Title: The White Horse (2/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Jim Kirk was a strange man. A silent man. No one knew much about him or, if they did, were not willing to say what they did know, especially to the town’s newest magical occupant. Not that Leonard McCoy cared. He had an old curse to track down and unravel by the year’s end. Meanwhile a killer was tracking him. AU.
Previous Part: 1

When Leonard was seven, he lost all his friends. He could remember the exact moment it happened, just as he remembered in stark detail the night his mother died. He hadn’t understood at the time why the other children looked at him like they were scared or why the adults would no longer meet his eyes. Even his pretty teacher, whom he admired as young boys are wont to do, seemed different as she led him off the playground. They walked to the elementary school’s clinic in silence, Leonard afraid to talk because he thought he’d done something wrong and Ms. Naomi unable to talk, it seemed, because whenever she looked down at him, her chin trembled the way Leonard’s did when he wanted to cry. Before she left him alone with the school nurse and a grim-faced man in a suit he knew was the vice principal, she knelt in front of him and said she was sorry. The apology frightened him more than the silence, so he asked for his parents. They were on the way, he was told.

Leonard stayed in that clinic for hours. Even when his mother came sailing in, hair as wild as it always was and eyes flashing, nobody let him leave immediately. They said, “Tell us again, Leonard. Tell us what you did to that Jenkins boy.”

Leonard hadn’t done anything bad, but they made it feel like he had.

Two days later, his parents told him he couldn’t go to that school anymore. His mother raged about it and called everyone, including Ms. Naomi, bastards. Leonard’s father didn’t say anything but Leonard thought maybe, on the inside, his father was calling them bad names too.

A week after that, they took him to a building in another city that was bigger than the town library and scarier-looking too. Two nurses held him down while a man in a white coat (Leonard couldn’t think of him as a doctor, couldn’t) burned his arm. Leonard screamed. Then he had cried and promised them he would never, never, never do what he’d done again. They wrapped up their handiwork and sent him back to his parents in the lobby. He cried into his mother’s shirt all the way home, and she cried into his hair.

A Mark, they called it. Because of what he was, he had to carry it the rest of his life. He wasn’t allowed to cover it up, he couldn’t lie about it, and if someone demanded to see it, he had to let them. For a long time, he was ashamed that he had been Marked.

Now, he was just angry. Leonard knew he’d be angry until the day he died.

“Hey, mister!“

Leonard wiped the sweat off his brow, planted the head of his shovel into the ground and used it to stand on. The moment his head cleared the lip of the hole, a light shone in his eyes.

“What the fuck,” snapped a voice, “aren’t you done yet?”

“Get that fuckin’ flashlight outta my face!” Leonard snarled back. Once he wasn’t blinded, he got a good grip on the topsoil and dragged himself out of the hole. “Goddamn,” he said, rolling onto his back. The sky above was too cloudy to get a good look at the moon. A moment later he sat up. “I guess it’s deep enough.”

Leonard and the young man with the flashlight peered contemplatively down into the grave.

“If this doesn’t work,” pointed out McCoy’s companion, “we are so screwed.”

Leonard scrubbed his dirty palms against his jeans. “Tell me about it.” Reaching around to his back pocket out of habit, he remembered he’d left his cigarettes in the truck. “What time is it?”

“Half past.”

That much closer to midnight. “Let’s get this done.”

He went for his backpack left by a big limb that had fallen from the ancient oak reaching out over the fence. There, the whiff of rot was strong enough it overpowered the familiarity of freshly turned earth. Leonard wrinkled his nose and opened the backpack. As he dug through it, something cold crawled along his spine.

A warning, he figured, or just a curious touch from the dryad dreaming inside the tree. He didn’t really know; and, in order to get paid for this night’s work, he didn’t have the time to care.

“What happens if we don’t finish by midnight?” asked the flashlight-bearer, beginning to shift nervously on his feet now that they were on track to perform the ritual.

“Tomorrow’s All Hallows’ Eve. What do you think will happen?”

“Fuck if I know! Like… like zombies’ll rise outta the ground or some shit?”

Leonard snorted and finally found what he was looking for. He sat back on his haunches and with his thumb flicked his lighter to life. Over the tiny orange flame, he observed the pale face watching him so intently. “This ain’t a horror movie. Now go stand to the side but make sure you shine the light where I can see what the fuck I’m doin’.”

“Don’t you need my help?”

“What I need is for you to stay out of the way.” People who’d never seen this sort of thing before tended to get spooked, which in turn tended to make them too stupid to live, like tripping headfirst into an open grave during an incantation. Leonard had no tolerance for fools unless it was to make ends meet.

Wordlessly, the young man held the flashlight aloft for Leonard.

Leonard took a bundle of cloth from his backpack and unrolled it at the edge of the grave.

“Fuck.”

“Shut up,” Leonard said mildly as he lifted free a skull missing its jawbone. “Ugly fucker,” he muttered under his breath then tossed it into the hole. He threw in a couple of ribs and a femur after it.

“The spell is gonna to do what it’s supposed to, right?”

“I told you to shut up!” snapped Leonard. “This is curse work. If I can’t concentrate, I might turn the curse on you.”

Blessed silence. Leonard pinched the bridge of his nose once and went back to work. In the end, he got through the whole thing under twenty minutes and thought it still looked pretty authentic. But his client just stared at him after it was over, underwhelmed by the lack of the supernatural phenomena. Leonard had warned him the first time they’d met he wasn’t a one-man magic sideshow. He guessed now the idiot believed him.

Leonard met that stare with an even one of his own until he was grudgingly handed the second half of his payment.

“How will I know if it really worked?” The people who hired Leonard always, always asked that question afterwards. This one was no exception.

Leonard finished counting the cash before he tossed his shovel at the young man’s feet. “You won’t until you cover that hole up. I’d get it done ‘fore the sun comes up, otherwise somebody’s gonna nail your ass for ripping up private property.”

The guy blinked at him stupidly. Leonard closed up his backpack and started to walk away.

Five, four, three, two—

“Where the fuck are you going!” came the uncertain cry at McCoy’s back. A bird sleeping high up in the branches of the oak tree startled and flapped its wings.

Leonard’s mouth quirked at one end. He never slowed his pace. The first thing he did when he reached his truck was tuck a cigarette between his lips in celebration. By dawn, he’d be three counties gone and if the idiot ever figured out the spell had been a scam… well, Leonard wasn’t likely to be back this way any time soon.

He took a long drag on the cigarette before stubbing it out in a paper cup filled with other partially smoked cigarette butts. He made the same promise to himself he always did after: that he’d quit before he was home again. For some reason, that promise never held water more than a few days.

At the nearest station Leonard ditched his prepaid phone, bought a tank of gas, and a few bottles of water. After that, he simply drove. An hour became two, nearly three. The roads were almost empty of traffic. He skirted Augusta by an old route (he loved the Savannah by moonlight; it was a beautiful thing) and was heading southwest into Georgia state in no time, feeling a little nostalgic as he always did when passing through.

Then the call came, cutting abruptly into the silence of the cab with an enthusiastic cry from Winnie the Pooh’s Tigger, a ringtone Leonard had eventually gotten himself used to. He pulled over to the shoulder of the road and searched for his personal cell phone in the mess of fast food wrappers littering the floorboard. Since it was still dark in Mississippi, there was only one person who could be calling him.

Leonard found the phone on the fourth ring. He answered it with “Dad?”

“Where are you?”

The way his father sounded immediately caused Leonard’s heart to lodge itself in his throat. “Georgia. Joanna?”

“Asleep. Mazie’s watchin’ her. Len…” His father’s voice had grown very soft, as it always did when delivering bad news.

Leonard closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the seat, remembering the cold that had touched his spine earlier, which he’d dismissed. Not a warning, then.

Somehow he managed to find the words for what his heart already knew. They came out close to a whisper. “Gramps is gone.”

His father was quiet for a long time. Leonard was grateful for that.

At last, he dragged in a breath just for the noise it made. “I can be home by lunch. Don’t—don’t tell Jo yet. I’ll do it.” He paused. “Will you be okay?”

“Drive careful” was the only thing his father said and hung up.

Leonard dropped the cell phone into the seat beside him. Unfolding the envelope of cash from his jacket pocket, he considered what he had left. It’d be enough for gas for the truck and coffee for himself. Maybe for a dress for Jo to wear to the funeral. He’d planned to make more so he could have more to give but life, he knew, didn’t always see fit to follow along with best-laid plans.

Ah, Gramps, Leonard thought, heart heavy. He shifted the old pickup into drive and pulled back onto the highway. Focusing on distant city lights helped him ignore the way his hands shook on the wheel. It was harder to ignore the roiling of his stomach.

His grandfather had believed it was tragedy that defined people’s lives, which shaped them into who they were meant to be. He’d said so after Leonard’s mother died, after the arrest when he was fifteen, and after the coldly polite letter that tore Leonard’s hope in half: “Boy, it’s the righteous man who comes out of the fire stronger than he was.“

Leonard hated hearing that. It left him with a bad feeling he couldn’t shake, and it always made him wonder what kind of fire would try to burn him next.

At that thought, his wrist ached from a long-ago pain. As Leonard often did, he traced the raised skin there with an absent mind. Oddly enough, it kept his grief at bay.

He was in Mississippi by noon.

“Daddy!”

The little girl flying down the front porch steps was taller than his knees. She had had a growth spurt in his absence. Leonard scooped his daughter up anyway and let her cling to his neck, rumbling, “Hey there, darlin’.”

“You’re back!” Everything about her was exuberant.

Leonard’s right hand clutched at the back of her overalls, and for a moment he battled with himself about letting her go. In the end, his own body won out.

He set her down on her feet with a dramatic groan. “My god, girl, you’re too heavy! What has Grandpa been feeding you?”

Joanna grinned up at him. “He says you ate more at my age. He says you were fat!”

The screen door squealed on its hinges. Leonard looked up to see his father move toward the top step of the porch and protested loudly, “I was not! I was pleasantly rotund.”

“Fat like a little piglet,” countered his father. “Amelia had a time finding you clothes that fit right.” He paused and leaned against the porch post, gaze landing on the back of Joanna’s head. “Your father grew out of it, though. By the time he hit grade school he was as skinny as every other boy who thought running was better than walking somewhere.”

At the mention of school, Leonard swallowed down bitterness. He hadn’t stayed in grade school long, that was for certain. A sharpness in his old man’s eyes indicated he knew what Leonard was thinking.

Leonard smiled at his daughter, asking like any good father, “Are you minding your teachers, Jo?”

She gave a firm nod. “Yes, sir. I’m the smartest in my class too! That’s what Ms. Thompson thinks.”

He tweaked one of her pigtails and turned her towards the house. “What makes you believe that?”

“Well, why wouldn’t she?”

“True,” he conceded then laughed, amused at the way she puffed up with pride at his agreement.

Leonard hesitated on the porch even as Joanna skipped into the house.

“Joanna, go get your father a glass of tea. He looks beat to the bone,” ordered her grandfather.

The little girl ran for the kitchen with a shout of “Okay!”

Leonard looked at him once Joanna had vanished from sight. “You all right?”

His father nodded, kept his voice low so their conversation wouldn’t carry. “I am. You know he wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t time. Your Grandmother McCoy always said the men of the family are three kinds of stubborn like that.”

They made for a set of rocking chairs. Leonard’s father sat down. Leonard knew if he took a seat too, in the next moment he’d fall asleep. The better option was leaning against the porch railing. Leonard crossed his arms.

“I got the call from the home late last night.”

“About eleven-thirty,” Leonard guessed.

His father studied him for a moment before agreeing. They didn’t talk about how Leonard had known. “Passed in his sleep. He… looked at peace, when I saw ‘im.”

Willing his tears to stay in his eyes, Leonard fixed his gaze on the boards of the house. The siding needed to be re-painted. He’d do it before he left again.

“Have you talked to anybody yet?”

“No, except to call Whittaker’s about an appointment. They took care of your grandmother, too.”

Leonard hadn’t known that, nor had he known his paternal grandmother. She had died before he was born. “I’ll go with you, or I can take care of the arrangements myself if you aren’t up to it.”

“Leonard…”

“I know,” he said. “We don’t have the money.”

“Cremation’s cheaper.”

Leonard shook his head. “That plot next to Grandmother is his. You know that’s what he wanted. He wouldn’t have bought it otherwise.”

“There’s still the casket and the obituary. The viewing, the church service. Maybe the reception after. Even a fee to dig the hole.”

Leonard had a brief image of what he’d been doing last night. He tucked that thought away guiltily. “We can have it graveside. If people want to come over after, they’ll come here anyway.” He glanced down the road. “I’m surprised no one’s been here to see you yet.”

“Neighbors already brought food. I told ’em Joanna didn’t know yet, so they agreed to come back later.”

Speak of the devil, Leonard thought as Joanna came out of the house. A quick glance at his father, and they were in mutual agreement to discuss the details of the funeral later. Leonard thanked his daughter for his drink. His first sip left him surprised. “Huh, this is different. Good.”

“I put mint in it,” Joanna told him.

Leonard’s father stared down at his own glass of tea with a nonplussed expression. “The girl likes to experiment.” The man might have muttered something about how things were just fine the way they’d always been.

There was a story there, Leonard could tell. He draped his arm over Joanna’s shoulders and hugged her close to him. “So what else can you make?” he asked her.

The child lit up and proceeded to tell him. He let her talk, wanting to savor this moment of happiness. She’d cry once he told her about her great-grandfather.

And then she’d ask him why he couldn’t fix it, because he was her father, he was special, and he fixed her whenever she needed it. He’d help anybody who asked, even if they feared what he could do as soon as that help was given.

So Leonard let her talk to her heart’s content until a car came up the long dirt road. Then he gently steered her into the house to explain about death, and left his father to greet the visitors bearing food and condolences.

The funeral was a short affair that happened two days later. Leonard wore the suit he’d bought for Joanna’s mother’s funeral but hadn’t had the chance to wear because in the end Jocelyn’s family hadn’t wanted him there. It was snug in some places and loose in others. He supposed he’d changed enough over the years for that to be so.

Joanna held his hand the entire time. She had wanted to be nearest the unadorned pine casket as the preacher prayed, not understanding why her father had an aversion to being in plain sight of all the mourners. Not that it mattered. Eyes followed him wherever he went.

When the decision had been made to leave Georgia, Leonard’s grandfather had welcomed his son and grandson with open arms and scorned the gossip that came with them. His Gramps had loved him and had made it publicly known on more than one occasion he would never turn his back on family. That was the kind of man he had been.

Caught up in those memories, Leonard’s eyes burned the entire day, but he didn’t once cry. Joanna didn’t cry either. He loved her even more for her strength.

Funny how, he sometimes thought, that for all that his family had stood with him over the years and never abandoned him, it was this small child who gave him a reason to be better than his worst. He couldn’t imagine himself being strong without her. It made no difference that, because of what he was, he could claim no paternal rights. They were father and daughter. Leonard knew he would fight the world if he had to in order to protect her.

When the time came, that love was what drove him to Iowa to find the curse-maker responsible for killing her.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• The White Horse (18/18) – from May 12, 2014
• The White Horse (17/18) – from May 10, 2014
• The White Horse (16/18) – from May 10, 2014
• The White Horse (15/16) – from April 4, 2014
• The White Horse (14/16) – from March 7, 2014