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Joanna became accustomed to seeing him, to waking up bleary-eyed on Sunday mornings and finding Jim Kirk in the kitchen, grinning through bruises.“How ‘bout some waffles?” he’d say, setting down a plate in front of her before she could answer.And they would sit at the counter and eat waffles, and he would steal hers when she wasn’t looking but never touch his own. And sometimes her dad would stumble out, looking haggard and sleepy like he did on the nights he worked late at the hospital.“Just make yourself at home,” he’d grumble, but he always sat down with them, pulling Jim’s plate closer to eat.It should have been nice. And it was, for a while. She never ate breakfast with her dad, never got to see Jim during the week, sometimes for weeks at a time. But in the quiet moments when the waffles were gone, Jim’s grin would slip, and he’d run a hand down his face, passing over the bruises and the scars while the youthful symmetry morphed into something closer to the contours of her father.On the days her dad joined them, he would reach over, rest a hand on the back of Jim’s neck and guide him to the other room, leaving Joanna in the kitchen surrounded by heavy silence and half-eaten waffles.But those days were better than when she ate with Jim alone. When she would let him eat her waffles and ruffle her hair and then watch in despair as his face crumpled. Because she’s only a kid, not a grown-up, not a doctor. She just cleans up the waffles and waits, waits for her dad to emerge and take Jim away again, to fix him. By the time she’s nine it’s a routine, and she’s eating waffles every weekend, and Jim’s bruises are getting worse, and the smiles are shorter and shorter, and Jim is eating less and less. And she’s only nine but she knows it’s not okay, and after all she’s nine and deserves to know.So on Saturday night when her father is tucking her into bed she asks if they will see Jim again tomorrow. And he sighs and says he doesn’t know, and she says I hope so and he says, “I hope so too, Jo.”And then he’s turning to leave but she has more questions, needs to know why he can’t go home, why he grins through bruises, why he always makes waffles.Her father is shaking his head, too young, too young, but it’s been four years of half-eaten waffles and fresh scars and she’s old enough.“Is Jim okay?”He sighs, sits down on the bed, presses a kiss to her forehead and says, “No, baby, he’s not.”And she listens, listens to the story of Jim, one filled with too much sadness and not enough smiles, too many bruises. And she’s too young to understand, to comprehend how anyone could hurt Jim, but old enough to know there are bad people in this world. And she cries because there aren’t enough waffles in the universe to make it better, too few Sunday mornings to heal.She makes a plan.The next morning when Jim trudges into the kitchen, Joanna is awake, and making waffles.Jim looks up, wrecked and puzzled, and Joanna just flashes a toothy grin, saying “How bout some waffles?”And she pushes Jim into a chair, puts a plate down on the counter, hands him a fork, and waits.Jim just stares.“I made these for you,” she says.“Why?”“Because it’s about time someone made you waffles.”And there, finally, a smile cracks through. It’s not a grin, not yet, but she’ll take it. From then on they take turns, and sometimes even her dad helps out, but usually on those days they end up eating cereal.The first time Jim doesn’t show up, Joanna is twelve, and her dad is rushing through the kitchen, fully dressed, car keys in one hand, medkit in the other.“Where’s Jim?” she asks, and he tells her he’s going to the hospital, got a comm from the on-call, Jim’s hurt pretty bad. “I’m going with you,” she tells him, and something in the way she says it, the hardness of her face, convinces him not to argue.“Get your coat,” he says, “it’s cold out.”Jim is in the hospital for two weeks. Every Sunday, she brings him waffles, sneaks them past the nurses and the Starfleet cadets and Jim grins when he sees her. They have a picnic on the bedspread and Joanna tries to ignore the bandages on his hands, the bruises on his neck, the way his breathing is just a little bit too shallow. And when she spills syrup on a piece of medical equipment that brings three nurses and her father running into the room, expecting a dying patient, Jim just laughs and laughs and laughs. And when she gets kicked out of the hospital room and sent home, she thinks to herself, it was worth it.There would be more hospital visits to follow. Some mornings she would wake up and find a note pinned to the waffle iron – We’re at the hospital. Be back as soon as I can. Love, Dad, and she would sit alone at the counter and wait, wait for the news that it was over, that Jim was gone. Because she was seventeen now and understood, had been watching for twelve years as Jim got used and wasted by his “clients.” She had been witness to his life-long career as a punching bag, an outlet for pent-up rage and a quick fuck, only to be thrown away, deposited on their doorstep the morning after. She watched him date his way through the scum of San Francisco, latching on to the same kind of assholes that hired him, and she watched as every relationship ended in another hospital visit, another Sunday morning missed, another wasted batch of waffles.A year later she was graduating from high school and Jim was at the hospital under the watchful eyes of her father, being treated for a broken arm and a punctured lung, as well as sleep deprivation and malnourishment. They both missed the ceremony. So instead of going out to party with the rest of her class, she made waffles, and brought them to the hospital only to find both men asleep, Jim at the hands of heavy medication and her father at the hands of a sneaky nurse with a hypo. Nurse Chapel smiled when she came in, but it wasn’t a grin, and she didn’t have time to eat waffles. Joanna ate them alone on a plastic hospital chair, plate resting atop the diploma in her lap as her family snored around her. She planned an intervention.Her father helped, provided the medical information and an extra scowl, where she provided the waffles.She told Jim that he needed to change, couldn’t go on like this. And he shook his head, too young, too young, what do you know? But she’s eighteen years old and knows that for thirteen years Jim has been dying. And one day, someday soon, she won’t be bringing waffles to a hospital room; she’ll be bringing them to the San Francisco cemetery.And then Jim starts crying and she really wasn’t prepared for that at all.Apparently her father was, his hand coming up to lay on the back of Jim’s neck, and suddenly Joanna is five again and all she wants to do is wake up to the smell of waffles on a Sunday morning and come out to find Jim singing in the kitchen, grinning through the bruises, and she wants her father to take him to the other room and for him to come out healed. She needs life to be that simple.And her father is whispering something into Jim’s ear and Jim is nodding and the next day they are cleaning out his apartment and he is quitting his job and he is moving in. By the time Joanna leaves for college, he has gained fifteen pounds and has only visited the hospital once. And when she comes home for Thanksgiving, he tells her he’s enlisting, moving into the dorms, starting classes in January. She hugs him tight, tells him she’s proud of him, and he grins and asks why suddenly he feels like the younger one. Her father just snorts and tells him it’s because he’s a moron, but she deadpans and says, “College changes a girl.”And then they are all laughing, clutching their sides and leaning on each other for support, and no one notices that the turkey is burning in the oven.They eat waffles. Thanksgiving waffles topped with stuffing and mashed potatoes and carrots and cranberry sauce. Her father shakes his head. “This is disgusting,” he tells them, and Jim starts to laugh again, heaping more potatoes onto his plate. “This is perfect,” he says, and Joanna agrees. After that the days seem to rush by in a blur, and before she knows it she’s halfway done with college and coming home to San Francisco to find out that Jim has started dating again. Her father refers to him only as the “green-blooded hobgoblin” or the “pointy-eared bastard,” which she has come to understand not as disapproval but merely his own brand of colorful descriptors.“His name is Spock,” Jim tells her, “and he’s drop-dead gorgeous.”Her father groans in the background and Joanna giggles, listening as Jim extols the virtues of this new man. She finds herself checking for bruises, eyeing wrists and cheeks and eyes for any sign of the old Jim, for some small tell that will show her this Spock’s true nature. She is continually surprised when Jim arrives on Sunday mornings with a clean bill of health, radiant even, and she spares a moment to imagine that this could be the one, could be what Jim’s been waiting for.When she finally meets the illusive Spock, he is not at all how she imagined he would be. He is stoic, soft-spoken, analytical, and serious – and yet somehow the perfect foil to Jim’s exuberance. And she doesn’t know how it happened, doesn’t know how they found each other, but there’s something about it that seems right. Jim has never looked happier, and on rare occasions, when Jim is wide-eyed and grinning, she will see something almost like a smile appear on Spock’s face, and she feels things click into place.Only one test of character remains.But the next Sunday morning, she wakes up to find Spock in the kitchen, making waffles with that almost smile on his face, and she knows everything is going to be okay.And then she’s twenty-two and graduating college, and everyone is there. Her father, beaming like he hasn’t since she was six and told him she wanted to be a doctor, like her daddy. Next to him sits Jim, with a grin to match, arm slung around Spock’s stiff shoulders. And when her name rings out over the stadium she hears her family – her father cheering, Jim catcalling, Spock clapping politely after Jim nudges him with his elbow, and her heart swells with pride. Not because the president of the university is handing her a diploma, but because her father is smiling again with no bags under his eyes, because Jim is sitting upright, not attached to any hospital equipment and without a bruise in sight, and because next to him sits someone who truly, truly loves him, and doesn’t expect anything in return. She can’t seem to stop smiling.That night, they eat their weight in waffles. When her father, Jim, and Spock all leave the next year on the Enterprise, she thinks her heart may never heal. But every Sunday they will call, her father making sure she’s doing alright, eating her vegetables, staying away from boys, Jim telling her that replicator waffles are shit, he’s making Spock reprogram them, going to pay him with sexual favors, and her father is groaning and covering his ears and Jim is grinning and she laughs and laughs and wishes that they weren’t lightyears away.She’s only been at medical school for a week when she meets Ralph Haverty. He is all charm and quick wit and fiery eyes and she’s falling hard before she can even stop to think about it. The first month is like magic, and she’s telling Jim all about him, his hair, his hands, his lips, and Jim is grinning and nodding and telling her it’s about damn time and has she told her father? She shakes her head no, it’s too soon, he doesn’t need to know. And Jim cocks his head to the side, eyes hard and questioning, before he sighs and promises to keep Ralph a secret. But he waggles his finger at her before signing off, thinks she’s making a big mistake.The first sign that he is right comes two months later, when Ralph comes over for breakfast and she sets down a plate in front of him and he tells her that he doesn’t like waffles. And she reels for a minute, trying to understand, before faking a smile and making him eggs instead. And when they’re cleaning up she watches as he throws the waffles into the trash and she feels something shift, the magic beginning to fade.A week later he will hit her for the first time, and she will cry, and he will swear and apologize and kiss her cheek where his handprint remains etched in raw skin. And she will forgive him, apologize for provoking him, turn her head to kiss his lips and pretend like this night never happened. But when Ralph leaves, she finds herself calling Jim, not sure why she’s doing so, and he is smiling when he answers but it fades fast when he sees her face, cheek still red and smarting. And suddenly he is all business, and she begins to see him as the captain of a starship instead of the broken man she once knew. So much has changed since then.“Joanna.”Her eyes snap back to the comm unit to find Jim’s worried eyes on her.“You need to tell your father,” he says.And she shakes her head, yells at him, he doesn’t understand, it was just a slap, it was an accident, no big deal. And he is yelling back, but when did Jim Kirk start knowing the first thing about healthy relationships anyway? She presses the button to end the call, slamming the comm unit down on the table. He doesn’t understand.But it wouldn’t be the last time Ralph hit her. He was a fighter after all, used violence to get his way, didn’t take no for an answer. And she screamed and fought back, threw things and lashed out, but after all she was twenty-three and slight and he was twenty-three and strong and she was no match. He forced himself closer, and she resigned herself to a painful night and a teary morning, to stumbling, panicked, into the pharmacy tomorrow, to fixing herself up and hoping for the best. And Ralph sneered, reaching for her shirt, when the door was thrown open and he was pulled off of her. Strong arms found their way underneath her and she was being carried out the door. She turned her head and saw Ralph drop to the floor, Spock’s hand wrapped around the juncture between shoulder and neck. And suddenly Jim’s voice was in her ear.“Shhhh, it’s gonna be alright Jojo,” he whispered. “It’s gonna be alright.”She cried and cried.She woke up in an unfamiliar bed in an apartment that looked like no one had lived there for years. She had a split second to be terrified before Jim walked in the room and she remembered. And his eyes met hers and she couldn’t possibly cry any more but there were the tears welling in her eyes. And then he was there, arms around her. She pressed her face into his shoulder, leaving a wet spot on his shirt, and he just held her. Didn’t say a thing, and she was grateful. When she straightened up, she saw Jim’s face, a mixture of sadness, rage, but also understanding, and like lightning it strikes her that of course Jim would understand. And that’s heartbreaking.“Jim-““Shh,’ he said, placing a finger over her lips. “It’s alright.“I’m sorry,” she squeaked out.And he nodded.She turned to look around at the sparse bedroom, and asked, “Where are we?”“Our apartment – mine and Spock’s,” he clarified.Spock. Who saw her last night with Ralph. And then the image of Ralph falling to the floor pops into her head and she gasps and is asking Jim if Spock killed Ralph and he chuckles in poorly concealed rage. No, he says, Spock didn’t kill him, just took him to the police station and may have used his rank and command authority to have Ralph incarcerated without bail.“You won’t be seeing him again.”Joanna nods, not sure how to feel. Ralph wasn’t a bad guy, she tells herself. He was just confused. And Jim is watching her like a hawk, somehow understanding what she’s thinking, and he’s turning her to look at him, face serious.“Ralph is a bad guy, Jo. He will always be a bad guy.” His face softens a fraction and he pulls her in close, one hand on the back of her head the other wrapped around her shoulders, taking a breath. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did.”And there are those pesky tears again, because she’s twenty-three but she feels so much younger, like that seven year old girl watching Jim in the kitchen on a Sunday morning, watching him wince as he twists his arm the wrong way, as fresh bruises bump against the counter, as old scars stretch on war-torn skin. And she cries for Jim, and for herself, and for not learning from Jim’s mistakes, but maybe that’s not how life works. And Jim is whispering in her ear again, telling her how he knows what it’s like to only see the parts of people we want to see, to make the best of any bad situation and wave off bruises because they only hurt when you remember the pain, and how it feels to be stuck, immobile, helpless.“But he doesn’t deserve you,” he whispers“That much is clear.” And then they’re breaking apart, because there’s Spock in the doorway, impassive as ever, but even so, there is such compassion in those eyes, in the turn of his lips, and Joanna can’t tell if it’s for her or for Jim. But then Jim and Spock are exchanging a look, one that speaks volumes, and Joanna’s heart sinks.“You’re going to tell my father, aren’t you?”Spock’s eyebrows shoot up before he replies. “No, Joanna, we are not.” And Jim nods in agreement. “We believe that should the incidents of the past twenty-four hours come to the good doctor’s attention, it would be best delivered not through Jim or I, but through yourself.”“You should tell your dad, Jo,” Jim agrees, “but we’re not going to.”Joanna nods, but stays silent, not sure if she ever wants her father to know how close it came, how foolish she was. Jim pats her comfortingly on the shoulder, and she takes a moment to appreciate the irony of the situation, that it is Jim staging the intervention, Jim picking up her pieces, and Jim putting her back together again. She is immensely grateful for all his careful gluing.A thought occurs to her.“How did you know?”“Know what?” Jim asks.“That I needed help.”It is Spock who answers. “We did not. The Captain and I had business to attend to in San Francisco, and intended to exchange greetings before our immediate return to the Enterprise. It was merely good fortune that allowed us to intervene when we did.”Jim’s eyes connect with hers and he simply says, “We got lucky.”“Don’t they need you back on board?” She asks, guilt flooding her as she realizes the trouble they have gone through to see her safe.“I think Sulu can manage a few more hours without us,” Jim says with a smirk. “He’s been looking for his go-round in the Captain’s chair for quite some time.”Spock shoots Jim a long-suffering look before adding, “We will remain as long as you need us.”“Thank you,” she says, the sincerest she has ever been, “to both of you.”Spock nods in acceptance, and Jim smiles, hand reaching up to brush against her cheek, and then they are gone, leaving her alone in the room with the caveat that if she needs anything, she ought to holler like an Andorian wildebeest. The last snippets of their conversation (“Andorian wildebeests do not holler, Jim.”) float through the door and for the first time in a long time, she feels at home in her own skin. An hour later and Spock is calling her to the kitchen, where a plate of steaming waffles is waiting.Two years later she meets Galen Belisle, and she feels like the entire world has shifted on its axis. He is nothing like Ralph. He is patient and kind and soft-spoken and is studying to become a doctor – a healer, not a fighter. She tells her father first this time, and he is grumpy and abrasive and threatens to inject him with fatal alien diseases and she laughs and says she’s glad he’s in a different galaxy. When she tells Jim, he coos like a mother hen and begs her for details, what he looks like, what his voice sounds like, what sort of skills he has in bed, and she hears Spock chiding him in the background for encouraging deviant behavior. You were pretty encouraging yourself last night, Jim is calling back, and Joanna voices her disgust with the direction the conversation has gone. Jim just cackles, Spock shakes his head, and Joanna attempts to scrub her brain of the many unwanted images Jim has placed there.The next Sunday, when she wakes up to find Galen in his boxers making waffles in her kitchen, she knows it’s a done deal.She is twenty-eight and getting married. The Enterprise is in space dock, a well-timed shore leave placing her crew dirtside for the next two weeks. Her father is walking her down the aisle, a rare smile gracing his face, and she thinks she might see a tear roll down his cheek as he leaves her standing next to Galen. And Jim is her maid of honor, which is truly ridiculous but somehow seems proper. When she asked him, he grinned like a madman, shouting to Spock that his wife would finally be doing something respectable with herself, and could he wear a dress, how about fuchsia? Wouldn’t it just perfectly highlight his rosy cheeks? Spock’s horrified face appeared on the screen for a split second and Joanna laughed and promised that he would absolutely have to wear a tux.And so he is, looking dapper and so much younger than a man of forty-four, and Spock is sitting with her father in the front row, and she can’t remember being this happy since their wacky Thanksgiving so many years earlier. And then Admiral Pike is saying they can kiss, and as she leans in she hears Jim wolf-whistle from behind her and she smiles against Galen’s lips and he smiles right back and her heart could not be more full of love for the people in her life than at this moment.At the reception, they forgo the traditional cake for make-your-own Belgian waffles, and she watches as Jim builds a mountain of whipped cream on top of his, laughs as her father berates his eating habits and Spock calmly begins scooping whipped cream off of Jim’s plate. And she turns and Galen is smiling at her, all wide-eyed and euphoric, and she eats her waffle one-handed, the other clasped tightly with his beneath the table.It is a perfect two weeks, and when shore leave is over, she watches her family board a shuttle, expecting her heart to shatter all over again, but there is Galen’s arm around her waist and his lips against her hair and she realizes that her family has grown, that she is left but not alone, that she has someone to share the heartache.The next two years seem to fly by, and before it seems possible her father is turning fifty-two and the Enterprise is finishing her first five-year mission. She calls to wish him a happy birthday, ask him when he got so old, and he grumbles about being too damn old to be trapped in tin can hurtling through space. She grins.“I have a present for you,” she tells him.He raises an eyebrow, asks her if she shipped it express, and she shakes her head.“It won’t be delivered for at least another six months.”And he is puzzled for only a minute before his eyes widen and he’s shouting at the console, and then Galen is sliding up next to her and they both laugh as her father tosses his hands up into the air, yelling so loud that he brings security into his quarters. And then he’s shaking the poor, unsuspecting crew members by the shoulders, telling them he’s going to be a grandpa, and shit he’s way too young to be a grandpa, and when Jim rushes in to respond to a disturbance in the quarters of his Chief Medical Officer, the entire charade begins again. And then there is an impromptu dance party happening and Jim is bouncing up and down, clapping his hands and shrieking at the security officers that don’t they understand, he’s going to be an aunt!Over the next few days, they receive dozens of comms congratulating them. There’s one from nearly every bridge officer on the Enterprise, including a particularly delightful one from Spock during which he professes his own contentment in becoming an uncle and also requests that from now on she inform him of any imminent offspring directly so that he might prepare for the expected drama and general mayhem among his command crew.A week later, they receive a package with a return address from Riverside, Iowa. It turns out to be a bouquet of flower-shaped waffles with a card reading Congratulations on your spawn. Love, Auntie Jim and Uncle Spock.Six months, two weeks, and four days later, Addie Jemma Belisle is brought into the world kicking and screaming. Joanna thinks she has never seen anything so beautiful in her life. And when they place her in her arms for the first time, she doesn’t think she will ever be able to stop smiling. Galen stands next to her, grinning like a loon, surgeon’s hands soft and gentle on new skin, and Addie sleeps, purple and wrinkled and perfect in her arms.In the next few hours Joanna will receive several frantic calls from deep-space: the first from her father, asking how it went, how her doctors were, which hospital was she at, it better not be Starfleet medical, those monkeys couldn’t deliver a letter to their own goddamned mailbox. The second is from Jim, asking her to please call her old man because he was terrorizing the crew, and she better be sending him a picture of his niece ASAP or he is going to turn the whole ship around and warp back to Earth to see her. The third is from Spock, his voice pained as he asks if she would please respond to the missives sent by her father so that he would cease monopolizing the communications frequency.When she finally does get around to calling her father, Galen and Addie are both fast asleep, Galen in one of those truly awful plastic hospital chairs and Addie in her arms. Her father answers the comm looking utterly panicked, and she quickly reassures him that everything went fine and the doctors were great and doesn’t he work for Starfleet medical?“Oh just leave it,” he grumbles in return. “How is she?”Joanna beams. “She’s beautiful,” she says, turning the viewscreen to take in the baby in her arms.A choked sort of noise comes from her communicator and she looks down to realize that her father is crying.“Congratulations, Grandpa,” she says softly, and he smiles.Suddenly, she hears the sound of a door being forced open behind her father and loud footfalls in the background and then Jim’s face is smushed in next to his.“Lemme see her, lemme see her!” He shouts, and then lets out some variety of a shriek when Addie’s little face appears on the screen. “Oh. My. God,” he says. “She looks just like her Auntie Jim!”And then, in a blur of command gold, he is gone, excited wails trailing behind him (“Spock! Spock c’mere and see the baby! She’s so fucking cute!”)Joanna just laughs, and her father grumbles about his damn, hyperactive, child of a captain, and she promises to call again soon. She lays her communicator down on the bedside table and takes in the sleeping forms around her, and remembers the last time she was awake in a hospital room surrounded by sleepy bodies. She remembers the sad smiles of the nurses, the slow beeps of Jim’s heart monitor, the soft snores as her father caught up on much needed rest. And everything has changed, but nothing really. She returns happy smiles from the nurses as they walk past, she listens to the soothing sounds of Addie breathing against her chest, and shakes her head at the locomotive snoring coming out of Galen. And they’re the same but different, changes for the better, steps in the right direction. She doesn’t need to be awake this time, knows they’re not going anywhere, and she is lulled to sleep by the familiar sounds of hospital and family.The three of them are sent home a day later and it seems like they will never sleep again. At first they don’t want to, would stay up just to watch her sleep, little chest moving up and down and hands curled beside her face. But as the weeks and months go on Joanna finds herself less and less eager to respond to those four-in-the-morning wails. She will, of course, pull herself out of bed to check on Addie, pick her up and coo and rock and put her to bed again, only to find that Galen has slept through everything, is still snoring away on his side of the bed, hogging the covers. So she will kick him, yank the blanket back, and sleep for another two hours or so, angry and exhausted.But the next morning she will stagger out into the kitchen to find Addie in her highchair, her hand clenched around a wooden spoon, laughing as Galen shows her how to drum on the counter. And there on the table will be a plate of waffles, still hot, and Galen will shoot her that lopsided smile, one part giddy and two parts apology, and she will smile, kiss him, pick up a wooden spoon and join the kitchen drum circle.Before she knows it, she’s thirty-three and Spock is calling her from deep space. There was an incident, he tells her without preamble, a fatal disease introduced to the Enterprise crew. It managed to spread throughout several departments before a suitable treatment was devised.“The casualties number in the hundreds.”Joanna’s heart is in her throat, her palms sweating, and she wipes them on her jeans, leaving long streaks like tear-tracks, before forcing her eyes back to Spock.“Is Jim-“ she starts, but he cuts her off.“Jim is a carrier, however the treatment was discovered before his symptoms became too severe. He remains in sickbay, unconscious for the time being, however it is expected he will make a full recovery,” he tells her, relief at his own words clear in his face, and she feels her heart begin to descend, is mad at Spock for worrying her needlessly, wonders if that was all he called about, is about to thank him and say goodbye, thinking she needs to go check on Addie, when Spock continues.“You father was also a carrier.”And she’s freezing, heart seizing in her chest at Spock’s use of the past tense and those are tears behind her eyes but Spock is still talking.“He was one of the first affected, however worked tirelessly in order to discover the cure. Once the solution was successfully isolated, he insisted that the command crew be treated first, Jim and myself included.” He paused, his head shaking just a fraction. “He saved my life, and Jim’s, and more than half of this crew, however in doing so sacrificed his own.”Joanna can’t speak, can’t think, doesn’t notice her hands shaking, her tears falling steadily onto the tabletop viewscreen. She clenches her eyes closed, but Spock’s voice floats upwards, filling her ears.“We are returning to Earth.”And at that her eyes are flying open and the world is crashing back down around her. The Enterprise is coming home, bringing death in her wake. Her cargo bays, usually stocked with the necessary materials for a five-year mission, instead filled with the bodies of her crew, slowly making their way to waiting graves. Among those corpses is her father, a man who spent his life saving others only to find himself at death’s door with no one to save him. And it’s not right, not fair, not in any way kind, or just, or okay.“Momma?”She whips around to find Addie standing in the doorway, blanket dragging behind her, and before she can help it she is sobbing, because her little girl will never get to meet her grandfather, will only ever know him as the man on the viewscreen on the other side of the galaxy, and Addie is crying because Joanna is crying and Spock is still on the other end of an open channel, waiting for her to tell him it’s okay to leave.She turns, and almost can’t handle the sight of tears making their way down Spock’s cheeks, because he is Spock, and he is strong and without emotion (although they all know that isn’t true). He is supposed to be the one unaffected, the one that holds them up when they are sinking, but there he is crying, saying that he is sorry, he is so, so sorry, and she just can’t take it, is saying goodbye and hanging up before he has a chance to apologize again and she has a chance to start blaming him.And there is Addie, tugging on her hand, momma what’s wrong? And she pulls her to her chest, buries her face in her hair and inhales the scent of living, breathing McCoy. Addie is crying, doesn’t know what’s happening, momma you’re hurting me, and Joanna loosens her grip, tries to explain what happened, that granddad isn’t coming home, won’t be at her birthday party next month, but the words are forced out, each one sticking in her throat. Addie doesn’t understand, is only three, too young, too young, and she needs Galen, needs those strong arms around her waist holding her up and someone to tell her what to do, so she’s dialing and he’s answering with a cheerful hello and all that comes out are sobs. So he’s asking what’s wrong? What’s wrong? And she’s telling him to come home, she needs him home, and he says of course, of course but is Addie okay?“She’s fine,” Joanna chokes out. “It’s the Enterprise-“ she forces back another sob “My father-“ and then she’s gone again, but Galen understands, always understands, and he is telling her to stay put, to sit down, he’ll be home in ten minutes, and take care of Addie.Seven minutes later and he is rushing through the door, and she falls into his arms and he holds her as she cries and she finds herself wishing for someone else’s arms, wants to be nine again with her father tucking her in, holding her tight and telling her truths she needs to hear, and she wants to have the same kind of certainty she had then, that everything was going to work out fine, that things were going to get better, that she was going to make them better. But she’s thirty-three and all she can think about is the truth that those arms will never hold her again. She has never cried so hard, will never cry so hard again.She doesn’t let Addie go to the funeral, doesn’t want her to remember the coffin being lowered into the ground, the mobs of mourners gathered in the graveyard to commemorate the late, great Doctor Leonard McCoy, the sight of Jim, leaning heavily on Spock, face ashen and pale. She doesn’t know if it’s because of the disease still in his body or because of the fresh layers of soil that cover her father. But she doesn’t want Addie to see, to have these images etched into her memory like a name on a gravestone, doesn’t want them to haunt her like she knows they will haunt Jim. She knows it as he carefully makes his way to the headstone, folds his legs in under himself and sits, staring at the name there, like he can make it go away if he tries hard enough. And Spock lays one solid, comforting hand on his shoulder before joining her further away, beneath the trees.“I am sorry for your loss,” he says, and it is formal and somehow wrong but it is the best he can do and she knows he is sincere despite it all.She nods her head in silent thanks and they turn to watch Jim, his head bowed, one hand on the cold stone in front of him, the other clenched in the dirt at his side. He looks nothing like a forty-nine year old starship captain and everything like the twenty-one year old man she first met in her kitchen, cocky but unsure and battered and broken, trying so hard to be strong only to crack further and further into something yielding and desolate.Spock looks worried, eyebrows drawn together, mouth in an anxious frown, and more than anything that is a sign that the situation has escalated, perhaps further than she anticipated. Because after all she’s thirty-three, so old, so old, and has known Jim almost her whole life, should have known this would hurt him as much as it hurt her, should have realized that Leonard McCoy was as much a father to Jim Kirk as he was to Joanna, that more than one person lost a father today.“Spock,” she says, and those worried eyes turn to fall on hers. “Is Jim okay?”His eyes close, a fearful moment disguised as a blink, and says, “No. He is not.”The Enterprise remains docked in orbit around Earth for an unprecedented five weeks, time enough for the dead to be buried, the crew to mourn, and for Starfleet to try and find suitable replacements for those lost. Despite this, Joanna does not see much of Jim. She wonders whose fault it is, if perhaps they are both avoiding each other for the same reasons, if coming face to face with him may be too painful. Occasionally she will call Spock to check in, but inevitably Jim is always “out.” Spock always seems worried, muscle in his jaw twitching as he speaks, his small quirk of a smile vanished from his face completely. Jim doesn’t answer his comms, doesn’t respond to messages, doesn’t appear at her door on Sunday mornings, but she doesn’t think anything of it, is too consumed by her own grief to consider how Jim may be handling his.She throws herself back into work at the hospital, signing on for extra hours in the ER, staying long after her shift ends to be with her patients. She tells herself she’s not compensating for anything, is not trying to wipe out the niggling thought in her head that all this doesn’t mean anything. Her father practiced medicine his whole life, took the nobler path, and where did it get him?But she tries not to think like that, only succumbs to the devil on her shoulder in the quiet moments amidst the chaos, late at night when the halls in the ICU become hushed, or those precious moments in the on-call room when everyone is asleep, or tucked into a corner of the ER watching from a distance. Or the moment after a patient takes his last breath, when the steady beep-beep of a heart monitor transitions to one continuous ping, and she’s whispering the time of death and wondering to herself, is it worth it?Like Spock, Galen worries, though he does so visibly. And she appreciates it, for the first few weeks soaks it up, lets herself be comforted. But after a while it starts to grate on her nerves, because she just wants everything to be normal, wants it all to go back to the way it was, and how can she push away the dark thoughts in her head when Galen is there seeing right through everything? So she yells, and he yells, and they’re arguing in the kitchen, and Addie is crying, and it’s so obvious that nothing can ever be the way it was but she thought she was doing alright pretending. Can’t he just let her go on pretending? And he sighs, shakes his head, picks up Addie and goes upstairs, question left without an answer, fight left un-won, and she pretends that’s normal.Two days later and she is working another late night in the ER when she sees a team of EMT’s rushing through with a stretcher. And they’re speaking at the rapid-fire pace of people who need to communicate a lot of information in not enough time – bar fight, intoxicated, concussion, severe trauma to chest and ribs, broken hand – and she’s nodding, nothing she hasn’t seen before, perfectly normal. Then blue-uniformed bodies part and she gets a glimpse of the broken, bloodied face on the stretcher and she gasps.Because it’s Jim. Of course it’s Jim. And she’s paralyzed and shaking, and there’s that wicked voice in her head saying nothing you haven’t seen before, everything’s back to normal.And there’s protocols to follow, paperwork to fill out, superiors to find, but her instinct is kicking in and she’s helping the EMT’s lift Jim onto a hospital bed, is working with the nurses to stabilize his vitals, is trying to ignore the way his face is caved in to one side and the way he’s babbling nonsensically and the way his breathing is shallow and wet like it was so many years ago, in a different hospital, on a different day.And when the rapid beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor slows down and stabilizes, and when she’s regenerated enough of his face to hide the damage, and when she’s splashed enough cold water on her own face to wash off the sweat, she sits down next to the bed and reaches out with shaking fingers to grab Jim’s hand in her own.“You better not be sleeping,” she tells him, and it’s not a smile, but she thinks she might see something lift on his face and he fakes a snore in response.She squeezes his hand a little harder and he slowly turns his head to look at her. His eyes are still bloodshot and bruises are starting to bloom around his neck.“Hey, Jojo,” he fumbles out, voice hoarse and halting, and he tries for a smile.Joanna just glares, and the smile slides off his face.“It’s not as bad as it seems,” he tells her.She takes her hand from the bed to tick off on her fingers. “Concussion, three broken ribs, ruptured spleen, fractured skull.”“Fine,” he says. “Then it’s not as bad as it looks.”“It looks pretty damn bad from where I’m sitting.“I can explain-“ Jim starts, but Joanna cuts him off.“Save it,” she says. “I know your story, Jim Kirk. You think you can just find someone to beat away your problems. So you let yourself be a punching bag because it makes you feel better, and then I get to pick you up off the floor and put you back together.”“Joanna-““No! Goddamnit, Jim! You can’t keep acting like a child whenever it suits you. You’re not twenty-one anymore and I’m not going to keep fixing your sorry ass every time you decide you need-““Stop it!” Jim yells, and that wrecked voice, the voice she’d hoped to never hear again, stops her in her tracks.“Just stop it.”She shakes her head, prepared to force out more words, to repeat years of lectures memorized over half-eaten waffles. But Jim is cutting her off, his words slamming into her at warp speed.“Stop acting so much like your goddamn father!”And before she can think, before logic rights itself, before normality is restored, she’s replying, “Well someone has to.”Jim’s eyes get wide, and Joanna is already regretting saying it, is going to apologize, but then Jim is speaking again.“Call Spock,” he says, defeated, “and I’ll be out of your hair.”Spock arrives in record time, bursting through the double doors of the Emergency Room and scanning around frantically until his eyes meet Joanna’s. And then he is running past her, skidding to a halt next to a sleeping Jim, taking in the damage with calculating eyes that see even what she’s already repaired, until they finally rest on the steady rise and fall of his chest and the rhythmic up and down lines of his heartbeat. And having ascertained that Jim is still alive, valiant heart still beating in his chest, Spock turns to take in Joanna, eyes dark and circled, hair carelessly tied up, hastily cleaned tear tracks still present on her cheeks. She has a moment to be surprised before he is hugging her, impossibly strong arms wrapping around her tired frame, squeezing so hard as to force the air from her lungs before loosening. She doesn’t return the embrace, arms hanging limp at her sides, hands unsure what to do. But then Spock is releasing her, and she breathes a sigh of relief, because an emotional Spock is too much, is sending her over the edge.Thank you, Spock is saying, but she’s hearing him from far away, the voices in her head getting louder and louder. And Spock is still talking, he was unsure of Jim’s location, had been looking for him, is satisfied there was not more extensive damage, is gratified that she was the one responding tonight.“I would entrust Jim’s safety to no other hands but yours.”And she’s thinking back to her earlier conversation with Jim, thinking that she’s not at all like her father, would not sacrifice herself for a patient, wouldn’t leave Addie without a mother. And she realizes that she’s angry at her father, furious even, for leaving her alone, for not thinking about her while he was saving half the crew. Didn’t he know that she needed him? Why didn’t he stay alive for her? And she’s thinking that if that’s what being a good doctor means she doesn’t want it, can’t want it, has too much to live for. And she just wants her hands to touch her daughter one more time.“Why?” she asks. “Why me?”And she thinks she knows the answer, but she wants to hear it said out loud, wants to know for sure that the plan hastily forming in her mind is the right choice. And Spock tilts his head, studying Joanna carefully, and says, “You are your father’s daughter.”And that’s it, the end of everything, because despite years of medical school, she’s not qualified to carry others’ lives in her hands. Her father was, but she is not her father, can never be her father. And she can’t expect Jim to be either, because they are both broken, and her father was the only one who could ever fix them. So she is leaving, turning her back on a startled Spock, a groggy Jim, a still-busy hospital building and everything she’s ever wanted to do with her life. She goes home, gathers Addie into her arms and just holds her, promises that she will never leave.A sleepy Galen ambles into the room and she’s telling him that she’s done practicing medicine, isn’t going back to the hospital, doesn’t want to be a doctor. And he’s telling her she’s confused, overcome with grief, can’t make any rash decisions now, it’s three o’clock in the morning why doesn’t she come to bed.“Galen,” she says seriously, “I’m done.”And something in her tone broaches no argument, so he puts his hands up in surrender and says okay, okay. He walks over and takes Addie from her trembling hands, laying her back down on her bed before pulling Joanna into his arms, all arguments forgotten, radiating nothing but comfort and concern, and she vows to never part from such things, to never become her father.The hospital calls the next day to inquire after her, and she tells them she’s quitting, to please ship her things to her home and that she will take care of transferring her patients to another resident. After she ends the comm she calls Spock, and he tells her that Jim is recovering well and that he has forbidden him from leaving the apartment. He asks after her own well-being, apologizing for offending her last night.“You didn’t offend me, Spock,” she tells him, “just made me realize something.”“What was that?”“That I didn’t want to be a doctor.”Spock is taken aback for only a moment before his expression is schooled back to Vulcan stoicism. “I am sorry to hear that my comments may have influenced such a decision.”“They were just one of many factors.”Spock eyes her carefully before responding. “It is a shame. You would have been a good doctor.”And she hears those words as Spock has said them so many times in reference to her father, the good doctor.She shakes her head. “I don’t want to be the good doctor. And I don’t want to be like my father.”“Your father was a good man, Joanna.”“My father was willing to abandon his own daughter to save his patients!” she yells. But then she watches as Spock’s face slams shut and she remembers that those patients weren’t just nameless, faceless crewmembers, that Spock was among those saved by her father’s sacrifice. But maybe that makes it even worse, even harder to accept.“How could he love you more than me?”And that hurts, she knows it does, can see that she’s gotten under that thick Vulcan skin, but she can’t bring herself to take it back. To Spock’s credit, his face remains impassive as ever, and his voice remains calm when he replies.“There is nothing in this world your father loved so much as you, Joanna.”She shakes her head. “Then how could he leave me?”“Because if he had chosen to let others die, you would have never forgiven him.”And that’s Jim’s voice coming from behind Spock, and he’s been listening the whole time, his face now appearing on the viewscreen. And some part of her knows he’s right, knows that if Jim had died in her father’s place, or Spock, she would have been ashamed to know he chose his own life over theirs. And it doesn’t make it hurt less, doesn’t make it fair, just makes it true.“I’m not returning to medicine,” she tells them carefully.Jim nods. “I understand,” he says. Then he exchanges a heavy glance with Spock, who nods slightly, before adding, “We’re not returning to the Enterprise.”And now it’s Joanna’s turn to be taken aback, and she’s already thinking of reasons why this is the worst decision in the world, blurting them out as they occur to her.“But your command, your crew! Who will captain the Enterprise?”It is Jim who responds. “The crew will be just fine, and Sulu’s been gearing up for the captaincy for years now.” He lets his chin drop to his chest. “Your father got me my command and without him it means nothing to me. The Enterprise will find a new Captain and keep flying,” he says, head lifting, “as will I."Joanna’s eyes return to Spock, who simply says, “As the good Doctor was to Jim, as is Jim to me.”And no further explanation is needed.“What will you do?” Joanna asks, and the hidden smile is back at the corner of Spock’s lips when he replies, “I could ask the same of you."Before she can answer, Jim is interjecting, his own grin slowly coming back to full brilliance.“Don’t worry guys, I have a master plan.”Spock’s eyebrows shoot up. “Jim, if this is the plan you refer to as ‘Contingency Plan B,’ I in no way approve.”Joanna is pretty sure she does not want to know what is outlined in Contingency Plan B.“For the record, that is a great plan. But no!” Jim says, “I actually had something else in mind.”As it turns out, Jim’s plan was genius. He would argue (and he did, often) that this was only to be expected, as genius was his M.O., to which Spock would reply that his aptitude tests in no way reflected his actual, practiced levels of intelligence.Joanna would just sit in her favorite booth, plate of waffles in front of her, and listen to the bickering from the kitchen carry out across the restaurant. And she would look up to see Addie pushing her way through the front door, hand clasped with Galen’s, and they would wave and call back to the boys before sliding into the booth. Then little hands would reach out to steal bits of her breakfast, and Joanna would smile as the front door swung shut, the backwards letters welcoming people to their little hospital. After all, it was a place that knew pain and heartache; it was filled with half-healed scars and old wounds. But at the end of the day, when the last plate was cleared, they went home confident that despite it all, they fixed people. They healed them with friendly smiles and caring words and plates of waffles. Because in the end, maybe that was all it took.A customer once asked how they had become so successful, and Jim would just grin that sneaky grin and tell them, “We learned from the best.”They called it Leonard’s.