Five Years
Chapter Three
Disclaimer: I do not own anything mentioned in the following fanfiction, except for the character of Penelope Richmond. She is of my own design.
She sat at her desk, her eyes staring at the word 'spaghettification' that was on the report in front of her, her mind light years from here. After he'd left last night in a ball of emotion, she'd gone back inside and tossed and turned all night until it was time for Jake to get ready to school. For the entire day so far, she went through her daily routine with the added bonus of having James on her mind the entire time. As if she didn't already have enough on her plate.
She knew deep down that she'd made the right decision not to tell him five years ago, so why was all this doubt coming to the surface now? She'd gone through her five stages of grief long ago, so why was she so unsure about her decision? She looked up from the word she'd been staring at for the past twenty minutes and sighed throwing down her red pen onto her desk and rubbing her eyes, tired from all of the unnecessary thinking she'd done today.
When she'd seen him yesterday standing outside her house, it was simultaneously her dream come true and her worst nightmare. She was inexplicably thrilled to see him again after a five year absence yet scared for his reaction to the news. She loved James with her entire heart, their three year friendship at the Academy bringing them closer and bonding them tighter than she'd ever imagined possible. For the three years they studied at the Academy, she found she learned more about him and things like his subtle quirks and ticks than she did about math or science. She would have done anything for the James she knew five years ago, and despite the fact that their relationship had changed greatly over the past few years, she knew that she'd still take a bullet for him if she had to.
In many ways, they had been your quintessential opposite sex best friends in college. He faked being her boyfriend whenever a sleazy guy hit on her and she bitched him out posing as a former lover whenever he wanted a girl to back off. She helped him pass Advanced Vector Calculus and he taught her how to throw a decent punch. She brought him home with her every Thanksgiving to spend it with her family and every Christmas he'd cut down a small pine tree and stick it in her dorm room. They were typical, even down to the most played out cliché; he went after anything with legs and a chest while she stood idly by, supporting him through it all while secretly harbouring feelings for him that she locked tightly away in an attempt to protect the sacredness of their friendship. It was girl and boy, best friends, despite the fact that girl was in love with boy and boy chased girls like it was his job. It was so played out that even she knew how classic their friendship was; she knew it back then and she still knew it now.
Whatever feelings she may have had for him five years ago, a child and five long years alone to think about things sure changed her perspective. Sure, she still really cared for James, but whatever romantic feelings she had for him and even some of her friendly love had dissipated since giving birth to Jake. She'd gone through her five stages of grief after finding out she was pregnant at twenty two and alone, and those five stages took quite a toll on whatever she felt for him.
She denied it at first, unable to process the fact that she was pregnant, none the less with James' child. She couldn't be pregnant, not at twenty two. She was too young. It was too much to process, especially because he wasn't around. It was one time, she remembered thinking to herself. One time at three in the morning with enough alcohol in our systems to blind a cow. She denied it for the several weeks in fact, until she started showing and getting sick every morning. Then came anger, and this was when the bulk of her feelings for James turned sour.
She spent a significant amount of time on the anger stage. She hated him for the better part of her pregnancy, cutting him out of her life wherever possible. She threw away almost everything that reminded her of him, she cut his face out of some pictures. In short, she hated him. She hated him for never realizing just how much he meant to her. She hated him for being a playboy who slept with girls for the sport of it. She hated him for leaving and not staying like she did. She hated him for doing this to her; for getting her pregnant and making her a statistic at twenty two. But more than anything, she hated herself. She hated herself for letting herself become some notch on his bed post. That's what she hated most.
She blamed him for pretty much everything up until she gave birth. The morning sickness, the 3 AM cravings for pomegranates, the painful kicking. She blamed it all on him. He was the bad guy she needed to blame, and it worked out quite well since he was never around to counteract it. His absence made him the perfect scapegoat, and she'd never, ever forgotten that.
The bargaining stage was the shorted, spanning from the very first time she ever laid her eyes on Jake in the hospital to her forth night in a row spent awake at Jake's side in an attempt to stem the crying. During that time period, she remembered herself doing mental checks and balances in her head. During that week, she reckoned that if James could bring something so beautiful, so perfect, into her life, that maybe he wasn't that bad a guy. And if Jake was really as perfect and amazing as she thought he was, that everything was going to be okay. But after the forth night in a row with no sleep set in, the bargaining stage ended.
Depression came next, and lasted the second longest besides anger. Things started to get really hard when she realized she was on her own and raising a baby. She spent many nights crying in her room, trying to figure out why in the hell she ever thought she could raise Jake on her own. She was twenty three with a newborn, and no one had ever told her it was going to be this hard. She had no one to turn to for help; her parents were out of state in Maine across the country and she didn't have many friends on Earth because all of them were up in the night skies on ships. She was totally and utterly alone.
Jake was around five months old when she hit rock bottom. She still remember the night clear as day; one of her most vivid memories to date. Jake was up crying, the high pitched yell that seemed to penetrate your skull and drive needles into your cerebellum. She'd been up late for the past few days marking papers and tending to him and everything was just starting to pile up. She remembered cradling crying Jake in her arms, tears streaming down her own face as well as she researched adoption possibilities for mothers unable to tend to their children anymore. She played with the idea of giving Jake up for all of 5 nanoseconds before exiting the page and holding him to her chest, trying to find whatever little bits of strength she had left to get through this. She needed to do this, because she had to do it for Jake. He was her child and her responsibility and she loved him far too much to ever, ever give him away to someone else.
Acceptance was the last stage, and the one she welcomed the most. It hit once she began getting used to a routine with Jake; when things finally settled down. He slept through the night and took naps during the day, allowing her to get some work done. Things were levelling out and it was around this time that she realized that she was doing okay; she'd gotten through the worst part on her own and she was okay. Everything was going to be okay.
It was around that time she let go of all the hate she had for James. She realized that it was just as much her fault as it was his and it was unfair for her to have expected him to do anything unless she'd asked him to. She let it all go and accepted the fact that at twenty three she was a single mom working a quasi full time job and doing both jobs well (hopefully). She also accepted the fact that she now had the task of coming up with a viable reason as to why she didn't tell James about Jake when she found out, whenever he popped back into her life. She never, not once, ever doubted the fact that James would be back. Not once.
So as she sat at her desk that night, her eyes burning tiredly and her mind exhausted from reliving the past five years in less than twenty four hours, she couldn't help but realize just how much she'd changed in the past five years. She'd started it all a naive, arrogant, weak twenty two year old and now she was a wise, knowing, fiercely independent and tough twenty seven year with the world in the palm of her hand, or so to speak. She had a beautiful four year old son who was showing exceptional intellectual levels for his age and she'd just been promoted to Associate Dean of Theoretical Physics as the Academy, making her the youngest Dean ever to be appointed. Things were going really for her, which made it all the more frustrating to have James choose now to come back. The friend inside of her was thrilled to have him back, if only for two weeks, but the mother inside her cringed at his timing.
"Momma, are you okay?"
She looked up from her desk and over to where Jake was playing with his lego, laying her eyes on his beautiful face and instantly smiling. It was true; the resemblance between Jake and James was astounding, but they did have some differences. Jake did have James' trademark crystal clear blue eyes as charming grin, but he had Penelope's nose and her mahogany coloured hair. There weren't many, but there were some indications that he was indeed her child.
"Yeah baby boy, momma's fine" she sighed, rising from her seat and going over to sit beside him.
"Momma, I'm not a baby anymore. I'm four years old, remember?" he chided her, bringing out the Kirk arrogance that she just had to chuckle at. She put a hand on his head and ruffled his hair a bit, kissing the top of his head affectionately before leaning back.
"Yes Jake, I remember" she chuckled, glancing at the clock as she rose.
"You've got twenty more minutes of play time before we got to get you ready for bed, alright Mister?" she asked as she crossed over to the kitchen, chuckling once more at how much he was like her father.
"Can I do it by myself tonight, Momma?" he asked, looking around his shoulder to her with the silliest grin on his face, a grin that reminded her of Kirk.
"You're going to brush your teeth, wash your face and say your prayers? All on your own?" she asked with fake surprise, giving him a curious look. She watched him stand up and nod, his shoulders held high and his head tilted up.
"Yes I am!" he exclaimed, nodding his head up and down several times before returning back to his lego, Penelope chuckling as she poured herself some coffee, taking the next twenty minutes to just sit there and appreciate her son.
She was nervous about what James was going to say to her in a few days when he came back to see her. She knew he'd be back; James had never been the type to forget or disregard commitments. He'd be back in a day or so to talk it all over again after he'd had some time to think about it all. But she feared for what he was going to say; she could live with him saying that he did not want a part of Jake's life. It'd be saddening and disappointing for her to hear from him that he didn't want to get involved, but she knew she'd understand. It was the other option that she didn't know what she'd do to handle it; if James came back and asked to be a part of Jake's life, she didn't know what she'd do. Part of her would be thrilled that he was still as stand up a guy that she remembered him to be, but she didn't know how to explain to Jake that his dad was leaving in less than two weeks with no future trips back planned for the near future. She didn't know what would be better for Jake; having a father for two weeks or not having a father at all?
She thought about her options for the twenty minutes before the clock rung eight thirty, signalling Jake's bed time. She shooed him off into the bathroom and waited in his room for him, smiling as he came in ten minutes later dressed for bed and teeth brushed.
"Momma, when's Daddy going to come home?" he said as she tucked him, asking her the same question he asked ever since she told him about James and what he did. She sighed, pulling his covers up to his shoulders and then sitting by his bedside, brushing some of his hair out of his face.
"I don't know, sweetheart. But just remember, he's up in the sky keeping us all safe, fighting bad guys on his space ship. Your daddy is a hero, and don't you ever forget it. Okay?" she said, bending down and pressing her nose against his in an Eskimo kiss before rising, moving over to the light to shut it off. Despite the fact that James hadn't been around for the past few years, she never forgot how important his job was. He saw things everyday she only imagined of and fought battles that she'd never get out of. The Federation was important, which was her biggest motivation for not telling him about Jake. Although he was arrogant, ignorant, and infuriating sometimes, she never lost sight of the fact that he was indeed a hero. He'd saved her life five years ago when she was on the Enterprise. He saved a lot of lives. He was a bonafide hero, and she knew it was important that Jake knew that.
"Night Jacob George Kirk" she said, shutting off the light, giving one final smiling to her beautiful son.
"Goodnight Momma"
((Author's Note: A reader mention that Penelope was still a little cardboard for her so hopefully this gives her a little more substence. It's easy to say she's suppose to be angry; she was. But at the same time, she's had five years to deal with that anger. Anyways, thank you all for your wonderful reviews! I'll keep this going for a few more chapters and I'll see where that takes me. The next chapter will include Kirk so, Kirk lovers be aware! LOL. Please keep reviewing and thanks again!))
