Fic: For You I Came This Far, Part 1 of 4

[circ_bamboo]

Back to Master Post | On to Part 2

TO: kirk.winona@starfleet.fed
FROM: auto-notification@starfleet.fed
SUBJECT: James T. Kirk (00485930405)

Commander Winona R. Kirk:

James T. Kirk, identification number 00485930405, has recently changed his status from DEPENDENT to CADET.

James T. Kirk, identification number 00485930405, has listed you as EMERGENCY CONTACT.

If this notification was in error, please inform STARFLEET COMMAND as soon as possible.

Do not hit ‘reply.’ This messaging account is not monitored.

--

TO: kirk.james@starfleet.fed
FROM: kirk.winona@starfleet.fed
SUBJECT: You’re at the academy?

What happened?

--

TO: kirk.winona@starfleet.fed
FROM: kirk.james@starfleet.fed
SUBJECT: RE: You’re at the academy?

Oh. Yeah. I forgot they’d notify you. It’s a long story. Do you know some captain named Christopher Pike? I guess he wrote his dissertation on Dad. Anyway, the short version is that there was a barfight and the next thing I know I’m on a shuttle to San Francisco.

I’m fine. I think I like it here. Hell of a lot more interesting than what I was doing before.

Does this count as our yearly email?

--

TO: kirk.james@starfleet.fed
FROM: kirk.winona@starfleet.fed
SUBJECT: RE: You’re at the academy?

I haven’t talked to Chris Pike since he interviewed me right after you were born, but yes, I know him by reputation. Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?

And yes, this can count as our yearly email.

If you need anything from me, though, feel free to make it twice-yearly emails. I’m on Captain Pike’s old ship (the Yorktown), with his former XO as the new captain.

--

TO: kirk.winona@starfleet.fed
FROM: kirk.james@starfleet.fed
SUBJECT: RE: You’re at the academy?

I don’t have a concussion. My roommate is a doctor. He’d notice.

You’re on the Yorktown? Huh. I’m guessing Pike didn’t know that.

I’m Command track, not Engineering, but if I need math help, I’ll drop you a line.

--

TO: pike.chris@starfleet.fed
FROM: kirk.winona@starfleet.fed
SUBJECT: James T. Kirk

Dear Captain Pike:

Apparently you and my son appear to be acquainted now. I’d offer you my sympathies but I doubt you’d take them.

It also appears that you are unaware of my current posting. For the record, then: I’m currently fixing the engines in your old ship.

Captain Number One says hello, or she probably would if I told her I was messaging you.

Sincerely,

Commander Winona Kirk
Chief Engineer, U.S.S. Yorktown

--

Transcript of real-time video communication between Number One, Captain, and Christopher Pike, Captain, excerpted.

PIKE: Winona Kirk is your chief engineer? When did that happen?
ONE: When I let Cait take a year off to go to command school.
PIKE: Well, obviously, but . . . I mean . . . [He shakes his head.] I just scraped Kirk’s younger son off the floor of a bar and convinced him to enroll in the academy.
ONE: Yes, she told me. Actually, she asked how the hell you managed that, as the last time she saw you, you were apparently not the kind of person who could manage such a feat.
PIKE: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
ONE: Well, when was the last time you saw her?
PIKE: [frowns] I don’t know that I’ve actually seen her since I interviewed her for my dissertation, so about twenty years ago, give or take. Well, okay. That makes sense.
ONE: Are you telling me you didn’t spring forth from the Academy, fully formed as a captain?
PIKE: As far as you and anyone who has ever been under my command is concerned, I absolutely did.
ONE: That’s fine. I’ll go ask Phil.
PIKE: Oh, no. Don’t do that!
[They both laugh.]
PIKE: Is Kirk going to be staying with you after Cait returns?
ONE: I don’t know. I asked her to consider extending her tour with the Yorktown and she said she’d think about it. I’m a little worried that with someone less than Winona Kirk, Cait will find it nearly impossible to concentrate on being the XO and staying out of Engineering, so I hope I’ll have her for at least another year.
PIKE: Speaking of XOs, how’s Lieutenant Deer working out for you?
ONE: [glares at him] I’d rather not talk about it.

--

“Number One to Engineering. Commander Kirk, could you please report to the captain’s ready room.”

Winona Kirk looked up from her desk, where she was piecing together a very small and remarkably unimportant for all its intricacy chip board, and said, “I’ll be there in a moment, sir.” As she stood, she pressed a few buttons on the monitors above her desk. Nothing appeared to be going on out of the ordinary, so she was willing to guess this had something to do with Lieutenant Deer.

It was a safe guess; she saw the captain pacing around the small room as she entered, and mere milliseconds after the door shut, Captain One said, “You’re qualified to be a bridge commander, correct?”

Winona nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’m going to need you to take some shifts on the bridge in the near future.”

“May I ask why, sir?” Winona had actually been expecting this since Lieutenant Zelát had told her of the personality conflict (to put it politely) between One and her XO four months ago. Frankly, she was only asking why because she hoped One was going to let loose and swear or something.

One closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “This goes no further, Commander.”

“Of course not.”

Another pause, and, “If I have to serve seven full shifts a week with Lieutenant Deer, it is very possible that I will commit a felony and, as the highest-ranked officer on the ship other than myself, it will in that case be your duty to put me in the brig and take over command of the Yorktown until we return somewhere where I can be court-martialed.”

“Is justifiable homicide still an affirmative defense?” Winona asked.

“I very much hope so!” was One’s response.

“Well, in that case,” Winona said, “I can’t refuse without being an accessory to murder.”

“I was hoping you’d see it that way,” One said, smiling. “I’ll send an amended duty roster around later.”

“Sounds good.”

“You can get back to Engineering now, Commander. Thank you for your assistance in this matter.”

“Of course, sir.” She turned to leave, and then said, “Actually, Captain, I believe that Dr. Boyce outranks me. If we need to take control of the ship, should I defer to his judgment?”

One’s snort was not entirely unexpected. “I asked Dr. Boyce to take a bridge shift or two, and he gave me the ‘you-know-better’ look before saying that if I made it an order, he would do so.”

Winona laughed, and left, saluting on her way out. She liked Captain One; liked Dr. Boyce and Lieutenant Zelát, the science officer, as well. As a matter of fact, she liked nearly everyone she had to work with on the ship except Lieutenant Deer.

She hadn’t had to work directly with the lieutenant yet, but from what she was given to understand, he was very bright, very knowledgeable, and outstanding at two things: picking the wrong time to display that knowledge, and coming to the wrong conclusion based on the facts presented. She could only guess that Starfleet thought that having actual experience under a captain who made nearly all the correct conclusions would fix that.

It might, if One doesn’t kill him first, she thought, and shook her head.

When she got back to her desk in Engineering, she found a message from Dr. Boyce blinking at the corner of one of her screens. Is anyone dead, maimed, or otherwise injured?

She chuckled to herself and replied, No, but she warned me that I may have to command the ship if she kills him.

Better you than me was his reply. Still on for tonight?

Winona groaned. After that pun, I’m not so sure. A new batch had come up ready in the still that she totally didn’t know about in the engine room, and she’d commandeered a bottle and called the only person on the command staff who could appreciate decent alcohol. Well, she amended in her head, decent non-beer alcohol. She had heard rumors that Lieutenant Zel sometimes brewed beer in her lab, but hadn’t had it confirmed yet.

A few hours later, ensconced in a comfy armchair, she swirled the new hooch around in her glass and held it up to the light. “I don’t know, Phil. I know you say it’s fine, but I’ve never seen it quite this . . . cloudy.”

“I didn’t say it was fine,” Dr. Boyce--Phil--said. “I said it wouldn’t kill us.” He was similarly seated in a chair, glass in one hand, his feet propped up on an end table. “You going to try it?”

“On the count of three?” Winona suggested, and Phil nodded. “One, two . . . three.” She took a ginger sip, swished it around her mouth, and swallowed. “Hm.”

“Tastes like engine-room hooch,” he said.

“Yup,” she said. “Only--what’s that aftertaste? Carrot?” She frowned, and looked at the glass. “What did they use in this?”

“I don’t think carrot, quite,” he said. “Maybe more like those carrot-like bits you find in Andorian curry.”

“Oh, aavli,” she said. “Maybe.” She took another sip. “Whew. Packs a punch, anyway.”

“So, better than Fifty-Two?”

“They’re all better than Fifty-Two.” She shuddered. The carrot-y batch was Fifty-Six; Forty-Nine was the first batch that had finished after she took over as chief engineer. “Better than Fifty-Four, even, I’d say.”

“Not as good as Fifty-One, though.” He made a note on a padd and set it aside. “Soda? Ice?”

“Nah,” she said. “I’ll drink this one straight. I think the carrot is growing on me.”

“Four more batches,” he said, adding ice to his own glass. He meant, before she left the Yorktown.

Winona shrugged. “Actually,” she said, in her best off-hand manner, “Captain’s asked me to stay on for a year past that.”

“Oh, really,” Phil said, and his utter lack of surprise wasn’t, in and of itself, a surprise.

“She seems to think I’ll be able to keep Commander Barry out of Engineering.”

He snorted. “You and what army?”

She gave him a look over the rim of her glass.

“Well, maybe,” he said, conceding.

“You people,” she said, mock-sighing. “You seem to think that you can run roughshod over every other officer in the fleet.”

“You’ve never actually met Cait, have you.”

She shook her head.

“Well, you’re in for a treat.”

“You would think so,” she said, tongue a tad loosened from the alcohol, which had hit her system like the proverbial Mack truck. “Er, wait. Are we still pretending I don’t know about that?”

“Are we still pretending I haven’t had my hands up your--”

“Yes, all right,” she said, cutting him off. He’d done a couple of her prenatal checkups back when she was pregnant with Jim twenty-odd years ago, before the Kelvin had taken off; there was only a limited number of doctors in Starfleet with training in obstetrics, and she’d seen all of ‘em between Sam and Jim.

Well, that and he’d done her last gyn checkup, but in order to be friends with the ship’s CMO, one generally had to ignore that.

“Speaking of,” Phil said, and took another sip of his drink. “I got an interesting message from Chris the other day.”

‘Chris,’ of course, being Captain Pike; something of his ghost lingered strongly over nearly every part of the ship. It was less explainable than Barry’s fingerprints being everywhere; at least she was coming back. Pike, of course, was due to get the Enterprise when she was finished. “Oh?” Winona said. “Yes, he apparently found Jim at a bar, picking a fight with about six cadets. I understand there was a young woman involved.”

He laughed. “Well, that was more than he told me. He’s excited, I guess, to see what Jim can do.”

Winona sighed. “Yeah, Jim put up some pretty good test scores before he finished high school, but after he graduated, he refused all of his college offers, told me to my face that he had no desire to make anything useful of himself, and rode off on that damn motorcycle of his.”

She’d spent the first year after that wondering what the hell she’d done wrong, and had finally come to the conclusion that it had taken a village to make Jim Kirk who he was, and she shouldn’t try to shoulder more than her share of the blame for it. The fact that she’d managed to keep in contact and on not-horrible terms with her wayward son was pretty remarkable, she thought.

“We’ll see if Captain Pike has any more luck than I did.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but probably failed.

Phil, wisely, didn’t respond to her tone, but said, “Chris has pretty good luck talking most people into things.”

Winona raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been told that, but honestly, the one and only time I remember meeting him, he couldn’t have talked his way out of a paper bag.” She could only blame the alcohol for what followed. “Cute as hell, but so nervous I thought he was going to throw up on my shoes.”

He snorted. “He got better. I promise.”

She didn’t say anything, but apparently the look on her face showed what she was thinking, because he added, “You’ll see in about four months.”

“Better-looking?” she asked wistfully. “Is that possible? Oh, hell, I’m plastered. This batch is lethal.”

“It is, at that,” he said. “Are you staying here tonight?”

“If I am, I want another glass. And no more personal questions.”

“I have not asked you a single personal question tonight,” he said, protesting, even as he poured more of Fifty-Six into her glass.

“Damnit, you’re right,” Winona said, after a moment. “I keep revealing stupidly inappropriate bits of information all by myself. Like, the LS who does the uniforms? I would hit that. I mean. Oh, damn.” She sighed.

“What happens under the influence of engine-room hooch stays under the influence of engine-room hooch,” he said, which made her laugh.

“Oh, you’re drunk as hell, too, aren’t you?”

“Completely,” he said. “I think this ought to be cut with Fifty-Five before it’s released to the general public.”

“Good idea. Remind me to send Nik an email.” Lieutenant Nikhil Patil was absolutely not in charge of the still. Assuming there was one. She giggled.

TO: ANONYMOUS-YORKTOWN-ENG
FROM: ANONYMOUS-YORKTOWN
SUBJECT: fifty-six

N, you might want to re-run some chemical tests on aavli (if that’s what was in there) and fifty-six before you release it. Stuff packs a punch, to the point where I’m wondering if there’s a by-product in there that P’s scan didn’t catch.

W.

--

The next morning, she woke up and groaned, her face mashed against one of the armrests of Phil’s couch. She was too damn old for this shit. Thank God he’d left a hypo about two inches from her nose. She stuck it into her neck and sighed, as the hiss made her feel better psychosomatically.

She heard faint noises coming from his attached bathroom, and thought she probably should sneak out while he was still in there, but it was taking a couple moments for the hangover hypo to work. She sat up slowly and pushed her feet back into her shoes.

On the table in front of her was a padd, with a text note from Phil: “Winona--Watch this sometime, when you’re bored.” She picked it up and thumbed it on. The memory contained a single video clip. It was, from the name, a vidcomm message of some sort, left by Captain Pike for Phil.

She hesitated before she hit ‘play.’ She really, seriously hadn’t thought about the kid who’d written his dissertation on the Kelvin at all in the years since he’d interviewed her. Of course she’d hardly avoided hearing his name on the ‘fleet news, but she didn’t search any information out; his successes hadn’t registered as anything other than those of a fellow officer.

There was no real reason why she shouldn’t watch the clip, though.

Except she didn’t.

She took it with her back to her room and put it in a desk drawer, figuring she’d find it the next time she was drunk and maudlin.

* * *

Winona served a couple of shifts on the bridge with Lieutenant Deer before she and he truly butted heads. The Yorktown was circling around a planet with no sentient life, taking readings to check on an anomaly in the system’s star. Lieutenant Zel was very excited, and her department had been working nearly round-the-clock for the last three days. It was nearly the end of beta shift, and Winona was yawning into her fist.

“Sir, the readings from Erthion Alpha are starting to approach the danger range,” Adivor, currently working the science station, said.

“Garrison, alert Lieutenant Zelát,” Winona said. The science officer and a handful of people had gone down to the surface of the planet.

A few minutes later, Zel and her party requested transport. “Sir, there’s too much interference,” the transporter tech reported.

“All right,” Winona said, with a sigh. “Wei,” she said to the pilot, “time for taxi duty.”

Wei nodded, but before she could stand, Lieutenant Deer stood up and said, “With all due respect, Commander Kirk, is Lieutenant Wei the best person to send for the job?”

“Ready room, now, Lieutenant Deer,” Winona snapped. “Wei, you have your orders.”

Wei nodded again and left quickly; Zsir took her place at the helm as Winona stalked over to the door, not bothering to look to see if Deer was following.

He was, right on her heels; when the door slid shut behind him, he said, “Sir, sending down our best pilot in a shuttle when we are this close to the Neutral Zone seems rather impractical.”

“Do you know what else is impractical, Lieutenant Deer?” Winona said. “Questioning my orders on the bridge.”

Lieutenant Deer blinked. “Technically, I outrank you,” he said.

“You do not,” she said. “At the moment, I am commanding the bridge, and whether or not you are first officer is irrelevant at this moment.”

“Respectfully, Commander,” he said, and that he’d switched from ‘sir’ to her rank did not go unnoticed, “there are eight pilots on this ship, and Wei is the best. If we need to perform evasive maneuvers while she is gone, we will be at a disadvantage.”

She stared at him for a moment. Apparently he actually did make all of his decisions based on statistics, and even more poorly than reported. “Two things,” she said. “First, we will not need to escape anything during the half hour or so that Wei and the landing party are not on the ship. Second, and more important, Wei is the second-best pilot on this ship.” She knew that one for a fact.

“Commander, if you look at the piloting scores of the eight pilots, you will find that Wei’s were the highest.” Deer was implacable.

Winona went through the list of pilots in her head: two per shift and two swing meant . . . “Actually, Lieutenant, there are nine pilots on this ship, and the one you apparently did not know about, I can guarantee, had a higher score on all the flight exams than even Wei.” She crossed her arms. “The fact that you didn’t even bother to look at the public file of your commanding officer does not speak well to your attention to detail, Lieutenant Deer. Between that and your inability to keep your opinions to yourself when they are neither relevant nor important nor, for that matter, respectful of the commander, I would find it very difficult to recommend you for a permanent position as an executive officer.”

“With all due respect, Commander Kirk, you are not a pilot.”

Actually, she had passed all the flight sims and was allowed to pilot any ship under a certain size, but that was irrelevant. “No, but Captain One is.”

“Oh,” Deer said, and flushed bright red.

“In the future,” she said, “I would advise you to expand your search parameters, and consider not opening your mouth unless you are certain what you are going to say is correct, relevant, and useful to the discussion. No one cares,” she said, holding her hand up when he looked like he was about to speak, “what your test scores are, or what anyone else’s test scores are, once you’ve been out here for a while.”

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Dismissed,” Winona said, and he left.

She took a moment to take the security video of the previous few minutes and send it to Number One, who was apparently still awake as she sent Winona back, Excellent. a few minutes later.

Three or four days after that, One caught Winona in her room and said, “I don’t know why your speech worked on Deer so much better than mine ever did, but he is at least fifty percent less annoying.”

“You haven’t met my children, have you,” Winona said, and they both laughed.

* * *

About three months later was the next Kelvin Day, the first Kelvin Day she spent aboard the Yorktown, and it was not mentioned. There were no ship-wide messages sent out about Kelvin Day. No one came up to her and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Commander,” or anything else stupid. Winona went to work in the morning, got back to her quarters after picking up dinner in the mess, and found Phil sprawled in her chair with what was probably a bottle of Fifty-One, by the shape.

“What makes you think I want company right about now?” she asked. She knew she sounded a bit harsh, but she’d spent all day on edge, waiting for someone to say something so she could pick a fight. It hadn’t happened, and her nerves were still jangling.

Phil shrugged. “It’s practically my job. In addition, I expect you to return the favor in about two weeks, because frankly, Number One is shit at the getting-a-friend-drunk-on-bad-anniversaries business.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face flushed red. That was something else they didn’t talk about--his late wife, Alicia, whom she’d met a few times before her death, a few years before George’s. It was easy to forget that she wasn’t the only one who had lost a spouse, because she was probably one of two people on the ship who knew. “I only got enough food for myself.”

He indicated a plate beside him, with a few crumbs on it. “I already ate. It’s fine.”

She sat on her bunk and set her tray down. “I feel like half of the time I spend around you involves alcohol.”

“More than that, I’d say,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “But the last time, with Fifty-Six, getting plastered wasn’t on purpose.” They’d both passed on Fifty-Seven and Fifty-Eight, and Fifty-Nine wasn’t done yet.

“Please tell me that’s not spiked with Fifty-Six,” she said, indicating the bottle. Nik’s experiments had indicated that the aavli, fermented, had some strange truth-serum-like properties. They’d saved a bottle for research purposes and dumped the rest out.

“Hell, no,” he said. “You think I want to hear about your and George’s sex life?”

Winona laughed.

It took nearly an hour for her to be drunk enough to talk about George as a person.

“You know what I miss?” she said. “I miss the fact that he was so damn tall.”

Phil raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, don’t even. He had eight or ten centimeters on you. I know it’s a stupid thing to miss, and there are other tall men around, but not--well, they’re just not him.”

He nodded. “That makes sense.”

“And even after twenty-odd years, and thirty-odd since we got married, once in a while I hear someone say ‘Kirk,’ and I don’t expect it to be me.”

“Why did you change your name when you got married?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you?” she countered.

“I did,” he said. “Philip Whitson married Alicia Boyce and became Philip Boyce.”

“Oh,” she said. “Whoops.” She was a tad too inebriated to feel truly embarrassed, but she did feel a little silly for making the assumption.

He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

“My last name was George,” Winona said. “It didn’t work very well. We thought about finding some acceptable third name but after a while it was just easier for me to change my name to ‘Kirk’ and drop the ‘George.’ I didn’t care that much; it was a name my parents chose, anyway, because they couldn’t decide on a family last name.” She shrugged. “I think if my last name had not been his first name, I’d have just kept my name and screw the whole thing.”

“Do you miss him? Not his height, not the sex--not that I want to hear about that--but just him?”

“Do you miss Alicia?” Phil never talked about his personal life. It was a Rule. But hey, there was alcohol involved--maybe he’d say something.

He shook his head. “You don’t get to ask that until a week from Thursday.”

“I thought we were sharing here.”

He gave her a look.

She sighed. “Yes, I still miss him. But it’s closer to the way I miss my father, I guess, than it was for the first few years, where it was like I was missing an arm or something.” She took another sip of her drink. “It’s not like I can ever forget, but twenty-three years later, it--just sort of hurts like a dull headache, the kind you don’t even bother taking drugs for, rather than walking around with a knife in my chest. Which I’m sure you know.”

He nodded.

“I haven’t exactly been celibate over the last twenty years and I don’t think I could have done that without having some measure of peace about the whole situation.” She heaved another sigh. “Except today. Some years it’s worse than others.”

“Because of Jim enlisting?”

“That, and all the other crap,” she said.

“He’s always admired you, you know.”

“Jim?”

“Chris,” Phil said.

His random changes of topic made sense to her by now, or maybe it was the alcohol. “Blah, blah, strength in the face of adversity,” Winona said, with a dismissive hand gesture. “There was a whole series of pamphlets about dealing with grief with my damn face on them.”

“I know,” he said. “I gave a few of them away, against my better judgment. No, that wasn’t it, really.” But he refused to say why, and she gave up after a few minutes.

* * *

And then all of a sudden the four months were up, and it was the end of January; the Yorktown was back on Earth, and she’d made plans to meet with Jim for the first time in three years.

The formal welcome-back ceremony wasn’t particularly formal; it was at five in the morning, San Francisco time, which meant that no one outside of the obligatory admiral and PR person bothered to show up. It also left the command staff a little too awake at an early hour. “Breakfast?” Phil suggested.

“Yes, please,” Number One said. “I assume you’ve already commed Cait?”

“And Chris,” he said. “Coming, Winona, Zel?”

“I’m meeting Jim at eight,” Winona demurred, but as it was only a little after 0630 she allowed herself to be persuaded.

The four went to a nearby diner and took over a corner booth, waiting for Barry and Pike to show up. It didn’t take long before Barry appeared, auburn curls still half wet from a shower, dressed in civvies. “Well, I feel out of place,” she said. “Hi--you must be Winona Kirk. I met your kid. Smart. Also a smart ass, but I’m sure you know that.”

“I’m well aware,” Winona said, smiling.

“You all might want to look away now,” Cait warned, as she slid into the booth next to Phil.

Huh, Winona thought. Apparently his reticence about his personal life didn’t include an unwillingness to participate in PDAs.

“So what’s good here?” Zel asked, her antennae almost touching with amusement.

“The hash browns,” Winona said immediately. “All the grease and salt you could ever want.”

“I do like grease and salt,” Zel said, “but I’m led to believe that hash browns are a side dish, normally.”

Winona sighed. “That’s true. I’d go for the waffles, as a main dish.”

“Mm, waffles,” Number One said. Her eyes flicked over to Cait and Phil, and then back to the chrono on the wall.

Winona nudged her and said quietly, “What, are you going to cut them off after five minutes?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“Heard that,” Cait mumbled, and went back to her . . . activities.

“Waffles, hash browns . . . how’s the bacon here?” Zel asked.

“It’s usually a little burnt,” a new voice said, and Winona stiffened. She hadn’t heard that voice in years, but of course she knew who it was, and not just because the group was expecting him to join them.

Christopher R. Pike, back when he was Lieutenant Pike, had been blondish and baby-faced and almost too pretty for words. But, as Winona discovered as she looked up from her menu, those days were decidedly past. Captain Pike’s hair was mostly gray, with a little silver at the sideburns, and he had lines in his face, especially around his eyes. He’d definitely outgrown ‘pretty’ and had landed smack dab in the middle of ‘handsome,’ with a side of ‘distinguished,’ she thought. Especially in the charcoal-gray instructor’s uniform.

“That’s unfortunate,” Zel said, breaking her train of thought.

Right. We’re talking about bacon.

And then he smiled, and Winona forgot what the conversation had been about altogether.

When she zoned back in, he’d taken a seat on the outside, next to Number One, and Cait and Phil had finally stopped trying to perform public tonsillectomies. “I don’t know if I should be disappointed that I didn’t get that warm of a greeting,” Captain Pike said, eyebrow raised, in Phil’s general direction.

Phil leaned back against the bench and smirked. “Well, if you really want . . .”

Pike leaned in and held his gaze for exactly long enough, and then smirked back. “I’ll take a rain check. The server’s here to take our orders.”

It took about five minutes of exceedingly general conversation, mostly between Zel (who liked talking about food) and Captain “no, call me Chris--what’s this ‘captain’ business? We’re eating breakfast.” Pike before Winona could relax enough to join in. Regardless, the hash browns were delicious and delivered quickly, the syrup unreplicated, and the coffee copiously refreshed.

“You’re on Earth for how long?” Pike--Chris--asked One.

“Three weeks. Actually twenty-two days.”

“Who’s staying here?”

“Deer,” One said, with a slight cough, and Chris’s pleasantly-neutral expression widened into a grin.

“What, you didn’t like your round of penance? Just remember what Spock was like before we beat him into submission,” he said.

Winona didn’t know who Spock was, but everyone else groaned.

“At least he improved,” One said.

“I don’t know about that,” Cait muttered, but Zel had asked a question about Spock’s current assignment at the same time, and the conversation turned to the Academy.

“Speaking of,” Chris said, “I understand that one of my advisees has to cancel his meeting with me because his mother is going to be in town.”

Winona blinked--almost, but not quite, a deer caught in the headlights--and laughed. “He told me that his schedule was so full that if we didn’t meet at 0800 today, he wasn’t going to have time for me until next Tuesday.” And I wasn’t exactly going to tell him no.

Chris laughed as well. “That may be true--some of the cadets are doing survival training this weekend--but somehow I doubt it.”

“Hey,” Winona said. “You found him in a bar. You should have known what you were getting into.”

“Indeed,” he said. “I absolutely recruited your son into Starfleet based on how thoroughly he got his ass kicked in that bar fight.”

She shook her head sadly. “I thought I taught him better than that.” Everyone at the table laughed.

If she hadn’t been watching Chris Pike very closely, she might not have noticed a slight tightening around his eyes after he made the comment about the bar fight. It didn’t take her long to put together the tightening with the full-on wince that Lieutenant Pike had used when he had made similar statements--ones that easily could have been interpreted the wrong way, had Winona chosen.

Back in the long days after the Kelvin disaster, she had chosen to interpret more of his statements the wrong way than perhaps had been strictly necessary, but--Well. That was then. This was now, and she’d given him an out, the easy quip instead of asking just why he had recruited her son into Starfleet. She was rather impressed--and then embarrassed that she hadn’t expected it--that he’d gained a remarkable amount of control over the last twenty-two years.

Besides, the answer was obvious, or at least some of the answers. Jim’s test scores were sky-high; Chris’s hero-worship of George had been easily apparent when he’d interviewed her for his dissertation. Winona was a damn fine officer, if she did say so herself, and a damn fine engineer; if genetics and numbers said anything about a person, they would say that Jim was at least a good gamble.

“And on that note,” Winona said, “it is 0745 and if I don’t leave now, I’m going to be late and Jim will never let me live it down.” She waved her credit chip over the table’s reader and stood.

“Far be it from us to let our chief engineer get shown up by a mere cadet,” Number One said.

“I’ll head back to campus with you,” Chris offered. “If by any chance Jim sees us walking together . . .”

Winona laughed. “I like the way you think. Nice to meet you, Cait. See the rest of you at debrief.”

It took her a few moments, but she was able to keep her brain in line and concentrate on the walk and polite conversation, rather than Chris’s presence. And a formidable presence it was, but he seemed to be dedicating all his charm to putting her at ease. Right when she felt she could contribute more than the bare minimum, though, they turned onto the campus.

She’d been putting off thinking about it, but she was actually meeting Jim at the building next to the Kelvin memorial, and as per habit, she turned to go down a side street and enter the building through a different door.

“It’s shorter that way,” Chris said, pointing.

“Yes,” Winona said, in the same voice that she used when explaining things to very small children or very annoying lieutenants, “but we’re going this way.” He was bright, she reasoned. He’d figure it out. She bit her lip anyway.

Which he did, only a heartbeat or two later; she saw his face turn red in her peripheral vision, and he pulled his comm out of his pocket to check the time rather ostentatiously. “It’s 0756,” he said.

“What are the odds of Jim being early?” she asked, as they rounded the corner into the lobby of Kelly Hall.

“He’s ten minutes early if he figures you’ll be late and ten minutes late if he thinks you’ll be there to meet him,” Chris said, “so I’m not sure.”

Winona sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I expected. He’ll be ten minutes late.” She grinned. “I’m guessing he’s ten minutes late to your advising meetings.”

Rather than the rueful look she expected, she got a bright chuckle. “No, he’s absolutely on time,” he said. “I was early for the first two meetings and then drastically late for the next two, and he got the picture.”

And that was so--so perfect, really, that she could only laugh. She was wiping her eyes a moment later, where they’d been streaming, when she noticed Chris’s posture alter subtly, and he held out a hand.

“Good to see you again, Winona.”

“Likewise,” she said, shaking his hand, and turned to see her younger son standing behind her, stiff as a poker in his cadet reds.

“Cadet,” Chris said, as Winona turned.

“Sir,” Jim said. “Commander.”

“Jim,” Winona said, and raised a single eyebrow.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Chris said, and disappeared into the hallway.

Jim did not relax, although he did say, “Mom.”

“Jimmy,” she said. “Let’s get more coffee.” She gestured to the kiosk nearby.

They did, and found a café table around the corner. A few sips in, after polite questions about how the other was doing, Jim said, “I thought you didn’t know Captain Pike.”

“I said I hadn’t talked to him in years, but I had breakfast with him this morning.”

He started to smirk.

“And Captain One, Dr. Boyce, Lieutenant Zelát, and Commander Barry.” Lord, she loved the boy, but occasionally she wished she’d managed to drill more manners into him and less sarcasm.

“Commander Caitlin Barry?”

She nodded.

“She subbed for Wil-hat for a week in AWC 1. She’s pretty brilliant.”

“Good to know,” she said. “She’ll be the XO when I ship out again.”

He nodded, his shoulders dropping, and he slouched back in his seat. It didn’t look as insolent as she remembered.

“And what are you doing in Advanced Warp Core Mechanics, anyway?”

A few minutes of chatting about his schedule later, Jim drummed his fingers on the table before asking, “How do you deal with it?”

“With what?” she asked. She was pretty sure he didn’t mean the flaw in the standard calculation algorithm that they’d been discussing.

“The--the monument. Kelvin Day.” His fingers curled into quotes around the last phrase. “The first fucking week of classes a professor mentioned my father, and it couldn’t have been an accident.”

Winona almost called him on his language, but figured it would be hypocritical. “I don’t,” she said. “I’ve been way the fuck off-planet for every single Kelvin Day memorial service, or when you were younger, with you hiding from the media. I go out of my way to stay away from the monument, and I sent them a strongly-worded suggestion of what they could do with their invitation to the dedication ceremony. And if anyone mentions George Kirk to me who didn’t know him when he was alive, they never do it again.”

He gave a half-smile at the last.

“I’m not--” She closed her eyes briefly. “It’s been--well, you know exactly how many years it’s been.”

“It’s not that I’m mad that he’s dead,” Jim said. “I mean, if I were still mad about that, I’d be mad every minute of every day, and I’ve got better places to put my energy. It’s that he isn’t a person to them anymore; he’s just a symbol.”

“Shit, Jim,” she said, startled.

“Even the professors who had him sometimes use him as an object lesson.”

“I can’t even imagine,” she said. She couldn’t.

“I know,” he said. “And that’s why I’m still here.” He gestured with one hand at the building around them.

She nodded.

“So I hear there’s a tradition on ships to make moonshine in engine rooms,” Jim said.

“Lies, all of it,” she said, and they both laughed.

* * *

Later that evening, she dithered for a half hour or so before sending a quick comm message to Chris, asking if he had any spare time. He responded, suggesting dinner and drinks. I suspect this has something to do wtih Jim, he said, and I think that conversation requires alcohol.

She agreed, and they set a time and place--a bar called Grumpy’s, which supposedly had the area’s best tater tots, at 2030, the next day.

For the next twenty-four hours, she attempted to forget that she was meeting Chris Pike; otherwise she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to get anything done. Not that she particularly had anything important to do, but she was supposed to meet One and Cait for lunch.

Fortunately, that got postponed. Apparently some irregularities in Lieutenant Deer’s reports needed to be explained. It was a surprise to Winona; she’d thought the lieutenant was merely annoying, not incompetent. Nonetheless, it gave her another couple hours to pretend she wasn’t feeling like a teenager going on her first date. For goodness’ sake, Winona, you’re fifty-five and dinner with your son’s advisor is not a date. Get a hold of yourself.

It was cold by San Francisco standards that evening, so she found a jacket to go over her long-sleeved shirt, and took transit there. She arrived five or so minutes early, but Chris was already there, waiting in the lobby, also wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, holding his jacket. Which, Winona noticed, was much heavier than her own.

“They just have to clean off the table and we can sit,” he said.

“Good timing,” she said.

They sat a minute or two later, and ordered food, and agreed to disappear before the karaoke started at ten that night, before Winona asked, “Where are you from?”

Chris looked surprised for a moment, and said, “Here. Ish. Fleet brat. My family has a ranch out in the desert, and I spent summers there, but my dad’s an admiral now and my mother was a professor at UCSF and Stanford before she retired.”

“Hm,” she said. “Still doesn’t explain why you’re wearing a winter coat when it’s about eight degrees out.”

He laughed. “It’s eight degrees out. Where are you from, Andoria?”

“I’m from Iowa,” Winona said. “Where it snows.”

“Right,” Chris said, and looked down at his drink for a moment. “I knew that. Riverside?”

“No, that was George,” she said. “I was born and raised in Des Moines. My parents still live there. It is, contrary to popular belief, an actual city. No cows or corn.”

“Is that all it takes to be a real city?” he asked, and they both laughed.

Later, after they’d demolished an astonishing amount of food, the conversation finally turned to Jim.

“He’s doing well so far,” Chris said. “Hasn’t gotten thrown out of any more bars, or if he has, it wasn’t to a point where I was notified.”

“That’s definitely an improvement,” Winona said. “I don’t know exactly what you did, but Jim and I had an entire conversation without fighting, and we actually talked about things of substance.” She sighed. “You’re the only person around here he seems to have any use for, so I figure it must be you who civilized him.”

“You give me too much credit,” he said, but he looked pleased. “Jim’s a good kid--a good young man, that is. He’ll be a great officer. My job is to teach him when he should be a contrarian and when he shouldn’t.”

“And I’m telling you, I think it’s starting to work already.” She smiled at him, and he saluted her with his bottle. “I have no idea what you said to him to get him to join the ‘fleet, but I think I’m glad you did.”

He smiled back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He started peeling the label off his beer bottle before he looked back up at her, and said, “That’s good. It’s not a lot of fun when the parents don’t agree with their child’s decision, and blame the recruiter.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Winona asked.

“More than I’d like,” he said, and sighed. “As much as we call ourselves a peacekeeping armada, the fact remains that people die in service, and everyone wants someone to blame. I’m--” He shrugged, and tipped his bottle to one side. “Convenient.”

“I guess,” she said. “I’m ‘Fleet, though.”

“Oh, I know,” he said, and gestured for another round of beer.

A round or two after that, they were watching what looked like a group of cadets hover around the signup terminal for the karaoke. “Probably ought to head out,” she said.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “I don’t need to hear my students caterwauling drunkenly again.”

“Again?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

She laughed. “Speaking of,” she said, and it was probably only the beer that had her so curious. “What did you say to Jim?”

“You could ask him,” he said, and she watched his face shutter rapidly, until he was Captain Pike and not Chris.

“I could,” she said, only more curious, “but you’re here and he isn’t.”

“True,” he said. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“Sure,” she said. She couldn’t think of any reason why not.

His lips twisted to one side, and then he said, “Something like, ‘your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes, and managed to save eight hundred lives, including your mother’s, and your own. I dare you to do better.’”

Winona couldn’t see for a moment, because her entire vision hazed over red. When it came back, she looked straight at Christopher Fucking Pike--who at least had the temerity to look embarrassed--and said, “You bastard.”

Standing, she slapped her credit chip against the reader on the table and walked out of the restaurant without so much as a second glance behind her. When she got back to her quarters, she sent Jim a quick message telling him she was going to be out of town for the rest of leave. She sent roughly the same message to the rest of the senior staff of the Yorktown, and then, despite the late hour, arranged for transport as far away on the planet as she could manage.

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