Title: The Boy and the Sea Dragon (7/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: On an away mission, Captain Kirk encounters an old friend he hasn’t thought of in years. Unfortunately, their meeting is less than fortuitous and bodes ill for the rest of Jim’s crew.
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Part Seven

The Bridge crew assembles in the Ready Room for a hastily called conference by Doctor McCoy. Nyota notes how pinched and wane Leonard’s face is, as he greets each person who takes a seat. Even his hello‘s seem forced and off-kilter.

She slides into her seat, feeling the strain of the last few days bearing down upon them all. McCoy does not sit like the rest; that alone signals trouble. When he begins to talk, she simultaneously leans forward to hear what he has to say and to brace herself for any upsetting news.

“I’ve been paid a visit by our friend,” the doctor begins.

No one says a word or gasps in surprise. The room remains deadly silent. Leonard stands behind a chair, his hands planted in a hard grip on the back of it. Perhaps he needs something to hold onto, not for physical support but for grounding.

“Leonard,” Nyota interrupts gently after he flounders for his next statement. “Did it hurt you?”

“No.” The way he flinches indicates otherwise. She’ll contact Christine in Sickbay and inform her of the situation in case McCoy hasn’t. And he’s apt not to, out of a stubborn insistence that he can take care of himself. Generally, it’s Jim or Spock who corner McCoy, but they aren’t here. Uhura tries not to carry that depressing thought too far.

“Anything you can tell us will be good, Doktor,” inputs Chekov earnestly. “We must have information to help the Keptin and Mr. Spock.”

“I do want to help them, so much,” says McCoy, the last part practically a whisper. Is Uhura the only one picking up on how heartbroken Len sounds? “The creature cornered me in my quarters. Apparently, it’s not afraid of gettin’ caught.” Leonard waves off any sharp concern or exclamations. “I’m fine, quit pestering me. I’d be in Sickbay otherwise.”

The man pulls out the chair that he has been standing behind. He sags the moment that he is seated. Nyota wants to reach across the table for his hand, but it is too wide to breach.

McCoy’s voice is weary. “It pretty much admitted that it had Jim and Spock.”

“Did he say that he would let them go?”

“No.” The word is too cutting. “Look,” the doctor sighs and curls one hand into a loose fist on the table. “It didn’t make any promises. Hell, I’m not sure what it did do, except confuse me.”

When he pauses, Uhura urges, “Go on.”

“It said that if I… gave it what it wanted, it would be happy.”

Uhura feels confusion and instant dread; so do the others, judging by the looks on their faces. “What does it want?”

Leonard slowly looks up. When she can finally see McCoy’s eyes, read them, she makes a small unhappy noise. They’re abnormally bleak. “It wants me,” he says without preamble.

Now there are loud protests and the scraping of chairs quickly abandoned. Sulu is on his feet, incensed. Chekov has risen, too, to catch at the pilot’s arm.

Leonard looks startled. “Sulu, for Christ’s sake—”

“—Doctor,” the pilot says with fury, “if you think that any of us are going to stand by while another one of our shipmates—our friends—are taken by that thing—”

“No, Hikaru,” Leonard says quickly, “I don’t expect you to be happy about this. Hell, I’m damn terrified. But we’ve got to save Jim and Spock, and—”

“—not at the cost of you!”

Leonard’s eyes drop to a half-hooded state. Uhura wonders what he is trying to hide.

“When is one man’s life worth more than another’s?” asks the doctor. “How do we make the decision to sacrifice a few for the good of the many?”

“We dinnae have to.” The answer comes from, surprisingly, Montgomery Scott. Everyone turns to look at the previously quiet engineer. Scotty does not quail under their attention. His voice is even. “It’s nae our responsibility to make that decision on the Enterprise. It’s the Capt’n’s.”

“Jim’s not here,” Leonard replies in a quiet voice.

“Then meebe we should ask ourselves what he’d do.”

Nyota could kiss the Scotsman in that moment. “Scotty’s right. This creature, it will divide us if we let it. That’s the last thing that J—Captain Kirk would want. He’d say that we have to stick together to beat the odds.”

The snort from McCoy is a sound she has missed hearing, is grateful if only because it means that Leonard has been reached through whatever terrible thing is weighing on him. “Jim would still run off to save our hides without so much as a by-our-leave,” Leonard points out.

“Aye,” agrees the Scotsman amiably. “‘N Mr. Spock would be right behind him.”

That instigates a chorus of chuckles and faint smiles. Some of the tension in the room dissipates.

Nyota sobers, wiping discreetly at the corner of her eyes. She nips at her bottom lip once before diving straight for the hard facts. “Len, do you know why it wants you?”

“Well, it ain’t ‘cuz of my looks, darlin’,” the replies man with a hint of grin. Then he sobers too. “It said something confangled about destiny.”

“Destiny?” Uhura and Chekov echo the word.

“Yeah. Damnedest thing. Does the Federation have any record of meetin’ a race that eats destiny?”

“Doctor, ye cannae be serious!”

“Serious as a heart-attack, Mr. Scott. It said that Jim and Spock’s destinies tasted good.“

“That’s—” The Russian obviously has no translation into Standard for what he thinks about Leonard’s statement. Uhura isn’t sure herself.

“How can a living organism feed on a concept?”

“A concept created by mere mortals,” Leonard adds. “You see? I said it didn’t make any sense.”

Sulu paces across the room. He asks McCoy, “Can you recall the conversation, word for word?”

The doctor hesitates and Nyota suspects that his hesitation has less to do with memory and more to do with something he isn’t saying. But she knows that if she corners him now, here in the Ready Room with the others, he will clam up and get belligerent. McCoy is as stubborn as a male can be when he sets his heels down.

“I told you most of it,” Leonard tells Sulu.

The pilot stares at the doctor for a just a minute too long. Then Sulu reminds them all, “Mr. Spock gave me the conn before he left. I’m not pulling rank, Doctor McCoy, but I am telling you that I am now responsible for the actions on this ship.” He lowers his voice, then, to a tone more reminiscent of Sulu’s earlier, rooky days aboard the Enterprise (like the rest of them). “I’m sorry, Leonard. I want them back as much as you. Can you try?”

Uhura doesn’t like how Leonard sets his jaw. “Sulu, I think you’re a damned fine officer and, frankly, I don’t envy you your position right now. But I ain’t got anything else… worth sharing.”

Sulu is silent as he meets McCoy’s gaze. Then he is so blunt that it’s painful to hear. “I need a full report, Doctor McCoy. Immediately.”

Leonard stands up. “I didn’t have to come here and tell you—any of you—a damn thing. But we are working on trust, and that’s a precise commodity these days. I need you to trust me. Trust me when I say that whatever else that monster ranted about has no relevance on helping Jim and Spock.”

“Then why has it targeted you?” Sulu is like a dog with a bone, won’t back down.

Uhura stands up, notes that Chekov and Scotty have too.

“Damn it, man, I don’t know how it thinks! It only said that—” He bites off his next words.

Nyota comes around the table and touches Leonard on the arm. “Said what?”

Leonard throws up his hands in an I-give-up gesture. “It said that my destiny was connected to Jim’s and Spock’s. And that’s the stupidest excuse I’ve ever heard. The monster has grabbed a couple of fish from the kettle and I happen to be one of ’em.” His half-smile is hard and unpleasant. It falters under Nyota’s stare. Leonard breathes deeply. “I’m just makin’ matters worse, aren’t I?” He turns his face from her. “I thought that… it’d help.”

“What do you mean?” she asks gently.

“Telling you. That it would help. I was wrong.”

Sulu’s brows come down. “The Captain and the First Officer of the Enterprise are MIA, possibly under mind control, and you regret informing this ship’s officers about something that could save lives?”

Leonard snaps defensively, “Don’t twist my words! This is hard enough already.”

Uhura reaches a hand to McCoy’s face, turns his head to look at her. “Leonard, you may think that you don’t have a choice, but you do. No one here will ask you to give in.” She cuts a hard look at Sulu. “No one.“

Leonard jerks a hand through his hair. “We don’t have any other options, Nyota. I don’t have other options.” He steps back from the conference table with a sigh so deep-felt that Uhura aches in response. “I’m a doctor. I can’t ignore this opportunity to save lives.”

Scotty remarks, “I’m with McCoy. We cannae condemn the Captain and Mr. Spock. They’re prisoners!”

Leonard looks at Sulu. “How are we going to get to them otherwise?” he reasons. “Not one of us has a fucking clue—” His fist thumps the table for emphasis. Nyota is oddly reminded of Jim. “—where they are, if they are really in their own damn bodies! We just don’t know.”

“I don’t want my friends to die,” Chekov says in a low, sorrowful tone.

No one does.

That quiets Leonard. Uhura lays a hand on the doctor’s shoulder, then, and his shoulders slump. He slides out from under her touch and heads for the door. Chekov and Uhura protest almost simultaneously with “Doktor!” and “Len! Please!”

He turns to them, addresses all the worried faces in the room. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… asked this of y’all. The truth is that I don’t think I can live with myself not matter how I choose. I can accept that.” He takes that last step which sends the door sliding open, the light of the corridor a bright backdrop. “Try to forgive me, will you?”

And with those words, Leonard McCoy is gone.

Scotty says, breaking the stillness, “I dinnae like the sound of that.”

Me either, Nyota thinks. She says instead, “We’ve got a ship to run. Let’s not give this thing more opportunities to use against us.”

They all agree.

“Have you made a decision?”

It’s Jim, this time.

Leonard allows the door to his office to slide closed and engages the locks by voice command. “Yes” is the quiet answer. “I’ve decided that we’ll deal on my terms.”

Kirk leans back in the chair and props a boot on the edge of McCoy’s desk. “Are your terms better?”

McCoy clenches a fist. “I’d say they are a sight better than what you’re offerin’, you piece of space trash.”

That laugh is pure Jim.

“Jem-me thinks you are a character. I did not understand this word before. I agree with Jem-me.”

Crossing his arms because there is little else to do, Leonard snaps out, “Shut up or I’ll raise such Cain you’ll be lucky you aren’t pitch-forked in the corridor.”

It tilts that blond head, amused. (Always fucking amused, McCoy knows, especially when it believes it is winning.)

“I’ll give you what you want but you have to give me something in return.”

“Cure,” it says slowly. “I give Leonard cure.”

The monster is forgetting grammar again. Interesting.

“That’s not much of a deal since you’re going to cure me and then make me a puppet. I need something better.”

“You will cure others.”

“Yeah, well, in case you hadn’t figured this out, Captain James T. Kirk and Commander Spock are important people to some other very important people. If they knew about this little scheme of yours, you’d be up shit creek. What’s a cure now that will probably be discovered in the future, anyway? No, the brass wouldn’t deal at all with you.“

Damn if Leonard isn’t lying through his teeth. Starfleet Command, no doubt, considers them all a dime a dozen. But the creature blinks at him and McCoy would bet that that means he has its full attention.

“So, since I know you won’t let them go—it’d defeat your purpose, right?—then you’ve got to bend a little.” McCoy takes one step forward, trying to envision himself to be as intimidating as a tall, hard-eyed Vulcan might be.

“What does Leonard desire?” it asks.

“Let me talk to ’em,” he says. “Release them just long enough to have a decent conversation, and then you’ve got me.”

“Just with Leonard,” it says with a hint of suspicion.

He nods. “That’s right. Just with me.”

The creature-monster-unknown entity of epic-ly bad proportions gives the dying doctor’s proposal a moment’s consideration.

Then it agrees.

Er, are people getting bored yet?

Next Part

Related Posts:

• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (14/14) – from December 7, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (13/14) – from December 6, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (12/14) – from December 2, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (11/?) – from November 27, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (10/?) – from November 25, 2010