Title: The Woman and the House
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk
Summary: Once and a while, Jim visits a familiar place. Gen.
A/N: Well, you know me… occasionally I have to write something strange.

Before Jim Kirk came back from the dead, he was crossing the wheat field behind the dilapidated barn on his Grandfather Tiberius’s property. The sight was different than what he remembered, as if he had returned to the farm decades after his childhood to find the old tire swing in the oak tree gone, yellow-flowered weeds and prickly burr plants grown knee-high, and the antique tractor—Tiberius’s pride and joy, the symbol of generations of Kirk farmers—rusting under a mid-afternoon sun. He expected the house to be equally abandoned, but as he drew near the screen door on the front porch swung open and a woman in an apron and faded gingham dress came out.

Her hair was like a dandelion gone to seed; by contrast her eyes seemed small, dark and pupilless.

“Boy,” she said, “where’ve you been?”

Jim shaded his eyes to see her better because the sun was closer to the earth than it should have been and it blinded him. “I don’t know,” he replied.

“Well, you’re late!”

At the whip-like crack of her voice, Jim suddenly felt too small for his adult skin. He didn’t know what to say to her.

The fierceness in the woman’s gaze faded slowly, and she pushed open the screen door until it was nearly flat against the boards of the house. The door’s hinges squealed in protest. “C’mon in,” she said.

“This is my grandfather’s house,” Jim told her as he ascended the sagging porch steps.

“It was my house ‘fore it was his.”

Strangely, Jim believed her.

They crossed the living room, where Jim noticed a rocker that once belonged to Tiberius’s wife (Jim had never met his paternal grandmother; she had passed away long before he was born) and an old green couch he didn’t recognize. In front of the dusty drapes of the window sat a wooden spindle, the kind that might have been used in a fairy tale to turn straw into gold. Dark red thread clung to the spindle’s end, pulled taut from a skein, like the woman had been in the middle of using the machine when she had caught sight of Jim’s approach. What she was making Jim could not discern.

As though she knew what her guest was thinking, the woman warned him, “Don’t touch that. It’s as delicate as life itself, and it has a way of unraveling if one isn’t payin’ attention.”

Jim tucked his hands into his pockets to show her he understood.

There was no door at the far end of the room like Jim thought there should be, only a yawn in the darkness. A shudder passed through him when he considered what might be waiting for him there, beyond what he could see. Jim felt relieved when the woman led the way into the farmhouse kitchen instead.

“I got water or tea,” she said as he sunk into a chair and followed her movements with his eyes.

“Beer?” Jim asked hopefully.

“Boy, do you not listen with those ears?”

He gave her a sheepish look. “Tea, please.” Then, as an afterthought, “With ice?”

Her eyes were too dark to read. “World’s a cold place as it is. The tea’s hot, to warm your bones.”

“Bones,” Jim repeated, and shivered.

Satisfied for some reason, she turned away and began taking items out of her cabinets. Jim watched her.

He couldn’t figure out if she was young or old. Maybe she was neither, he decided. If that was true, it made sense that she was the keeper of this house, a thing subject to time which could go to ruin if no one cared for it. Jim had thought he would inherit the Kirk farm and live as his grandfather did, cherishing its memories; then he took to the stars and forgot why it had meant so much to him. New memories became more important than the old ones.

The woman returned to the table, saying, “You have a lot on your mind for being so young.”

Jim politely accepted a tiny chipped porcelain cup and blew at the tea’s curl of steam. “I have to,” he agreed. “I’m responsible for a lot of people.”

“No one’s responsible for another, boy.”

“When you make a decision that could potentially save or destroy four hundred people, you call it responsibility.”

“Ah,” she said. “So what’d you decide this time?”

Jim shrugged and dipped a finger into his tea, only to immediately jerk it out again and pop it into his mouth to soothe the pain of a burn. “Somebody had to disconnect the core reactor before it overloaded. So I did.”

The woman made a clucking noise of disapproval.

Jim blinked up at her. A thought occurred to him. “Have I been here before?”

She neither smiled nor frowned, just answered simply, “Yes.”

Jim take a sip of his tea (mint, the kind he preferred) and sighed. Like before, he knew she wasn’t lying. “This is nice,” he commented.

“Better than what some people get.”

For a moment her tart reply reminded Jim of someone he knew, except a name eluded him. He gave up on chasing it down. If it was important, he felt certain he would remember it eventually.

Jim considered his surroundings and his hawk-eyed hostess. “Is there any way I can repay you for your hospitality?”

The sharp lines of her face seemed to soften at his polite inquiry. She looked a little bit like his mother, Jim realized, startled.

Then the woman said, “Seeing you again is payment enough,” and pinned him with a frank scrutiny, and the familiarity vanished. Her voice was rough, like somebody whose great age had worn out their vocal chords, when she added, “But you won’t be stayin’.”

“I could,” Jim offered, looking down at the cup cradled in his hands. The tea leaves had settled to the bottom in a peculiar pattern.

The woman shook her head. “Best if you don’t, boy. There’s time enough yet to do what you need to do before you come visitin’ me again.”

He lifted his head and met her eyes. “Did my father come to see you?”

A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth, made her seem younger. “He did,” she said, “but he didn’t stay long. Men like ‘im got more important things worth doing.”

“Oh.” Even here disappointment could nettle him. He pushed the feeling aside and tested out his best boyish grin. “But I’m better company, right?”

The woman’s chest trembled like she was amused but it was the breeze outside the kitchen window which had laughter in it. “I suppose you are a favorite of mine.”

Jim’s ego gave a little puff of pride, and he sopped up the words.

Suddenly the air in the room changed, electrified, and one of the woman’s thin arms snaked out and stole his tea. “All right, no more for you.”

“But..” Jim began, confused.

“Time to go home.”

Jim opened his mouth. The woman leveled a look at Jim which silenced him and got up from the table.

He stood up too. “How do I get there?” he asked.

“Way you came in.” She had her back to him now as if looking at him was something she didn’t want to do. When Jim didn’t move, her voice gained a razor’s edge. “Go on, boy, get! Out the front door and don’t dawdle.”

“I can’t leave without saying thank you.”

“Thanks is not something I need.”

“Thank you anyway,” he said stubbornly. “Thank you for being here when I come to visit.”

“Boy, I’m only here because you invited me.”

“I know,” he replied on instinct. He looked around the kitchen, run-down but still containing a hint of home, of a place he once felt safe. “I never imagined I would be alone.”

She said nothing, which signified her understanding to Jim. He turned for the archway separating the kitchen and the living room. He could see the front door from where he stood. The door was open, showing a view of the field beyond the house, heads of wheat swaying gently in a golden wave. The sun or the light, whatever it was, had sunk to a hair’s breadth from the horizon. Soon it would pass beyond the earth. The woman was right: he had to go before the light was gone.

“Thank you!” Jim called again to her as he moved toward the place beyond field and farm where he needed to be. “Bye! I will see you again!”

It was a promise everyone had to keep, Jim knew, whether they kept it once like his father or many times like he did. Jim would continue to visit this house and its occupant until the day the woman shared a cup of tea with him and, afterwards, told him he could stay.

Then he would, for a while.

-Fini

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