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comment_fic, and it's been forever since I tried writing Star Trek. Any Star Trek. So, ah, this may be complete shit, is what I'm saying?
Title: Crash-courses in Therianthropy
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS
Characters/Pairings: Leonard McCoy, Pavel Chekov, Hikaru Sulu, Nyota Uhura, mention of Jim and Spock. McCoy & Uhura, McCoy & Chekov, hinted Pavel/Hikaru
Summary: Leonard McCoy always hated shore leave, waiting for the next bloody idiot to come back broke up when half of sickbay were busy getting smashed on Andorian ale planetside. When Pavel Chekov came back from shore leave with bite-wounds and a condition that threatened to endanger a whole sub-community on the Enterprise, he considered that hatred well-justified
Wordcount: 4110
Warnings/Notes: Alternate Universe. Were-creatures. Secrecy, violence, turning.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
comment_fic, and it's been forever since I tried writing Star Trek. Any Star Trek. So, ah, this may be complete shit, is what I'm saying?Title: Crash-courses in Therianthropy
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS
Characters/Pairings: Leonard McCoy, Pavel Chekov, Hikaru Sulu, Nyota Uhura, mention of Jim and Spock. McCoy & Uhura, McCoy & Chekov, hinted Pavel/Hikaru
Summary: Leonard McCoy always hated shore leave, waiting for the next bloody idiot to come back broke up when half of sickbay were busy getting smashed on Andorian ale planetside. When Pavel Chekov came back from shore leave with bite-wounds and a condition that threatened to endanger a whole sub-community on the Enterprise, he considered that hatred well-justified
Wordcount: 4110
Warnings/Notes: Alternate Universe. Were-creatures. Secrecy, violence, turning.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Crash-courses in Therianthropy
There were times, Len managed to think, through the sudden rush of adrenalin and the chaos of a between-shift Sickbay trying to slam itself into gear, when he hated shore leave.
Not on its own merits, you understand. He was all for rest and relaxation, trust him on that one. He hated shore leave because it meant that, almost invariably, some bright spark would arrange to get the most spectacular and/or life-threatening injury or disease possible at a time when half his goddamn staff were busy getting smashed on Andorian ale planetside. It was getting to the point where he tried to arrange his own leave shifts at polar opposite times to certain individuals, sure in the knowledge that if anyone was gonna fall down a cliff or contract a new superplague while taking in the nightlife on Risa, it'd be them. And he'd be the one who'd have to fix it.
"Didn't I tell you so?" grumbled a voice in the back of his head, while he struggled to catch a flailing and bloodied Pavel Chekov under the knees and help Sulu swing him up onto a biobed, the skeleton sickbay staff scattering and reforming around them. Len tried not to listen to it. It did a body no damn good to be growling at his own subconscious in the middle of a crisis.
"Easy kid, damnit," he snarled, choosing to growl at his patient instead. "Come on, take it easy, we got you. Let me see, alright? Calm down a sec and let me see."
"Pavel," Sulu snapped, reaching up to press his hands to Chekov's cheeks, pushing his head gently back into the pillow and forcing the kid to meet his eyes at the same time. "We're safe. We're on the ship. You hear me? We're safe." He paused, gentled his hands when his friend's eyes turned towards him, a hint of lucidity flashing in them. "We're good," Sulu confirmed, keeping his voice gentle. "You need to be still and let the doc do his job now. Okay?"
Chekov stared wild-eyed up at him, his chest still heaving wetly, but the panicked flailing was subsiding back into the shudders of a man going into shock, and that was good enough to be going on with. Leaving Sulu to work on keeping the kid calm, Len finally managed to get his first good look at the injuries.
Goddamnit, was his first thought, entirely unbidden. The physical injuries were fairly bad, yes. Two sets of claw-marks that raked across the kid's chest and upper thigh, and then a messy bite-wound that looked to have almost torn his arm off at the shoulder. Not good, that kind of trauma was never good, but that wasn't what sent the chills skittering down Len's spine.
It was the smell. The smell that crawled up his nose and slammed into his hindbrain and whispered we are in deep shit now. Because he knew that smell. Yessir, he knew it very well indeed, and he understood now why the kid was freaking the hell out.
Damnit. Damnit, fine, we'll deal with that. Okay. Let's just get the easy stuff out of the way first.
"Antibiotics, painkillers, dermal and haemal regenerators, disinfectants over here!" he snapped to the bay at large, trusting his remaining staff to hop to it. "Let's get these wounds dealt with, people!"
"Doktor." Chekov turned to him, levering his head free of Sulu's stabilising grip despite the shivers that were running through him, reaching out with his good hand to snag Len's sleeve. His expression was one of a man who knew exactly what was happening to him, and scared to shit because of it. "Doktor, you don't ... You have to ..."
"It's alright, kid," Len interrupted, gently enough, shifting sideways to give Chapel access to the chest wound. He took Chekov's trembling hand, placed it back down on the biobed, keeping hold of it for a small second. "I know what happened. Seen it before. You don't worry, y'hear? We'll get these wounds closed up, make sure there aren't any extra infections knocking around in there. Then we'll talk about your options, okay? We'll sort this out, don't you worry."
Chekov held his gaze, nostrils flaring in a dead pale face, knowledge tangling with fear and desperate hope in his eyes. "Op-Options?" he managed, and goddamn it, it never got any easier, hearing that crack of hope and fear in a friend's voice. Len gripped his hand fiercely, looking down with every scrap of confidence he could muster.
"Options," he agreed firmly. "You've got 'em, kid. This ain't the thirteenth century anymore, and I ain't some goddamn superstitious witch-hunter looking to hurt anyone." He smiled crookedly. "Let's just make sure you ain't gonna bleed out on us first, and then I promise I'll lay 'em out for you. That sound good to you?"
The kid's eyes were clouding over by now, the anaesthetic starting to kick in, but he held Len's gaze all the way down. He kept his eyes fixed on Len's until the blackness pulled him under, his hand tight around his doctor's.
"Da," Chekov whispered, fading rapidly. "Please. Yes."
There were a hard few minutes after that, flushing enflamed wounds and patching torn flesh back together, setting a priority flag on certain compounds in the kid's system. It'd been a long while since he'd had to track this infection through a body, he mused, though Starfleet equipment made it a damn sight easier. If you knew what you were looking for, anyway, and had an idea where it came from and where it was going to go.
Len waited, even after the wounds were closed. Watching the read-outs, working out how this was going to play. He hung around until he had a bead on it, until he knew what he was looking at and how much time he was gonna have before Chekov's options got a lot more limited.
Then ... then he reached up, carefully, and brushed his hand where Sulu's had been a while ago, smoothing the kid's hair gently back from his face. He looked at Sulu, sitting perched on the biobed opposite and determinedly not leaving, and saw the knowledge there. Saw that the pilot had some idea of what had happened to his friend, and was damn well not leaving him in the lurch. Len saw the pitch-dark determination in the man's face, and nodded once.
"We're gonna fix this," he told Sulu quietly, rough and implacable, pained. "It's gonna take some doing, and it ain't gonna be easy. He's gonna need some help. You able for that, you think?"
Well hell, he thought. The look Sulu gave him for that one was about as eloquent as one of Spock's, and made a man feel just about as small, too.
"Right," he agreed, scrubbing a hand through his hair and sighing. "Stupid question. Never mind. You keep an eye on him for a while, then. Me, I gotta go talk to a woman about a dog."
Goddamnit, this was why he hated shore leave. Every goddamn time.
-----
He called Lt Uhura down to Sickbay. It was easier than trying to dodge Jim and Spock up on the bridge, since he figured the only reason they hadn't already raided his sickbay in search of their injured crewman was because they were busy yelling at people planetside trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.
Privately, he wished them luck with that one. This wasn't one of the safe colonies, he'd have been a lot more ready if it had. So either they didn't know what they had running down there, in which case they weren't going to be any help, or they did know, in which case they'd likely be doing their damnedest to keep a lid on it. If the colony's population had the same approach to this infection as the ones back home did, nobody was gonna breathe a word until someone with know-how asked them outright.
And Len wasn't ready to open that can of worms yet. Not until Chekov was up and conscious, and knew what his choices were.
Nyota, though, was a different story. He fudged up a quick excuse, something about the kid dropping back into Russian in shock and needing a translator, but it was the Kanuri word he dropped in the middle of it, bultungin, that had her making her excuses to the Captain and telling him she'd be in sickbay in a few moments. Not that it was a particularly accurate word, under the circumstances, but it got most of the idea across and the chances of anyone aside from Nyota knowing what it meant were slim.
He waved her over when she strode through sickbay's doors, bowing her into his office and ignoring the weighing stare Sulu was sending them both. They were gonna have to deal with a lot worse than stares by the time this was done.
"Are you sure?" she asked him, the instant the door was closed. No preamble, no nothing, but Len could get behind that. He didn't much believe in farting around with niceties himself.
"Wolf," he agreed, stalking over to his desk drawer and pulling out some of Scotty's finest. He handed her a glass, giving her a full measure. They were going to need it. "Chekov recognised it, which would probably mean wolf anyway, given the Slavs, and I could smell it on him besides." He paused meditatively. "Makes me wonder how the kid knew. Maybe he's got a vaukalak somewhere in the family tree?"
She leaned back against his desk, rubbing her temples lightly. "If he does, then the chances of the strain taking will be increased, won't they?" He nodded glumly, and she winced. "Can it be reversed still?"
That, at least, was good news. "Judging from the rate of conversion I'm tracking so far, he's got about four days before it's irreversible. More, if I can get Jim to move the ship out past the lunar field." He raised his glass in wry toast. "I'll be waiting on that one until Chekov has an idea what's going on and what he wants to do about it. This ain't the sort of thing you spread around."
"No," she agreed, rather vehemently. Much as times had moved on the from thirteenth or even twenty-first centuries, a lot of old prejudices still hung around, and Nyota had had enough trouble making her name without having to deal with that on top of it. Hell, so had Len, come to that. People got a mite shy of a man when they knew that about him, especially when he was trying to be their doctor. He met her eyes, the tired humour there, and shook his head.
"He'll be waking up in a few hours," he explained wearily, sitting down on the desk beside her. She scooted over to make room, resting shoulder to shoulder with him. "I reckoned you and me, we could explain the options to him? And Sulu, because hell if he's leaving the kid before this is over." He smiled faintly, then sobered. "I was hoping you could do most of the explaining. You've got a better cultural grasp than I do, and you're not wolf, which is probably going to help. It looks ... it looks like it was a bad one."
She nodded, a dark expression flickering across her face. Most of their kind these days had a damn poor view of forced conversion. They were in a tentative enough position as it was, a couple of safe colonies and a tacit understanding with the Federation governments aside, without damned berserkers running around and riling up the old prejudices.
"Will he take against you, you think?" she asked softly, looking over at him with knowing sympathy. She knew his background inside and out, by this stage. Even if she wasn't a confidante by nature, it was standard for people like them to get an idea of who they'd be sharing a floating tin-can with, and in some other life she'd have made a damn fine interrogator. So she knew what memories this was calling up for him. She knew ... how hard this was going to be.
Len shrugged, a lot more casually than he really felt. She let it go. Always merciful, Nyota. "Don't know," he admitted quietly. "It might help, might make him feel less alone. Or it might scare him to death, make him feel like they followed him up here, like I'm one of them and I'm gonna hurt him."
He didn't let the flinch through, didn't let himself move. She felt it anyway, leaned closer against him in mute sympathy. Because yeah, they were in deep shit now, and they both knew it.
"It might ..." he started, carefully not looking at her. "Might be best to let me take the hit on this one." She stiffened, anger tangibly stirring in the air beside him, and Len hurried forward with the thought. "You ain't wolf, and he's new enough yet that he mightn't realise what you are. If this blows up, it's gonna be bad for all of us. Might make sense to limit the damage ..."
"Do not," she cut in, clipped and unimpressed. The lioness was suddenly very visible in her, the feline huntress laying her paw across his throat. Not a threat, as such. Not the way the stories made it out to be, an alpha enforcing her will whether her pride liked it or not. Just ... just a fierce, powerful friend, reminding him that she was big and ugly enough to take care of herself, and him too besides. Reminding him that prides hunted together, and took the hits together too. "Leonard. Don't even go there. That's not how we do things. You know that."
He slumped, trying not to feel ashamed of the relief that coursed through him, the desperate sense of belonging that he'd been missing for so long, until he came aboard this ship. Until he stood among friends, captain and crew, and among family, alpha and pack. These people, two-natured and one-natured both, were the best damn bunch he'd ever lived with in his life.
Not like the stories, no. Not like his own previous experiences, either.
And it occurred to him, there, that painful as this was going to be for all concerned, Chekov could not have picked a better ship in the fleet to be on when he was turned.
Now all they had to do ... was hope the kid saw things that way too.
"You know," he mused, smiling over and nudging his shoulder against hers. "I'm getting real damn tired of all these breaches we're once-moring into."
She snorted, regal and amused, leaning solidly against him. "Then you picked the wrong damn ship to serve on, didn't you?" she said, with that twinkle in her eye that he'd loved from the first. "We're captained by James T. Kirk, remember? We live in the breach."
Yeah. Maybe that was why it was starting to feel so damned homey 'round here.
-----
Chekov woke up two and a half hours later. It was not an easy re-emergence into the land of the living, the anaesthesia having kicked the nightmares into high gear below-decks, and the kid came awake with a thin yell like the hounds of hell were after him.
Not too far off the mark, really.
Sulu got there first. The pilot had been dozing gently, beta shift staff steering around him with the ease of long practice, and at the first sound from Chekov's mouth he'd practically vaulted across the intervening space. Len, coming out of his office at a fair clip with Nyota behind him, thought the man had all but blurred getting across the room.
"Pavel!" Sulu exclaimed, grabbing his friend by the uninjured shoulder and checking the panicked flail upwards. Len silently thanked his good sense, arriving in time to help Sulu lower the kid back down. Chekov seized his arm as he did so, grabbing hold of Sulu at the same time, nostrils flaring again as he struggled to register who was holding him. Len winced internally, watching as Chekov's head swung towards him, new senses trying to tally strange data, instinct and memory swimming underneath it in a heady cocktail. Recognising another wolf when he smelled one.
Shit and damnit.
"Take it easy, kid," he said, slow and easy while he gingerly extracted his hand and activated the privacy shield around the biobed, deliberately keeping his tone as gentle and reassuring as possible. "You're getting some new information right now, and I'm guessing most of it isn't anything good. We're gonna fix that soon, I promise you. You're in safe hands. But you gotta keep calm for a while first. Can you do that for me?"
"... Doc?" Sulu asked, leaning towards him protectively across Chekov's chest, hearing something in Len's tone that he obviously didn't like. Len glanced up at him, at the hard, evaluating stare the man was giving him, and did his best not to look guilty as sin. By the change in Sulu's expression, he didn't think he'd managed that one too well.
"Gonna get to that," he temporised, holding the man's gaze pleadingly, sensing Nyota move behind him, protective in her turn. "Bear with me a while yet, okay? This is gonna be hard no matter which way we cut it."
Sulu's eyes narrowed, going dark and dangerous for a second, but then ... then Chekov reached up, forestalling anything his friend might have said, and tangled his fingers carefully in Len's sleeve. Len snapped his head around, staring down at the kid in surprise, and Chekov looked back at him, eyes thoroughly lucid and shockingly calm all of a sudden.
"Vlko-dlak," he whispered softly. "You are vlko-dlak?"
Len winced, but nodded. Chekov didn't blink, so much, but his fingers tightened, tugging the material over Len's shoulder. His face shuttered, a man who'd hoped something had been a nightmare and was now realising he'd no such luck.
"And me?" he asked carefully. "The ... the wolf. The wound. I am now ...?"
"... Yeah," Len said heavily. "Yeah, it's like that." Chekov flinched, curling into himself, and Len found himself reaching down before he'd realised it, taking the kid's hand in his own. "Listen to me, okay? It's not permanent yet. You've got time, and you've got choices. We've got a few days before we hit the irrevocable stage. So just ... stay with me for a bit longer. We've got time to fix this, if that's what you want to do."
The kid stared at him, that sudden rush of hope that hit like a phaser blast every damn time, and Len pulled back some. Gave himself space, tried to let himself breathe. This was always the bad part. This was the part where even stepping carefully didn't always save you.
"Options," Chekov said, frowning up at him in realisation. "That was what you said. I have ... options?"
"Yes," Nyota spoke up, stepping carefully around Len and brushing his arm reassuringly as she passed. She smiled softly down at Chekov, ignoring the flash of confusion her presence garnered. "Things are not the way they were a few decades ago," she said gently. "Leonard is the best doctor Starfleet has. You have a choice, now. To be one of us or to return to what you were before. Whichever you choose, you will have support. This doesn't have to damage you if you don't want it to."
"This?" Sulu asked suddenly, looking between them with narrow eyes. Not suspicion, Len realised with a jolt. Not fear or aggression. Thoughtfulness, rather. Consideration. "What is 'this', exactly?" He looked down at Chekov. "What does vlko-dlak mean, Pasha?"
Len stilled. He didn't mean to, hadn't meant to let fear or instinct take over that much, but he stilled anyway. Even Nyota, never perturbed for long, lifted her chin in instinctive defiance, instinctive readiness.
And Chekov, sensing their fear even in the middle of his own, never mind that he was the one lying there with his arm half-ripped off by something not too distant from them, had the damnable grace to smile reassuringly at them.
"Werewolf," Nyota said softly, blinking at the kid a little herself. "It means werewolf." She smiled suddenly, bright and regal as a goddess, her delight brimming over as Chekov met her gaze steadily. "Though the word you really want, these days, is two-natured. Not all of us are wolves, you know."
"... No," Chekov agreed as he looked at her, nostrils flaring again as virgin instincts tried to make sense of new smells. The kid's face screwed up a little, his agile brain jumping at the challenge the way it did pretty much every other one, plunging in at the deep end because why the hell not. They were the crew of the Starship bloody Enterprise. What was a little therianthropy thrown in the mix? "You are ... cat? Some kind of cat?"
Len barked out a laugh, snapping his hand up to cover his mouth a second later, and a second too late. Nyota raised an eyebrow at him, arch and amused, and he ducked his head into his chest. Cat, he says. Nope. Not touching that one. No sirree.
"A cat," she repeated slowly, into Chekov's sudden look of alarmed apology. "Well. I suppose one might say that. A lioness is technically a cat, after all ..."
"My apologies," the kid said hurriedly, lurching up to sitting and extending an apologetic hand towards her. "I meant no offense. I am new to this ..." He waved desperately at his nose, wincing as the motion pulled on his chest wound, and she took pity on him. Nyota Uhura, the alpha shapeshifter aboard Enterprise, leaned forward and took pity on the poor boy.
"I know," she said warmly, taking his hand between hers. "I'm sorry, Pavel. You've been through a lot tonight, and I shouldn't tease you. I'm sorry."
"It's ... It is quite alright," Chekov said, slow and a little distant, and his expression was half the stunned bemusement that Nyota in full goddess mode deserved, and half something sly and sneaky lurking beneath it, something that twanged all Len's instincts at once and almost had him dropping his face into his hands.
Pups. Goddamn pups, and he'd enough trouble trying to steer the normal idiots around here, trying to keep Jim and Spock alive and out of trouble, without uppity werepups making his life hell.
Right, he thought, steeling his spine and gently moving Nyota out back out of the way. He needed to tell the kid his options, let him decide if life as a werewolf was really something he wanted, or if he'd rather the (admittedly long and somewhat painful) drug regime that would pull him back from the brink. He needed to discuss things like secrecy and prejudice and tacit agreements, needed to talk about who knew what and why. He needed to give Chekov as clear an understanding as possible of what the choices were and what life was like around them.
And he needed to do so now, before anyone put any goddamn ideas in the kid's head, or before Chekov came up with any more ideas all by his lonesome either.
But yeah, he thought. Feeling the warmth of Nyota beside him, watching the agile ticking of Chekov's mind as he got to grips with his new understanding of the universe and his crewmates both. Seeing the placid, serene consideration in Sulu's eyes, with never a hint of threat or of fear. Yeah, shore leave was a goddamn bitch and this ship ended up in far too many breaches. Yeah, life up here was so much more dangerous than he'd ever figured.
But this crew, one-natured or two, was the best in the whole damn universe, and he knew there wasn't anywhere he'd rather be than beside them.
This wasn't what he'd thought pack meant, way back when, new and scared and fighting his own forced transformation. This wasn't any definition of pack he'd ever met before. But then, that was the point of this mission, wasn't it? That was what Starfleet was for. To go where no-one had gone before, and drag everyone else along behind.
"Hey, kid?" he said slowly, thoughtful enough that all three of them turned towards him immediately. Nyota curious, Chekov wary, Sulu saturnine and watchful. Len took them in, his pack, and let the grin slowly creep across his face.
"Welcome to the Enterprise, kid. It's gonna be a hell of a ride."
A/N: 'Bultungin' is a Kanuri word (African language from the region around Lake Chad) for werehyena. I don't know all that much about the beliefs involved, unfortunately, but since McCoy is only using it as a codeword to get the concept across, I'm hoping I haven't managed to offend. (It's oddly difficult to get information on African traditions of shapeshifting. Does anyone know any good sources?)
'Vlko-dlak' and 'vaukalak' are two variations on the Slavic word for werewolf (literally 'wolf-skin'), although I think the concept is a little different from the usual germanic werewolf. There seems to be a link to vampires?
Therianthropy is the type of shapeshifting where a human becomes an animal, and is a catch-all term for most types of were-transformation.
There were times, Len managed to think, through the sudden rush of adrenalin and the chaos of a between-shift Sickbay trying to slam itself into gear, when he hated shore leave.
Not on its own merits, you understand. He was all for rest and relaxation, trust him on that one. He hated shore leave because it meant that, almost invariably, some bright spark would arrange to get the most spectacular and/or life-threatening injury or disease possible at a time when half his goddamn staff were busy getting smashed on Andorian ale planetside. It was getting to the point where he tried to arrange his own leave shifts at polar opposite times to certain individuals, sure in the knowledge that if anyone was gonna fall down a cliff or contract a new superplague while taking in the nightlife on Risa, it'd be them. And he'd be the one who'd have to fix it.
"Didn't I tell you so?" grumbled a voice in the back of his head, while he struggled to catch a flailing and bloodied Pavel Chekov under the knees and help Sulu swing him up onto a biobed, the skeleton sickbay staff scattering and reforming around them. Len tried not to listen to it. It did a body no damn good to be growling at his own subconscious in the middle of a crisis.
"Easy kid, damnit," he snarled, choosing to growl at his patient instead. "Come on, take it easy, we got you. Let me see, alright? Calm down a sec and let me see."
"Pavel," Sulu snapped, reaching up to press his hands to Chekov's cheeks, pushing his head gently back into the pillow and forcing the kid to meet his eyes at the same time. "We're safe. We're on the ship. You hear me? We're safe." He paused, gentled his hands when his friend's eyes turned towards him, a hint of lucidity flashing in them. "We're good," Sulu confirmed, keeping his voice gentle. "You need to be still and let the doc do his job now. Okay?"
Chekov stared wild-eyed up at him, his chest still heaving wetly, but the panicked flailing was subsiding back into the shudders of a man going into shock, and that was good enough to be going on with. Leaving Sulu to work on keeping the kid calm, Len finally managed to get his first good look at the injuries.
Goddamnit, was his first thought, entirely unbidden. The physical injuries were fairly bad, yes. Two sets of claw-marks that raked across the kid's chest and upper thigh, and then a messy bite-wound that looked to have almost torn his arm off at the shoulder. Not good, that kind of trauma was never good, but that wasn't what sent the chills skittering down Len's spine.
It was the smell. The smell that crawled up his nose and slammed into his hindbrain and whispered we are in deep shit now. Because he knew that smell. Yessir, he knew it very well indeed, and he understood now why the kid was freaking the hell out.
Damnit. Damnit, fine, we'll deal with that. Okay. Let's just get the easy stuff out of the way first.
"Antibiotics, painkillers, dermal and haemal regenerators, disinfectants over here!" he snapped to the bay at large, trusting his remaining staff to hop to it. "Let's get these wounds dealt with, people!"
"Doktor." Chekov turned to him, levering his head free of Sulu's stabilising grip despite the shivers that were running through him, reaching out with his good hand to snag Len's sleeve. His expression was one of a man who knew exactly what was happening to him, and scared to shit because of it. "Doktor, you don't ... You have to ..."
"It's alright, kid," Len interrupted, gently enough, shifting sideways to give Chapel access to the chest wound. He took Chekov's trembling hand, placed it back down on the biobed, keeping hold of it for a small second. "I know what happened. Seen it before. You don't worry, y'hear? We'll get these wounds closed up, make sure there aren't any extra infections knocking around in there. Then we'll talk about your options, okay? We'll sort this out, don't you worry."
Chekov held his gaze, nostrils flaring in a dead pale face, knowledge tangling with fear and desperate hope in his eyes. "Op-Options?" he managed, and goddamn it, it never got any easier, hearing that crack of hope and fear in a friend's voice. Len gripped his hand fiercely, looking down with every scrap of confidence he could muster.
"Options," he agreed firmly. "You've got 'em, kid. This ain't the thirteenth century anymore, and I ain't some goddamn superstitious witch-hunter looking to hurt anyone." He smiled crookedly. "Let's just make sure you ain't gonna bleed out on us first, and then I promise I'll lay 'em out for you. That sound good to you?"
The kid's eyes were clouding over by now, the anaesthetic starting to kick in, but he held Len's gaze all the way down. He kept his eyes fixed on Len's until the blackness pulled him under, his hand tight around his doctor's.
"Da," Chekov whispered, fading rapidly. "Please. Yes."
There were a hard few minutes after that, flushing enflamed wounds and patching torn flesh back together, setting a priority flag on certain compounds in the kid's system. It'd been a long while since he'd had to track this infection through a body, he mused, though Starfleet equipment made it a damn sight easier. If you knew what you were looking for, anyway, and had an idea where it came from and where it was going to go.
Len waited, even after the wounds were closed. Watching the read-outs, working out how this was going to play. He hung around until he had a bead on it, until he knew what he was looking at and how much time he was gonna have before Chekov's options got a lot more limited.
Then ... then he reached up, carefully, and brushed his hand where Sulu's had been a while ago, smoothing the kid's hair gently back from his face. He looked at Sulu, sitting perched on the biobed opposite and determinedly not leaving, and saw the knowledge there. Saw that the pilot had some idea of what had happened to his friend, and was damn well not leaving him in the lurch. Len saw the pitch-dark determination in the man's face, and nodded once.
"We're gonna fix this," he told Sulu quietly, rough and implacable, pained. "It's gonna take some doing, and it ain't gonna be easy. He's gonna need some help. You able for that, you think?"
Well hell, he thought. The look Sulu gave him for that one was about as eloquent as one of Spock's, and made a man feel just about as small, too.
"Right," he agreed, scrubbing a hand through his hair and sighing. "Stupid question. Never mind. You keep an eye on him for a while, then. Me, I gotta go talk to a woman about a dog."
Goddamnit, this was why he hated shore leave. Every goddamn time.
-----
He called Lt Uhura down to Sickbay. It was easier than trying to dodge Jim and Spock up on the bridge, since he figured the only reason they hadn't already raided his sickbay in search of their injured crewman was because they were busy yelling at people planetside trying to figure out what the fuck had happened.
Privately, he wished them luck with that one. This wasn't one of the safe colonies, he'd have been a lot more ready if it had. So either they didn't know what they had running down there, in which case they weren't going to be any help, or they did know, in which case they'd likely be doing their damnedest to keep a lid on it. If the colony's population had the same approach to this infection as the ones back home did, nobody was gonna breathe a word until someone with know-how asked them outright.
And Len wasn't ready to open that can of worms yet. Not until Chekov was up and conscious, and knew what his choices were.
Nyota, though, was a different story. He fudged up a quick excuse, something about the kid dropping back into Russian in shock and needing a translator, but it was the Kanuri word he dropped in the middle of it, bultungin, that had her making her excuses to the Captain and telling him she'd be in sickbay in a few moments. Not that it was a particularly accurate word, under the circumstances, but it got most of the idea across and the chances of anyone aside from Nyota knowing what it meant were slim.
He waved her over when she strode through sickbay's doors, bowing her into his office and ignoring the weighing stare Sulu was sending them both. They were gonna have to deal with a lot worse than stares by the time this was done.
"Are you sure?" she asked him, the instant the door was closed. No preamble, no nothing, but Len could get behind that. He didn't much believe in farting around with niceties himself.
"Wolf," he agreed, stalking over to his desk drawer and pulling out some of Scotty's finest. He handed her a glass, giving her a full measure. They were going to need it. "Chekov recognised it, which would probably mean wolf anyway, given the Slavs, and I could smell it on him besides." He paused meditatively. "Makes me wonder how the kid knew. Maybe he's got a vaukalak somewhere in the family tree?"
She leaned back against his desk, rubbing her temples lightly. "If he does, then the chances of the strain taking will be increased, won't they?" He nodded glumly, and she winced. "Can it be reversed still?"
That, at least, was good news. "Judging from the rate of conversion I'm tracking so far, he's got about four days before it's irreversible. More, if I can get Jim to move the ship out past the lunar field." He raised his glass in wry toast. "I'll be waiting on that one until Chekov has an idea what's going on and what he wants to do about it. This ain't the sort of thing you spread around."
"No," she agreed, rather vehemently. Much as times had moved on the from thirteenth or even twenty-first centuries, a lot of old prejudices still hung around, and Nyota had had enough trouble making her name without having to deal with that on top of it. Hell, so had Len, come to that. People got a mite shy of a man when they knew that about him, especially when he was trying to be their doctor. He met her eyes, the tired humour there, and shook his head.
"He'll be waking up in a few hours," he explained wearily, sitting down on the desk beside her. She scooted over to make room, resting shoulder to shoulder with him. "I reckoned you and me, we could explain the options to him? And Sulu, because hell if he's leaving the kid before this is over." He smiled faintly, then sobered. "I was hoping you could do most of the explaining. You've got a better cultural grasp than I do, and you're not wolf, which is probably going to help. It looks ... it looks like it was a bad one."
She nodded, a dark expression flickering across her face. Most of their kind these days had a damn poor view of forced conversion. They were in a tentative enough position as it was, a couple of safe colonies and a tacit understanding with the Federation governments aside, without damned berserkers running around and riling up the old prejudices.
"Will he take against you, you think?" she asked softly, looking over at him with knowing sympathy. She knew his background inside and out, by this stage. Even if she wasn't a confidante by nature, it was standard for people like them to get an idea of who they'd be sharing a floating tin-can with, and in some other life she'd have made a damn fine interrogator. So she knew what memories this was calling up for him. She knew ... how hard this was going to be.
Len shrugged, a lot more casually than he really felt. She let it go. Always merciful, Nyota. "Don't know," he admitted quietly. "It might help, might make him feel less alone. Or it might scare him to death, make him feel like they followed him up here, like I'm one of them and I'm gonna hurt him."
He didn't let the flinch through, didn't let himself move. She felt it anyway, leaned closer against him in mute sympathy. Because yeah, they were in deep shit now, and they both knew it.
"It might ..." he started, carefully not looking at her. "Might be best to let me take the hit on this one." She stiffened, anger tangibly stirring in the air beside him, and Len hurried forward with the thought. "You ain't wolf, and he's new enough yet that he mightn't realise what you are. If this blows up, it's gonna be bad for all of us. Might make sense to limit the damage ..."
"Do not," she cut in, clipped and unimpressed. The lioness was suddenly very visible in her, the feline huntress laying her paw across his throat. Not a threat, as such. Not the way the stories made it out to be, an alpha enforcing her will whether her pride liked it or not. Just ... just a fierce, powerful friend, reminding him that she was big and ugly enough to take care of herself, and him too besides. Reminding him that prides hunted together, and took the hits together too. "Leonard. Don't even go there. That's not how we do things. You know that."
He slumped, trying not to feel ashamed of the relief that coursed through him, the desperate sense of belonging that he'd been missing for so long, until he came aboard this ship. Until he stood among friends, captain and crew, and among family, alpha and pack. These people, two-natured and one-natured both, were the best damn bunch he'd ever lived with in his life.
Not like the stories, no. Not like his own previous experiences, either.
And it occurred to him, there, that painful as this was going to be for all concerned, Chekov could not have picked a better ship in the fleet to be on when he was turned.
Now all they had to do ... was hope the kid saw things that way too.
"You know," he mused, smiling over and nudging his shoulder against hers. "I'm getting real damn tired of all these breaches we're once-moring into."
She snorted, regal and amused, leaning solidly against him. "Then you picked the wrong damn ship to serve on, didn't you?" she said, with that twinkle in her eye that he'd loved from the first. "We're captained by James T. Kirk, remember? We live in the breach."
Yeah. Maybe that was why it was starting to feel so damned homey 'round here.
-----
Chekov woke up two and a half hours later. It was not an easy re-emergence into the land of the living, the anaesthesia having kicked the nightmares into high gear below-decks, and the kid came awake with a thin yell like the hounds of hell were after him.
Not too far off the mark, really.
Sulu got there first. The pilot had been dozing gently, beta shift staff steering around him with the ease of long practice, and at the first sound from Chekov's mouth he'd practically vaulted across the intervening space. Len, coming out of his office at a fair clip with Nyota behind him, thought the man had all but blurred getting across the room.
"Pavel!" Sulu exclaimed, grabbing his friend by the uninjured shoulder and checking the panicked flail upwards. Len silently thanked his good sense, arriving in time to help Sulu lower the kid back down. Chekov seized his arm as he did so, grabbing hold of Sulu at the same time, nostrils flaring again as he struggled to register who was holding him. Len winced internally, watching as Chekov's head swung towards him, new senses trying to tally strange data, instinct and memory swimming underneath it in a heady cocktail. Recognising another wolf when he smelled one.
Shit and damnit.
"Take it easy, kid," he said, slow and easy while he gingerly extracted his hand and activated the privacy shield around the biobed, deliberately keeping his tone as gentle and reassuring as possible. "You're getting some new information right now, and I'm guessing most of it isn't anything good. We're gonna fix that soon, I promise you. You're in safe hands. But you gotta keep calm for a while first. Can you do that for me?"
"... Doc?" Sulu asked, leaning towards him protectively across Chekov's chest, hearing something in Len's tone that he obviously didn't like. Len glanced up at him, at the hard, evaluating stare the man was giving him, and did his best not to look guilty as sin. By the change in Sulu's expression, he didn't think he'd managed that one too well.
"Gonna get to that," he temporised, holding the man's gaze pleadingly, sensing Nyota move behind him, protective in her turn. "Bear with me a while yet, okay? This is gonna be hard no matter which way we cut it."
Sulu's eyes narrowed, going dark and dangerous for a second, but then ... then Chekov reached up, forestalling anything his friend might have said, and tangled his fingers carefully in Len's sleeve. Len snapped his head around, staring down at the kid in surprise, and Chekov looked back at him, eyes thoroughly lucid and shockingly calm all of a sudden.
"Vlko-dlak," he whispered softly. "You are vlko-dlak?"
Len winced, but nodded. Chekov didn't blink, so much, but his fingers tightened, tugging the material over Len's shoulder. His face shuttered, a man who'd hoped something had been a nightmare and was now realising he'd no such luck.
"And me?" he asked carefully. "The ... the wolf. The wound. I am now ...?"
"... Yeah," Len said heavily. "Yeah, it's like that." Chekov flinched, curling into himself, and Len found himself reaching down before he'd realised it, taking the kid's hand in his own. "Listen to me, okay? It's not permanent yet. You've got time, and you've got choices. We've got a few days before we hit the irrevocable stage. So just ... stay with me for a bit longer. We've got time to fix this, if that's what you want to do."
The kid stared at him, that sudden rush of hope that hit like a phaser blast every damn time, and Len pulled back some. Gave himself space, tried to let himself breathe. This was always the bad part. This was the part where even stepping carefully didn't always save you.
"Options," Chekov said, frowning up at him in realisation. "That was what you said. I have ... options?"
"Yes," Nyota spoke up, stepping carefully around Len and brushing his arm reassuringly as she passed. She smiled softly down at Chekov, ignoring the flash of confusion her presence garnered. "Things are not the way they were a few decades ago," she said gently. "Leonard is the best doctor Starfleet has. You have a choice, now. To be one of us or to return to what you were before. Whichever you choose, you will have support. This doesn't have to damage you if you don't want it to."
"This?" Sulu asked suddenly, looking between them with narrow eyes. Not suspicion, Len realised with a jolt. Not fear or aggression. Thoughtfulness, rather. Consideration. "What is 'this', exactly?" He looked down at Chekov. "What does vlko-dlak mean, Pasha?"
Len stilled. He didn't mean to, hadn't meant to let fear or instinct take over that much, but he stilled anyway. Even Nyota, never perturbed for long, lifted her chin in instinctive defiance, instinctive readiness.
And Chekov, sensing their fear even in the middle of his own, never mind that he was the one lying there with his arm half-ripped off by something not too distant from them, had the damnable grace to smile reassuringly at them.
"Werewolf," Nyota said softly, blinking at the kid a little herself. "It means werewolf." She smiled suddenly, bright and regal as a goddess, her delight brimming over as Chekov met her gaze steadily. "Though the word you really want, these days, is two-natured. Not all of us are wolves, you know."
"... No," Chekov agreed as he looked at her, nostrils flaring again as virgin instincts tried to make sense of new smells. The kid's face screwed up a little, his agile brain jumping at the challenge the way it did pretty much every other one, plunging in at the deep end because why the hell not. They were the crew of the Starship bloody Enterprise. What was a little therianthropy thrown in the mix? "You are ... cat? Some kind of cat?"
Len barked out a laugh, snapping his hand up to cover his mouth a second later, and a second too late. Nyota raised an eyebrow at him, arch and amused, and he ducked his head into his chest. Cat, he says. Nope. Not touching that one. No sirree.
"A cat," she repeated slowly, into Chekov's sudden look of alarmed apology. "Well. I suppose one might say that. A lioness is technically a cat, after all ..."
"My apologies," the kid said hurriedly, lurching up to sitting and extending an apologetic hand towards her. "I meant no offense. I am new to this ..." He waved desperately at his nose, wincing as the motion pulled on his chest wound, and she took pity on him. Nyota Uhura, the alpha shapeshifter aboard Enterprise, leaned forward and took pity on the poor boy.
"I know," she said warmly, taking his hand between hers. "I'm sorry, Pavel. You've been through a lot tonight, and I shouldn't tease you. I'm sorry."
"It's ... It is quite alright," Chekov said, slow and a little distant, and his expression was half the stunned bemusement that Nyota in full goddess mode deserved, and half something sly and sneaky lurking beneath it, something that twanged all Len's instincts at once and almost had him dropping his face into his hands.
Pups. Goddamn pups, and he'd enough trouble trying to steer the normal idiots around here, trying to keep Jim and Spock alive and out of trouble, without uppity werepups making his life hell.
Right, he thought, steeling his spine and gently moving Nyota out back out of the way. He needed to tell the kid his options, let him decide if life as a werewolf was really something he wanted, or if he'd rather the (admittedly long and somewhat painful) drug regime that would pull him back from the brink. He needed to discuss things like secrecy and prejudice and tacit agreements, needed to talk about who knew what and why. He needed to give Chekov as clear an understanding as possible of what the choices were and what life was like around them.
And he needed to do so now, before anyone put any goddamn ideas in the kid's head, or before Chekov came up with any more ideas all by his lonesome either.
But yeah, he thought. Feeling the warmth of Nyota beside him, watching the agile ticking of Chekov's mind as he got to grips with his new understanding of the universe and his crewmates both. Seeing the placid, serene consideration in Sulu's eyes, with never a hint of threat or of fear. Yeah, shore leave was a goddamn bitch and this ship ended up in far too many breaches. Yeah, life up here was so much more dangerous than he'd ever figured.
But this crew, one-natured or two, was the best in the whole damn universe, and he knew there wasn't anywhere he'd rather be than beside them.
This wasn't what he'd thought pack meant, way back when, new and scared and fighting his own forced transformation. This wasn't any definition of pack he'd ever met before. But then, that was the point of this mission, wasn't it? That was what Starfleet was for. To go where no-one had gone before, and drag everyone else along behind.
"Hey, kid?" he said slowly, thoughtful enough that all three of them turned towards him immediately. Nyota curious, Chekov wary, Sulu saturnine and watchful. Len took them in, his pack, and let the grin slowly creep across his face.
"Welcome to the Enterprise, kid. It's gonna be a hell of a ride."
A/N: 'Bultungin' is a Kanuri word (African language from the region around Lake Chad) for werehyena. I don't know all that much about the beliefs involved, unfortunately, but since McCoy is only using it as a codeword to get the concept across, I'm hoping I haven't managed to offend. (It's oddly difficult to get information on African traditions of shapeshifting. Does anyone know any good sources?)
'Vlko-dlak' and 'vaukalak' are two variations on the Slavic word for werewolf (literally 'wolf-skin'), although I think the concept is a little different from the usual germanic werewolf. There seems to be a link to vampires?
Therianthropy is the type of shapeshifting where a human becomes an animal, and is a catch-all term for most types of were-transformation.
