![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Um. This is a story that I've been trying to write for years, because "Mirror Mirror" and what these two in particular went through during it always affected me. This means, however, that it's something of an idfic, shameless emotional angst and h/c, and I apologise in advance. Also includes references to events during "Space Seed".
Title: Fool's Hopes and Friendship
Rating: Light R
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series
Characters/Pairings: Leonard McCoy, Nyota Uhura, mention of Spock, Sulu, Mirror!Spock and Mirror!Sulu
Summary: In the aftermath of "Mirror Mirror", McCoy and Uhura realise that they're having trouble, and come together to pull each other through the tangles of what happened in the mirror universe
Wordcount: 3578
Warnings/Notes: Tags to "Mirror Mirror" and "Space Seed", discussion of attempted/threatened non-con, nonconsensual mind melds, guilt and shame. Also emotional hurt/comfort, friendship, recovery, and a hopeful ending.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Fool's Hopes and Friendship
Rating: Light R
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series
Characters/Pairings: Leonard McCoy, Nyota Uhura, mention of Spock, Sulu, Mirror!Spock and Mirror!Sulu
Summary: In the aftermath of "Mirror Mirror", McCoy and Uhura realise that they're having trouble, and come together to pull each other through the tangles of what happened in the mirror universe
Wordcount: 3578
Warnings/Notes: Tags to "Mirror Mirror" and "Space Seed", discussion of attempted/threatened non-con, nonconsensual mind melds, guilt and shame. Also emotional hurt/comfort, friendship, recovery, and a hopeful ending.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Fool's Hopes and Friendships
Lt Uhura wasn't doing very well. Oh, she covered it ably enough, masked it with efficiency and gentle quips and wry smiles, but there was a brittleness lurking under it, a vague nausea that he caught sometimes out of the corner of his eye. Her mouth twisted with unease when she thought nobody was looking. Her hand drifted to her stomach, as if she wanted to be sick.
He wouldn't have noticed it. Leonard had never been so ashamed in his life as admitting that, but he wouldn't have noticed it these past few days if he didn't ... if he didn't know exactly how she felt. He'd been covering things himself. He'd been looking away, waiting until everyone was distracted so he could unknot his hands from their fists and swallow the bile back down. Only on the bridge. Only there. That was why he'd caught her at it. That was why he'd seen her, too, glancing away from the object of her distress and struggling to hide her reaction to him.
Spock, for him. Sulu for her. Those two. Those two specifically.
And he didn't know exactly why, he didn't know what that ... that other Sulu had done, but maybe he didn't need to. Maybe he didn't want to, but frankly he'd had it to here with being a coward about this. He should have had it before, days ago, but just ... Seeing her, seeing her suffering the same, it knocked his head out of his ass. Just a bit. Hopefully enough. Sitting pretty in his own shame and reaction was one thing, but leaving someone else alone in hers was quite another. It was time to do something about it and then some.
And hell, who knew. Maybe she'd even be able to help him in turn. Maybe even just ... knowing someone else was as bad could maybe help.
He didn't make it official. He should do, should have done this as a CMO concerned for a crew-member's health and wellbeing, but he wasn't fooling himself that he was impartial enough for that. Not right now. It would have felt cheap and using, doing it like that. It felt cheap and using doing it like this, too, but at least he wasn't misusing his position for it. What he'd seen in that other universe, what he'd seen in that Sickbay ... he couldn't do that. He couldn't. He'd do this as a friend or not at all, and hope it was good enough for the both of them.
He brought two bottles with him, on the way to her quarters. One of the good stuff, smooth and decent like Uhura deserved, and one full of the most vile, disgusting, incredibly alcoholic brew that Scotty could scrounge or possibly distill up for him on short notice. Also for Uhura, though himself as well, on the chance that she'd need it as much as he did.
He'd been avoiding that, himself. He knew that if he went down that route he'd have a damned hard time coming back. Drinking in company was different, though. A shared misery didn't have quite the same sort of staying power.
There was a second of unease as she opened her door. On her part, not his, though he'd be lying if he said he wasn't wilting a bit himself. He held up the bottles wordlessly, figuring his ragged state would do most of the talking for him, and then ...
Then her eyes softened, and her mouth twisted wryly, and she opened her door to let him in.
"I'd hoped no one would notice," she said softly, while they settled themselves side by side on the floor at the foot of her bed. He hadn't expected that part. He hadn't thought they'd been close enough for that sort of exhausted intimacy before. Misery knew no boundaries, though. Maybe that was enough. He handed her a shot glass silently, offered up her pick of poisons. She chose the viler of the two. Somehow, he wasn't the least surprised.
"... I wouldn't have," he admitted quietly, leaning his shoulder against her. "Wouldn't have seen anything, if I hadn't been doing the same damn thing myself." He grimaced, bringing one knee up and balancing his glass precariously on top of it. "It's not him. I know it's not him. Doesn't make it any damned easier to look at him, though."
She was quiet for a second. Leaning against him, studying him, warm and worn and solid. She looked tired, he thought. Should have noticed that sooner. More than the nausea, the shame, he should have noticed how tired she'd been. A body who'd forgotten how to sleep.
"I wondered," she said. Gently. "When he brought you into the transporter room, I wondered. They are ... they were hard to be alone with. I wondered if he might have done something."
He barked out a laugh. Didn't mean to, couldn't help it. For half a second, he felt the phantom of a hand on the side of his face, felt the physical sensation the way he was too afraid to let himself remember the other, less tangible one. He shook his head, knocked back a slug with a will. Wiped his mouth before he answered her.
"Did something," he said, doing his best not to look at her. "Yes. Though I should have known better, really. Wasn't the first time a patient got up off his bed to do something to me. After Khan, you'd think I'd have learned."
She frowned at that, curving towards him. Her hand was gentle on his wrist. Less demanding than he'd expected. He blinked, and looked over at her.
"Khan?" she said, confused and more than a little dismayed. "What did Khan do? You never mentioned that he'd hurt you."
Leonard raised his eyebrows a bit. Hadn't he? But no, he hadn't. It had seemed only a small thing at the time, an understandable reaction for a patient used to violence, and then they'd had ... rather more things to be worried about, and a lot of people threatened worse than he'd been. Including her, he remembered. Khan had thought physical violence would force her into obeying him. Leonard might have told him how well that was going to work, but her defiance didn't change the fact that she'd been violently struck in front of everyone. Put a little knife to the throat in perspective, didn't it?
"... It was nothing," he said, shaking his head ruefully. "Woke up armed, that's all. Grabbed me by the neck and wanted answers. Same as ... same as ... I just mean I oughta have learned, that's all. Patients that go down hard are likely to wake up fighting. Should have remembered that, is all."
Her hand flexed around his wrist, a glimmer of anger and taut defiance running through her. "We shouldn't have left you alone," she said, low and fierce. "We shouldn't have left any of us alone. Not once we'd realised ..."
Where they were. What the hell sort of ship they were on. But there'd been no help for it. They'd had to split up to get anything done. And he'd ...
"I volunteered," he noted wryly. "Insisted, even. Rather strenuously, if I'm remembering right. The kind of time limits we were on, you didn't have any choice." He paused, wet his lips while he thought about it. Remembering that Sickbay, what he'd seen there, what it had said about the man in that universe who wore his face. He breathed, carefully, around his nausea, as he admitted: "I'd have done it anyway. If I had to go back ... If I had to go back I'd do it again. Try to be a bit more careful, maybe, but I'd ... I couldn't leave him to die. I'd have done it anyway. Khan too. I didn't know, and I'm not tying anybody down just for being a stranger. I'm not starting like that. I know where that leads." He snorted, thick and bitter. "Which I guess means I should just get used to paying the price, huh?"
She moved. Lunged, startling the hell out of him, knocking his empty glass off his knee. She rolled onto her knees beside him and took his face fiercely in her hands. "Compassion is not a crime," she growled, fierce and shaking with tension, that flash of pure defiance that Khan must have seen when he had somebody beat her across the face. "It is nothing you should be punished for, and nothing you should be ashamed of. I don't ... I don't know what that man did to you, but I promise you it was nothing you deserved. Not for that, and not for anything."
Leonard blinked at her. Stunned silly, if he was honest. Her hands were hot around his face, or just the sensation of them made him think they were, but they ... they didn't remind him, oddly. They didn't cause the instinctive surge of nausea that he'd half thought they might. Her hands were not ... not that man's. Never would be.
"... You're a hell of a woman, you know that?" he said, rueful and admiring and with a vague, faint edge of humour. "You're an amazing thing, Lieutenant Uhura."
She flinched. Curled back, tucked her hands into her chest. He straightened, startled and alarmed, and reached towards her. She turned away from his hand, sliding herself back to her place at his side instead, her face studiously turned away. Leonard blinked after her, startled all over again. That ... That had been shame. He'd seen it, seen the roiling, sickening swell of it, and he'd no idea what had caused it. A compliment? What had ...
"What the hell did he do to you on that bridge?" he growled, half coming up on one arm as if he could ... as if the man wasn't a universe away, as if that other Sulu was anywhere Leonard could hope to reach him. His hand clenched, a furious, impotent fist, and she laughed at it in her turn. That familiar, ragged bark that he knew so very well.
"Nothing," she said, and he knew that twist of her mouth, had seen it so many times these last few days. "He did nothing to me, Doctor. It was ... It was what I did that ..."
She stopped, unable to continue with it, and Leonard blinked at her helplessly. Sank back against the bed, reached out carefully and rested a hand on her arm. Squeezed gently when he felt her shaking through it, felt the tangible evidence of her misery. He sucked in a breath, reached out to wrap the other arm around her shoulders and draw her gently in. She came. Stiff and shaking with ... whatever was inside her, but she let herself settle in against him. He closed his eyes, sent his hand down along her arm to curl it inside hers.
"What happened, darlin'?" he asked, hearing his accent thicken involuntarily. Ignoring it, focusing on her instead. "What happened that you think is so wrong?"
She breathed, a ragged sounding thing, and shook her head against his chest. Not denial, he thought. Just ... building up to the thing.
"I led him on," she managed at last. "I thought ... I had to distract him, and I knew he wanted ... He'd already threatened. So I let him think he might have it. Just long enough to do the job. And then I ... Then I told him I'd changed my mind. With a knife. And I left."
Leonard coughed, a half-startled laugh of a thing, and hugged her close automatically. Instinctively, a startled flash of pity and admiration and delight. Horror, distantly, for what had apparently almost happened, all the admiration in the world for her handling of it. Her daring, her courage and her nerve. Good god, woman. To have that kind of strength.
"So what's wrong with that?" he asked, a little indignant. Surely to god she wasn't ashamed of that? The pig deserved worse than a knife for what he'd threatened. She couldn't possibly be ...
"I can't stop thinking about her," she said, thick and hurt and horrified, and his indignation cut off at the root, even if the confusion remained. "That other ... My counterpart. It was her he wanted, her he couldn't have. I did what ... I led him on because I knew, I hoped, that I wouldn't have to deal with it long. I knew that we would escape. I had to hope that. But her ... We sent her back there. What if he wants her to answer for what I did? I know that she was ... That they all were ... But I can't wish that on her. I can't want anyone to pay for what I had to do. I shouldn't have led him on. But it was ... it was the only way. And now she'll have to deal with him for it."
Ah hell. God Almighty. And he couldn't fault her. He couldn't. Compassion wasn't a crime, she'd said. It surely wasn't. Compassion for a woman she didn't even know, a woman likely as violent and terrible as all their other counterparts, but a woman nonetheless. A woman with her face, who would have to deal with the horror that she had escaped.
"... It's not your fault," he said, soft and hollow beside her, hugging her close. "It isn't, it really isn't. It was the only way, the only weapon you had. You were on your own up there. You did what you had to do. She's strong. I don't ... I saw things. In his head, while he was ... She's strong. Enough to hold a position on the bridge in her own right, when so many women over there have to ... to sleep their way to it instead. I think ... He won't have it easy. Even if he does try it. She had to know what he wanted. She'll make him pay for it if he tries. You can't ... There's nothing you can do, darlin'. You just have to hope that she's mean and dangerous enough herself to handle him. It's all you can do. I'm so sorry."
Because god, there were some things you couldn't wish on anyone. Even someone who'd done you wrong. Even that ... even that bastard, that fierce, somewhat-honourable bastard, that enemy who'd worn a friend's face and nearly earned it, despite it all. He couldn't have let the man die. Even now, even if he had to do it again, knowing what the man would do to him afterwards ... he couldn't let him die. He knew how she felt. He understood so goddamned well.
Compassion wasn't a crime, no, but it was damned fucking painful at times. No good deed goes unpunished, and no necessary one either. You just ... You knew that, you accepted that, and then you went and did what you had to do in spite of it.
Her hand curled slowly at his chest. Her shaking had stopped, he realised, ashamed that it had taken a second for him to notice it. The shaking stopped, while her hand slowly clenched against his shirt. She raised her head, her eyes dry despite the wetness of her cheeks, and ... and a slow, dangerous anger building in her expression. Leonard blinked at it. He didn't know what had caused it. He'd missed something again, missed something that had made her fiercely and savagely angry all of a sudden. He'd no idea what it was.
"... In his head?" she asked, very quietly, and he felt the blood drain out of his face. Realised, far too late, exactly what he'd admitted. And it wasn't that ... it wasn't as though he hadn't planned to, maybe, hoped to, he'd come intending to ... Shared pain, that's what he'd had in mind, and she'd earned his honesty for what she'd been brave enough to tell him, but it ...
It was different hearing it. It was different realising someone knew. What he'd allowed. What he'd been stupid enough to have done to him. It was ... it was different when someone knew.
"He forced ... he forced a meld on you?" she asked, her eyes stark and wide, anger and horror warring through them, and Leonard nodded carefully. Made himself. Shoved aside the phantom hand against his face, the memory of a presence ... a presence where he hadn't wanted anyone to be. Where he'd never given permission for anyone to be. He pushed that aside and nodded for her.
And her fury then. The way her hands curled savagely into fists, the way she came up onto her knees and turned towards the door as if ... as if he wasn't a universe away from her, that other Spock, as if he was anywhere she could hope to reach him. It pulled a bubble of humour up out of him, a knot of pain and gratitude and love. Just for her being there. Just for her being willing to be angry on his behalf. He reached up to her. Took her shaking, furious hands in both of his, held them softly while she looked at him. He smiled at her, tired and crooked and real.
"There's nothing to be done, darlin'," he said quietly. "They're a universe away. They're gone, and those two poor saps on the bridge, whatever faces they wear, they're not them. No matter how hard it is to look at them. We got away. There's nothing we can do about it now."
Her face crumpled, collapsed down from anger into grief and quiet, pained sympathy. Compassion. She tugged his hands up to her chest, held them there. Held them tight.
"... We shouldn't have been left alone," she said, soft and useless and knowing even as she said it that they hadn't had any choice, that they'd volunteered and would volunteer again, exactly the same, however many times it came up. "It shouldn't have been ... I'm so sorry. It shouldn't have happened to you. To either of us."
Leonard let out a breath, sighed it out, and pulled her gently back down against him. She went, settled in against his side with what was beginning to be the ease of familiarity. He couldn't help but appreciate that. He couldn't help but find it comforting.
"Nothing for it, darlin'," he said tiredly. "We are who we are, and apparently what we are is a pair of damn fine easy targets. Me more than you, maybe. I'd have liked to see that bit with the knife. But we are what we are, and I don't reckon either of us is likely to change. We've just got to ... hope we don't run into too many more bastards, that's all."
Which, given past examples, was the greatest fool of a hope he'd ever proposed to anyone, but what the hell else were they to do? They weren't going to back down. Neither him nor her. He'd seen that in her, seen it in her reaction to Khan and everyone else who'd ever tried to force anything out of her, and he knew it in himself as well. Pride, stubbornness, damn fool hardheadedness. Whatever you wanted to call it. They weren't either of them going to back down, so they'd just have to bear through instead. They'd just have to live with it, and put themselves back together as best they could on the other side.
And maybe she'd heard that, maybe her thoughts were running along similiar lines, because she sighed a little herself, her weight warm and solid against his side, and reached down to pick up the bottle of the vile stuff. She held it up between them, and smiled with a hopeful, quiet radiance for them both.
"Perhaps we should hope more for friends," she said softly. "Someone to ... to offer help and sympathy and terrible alcohol when other hopes fall through?"
It cracked something in him. Cracked something clean through his chest. He felt tears prickle at his eyes for the first damn time in this entire conversation, and he felt a smile warm his cheeks at exactly the same time. He fumbled around for his glass, rolled behind him on the floor, and held it out to her with all the warmth and desperate gratitude he had to offer.
"Lieutenant, I'd be honoured," he said, with every scrap of sincerity he possessed. Honour was the word for it. Honour was the least of it. He let it shine out, for no better reason than why not, and she answered to it in kind.
"Nyota," she said, smiling faintly. "Off-duty, at least, you can call me Nyota, Doctor."
He laughed, chuckled wryly. "Leonard," he offered in his turn. "If we're going to be getting piss-ass drunk together, you can call me Leonard. It's, ah. It's a pleasure, Ms Nyota."
She smiled at that, sweet and pleased and delighted, with that sly little edge that often curved her mouth when there was no nausea to disguise it. He felt a little proud of that. He felt a glimmer of something so warm and so fierce and so happy to have brought her that. She lifted the bottle, held it there until he answered with a little tap of his glass, a silent and happy toast.
"To friends, then, Leonard McCoy," she said as she poured. "To friends, and family, and terrible alcohol. May they remain where all else fails."
"Amen to that," he answered firmly, knocking back the toast in perfect time.
Amen to that indeed.
Lt Uhura wasn't doing very well. Oh, she covered it ably enough, masked it with efficiency and gentle quips and wry smiles, but there was a brittleness lurking under it, a vague nausea that he caught sometimes out of the corner of his eye. Her mouth twisted with unease when she thought nobody was looking. Her hand drifted to her stomach, as if she wanted to be sick.
He wouldn't have noticed it. Leonard had never been so ashamed in his life as admitting that, but he wouldn't have noticed it these past few days if he didn't ... if he didn't know exactly how she felt. He'd been covering things himself. He'd been looking away, waiting until everyone was distracted so he could unknot his hands from their fists and swallow the bile back down. Only on the bridge. Only there. That was why he'd caught her at it. That was why he'd seen her, too, glancing away from the object of her distress and struggling to hide her reaction to him.
Spock, for him. Sulu for her. Those two. Those two specifically.
And he didn't know exactly why, he didn't know what that ... that other Sulu had done, but maybe he didn't need to. Maybe he didn't want to, but frankly he'd had it to here with being a coward about this. He should have had it before, days ago, but just ... Seeing her, seeing her suffering the same, it knocked his head out of his ass. Just a bit. Hopefully enough. Sitting pretty in his own shame and reaction was one thing, but leaving someone else alone in hers was quite another. It was time to do something about it and then some.
And hell, who knew. Maybe she'd even be able to help him in turn. Maybe even just ... knowing someone else was as bad could maybe help.
He didn't make it official. He should do, should have done this as a CMO concerned for a crew-member's health and wellbeing, but he wasn't fooling himself that he was impartial enough for that. Not right now. It would have felt cheap and using, doing it like that. It felt cheap and using doing it like this, too, but at least he wasn't misusing his position for it. What he'd seen in that other universe, what he'd seen in that Sickbay ... he couldn't do that. He couldn't. He'd do this as a friend or not at all, and hope it was good enough for the both of them.
He brought two bottles with him, on the way to her quarters. One of the good stuff, smooth and decent like Uhura deserved, and one full of the most vile, disgusting, incredibly alcoholic brew that Scotty could scrounge or possibly distill up for him on short notice. Also for Uhura, though himself as well, on the chance that she'd need it as much as he did.
He'd been avoiding that, himself. He knew that if he went down that route he'd have a damned hard time coming back. Drinking in company was different, though. A shared misery didn't have quite the same sort of staying power.
There was a second of unease as she opened her door. On her part, not his, though he'd be lying if he said he wasn't wilting a bit himself. He held up the bottles wordlessly, figuring his ragged state would do most of the talking for him, and then ...
Then her eyes softened, and her mouth twisted wryly, and she opened her door to let him in.
"I'd hoped no one would notice," she said softly, while they settled themselves side by side on the floor at the foot of her bed. He hadn't expected that part. He hadn't thought they'd been close enough for that sort of exhausted intimacy before. Misery knew no boundaries, though. Maybe that was enough. He handed her a shot glass silently, offered up her pick of poisons. She chose the viler of the two. Somehow, he wasn't the least surprised.
"... I wouldn't have," he admitted quietly, leaning his shoulder against her. "Wouldn't have seen anything, if I hadn't been doing the same damn thing myself." He grimaced, bringing one knee up and balancing his glass precariously on top of it. "It's not him. I know it's not him. Doesn't make it any damned easier to look at him, though."
She was quiet for a second. Leaning against him, studying him, warm and worn and solid. She looked tired, he thought. Should have noticed that sooner. More than the nausea, the shame, he should have noticed how tired she'd been. A body who'd forgotten how to sleep.
"I wondered," she said. Gently. "When he brought you into the transporter room, I wondered. They are ... they were hard to be alone with. I wondered if he might have done something."
He barked out a laugh. Didn't mean to, couldn't help it. For half a second, he felt the phantom of a hand on the side of his face, felt the physical sensation the way he was too afraid to let himself remember the other, less tangible one. He shook his head, knocked back a slug with a will. Wiped his mouth before he answered her.
"Did something," he said, doing his best not to look at her. "Yes. Though I should have known better, really. Wasn't the first time a patient got up off his bed to do something to me. After Khan, you'd think I'd have learned."
She frowned at that, curving towards him. Her hand was gentle on his wrist. Less demanding than he'd expected. He blinked, and looked over at her.
"Khan?" she said, confused and more than a little dismayed. "What did Khan do? You never mentioned that he'd hurt you."
Leonard raised his eyebrows a bit. Hadn't he? But no, he hadn't. It had seemed only a small thing at the time, an understandable reaction for a patient used to violence, and then they'd had ... rather more things to be worried about, and a lot of people threatened worse than he'd been. Including her, he remembered. Khan had thought physical violence would force her into obeying him. Leonard might have told him how well that was going to work, but her defiance didn't change the fact that she'd been violently struck in front of everyone. Put a little knife to the throat in perspective, didn't it?
"... It was nothing," he said, shaking his head ruefully. "Woke up armed, that's all. Grabbed me by the neck and wanted answers. Same as ... same as ... I just mean I oughta have learned, that's all. Patients that go down hard are likely to wake up fighting. Should have remembered that, is all."
Her hand flexed around his wrist, a glimmer of anger and taut defiance running through her. "We shouldn't have left you alone," she said, low and fierce. "We shouldn't have left any of us alone. Not once we'd realised ..."
Where they were. What the hell sort of ship they were on. But there'd been no help for it. They'd had to split up to get anything done. And he'd ...
"I volunteered," he noted wryly. "Insisted, even. Rather strenuously, if I'm remembering right. The kind of time limits we were on, you didn't have any choice." He paused, wet his lips while he thought about it. Remembering that Sickbay, what he'd seen there, what it had said about the man in that universe who wore his face. He breathed, carefully, around his nausea, as he admitted: "I'd have done it anyway. If I had to go back ... If I had to go back I'd do it again. Try to be a bit more careful, maybe, but I'd ... I couldn't leave him to die. I'd have done it anyway. Khan too. I didn't know, and I'm not tying anybody down just for being a stranger. I'm not starting like that. I know where that leads." He snorted, thick and bitter. "Which I guess means I should just get used to paying the price, huh?"
She moved. Lunged, startling the hell out of him, knocking his empty glass off his knee. She rolled onto her knees beside him and took his face fiercely in her hands. "Compassion is not a crime," she growled, fierce and shaking with tension, that flash of pure defiance that Khan must have seen when he had somebody beat her across the face. "It is nothing you should be punished for, and nothing you should be ashamed of. I don't ... I don't know what that man did to you, but I promise you it was nothing you deserved. Not for that, and not for anything."
Leonard blinked at her. Stunned silly, if he was honest. Her hands were hot around his face, or just the sensation of them made him think they were, but they ... they didn't remind him, oddly. They didn't cause the instinctive surge of nausea that he'd half thought they might. Her hands were not ... not that man's. Never would be.
"... You're a hell of a woman, you know that?" he said, rueful and admiring and with a vague, faint edge of humour. "You're an amazing thing, Lieutenant Uhura."
She flinched. Curled back, tucked her hands into her chest. He straightened, startled and alarmed, and reached towards her. She turned away from his hand, sliding herself back to her place at his side instead, her face studiously turned away. Leonard blinked after her, startled all over again. That ... That had been shame. He'd seen it, seen the roiling, sickening swell of it, and he'd no idea what had caused it. A compliment? What had ...
"What the hell did he do to you on that bridge?" he growled, half coming up on one arm as if he could ... as if the man wasn't a universe away, as if that other Sulu was anywhere Leonard could hope to reach him. His hand clenched, a furious, impotent fist, and she laughed at it in her turn. That familiar, ragged bark that he knew so very well.
"Nothing," she said, and he knew that twist of her mouth, had seen it so many times these last few days. "He did nothing to me, Doctor. It was ... It was what I did that ..."
She stopped, unable to continue with it, and Leonard blinked at her helplessly. Sank back against the bed, reached out carefully and rested a hand on her arm. Squeezed gently when he felt her shaking through it, felt the tangible evidence of her misery. He sucked in a breath, reached out to wrap the other arm around her shoulders and draw her gently in. She came. Stiff and shaking with ... whatever was inside her, but she let herself settle in against him. He closed his eyes, sent his hand down along her arm to curl it inside hers.
"What happened, darlin'?" he asked, hearing his accent thicken involuntarily. Ignoring it, focusing on her instead. "What happened that you think is so wrong?"
She breathed, a ragged sounding thing, and shook her head against his chest. Not denial, he thought. Just ... building up to the thing.
"I led him on," she managed at last. "I thought ... I had to distract him, and I knew he wanted ... He'd already threatened. So I let him think he might have it. Just long enough to do the job. And then I ... Then I told him I'd changed my mind. With a knife. And I left."
Leonard coughed, a half-startled laugh of a thing, and hugged her close automatically. Instinctively, a startled flash of pity and admiration and delight. Horror, distantly, for what had apparently almost happened, all the admiration in the world for her handling of it. Her daring, her courage and her nerve. Good god, woman. To have that kind of strength.
"So what's wrong with that?" he asked, a little indignant. Surely to god she wasn't ashamed of that? The pig deserved worse than a knife for what he'd threatened. She couldn't possibly be ...
"I can't stop thinking about her," she said, thick and hurt and horrified, and his indignation cut off at the root, even if the confusion remained. "That other ... My counterpart. It was her he wanted, her he couldn't have. I did what ... I led him on because I knew, I hoped, that I wouldn't have to deal with it long. I knew that we would escape. I had to hope that. But her ... We sent her back there. What if he wants her to answer for what I did? I know that she was ... That they all were ... But I can't wish that on her. I can't want anyone to pay for what I had to do. I shouldn't have led him on. But it was ... it was the only way. And now she'll have to deal with him for it."
Ah hell. God Almighty. And he couldn't fault her. He couldn't. Compassion wasn't a crime, she'd said. It surely wasn't. Compassion for a woman she didn't even know, a woman likely as violent and terrible as all their other counterparts, but a woman nonetheless. A woman with her face, who would have to deal with the horror that she had escaped.
"... It's not your fault," he said, soft and hollow beside her, hugging her close. "It isn't, it really isn't. It was the only way, the only weapon you had. You were on your own up there. You did what you had to do. She's strong. I don't ... I saw things. In his head, while he was ... She's strong. Enough to hold a position on the bridge in her own right, when so many women over there have to ... to sleep their way to it instead. I think ... He won't have it easy. Even if he does try it. She had to know what he wanted. She'll make him pay for it if he tries. You can't ... There's nothing you can do, darlin'. You just have to hope that she's mean and dangerous enough herself to handle him. It's all you can do. I'm so sorry."
Because god, there were some things you couldn't wish on anyone. Even someone who'd done you wrong. Even that ... even that bastard, that fierce, somewhat-honourable bastard, that enemy who'd worn a friend's face and nearly earned it, despite it all. He couldn't have let the man die. Even now, even if he had to do it again, knowing what the man would do to him afterwards ... he couldn't let him die. He knew how she felt. He understood so goddamned well.
Compassion wasn't a crime, no, but it was damned fucking painful at times. No good deed goes unpunished, and no necessary one either. You just ... You knew that, you accepted that, and then you went and did what you had to do in spite of it.
Her hand curled slowly at his chest. Her shaking had stopped, he realised, ashamed that it had taken a second for him to notice it. The shaking stopped, while her hand slowly clenched against his shirt. She raised her head, her eyes dry despite the wetness of her cheeks, and ... and a slow, dangerous anger building in her expression. Leonard blinked at it. He didn't know what had caused it. He'd missed something again, missed something that had made her fiercely and savagely angry all of a sudden. He'd no idea what it was.
"... In his head?" she asked, very quietly, and he felt the blood drain out of his face. Realised, far too late, exactly what he'd admitted. And it wasn't that ... it wasn't as though he hadn't planned to, maybe, hoped to, he'd come intending to ... Shared pain, that's what he'd had in mind, and she'd earned his honesty for what she'd been brave enough to tell him, but it ...
It was different hearing it. It was different realising someone knew. What he'd allowed. What he'd been stupid enough to have done to him. It was ... it was different when someone knew.
"He forced ... he forced a meld on you?" she asked, her eyes stark and wide, anger and horror warring through them, and Leonard nodded carefully. Made himself. Shoved aside the phantom hand against his face, the memory of a presence ... a presence where he hadn't wanted anyone to be. Where he'd never given permission for anyone to be. He pushed that aside and nodded for her.
And her fury then. The way her hands curled savagely into fists, the way she came up onto her knees and turned towards the door as if ... as if he wasn't a universe away from her, that other Spock, as if he was anywhere she could hope to reach him. It pulled a bubble of humour up out of him, a knot of pain and gratitude and love. Just for her being there. Just for her being willing to be angry on his behalf. He reached up to her. Took her shaking, furious hands in both of his, held them softly while she looked at him. He smiled at her, tired and crooked and real.
"There's nothing to be done, darlin'," he said quietly. "They're a universe away. They're gone, and those two poor saps on the bridge, whatever faces they wear, they're not them. No matter how hard it is to look at them. We got away. There's nothing we can do about it now."
Her face crumpled, collapsed down from anger into grief and quiet, pained sympathy. Compassion. She tugged his hands up to her chest, held them there. Held them tight.
"... We shouldn't have been left alone," she said, soft and useless and knowing even as she said it that they hadn't had any choice, that they'd volunteered and would volunteer again, exactly the same, however many times it came up. "It shouldn't have been ... I'm so sorry. It shouldn't have happened to you. To either of us."
Leonard let out a breath, sighed it out, and pulled her gently back down against him. She went, settled in against his side with what was beginning to be the ease of familiarity. He couldn't help but appreciate that. He couldn't help but find it comforting.
"Nothing for it, darlin'," he said tiredly. "We are who we are, and apparently what we are is a pair of damn fine easy targets. Me more than you, maybe. I'd have liked to see that bit with the knife. But we are what we are, and I don't reckon either of us is likely to change. We've just got to ... hope we don't run into too many more bastards, that's all."
Which, given past examples, was the greatest fool of a hope he'd ever proposed to anyone, but what the hell else were they to do? They weren't going to back down. Neither him nor her. He'd seen that in her, seen it in her reaction to Khan and everyone else who'd ever tried to force anything out of her, and he knew it in himself as well. Pride, stubbornness, damn fool hardheadedness. Whatever you wanted to call it. They weren't either of them going to back down, so they'd just have to bear through instead. They'd just have to live with it, and put themselves back together as best they could on the other side.
And maybe she'd heard that, maybe her thoughts were running along similiar lines, because she sighed a little herself, her weight warm and solid against his side, and reached down to pick up the bottle of the vile stuff. She held it up between them, and smiled with a hopeful, quiet radiance for them both.
"Perhaps we should hope more for friends," she said softly. "Someone to ... to offer help and sympathy and terrible alcohol when other hopes fall through?"
It cracked something in him. Cracked something clean through his chest. He felt tears prickle at his eyes for the first damn time in this entire conversation, and he felt a smile warm his cheeks at exactly the same time. He fumbled around for his glass, rolled behind him on the floor, and held it out to her with all the warmth and desperate gratitude he had to offer.
"Lieutenant, I'd be honoured," he said, with every scrap of sincerity he possessed. Honour was the word for it. Honour was the least of it. He let it shine out, for no better reason than why not, and she answered to it in kind.
"Nyota," she said, smiling faintly. "Off-duty, at least, you can call me Nyota, Doctor."
He laughed, chuckled wryly. "Leonard," he offered in his turn. "If we're going to be getting piss-ass drunk together, you can call me Leonard. It's, ah. It's a pleasure, Ms Nyota."
She smiled at that, sweet and pleased and delighted, with that sly little edge that often curved her mouth when there was no nausea to disguise it. He felt a little proud of that. He felt a glimmer of something so warm and so fierce and so happy to have brought her that. She lifted the bottle, held it there until he answered with a little tap of his glass, a silent and happy toast.
"To friends, then, Leonard McCoy," she said as she poured. "To friends, and family, and terrible alcohol. May they remain where all else fails."
"Amen to that," he answered firmly, knocking back the toast in perfect time.
Amen to that indeed.
