Title: The Long Journey Home
Author: Takada Saiko
Disclaimer: I still don't own them. Seriously. I have no money, therefore you shouldn't sue me. I have a cat, but I think I'd fight tooth and nail before I'd give him up.
A/N: Okay, so this is a sequel to Ghosts. While I don't suppose you have to have read it, it will make a lot more sense if you did. So yeah… Anyway. Yay new story! Oh, and btw, since I know that I'll probably have some new readers (I hope so anyway) and some didn't read the author's notes on the LAST story b/c I was getting questions on this, I will state it again so I don't confuse anyone, because I'm really good at that…: Spock and Uhura are NOT dating in this. I'm a UhuraXScotty fan, but there probably won't be any of that either, because this is totally focused on these three, as I love them dearly.
Chapter One.
The cold air bit into them as soon as they stepped from the shuttle, but it was nothing compared to the winds of Shriven II that they had encountered very few days ago. While those would bite through whatever clothing that one might cover themselves with, no matter how thick, Iowa's cold could be warmed away.
Perhaps that was how Jim Kirk was able to exit to shuttle with only a light jacket to cover his t-shirt.
He glanced back to see his two companions, both clad in heavier coats and Spock even had a hat pulled down around his head that covered the tips of his pointed ears and the arches of his eyebrows. Kirk wasn't sure how much of the half-Vulcan's attire was his own choice, having grown up on a desert planet and holding a hirer body temperature than Humans, and how much of it was the paranoid, pessimistic doctor that was busy looking for something in his oversized jacket and not being able to find it because his gloves were too thick. Bones had protested widely about leaving out on shore leave, as Kirk still sported a brace on his right leg and while some bruises had begun to fade from his encounter with the falling rocks, some were only beginning to show. At least his eye was no longer swollen so that he could barely see out of it. Spock, on the other hand, looked as if he were back to normal. True, he wasn't quite back to his normal self, but he was lucky to be alive, much less walking around.
"You two are pathetic," Jim said with a lopsided grin. He motioned to their heavy clothing. "We're in Riverside, not on Delta Vega."
"I don't give a damn where we are, Jim, it's cold," McCoy protested loudly, causing several heads around them to turn. The people eyed him warily.
"Sorry," Kirk called to the people who had been watching them. "He's from the deep south."
"Damn right, and remind me again what bright idea brought you here. Not to mention the fact that you dragged us along."
"It's shore leave, Bones. I wasn't going to just sit around in a few rooms that Starfleet had rented for us. That's a waste. I know you've been here, but Spock hasn't. You haven't seen much of anything on Earth outside of San Francisco, have you, Spock?"
"I have been in Washington DC, New York City, and San Francisco with my father for his trips as ambassador to Earth. I visited Seattle once when I was very young to meet my mother's family ," the Science Office answered as he pulled his hat back a bit so that his view was not obstructed, and then turned to towards McCoy. "It is cold here, Doctor, but you are exaggerating."
"Dammit, Spock!" Bones growled. He had expected, if for nothing else, that he would have his agreement about the weather being unbearable. He wondered silently if the Vulcan disagreed with him sometimes just for the pleasure of disagreement. You couldn't fool Leonard McCoy into believing that Spock had no emotions. Not for one minute. Jim was laughing at him by now and he huffed in frustration. "Wasn't nearly this cold last time I was here."
"It wasn't in the middle of winter, either," Kirk reminded him. His eyes scanned the landscape, taking in the sights. People were changing transportation vehicles and greeting loved ones. Not much had changed in the little over three years since he had up and run out on everything. Some familiar faces mingled around him, but none acknowledged him. He knew that no one in the area really paid attention to the news (if they even received it with that 'new fangled electrical system. My grandfather used to speak of a television! Good old fashion TV…' as elderly would gripe), so their faces wouldn't be readily recognized. His eyes finally fell on a spot in the distance that looked like a well-known shipyard in which he had met the irritable doctor standing to his right. It seemed like so long ago… perhaps another lifetime. Had it really only been three years? He had left without saying a word to his mother, knowing that he could not explain his reasons, nor was he ready to at the time. He had wanted to do something to make his father proud instead of waste his life away. He owed Admiral Pike his life for that one speech to a drunken delinquent. Who would have thought it would have worked?
"Does your mother know that you intend to visit?" Spock asked, bringing his captain out of his thought processes.
"No, I don't think so. I've only spoken to her a little since I joined Starfleet. Unless someone else told her, she doesn't even know that's where I've been."
McCoy turned a curious look on his younger friend. "So where the hell does she think you've been?"
Jim shrugged as he bent to grab his bags and started walking. His companions followed suite and they started towards the road. It was old and cracked, not well made for the hovercrafts that were few and far between in this out-of-the-way little farming community. It seemed as if the police might be the only ones without classic – as the residents liked to call them, but anyone outside of Riverside would have called them junk – cars. Even the one bus was running with its old-fashioned tires touching the pavement.
"That is the public transportation?"
Kirk nodded. "Yup, you think you can deal with our low class, hick ways, Spock?"
"What is a 'hick'?"
McCoy burst out laughing at this as he entered the bus behind his half alien friend. While Jim had managed to be outside the bus and outside the other passengers' hearing range when he had made the statement, Spock had not responded until he was one step in, speaking loudly enough for his Human captain to hear him clearly. His laughter did not cease as Spock looked around curiously, completely oblivious to the reason behind the glares coming from all sides.
"Sorry, he's not from around here," Kirk managed through his own attempt not to laugh. It was a losing battle from the beginning. He turned back to Spock. "I'll tell you when we get off the bus."
"Have I said something to offend these people?"
"You might want to just quite while you're behind, Spock," McCoy encouraged, patting the taller man on the back and urging him forward. He slid in the seat next to the Vulcan and settled in for one of the bumpiest rides he had ever encountered. At least there were very stable wheels on a very stable ground though. That was good enough for him.
Spock's eyes were fixated on the passing landscape, little as it was. The farmland and all the animals it included passed by with great speed as the bus bounced its way down the old country roads. The half Vulcan had never seen most of the animals before but knew them through various books that he had read.
"You see that?" McCoy asked, pointing out the window as the passed a patch of land.
"Abos primigenius taurus, I believe."
"Most people call them cows, Spock," the doctor grumbled. "You know what else most people call them?" At the other man's inquisitive look, he smiled. "Steak."
If Bones hadn't known better, me might have thought the Vulcan looked a little disturbed by this. "I am a vegetarian, Doctor."
"Never said you had taste in food," McCoy answered with a shrug, settling in for the rest of the short ride.
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"Are you sure we got off in the right place?"
"I'm sure, Bones."
"It's been three years since you've been here, Jim. Things might have changed… or all look the same. I'll vouch for the latter."
"I grew up here, Bones," Jim promised as they trudged through the slushy muck. Snow had begun to fall in the smallest of flakes and they were moving at a much slower rate than the Enterprise's captain would have wished, but there was little helping it. His leg ached like it had been fully broken instead of fractured and he could tell by the way that Spock continuously shifted his one bag that he was still feeling an ache where his ribs had been broken. Vulcan self healing did wonders, Kirk admitted, but it hadn't fully healed half a shattered rib cage or massive amounts of blood loss. His first officer was still just as much on the mend as he was. That was why coming to Riverside had been the best idea he could come up with. It got them out and about, but offered little real excitement. After all, nothing happened in Riverside, Iowa. "It's just up this road here," he promised. "The one with the car."
McCoy grinned at this. "The infamous care theft?"
"That's the one."
"Car theft, Captain?" Spock questioned.
"It's a long story… my stepdad – or at least, I assume he still is, if my mother hasn't come to her senses and divorced him – pissed my brother off one day and he took off. He – Frank – was going to sell my dad's car, but I drove it off a cliff instead. Almost followed it."
Spock stared at him for a long moment. "I fail to see the logic in that."
"There wasn't any. I was eleven. Oh, and Spock, since Mom doesn't know anything about Starfleet, you might not want to call me 'captain' at all."
"Very well, Jim."
"Good. Look, there it is," Jim said with a grin, pointing at the farm house that stood tall in front of them. "C'mon."
He was pushing himself, he knew, but watching Spock's reunion with his mother made him realize just what an ass he had been to his own. He had spent the better part of his life giving her hell. Hadn't she been through enough? He finally realized that now. Someone, in some small way, he needed to strive to make that up to her. Maybe when she found out that her son had bettered himself, pulled himself out of the gutter and strove to be something – to be a man worthy of the name Kirk – she could find it in her heart to forgive him. He didn't deserve it, but he wanted it. Spock would tell him it was illogical. He glanced sidelong at his first officer. Maybe not. Before their trip to Shriven II, but maybe not now.
Kirk felt a strange mix of excitement and apprehension well up inside him as he pushed open the gate in front of the house that he had grown up in. His mother had told him that his father had always loved that house, and that was why they had never left it. It held memories of George Kirk that she would never throw away. Pictures hung and projected, a metal that had been sent to her for his bravery – sent because she had refused to come and receive it on his behalf – and various other things that had been his. The car had been his, but Jim had destroyed that.
"Who the hell are you?" a voice rang out and Jim turned, shaken out of his musings to find a phaser aimed at him. The excitement wore away quickly and Jim realized that his apprehension had not been for the reasons he had thought it was for.
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A/N: Okay, my former roommates take no offense to the term 'hicks' but I find that others do, so for this story, apparently these people take offense to it. At least nothing was said about having sex with farm animals like Uhura says in the movie… That would have gotten Spock thrown off the bus. Hehe… Poor Spock.
Let me know how it is so far!!
