Chapter Text
Winona groaned, the baby was coming and had been coming since she had woken up this morning with back pain. It was supposed to be a joyous day, the birth of their child that they had been eagerly awaiting for months. But the ship was under attack and George was not there.
“George, the shuttle's leaving. Where are you?” She needed him there; she needed him there so badly.
“Sweetheart, listen to me,” Winona knew she wouldn’t like what she was about to hear,” I'm not going to be there.”
“No” Winona started, in her mind thinking ‘no no no no no – you can’t do this George, you can’t’
“This is the only way you'll survive.”
“Please, don't stay on the ship. You have to be here!,” Winona begged.
“The shuttles will never make it if I don't fight them off.” Winona could hear the strain in his voice, how hard this was for her George to tell this to her. It didn’t help though.
“George, I can't do this without you.”
A nurse interrupted her pleas to her husband – her universe – telling her to push, that the baby was coming. Distracted by the order, Winona pushed, pushed their baby out with all her energy. But it felt wrong – ‘so so wrong. George –‘
“What is it?” interrupted her thoughts – her George.
“It’s a boy.”
“A boy!“, he sounded so excited and it broke her heart even more, “tell me about him”
“He’s beautiful… George, you should be here” Winona said, begging one last time against the inevitable.
Winona choaked back a sob when she heard the computer blare over the comm, “Impact Alert”
George distracted her again from her thoughts of his death, “What are we going to call him?”
“We can name him after your father,” she replied, anything to link this baby boy to her husband.
“Tiberius? Are you kidding me? No, that’s the worst. Let’s name him after your dad. Let’s call him Jim.”
Winona couldn’t help but give a teary smile – even now her George was smiling, and just being the George she loved, “Jim. Okay. Jim it is.”
“Sweetheart, can you hear me?” Winona held her baby – Jim – close, as though holding him would prevent what was about to happen.
“I can hear”
The last things she heard her husband say was, “I love you so much. I love you…”, and then there was an explosion.
There was nothing left but static, her tears, and the cries of her baby as her universe was destroyed.
When the USS Geribold picked up on the distress signal and picked up the survivors, Winona wasn’t sure what to do. Her husband was dead and the light of their lives, their son was there. She knew deep down she should be focusing in on her son, taking care of him, but she couldn’t find it in herself to give a damn.
She was stationed planet side – “to allow her time to recover from the USS Kelvin and to recover from the birth of your son” the official memo said. She tried living on her own, she really did – but most days she could barely take care of herself, never mind her son.
“Winona… Winnie, you need to stop this. Come back to Iowa, live with us, Frank and the boys would love you have you there. I would love to have you there,“ Winona’s sister-in-law Tracy plied on her when she made her weekly visits. It wasn’t long before Winona caved in.
Life in Riverside, Iowa was pleasant. Jim calmed down and Frank was just enough George and, more importantly, just enough not-George that Winona felt herself coming back together. Slowly she patched herself back together and everything was going to be okay – and it was – it really, really was.
Then Starfleet built the George Kirk Memorial Shipyard and Winona knew she couldn’t stay. Frank and Tracy could take care of Jim, Jim would be in good hands. Jim was barely 26 months when Winona went back to the black. She had been patched up as best she could, but she couldn’t stay on Earth, she couldn’t stay with Jim, he looked like George more every day and now all everybody could talk about in town was the shipyard – ‘and no, I’m needed out in Space. It’s time I make sure George’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain…’
Winona loved her baby, she loved her baby so damn much – but she had loved George more. But that didn’t stop her from long-distance comms. She followed her son’s life through pictures and videos, delighting in everything that he did. Tracy practically documented his life for her, and Winona was eternally grateful. Winona adored when Jim would kiss the screen and more than once took a screenshot of his face scrunched up against the glass with baby lips forming a kiss. She hoarded every minute she could get of live feed. But at the end of the day she loved her baby, but she couldn’t stand to be with him outside of the screen. She wasn’t whole enough yet.
Jim was turning five tomorrow – a big step for her little boy. He would be starting school in the fall and he was growing up too fast. Winona glanced at her wall at the pictures of her little boy over the years. It had been over two years since she had last held him. Sometimes she felt guilty about it, but most days she was just happy that the ship was working and they were doing something, she was doing something, worthwhile.
She had been assigned to the USS Geribold when she requested a long term assignment. At first she had felt slightly resentful – this was the ship that had rescued them after … after that day. But when she found out their mission, she felt alive for the first time in years. They were on a long-term exploratory mission, assigned by Admiral Marcus, to seek out allies – to seek out people who would make sure what happened on the USS Kelvin didn’t happen again.
Winona broke away from her thoughts at the ping of an incoming message – Tracy had sent another message with pictures. It seems the boys had gotten into the flour. It was utterly adorable and Winona knew she was sporting a fond smile – George would have loved Jim. Jim would have loved George. They would have been a great family. Jim was young, but she could already tell - once he entered school, he’d be too much for Riverside; George had been and Jim was every inch his father, and her genes wouldn’t help him any. ‘My little genius, my little star,’ Winona thought, stroking his picture as if he was there.
Winona sent a message back to Tracy – “I’ve booked the long range comm for tomorrow. There should also be a package in the mail ;) – WK”
The rest of the day was business as usual – Winona was an Engineer with a specialty in programming systems. On the last planet they were on, they had received a gift from the Chieftain which would allow them to modify their shields to be able to absorb some of the power from blasts back into the shields. It was Winona’s job to create a testing algorithm in order to assess its practicality in production.
In Starfleet, you really needed to expect the unexpected. She was all geared up to go down to the comm lab to wish her son a ‘Happy Birthday’, but just as she was leaving, there was a ship-wide alert and call to stations. There was a ship floating out in space – a sleeper ship – from the 20th century. It was a historical find of the century. The ship was busy doing survey missions on this new find. Winona was assigned to cracking through the encryption logs to access the ship records.
What she found had been amazing. It wasn’t any normal sleeper ship – no, this sleeper ship held remnant from the Eugenics war. The entire ship was in frenzy – cataloging the information, sending reports to headquarters, and piecing together a history that had been lost for centuries.
It wasn’t until she checked her personal messages a week later that she realized she had missed her son’s birthday. Tired to the bone, Winona sat down and instructed the computer to start recording – this would be a long message. It was the first time she had missed a promised long range comm to her son, and she knew it would be the first of many.
“Jim, hey baby. How’s my five year old doing? Happy birthday. Momma’s sorry she wasn’t able to call on your birthday. I’ve been doing a lot of hard work out here. Do you want to know about my latest project? Well I had to…” Winona talked into a screen. She talked and talked, telling Jim about ship design of the 20th century, at least, a more age appropriate version. She wouldn’t be able to tell him the truth of what they found – there was such a thing as being classified, but Jim was smart and he would appreciate learning something new. Her bright little boy. The SS Botany Bay had been a fairytale, a folklore left from a time most had forgotten. But they – the USS Geribold – had found it, have seen for themselves that it was real. Jim would understand, he would have to understand.
“… and remember Jim, Momma loves you.” Winona ended her message.
“Computer, send message,” Winona commanded and then sat back. She was exhausted, but there were pictures of her little boy’s birthday to view and there was nothing she’d rather be doing now that she had the time.
Winona was worried. Jim was supposed to send her a video message at least once a week. Tracy had died three months ago and nobody planet side had been taking it well. Winona had appreciated Tracy, maybe even loved her a little bit more than Frank because of how well she documented Jim’s life. But at the end of the day, Tracy’s death was nothing to George’s. Maybe it wasn’t fair to compare them like that, but Winona figured all her tears had been cried out eleven years ago.
The pictures had stopped, and without them Winona was finding each video message seemed to be further and further apart – even on the days when she received two because ‘hey mom, I forgot to mention…’. She was missing her boy more and more each day. But there was a mission to do and she would do it.
But first, Jim hadn’t sent her a message in two weeks. Two Weeks. It had been almost ten year since she had been planet side, but she still had some connections in Riverside. She had tried coming Frank three days ago and he never responded back. So it was time to call Sheriff Riley. He’d gone to school with George and had been a part of the wedding party. She hadn’t talked to him in ages, but this was Jim and she would do anything to find out that he was safe.
After that conversation, though, Winona was livid. Frank had hit her baby. Sheriff Riley had forwarded her to the jail cell where Frank had left her baby to rot after driving his – and really, it was George’s – classic car off a cliff. If she wasn’t six months travel from Earth, Frank would be six feet under.
“Bastard,” Winona growled, to nobody in particular, “that utter bastard.”
After she had gotten the story from Jim, and he tried to hide it, but mother’s intuition was mother’s intuition, even if it was light years away. She could see the palm print on his face. No, Iowa was no longer safe for Jim. Oh, don’t get her wrong, she was going to kill Frank when she got back. She had a commission to keep, but she had friends in the fleet and she would find a solution. Being George Kirk’s widow did have its power.
It took five calls to brass, seventeen hours, and thirty-seven forms – ‘and really, why was there a form for mattress rental?’ – but Jim was signed up for a study abroad for a year. He was almost twelve, but it would get him away from Frank, from Iowa, and would allow her to pick him up on their way back to Earth. She was able to get another live comm back to Riverside; she had left Jim with Sheriff Riley after sending the credits to post bail. Riley would do right by him until Jim left, he would for George – though a little part of her wondered ‘Where was he when Frank was hitting her baby’, but then she would have to ask the same to herself.
“Jim, baby, I’ve got some good news”
Jim looked at her from a screen. The bruise was healed, but he looked different – jaded.
“I signed you up for a study abroad…” she started, pausing when she realized that she had Jim’s attention.
“Really?” her baby asked, probably smiling for the first time in weeks – and didn’t that hurt a little bit.
“Yeah, you’ll be doing a colony survey on Tarsus IV. It’s for at least a year.”
Jim looked up, “Thanks mom”
“No problem, baby,” Winona smiled fondly at her son, “Now tell me all the dirt around Riverside”
Jim smiled again and just like that, it seemed like everything was okay again. After her talk with Jim, she talked to Riley – he agreed to watch Jim and get him on the right shuttle on time.
Before she knew it, she looked at the stardate and realized – her little Jim was on his way to Tarsus IV.
It had been years since she had last seen the SS Botany Bay – at least five. After their initial discovery and expeditions, Admiral Marcus had sent a small science ship to continue with the research and cataloging. The USS Geribold had continued on with its ally-seeking mission and Winona thought that the next time she heard about the SS Botany Bay would be through the media.
Time had passed and Winona hadn’t realized that there hadn’t been a peep about it until they had pulled up next to the ship again. The scientists had discovered all that they could in the original environment and the order had come to pick up the cryotubes and transport them on their way back to Earth.
That wasn’t why Winona wasn’t excited. No – Winona was excited because the mission was almost over. She couldn’t believe how long it had been since she had held her baby in her arms. He had grown up so much and a small part of her regretted ever leaving him. But that was okay – they were okay.
Tarsus had been wonderful for Jim. Those first few weeks there, she got a comm from him every day detailing the colony. Of course, the novelty had worn off and now he was down to once a week. “Boys will be boys after all”, Winona thought fondly.
She was going to surprise Jim with a live transmission next week, but she had to cover Lt. Wix’s inventory duty for the week. It was during this that Winona got her first look at the cryotubes.
They were lined up in twelve rows of seven pods. Each pod was situated two feet off the floor on stands and had little plaques next to each, detailing the names and what history the scientists could find on them. It was like a morbid museum of history. Winona used her tricorder to make sure the systems were still functional in all 84 cryotubes. They had already discovered that some had malfunctioned over the years – in fact the entire row 12 had failed. Now they kept them monitored to make sure they kept the bodies frozen and out of the state of decomposition.
They looked human enough, but there was something wild about them, untamed even. Walking up and down the aisles, Winona let her curiosity take hold and studied each one. Each one was different, they had different ages, different looks. It was sort of fascinating. She had passed the halfway mark of Row 11 when she did a double take. There in the next to last cyrotube in the row was a boy. He looked to be Jim’s age and… and he looked so much like Jim. It was uncanny.
Winona glanced at the nameplate – McPherson – and recalled that the previous tube was also a McPherson – ‘they must be father and son… or uncle – related’. She shook her head – though the resemblance was uncanny, she had a job to do. That wasn’t her Jimmy in that tube – her son was safe on Tarsus.
She finished off her extra duties – and if she spent the rest of the day longing to see and hear her little boy, well – Winona figured that maybe it was time for her to go home and stay this time. It was time to be with her family – her little Jimmy.
It was time. It was actually a long time overdue, but nonetheless, it was time. They were on their way back to Earth, but first – first they would stop by Tarsus and pick up Jim. Once again – there were some benefits to being George Kirk’s widow – and if that meant she got to see her son that much sooner, so be it.
It was going to be just her and her baby, them against the world. She would buy a nice place planet side – not in farm country, no, her baby wasn’t meant for farm country. Not after Frank. For the first time in twelve years, everything was the best it was going to be without George and she was okay with that. She could retire from the fleet, with the Augments, they had found an ace in the hole the next time a crazy ship threatened the peace of the Federation.
Winona was in the process of debugging an upgrade to the security system when a shipwide alert came on screen. Stopping what she was doing, she turned to the screen and listened.
“Attention Crew of the USS Geribold, this is Captain Carter. On stardate 2784.7, Governor Kodos of Tarsus IV ordered the execution of 4,000 inhabitants of the planet.”
Captain Carter continued, but Winona couldn’t hear anything past Tarsus IV and execution. 4,000 people was half the population and her baby was on that planet.
“We have been ordered to tend aide to the planet. All crewmen are expected to report to their posts, Carter out.”
Winona could feel the blood leaving her face as the grim reality started setting in – her son, who was supposed to be safe, had been in danger for who knows how long and she hadn’t known. She didn’t even have a clue – she had spoken to Jim, why, it just seemed she talked to him yesterday. But that wasn’t true.
They had sent her back to her quarters; it was beyond obvious that she was in no state to work. She spent every minute between her and Jim searching through the newsfeeds, files – anything really that might tell her that her baby was still alive.
But the universe didn’t like Winona, but at this point, Winona wasn’t too fond of the Universe either anymore.
Captain Carter was sensible enough to know to put her on the initial landing party. Winona rushed over to the survivor’s center – but there was no sign of Jim.
Winona thought that the worst day of her life happened twelve years ago. But nothing – nothing – compared to the horror she found when she was directed to the morgue to look amongst the dead. It was late, it was too late. Her baby boy was lying there, starved, emancipated, and so painfully cold.
When George had died, she at least had Jim; her little Jimmy, a little piece of George to hold on to. Now, now she had nothing. She could feel her world crumbling – again, and this time she didn’t think she’d be able to recover.
She brushed aside the hair from her baby’s face, a little too long and unkempt, and a flash of a memory came to her. McPherson – the boy who looked so much like her baby; the boy who was alive and sleeping in storage; the boy who was in cryotube 6 in row 11.
Once the idea was in her head, she couldn’t get it out. Everything on T arsus was crazy and there was so much to do that nobody quite knew what anybody else was doing. It was a cluster fuck and records were the last thing on anybody’s mind.
Bringing the body onboard the ship wasn’t that hard. It should have been harder, but she was already granted access to modifying the source code for the security system – it had been less than a day since she had last worked on that project, but it seemed like lifetimes ago.
Slipping into the storage area should have been harder, but everybody was planet side, helping those who had survived – those she couldn’t help but hate deep down because they survived and her baby didn’t. But that wasn’t important anymore.
Nobody saw her place her son in the crytotube, and nobody saw her wake McPhearson. And nobody ever would.
Crying, Winona placed a kiss on her son’s head before she closed the tube before turning to the boy who was slowly waking up. He really did look remarkably like Jim.
Winona beamed them back down to Tarsus, in an alleyway behind a building.
The city center was still a bustle of activity – new bodies were still being found every day. So it wasn’t an odd sight when Winona rushed into one of the medical tents, carrying a body.
“Medic! Medic! He’s still alive!”
Winona watched as they wheeled the boy – her boy – into triage. A nurse placed a hand consolingly on her shoulder, “He’ll be alright ma’am, his vitals looked good”
Winona nodded. She knew he would be alright.
When she was questioned later about where she found him, she lied. When they asked if he had any identification on him, she lied. When they asked her his name, she lied. To the world, it was another daring escape from death by George Kirk’s family. If anybody knew better – they didn’t say so. No, they wouldn’t debunk this miracle.
Winona figured she might be a broken, just a little bit – but that was okay. This Jimmy would be alive and she would never leave him for the stars again.