#it's often the case when they focus on spock and kirk only | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

per-ineptia-ad-astra · 4 years

Text

Star Trek Episode 1.24: This Side of Paradise

AKA Yet Another Creepy Utopia Planet

Our episode begins with the Enterprise heading in to orbit around an Earthy-looking planet named Omicron Ceti 3. Omicon Ceti is a real star, by the way—also known as Mira or Mira A, it’s a red giant and part of a binary star system with its sister Mira B. It’s not a real likely place to go looking for such a nice homey sort of planet, though, because Mira is a pulsating variable star, which means its size and brightness is constantly fluctuating, and it’s hard to evolve life when your sun keeps flickering like a neon sign in a noir movie all the time.

Uhura reports to Kirk that she’s been transmitting a contact signal every five minutes just as he ordered, but she’s only getting dead air in response. Kirk tells her to keep it up until they get into orbit, then moves on to talk to Spock. “There were one hundred fifty men, women and children in that colony,” he says. “What are the chances of survivors?”

Looks like the chances are, uh...not great. And by ‘not great’ I mean ‘nonexistent’. Spock explains that ‘Bertold rays’ are a recent enough discovery that there’s still a lot not known about them, but one thing that is for sure known is that exposure to these rays causes living animal tissue to disintegrate. Nasty. Evidently this planet is heavily exposed to these rays, because a group of colonists-- “Sandoval’s group”-- came here only three years ago and Spock says there’s no possibility they could have survived. Well why the heck would anyone build a colony in such a place? All Spock can say is “They knew there was a risk.”

Kirk questions whether they can risk sending a landing party down under such conditions, but Spock says the disintegration doesn’t start immediately, so they’ll be alright if they don’t stick around too long. The helmsman reports that they’ve successfully established orbit, and he’s found a settlement—or at least, something that was a settlement at one point. Kirk tells Spock to equip a landing party of five to accompany him down there, including a biologist and McCoy. That’s gonna be a fun mission briefing. “Yes, we're beaming down to a planet bombarded with deadly radiation, but no need to worry, crew, your tissues will probably only disintegrate a little bit."

Sometime later, the landing party—Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, a blueshirt and a goldshirt—materialize into a meadow near a dirt path and a picket fence. They’ve thoughtfully arranged themselves into a nice alternating pattern.

[ID: A shot of a sunny meadow with a dirt road, a few trees and a white picket fence in the background. Newly beamed down are six Enterprise crewmembers standing in two rows: in the front are Kirk and Spock, in the back are McCoy, a goldshirt, a blueshirt, and Sulu.]

The goldshirt, incidentally, is DeSalle, who we last saw back in The Squire of Gothos. The character was originally written for this story as Lt. Timothy Fletcher, but was changed to DeSalle after the production crew realized they’d cast an actor who had already appeared in the series. Yes, really. AGAIN. The blueshirt is Kelowitz, who showed up briefly in The Galileo Seven and Arena, and likewise started out as another character but was renamed after being cast. I don’t know how this situation managed to happen so often on TOS, but apparently it did. At least they both seem to have managed to hold onto more or less the same positions that they had the last time we saw them, a rare feat for any minor TOS crewmember.

The group walks forward towards some nearby farm buildings arranged around a dirt yard, with a horse-drawn cart sitting out in front of one of them. But there’s no horse to be seen, and no people either. They wander through the yard and over toward what looks like a paddock, but without any animals in it. Everything seems quite thoroughly deserted.

Kirk leans on the paddock fence and glumly muses, “Another dream that failed. There’s nothing sadder. It took these people a year to make the trip from Earth. They came all that way...and died.” Hold on, it took them a year? What, do they not give colony ships warp drives? Did they have to hitchhike here?

“Hardly that, sir,” someone says, and suddenly we see three men in green jumpsuits standing at the edge of the yard, looking very relaxed and also very not dead.

As the landing party all turn around to stare in shock the man in front strides forward and says, “Welcome to Omicron Ceti 3. I’m Elias Sandoval.” McCoy looks like he’s getting ready to spray the dude with holy water.

After the titles, we get a brief captain’s log to sum things up, just in case everyone forgot what happened during the commercial break:

“Captain’s Log, Stardate 3417.3. We thought our mission to Omicron Ceti 3 would be an unhappy one. We had expected to find no survivors of the agricultural colony there. Apparently, our information was incorrect.”

The colonists start happily shaking hands with the landing party—but happily as in “oh, it’s so nice to meet you” not “oh thank god you came to rescue us we’re all on the brink of death”. Sandoval says they haven’t seen anyone outside the colony since they left Earth four years ago, although they’ve been expecting someone to come by for a while. Apparently their subspace radio didn’t work right and they don’t have anyone who could “master its intricacies”. Now, I’m no expert on establishing colonies on alien planets, but ‘person who can work our only communication device’ does rather seem like a position you would want to make sure was filled before you left.

Kirk has to explain that they haven’t come to visit because of the dead radio. He does not explain why they did decide to come when they did. Spock’s comment about the colonists knowing there was a risk indicates that whether or not Bertold rays specifically were known about before the colonists left, they at least had reason to believe there was something dangerous about the planet. So why’d the Federation let them go and then wait another three years before sending anyone to check up on them? Eh, probably just another failing of twenty-third century space bureaucracy.

Sandoval’s not bothered about it, though. He tells Kirk that it doesn’t make much difference—the important thing is the party is here now and the colonists are happy to see them. Then he invites them on a tour of the settlement and casually strolls off, leaving the landing party to stand there and try to process what the hell they just witnessed.

“Pure speculation, just an educated guess...I’d say that man is alive,” McCoy says. Thanks Bones.

Spock says that his scans show that the planet is getting ray’d just as their reports indicated, so that’s not the issue. Under this intensity, the landing party could safely hang out here for a week if necessary, as per the usual Star Trek rule that you can be exposed to a deadly thing and be just fine up until the exact moment it kills you, but there’s a mighty big difference between a week and three years. Or as Kirk succinctly puts it, “These people shouldn’t be alive.”

“Is it possible they’re not?” Sulu asks. Great out of the box thinking there Sulu, love it.

Kirk takes a moment to consider that, which is fair—compared to the kind of weird shit they’ve encountered so far, the walking dead wouldn’t even stand out that much. But McCoy points out that when they shook hands with Sandoval, “His flesh was warm. He’s alive. There’s no doubt about that.” Spock fires back with a reminder that, “There’s no miracle connected with [Bertold rays], doctor, you know that. No cures, no serums, no antidotes. If a man is exposed long enough, he dies.” Okay dude, calm down, all McCoy said was “he’s alive” not “my god! Bertold rays have been fake all along! wake up sheeple!"

As Kirk points out, this whole debate is pretty pointless anyway for the moment—they’re arguing in a vacuum, and they’ll need more answers if they want to get anywhere. So they go to follow Sandoval, who leads them towards a nearby farm house, while a few colonists do various farm chores nearby. Sandoval explains that the colonists split into three groups, with forty-five people at this settlement and two more settlements elsewhere on the planet. Apparently they thought that arrangement would give each group a better chance for growth, since if some disaster struck one group the other two would probably still be alright.

“Omicron is an ideal agricultural planet,” he says. “We determined not to suffer the fate of the expeditions that went before us.” It’s rather vague what expeditions he’s referring to here, since at no other point in the episode are any previous attempts at settling Omicron Ceti 3 mentioned. But given that Sandoval specifically mentions the possibility of disease afflicting one group as a reason to split up, and Spock earlier said that Bertold rays were a recent discovery—and that the colonists knew coming to Omicron Ceti 3 was risky-- it seems possible that previous groups tried to settle the planet and, without knowing about the Bertold rays, mistook their effects for some kind of disease native to the planet. Of course that doesn’t explain why this group of colonists decided it would be a good idea to try to settle here again anyway, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few months, it’s that not everyone sees the possibility of dying to a terrible disease as a compelling reason to change their plans in any way.

As they stand in the farmhouse talking about this, a woman steps forward from another room in the house. She’s in soft focus, just in case we might forget she’s a woman, and instead of the green jumpsuit all the male colonists are wearing, she’s wearing green overalls over a lavender shirt, a combination that somehow manages to be an even worse fashion disaster than the jumpsuits themselves. She starts to say something to Sandoval, then stops in surprise as she sees the landing party. But for once the romance-o-vision isn’t for Kirk—it’s Spock that the camera zooms in on as the woman stares at him.

“Layla, come meet our guests,” Sandoval says cheerfully, oblivious to the wistfully romantic background music. He introduces her as Layla Colomi, their botanist. Layla says that she and Spock have met before, but “It’s been a long time.” Kirk gives Spock a bit of a side-eye for that, but Spock offers no details.

Well, all romantic tension aside, they do still have a mission to attend to here, as Kirk reminds Sandoval. Sandoval tells them to go ahead with any examinations or tests they want. “I think you’ll find our settlement an interesting one. Our philosophy is a simple one: that men should return to a less complicated life. We have few mechanical things here, no vehicles, no weapons. We have harmony here. Complete peace.” Oh yeah, that bodes well. Remember the last place we saw complete harmony and peace? At least that explains why everyone on this farm is using equipment straight out of Stardew Valley, which is presumably not the most advanced agricultural technology available by the twenty-third century. I’m not sure why Sandoval’s idea of a simpler lifestyle excludes vehicles, though. They’re not exactly the most recent thing on the timeline of human technological advancements.

Sandoval tells the landing party to make themselves at home, and they all head off. All except for Spock, who lingers just a few seconds more to give Layla a completely neutral look before walking away as well.

Everyone goes off to conduct their respective investigations. Sulu and Kelowitz wander through a yard over towards another farm building. Kelowitz isn’t sure what exactly they should be looking for, though. “Whatever doesn’t look right—whatever that is,” Sulu replies, climbing up to sit on a railing on the building’s porch. “When it comes to farms, I wouldn’t know what looked right or wrong if it were two feet from me.” I hope you enjoyed that line, because “didn’t grow up on a farm” is about all the backstory TOS is going to give us for Sulu until the movies.

[ID: Three screenshots showing Sulu pulling himself up to sit on the railing of an old-fashioned farmhouse as he says, "When it comes to farms, I wouldn't know what looked right or wrong if it were two feet from me." Growing up from the ground nearby are two large plants with thick brownish-purple stems and large pink flowers on top.]

Hey Sulu, what's that about two feet from you? Oh well, I'm sure it's not important.

Kelowitz opens up a nearby barn and notes that there’s no cows there—in fact, the barn isn’t even built for cows, just for storage, and indeed it only looks big enough to be useful for holding cow, singular. Having a storage barn isn’t itself that weird, although the fact that there is nothing currently stored in the storage barn is a bit strange. But also, as Sulu points out, come to think of it, they haven’t seen any animals here, native or imported. No cows, no horses, no pigs, not even a dog. Which is a bit odd for an agricultural colony. They must have had or expected to have animals at some point—otherwise what was pulling that cart?

Back in the house, Sandoval is asking Layla about Spock (once again referred to as a ‘Vulcanian’). She says that she knew Spock on Earth, six years ago. Sandoval, apparently having noticed the dreamy background music by now, asks if Layla loved Spock. She says that if she did, “it was important only to myself...Mr. Spock’s feelings were never expressed to me. It is said he has none to give.”

“Would you like him to stay with us now? To be one of us?” Sandoval asks. Layla smiles at him. “There is no choice, Elias,” she says. “He will stay.”

Elsewhere in the house, McCoy is scanning a colonist. He doesn’t look exactly happy with the tricorder result he gets, but all he says is, “That’ll be all, thank you very much,” and the colonist leaves, passing Kirk coming in. Incidentally, I can’t help but note that this room contains two paintings on the wall and what appears to be a cabinet full of china. I suppose the paintings could have been done by a colonist, but the china could surely only have been brought there. Who decided to pack fancy china on a year-long space voyage to an agricultural colony?

[ID: A shot of the interior of a farmhouse with blue walls, with a large wooden table in the middle of the room, a cabinet with china and glassware in the corner, a wooden desk with a copper tea kettle and some other kitchen items on it against the back wall, and a painting hanging on the wall showing some blurry trees. Sandoval, a middle-aged white man with short brown hair wearing a green jumpsuit, walks past the camera as he says, "Oh, captain, I've been looking for you."]

Kirk asks if McCoy’s found anything yet. McCoy replies that he’s surveyed nine men so far, ranging in age from twenty-three to fifty-nine. And they’re all in perfect condition. Not just healthy—perfect. Textbook responses across the board, from all of them. “If there are many more of them,” McCoy muses, “I can throw away my shingle.”

At that point Kirk’s communicator goes off. It’s Spock, calling in from one of the crop fields. He’s made the same observation as Sulu—there’s no life on the planet aside from the colonists and the plants. No animals, no insects. Spock doesn’t have any explanation yet, so Kirk tells him to carry on with his investigation and hangs up.

McCoy notes the absence of animals as peculiar, and Kirk says it’s especially so because the expedition records show that they did bring animals with them to raise for food. And pull their carts, presumably. But it seems none of them are still around. McCoy says he’d like to see the expedition’s medical records, a request Kirk has apparently anticipated because he’s got the floppy disc on hand with him.

Sandoval comes in and says that he’d like to take the two of them on a tour of the fields, to show off what the colony’s accomplished. McCoy says he’ll have to bow out, since he’s still working on the medical examinations. “However, if I find everyone else’s health to be as perfect as yours...”

“You’ll find no weaklings here,” Sandoval says, which uh, sure is a hell of a way to phrase that. “No weaklings! None of those miserable, pathetic sods with imperfect health! Only the strong survive! THE SLIGHTEST BLEMISH SHALL BE CAUSE FOR EXILE!”

Leaving McCoy behind, Kirk and Sandoval head out to the fields, where Sandoval gushes to Kirk about how great this place is: they’ve got moderate climate, moderate rains all year round, and the soil will grow anything they stick in it. Which is pretty miraculous, considering there’s no such thing as growing conditions that are perfect for every plant. But as we’re about to see, that’s not the only weird thing going on with their farming practices.

The conversation is interrupted by DeSalle arriving to give Kirk the biology report. Sandoval excuses himself to attend to work elsewhere, leaving Kirk and DeSalle alone to discuss the report. At first, it seems to be just as Sandoval said: they’ve got a variety of crops growing here successfully. The weird thing is that they don’t actually have very many of those crops. There’s enough to keep the colony going at the size it currently is, but barely more than that. Which tracks with what we’ve seen of the place so far: a couple of tiny fields that look more about the size for someone’s backyard garden than for a prosperous farm, tended by the occasional person idly scratching at the ground with a hoe. For a supposedly bounteous agricultural colony, that’s pretty weird. What have they been doing all this time?

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle all one color,” Kirk muses, taking a moment to stroll a few steps away so he can say this dramatically in the distance instead of actually talking to DeSalle. “No key to where the pieces fit in. Why?”

Kirk’s communicator goes off. It’s McCoy, saying Kirk had better get back over there. “Trouble?” “No, but I’d like you to see this for yourself.” Of course. No one can ever just explain something over the phone, can they.

So Kirk heads back to the house, where the thing that Kirk just absolutely has to see for himself turns out to be McCoy just telling him what he’s found out, but he definitely couldn't do that over the communicator for, uh, reasons. What he’s found out is pretty interesting, though: McCoy checked up on Sandoval’s medical records from right before the colonists had left, which said that Sandoval had had an appendectomy, and had scar tissue on his lungs from childhood pneumonia (the weakling!). Yet when McCoy scanned Sandoval himself today, the results came back just as perfect as all the other colonists’. Kirk’s first thought is instrument failure, but McCoy says no, he thought of that and tested it by scanning himself, and it recorded him just fine, down to “those two broken ribs I had once.” Which sounds like an interesting story. But Sandoval’s scan? No scar tissue, and one healthy appendix. That’s right, Sandoval’s apparently managed to regrow an entire organ. Do you think you would notice that happening? Like, would it itch?

While Kirk and McCoy try to figure that out, Spock is hanging out in a field scanning with his own tricorder, while Layla stands nearby smiling ominously at him. Spock muses that there’s “Nothing. Not even insects. Yet your plants grow, and you’ve survived exposure to Bertold rays.” Yeah, how are those plants growing without insects? Presumably the native plants have evolved some way around that, but the ones the colonists have brought from Earth would need some help. Are the colonists just manually pollinating everything? Maybe that’s why they haven’t grown very much.

Layla says this can be explained, but when asked to do so, she just says, “Later.” Spock looks annoyed and remarks, “I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to any question.” Hey! Cut that bullshit out. No one on this colony has directly answered a question since you got here, there’s no call to go ragging on a whole gender for it. Besides, just saying “Later,” is hardly a stunningly deft diversion, it’s not like she threw a smoke bomb down and disappeared.

“And I never understood you,” Layla says, walking over and placing a hand on his chest. “Until now. There was always a place in here where no one could come. There was only the face you allow people to see. Only one side you’d allow them to know.”

[ID: Three screenshots of Spock and Layla, a white woman with a lot of long blonde hair wearing a lilac shirt and green overalls, standing outside in a field with a large tree in the background. Layla, seen from behind, is pressing her hand to Spock's upper chest and saying, "There was always a place in here where no one could come." Spock replies "you know that's not where my heart is right".]

If Layla was hoping this little speech would prompt Spock to cry out that yes, she’s figured him out, he does love her but has never been able to show it! she’s disappointed, because he just looks uncomfortable and steps away. He tries to steer the conversation back onto the mystery of the colonists. “If I tell you how we survive,” she asks, “will you try to understand how we feel about our life here? About each other?”

That’s a pretty vague thing to make a promise about, so Spock deflects by saying that emotions are alien to him; he’s a SCIENTIST. “Someone else might believe that—your shipmates, your captain—but not me,” Layla says. Oh sure! Obviously none of the people who have lived, worked, and risked death alongside Spock can be expected to know anything about Spock. Only you are the Spock Expert, gifted with incredible insight by virtue of having a crush on him.

“Come,” she says, sauntering off through the field with her hand outstretched to him. Spock rather pointedly folds his hands behind his back instead and follows her.

Back in the house, Kirk and McCoy are struggling to have a conversation with Sandoval. Kirk tells Sandoval that he’s received orders from Starfleet Command to evacuate everyone on the colony, since, y’know, deadly rays and all that. He expects Sandoval to start making preparations. But Sandoval, calmly, casually, says, “No.” It’s not necessary, he insists—they’re in no danger.

But...but the Bertold rays. Sandoval is unmoved, pointing out that as McCoy’s own instruments show, the colonists are in perfect health and there have been no deaths. Okay, what about all those animals? What happened to them? “We’re vegetarians,” Sandoval says blithely. Which, as Kirk points out, does absolutely nothing to answer the question. Actually it raises further questions.

Sandoval remains thoroughly unbothered and thoroughly unhelpful. “Captain, you stress very unimportant matters. We will not leave,” he says, and goes back to gazing out the window, evidently considering the conversation over.

Elsewhere, Spock and Layla are still walking, and Spock is getting annoyed that Layla still hasn’t explained just what it is they’re going to see. “Its basic properties and elements are not important,” Layla says helpfully. “What is important is that it gives life, peace, love.” Oh boy.

Spock is dubious, but Layla pulls him forward, over towards another one of those large pink flowers. “I was one of the first to find them,” Layla says. “The spores.”

[ID: A gif of Spock approaching a large pinkish-purple flower and saying, "Spores?" The flower then sprays a cloud of white spores all over his face and torso while Spock recoils.]

For a moment Spock just looks startled, but then he starts clutching his head and falling onto his knees in the grass, dropping his tricorder and gasping, “No--” For the first time all episode, Layla’s absolute serenity starts to fracture slightly. Over Spock’s agonized protests, she insists that it shouldn’t hurt—it didn’t hurt any of them. But, as Spock gasps out, he’s not like them. Whoops, did the biologist forget to account for biological differences before handing out a facefull of spores? I bet you didn’t even check if he had any allergies first, did you?

Just as it’s looking like this might put actually put a crack in Layla’s blissed-out impassivity, Spock stops thrashing about and starts seeming less anguished and more confused. Layla’s concern vanishes once again, and she goes back to smiling happily while stroking his face. “Now...now you belong to all of us...and we to you. There’s no need to hide your inner face any longer. We understand.”

Spock still seems unsure, but then he takes Layla’s hand in his and smiles. Not the slight hint of a smile or sardonic quirk of the lips you’d expect to see from Spock, but a huge, broad grin from ear to ear. “I love you...I can love you,” he says, and then he kisses her.

Hoo boy.

After the break, we get a quick Captain’s Log to recap:

“Captain’s Log, supplemental. We have been ordered by Starfleet Command to evacuate the colony on Omicron 3. However, the colony leader, Elias Sandoval, has refused all cooperation and will not listen to any arguments.”

Sure enough, we see Sandoval exiting the farmhouse, followed by McCoy and an extremely frustrated Kirk. “Captain, your arguments are very valid, but do they not apply to us,” Sandoval says, as calm as ever. He tries to walk off, but Kirk grabs his arm and pulls him back.

“My orders are to remove all the colonists,” he says, “and that’s exactly what I intend to do with or without your help.”

“Without, I should think,” Sandoval says, and strolls off, leaving Kirk standing there fuming.

Sulu and Kelowitz come walking up to report that they’ve checked out everything and it all seems normal, except for the missing animals. Of course, they also both said they had no idea what to look for in the first place, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. Kirk tells them about the evacuation orders, and says he wants landing parties to start gathering the colonists and preparing them to leave. And by the way, where did Spock and DeSalle go? Sulu says they haven’t seen either one in some time, but McCoy says DeSalle was going to examine some native plants he found. Native plants, huh? I think we can guess what happened to DeSalle.

Since Spock still hasn’t reported in, Kirk gives him a call. Or tries to, at least—Spock doesn’t pick up. On the other end of the line, we see why that is: Spock's communicator is laying abandoned on the ground, while Spock himself, now dressed in the same horrible green jumpsuit as the colonists, is stretched out on the grass with Layla, watching clouds. The communicator beeps away while Spock happily describes how one of the clouds looks like a dragon. "I've never seen a dragon," Layla says. BEEP BEEP. "I have." BEEP BEEP. "On Barengarius 7." BEEP BEEP. "But I've never stopped to look at clouds before." BEEP BEEP. "Or rainbows." BEEP BEEP. "You know, I can tell you exactly why one appears in the sky, but considering its beauty has always been out of the question." BEEP BEEP.

"Not here," Layla says (beep beep), and they smile dreamily at each other before going into another makeout session. Meanwhile, Kirk is still on the line, and not getting any happier about it. Layla finally picks up the communicator and holds it up for Spock, who takes a break from kissin' to say, "Yes, what did you want?"

Naturally, this throws both Kirk and McCoy for a loop. While McCoy stands there with a "what the fuck" look on his face, Kirk takes a moment to recover and then demands, "Spock, is that you?"

"Yes, captain, what did you want?"

"Where are you?"

"...I don't believe I want to tell you."

[ID: Three shots of Kirk and McCoy standing in front of the farmhouse, Kirk holding his communicator while McCoy looks on. Kirk has a stunned expression on his face and looks around with his mouth open, trying to figure out what to say.]

Kirk plows on ahead, telling Spock that, whatever the hell he thinks he's doing, he's got orders: they're getting the colonists out, and Spock is to meet back at the settlement in ten minutes.

"No, I don't think so," Spock says casually. "You don't think so, what?" "I don't think so, sir."

Kirk has to take a moment after that one. It's rather amazing that McCoy's made it this far into the conversation without saying anything himself. Presumably he's just in shock. Eventually Kirk tells Spock to report in immediately, but by now Spock and Layla have gone back to kissing, leaving the communicator open but abandoned in the grass once more.

"That didn't sound at all like Spock, Jim," McCoy says, putting in his bid for the Enterprise’s bi-weekly Massive Understatement contest.

"No, it--I thought you said you might like him if he mellowed a little."

"I didn't say that!"

"You said that."

"Not exactly,” McCoy protests, and then somewhat grudgingly adds, “He might be in trouble.”

I'm sure McCoy did say that, or something like it, but "I hope Spock has his brain taken over by alien spores" was presumably not where he was going with it. He obviously sees this sudden change of behavior as something to be concerned about--even moreso than Kirk, who seems more irritated than anything. But then, it's only been a couple episodes since McCoy had his own run-in with an alien influence making people act a lot more mellow than usual, and he didn't enjoy that experience at all, so it's not surprising that "trouble" is his first thought here.

Kirk tells McCoy to take over the landing party detail and start getting the colonists up to the ship, and to make sure the party works in teams of two, with nobody being left alone. Meanwhile, Kirk himself takes Sulu and Kelowitz and heads off to find Spock, using the open frequency from Spock's communicator as a homing signal. They follow a dirt path out of the main settlement and soon find said communicator, laying open and abandoned in the grass just off the path. As Kirk picks it up, they hear laughter nearby, and Sulu points in astonishment further down the path, where Layla is watching Spock dangle upside-down from a tree branch like a kid on a jungle gym.

[ID: A shot of Spock and Layla among some trees at the end of a dirt path. Layla is standing on the ground and holding hands with Spock, who is hanging upside-down by his knees from a large tree branch, laughing.]

For a moment all Kirk can do is stare weakly at this weird spectacle. Then he collects himself with a stern AHEM and marches over like a principal about to deliver some very serious detention.

Meanwhile, back at the main hub of the colony, the landing party seems to have gotten well underway with preparations for departure, with several colonists and crewmen piling up luggage and equipment in the middle of a field while McCoy stands nearby overseeing everything, a job I’m sure he’s enjoying since we all know administrative work is McCoy’s favorite thing. Then DeSalle arrives, carrying a couple of the spore flowers and tells McCoy to take “a good, close look” at them, because they’re very interesting. McCoy steps forward to check them out right before the scene cuts away again, leaving us with little doubt as to what’s about to happen next.

During that little interim, Kirk and his crew have made it over to where Spock and Layla are cavorting. Spock just grins happily at Kirk, clearly not bothered one bit, even as Kirk asks if Spock’s out of his mind. He didn’t report to Kirk, he says, because...he didn’t want to.

Kirk glances back and forth between Spock and Layla, who’s standing there smiling rather smugly, and tells Layla that she’ll need to come get ready to evacuate with the rest of the colonists. Spock cheerfully says that there’s not going to be any evacuation. “But perhaps,” he adds, “we should go and get you straightened out.”

That really doesn’t bode well, but rather than ask just what Spock means by that, Kirk tells Sulu that Spock is under arrest in Sulu’s custody until they get back to the ship. Which will certainly work out well because it’s not like Spock is strong enough to chuck Sulu all the way across the field barehanded or anything. Not that Spock seems especially perturbed about being under arrest; instead he just shrugs, drops down from the tree, and says, “Very well. Come with me,” before heading off across the field, leaving else to follow in confusion. That’s how you arrest someone, right?

Of course, Spock leads them right to another group of spore flowers, which the group stops and stares at obligingly for a moment. Then the flowers explode a bunch of spores at them. Somehow, even though he’s standing right next to Sulu and Kelowitz, Kirk manages to totally avoid getting any spores up his sinuses, while the other two are immediately affected. “Yes...I see now,” Sulu says blissfully, with that trademark Very High grin that George Takei does so well. “Of course we can’t remove the colony. It’d be wrong.”

Kirk grabs him by the shoulders—Kirk’s go-to method for snapping people out of it--but when this somehow fails to bring Sulu back to his right mind, all Kirk can do is say that he doesn’t know what these plants are or how they work, but “you’re all going back to the settlement with me, and those colonists are going aboard the ship.” This stern proclamation has absolutely no effect on anyone. The whole group just stands there happily watching Kirk stomp back toward the colony. “I can see the captain is going to be difficult,” Spock remarks.

Kirk’s day isn’t about to get any better, because upon making it back to the colony he’s greeted by McCoy, who we can immediately tell is under the influence as well because his accent is absolutely out of control. It’s so thick even the subtitles pick up on it.

[ID: A screenshot of McCoy walking through a meadow with his communicator out, saying, "Sho’nuf."]

“Hiya, Jimmy boy!” McCoy very happily says to a very unhappy Kirk. “Hey, I’ve taken care of everything. Now all y’all gotta do is just relax. Doctor’s orders!” With a very resigned look, Kirk asks how many plants McCoy’s beamed up to the ship, and McCoy says it must be going on a hundred by now.

So Kirk beams up to the ship and heads right to the bridge, where he tells Uhura to put him through to Admiral Komak at Starfleet, though what he expects Komak to do about all this I don't know. But it’s too late. Uhura turns around to show that she’s smiling as happily as everyone else, and says, “Oh, I’m sorry Dave, I mean, captain. I can’t do that.” She’s short-circuited all the ship’s communications, except for ship-to-surface, since they’ll need that for a little while yet. Then she leaves, pausing in the door of the lift to tell Kirk that it’s really all for the best.

Kirk stands there seething for a moment, then stomps over to grab a plant that’s been left in Spock’s chair. He throws it across the bridge, and the camera lingers ominously on it as Kirk heads back into the lift.

Things aren’t any better on the rest of the ship. Kirk soon finds a long line of crewmembers of all different shirt colors, patiently waiting to transport down to join the colony. Out of what I can only assume is some desperate futile hope that someone will follow his orders if he just keeps trying, Kirk orders them all to go back to their stations at once. Unsurprisingly, they all ignore him. Kirk points out to one of the redshirts that this is MUTINY! but it doesn't get him very far.

[ID: A gif showing a young white man with brown hair wearing a redshirt as he says, "Yes, sir, it is." The camera then zooms in very dramatically on Kirk's stunned face.]

So...they’re all going down to join the colony? All four hundred thirty of them? Or four hundred twenty-nine, I guess, if Kirk refuses to join the fun. That’s almost ten times the amount of people the colony currently has in it. That seems like it could present a bit of a problem, because if you’ll recall DeSalle told Kirk earlier that right now the colony’s growing enough food to feed their current population, with little left over. How are they going to handle such a large and sudden influx into their population? Do they have housing for all these people? Or are they just all going to eat dirt and sleep on the ground because they’re all too high to notice anyway?

After we’ve had a commercial break to contemplate this shocking turn of events, Kirk takes some time out to give vent to his feelings in a captain’s log:

"Captain's Log, Stardate 3417.5. The pod plants have spread spores throughout the ship, carried by the ventilation system. Under their influence, my crew is deserting to join the Omicron colony, and I can't stop them. I don't know why I have not been infected, nor can I get Doctor McCoy to explain the physical, psychological aspects of the infection."

And indeed, just in case we had any doubt, we then see McCoy strolling through the field and happily telling Kirk, “I’m not interested in any physical, psychological aspects, Jim-boy. We all perfectly healthy down here.” Kirk grumbles about how much he’s been hearing about things being perfect lately. “I bet you’ve even grown your tonsils back.” “Sho’nuf!”

Kirk tries desperately to get McCoy to do something to figure these spores out—run a blood test, take a scan, type the symptoms into WebMD, something, anything—but McCoy is more interested in rambling on about mint juleps. Meanwhile, back in the farmhouse, Sandoval’s having tea with Spock while they talk about how nearly everyone’s beamed down from the ship and things are “proceeding quite well.” Kirk storms in and demands to know where McCoy’s gotten to, and Spock says he went off to make that mint julep. Which could prove quite difficult unless this tiny half-assed farm colony has somehow managed to set up a working distillery around here somewhere, but Kirk’s got bigger concerns right now than where McCoy’s going to get his bourbon.

Sandoval wants to know why Kirk won’t join them in their private, spore-sponsored paradise. Kirk asks where these spores came from, anyway, and Spock exposits that there’s no way to know—they just drifted through space until they arrived at this planet, which is perfect for them because it turns out they actually thrive on Bertold rays. The plants act as a repository for the spores until they can find a human—or half-Vulcan—body to inhabit. No explanation is forthcoming as to how Spock knows any of this.

Spock and Sandoval insist that the planet is “a true Eden” with belonging and love and no needs or wants for anyone, but Kirk is skeptical. “No wants, no needs. We weren’t meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.” Of all the things wrong with this situation I’m not sure “BEING TOO HAPPY IS BAD FOR YOU” is the take I would go with, but okay. Spock says that Kirk doesn’t understand, but he’ll come around...sooner or later.

Kirk, disgusted with this whole conversation, goes back to the ship. The bridge is dark, silent, and utterly empty. We get a slow pan of the blinking lights and displays of the consoles, with no one left to man them. Kirk walks over to his chair, hits the intercom, and starts calling one part of the ship after another, with no response from any of them. With nothing else left to do, he sits down in his chair and starts glumly recording a captain’s log so angsty it could be a LiveJournal entry:

"Captain's Log, Stardate 3417.7. Except for myself, all crew personnel have transported to the surface of the planet. Mutinied. Lieutenant Uhura has effectively sabotaged the communications station. I can only contact the surface of the planet. The ship...can be maintained in orbit for several months, but even with automatic controls, I cannot pilot her alone. In effect, I am marooned here. I'm beginning to realize...just how big this ship really is, how quiet. I don't know how to get my crew back, how to counteract the effect of the spores. I don't know what I can offer against...paradise."

Hold on hold on HOLD ON what do you MEAN the ship can be maintained in orbit for several months? Every time someone takes their hands off the controls for five seconds we get told that the orbit is decaying and they’re gonna plummet into some hapless planet within a few hours at most but now all of a sudden it’s fine to hang out up there for several months? MAKE UP YOUR MIND.

Kirk gets up to go sit at the helm, just to get a change of scenery mid-mope, and as he finishes his log/rant the camera slowly pans down to reveal the spore flower that he chucked across the bridge earlier. Which is weird because we just got a wide shot of the bridge and that flower definitely wasn’t there then.

[ID: Two shots. The first is a wide shot showing Kirk alone on the empty, darkened bridge, preparing to sit down at the helm. There is nothing in on the floor in front of the helm. The second shot is a closer shot of Kirk sitting at the helm with his chin in one hand, now with a large spore flower poking up in the front of shot.]

The flower promptly shoots Kirk in the face, and for a moment he just continues to sit there with spores in his hair and a “yeah, this might as well happen” expression. But then he slowly starts to smile, suddenly as happy as everyone else. Exactly why Kirk’s been unaffected by the spores up until now, even after hanging out for quite a while on a ship that’s supposedly been thoroughly contaminated by them, is never really explained. Maybe he's just on a lot of Zyrtec. But it seems even Kirk’s determination to not be happy can’t hold out against a point-blank spray in the face. He calls Spock to say that he finally understands now, which Spock is happy to hear. Kirk says he’ll be down just as soon as he packs up a few things, so Spock says he and Layla will wait for him at the beamdown point.

So Kirk goes off to his quarters to pack up a suitcase, the contents of which seem to mostly consist of uniform shirts. Apparently paradise for Kirk does not include one of those green jumpsuits, which, really, who can blame him. He opens a small vault by his bed and pulls out a couple of black cases, one of which he opens to reveal a medal. This seems to stir some sense of conflict because he sits down and stares at it for a long moment, but then puts it aside and heads to the transporter room, where he puts the suitcase on the platform and then prepares to set the controls.

But then Kirk hesitates, and stands there for a moment looking conflicted. Possibly he’s still having feelings about those medals, or maybe he’s having second thoughts about whether he packed enough shirts. In any case, he eventually exclaims, “No...No! I...can’t...LEAVE!” Then he punches the console for good measure.

Apparently this little emotional outburst is all it takes to cure the spores, because Kirk gasps a little, looks momentarily confused, and then seems to be back to his old self. “Emotions...violent emotions. Needs...anger,” he tells the empty room. “Captain’s log, supplemental. I think I’ve discovered the answer...but to carry out my plan entails considerable risk. Mr. Spock is much stronger than the ordinary human being.” Then he treats us to this remarkable line:

[ID: A shot of Kirk in profile at the transporter controls as he says, "Aroused, his great physical strength could kill."]

Down on the planet, Spock and Layla are still waiting at the beamdown point when Kirk calls Spock up and says he’s realized there’s some equipment on the ship that they’ll need for the colony, and he needs Spock’s help to get it all beamed down. Really, you’d think there’d be quite a lot of equipment on the Enterprise that a farming colony could make good use of, but I guess they’re really determined to stick to the whole no-technology approach. Despite this, Spock cheerfully accepts the explanation, gives Layla a quick smooch, and beams up.

But upon materializing, Spock is greeted not with a smiling Kirk ready to go move some equipment with his bro, but Kirk standing there holding some nonspecific heavy metal rod thing that he’s smacking threatening against his hand. “All right, you mutinous, disloyal, computerized half-breed,” he says, “we’ll see about you deserting my ship.”

Spock reacts to this bar-brawl-starter with nothing more than a nonplussed expression and polite correcting Kirk on his syntax. Kirk, determination unshaken, continues laying into him with a stream of insults that would have made that fucker from Balance of Terror go, “Whoa, hold on there a minute.” Undeterred by not being able to use any actual expletives, he compares Spock both to a machine and to various fairy-tale creatures, makes fun of his ears, and rounds it all off by having a go at the entire Vulcan race. He even insults Spock’s parents.

[ID: 1. A shot of Spock standing in the transporter room looking perplexed as Kirk, off-camera, says, "Whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia?" 2. A gif from Monty Python and the Holy Grail of John Cleese as the French knight on the battlements yelling, "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"]

Spock stands there taking it all stoically for quite a while, even as the background music gets increasingly tense. He finally starts to crack when Kirk goes after Spock’s relationship with Layla, and when Kirk keeps going despite Spock angrily telling him, “That’s enough,” Spock finally flips out big time. You know what that means, it’s time for a STAR TREK FIGHT SCENE! This one’s got it all: close-up shots of the actors intercut with long shots of very obvious stunt doubles; cardboard props getting punched; even people picking up random unidentifiable bits of starship equipment that may or may not have ever been there before to use as weapons. The only thing we’re missing is Kirk doing some kind of weird wrestling move.

[ID: Three gifs showing a fight scene between Kirk and Spock. First we see a long shot where Kirk and Spock are clearly being played by stunt doubles, as Spock punches a metal rod Kirk is holding, bending it in half. He then punches Kirk in the jaw, sending him careening into the wall. Then a close-up of Nimoy and Shatner as Spock advances on Kirk and throws a punch but misses, denting the control panel in the wall behind Kirk. Kirk dodges out of the way towards the console, and Spock throws another punch that hits the side of the console. Then back to a long view with the stunt doubles as Spock throws Kirk into the opposite wall, which Kirk careens off of, falling on his back on the floor, while Spock picks up something resembling a square metal stool or stepladder and raises it over his head. Finally, we see Nimoy and Shatner again as Kirk lays on the floor looking up at Spock, raising the thing he's carrying over his head.]

We dramatically cut to black as Spock stands poised above Kirk, raising whatever-the-hell-that-thing-is over his head threateningly. Apparently the ad break gives him enough time to cool down, though, because instead of bringing the thing down on Kirk’s skull, he hesitates.

“Had enough?” Kirk asks. “I didn’t realize what it took to get under that thick hide of yours.”

Spock slowly lowers the thing, looking a bit regretful about having to do so. Kirk says he doesn’t know what Spock’s so mad about, anyway. “It isn’t every first officer who gets to belt his captain...several times.” Dude, you just stood there and unleashed a screed of personal and racial insults at your best friend here. A “sorry” probably wouldn’t go amiss here.

“You did that to me deliberately,” Spock realizes, and then realizes that the spores are gone. “I don’t belong anymore.” Kirk explains that since the spores are “benevolent and peaceful,” violent emotions overwhelm and destroy them—that’s the answer. Which...definitely makes sense, chemically speaking. Sure.

Spock, still looking pretty glum about all this, points out that Kirk’s method might have worked out alright for curing one person, but they’ve got over five hundred infected people down there, and trying to pick a fight with all of them probably isn’t going to go so well. But no worries, Kirk’s got another plan. He wants Spock to rig up a subsonic transmitter that they can hook up to the ship’s communications system and then broadcast to all the communicators. Spock says he can do that, but hesitates as Kirk turns to leave. “Captain. Striking a fellow officer is a court martial offense,” he points out.

Kirk mulls over that one for a moment. “We-ll...if we’re both in the brig, who’s gonna build the subsonic transmitter?” he says, and Spock concedes the point. Besides, it’s a bit late to be worrying about striking fellow officers now.

[ID: A gif from The Naked Time of Kirk and Spock standing in an Enterprise conference room. Kirk slaps Spock across the face, and Spock retaliates by backhanding Kirk so hard he is thrown across the table in the center of the room and falls onto the floor on the other side.]

But what with the insults and the punching and de-sporing and everything, it seems that something has clean slipped Spock’s mind: Layla’s still down there waiting for him to come back. As she stands around the field, McCoy wanders over and asks what’s up. When she tells him that she’s been out here for some time now waiting for Spock and Kirk to come back, he gentlemanly offers to fix that for her and calls the ship. Spock picks up, and Layla asks if everything’s okay up there.

With obvious discomfort, Spock tells her that yes, he’s...quite well. Layla, oblivious to anything being wrong, asks if she can come up there, because she wants to talk to him, and besides, “I’ve never seen a starship before.” Wait a minute, never seen a starship before? You’re on a planetary colony! What, did you drive here?

Spock asks if she’s still at the beamdown point, and if McCoy’s there. Layla says yes to both, so Spock tells her to give the communicator back to McCoy, since she won’t need it to transport, and he’ll have her beamed up in a few minutes. One might think that at this point they might take this easy opportunity to also beam up McCoy and get him cured (it shouldn’t be hard, McCoy is already 85% comprised of negative emotions to begin with), so he can start investigating these spores, just in case Operation Go For the Eardrums doesn’t work. But they don’t. Kirk awkwardly asks Spock if he’s sure about talking to Layla while she’s still spore’d, but Spock just nods and heads to the transporter room.

He beams Layla up, and she happily runs over to give him a hug—they’ve been parted ever so long, after all—but when he just stands there stiffly, not reacting at all, she slowly pulls back and says, “You’re no longer with us, are you?”

Spock says it was necessary. Layla begs him to come back to the planet and belong again, but he says he can’t. She starts crying and saying she loves him. "I said that six years ago, and I can't seem to stop repeating myself. On Earth, you couldn't give anything of yourself. You couldn't even put your arms around me. We couldn't have anything together there. We couldn't have anything together anyplace else. But we're happy here. I can't lose you now, Mr. Spock, I can't." Look, if the only time the relationship you want can possibly work out is when the other person is being mind-controlled by alien spores, I think it may be time to consider whether this is really a relationship you should be pursuing in the first place.

“I have a responsibility to this ship...to that man on the bridge,” Spock gently tells her. “I am what I am, Layla. And if there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.”

Layla soon realizes that all this anguish has resulted in her getting de-spore’d as well, and she’s not happy about it. “And this is for my own good?” she demands angrily. Well...yes, I mean, it is, but Spock doesn’t say that. Nor does he respond when she asks, “Do you mind if I say I still love you?” but she hugs him again anyway.

[ID: Layla tearfully embraces Spock and says, "You never told me if you had another name, Mr. Spock." Spock replies, "You couldn't pronounce it."]

ROMANCE

We’re obviously supposed to read this little story arc as the tragic tale of true love destined never to be, because Spock is only able to express his feelings for Layla under the influence of the spores. He has experienced paradise, but alas, he cannot linger there, and so on. It’s never set all that well with me, though. The problem is we never really get Spock’s side of the story and so it leaves open the question of how much he actually did want this relationship in the first place. Layla said earlier that “Mr. Spock’s feelings were never expressed to me” so evidently he never outright said “I love you but I can’t be with you” or anything of that sort to her. When they’re alone in the field before Spock gets spore’d he seems stiff, standoffish, awkward, and deflects all of her overtures with what appears to be discomfort, even annoyance. He clearly has no interest in talking about whatever history they had together, even when they’re all alone. For all that Layla goes on about how she can see a side of Spock that his crewmates don’t, we see interactions with those crewmates multiple times throughout the show that prove that Spock is perfectly capable of showing people that he cares about them, even if the ways he does it are usually a bit atypical. We don’t see any of that in his initial interactions with Layla.

If we accept the premise that the spores only make people act as they would if they had no inhibitions or fears holding them back, then yes, Spock saying he loves Layla after he’s been spore’d would indicate that he did secretly love her all along. The problem is that we know the spores make people do things that they would not ordinarily want to do. You think all of those four hundred thirty people on the Enterprise secretly longed for a quiet life among the soil but all chose to instead join the space navy for some reason? Should we believe Scotty is actually deep down perfectly okay with abandoning his beloved ship to a slowly decaying orbit? I doubt that Kirk has always harbored a subconscious desire to give up exploring the final frontier to pursue a peaceful agrarian lifestyle, but he very nearly does do just that. So the question of how much a relationship with Layla is what Spock “really” wanted seems to be a bit hazy.

Mind, I’m not saying this makes Layla an evil person who deliberately drugged Spock so she could have a relationship with him or anything like that. It’s clear throughout the episode that the spores induce those who are infected by them to spread them around to anyone nearby who’s not in the spore fandom yet, so there’s no reason to believe Layla would act as she did if she wasn’t under the influence herself. I just personally find it hard to buy into the tragic romance of a star-crossed relationship when the thing crossing the stars is that one of the participants is only enthusiastic about the whole thing when they’re not fully sober. It makes me question how much of their previous relationship really was Spock having feelings for Layla but being unable to express them, versus Layla projecting a lot of feelings onto him and writing off his disinterest or discomfort as denial.

Kirk and Spock go back to working on the signal, while Layla deals with her heartbreak by disappearing into thin air for the rest of the episode. Spock says that the sound they’re going to send out is on a frequency that won’t be heard so much as felt, but apparently it will be felt quite emphatically. Kirk compares it to putting itching powder on someone. Which may seem like another silly technobabble deus ex machina, but speaking from personal experience, driving someone into a frantic frustrated fit by playing an obnoxious noise just on the edge of hearing sounds totally legit. All they need to complete the sensory overload meltdown experience is find a way to simulate some flickering florescent lights and put tags on the backs of the uniform shirts.

And indeed, as the device starts to work, we see Sulu and DeSalle working in one of the fields—for a certain value of ‘working,’ anyway, they’re kind of just digging around aimlessly—when Sulu accidentally elbows DeSalle in the back. He apologizes, but DeSalle shoves him back, and before long they’re having a full-on brawl right there in the field, which can't be good for the crops. As the device on the ship hums away, two more crewmembers start their own fight over by the farmhouse, and when a third tries to break them up he promptly gets dragged into it as well.

The effects haven’t quite reached everyone just yet, though, as we see McCoy chillaxing under a tree with some unspecified concoction. Sandoval strolls up and says that he’s been thinking about what sort of work he could assign McCoy to. When McCoy protests that he does one kind of work and that’s doctorin’, Sandoval says that he’s not a doctor anymore—they don’t need any doctors here.

This does not go over well.

[ID: A gif showing McCoy reclining against a tree in a grassy meadow, a stalk of grass in one hand and a grass of something brown with several leafy stalks in it. Sandoval is standing over him. McCoy says, "Oh, no?" and then slowly stands up, tosses his grass stalk aside, looks Sandoval in the eye and says, "Would you like to see just how fast I can put you in a hospital?"]

Undeterred, Sandoval says that he’s the leader and he’ll be assigning McCoy whatever work he wants to, but when he tries to walk away McCoy pulls him back and snarls, “You’d better make me a mechanic. Then I can treat little tin gods like you.” Sandoval throws a punch at him, but McCoy dodges and whacks Sandoval in the stomach, putting him out flat on the ground. See, I told you it wouldn’t be hard to cure McCoy. Everyone else on the Enterprise was perfectly happy to give up their careers to go do a bit of light farming, but tell McCoy he can’t be a doctor anymore and no amount of spores are going to save you.

While Sandoval is busy rolling around on the ground, McCoy stands there looking confused for a moment, then—presumably having only just now noticed that instead of a mint julep he’s actually been drinking a coke with a bunch of cilantro in it—throws his drink aside and admits that he’s not sure why he just clobbered Sandoval. But Sandoval has other concerns for the moment. With a look of dawning horror familiar to all us chronic procrastinators, he abruptly realizes that they haven’t actually been doing anything all this time. “No accomplishments, no progress. Three years wasted. We wanted to make this planet a garden...”

McCoy points out that the colonists really will have to leave—they can’t survive here without the spores handling all that radiation for them. But the dream’s not over; the colonists could be relocated to start again somewhere a bit less deadly, if that’s what they want.

“I think I’d...I think we’d like to get some work done,” Sandoval muses. “The work we set out to do.”

McCoy calls Spock and says that Sandoval wants to talk to Kirk. Spock notes to Kirk that the crew are all starting to rather sheepishly call in by now. Sandoval tells Kirk that the colonists will fully cooperate with the evacuation now, and Kirk tells him to start making the preparations. Real ones, this time.

Sometime later, everyone’s back on the bridge getting ready to head out. McCoy reports that he’s examined all the colonists and they all remain in perfect health. “A fringe benefit left over by the spores.”

One would think that this would have been quite the eventful afternoon for the medical sciences, given that they just discovered spores with such incredible healing powers that they can make people regrow organs, and McCoy just confirmed that anything healed by the spores stays healed after the spores are gone. Sure, they’ve got some side effects, but Kirk’s already discovered a simple way to get rid of the things once they’re no longer needed. Strap someone to a bed, give em a facemask full of spores, let them lay there for a while having a nice buzz while they heal their cancer or whatever, then play an irritating noise at them until they sneeze the spores back out again. Boom. Done. You’ve solved medicine. Or, y’know, we could vacate the planet and never speak of it ever again, that works too.

Notably unmentioned by anybody during this little denouement is the fate of the other two settlements on the planet that Sandoval mentioned back near the beginning of the episode. The length of the timeskip isn’t specified, so it’s possible that the crew went and collected them as well in the interim, but we never get any details as to how that little adventure went, assuming that it did happen and that the Enterprise isn’t about to get halfway to the next starbase before Kirk realizes he forgot something.

As they watch the planet diminish behind them on the viewscreen, McCoy muses that this was “the second time man’s been thrown out of paradise.” Kirk disagrees. "No, no, Bones, this time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren't meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through--struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums."

Spock remains unimpressed by this bit of philosophizing. “Poetry, Captain. Nonregulation.” Kirk notes that they haven’t heard anything from Spock about this whole ordeal, since, y’know, that definitely seems like something Spock would want to talk about. He says he’s got little to say about Omicron Ceti 3.

[ID: A close-up of Spock on the bridge as he says, "Except that for the first time in my life...I was happy."]

oh my god someone needs therapy

On that INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL note, the Enterprise flies away and the episode ends.

It’s somewhat baffling to me that of all the quite reasonable objections available to the whole situation with the spores, the main problem that Kirk—and by extension, the episode—seems to have is that “the spores make things too EASY and mankind was meant to STRUGGLE!!!” I mean, effectively what we had going on here was people being drugged without their consent into a state that overwrote their own desires, ambitions, emotions and much of their individual personalities and replaced them with bland, happy conformity to a goal and lifestyle none of them actually chose. That seems a bit worse to me than “people weren’t working hard enough.” Kirk goes on and on about how the spores made things too easy, but what they really did was make people apathetic to whether they succeeded at anything or not. Sandoval’s horrified when he’s cured of the spores because the colonists had much different plans for their colony; far from making those plans easier, the spores made them impossible. The dreams and desires of the Enterprise crew for a life of exploration among the stars would have been forever unmet if they had permanently joined the colony, they just wouldn’t have been able to care. Kirk seems to believe that the ultimate evil of the spores is that they deprive people of ambition; to me it seems that the worse evil is that they deprive people of their individuality and their autonomy.

Then there’s the fact that while the spores make people happy and friendly, they also make them remarkably blasé about the well-being of anyone who isn’t part of their collective. They have to be—caring about whether someone else is upset or hurt would make them unhappy, after all. Spock and McCoy are completely unconcerned with the mounting distress of their best friend, and beyond peer pressuring him to get with the program and take the spores like everyone else, they don’t seem to much care if he remains the only unhappy person on the planet. The colonists seem completely unbothered by the fact that all the animals they brought with them died a rather grueling death by radiation poisoning. Everyone on the Enterprise is happy to abandon the ship and join the colony with no message left behind for Starfleet, with apparently not a thought to spare for any friends and family back home, who would only ever know that their loved ones disappeared into space never to be seen again.

Or at least, they would if things actually went according to plan, which they probably wouldn’t, because the spores also made everyone cheerfully oblivious to the idea that anything could potentially cause a problem or pose a threat to them. After all, if Kirk hadn’t had a recovery at the last minute, the Enterprise would have been left unmanned in orbit around the planet, with no way for anyone in the colony to get back onboard. Uhura also goes out of her way to make sure that they no longer have any off-planet communication. So it’s probably not going to be long before Starfleet notices that one of their prize starships has abruptly gone incommunicado, and I’m willing to bet they’d be a bit quicker on that investigation than they were about checking on a tiny backwater colony (although it is Starfleet, so who knows, really). And since they know exactly where the ship was headed on its last recorded mission, it probably won’t take them long to find it. If Starfleet sends another ship along to investigate quickly enough, they’ll find the abandoned Enterprise hanging out in orbit around the planet, and Kirk’s log clearly lays out what happened, so all the other ship has to do is figure out how to neutralize the spores and everyone’s going to get rescued from Omicron Ceti 3 pretty quickly whether they want to be or not.

If Starfleet doesn’t show up in time...Kirk says the ship can be “maintained in orbit” for several months, but then what? It can’t stay up there forever. Sooner or later, the orbit will decay and the ship’s going to crash into the planet, and if it crashes anywhere near one of the colonies, their magic healing powers are going to be put to the test. Also their magic agriculture powers--rich soil and mild weather is all well and good, but is that going to be enough to carry all those crops through the ensuing environmental effects of an impact that big? Especially since, as already mentioned, the colony has enough to feed them and that’s about it—so they really can’t afford to lose any crops for very long.

Sure, maybe the Enterprise wouldn’t crash close enough to any of the colonies to ruin them, but why take the risk? All they had to do was have a helmsman set it on a course out of orbit, then take a shuttlecraft back to the planet. Doesn’t occur to anyone, evidently. Nor do we see anyone bothering to bring any supplies or equipment from the ship to the colony, even though there’s gotta be lots of stuff up there that would be useful. All in all, it seems quite likely that Paradise would have eventually collapsed in on itself simply because the spores make people unable to pay attention to any potential threats or obstacles long enough to do anything about them.

So what’s the moral here? ‘Society can’t survive if everyone is stoned all of the time’? I mean, okay? Sure? Cool? Glad we sorted all that out.

That said, despite having ranted for the past nine hundred words about the weird moral, I’m not saying this episode is bad. As a serious point about human nature I don’t find it especially compelling—YMMV, but I just personally tend to side-eye stories that center around the idea of “wouldn’t it be awful if we all had it too easy??”--but as fifty minutes of extremely Star Trek-y silliness it’s glorious. We’ve got Spock hanging from a tree and talking about dragons while making out in the grass, McCoy going full Georgia and wandering about with something he thinks is a mint julep, Kirk stomping around in increasing agitation as he tries to get some sense out of somebody and then making emo log entries while he sits on the bridge alone...it’s great.

The original draft of this episode apparently had the romantic subplot be for Sulu, who would have been motivated to stay with Layla after having been diagnosed with a serious medical condition that was cured by the spores, kind of like the eventual plot with McCoy in For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky. D.C. Fontana rewrote the story to focus on Spock, since if you have an episode about something that causes a strong emotional reaction, throwing Spock and his ever-present internal conflict into the mix is kind of the most immediately obvious way to generate some pathos and drama. The spores originally granted those affected with them telepathic abilities, enabling them to link with everyone else who’d been spore’d and form a hivemind. There are some traces of this in the final episode with spore’d people talking about “joining us” and “being one of us” and so on, but without the telepathy part it just kind of makes it sound like they’re in a cult. Also, the cure for the spores would have been consuming alcohol, so presumably in that draft McCoy never got infected.

For the purposes of the Trek Tally I’m going to count the spores as a Space Disease, which might be broadening the umbrella of that term a bit but hey, close enough. Next time we’ll be looking for life, Jim, but not as we know it, in The Devil in the Dark.

#star trek #star trek TOS #star trek TOS season one #recap tag #star trek TOS recaps #1.24 This Side of Paradise #1.24 This Side of Paradise recap

93 notes · View notes

qvid-pro-qvo · 4 years

Text

fuck, marry, kill

aos!leonard mccoy x female!reader, who’s a nurse on the starship enterprise.

word count: 5885

rating: explicit (workplace sex, at the end, for fun.)

part one of more than a game, you and me.

A silly game from your academy days gets interrupted, leaving you to think over how you really feel about the great Dr. McCoy.

“Goddammit, bastard, son of a fucking bitch,” you hissed, shaking your hand after yanking it back from the control panel next to your shower. It had the gall to shock you, one that rippled down your arm and almost made your other hand drop the towel you clung to for decency. Somehow the same steady hands that could wield a pair of hypodermics and a tricorder without thinking about it managed to break every other piece of equipment on the Enterprise.

A year since you got transferred, a year since the last major headache, and you had managed to build up a routine. Waking up to beta shifts until the six-month mark when you transferred to alpha shifts that gave you more to do without the headaches of fighting artificial daylight. Crew physicals and routine exams for viruses carried onboard from earth until all the crew had been cleared. Lunches six hours in, dinner six hours after that, followed by a jog, some yoga, a shower, and then… repeat.

It was a good routine. One that made you friends with other nurses in blue and engineers in red and a few on the captain track who came in more often because of their proximity to the action. You could now say “hello” to Sulu and “good morning” to Chekov and other niceties to a couple other officers. And they’d smile back, and all in all nothing was disrupted. Your routine kept you going.

But now, that routine was stopped in its tracks.

With a little huff, you shook your head. Fortunately for you, your connections through routine hypos and the occasional healing after a scuffle gave you one particularly good friend. One who was very good at fixing up the Enterprise in any state she was in. And because of your clumsiness and tendency to get shocked, that friend was simply a comm unit away. Decency first, of course.

“Y/N to Scotty.”

“Aye, lass, Scotty here.”

A sigh of relief that he wasn’t on break, or worse, sleeping. That’d been a bear you wouldn’t want to disturb more than once. Your fingers tapped away, allowing his voice to fill the room rather than sound tinny coming from the communicator and your hands to hunt for a shirt.

“Yeah, we’ve got a situation. My shower isn’t working?”

“Is that right,” the chief engineer replied, and you could tell by his voice that under the amusement there was distraction. Your problem was not the only one on his plate, then. Or at the very least, not his main focus.

“Yeah, that’s right. Shocked me, as a matter of fact, when I tried to get it going.”

“Mmm.” Make that a lot of distraction.

“Scotty?”

“Yeah, lass?”

“Can you come fix it?”

“Fix what?”

With a soft sigh you pulled your shirt over your head, shaking out your hair before pulling it up into something passable for company.

“My shower, Scott. Y’know, again, the one that shocked me. That’s not turning on. That shower.”

“Shocked you? Well, this is the first I’m hearing about it,” he scoffed, indignant, and your eyes went wide with disbelief before you heard his chuckle.

“Oh, so I’m the entertainment for this evening, then,” you muttered with a scowl, scrounging around for the pants you just had on and the regulation zip-up you could walk around the halls in.

“Of course, Y/L/N,” he retorted. “I was wondering when the next time you’d call was. After all, it’s been, what, almost a week since our last incident with the replicator, hasn’t it been?”

“Two weeks, thank you,” you snapped, the pants snatched off the floor and shaken out with a vengeance. One foot began making its way inside the leg of the pants, the other hopping on the floor. “Monty, please, I just got off shift, I’m tired, and I’m sweaty, and there were three cases of Takarian bronchiolitis that we had to treat with airborne precautions. Never mind next week’s also Christine’s birthday, who I love with all of my heart but the party I got roped into planning for, of fucking – agh!”

“Y/N!”

Bouncing on one leg could only last for so long, of course. Your head thankfully did not contact anything with a hard surface. Your ass, however, got the brunt of the blow, specifically your tailbone.

“Y/N?”

When you groaned, you heard the relief, as well as the stifled laughter.

“Can you just please come fix my shower? I think there’s an analgesic hypo with my name on it back in the med bay.”

Of course, you weren’t one to completely bypass the rules. The Enterprise had enough of that in places other than the medical unit, and your chief medical officer, Dr. McCoy, was a stickler for right and wrong and lines that shouldn’t be crossed. So, your hypodermic needle was checked out by Christine, administered by her, and all logged and dated with a note about the situation. And, because your appointment didn’t technically end for another fifteen minutes, there was enough time for a little bit of gossip.

Your type of news always was the kind of shit that got the whole crew talking. The next adventure, who was sleeping with who, the drama that came out of confessions when the ship was falling apart. Anything to work through the monotony. But Christine’s favorite topic was almost always you, much to your chagrin.

“You know I don’t have a love life,” you said with a roll of your eyes, sitting up on the biobed and letting your feet dangle off of the edge. “That hasn’t changed in the three days since you asked me last.”

“I do know you’re at the very least no fun about it,” she responded with an eye roll, fingers tracing over your vitals the bed collected and reported. “There’s hundreds of people on this ship, and you’re telling me that none of them catch your eye? What about the chief engineer?”

Immediately your eyes widened, and you couldn’t help the laugh that left you. “Scotty? No. No, no, we’re just friends, aggressively friends. He keeps me around because I’m the only one who gives him stuff to do during the night shifts. Without me breaking lightbulbs it’d be too dull.”

Of course, her eyebrow crept up in suspicion, but when your gaze held steady, she dropped her eyes, waving a hand like the idea was preposterous anyway.

“All right. So, no Scotty. Any ensigns?”

“No.”

“Lieutenants?”

“No.”

“Cadets?”

“Oh, my god, Christine,” you gasped out with a laugh, jumping off of the biobed, smacking her on the arm. “Stop it.” Your eyes glanced around the med bay, but just like every beta shift began, it was pretty damn quiet. Not a soul in sight besides the two of you. “There’s no one.”

“Well, you’re no fun,” she sighed, pushing off of the wall to meet you nose to nose. “But there’s gotta be someone who at least catches your eye, right?”

“Chris…”

“Someone on this ship you’d be willing to fuck – “

“No, we’re not – “

“- marry, maybe – “

“Christine, I swear to god – “

“- or kill?”

Again, your eyes darted around, but at that point the game had been called. A throwback to your time in the academy, when your classmates would find the local bars and a booth to heckle each other in. When passersby would be unknowingly subjected to a game based on nothing but good fun, and usually a whole lot of booze.

Simple premise. Three names called out. Each gets a label, and the rounds continue until the players decide they’ve had enough. Called anywhere, at any time, and Christine had thrown the gauntlet.

“You’re on duty,” you pointed out, but you leaned back on the biobed, crossing your arms over your chest.

“And if there’s a patient I’ll tend to them. But you’ve got nowhere to be, and if I have a say we’re finding someone on this ship for you,” she pointed out, before swiping your scans away from the vicinity and joining you on the bed. “Three rounds. I bet you I can do it in three rounds.”

With an eye roll you proceeded to glare at her, but her grin did not budge once, and with a sigh you just nodded.

“Perfect. Why don’t we start with a throwback? Old classmates? Harrison, Twyla, and Betty.”

Your smile crept up on your face, and without a second thought you rattled it off. “Fuck Twyla, marry Harrison, kill Betty. Obviously.” Considering that two of the three weren’t even on the ship, you knew that it was more a warmup than anything. Lots of pretty people at the Starfleet Academy.

“All right. And then… oh, what about the bridge crew?”

“Christine,” you groaned, hand smacking over your face. “We’re in public.”

“There’s no one here, and you can’t chicken out of the second round! Look, we’ll do… Lieutenant Sulu, Lieutenant Uhura, and Ensign Chekov.”

Your jaw clenched. Forget about saying hi to Sulu ever again.

“I would… I would…”

“C’mon. You can say it, Y/N.”

“Fine, fine!” But you couldn’t help your laughter as you shoved Christine’s arm again. “I would… I would fuck Uhura, marry Sulu, and – “

“And kill Chekov? He’s got a baby face! You’re gonna kill him where he stands!”

“Christine, this is not real life,” you reminded her with a hiss, shaking your head before beginning to walk towards the door. “I’m leaving before I end up having to resign.”

“Oh, no! We’ve got one more go.”

“I’m walking. My tailbone doesn’t even hurt anymore. The miracle of modern medicine.”

“Y/N!”

“What?”

“Captain Kirk.”

“No, Christine.”

“Commander Spock.”

“Stop!”

“And Dr. Mccoy!”

“What about me?”

Your heart stopped.

“Nurse Y/L/N, is that right?” Dr. McCoy, the man himself, stated, raising a brow as he moved into the med bay, boxes stacked up in his hand. Christine did the smart thing, moving forward to help the doctor carry them inside, but your feet were cemented to the floor, mouth a little agape, color flooding your cheeks.

“Y-Yes! Hello, sir, I was just – uh, I was just ��“ you stammered, turning to follow them both with your eyes as their load was dropped on one of the biobeds. “Well. I was just leaving, really.”

“She had an appointment,” Christine offered, her best and most polite smile on for your shared boss, who seemed too tired to do more than nod. “And we were just discussing… shifts?”

“Shifts.” Again, Dr. McCoy’s brow raised, and with skilled fingers he reached to slide them along the seam, a hiss sounding out as they opened up, bearing unloaded hypodermics, some bandaging supplies.

“Shifts.” Your voice was weak as you confirmed it, but while his eyes were down Christine gave you a subtle nod, winking even as you scowled at her. “You see, I was just – I was just wondering if I could take the beta shift next week, and… well. That’s a change I need you to sign off on. Dr. M’Benga and dr. Olson didn’t have a preference when I asked them.”

“Uh-huh,” was the gruff response, and as his fingers reached up to scratch at his chin, something like amusement seemed to play in his eyes. Although, thinking about it, you reasoned it was probably just the exhaustion and the lights in the med bay you saw instead. “So, you scheduled an appointment with Christine and my medbay, takin’ up one of the biobeds here, to talk about shift changes?”

“No. No, no, it wasn’t just about that,” you got out, more heat rising to your cheeks, and thankfully your feet were moving backwards, towards the door, as their hands slid into gloves and prepped the new cargo for treatment.

“She… took a spill in her quarters. Needed an analgesic. I did a scan to make sure it wasn’t anything more than a bruised tailbone and then gave her a dose of lidocaine for the area and acetaminophen for the pain.” Of course, Christine could chime in, sounding composed, while you had just managed to regain motor functioning.

“I see,” McCoy responded, and there was a brief moment where you were sure he was gonna call your bluff. You didn’t even remember right away that there was a hypo-stick in the first place, and the lidocaine definitely did not happen, right? But then, something, almost like a smirk washed over his features. They relaxed, and those eyes lit up again, deep and dark and warm. It was like taking a shot of whiskey, the sour leaving behind something that made your breath catch.

“You know you could just say you fell on your ass, Nurse Y/L/N.”

The stories about Dr. McCoy in a nutshell. No southern charm, just a sweet Georgian gut punch. Humor hiding in the comment, of course, but at that point your embarrassment made it taste pretty damn bitter.

Thankfully, though, the moment was gone. The smirk vanished, the exhaustion seemed to settle over him like a blanket, and his eyes glanced toward you once again before shrugging. “beta shift works for me. Just don’t let it screw with your head too much and find someone who’s willing to trade.”

“That’s… yes. Well - good night, sir,” you got out, biting your lower lip, bowing your head before shooting another glare at Christine. “Good night, Nurse Chapel, and I’ll see you both… when I see you.”

“Good night, Y/N,” Christine called out, and the good doctor managed a hum of acknowledgement, his attention already pulled away from your retreating form. And if there was a second glance at you, it was nothing more than confirmation that the night was back to peace and quiet.

“I am never going to recover from this.”

“Mmm,” Scotty ground out, his arm elbow deep into the guts of the Enterprise.

“I mean it, Monty!” You cried out, back flat on your bed, arm thrown across your face but leaving your mouth wide open to complain. “Jesus Christ and now I’ve gotten myself roped into beta shifts, ready to be bored out of my skull for a whole damn week. He thinks I’m an idiot. An idiot and insane!”

“D’you think?” Was the reply, but the lack of attention didn’t bother you one bit. You were barely paying attention.

No, your head was running wild, with the fear that the greatest job you had, the job you were best at, was now at risk because of some dumb game you played with Christine. What if Dr. McCoy had heard all of it? What if he had just walked in because he had heard enough, and then you’d get called into his office, not a smirk in sight, and request your resignation? Could he do that? Off of a conversation?

“Y/N!” Scotty called out, and that’s what finally broke your spiral downward, your body shooting up to a sitting position, looking up to see Scotty staring out of the bathroom at you. Your water was running, you could hear it, and Scott was grinning from ear to ear, some kind of tool tucked behind his ear.

“All fixed,” he crowed with joy, brushing his hands off on his uniform. When he leaned on the doorway, his eyes were gazing around the rest of the place, as if it was just waiting to break on him, too. “computer, shut down the shower. Now, what were you saying, lassie? Somethin’ about our chief medical officer, yes?”

And as Scott smiled at you, no recognition of your crisis in him, you just smiled back, standing up to give him a hug. Even without saying anything, he had the best ideas.

“Nothing, Monty. Thanks for the fix.”

He was hustled out a few moments later, after a playful argument taking bets on what piece of machinery in this poor room would fall apart next (he was a fan of the faulty replicator, but you had a gut feeling it’d be the temperature control). But soon he was out of the room, and you knew that ignoring the whole thing would be the best option.

Except with Christine, ignorance was never an option for bliss. When your padd beeped, and then your communicator, you were forced to answer the message, looking to see a little smiley face emoticon with a message that left your heart falling to the floor.

“Your answer? :)”

Your answer? For the game? After all of that and Christine had the gall? But you could see her smile, even from this far, a smile that made you smirk.

But they were the rules, and so the question was left in your head. What was your answer? What were the options?

You thought about it as you started to get ready for bed, t-shirt set on the counter in the bathroom, hot shower started. Your hair was put up before you stripped, your face splashed with water and a towel as steam began to fill the room.

“Captain Kirk.” No personal experience with him, but you, like everyone on the ship, had seen him around. Had heard the legends. There wasn’t a soul who didn’t seem stricken by the love bug when it came to him, blond hair perfect, smile bright, blue eyes startlingly, well, blue. Friendly, quick, brave. He was the perfect man. But not everyone knew Christine. Christine, who’d had the lovely interaction with Cadet Kirk, at the time, who ended up kicking him out of your shared dorm room after a bad argument gone bad. The air was cleared enough that he managed to get polite smiles from her, but after that captain kirk never had the appeal. He was a playboy. His nature, his right, you supposed. But not for you.

“Commander Spock.” Tall, handsome. But very Vulcan, and very taken. Now, you knew he had to have some kind of sweet side, and there was something, you guessed, about the confidence that his reliance on logic seemed to convey. After all, you’d heard him lecture a few times, and if you were honest that would’ve been when you were most attracted to him – using his knowledge and logic and proud spirit to lead others on the path toward serving the federation. But there was only so far that logic and a lack of emotion could go, and even though you’d heard of outbursts occurring where his emotion made their mark? No. Arguments aplenty.

And who did that leave?

“Dr. McCoy.”

At that point, you still hadn’t entered the shower, and the computer was telling you that the water was about to automatically turn off to preserve the function of the ship’s supply, but your head was no longer in your bedtime ritual, instead thinking about the mysterious Dr. Mccoy, the infamous Dr. McCoy.

The Dr. McCoy that made nurses cry every so often from his outbursts – never violent but fierce, always due to the protectiveness he had for his patients. The Dr. McCoy who was a doctor before he even became a cadet, with enough knowledge to fill a few books. The Dr. McCoy who had smirked at you with those dark and deep eyes, brown and full with some kind of life as he... Well, teased, southern accent lilting just a bit, maybe? That Dr. McCoy? The Dr. McCoy who saved lives and healed and always, always, always fought for more healthcare, for more hypos, for more protections for the nurses who somehow, even in the 24th century, managed to get pushed to the wayside?

When you stepped in the shower, it took a second for your fingers to bang at the control panel, your legs held together, and with a quick setting manipulation the steam quickly cleared, the water’s temperature dropping to ice cold. You were in, and you were out, but by the time you had dressed and brushed your teeth color had crept on your cheeks again.

All you could see were those eyes.

“Fuck.”

“Ah, Nurse Y/L/N,” the doctor said, eyes barely looking up from the singed hands of the red-shirt in front of him. “I need dermatological regen started here and a full body scan initiated on the biobed two over.”

Like nothing had even happened. Like your nightmare interaction two weeks ago hadn’t resulted in you unintentionally taking night shifts, resulting in a fucked up circadian rhythm and bags under your eyes, not to mention hours bored out of your skull.

Christine wasn’t here, and for once you were grateful. The last thing you needed was her eyes on you as you maneuvered around the doctor for a new shift while exhaustion lingered in the back of your mind. But it also meant that there was no one to offer a united front. Just you.

“Nurse Y/L/N?”

And you just spent the past minute mulling all of that in your mind. Making yourself look like a dumbass in front of the doc and his patient. The patient hadn’t noticed, staring at his own hands in horror, but Dr. McCoy seemed like he was regretting letting you back on to handle days.

Shit.

“You got it, doc,” you managed with a kind smile at the engineer, whose face you could now see as you walked past him toward the wall. Your hands expertly manipulated to storage system, and with the tricorder kept at your waist you gathered the necessities.

The great thing – you were damn good at what you did. Especially when you could focus on it. Your face was bright, uniform neat (until it wasn’t due to fluids of some kind), and your hands were steady. And no complicated patients came in that day, especially since no away missions were sent out and nothing malfunctioned horribly deep within the ship’s bowels.

And yet, no matter what you did, no matter how competent you showed you were, no matter how many laughs or smiles or even nods from the most stubborn of usual patients? Eyes were on you. Dark, deep eyes. The whole day, no matter where you went, a furrowed brow and focused tailed you, watching your interactions.

All in all, a good day. A great day, even, as you injected your last hypo and the padd reported a normal set of vitals, no reaction to the medication after fifteen minutes.

The shift was over, now. It was a good shift, one that required no personal defense. You gave report to the next nurse, said goodbye to the others on-duty. Your jacket put on, your hair pulled down and back up after the frizz of the day had ruined it. Nothing really to note.

So why did the doctor not let you out of his sight?

The rest of the week, the same routine. The flow you had gotten into on alpha shifts returned, and your week of off nights was left behind in favor of much better mornings. Back on track, the same old, same old. And yet with every shift there was a new weight, those eyes on you. It felt like if he wasn’t tending to a patient, and he wasn’t in his office in the back of the bay, he was watching you. Critical of every injection and admission. You were starting to go a little crazy with it, your mind going a million miles an hour, second guessing the simplest stuff just so you wouldn’t fuck up in front of the CMO.

But after a while, the fear of failure turned into anger.

What right did the doctor have to analyze like that? You were a great nurse! You treated your patients and coworkers fairly, with respect and compassion. What was there to complain about? You knew your shit, and here was McCoy, looking like the Enterprise regretted your assignment there in the first place. By the end of the week, that anger had built up, and once the weekend rolled around, and your two off days in a row loomed, you decided you were done.

“Is there something on my uniform, Dr. McCoy?” You asked, terse as you organized the vaccine cart, the new year meaning new yearly injections to follow up on.

His fingers had been steadily scrolling through files of crew members, but their nimble work paused at your question. His eyes had taken a break from tearing you apart, but now they were focused on you once again.

“Excuse me, Nurse Y/L/N?” He asked, his face looking almost pinched.

“I was just wondering if there was something on my uniform. Or in my teeth, perhaps. Something in my hair, maybe, too.” Your hands kept chugging along, automatically rearranging the colored liquids, but there was a tightness you couldn’t shake, a tension.

“Something in your hair?” The doctor repeated, and at his tone, somewhat amused, you finally turned to face him, your brow raised in a mimic of his.

“Well, there’s gotta be something, considering that you haven’t gone five minutes without staring at me like I’m your least favorite sight in the world. So, what is it? Uniform out of regs? Did I administer a medication wrong? Did a patient complain?”

At that point, the amusement had turned to indignation, maybe even anger. His jaw was clenched, and the padd in his hands had been abandoned on the desk in favor of crossed arms over his chest.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, nurse,” he ground out, eyes flicking around the med bay. But there was no one to look at. No one to distract or overhear.

You couldn’t help your laugh. “Oh, I think you do,” you snapped, and almost mocking him, your arms crossed as well, a hip cocked, your eyes like daggers. “Ever since I came back on alpha shift, you’ve been doing all you can to catch me in a fuck-up. Well, it’s not happening! I’m damn good at what I do, and no amount of posturing, even from the CMO, would ever change that!”

His scoff was hard, arms uncrossing so a hand could pull through his hair in disbelief. “darlin’,” he said, slowly, as if you were dense, “There’s no posturing going on. Your abilities aren’t being doubted. Hell, I don’t even know your first name. Whatever story you’ve got going on in your head? It’s a story!”

His frustration showed through his accent, a southern drawl that got thicker as his sentences rambled on. But that couldn’t distract you from calling him out on his bullshit, no matter his position.

“I’m not senile,” you huffed, eyes rolling hard, and your steps closer were unconscious, crowding him against the desk he was leaning on now. “And I’m definitely not blind. So, tell me what your problem is with me, so I can go back to focusing on my job, and you can go back to focusing on yours!”

“There’s no damn problem!” His voice was almost a yell now, but you had no fear, and you sure as hell weren’t backing down. “It’s nothing. Hell, there isn’t anything to be nothing.”

And then it clicked, it clicked, as you stared into brown eyes that wavered for a second, that scanned you top to bottom in a split second. A break, a tell, whatever it was, the pieces were put together, and you stood tall, not letting his height on you intimidate.

“You overheard me and Christine, didn’t you?” It was low. “Is that what it is?”

“Overheard.” The clench in his jaw hadn’t loosened, but you watched that brow tick upwards again, his arms uncrossing so his hands could rest on the desk.

“When you walked in on us, last week,” you clarified. “You overheard our game.”

The anger was gone now. Now that everything had slotted into place, you weren’t angry. A little bit embarrassed maybe, but not angry. Frustration felt like it was leaking out of you, but the tension wasn’t gone. The standoff wasn’t broken. And after all of what, you had just yelled at your superior officer.

“Dr. McCoy,” you started, uncrossing your arms, and holding them up to offer a truce. “I apologize. For yelling. That… well, it shouldn’t have been my first move. But. I can explain, if you want me to.”

There was no verbal reply, but his exasperation came through with a huff, and he simply lifted a hand, gesturing for you to go on.

“It’s just a game we’ve played since the academy. It was inappropriate to play while Christine was on shift. I apologize for that as well,” you told him pulling back to glance once more at the sliding doors, which mercifully stayed closed. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Just a game,” he repeated, and at first you didn’t catch the shift in his tone. Didn’t connect it with the glance toward the doors, or the way he stood from the desk, so that you were almost close enough to brush against him. “Just a game… using the names of your captain, commander, and chief medical officer?”

“Yes,” you said, shaking your head. “I’m sorry for that, as well, that definitely won’t be happening again.”

“A game talkin’ about who you’d rather have in your bed.”

Your eyes shot back to him, color flooding your cheeks.

“I’m… I’m sorry?”

“Well, that’s the game, isn’t it?” He said with a shrug, and as he leaned forward you could feel your breath catch in your throat, looking up into a face you imagined in your own quarters in the dead of night, as you let steaming water hit your skin. His jaw wasn’t clenched anymore, and his voice was a low rumble.

It wasn’t a threat. But it gave you goosebumps all the same, that the bass of his words, and you managed to nod, swallowing even as you kept your chin lifted.

“That’s the game. Is there a problem?”

And God, there was that smirk. Warm like whisky, it made your hands clench, your legs shift as that warmth rushed through you.

“No problem at all,” he hummed, and as he leaned close those lips brushed past your cheek. You could smell his cologne now, spice flooding your nose, the antiseptic of the day fading away. The chill in the air that always seemed to linger was gone, nothing but heat on your mind. Right in your ear you heard him, after a low chuckle that made you want to scream, beg him to get on with it. “I guess I’ve just been wondering what you would’ve answered, had I not… interrupted.”

Lunchtimes were surely coming to an end. Any second a patient could come in, could see the both of you crowded against the desk and know exactly why the whole place felt like an oven. But something possessed you, then, to bring one of your hands to his shoulder, the other to his hip, and lean just as close, almost pushing up on your toes to whisper right back.

“Give you one guess.”

Matches. That’s what that kiss felt like, a box of matches all lighting at once – the spark and the flash and explosion of heat as Dr. McCoy pulled back just enough to press his lips against yours. Nothing gentle, nothing kind, just a ferocity that made you moan against his mouth. His hands, broad and hot, began to roam on your back, settling just enough to pull you ever closer, so that your bodies were flush against each other. Your hand ended up twisted in his hair, the other fisted in his shirt. And just like matches, it was the start of a fire, one that had you both stumbling towards his office, the door sliding behind you with a quiet hiss.

“You were teasing me,” he ground out, directing you between kisses until the back of your thighs were against his desk. His hands gripped you then, around the waist, lifting you so you could sit. “And you didn’t even know it. Your voice over and over in my head, thinking about how it’d sound with my name.”

“So, you stare at my ass instead of asking me, hmm? What a southern gentleman,” you laughed, and for that you got teeth against your neck, a hand shoving your skirt up. The tips of his fingers seemed to skate over your skin, tickling your inner thigh. But those slow circles never quite got where you wanted, just left burning trails in their wake. “Talk about teasing.”

“At’s what you get for having a smart mouth,” he chuckled, face still against your neck. But soon he was back to kissing you, making your head spin.

“That I know how to use,” you shot back, once again between presses of lips and gasps of air. “I’m – I’m not just a pretty face.”

“Never said you were,” he purred, and this time both hands lifted your skirt high, reaching for the panties that did a poor job of hiding anything. “But why don’t you let me use my mouth first?”

“What an offer.” One you certainly wouldn’t refuse, especially since he looked hungry for it, for you.

There was a brief moment’s hesitation, his finger curled around the elastic and so close to ripping them off. But while his body was begging for it, his pants more than a little tight, his eyes met yours.

“Is that a yes?” He asked, his tongue running along his lips as he got to his knees.

Your gaze didn’t waver, a grin coming over you. “That’s a fucking yes, sir.”

His grin matched yours, sharp and wily as he rid you of your underwear, hands on your knees so he could pull them apart. You were bare to the cool air, and your teeth caught your lower lip as he leaned forward with a hot gasp on your inner thigh.

“Fucking gorgeous.”

The first thing you felt was the swipe of his tongue, a furious push against where you were wettest. A taste, almost, before he licked a line through your folds until his mouth enveloped your clit. You were swollen, desperate for it, and your gasp was thick as fingers once again tangled in his hair. If you said anything, it was a “please,” a “yes,” a “god, right there” as he worked.

He took you apart with his mouth, no hesitation as his tongue worked you over, swirling around your clit as a finger began to tease your entrance. It was with a gasp you came, his hand spreading you open with two fingers inside of you, and when you were able to see straight you saw that grin again, his chin wet, his lips red.

“Holy shit, Doc,” you huffed, your hand falling from his hair to his chin, thumb swiping across the mess and bringing it up to your mouth so you could get a taste of yourself. He did you one better, leaning forward to kiss you again, and the taste of him and you made you smile.

“Leonard.”

“Leonard,” you repeated, and when you pulled back his smile was softer. Almost… vulnerable. “Suits you.”

“Well, I hope so,” he laughed. “It is my name.”

“And it’s my turn,” you pointed out, reaching for his waistband. “I think you should move to the chair.”

#reader-insert #leonard mccoy x reader #bones x reader #leonard mccoy #christine chapel #montgomery scott #scotty #bones #fanfic #my fic #star trek: aos

99 notes · View notes

halfblood-fiend · 4 years

Text

On Humans and Nightmares - Star Trek TOS (with ST: Discovery lore), pre-relationship Kirk x Spock

Taking place shortly after the episode, The Conscience of the King, Kirk grapples with his dredged up trauma and Mr. Spock offers a solution taken from his own past personal experience with his adopted sister.

Words: 4,792

Rating: General Audiences

Warning(s): some hinting to the murder fate of Burnham’s parents, maybe some PTSD if you had annoying/irresponsible older siblings

Read it on AO3

Jim Kirk sat at the desk in his dimly lit quarters and tried to focus on the words swimming in his vision as best as he could. No matter how stubbornly he stared, the words refused to stay put, to stay sharp. In fact, they seemed rather hellbent in proving this to be an exercise in futility. The reports on the PADDs blurred together in his mind until he couldn’t remember which he had read and approved and which he hadn’t. His itchy eyes and heavy lids were all but begging him to go to sleep. Just get some damn sleep, you miserable fool!

Funny. His inner voice of reason sounded an awful lot like Bones. That thought distracted and amused him for a moment and Jim tried to stretch out his neck and shift in his chair to keep himself awake. Because no matter how badly his body or that inner voice of Bones wanted him to sleep, he couldn’t listen to either.

Or wouldn’t listen to it, as was more the case.

For three days now, nightmares had plagued him. It was silly and childish, and very much not befitting of a captain, to be so afraid of the dark—of sleeping—but Jim thought that if he had to relive Tarsus IV again one more time it might just be the death of him.

Maybe he should have gone straight to Bones for help after the first. If he went right now, maybe he could cajole his friend into giving him some sleep-inducing hypo-spray. Jim considered it…and then dismissed it. The risk of Bones pouring him a glass of whiskey and sitting Jim down to make him “talk it out” was just too great. That was the last thing Jim wanted to do, no matter how good a medically induced death-like sleep sounded. No, he couldn’t risk Bones deciding to do his job this time around. Jim already knew, definitively, whiskey or not, that he did not want to talk about this. What else was there to say about Tarsus that hadn’t already been said before?

Kodos had murdered thousands of people, and then Jim just let him get away with it. Twice. He hadn’t listened to his old friend or his gut and then the murderer was allowed to just…die. All those souls who could never rest easy… Jim had let them all down. Four thousand souls sitting heavy on his shoulders. Like ghosts, they haunted him, plagued him with nightmares as penance for not extracting their justice in their name.

There wasn’t enough whiskey in the galaxy to numb that, let alone in Bones’ stash.

So his perfect and flawless plan to avoid the nightmares? Avoid sleeping.

Jim massaged his eyes with his fingers until black dots popped in his vision. He sat back, yawning, and then the door chime rang. For a heartbeat, he stared at the bulkhead and considered pretending to be asleep, until a nasty thought occurred to him:

Jim had already shirked his duty as a survivor, it would be shameful to avoid his responsibility as a Captain too.

He set his mouth. “Enter,” he sighed.

The door slid open, revealing his first officer in the hallway. Mr. Spock glided inside, his eyes glued to his own PADD. He was already speaking before he had made it fully through the threshold.

“Captain, there seems to be minute inconsistencies in the computer’s analysis of the geothermal data we collected on Al’her V. I wonder if—”

The Vulcan glanced up at Jim for the first time and stopped dead. The look in his eyes made Jim wonder what an awful sight he was, to give his first officer such pause. He tried to give Spock a smile, hoped it wasn’t more of a grimace. “You wonder if?” he prompted.

“Sir…” Spock cocked his head to the side. Jim had hardly known Spock to hesitate when he had something to say, and something in the timbre of the other man’s single syllable made him curious. Jim felt it teetered on the edge of something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He stared at Spock’s mouth for a moment, fascinated by it. Waiting.

No, he was thinking too much into it. He was delirious. Jim rubbed his face again and said a quick prayer to anyone listening that his exhaustion wouldn’t give way to impropriety.

At least, not today.

“Captain,” Spock said seriously, appearing to make up his mind, “are you well?”

To tell the truth or to tell a lie? To tell or to lie? There were merits and downsides to both, and Jim attempted to weigh them all quickly in his sluggish mind.

“No, Spock, I…” Jim began… and then lost his nerve. “I’m just tired is all.”

“Tired,” Spock echoed. His dark eyes flicked to the bright green letters of the chronometer beside Jim’s bed and then to the neatly tucked in sheets. Been that way for days. “If you have not slept since our last full shift on the bridge, I calculate that you will not have slept for nearly thirty-six hours.”

“Oh?” It was thirty-eight, actually. If one counted the two hours before their shift that Jim’s last nightmare had stolen from him. But who was counting?

“That is unsafe for a human, and more so for a starship captain. You should consider seeing to your needs for the greater benefit.”

Jim could only find it in himself to nod. He knew that already. He had given the same sort of lecture to himself, but the consistency of the nightmares made it difficult. Even if he did fall asleep, the snatches of rest he got were fitful at best. So, what did Spock know about it? Jim didn’t have the patience right now to listen to this.

His displeasure may have shown on his face, for Spock’s brows knit. He approached Jim’s desk and sat gracefully on the other side of it, laying his PADD aside. When the man spoke again, his voice was gentler, and made Jim’s heart ache in his chest.

“It is something else, isn’t it? Something, perhaps, to do with the travelling theatre troupe? I do realize how the loss of Govenor Kodos must have affected you.”

“How could you possibly realize that?” Jim spat before he could stop himself.

Spock may have appeared unmoved by the venom in Jim’s voice, but he felt immediately guilty anyway. Spock didn’t have anything to do with it, he didn’t deserve to be snapped at. He was even, quite unexpectedly, trying to help Jim.

His heart shriveled up in his chest. He backtracked. “I’m sorry, Spock. I… yes. Kodos or Karidian or whomever he was… his end was…dissatisfying to say the least. I’ve been unsettled ever since.”

“You are dissatisfied with his death?”

“I am dissatisfied with the lack of justice in it.” Jim considered saying more. He considered telling his first officer that it was unfair and frustrating and made him feel like the useless child once again, watching the horror unfold from behind the stands. Powerless once more. But these were all feelings, just raw emotions and Spock would never, either by his nature or by his own desire, understand any of those.

And Jim refused to unburden himself by burdening this Vulcan with his humanity.

Besides, Jim was sure that Spock was sure there was more to it anyway. It was hard to put anything past him. The other man’s interlaced fingers pressed to his lips; Spock’s lovely, deep-set eyes regarded him.

“One would assume you wouldn’t lose sleep over mere dissatisfaction. “

“They’re just nightmares, Spock,” Jim said quickly, realizing that he had to act fast if he wanted to wriggle out of the same impromptu therapy he had wanted to avoid in Bones. “Old faces. Old nightmares. Nothing to be very worried about, but still. I don’t sleep well.”

“Ah.” Spock nodded, more to himself it seemed. “And you hoped that staying alert for as long as possible would—”

“Make me too tired to dream, yes,” Jim finished for him. “That was the idea, anyway. I wish there was a guarantee it would work…”

Spock was quiet a few moments, his brows knit a little while he thought. Jim found himself sleepily taking advantage of the vulcan’s downturned gaze. He hadn’t been this close to Spock for some time, trying to give him the distance he deserved, even though Jim wanted very badly to be near him. Constantly, inexplicably. Vulcans, he knew, didn’t appreciate that. But maybe if he drank in Spock’s face now, Jim could replace his nightmares with far pleasanter dreams. Filled with long steepled fingers and black bangs and dark eyes, curving pointed ears and high cheekbones—Spock suddenly looked up, brightly, for a Vulcan, and took Jim aback. “If I may…Jim, offer something of a solution?”

His name! Jim didn’t think Spock had ever used his name before. He was surprised that he had used ‘Jim’ and not ‘James.’ It was more proper, more expected. Overwhelmingly curious, Jim indicated that Spock continue.

“It has been my experience that humans, as social creatures, garner direct benefits from social interactions. I…knew of another human who often had nightmares in the first several years that I knew her. These dreams went away with time and mental discipline, but a temporary solution could be found once she was no longer alone in a room. It is…an imperfect solution, and perhaps it would make you uncomfortable, but as an integral member of this crew with so many lives at risk, I hope you give it proper consideration, Jim. So, it is by this logic that offer my company in your room tonight so that you may get some clearly much needed rest.”

Jim stared. He couldn’t believe his ears. Spock was offering to—what? —stay the night with him? Keep him company? That couldn’t be right. That seemed...so out of character. Not that Jim claimed to know his first officer very well beyond a spotless service record. Did he make a habit of keeping nightmare-having women company in their quarters? That wasn’t something that was on his file.

There is nothing else for it but to ask, Jim supposed.

“And…just what are you intending to propose? I am…afraid it’s unclear. Forgive me.”

Spock nodded as though there was nothing amiss and Jim wasn’t sitting across from him having an audible heart attack while being prodded with jealousy. “Not surprising given your sleepless state. I am offering my presence for whatever comfort you might take from it. It is my estimation that I may just as easily analyze reports in your quarters as in mine. Only here, I hypothesize I would aid in putting your mind to rest.”

Ah. So…just offering to stay over to be another body in the room. Jim tried to ignore the way his heart shrunk in disappointment.

He didn’t know what his imagination had been on about. That, all-of-a-sudden, Spock would crawl right into his bed was ludicrous.

And yet.

Rubbing his face again, banishing impure thoughts mingled with disappointment, Jim agreed. “It’s worth a shot. Better than what I’m doing, anyway, if I’m being honest. Though I will request that you don’t tell Bones. About the nightmares, I mean. He’d have my head if he knew I wasn’t reporting sleeping problems again.”

“It is my experience that our dear doctor has ‘had men’s heads’ for less, but I will comply.”

Jim smiled. “Bones is just a staunch believer in tough love, that’s all. I…appreciate what you’re doing, Spock. You will…wake me if—”

“I will keep an eye out, Captain, and wake you if anything seems amiss.”

Jim hadn’t missed the way Spock had switched back to his formal name-calling. He wasn’t upset about it. He wasn’t.

With a final lingering look, Jim rose and drowsily made his way to his bed. His heaviness hit him all at once. He had really managed to stay up for a long while, hadn’t he? He hadn’t pulled such a stunt since all-nighters in his academy days. But it wasn’t just his finals he was risking anymore. Spock was right about becoming a danger to his ship, of course. Jim was putting all their lives at risk with his fear.

He had half a mind to crawl into bed in his clothes, both for ease and to protect Spock’s eyes, but Jim knew he could never get comfortable like that. So he stripped down to his briefs and dove into bed as quickly as he could manage. He blushed, but made sure not to glance back at Spock, presumably still sitting at the desk.

Don’t think about him watching you undress.

Closing his eyes, Governor Kodos’ face swam into Jim’s vision right on time, but it didn’t bring with it the pangs of anger or regret. This time, the half-shadowed memory hardly bothered Jim at all.

This time, Jim didn’t have to face his demon alone.

Spock resumed his previous manual calculations and noted that Jim was quiet for several hours. It was just as well.

For a moment after he made his offer, Spock experienced a fleeting pang of regret, a sudden nagging at the back of his consciousness that he was being far too forward with the Captain.

Obvious, to put it bluntly. He was being obvious.

Whatever base attraction he had to the captain had to be controlled and ignored. He mustn’t let him know. Not because the Captain would be cruel or make an ordeal out of it—he wouldn’t, Spock was certain—but because Spock would never be able to live with the soft pity he could vividly imagine in Jim’s eyes if he learned of Spock’s infatuation.

Tonight, he had nearly given himself away.

While logical for a human to require the comfort of another person in the room with them to sleep, Spock had promptly assessed that his offer was being taken in a more physical direction than he had originally intended. Jim’s blank and uncertain surprise had all but confirmed it.

Spock caught and corrected his behavior, as he so often did around Jim, but decided not rescind his solution.

The offer, after all, had been genuine, and from genuine experience.

Since her arrival in their home, Michael Burnham had been plagued with nightmares.

At first, her shouts in the dead of night from down the hall were irksome to him, disturbing Spock either during his late meditation or his own slumber on numerous occasions. When it became apparent they would be a regular occurrence, Spock found himself uniquely concerned. Not only for himself, and how being woken through the night might affect his days in the Learning Center, but also for the affect it had on his mother, who was most often the one who would go to Michael and console her. He never spared much thought for the wellbeing of the new intruder, Michael Burnham until some time later.

After Michael had lived with them for a few months and his concern now included her, he got up the nerve to ask about her nightmares. It was a particularly cool afternoon, late in the year, and they worked together on assignments in a sunny spot on their kitchen table.

“Why do you have nightmares every night?”

Michael turned furtive in her seat across from him. She pulled the textbook they were sharing nearer to her PADD and pretended to be engrossed in it.

“What are they of?”

Shrugging, she mumbled, “I dunno. Just...bad dreams, I guess.”

Spock could tell she was lying but could also tell that pressing the issue outright would yield him no new results. He judged a new tack of lending helpfulness would fare better. Humans, generally most people, responded well to being helped by their peers.

“When I have bad dreams, father cautions me to meditate on them. Being afraid of them gives them power. He says it’s better to face it outright—”

“I guarantee you that we don’t have the same bad dreams, Spock.” Her voice was cold and hard, and her eyes did not move over the text in any attempt to appear she was reading anymore. “Can’t you just drop it?”

“I want to help you,” Spock insisted, leaning forward in his chair. “If you don’t do well in the Learning Center—”

“I’m doing fine!”

“No, you’re not. Your productivity is declining by 2.3 percent a week and your response times are most likely inhibited by—”

Michael clapped her hands to her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, crying, “Just STOP IT! Can’t you see I don’t want to talk about it? Just STOP ASKING!”

This was not going as well as he planned. “I only want to help—”

“My parents were murdered by Klingons right in front of me! I have to hear it every night! You can’t help that! NO one can!”

Spock's mouth snapped closed and he stared across at her. For a long time, he couldn't think of a single thing to say. What could be said?

And before he realized an apology should be tumbling from his lips, Michael had scooped up all her study materials and rushed from the table, tears streaming behind her.

Sybok slouched into the room just as Michael pushed past him. He looked up at Spock with bleary but accusing eyes. “What did you do now?”

“Nothing!”

“They might not have as much control over their emotions as our kind, but even humans don’t cry for ‘nothing’.”

“I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying to help!”

His older brother’s lean face was impassive, but Spock swore he saw the glint of mischief in his eyes. “Of course,” Sybok scoffed. “You did a great job.”

Scowling, Spock shoved away from the table and collected his own things.

Don’t be mad. I don’t feel anger. The way his human eyes pricked in the corners were in direct contradiction to his thoughts.

Spock was trying to help. And what did Sybok know about that? All he did was stay shut up in his room, sometimes for days on end, until Amanda lured him out with food. Spock didn’t think he had ever thought about helping Michael.

“Where are you going now?”

Spock ignored him. He kept his head low, intent on pushing past Sybok if he tried to stop him. But he met no resistance.

“How about you try not to make it worse this time,” Sybok called after Spock as he reached the stairwell.

Without glancing back, Spock took them two at a time.

He would speak with Michael again. He would apologize. He would—

But he never did get to that day, or any day after. The next time he saw Michael, she acted as though nothing had transpired at all. Spock had been forced to let it go.

Until one night, when both Sarek and Amanda were out for the evening at a dignitary’s gala.

Spock had nearly fallen asleep when a scream—Michael’s scream—echoed through the house.

Turning over, Spock pressed his pillow around his head and attempted to go back to sleep. Sybok was in charge. He would handle it in his parents’ absence. Likely in the same indifferent way he had handled “dinner”, but he would handle it all the same. Michael’s wellbeing wasn’t Spock’s problem tonight. Their parents had said…

And then a small, timid knock on his door roused him from the edges of a hazy dream.

Rubbing his eyes, swallowing his annoyance, Spock threw himself out of bed and stomped across the floor. He yanked on the handle, and there Michael stood, with tears in her eyes. Sneaking a glance down the hall, Spock saw Sybok’s door firmly closed and Michael’s thrown wide open.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, struggling to keep irritation out of his voice. “Are you hurt? Do you require a healer?”

Michael shook her head, but still the tears ran silently down her cheeks. “M-may I enter?”

Without a valid reason not to, Spock stood aside for her. She wiped her nose and tried to gather herself in the dark room as he waited. He focused on keeping perfectly still to keep his foot from tapping. It helped to busy himself counting the seconds of lost sleep in his head and attempting to calculate the impact they would have on his marks at the Learning Center the next morning. In the end, it was impossible to be accurate because his data was incomplete without a single important variable: how long this interruption would take.

“I can hear them, Spock,” Michael said finally. She was quiet and her voice sounded raw on the edges from crying. “Have you ever heard a Klingon growl before? My dad, he shouted at them, but he couldn’t stop—my mom—” Whatever else she might have said choked off in a sob.

Spock’s eyes grew wide and his body became tense. He was not equipped to deal with…this.

Suddenly, Spock understood. Sarek had informed him and his brother before she arrived of the fate of Michael Burnham’s real parents and warned them against asking Michael about it.

“Humans don’t often wish to discuss such things,” his father had said. “They find these emotions difficult to process and attempt to avoid them. You should respect that desire until she is ready.”

Sybok yawned in a way that felt very purposeful, but Spock had diverted Sarek’s reprimand by asking, “How long should we expect that to take?”

He pressed his mouth in a line as he stared at his eldest son for a moment before answering his youngest, “It is impossible to approximate. Perhaps she will never choose to speak of it, but we must maintain that it is her choice to do so.”

How he wished he had made the connection between this and Michael’s nightmares. It seemed so obvious now.

To his surprise (or maybe relief) she didn’t say any more, though neither did her tears subside. Spock wondered if he should attempt to comfort her somehow, but found he was ill-equipped to do that either. Spock couldn’t even raise his arms to offer a hug. He just stood there motionless, mouth glued shut, tongue like lead.

Helpless. Useless.

Michael finally spoke. “Would.. would it be okay if I slept in here with you? I could get my blanket and stay on the floor? Usually Amanda comes and stays with me until I go back to sleep, but… but…”

But his mother wasn’t here, he finished for her.

Spock licked his lips and tried to speak, but still nothing would come. The request didn’t seem outlandish, through his mind pricked with a strange desire to do more. But what, he didn’t know, so he nodded.

As Michael dashed away to grab her things, Spock tried to reconcile what it must have been like to relieve the loss of your family over and over again in your dreams. Being tortured by the other children was one thing. The vague monstrous shapes of his imagination that haunted his own nightmares was one thing. But a memory that wouldn’t leave you? He tried to imagine his mother screaming, his home burning, his father fighting the hulking shapes of Klingon warriors wielding fierce glinting bat’leths, and Spock understood. His heart ached terribly, and he felt his own hot tears prickle at the corners of his eyes.

Inappropriate, as Vulcans do not cry. Shaking his head, Spock bid the imaginary specters to leave him alone, assuring himself that the only danger threatening his mother and father tonight was an overabundance of champagne.

By the time she had returned clutching her duvet and pillow, he’d regained control of himself.

Michael closed the door behind her and followed him back towards his bed. She stopped short and tossed her pillow on the ground by the thick rug protruding from under the bed’s feet.

Pausing in pulling away his covers, Spock made a quick and logical decision. “That is unnecessary,” he said, finding his voice at last. Maybe he couldn’t describe his empathy to her, or fully realize how awful it must have been to relive your parents’ final moments, as he still had his. Maybe he couldn’t quite give the Terran the exact comfort she might have needed, but Spock was convinced he could still do something. “Your dreams have already deprived you of hours of restful sleep tonight. I see no reason to spend the rest of your time in discomfort when my bed is plenty big enough for the both of us.”

Michael, wide-eyed and disbelieving, looked from her pillow on the floor to Spock’s large bed. “Are…are you sure?”

Admittedly, he swam in it most nights. “Yes. It’s logical.”

She blinked at him a moment more before scooping the pillow up and climbing up onto the bed, dragging her own duvet behind her. She wriggled to the far side as Spock clambered in after her.

“Good night, Spock,” Michael whispered as he gathered his own blanket around himself.

He hoped it would prove to be now. “Good night, Michael.”

They both quickly fell back asleep and did not wake the rest of the night.

It was the first of many such encounters in their youth, and eventually, she stopped asking permission at all. It came to be that whenever Spock heard his door open, rousing him from sleep, he rolled over to the side to make room for his sister.

There was a marked difference, she informed him objectively, in the consistency of her nightmares when she had his presence beside her.

Spock was satisfied he could similarly aid his captain, now.

Just as he decided to settle in for a meditation, Jim’s rest took a turn for the worse. He began to pant and to moan piteously as he shifted in his bed. Then he thrashed, a twist of limbs and blanket. The only intelligible words that could be discerned by Spock’s ears was “No.” The single syllable left his lips in a string and ended in a final, barely audible, “Not them.”

Spock crossed to Jim and deliberated a moment. The Human’s handsome face was scrunched as though he were in pain, lovely mouth open and gasping for breath. Spock reached a hand towards Jim’s forehead, but paused. No, that seemed like a severe breach in manners. Many humanoids did not appreciate their minds being invaded without permission. He didn’t know the Captain quite well enough for that.

Yet.

Spock pressed the thought from his mind with vague irritation and considered alternatives when Jim suddenly rolled over away from him towards the wall. The new position exposed an ample amount of space on the mattress, ample enough to—

With hindsight, Spock realized he could have—and perhaps should have—wakened Jim and let events unfold from there. But in the moment, with Michael’s ordeal still on his mind, and wanting Jim to have a full night’s peace, Spock did what he would continue to argue was “perfectly logical” for days later. Even when he knew, deep down and with burning shame, that it very much was not.

He dispensed himself of his polished black boots and carefully tested his weight on the edge of the mattress. Spock watched Jim closely, searching for any indication he was waking. All he saw was Jim’s broad back heaving, his head twitching minutely on his pillow. It appeared to be safe enough. He was not disturbed.

Spock climbed into bed behind the fitful captain and when that alone did not appear to ease Jim’s heartrate, he snaked his arms around the other man’s waist. Michael had found this comforting in their youth, he reasoned, and most, if not all, Humans gained distinct benefit from touching others. He would ask forgiveness later, he decided, closing his eyes. He listened to the erratic patter of Jim’s heart and labored breathing, counting the beats and noting their rhythm.

Jim’s relief with the pressure of his arm was very nearly instantaneous. Tense muscles in his back and neck relaxed, a long sigh parted his lips, and, slowly, minute by minute, the frantic heartbeat settled. As Jim relaxed into a deep sleep, he pressed himself into Spock’s chest and the Vulcan noted that he fit snuggly. Almost as though it was where he belonged.

Spock roughly shoved the thought from his mind before it could have the chance to plant itself and grow.

This is logical, Spock thought firmly, settling his head onto the Captain’s second pillow. This is necessary to protect the rest of the crew.

His own fluttering heart was the only thing brave enough to call him a liar.

Thank you for reading! <3

38 notes · View notes

britesparc · 4 years

Text

Weekend Top Ten #450

Top Ten Characters with the Best Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes

As I’m writing this, it’s officially Star Trek: Discovery day; the first episode of the new season is up on Netflix and ready to watch. Given how little time I manage to find for watching anything that I want to watch, I’m cautiously optimistic that I can get to see it this weekend, but we’ll see; my lovely wife might want to finally catch up with Star Trek: Picard first, which for some reason she never finished. Regardless, I’m excited, and I wanted to write about Star Trek again.

The new Star Trek series have been a bit of a roller coaster, because whilst they’ve both generally been very good, they’ve certainly had their odder and more controversial moments, and neither of them has consistently felt like classic Trek. If I had to be critical, I’d argue that there are plenty of darker adult-tinged sci-fi shows at the moment, including ones set in space, but not that many that follow the day-to-day travails of a starship crew, which as always been Trek’s raison d'être. However, both shows have succeeded in giving us some compelling stories and – especially in the case of Discovery – a fantastic cast of new characters to celebrate. Great characterisation has been the cornerstone of Trek since the beginning, and no doubt one of the reasons why it still resonates to this day, from the “Holy Trinity” of Kirk, McCoy, and Spock, through to the wonderful and insanely empathetic Saru in Discovery and Captain Sexpot Rios in Picard. The fact that we’re now in a new time period, with no established history to try to tie the narrative to, means Discovery 3 is in a great place to give us some great new stories.

Anyway, to celebrate all of this – the new season of Discovery and my overall love of Star Trek characters – I’ve decided to go back to the Next Generation well and talk about just that: characters. TNG famously hit its stride when it started focusing each story through the lens of the different characters on the show, so that we tended to get a “Worf episode” or a “Riker episode”; even the best eps, the biggest and most epic, really had a tendency to hone in on one or two characters specifically, such as the all-time classic “The Best of Both Worlds” really being about Picard and Riker, or “Yesterday’s Enterprise” being a much-belated Tasha Yar episode.

But which characters have the best episodes? That is, if you know an episode is focused on a particular character, how likely is it that it’s going to be a belter? Can you reasonably say one character was better served than another in terms of the quality of “their” episodes? Well, yes. Yes you can. That’s this list. That’s the whole thing.

So this list is basically which characters have the best episodes, or are more likely to. It’s not a list of my favourite characters, or even really a list of the best episodes overall; it’s just, well, who got to chew scenery the most on the bridge, basically. Now, I really feel like I should end this blurb with an appropriate Star Trek quote, but I must have used “Make it so” and “Engage” before, so I’m not sure what else to say.

May the Force be with you, I guess.

Picard: Yes, of course; he’s the star, he’s the stand-out actor of the bunch, he gets the best episodes. If it focuses on the captain, you can rest assured you’re in for a treat. Whether it’s an epic mythology-enhancing saga or – even better – a slower, sadder meditation on life, Picard’s episodes are engaging. Chortle. Also if there’s room for a classic Picard Monologue, all the better; I don’t know if you’ve noticed this about Patrick Stewart, but the guy can chew scenery. Key episodes: The Best of Both Worlds, The Drumhead, The Hidden Light

Worf: Worf’s complex backstory offers a lot of opportunities for great stories, with the caveat that pretty much all of them focus on Klingon history or the contrast between his heritage and his place in Starfleet. Issues of familial loyalty rub up against quasi-Shakespearean dynastic dramas, often with high adventure. You can assume a Worf ep is a good one, despite the fact that quite a few of them are also about Alexander. Key episodes: Sins of the Fathers, Redemption, Birthright

Data: everyone’s second-favourite emotionless nerd on Star Trek, Data’s eps are almost uniformly great, and often poke at what it means to be alive. There may be a bit of ground retrod as we examine the notion of humanity, or sentience, or emotion, but his episodes are always interesting, and often very funny, and Brent Spiner is a continuing delight. Key episodes: The Measure of a Man, The Offspring, Brothers

Q: is it cheating to include a recurring guest star? Maybe, but I don’t care. John de Lancy is just phenomenal as Q, one of the best Trek characters, and so good he became a My Little Pony. He’s arch, he’s hilarious, he can take the show into new directions; he raises questions of fate, or of the concept of divinity; and underneath it all there’s a malevolent streak, a genuine sense of danger exemplified in his first appearance. Pairs very well with Picard, naturally. I didn’t like the Robin Hood episode, though. Key episodes: Deja Q, Encounter at Farpoint, Q Who

Riker: he’s a Kirk-esque horn-dog ragamuffin with a heart of gold and a fist of steel, so there’s always a lot to love when William T. takes the helm (see what I did there?). Often issues of loyalty, or duty versus personal wishes, arise; he’s frequently putting his life on the Enterprise above his career. But he’s also a very moralistic character, so quite often he’ll be trying to do the right thing in tough circumstances. Key episodes: The Pegasus, Future Imperfect, Frame of Mind

Crusher: always a stand-out supporting character, Crusher has some great episodes focused on her too; usually quite a self-righteous sort who puts the immediate moral obligation above her own safety or duty to Starfleet, which raises lots of interesting, thorny questions. She’s a smart cookie, exemplified in the astounding Remember Me; her relationships with her son and with Picard are good to explore too. She also shagged a ghost, but let’s try to forget about that. Key episodes: Remember Me, Attached, Suspicions

Wesley: pigeonholed somewhat unfairly due to a few ropey first-season episodes, Wesley Crusher is actually an interesting character whose stand-out storylines offer a good deal of nuance and intrigue, as well as exciting hi-jinks, insights into the Federation, and – should you go that far – weird magic Jedi stuff. He gets a nice romance with Ashley Judd, we unpeel his relationship with Picard over multiple episodes, and the bloom comes off the rose in spectacular fashion when he gets to Starfleet Academy. Wil Wheaton was a good young actor and was sadly underserved by the show, but at least we get these eps. Key episodes: The Game, Final Mission, The First Duty

Pulaski: say whaaat? Yes, she’s only in the show for five minutes, but Doctor Pulaski gets a few crackers under her belt in that time. A bit like Crusher would later, she often excels when standing up to authority and presenting herself as a moral arbiter. Interestingly, she’s not always right, and it’s a fun dance to watch. She’s also been round the block a bit, adding facets to her relationships with other characters, particularly Riker. And, of course, she flirts with a bunch of polygons when Geordi and Data cock up the Holodeck. Key episodes: Elementary, Dear Data, Unnatural Selection, The Icarus Factor

Troi: sadly suffering in the face of a bunch of soppy romances and storylines involving her mother that are, shall we say, an acquired taste, Troi still gets some good stuff, mostly later in the series’ run. Taking her out of her comfort zone, making her a spy or an investigator, or giving her some proper dramatic meat, works wonders. Also once she was a cake. Key episodes: Face of the Enemy, Eye of the Beholder, Dark Page

LaForge: oh, Geordi. I love Georgi, but he kinda got done dirty a little bit. Always an interesting and dependable secondary character, unfortunately the bulk of his episodes as a primary character tend to revolve around him being a bit of a jerk or a bit of a creep. Obviously the most heinous sin is making a computer program based on a real person and then, well, trying to shag it, but he also has a tendency to be a dick to anyone new in Engineering. He’s even a bit of a dick to Scotty! I sometimes think the writers never quite had a handle on Geordi’s character; is he a young tech genius with poor social skills? Is he supposed to be arrogant? A wannabe lothario who’s just really unlucky? Anyway, like I say, I still love the guy to bits, and LeVar Burton is fantastic, but of all the main ensemble, his are the flakiest solo episodes. That said, the three listed here are all belters. Key episodes: The Next Phase, The Enemy, Relics

Anyway. There we are. I’ve still, as of going “to press”, not watched Discovery season 3, and my wife’s still not watched the end of season 1 of Picard. Any day now…!

#top ten #star trek #picard #discovery #the next generation #star trek discovery #star trek tng

3 notes · View notes

v-thinks-on · 5 years

Text

Generations - Part 3

First | Previous | Next

There was no reason to delay. Kirk didn’t even have a career to sacrifice. He would rather not steal a starship, but having recently returned from the dead, he didn’t have many options.

“Computer, put me through to Admiral Brackett-” Kirk began.

The beep of his communicator cut him off.

“Wait on that,” Kirk ordered and tapped on his communicator.

It was Picard. “Jim, we’ve received a transmission from Ambassador Spock.”

Kirk’s heart leaped. “I’m on my way.” He turned off the communicator, cancelled the call to the admiral and nearly ran down to Picard’s quarters.

“What did Spock say?” Kirk demanded as the doors slid open to let him inside.

Picard was at his desk, working on the computer terminal. He turned it off when Kirk entered and answered with a smile, “He’s on his way. We’ll meet him between here and the Neutral Zone.”

It took Kirk a few moments to truly register what Picard had said. Spock was on his way. There was no need to go to Romulus. He would see Spock soon, in a matter of days. He remembered seeing Spock off like it was just a month ago, but it had been eighty years since Spock had last seen him, since their minds had touched - a whole lifetime. Kirk couldn’t imagine how much had changed in his absence.

A jittery rush of nerves and excitement spread through his veins. He couldn’t hold back a grin.

“Good,” Kirk said, “great.”

“I imagine he’ll be pleased to see you.”

“I hope so,” Kirk said, though he couldn’t really bring himself to doubt it. “Is there anything I can do around here in the meantime?” With nothing left to plan, he could easily go crazy just waiting around.

Picard shook his head. “The Farragut is over staffed as is. I’ve just been doing my best to stay out of the way.”

Kirk couldn’t help but sympathize with the captain stuck on another’s ship. “I don’t envy your position.”

“It gives me some time to catch up on my reading.” Picard gestured toward the book on his desk.

“You collect antique books too?”

“I find it makes for a richer experience.”

Kirk nodded in agreement. He glanced at the novel and exclaimed in surprise, “The Tale of Two Cities?”

“Are you familiar with it?”

Kirk grinned. “It’s a favorite of mine.”

“I didn’t realize you were interested in history.”

“I am, but that one was a gift.”

“I was curious about its portrayal of the French revolution, but it’s clearly written from an English perspective.” Picard frowned at the thought.

“You’re actually French?”

“Yes, I was raised on an old-fashioned vineyard near the border with Switzerland.”

“With your accent, it’s easy to forget,” Kirk said with a wry smile. “I have a similar interest in American history.”

“I know less French history than maybe I should,” Picard admitted. “Usually I prefer archeology; studying lost alien civilizations.”

“Sounds exciting. You’re in the right place to do it, though I was usually preoccupied with the civilizations we found.”

“That’s often the case,” Picard said with a touch of disappointment, “But occasionally I have the chance to uncover something no one has seen in millennia.”

“There’s so much out here, we can barely even brush the surface,” Kirk marveled, leaning back in his chair.

“I’m certain the admiral’s offer stands.”

Kirk waved it off. “I’m retired.” After a moment’s thought he asked, “She said something happened to the fleet?”

Picard nodded. “The Borg. They’re part organic and part machine. They assimilate sentient species into their empire - for lack of a better word. They’re adaptable and relentless, just one of their ships destroyed most of the fleet. They would be centuries away, but a powerful alien we’ve encountered a few times decided to introduce us to them as a sort of practical joke.”

“And there’s no reasoning with them?”

“No, at least not until they see us as a real threat.”

Kirk glanced away, his mind already racing far ahead of him, trying to figure out how to beat such an opponent.

“I’m sorry, I’ve brought you into a dangerous time,” Picard said, jolting Kirk back to reality. “Thankfully, we think most of their fleet is still years away, so we should have some time to improve our defenses before we have to face them again.”

“Every age has its challenges.”

Picard nodded. “I wouldn’t have wanted to get in a fight with the Klingons.”

“We didn’t fight them face to face much. It was mostly just competing over allies and resources, but they did play dirty.”

“The Klingons? They can be ruthless, but they have their honor - for the most part. The Romulans on the other hand…”

“Maybe things have changed in eighty years. We only encountered the Romulans a few times, but they seemed to be honorable in their way.”

“I’ve just read about your times, but it seemed like the galaxy was a very different place.”

“I have a lot of catching up to do,” Kirk said with a smile.

“If you want any lighter reading, you’re welcome to borrow a book,” Picard offered. “My quarters were mostly undamaged in the crash.”

“What do you have?”

Picard led him over to a small cabinet in the corner, full of books. Some were a little charred around the edges and others had been banged up pretty badly, but they all looked readable. Kirk bent over to peruse the titles. There was Shakespere, some Klingon poetry, a few books in French, and other classics from all over the galaxy, even some Vulcan philosophy.

Kirk was considering the Vulcan philosophy when something else caught his eye - “The Campaigns of Alexander, it’s been years since I last read that!”

“You’re welcome to it.”

“Thank you.” Kirk carefully drew the old book out of the cabinet and flipped through the pages, scanning for familiar names and places - in all honesty, he was mostly looking for Alexander’s loyal companion, Hephaestion.

Picard hesitated. “If you get tired of reading, I’ve been meaning to go fencing when I have the time, you could join me,” he suggested a little awkwardly.

“I’ve never fenced before, but I could give it a try.”

“I can teach you the basics.”

“Sure. Just tell me when and I’ll meet you in the gym - this ship does have one?”

“Yes.”

“It has about everything else.” More seriously, Kirk said, “Thank you.”

“Not at all.”

Kirk took the book and returned to his quarters, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to focus on reading - maybe later in the evening it could distract him from tossing and turning in bed. Instead, he left The Campaigns of Alexander on the table and made his way up to the ship’s bar. It was still bustling, but he recognized a few familiar faces in the crowd. Guinan waved to him from the bar and he spotted Riker and Worf at a table, not far from where they had been sitting when he ran into them the day before.

Kirk greeted Guinan with a nod and headed over to the table staked out by the senior officers.

“Captain Kirk,” Riker exclaimed, “I see you’re as bored as the rest of us.”

Kirk shrugged. “I’m helping by staying out of the way.”

“Those are the captain’s orders,” Worf grumbled.

Riker stood and insisted, “Have a seat.”

After much rearranging and polite apologies, Kirk ended up in a chair that had been hastily vacated by a timid ensign, who would not reclaim it despite all his protests, and promptly fled to the far corner of the room.

“Rank has its privileges,” Riker said wryly.

Kirk just shook his head.

“So, Ambassador Spock is on his way,” Riker remarked once Kirk was settled.

Kirk grinned. “News travels fast.”

“I heard you married him to keep him from being assigned to another ship when he was your first officer,” Riker said, though he was careful to neither endorse nor deny the assertion.

“No, it was for the joint shore leaves once Spock had a ship of his own,” Kirk countered.

Worf glanced between them, as though he couldn’t decide if it was worse if they were lying or telling the truth. “I thought Vulcans were supposed to be logical,” he said at last.

“But when a man is in love…” Riker trailed off.

Worf looked dubious.

“I’m surprised you decided to get married at all, or do the history books have you pegged all wrong?” Riker asked.

“Vulcans have a different idea of marriage than humans,” Kirk said, though he couldn’t say much more.

“I see,” Riker said with a grin. “And it sounds like he was one hell of a first officer too.”

“I couldn’t ask for any better. Does Mr. Data have much command experience?”

“Putting together a command team already?”

“No” - Kirk waved off the suggestion - “I was just wondering what the crew makes of him.”

“He took a little getting used to,” Riker admitted. “But I don’t think there’s anyone who’s gotten to know him that doesn’t like him.”

Worf nodded in agreement.

“What about you?” Kirk asked. “Do you have your eyes set on a first officer?”

Riker shook his head. “I’ll probably get a command one day, but I’m happy here for now.”

“Really? I was probably promoted too young, but I’m surprised you’re not ready to get out of here.”

“So am I, But I’m happier as first officer on the Enterprise than I’ve been anywhere else, and I think that’s more important than a promotion.”

“Who am I to argue with that? I accepted a promotion to admiral and where did it get me?”

“Was it really that bad?”

“For someone else, maybe not, but I don’t belong on Earth commanding a console. There’s nowhere better than the bridge of the Enterprise.”

“I’d toast to that.” Riker raised his glass and tipped it back.

“Hear!” Worf exclaimed and followed suit.

“She was a good ship. I hope the Enterprise-E will live up to the name, but I don’t know if it’ll ever be quite the same.”

“It isn’t,” Kirk said. “You were in command when she was destroyed?”

Riker nodded.

“I sacrificed the first Enterprise for a lot less. It was still worth it, but the Enterprise-A never felt like home in the same way.”

Riker finished the dregs of his drink. “Speaking of, I should probably get back to approving those transfers for when we do get the Enterprise-E. It was good talking to you, Worf, Captain.” With that, he stood and took his leave.

Another officer promptly stole the vacated chair to take it to another table, and Kirk found himself alone with the Klingon. They seemed to size each other up, neither quite ready to make the first move.

To Kirk’s surprise, Worf spoke up, “At Starfleet Academy, I read about your battles with the Klingons.”

Kirk nodded. He would have been lying to say he regretted them.

“You were a true warrior,” Worf concluded.

“I admit, I was sometimes lacking in diplomacy, but our mission was peaceful exploration,” Kirk attempted.

“But you fought well,” Worf protested.

It sounded like it was intended as a compliment, but Kirk wasn’t quite ready to take it. Instead, he asked as casually as he could, “Are you the only Klingon in Starfleet?”

“Yes,” Worf said.

“Why? The Klingons must still have their own fleet.”

“After my family was killed in the Khitomer massacre, I was raised by humans,” Worf explained, but with the way he said it, he might as well have been talking about someone else’s family.

Still, Kirk’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t realize. That can’t have been easy.”

“I faced some challenges,” Worf acknowledged stoically.

“You almost sound more like a Vulcan than a Klingon,” Kirk suggested with a smile.

“Vulcans are pacifists” - Worf said the word “pacifist” with some disdain.

“That’s usually the logical course of action,” Kirk argued, “But there’s no one I’d rather have on my side in a fight.”

Worf gave him a look of disbelief.

Wryly, Kirk asked, “You’re set on being a Klingon?”

“That is what I am,” Worf insisted.

“You’re right,” Kirk said. It had been unfair of him to suggest otherwise. “How is it, serving on a ship full of humans?”

“They are not warriors, but they are good colleagues” - Worf hesitated - “And friends.”

“Good. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been assigned a Klingon officer,” Kirk admitted. “I can only hope I would have followed your Captain Picard’s example.”

“Many Klingons still have a difficult time accepting the Federation as our allies. Most humans would not fare well on a Klingon ship - they do not understand the glory of war.”

“Some do, but they usually end up as the villains.”

“Yes, I do not understand why humans place so much value in reluctance.”

“Maybe we’re just indecisive,” Kirk suggested with a wry smile.

“That is not how I would describe my human colleagues.”

Kirk tried again - “Isn’t it better to go to war for a good cause than a bad one?”

“Perhaps,” Worf acknowledged, “But humans seem to place no value in the glory of battle.”

“No, I suppose we don’t. We’re not so fond of death and destruction.”

“You fear it,” Worf charged.

“With good reason.”

“Why fear the inevitable? At least a warrior can die well.”

“Is anything really inevitable?”

“All things die.”

“I don’t know, I’ve managed to cheat death well enough myself.”

“Your case is a unique one,” Worf admitted, “But eventually you will die.”

“Maybe, but I don’t believe in no-win scenarios. Even if everything supposedly dies, there’s no reason to surrender and let it happen.”

“You would consider charging into battle, prepared to die, a surrender?” Worf demanded.

“Isn’t it better to live to fight another day?”

“Not if all your days are spent fleeing in fear of death.”

“Maybe you’re right, but if there’s a way…” Kirk trailed off, his eyes gazed out the windows that made up the far wall.

For a moment Worf drank in silence. Abruptly, he remarked, “I don’t understand how you humans can spend days on end doing nothing but waiting.”

Kirk looked back at the Klingon with a smile. “We don’t like it any more than you do. We just try to distract ourselves.”

Worf seemed to consider the suggestion. “Maybe I will go see if the Farragut’s holodeck has a suitable calisthenics program. You are welcome to join me.”

Kirk was curious, but shook his head. “Maybe another time.”

“Very well.” Worf finished his drink and took his leave.

Kirk was in his quarters reading when Counselor Troi dropped by. She joined him at the desk, no doubt ready with another barrage of questions.

“Good afternoon, Counselor,” he said, putting the book aside. “What can I help you with?”

To his surprise, she asked, “What are you reading?”

He smiled. “The Campaigns of Alexander. I borrowed it from your Captain Picard.”

“Alexander the Great?” she clarified.

He nodded.

“May I ask why that book in particular?”

“It’s a classic.”

Troi could tell there was another reason, but she didn’t press him on it. Instead she said, “The captain told me that Ambassador Spock is on his way.”

Kirk grinned. “Yes, I know.”

“How do you feel about seeing him after so long?” Troi attempted.

“It’ll be good to see him again,” Kirk said with half a shrug, as though there wasn’t anything else to be said, but the counselor could sense a deeper turmoil of nerves and uncertainty.

She decided it was time to take another approach. Starting on more solid ground, she asked, “When did you last see your husband?”

Kirk glanced away in recollection. “It was a little over a month before the launch of the Enterprise-B - Spock could tell you exactly how long. He was on Earth for just a few days between meetings with the Klingons. He wasn’t an ambassador yet, but he was well on his way.” Troi could feel some bitterness amidst his pride.

“Did you have many chances to talk to him while he was away?” she asked.

Kirk gave her a wry smile. “A few.” Troi could tell that it was intended as a joke, but she didn’t know why.

“You spoke with him frequently?” she clarified.

“You could say that,” Kirk said with that same private bemusement.

“Is there anything you wish you could have told him before you fell into the Nexus?”

He shook his head. “If I knew I wasn’t going to be in there forever, it would have been nice to let him know, but there weren’t any secrets between us.”

Kirk was carefully keeping something out of the conversation, Troi could feel it, but she didn’t know what. Unless… She hesitated. “When I first met you, in sickbay, I sensed that you were attempting to contact someone telepathically. I am aware that Vulcans have significant telepathic abilities, did you and Ambassador Spock have a telepathic connection?”

Kirk grinned and she could feel that she was correct. “Vulcans are a very private people, Counselor.”

“I see…” she said. Delicately, she continued, “I take it you and Ambassador Spock have not been in contact since you left the Nexus?”

He shook his head. “Not a word.”

“I’m sorry. To go from constant communication to nothing must be very unsettling.”

Kirk grimaced. “We were ‘out of contact’ for a few years after Spock’s death. It was a lot worse then, but it is still unsettling.”

“How do you think your husband is feeling right now, on his way to see you?”

“He is a Vulcan,” Kirk said with a wry smile.

She just gave him a look.

Again, Kirk glanced away, out the window, in thought. “I don’t know,” Kirk admitted at last. “I know I miss him, but it’s been so long… Eighty years… It’s longer than I’ve been alive. I can’t imagine… Maybe he’s just coming here to prevent me from going to Romulus.”

“Do you actually believe that?”

“No. But it might be easier for him if I hadn’t come back.”

“Why?”

“I’ve given him a lot to worry about.”

“You seem to worry a lot about him,” she pointed out.

“While I was in the Nexus, at least I was safe. I can’t say as much about him.”

“If your connection really was severed” - Kirk winced at the thought - “He may not have known you were safe,” Troi remarked.

“I don’t know…” Kirk trailed off. He hoped the bond hadn’t been broken. Even if it hadn’t, it was probably silent on Spock’s end, but he was a proper telepath, maybe he could sense something that Kirk couldn’t.

“How do you think he feels?” Troi prompted again.

“I hope he hasn’t been too worried. Jean Luc said Spock still feels guilty for the time I spent on Rura Penthe, but I don’t even think an illogical human could spend eighty years worrying.” He gazed out the window, lost in thought. “I wonder how much he’s changed…”

“En garde!” Picard called out.

Kirk raised his sword for another attack - it was surprisingly heavy between his fingers. The stiff uniform was stifling, the helmet like a cage over his head. He peered at Picard through the mesh - not that he could see his opponent’s face - his sword bouncing in his hand.

Kirk let Picard come to him - they had barely bothered with footwork. Their swords met. He could tell Picard was going easy on him, maneuvering his blade this way and that in small neat motions that Kirk was sure left him wide open for an attack that Picard was kind enough not to take. Kirk circled Picard’s blade with his own in an attempt to replicate them, but it didn’t get him anywhere.

Finally, he threw caution to the wind and took a wild stab.

The alarm went off - the tip of Picard’s blade had caught on Kirk’s glove, winning him the match.

Picard raised his blade in a salute and Kirk only belatedly remembered to follow suit before pulling off his helmet. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of fresh air.

“Good bout,” Picard said.

Kirk opened his eyes and accepted Picard’s gloved hand with a wry smile.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks,” Kirk remarked as he tried to shrug off the thick jacket.

“It just takes practice,” Picard said, though he looked a little smug. “Not up for another?”

Kirk shook his head. “I think I’ll stick to wrestling.”

Kirk accepted a towel from Picard, grabbed a glass of water from the replicator and let himself fall onto the bench by the wall to catch his breath. Picard soon joined him.

They sat in silence, catching their breath. Abruptly, Picard asked, “You’re married - I don’t suppose you ever had children?”

A grimace flitted across Kirk’s face. “I had a son, but I barely knew him.” More lightly, he asked, “Do you have kids?”

“No,” Picard said. “The closest thing I had to a son was my nephew, René, but he and my brother were killed in a fire recently.”

“I’m sorry. David died a few years ago - give or take a few decades - but I never really mourned him.”

“I never liked children,” Picard continued, “But René was the exception. Now, I wonder if I made a mistake not settling down and having children of my own.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t settle down either. David wasn’t really mine. I was his father, but his mother and I weren’t together; she didn’t want him taking after me and running off across the galaxy, so I stayed away. I didn’t think twice.”

“Do you regret it?” Picard asked.

“Of course I regret not being there when I should have, but I wasn’t ready then and I don’t know if I’ve ever been ready. Spock certainly didn't want kids," he added a little less seriously - though he didn’t know what Spock wanted now.

"I didn’t think I did either, but now I’m not so sure.” Picard hesitated. “That’s what the Nexus showed me - a whole family in a stately old home. I thought that was what my brother wanted, that I’d moved beyond it somehow, but maybe we were more similar after all.”

“Maybe,” Kirk said, “But it would be hard to captain the Enterprise from the family homestead.”

“True. Perhaps the Nexus merely shows us a path not taken rather than our hearts’ desires.”

“I would rather be on a bridge than that old cabin any day,” Kirk said with a smile.

“Why did you retire?”

Kirk’s smile quickly faded. “I gave up too much. Spock died because of me. He came back, but I couldn’t risk it happening again.”

“Surely it was dangerous before,” Picard attempted.

“We always made it out alive somehow.”

Picard hesitated. “I didn’t die, but I was assimilated by the Borg to be their representative to humanity. I lost my identity - part of myself. I considered leaving Starfleet, that it wasn’t worth the risk, but with more than a little help I learned to live with it.”

“You’re a braver man than I am, Captain.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I just have less to lose.”

#v writes #Star Trek: The Original Series #Star Trek: The Next Generation #Star Trek: Generations #Spirk #Generations

4 notes · View notes

unexpectedreylo · 6 years

Text

Mary Sue Or Not?

Having climbed aboard the Reylo ship 10-11 months ago, I’ve written quite a bit about them as a couple and about Kylo/Ben, since he is endlessly fascinating on many levels and he is the last Skywalker heir.

But it’s time to shine some light on our girl Rey, the heroine of this fairy tale/gothic romance novel collision in space. And the first thing I want to address is whether or not it’s fair to call her a Mary Sue.

One problem we have is no one really can define what a Mary Sue is anymore; it’s become what former U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart once said about obscenity...you can’t define it but you know it when you see it. A lot of the time in modern parlance, it’s a lazy shorthand for “a female character I don’t like.”

But “Mary Sue” did mean something once and it was very specific. It was meant to describe an original character in fan fiction who was basically an idealized version of the author, there to suck all of the gravity of a particular universe in her direction. Someone I knew in Star Wars prequel fandom once described a Mary Sue as a fundamental writing error. I would add it’s the kind of error (usually) young, inexperienced writers who aren’t familiar enough with the source material tend to make.

The OG Mary Sue from the zine Menagerie #3.

The term “Mary Sue” came from a satirical Star Trek fan fiction (“A Trekkie’s Tale”) written in the ‘70s meant to spoof these kinds of stories. The heroine, Mary Sue, is the youngest Starfleet officer at 15.5 years old and is half-Vulcan. Everyone falls in love with Lt. Mary Sue; of course Capt. Kirk hits on her but being a woman of virtue, she rebuffs him. She dies a tragic death trying to save the Enterprise and is mourned by all (in the early days, Mary Sues often died tragically and heroically). Since then Mary Sues have become more sophisticated and varied, but are often marked by their extraordinary skills, unusual but beautiful appearance, and ridiculously convoluted names (”Mary Sue” is pretty vanilla these days for a Mary Sue). They also stubbornly refuse to die. But the principles remain the same: the Sue is the always the center of attention, the Sue is always a usurper, and the rules of the canonical universe/characterizations always bend or break to justify a character who really doesn’t fit into that universe at all. For example in “A Trekkie’s Tale,” the normally stoical Mr. Spock blubbers like a baby at Mary Sue’s funeral. In the infamous “My Immortal,” the denizens of Hogswarts are transformed into suicidal bisexual “goffs” to accommodate its Draco-humping vampire anti-heroine “Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way.” (”My Immortal” just might be the 21st century internet troll’s version of “A Trekkie’s Tale.”)

I started reading Star Wars fan fiction 26 years ago and every now and then, I’d run into a Mary Sue. More often than not, she was Force-sensitive and was usually paired with Luke. In older zines, particularly ones pre-TESB, I’d see the kind often paired with Han Solo that I’d called “Spacer Sues.” About 20 years ago I wrote a fic spoofing Star Wars-style Mary Sues called “Hello Jedi Sue.” In the story the main character Sue was sucked up into a tornado and sent into the GFFA. She had a higher midichlorian count than even Anakin and immediately upon meeting Luke, he realizes she is destined for him. Over the course of the story, she leads Rogue Squadron to victory against a stray Sith Lord who turns up out of nowhere (she’d never flown an X-wing before), she pilots the Falcon through an asteroid field after Han suffers a heart attack, and of course she trains to be a Jedi. Leia is kind of chilly to her at first but comes around and gives her a ring that once belonged to Queen Amidala, the only memento she has left of her birth mother. Some apprentice gets jealous of her and pushes her off the top of the temple to her death. Leia declares it a worse tragedy than Alderaan. Everyone’s crying and stuff but Sue uses her Force superpowers to resurrect herself. She and Luke marry and she immediately gets pregnant. Obi-Wan’s ghost appears to tell the happy couple she is his granddaughter and Qui-Gon’s great-granddaughter (don’t ask).

So you might say TFA raised my eyebrows because some of it reminded me of “Hello Jedi Sue.” Before everyone hits the unfollow button, I DO NOT think that Rey is a Mary Sue.

I’ll break it down like this. In order for a character to be a Mary Sue, the character must do most if not all of the following:

Be an idealized version of the author.

Be the center of attention, even in situations where it wouldn’t be practical or appropriate.

Bend or break the rules of the canon universe just to fit in.

Possesses highly unusual but beautiful looks and exhibit a large amount of extraordinary skills.

Be irresistible, especially sexually irresistible, to everyone.

Usurp the roles played by canon characters and their importance.

So, let’s go over that list with Rey in mind.

1. Is she an idealized version of J.J. Abrams, Rian Johnson, Lawrence Kasdan, or George Lucas (who created Rey’s progenitor “Kira”)?

Uhh, I doubt it. It’s not just that Rey is obviously not of the same sex, but she doesn’t seem to exhibit anything that reminds me of these men in real life. Sure she’s packed with girl power but so what? So are Lara Croft, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Padme Amidala, Xena, Leia Organa, Black Widow, Wonder Woman, that dragon chick from Game Of Thrones, Ahsoka, etc..

2. Is she the center of attention, even where it wouldn’t be practical or appropriate?

She’s the main hero(ine) of this trilogy and the avatar for the audience but she serves the same function that Luke Skywalker did in the OT or Anakin Skywalker did in the PT. So of course the story is going to focus on her. But if she was genuinely a Mary Sue, she would be doing everything of importance in the film to the point of making everyone else useless. They could be sitting by the sidelines having a beer while she’s basically running the movie.

3. Does she bend or break the rules of the canon universe just to fit in?

This is one point where I think a lot of the contention lies. She gets accused a lot of being “overpowered.” Well, what does that mean? The way I see the narrative shaping up after two films, she is obviously very powerful in the Force but TLJ makes it clear her power level is the same as Kylo’s. I think the movies are hinting she and Kylo/Ben are something new and unique, a creation of the Cosmic Force in its post Anakin-balanced state. I hope we get more of an explanation of this because I think it would go a long way to reassure people.

On that note, another common complaint is that Rey takes on skills rapidly with minimal training. I admit, I felt this was a problem the first time I saw TFA. I couldn’t understand why for instance she was able to use the Jedi mind trick so quickly without any training. By contrast, Luke wasn’t able to use the mind trick until ROTJ. I couldn’t understand why she was able to defeat someone trained in the Force in a lightsaber duel, regardless of his mental state or injury. It took until I saw TLJ and saw some comments from one of the story groupers that I understood she’d basically downloaded Kylo’s skills when he entered her mind and she’d entered his. Now I get it. But this is one criticism I still have of TFA; it didn’t make that clear enough to the audience. There’s a reason why George Lucas spent time letting you know Luke was a good bush pilot on Tatooine who could shoot womp rats in his T-16 or Anakin could win a pod race...it’s so that when they fly out to blow up something at the end of the movie, you’re able to understand why they can do that. Sometimes you do have to make movies so that the common idiot can figure it out!

Now a critic might argue that Rey Matrixing her way to Jedi skills is lazy. Maybe the filmmakers wanted to make sure they had a protagonist able to get into the mix early on because there weren’t enough Force-sensitive characters around who could’ve taken on Kylo. But then again, did we really see the OT or PT spend a lot of time on training? Luke fought Darth Vader after about 25 minutes of training in TESB and we never saw Anakin train at all; 10 years had passed between TPM and AOTC and by the latter film, he was able to do all kinds of cool stuff. And TLJ makes it clear that while Rey had the skills, she still needed direction and instruction. She thought the Force just controlled people and made things float!

And sometimes the audience misses things, especially if they only see a movie once. For instance, the first time I saw TFA I was baffled why Rey was able to pilot the Falcon. It seemed like Little Miss Desert Scavenger just hopped into the cockpit and away she went, whereas if I just got on a spaceship for the first time ever, I’d crash that mo-fo pretty quickly. Then when I saw the film again some time later, the dialogue makes it clear she IS able to pilot. She never left Jakku not because she couldn’t leave but because she was still waiting for her loser parents to come back.

4. Is she irresistible to everyone?

Mary Sues always get a reaction out of every canon character and that reaction is a strong one. It’s always fierce devotion, instant BFFs forever, undying passionate and true love, boiling-over lust, or pure loathing and hatred (that of course turns into the opposite or the hater is toast). There’s never indifference, or relationships that take time to build, or first impressions that turn out to be wrong, etc.. And it’s always instantaneous.

Most of the good guys like Rey but is any of it different from how characters took to Luke in the OT or Anakin in the PT? Not really. The only thing that stands out is Leia running over to hug the girl she’s known for part of a movie over Chewbacca but even Abrams admitted he’d goofed. And one instance does not a Mary Sue make.

The only characters who have more intense feelings for Rey are Kylo and Finn and in both cases, those feelings are complicated.

5. Does she have a highly unusual but beautiful appearance and exhibit a large amount of extraordinary skills?

Note the lack of rainbow hair and silver eyes.

Daisy Ridley is a beautiful young woman but as Rey, it seems like if anything they’re shooting for more of a natural, earthy beauty that befits her character. There’s nothing unusual about how she looks or how she dresses. She looks like she would almost fade into the crowd if you didn’t know who or what she was. Mary Sues on the other hand ALWAYS have to be noticed for their looks.

As for Rey’s skills, this is another thing people criticize. But in the Star Wars universe, being a Force-user isn’t alone an indication of Mary Sue-dom. Now if Rey was more powerful than anyone else ever, even Anakin Skywalker, that would be a Mary Sue issue. But the films make it clear that she isn’t more powerful than everyone; her power level is the same as Kylo’s. Her only advantage comes from being the more morally correct character in the story.

Her other skills are explained in the films and are nothing unusual in the Star Wars universe. She’s a good pilot but not such an ace everyone’s saying she’s better than Wedge Antilles, Poe Dameron, and Luke Skywalker combined. She’s a grease monkey but that comes from years of scavenging. Her talents aren’t just dropping out of the ether.

A Mary Sue would be the most powerful Force user ever, the greatest pilot of all time, someone who could teach space aeronautics at MIT at the age of 20, have an IQ higher than Einstein’s, be the greatest and most ingenious hacker, a better leader than Leia, a better shot than Annie Oakley even while drunk, cook like Julia Child, have sex like a porn star, have a singing voice like an angel, and is all-around the best at everything that needs to be done at any given time, ALL OF THE TIME. That’s not quite what we’re getting with Rey.

6.. Does she usurp roles played by canon characters and their importance?

This is another area of heated contention and it depends on what you believe are the filmmakers’ intentions. Are they setting Rey up to be the “real” Chosen One, essentially changing Lucas’s story? Are they setting up the Skywalkers as unworthy so Rey has to basically take their place as the “gods” end their cursed line?

Believe it or not, I was really worried this was exactly what Disney was going to do. Now, I don’t think this is the case. If anything, Rey is there in part to save the Skywalker line and legacy, not to end it or steal it for herself. But I suspect there are a lot of fans who still think this is where they are going in IX, so of course they’re going to resent Rey.

I came to the conclusion after seeing TLJ that while Rey is important and the lead character, she’s not the center of gravity in the story. Kylo Ren is. Pay attention; nearly everything that’s happening in the films is in some way because of him or related to him. It’s harder to believe she’s some random OC who broke into the Star Wars saga to suck the attention away from the Skywalkers once you realize this.

All of these said, there’s one more reason why Rey is not a Mary Sue.

Canon characters by definition cannot be Mary Sues!

It drives me nuts that people call canon characters Mary Sues. The whole point of a Mary Sue is someone who doesn’t really fit in with a universe so the universe is fit around her. Bella Swan may be a lot of things but she’s not a Mary Sue. (Now if you wrote a Twilight OC who pushes out Bella, gets Edward to fall in love with her, and gets Edward to give up his vampire ways and become a Christian, THAT’s a Mary Sue.) Now, some fans won’t accept anything Disney produced as canon but this is what we’ve got and it’s all we’re getting.

I don’t know who did this--I found it on Know Your Meme--but it’s a decent guide.

#rey #rey is not a mary sue #reylo #meta

17 notes · View notes

isitanylittlewonder · 7 years

Photo

(image source: captaincrusher)

I have often attempted to imagine myself in Spock’s position in moments like these, when Kirk touches him like this, but I’ve only now come to the conclusion that what I imagined was wrong.

See, with humans, being touched intimately is exciting, it alights your senses, makes you feel alive. You tingle. It takes your breath away.

But think about pon farr. Every 7 years of an adult male’s life, his blood boils. It gets so bad, in fact, that without physical intimacy, it can overwhelm and kill him. In The Search for Spock, when the teenage Spock was on Genesis and had just reached pon farr. He was shaking, his blood boiling, and Saavik came in and touched him. And he stopped. So in Vulcans, physical touches don’t excite; they calm.

Every time Kirk has ever touched Spock, he didn’t tingle, his breath wasn’t taken away, he didn’t get excited; He was soothed, his breath returned, his nerves subsided. It was helpful, certainly, when he was recovering from his mind meld with a murderous machine and Kirk touched him. It brought him down to earth, he was able to focus.

He probably wouldn’t be able to even understand humans’ obsession with intimacy knowing how it affects them. Such a passionate race, hot-blooded and illogical. Humans are not Vulcans.

Kirk and Spock really are a case of opposites attract. And they complement each other perfectly.

#spirk #star trek #pon farr #intimacy #vulcan #vulcan physiology

2K notes · View notes

writings-of-a-hufflepuff · 7 years

Text

Mrs Kirk {Part 5}

Fandom: Star Trek

Pairing: Jim Kirk x Reader (She/Her identifying)

Warning: Angst, hurt

Writer: @imaginesofeveryfandom aka @thequeenofthehobbits

Summary/request: You and Jim get married. Accidentally. On a new federation planet. Without knowing about it. Turns out its legally binding. Fuck.

Part 1 X, Part 2 X, Part 3 X, Part 4 X, Part 6 X

A week went by rather quickly. You learnt that Jim had a bad habit of leaving laundry on the floor, that he tried his best to get time free to have lunch with you where you’d discuss each other. He’d ask you questions about growing up and what books or movies you liked and take a genuine interest which was so strange at first. Originally it had felt a little bit like an interrogation, but that had gone away over the week and talking with him became almost natural.

He still called you Moonbeam.

You still shared a bed but each evening and each morning became more natural. Waking up to him had become a ritual, he was there and he would roll over when you tried to wake him up, he’d eventually get up and smile at you. On the odd occasion he’d be up before you, dressed and energetic, in some cases he tickled you awake and you claimed you hated him. More and more you fell asleep closer to each other, the gap between the two of you slowly closing until you fell asleep with an arm around your waist and your cheek pressed against his chest. It almost seemed normal until you started thinking about it too hard. Then you realised that this whole situation wasn’t really normal, but maybe that was okay.

Do things really need to be normal for them to be good and right?

A week in and a lot of the crew had grown used to the new development, while people were still curious they didn’t outright stare at you in the corridors nor did they make jokes or comments when you walked past. In general people had calmed down and it made things a lot less uncomfortable when you only had to deal with close friends asking questions and making comments.

You were sealing a wound shut on one of the newbies from engineering when Uhura walked in. You’d been friends with Nyota since the academy, having lived next to each other. Nyota had needed someone to vent to about Gaila and the men she brought back and you needed help with your xenolinguistics class so it worked out all in all and the two of you had grown close. You were still close, spending lunches and dinners together, shore leave was spent together in bars watching Chekov try and often fail at seducing people.

“I thought you were on shift?” You ask her, she’s usually on the bridge this time of day monitoring communications even if sometimes there’s nothing to monitor. You’d listened to enough rants about how boring it could get to know that it wasn’t quite as busy as the med bay was. At least you always had at least one injury or sickness to handle.

“We’re going on an away mission…I decided to come tell you because otherwise you’d worry.”

“I’ll worry anyway. Who’s going?” You finish with the red shirt, telling him he can leave and begin cleaning up the space where he’d been, remaking the medical bed. You know that certain people, Jim for example, always go on away missions and it worried you because Jim was notorious for getting hurt on every single one. To varying degrees. You know him now, he’s more than just your captain and you’re worried he might get himself killed for the second time.

“Myself, Spock, the Captain, a few of the security people, Leonard.”

“Which means I put you in charge of my med bay.” You watch Leonard leave his office, grumpy as per usual, phaser at his side. He hated away missions but he was also one of the most qualified doctors on the ship.

“The nurse? You do have other doctors here.”

“But I trust you. Also these lot are all bloodsucking bastards.”

“You should probably keep that opinion to yourself, Len.” You watch a few of the doctors’ glare at him due to his words. But agreed with him in a way. A lot of the doctors were very…stuck up. They cared more about getting people out of med bay then actually looking after them. Not all of them were bad, but then you supposed Leonard had a point in picking someone he trusted to boss everyone about in his absence.

“We have to go…I’ll see you at dinner?”

“Of course you will, Nyota.” She leaves first, long ponytail swinging behind. You’re sure she’s going along because of some communication issue, but that doesn’t mean that she’s entirely safe. It’s discomforting to think that she might not actually be there at dinner that rather she’d be in the med bay but you tell yourself it’s just that voice called fear talking and not rationality.

Leonard lingers a moment, an uncharacteristic softness to him, hand patting you on the shoulder, “I’ll make sure your husband doesn’t die.” It’s said as a joke, a quirk of a lip, a lifted eyebrow. But you know he knows you’re worried about Jim. You won’t admit it. You won’t admit that after just a week you’re terrified of him leaving…but he knows. You don’t need to say anything. Leonard always knew.

“Don’t die either, Len.”

“I’ll try not to, kid.” You hate when he calls you kid, but in that moment it’s a bittersweet sort of hate. The sort that reminds you that you’d miss it if he wasn’t there to call you that anymore.

Watching people walk away is hard. Part of you is glad Jim didn’t come to say goodbye to you. Not sure you could watch another person walk away into uncertainty. It also means you can trick yourself into believing that he didn’t say goodbye because he knew nothing would happen, because the away mission would be simple and harmless.

You tried to distract yourself while they were gone, spending time reorganising supplies, caring for Engineers who’d hurt themselves…but there was always an awareness in the back of your mind that they were all down on a planet where they could get hurt. It bothered you, you realised, not just because you had friends down there, but because you had Jim down there.

It was something you’d been attempting to ignore. To put off thinking about but with the med bay quiet and with worry niggling at you it was becoming harder to ignore. You’d always been attracted to Jim, in the academy he’d been unattainable and beautiful, once he became captain it only increased. But the past week…had made you attracted to him in a different regard. He wasn’t just physically beautiful; he was kind and silly and fun…he was dreadfully intelligent and could be irritating as well. You knew it had started to go past base attraction. You liked him. You didn’t want to admit how much but you liked him.

You liked how warm he was. You liked how comforting sleeping in the same bed with him is. You liked how much respect he had for you and everyone. You liked that he called you Moonbeam and that he wanted to give this marriage thing ago. You liked how blue his eyes were. You liked the way his hair fell in his face. You liked when he talked about himself and told you stories or discussed xenoanthropology with you. You liked him. More than you’d admit it.

It wasn’t just friendly admiration…you knew that. It was the warmth in your chest, those moments of pure affection you felt for him. It was something much more romantic…if not dissimilar. It was more than a little terrifying to be married to someone you’d started to fall for and had no idea of knowing if that person felt the same.

Your comm rang out and you grabbed, “Y/L/N, here” You could hear phaser fire and the sound of running feet through what sounded like foliage.

“Kid! Get the med bay ready!”

“What happened?!” You turn to tell junior nurses and the doctors to prep for whatever might come through those doors. It wasn’t the first time you’d been in the med bay during an emergency but every time was just as nerve wrecking as the last. That jolt of adrenaline at knowing someone needed your help, the adrenaline that had kept you on your feet for 24 hours once during an outbreak of the flu.

“It’s Jim.” You don’t need to hear any more than that, you can’t hear any more than that. It’s like you’re underwater for a moment, the panic dulling the sounds you hear and it takes a nurse bumping into you for you to come to your sense and begin helping despite not knowing what Leonard would need, what was wrong with Jim.

You swear your heart stops when he comes through the doors on a stretcher, he’s conscious you can see that but he’s barely aware and what awareness he has seems to be panic. He is bloodied and hurt and you try not to look at the wounds as you help Leonard get him onto a medical bed.

“Moonbeam…” A weak hand grabs your uniform as you turn to call out to a nurse standing nearby. He’s grasping it so weakly that you could ignore it, but you don’t. He’s blinking up at you barely aware of his surroundings and you for go your job to grasp that hand with your own and stand by his head.

“Leonard?”

“You keep him calm and I’ll fix him up, kid.” He flickers a glance up at you before returning to his work.

You feel your stomach turn as you look at the blood, the open wounds across his torso, before you look away and focus on his face. Your free hand pushing hair from his face and gently moving the back of your hand across his cheek, calming, soothing. He can’t go into shock you realise and the thought that he could terrifies you.

“I’m right here, James…I’m not going anywhere.” You weren’t. You weren’t. Fear wouldn’t let you leave him. Wouldn’t let you move. A week and he’d captured you in his net and that thought that he might let you go by leaving hurt so badly.

#Mrs Kirk #readerinsert #reader insert #star trek #star trek reader insert #jim kirkxreader #jim kirk x reader #jim kirk/reader #jim kirk / reader #james kirkxreader #james kirk x reader #james kirk / reader #james kirk/reader

186 notes · View notes

lenievi · 3 years

Text

[spock/mccoy] finding a cure

This is For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky missing scenes kind of a fic set between Spock finding the intelligence files on Yonada and the very last scene. I wrote it last year and it might actually be one of my favourite things I’ve ever written (at least it makes me feel all kind of things in any case). It’s 4k, half is written from Jim’s POV and half from Spock’s.

I like to imagine that it took Spock a few days to find the cure in the Fabrini files, so that’s what the fic is about. I guess you can say it’s quite angsty, but it’s 100% canon compliant, so no worries.

Spock/McCoy and Kirk&McCoy is the focus. (with some show typical triumvirate-y feels)

#angst. #unresolved emotional tension. #friendship. #hurt/comfort.

[ao3 link] as For This Space Would Be Hollow If You Were Gone

--------------------

i. Jim

When Jim entered the lab, the tension inside could be cut with a knife. Spock’s back was straight as an arrow and his shoulders tense as he looked at the large screen in front of him. McCoy was leaning against a table at the other side of the lab, his arms folded. He was frowning, and his piercing blue eyes were focused on Spock’s back.

Under different circumstances, Jim would turn back and leave them be, for – as amusing as their bickering often was – he wasn’t interested in getting caught in one of their petty squabbles. This time, however, it was McCoy’s life at stake.

For the last two days, Spock and McCoy were shut in the lab, trying to find a cure to xenopolycythemia in the Fabrini database Spock had brought back from Yonada. Jim left them alone, but the silence had become unbearable.

“Mister Spock, have you found anything?” Jim asked, coming to stand next to Spock. Half of the screen was full of the Fabrini symbols Jim remembered seeing around Yonada, the other half contained Vulcan writing – pleasing to look at but entirely incomprehensible to him.

“My work would go faster if Doctor McCoy left the laboratory,” Spock said, his eyes never leaving the screen.

“You’re not a doctor, Spock.” McCoy snapped. “Do you even know what you’re looking for?”

“I am familiar with the disease.”

“The database is ten thousand years old!”

Jim suppressed the need to sigh. “Gentlemen.”

“Doctor, it is not efficient to question me every five minutes,” Spock continued as if Jim hadn’t spoken.

Jim frowned, looking from one man to another. McCoy stood as far from Spock as physically possible in the small lab, and there was something different, something raw in the tones of their voices, suggesting that whatever had happened before Jim came wasn’t one of their meaningless sparrings Jim considered a waste of time.

He straightened, and before McCoy could react to Spock’s words, Jim said, “Mister Spock, I’ve asked you a question.”

Spock’s fingers, lying on the desk, twitched as if he wanted to curl them into a fist. Jim’s insides twisted uncomfortably. If Spock’s control was slipping…

“No, Captain,” Spock answered coolly. “I have not.” He put his hand into his lap.

Jim didn’t look at McCoy. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to see the acceptance on McCoy’s face. He didn’t want to see the cold mask of a surgeon that only hid the worst news.

“However, there is still forty-three percent of the database to search through,” Spock added, and the screen in front of him changed.

Despite the situation, Jim admired Spock’s ability to focus on his task. They were on a tight schedule. In a week, they’d arrive at Starbase 17, and McCoy would permanently leave the ship. Jim had already requested a replacement, as demanded by the regulations, but if there was a possibility to cure McCoy’s condition, he needed to inform the Starfleet Command as soon as possible. For that, he needed Spock to find a cure. Any other option was unacceptable.

“Let me know the moment you find something,” Jim said and turned to McCoy. “Bones, come with me.”

“You can’t be serious.” McCoy straightened, his hands falling down his sides.

“Spock said you weren’t needed here.”

“Just because he wants to do everything himself doesn’t mean –”

“Doctor,” Spock interrupted, his voice tense and controlled. “Your presence here is disruptive. Go with the Captain.”

A faint dusting of red colored McCoy’s cheeks. He opened his mouth. He closed it again, angrily rocking on his feet.

“Fine,” he said and moved toward the door. “Fine.” The door opened, and McCoy stopped, his shoulders dropping. “Coming, Jim?” he asked, tired and defeated.

For the first time since Jim had come, Spock’s eyes left the screen. They landed on McCoy’s back. It lasted only a few seconds, then Spock bit into his lower lip – a habit Jim hadn’t seen for over a year – and faced the screen again without a word. Not for the first time, Jim wondered if McCoy knew how dear he was to Spock.

He let out a sigh and put a hand on Spock’s shoulder. “We’ll be in my quarters.” He gave Spock’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and followed McCoy out of the lab.

They walked in silence. McCoy wouldn’t speak without being prompted, and it suited Jim not to talk in the corridors. While McCoy didn’t care for decorum and oftentimes blatantly questioned orders that would make – and had made – his service difficult on a different ship, he was still the Chief Medical Officer, and Jim didn’t want the whole ship to be overrun with more rumors.

He nodded at the passing crewmates, remembering to meet their eyes, but his heart wasn’t in it. Seeing Spock and feeling the tension in his muscles made it harder to ignore the situation, for Jim could really be losing McCoy for good. First to regulations, then to xenopolycythemia. Losing a crewmember was always hard, but losing a friend, losing McCoy…

No, he couldn’t even think about it. He fisted the fabric of his pants. Until Spock said that he exhausted all possibilities, Jim would continue believing. Nothing was lost yet, and he trusted Spock to find a cure.

Jim straightened and smiled at the Lieutenant who greeted them.

When they arrived at Jim’s quarters, Jim let McCoy inside. Without asking, he took out a bottle of whiskey, he’d kept for a special occasion, and two glasses from his cabinet.

At the sight, McCoy raised his eyebrow. “Isn’t that wasteful?” he asked.

The traitor of Jim’s mind whispered that it could very well be one of the last opportunities to have a drink with McCoy, and he pushed the thought down. Hard.

“I can get another one at Starbase 17,” Jim said, opening the bottle.

“Not like that one.” McCoy sat down and unzipped his collar. The black undershirt peaked out.

“If you don’t want to drink...”

“I didn’t say that.”

Jim smiled and poured both of them a glass. He didn’t spend time alone with McCoy since the moment McCoy had informed him of his condition. There were so many things he wanted to say, things he wanted to ask. Most of them were things McCoy wouldn’t want to discuss, and for now, Jim didn’t want to alienate him. If this week turned out to be McCoy’s last week on the Enterprise, Jim didn’t want them to argue.

Whereas the arguments between McCoy and Spock rarely seemed to have any consequences, there were a few times when an argument between Jim and McCoy caused McCoy to distance himself and avoid talking to Jim outside of a professional capacity. Those moments were far and few between, but Jim didn’t want to tempt fate.

“What happened between you and Spock?” Maybe not the safest topic, but Jim’s curiosity got the better of him. Despite McCoy’s outward grumpiness, there was something about the way he got when he talked about Spock, and Jim hoped it could break the ice.

McCoy looked into his glass as if it was hiding the answer to Jim’s question. “Nothing happened. Everything’s peachy.”

“Yeah, I could see that.” Jim held back the urge to roll his eyes.

“Look, Jim,” McCoy said, putting down his almost untouched glass of brandy. “I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he’s –” he stopped himself and wet his lips. He took a deep breath and continued, “I don’t know. He got it into his head that there’s a cure, and he’s going to find it.”

“You don’t think there’s one?”

“Seems like wishful thinking on his part.” McCoy shrugged.

“That doesn’t sound like Spock,” Jim pointed out. And yet carrying a sliver of hope was something Jim had seen in Spock many times before, even though Spock kept denying it again and again.

“You’ve said it yourself,” Jim continued, watching McCoy over the edge of his glass, “you want to go and look for a cure.”

“I’m not going to sit and wait for the inevitable death.” McCoy took his glass again, his knuckles white.

“Wasn’t that how it’d go if you stayed on Yonada?” The bitterness and accusation in his voice surprised Jim. Even two days later, McCoy’s readiness with which he’d stayed behind on the planet didn’t stop bothering Jim.

Jim understood loneliness. He understood the need for company. To be where he was now, he’d said a great many farewells, had given up a great many things. He’d lie if he said he didn’t have any regrets, never imagined a different life, but he had a job to do and so did McCoy.

“What do you want me to say, Jim?” McCoy avoided looking at him. “That I didn’t think it through? That I was being selfish? Can you blame me?”

Jim knew McCoy had joined Starfleet because of a ruined marriage, and his next serious relationship didn’t end happily either. There was only one time, almost two years ago, when McCoy had allowed himself to loosen up and openly flirt with a crewmember and date her for a while. It was a short-lived affair, and Jim wasn’t privy to the details, but since then, McCoy hadn’t shown an interest in any member of the crew, and in contrast to the start of their five-year-long journey, McCoy stopped staying the night on any planet or any starbase Jim had chosen for a shore-leave.

“I just don’t understand, Bones.”

“Don’t understand what? An attractive woman wanting me?”

“That’s not it, and you know it.”

McCoy sighed. “I’m here now, aren’t I?” McCoy downed his drink.

McCoy wasn’t telling Jim everything, but could Jim begrudge him wanting to spend the rest of his short life with someone who appeared to want him?

Jim rubbed his eyes, letting out a sigh. “What would you have me say to your daughter?”

McCoy looked at him sharply, his lips pressed together in a thin line. Seconds passed, neither of them breaking eye contact. Bringing up McCoy’s child was a low blow, Jim knew that, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“I’m not going to apologize,” McCoy said, downing his drink. “I did what I thought was right.” He sighed. “And... it’d be better for her to remember me as she does now. A child shouldn’t be burdened with –” McCoy’s glass landed on the table with a loud clink. “The last weeks aren’t pretty, Jim.”

Jim finished his drink and poured them another. “Spock will find a cure.”

McCoy, grabbing his refiled glass, gave him a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Jim awoke. The light in the cabin was set on low. He squinted at the chronometer. Three-sixteen. He straightened and kneaded the back of his neck, letting out a sigh. He was getting too old to fall asleep at the desk. Trying to get rid of the dry feeling in his mouth, he wet his lips.

There was a soft knock on the door. The sound Jim had heard in his dreams, that had woken him up. Only one person would knock on a starship, and it’d been years since he’d done it when coming to Jim’s quarters.

“Enter,” Jim called out, and Spock came in.

“I apologize, Captain.” Spock clasped his hands behind his back. “I am looking for Doctor McCoy.”

Jim, still not completely awake, glanced at the chronometer. The time didn’t change. Why did Spock come to his room this early? Why would he look for McCoy in Jim’s quarters?

Pressing his palms against the desk, Jim stood up. “Have you found a cure?” he asked, remembering, inspecting Spock’s face, hoping to see any signs of success, but the light was too low, and Spock too far.

“I gave the translation to Nurse Chapel, but I would like Doctor McCoy’s opinion as well,” Spock said, his eyes falling on the desk. There were two glasses and a half-empty bottle of brandy.

“At three in the morning?” Jim blurted out.

“The time on the ship is simulated to –”

Jim raised his hand and said, “Spock.”

Spock stopped talking. Jim walked around the desk and stopped two steps away from Spock, his heart beating faster. “Do you think you’ve found a cure?”

Spock nodded, slowly, and Jim let out a deep breath. He wouldn’t have to say goodbye to McCoy. McCoy wouldn’t be leaving. He would stay.

“Thank you,” Jim whispered, closing his eyes, the tension in his shoulders relaxing. He hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on McCoy’s condition. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about worst-case scenarios. When McCoy had been cynical, Jim had decided to trust Spock. Spock wouldn’t waste time looking for something that didn’t exist, would he? And Jim was right.

“Captain, where is McCoy?”

Jim opened his eyes. Spock’s cool tone could fool one into thinking that Spock was indifferent and uncaring to what was happening, but just one look at his face told a different story.

Jim nodded towards the sleeping alcove. Spock glanced over there, the lines in his face softening; an expression he’d never allow McCoy to see. Unless he was on a deathbed, Jim’s mind reminded him.

Sometimes, Jim wished the two men would just admit they worried and cared and stopped with their foolish pretense, but he knew how difficult it was for them to express their true feelings and emotions. And perhaps, in their case, they were the living proof of “actions speak louder than words”.

“Let him sleep. He’ll have a clearer head in the morning.” Jim rubbed his eyes.

“I do not understand your and Doctor McCoy’s fascination with alcohol,” Spock said, his gaze never leaving McCoy’s lying form.

Jim smiled slightly. “I don’t think we understand it either, Spock.”

Spock hummed but stayed quiet.

“Will the cure work?” Jim asked.

“It will be very painful.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Stop questioning him, Jim,” McCoy murmured from the bed. “Nothing’s ever certain.”

McCoy stood up, a bit unsteady on his feet, and before Jim could move, Spock stepped closer and gripped McCoy’s arm, steadying him. They looked at each other – something unreadable passing between them – and instead of shaking Spock off, McCoy relaxed and leaned into the touch, letting himself be supported. Jim blinked, shifting his gaze, inexplicably feeling as if he was intruding.

“Spock found a cure,” Jim said, breaking the silence.

McCoy’s gaze flickered over Jim’s face, and then he asked the floor, “So are you finally going to let me work on it?”

“It is your expertise, Doctor,” Spock said softly.

“He says that now,” McCoy muttered.

Jim smiled. It wasn’t their usual bickering, but the tension from the lab was nowhere to be found, and Jim took it as a sign that things were looking up.

ii. Spock

–before–

No results. The red letters shone from the screen, and a heavy feeling settled in Spock’s stomach. He changed the keywords. No results. Again.

“Spock,” McCoy said from behind him. “There’s no cure. I appreciate you trying, but –”

“Doctor.” Spock turned around. “I anticipated this. I will search through the database myself.”

The Fabrini knowledge was ten thousand years old, and the English interface of the ship was not the most compatible with the Fabrini’s writing system.

“That will take days!”

“There are nine days until we arrive at Starbase 17.”

McCoy’s shoulders fell. “And you’ll spend them in a lab chasing after something that doesn’t exist.” He let out a sigh. “Of course.”

Spock titled his head. “How I decide to spend the time, does not concern you, Doctor. You’ve made it rather clear that my company is unwanted.” Spock held his gaze until McCoy looked away.

“I guess I have.” McCoy grabbed his PADD and faced the door. “Fine, do what you want,” he said and left.

Spock strengthened his shields, faced the computer screens, and started to set up the interface to Vulcan.

“Why are you doing this, Spock?”

Despite believing Spock’s attempt to find a cure for xenopolycythemia futile, McCoy had stormed into the lab in the morning and hadn’t left since; except to provide both of them with a meal. Spock had given him an English translation of the Fabrini’s notes on surgeries, hoping that it would hold McCoy’s interest, and while reading through them occupied McCoy for a couple of hours, he would periodically interrupt Spock’s concentration. It was becoming annoying.

“I am a scientist, Doctor,” Spock said. “And my findings will be beneficial to many.”

McCoy grabbed Spock’s shoulder and turned him around. McCoy’s face was paler than usual, and Spock wondered how much the Oracle and the Instrument of Obedience worsened McCoy’s condition.

“You can’t believe that a cure would just conveniently appear in front of us,” McCoy said.

Spock took McCoy’s hand off his shoulder. “Let me return to work, Doctor.”

“Spock –”

“Stop wasting both of our times by asking questions you know the answer to.”

McCoy stepped back as if stricken and folded his arms across his chest.

He exhaled. “I’m sorry, you know. For how I left.”

Spock pressed his lips together and turned back to the computer screen filled with the Fabrini symbols.

When Kirk came in twenty-three minutes later, Spock used him to get McCoy out of the lab.

–now–

“You can go now, Spock.”

Spock clasped his hands behind his back, straightening. McCoy was sitting on his bed, taking off his boots, pointedly avoiding looking at Spock.

“Is that what you want?” Spock asked, watching as McCoy slid off the second boot.

“Since when do you care about what I want?”

Spock took a breath. “Doctor, it is a fact that I read somewhat faster than you. Therefore –”

“Spock.” McCoy raised his hand but not his face.

Spock waited, but McCoy didn’t continue. Spock unclenched his hands and walked toward the desk to pick up the PADD he’d left there before coming to the Captain’s quarters. He handed it to McCoy.

“I suggest you sleep before looking at it.” Spock turned around, prepared to leave.

“Why did you come to Jim’s cabin?”

Why, indeed. It already seemed like a mistake, but he’d wanted to let McCoy know and when he couldn’t find him in his quarters, there had been no other option. Spock let out a short breath. “You were not here,” he said.

The only sound in the room was their breathing. Quiet and asynchronous. McCoy shifted on the bed, the fabrics rustling. Spock closed his eyes, waiting for something, but when it didn’t come, he reached out his hand in order to push the button opening the door.

“Spock.”

Spock’s hand hovered above the button.

“Do you…” McCoy cleared his throat. He was standing close. “Will you stay?”

They’d never given a name to what they had. Either of them could end it at any time, if they so decided, but contrary to Spock’s initial belief, it lasted for over a year.

They’d never made promises, but they were content, or so Spock thought. And yet McCoy had made a promise to Natira, however brief. He did not know her, but he’d taken her as a wife.

“Your decision to stay on Yonada was most illogical,” Spock said, turning around. He hadn’t understood back on the surface of the asteroid ship, and he didn’t understand now.

“So you’ve said.” McCoy watched his feet.

“Why?”

“Dying among strangers makes things easier.” McCoy shrugged.

“Easier for whom?”

McCoy finally met his eyes – so blue, so clear, so pained. Neither of them said anything, and Spock’s chest ached in a way it hadn’t for a long time.

“Spock, I…” McCoy raised his hand, as if to touch Spock, but he changed his mind and touched his stomach instead, fisting the undershirt. “You should go.”

Spock exhaled. “I’d like to stay, Leonard.”

McCoy’s eyes widened, and he nodded. “Alright.” His lips loosened into not quite a smile, and Spock guided him back to bed.

When McCoy pressed his face against Spock’s shoulder – his breath, weakly smelling of alcohol, tickling Spock’s neck – Spock curled his arm around him and rested his hand on McCoy’s upper arm, holding him close.

“Are you certain, Mister Spock?” Kirk asked when McCoy stepped out of the lab.

“Nothing is ever certain, Captain,” Spock repeated the words McCoy had said the day before. Spock was sure he saw recognition in Kirk’s eyes, and he dropped his eyes back to his PADD. “But Doctor McCoy and Nurse Chapel both agree that it is promising.”

“Is promising enough?”

Spock tightened his hold on his PADD. “It has to be.” He could not accept any alternative. It was, as the Captain and McCoy would say, their best shot.

McCoy and Nurse Chapel were both confident that the cure would be compatible with a human. They’d made some modifications, and the tests had been successful. All that was left now was to administer it and hope.

“It’s McCoy’s life at stake, Spock.” Kirk started to pace, his fingers sliding and tapping on the surface of the desks. “There can’t be any doubt.”

“I would not inform McCoy if I’d thought there was no chance.”

Kirk’s expression softened. “Of course not. It’s just…” Kirk ran his fingers through his hair. How easily could humans let their frustration and feelings be known.

“I understand the feeling, Jim,” Spock said and set his PADD aside. He clasped his hands behind his back, gripping them tightly, and glanced at the test tubes with the dark green cure. In the evening, they would apply the first dose, and if everything went well, two more every twelve hours after that. Until then, there was nothing else to do but wait.

“You should return to the bridge, Captain.”

“They’ll inform me if something happens.” Kirk took an empty test tube and rotated it in his hands. The silence, so rarely uncomfortable, was filled with unease. After forty-nine seconds, Kirk asked, “Spock, are things okay between you and Bones?”

Spock watched the tube in Kirk’s hands. In the morning, McCoy had woken up and stayed pressed against Spock for another thirteen point seven minutes; his hand placed over Spock’s heart.

“You stayed,” McCoy said, his breath brushing Spock’s collarbone. It was an innocent sentence, but something about McCoy’s tone made Spock think.

Spock often left without a word while McCoy was still asleep. To work in the early mornings was highly productive, and it allowed Spock more time to spend with McCoy in the evenings. McCoy never commented on it, and Spock never thought much of it. Perhaps it was an oversight on his part.

His throat tightening, Spock closed his eyes. “I did,” he had said, voice hoarse, focusing on McCoy’s fingers running soft circles over Spock’s abdomen.

“Spock?” Kirk’s question brought him back to the present.

“What are you referring to?” Spock asked carefully. He was sure that Kirk did not know about… about him and McCoy.

“It’s not any of my business, but the last couple of days, both of you seemed… off.” Kirk put the tube back in its place. “And I don’t want you to have any regrets if –”

“The treatment will be successful.” His interruption and the firmness of his voice surprised them both. Spock exhaled and strengthened his shields, burying his emotions deeper. “I apologize.” He closed his eyes, the nails digging into his palm.

When Kirk touched his upper arm, Spock startled but did not open his eyes. He did not want to face the captain. He did not want to see the pity and concern.

“You should rest, Spock.” The gentle tone hurt. “Chapel and M’Benga can handle it from now on.”

Spock shook his head. “I wish to be present, Jim.”

“Alright, but you should still –”

The door swished open and McCoy returned. Spock turned around and grabbed his PADD, opening his translation notes but not reading anything.

“You’re still here?” McCoy asked. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

“Rank hath its privileges,” Kirk answered with feigned cheerfulness.

McCoy hummed. “Well, Chapel is running the tests you’ve asked for, Spock.”

“I understand,” Spock answered without moving.

McCoy came closer. “I guess I should thank you, Mister Spock.”

“It is not necessary,” Spock said, keeping his back towards McCoy. “You are not cured yet.”

“Hmm, and here I thought you’d tell me that one does not thank logic.”

“One does not.” Spock turned around. “But I’m aware of your emotional need to express gratitude. And I believe now would still be premature.”

McCoy turned up his eyes.

“Seems like I worried for nothing.” Kirk came to stand next to McCoy.

“What’s that, Jim?” McCoy asked.

“It’s good to see you two doing okay.” Kirk smiled at them. “I’ll come back in time for the first dose.”

“You don’t have to,” McCoy said.

“I want to.”

McCoy nodded. Kirk patted McCoy’s shoulder and left. When the door closed behind him, McCoy glanced at Spock and asked, “Are we okay, Spock?”

Spock inclined his head. “I believe we will be, Leonard.”

SPOCK: Your haemoglobin count is back to normal, Doctor, which indicates that the flow of oxygen to each cell of your body is back up to its abundantly energetic level.

MCCOY: Thank you, Mister Spock, for bringing back the knowledge of the Fabrini.

SPOCK: *nods without any word*

(For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky)

a ficlet I wrote before could be set in the same universe, between the end of this fic and the final scene as shown in the episode, in case you want something a bit... sweeter? Maybe? At His Bedside

#spones #Leonard McCoy #spock #jim kirk #star trek tos #my writing #i crave attention so i decided to post this lol #maybe one day i'll write the third part from mccoy's pov but i feel like it can work like this as well... but i'm biased #since it's 4k i guess i could post it to ao3..... ????#even though it isn't finished-finished????#i also need to find a better title lol #eta: i did think of another title so now it's on ao3 lol

34 notes · View notes