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where_no_woman2011-05-13 09:54 pm
sternel.livejournal.com) wrote in where_no_woman2011-05-13 09:54 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: Run Away (With My Heart)
Title: Run Away (With My Heart)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sternel
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1900
Warnings: Tarsus.
Characters: Hoshi Sato, Thomas Leighton, James Kirk, OCs
Prompt: Hoshi Sato: Raising children on Tarsus. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
where_no_woman’s Mother’s Day Challenge
A/N: Vhary,seanchaidh, nnaylime, athena4lynn: thank you. Title is from The Calling’s song “Wherever You Will Go.” Also, someday I’ll post Jimmy’s half of this.
Summary: There are many ways to be a mother.
There was a knock on her door at 6:45 – right on time. Like every morning, Hoshi opened it and looked down at Annie, who stood looking up at her, with her hair brush and elastic clutched tightly in her tiny hand while her father waved from the stoop next door before disappearing to get ready for his work shift.
“Good morning, Hoshi,” the girl said quietly, and held out her handful. “I have gym today. Can you braid it really tight?”
Taking the hairbrush, Hoshi waved the girl in and waited until she’d settled herself on the little bench Hoshi kept in the living room just for this purpose. “Of course. Sit up straight.” She started brushing out Annie’s long hair, admiring as she did every morning how it gleamed red in the sunlight. “How was your math test yesterday?”
“It was OK.” Annie turned her head to talk, and Hoshi had to put her fingers on top of her head and rotate it straight. “Sorry. It was OK. I got some of the division questions wrong, though.”
With swift, economical motions, Hoshi began to braid Annie’s hair, carefully scooping up sections to add in as she went. “Maybe you need more practice?”
Annie started to nod and remembered just in time not to move her head. “Mrs. Muller gave me extra questions to work on.” She twisted again to try to watch as Hoshi finished the braid and again Hoshi turned her head forward. “Can I come over after school and work on them here?”
“If your father says it’s all right.” Hoshi carefully fastened off the braid with the elastic and patted Annie’s shoulder. “All set.”
“Thanks!” Annie tugged her forward and kissed her wrinkled cheek. Hoshi gave her a smile and ran a hand over her head to smooth the short hairs in front that insisted on floating away from the braid, before following Annie to the door. “Bye, Hoshi! See you later!”
Hoshi waved after her as she ran back home to finish getting ready for school. When she came back into the living room, she realized Annie had forgotten her hairbrush. She chuckled, and put it on the table where Annie would see it when she came over that afternoon with her math. And then she went to see if Takashi was finished preparing their breakfast.
::
She was leaving the market, wobbling a bit as her legs protested, stiff and swollen with her advanced age. A tremble in the air passed just a little too close to her and she spun around in a rush to see what had nearly struck her, fighting to keep her balance. Flailing, her cane went flying and her bag of groceries slipped from her hand, landing on the ground with a crunch.
“Lovely,” Hoshi muttered to herself as she finally steadied herself, looking around for her cane. “I bet that was the eggs.” She spotted the cane and leaned over carefully to pick it up, relieved to be able to use it to push herself back up. Ahead of her, something moved in the edge of her vision and she whipped her head around to see. One of the younger boys was scrambling to his feet, attempting to pick up a badly whirring hoverboard and cursing a blue streak. He looked up when he saw Hoshi slowly advancing on him.
“Shit! I mean –”
“You mean ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Sato-Kimura, and I apologize for making you drop your bag of groceries and almost knocking you over?’” Hoshi fixed him with her best T’Pol-inspired stare, gratified when he flinched. “Don’t you, Tommy?”
The boy fell over his own two feet as he stuttered. “Uh…”
“Thomas Leighton,” she said, dragging the name out and watching his head hang. “I thought your mother was on the committee to ban these things?” Hoshi went on pleasantly as she prodded at the dying hoverboard with her cane. “And I’m pretty sure I remember her swearing up and down that no child of hers would ever be caught riding one of these around town.” She clucked and the cane rose up to tap softly again Tommy’s head. “Especially not without a helmet, I’m sure.”
Tommy gulped. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?”
Hoshi managed to hide her smile. “That depends. What was it you meant to say just now again?”
Confusion wrote itself across Tommy’s face, and Hoshi crossed her arms over her chest, letting her cane dangle in the air. “Well?”
“Oh!” Tommy turned flame-red. “Uh. Okay. I’m sorry for flying into you, almost, and for the groceries. Uh, should I carry them for you?”
Chuckling, Hoshi nodded and took a step back to give him room to stand up. Scrambling to his feet, Tommy peeled the board off the ground. It let out a whine and all the lights went off. “Oh no,” Tommy groaned, with the despair only child can manage. “Billy’s going to kill me.”
“Ah,” Hoshi said as she leaned in to examine the hoverboard. “This is Billy Shin’s board?”
“Yeah, and I promised him I’d take care of it and I broke it.” Tommy had gone pale under the sun-brown shading his face. “He’s gonna pound me.”
Unexpectedly, Hoshi found herself feeling sorry for the boy. Billy Shin was a nice boy, but he had a quick temper, and his cousin had taught him more than a few tricks for schoolyard brawls. She poked at the board with her cane again. “Looks like it’s just some loose connectors,” she heard herself saying, and almost laughed at Tommy’s suddenly hopeful look. “Bring my groceries, Tommy, and we’re going to see if we can’t get those into place with my toolkit. And then we’re going to take that board right back to Billy Shin.”
“Really?” Tommy asked, hope shading into relief.
“Really.” Hoshi tapped his leg gently with her cane. “And then we’re going to go see about finding you a helmet. If you’re going to go tearing around town like that, you have to have something protecting that hard head of yours.”
Tommy was staring at her like he’d never seen her before, which was ridiculous because she volunteered in the school several times a week and every child in the village knew who she was. “Let’s go, Tommy. Check and make sure the eggs aren’t broken, will you?”
The eggs weren’t broken, and Tommy chattered at her the whole walk back to her home, about sneaking out behind his mother’s back to borrow his friends’ hoverboards, and how much he loved learning new tricks. Hoshi promised she wouldn’t tell his mother, and made a note to herself to have Takashi check their course in the woods and make sure everything was safe enough.
::
School days always exhausted Hoshi: so much talking and standing and sitting up. She sank gratefully into her chair in the living room, a cup of green tea steaming next to her, and put her feet up with a sigh. Takashi was still at the town council meeting, but she had opted to skip tonight. Council meetings seemed to run longer all the time and she preferred the peacefulness of dusk and the quiet house. There were messages waiting for her, from Jonathan and her niece back on Earth, but she had all evening and the chair was so comfortable.
She was dozing, rousing every few minutes to take a sip of tea, and almost didn’t hear the knock on the door. It came again, a moment later, a little louder, and Hoshi slowly pushed herself to her feet, grumbling. “Hold on, I’m coming.”
She opened the door into the last of the sun’s rays and had to blink for a moment to adjust to the light. Billy Shin’s cousin was standing in front of her, the new boy who had arrived from Earth a few months ago. “Uh. Commander Sato?”
That was unexpected, and Hoshi stared down at the boy, his blond hair practically glowing in the dying sunlight. “I haven’t been called that in a long time, young man. That’s me. Now, who are you?”
“I’m Jimmy,” the boy said, pulling his shoulders up. “Jimmy Kirk.” He looked almost nervous, which mystified Hoshi, because it wasn’t like she was going to bite –
“Oh,” she said a moment later, as the last name clicked. No wonder he’d used her rank. She stepped back. “Come in, Jimmy.”
“Thanks,” Jimmy said, and drifted slowly into the house, looking around and trying not to be obvious about it. Hoshi could tell the exact moment he found the picture she kept of her crew on the wall, next to the portrait of Takashi posing with his old research partners from Brazil. She followed him over.
“That’s Captain Archer, and the bridge crew of the Enterprise,” she told him, pointing. “Reed, Mayweather, Tucker, T’Pol, and me.”
Jimmy nodded. “I know,” he said, and she had no doubt he did. She returned to her chair and let him examine the rest of the pictures; it was a pretty substantial collection, she had to admit. Takashi had spent his career in research, so his were mostly the annual grad student and fellows cohort portraits, symposia and conferences and so on. Not terribly exciting, if you hadn’t been there. But Hoshi’s were from starship bridges, interplanetary treaty signings, and any number of distant planets, filled with famous places and faces. Jimmy looked at them all, but he kept coming back to the first one.
Finally, he turned around to look at her. “Annie’s taking Vulcan with me at school,” he said. “I’m not very good at it, but she is. She said you help her study. And that you tell her stories about – about back then. And Tommy said you’re good at keeping secrets. So…”
Hoshi tilted her head and waited, but she had a good idea what this was about.
“Would you tell me your stories?” Jimmy blurted out. “About being on the Enterprise? About being in space? Nobody ever wants to talk about it with me, and I want to know.” He lifted his chin up. “I need to know.”
She’d been right, then. Hoshi got up and moved to the sofa, patting the cushion next to her. “Come have a seat, Jimmy, and I’ll tell you about our very first mission. Do you know I was one of the first humans ever to see a Klingon? I even got to set foot on their homeworld.”
Jimmy perched on the edge of the couch, and listened with wide eyes while she told him the story of Klaang and the journey to bring him home. He asked wide-eyed questions that kept her talking all evening, long past the point where her voice had gone hoarse, until finally Takashi walked him home in the dark quiet night. He would only leave when Hoshi promised he could come back whenever he’d like.
She found herself looking forward to it.
::
When the door of the classroom banged open, and the soldiers streamed in, guns at the ready, Hoshi shoved the children behind her without a second thought, hissing at them to run before she called the soldiers a group of p’taks.
The last thing she saw was Jimmy, pushing Annie and Tommy out the window, so she closed her eyes, breathed deep, straightened her spine, and lifted her chin.
Author:
sternelFandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1900
Warnings: Tarsus.
Characters: Hoshi Sato, Thomas Leighton, James Kirk, OCs
Prompt: Hoshi Sato: Raising children on Tarsus. For
where_no_woman’s Mother’s Day ChallengeA/N: Vhary,
seanchaidh, nnaylime, athena4lynn: thank you. Title is from The Calling’s song “Wherever You Will Go.” Also, someday I’ll post Jimmy’s half of this.Summary: There are many ways to be a mother.
There was a knock on her door at 6:45 – right on time. Like every morning, Hoshi opened it and looked down at Annie, who stood looking up at her, with her hair brush and elastic clutched tightly in her tiny hand while her father waved from the stoop next door before disappearing to get ready for his work shift.
“Good morning, Hoshi,” the girl said quietly, and held out her handful. “I have gym today. Can you braid it really tight?”
Taking the hairbrush, Hoshi waved the girl in and waited until she’d settled herself on the little bench Hoshi kept in the living room just for this purpose. “Of course. Sit up straight.” She started brushing out Annie’s long hair, admiring as she did every morning how it gleamed red in the sunlight. “How was your math test yesterday?”
“It was OK.” Annie turned her head to talk, and Hoshi had to put her fingers on top of her head and rotate it straight. “Sorry. It was OK. I got some of the division questions wrong, though.”
With swift, economical motions, Hoshi began to braid Annie’s hair, carefully scooping up sections to add in as she went. “Maybe you need more practice?”
Annie started to nod and remembered just in time not to move her head. “Mrs. Muller gave me extra questions to work on.” She twisted again to try to watch as Hoshi finished the braid and again Hoshi turned her head forward. “Can I come over after school and work on them here?”
“If your father says it’s all right.” Hoshi carefully fastened off the braid with the elastic and patted Annie’s shoulder. “All set.”
“Thanks!” Annie tugged her forward and kissed her wrinkled cheek. Hoshi gave her a smile and ran a hand over her head to smooth the short hairs in front that insisted on floating away from the braid, before following Annie to the door. “Bye, Hoshi! See you later!”
Hoshi waved after her as she ran back home to finish getting ready for school. When she came back into the living room, she realized Annie had forgotten her hairbrush. She chuckled, and put it on the table where Annie would see it when she came over that afternoon with her math. And then she went to see if Takashi was finished preparing their breakfast.
::
She was leaving the market, wobbling a bit as her legs protested, stiff and swollen with her advanced age. A tremble in the air passed just a little too close to her and she spun around in a rush to see what had nearly struck her, fighting to keep her balance. Flailing, her cane went flying and her bag of groceries slipped from her hand, landing on the ground with a crunch.
“Lovely,” Hoshi muttered to herself as she finally steadied herself, looking around for her cane. “I bet that was the eggs.” She spotted the cane and leaned over carefully to pick it up, relieved to be able to use it to push herself back up. Ahead of her, something moved in the edge of her vision and she whipped her head around to see. One of the younger boys was scrambling to his feet, attempting to pick up a badly whirring hoverboard and cursing a blue streak. He looked up when he saw Hoshi slowly advancing on him.
“Shit! I mean –”
“You mean ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Sato-Kimura, and I apologize for making you drop your bag of groceries and almost knocking you over?’” Hoshi fixed him with her best T’Pol-inspired stare, gratified when he flinched. “Don’t you, Tommy?”
The boy fell over his own two feet as he stuttered. “Uh…”
“Thomas Leighton,” she said, dragging the name out and watching his head hang. “I thought your mother was on the committee to ban these things?” Hoshi went on pleasantly as she prodded at the dying hoverboard with her cane. “And I’m pretty sure I remember her swearing up and down that no child of hers would ever be caught riding one of these around town.” She clucked and the cane rose up to tap softly again Tommy’s head. “Especially not without a helmet, I’m sure.”
Tommy gulped. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?”
Hoshi managed to hide her smile. “That depends. What was it you meant to say just now again?”
Confusion wrote itself across Tommy’s face, and Hoshi crossed her arms over her chest, letting her cane dangle in the air. “Well?”
“Oh!” Tommy turned flame-red. “Uh. Okay. I’m sorry for flying into you, almost, and for the groceries. Uh, should I carry them for you?”
Chuckling, Hoshi nodded and took a step back to give him room to stand up. Scrambling to his feet, Tommy peeled the board off the ground. It let out a whine and all the lights went off. “Oh no,” Tommy groaned, with the despair only child can manage. “Billy’s going to kill me.”
“Ah,” Hoshi said as she leaned in to examine the hoverboard. “This is Billy Shin’s board?”
“Yeah, and I promised him I’d take care of it and I broke it.” Tommy had gone pale under the sun-brown shading his face. “He’s gonna pound me.”
Unexpectedly, Hoshi found herself feeling sorry for the boy. Billy Shin was a nice boy, but he had a quick temper, and his cousin had taught him more than a few tricks for schoolyard brawls. She poked at the board with her cane again. “Looks like it’s just some loose connectors,” she heard herself saying, and almost laughed at Tommy’s suddenly hopeful look. “Bring my groceries, Tommy, and we’re going to see if we can’t get those into place with my toolkit. And then we’re going to take that board right back to Billy Shin.”
“Really?” Tommy asked, hope shading into relief.
“Really.” Hoshi tapped his leg gently with her cane. “And then we’re going to go see about finding you a helmet. If you’re going to go tearing around town like that, you have to have something protecting that hard head of yours.”
Tommy was staring at her like he’d never seen her before, which was ridiculous because she volunteered in the school several times a week and every child in the village knew who she was. “Let’s go, Tommy. Check and make sure the eggs aren’t broken, will you?”
The eggs weren’t broken, and Tommy chattered at her the whole walk back to her home, about sneaking out behind his mother’s back to borrow his friends’ hoverboards, and how much he loved learning new tricks. Hoshi promised she wouldn’t tell his mother, and made a note to herself to have Takashi check their course in the woods and make sure everything was safe enough.
::
School days always exhausted Hoshi: so much talking and standing and sitting up. She sank gratefully into her chair in the living room, a cup of green tea steaming next to her, and put her feet up with a sigh. Takashi was still at the town council meeting, but she had opted to skip tonight. Council meetings seemed to run longer all the time and she preferred the peacefulness of dusk and the quiet house. There were messages waiting for her, from Jonathan and her niece back on Earth, but she had all evening and the chair was so comfortable.
She was dozing, rousing every few minutes to take a sip of tea, and almost didn’t hear the knock on the door. It came again, a moment later, a little louder, and Hoshi slowly pushed herself to her feet, grumbling. “Hold on, I’m coming.”
She opened the door into the last of the sun’s rays and had to blink for a moment to adjust to the light. Billy Shin’s cousin was standing in front of her, the new boy who had arrived from Earth a few months ago. “Uh. Commander Sato?”
That was unexpected, and Hoshi stared down at the boy, his blond hair practically glowing in the dying sunlight. “I haven’t been called that in a long time, young man. That’s me. Now, who are you?”
“I’m Jimmy,” the boy said, pulling his shoulders up. “Jimmy Kirk.” He looked almost nervous, which mystified Hoshi, because it wasn’t like she was going to bite –
“Oh,” she said a moment later, as the last name clicked. No wonder he’d used her rank. She stepped back. “Come in, Jimmy.”
“Thanks,” Jimmy said, and drifted slowly into the house, looking around and trying not to be obvious about it. Hoshi could tell the exact moment he found the picture she kept of her crew on the wall, next to the portrait of Takashi posing with his old research partners from Brazil. She followed him over.
“That’s Captain Archer, and the bridge crew of the Enterprise,” she told him, pointing. “Reed, Mayweather, Tucker, T’Pol, and me.”
Jimmy nodded. “I know,” he said, and she had no doubt he did. She returned to her chair and let him examine the rest of the pictures; it was a pretty substantial collection, she had to admit. Takashi had spent his career in research, so his were mostly the annual grad student and fellows cohort portraits, symposia and conferences and so on. Not terribly exciting, if you hadn’t been there. But Hoshi’s were from starship bridges, interplanetary treaty signings, and any number of distant planets, filled with famous places and faces. Jimmy looked at them all, but he kept coming back to the first one.
Finally, he turned around to look at her. “Annie’s taking Vulcan with me at school,” he said. “I’m not very good at it, but she is. She said you help her study. And that you tell her stories about – about back then. And Tommy said you’re good at keeping secrets. So…”
Hoshi tilted her head and waited, but she had a good idea what this was about.
“Would you tell me your stories?” Jimmy blurted out. “About being on the Enterprise? About being in space? Nobody ever wants to talk about it with me, and I want to know.” He lifted his chin up. “I need to know.”
She’d been right, then. Hoshi got up and moved to the sofa, patting the cushion next to her. “Come have a seat, Jimmy, and I’ll tell you about our very first mission. Do you know I was one of the first humans ever to see a Klingon? I even got to set foot on their homeworld.”
Jimmy perched on the edge of the couch, and listened with wide eyes while she told him the story of Klaang and the journey to bring him home. He asked wide-eyed questions that kept her talking all evening, long past the point where her voice had gone hoarse, until finally Takashi walked him home in the dark quiet night. He would only leave when Hoshi promised he could come back whenever he’d like.
She found herself looking forward to it.
::
When the door of the classroom banged open, and the soldiers streamed in, guns at the ready, Hoshi shoved the children behind her without a second thought, hissing at them to run before she called the soldiers a group of p’taks.
The last thing she saw was Jimmy, pushing Annie and Tommy out the window, so she closed her eyes, breathed deep, straightened her spine, and lifted her chin.