A/N: This blizzard has done wonders for my inspiration and given me plenty of time to write (not that I do much anyway, but hey, I'm not stuck at school for half the day and I don't have to bother going to bed before midnight, because, of course, the times I should be sleeping are when I do my best writing). Tomorrow's a snow day (although I guess, it being after midnight, it's technically already Monday), and here's hoping Tuesday's one too, so hopefully I'll finish another chapter before I have to go back and writing slows down again (because this semester's classes will actually give me a lot of homework, according to friends who have already taken them... Sigh.).
Aurelan lightly rubbed Jim's back, her hand moving in small circles. His muscles remained tense, his face hidden. She kept rubbing, and slowly he leaned towards her, allowing himself to take comfort from her quiet presence. She smoothed his pillow-ruffled hair, a small part of her reveling in this expression of trust despite the situation surrounding it. An idea popped into her head.
"Jim, go put on a jacket and some shoes," she told him.
He straightened up, turning a dubious blue gaze on her. "Why?"
"Trust me," Aurelan urged. Taking his hand, she tugged him to his feet and led him upstairs. Leaving him outside his room, she retreated to her own to get dressed, finding herself only semi-surprised when she found Jim waiting outside of his room, his hands tucked in the pockets of a thick, uniform gold coat.
"You really like being a captain, don't you?"
Jim glanced down at his coat and shrugged. "Getting my ship is one of the best things that ever happened to me."
Aurelan freed one of his hands from its pocket and held it, gently guiding him into the kitchen. "Personally, I find it difficult enough to care for a family of seven, no matter how much I love them."
The corner of Jim's mouth twitched wryly upwards. "I never said it was easy, leading a crew of over 1,100 people. It's probably the hardest thing I've ever done, which is saying something considering some of the things I've done."
Aurelan passed her hand through the holographic section of wall over the back door. Sam had put it up years ago to cover the falling apart door, insisting he would fix the door and remove the faux wall, but he never seemed to get around to it. "Like what? If you don't mind telling me," she added.
Jim hesitated for a moment, glancing back curiously at the faux wall – it was invisible from outside. "I don't think you want to know."
Once outside, Aurelan turned away from the rising sun and set off across the grounds. "If you think I won't have the stomach for it, I'm stronger than I look."
"Trust me, I learned long ago not to underestimate women, no matter how pretty or gentle they may look," Jim assured her in the tone of someone who had fallen for that trap too many times.
Aurelan chuckled. "I would love to hear those stories."
"I don't know what stories you're talking about," Jim mumbled.
"Sure you don't," Aurelan replied teasingly. "So, you're a young man in charge of hundreds of people, all of you stuck onboard a single ship in the middle of space. Fairly stressful, I'm assuming? A lot more stressful than managing a single household."
"Yeah," Jim agreed.
After a few minutes of walking, Aurelan paused at the bottom of a hill, turning around to face Jim. "You must need some alone time, maybe somewhere people know not to come find you. Am I right?"
Jim nodded.
"Getting away is one way you cope when too much is going on. You just curl up and enjoy the silence."
"Yes… Is this going somewhere?"
In response, she led him over the hill. Behind it grew a magnificent weeping willow, genetically engineered to be in full-leaf even in the dead of winter. Its branches swept down, many reaching to the ground, providing a natural shield from the world. Nudging some branches out of the way, she ducked into its middle, where they stood in a small clearing. An outdoor couch adorned by pale blue cushions, a couple silver pillows, and a brown blanket stood against the trunk.
"This is my quiet spot," she told him, gesturing at the couch. "Winona uses it sometimes, too. The family knows not to bother anyone who's in here. If and when Sam gets on your nerves, or you need some time to collect yourself, feel free to come here. I know the whole tree thing is probably a bit girly, but-"
"It's fine," Jim told her. He smiled softly, nothing grand, but it was genuine and sweet. His eyes were trained on the sky visible through gaps in the upper branches. "Bones'll be happy to know I'm on a couch instead of curled up in a cramped corner beneath Engineering."
Aurelan smiled at his acceptance, even as she felt her heart bleed for him. He was so sweet and funny, and yet she got the feeling that this was a hidden part of him, buried under decades of hardships that had built walls of steel around his sensitive heart. He lived in a shell of coarser personality traits meant to disguise the gentle boy he probably had once been. And he had the act so perfected that even his own brother believed it – and hated him for it.
"I know we've only known each other since yesterday afternoon, but if you ever need to talk someone that's neither your mother nor a member of your crew, I'm here."
Jim glanced down at their hands, which hadn't let go of each other since she had taken his outside of his bedroom door. "I know," he whispered after a moment.
She squeezed his hand gently before finally letting go. "Do you want me to tell Leonard where you are?"
He looked at the couch, then back at the sky. "Give me like an hour? He'll go into full mother-hen-doctor mode if he knows I'm sick and outside on a cold day."
Aurelan though fleetingly of the way she could get with her kids, wondering how much more protective Leonard would be of Jim, all things considered. "All right. But, really, if you do start feeling really sick-"
"I'll come inside, I promise. Anything else you want to be concerned about… sis?" Jim asked, his voice quiet as he tried out the nickname.
Sis. The nickname sounded good… sounded right. "Not that I can think of, baby bro."
Jim beamed at her, and her heart glowed in response.
-LLAP-
Winona sat on her bed and looked out her bedroom window, watching Aurelan guide Jim in the direction of her weeping willow and come back alone, mild surprise flickering through her. That willow had been Sam's first anniversary present to Aurelan, and it was almost sacred to the young woman. She rarely took anyone to it with the intention of letting them stay underneath it – letting Jim do that was akin to sharing a piece of her soul with him. Yet she hadn't even hesitated, and Winona could've sworn she saw a smile on her face as she returned, a slight bounce in her step.
Aurelan did that for Jim faster than either Sam or I did.
She'd known Jim wouldn't have a problem befriending her – Aurelan just had one of those universally likeable personalities. But she had been concerned that Sam would drive a wedge between them purely because of his respective relationships to the two. Apparently, she needn't have worried about that – rather, it was Jim accidentally dividing Aurelan and Sam that she should worry about. Aurelan was the best thing that had ever happened to her firstborn, followed by their three kids. If Aurelan left Sam and took the kids with her…
But she was getting ahead of herself. It hadn't yet been 24 hours – it was far too early for such drastic pessimism. But she knew from personal experience that it only took a split second for a happy family to be brutally destroyed. Aurelan knew it, too, from when her parents had died in a shuttle crash when she was thirteen. While she knew this week would kill neither Sam nor Jim, one word too far, one blow too many… It could end any hope of Jim becoming an important part of a big, happy Kirk family.
Stop thinking like that, she scolded herself. Sam will come around, and in the meantime, Jim is a courageous man. He wants this, so he won't back down easily.
She glanced around her room. In layout, it wasn't much different from the guest room, except hers had an adjoining bathroom and a larger closet. The walls had been painted a pale gold. The bed was queen-sized, also shoved into the corner, with red-and-gold striped sheets and pillows. Sitting beside it was a large mahogany nightstand, adorned by a plethora of pictures of her family – her parents, George, Sam, Aurelan, the kids, and Jim. It was on one of these pictures that her eyes rested – Winona sat on a stool, her belly round with the unborn Jim, a four-year-old Sam sitting on her lap, fast asleep; George stood beside them, one arm wrapped around her, a broad grin lighting up his electric blue eyes.
It was the closest thing she had to a picture of the four of them together. George had died only a month later, and Jim and Sam were rarely featured in the same picture. She had no pictures of Jim between ages thirteen and 29, discounting his uniform photo – if he had any others from that time frame, he hadn't shared them with her; even the one on the shelf downstairs was from only a few months ago. Maybe she could ask McCoy…
A tiny knock on the door tugged her out of her thoughts. "Grandma?"
She smiled – if Jane was up, she must be feeling better. "Come in, sweetie," she called.
The door creaked open just wide enough for the little girl to slip inside. Closing it behind her, Jane turned to the bed and promptly crawled onto Winona's lap. Winona leaned back against the wall, wrapping one arm around her granddaughter and fingercombing Jane's hair with her other hand.
"You must be feeling better," Winona observed.
Jane nodded, absently sticking her thumb in her mouth. Realizing what she was doing, she abruptly took it out and wiped it on her pink nightgown. "Uncle Jim's friend made me better."
"He's a doctor – that's what they do."
Jane looked up at her with wide blue eyes. "Cool."
"I'm sure Doctor McCoy would agree with you."
"Can he make Daddy and Uncle Jim better?"
Are they sick? "What?"
"They were yelling at each other yesterday," Jane informed her.
"That takes a different kind of doctor, sweetie," Winona explained. "Doctor McCoy fixes things like the flu and sprained ankles."
"Oh." Distress began to gleam in her little face. "Does that mean they won't stop yelling at each other?"
"No," Winona reassured her hurriedly. "With some help from the rest of us, they'll learn to get along."
"Oh," Jane said again. Beginning to suck her thumb again, she stared out the window for a second. Then, taking her thumb out of her mouth, she asked "Would a tea party help? It helps my stuffed animals stop arguing."
Winona couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Maybe you could try that later this week, sweetie."
"Ok," she agreed cheerfully. "I'm hungry."
"I think your mom is already downstairs. How about you go down now, and I'll meet you in a few minutes?"
"Ok," she said, sliding off Winona's lap and skipping out of the room. Grinning and shaking her head at the drastic change of subject, Winona stood and began to change.
Jane did have a point, though, in her own six-year-old-mentality way. Maybe Jim and Sam just needed to sit down – with Winona, Aurelan, or McCoy there – and talk it out. So far, their interactions had consisted of Sam walking in on Jim and yelling at them. Perhaps an arranged time and a neutral setting, so they could both go in prepared and level-headed on even ground? It wasn't much, but it was more of a plan than anyone had come up with so far.
She went downstairs and pulled McCoy aside to work out the details.
A/N: I have basically no experience with kids, so sorry if Jane wasn't acting like a typical six-year-old...