A/N: I do not own Star Trek or Iowa.

Freedom

When faced with obstacles, kids would nine times out of ten find a way to overcome them.

Well - ordinary kids would. Smart ones would just walk away.

Once in a while, however, you got a child smart enough to consider walking away, but too stubborn to actually do it. Those kids would typically find a way to circumvent the obstacle, and then get on with their lives.

Jim Kirk, nine years old, had just discovered the first major obstacle of his life, and he had promptly beat a tactical retreat to his room. So far, he had formulated five plans to overcome that obstacle, nine to circumvent it, and one, Jim's personal favourite, that involved a lot of heat-seeking missiles and a very large crater.

The problem was, while all of them were masterpieces of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, none of them were the sort of plan that a regular, missile-less child would be able to execute.

Groaning, Jim rolled from his stomach (hand in chin, notebook before him, an excellent position in which to plot) onto his back. The irregular wooden floorboards dug into his shoulderblades a little, and he decided that the faint twinge of discomfort had better develop into major inflamed wounds. Maybe, just maybe, if he died of gangrene and bloodloss, his mom would feel really guilty and realize what a terrible idea she'd had. Maybe she'd apologize, and feel bad about the direction things had taken. Then Jim would miraculously be revived, and they could all go out for ice-cream, Mom and Sam and Jim, the tree of them together, and all would be right with the world.

His world. This one. Earth.

He was willing to negotiate on that bit, though. Earth was nice, as far as planets went. It had trees, which were good for climbing, it had mud, which was good for sploshing, and it had chocolate, which was good for everything. However, Jim had learned for Saturday morning cartoons that other planets had robots and aliens. 'Alien' ranked just below 'ninjapirate' on Jim's list of awesome jobs, and if he got to practice being an alien for a bit around other aliens, he supposed it would be worth the temporary loss of mud and trees. He could find another home planet for a bit, and then, once he'd explored the universe, he'd be back on Earth for more chocolate. Preferably in time for supper.

What Jim most definately wasn't willing to negotiate was his family. Alright - Sam he would consider loaning out for short periods of time, particularly if he got something really cool in return, but he was pretty sure he'd want his brother back at some point. After all, that time Sam went on summer camp, Jim had missed him, and even written him a letter that seemed vaguely embarrasing now that Sam was around to tease him with it. But Mom? Nope, Jim wouldn't even dream of loaning her out. Not for a moment.

So why was she so intent on leaving Earth without him and Sam?

A series of loud thuds perforated the silence. There was a brief lull, and then a particularly loud 'wham!' from somewhere to Jim's right. Jim held his breath. Sam had stayed to talk with Mom after Jim had stormed off in a huff to plot. He didn't believe that Sam would actually be able to change her mind, but on the off chance, he kept quiet. Longer, softer footsteps, going up the stairs, following Sam, telling him it would all be all right... But there was no-one coming, no sound at all. Sam was hiding in the bathroom, because Jim had beaten him to their shared bedroom, and Mom wasn't coming after him.

Jim sighed. It had been a terrible year, and it had all the earmarks of getting worse. Mom hadn't clammed up so much when he was smaller, but for every passing year, the look in her eyes got more and more misty, like she was somewhere far away. He wasn't sure how much he could trust Sam on the issue, since Sam claimed that everything from torn jeans to rainy Sundays was Jim's fault, but Sam had said that it happened mostly when Jim was around. One moment, normal, happy Mom, then she'd see Jim, and her face would go all - blank. Like something inside her had gotten up and left. It happened close to three times a day now, more if he didn't put an effort into keeping out of her way.

Apparently, those efforts hadn't been good enough. There was something wrong with him, bad enough to make Mom want to go into space to avoid him. He'd asked her about that once, why she only got distant around him. She'd gathered him up in her arms, kissed his forehead, and murmured "Oh, sweetheart. It's nothing to do with you, nothing at all."

And then she'd gone misty. Jim had a pretty good grasp of causality for his age, and he didn't ask her again.

So, the problem, best as he could formulate it, was this: Mom was going to meet aliens and robots, and she was not bringing Jim, specifically. Jim didn't mind aliens and robots, but wanted to be with Mom and Sam. Sam wanted to be with Mom (and Jim, he hoped), but didn't want to leave Iowa. The best plan Jim could come up with in response to that was that they all move to Minnesota, which was closer than the Moon, but further away than the ditch way down past farmer Jensen's place. Mom and Sam could live together, and Jim could live in a treehouse in the back yard. Jim drew the details of his plan below the others for posterity, then frowned at his pad, unsatisfied.

A deep down part of him blinked sleepily, then stretched in newfound awareness. Minnesota might be far enough for Mom and Sam, but he wasn't all that sure it would be for him. Not anymore. Jim had always wanted to go off-planet someday. Now that Mom had decided to aid in the colonization of a new planet for close to a year, and not bring him or Sam, the desire seemed a bit more urgent. He wanted to leave now. Yesterday, Iowa had covered all of existence like a particularly spectacular wall-to-wall carpet. Today, Jim had noticed the walls. Living in a flat, grassy state only served to draw more attention to the horizon, and above it, the sky. It was going to be a very long year.

Rolling back onto his stomach, Jim allowed himself to sob quietly for five minutes before getting back to plotting.

Jim's prediction turned out to be correct - the year dragged on, and on, and on. He had odd fits of claustrophobia where the walls would close in on him and he couldn't seem to breathe. As a result, he cut school frequently to avoid the small, stifling classroom. His uncle Frank looked after Sam and himself, insomuch as you could call 'shouted orders and otherwise avoided' looking after, and Jim very quickly found himself spending more and more time out. Not necessarily outside, even though that was a safe bet when he was having a claustrophobic day, just away from home. He could walk into town in about twenty minutes, and three weeks after Frank had moved in, Jim had a drawn himself map of every street, shortcut and good climbing tree in Riverside. It took him two further days to discover the town library, and after that his explorations aprubtly seized.

Maybe Jim couldn't get off Earth physically, but he was having a good shot at getting away mentally. In less than a year, Jim had made his way through every sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and suspense novel on the shelves, two-thirds of the books on geography and travel litterature (on-and off-world) and half a romance novel. The library wasn't very big, but he still considered this an impressive feat. When the supply of fresh, intriguing books grew thin, Jim started spending more time outdoors. His town map (carefully hidden beneath a loose floorboard when not in use) grew rapidly to encompass the surrounding meadows and fields. There were several large silos near Riverside, as well as a decomissioned shuttle construction yard, and both of these turned into all-day field trips.

Sam and Jim would occasionally get letters from far-off planets, mostly concerning new, important problems with colonization. Winona Kirk was needed, and she wasn't about to let the colonists down. They could understand that, couldn't they?

Jim settled into a routine. He would get up in the morning, and start walking. When he found something new, he'd pen it into his map or notebook. As time passed, it took longer and longer to find things that were genuinely new, not to mention interesting, and each walk to the current edge of his map took longer than the day before. Jim started to get tense and irritable, and the claustrophobia attacks increased in frequency. Things were reaching boiling point a long time before the inevitable confrontation, and to be honest, he wasn't quite sure afterwards how on Earth he'd managed to delude himself for so long that he was coping just fine.

One morning in June, Sam, not Jim, left. Sam, who loved Iowa. Sam, who was born with Riverside soil under his fingernails. Jim was too numb to plead with him, too numb to beg Sam to bring him with him. How could this be happening?

When ordered to wash the car, Jim went. The keys were still in the ignition.

Later, Jim wouldn't remember much of his first time driving. He'd fill in the blanks according to his mood - he'd wanted to see the white spaces at the edge of his map for himself, he'd wanted to get back at his uncle, he'd just wanted the thrill of the chase because he was James T. Kirk, dammit, and sometimes James T. Kirk did stupid things for no apparent reason.

He did get one thing out of it, besides a handful of scrapes and a mark on his juvenile record. He discovered adrenaline.

Adrenaline would shut out everything. It was better than a book, or a map, in that he never actually went anywhere. It just made him blind to everything but his own body, where he was and what he was doing right now. Escapism for the opportunity-challenged. Adrenaline was very easy to come by. Fixing up a rusty motorcycle (with the help a dozen book on mechanics from the library) was an absorbing project, and as it turned out, also a marketable skill. Jim discovered motorcycle-racing shortly thereafter. Later came barfights, advanced mathematical problem-solving and sex. Lots and lots of sex.

He'd didn't need to go off-world anymore, and he was fairly sure he didn't want to, either. Space was a black, sucking void that ate mothers, fathers and brothers, and left their ghosts resting in your bones. At sixteen, he'd stumbled upon an old photo of his father and abruptly realized why his growing up had caused Winona (Mom! insisted a part of him. She's still Mom.) to lose her grasp on reality. At seven, he'd been his father's son. At sixteen, he was closer to being a young clone of George Kirk.

Jim had stashed the photo away under the floorboard too. His father had not only managed to get himself killed, he'd torn apart Jim's family with his memory, and effectively destroyed any chance for Jim to anything other than 'George Kirk's son, the one who didn't turn out quite so well'. He hated that he owed his father a debt of gratitude. He hated that even though he'd never met the man, he would still, occasionally imagine what he was like. George was never, ever, anything but a hero and a good man. Even in Jim's head. He tried to avoid his father's memory as much as possible. Dwelling on the cloying resentment and yearning tended to lead to Jim waking up in a bed he didn't recognize, with enough alcohol in his blood that it could be used as antifreeze.

Then he met Christopher Pike, and for the second time in his life, things reached a point where they boiled over.

It was like someone was simultanteously fast-forwarding and rewinding his life. He was a little boy again, dreaming of a starship and some unknown destination at the far end of the universe. His father was watching over his shoulder as always, but it was less claustrophobic when he had a clear goal in mind. For the first time in his life, he was walking forwards and away, instead of looping around in the same old circles.

Bones and Nero, Uhura, Spock and the Enterprise herself. Jim's life, which had been something small and constrained suddenly felt full to the breaking point. There weren't enough hours in a day in which to run a starship, and he worked himself to the limit. In the engine room, with Scotty and his endless stream of improvements. In the science labs, trying to coordinate teams, shifts and away missions. On the bridge, flickering between diplomacy, paperwork, and the most accelerated course in leadership ever taken.

Things just blurred past, and when he retired to his quarters for the night, he was asleep within minutes. The away-missions and occasional alarms played merry hell with his natural sleep cycles, and after two months, dark circles around his eyes were showing up with alarming frequency. Bones remarked upon it, and Jim waved him off.

Then came Betel Epsilon II. As Jim frequently told his ensigns, away-missions were dangerous, unweildy things, and if you weren't attentive and hadn't listened to Uhura's cultural brief on Things Not To Say To The Natives, they tended to end badly. Jim still felt like everything was happening too fast, and he'd really meant to get some sleep when he had time.

The speeding screeched to a grinding halt when he got shot.

One moment, there had been a rocky mountainside, and then next, his conciousness was narrowed to the arrow sticking out just below his ribs.

Ah, shit, he thought. Well, that's a bit of an anticlimax after almost getting sucked into a black hole.

He decided he must have passed out then, because the next thing he could remember was being carried, carried! along by his vulcan First Officer. He could feel the air being sucked into his lungs in heaving mouthfuls as though from outside his body. His abdomen was uncomfortably warm, and whenever Spock jostled him even a little, it felt like someone had taken a switchblade to his solar plexus.

"Wha'ppened?" he managed to gasp.

Spock looked down at him, his eyes completely black, and Jim could feel the tension reverberating through his body. Like a spring, pressed down until it could go no further, ready to unfurl. Fuck, Jim hadn't seen him that angry for a long time. Not since Nero.

He and Spock had been able to work together fairly well since the Narada, and Jim had come to respect his First. Jim thought they'd been doing alright. Nothing like what the elder Spock had told him about, but alright. Still, Spock rarely gave any indication of what was going on in his head. For all Jim knew, Spock had spent the past months in contemplation of the perfect murder.

"Any attempts at communication in your state would be inadvisable, Captain." Spock said.

"Wha'bout the others?"

Spock fixed his gaze on a point further along the hallway. "The rest of the landing party are unharmed. It would seem that your attacker was attempting to scare us off, rather than force us into a military confrontation."

"Spock-"

"You will not attempt to speak."

Jim wondered how it was that he was being dragged to sickbay by the one officer on the ship who, by the looks of it, would much rather he bled out painfully whilst immersed in lava. Spock was even paler than usual, save for faint splotches of green on his cheeks and ears.

A slight break in Spock's step, and Jim winced.

"You should have notified me you had not completed your sleep cycle last night," Spock got out past gritted teeth. "You should not, under any circumstances, have beamed down with the landing party. It was highly irresponsible-"

A security officer appeared from one of the adjoining hallways, and Spock immediately clammed up, swallowing the rest of his sentence. Jim appreciated the gesture. Then, the officer (Márquez? Crossley?) rushed over to Spock, needlessly hefting Jim's legs into his own arms. Spock remained silent the rest of the way to sickbay.

Bones was at his desk, eating an apple, when they limped in. Plastering a smile upon his face, Jim dragged out a bit of his remaining strength. Bones had warned him about this sort of thing. Jim couldn't face showing up in sickbay, bleeding, defeated and wrong, on top of everything else.

"Bones! Tell Spock I'm alright, will you? He's been bitching at me since we beamed back, and -"

Spock lowered Jim onto one of the medical cots with such care that Jim was momentarily silenced. Then, Jim's tensed-spring First was back, settling into his usual posture.

"I do not bitch, Captain. Ignoring Starfleet protocol to beam down with the landing party is illogical and hazardous."

Bones collected a handful of gear from a nearby table, and promptly stabbed Jim in the neck with a hypospray. The faint, familiar pain was almost welcome.

"Dammit, Jim," Bones muttered softly, and Jim could hear the quiet buzz of a tricorder being swept over his body. Already he could feel the effects of the injected anaesthesiac. He smelled something sharp and chemical, and things began to unravel at the edges. He was looking at the world through a microscope that'd been twisted out of focus.

Spock had stopped talking. Idly, Jim noticed that his hands were clenched tightly enough to paint the knuckles olive.

"Will the Captain recover?" asked Spock.

Bones made a noncommittal noise. "He's lost a lot of blood, but unless the bastards got lucky and hit something vital, it shouldn't be permanent. Goddamn-"

Jim was out cold before he could discover the end of that sentence.

When he woke, his first thought was that someone had left an anvil on his chest. For a few horrid seconds, he couldn't breathe at all. Opening his eyes to a semi-dark room, he managed to force air into his lungs in a series of painful gulps. Jim tenatively ran his hands down across his torso, discovering the tight bandages encircling his midsection. Oh. Not an anvil. He pushed the blanket draped over him off his upper body to get a better view of the damage. The bandages were clean and white, with no tell-tale bloodstains, but he didn't believe Bones would permit such a thing in his sickbay, either. A thick cotton pad of about five times five inches was held tightly in place by the bandages, above and to the left of his belly button. That was hardly a good sign - his arrow wound had been deep enough to cause internal damage. The dermal regenerator only worked for shallow wounds. Anything beyond that required bioglue and time to heal.

Well, crap. Apparently, he wouldn't be doing any captaining for the next few days. He was already bored.

Carefully, Jim wiggled into a more upright position. The other beds were empty, and except for the muted hum of various apparatuses, the room was quiet.

"Bones!" Jim hollered.

His friend appeared - and Jim must still have been on some sort of meds, because even Spock couldn't move that fast. Before Jim had time to protest, Bones had him flat on his back, and was examining his wound with a clinical expression.

Well, Bones' clinical expression, anyway. Narrowed eyes, staring down the bandages like they were cheating him at poker.

Jim cleared his throat. "Hey." It sounded rough and gravelly, even to himself. A glass of water was pushed into his hand without Bones even breaking his stride, and Jim gulped it down gratefully.

"How long have I been out?"

"Two days." Bones replied.

Jim let out an exasperated groan. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

Bones gave his ribs a final poke, and satisfied, leaned forward to focus all his narrow-eyed disapproval at Jim. "Listen to me Jim, and listen carefully - I don't know what game you and the hobgoblin are playing, but he's right."

Jim blinked in surprise. Bones agreed with Spock on something. The apocalypse was imminent. "I'll tell him you said that," he said after a beat.

The doctor wasn't even fazed. "I'd tell him myself if it thought it'd make a difference. At the rate you're burning yourself out, you'll be held together by nought but bioglue and determination by next Tuesday. What the hell do you think you're doing? Beaming down with every landing party, 'I don't need rest', my arse -"

"Spock goes on every away mission as well," Jim interjected.

"Spock doesn't need sleep! He's probably got liquid caffeine stashed somewhere in the computer he calls a body." Bones sighed. "Doesn't need sleep in the way you do, anyway. You're as human as anyone else, Jim. And you can boss the crew around all you want, but goddamn it, I'm your doctor. If you continue to make my job impossible, I'll suspend you."

This wasn't a new threat, as far as Bones was concerned. He'd made it at least three times a week since Jim had been promoted to captain. This time, however, there was no overtones of exasperation or teasing in Bones' voice, just a weary sadness. Jim wasn't certain that Bones could pull off declaring the captain unfit for duty without anyone signing off on it, but he was absolutely convinced that his friend would give it the best shot he had. The kicker was, Spock would probably back him up on it. And if the First Officer and the CMO agreed...

"You can't - there is too much - I can handle it, really, I can. You know I'd drive you crazy trapped in here." Jim flashed him his best grin, trying to salvage the babbling slew of arguments.

Bones ignored him, and fished out his beeping commlink. "Oh, for crying - bunch of incompetent, pencilpushing, turkeybrained - I'll be back in a bit." He gave Jim's blanket a pat, and hesitated for a moment. He had that expression on his face people got when they were trying to choose between a slew of possible things to say. Jim had read enough to know that this was where the protagonist's friend would say something reassuring, like - 'You'll be up and about before you know it.' or 'Try and get some sleep, you'll feel better tomorrow.'

What Bones actually said was; "If you leave, I'll sedate you and drag you back by your ankles."

Jim rolled his eyes. "If you want to chain me to the bed, all you have to do is ask."

Bones winced. "You know, whiskey isn't as effecive a brain bleach as you think," he informed Jim. The doctor stood, and picked his way across the room.

"Hey!" Jim shouted after him. "If I find some way to implant Spock's expresso chromosome, can I go?"

Bones punched the button for the door with a vengeance, then turned around to face his patient. "Jim - why you think the hobgoblin goes on all the away missions?"

Even with Bones' parting shot to mull over, Jim was back to mind-boggling boredom within minutes. He considered making a jailbreak for his quarters and then the bridge, but the threat of suspension was still fresh in his mind. A formal process that could take weeks to repudiate was not worth the price of an afternoon of freedom. Sleep was out of the question - he'd slept for two whole days, and his body was used to four-hour naps. So instead of rolling over and trying to doze, he began systematically investigating his environment.

He'd rifled through all the cupboards and medkits for tools, and had set to work trying to manually override the lock on Bones' office so he could get to his computer, when the sickbay doors swished open. Quickly, Jim shoved his impromptu toolkit under a chest of drawers, and put his hands behind his back. 'I didn't do it' said his facial features.

"I was just wondering where you'd put the water - oh." Jim relaxed a bit. "Hi, Spock."

His First looked distinctly uncomfortable, though a bit better than Jim remembered him from yesterday. His skin was back to its normal level of pale, and he was wearing a crisply ironed uniform and a carefully blank expression. He moved as though he was anictipating another attack - wary, curt movements, dark eyes sweeping the room. In his hand was an old, battered book.

Spock gave Jim a formal nod of his head. "Captain."

Jim quickly crossed the floor and collapsed on his bed in case Bones returned.

"Liutenant Sulu asked me to bring you this. He said that you are welcome to borrow it," said Spock and laid the book on Jim's bedside table. It was The Three Musketeers. Jim grinned. When drunk, the pilot had once quoted the book at earsplitting volume, demonstrating his fencing technique with a punch ladle. He wasn't surprised, though the gesture touched him.

"That's nice of him. I haven't read this in years." Jim picked up the book and turned it over in his hands.

"Indeed," said Spock.

"Erm... Would you like to sit down or something?"

"Negative. That will not be necessary." Spock was hovering uncomfortably near the foot of the bed, his hands stashed behind his back. He was deliberately avoiding looking at Jim.

"Spock, if there is something you'd like to talk about-"

It was like opening the lid of a shaken can of soda.

A deep breath was all the warning Jim got before Spock was off.

"There is always danger inherent in beaming down to an unknown planet and such a risk is unwarranted for the Captain when it is a minor exploratory mission. As the serving Science Officer aboard this vessel, I was obliged to supervise the mission, and my rank of First Officer rendered it both unnecessary and extraordinarily ill advised for you to hazard yourself in this manner. If, by chance, the mission had been the victim of a full-scale attack, the Enterprise would not have any personnel available capable of functioning as Acting Captain for an extended period of time. I must request that you refrain from doing so again without express reason."

Jim gave himself a moment to mentally sort through the diatribe before replying. When he did, his voice was cold. "No. No way in hell. I'm not going to be one of those captains who just sit around, sending their men into danger, taking all the credit and none of the risks."

"That is not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting you refrain from adding to those risks."

Spock was still as a staue, and Jim found all the frustration, fear and exhaustion of the past months bubble up within him. It was easy for Spock to be logical. All he cared about was the data. For him, losing a crewmember was a regrettable event, to be avoided if possible. He didn't have to contend with the guilt, or the nightmares. Jim knew he was being unfair, but it was Spock's fault he was trapped in sickbay, Spock's fault he couldn't take care of his ship.

"Yeah? Well that's what it sounds like from over here. You always beam down, always, and Bones isn't halfway down your freaking throat. I don't know if you think I'm incompetent or just plain stupid, but I can take care of myself, Officer."

Spock took an invlountary step forwards, and a small, detatched part of Jim's brain wondered if he'd decided to finish the job he'd started after Delta Vega.

"You would not permit this sort of behaviour from anyone else in the crew." Despite the fact that his eyes were blazing, Spock's voice was flat, like he was reading an itinerary of spare parts. "You hardly sleep. You rush into situations. You run everyone's risks for them. You have been injured over five times more than the second-most unfortunate crewmember, and yet you persist with your illogical behaviour-"

"Dismissed." Jim cut him off.

Spock straightened himself. "I will not leave."

"Well, I can't. Dismissed."

Jim met Spock's eyes, and it was like pushing against a physical weight. He wondered if Spock's emotions, unable to break through his mask of a face, were concentrated into actual energy behind the eyes. Biting his teeth together, he held the gaze.

After a few moments, Spock looked down, the anger bleeding from his posture. When he spoke, Jim could hardly reconcile the quiet question with the whip-cord sentences that had precededed it.

"Why do you persist in doing this?"

I don't know, Jim thought. I want to protect my crew, but I know you do too. I haven't needed the adrenaline - not for weeks. Why did I drive the car over the edge of the cliff?

Freedom, perhaps - the ultimate defiance of expectations. But defying expectations was a very narrow sort of freedom indeed. Jim had been struggling to free himself from his father's spectre for so long, he'd failed to realize that he'd bound himself as effectively as if he'd simply caved to the expectations. By being constantly contrary, he'd limited his options to the opposite of whatever was expected.

They'd told him to behave, to be a good boy, to take care of himself and value the life his father's sacrifice had bought. He'd driven a car over a cliff.

They'd told him he couldn't do better than his father. He'd saved earth.

He shrugged, and Spock inched a little closer, looking throughly apprehensive about doing so. "I - Jim, I know you enjoy the - thrill. But getting yourself killed will not accomplish anything."

The last comment rankled a little, and Jim answered stiffly. "I'll take your concerns under advisement."

"I do not have any issues to discuss with the Captain. He is an adequate officer. It is my friend I am worried about."

Jim froze. "Spock."

"I believe that Ensign Chekov could use my assistance on the bridge. We are approaching the Oisín nebula, and-"

Jim's hand shot out to catch Spock's wrist. "Don't you dare. I can't believe you said that, but I'm not going to let you pretend you didn't."

"That would be illogical," Spock conceded.

Awkward silence stretched between the two. Spock cleared his throat. Jim dropped Spock's arm like a hot potato.

"So..." Jim said. "Friends."

Spock raised an eyebrow.

"You know what would be really good right now? A friendly distraction. Apparently, I'm going to be stuck here for a day or two, so I should probably ration out Sulu's book. I mean, I wouldn't want to go stir-crazy and run off to help Scotty in Engineering, or anything like that." Puppy eyes had always come naturally to Jim.

Spock opened his mouth, doubtlessly to be acerbic, then closed it again. "I presume you are familliar with the terran game of 'chess'?" he finally asked.

Jim grinned. Expectations be damned - this felt right.

"Teach me," he said.

This is the last chapter of Perspective. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and commented - I hope you enjoyed it. If you have time, I'd really appreciate feedback, so I can make my next story better than this one (whenever I get around to writing it). I appreciate your sticking with this :D