fic: ordinary extraoridnary life
Title: Ordinary Extraordinary Life
Author: midnightlover
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Character Death(s)
Summary: The lives of James Kirk and Leonard McCoy as viewed through the eyes of Joanna McCoy.
Word Count: 4,315
Notes: I took a few liberties here and there with canon, but nothing too drastic I hope.
Joanna McCoy is not a stupid head, no matter what that Billy Jenkins from across the river says.
Even at the mature age of six, she knows what it means when her mommy and daddy start yelling at each other after she goes to bed. Their exact words are muffled through the walls, so Joanna opens her pink bedroom door just a crack to hear what they're saying, just in time to catch her mommy saying "I hate you, Len".
Annie Woodard, a third grader at Joanna's school, tells her that when mommies and daddies don't love each other anymore, they get a divorce. When Joanna asks her teacher about divorce, her teacher gets a funny look on her face and tells Joanna to ask her daddy about it.
When she asks Daddy, one late night when he comes to tuck her into bed after coming home from the hospital, he just kisses her forehead and tells her not to worry about it, that he and mommy will be just fine. "Sometimes, grown ups get mad at each other, but they don't stay mad forever," he whispers, making sure that her stuffed frog she's had since birth is tucked in beside her. "Daddy isn't going anywhere, I promise."
Two days later, Mommy tells Joanna that she and Daddy are getting a divorce and Daddy is going far away for a very long time.
When Daddy comes home that night, Joanna hides out in the barn as the yelling starts again. Curled up against one of her daddy's horses, she clutches Mr. Ribbit and cries until Daddy finds her there and carries her back to the house. They don't go inside, and Joanna can see the worn suitcase on the front porch next to the swing, where Daddy sits down and presses soft kisses all over her face.
"Daddy loves you more than anything in this world, Joanna. Don't you ever forget that, no matter how far away I am." The stubble on his cheek is rough against her skin but familiar, like the smell of antiseptic and warm rain that follows her father wherever he goes.
They sit like that until dawn, Joanna falling asleep in her daddy's arms, until Mommy wakes them up and tells Daddy he should leave now. Joanna clings to him until the very last second, holding out her beloved Mr. Ribbit to him when she's finally forced to pull away.
"Take him with you, Daddy," she says solemnly, tears brimming in her dark eyes. "He'll keep you safe."
Joanna doesn't see her father again in person for nearly two years.
--
Joanna is eight now, which is ever so much older than six, and she's standing on a landing pad in the bright San Francisco sunshine, holding her mother's hand and scanning the crowd for sight of someone she hasn’t seen in a very long time.
When Daddy turns the corner and comes into view, tugging at the collar of his red Starfleet uniform in the oppressive summer heat, Joanna doesn't think twice before she pulls away from her mother and sprints to cross the distance between them, jumping up into her father's waiting arms.
"Hi Jojo," he whispers against her hair and she doesn't even make a face at the nickname--she's eight now, nicknames are for babies--and just presses her face against his shoulder, ignoring the quiet, tense conversation he has with her mother and the way he squeezes her just a little bit tighter while they're speaking.
The conversation is over quickly and her daddy grabs Joanna's suitcase and leads her away from the shuttles towards a tall brick building. Red-suited cadets are everywhere on the academy grounds, standing in groups or hurrying from one place to another. When they reach the cadet dormitory, he lets go of her hand and asks her to sit on one of the squishy chairs in the lobby for a moment while he takes care of something "important".
Joanna doesn't mind one bit--the chairs are fun to sit in and the whole room is so much more bright and colorful than anything they have back home. And Daddy comes back after just a few minutes with an ident pass for her, just in case she gets lost, and a cookie, which she nibbles on happily as they head up to her father’s dorm room.
It's nothing like their house in Mississippi--it's much, much smaller, but it feels cozier somehow and her face lights up when she sees the stuffed frog sitting on the desk, right next to her last school photo and a picture she'd drawn in her art class.
"Mr. Ribbit helps me study," Daddy says seriously, but there's a twinkle in his eye and she knows he's being silly. She tells him about school and what she’s learning in science class, and about old Miss Catherine’s cows getting out of their pen and terrorizing the town last week. When her stomach rumbles, Daddy makes spaghetti and breadsticks in the replicator and gives her chocolate ice cream for desert, something her mother never lets her have.
They're playing checkers after dinner when the door opens and someone bounces in, all smiles and bright blue eyes in a red cadet uniform. "Bones, you wouldn't believe what I just--"
"Jim," her daddy's voice is stern and he's frowning at the newcomer, who is staring at Joanna like he's never seen a little girl before in his life. Annoyed, she crosses her arms and glares at him-how dare someone interrupt her time with her dad?
"This is the pipsqueak?" Before Joanna can voice her serious disapproval of that nickname, Jim has flung himself into one of the chairs, grinning at her like they're friends (which they are NOT). "Hi kiddo, I'm Jim."
"Go away," she mutters, not at all amused. "You're rude." Her daddy's laughter startles her but she keeps her death glare fixed on Jim. When he finally stops laughing, Daddy just shakes his head with a smile and makes another move on the checkerboard.
"She got you there, Jim. When's the last time you knocked before you came barreling in here?"
"Never had to before now." Jim scowls at Joanna, who scowls right back and they have a sort of staring contest before her father rolls his eyes in that way that Joanna knows means he’s close to losing his patience.
She gets the feeling that Jim makes her father roll his eyes a lot.
“Stop it, you two. Joanna, Jim is my very good friend and I’d like you to get along, no matter how annoying he is.”
Jim makes a sound of protest but Joanna just nods, still eyeing the energetic cadet with suspicion. “I’ll be nice if he is,” she finally concedes and scowls again when Jim sticks his tongue out at her from behind her father’s back. He’s worse than the boys in her class, that’s for sure. At least they know how to behave sometimes.
“Jim, don’t stick your tongue out at my kid,” her father chides, none-too-gently, and Joanna smirks in a satisfied way as Jim sighs and schools his expression into something a little less childish.
“Fine, fine. But I’m still calling you pipsqueak.”
At the end of her weeklong visit, after a harrowing adventure in Chinatown, way too many ice cream sundaes, and two bags full of souvenirs, Joanna has completely forgotten the animosity between her and Jim Kirk and before she joins her mother on the shuttle, she gives both her father and her ‘Uncle’ Jim a kiss goodbye.
Joanna doesn’t see it happen and doesn’t learn about it until years later, but Jim’s eyes are misty as the shuttle takes off and her father teases him mercilessly for a week straight.
--
Joanna is nine when the Narada attacks Earth.
She spends the first day after the attack in a blind panic, watching the newsfeeds and clutching a framed photo of her father from her last visit to San Francisco. She was supposed to go to the graduation ceremony, but all non-essential planetary transport is canceled and she’s stuck in Mississippi, not knowing whether her father is alive or dead.
Her mother says nothing and neither does her new stepfather, but they don't stop her from scouring the lists of the dead that get leaked onto the feed from Starfleet.
Her father isn't on the list, nor is Uncle Jim, but it’s two more days before she hears any word from either of them. She's making a valiant attempt to catch up on homework when the vidscreen beeps, indicating an incoming message, and it’s her dad, looking exhausted and bruised but alive and she can hear Uncle Jim is in the background, talking to someone she can't see.
"Daddy!" She can't stop the tears that start to fall and touches the vidscreen, an action which her father mimics on the other end, his own eyes bright with unshed tears. "You're okay."
"Sorry I didn't call sooner, Jojo. Starfleet needs all the doctors they can get right now." Her father’s words are evasive and she knows the meaning behind them-her father is one of the lucky few doctors left. In this case, she's the second most important thing in his life and it hurts like hell, but she pushes that aside and smiles weakly at him.
"It's okay, Dad." And it really is--she knows how important being a doctor is to her father and some of the tension in his shoulders leaks away when she gives her silent forgiveness, even if it’s half-hearted forgiveness at best.
They talk for a few more minutes before Jim interrupts, his face filling the vidscreen. "Hey pipsqueak! Glad to see your pretty face again."
"Uncle Jim..." her exasperated tone is nearly identical to her father's now and it makes Jim’s eyebrows raise in surprise before he grins at her. She can see the faint line of a few new scars on his face and the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but tries not to think of the news reports she’s read and focuses on the here and now.
"Your dad's got some news he needs to tell you about" Jim's grin fades and he runs a hand through his cropped hair with a sigh. "Don't be mad at him, okay? It was my call-you want to be mad, you yell at me."
"What is it?" she asks suspiciously, when Jim has left the screen and it's just her and her father again, who looks suddenly old and tired, like he's been through a war. Which he sort of has, and the knowledge makes her a little bit sick to her stomach. But for a chance of fate, her father could have been on that list of the dead.
"Uncle Jim and I are being assigned to the Enterprise, Jo. We'll be up there for five years, starting next week." her father looks nervous, like he's expecting her to get hysterical (like her mother), but she merely nods because she's known that this was coming ever since her father joined Starfleet. Evie Taylor's dad is in Starfleet too and he got sent away on missions, but Evie still gets to talk to her dad and see him on shore leave, so there's no reason for her to be upset. Her dad has never let her down before and she knows he won’t start now.
"Can I come and visit you?" She desperately wants to see a real starship and it would give her one-up on Evie, who's always bragging about her dad's ship even though her dad is just an engineer. "What are you doing? Is it dangerous?"
"Well, your Uncle Jim is captain, so I'd expect we can find a way to get you on board without too much trouble."
“They let Uncle Jim be captain?” Joanna cannot help the skepticism. Uncle Jim is not exactly the best example of a responsible person and she says as much, which earns a wounded “Hey!” from Uncle Jim offscreen.
“I know, but that’s what the admirals decided, and Uncle Jim needs me to be his chief medical officer.” Her father’s lips quirk upward in a grin, which makes him look a little less like and old man and more like the father she knows. “Someone has to keep him in one piece.”
She can hear Uncle Jim muttering things about “jackass doctors” and “traitors” offscreen and laughs, knowing her father is right. If anyone can keep Uncle Jim alive, it’s her dad, and her dad needs Uncle Jim to be there for him, just like she needs them both to be there for her.
They talk for another two hours before Joanna’s mother orders her to stop hogging the vidscreen and she goes to bed that night with a smile on her face, dreaming of starships, her father, and Jim.
--
For eight months after the Enterprise leaves on its five year mission, Joanna gets a message every week from her father. Sometimes they're short, just letting her know he's okay and that he'll write more next week (sometimes Uncle Jim adds a footnote to let her know that yes, he really is okay, he's just really busy saving the crew from whatever awful disease they've picked up this time). Other times they're long, full of ship gossip and stories and pictures of the amazing things that the Enterprise comes across. Uncle Jim writes to her most weeks as well, and on the occasion that the Enterprise is close enough for audio or video transmissions, she even gets to talk to them face to face.
The first time her dad misses a week, she panics. When the message finally arrives, three days late, it’s short and to the point, letting her know that communications were knocked out and that's why he wasn't able to send her a message sooner. A few hours later, she gets a much longer message from her Uncle Jim, who tells her some fantastical story about a planet full of giants and a misunderstanding about "cultural differences", which is Uncle Jim's way of saying he did something to offend the locals and they ended up in prison, again. She isn’t surprised to find that her father leaves that story out of his next missive.
There are no more interruptions in messages for another year, until the week before the Enterprise is scheduled to come back to Earth for repairs and supplies. Joanna is supposed to join her father on the ship to escape yet another summer spent with old Miss Catherine and her cows, since her mother is going off-planet on some xenobiology expedition.
When no message arrives from her father that week, or the week after, Joanna does what any resourceful ten year old would do: she calls Christopher Pike.
Uncle Jim gave her the number for Admial Pike's private quarters right before they left Earth and told her only to use it in an emergency. To her, this is absolutely an emergency because if neither her dad nor Uncle Jim have sent her a message for two weeks, something is very, very wrong.
Admiral Pike is not amused by her call at first (she sort of forgot the time difference on the other side of the continent) but he takes her concerns seriously and two days later, after a distress beacon is heard near the Enterprise’s last coordinates, the USS Exeter is sent out to investigate. Admiral Pike has a shuttle bring Joanna to Starfleet headquarters to wait for the news, a gesture for which Joanna is extremely grateful. Her mother is off-planet already, and Miss Catherine is too old and too far gone in her mind to notice if one little girl goes missing.
Joanna likes Admiral Pike right from their first meeting when she gets off the shuttle. She knows he's responsible for encouraging Uncle Jim to join Starfleet and that makes him a hero in her eyes, because without Uncle Jim her dad would be lost, plain and simple. While they wait for word from the Exeter, he teachers her to play three-dimensional chess and his wife stuffs Joanna full of non-replicated food. When word from the Exeter finally comes almost a week later while Joanna and Pike are playing chess, she almost upsets their board when she leaps for the communications panel to read the news.
The Enterprise had been attacked by a group of rogue Klingons and badly damaged, but they'd been slowly limping back towards Earth when the Exeter found them. A list of the injured and dead accompanies the report, and Joanna nearly faints when she sees her father's name listed among the wounded. Only the admiral’s firm grip on her arm keeps her upright.
When the Enterprise returns to Earth with the Exeter, they transfer the wounded to the Starfleet Academy hospital and Pike personally takes Joanna there, pulling rank to force the staff to let her see her father. They don't really have to fight hard--Leonard McCoy is a legend still in these halls--and she finds herself in the doorway of his private hospital room, watching Uncle Jim sitting by her unconscious father's bedside, clutching his hand and staring at nothing.
"Uncle Jim?"
"Hey pipsqueak." Jim's voice betrays his exhaustion and she can see the bandages poking out from under his captain's tunic. It frightens her, seeing the realities of space battle marring the skin of those she loves and she crosses the room to stand beside Jim, putting one small hand on his shoulder.
"Is he going to be okay?" She feels like she’s a little girl all over again, seeing her daddy laying still and quiet in a medical bed, only the beeping of the monitors to show that he was still alive.
"Should be fine. Your dad's too stubborn to give up on us now." Jim squeezes her hand and pulls over a chair for her, which she ignores in favor of the edge of her father’s bed.
Somewhere during the second night of their vigil, while she’s half-asleep on a cot, holding Mr. Ribbit (Nurse Chapel brought him from her father’s quarters the last time she came to visit) Joanna hears Jim talking to her unconscious father in a low, broken voice.
“Bones, you can’t leave me now. You just can’t, alright? I love you, you stupid bastard. If you don’t fight this, I’m going to find a way to follow you beyond the grave and kick your stupid, stubborn ass, do you hear me?”
The next morning, her father awakens without a sound, finding Jim asleep in the bed beside him, holding one of his hands, and Joanna curled between them with her smaller hand on top of theirs, a smile on her face.
Before the Enterprise returns to its mission, with it’s newly healed CMO already back at work, Jim asks Joanna’s permission to court her father.
She doesn’t even have to think twice before she gives Jim her answer.
--
Joanna is fourteen when her father and Jim decide to get married.
It’s a small ceremony, without the pageantry and politics that would normally surround weddings of famous starship captains and legendary chief medical officers. There are only three guests-herself, Spock, and Uhura, and the ceremony performed by the now-retired Admiral Pike.
It’s the last time she’ll ever see the man who helped put her family together, whom she dances with at the dinner after the wedding in spite of his wheelchair and her awkwardly long legs that she’ll grow into someday. He kisses her hand at the end of the night and tells Joanna he’s proud of her, that he looks forward to testing out “that McCoy stubbornness” when she finally enlists in Starfleet.
Two weeks later, her father calls with the news. Knowing that Admiral Pike’s death was painless and natural does nothing to lessen the blow and she cries all the way to San Francisco, stopping only when she steps off the shuttle and into the waiting arms of her fathers.
--
Joanna Kirk-McCoy graduates from Starfleet Academy with her medical degree and a specialty in neurophysiology on Jim’s 40th birthday. Her birthday present to him comes in the form of orders to serve as assistant physician aboard the USS Enterprise, wrangled thanks to a combination of nepotism, hard work, and a letter in her file from the long-departed Christopher Pike, the contents of which she was not allowed to read but she had a feeling contained a very strongly worded reminder about Starfleet’s policy on families serving together to minimize stress and promote ship unity.
Much of the original crew have gone on to other postings or out of Starfleet all together, and she finds it disconcerting at first to not see Uhura or Spock on the bridge, no Scotty or Gaila in Engineering, no Chekov or Sulu at the helm.
She knows Jim won’t be captain much longer-he’s turned down the position of admiral four times, claiming he belongs in space, but there’s a heaviness to both Jim and her father that speaks of a looming retirement and she has a feeling they were waiting for her to take the reins, so to speak, before gracefully letting go.
Two years, three months, and four days into her service under Captain Kirk, the Enterprise is attacked by Romulans once again, this time in the form of an organized assault force from the Romulan Empire itself. The fight is brutal and lengthy, as the Enterprise does its best to dodge the attacks long enough to contact Starfleet for backup. At the last moment, before the Romulans can blow the ship apart, Jim pulls out one last spectacular maneuver that jettisons the warp core into a nearby gravity well, frying not only their own systems but those of the Romulans as well.
Seemingly defeated, the Romulans ask for a parlay on a neutral planet within transporter range.
When the away team beams back up to the Enterprise, it is not the victory they hoped for. Instead of six crew members materializing on the pad, there are only two: her father and Jim.
Jim.
Her father is carrying Jim, his body bent with the effort, and she can see the blood that covers both men, too much blood to belong to just one of them. Her brain moves into doctor mode as her body responds, pulling out her tricorder as one of the med team catches her father as he stumbles off the pad, laying both men out on stretchers.
They’re rushed to sickbay and Joanna finds herself methodically attending to her patients, ignoring the screaming in her head that these are her fathers and that they’re dying. Jim is her first concern-the external injuries are severe enough that she’ll have to work fast to save him.
It takes her a few seconds for her to realize that Jim isn’t breathing.
According to the tricorder, held in a hand that is shaking so hard she can barely see the readout, he’s been dead for nearly an hour. At this point, nothing in her medical arsenal will bring him back.
“Daddy?”
Suddenly, she is six years old again, standing on the front porch of her mother’s home watching her father walk away, suitcase in hand.
“Tried everything I could. Too fast-they were too fast.” There is blood on her father’s lips and she hurriedly runs the scanner over him, noting the massive internal injuries that she’ll have to work quickly to mend. As if he was reading her mind, her father reaches up and grabs her wrist, giving the tiniest shake of his head.
“No, honey. Let me go.”
“Dad--”
She is four, falling off her pony and skinning her knee. Her father is there with a skin patch and kisses away her tears.
“Couldn’t be prouder of you, kid.” Her father’s voice is weak and she can hear the bubbling of blood in the rasp of his breath. “Always…knew you’d turn out okay.”
She can do this, she can let go. Her dad needs to follow Jim---always has, always will. In this, she is second, and it hurts like hell but she understands. “I had the best fathers a girl could ever hope for.”
She is two, riding on her smiling father’s shoulders as they walk towards the creek at the edge of their farm.
“Love you, Jojo.”
She is a baby, fussing in her crib. Her father picks her up, cradles her to his chest, and whispers his hopes for her future as he rocks her back to sleep.
“Love you too, Daddy.” She presses a gentle kiss against her father’s forehead, knowing he’ll never feel it, and covers him with a blanket, a gesture she knows means little to him but so much to her. But there is no time to grieve. Turning around, she hands her tricorder to a young nurse whom she and her father found to be extremely reliable and smiles grimly at the young woman.
“You’re acting CMO now, Nurse Williams.”
Wide eyed, the woman nods and straightens under Joanna’s gaze, turning to work with a look in her eyes that reminds Joanna of her own duty. She doesn’t know how many officers are still alive or who technically outranks her and she doesn’t really care. Right now, the Romulans are still out there, probably preparing to attack, and she has a job to do.
When the turbolift doors open onto the bridge, Lieutenant-now acting Captain-Joanna Kirk-McCoy breathes deep and squares her shoulders, ordering the remaining bridge crew to open fire on the Romulans. The Excelsior is on its way to their position and if the Enterprise can defend herself for just a bit longer, no more of her crew will die today. She’ll fight for the life of this crew and this ship until her very last breath.
Just like her fathers.
Author: midnightlover
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Character Death(s)
Summary: The lives of James Kirk and Leonard McCoy as viewed through the eyes of Joanna McCoy.
Word Count: 4,315
Notes: I took a few liberties here and there with canon, but nothing too drastic I hope.
Joanna McCoy is not a stupid head, no matter what that Billy Jenkins from across the river says.
Even at the mature age of six, she knows what it means when her mommy and daddy start yelling at each other after she goes to bed. Their exact words are muffled through the walls, so Joanna opens her pink bedroom door just a crack to hear what they're saying, just in time to catch her mommy saying "I hate you, Len".
Annie Woodard, a third grader at Joanna's school, tells her that when mommies and daddies don't love each other anymore, they get a divorce. When Joanna asks her teacher about divorce, her teacher gets a funny look on her face and tells Joanna to ask her daddy about it.
When she asks Daddy, one late night when he comes to tuck her into bed after coming home from the hospital, he just kisses her forehead and tells her not to worry about it, that he and mommy will be just fine. "Sometimes, grown ups get mad at each other, but they don't stay mad forever," he whispers, making sure that her stuffed frog she's had since birth is tucked in beside her. "Daddy isn't going anywhere, I promise."
Two days later, Mommy tells Joanna that she and Daddy are getting a divorce and Daddy is going far away for a very long time.
When Daddy comes home that night, Joanna hides out in the barn as the yelling starts again. Curled up against one of her daddy's horses, she clutches Mr. Ribbit and cries until Daddy finds her there and carries her back to the house. They don't go inside, and Joanna can see the worn suitcase on the front porch next to the swing, where Daddy sits down and presses soft kisses all over her face.
"Daddy loves you more than anything in this world, Joanna. Don't you ever forget that, no matter how far away I am." The stubble on his cheek is rough against her skin but familiar, like the smell of antiseptic and warm rain that follows her father wherever he goes.
They sit like that until dawn, Joanna falling asleep in her daddy's arms, until Mommy wakes them up and tells Daddy he should leave now. Joanna clings to him until the very last second, holding out her beloved Mr. Ribbit to him when she's finally forced to pull away.
"Take him with you, Daddy," she says solemnly, tears brimming in her dark eyes. "He'll keep you safe."
Joanna doesn't see her father again in person for nearly two years.
--
Joanna is eight now, which is ever so much older than six, and she's standing on a landing pad in the bright San Francisco sunshine, holding her mother's hand and scanning the crowd for sight of someone she hasn’t seen in a very long time.
When Daddy turns the corner and comes into view, tugging at the collar of his red Starfleet uniform in the oppressive summer heat, Joanna doesn't think twice before she pulls away from her mother and sprints to cross the distance between them, jumping up into her father's waiting arms.
"Hi Jojo," he whispers against her hair and she doesn't even make a face at the nickname--she's eight now, nicknames are for babies--and just presses her face against his shoulder, ignoring the quiet, tense conversation he has with her mother and the way he squeezes her just a little bit tighter while they're speaking.
The conversation is over quickly and her daddy grabs Joanna's suitcase and leads her away from the shuttles towards a tall brick building. Red-suited cadets are everywhere on the academy grounds, standing in groups or hurrying from one place to another. When they reach the cadet dormitory, he lets go of her hand and asks her to sit on one of the squishy chairs in the lobby for a moment while he takes care of something "important".
Joanna doesn't mind one bit--the chairs are fun to sit in and the whole room is so much more bright and colorful than anything they have back home. And Daddy comes back after just a few minutes with an ident pass for her, just in case she gets lost, and a cookie, which she nibbles on happily as they head up to her father’s dorm room.
It's nothing like their house in Mississippi--it's much, much smaller, but it feels cozier somehow and her face lights up when she sees the stuffed frog sitting on the desk, right next to her last school photo and a picture she'd drawn in her art class.
"Mr. Ribbit helps me study," Daddy says seriously, but there's a twinkle in his eye and she knows he's being silly. She tells him about school and what she’s learning in science class, and about old Miss Catherine’s cows getting out of their pen and terrorizing the town last week. When her stomach rumbles, Daddy makes spaghetti and breadsticks in the replicator and gives her chocolate ice cream for desert, something her mother never lets her have.
They're playing checkers after dinner when the door opens and someone bounces in, all smiles and bright blue eyes in a red cadet uniform. "Bones, you wouldn't believe what I just--"
"Jim," her daddy's voice is stern and he's frowning at the newcomer, who is staring at Joanna like he's never seen a little girl before in his life. Annoyed, she crosses her arms and glares at him-how dare someone interrupt her time with her dad?
"This is the pipsqueak?" Before Joanna can voice her serious disapproval of that nickname, Jim has flung himself into one of the chairs, grinning at her like they're friends (which they are NOT). "Hi kiddo, I'm Jim."
"Go away," she mutters, not at all amused. "You're rude." Her daddy's laughter startles her but she keeps her death glare fixed on Jim. When he finally stops laughing, Daddy just shakes his head with a smile and makes another move on the checkerboard.
"She got you there, Jim. When's the last time you knocked before you came barreling in here?"
"Never had to before now." Jim scowls at Joanna, who scowls right back and they have a sort of staring contest before her father rolls his eyes in that way that Joanna knows means he’s close to losing his patience.
She gets the feeling that Jim makes her father roll his eyes a lot.
“Stop it, you two. Joanna, Jim is my very good friend and I’d like you to get along, no matter how annoying he is.”
Jim makes a sound of protest but Joanna just nods, still eyeing the energetic cadet with suspicion. “I’ll be nice if he is,” she finally concedes and scowls again when Jim sticks his tongue out at her from behind her father’s back. He’s worse than the boys in her class, that’s for sure. At least they know how to behave sometimes.
“Jim, don’t stick your tongue out at my kid,” her father chides, none-too-gently, and Joanna smirks in a satisfied way as Jim sighs and schools his expression into something a little less childish.
“Fine, fine. But I’m still calling you pipsqueak.”
At the end of her weeklong visit, after a harrowing adventure in Chinatown, way too many ice cream sundaes, and two bags full of souvenirs, Joanna has completely forgotten the animosity between her and Jim Kirk and before she joins her mother on the shuttle, she gives both her father and her ‘Uncle’ Jim a kiss goodbye.
Joanna doesn’t see it happen and doesn’t learn about it until years later, but Jim’s eyes are misty as the shuttle takes off and her father teases him mercilessly for a week straight.
--
Joanna is nine when the Narada attacks Earth.
She spends the first day after the attack in a blind panic, watching the newsfeeds and clutching a framed photo of her father from her last visit to San Francisco. She was supposed to go to the graduation ceremony, but all non-essential planetary transport is canceled and she’s stuck in Mississippi, not knowing whether her father is alive or dead.
Her mother says nothing and neither does her new stepfather, but they don't stop her from scouring the lists of the dead that get leaked onto the feed from Starfleet.
Her father isn't on the list, nor is Uncle Jim, but it’s two more days before she hears any word from either of them. She's making a valiant attempt to catch up on homework when the vidscreen beeps, indicating an incoming message, and it’s her dad, looking exhausted and bruised but alive and she can hear Uncle Jim is in the background, talking to someone she can't see.
"Daddy!" She can't stop the tears that start to fall and touches the vidscreen, an action which her father mimics on the other end, his own eyes bright with unshed tears. "You're okay."
"Sorry I didn't call sooner, Jojo. Starfleet needs all the doctors they can get right now." Her father’s words are evasive and she knows the meaning behind them-her father is one of the lucky few doctors left. In this case, she's the second most important thing in his life and it hurts like hell, but she pushes that aside and smiles weakly at him.
"It's okay, Dad." And it really is--she knows how important being a doctor is to her father and some of the tension in his shoulders leaks away when she gives her silent forgiveness, even if it’s half-hearted forgiveness at best.
They talk for a few more minutes before Jim interrupts, his face filling the vidscreen. "Hey pipsqueak! Glad to see your pretty face again."
"Uncle Jim..." her exasperated tone is nearly identical to her father's now and it makes Jim’s eyebrows raise in surprise before he grins at her. She can see the faint line of a few new scars on his face and the smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but tries not to think of the news reports she’s read and focuses on the here and now.
"Your dad's got some news he needs to tell you about" Jim's grin fades and he runs a hand through his cropped hair with a sigh. "Don't be mad at him, okay? It was my call-you want to be mad, you yell at me."
"What is it?" she asks suspiciously, when Jim has left the screen and it's just her and her father again, who looks suddenly old and tired, like he's been through a war. Which he sort of has, and the knowledge makes her a little bit sick to her stomach. But for a chance of fate, her father could have been on that list of the dead.
"Uncle Jim and I are being assigned to the Enterprise, Jo. We'll be up there for five years, starting next week." her father looks nervous, like he's expecting her to get hysterical (like her mother), but she merely nods because she's known that this was coming ever since her father joined Starfleet. Evie Taylor's dad is in Starfleet too and he got sent away on missions, but Evie still gets to talk to her dad and see him on shore leave, so there's no reason for her to be upset. Her dad has never let her down before and she knows he won’t start now.
"Can I come and visit you?" She desperately wants to see a real starship and it would give her one-up on Evie, who's always bragging about her dad's ship even though her dad is just an engineer. "What are you doing? Is it dangerous?"
"Well, your Uncle Jim is captain, so I'd expect we can find a way to get you on board without too much trouble."
“They let Uncle Jim be captain?” Joanna cannot help the skepticism. Uncle Jim is not exactly the best example of a responsible person and she says as much, which earns a wounded “Hey!” from Uncle Jim offscreen.
“I know, but that’s what the admirals decided, and Uncle Jim needs me to be his chief medical officer.” Her father’s lips quirk upward in a grin, which makes him look a little less like and old man and more like the father she knows. “Someone has to keep him in one piece.”
She can hear Uncle Jim muttering things about “jackass doctors” and “traitors” offscreen and laughs, knowing her father is right. If anyone can keep Uncle Jim alive, it’s her dad, and her dad needs Uncle Jim to be there for him, just like she needs them both to be there for her.
They talk for another two hours before Joanna’s mother orders her to stop hogging the vidscreen and she goes to bed that night with a smile on her face, dreaming of starships, her father, and Jim.
--
For eight months after the Enterprise leaves on its five year mission, Joanna gets a message every week from her father. Sometimes they're short, just letting her know he's okay and that he'll write more next week (sometimes Uncle Jim adds a footnote to let her know that yes, he really is okay, he's just really busy saving the crew from whatever awful disease they've picked up this time). Other times they're long, full of ship gossip and stories and pictures of the amazing things that the Enterprise comes across. Uncle Jim writes to her most weeks as well, and on the occasion that the Enterprise is close enough for audio or video transmissions, she even gets to talk to them face to face.
The first time her dad misses a week, she panics. When the message finally arrives, three days late, it’s short and to the point, letting her know that communications were knocked out and that's why he wasn't able to send her a message sooner. A few hours later, she gets a much longer message from her Uncle Jim, who tells her some fantastical story about a planet full of giants and a misunderstanding about "cultural differences", which is Uncle Jim's way of saying he did something to offend the locals and they ended up in prison, again. She isn’t surprised to find that her father leaves that story out of his next missive.
There are no more interruptions in messages for another year, until the week before the Enterprise is scheduled to come back to Earth for repairs and supplies. Joanna is supposed to join her father on the ship to escape yet another summer spent with old Miss Catherine and her cows, since her mother is going off-planet on some xenobiology expedition.
When no message arrives from her father that week, or the week after, Joanna does what any resourceful ten year old would do: she calls Christopher Pike.
Uncle Jim gave her the number for Admial Pike's private quarters right before they left Earth and told her only to use it in an emergency. To her, this is absolutely an emergency because if neither her dad nor Uncle Jim have sent her a message for two weeks, something is very, very wrong.
Admiral Pike is not amused by her call at first (she sort of forgot the time difference on the other side of the continent) but he takes her concerns seriously and two days later, after a distress beacon is heard near the Enterprise’s last coordinates, the USS Exeter is sent out to investigate. Admiral Pike has a shuttle bring Joanna to Starfleet headquarters to wait for the news, a gesture for which Joanna is extremely grateful. Her mother is off-planet already, and Miss Catherine is too old and too far gone in her mind to notice if one little girl goes missing.
Joanna likes Admiral Pike right from their first meeting when she gets off the shuttle. She knows he's responsible for encouraging Uncle Jim to join Starfleet and that makes him a hero in her eyes, because without Uncle Jim her dad would be lost, plain and simple. While they wait for word from the Exeter, he teachers her to play three-dimensional chess and his wife stuffs Joanna full of non-replicated food. When word from the Exeter finally comes almost a week later while Joanna and Pike are playing chess, she almost upsets their board when she leaps for the communications panel to read the news.
The Enterprise had been attacked by a group of rogue Klingons and badly damaged, but they'd been slowly limping back towards Earth when the Exeter found them. A list of the injured and dead accompanies the report, and Joanna nearly faints when she sees her father's name listed among the wounded. Only the admiral’s firm grip on her arm keeps her upright.
When the Enterprise returns to Earth with the Exeter, they transfer the wounded to the Starfleet Academy hospital and Pike personally takes Joanna there, pulling rank to force the staff to let her see her father. They don't really have to fight hard--Leonard McCoy is a legend still in these halls--and she finds herself in the doorway of his private hospital room, watching Uncle Jim sitting by her unconscious father's bedside, clutching his hand and staring at nothing.
"Uncle Jim?"
"Hey pipsqueak." Jim's voice betrays his exhaustion and she can see the bandages poking out from under his captain's tunic. It frightens her, seeing the realities of space battle marring the skin of those she loves and she crosses the room to stand beside Jim, putting one small hand on his shoulder.
"Is he going to be okay?" She feels like she’s a little girl all over again, seeing her daddy laying still and quiet in a medical bed, only the beeping of the monitors to show that he was still alive.
"Should be fine. Your dad's too stubborn to give up on us now." Jim squeezes her hand and pulls over a chair for her, which she ignores in favor of the edge of her father’s bed.
Somewhere during the second night of their vigil, while she’s half-asleep on a cot, holding Mr. Ribbit (Nurse Chapel brought him from her father’s quarters the last time she came to visit) Joanna hears Jim talking to her unconscious father in a low, broken voice.
“Bones, you can’t leave me now. You just can’t, alright? I love you, you stupid bastard. If you don’t fight this, I’m going to find a way to follow you beyond the grave and kick your stupid, stubborn ass, do you hear me?”
The next morning, her father awakens without a sound, finding Jim asleep in the bed beside him, holding one of his hands, and Joanna curled between them with her smaller hand on top of theirs, a smile on her face.
Before the Enterprise returns to its mission, with it’s newly healed CMO already back at work, Jim asks Joanna’s permission to court her father.
She doesn’t even have to think twice before she gives Jim her answer.
--
Joanna is fourteen when her father and Jim decide to get married.
It’s a small ceremony, without the pageantry and politics that would normally surround weddings of famous starship captains and legendary chief medical officers. There are only three guests-herself, Spock, and Uhura, and the ceremony performed by the now-retired Admiral Pike.
It’s the last time she’ll ever see the man who helped put her family together, whom she dances with at the dinner after the wedding in spite of his wheelchair and her awkwardly long legs that she’ll grow into someday. He kisses her hand at the end of the night and tells Joanna he’s proud of her, that he looks forward to testing out “that McCoy stubbornness” when she finally enlists in Starfleet.
Two weeks later, her father calls with the news. Knowing that Admiral Pike’s death was painless and natural does nothing to lessen the blow and she cries all the way to San Francisco, stopping only when she steps off the shuttle and into the waiting arms of her fathers.
--
Joanna Kirk-McCoy graduates from Starfleet Academy with her medical degree and a specialty in neurophysiology on Jim’s 40th birthday. Her birthday present to him comes in the form of orders to serve as assistant physician aboard the USS Enterprise, wrangled thanks to a combination of nepotism, hard work, and a letter in her file from the long-departed Christopher Pike, the contents of which she was not allowed to read but she had a feeling contained a very strongly worded reminder about Starfleet’s policy on families serving together to minimize stress and promote ship unity.
Much of the original crew have gone on to other postings or out of Starfleet all together, and she finds it disconcerting at first to not see Uhura or Spock on the bridge, no Scotty or Gaila in Engineering, no Chekov or Sulu at the helm.
She knows Jim won’t be captain much longer-he’s turned down the position of admiral four times, claiming he belongs in space, but there’s a heaviness to both Jim and her father that speaks of a looming retirement and she has a feeling they were waiting for her to take the reins, so to speak, before gracefully letting go.
Two years, three months, and four days into her service under Captain Kirk, the Enterprise is attacked by Romulans once again, this time in the form of an organized assault force from the Romulan Empire itself. The fight is brutal and lengthy, as the Enterprise does its best to dodge the attacks long enough to contact Starfleet for backup. At the last moment, before the Romulans can blow the ship apart, Jim pulls out one last spectacular maneuver that jettisons the warp core into a nearby gravity well, frying not only their own systems but those of the Romulans as well.
Seemingly defeated, the Romulans ask for a parlay on a neutral planet within transporter range.
When the away team beams back up to the Enterprise, it is not the victory they hoped for. Instead of six crew members materializing on the pad, there are only two: her father and Jim.
Jim.
Her father is carrying Jim, his body bent with the effort, and she can see the blood that covers both men, too much blood to belong to just one of them. Her brain moves into doctor mode as her body responds, pulling out her tricorder as one of the med team catches her father as he stumbles off the pad, laying both men out on stretchers.
They’re rushed to sickbay and Joanna finds herself methodically attending to her patients, ignoring the screaming in her head that these are her fathers and that they’re dying. Jim is her first concern-the external injuries are severe enough that she’ll have to work fast to save him.
It takes her a few seconds for her to realize that Jim isn’t breathing.
According to the tricorder, held in a hand that is shaking so hard she can barely see the readout, he’s been dead for nearly an hour. At this point, nothing in her medical arsenal will bring him back.
“Daddy?”
Suddenly, she is six years old again, standing on the front porch of her mother’s home watching her father walk away, suitcase in hand.
“Tried everything I could. Too fast-they were too fast.” There is blood on her father’s lips and she hurriedly runs the scanner over him, noting the massive internal injuries that she’ll have to work quickly to mend. As if he was reading her mind, her father reaches up and grabs her wrist, giving the tiniest shake of his head.
“No, honey. Let me go.”
“Dad--”
She is four, falling off her pony and skinning her knee. Her father is there with a skin patch and kisses away her tears.
“Couldn’t be prouder of you, kid.” Her father’s voice is weak and she can hear the bubbling of blood in the rasp of his breath. “Always…knew you’d turn out okay.”
She can do this, she can let go. Her dad needs to follow Jim---always has, always will. In this, she is second, and it hurts like hell but she understands. “I had the best fathers a girl could ever hope for.”
She is two, riding on her smiling father’s shoulders as they walk towards the creek at the edge of their farm.
“Love you, Jojo.”
She is a baby, fussing in her crib. Her father picks her up, cradles her to his chest, and whispers his hopes for her future as he rocks her back to sleep.
“Love you too, Daddy.” She presses a gentle kiss against her father’s forehead, knowing he’ll never feel it, and covers him with a blanket, a gesture she knows means little to him but so much to her. But there is no time to grieve. Turning around, she hands her tricorder to a young nurse whom she and her father found to be extremely reliable and smiles grimly at the young woman.
“You’re acting CMO now, Nurse Williams.”
Wide eyed, the woman nods and straightens under Joanna’s gaze, turning to work with a look in her eyes that reminds Joanna of her own duty. She doesn’t know how many officers are still alive or who technically outranks her and she doesn’t really care. Right now, the Romulans are still out there, probably preparing to attack, and she has a job to do.
When the turbolift doors open onto the bridge, Lieutenant-now acting Captain-Joanna Kirk-McCoy breathes deep and squares her shoulders, ordering the remaining bridge crew to open fire on the Romulans. The Excelsior is on its way to their position and if the Enterprise can defend herself for just a bit longer, no more of her crew will die today. She’ll fight for the life of this crew and this ship until her very last breath.
Just like her fathers.