Sweetheart, I'm Not Going to be There
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Spock
Series: Belief in Angels
Summary: Winona never forgot how to hit. Never forgot how to make it hurt. “You weren’t ever supposed to break like me. You weren’t ever supposed to need someone that much.”
When she hits him, it stings. She's old. Not in the way he's always thought of her, not as stronger, wiser, fucking indestructible. Old in the way that makes him wish they'd had a normal relationship. He knows, probably, that he wouldn't have survived normal, wouldn't have become who he is with anything even remotely resembling normal. But still. He wonders if it's a psychological malady that he misses something he's never had. But he does, misses it so much it hurts, stings almost as bad as the bright pink imprints of her fingers on his cheek.
Winona never forgot how to hit. Never forgot how to make it hurt.
"The fuck is wrong with you?" he demands, cupping his hand gingerly over the warm, burning mark.
She doesn't answer, just holds her fists at her sides, tense, like she's about to run at him and tear his fucking head off. He wouldn't put it past her. Not even on a good day. He's never really thought about how powerful she is. Winona is this fucking massive energy, all bound up in her thin, wiry old body. It's just waiting for the chance to get out, to explode and take as much out with her as she can.
It's terrifying.
Her eyes are brown, mostly, with little flecks of gold. And she left him, and he loves her more than anything but he still can't figure out why. He used to ask, when he was young and naïve and thought he knew what a family was supposed to look like. He's filed away every non-answer she ever gave. They dig into him sometimes, barreling through his chest like phaser fire.
And the "What the fuck is wrong with you?" and the "I love you" should be contradictory. They shouldn't be able to exist contemporaneously, should be mutually exclusive. At least, he's pretty sure. These are the paradoxes that make them close, that have always kept them from killing each other. He's glad of that.
And then she's hugging him, and it's almost like she sucker punched him. She's holding so tight, and he's pretty sure she's mouthing George into his shoulder but he doesn't care.
"It's okay, Mom," he says, and it isn't. But he pretends, and he rubs the tension and pent up energy out of her shoulders. She doesn't let go for a long time. "It's okay."
"The fuck is wrong with you?" she grinds out, and he can feel how hard it is for her to say, how much she wants to just hit him again and hope he gets it. Because he's her son and he's always gotten it. They've never needed words like this.
But then, she's never hit him before, either. First time for everything.
"What is it, Mom?" he asks, because he just doesn't fucking know how to answer her.
"You're not supposed to end up like me," she says. And oh shit, he knows exactly what's wrong.
"Mom, I-"
"Don't start, Jimmy."
And he knows, he knows before she says anything, but he doesn't know how to tell her that he can't help it. That it's become like needing air, and he doesn't fucking know how it got this far. He wants to tell her he didn't mean for things to happen this way, even though that's sort of a lie. He wants it to not be his fault.
"Jimmy, did you see what he did?"
"Yeah, Mom. I saw. It was part of the plan. Don't worry about it."
He's gone too far. He knows before she pushes away, before she looks at him with eyes full of no. It's disbelief, and he doesn't like the way it colors her eyes. And then she laughs, and that's how he knows he's fucked up.
"Bullshit, Jimmy."
And yeah, it is. He wishes he was a better liar. Wishes he could tell her seriously that he told Spock to set a collision course with the Narada. But he can't. Too much Vulcan influence, he thinks, warmth blooming in his chest.
"Bullshit. You wouldn't plan that. I know you're a crazy motherfucker-" And here she laughs again, and he just wishes she would stop already; it's making him crazy. "You get that from me. But even you wouldn't plan that."
And he's really glad Spock isn't here, because Winona would probably kill him. Actually, she might kill the both of them either way.
"Mom, I'm sorry-"
His name rips out of her throat like a growl, and he can't say anything. She looks desperate, her eyes vulnerable and sad, her body all cold, hard lines. He's seen his mother in all states of broken, bleeding and drunk, but this is new. This is Winona inside-out, and he aches with the knowledge that he thought he knew what she was going through. He thought they were all suffering together. But he knows nothing.
"Didn't I teach you not to need?"
The pause stretches, taut. Snaps.
"You tried."
"I didn't leave you because I wanted to. I left so I could teach you, so you wouldn't go and do this."
And now he's burning all over, the anger he'd held away from her for so many years bubbling over. "Bullshit, Mom. Bullshit. You left because you couldn't stand me. Because I look like Dad. You ran away and you left me to rot in a fucking bar."
It's not true. Most of it, it isn't true. But he can't stop saying it. Winona looks away, and the fact that something about that struck home cracks something in him and he stops. Backs away. Sinks against the wall, defeated.
Winona, when given an impossible situation, drinks. Her first instinct is to break, her second to build back up. She's an engineer; it's what she knows how to do. And for her, they build when they drink. She's forgotten how to just be, unaided. She has to do, to be bigger than everything. She doesn't know what to do with the tender, human moments.
And maybe that's what made her parenting skills so shit, and maybe that's why he loves her so much. They're so alike, and it's going to fuck them up someday. Probably the day they can't drink it out and Winona can't hit him anymore.
So Winona breaks out the good whiskey, and she sits on the floor next to him.
"I left you," she says as she opens the bottle. "I left you and Sam tried to raise you and I fucked up. But I did try to teach you."
He swallows, and it burns pleasantly. "I know." It's all he's ever had to say, really. She believes him like she always has, because what reason could he ever have to lie to her about this?
"You weren't ever supposed to break like me. You weren't ever supposed to need someone that much."
There's an unspoken like I needed your father. He doesn't point it out, doesn't miss it.
"Neither of us is going to die, Mom," he says, handing her back the bottle.
"Bullshit, you naïve little son of a bitch. You're too much like me, and he's the spitting image of your father, the motherfucker." He isn't really sure if she's directing the curse at George or Spock, but it probably doesn't matter.
"Mom." And she looks at him. Despite everything, she's always looked at him. Never shied away. "Mom, I love him."
Her brown eyes, flecked with gold, are unreadable. He isn't used to that, not from her.
"I know."