A Reaper's Vale
Abby Ebon
O.o.O.o.O.o.O
Disclaimer: I do not own the following, "Doom", "Star Trek", "Torchwood" – and, just in case it comes up – "Doctor Who".
Note: or, really, warning, complicated genealogy ahoy.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O
The Woman That Made Waves
Deneva Prime
2247+
The Doctor's daughter walks out of the sea, and remembers only fleetingly her father's face, but it's the enemy that causes her to forget – and she has forgotten. It's been a short life, less than a handful of years, yet she stands on the sand full grown and thinks of seashells and foam and doesn't know where that image comes from. She isn't alone though, so perhaps she snatched that thought up from a mind not her own, for she is so, so lonely.
Proof that she is not alone comes with the sound of a voice, like the breaking of a wave.
"Hey, are you…okay?" It isn't, after all, every day that Jim Kirk sees a woman walk ashore from Aurelius Ocean. She's as blond and blue eyed as he is, but lovely in a strange and absentminded, uncaring sort of way.
She looks at him, sees right into him, and her blue eyes are so sad that Jim just knows she's not normal. She sees his scars, every one of them, and she doesn't look away afraid or ashamed. There's difference between sharing sorrow and pity for the wounded, and this, her sadness, she gives it to him like it's a gift. She's seen things just as bad as he has, and has survived them – like he has – with scars that they can hide from everyone who matters, except each other.
It's unnerving and Jim Kirk doesn't like it in the least.
She doesn't answer him, he realizes as she just stands there in the sand without a stitch of clothing on her, and very likely doesn't understand a word he'd said. He offers her his hand, and she takes it, and Jim takes her home. He's fourteen and it's the first time he's felt connected to anyone outside his family.
On his great grandmother's porch, two old Vulcan women play chess, their quiet and serenity broken only by the surf against the shore, the crying of birds, and the click of black and white pieces on the board. It's two-dimensional today, because T'Pau won yesterday, so it doesn't surprise Jim Kirk when T'Pol is the one to look up as he climbs the steps.
T'Pol arches a brow, tilting her head at the sight of Jim bringing home a girl with only her hair covering her up. She waits until Jim breaks the silence between the four of them. Jim likes her for that; she lets him remember how to say what he needs to before she demands reasons. Jim went a long time without saying more than what needed to be said to survive, one day after another.
"Can you get my second foremother, T'Pol? Tell her I'll be in mom's rooms looking for something for her to get into." T'Pau looks the girl over, and what the Vulcan woman makes of her, Jim won't ever know from her face. T'Pol glances to her friend, and goes quick and quiet.
Jim leads the girl past the porch; his great-grandmother's house is more of a mansion for it fits his mother's family in it easily. So far as Jim knows, T'Pol and T'Pau are close family friends of his great-grandparents, and aren't guests. He'd learnt that when he asked his mother when they'd go home to Vulcan and Winona had laughed and told him they'd lived here since before she'd been born.
So they were very old and not so much friends of the family as a by now a part of the family themselves. T'Pol, he'd figured out, was married to Trip, his great-grandfather's best friend. How T'Pau fit into things, he didn't quite know yet – but she was dignified and small and powerfully fierce, and a Vulcan priestess. Or princess - Jim wasn't quite sure if she wasn't both.
Jim goes by her, not quite meeting those dark Vulcan eyes and takes the girl to his mother's door. Winona isn't in her rooms, she's off somewhere between Deneva Primeand the stars. George Kirk's sons have taken names shorter then there own, so it was with George Samuel Kirk, now Sam, and so it is now with James. It's their only way of making their names their own.
So while their mother isn't here - Sam, though, is here. Jim's never seen his seventeen year old brother's eyes so wide. He stares, but if it bothers the girl, she doesn't show it – in fact she stares right back, equally blunt and curious.
"Uh, what are you doing, Jimmy?" Sam asks, whispers soft, as if the girl can't hear if he does. Jim rolls his eyes, because he knows she can hear and understand, but for some reason just can't speak. Jim hopes that he's brought her somewhere she can get help and not just be ogled at by his older brother.
"Helping her get dressed, Sammy…" His mother's dresser is of old oak, and it's as big as most beds would be. It's got a closed closet that can be locked but never is. Jim takes a purple dress he thinks his great grandmother will approve of. He gives it to the girl, who touches it as if she's never seen the color before, but she doesn't need Jim or Sam to help her put it on, she does so with a shrug and a little shimmy.
Her smile is pleased, as if she wasn't sure she'd remember how to put a dress on.
"Where she'd come from?" Sam asks, blushing now that she's clothed, as if he'd just realized how much he'd been staring from the start.
"Aurelius Ocean, just, I don't know, walked out of it. Like a goddess." Sam glances at Jim, measuring and judging, as if trying to gauge what his brother thought about the girl he'd brought home. Jim was careful not to let it show. Sam wouldn't hurt him if he knew, wouldn't tease more than any other brother, but Jim had learnt to keep everyone at a distance.
"Well, she's certainly lovely enough." Hoshi Sato, his great grandmother's voice washes over them like a wave, startling and not to be ignored. Yoshiko, Jim's grandmother, stands at her side. The girl looks to her, and Jim doesn't know how, but smiles wider and speaks – says something, a sting of words that Jim can't quite make sense of.
Hoshi's eyes widen, and she parrots it back, and it goes on that way, back in forth, a conversation that Jim can't follow. He feels envy stirring in his belly, stealing his breath, but his great grandmother speaks before it grows to be more than heat.
"She says she thinks your kind, Jim – and that Sam's lovely…" At her mother's words, Yoshiko's lips twist into a teasing grin, and Jim is glad he isn't Sam. It was by Yoshiko's late husband that James Tiberius Kirk got his first name. Michio Sato, Hoshi's grandfather had named her first born daughter for Toshiko Sato, his sister.
"What's her name?" Sam demands, eagerly, and Jim can't help but dislike that he got to ask first.
Hoshi questions her, but the girl never has an answer. They call her Aurelan, after the ocean. Hoshi Sato teaches both her great grandson's her language when they ask to learn it. It's only in Jim that the learning grows to become a love of languages, both human and alien. Its stories that Jim Kirk loves, and when he finds one in a book he can't read, he asks his great grandmother to teach him that to. Hoshi Sato does not say no.
That it's Xindi and that the Federation had forbidden that language from being put into the so called universal translator, her life work – well, she only tells him to be wary of sharing it.
It doesn't surprise her much to learn one night that Jim and Sam use Xindi as their personal language. She is, if truth be told, quite pleased. Jim only teaches his brother – and Aurelan – until they both break his heart, by telling him they are getting married.
"He wants me to be his best man." Jim says when Hoshi goes into her youngest great grandchild's room without knocking, knowing he expects her.
She keels to look into his wounded blue eyes. Hoshi's smile is warm and she offers her hand for the boy to hold onto, if he wants. He sees no pity in her, but understanding and strength. He takes her hand, and Hoshi folds hers over his.
"James." Hoshi doesn't know what she's going to do until she sees the look in the thirteen year olds blue eyes. Kirk is his last name, but those eyes are all Archer.
"James was my grandfather, I'm Jim." Hoshi Sato nods but once. Hoshi understands all too well about names and language and symbolism.
"Of course you are Jim." Hoshi offers a distracted half smile, as if she's a great-grandmother who forgets these things and to be forgiven. No one her knows her is fooled, but Jim scoots to offer his seat to her. Hoshi pets a hand though his blond hair, and wonders at what he's seen that he can be so temperamental one moment and timid with polite unspoken offerings in apology the next.
She's reminded of Jonathan's beagle, a hurt animal that can't be left alone – but thinks it should be to lick its own wounds. She takes his spot, and Jim settles at her feet, leaning against her knees. Hoshi keeps soothingly stoking golden hair, and tells stories, all true, all about their family and hardship, adventure and adversaries, struggle and survival. A history shared makes the past and present blur out of the shadows.
"What will you do?" Hoshi finally asks, and when Jim looks to Earth's solar system – stickers on his ceiling – she understands. That night, she calls her granddaughter home, to comfort one son and send the other down the aisle, and tell Winona that she'd best tell Frank that his nephew was going to Earth.
"Are you sure about this, Winona?" Frank, she knows, is only trying to be helpful with terrible timing. At least that's the cause Winona gives to name her frustrations with her older brother. She glances to the one woman to who makes the difference in staying here or leaving. Hoshi Sato sits up from behind Winona and meets Frank eye to eye. Light years upon light years part them, but Hoshi alone can still make him listen where anyone else might fail.
"After Tarsus IV, James…Jim, like any thirteen year old, needs stability. On Earth, you failed to give him that, Frank – that is why, I assume, he ended up on Tarsus IV to begin with, yes?" Frank swallows down his words, guilt haunting his brown eyes. He nods solemn and otherwise still, when it becomes obvious Hoshi is waiting for his response. Her smile is tight and sure. She's always been fonder of Winona than of Frank, and has never hidden what she thought of their father James – who Frank takes more after than Winona.
"I can provide stability on Deneva Prime for Jim, but not without sending Sam away. I won't do that. Jim wants to go, Jonathan is so sure of it he's taking him to Earth with him. You only need to make sure the boy goes to school, Frank." At the mention of Admiral Jonathan James Archer, Frank's lips twist and the connection between Earth and Deneva Prime is rudely cut off.
"Do you think he'll do it?" Winona asks softly into the strained silence.
"He hasn't any choice. If he doesn't, Jonathan will. He's a teen still, yes, but Jim's been through more in those short years than most in a lifetime." Hoshi allows that Jim is more like her than any other of her descendents, he prefers to be alone. She hopes that living away from the family, with only Frank to check in on him, will get him to be more outgoing. She knows how lonely being alone can be, and if Jim is either too comfortable or not comfortable enough with his family, they aren't helping – but hurting – him. Hoshi won't stand for it.
It's Trip that takes Jim to meet his great grandfather, Admiral Archer and his son Captain Toru. They tell him about how Trip lived when he should have died, and it somehow helps him to heal a broken and bleeding heart. He's given Sam his wedding ring, his blessing, and seen it put around Aurelan's finger. She could never have been theirs, because Sam was his brother. She was happy, and Jim was going to Earth to pretend he wasn't hurt.
Frank doesn't meet them, they go to the house and knock on the door and he isn't impressed by Admirals or Captains or nephews who might – or might not – need him. Jim isn't surprised, pretends to be pleased with the freedom that is actually negligence that Frank is just the uncle he needs.
Jim Kirk remembers Jack, the last man to call him James – the first person he loved, and lost. He goes out to celebrate, the lie at the tip of his tongue that he never uses - toasting his brother's wedding, because Frank never asks questions – ever.
Frank could care less why on his nineteen year old nephew brings home a bride and groom and takes them to bed. Samantha Grimm and Jack McCoy, who tell him about Sam's brother whose wife is Jocelyn – it was a double wedding for the sake of the twin siblings, all of them taking the McCoy name. She's a doctor, and so is her brother – but a soldier, and Jim wonders which profession he's better at, with a nickname like Reaper.
There is a holo on his bedside, of Aurelan and her babe. He's the first of three. Peter, Alexander, and Julius – it's when Julius is born that he goes out to a bar and meets a woman, dark and mysterious – who won't tell him her name. He fights for it, and it wins him nothing of her favor. But it is the night Captain Christopher Pike cares enough to challenge him to be better, do more.
Jim Kirk changes his life, and he does it in three years rather than the Academy's standard of four.