A/N: Warning for violence.
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Enterprise High
being a high school AU of ST: XI
with many hijinks
and much angst
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Chapter Forty: All Our Yesterdays
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Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye free.
—John 8:32
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When James Kirk was thirteen, his stepfather hit him one last time.
It was the last time because Winona was through with him. The relationship was over. Frank and Winona screamed at each other for two hours in the middle of the shining afternoon, stalking around the house and slamming doors and yelling up and down stairs, faces red with incandescent rage.
Kirk didn't hide. He had never been a hiding type of kid. He was a beating the shit out of innocent objects type of kid. He sat in the dirt off the back porch and methodically destroyed an old tire with a butcher's knife he'd found while he and Sam were excavating a few years ago. (He had wanted to be an archaeologist for a long time, until one of his teachers told him he was no good at geology. He stopped digging, after that.)
After Frank left, Winona came outside and put her hands on her hips. Her blonde hair flickered in wisps around her face, like bunches of ivy fluttering in the wind. She was an iron woman, a solid force, and the lines of expression carved into her face made her look like an old statue, gnarled and smoothed by time.
Kirk had moved to the upper branches of a post oak tree and was stripping the branch he was seated on of bark. Winona relaxed, the steel going out of her, and leaned against the screen door. For a while, she watched the dust thrown up by Frank's transport fade away, falling back into the ground.
She glanced into the tree, but didn't say anything. Kirk didn't look at her. He kept tearing the bark off.
Winona went back inside and poured herself a drink.
Kirk didn't come inside until midnight. He woke up early the next day and went down to the creek. He fished some, and listened to the sky, and sure enough, by lunchtime, Frank was back.
In the stream, a few minnows tarried skittishly in the shallows, wondering if he had any more tasty scraps of bread. The larger perch and bass remained in the deep water, entirely skeptical of Kirk's intentions. He'd run out of leftovers and worms a long time ago. He tossed a few grasshoppers halfheartedly into the water. He looked into the sky, at the clouds. They moved quickly across the sky, miles and miles away. In Riverside, the air was still.
He didn't know he'd fallen asleep until he woke up. Winona was bending over him, a soft smile on her lips and the sun haloing her flicking hair. "You missed lunch," she said, touching his cheek. "Come on, I made dinner."
"Oh," said Kirk, scrambling up. He felt himself smiling too, for some reason. "What'd you make?"
Winona laughed. Her arms were crossed and relaxed into a soldiers' ready stance: feet squared, spine straight, neck loose. "I baked a chicken. And broccoli and kha'di. And iced tea."
"Dessert?" He tried to stand like she did. She looked taller than he remembered seeing her. Rare pride arched through him.
She grinned. "Went to the store. Blue Bell, vanilla."
Kirk whistled. "Mom!"
She laughed. "I know! We can afford it." She was beaming, now. "Jim, I finally got a promotion! They just let me know, right before I went to the store—I mean, that's why I went to the store. They want me to head up a mechanics shop."
"Wow!" said Kirk. The happiness in her eyes was contagious. "That's amazing! In Riverside? At the shipyard?"
Winona grinned. She reached out to tousle his hair.
"No, honey. On Sanger, in the Beta Quadrant. They want me right away. I'm leaving in a week."
Kirk would never, ever forget that feeling. It was like coming out of a hurricane, only to realize that you were in the calm of the eye, and the far wall was fast approaching.
x
Uhura didn't have a chance to be pissed.
She had searched the club top to bottom when she realized that she had missed a text from Spock. She had just started to read it when Spock called her.
"It is a long story," he said, out of breath. "Come outside."
Uhura beat her way through the crowd and, like Spock, had been in the moonlight for a while before she realized she was there. She took a long drink of air. Her clothes felt too tight. She tugged at the collar of her shirt, tilting her head to catch the breeze on her damp neck. She didn't feel much, except for a small, insistent tap-tap-tap of irritation mixed with curiosity.
Spock was leaning against the side of the building, staring at his shoes.
Uhura approached him, concentrating on the way she walked. "What happened?" she said, a little more harshly than she intended.
"Jim fled," said Spock tonelessly, looking out across the street. The streetlights bounced out of his eyes.
"That implies he's running from something," said Uhura, going to stand next to him. Every muscle in her had started humming. She was keyed up and she wanted to do something, but she was going to give Spock a chance to explain first.
"Yes," said Spock, barely moving his lips. Uhura felt a surge of anger.
She raised her eyebrow at him. "Seriously? That's all you're giving me, here? A 'yes?' Come the fuck on, Spock."
On a human, Spock's expression would have been one of displeasure. Instead, he was cloudier than usual. "Yes, Nyota." His tone was surprisingly hateful.
Well, that was it.
Uhura didn't do violence very often, but this was the perfect opportunity—now she had a chance to be pissed. She took it, feeling anger drive through her like a bolt of lightning. She grabbed Spock's shirt, clenched the soft material of it unlovingly in her fist, and slammed him into the wall. He gasped as she drove the breath out of him.
"What the fuck. Is up with you two?" she said, her voice perfectly level and poisonous. "You seem fine half the damn time, and then you do completely crazy shit. Both of you. You, Spock—you're here one day, gone the next. There is something seriously wrong with you!"
"You somehow feel the need to express this to me?"
"Yes," said Uhura coldly. "I do. Because sometimes I don't think you're aware of it. If you're going to try to be the main character here, you have to act a little more self-aware."
She released his shirt unexpectedly, and he stumbled as he fell away from the wall. She took a few steps backwards, breathing through her nostrils.
"Listen," she said, pointing an unquavering finger at him. "Fix this. Stop fucking around. You've been avoiding the real parts of life for too long, Spock. Go find out what the fuck is up with Jim and maybe it'll help you find out what the fuck is up with you."
Spock stared at her.
"You got that?" she hissed.
"Yes," he said, straightening. "Yes."
x
Half an hour after Spock left the police station, Winona Lawrence exploded through the front doors.
The SFPD had dealt with angry mothers for centuries, but this was something rather different. Winona Lawrence was angry for a number of extremely compelling reasons, the very smallest of which was that her son was in jail. She stalked up to the receiving desk and pinned the officer behind it to the wall with her very gaze.
"M-ma'am," he quavered, touching his phaser for reassurance.
"Winona," bit Winona, "Lawrence. I believe—" She articulated this very, very carefully. "—you have my son."
"Er," gulped the receiving officer, tapping with indecent haste at his PADD. "James Ti—"
"Yes," said Winona shortly.
"Right this way, ma'am—"
She swept after him, making damn sure to breathe down his neck. Just because it was Kirk she was mad at didn't mean that she couldn't scare the everloving Lord out of everyone else.
"Kirk, James T.," the officer barked. Kirk, back in the cell (and sitting carefully opposite Mandana), jumped to his feet and hurried over to the force field. He was expecting his mother, but he wasn't expecting her facial expression—or her outfit.
"Hey, m—oh," said Kirk, coming to an abrupt halt a few feet from the force field. The receiving officer backed away from Winona slightly: her eyes had narrowed to slits upon seeing her son.
"James," she said, her voice deep, pleasant, and terrifying. "How are you?"
"Oh, you know," whispered Kirk. "So-so."
"Yes," said Winona poisonously. "I'm sure. I'll just be posting bail."
"Thanks."
"Oh, any time, honey."
Both Kirk and the receiving officer gulped. The latter deactivated the force field. Kirk emerged, scraping the side of the wall in an effort to avoid Winona. Winona sparkled threateningly at him.
Winona was sparkling threateningly because of the evening gown she was wearing. It was smooth, pale gold silk that swept down her legs, curling back between her feet to reveal a foamy white underskirt made of Bajoran lace. She was wearing Terellian diamonds, which glowed expensively.
"So uh," said Kirk. "Um, what were you doing this evening, mom?"
The receiving officer hurried down the corridor, trying to put large quantities of distance between the terrifying woman in gold and her very unfortunate son.
"I was at a ball," said Winona, tossing a piece of immaculately curled hair over her thin shoulder.
"That's… that's pretty cool," Kirk hedged. "Where at?"
"Starfleet headquarters."
"Did you go with somebody?"
"Chane Uhura. James, I am taking the bail out of your savings."
"Chane—? Wait, my savings?"
"Of course out of your savings. You got arrested. Again. And for—" Winona finally went white with rage. "For being under the influence of illegal substances!"
"Oh, that was in the arrest warrant?" said Kirk weakly.
Winona looked like she was about to hit him. "One count of that, and two of resisting arrest."
"I only resisted arrest once."
"You resisted arrest from two officers."
"Ah." Kirk paused delicately. "That, uh, matters?"
"Yes. I know you've generally been pursued by so many officers, for so many charges, that you don't pay attention to most of those charges, so you weren't aware that the number of police officers that pursue you matters."
Kirk nodded modestly. This was true.
In the lobby, the receiving officer took Kirk's credit chip hurriedly and breathed a long sigh of relief when Kirk and Winona left.
x
Winona went out to the Riverside main office that night. Kirk wasn't allowed outside after nightfall—at least, not when Frank was home—so he went to his room. He didn't like having to stay out of the way, but Frank was in a bad mood. Not that he was ever in a good mood.
Kirk didn't get to stay in his room for long. Frank had him come out and clean the kitchen, and he smacked Kirk's ear for no reason Kirk could discern. Frank hit him so hard his ears rang for the next hour.
Frank kept up his usual spew of poison while Kirk was cleaning. "Fucking useless kid. Should have never been born. Died in space, like your daddy. Would have been better. You and your brother. You'll never amount to anything. You cheat in school, kid. You can't even put the meat up properly." Whack. "Don't know how you get grades like you do. Probably a slut already. Yeah, at your age. It's a fucking disgrace. Raised by fucking wolves or something. I'll be glad when Winona's gone—you eat too much. Kid like you can do with a meal a day." Smack. "Get the fuck out of there. Did I say you could open that cabinet? Stop glaring at me, you idiot. I guess that's all you're good for. Mean looks and shitting. You're useless, kid. You're nothing. You're a speck of fucking dust on somebody's shoe. And here's the thing, kid."
The words were like a sharp, sharp knife.
"You deserve every shitty thing that will ever happen to you."
x
Somewhere on the way home, the dynamic shifted.
"Jim," said Winona, when they were standing in the dark house.
"Where're Sam and Aurelan?" said Kirk. He was tired. All he wanted to do was go to sleep.
"I don't know," said Winona. Her eyes were very wide. "Jim."
"I'm going to bed."
He walked off. He was in the doorway to his room when she said it again.
"Jim."
He shut the door softly, like it was a piece of china. He stood in darkness for a moment, then went to his window, opened it, and climbed out of it.
Winona knocked on his door five minutes later with a cup of tea. She came in and saw he was gone. He'd left the window open. She sat the tea down on his nightstand and left.
Her expression never changed.
x
At two o'clock in the morning, Kirk sat on the curb in front of the Vulcan Embassy and thought about moments.
He thought about how the universe was a really big thing, bigger than the biggest big thing you could image, and then some, and how his perception of it was limited to this little tiny itsy-bitsy bit. He looked into the sky. It was big. It's huge, he tried to tell his mind. Larger than I can imagine. But he didn't believe himself.
He thought about how atoms were really small things, smaller than the smallest thing you could imagine, and then some. He looked at his fingers. There were more than a trillion atoms in his fingers. A trillion. He thought about how if you lined up fifty million atoms, they would stretch for barely a centimeter. He couldn't understand how small that was.
He thought about how telling yourself something and believing it are two different things. He wondered how physicists did it. He was pretty good at physics, but he couldn't find a quark in a barrel of fish if you gave him Cal Tech. He knew that physicists had to believe that stuff. They had to know how small atoms were, or how big the universe was. It was their job to believe it.
Why do physicists want this as their job? Why do they want to dedicate themselves to something that's so hard to understand? He looked at the sky again and wondered how many atoms he was seeing.
He thought he knew why they wanted to understand when he felt his mind flicker a bit, as if it was going out from him to stand in the field of stars.
He thought: Understanding wasn't math and calculus and differential equations; it wasn't biochemistry, or boiling points, or the atomic weight of every single element. All of their knowledge, everything they learned in school and lecture, every book on math and science—that was the easy part.
Kirk wanted any number of things, and getting them was hard. He wanted to be smart and for everybody to think he was smart. He didn't want care what people thought about him. He wanted to care what people thought about him. He wanted to be loved—by his mother, by his friends, by Spock. He wanted to love them, and that was difficult, because he didn't know what love consisted of. He wanted to be happy; he didn't know what would make him happy. He scratched his head. He also wanted some chocolate.
He thought about how hard it was to be emotional. For the past eight years he had been telling himself how stupid it was to feel certain emotions: fear, panic, anger… and lust, and happiness, and contentment. He'd let the innocent things through, like simple lusts: kissing that girl, fucking that boy. But the deeper things were harder. Deviant behavior. Being fucked. Real intimacy, real emotional connections. The same held true for everything. He could be comfortable, and he could feel moments of joy. But beyond that…. He swallowed. Blankness.
This was the sharp: this mixture of everything he wanted and didn't want, rising and falling like the tide within him. This was the sharp: the cut of the gun.
The tide came in.
He stood up. The world twirled around his head. He walked into the road, unsteady on his legs; the water tugged at his ankles. He looked for transports just in time, and paused—a big black one screamed by, blaring its horn. He jogged across the road, up to the gate of the compound.
He tapped the vidscreen. "Hey? Sorry it's so late. Can I talk to Apartment 24C? Uh, Spock's room."
"I am sorry," said the computer smoothly, "voice access is blocked during these hours."
"But he turned his communicator off," said Kirk, knowing it wouldn't help but feeling the need to bring it up anyway.
"I am sorry, voice access is blocked during these hours."
"This is an emergency," said Kirk firmly.
The computer considered this.
"Name?" it asked finally.
"James Kirk," said Kirk.
"You are on the list," said the computer mysteriously. "I will grant voice access. Standby for override." There was a surprisingly loud whirr, then the sound of a microphone clicking on.
"Spock!" said Kirk loudly. "Dude! It's Jim! Wake up!"
There was nothing for a long time. He was about to say something else when the opposite end was activated.
"Jim," said Spock, sounding both sleepy and pained. "What?"
"Can we talk?"
There was another long silence, and then Spock said, "Yes."
x
They walked to a park.
It was cool outside, not cold—surprisingly warm for early February. Kirk's jacket was thin, and it was a little less than enough. There were no twinkling stars; just a heavy overlay of clouds that had appeared while Kirk was talking to the embassy computer.
"When I said we needed to talk, I did not mean tonight," said Spock, almost gently. They were still walking; they weren't to wherever they were going yet.
"Well," said Kirk, unsure how to explain what he had been thinking. "I'm sorry. You don't have to—"
"Of course I do," said Spock, touching Kirk's forearm.
Kirk put his head down and kept walking.
The park was hill and valley, lined by cedar and cypress trees, brown-gray and skeletal, but with hints of lime in nudging buds. The grass was well-mown and rustled, coolly, giving way to sweet brown earth on the walking paths.
"Why don't I tell you," said Kirk.
x
"I deserve this," said Kirk.
He'd always been good at taking pills. One time, he'd had a bad intestinal infection, and the doctor had given Winona these gigantic horse pills for him to take. Hyposprays weren't good for everything—especially not self-medicating—and Winona had been concerned, at first, that her baby boy wouldn't swallow the capsules. But he'd gulped them down unconcernedly.
These pills were different. They were small, purple painkillers. He lined them up, twelve piles of ten, and drank each pile with a long gulp of water from a frosted glass.
Automatic movement. He moved through the process and finished, and went to lie on his bed.
There wasn't anything.
At some point, Winona came in, and something happened—she found out somehow. Kirk didn't remember much, because there still wasn't anything. (That was the point.) He had a fleeting memory of horrifying warmth in his throat, and throwing up for a moment that felt like days, and of a hospital transport, and of a surprisingly clear few seconds in which a beautiful nurse with skin the color of rich chocolate gently placed an IV under his skin, and being taken aback by how painless it all was.
He remembered a lot of flickering light, and voices, braided into the silence, and staring at a clock tick through two hours, from four AM to six AM, second by second by second by second. He remembered a police officer, but not clearly—he thought he might only remember that because he knew that the police officer was there, from hearing the officer's testimony in court.
The first really firm memory he had was of a spider the size of his thumbnail crawling all the way from the foot of his biobed up to his level, where it perched in the exact center of his chest for a long, long time. Finally it skittered off to the side, and, he assumed, crawled away.
He remembered that the angle of the sunlight through the window was exactly forty-five degrees, and he remembered that the beige tiles had a pattern in their dark flecks.
After howeverlong, the haze lifted, and the air grew heavy again, but the change was this: he heard whispers, brought in on eddies of wind from the hospital halls, about separation and abuse and jail.
But there still wasn't anything.
x
In the park, the expression on Spock's face was forcibly calm.
"He physically and verbally abused you for years," said Spock. "And so you tried to kill yourself."
Kirk didn't think he had ever actually heard it summed up. He nodded.
Spock laced his fingers together in front of his face. "This happened when you were thirteen."
"Yes. They started dating when I was nine."
The wind was colder now, and Kirk shivered. The sharp was pulsing inside of him, scraping at his ribs and stomach. Spock seemed very, very far away, and for a long, pure moment, Kirk was afraid, so afraid, that things were going to change horribly between them. Spock was going to be understanding and look him in the eye and they were going to laugh and see the radiant veils of lies slide back to reveal the grimy truth, and it was going to be too much to bear, and Kirk would never be able to sit near him again like this, and watch the veins in Spock's eyelids pulse. He would never be able to put his head on Spock's shoulder or kiss the paper-thin skin on Spock's neck.
Spock's black, black eyes gave him no clues.
Kirk didn't know it, but his mind was making connections that would allow him to continue his tale. Kirk hadn't trusted anybody since he was thirteen, and now, four years later, he had a chance to give his whole being over to another person. He'd had that chance before but had never taken it.
Even though his eyes were dark, Kirk knew like breathing that Spock wouldn't go away.
He considered having an epiphany, but he wasn't sure what it would be about, or how much good it would do him, so he said, "I haven't told you all of it," and Spock said back, "Yes. I know."
Spock got up, unfolding like a mystery, and came to sit next to Kirk, the sides of his hot upper arm and leg pressed against Kirk's.
"I am here," said Spock. "I am here."
x
The judge said, "Thirty to one hundred years," and that should have been it.
But it wasn't. It never was.
Winona changed completely. She took three consecutive demotions and became a second-level mechanic at the Riverside shipyard. She never took her eyes off of Kirk again. The men she dated were few and far between, and she vetted them thoroughly. Kirk only ever met two of them, and he liked them well enough, but nobody was up to Winona's standards anymore.
Kirk changed too. He shattered that night, and the glue the hospital administrators and psychologists plied on him never took.
He only did well in school because he was crazy—or, that's what he told Winona. Kirk had a weird streak in him that was a mile longer than his stupid one. So he never skipped school (unless it wouldn't hurt his grade). He was arrested four times before he was seventeen, and effectively went off the deep end, but he was first in his class, and it puzzled the hell out of his teachers and counselors. But of course, Kirk never let other people worry him.
In the intervening years, Kirk would wonder where he was going, what he was doing, why he was doing it—and he would never know. Before, he had been so rational, so in control. But now there was nothing holding him back. He had survived death, and he was newly indestructible—but he had no will to live.
He didn't realize how much he liked being alive until the chance to die was once more bluntly presented to him.
On the night of April 8th, just after Hydra had risen in the Western hemisphere, Franklin Sandford, with twenty-seven years until parole left on his sentence, escaped from jail.
He broke into a nearby house and stole three antique firearms, new clothing, and the household car. Edmonton Low-Security Penitentiary was seventy miles from Riverside. In an hour, Frank was standing outside the Lawrence residence.
He heaved a chair through the downstairs window. Winona Lawrence, who came, phaser blazing, out of the kitchen, he shot twice in the leg and once in the face.
He went upstairs.
Later Kirk will think that he has been saving all of the fear in his life for that one moment. He has never been afraid before, and he will never be afraid again. But when Kirk sees Frank in the doorway, it isn't fear that takes him: it is something so basic and plain that it is a sheet of solid, gaping color draped over his every sense.
Later Kirk will think that he could have struggled harder. Frank isn't young and spry like Kirk. But he is big and powerful, Kirk's litheness can't save him. Frank shoots Kirk four times, in the arms and legs, before Kirk stops struggling. The bones in his shoulder, wrist, and both knees shattered almost completely, Kirk can only close his eyes.
x
Rape is all of the pain and uncertainty in the world balled up into a whisper that echoes forever in the dark places in your head. It is thin, jagged splinters of glass that can never be plucked from your flesh. It is a miasma of clouds fogging every sunny day. It is bruises and havoc, and it smells like sewer and blood. It is a symphony of chaos, screaming like a pair of lungs with a burning brand thrust through them.
Rape is a living thing, and it is the edge of a sharp, sharp knife that never leaves your skin.
x
Kirk tells Spock all he can remember, because he never has, and it's been welling up inside like a rotting corpse. It's poison that comes spewing out of him, and it's been inside long enough.
x
At some point—Kirk remembers so much of that night clearly, but not this—Frank's attention lapses, and Kirk does not stop to think. He takes a gun—maybe it was on the floor, maybe Frank was still holding it—and shoots Frank in the head.
Kirk has never held a weapon before this. The retort sends a bolt of white pain up his arm that explodes at his already injured shoulder, and he blacks out. When he wakes up, there is blood and brain everywhere, and Frank isn't moving.
The lawyer calls it adrenaline, courage, and self-defense. Kirk doesn't care what it is, or if it was right or wrong to do it. He cares that it's over now. He's slumped on a bench in a courtroom again, next to his mother, whose eyes are still bruised. Frank is in the hospital, in a coma, and he will never wake up.
x
Kirk pulls himself out of the past that he has been reliving and placed himself firmly in the present.
x
The caveat—there were so many, but like footnote 4 of US v. Carolene, this one was hugely significant—was that Kirk never told anyone that he had been raped.
Kirk never passed out at the hospital and refused a full-body scan. A doctor came into his room at midnight, accompanied by a police officer, and said something about "DNA" and "assault" and was about to say "sexual assault" when Kirk lifted his pointer finger—all he could move of his arms—and said, "I have the right not to have this investigated, correct?" The officer nodded briefly. "Then no," said Kirk. "I wasn't sexually assaulted, and if you find any evidence that proves I was, then not only is it false, but you also need to keep in mind that I won't be pressing charges."
The officer nodded again and left. The doctor looked angry, but Kirk just blinked at her, and she left too, slamming the door behind her, because there was nothing she could do.
x
"Because," said Kirk. "I didn't want to deal with it any more. I should have—that's what I think now. I didn't even know Frank's condition then. They wouldn't tell me about him—no, that's not true. I never asked. But even before I knew that he was brain dead, I didn't want to pursue charges."
"I am glad you changed your mind," said Spock. "Can the charges still be levied?"
"Yeah," said Kirk. "There was a 2028 Supreme Court case that ruled that the statue of limitations never expires on cases involving the physical or sexual abuse of children. And I was a minor."
"I am surprised you were able to force the doctors not to investigate," said Spock.
"Iowa has laws on the books that treat 17 as the age of medical consent. It's leftover from the pre-Federation days, and they're just getting around to changing it," said Kirk. He paused, letting the wind billow into the silence. "Thank you for listening," he said finally. He didn't know what he felt. There was hollow and emptiness. And energy; a huge amount of it, more than he'd felt, like crackling lightning.
x
Spock felt little unease. With any other person, he wouldn't have known what to say and it would have been terribly uncomfortable. But with Kirk, he didn't know what to say and that was fine. They let words lapse into silence.
Spock realized, at some point, that Kirk was glancing over at him, and that he wanted to say, "So, what's your deal?"
"Would you like to talk more?" asked Spock.
"Yes," said Kirk. His eyes were intent. "Tell me about you."
x