Title: What We Feel (4/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Pairing: pre-Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Spock asks Jim and Leonard to consider their future together.
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3
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Part Four

“What’s bothering you, Leonard?”

Uhura is the first person to approach McCoy about the emotional turmoil the doctor had thought he’d hidden well. The woman perches on the edge of the examination table, head cocked in a way that is too reminiscent of Spock. He has to look away to answer her.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question, Lieutenant?”

She laughs, and the sound reminds McCoy that Nyota is a kindred spirit he can talk to—something she likes to tell him time and time again. It isn’t that Nyota Uhura is nosy, or even a mild gossip; no, she knows how to hold others’ secrets close to her heart—and the reason she will be the keeper of those secrets is because she is a sympathetic ear. Perhaps it is just part of the woman’s skill as a communications officer, being able to read beneath the spoken for the things unsaid.

He sighs playfully as he turns around. “Please tell me that you at least have a legitimate reason for scheduling this appointment. I want something to put in my log other than ‘needed to see doctor ’cause he’s a stubborn ass who won’t talk.'”

“You said it first,” Nyota quips with twinkling eyes. Then she makes a visible effort at seriousness. “I am having some abdominal discomfort, so I wouldn’t say this visit is entirely off the record.”

He frowns, switches a setting on his tricorder, and waves it over her stomach. Uhura complies when he asks her to lie back so that he can push gently on the muscles.

“Tell me when it hurts, a’right?”

Doctor McCoy questions her eating habits, if she has other symptoms such as nausea, headaches, or fatigue. After consulting some of the blood-work, and based on her responses, he informs her, “Your readings are good, and no abnormal scans. I can give you something for the ache, darling, but the best I can tell you right now is to monitor what you’re feeling.” He writes down a few notes to hand to Christine for a prescription of a mild muscle relaxant. “Now, if anything else strange starts or you just feel plain bad, I want you to come straight here—I don’t care if we’re in the middle of skirmish with pirate raiders. And if you can’t come to us, call us to you.”

Uhura straightens her tunic and nods in understanding. “You have my promise, Doctor.”

He remarks dryly, “You’re definitely one of the smarter people on board; it’s the blockheads like the Captain who haven’t the sense God gave a goat. I tell him not to run around with a fresh wound—and what does he do?”

“That’s why you’re on this ship, Leonard,” Uhura tells him sweetly. “Anyone else would give up on Kirk. You simply sedate him into compliance.”

They share a grin.

Uhura settles her hands in her lap. “Now it’s your turn. So talk.”

Just as he is trying to figure out a way to tell his friend that she would probably rather not know—Spock would probably rather no one knew except Jim and Leonard—Uhura slips onto her feet and pokes a finger into his chest. “I mean it! You don’t have to tell me specifics, Leonard, but it’s clear that you need to share this with someone.” Her eyes are sympathetic. “I know you usually talk to Jim, but for some reason he’s involved and so you can’t discuss the problem with him. Am I right?”

She knows she is.

He concedes, “Yeah. It’s… complicated.”

“Give me the easy version then.” Then more softly, Uhura adds, “I know I can help—and even if I can’t, I want to try.”

It is as if she dares him to deny her the opportunity to be a good friend.

“You win!” He sets his tricorder to the side and runs a hand over his face. “I, well, I have got to make a choice—and it depends on whether or not I want to take a chance.” His voice catches. “Last time I decided something like this, it didn’t work out.”

The woman stares at him for a long moment, and Leonard could swear that she sees something in him; the problem is that he doesn’t know what it could possibly be.

Then Uhura replies, “We take chances with our lives every day. Sometimes we get hurt; and sometimes we don’t.” She reaches up to brush his cheek with her fingertips. “But if we didn’t take chances at all, Leonard, we wouldn’t be the people we are—we wouldn’t be here, on this ship, or even in our given careers. I hate to think of what I would have missed if I hadn’t left my family.” Her smile is almost sad. “I was engaged before I joined Starfleet,” she says after a pause.

Leonard takes her hand in his, surprised. “What happened?” he asks, knowing that if it isn’t too painful, she will tell him. And for some reason, McCoy thinks he needs to hear Nyota’s story.

“We realized that we wanted different things, even though we loved each other. He had a path to follow that wasn’t in the direction of my own; for a long time, I thought that I might have made a mistake, walking away. I missed him, and I wondered if… if being alone was my penance.”

He says gently, “Now that’s foolish, darlin’. You’re a smart, beautiful, and talented woman—and some day you’ll find a person worthy of you.”

She kisses his cheek. “Thank you for that. What I meant to say, to you, is that I have had some regret because of the chance I decided to take but I also knew, when I made the decision, how much happiness it could bring me. And that made it a good risk.”

“How do I know if this risk is good or not?” he wonders.

She studies him. “Picture yourself as if you’ve already chosen to do it.”

He does.

“You’re smiling,” she says.

Leonard starts, realizes that he is. “Well I’ll be damned!”

“No,” Nyota tells him, “if you’re lucky, you will be a very happy man.”

~~~
before…

“Mrs. McCoy keeps the house.”

Leonard stares at his wife, then at the divorce papers on the table between them. He is tired, beaten under the words of Jocelyn’s lawyer. “What else?”

He listens to a long list of assets built during the marriage—and realizes that by the time this meeting is over, his wife will have taken most of the more valuable items in their life. Except…

“Joanna,” he dares to say. “I want full custody of Joanna.”

McCoy directs his words to his wife, but it is the lawyer who answers. “That is unacceptable, Mr. McCoy.”

He slams a fist onto the table. “She’s my child! I don’t care about the rest—” Leonard pleads to Jocelyn, who stares at him without flinching. “You can have everything—the house we built, my savings, alimony—but give me Joanna. Please.“

The lawyer looks to his client. Jocelyn closes her eyes, then, briefly. When she opens them again, Leonard seems a familiar look that makes his stomach drop. She’ll fight him on this—and when Jocelyn goes to war, she doesn’t stop until she has victory.

“Our daughter,” the woman he loved (still loves now, even as she squeezes the life out of his heart) says slowly, “is the only good thing that came of our marriage. I’m her mother and she needs me in a way that she won’t always need you, Leonard.”

Her words are like a blow.

Is this how Jocelyn felt? Had Leonard just imagined the happy years, when they were younger, in love; years before the overtime hours and traveling his career demands, long before he felt the estrangement grow without knowing how to stop it.

The lawyer’s face has a hint of pity, and that Leonard cannot stand. Already, his friends and family are saying, “poor Leonard” and “it’s just divorce—happens all the time—you’ll get over it.”

He shakes his head, trying to deny more than what Jocelyn said. “I’m her father and that gives me the right to be in her life.”

“Yes,” she agrees. Then to her lawyer, “The judge will grant him visitation rights?”

The two people across from Leonard converse with each other, ignoring him despite he is part of the decision. Doctor McCoy’s own lawyer is absent, having opted to represent a case of property dispute between two wealthy residents, a case which shall be considerably more profitable than divorce proceedings. He feels stretched thin from the workload and this emotional mess, worrying about his daughter’s mental well-being over the split between her parents. On top of that, today McCoy is running late to the hospital as it is, and now he has to find another half-decent lawyer.

The world seems to be collapsing around Leonard McCoy, and the man has finally realized how helpless he is to stop it.

“Can—can we talk about this later?” he drawls thickly, too low on energy to correct his accent. Jocelyn hates his accent.

His wife (ex-wife, he corrects with a pang) just sighs, a sound of disappointment. “This is what he does,” she tells the room at large, as though there is an audience listening. “Fine, Leonard. Get yourself together, then we will arrange a date to sign the papers.”

She doesn’t wait for his reply, merely collects her purse, tosses a cashmere shawl over her shoulders, and walks away.

Leonard slumps in his chair, alone. It is many minutes before he wills himself to leave the room. No one remarks on his passing.

~~~

It occurs to Jim that he is missing half of the picture as he watches Bones across the large cafeteria, shifting a plate on his food tray to make room for a cup of coffee.

Spock wants Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy. That means Jim has to accept not only the Vulcan, but he will be expected to share Spock’s affection with another man.

Ensign Barrows pauses next to McCoy, saying something with a small smile on her face and a sparkle in her eyes. Jim reads the red-headed woman’s body language well enough. If he remembers correctly, Bones returned her interest once upon a time.

Now the doctor marginally shifts away as he answers whatever teasing request was, no doubt, asked of him. She looks disappointed.

Jim, surprisingly, has to swallow down a lump in his throat. He makes sure that it is completely gone by the time Bones drops into a chair opposite him, tray clattering onto the table.

His mouth stretches in a tight smile. “Tonia, right?”

“What?”

“Ensign Barrows.”

Leonard glances behind him as if he expects to see her standing there. Then he fixes a sharp look on Jim. “You know who she is, Jim. There’s not a crewman aboard you can’t name.”

He shrugs, deciding that to say anything else will arouse Bones’ suspicion.

They settle into a silence that is too prevalent between them these days. Jim sips his drink while Bones half-heartedly rearranges his salad.

“Jim—”

“Bones—”

They speak at the same time, like a bad comedy. Kirk gives a short laugh, leaning back as he gestures for McCoy to go first.

McCoy pushes his tray away to prop elbows on the table. “We can’t keep avoiding Spock on this; if anything, we will hurt him drawing it out. I don’t think either one of us wants that.”

“No,” he agrees. “Bones… You and I, we should talk about the details. All of them.”

At the confusion on the doctor’s face, he clarifies, “Us, I mean. This is about—us too.”

Leonard’s eyes drop for a moment. “Damn. I guess my brain is more muddled than I realized, to forget that.” Then he nods, looking into Jim’s eyes. “You’re right. My quarters or yours?”

Things are actually simpler than he anticipated. “Yours.”

Bones doesn’t bother to ask the time because they keep track of each other’s schedules fairly well. Jim pushes back from the table and stands. Hesitating, he opens his mouth to speak but closes it again.

Despite that Leonard is concentrating on drinking his coffee, the man says, “Might as well spit it out, Jim.”

Caught. “I’m glad it’s you, Bones.” Where did that come from?

Startled blue eyes flick up to him. “Really? Why, I… Thank you.”

He nods and moves away. Bones’ voice calls to him as he passes around the side of the table. “Jim?”

Jim stops, waits.

“Ditto.”

He leaves the mess hall with a lighter step than usual.

Spock and Bones… An all-or-nothing package. He doesn’t have to choose this time.

~~~
before…

“Gentlemen, I’ll decide.”

They have less than one hour and thirty-five minutes; time is running out, and while Jim fights his body’s weariness to stay on his feet, he agonizes that his final moments of life will be used to make a decision that breaks his heart.

Both Mr. Spock and Doctor McCoy have volunteered to risk their lives, death almost certain, in order to find a way to save the ship. Bones displays a passion for the mission, is determined that this opportunity cannot be pushed aside to study an organism their galaxy has never encountered. Jim is less concerned about the potential medical knowledge than keeping his crew alive. He knows Bones is not that callous, never could be, and he also knows that the odds of McCoy surviving under the strain are low. Spock, on the other hand, has the strength to withstand such strain and a scientific—though not necessarily biological—mindset. The part of Jim which is a captain in its purest form tells him that his Vulcan First Officer is the better choice.

His heart cries No!

James T. Kirk would gladly step into that shuttle, if only to prevent the death of either man.

He recalls how Spock bluntly declared that Jim cannot be risked, in a logical argument that cut through Kirk’s reasoning like a honed blade. On this, McCoy is in agreement with the Vulcan; though perhaps the doctor agrees for the sole reason that he instinctively bucks against placing another person in harm’s way (unless, of course, that person is McCoy himself, which Jim finds both ironic and worrisome).

So Jim cannot pilot the shuttle. It has to be either McCoy or Spock.

He wants it to be neither.

He wants to turn back time, reroute the ship’s charted course—anything that could minutely change the outcome of what must happen in matter of minutes.

This is why Jim thinks that to love someone is more painful than it is wonderful. He is a man always in danger, a man always forced to choose between duty and relationship. Were he to forgo personal attachment altogether, he would be so much more efficient—and so much less vulnerable. Yet the thought of doing so makes the man ill; he imagines a sensation akin to having a piece of him ripped out and tossed away.

Bones would say, “It can’t be helped, Jim. You’re human, and a human cannot deny the need to love.”

Is Spock luckier in this respect? He comes from a race than places logic before love; Jim knows the decision for the Vulcan would only take half of a second—and it would be unbiased. Jim has to fight with himself to overcome his biases, his wants, and his denials. Every choice like this one is a struggle—and a scar that lingers with him long afterward.

He jams a hand into his hair, a gesture of hardship that he only succumbs to once the struggle is over, once he can give himself a split-second to regret what he has decided.

Then Kirk loosens his grip on his hair, drops his hand to the comm unit and says, “This is the Captain. Mr. Spock, Doctor McCoy, report to my quarters immediately. Kirk out.”

The Captain is back, and the Captain will bear the brunt of the responsibility—and inherent tragedy—that will result from today. And if Kirk lives, it is the man beneath the armor of the Captain who shall pay the price.

Footnotes:
1. Uhura’s ex-fiance – while not mentioned in the series, I am playing off the scene in the episode The Man Trap, where the salt monster takes the form of a man from Uhura’s memories.
2. Tonia Barrows – Romantic interest (flirting, really) for McCoy during the episode Shore Leave.
3. Fourth scene is a fictional extension/introspection on the episode The Immunity Syndrome; italicized sentences are quotes.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• What We Feel (12/12) – from April 2, 2011
• What We Feel (11/12) – from April 2, 2011
• What We Feel (10/12) – from March 28, 2011
• What We Feel (9/?) – from March 26, 2011
• What We Feel (8/?) – from March 23, 2011