with a bat?" Jim laughed incredulously.

"He was a big, dumb jerk breaking into our room. Yeah! I hit him with a bat!" she said in the ultimate 'duh!' tone.

He continued to laugh hysterically at that thought, taken with it in a way Winona understood all to well. "What happened then?" he gasped through his dying chuckles.

"Well, I dropped the bat after the first hit, deciding it would be much more beneficial to punch him with my hands. So, I was beating the pulp out of him when Shannon came in, saw her brother being beaten to hell and back, and so she subdued me. With much effort, may I add. And your dad…" a smile fell over her face at the memory, "started laughing. That's how drunk he was. Shannon just barely stopped me from going after him again."

His laughter had fully subsided, but his smile still etched his face. "You and dad started dating after all that?" he asked, his brows drawn up doubtfully.

She shook her head and picked up her padd. "No, we didn't start dating until a month later."

"Well!" he demanded after a few seconds silence. He had stopped tinkering with his disassembled communicator to stare at her expectantly.

"What do you want from me? You asked how we met, not how we got together."

With a heavy roll of his eyes and a put upon tone, he asked, "How did you and dad get together?"

Winona shrugged. "I went to a party three weeks later and threw up on his favorite shoes. He wouldn't leave me alone after that." She took the last bite of her apple and stared at him challengingly.

"Oh, whatever," Jim said, returning to his little project. He shot her an exasperated glare, but his smile had yet to completely fade, making his effort null and void.

"How the hell would you know?" she asked teasingly, reaching down beside her chair to grab an errant sock that Jim hadn't managed to get into the laundry chute and throwing it at him. "Were you there, snot? You gonna make a time machine to prove me wrong? If you don't believe me, go call Shannon. She was there both times."

He made some placating noise that was supposed to sound like he was retracting his statement, she was sure. He still had that look of disbelief on his face, though, so she sprung out of the chair and tackled him to the ground. He was getting taller than she was but she still had thirteen years of working with engines and carrying her tool boxes around. She grabbed hold of him and began an assault on his obnoxiously long hair, causing him to thrash and yell about how long it took to 'tame those locks of loveliness.'

Winona cackled mercilessly, managing to keep her grip even as he tossed and turned. When his hair was a lovely crow's nest, she let go with a shit-eating grin that rivaled his.

Jim scampered away from her clutches, going to sit on the other side of the room with a pitiful glare directed at her.

Still cackling, Winona retook her seat. She grabbed her padd with an air of satisfaction intent on finishing the reports sent to her.

Silence permeated the living area, but an air of contentment wafted alongside it. Slowly, after he had smoothed his hair back into place, Jim returned to his briefly forgotten project and they worked side by side until an alarm went off, signifying that Winona needed to report for Beta shift.

She stood with a tall stretch, reaching her hands toward the ceiling paneling. She scratched lightly at her hair before pulling back thoughtlessly, beginning a careless braid as she headed toward the bathroom.

"You good for the night, Jimmy?" she called as she tied her hair with a rubberband.

His response was humored. "Not like I don't know where to find you if I'm not."

She nodded in agreement even though he couldn't see her, then snapping her ostentatious orange shirt into place she made her way to grab a few last items from the living area. With her padds, her personal set of tools, and a nutrition bar, she was almost out the door when something came back to her. She turned around to see Jim concentrating solely on his slowly reassembling communicator.

"Your dad carved something in mine and Shannon's closet," she said across the content silence.

"What was it?" he asked offhandedly, a flick of his hair to get his bangs out of his eyes following swiftly behind his question.

She smiled. "He carved, 'the Big, Dumb Jerk hearts the Evil White Witch forever and ever'."

He looked up at her, his bright blue eyes showing confusion at first, but it slowly bled into understanding as he thought of the stories she had told him until he was seven. "Really?" he asked with a laugh.

"Yeah," she said with a slight nod. "Room 218 in Cochrane Hall. I'll take you to see it one day."

He nodded in agreement with her plan and waved her goodbye.

+ststst+

When Jim was fifteen, Winona was stationed to a Starfleet operated facility in Germany building new shuttles. Instead of living on base, she chose to rent a two room apartment in the hopes that Sam would visit. He never really did unless it was a family gathering. He had just started at a college in Michigan, and his studies prohibited him from traveling a lot of the time, or so he said. However, Tibby and Ainsley flew over if they found the time, or more importantly they became too bored in California. After six months of living there, Shannon started visiting for weeks at a time, her extended-extended-orders on Tarsus IV coming to a halt quickly, abruptly, and with no reasoning from Shannon.

She enrolled Jim in a local public school, his test scores upon reaching Earth declaring he would be comfortable in senior level classes. He picked up being around other adolescents as if he had never been schooled alone by a computer. He had more friends than Winona could really keep track of, both male and female and they all traipsed in and out of her apartment with more speed and destruction than she had known possible. Their faces blurred together before Winona could even categorize them.

He began going to parties, and she knew this because she asked. When he gave her a guilty look that seemed to teeter on the want to lie and to tell her the truth, she crossed her arms, saying honestly that it was okay if he went out to have a good time. When his eyes had lit up, she held up her hand telling him point blank that when he went to parties, he either had to have a designated driver, to stay at the party sight, or to call her. She would not budge. The moment she found out anything else had happened and she would find a way to keep him inside until the moment he turned legal age.

Sooner than she had thought possible, Jim had a girlfriend, and even quicker, he was going out with her to all unknown corners of Munich. After two nights of this, she turned to leaving padds filled with information about sex and condoms under his pillow, because she sure as hell wasn't going to have an actual talk with him about the mechanics of intercourse. He never said anything one way or the other if he read them, but she knew he received them by the way his face would turn a deep shade of crimson the morning after she left the padds in his room.

Four months after that, Jim came home, sullen and moody. He tossed his bag into the wall, letting it land with an audible crash against the wall. Winona had the week off. Shannon would be arriving early the next morning and Winona made sure that she would be able to spend as much time possible with her best friend. Since she had the week off, she was able to hear Jim throwing his small tantrum, and met him in the small hallway. One look at his face, and she knew without a doubt what had happened.

"Carol broke up with you," she said sympathetically, cringing a bit at the dirty look he sent her.

A scowl still on his face, he said as he tried to move passed her, "I just wanna be alone. I'm going to my room."

"What the hell are you gonna do in there? Write angry love poems in your diary?" She snorted as she blocked his path, her arms going out to block any escape he may have had. He was taller than her by then, and he was filling out quickly, but she was still much meaner than he could ever be, and some part of him must have known it. "Fuck that! I didn't raise you that way."

He sighed, his face still pinched as he looked at the wall with an intent he only ever showed to his projects. Winona shook her head with a soft roll of her eyes. "No, I know what we're gonna do. I'll go into town and get us a bottle of whiskey, and we'll watch awful horror movies and take shots every time someone smokes weed, has sex, or says 'I'll be right back.' What d'ya say?"

She smiled at the end of her proclamation, like it was the best damn plan the world had ever stumbled upon. As Jim looked up at her from below his brows, a small, incredulous laugh left his lips. Slowly, he nodded. "I say if you make it a bottle of tequila you've got yourself a deal."

"Ugh!" Winona groaned, making fake cries. "I am always compromising for you! I suppose you want me to get lime and salt too?"

His face crumpled in disgust. "Hell no! If you can't drink it straight, you shouldn't be drinking it at all."

The smile that stole her face was completely without her permission. Grabbing his face in her stained hands, she complimented, "Now that's the boy I raised."

With that, they did a half tango to get around each other. Jim settled in the living room, presumably to sulk while she couldn't scold him for it, and she went to grab her boots and her credit card. She was in and out of town within thirty minutes and returning to her flat before the tequila even lost the cool of the shop she had bought it from. Jim was still on the couch, but his eyes turned up to look at her eagerly as she inserted the chip with the rented videos into the holoscreen's pad.

He gave an eager bounce, grabbing the remote before Winona could even make a grab for it and scooting over to one side of the sofa to make room for her. She wasn't surprised to see that he already had two shot glasses on the table before them, ready and begging to be filled with tequila. She smiled at him and cracked open the bottle and poured their first shot.

When they both had their shots, she held her hand out, saying gently, "To heartbreak."

He looked at her, his eyes no longer as angry as they were, but looking as if he understood a fraction of what she had felt when she lost George. It hurt her heart to see that look in his eyes. It would fade before too long. Young love was like that, but it didn't make her hurt any less for her baby.

They took their shots, and surprisingly it was Winona who made a face. Her drink of preference was usually whiskey, but it was Jim's night so she had let him have his way. Her son laughed at her, the first one she had heard that day, causing her to roll her eyes. She shoved his shoulder playfully, telling him, "Pick the movie, snot. Let's get this show on the road."

They got drunk as hell that night. They bitched and complained about anything that came to mind, and she told him that he was too young to feel that betrayed by anyone. She told him that youth was meant for fun girls and fast drinks, or fast girls and fun drinks. She told him to love himself, first and foremost at the moment, and loving someone else who loved him would come naturally.

Shannon entered their apartment early the next morning to see Jim partially flopped on the sofa, Winona curled under that coffee table, and an empty bottle of tequila tipped on its side resting precariously on the arm of the couch.

They were awakened to her shout of, "You little hookers had best have some party left for me!"

+ststst+

It hit her three years later that heathen children who raised themselves and played with monsters eventually became monsters too. Strings of girlfriends and even a few boyfriends, fights, and many nights of coming home drunk, and Jim, though still recognizable to her, was only recognizable to her because she saw the prototype in the mirror each morning.

He had taken her words to heart three years ago. He lived life hard, chasing after fast women or men and fun drinks. He loved himself before anyone else, but he didn't slow down enough to let anyone try and love him. One night stands were his modus operandi and though she couldn't slight him that, she had lost her lips to worrying them so much.

Often, she called Shannon, or Tibby and Ainsley asking for any advice they could give to help her turn around the disaster she had set into motion. They could never give her anything. There words always echoing in her head as they said, 'Love him for what he is and how he disappoints you.' She wondered if they knew she would one day need those words, and how often they had practiced them in the mirror.

Nevertheless, she tried to follow their instructions. It was difficult. He tried her patience every time he staggered into the apartment or, later after she had been assigned to help with the construction of a ship in Iowa, their house, she felt her patience slipping. He tested her patience with each time she received a call alerting her that Jim had been picked up for a fight, every time he came back bloodied and stumbling around for their first aid kit. She held her thoughts to herself, though, feeling that it was unfair to blame him for what she had turned him into.

It didn't matter when Winona came home after a long shift of arguing with other engineers about the way the wiring should be set up in the ship, and she heard the soft moans of a woman coming from living room, she had reached the end of her tether. She tried to recall the words her family had told her, but they did nothing to sooth her. With tattered nerves left over from work, she stomped into the living room, uncaring of what she saw.

"Out!" she hollered as she rounded the corner.

Thankfully they were still mostly clothed. The woman had lost her shirt, but nothing else. When her eyes landed on Winona, they widened considerably and she pulled Jim away from her. Grabbing her shirt from the floor, she held it over her chest as if Winona didn't see the exact same thing every day. "Who the fuck are you?" she all but screeched.

"I'm the landlady!" she snapped. "Get your shit and get off of my property." The girl continued to look at her in abstract horror. "Now!" Winona yelled, before her eyes landed on her son.

Jim's eyes were bloodshot with alcohol and perhaps something else, but she didn't care to ask. She glared at the woman as she pulled on her shirt, and Jim glared at her when the nameless girl high-tailed it out of her house. When the front door slammed shut, Winona turned to meet Jim's glare with one of her own and for several minutes the silence was only broken by the angry breathing of the two of them.

"I don't think that was necessary," Jim said with a false calmness. His bloodshot eyes shot daggers at her though, and she knew he was just as pissed as she was, if for different reasons.

"Funny," she snapped sarcastically. "I thought it was not only necessary, but passed due. You've been dragging your one night stands into my house for the past year, coming in drunk at all hours of the night, bruised and bloody…"

He rolled his eyes. "You're blowing this way out of proportion."

"Out of proportion?" she mimicked. "I think I'm handling this rather well since I came in to find you and your morsel of the night five minutes from fornicating on my fucking couch!"

"If it's a fucking couch, fornicating on it really shouldn't be that much of a problem," Jim said blithely, a smirk on his face.

Another wave of anger crashed over her. "You're not cute, Jim! Don't start turning my words into silly little jokes."

He shrugged. "Don't make it so easy."

He picked himself up off the couch, brushing passed her to go upstairs. Winona stared after his retreating form for a few seconds, before following after him, her anger too riled to let this go without a fight. She stomped up the stairs after him, stopping his door from closing behind him. He turned quickly, now easily staring down at her with irritation in his eyes.

"You can't keep doing this," she told him, her voice as more steely than it had ever been in her entire time being a mother. "Not here. I won't have you stumbling in and out of my house with people you pick up from wherever the hell you pick them up from. I don't run a hotel and you won't treat me like I do."

Jim ran a hand through his hair, cropped and styled with gels to look like he had just rolled out of bed. "Fuck!" he yelled into the emptiness of his room. "You are so dramatic!" Spinning on heel, he looked at her, frustration marring his features. "I thought you'd be later coming home. It's not like I expected you to come walking in on us."

"That's hardly the point, Jim!"

"Then what is, if you have one at all?" he asked, moving through his room for something she had no real idea of.

She didn't hesitate. "The point is that you're treating my house like a hotel. You sleep here, catch a few meals and before you've even been here for an entire day you're already out in Riverside living like you fucking own this town. You've been through half of the population here already, and I swear you've broken merchandise in every building you can find. I'm not going to keep paying for your mistakes while you skate by."

He stopped in his wandering to do whatever it had been that he was doing. He looked at her accusingly, his bright blue eyes so much like George's bright with anger in the half-light of the sunset. "Are you kicking me out?"

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what else to do! You're so wound up in whatever it is you're doing and I'm not going to watch it, Jim. I'm just not. You can stay here for another month, but after that…"

"You're kicking me out…" He shook his head as if he couldn't believe it. Winona wished she could say it was just a joke but the truth was if she continued to harbor him in her home, he would never change.

He had to leave. He had to live on his own as an efficient human, not as the deviant offspring of a monster half made up from stories she told him. She stared at him, her anger still boiling, caught somewhere between being pissed off at Jim and pissed off at herself for letting everything come to this.

"What the hell am I supposed to do?" he asked, his lips tight with anger.

"Get a job. Use your savings money. Do whatever you want, just don't do it here," she said with a shake of her head.

She left his room, then, and turned in for an early night. She heard Jim banging around his room until one in the morning. She heard stomps down the staircase and the echoing sound of the front door. She refused to get out of her bed.

She had made the decision.

Even monsters had to grow up.

+ststst+

Jim didn't call for three months. He didn't call her or any of the other family. He just went off in the night and practically disappeared. She watched his savings account, and every three weeks or so a hundred credits would be withdrawn, but that was the only way she knew he was still alive and kicking.

She busied herself with the plans at the shipyard, refusing to regret her decision by working as much as possible with the other engineers. When she came home, she stayed in the living room for most of the night, never giving into the urge to see Jim's room, to sit down on his bed and hate herself for giving into her anger.

Shannon stopped by a few times to keep her company in the silence of her house. Her eyes were gentle in their disappointment, but they were just that. Disappointed. Tiberius and Ainsley shared those eyes. When Winona called them on their birthdays or for Hanukah, even though they weren't Jewish. Disappointed in her, because in the end she had made her younger son disappear.

Then just shortly after the New Year, Jim called. He was in Montreal, Ontario and had picked up a job at a mechanics shop in downtown. He didn't tell her where he had been, and she didn't think she had the right to ask. When he spoke, there was an anger there that reminded her ever so slightly of Sam, of George. He told her he would be in contact, but she knew it wouldn't be like it had been when she went away into space. He would call her when he felt like it, and in all likelihood it wouldn't be that often.

He called her two months later, but she wasn't home to receive it. A massive windstorm had come through and the ship, the Enterprise had been damaged. She had gone down to the shipyard to see what help she could give. When she got home, his message was that he was in England somewhere, doing some menial job, and that he would call her later.

The next two years followed much in the same pattern. Jim jumped from city to city, country to country, living on a balance of the money he earned and the money from his savings account. Winona stayed in Iowa, Shannon visiting every so often, but mostly just working on plans and, after so long, the systems that the Enterprise would one day run on. They would talk when they could, and when they couldn't Jim would leave her a message of where he was.

It took her by surprise when one night, as she was pouring a bit of whiskey into her coffee, she heard an engine come sputtering up her drive. Normally the only engines that came around her house were the cabs that took her to and from work, and she wasn't scheduled to be back at work until after the weekend.

She looked out her kitchen window to see a little beat up motorbike come to a halt. It idled for a moment, the headlight still glaring into the darkness.

Winona set her coffee mug down and quickly went outside to see what the hell this person wanted. By the time she was outside, the bike's engine had been cut, and the rider was stepping off of it. Even in the dark of the night, she could make out the form of her younger son. She stepped back into the house and pressed the porch light on. Stepping back into the artificial light, she could see his features clearly, his darkened hair and brilliant blue eyes.

A smile grew on her face as she went to lean against the banister. "That's a nice jacket, Jimmy," she said, her hand gesturing to the leather jacket that covered his broad shoulders.

"You think so?" he asked, a beatific smile spreading across his features as he pulled on his own jacket. He looked up at her with his own happiness lingering in his eyes, like their falling out was no longer important.

"Yeah," she assured, her smile turning into a smirk. "I think it's nicer than that junker you're riding." She nodded to the motorbike Jim rode in on.

His hand flew over his heart as if she had physically wounded him. "She isn't much to look at now, but give me a few months. I'll get her fixed up and you will be so jealous."

He smiled up at her and loped up the porch steps, wrapping her in his long arms for a bone-crushing hug. "It's good to see you, mom."

She tried to return the hug, but she was irritated to note that he had pinned her arms. After a few more seconds, she let out an oxygen-deprived laugh, and flapped her arms. "I missed you, too, snot," she wheezed, honest but covering it up in the humor of the moment. "But at the moment, I'm missing air just a little more."

He released her with a loud laugh that had always been just like hers. When she took a step back, his smile was wide and happy. He looked just like his father in that moment and she remembered what she had told him all those years ago; when he was worried that seeing him caused her pain. Seeing him like this wasn't painful at all, it never had been.

She realized that she had pushed him out of the house, but it was good to have him back, for however long he would be staying. Over the last two years, he had been a lot like a nomad, travelling where the wind happened to take him and only staying for a few weeks to a few months. She didn't fool herself into thinking that just because he was here all of a sudden that he would stay.

Winona led the way back into her house, and more importantly to her cooling laced coffee. Jim sat down at the kitchen table, kicking his feet up onto the tabletop. "Do you want some coffee?" she asked, waving to the coffee maker behind her.

He shrugged. "Yeah, that sounds good."

She poured him a cup, asking afterward, "Want whiskey in it?"

He declined, taking the cup from her hand. "I gotta drive back to the apartment tonight. I was actually just dropping in to tell you that I was back in town."

"For how long?" she asked, taking a sip of her drink.

He shrugged. "I dunno. Long enough," he said indifferently, his own coffee lounging in his hands uselessly. "Thought about staying for a while, but I also thought about all the places I had yet to go. I'm thinking about going to the moon colony for a while."

She smiled, but it felt pained on her own face. "That sounds good, Jim."

His look made it apparent that he wasn't fooled by her bravado.

+ststst+

A year later, and Jim was surprisingly still in Iowa, though he did travel more than the normal Riverside resident. Every month or so, he would take off on that junker, which, to Winona's surprise, he did manage to fix up rather nicely. He went to visit Sam, who had graduated from college as a microbiologist and worked somewhere in Florida, Tibby and Ainsley, and whoever else he could think of, most likely people he had met on his two years away.

He worked through job after job, none of them ever really seriously holding his attention. He worked at a few mechanics shops, a few bars as both bartender and bouncer. He even held a job as a farmhand once, but nothing ever stuck with him.

The fights still continued, but Winona was a little pleased to see that they happened with less frequency. His sexual encounters seemed like they had tripled, though. She never knew anyone who had sex as much as her son did, and unfortunately, she had to hear about it. Jim never told her. They still had some level of propriety lingering in their mother-son relationship. No, she heard about it from everyone else. She never heard so many townspeople go on and on about one person for so long.

It was as if Jim had somehow offended them by liking sex.

Most of the time she put it out of her mind, especially when he stopped by for dinner, or lunch, or whenever the hell his schedule allowed. She was happy to have him around and didn't need to listen to the cashier at the local grocery store.

The longer she worked the shipyard, the more she could see how the ship was coming together. She couldn't say that she really had much to do with it. She worked with other engineers from all over the world, but she never really built anything for the behemoth that rose up from the ground. That was for some of the younger crew, those who were younger and spry, and more importantly didn't mind shimmying around on beam that weren't even a foot wide.

Winona had never been aware that she had a fear of heights until the first time she tried going up on the scaffolding. She had been desperately dodging that experience at every turn in the four years she had been in Iowa. She didn't think it was appropriate for a fifty year old woman to be running around up there anyway.

It was in that same year, August, when Starfleet came to recruit fresh meat for Winona to boss around, that she met the captain of the ship she was guiding to completion.

Christopher Pike landed a shuttle in the shipyard and stepped out with a content smile, after several recruits from several different places had all but ran out to see the wonders of Riverside, Iowa. She hoped they didn't have their standards set too high.

She walked over to greet Captain Pike with a salute that he promptly waved away. "I'm just taking a look around, Lieutenant. No need for formalities." He looked up at the ship, "She's really coming along well. Engineers work fast in Iowa."

She smiled. "Of course we do. Working on this girl is the only source of entertainment in this entire state. We actually have to make a few of the workers leave at the end of their shift."

He nodded, still staring up at the skeleton of his ship. He looked like he had fallen in love then and there. His smile grew to cover nearly his entire face. She could definitely tell he was a captain. She wouldn't have even had to see the rank on his sleeves. She only needed to see the way he stared up at the ship like she was the love of his entire life

When he came back down to Earth, nearly with a visible start, he turned to put his full attention on her. "Now, you're Lieutenant Commander…" There were three lieutenant commanders overlooking the construction of this ship, as well as two commanders.

"Lieutenant Commander Kirk, sir. Commander Atkins asked me to greet you while he's up on the scaffolding." She gave said metal bars a look of disdain.

His face showed bewilderment. "You are Winona Kirk?" She nodded, not understanding what the big deal was. He gave a small impressed chuckle. "It's a small world."

"What do you mean, sir?" she trudged, not really wanting to know after the way he had laughed.

He looked at her. "I did my dissertation on the Kelvin."

Well that wasn't what she had expected. Her head snapped around. There had been eight hundred people to escape the destruction wrought on the Kelvin of course, but that wasn't really much, wasn't even a pin point when considering the massiveness of the universe. She had never once met another survivor of that horrid accident.

She smiled genially, maybe a little too genially considering what they were speaking about. "Well, it sure as hell is a small world, isn't it?"

She forgot to censer her language or even tack on a 'sir' but he didn't seem to mind.

+ststst+

Late that night, she woke to the sound of Jim cursing and stumbling around. She too stumbled as she rushed to see what the hell Jim was up to. He hadn't come to her house drunk since he moved out however long ago, and they had both seemed pretty intent on never having a repeat of it. She flew down the stairs and around into the kitchen, the only light on downstairs.

"Jim?" she called as she turned, to see him leaning over the sink with the water running.

"Hi, mom," he said without looking up.

She went over to stand beside him, trying to figure out why his face was practically in the basin of her sink. As she stood beside him, she pried his face up and turned it to look at her. It wasn't the worst she had ever seen his face, but it still made her cringe.

"Damn, Jimmy, what earned you this beating?" she asked as she grabbed a dish towel, intent on wiping away the bloody water.

He rolled his eyes and took the towel away from her, swiping at his face with more force than she had been, though he didn't seem to notice whatever pain he caused himself. She supposed after a night of whatever had led to his mangled face, a few harsh swipes at his own hand wouldn't be that much of a problem. He threw the towel on the counter, leaning against it afterward.

With a deep breath, he tilted his head up toward the ceiling. "I really hate the cadets that roam around this place this time of year."

He had hated them since he was sixteen, and in some way, Winona believed, it had been why he didn't join Starfleet. He was good to make friends with almost anyone, as long as they didn't try to beat his face in…and even then…

She went to make a pot of coffee, more for her than for him, since she needed to be up in three hours anyway. With the coffee going, she motioned for the table. They seated themselves comfortably in two of the three chairs, and Winona asked again, "What happened?"

He side-stepped the question, instead asking, "Do you know a Christopher Pike?"

She stared at him without understanding. "I met him earlier today, or yesterday, as it stands. He's captaining the ship being built down at the shipyard." They had actually spent an hour and a half spent between chatting about his ship and just seeing what another survivor had done with their life. She didn't know what was so amazing about meeting someone else from the Kelvin, not now that she looked back on their conversation, but she'd had fun, felt a kinship with the man. At Jim's snort of derision, she shook herself and carefully asked, "Why?"

"He told me to join Starfleet," he scowled, an odd look on her normally happy-go-lucky son's face. "Rambled a bunch of bullshit about me being a genius…"

"Well, you are," she intercepted with a nod. "I know. I have the pretty transmission that told me when you were seventeen."

The look he shot her was one of longsuffering. Then as if to add an air of finality, he said, "I'm not going."

"Why not? Too many fuck buddies you'd have to disappoint?" she asked with a teasing smile. He laughed loudly and flipped her the bird. She sent one back to him, saying, "There are many more people in San Francisco to woo, Jimmy."

He made a show of considering this revelation before dismissing it. "I'm actually much more attached to my claim of being the only 'genius-level repeat offender.'" He added air quotation with a roll of his eyes, which made her think that perhaps that was something else that had popped up somewhere in conversations tonight.

She smiled and they were cast in silence as she watched Jim stare down at the table. He looked irritated by something, something more than his face being pounded on or what he had told her of his chat with Captain Pike. She gave a nudge with her foot under the table, prompting him to tell her what was bothering him. He huffed, not that she would tell him that. "He compared me to dad."

"Okay that did lack couth," she conceded after a moment of silence. He nodded, his face easily conveying his 'duh' without him having to voice it. "I still think you should go."

His eyes snapped up. "Really?" he asked doubtfully.

She nodded. "Yeah, I think you'd have fun. A lot of the classes there are geared for annoying assholes with IQ's that shame Zephrum Cochrane. You know…people like you."

Again, he flipped her off, but she didn't return it.

Jim sighed, leaning back in the seat. "What would you do without me around?"

She didn't mention that she had done it once before. Instead she shrugged. "I'd probably save on coffee."

"What would I do?"

She snorted. "Uh, go to the Academy. I thought that would be rather obvious."

"You are no fucking help," Jim laughed with an accusatory finger pointing her way.

She threw her hands up in a 'what can you do' fashion and he pulled himself out of his chair. "Ugh, I need to clear my head," he groaned, heading toward the front door with much less stumbling and cursing than before.

The next morning, just as Winona started barking orders and one of her underlings, she saw a familiar motorcycle come tumbling down one of the several pathways. Jim gave his keys to one of the off shift workers just now getting on his way home, and said a few words to Pike before entering into the shuttle Pike was piloting to San Francisco.

Pike stayed for a few seconds after Jim boarded the craft and somehow, out of all people in the shipyard, he caught her eyes. He gave her a slight wave, and she found herself waving back just as easily, smiling for no reason at all as he boarded the ship to take her younger son away.

+ststst+

Two weeks later, when her computer console alerted her to an incoming call, Winona scrambled away from her game of solitaire to answer the call, knowing by some motherly instinct that it was her wayward boy.

"Two weeks, Jimmy!" she yelled before the connection had even pulled up his picture. "Two fucking weeks. You," she pointed an accusing finger at him, "are an asshole!"

He shrugged noncommittally. "I was busy."

"Too busy to call the woman who gave birth to you?" She glared at him. "I thought you were mad at me, snot. I kept wracking my brain to figure out what the hell I had done."

Jim smiled at her statement of frenzied panic. "Are ya gonna cry?"

"I might!" She threw the card she hadn't realized she had taken with her at the screen, causing him to laugh loudly when it fluttered helplessly in the air. Her glare intensified.

After his fit of giggles had subsided, he reigned himself under control. "I got ya something," he said as a way of amends.

"What the hell is in San Fran that I want?" she asked waspishly, feeling unreasonably petulant.

He tapped a few things on the computer screen, and behind her, a padd on the coffee table began bleating. "Open that," he commanded with a smug smile on his face.

She pushed herself away from the console and opened the document Jim had just sent to her. When a picture popped up, Winona gasped, caught somewhere between shock and delight.

"Oh, Jimmy…" she said with a happy smile as she traced the contents of the picture.

"That's what took two weeks. Do you know how hard it was for me to convince two girls to let me into their closet?"

"You?" she said with an amused laugh. "It probably took two weeks getting you out of there." He smiled cockily, but otherwise made no comment. For a few moments, silence was all that could be heard over their connection as Winona continued to stare at the picture she had received from him. When finally she pulled her gaze away from her padd, she cleared her throat and asked, "You coming home for winter break?"

"Oh, ya know," he shrugged like he wasn't sure, "if I can find the time."

"Don't make me disown you, snot," she threatened without any intention to follow through.

Before Jim could respond, a loud voice came booming from his end, a man's deep, angry timbre laced lightly with a southern lilt. "Goddammit, Jim! Can you not keep your shit on your side of the room? Christ, how the hell did your damn boxers get on here?"

Winona stifled the urge to laugh. "Your roommate?" she asked amusedly.

Jim grinned like a loon. "Yeah, that's Bones, grumpy and surly as ever after his shift."

Bones, as Jim had called him, yelled again, making it easy for Winona to hear him. "These had best not be on my bed for any reason other than laundry mix up!"

"Your filth is still as far-reaching as the universe?" she asked with amusement, remembering the way he had never been able to get all of his clothes to a laundry chute, or even to the washing machine. She shook her head in mock-disappointment. "I don't see how he puts up with it."

"He has to." Jim spoke with an air of 'that's that.'

"Oh, really? And why is that?" she asked with disbelief dripping off of her words.

Light, pure and blinding, flared up in his eyes, eclipsing all emotions when he looked back over his shoulder, presumably to look at 'Bones.' He looked like he had won the lottery and been promised the universe within the span of fifteen seconds. When he turned around again, he smiled in a way she had never seen him smile, and she had seen a lot of his smiles. "He threw up on my shoes."

"He did, did he?" A responding and understanding smile bloomed across her face. Her heart swelled at the sight of her son's completely beguiled face and she hoped like she had never hoped before that he had finally slowed down enough to let someone love him too. "See if he'd like to visit over winter break as well."

He looked delighted by this idea, and it only grew when Bones came stomping just within range of the camera to growl, "Learn to keep your shit on your own bed!" He threw the pair of boxers at Jim, and unlike her own pathetic card, the boxers landed on Jim's shoulder.

Jim laughed at the, admittedly, handsome man, just as he had at her, but he cut it off quickly when Bones started stomping away. He struggled out of his seat, giving her a quick, 'Gotta go, mom' before the call was ended.

She laughed at the blank screen for a few seconds before smiling down at the picture Jim had sent her, tracing the image of George's chicken scratches carved into the wall with one of her screwdriver of all things.

She could hear him again, what he said that day when he carved the words into the wall…

'You know, despite the fact that you are so abusive towards me, I made you something,' he said, his head resting in her lap like a fucking puppy dog.

She thumped him between the eyes. 'I don't want anything made from your leftover Popsicle sticks, Kirk.'

'Ms. Slydell, you overestimate me. I didn't make you anything from my leftover Popsicle sticks. That would have taken much more effort than you, my evil abuser, are worth.'

She raised her eyebrow and he smiled, sweet and boyish. He pressed his hand to her cheek for a moment, running his thumb along her cheekbone reverently. Then he hopped up, all enthusiasm and laughter, and he ran towards her closet.

She remembered feeling a chuckle work its way up her throat, a cosmic joke unfolding before her eyes as he swung the closet door open and stepped inside.

'Oh. My god! Georgie, when did you go back into the closet?' she cackled helplessly.

He looked back at her humorlessly, as he shoved part of her clothing to the side. 'When did we start dating?'

'We're dating? Well, that's news to me.'

He shoved the other half of her clothing to the other end of the pole before leaning out of the closet with what could have been a glare if he weren't so damn smiley all the time. 'You know, now I'm not so sure you deserve this. I'm gonna paint over it.'

'No! I have to see it before you can be a prick and take it away from me!' she had yelled, scrambling off of her bed to shove him out of the way.

And there on her wall…

The Big Dumb Jerk

hearts

The Evil White Witch

forever and ever

Biting her bottom lip in an effort to quell her smile and the emotions that were welling up in her heart, threatening to spill over her lashes, she stroked the picture one more time. "I heart you, too, jerk," she whispered, "forever and ever."

The computer screen alerted her for a new incoming call, and she looked up quickly to see that it was Christopher Pike. That same stupid smile that she had given the captain before he returned to San Francisco began creeping on her face again.

She looked down to the picture one last time before setting it on her coffee table, telling it as if she were telling George's ghost, "I think there might finally be room for someone else, though."

She accepted the call, blinking rapidly to get rid of the tears that had threatened to trek down her cheeks.

"Hello, Captain. How'd you get my number?"

He had the good graces to look a little embarrassed. "I may have looked up your file, and please, call me Chris."

"Call me Winona."

Winona, fractured, but not broken.

END

+ststst+

A/N: Well that's it folks.