Fic: "The Cure," ST:XI, Always-a-girl!Kirk/McCoy, R
I have so much homework to do, and yet I'm writing fanfic. Het, no less. I should be taken out back and flogged. But I'd probably like it.
The Cure
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: ST:XI/Doom
Pairing: Always-a-girl!Kirk/Reaper!Bones
Rating: R
Word Count: Approx. 5200
Disclaimer:
vinniebatman’s fault.
Notes: Set post-Doom and post-ST:XI. Kirk’s always been a girl and Bones has always been Reaper. Timelines have been toyed with.
Summary:
vinniebatman wanted some always-a-girl!Kirk/Reaper!Bones. Her wish is my command.
It’s bad.
Fuck Christ, is it bad.
Covered in burns and studded with shrapnel from the explosion, Gin should be unconscious from pain and shock, but she’s not. Dear God in Heaven, but she’s not. She’s wide-awake, her remaining eye fixed intently, intensely on Bones’s: a glittering, bright blue jewel in the raw hamburger of her face.
Cracked, burned lips shape out some word or other before being swiped by a dry, swollen tongue. She mouths the word again, her mouth curving a little in what’s far too ghoulish to be a proper smile . . . yet somehow it is. And still beautiful for all the ruin it’s set in.
Gin mouths another word, and this one . . . this one is the one that undoes Bones. That make sudden tears leak from his gritty, dry eyes and drip down his nose.
“Shut up,” he tells Gin in a choked, hoarse voice that’s healing even as he talks. “Ya idiot. You want those to be your last words?”
That ghoulish half-smile, and Gin’s eye is rolling back into her head even as her body’s seized by a violent grande mal.
There’s really nothing Bones can do for her that he hasn’t already done, except still the seizure that’s helping to kill her as he watches. . . .
No, there’s nothing-
But then, there’s never nothing, is there?
Wiping his eyes and looking at his med-kit, he reaches hesitantly toward it. When his fingers touch the cool metal of the case, his eyes slip shut, attempting to still the renewed flood of tears.
It doesn’t work. It does the exact opposite, in fact, recalling to his mind burnt lips shaping out words that break Bones over and over.
Always and you, they’d been. Always you.
“Damnit, Gin,” Bones husks, hanging his head and opening the kit by feel alone. His fingers find the vial he wants by the Braille on the label. “Damn you.”
But it’s not Gin’s fault, is it, that he’s so prepared to break the only promise he’s ever kept, is it? Not her fault she’s dying because she’d tried to save their lives-there’s irony of the worst kind-and so took the bulk of the shrapnel and the worst of burns that would barely have phased Bones?
Not her fault, any of it.
No, if Bones means to do what he’s already doing, it’s no one’s fault but his own. His own loneliness, his own desperation . . . his own decision.
Opening dark, determined eyes, he sees that Gin’s seizures have slowed to sporadic petite mals. Charred right half of her body steams gently in the chilly air. . . .
Bones prepares the hypo and places it against the left side of her neck, but before he can depress it, he’s taken by a strong urge . . . he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to her mouth, ignoring the faint taste of cooked flesh.
As he injects her, Virginia T. Kirk takes her last labored breath.
*
Gin Kirk bolts upright out of a nightmare and into . . . a Sickbay cubicle?
Breathing hard and sweating even in the perfectly modulated environment, she looks around her cubicle. No extra machinery, so whatever happened to her hadn’t been that bad. Maybe just a bump on the head, though there’s no residual ache. But that means nothing, except as a testament to just how damned good a doctor Leonard McCoy is.
And speaking of, that’s just who happens to be parked in the chair next to her bio-bed: deeply asleep, from the looks of it, his arms crossed over his broad chest, chin down and legs crossed at the ankle.
He looks haggard and harried even in his sleep, and Gin feels a sudden wave of affection for him. Affection, worry, and yearning that she’s grown used to in their five years of friendship.
And in that five years, she’s woken up to Bones by her bedside, looking like hell, more times than she cares to count.
One of these days, she thinks, fighting the very strong urge to reach out and brush messy locks of hair back off his forehead. One of these days, I’ll stop taking years off your life, old friend.
But probably not any time soon, she knows.
Huffing a soundless laugh, she runs a hand through her hair . . . which is much shorter than it was before the apparently disastrous away mission. In fact, it’s an uneven cap of crisp-feeling spikes, barely an inch long.
“The fuck?” she whispers, patting her whole head over again, just to make sure. “What the fuck happened to my hair!” She screeches, horrified and angry. Bones snorts and opens groggy eyes.
“Huzzat?” He mumbles, rubbing his face. Gin swings her legs over the edge of the bed, stands up, and when there’s no bout of dizziness, she punches Bones in the arm. Hard.
“Ow! Ya crazy bi-damnit! Stop hittin’ me!” Bones growls, catching her fist in the third swing and shoving her back toward the bed. Back she goes, but doesn’t topple, like she expects. Instead, she pushes back against Bones hard enough to make him rock back a little.
“Where’s. My. Hair?!” She demands, glaring into Bones’s dark, exasperated eyes. Eyes which he rolls.
“’S what I love about you, Gin, always got your priorities in order.”
“Fuck my priorities, Bones, whatever happened clearly wasn’t a big deal, or else I’d feel like shit, instead of just looking like it!” Gin yanks her hand out of Bones’s and sits on the bed, trying to be calm and reasonable. “Look, I understand you do some unorthodox things in your Sickbay, Bones. Believe me: I’m glad you do. But cutting off all my hair-“
“Gin, willya shut up about your goddamn hair for a minute!” Bones barks, tugging on his own hair. “I need to think.”
Gin rolls her own eyes. “Fine. Think all you want, Bones. I’ve got time.”
Sighing, Bones sits back in his chair, slouching forward, burying his face in his hands. “Gin . . . what do you remember about the away mission?”
“Well, I-“ Gin frowns, trying to remember what happened after she, Bones, and Ensign Taglietta had boarded the shuttlecraft. But there’s nothing. Nothing but that awful nightmare and waking up in Sickbay.
Bones is watching her now, as if he can read her mind and see the memories she doesn’t have.
“I remember boarding the shuttle, and taking off, then . . . there’s nothing. Not a damn thing.” Gin unconsciously reaches up to her hair and scrunches what little of it there is to scrunch. “Bones . . . what happened to me-no, fuck that, what happened to the ensign? Is she-?”
Bones shakes his head gravely, and Gin’s shoulders sag. She hadn’t known the ensign all that well, just that she was bright and upbeat, and that Spock-Spock-had nothing but praise for her.
Her vision begins to blur and, because there’s no one around but Bones, she lets it. Lets the tears fighting so hard to escape roll down her nose to drip on her blue hospital gown.
“Ah, fuck, Bones,” she breathes, pinching the bridge of her nose till it feels like her traitor eyes are about to explode. Next thing she knows, Bones’s arm is around her, heavy and comforting.
“Wasn’t anything you coulda done, Gin.”
“Bullshit. There’s always something.”
“Not this time.”
Gin hides her face in Bones’s shoulder for a moment, simply breathing. Breathing in Bones: the scent of sanitizer, clean skin, and the various polymers he works with. “Yeah? And why is that, Dr. McCoy?” She looks up into Bones’s steady, worried gaze. “Why was this a no-win situation?”
Bones sighs. “From what we can tell, the damned atmosphere caught fire as soon as the shuttle entered it. Nearly burnt us to a crisp. Taglietta’s station was the worst hit. As near as I can remember, the conn panel blew right in her face. She was dead before she knew what hit her.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “And you-Jesus wept, Gin, you took her station without a second thought. Just leapt into the chair and tried to land our cooked gooses.”
Bones’s eyes go hazy with memories. None too happy ones, to go by the look on his face.
“You landed us, alright. But not before the co-pilot instrument panel blew and . . . you were burned. Badly. Your whole right side.” Bones swallows and looks away from Gin, who examines her arm. As good as new. Even Bones couldn’t fix a burn as bad as he’s implying in . . . Gin doesn’t even know what day it is, let alone what time. It occurs to her she may have been unconscious for a good deal longer than she suspected.
“You musta been in agony, but you landed us. And a damn fine landing, if I’m any judge.” Bones swallows again and looks at Gin. His eyes are haunted and the circles around them seem to stand out like a raccoon mask. “I just barely dragged us out of the damned albatross before the whole thing blew sky high.”
Gin shakes her head. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Bones snorts wryly, but squeezes her close for a moment. “Probably never will short of hypnosis. And that’s probably a good thing.”
Doubtful, Gin thinks, but doesn’t say. It’d only start an argument, and that’s the last thing either of them wants right now. “How long have I been out?”
She’s completely unprepared for Bones to say: “About eight hours. Mostly because I kept you good and tranqed up. You needed the rest and I needed to keep an eye on you.”
Putting aside Bones’s liberal hand with the sedatives-another argument for later-Gin shakes her head again. “If it’s only been eight hours, shouldn’t I still be, uh, kinda crispy?”
Bones looks away once more. “You should. But you’re not. I . . . gave you something experimental . . . something that literally saved your life-“
“Thanks again, by the way.” Gin lays her head on Bones’s solid shoulder. “Whatever it was, I feel a thousand percent. In fact, I feel better than I have since I was twelve. You should be marketing that stuff as a miracle serum.”
“You may not be thankin’ me once I tell you the story behind C24.”
Gin looks up at Bones, who’s watching her again with sad, wary eyes. “Is that the stuff you gave me?”
He nods then sighs heavily. “Look, I’ve never been good at beatin’ around the bush, so I’m just gonna tell you everything I know-without interruption, I might add-and let you make of it what you will. Okay?”
Gin’s first instinct is, of course, to ask about a thousand questions, but the mulish, intent look on Bones’s face stops her. “Okay, Bones, sure. Whatever you say.”
Some of that wariness fades and is replaced by a grimace of a smile. “Once upon a time-back in 2046, this was-there was a highly classified research facility on Mars called Olduvai. It was funded by the Union Aerospace Corporation-“
Gin gasps, unable to help the question that springs to her lips. “Aren’t they-?”
Bones nods once. “The largest shareholders in what was EugenSys, under that augmented lunatic, Khan Singh’s reign of terror.”
Fuck, Bones, what’s any of this got to do with me? Gin wants to demand, but remembers her promise, and zips it.
For his part, Bones takes up the narrative shortly, looking distant and disturbed. “Anyway, a bunch of . . . forensic archaeologists dug up something they shouldn’t have at one of the sites, and as a result, a lot of innocent people wound up dead. So UAC called in a few favors and the marines got sent in . . . I was one of them.”
It takes a few moments for that last, quiet statement to sink in, and when it does, Gin thinks she heard wrong. But Bones is talking once more, hesitantly and gruffly, his eyes focused on the cubicle wall across from them.
“My name back then was John Grimm,” he says without inflection, and . . . without his good ol’ boy accent. Gin gapes as he stands up and paces back to the chair. “And my codename, was Reaper. . . .”
*
“ . . . so I did what I had to do. What I promised myself and my sister I’d never do. I injected another human being with a . . . somewhat modified Agent F003. C24 glommed itself onto your chromosomes and got about the business of reproducing itself and, in the process, healing you as it went along. Bye-bye burns, hello regenerated eye. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.” Bones squares his shoulders and looks over at Gin, who’s watching him as if she’s never seen him before.
And she goes on doing so until Bones is about ready to tear his hair out.
“Well,” he grunts, unconsciously slipping back into his normal accent for the first time since he began his story. “Are you gonna phaser me now, or wait to see me court-martialed and put under a military prison?”
Gin swings her long legs up onto the bio-bed and crosses them underneath her. Then she runs a hand over her burnt-off hair. “I . . . don’t know what to say, Bones. What to think. I mean your story is . . . unbelievable. In that I can’t believe it. I mean-you’re practically immortal because of alien DNA, and now I’m immortal, too, because you injected me with the same DNA? We’re both super-strong, super-fast, and we can heal almost instantaneously-“ Gin laughs a little, running her hand over her hair again. “Look, buddy, I can believe some pretty outrageous shit-even that you gave me something that can cure massive third degree burns over half my body. But magical alien DNA is where I draw the line!”
Bones smiles, but it’s a hard, mirthless sort of grin. “You know, I knew you’d say that. So I arranged for a little demonstration.” Bones eases himself out of the chair and digs for the laser scalpel in his pocket. Gin’s big blue eyes get even bigger when he holds it out to her.
“I can heal anything you dish out, but don’t go ape-shit cutting me up.”
Gin blinks. “What?”
“Cut. Me,” Bones enunciates slowly, rolling up his sleeves carefully. “Pick an arm. Any arm.”
“Bones, how have I known you for so long and not realized you’re completely fucking insane?” Gin asks, shaking her head and laughing. But her eyes are steady on Bones’s and intent. Like he can read her mind, Bones knows what she’s planning to do before she does, and sidesteps her sudden leap off the bed, turning to face her as she recovers from her botched attack.
“You’re strong, and you’re fast, but not strong enough or fast enough to get the scalpel from me. At least not yet. Though I suspect with some training, you could be,” Bones notes as she straightens up and turns around. Her gown is all rucked up, and he gets a flash of thigh and higher that makes him-John “Reaper” Grimm-blush. But he stands resolute.
Gin fakes left, then right, then rushes Bones, who lets himself be tackled to the bed. But he keeps his hold on the scalpel even as they roll around, tussling. It’s actually kind of fun. She’s almost quick enough to get the upper hand, but of course she never quite does.
Finally long thighs wrap around his hips and she tries to roll them back over, but Bones pins her torso with his own, and her hands with his own, letting his substantially greater weight-all of it good old-fashioned marine muscle-press her into breathless stillness.
Except for her right hand, which is prying futilely at his left, still trying to get the scalpel from him.
“Fuck!” She glares up into Bones’s eyes. “Look, I know lately things’ve been pretty stressful around here, but you can’t go around wielding a surgical tool like you’re fucking Don Quixote! So just-gimme the scalpel, and we can sit down and talk this over-“
“Gin,” Bones leans down till their noses are brushing. “Shut up.”
“Bones-“
But Bones is kissing her, hard and thoroughly. Not exactly what he’d planned to do-or a situation he’d ever thought to find himself in-but it happens, and he’s glad of it. Glad to get what is likely to be his only taste of the woman he’s wanted since the moment they met. And for her part, Gin moans and melts like butter underneath him, giving as good as she gets from the kiss. Her heart beats strongly and quickly against her ribcage and he can feel it keeping time with his own.
She shifts her body slightly under his so that the erection he’s been fighting since he got unintentionally flashed a few minutes earlier is closer to the sweet, secret heat at the core of her. . . .
“Oh, fuck. Oh, God . . . please . . . gimme the scalpel, Bones. . . .” Gin pants between kisses, her breath humid and hot on Bones’s lips. “Please?”
And instantly, Bones is recalled to his reason for being on top of her in the first place.
Sighing irritably, he gets to his knees, pulling Gin up with him. Her eyes are dilated and her lips are temptingly swollen. When Bones risks letting go of her hands, her arms immediately wrap around his neck in a tight embrace. Her face is warm and wet against his neck and he hugs her back. Waves of despair and a keen sense of just how unfair the universe truly is wash over him.
“Be careful what you ask for, Gin,” he murmurs grimly in her singed yellow hair. Then he flicks the scalpel on. And gives it to her.
*
At first, Gin doesn’t even feel any pain, the laser’s so damn keen.
Then, as some organ she can’t even name ruptures, agony floods through her, leaving her too breathless to scream.
“Bones. . . .” out of the bottom corner of her vision, she can make out a spreading stain of blood on her gown, spreading across her abdomen like fire through a cornfield.
The man in question lays her gently back on the bio-bed, which is beginning to beep urgently. His eyes are dark, serious, and utterly sane as they look her over.
“That was your spleen,” he says detachedly, flicking the bloody scalpel off and tossing it away from himself as if it’s hot. “I know it hurts now-that the pain is incredible-but that’ll only last for a minute.”
“What . . . have you . . . done?” Gin gasps, tears filling her eyes. More from the pain of Bones’s betrayal than from the mortal injury he’s done her. Darkness eats away at the edges of her vision, and she distantly feels Bones’s large, warm hand take her smaller, colder one.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Gin,” he says, blinking fast. Gin looks away, not wanting the last thing she sees to be the only man she’s ever loved, apologizing for killing her. Instead, the last thing she sees before darkness swallows her whole is the damned cubicle chair-
Then she’s wide-awake, head ringing from a solid slap.
Bones turns her face toward his. “I need you to stay with me, Gin. I need you to stay conscious for me.”
Gin blinks away the tears in her eyes. “Please, Bones . . . don’ lemme die.”
Bones looks as if he’s been gut-punched for a few moments, then his face smooths out, goes unreadable. It’s his doctor-face, and that’s somehow reassuring, despite the fact that he’s the one who stabbed her.
“Y’ain’t gonna die, but you need to stay awake. I need you to be cogent while you heal.”
Gin chuffs out a laugh, even though it hurts just to breathe. Not as much as it did even a few seconds ago, which means that she’s probably going into shock. Though, strangely, she doesn’t feel the cold lethargy she associates with shock. “Cogent while I die. Crazy bastard.”
“Yeah, I’m a crazy bastard, Gin. One who’ll be brig-bound shortly, I’m sure.” Bones chuckles ruefully. “By the way: how’s that spleen?”
“Damnit, Bones, I’m a captain, not a doctor! Fix me up, for the love of God!” Gin’s practiacally begging, now. She can’t feel the pain of the rupture, anymore, nor can she feel the blood pouring out of her. In fact, she barely feels a twinge. “Bones, I’m going into shock!”
Bones chuckles again. “No, you’re not. If you were, you’d be unconscious and the bio-bed would still be bleeping and blipping like mad. In fact-computer, generate a hologram of the patient’s torso. Three-X magnification.”
The hologram flashes into existence, hovering over Gin’s legs, big as life and twice as gross. Gin can see the usual viscera: lungs, lights, liver, stomach, and-
“That’s your spleen,” Bones says, pointing at the greyish organ and obscuring the hologram. Gin sits up and smacks his hand away.
“I know where my spleen is, Doctor,” she huffs, giving Bones a cold glare before leaning in to look at the organ. It looks whole, from what Gin remembers of the holograms of spleens in Biology 101. Whole, except for a laceration on the anterior side that seems to be . . . filling in with new tissue even as she watches. Which is impossible. Even if the organ is being regenerated, complete regeneration would still take, depending on the damage, hours to days. Or possibly, in the case of brain damage, weeks to months.
“This is some kinda mistake,” Gin murmurs absently, reaching out to the hologram, her own finger obscuring the almost completely whole spleen. The hologram fuzzes for a moment, then compensates. “This isn’t right.”
“It certainly ain’t. But it’s true,” Bones states firmly. Gin looks over at him. He’s standing stolidly, arms crossed over his chest, staring intently at the hologram. “As your body grows accustomed to having the blueprints for self-regeneration, you’ll heal faster than this. At least for so superficial a wound.”
“Superficial!” Gin crosses her own arms over her chest.
“Well, it’s not brain, kidneys, liver, lungs, or heart. Those’re the big’uns. Even now, it’ll take some time for your body to regenerate and recover from mortal wounds to those organs. Of course, the more they’re . . . injured, the faster and more adept your body’ll become at healing them. In fact, I suspect your penchant for sustaining head injuries’ll guarantee your body’ll learn to heal those faster than any other serious injury.”
“Oh, haha, Dr. McCoy.” Gin sniffs, and flops down on the bed, scowling. In the hologram, the spleen is now perfect and unmarred. She’s come to the reasonable conclusion that it isn’t her spleen, but some sort of time-lapse vid of someone eles’s spleen being fixed. That’s really the most probable explanation, however improbable. “This could be part of some kinda trick or an elaborate practical joke.”
“Could be,” Bones acknowledges. “How’s that spleen doin’ now, Cap’n?”
“Skewered and bleeding out, that’s how-“ Gin pauses. Frowns. For the first time in two minutes-two minutes in which she would’ve sworn she’d have been worm-chow without some kind of first aid-Gin realizes that she’s not in any pain. Not in shock, either, if the lack of cold and lethargy are anything to go by.
And the spreading bloodstain on her gown has stopped spreading.
Which would only happen if she were dead. Dead, or. . . .
Gin sits up and gingerly pats the left upper quadrant of her abdomen. No pain. So she prods it a little less gingerly, inspecting the neat slit in her gown and prying it till it’s a wide hole.
No sign of a wound.
She looks up at Bones, the blood draining out of her face till she feels light-headed.
He merely smiles sadly, and doesn’t bother saying “I told you so.” Though she might prefer it if he did. It’d make this moment less . . . surreal.
“What’ve you done, Bones?” Falls from her numb lips. Bones looks away guiltily, aiming his next words at the hologram of Gin’s abdominal cavity.
“I told you what I did, Gin.”
With all the will she has, Gin grabs hold of herself, forcing away the light-headedness. “Yeah? Well, tell me again. And this time, I get to ask all the questions I want, Corporal Grimm.”
Bones-Reaper-flinches, but nods.
“And tell the computer to get rid of that fucking hologram. It’s making me queasy.”
For a second, Reaper’s mouth twitches as if it wants to smile. Then he’s banishing the hologram and standing at attention in a queerly old-fashioned way, like some actor out of a period-piece holo about pre-warp Earth. But then Bones has always been something of an anachronism-a tendency Gin’s always found charming and endearing, till now. “Ma’am!”
Suddenly uncomfortable with the steady, intent stare now directed her way, Gin fidgets, unable to look away-though she wouldn’t even if she could. Captains don’t flinch away from subordinates, no matter how eerie the circumstances.
But, God, how have I never noticed how fucking ancient his eyes can be sometimes? How have I never noticed that, for all that I damn near wrote sonnets about the ‘keen, yet gentle darkness’ of them?
Gin shakes her head and tries to organize her thoughts into something a bit more apropos.
“Tell me again about the ones that turned into monsters,” she says quietly. “And why you were sure I wouldn’t turn into one.”
Reaper’s shoulders tense up. “Sam was the expert on that, not me. Even now, without an actual subject to study and the Federation’s technology to do it with, I can’t really tell you more than I already have. They had a truly unique neurology, and were, Sam thought, able to pick up on neurotransmitters. They could . . . pick out who was gonna be one of them-monsters-and who wasn’t. They infected the ones who would, and killed the ones who wouldn’t.”
After some of the things Gin’s seen-that they’ve all seen-that makes entirely too much sense, improbable though it sounds even now.
She unconsciously rubs her temples. “And how could you be sure I wouldn’t turn out to be one of the ‘monsters’?”
Now, that perfect, perfectly antiquated military attention wavers a bit and Reaper’s eyes are haunted and almost pleading. “Because I know you better than I know anyone, myself included. You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever met, Gin Kirk. You’re a lot of things, besides, but none of those things are a monster.”
Gin doesn’t know what to say to that. All she can do is blush and fidget under Reaper’s defenseless gaze. The kind of gaze she’d have given anything to see directed upon her even an hour ago.
“Jesus, Bones,” Gin buries her face in her hands. They have that strange ozone-smell that she associates with a Sickbay-grade sanitizing field. “Jesus.”
“As to why I broke my vow,” Reaper goes on implacably. “I did it because . . . I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved, whether through time or misadventure. The hurt of it never goes away, never seems to dull. I couldn’t imagine what that pain would be like if the person I lost was you: my best friend and the woman I happen to love to the point of distraction. Couldn’t imagine spending however long is left to me without you.
“I broke my vow for purely selfish reasons, Gin, and I have no excuses,” Reaper says softly. “The galaxy may need Captain Kirk, but I need Gin Kirk even more. And that’s why I saved you.”
Gin looks up from her hands, but Reaper’s looking down at his regulation Starfleet issue shoes.
He looks like nothing so much as a lost, lonely little boy.
Gin’s heart goes out to him, even though she’s not sure she wants it to. “Bones, I . . . I need time to think about all this.”
He nods. “Shall I call security?”
For a few seconds, Gin doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Then she’s laughing: a choppy, uncomfortable ha-ha. “Ah, no, Bones. I don’t throw my Chief Medical Officer in the Brig for saving his captain’s life.”
Reaper shakes his head. “You know damned well I did more than that, Gin.”
“Yeah. I know.” Boy, do I know. “But I’m not keen on the best doctor Starfleet’s ever had spending the rest of this mission in the Brig. Nor am I comfortable with him spending the rest of his life in prison. Nor myself in a research lab on some distant-ass moon, being poked and prodded for eternity. Whatever else I decide to do, telling Starfleet is not an option.”
He sneaks a glance at her, wary and hopeful.
“But I still need time to think about this. About what it means and who I am, now.”
Reaper’s look turns confused. “You’re Captain Virginia Tiberius Kirk.”
Gin’s eyebrows quirk up. “Was it so easy for you in the beginning, Reaper?”
Another flinch, but Reaper answers, if hesitantly. “I was so busy trying to get myself and Sam to safety-then with being debriefed back on Earth, by the time I actually had time to process things . . . subconsciously I already had. I knew whom I was and that the most important parts of me-my heart and soul-hadn’t changed. At least not for the worst. I think you’ll come to realize that, too. In time.”
“Maybe.” Gin snorts. Bones, and apparently Reaper, too, have a tendency to see life in black and white. In absolutes. To Gin, life is infinite shades of grey, that are open to interpretation. “Anyway, what’s a lady gotta do to get an escort back to her quarters?”
Now Reaper’s the one to snort. “If I ever run into a lady, Gin, I’ll be sure and ask her for you.” But he disappears around the corner of Gin’s cubicle for a minute-during which she stands up and does a few stretching exercises. She still doesn’t feel any different, except for that pervasive sense of total wellbeing. Like she could bench-press the entire universe with one arm tied behind her back. . . .
“Madam’s carriage awaits.”
It’s Reaper, and he’s pushing a wheelchair. Gin rolls her eyes.
“Since I’m Wonder Woman, now, is that really necessary, Bones?”
He shrugs, but looks far too amused for Gin’s liking. “Sickbay rules. Overnight patients have to be wheeled out and to their quarters by a member of the medical staff or, if there’s an emergency, a member of the crew.” Reaper blinks slowly. “This ain’t no emergency, but if you prefer, I can wake up Spock, and get him to-“
“No-ho!” Gin hurriedly throws herself into the chair and looks up at a smirking Reaper. “I’m all yours, Marine. Bring us about, and squire me hence.”
Reaper rolls his eyes. “Yes’m.”
He does a wheelie with her chair-some regard for his patient-and escorts Gin out of Sickbay and into her new life.
The Cure
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: ST:XI/Doom
Pairing: Always-a-girl!Kirk/Reaper!Bones
Rating: R
Word Count: Approx. 5200
Disclaimer:
vinniebatman’s fault.
Notes: Set post-Doom and post-ST:XI. Kirk’s always been a girl and Bones has always been Reaper. Timelines have been toyed with.
Summary:
vinniebatman wanted some always-a-girl!Kirk/Reaper!Bones. Her wish is my command.
It’s bad.
Fuck Christ, is it bad.
Covered in burns and studded with shrapnel from the explosion, Gin should be unconscious from pain and shock, but she’s not. Dear God in Heaven, but she’s not. She’s wide-awake, her remaining eye fixed intently, intensely on Bones’s: a glittering, bright blue jewel in the raw hamburger of her face.
Cracked, burned lips shape out some word or other before being swiped by a dry, swollen tongue. She mouths the word again, her mouth curving a little in what’s far too ghoulish to be a proper smile . . . yet somehow it is. And still beautiful for all the ruin it’s set in.
Gin mouths another word, and this one . . . this one is the one that undoes Bones. That make sudden tears leak from his gritty, dry eyes and drip down his nose.
“Shut up,” he tells Gin in a choked, hoarse voice that’s healing even as he talks. “Ya idiot. You want those to be your last words?”
That ghoulish half-smile, and Gin’s eye is rolling back into her head even as her body’s seized by a violent grande mal.
There’s really nothing Bones can do for her that he hasn’t already done, except still the seizure that’s helping to kill her as he watches. . . .
No, there’s nothing-
But then, there’s never nothing, is there?
Wiping his eyes and looking at his med-kit, he reaches hesitantly toward it. When his fingers touch the cool metal of the case, his eyes slip shut, attempting to still the renewed flood of tears.
It doesn’t work. It does the exact opposite, in fact, recalling to his mind burnt lips shaping out words that break Bones over and over.
Always and you, they’d been. Always you.
“Damnit, Gin,” Bones husks, hanging his head and opening the kit by feel alone. His fingers find the vial he wants by the Braille on the label. “Damn you.”
But it’s not Gin’s fault, is it, that he’s so prepared to break the only promise he’s ever kept, is it? Not her fault she’s dying because she’d tried to save their lives-there’s irony of the worst kind-and so took the bulk of the shrapnel and the worst of burns that would barely have phased Bones?
Not her fault, any of it.
No, if Bones means to do what he’s already doing, it’s no one’s fault but his own. His own loneliness, his own desperation . . . his own decision.
Opening dark, determined eyes, he sees that Gin’s seizures have slowed to sporadic petite mals. Charred right half of her body steams gently in the chilly air. . . .
Bones prepares the hypo and places it against the left side of her neck, but before he can depress it, he’s taken by a strong urge . . . he leans down and presses a gentle kiss to her mouth, ignoring the faint taste of cooked flesh.
As he injects her, Virginia T. Kirk takes her last labored breath.
*
Gin Kirk bolts upright out of a nightmare and into . . . a Sickbay cubicle?
Breathing hard and sweating even in the perfectly modulated environment, she looks around her cubicle. No extra machinery, so whatever happened to her hadn’t been that bad. Maybe just a bump on the head, though there’s no residual ache. But that means nothing, except as a testament to just how damned good a doctor Leonard McCoy is.
And speaking of, that’s just who happens to be parked in the chair next to her bio-bed: deeply asleep, from the looks of it, his arms crossed over his broad chest, chin down and legs crossed at the ankle.
He looks haggard and harried even in his sleep, and Gin feels a sudden wave of affection for him. Affection, worry, and yearning that she’s grown used to in their five years of friendship.
And in that five years, she’s woken up to Bones by her bedside, looking like hell, more times than she cares to count.
One of these days, she thinks, fighting the very strong urge to reach out and brush messy locks of hair back off his forehead. One of these days, I’ll stop taking years off your life, old friend.
But probably not any time soon, she knows.
Huffing a soundless laugh, she runs a hand through her hair . . . which is much shorter than it was before the apparently disastrous away mission. In fact, it’s an uneven cap of crisp-feeling spikes, barely an inch long.
“The fuck?” she whispers, patting her whole head over again, just to make sure. “What the fuck happened to my hair!” She screeches, horrified and angry. Bones snorts and opens groggy eyes.
“Huzzat?” He mumbles, rubbing his face. Gin swings her legs over the edge of the bed, stands up, and when there’s no bout of dizziness, she punches Bones in the arm. Hard.
“Ow! Ya crazy bi-damnit! Stop hittin’ me!” Bones growls, catching her fist in the third swing and shoving her back toward the bed. Back she goes, but doesn’t topple, like she expects. Instead, she pushes back against Bones hard enough to make him rock back a little.
“Where’s. My. Hair?!” She demands, glaring into Bones’s dark, exasperated eyes. Eyes which he rolls.
“’S what I love about you, Gin, always got your priorities in order.”
“Fuck my priorities, Bones, whatever happened clearly wasn’t a big deal, or else I’d feel like shit, instead of just looking like it!” Gin yanks her hand out of Bones’s and sits on the bed, trying to be calm and reasonable. “Look, I understand you do some unorthodox things in your Sickbay, Bones. Believe me: I’m glad you do. But cutting off all my hair-“
“Gin, willya shut up about your goddamn hair for a minute!” Bones barks, tugging on his own hair. “I need to think.”
Gin rolls her own eyes. “Fine. Think all you want, Bones. I’ve got time.”
Sighing, Bones sits back in his chair, slouching forward, burying his face in his hands. “Gin . . . what do you remember about the away mission?”
“Well, I-“ Gin frowns, trying to remember what happened after she, Bones, and Ensign Taglietta had boarded the shuttlecraft. But there’s nothing. Nothing but that awful nightmare and waking up in Sickbay.
Bones is watching her now, as if he can read her mind and see the memories she doesn’t have.
“I remember boarding the shuttle, and taking off, then . . . there’s nothing. Not a damn thing.” Gin unconsciously reaches up to her hair and scrunches what little of it there is to scrunch. “Bones . . . what happened to me-no, fuck that, what happened to the ensign? Is she-?”
Bones shakes his head gravely, and Gin’s shoulders sag. She hadn’t known the ensign all that well, just that she was bright and upbeat, and that Spock-Spock-had nothing but praise for her.
Her vision begins to blur and, because there’s no one around but Bones, she lets it. Lets the tears fighting so hard to escape roll down her nose to drip on her blue hospital gown.
“Ah, fuck, Bones,” she breathes, pinching the bridge of her nose till it feels like her traitor eyes are about to explode. Next thing she knows, Bones’s arm is around her, heavy and comforting.
“Wasn’t anything you coulda done, Gin.”
“Bullshit. There’s always something.”
“Not this time.”
Gin hides her face in Bones’s shoulder for a moment, simply breathing. Breathing in Bones: the scent of sanitizer, clean skin, and the various polymers he works with. “Yeah? And why is that, Dr. McCoy?” She looks up into Bones’s steady, worried gaze. “Why was this a no-win situation?”
Bones sighs. “From what we can tell, the damned atmosphere caught fire as soon as the shuttle entered it. Nearly burnt us to a crisp. Taglietta’s station was the worst hit. As near as I can remember, the conn panel blew right in her face. She was dead before she knew what hit her.” He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “And you-Jesus wept, Gin, you took her station without a second thought. Just leapt into the chair and tried to land our cooked gooses.”
Bones’s eyes go hazy with memories. None too happy ones, to go by the look on his face.
“You landed us, alright. But not before the co-pilot instrument panel blew and . . . you were burned. Badly. Your whole right side.” Bones swallows and looks away from Gin, who examines her arm. As good as new. Even Bones couldn’t fix a burn as bad as he’s implying in . . . Gin doesn’t even know what day it is, let alone what time. It occurs to her she may have been unconscious for a good deal longer than she suspected.
“You musta been in agony, but you landed us. And a damn fine landing, if I’m any judge.” Bones swallows again and looks at Gin. His eyes are haunted and the circles around them seem to stand out like a raccoon mask. “I just barely dragged us out of the damned albatross before the whole thing blew sky high.”
Gin shakes her head. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Bones snorts wryly, but squeezes her close for a moment. “Probably never will short of hypnosis. And that’s probably a good thing.”
Doubtful, Gin thinks, but doesn’t say. It’d only start an argument, and that’s the last thing either of them wants right now. “How long have I been out?”
She’s completely unprepared for Bones to say: “About eight hours. Mostly because I kept you good and tranqed up. You needed the rest and I needed to keep an eye on you.”
Putting aside Bones’s liberal hand with the sedatives-another argument for later-Gin shakes her head again. “If it’s only been eight hours, shouldn’t I still be, uh, kinda crispy?”
Bones looks away once more. “You should. But you’re not. I . . . gave you something experimental . . . something that literally saved your life-“
“Thanks again, by the way.” Gin lays her head on Bones’s solid shoulder. “Whatever it was, I feel a thousand percent. In fact, I feel better than I have since I was twelve. You should be marketing that stuff as a miracle serum.”
“You may not be thankin’ me once I tell you the story behind C24.”
Gin looks up at Bones, who’s watching her again with sad, wary eyes. “Is that the stuff you gave me?”
He nods then sighs heavily. “Look, I’ve never been good at beatin’ around the bush, so I’m just gonna tell you everything I know-without interruption, I might add-and let you make of it what you will. Okay?”
Gin’s first instinct is, of course, to ask about a thousand questions, but the mulish, intent look on Bones’s face stops her. “Okay, Bones, sure. Whatever you say.”
Some of that wariness fades and is replaced by a grimace of a smile. “Once upon a time-back in 2046, this was-there was a highly classified research facility on Mars called Olduvai. It was funded by the Union Aerospace Corporation-“
Gin gasps, unable to help the question that springs to her lips. “Aren’t they-?”
Bones nods once. “The largest shareholders in what was EugenSys, under that augmented lunatic, Khan Singh’s reign of terror.”
Fuck, Bones, what’s any of this got to do with me? Gin wants to demand, but remembers her promise, and zips it.
For his part, Bones takes up the narrative shortly, looking distant and disturbed. “Anyway, a bunch of . . . forensic archaeologists dug up something they shouldn’t have at one of the sites, and as a result, a lot of innocent people wound up dead. So UAC called in a few favors and the marines got sent in . . . I was one of them.”
It takes a few moments for that last, quiet statement to sink in, and when it does, Gin thinks she heard wrong. But Bones is talking once more, hesitantly and gruffly, his eyes focused on the cubicle wall across from them.
“My name back then was John Grimm,” he says without inflection, and . . . without his good ol’ boy accent. Gin gapes as he stands up and paces back to the chair. “And my codename, was Reaper. . . .”
*
“ . . . so I did what I had to do. What I promised myself and my sister I’d never do. I injected another human being with a . . . somewhat modified Agent F003. C24 glommed itself onto your chromosomes and got about the business of reproducing itself and, in the process, healing you as it went along. Bye-bye burns, hello regenerated eye. Hallelujah, praise the Lord.” Bones squares his shoulders and looks over at Gin, who’s watching him as if she’s never seen him before.
And she goes on doing so until Bones is about ready to tear his hair out.
“Well,” he grunts, unconsciously slipping back into his normal accent for the first time since he began his story. “Are you gonna phaser me now, or wait to see me court-martialed and put under a military prison?”
Gin swings her long legs up onto the bio-bed and crosses them underneath her. Then she runs a hand over her burnt-off hair. “I . . . don’t know what to say, Bones. What to think. I mean your story is . . . unbelievable. In that I can’t believe it. I mean-you’re practically immortal because of alien DNA, and now I’m immortal, too, because you injected me with the same DNA? We’re both super-strong, super-fast, and we can heal almost instantaneously-“ Gin laughs a little, running her hand over her hair again. “Look, buddy, I can believe some pretty outrageous shit-even that you gave me something that can cure massive third degree burns over half my body. But magical alien DNA is where I draw the line!”
Bones smiles, but it’s a hard, mirthless sort of grin. “You know, I knew you’d say that. So I arranged for a little demonstration.” Bones eases himself out of the chair and digs for the laser scalpel in his pocket. Gin’s big blue eyes get even bigger when he holds it out to her.
“I can heal anything you dish out, but don’t go ape-shit cutting me up.”
Gin blinks. “What?”
“Cut. Me,” Bones enunciates slowly, rolling up his sleeves carefully. “Pick an arm. Any arm.”
“Bones, how have I known you for so long and not realized you’re completely fucking insane?” Gin asks, shaking her head and laughing. But her eyes are steady on Bones’s and intent. Like he can read her mind, Bones knows what she’s planning to do before she does, and sidesteps her sudden leap off the bed, turning to face her as she recovers from her botched attack.
“You’re strong, and you’re fast, but not strong enough or fast enough to get the scalpel from me. At least not yet. Though I suspect with some training, you could be,” Bones notes as she straightens up and turns around. Her gown is all rucked up, and he gets a flash of thigh and higher that makes him-John “Reaper” Grimm-blush. But he stands resolute.
Gin fakes left, then right, then rushes Bones, who lets himself be tackled to the bed. But he keeps his hold on the scalpel even as they roll around, tussling. It’s actually kind of fun. She’s almost quick enough to get the upper hand, but of course she never quite does.
Finally long thighs wrap around his hips and she tries to roll them back over, but Bones pins her torso with his own, and her hands with his own, letting his substantially greater weight-all of it good old-fashioned marine muscle-press her into breathless stillness.
Except for her right hand, which is prying futilely at his left, still trying to get the scalpel from him.
“Fuck!” She glares up into Bones’s eyes. “Look, I know lately things’ve been pretty stressful around here, but you can’t go around wielding a surgical tool like you’re fucking Don Quixote! So just-gimme the scalpel, and we can sit down and talk this over-“
“Gin,” Bones leans down till their noses are brushing. “Shut up.”
“Bones-“
But Bones is kissing her, hard and thoroughly. Not exactly what he’d planned to do-or a situation he’d ever thought to find himself in-but it happens, and he’s glad of it. Glad to get what is likely to be his only taste of the woman he’s wanted since the moment they met. And for her part, Gin moans and melts like butter underneath him, giving as good as she gets from the kiss. Her heart beats strongly and quickly against her ribcage and he can feel it keeping time with his own.
She shifts her body slightly under his so that the erection he’s been fighting since he got unintentionally flashed a few minutes earlier is closer to the sweet, secret heat at the core of her. . . .
“Oh, fuck. Oh, God . . . please . . . gimme the scalpel, Bones. . . .” Gin pants between kisses, her breath humid and hot on Bones’s lips. “Please?”
And instantly, Bones is recalled to his reason for being on top of her in the first place.
Sighing irritably, he gets to his knees, pulling Gin up with him. Her eyes are dilated and her lips are temptingly swollen. When Bones risks letting go of her hands, her arms immediately wrap around his neck in a tight embrace. Her face is warm and wet against his neck and he hugs her back. Waves of despair and a keen sense of just how unfair the universe truly is wash over him.
“Be careful what you ask for, Gin,” he murmurs grimly in her singed yellow hair. Then he flicks the scalpel on. And gives it to her.
*
At first, Gin doesn’t even feel any pain, the laser’s so damn keen.
Then, as some organ she can’t even name ruptures, agony floods through her, leaving her too breathless to scream.
“Bones. . . .” out of the bottom corner of her vision, she can make out a spreading stain of blood on her gown, spreading across her abdomen like fire through a cornfield.
The man in question lays her gently back on the bio-bed, which is beginning to beep urgently. His eyes are dark, serious, and utterly sane as they look her over.
“That was your spleen,” he says detachedly, flicking the bloody scalpel off and tossing it away from himself as if it’s hot. “I know it hurts now-that the pain is incredible-but that’ll only last for a minute.”
“What . . . have you . . . done?” Gin gasps, tears filling her eyes. More from the pain of Bones’s betrayal than from the mortal injury he’s done her. Darkness eats away at the edges of her vision, and she distantly feels Bones’s large, warm hand take her smaller, colder one.
“I’m sorry it had to be this way, Gin,” he says, blinking fast. Gin looks away, not wanting the last thing she sees to be the only man she’s ever loved, apologizing for killing her. Instead, the last thing she sees before darkness swallows her whole is the damned cubicle chair-
Then she’s wide-awake, head ringing from a solid slap.
Bones turns her face toward his. “I need you to stay with me, Gin. I need you to stay conscious for me.”
Gin blinks away the tears in her eyes. “Please, Bones . . . don’ lemme die.”
Bones looks as if he’s been gut-punched for a few moments, then his face smooths out, goes unreadable. It’s his doctor-face, and that’s somehow reassuring, despite the fact that he’s the one who stabbed her.
“Y’ain’t gonna die, but you need to stay awake. I need you to be cogent while you heal.”
Gin chuffs out a laugh, even though it hurts just to breathe. Not as much as it did even a few seconds ago, which means that she’s probably going into shock. Though, strangely, she doesn’t feel the cold lethargy she associates with shock. “Cogent while I die. Crazy bastard.”
“Yeah, I’m a crazy bastard, Gin. One who’ll be brig-bound shortly, I’m sure.” Bones chuckles ruefully. “By the way: how’s that spleen?”
“Damnit, Bones, I’m a captain, not a doctor! Fix me up, for the love of God!” Gin’s practiacally begging, now. She can’t feel the pain of the rupture, anymore, nor can she feel the blood pouring out of her. In fact, she barely feels a twinge. “Bones, I’m going into shock!”
Bones chuckles again. “No, you’re not. If you were, you’d be unconscious and the bio-bed would still be bleeping and blipping like mad. In fact-computer, generate a hologram of the patient’s torso. Three-X magnification.”
The hologram flashes into existence, hovering over Gin’s legs, big as life and twice as gross. Gin can see the usual viscera: lungs, lights, liver, stomach, and-
“That’s your spleen,” Bones says, pointing at the greyish organ and obscuring the hologram. Gin sits up and smacks his hand away.
“I know where my spleen is, Doctor,” she huffs, giving Bones a cold glare before leaning in to look at the organ. It looks whole, from what Gin remembers of the holograms of spleens in Biology 101. Whole, except for a laceration on the anterior side that seems to be . . . filling in with new tissue even as she watches. Which is impossible. Even if the organ is being regenerated, complete regeneration would still take, depending on the damage, hours to days. Or possibly, in the case of brain damage, weeks to months.
“This is some kinda mistake,” Gin murmurs absently, reaching out to the hologram, her own finger obscuring the almost completely whole spleen. The hologram fuzzes for a moment, then compensates. “This isn’t right.”
“It certainly ain’t. But it’s true,” Bones states firmly. Gin looks over at him. He’s standing stolidly, arms crossed over his chest, staring intently at the hologram. “As your body grows accustomed to having the blueprints for self-regeneration, you’ll heal faster than this. At least for so superficial a wound.”
“Superficial!” Gin crosses her own arms over her chest.
“Well, it’s not brain, kidneys, liver, lungs, or heart. Those’re the big’uns. Even now, it’ll take some time for your body to regenerate and recover from mortal wounds to those organs. Of course, the more they’re . . . injured, the faster and more adept your body’ll become at healing them. In fact, I suspect your penchant for sustaining head injuries’ll guarantee your body’ll learn to heal those faster than any other serious injury.”
“Oh, haha, Dr. McCoy.” Gin sniffs, and flops down on the bed, scowling. In the hologram, the spleen is now perfect and unmarred. She’s come to the reasonable conclusion that it isn’t her spleen, but some sort of time-lapse vid of someone eles’s spleen being fixed. That’s really the most probable explanation, however improbable. “This could be part of some kinda trick or an elaborate practical joke.”
“Could be,” Bones acknowledges. “How’s that spleen doin’ now, Cap’n?”
“Skewered and bleeding out, that’s how-“ Gin pauses. Frowns. For the first time in two minutes-two minutes in which she would’ve sworn she’d have been worm-chow without some kind of first aid-Gin realizes that she’s not in any pain. Not in shock, either, if the lack of cold and lethargy are anything to go by.
And the spreading bloodstain on her gown has stopped spreading.
Which would only happen if she were dead. Dead, or. . . .
Gin sits up and gingerly pats the left upper quadrant of her abdomen. No pain. So she prods it a little less gingerly, inspecting the neat slit in her gown and prying it till it’s a wide hole.
No sign of a wound.
She looks up at Bones, the blood draining out of her face till she feels light-headed.
He merely smiles sadly, and doesn’t bother saying “I told you so.” Though she might prefer it if he did. It’d make this moment less . . . surreal.
“What’ve you done, Bones?” Falls from her numb lips. Bones looks away guiltily, aiming his next words at the hologram of Gin’s abdominal cavity.
“I told you what I did, Gin.”
With all the will she has, Gin grabs hold of herself, forcing away the light-headedness. “Yeah? Well, tell me again. And this time, I get to ask all the questions I want, Corporal Grimm.”
Bones-Reaper-flinches, but nods.
“And tell the computer to get rid of that fucking hologram. It’s making me queasy.”
For a second, Reaper’s mouth twitches as if it wants to smile. Then he’s banishing the hologram and standing at attention in a queerly old-fashioned way, like some actor out of a period-piece holo about pre-warp Earth. But then Bones has always been something of an anachronism-a tendency Gin’s always found charming and endearing, till now. “Ma’am!”
Suddenly uncomfortable with the steady, intent stare now directed her way, Gin fidgets, unable to look away-though she wouldn’t even if she could. Captains don’t flinch away from subordinates, no matter how eerie the circumstances.
But, God, how have I never noticed how fucking ancient his eyes can be sometimes? How have I never noticed that, for all that I damn near wrote sonnets about the ‘keen, yet gentle darkness’ of them?
Gin shakes her head and tries to organize her thoughts into something a bit more apropos.
“Tell me again about the ones that turned into monsters,” she says quietly. “And why you were sure I wouldn’t turn into one.”
Reaper’s shoulders tense up. “Sam was the expert on that, not me. Even now, without an actual subject to study and the Federation’s technology to do it with, I can’t really tell you more than I already have. They had a truly unique neurology, and were, Sam thought, able to pick up on neurotransmitters. They could . . . pick out who was gonna be one of them-monsters-and who wasn’t. They infected the ones who would, and killed the ones who wouldn’t.”
After some of the things Gin’s seen-that they’ve all seen-that makes entirely too much sense, improbable though it sounds even now.
She unconsciously rubs her temples. “And how could you be sure I wouldn’t turn out to be one of the ‘monsters’?”
Now, that perfect, perfectly antiquated military attention wavers a bit and Reaper’s eyes are haunted and almost pleading. “Because I know you better than I know anyone, myself included. You’re one of the finest people I’ve ever met, Gin Kirk. You’re a lot of things, besides, but none of those things are a monster.”
Gin doesn’t know what to say to that. All she can do is blush and fidget under Reaper’s defenseless gaze. The kind of gaze she’d have given anything to see directed upon her even an hour ago.
“Jesus, Bones,” Gin buries her face in her hands. They have that strange ozone-smell that she associates with a Sickbay-grade sanitizing field. “Jesus.”
“As to why I broke my vow,” Reaper goes on implacably. “I did it because . . . I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved, whether through time or misadventure. The hurt of it never goes away, never seems to dull. I couldn’t imagine what that pain would be like if the person I lost was you: my best friend and the woman I happen to love to the point of distraction. Couldn’t imagine spending however long is left to me without you.
“I broke my vow for purely selfish reasons, Gin, and I have no excuses,” Reaper says softly. “The galaxy may need Captain Kirk, but I need Gin Kirk even more. And that’s why I saved you.”
Gin looks up from her hands, but Reaper’s looking down at his regulation Starfleet issue shoes.
He looks like nothing so much as a lost, lonely little boy.
Gin’s heart goes out to him, even though she’s not sure she wants it to. “Bones, I . . . I need time to think about all this.”
He nods. “Shall I call security?”
For a few seconds, Gin doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Then she’s laughing: a choppy, uncomfortable ha-ha. “Ah, no, Bones. I don’t throw my Chief Medical Officer in the Brig for saving his captain’s life.”
Reaper shakes his head. “You know damned well I did more than that, Gin.”
“Yeah. I know.” Boy, do I know. “But I’m not keen on the best doctor Starfleet’s ever had spending the rest of this mission in the Brig. Nor am I comfortable with him spending the rest of his life in prison. Nor myself in a research lab on some distant-ass moon, being poked and prodded for eternity. Whatever else I decide to do, telling Starfleet is not an option.”
He sneaks a glance at her, wary and hopeful.
“But I still need time to think about this. About what it means and who I am, now.”
Reaper’s look turns confused. “You’re Captain Virginia Tiberius Kirk.”
Gin’s eyebrows quirk up. “Was it so easy for you in the beginning, Reaper?”
Another flinch, but Reaper answers, if hesitantly. “I was so busy trying to get myself and Sam to safety-then with being debriefed back on Earth, by the time I actually had time to process things . . . subconsciously I already had. I knew whom I was and that the most important parts of me-my heart and soul-hadn’t changed. At least not for the worst. I think you’ll come to realize that, too. In time.”
“Maybe.” Gin snorts. Bones, and apparently Reaper, too, have a tendency to see life in black and white. In absolutes. To Gin, life is infinite shades of grey, that are open to interpretation. “Anyway, what’s a lady gotta do to get an escort back to her quarters?”
Now Reaper’s the one to snort. “If I ever run into a lady, Gin, I’ll be sure and ask her for you.” But he disappears around the corner of Gin’s cubicle for a minute-during which she stands up and does a few stretching exercises. She still doesn’t feel any different, except for that pervasive sense of total wellbeing. Like she could bench-press the entire universe with one arm tied behind her back. . . .
“Madam’s carriage awaits.”
It’s Reaper, and he’s pushing a wheelchair. Gin rolls her eyes.
“Since I’m Wonder Woman, now, is that really necessary, Bones?”
He shrugs, but looks far too amused for Gin’s liking. “Sickbay rules. Overnight patients have to be wheeled out and to their quarters by a member of the medical staff or, if there’s an emergency, a member of the crew.” Reaper blinks slowly. “This ain’t no emergency, but if you prefer, I can wake up Spock, and get him to-“
“No-ho!” Gin hurriedly throws herself into the chair and looks up at a smirking Reaper. “I’m all yours, Marine. Bring us about, and squire me hence.”
Reaper rolls his eyes. “Yes’m.”
He does a wheelie with her chair-some regard for his patient-and escorts Gin out of Sickbay and into her new life.