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ninety6tearsTitle: Rising Sign
(3/8)
Characters/Pairings: Starbuck, Kirk, Bones, Spock. (Kirk)/Kara/McCoy.
Rating: R for language.
Spoilers for Trek XI and BSG up through "Maelstrom," lots of references to the entire series.
Huge, huge executive-producer-credit style thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
flowrs4ophelia; I fear the term "beta reader" doesn't quite cut it for her level of contribution to this.
Summary: Loosely 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."
...Part One...Part Two...
Upon being released from sick bay by a doctor who seemed quite happy to be rid of her, Kara had returned to her sleeping area to find a pile of clothes Jim had acquired for her so that she wouldn’t be living in her old fleet tanks all the time. Her hands had paused at the bottom of the pile where what was left of her old jock smock had been respectfully folded, breathing a numbed sigh as she stuck her finger along one of the gashes they'd had to make to get her out of it. Leafing then through what she thought was a somewhat overcomplicated pair of jeans and a couple soft t-shirts, she went for putting on sweatpants and shook off her restlessness with a jog around the residence halls where they were pretty low-traffic in the afternoon. The change of clothes did nothing for how much she stood out among the crew. She didn’t have a uniform, and though it was probably out of earnest curiosity that she seemed constantly noticed, she still felt like a bit of a spectacle. She was grateful that despite the occasional joking salute, which she was happy to return if she was in the right mood, everyone she wasn’t acquainted with basically kept their distance.
Evenings in the rec room were the only time she really forgot being an outsider. She was fully aware that some higher-ranking members of the crew didn’t know what to make of her, but she had enough of a level of easy trust with the captain so that people seemed to just cock their eyebrows and go with it. The failure to teach everyone Triad had segued into Kirk breaking out his own deck to teach her poker, which she caught onto pretty fast. Because she still couldn’t beat Spock, she merely got satisfaction from the fact that he always wanted to be doing something more constructive instead. For some reason she didn't think she'd ever really grasp, Jim loved the game more when Spock was playing and was usually very insistent that his first officer join in, and she'd gotten used to that by now.
After McCoy folded he took a sip of his beer and asked, “You guys wanna take a break?”
Kirk concurred, “Yeah, I gotta pee.” They stood up and left together. Kara remained at the table with Spock sitting quietly on her left.
She refused to just sit there in silence with him; with a resigned motion of her shoulders, she smiled dryly at the science officer, who replied with an obligatory, “Mrs. Thrace. I trust you are adjusting favorably.”
“Oh, what does that even mean?” she muttered, pausing to eavesdrop on the table next to them, becoming bored with that. “Can I ask you something?”
Spock looked more directly at her before looking back down with an appearance of near-shyness. “You wish to know the extent of my findings in relation to the wormhole...”
“No.” She shook her head. “Actually. I was wondering how many of your people survived.”
Spock did not even flinch, but his look at her was a bit more reading before he said, “The last calculation of the Vulcan population was 10, 307.”
Her eyes quietly widened for only a second, as if she’d wanted to be able to say, Trust me, that’s a good number. She swalled roughly. “And, um. You’re not with them?”
He stated simply, “The Enterprise is my home now.”
“Yeah...” Kara’s thoughts trailed into something else, and she was mutely surprised when Spock volunteered to speak.
“I did not find anything of substance from the conditions of the anomaly where we first came across your vessel, but any logical projection of the circumstances leads me to believe that it would be impossible to send you back to your place and time, even if the—”
“Hold on, hold on. Wait,” Kara interrupted, unprepared, putting a hand up. “Place and time?”
“Affirmative. The star charts and data you provided me with from the Viper, your accounts of the limited amounts of life within your universe all indicate—”
“Don’t. Don’t even...Come on, time travel? This is bullshit.”
“Lieutenant Uhura even informed me that your religion prescribes perfectly with that of certain archaic Terran faiths,” Spock explained patiently. “This crew has already seen firsthand evidence of time travel and I do not find it improbable that we would encounter it again. I was told to find the most logical answer to your situation and my conclusion is that your origin is in fact the past. We have solved the occasional sift in space, but not time, not with essentially no measure of temporal difference. You have as little chance of returning to where you came from as I do.” And some day, when Kirk explained it all to her, she’d understand the double meaning of that last part.
Kara took an unneeded glance at her cards, set them back face down, reached to sneak a swig of McCoy's beer. Then she looked back at Spock. "While we're alone, I guess I have something else to say..."
Spock was attentive, patient through her hesitance.
"Um. Okay...What would be your scientific opinion if I was to suggest that...I'm actually dead...back home."
Spock narrowed both of his eyebrows, and replied with a rather uncharacteristic hesitation, "You must clarify."
"Like if it seems like I died, just before I got here..." She checked the door. "I can't believe I'm...Look, can you keep a secret?" Her voice was wrought with the sense of how ridiculous it was to ask that of Spock.
"I certainly can if the information is not of an urgent nature."
She nodded and tried, awkwardly but quickly, to get it out in the air. "So, we know that I came out of a wormhole, but...What if this accident that led me here wasn't with something that even looked like a wormhole at all?"
"Just because you did not perceive—"
"No, listen. What if it was actually a really...really bad windstorm, just above a gas giant." Her arms dropped in limp uncertainty from her gesturing explanations, and she breathed in a couple nervous breaths and took a moment. "I mean like pressure strong enough to totally crush a vessel in seconds. And I mean...it's all really hazy, but I...I kinda feel like it did."
"Thrace," Spock interrupted, his tone measured. "There was no damage to your Viper when we—"
"I know. There was no damage to me either, apparently."
"If you are in fact suggesting that you were split into two entities..."
She shook her head, bemused. "I don't know what I'm suggesting, Spock—"
He stubbornly interrupted, "Impossible. At the least extremely improbable. If your experience with the wormhole caused you any shock or trauma, your memories of the experience would understandably be subject to some distortion."
"Of course," Kara said bitterly. "You mind telling me why my mind would just fabricate some reason that I'm not meant to be alive?"
"Your experience here, in an unfamiliar environment, is greatly troubling for you. You are responding with some kind of dissociative invention of the circumstances so as to distance yourself from the present."
Kara's teeth clenched together. She closed her eyes for a sigh; she wasn't hostile when she asked, "Is there any chance you can try to appreciate the fact that sometimes, to me, this feels like the hallucination..." She gestured to their entire surroundings. "And you can't see that because you've never even seen where I've been?"
For a beat, it seemed like Spock was going to ignore the question. It was apparent that he had simply been further ruminating when he simply replied, "Yes. Of course, there is another explanation for your psychoses that is perhaps more straightforward, if you would hear it."
She shook her head almost apathetically. "What?"
He replied with a question. "Have you ever entertained suicidal tendencies?"
Her hands tucked down and just squeezed the edge of the table, hard. She was like that when Kirk came up beside her; he could immediately sense something heavy had been touched upon, but he and Spock managed to convey an entire conversation about it (Yes, we just talked and yes, I would like to tell you but no, I will not) with a few looks.
The two moved on to discussing a mission they would be taking care of tomorrow. Just as McCoy set down a fresh drink he’d just gotten, he casually pointed at Kara and said, “She’s going. She could use some air.”
Kirk blinked at her. “Oh, that’s right, you haven’t been planetside...”
“In a long time,” she finished a bit matter-of-factly, her eyes downturned. Then she muttered, “Are you gents all sure I won’t just get in the way?”
Her tone didn’t exactly suggest that she wouldn’t argue her way into going anyway, and Kirk smiled. “It’s mostly a routine diplomatic thing. You’ll be able to look around while we most likely attend a boring meeting and then grab some unreplicated food afterwards.”
It wasn’t like she was expecting anything other than a simply and beautifully green, populated, oxygenated planet. But the next day consisted of quite constantly gulping down how very overwhelmed she was, from her unsettling first transporter experience to really being in the midst of a thriving environment. Within the first few minutes of hiking through the farm-like fields to the small town close by Kirk was griping about being bitten by bugs, and she could only relish those annoyances, the small evidence of teeming, abundant life tickling against her skin.
“Hey guys, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just hang out here while you’re doing your...thing.” Kara stopped with her hands in her pockets, looking off into the yellowy horizon. When they all hesitated to respond, she turned and reassured, “What? I’ll stay right here. Just remember the tree.”
Jim didn't have a problem with it and asked, "You’ve got a communicator in your bag, right?”
“Scotty babbled something about ‘Federation property’ and breaking protocol and then he gave me one, yeah.” Kara was already shrugging off the little backpack she’d brought down and crouching down against a thickly veined tree trunk to get into it, and the three men left her to herself.
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When the talks went by a little more smoothly than expected, Jim and McCoy were in a good mood and decided to visit the pub-like establishment just down the street. Just as Spock was in the middle of asking Kirk something, Bones flicked a look to the side, hearing just faintly a couple bold clacks off in the distance.
When he noticed the lack of surprise on Jim’s face, he scowled. “What is she doing?”
Jim shrugged.
“You let her bring her gun?”
“It’s hunting season here, nobody’s gonna come running,” Jim explained with a kind of reserved understanding as Bones started walking off toward the fields. “Come on, let her be...”
“I’m just gonna see if she wants to come get a drink,” Bones shouted behind him.
The occasional sound of gunshots—usually only two or three with pauses of a few minutes in between—were increasingly louder until he was close enough to hear the tinny little explosions that accompanied them farther in the distance.
He was slowing up right over her shoulder when she snapped into aim and let a round off, the bullet smashing some blue aluminum canister she’d set on a big rock some dozen yards away. She turned swiftly to crouch down, not overtly reacting to him.
“Can’t say this is how I would’ve expected you to spend your time down here,” Bones commented lightly, leaning his back into the tree. At his feet she was reaching into a small compartment, looking like she was double-checking something, then finally thinking to give an indifferent shrug in reply.
She stood back up, squinting off at the rock where she had two of the cans left. She stiffened and aimed again, muttering “three,” taking out the last two. Then she lowered her arm, loosening down a bit but pensively pressing her lips together.
She seemed to remember he was there after a moment, then flatly explained, “I’m on the last round of my last magazine. I’ll probably never be able to shoot this gun again.”
Bones furrowed his brow, taking in the strange smile on her face, the kind she had sometimes that looked nearly frantic if you looked close enough.
He was a bit taken aback when she shifted towards him and held the gun out by the barrel. “You do it.”
Even as he took it, his expression was unsure. “I don’t...I mean, what do I even shoot at? You gonna kill me or something if I miss?”
She scoffed. “Doesn’t matter, just shoot it. I’m assuming you know how.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know how...Why don't you close your eyes or something.”
She seemed confused before she sort of got what he was doing. She put her hands over her eyes and waited till her ears swelled to the sound of that final bullet tearing out, booming its swan song, hitting whatever target she wanted it to be. She took her hands back down, and after a pause, just let out an uneasy laugh at herself.
After she tossed an unneeded canister out of her bag with a shrug, he acted out of reflex and leaned down to pick up and throw it over his shoulder.
Kara argued, "I can—"
"So can I."
They walked a little ways before she kind of laughed at that. "Seems like you act more like a doctor's supposed to act when they get you away from sick bay..."
"You mean like, nice?" McCoy chuckled. "...Come on, I'm alright."
"I hate that bedside manner bullshit anyway," she muttered. "And you're not as bad as my last doctor, he was a real son of a bitch."
"Well, I'm glad I'm not so bad. Compared to a real son of a bitch."
One side of her mouth smirked, like no way in hell would she ever give him a real compliment cause it would ruin all the fun. "You're welcome."
She made fun of him for whistling "When the Ship Comes In" all the way to the pub. There she looked around with half-shy fascination at the crowds, several of whom were of a bizarre and strange-looking species to her. They stuck around a little longer than they should have and Kara drank a little more than she should have, and ended up whipping a threatening remark at a traveler who was actually offering to help carry their next round of drinks, perhaps partly out of being alarmed by the broad grimacing shape of the Denobulan smile. When she got a little too animated against his flustered response Kirk had to intercept and stiffly say, "Please go outside and ask Scotty to beam you up." Spock opted to join her, leaving him and Bones finishing their ales at the shoddy wooden table.
"She's trouble," Bones said after a heavy tired silence.
Kirk winced a bit. "It's tough with her, you know...I'd probably get sick of her attitude pretty fast if she was an actual officer, she's completely undisciplined, and God knows she's about as fucking paranoid as the worst Romulans we've ever run into. But with what she's been through, I'm surprised she even trusts us."
"Yeah, I know all that. I don't even mean it like that." Bones was apparently not pressed to explain how he did mean it; he stood up and finished off his drink, leaving his friend looking mildly befuddled as he took both their glasses up to the bar.
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.
The extent of Kara's relationship with Pavel Chekov was based solely on food recommendations. Starting with the day she'd been desperate for something comparable to her favorite packaged snack mix but had had no idea what they'd call it, he always seemed like the nicest guy in the mess hall to flag down so that she didn't feel like growling at the replicator that she just wanted something chewy.
One morning he'd recommended red licorice, insisting as always that it was invented in his mother country, which had to be some ongoing prank she affectionately allowed him to have at her. She'd been stopping for some small talk with Kirk with the candy hanging out of her mouth, and hell if she'd ever remember what happened to the licorice after the chaos stormed into view.
She had to assume it was a very sudden emergency, since Kirk didn't even know what was going on: it started with a nurse running by them and into the transporter room pushing a biobed. They heard the tingling sound of bodies beaming in, immediately conjoining into a tumult of undefinable noise. Kara was about to get a look in when Kirk pulled her back closer to the wall, seeing the bed being pushed rapidly out. The collected bodies pushing past were the patient and two nurses: a moaning, asking of questions, confirming readings, and Bones behind them barking out orders. When they passed by Kirk yelled out, "Bones?" in a way that seemed like shorthand for 'Anything I can do?'
In equally sparse response, the doctor barely looked at Kirk before shouting, "Code 39-'B' refugee, fleeing advisable."
And then Kirk was already on the comm ordering Sulu to take them away at a moderate warp speed, and after the rush had so suddenly dissipated that the corridor seemed more quiet than before, Kara's mouth dropped open without a noise before she managed, "Uh. Was that...a blue woman...in labor?"
Kirk gave a brisk nod. "And it's gonna be a tough time, too, half the medical crew's on leave during repairs—oh, dammit, even Chapel—Sulu, belay that, we need to get some of our—"
"Oh, shit..." Kara leaned down to the floor, noticing one of the wireless scanners she recognized as belonging to the medical tricorders. "Did they drop this?"
Kirk had been about to head up to the bridge, and he cast a look down the opposite way and grimaced slightly, then said, "You better chase 'em. Hurry."
They had already gotten the woman set up in medical by the time she got there, and Kara could tell upon arriving that the situation could probably wrack Vulcan nerves from the particular way Bones was making demands, cursing their shortages; she never imagined they could ever be very under-prepared, but this was obviously some completely unpredictable situation. It couldn't be every day that Bones went to a planet for a seminar and came back with a woman who apparently couldn't get medical assistance anywhere else.
As she came up behind McCoy he was asking Nurse Lang, the one currently occupied trying to look up xenobiology data, if she knew of anyone on the ship who was experienced delivering a baby of this species, and sure enough also digging through his pockets, interrupting himself with, "Dammit, dammit, dammit, where's my—"
"Doc!" Kara held out his scanner and he immediately looked and snatched it. And just when she figured she'd be getting out of his way, he reached down under the biobed and took out a large plastic bucket and shoved it out for her to take.
"Water. Warm, not cold."
As she was at the faucet she saw Chapel storming in still in civilian clothes and working on some rubber gloves, heard McCoy's grateful outburst of "THANK GOD. DO YOU KNOW IF—"
"Yes, I delivered a Maklin my fourth year in Washington. Does she know any Standard?..."
As Christine Chapel took over where Bones was more hesitant, the head nurse's presence somehow smoothed things along by the edge of a blade, quietly but confidently. She turned and soaked a rag in the water as soon as Kara took it over, and after merely sizing up the fact of Kara's presence, said, "She's afraid. Hold her hand."
Kara let out a scuffing laugh, backing up nervously. "Oh, I'm...I'm not really..."
Her voice could only trail off as it was not only Bones struggling to verbally assure a woman that her baby was going to be okay when she probably couldn't understand a word, but Chapel turning a most impenetrable expression to her and correcting, "You are today."
The woman's hand was sweaty, but soft, very humanoid and vulnerable in Kara's grasp, and even though it did no good to talk she felt that it might mean something to her anyway when paired with the physical comfort; as the tension in those fingers started wringing into her she found herself automatically mumbling things like "It's okay" and "You can do this" without really thinking about it. When Blue finally started really pushing and Chapel's look at the progress turned into good news, a relief very much like open happiness came over McCoy, and Kara found herself smiling too, almost proudly, brushing her free hand through the woman's hair.
The baby, when she saw it more closely as it passed from the doctor's arms into the woman's, was tiny and glazed in a milky blue and...sort of cute. Kara found herself still standing by the bed quite a few minutes after, and the woman, attempting to communicate in her own tongue an offering inquiry, tilted the infant just a little in her direction. Kara speechlessly hesitated until Bones was glancing up from typing out the paperwork on the woman's records and said, "I think she's asking if you'd like to hold him, Kara."
"Oh..." She gave an attempt at a gracious grin but instead awkwardly sidled over closer to Bones, muttering, "I'm not very good with kids."
A few minutes later he explained the situation to her, how she was a member of a nomadic species that held a belief that any child born in the first week of the warmest season was cursed, that the women were shunned and abandoned if they didn't murder their own (he added with a spitting tone that most of them apparently were willing to).
"I thought, um..." Kara scratched at her eyebrow. "Isn't that like a cultural thing? If you interfere with that custom, aren't you sort of breaking the rules?"
"You kidding me?...Yeah, if we tried to monitor the entire society, that's something we just can't do. But on a case-by-case basis—This lady comes up to me in the middle of a crowd, says she knows a woman is in the middle of a tough delivery and her people won't help her, and asks me to do this because she knows I'm a doctor..." He shook his head, muttered quietly, "Even if it was breaking the rules, you think I'd give a damn?"
Maybe she'd just wanted to hear him tell her it was a stupid question, and she couldn't help a slight satisfied smile.
After a second he looked at her suspiciously. "What?"
She scrubbed a hand over her face. "Nothing."
The next afternoon when Bones got back from his lunch, she was standing idly in sick bay, leaning against the wall next to his office. He only raised his eyebrow for a second before reaching for a bin containing used vaccine cartridges and handing it to her.
"Sort those out by color; check every one to see if it's cracked, if it is, throw it out. Come and get me when you're done."
He never once thanked her for anything, just told her what to do like it was her job. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
(3/8)
Characters/Pairings: Starbuck, Kirk, Bones, Spock. (Kirk)/Kara/McCoy.
Rating: R for language.
Spoilers for Trek XI and BSG up through "Maelstrom," lots of references to the entire series.
Huge, huge executive-producer-credit style thanks to
flowrs4ophelia; I fear the term "beta reader" doesn't quite cut it for her level of contribution to this. Summary: Loosely 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."...Part One...Part Two...
Upon being released from sick bay by a doctor who seemed quite happy to be rid of her, Kara had returned to her sleeping area to find a pile of clothes Jim had acquired for her so that she wouldn’t be living in her old fleet tanks all the time. Her hands had paused at the bottom of the pile where what was left of her old jock smock had been respectfully folded, breathing a numbed sigh as she stuck her finger along one of the gashes they'd had to make to get her out of it. Leafing then through what she thought was a somewhat overcomplicated pair of jeans and a couple soft t-shirts, she went for putting on sweatpants and shook off her restlessness with a jog around the residence halls where they were pretty low-traffic in the afternoon. The change of clothes did nothing for how much she stood out among the crew. She didn’t have a uniform, and though it was probably out of earnest curiosity that she seemed constantly noticed, she still felt like a bit of a spectacle. She was grateful that despite the occasional joking salute, which she was happy to return if she was in the right mood, everyone she wasn’t acquainted with basically kept their distance.
Evenings in the rec room were the only time she really forgot being an outsider. She was fully aware that some higher-ranking members of the crew didn’t know what to make of her, but she had enough of a level of easy trust with the captain so that people seemed to just cock their eyebrows and go with it. The failure to teach everyone Triad had segued into Kirk breaking out his own deck to teach her poker, which she caught onto pretty fast. Because she still couldn’t beat Spock, she merely got satisfaction from the fact that he always wanted to be doing something more constructive instead. For some reason she didn't think she'd ever really grasp, Jim loved the game more when Spock was playing and was usually very insistent that his first officer join in, and she'd gotten used to that by now.
After McCoy folded he took a sip of his beer and asked, “You guys wanna take a break?”
Kirk concurred, “Yeah, I gotta pee.” They stood up and left together. Kara remained at the table with Spock sitting quietly on her left.
She refused to just sit there in silence with him; with a resigned motion of her shoulders, she smiled dryly at the science officer, who replied with an obligatory, “Mrs. Thrace. I trust you are adjusting favorably.”
“Oh, what does that even mean?” she muttered, pausing to eavesdrop on the table next to them, becoming bored with that. “Can I ask you something?”
Spock looked more directly at her before looking back down with an appearance of near-shyness. “You wish to know the extent of my findings in relation to the wormhole...”
“No.” She shook her head. “Actually. I was wondering how many of your people survived.”
Spock did not even flinch, but his look at her was a bit more reading before he said, “The last calculation of the Vulcan population was 10, 307.”
Her eyes quietly widened for only a second, as if she’d wanted to be able to say, Trust me, that’s a good number. She swalled roughly. “And, um. You’re not with them?”
He stated simply, “The Enterprise is my home now.”
“Yeah...” Kara’s thoughts trailed into something else, and she was mutely surprised when Spock volunteered to speak.
“I did not find anything of substance from the conditions of the anomaly where we first came across your vessel, but any logical projection of the circumstances leads me to believe that it would be impossible to send you back to your place and time, even if the—”
“Hold on, hold on. Wait,” Kara interrupted, unprepared, putting a hand up. “Place and time?”
“Affirmative. The star charts and data you provided me with from the Viper, your accounts of the limited amounts of life within your universe all indicate—”
“Don’t. Don’t even...Come on, time travel? This is bullshit.”
“Lieutenant Uhura even informed me that your religion prescribes perfectly with that of certain archaic Terran faiths,” Spock explained patiently. “This crew has already seen firsthand evidence of time travel and I do not find it improbable that we would encounter it again. I was told to find the most logical answer to your situation and my conclusion is that your origin is in fact the past. We have solved the occasional sift in space, but not time, not with essentially no measure of temporal difference. You have as little chance of returning to where you came from as I do.” And some day, when Kirk explained it all to her, she’d understand the double meaning of that last part.
Kara took an unneeded glance at her cards, set them back face down, reached to sneak a swig of McCoy's beer. Then she looked back at Spock. "While we're alone, I guess I have something else to say..."
Spock was attentive, patient through her hesitance.
"Um. Okay...What would be your scientific opinion if I was to suggest that...I'm actually dead...back home."
Spock narrowed both of his eyebrows, and replied with a rather uncharacteristic hesitation, "You must clarify."
"Like if it seems like I died, just before I got here..." She checked the door. "I can't believe I'm...Look, can you keep a secret?" Her voice was wrought with the sense of how ridiculous it was to ask that of Spock.
"I certainly can if the information is not of an urgent nature."
She nodded and tried, awkwardly but quickly, to get it out in the air. "So, we know that I came out of a wormhole, but...What if this accident that led me here wasn't with something that even looked like a wormhole at all?"
"Just because you did not perceive—"
"No, listen. What if it was actually a really...really bad windstorm, just above a gas giant." Her arms dropped in limp uncertainty from her gesturing explanations, and she breathed in a couple nervous breaths and took a moment. "I mean like pressure strong enough to totally crush a vessel in seconds. And I mean...it's all really hazy, but I...I kinda feel like it did."
"Thrace," Spock interrupted, his tone measured. "There was no damage to your Viper when we—"
"I know. There was no damage to me either, apparently."
"If you are in fact suggesting that you were split into two entities..."
She shook her head, bemused. "I don't know what I'm suggesting, Spock—"
He stubbornly interrupted, "Impossible. At the least extremely improbable. If your experience with the wormhole caused you any shock or trauma, your memories of the experience would understandably be subject to some distortion."
"Of course," Kara said bitterly. "You mind telling me why my mind would just fabricate some reason that I'm not meant to be alive?"
"Your experience here, in an unfamiliar environment, is greatly troubling for you. You are responding with some kind of dissociative invention of the circumstances so as to distance yourself from the present."
Kara's teeth clenched together. She closed her eyes for a sigh; she wasn't hostile when she asked, "Is there any chance you can try to appreciate the fact that sometimes, to me, this feels like the hallucination..." She gestured to their entire surroundings. "And you can't see that because you've never even seen where I've been?"
For a beat, it seemed like Spock was going to ignore the question. It was apparent that he had simply been further ruminating when he simply replied, "Yes. Of course, there is another explanation for your psychoses that is perhaps more straightforward, if you would hear it."
She shook her head almost apathetically. "What?"
He replied with a question. "Have you ever entertained suicidal tendencies?"
Her hands tucked down and just squeezed the edge of the table, hard. She was like that when Kirk came up beside her; he could immediately sense something heavy had been touched upon, but he and Spock managed to convey an entire conversation about it (Yes, we just talked and yes, I would like to tell you but no, I will not) with a few looks.
The two moved on to discussing a mission they would be taking care of tomorrow. Just as McCoy set down a fresh drink he’d just gotten, he casually pointed at Kara and said, “She’s going. She could use some air.”
Kirk blinked at her. “Oh, that’s right, you haven’t been planetside...”
“In a long time,” she finished a bit matter-of-factly, her eyes downturned. Then she muttered, “Are you gents all sure I won’t just get in the way?”
Her tone didn’t exactly suggest that she wouldn’t argue her way into going anyway, and Kirk smiled. “It’s mostly a routine diplomatic thing. You’ll be able to look around while we most likely attend a boring meeting and then grab some unreplicated food afterwards.”
It wasn’t like she was expecting anything other than a simply and beautifully green, populated, oxygenated planet. But the next day consisted of quite constantly gulping down how very overwhelmed she was, from her unsettling first transporter experience to really being in the midst of a thriving environment. Within the first few minutes of hiking through the farm-like fields to the small town close by Kirk was griping about being bitten by bugs, and she could only relish those annoyances, the small evidence of teeming, abundant life tickling against her skin.
“Hey guys, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just hang out here while you’re doing your...thing.” Kara stopped with her hands in her pockets, looking off into the yellowy horizon. When they all hesitated to respond, she turned and reassured, “What? I’ll stay right here. Just remember the tree.”
Jim didn't have a problem with it and asked, "You’ve got a communicator in your bag, right?”
“Scotty babbled something about ‘Federation property’ and breaking protocol and then he gave me one, yeah.” Kara was already shrugging off the little backpack she’d brought down and crouching down against a thickly veined tree trunk to get into it, and the three men left her to herself.
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.
.
When the talks went by a little more smoothly than expected, Jim and McCoy were in a good mood and decided to visit the pub-like establishment just down the street. Just as Spock was in the middle of asking Kirk something, Bones flicked a look to the side, hearing just faintly a couple bold clacks off in the distance.
When he noticed the lack of surprise on Jim’s face, he scowled. “What is she doing?”
Jim shrugged.
“You let her bring her gun?”
“It’s hunting season here, nobody’s gonna come running,” Jim explained with a kind of reserved understanding as Bones started walking off toward the fields. “Come on, let her be...”
“I’m just gonna see if she wants to come get a drink,” Bones shouted behind him.
The occasional sound of gunshots—usually only two or three with pauses of a few minutes in between—were increasingly louder until he was close enough to hear the tinny little explosions that accompanied them farther in the distance.
He was slowing up right over her shoulder when she snapped into aim and let a round off, the bullet smashing some blue aluminum canister she’d set on a big rock some dozen yards away. She turned swiftly to crouch down, not overtly reacting to him.
“Can’t say this is how I would’ve expected you to spend your time down here,” Bones commented lightly, leaning his back into the tree. At his feet she was reaching into a small compartment, looking like she was double-checking something, then finally thinking to give an indifferent shrug in reply.
She stood back up, squinting off at the rock where she had two of the cans left. She stiffened and aimed again, muttering “three,” taking out the last two. Then she lowered her arm, loosening down a bit but pensively pressing her lips together.
She seemed to remember he was there after a moment, then flatly explained, “I’m on the last round of my last magazine. I’ll probably never be able to shoot this gun again.”
Bones furrowed his brow, taking in the strange smile on her face, the kind she had sometimes that looked nearly frantic if you looked close enough.
He was a bit taken aback when she shifted towards him and held the gun out by the barrel. “You do it.”
Even as he took it, his expression was unsure. “I don’t...I mean, what do I even shoot at? You gonna kill me or something if I miss?”
She scoffed. “Doesn’t matter, just shoot it. I’m assuming you know how.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know how...Why don't you close your eyes or something.”
She seemed confused before she sort of got what he was doing. She put her hands over her eyes and waited till her ears swelled to the sound of that final bullet tearing out, booming its swan song, hitting whatever target she wanted it to be. She took her hands back down, and after a pause, just let out an uneasy laugh at herself.
After she tossed an unneeded canister out of her bag with a shrug, he acted out of reflex and leaned down to pick up and throw it over his shoulder.
Kara argued, "I can—"
"So can I."
They walked a little ways before she kind of laughed at that. "Seems like you act more like a doctor's supposed to act when they get you away from sick bay..."
"You mean like, nice?" McCoy chuckled. "...Come on, I'm alright."
"I hate that bedside manner bullshit anyway," she muttered. "And you're not as bad as my last doctor, he was a real son of a bitch."
"Well, I'm glad I'm not so bad. Compared to a real son of a bitch."
One side of her mouth smirked, like no way in hell would she ever give him a real compliment cause it would ruin all the fun. "You're welcome."
She made fun of him for whistling "When the Ship Comes In" all the way to the pub. There she looked around with half-shy fascination at the crowds, several of whom were of a bizarre and strange-looking species to her. They stuck around a little longer than they should have and Kara drank a little more than she should have, and ended up whipping a threatening remark at a traveler who was actually offering to help carry their next round of drinks, perhaps partly out of being alarmed by the broad grimacing shape of the Denobulan smile. When she got a little too animated against his flustered response Kirk had to intercept and stiffly say, "Please go outside and ask Scotty to beam you up." Spock opted to join her, leaving him and Bones finishing their ales at the shoddy wooden table.
"She's trouble," Bones said after a heavy tired silence.
Kirk winced a bit. "It's tough with her, you know...I'd probably get sick of her attitude pretty fast if she was an actual officer, she's completely undisciplined, and God knows she's about as fucking paranoid as the worst Romulans we've ever run into. But with what she's been through, I'm surprised she even trusts us."
"Yeah, I know all that. I don't even mean it like that." Bones was apparently not pressed to explain how he did mean it; he stood up and finished off his drink, leaving his friend looking mildly befuddled as he took both their glasses up to the bar.
.
.
.
.
The extent of Kara's relationship with Pavel Chekov was based solely on food recommendations. Starting with the day she'd been desperate for something comparable to her favorite packaged snack mix but had had no idea what they'd call it, he always seemed like the nicest guy in the mess hall to flag down so that she didn't feel like growling at the replicator that she just wanted something chewy.
One morning he'd recommended red licorice, insisting as always that it was invented in his mother country, which had to be some ongoing prank she affectionately allowed him to have at her. She'd been stopping for some small talk with Kirk with the candy hanging out of her mouth, and hell if she'd ever remember what happened to the licorice after the chaos stormed into view.
She had to assume it was a very sudden emergency, since Kirk didn't even know what was going on: it started with a nurse running by them and into the transporter room pushing a biobed. They heard the tingling sound of bodies beaming in, immediately conjoining into a tumult of undefinable noise. Kara was about to get a look in when Kirk pulled her back closer to the wall, seeing the bed being pushed rapidly out. The collected bodies pushing past were the patient and two nurses: a moaning, asking of questions, confirming readings, and Bones behind them barking out orders. When they passed by Kirk yelled out, "Bones?" in a way that seemed like shorthand for 'Anything I can do?'
In equally sparse response, the doctor barely looked at Kirk before shouting, "Code 39-'B' refugee, fleeing advisable."
And then Kirk was already on the comm ordering Sulu to take them away at a moderate warp speed, and after the rush had so suddenly dissipated that the corridor seemed more quiet than before, Kara's mouth dropped open without a noise before she managed, "Uh. Was that...a blue woman...in labor?"
Kirk gave a brisk nod. "And it's gonna be a tough time, too, half the medical crew's on leave during repairs—oh, dammit, even Chapel—Sulu, belay that, we need to get some of our—"
"Oh, shit..." Kara leaned down to the floor, noticing one of the wireless scanners she recognized as belonging to the medical tricorders. "Did they drop this?"
Kirk had been about to head up to the bridge, and he cast a look down the opposite way and grimaced slightly, then said, "You better chase 'em. Hurry."
They had already gotten the woman set up in medical by the time she got there, and Kara could tell upon arriving that the situation could probably wrack Vulcan nerves from the particular way Bones was making demands, cursing their shortages; she never imagined they could ever be very under-prepared, but this was obviously some completely unpredictable situation. It couldn't be every day that Bones went to a planet for a seminar and came back with a woman who apparently couldn't get medical assistance anywhere else.
As she came up behind McCoy he was asking Nurse Lang, the one currently occupied trying to look up xenobiology data, if she knew of anyone on the ship who was experienced delivering a baby of this species, and sure enough also digging through his pockets, interrupting himself with, "Dammit, dammit, dammit, where's my—"
"Doc!" Kara held out his scanner and he immediately looked and snatched it. And just when she figured she'd be getting out of his way, he reached down under the biobed and took out a large plastic bucket and shoved it out for her to take.
"Water. Warm, not cold."
As she was at the faucet she saw Chapel storming in still in civilian clothes and working on some rubber gloves, heard McCoy's grateful outburst of "THANK GOD. DO YOU KNOW IF—"
"Yes, I delivered a Maklin my fourth year in Washington. Does she know any Standard?..."
As Christine Chapel took over where Bones was more hesitant, the head nurse's presence somehow smoothed things along by the edge of a blade, quietly but confidently. She turned and soaked a rag in the water as soon as Kara took it over, and after merely sizing up the fact of Kara's presence, said, "She's afraid. Hold her hand."
Kara let out a scuffing laugh, backing up nervously. "Oh, I'm...I'm not really..."
Her voice could only trail off as it was not only Bones struggling to verbally assure a woman that her baby was going to be okay when she probably couldn't understand a word, but Chapel turning a most impenetrable expression to her and correcting, "You are today."
The woman's hand was sweaty, but soft, very humanoid and vulnerable in Kara's grasp, and even though it did no good to talk she felt that it might mean something to her anyway when paired with the physical comfort; as the tension in those fingers started wringing into her she found herself automatically mumbling things like "It's okay" and "You can do this" without really thinking about it. When Blue finally started really pushing and Chapel's look at the progress turned into good news, a relief very much like open happiness came over McCoy, and Kara found herself smiling too, almost proudly, brushing her free hand through the woman's hair.
The baby, when she saw it more closely as it passed from the doctor's arms into the woman's, was tiny and glazed in a milky blue and...sort of cute. Kara found herself still standing by the bed quite a few minutes after, and the woman, attempting to communicate in her own tongue an offering inquiry, tilted the infant just a little in her direction. Kara speechlessly hesitated until Bones was glancing up from typing out the paperwork on the woman's records and said, "I think she's asking if you'd like to hold him, Kara."
"Oh..." She gave an attempt at a gracious grin but instead awkwardly sidled over closer to Bones, muttering, "I'm not very good with kids."
A few minutes later he explained the situation to her, how she was a member of a nomadic species that held a belief that any child born in the first week of the warmest season was cursed, that the women were shunned and abandoned if they didn't murder their own (he added with a spitting tone that most of them apparently were willing to).
"I thought, um..." Kara scratched at her eyebrow. "Isn't that like a cultural thing? If you interfere with that custom, aren't you sort of breaking the rules?"
"You kidding me?...Yeah, if we tried to monitor the entire society, that's something we just can't do. But on a case-by-case basis—This lady comes up to me in the middle of a crowd, says she knows a woman is in the middle of a tough delivery and her people won't help her, and asks me to do this because she knows I'm a doctor..." He shook his head, muttered quietly, "Even if it was breaking the rules, you think I'd give a damn?"
Maybe she'd just wanted to hear him tell her it was a stupid question, and she couldn't help a slight satisfied smile.
After a second he looked at her suspiciously. "What?"
She scrubbed a hand over her face. "Nothing."
The next afternoon when Bones got back from his lunch, she was standing idly in sick bay, leaning against the wall next to his office. He only raised his eyebrow for a second before reaching for a bin containing used vaccine cartridges and handing it to her.
"Sort those out by color; check every one to see if it's cracked, if it is, throw it out. Come and get me when you're done."
He never once thanked her for anything, just told her what to do like it was her job. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
...Part Four...
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 12:29 am (UTC)It's just a good story, and the main reason I like it is because of the character writing you're doing; I can visualize every moment, and it all rings true.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 07:46 pm (UTC)You should take your computer into the lounge tonight so we can chat while watching PR, yaaaay.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 08:34 pm (UTC)WTF makes you think I can get internet downstairs, bro? TY for reminding me about Runway, though. You can call me on commercial breaks if you have anything to say, LOL.
New chapter 4U (did you get the email?) Jeez, isn't it surreal for my writing to be time-consuming for you?
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 09:28 pm (UTC)Yes I got the e-mail. I got both e-mails, they're both the same e-mail. And I'm now wery much not grouchy.
OH HAY, and you should check out my recent entries too, wink wink. I made a point of waiting until I was added to the
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:34 pm (UTC)You know, some day I will make a big list of the top twenty or so movie quotes that we have been quoting our entire lives for not much reason. "...Scanning." "Pork rind? Pork rind." "You.....hhh.....are my number one...hhhhh...guuuyhhhh."
no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:14 pm (UTC)I also like the little details about the Star Trek characters, like Kirk always wanting Spock at the card game. And LOL, everyone always ignores the Prime Directive. Obviously, Kara would approve. ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-13 06:38 pm (UTC)I'll keep checking back for more installments -- thanks for writing!
no subject
Date: 2009-09-14 04:03 am (UTC)Thanks so much! I really hope I can get more posted pretty soon!