Chapter Text
It still took him few weeks before he, Scotty and Uhura manage to patch comm systems good enough to be able to send at least short distance messages, few more days before they can broadcast the long distance ones. He records short message for Frank, shortly explaining what happened and promising to call once there will be any chance of it.
The opportunity presented itself soon enough and he were sitting in front of his terminal, nervous as a teenage boy before his first date. The first message was sort of a reply to the message sent to Pike – Frank was rather desperate to know what happened to his nephew. Now it will be all real time and their time was limited, the rest of the crew wanting their chance to call home, too.
Frank responded the call almost immediately. His face, tight with worry, relaxed as soon as he saw who's on the other side of the screen. "James," he said, "you're alive."
And that was all Jim needed to hear before the words flew out of his mouth almost without thought. In the few minutes they had he didn't say many things which made any sense – but the most important part was "we are going home, Frank. Starfleet will notify you and all the others about the date of our arrival. See you at the spaceport?" he asked in the end, unsure.
The last words he heard before the connection ended was chuckle and "ya bet you will, Jim."
And he smiled.
Next few weeks before the finally find themselves orbiting Earth were endless. The good side of it was that the crew has finally seen that there is more to him thanjust pretty face and cocky attitude – he could hold more than just his own during staff meetings, was caught conversing with some of the Vulcan refugees in their own language and Sulu swore that he heard him singing some Russian song with Chekov or some song about pirates with Scotty, while they were doing something in engineering (with half of the engineering crew joining in for the chorus, oh, the horror).
When Earth could finally be seen on the main screen on bridge, the whole crew was so caught up in cheering that no one but Uhura noticed the Acting Captain nodding absent-mindedly to the image, while quietly singing "I cherish you, planet of mine, your heat and cold…"
All of the personnel and refugees were to transport to Earth in the next few hours, the bridge crew the last ones to leave Enterprise. When they were transported to the dock grounds, he looked around. Over there was Bones hugging his daughter, over there he saw Uhura, Chekov had been passed from arms to arms of his huge family… Then he saw him.
For a moment Frank just gazed back at him. Jim's feet felt as if someone glued them to the ground. When he opened his arms, Jim didn't care that it didn't look professional at all and just run up to the man and hugged him tightly, clinging to his uncle, as if he were eleven again, not caring about the world around.
Several months later, after graduation and solving at least part of the mess created by Nero, there is another Academy hearing, with only about one third of graduating class attending. The rest was lost to battle of Vulcan. He was standing in front Captain Pike, who recovered well enough to be able to attend.
"I relieve you, sir."
"And I'm relieved," answered Pike with a small smile. Shaking his hands with Jim, he added: "Your father would be proud, Jim."
Jim looked over heads of the students assembled, towards the place where his only family sat and smiled. "I certainly hope so."
Frank smiled back and nodded slightly. And Jim knew that no matter what he will do in future, Frank will always be proud of him – and that he actually is not as fucked-up as people around always seemed to say.
He was right where he was supposed to be. He was Captain of Enterprise, just like old Spock told him, so the reality tried to correct itself. He may even become friends with his Spock, if the said Vulcan returned to Starfleet, although he didn't count on it. Given the clear dislike he could feel from Spock and Uhura, any chances at building a friendship were quite in vain. But he had Bones, Sulu, Scotty and Chekov. And Frank.
Everything will be fine now, because he was home.