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ninety6tearsI am absolutely astonished that I actually wrote a crossover. This is also my first ever multi-parter I've gotten around to posting. Holy damn.
Title: Rising Sign
(1/6)
Characters/Pairings: Starbuck, Kirk, McCoy, Spock. (Kirk)/Kara/McCoy.
Rating: R for language.
Spoilers for Trek XI and BSG up through "Maelstrom," lots of references to the entire series.
Summary: In response to this prompt at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
st_xi_kink. In short: "When Kara Thrace flies through the wormhole near the end of Season Three, she finds Earth-- but not the Earth that Galactica's been searching for. Instead she finds herself hailed by a ship calling itself the USS Enterprise!...Kara/anyone, Kara/everyone, especially McCoy, Kirk and/or Uhura."
Author's Note: I sort of strayed from the prompt by half a mile, hopefully not in any...offensive way. Just didn't come out as cracky as the OP requested.
“What?”
Spock lifted his eyes from his report, and sighed. “Captain, that is the fifth time you have used that exclamation while I have attempted to explain the situation with the woman on board—”
“Okay, just slow down...” Jim staggered and stopped where he and Spock were making their way out of the landing bay. “She just showed up in that thing and has never even heard of the Federation. And she's completely human."
“And her language and dialect is typical of Terran American Standard. But she claims to be from some ‘colonial fleet,’ and, interestingly, insisted that Mr. Scott’s accent is typical of somewhere called Aerilon.”
Jim squinted in confusion. “Has she been cooperative?”
The Vulcan blinked for a second before replying, “She was most attentive when I mentioned this ship is from Earth. And was then quite alarmed to learn the population of the planet as well as its technology. She immediately insisted that we take her there, and when we explained the impossibility of immediately doing so, she became increasingly...animated. I believe she is reacting to stress and does not mean to be violent, however.”
Kirk slowly cocked his eyebrow. "Did she hit somebody?"
"She nearly committed a minor assault on Ensign Reah. She appeared distressed but not resistant when she was escorted to the brig."
Kirk sighed. "Put her in the slam, huh?"
Spock didn't bother with his usual dissection of slang, merely explained, "The uncertainty of her origin as well as her behavior gave me reason to evaluate her as a possible threat to the crew; because she boarded as a guest rather than as a captive, I made it clear that she had the option of leaving the ship without our assistance. Given that she opted for arrest, she is either willing to peacefully cooperate or—"
"She's lying, and she's got something up her sleeve?" Kirk finished, then shrugged. "Not a likely explanation, unless she somehow knows how to break out of our cells."
"Indeed. I would advise you to consult with her immediately, and employ Bones for a lie detector..."
"No, no," Kirk made a wave of his hand. "I don't think we should go that far. But is there really any way to know if her story checks out?"
"Most likely not, Captain." Spock paused, calculating his next words. "There is another detail which may be paramount, depending on which theory we subscribe to. The spacial anomaly in our proximity, which Chekov projected was likely to be a wormhole..."
Kirk narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, what about it?"
"She claims that she came out of it."
.
.
.
.
The brig room was rather dark when Kirk entered but he could see that the woman was lying down examining the ceiling, very still, before he commanded the lights to go brighter, dragging a chair in after him and setting down a small box at the rickety table by the wall.
She was slowly sitting up, a bruised and tired-looking woman maybe around his age with short yellowy hair raking back under her anxious fingers. She was biting her lip and giving him a sorely expectant look. "I can already tell you're not really suited for the interrogation jobs, so let's get this over with."
His mouth curled up a little as he shook his head. "That's not exactly why I'm here. I'm sure Mr. Spock told you he's not the usual commanding officer...And that would be me. Captain James T. Kirk."
Her eyes narrowed at him. "...Aren't you a little young to command a starship?"
He was watching her closely, the way her fingers scraped anxiously at her lap, the stiff way she sat as if expecting something to blow up any second, and he knew Bones would be demanding to do a check-up on her if he got even one look. But later. He started off by offering, "Maybe. I'm twenty-seven. How old are you?"
She didn't answer, just kind of scowled at him for a second as he began to leaf through the stuff in the box, most of which had been tucked somewhere in her flight smock, pulling up one of the weird cornerless parchments that was something like an ID badge.
"Kara Thrace...Captain Kara Thrace. Something tells me we're pretty different kinds of captains."
She finally rolled her eyes and seemed to resign herself to the consequences of not playing along. "Look, whatever you're trying to do, with the small talk..."
Kirk gave a gesture as if to promise he would cut the crap, assuring, "All I'm trying to do is calm you down, you seem...I don't even know. There's no deception, I'm honestly trying to evaluate as soon as possible whether you even need to be in here."
"It would probably calm me down if you would leave me alone," she muttered.
"You want to spend the night in the brig?"
She considered her reply for long enough that she seemed to be swaying a bit. "Is this really the brig? My bed back home is smaller than this."
It was a slightly feisty way of saying she could deal with whatever he gave her, and while he thought she was still missing the point, he laughed.
"You think I'm kidding?" she cocked an eyebrow, and yeah, they were on a level now. "And to answer your question, I'm a pilot, not a commander."
"It's a fighter vessel?" he asked. She nodded. "We've never seen anything quite like that...What's it called? Starbuck?"
She squinted, then comfortably corrected, "No—That's my call sign."
"...Oh. What does it mean?" He interrupted himself then with a wave of his hand. "Look. Your story is that you came out of a wormhole. How'd you come to fall into one in the first place?"
Her mouth opened but no words came out for quite some time. "I was going after an enemy fighter. We were in this...storm, and..."
Kirk wasn't sure what to make of how unsettled she seemed about it, and he thought suddenly that the answer to the question didn't matter, cause she was obviously someone who had had a hell of a rough day and maybe that was that for now. He quietly interrupted, "There was an accident?"
She just slightly nodded, said, "I can't even try to explain. I don't know, I don't...remember how the hell I got here."
She seemed a bit less fragile than when he'd walked into the cell, but there was something chaotic attached to her, in the way she kept looking around like she expected everything to reveal itself as something else. Considering how surreal her very appearance was to them, he could imagine this whole thing was making her feel a little crazy.
"Alright," he said, standing up out of his chair. "Let's go."
.
.
.
.
“Hold still, lady,” Bones growled. “You got some kinda problem with doctors?”
“Only the ones I don’t know.” Kara stopped her constant shifting but kept glaring up from her sitting position on the sick bay bed.
“Name’s Leonard McCoy. Nice to meet you,” the doctor grumbled. “Now, if you would let me try to confirm whether you’re a total nutcase or just a damn liar...”
She squinted at the psychotricorder McCoy was wielding above her forehead. “How come the captain calls you ‘Bones’?”
“What about ‘Starbuck’?” he returned. “Where’d you get a name like that?”
She sighed. “D'you guys even use call signs?”
“Used to, not now. It’s not the military, you know. There is no military, not exactly.”
“Boy scouts in space. Well, isn’t this cute.”
“Look, I’m sure we’ve both had a hard day, so if you could knock off the chatter...” But his voice trailed off lazily as he examined his tricorder screen. “....Oh...kay. Jim!”
“What?” came the reply from across the room where the captain was talking to another officer.
“Symptoms indicate recent shock, but relatively sane.” That last phrase accompanied his eye crooked towards her, making her return the rough tease with a squinting look.
“Kay!”
“No doctor-patient confidentiality, huh?” Kara said as Bones picked up a basic medical scanner and began a thorough check-up on the rest of her body. “Would you cut it out?”
“If you don’t mind,” he replied sourly, “I’d like to get a sense of what your medical technology was like. Maybe I’ll find something that needs attention in the process. You got somewhere else to be?”
With a resigned rolling of her eyes, Kara shifted her legs up and sighed back into a lying position. He had no objection to her moving and just kept examining her, occasionally making noises of vague dissatisfaction but never bringing anything to her attention. Kara was only starting to figure out how advanced these devices were when he passed the scanner loosely down her arm to where her hands rested anxiously over her waist. McCoy paused in his observation, his eyebrow going up, and he passed the little cylinder back up and then made a more thorough scan, just over the fingers of her right hand.
With his eyes continuously fixed on the tricorder screen, he may not have noticed the way her body immediately tensed all over, probably didn’t see the defensive edge flicking her eyes wide and her lips tighter together. For a couple seconds, oblivious, he glared at his readings that she knew just might be indicating four hairline fractures drawing a lightning line across her knuckles.
And he muttered a sympathetic “Ouch,” mostly to himself, and just moved on. Kara let out a breath and then stayed quiet until he said she was good to leave.
.
.
.
.
Both sides seemed grateful that as strange as the whole situation was, there was no good reason to believe she was some crook constructing an elaborate lie to get on board. As for whether she was crazy, the jury was still out, but everyone who stopped by the landing bay to look at the Viper was pretty impressed. Kirk managed to peel her away from protectively making sure nobody was messing with her “bird” when he sensed that even though they’d decided she wasn’t much of a risk, her nervousness indicated she wasn’t sure if she trusted the crew at all. And if she was actually from a completely different world, she wasn’t bound by their laws, and he owed her some explanations too.
After he’d spent a good half hour presenting her with collected images and data in the observation deck, he finally asked why she was so interested in collecting proof of all the life forms they knew about, not just information about Earth, though she was certainly very invested in that. She said something about needing to see the life that existed outside of the spaceship to really get that this was really happening, and that she was pretty convinced, despite the fact that she couldn’t see it for herself, at least not yet.
“Why would we...lie about this stuff?” he asked. “You think this is some elaborate ruse to fuck with you or something?”
“‘Fuck’?” Kara smirked, and blinked. Jim also blinked. Returning to the heavier set of her dazed expression, she turned back to the monitor and said, “There was a war. Where I came from. I wasn’t sure if I was being toyed with or something...You know what, that’s way too long a story. I’m pretty sure you’re all human. Except for...”
He wasn't sure how that was relevant, but he let it slide for now. “Yeah, you met Spock. He’s a—”
“No, you know what, I don’t even wanna know,” Kara said with a dismissive wave of her hand, continuing to numbly explain: “The point is, there was no life. There was a system of twelve planets, and uh...They were nuked. Completely destroyed. I’ve been on the run with a handful of survivors for years in a small fleet of ships, looking for a habitable planet. Looking for Earth, actually.”
“Wait...” The interruption didn’t mean much of anything. Kirk’s face just seemed to chase through a hundred understatements like That sucks before resorting to speechlessness.
“And here I am,” Kara added with a wry smile, and then pointed at the viewscreen with a swivelling dimensional image of Earth: “And here it is. And...every person I’ve been with for the past few years...is...uh. Look, you better have something alcoholic on board."
“What’s your poison?” Kirk quickly asked, happy to be able to offer something.
“Gods, I don’t care. Give me something...something very clear.”
On their way to hitting up Chekov for some vodka, Kirk had a moment of consideration after which he muttered, “Look, if you want your stuff back that you had in your uniform..."
“Surely you don't mean everything, captain,” Kara said with a nervous smile, not quite granting a respect for his authority into the last word. “It can’t be okay with whatever protocol you have to let me run around with a sidearm, not that I've got much ammo for it...”
“What, it uses bullets?” Kirk asked a little excitedly, like this was some pet topic of novelty for him.
She gave him a look like it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard, and with a patronizing sneer slowly said, “It’s a gun. Bullets come out of it. Into people’s faces...Look, I’d like to have it back anyway. There’s a deck of cards in that belt, and what the hell else are we doing tonight besides cross-cultural comparison drinking games?”
One hour later a small crowd consisting of Kara, Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, and Spock had significantly livened the mood in the rec room. With the exception of Spock, everyone had had trouble catching onto the rules of triad, and if it wasn’t bad enough that she’d had to explain the colors over and over again, Kirk had been the one to volunteer a different game when Kara looked ready to throttle Spock for winning too many times.
“...So you have to drink one cause you don’t have hypovaccinations. And then it’s your turn.”
After gladly taking a shot, Kara cleared her throat and muttered, “Um. Pyramid.”
Uhura said, “As in...”
“As in the sport.” She looked rather depressed when there were looks of confusion round the table. “Damn...Drink up.”
Of course Kirk had failed to take into account that Spock, being unable to feel the effects of the alcohol, would also be frustratingly adept at this game. After noting the tenth look of suspicion at Spock’s impassive demeanor, Kirk leaned over from where he was sitting between his friend and Kara to quietly tell her, “I know you don’t believe me, but I absolutely swear, he’s not that bad once you get to know him.” It didn’t help.
“So you’re telling me...” Scotty mused after his sixth shot, “You’re tellin’ me...That you’d be able to essentially beam a grapefruit, at faster than light speed—”
“We call it jumping, not beaming,” Kara explained. “And yeah. When we’ve got the fuel, it’s how we get around.”
Scotty’s mouth opened into an amazed ‘O’ before forming his next sentence. “...You transport entire ships to specific coordinates? You can beam your vessels!? But you don’t even have industrial replicators?”
Many had forgotten it was Spock’s turn; his eyebrow cocked and he simply said, “Antimatter containment.” Kara poured herself a new shot.
Kirk was pointing a finger across the table at Scotty, then indicating Kara. “Did you get a look at her ride?"
In response to Scotty’s look of puzzlement, Uhura asked, “You haven’t seen the Viper?”
“The what?—I was working on the comm system today.”
“Oh, man,” Kirk said. “Get a look before the night’s through. Looks ancient, but it flies, apparently.”
“Excuse me?” Kara interrupted. “It's not a museum exhibit.”
“Does this Viper have the technology to do this, uh—” Scotty stuttered over his excitement, “the jump technology?”
“Frak, man, I wish.”
Spock gave a thoughtful tilt of his head. "Perhaps it would be possible to adapt warp capacity...As I understand it is much more complicated with smaller vessels, particularly if it is not already equipped with our sensors..."
Scotty's face was lighting up, but Kara only glared at Spock more for even suggesting it. "No. No way."
"I wouldn' let anything happen to her," Scotty pleaded. "I'm a bit of a genius, you know—"
"He is," Kirk passively confirmed.
"No." Kara threatened, "If you take even a screw off..."
"Right, alright, nevermind," Scotty pacified. Uhura laughed in sympathy at his disappointment.
Just then McCoy, who had offered to do a replicator run after declining to join in on the evening, came up holding a tray with a random array of items he started handing out at the table. With a dry remark about oral fixations he handed Jim the glossy round lollipop he'd apparently requested. He muttered, "Fuck you, Bones" between laughs, quickly unwrapping it and sticking it in his mouth where the white stick hung out lazily from his teeth.
As Bones passed by Kara, she was leaning back into a yawn, and what caught her eye then was something tucked under his arm that looked a whole lot like a humidor.
“Um.” Without hesitance, she reached out to take it and asked, “What’s this?”
“Hey, don’t—” Bones protested, to no avail, as she took the box and opened it up to find the long skinny things that didn’t really look like she’d expected. “Jim, you wanted one of those.” The comment seemed to infer that they definitely hadn’t come from a replicator.
“Yeah, thanks, Bones, but my mouth’s a little busy now."
“Listen, I’m trying not to get my hopes up,” Kara started to explain. “But...we ran out of cigars a long time ago...”
With a scoff Bones explained, “So did we. These are Orion and they’re not exactly cigars, but...”
“Try one,” Kirk urged.
She picked out one of the wrapped tubes and noticed that Bones was digging into his pocket, and set it between her lips. She tipped her head back while he flicked on a lighter that looked very, very old, and held it at the tip. As soon as it lit, Kara instinctively puffed, pulled out the cigar and exhaled a gradual stream of milky, aromatic smoke.
She then just closed her eyes for a second, and looked up behind her with a wide smile. “Damn. Thanks, Doc.” He only gave that a slightly uncomfortable shrug.
The crowd cleared out when it was a pretty reasonable time to go to bed, but Kirk and Starbuck remained relaxed in their seats until long after they’d left, and since they were probably the two loudest drunks to ever board a space vessel, it didn’t really feel like the party had ended. Once Kara had actually managed to drool vodka from giggling too hard, Kirk realized it was time to call it a night, once he got control of his last laughing fit.
“Okay, wait. Hah. I’m the worst host ever,” Kirk managed to say apologetically. “I haven’t set you up a room on the ship.”
“Oh no,” Kara replied coyly, rocking her eyes up to the ceiling as she daintily sucked on the lollipop that had somehow changed hands at some point. “Where am I going to sleep tonight?”
"Well." Kirk's eyes were comically wide for a second. He wasn't even sober enough to be clever and subtle about it, so he just started laughing as he kind of realized he probably didn't need to be. "Are you...uh..."
“Come on.” She laughed and squirmed out of her seat, grabbing him by the arm.
By the time they’d managed to get on and off the turbolift she was asking, “How come I’m hoisting you all over the place when I’m more drunk than you?” Kirk towered at six or seven inches taller than her, but he was skinny and light, so it was no big chore. Still, she had no idea where they were going and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the possibility of any members of the crew spotting her carting their captain off to bed.
“What are you talking about?” Jim mumbled. “I swear...I haven’t been this drunk since I left Iowa.”
He moved to carry more of his own weight, and they wielded each other down the hallway at a sluggish pace. “What’s Iowa?” Kara asked.
“It’s...huh. How to define Iowa...” Jim thought for a hazy second, then asked, “What’s the shittiest place you can think of?”
“...New Caprica.”
“Well...” Kirk raised his eyebrow and said simply, “Iowa...is New Caprica. Uh, this is my room.”
As soon as Kara turned them both to head into Jim’s cabin, the door automatically opened. She quickly exclaimed, “You sure got a lotta space.”
“Yeah,” he said flatly, licking his lips. “I gotta lotta space.” His unrelated afterthought was his lips meeting Kara’s, drawing an almost-giggle from her as she comfortably reciprocated and eagerly pulled them both through the door. In their haste, they somehow lost their footing and fell into a heap on the floor just inside Jim’s quarters, a couple limbs hanging out the threshold and keeping the door from closing.
Jim laughed quite heartily as he untangled himself from under her, feeling a lot less of a need to be careful than he usually would with a woman he'd just met that day. It was kind of freeing, if weird, that they were so physically comfortable already, in a way that didn’t have to be sexual, but hell, he wasn’t gonna complain if...
Kara pointedly shoved Jim down on his back and started taking her tops off. “This is gonna be the worst sex ever, you know.”
“I know,” he replied, laughing, watching her bare stomach skim out from under the clothing. “We are pretty drunk...”
Her voice lowered to a slightly more distant sense of abandon. "Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you."
“...Oh, I like you,” Jim realized, laughing in increasing frequency, his chest bouncing up and down. “I like you a lot.”
She rolled her eyes and then shoved his legs back a little out of the threshold. He was grabbing her down over him, pressing his fingers down the pattern of her ribs, as the door automatically sealed shut.
Title: Rising Sign
(1/6)
Characters/Pairings: Starbuck, Kirk, McCoy, Spock. (Kirk)/Kara/McCoy.
Rating: R for language.
Spoilers for Trek XI and BSG up through "Maelstrom," lots of references to the entire series.
Summary: In response to this prompt at
st_xi_kink. In short: "When Kara Thrace flies through the wormhole near the end of Season Three, she finds Earth-- but not the Earth that Galactica's been searching for. Instead she finds herself hailed by a ship calling itself the USS Enterprise!...Kara/anyone, Kara/everyone, especially McCoy, Kirk and/or Uhura."Author's Note: I sort of strayed from the prompt by half a mile, hopefully not in any...offensive way. Just didn't come out as cracky as the OP requested.
“What?”
Spock lifted his eyes from his report, and sighed. “Captain, that is the fifth time you have used that exclamation while I have attempted to explain the situation with the woman on board—”
“Okay, just slow down...” Jim staggered and stopped where he and Spock were making their way out of the landing bay. “She just showed up in that thing and has never even heard of the Federation. And she's completely human."
“And her language and dialect is typical of Terran American Standard. But she claims to be from some ‘colonial fleet,’ and, interestingly, insisted that Mr. Scott’s accent is typical of somewhere called Aerilon.”
Jim squinted in confusion. “Has she been cooperative?”
The Vulcan blinked for a second before replying, “She was most attentive when I mentioned this ship is from Earth. And was then quite alarmed to learn the population of the planet as well as its technology. She immediately insisted that we take her there, and when we explained the impossibility of immediately doing so, she became increasingly...animated. I believe she is reacting to stress and does not mean to be violent, however.”
Kirk slowly cocked his eyebrow. "Did she hit somebody?"
"She nearly committed a minor assault on Ensign Reah. She appeared distressed but not resistant when she was escorted to the brig."
Kirk sighed. "Put her in the slam, huh?"
Spock didn't bother with his usual dissection of slang, merely explained, "The uncertainty of her origin as well as her behavior gave me reason to evaluate her as a possible threat to the crew; because she boarded as a guest rather than as a captive, I made it clear that she had the option of leaving the ship without our assistance. Given that she opted for arrest, she is either willing to peacefully cooperate or—"
"She's lying, and she's got something up her sleeve?" Kirk finished, then shrugged. "Not a likely explanation, unless she somehow knows how to break out of our cells."
"Indeed. I would advise you to consult with her immediately, and employ Bones for a lie detector..."
"No, no," Kirk made a wave of his hand. "I don't think we should go that far. But is there really any way to know if her story checks out?"
"Most likely not, Captain." Spock paused, calculating his next words. "There is another detail which may be paramount, depending on which theory we subscribe to. The spacial anomaly in our proximity, which Chekov projected was likely to be a wormhole..."
Kirk narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, what about it?"
"She claims that she came out of it."
.
.
.
.
The brig room was rather dark when Kirk entered but he could see that the woman was lying down examining the ceiling, very still, before he commanded the lights to go brighter, dragging a chair in after him and setting down a small box at the rickety table by the wall.
She was slowly sitting up, a bruised and tired-looking woman maybe around his age with short yellowy hair raking back under her anxious fingers. She was biting her lip and giving him a sorely expectant look. "I can already tell you're not really suited for the interrogation jobs, so let's get this over with."
His mouth curled up a little as he shook his head. "That's not exactly why I'm here. I'm sure Mr. Spock told you he's not the usual commanding officer...And that would be me. Captain James T. Kirk."
Her eyes narrowed at him. "...Aren't you a little young to command a starship?"
He was watching her closely, the way her fingers scraped anxiously at her lap, the stiff way she sat as if expecting something to blow up any second, and he knew Bones would be demanding to do a check-up on her if he got even one look. But later. He started off by offering, "Maybe. I'm twenty-seven. How old are you?"
She didn't answer, just kind of scowled at him for a second as he began to leaf through the stuff in the box, most of which had been tucked somewhere in her flight smock, pulling up one of the weird cornerless parchments that was something like an ID badge.
"Kara Thrace...Captain Kara Thrace. Something tells me we're pretty different kinds of captains."
She finally rolled her eyes and seemed to resign herself to the consequences of not playing along. "Look, whatever you're trying to do, with the small talk..."
Kirk gave a gesture as if to promise he would cut the crap, assuring, "All I'm trying to do is calm you down, you seem...I don't even know. There's no deception, I'm honestly trying to evaluate as soon as possible whether you even need to be in here."
"It would probably calm me down if you would leave me alone," she muttered.
"You want to spend the night in the brig?"
She considered her reply for long enough that she seemed to be swaying a bit. "Is this really the brig? My bed back home is smaller than this."
It was a slightly feisty way of saying she could deal with whatever he gave her, and while he thought she was still missing the point, he laughed.
"You think I'm kidding?" she cocked an eyebrow, and yeah, they were on a level now. "And to answer your question, I'm a pilot, not a commander."
"It's a fighter vessel?" he asked. She nodded. "We've never seen anything quite like that...What's it called? Starbuck?"
She squinted, then comfortably corrected, "No—That's my call sign."
"...Oh. What does it mean?" He interrupted himself then with a wave of his hand. "Look. Your story is that you came out of a wormhole. How'd you come to fall into one in the first place?"
Her mouth opened but no words came out for quite some time. "I was going after an enemy fighter. We were in this...storm, and..."
Kirk wasn't sure what to make of how unsettled she seemed about it, and he thought suddenly that the answer to the question didn't matter, cause she was obviously someone who had had a hell of a rough day and maybe that was that for now. He quietly interrupted, "There was an accident?"
She just slightly nodded, said, "I can't even try to explain. I don't know, I don't...remember how the hell I got here."
She seemed a bit less fragile than when he'd walked into the cell, but there was something chaotic attached to her, in the way she kept looking around like she expected everything to reveal itself as something else. Considering how surreal her very appearance was to them, he could imagine this whole thing was making her feel a little crazy.
"Alright," he said, standing up out of his chair. "Let's go."
.
.
.
.
“Hold still, lady,” Bones growled. “You got some kinda problem with doctors?”
“Only the ones I don’t know.” Kara stopped her constant shifting but kept glaring up from her sitting position on the sick bay bed.
“Name’s Leonard McCoy. Nice to meet you,” the doctor grumbled. “Now, if you would let me try to confirm whether you’re a total nutcase or just a damn liar...”
She squinted at the psychotricorder McCoy was wielding above her forehead. “How come the captain calls you ‘Bones’?”
“What about ‘Starbuck’?” he returned. “Where’d you get a name like that?”
She sighed. “D'you guys even use call signs?”
“Used to, not now. It’s not the military, you know. There is no military, not exactly.”
“Boy scouts in space. Well, isn’t this cute.”
“Look, I’m sure we’ve both had a hard day, so if you could knock off the chatter...” But his voice trailed off lazily as he examined his tricorder screen. “....Oh...kay. Jim!”
“What?” came the reply from across the room where the captain was talking to another officer.
“Symptoms indicate recent shock, but relatively sane.” That last phrase accompanied his eye crooked towards her, making her return the rough tease with a squinting look.
“Kay!”
“No doctor-patient confidentiality, huh?” Kara said as Bones picked up a basic medical scanner and began a thorough check-up on the rest of her body. “Would you cut it out?”
“If you don’t mind,” he replied sourly, “I’d like to get a sense of what your medical technology was like. Maybe I’ll find something that needs attention in the process. You got somewhere else to be?”
With a resigned rolling of her eyes, Kara shifted her legs up and sighed back into a lying position. He had no objection to her moving and just kept examining her, occasionally making noises of vague dissatisfaction but never bringing anything to her attention. Kara was only starting to figure out how advanced these devices were when he passed the scanner loosely down her arm to where her hands rested anxiously over her waist. McCoy paused in his observation, his eyebrow going up, and he passed the little cylinder back up and then made a more thorough scan, just over the fingers of her right hand.
With his eyes continuously fixed on the tricorder screen, he may not have noticed the way her body immediately tensed all over, probably didn’t see the defensive edge flicking her eyes wide and her lips tighter together. For a couple seconds, oblivious, he glared at his readings that she knew just might be indicating four hairline fractures drawing a lightning line across her knuckles.
And he muttered a sympathetic “Ouch,” mostly to himself, and just moved on. Kara let out a breath and then stayed quiet until he said she was good to leave.
.
.
.
.
Both sides seemed grateful that as strange as the whole situation was, there was no good reason to believe she was some crook constructing an elaborate lie to get on board. As for whether she was crazy, the jury was still out, but everyone who stopped by the landing bay to look at the Viper was pretty impressed. Kirk managed to peel her away from protectively making sure nobody was messing with her “bird” when he sensed that even though they’d decided she wasn’t much of a risk, her nervousness indicated she wasn’t sure if she trusted the crew at all. And if she was actually from a completely different world, she wasn’t bound by their laws, and he owed her some explanations too.
After he’d spent a good half hour presenting her with collected images and data in the observation deck, he finally asked why she was so interested in collecting proof of all the life forms they knew about, not just information about Earth, though she was certainly very invested in that. She said something about needing to see the life that existed outside of the spaceship to really get that this was really happening, and that she was pretty convinced, despite the fact that she couldn’t see it for herself, at least not yet.
“Why would we...lie about this stuff?” he asked. “You think this is some elaborate ruse to fuck with you or something?”
“‘Fuck’?” Kara smirked, and blinked. Jim also blinked. Returning to the heavier set of her dazed expression, she turned back to the monitor and said, “There was a war. Where I came from. I wasn’t sure if I was being toyed with or something...You know what, that’s way too long a story. I’m pretty sure you’re all human. Except for...”
He wasn't sure how that was relevant, but he let it slide for now. “Yeah, you met Spock. He’s a—”
“No, you know what, I don’t even wanna know,” Kara said with a dismissive wave of her hand, continuing to numbly explain: “The point is, there was no life. There was a system of twelve planets, and uh...They were nuked. Completely destroyed. I’ve been on the run with a handful of survivors for years in a small fleet of ships, looking for a habitable planet. Looking for Earth, actually.”
“Wait...” The interruption didn’t mean much of anything. Kirk’s face just seemed to chase through a hundred understatements like That sucks before resorting to speechlessness.
“And here I am,” Kara added with a wry smile, and then pointed at the viewscreen with a swivelling dimensional image of Earth: “And here it is. And...every person I’ve been with for the past few years...is...uh. Look, you better have something alcoholic on board."
“What’s your poison?” Kirk quickly asked, happy to be able to offer something.
“Gods, I don’t care. Give me something...something very clear.”
On their way to hitting up Chekov for some vodka, Kirk had a moment of consideration after which he muttered, “Look, if you want your stuff back that you had in your uniform..."
“Surely you don't mean everything, captain,” Kara said with a nervous smile, not quite granting a respect for his authority into the last word. “It can’t be okay with whatever protocol you have to let me run around with a sidearm, not that I've got much ammo for it...”
“What, it uses bullets?” Kirk asked a little excitedly, like this was some pet topic of novelty for him.
She gave him a look like it was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard, and with a patronizing sneer slowly said, “It’s a gun. Bullets come out of it. Into people’s faces...Look, I’d like to have it back anyway. There’s a deck of cards in that belt, and what the hell else are we doing tonight besides cross-cultural comparison drinking games?”
One hour later a small crowd consisting of Kara, Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, and Spock had significantly livened the mood in the rec room. With the exception of Spock, everyone had had trouble catching onto the rules of triad, and if it wasn’t bad enough that she’d had to explain the colors over and over again, Kirk had been the one to volunteer a different game when Kara looked ready to throttle Spock for winning too many times.
“...So you have to drink one cause you don’t have hypovaccinations. And then it’s your turn.”
After gladly taking a shot, Kara cleared her throat and muttered, “Um. Pyramid.”
Uhura said, “As in...”
“As in the sport.” She looked rather depressed when there were looks of confusion round the table. “Damn...Drink up.”
Of course Kirk had failed to take into account that Spock, being unable to feel the effects of the alcohol, would also be frustratingly adept at this game. After noting the tenth look of suspicion at Spock’s impassive demeanor, Kirk leaned over from where he was sitting between his friend and Kara to quietly tell her, “I know you don’t believe me, but I absolutely swear, he’s not that bad once you get to know him.” It didn’t help.
“So you’re telling me...” Scotty mused after his sixth shot, “You’re tellin’ me...That you’d be able to essentially beam a grapefruit, at faster than light speed—”
“We call it jumping, not beaming,” Kara explained. “And yeah. When we’ve got the fuel, it’s how we get around.”
Scotty’s mouth opened into an amazed ‘O’ before forming his next sentence. “...You transport entire ships to specific coordinates? You can beam your vessels!? But you don’t even have industrial replicators?”
Many had forgotten it was Spock’s turn; his eyebrow cocked and he simply said, “Antimatter containment.” Kara poured herself a new shot.
Kirk was pointing a finger across the table at Scotty, then indicating Kara. “Did you get a look at her ride?"
In response to Scotty’s look of puzzlement, Uhura asked, “You haven’t seen the Viper?”
“The what?—I was working on the comm system today.”
“Oh, man,” Kirk said. “Get a look before the night’s through. Looks ancient, but it flies, apparently.”
“Excuse me?” Kara interrupted. “It's not a museum exhibit.”
“Does this Viper have the technology to do this, uh—” Scotty stuttered over his excitement, “the jump technology?”
“Frak, man, I wish.”
Spock gave a thoughtful tilt of his head. "Perhaps it would be possible to adapt warp capacity...As I understand it is much more complicated with smaller vessels, particularly if it is not already equipped with our sensors..."
Scotty's face was lighting up, but Kara only glared at Spock more for even suggesting it. "No. No way."
"I wouldn' let anything happen to her," Scotty pleaded. "I'm a bit of a genius, you know—"
"He is," Kirk passively confirmed.
"No." Kara threatened, "If you take even a screw off..."
"Right, alright, nevermind," Scotty pacified. Uhura laughed in sympathy at his disappointment.
Just then McCoy, who had offered to do a replicator run after declining to join in on the evening, came up holding a tray with a random array of items he started handing out at the table. With a dry remark about oral fixations he handed Jim the glossy round lollipop he'd apparently requested. He muttered, "Fuck you, Bones" between laughs, quickly unwrapping it and sticking it in his mouth where the white stick hung out lazily from his teeth.
As Bones passed by Kara, she was leaning back into a yawn, and what caught her eye then was something tucked under his arm that looked a whole lot like a humidor.
“Um.” Without hesitance, she reached out to take it and asked, “What’s this?”
“Hey, don’t—” Bones protested, to no avail, as she took the box and opened it up to find the long skinny things that didn’t really look like she’d expected. “Jim, you wanted one of those.” The comment seemed to infer that they definitely hadn’t come from a replicator.
“Yeah, thanks, Bones, but my mouth’s a little busy now."
“Listen, I’m trying not to get my hopes up,” Kara started to explain. “But...we ran out of cigars a long time ago...”
With a scoff Bones explained, “So did we. These are Orion and they’re not exactly cigars, but...”
“Try one,” Kirk urged.
She picked out one of the wrapped tubes and noticed that Bones was digging into his pocket, and set it between her lips. She tipped her head back while he flicked on a lighter that looked very, very old, and held it at the tip. As soon as it lit, Kara instinctively puffed, pulled out the cigar and exhaled a gradual stream of milky, aromatic smoke.
She then just closed her eyes for a second, and looked up behind her with a wide smile. “Damn. Thanks, Doc.” He only gave that a slightly uncomfortable shrug.
The crowd cleared out when it was a pretty reasonable time to go to bed, but Kirk and Starbuck remained relaxed in their seats until long after they’d left, and since they were probably the two loudest drunks to ever board a space vessel, it didn’t really feel like the party had ended. Once Kara had actually managed to drool vodka from giggling too hard, Kirk realized it was time to call it a night, once he got control of his last laughing fit.
“Okay, wait. Hah. I’m the worst host ever,” Kirk managed to say apologetically. “I haven’t set you up a room on the ship.”
“Oh no,” Kara replied coyly, rocking her eyes up to the ceiling as she daintily sucked on the lollipop that had somehow changed hands at some point. “Where am I going to sleep tonight?”
"Well." Kirk's eyes were comically wide for a second. He wasn't even sober enough to be clever and subtle about it, so he just started laughing as he kind of realized he probably didn't need to be. "Are you...uh..."
“Come on.” She laughed and squirmed out of her seat, grabbing him by the arm.
By the time they’d managed to get on and off the turbolift she was asking, “How come I’m hoisting you all over the place when I’m more drunk than you?” Kirk towered at six or seven inches taller than her, but he was skinny and light, so it was no big chore. Still, she had no idea where they were going and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the possibility of any members of the crew spotting her carting their captain off to bed.
“What are you talking about?” Jim mumbled. “I swear...I haven’t been this drunk since I left Iowa.”
He moved to carry more of his own weight, and they wielded each other down the hallway at a sluggish pace. “What’s Iowa?” Kara asked.
“It’s...huh. How to define Iowa...” Jim thought for a hazy second, then asked, “What’s the shittiest place you can think of?”
“...New Caprica.”
“Well...” Kirk raised his eyebrow and said simply, “Iowa...is New Caprica. Uh, this is my room.”
As soon as Kara turned them both to head into Jim’s cabin, the door automatically opened. She quickly exclaimed, “You sure got a lotta space.”
“Yeah,” he said flatly, licking his lips. “I gotta lotta space.” His unrelated afterthought was his lips meeting Kara’s, drawing an almost-giggle from her as she comfortably reciprocated and eagerly pulled them both through the door. In their haste, they somehow lost their footing and fell into a heap on the floor just inside Jim’s quarters, a couple limbs hanging out the threshold and keeping the door from closing.
Jim laughed quite heartily as he untangled himself from under her, feeling a lot less of a need to be careful than he usually would with a woman he'd just met that day. It was kind of freeing, if weird, that they were so physically comfortable already, in a way that didn’t have to be sexual, but hell, he wasn’t gonna complain if...
Kara pointedly shoved Jim down on his back and started taking her tops off. “This is gonna be the worst sex ever, you know.”
“I know,” he replied, laughing, watching her bare stomach skim out from under the clothing. “We are pretty drunk...”
Her voice lowered to a slightly more distant sense of abandon. "Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you."
“...Oh, I like you,” Jim realized, laughing in increasing frequency, his chest bouncing up and down. “I like you a lot.”
She rolled her eyes and then shoved his legs back a little out of the threshold. He was grabbing her down over him, pressing his fingers down the pattern of her ribs, as the door automatically sealed shut.
...Part Two...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-08-19 07:47 pm (UTC)I so love her interactions with the rest of the crew, and her distrust of Spock. Man, talk about culture shock! But at least the booze and cigars helped smooth things over. ^_~
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Date: 2009-08-20 01:47 am (UTC)Thanks for reading!
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Date: 2009-08-19 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-19 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 01:52 am (UTC)Next time Kara should make a remark about the miniskirts the female crew is wearing. LOL, I have something along those lines coming up, I think, but not for a while...
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Date: 2009-08-19 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 01:57 am (UTC)And man, I didn't think it would work either, and then it just...engulfed my brain. I hope it works.
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Date: 2009-08-20 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 02:05 am (UTC)Spock/Starbuck really did cross my mind! But I am really not capable of making romance with Spock believable...He'll certainly grow on her after a while, though.
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Date: 2009-08-20 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-20 07:53 pm (UTC)“It’s...huh. How to define Iowa...” Jim thought for a hazy second, then asked, “What’s the shittiest place you can think of?”
“...New Caprica.”
“Well...” Kirk raised his eyebrow and said simply, “Iowa...is New Caprica. Uh, this is my room.”
LMAO, I think this is my favorite dialogue so far.
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Date: 2009-08-21 06:05 am (UTC)And yes, McCoy may find himself unable to believe he ever pronounced Kara relatively sane after a while.
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Date: 2009-08-21 08:53 pm (UTC)tonight, my friend... tonight, i will read, and there will be flailing of an EPIC FUCKING DEGREE. :D :D :D :D :D :D
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Date: 2009-08-21 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 04:32 am (UTC)My favorite has to be “It’s a gun. Bullets come out of it. Into people’s faces..., most Starbuck like dialogue I have ever heard.
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Date: 2009-08-28 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-08 01:54 pm (UTC)