Fic: "Make Me Believe," Star Trek Big Bang, Part 1 of 3
Title: Make Me Believe
Author: circ_bamboo
Artist: ellipsisthgreat
Mixer: da_angel729
Betas: imachar and boosette
Series: AOS/ST:XI
Characters/Pairings: Pike/McCoy; Phil Boyce, Jim Kirk, and Elizabeth Dehner are the other major canon characters.
Warnings: Smut, PTSD, panic attacks. Emetophobes and those triggered by ED-related situations may also wish to beware. If one needs more info, please PM or email me (circ dot bamboo at gmail dot com).
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 23000
Summary: Pike, after the events of the Narada, must put himself back together before he can fall for McCoy.
Link to fic: Master post on LJ | On AO3
Link to art: Artings here!
Link to mix: Music here!
Notes/acknowledgments: Thanks due to my artist and mixer for being extraordinarily easy to work with and very talented, and again to boosette, for giving me the original prompt (for what was supposed to be a drabble).
Christopher Pike's brain went from zero to maximum warp almost instantaneously, and he would have shot straight to a seated position except his legs didn't seem to want to work properly. He tried to breathe, resulting in some sort of gasping for air that felt like inhaling knives and razor blades. It was dark in the room he was in, although that weird sort of incomplete darkness common to spaceships. Something was stuck to his temples, and he fumbled a hand up to find the discs that doctors used to monitor brain activity. Wait-what happened to his hair?
Dragging in another painful breath, he raised his other hand to pull the discs off, and realized that there was something taped to his arm-something stuck in his arm-and the monitors above his bed went wild. A moment later a doctor appeared: Dr. Leonard McCoy, one of the cadets, not set to graduate until later this year. Where was Dr. Boyce or, barring that, Dr. Puri?
Also, what the fuck was he doing in Sickbay? The last thing he remembered was-
Was-
A white-hot flood of images rushed through his brain. Through it, he was dimly aware that Dr. McCoy was speaking, and then he felt the pressure of a hypospray against his upper arm, and then-nothing.
* * *
The second time Chris woke up, it was like swimming through murky water. He blinked, took slow, clear breaths, and finally broke the surface, the room around him-still Sickbay, in an isolation room-becoming clearer. An odd grating noise confused him until he turned his head slightly to the left and saw Jim Kirk, of all people, snoring in a chair.
"Kirk?" he said, voice barely above a whisper.
Nonetheless, Kirk heard him, and startled awake. "Captain Pike. You're awake. Let me go get Bones."
'Bones' was Jim's idiosyncratic nickname for Dr. McCoy, Chris knew, but was still fuzzy enough to keep wondering why he was in Sickbay and what Jim was doing there. Kirk was still a cadet; hadn't graduated either. And he couldn't remember why he himself would be on a ship anyway.
It only took about thirty seconds for Kirk to return. "He'll be here in five minutes or so. At least he got a few hours of sleep."
"What's going on?" Chris asked.
"He was sitting here-" Jim indicated the isolation room with a careless gesture. "-for a full 24 hours, until Nurse Chapel begged me to help kick him out."
"Oh," Chris said. "Why? And what happened?"
Jim paused and blinked. "Well, that answers that question. Just a moment, sir, and he'll be here."
McCoy appeared in much less than the advertised five minutes, which was good as Chris couldn't get any more information out of Kirk. He watched, feeling strangely detached, as McCoy performed a short exam, explaining carefully what he was doing and always keeping his hands where Chris could see them. Nice, and useful, but not necessary; Chris was about to tell him so, when McCoy sighed and sat down in the chair next to the bed. "Jim, scram," he said, and strangely enough, Jim did.
Hm.
"Captain Pike," McCoy said, oddly hesitant. "I've got you on cyrprogian. It provokes temporary short-term memory loss. Can you tell me-what's the last thing you remember?"
Chris frowned. "Kirk was set to take the Kobayashi Maru for the third time. After that-nothing. When was that?"
"Almost four weeks ago," McCoy said.
"What?" That . . . didn't make sense. What on-fuck, he did not want a gap in his memory that big. He struggled to sit up, realized there was an IV in his arm-old-fashioned as it was. "McCoy, tell me now," he ordered, but the coughing fit marred the order.
"I could lower your dose of cyrprogian, and you'll remember yourself," McCoy said. "It won't be pleasant, and we don't have a ship's psychiatrist or even a run-of-the-mill therapist at the moment."
"Do it," Chris said, his jaw tightening. "Also, where the fuck am I, Cadet?"
McCoy's own jaw tightened. "At the moment I am the acting CMO of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Jim Kirk is currently acting captain. You are in one of the isolation chambers on that ship, having been injured in the line of duty."
Oh, jesus fuck, what the hell happened? He didn't say anything out loud, but McCoy continued. "I will lower your dose of cyrpro, but I am profoundly uncomfortable with allowing you to go through this without proper support. I've had you in a medically-induced coma for the last two weeks due to your physical injuries, but I cannot allow your condition to deteriorate any more."
Chris had never heard McCoy speak so formally, every word bitten off precisely, despite the occasional twangy vowel. "Dr. McCoy," he said, feeling as though he were repeating himself for the twentieth time. "I understand that what happened was probably awful, and that you don't have high hopes for my sanity after the incident. But can you give me some idea of what I've forgotten so I don't lose my sanity twice?"
McCoy sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "A distress signal came in from Vulcan." In a few short sentences, he described the last few weeks.
Chris knew that McCoy was leaving out more than he told, but he was capable of filling some of it in himself. Some astronomically high percentage of the cadets dead, the majority of the Vulcans in the galaxy dead-and of course, the torture he'd undergone-he was surprised, in a distant way, that his hands were starting to shake, and then surprised at his surprise. "I think," he said carefully, "that perhaps you shouldn't lower the dose until we're back at Starfleet Medical."
It was cowardly of him, Chris knew, but McCoy's face relaxed. "It'll be another two weeks-sixteen days, actually. I've already contacted Dr. Boyce. He'll have everything set up for you when you get back."
"Okay," Chris said, his eyes starting to close. He didn't hear McCoy leave.
* * *
When he woke up the next time, he demanded more facts about his physical condition; McCoy explained as best he could about experimental neural grafts. The fact that Chris didn't care about McCoy's inability to say he'd walk again, let alone return to active duty, let him know that he was still highly drugged.
On the other hand-
"Wait, so the bug chewed on my what?" He looked down at his feet, lumps under the biobed blanket. He could feel them, sort of; that is, when McCoy or one of the other medical professionals poked at them, he knew there was someone poking at his feet. "Shouldn't I be paralyzed?" Or dead?
"You are," McCoy said. "Partially, at the moment. Primary issue was keeping your autonomic functions working, and they do-you can breathe, swallow, blink, et cetera, and your heart still beats. But nerves take a long time to regrow, even with grafts and a regen, and the fact that you have some sensation in your legs at all is a miracle."
"Either that or you're a damn fine surgeon."
McCoy shrugged. "Little of column A, little of column B."
Chris laughed as intended.
He still only managed to stay awake for an hour or so at a time, but at least he still had feet.
* * *
It got better. Sort of. He could stay awake for longer stretches, but that only let him see the number of haunted-looking people aboard the ship. Even though he was told that the Aquino had come to give them much-needed supplies and relief crew, the Enterprise crew all still looked worn and drawn thin. Many of them never seemed to sleep-no matter when he woke up, both Dr. McCoy and the de facto head nurse, Christine Chapel, were both there. Kirk stopped by regularly, but even he was wearing down; the dark circles under his eyes looked like they might become permanent.
Chris didn't want to know how he looked, and no one was foolish enough to offer him a mirror.
It was mostly boring, though, being hurt but not remembering it; being stuck in bed. At least he slept most of the time.
A week or so after he woke up from the medical coma, McCoy asked him to wiggle his toes.
"I can't," he said. He'd tried, when he woke up in the middle of the night.
"Yes, you can."
"No, I can't."
With a significant amount of effort and what Chris would call "threats" but McCoy called "encouragement," he did manage to wiggle his toes briefly, but the pain almost made him black out. When his vision returned, he said, "That hurt."
"Pain's good; means you're alive," McCoy said.
"What the hell kind of bullshit is that," Chris said, still hauling in breaths as fast as he could. "Some sort of Buddhist nonsense?"
"No, medical fact," McCoy retorted. "Can't feel pain if the nerves are dead."
"Also can't feel pain if the doctors are giving you sufficient levels of drugs," Chris said. Not that he wanted more drugs-his head was fuzzy enough as it was and any time he thought about it, he still felt guilty about leaving the ship in the hands of the cadets-children-who were running the place. He closed his eyes and sighed.
"Captain Pike?" he heard McCoy ask.
"Go away, Dr. McCoy," he said, suddenly exhausted.
"All right," McCoy said, "but if you need anything. . . ."
He didn't say anything, and a moment later, he heard the door shut as McCoy's footsteps receded. It was strange, though-for a moment, there, McCoy had actually sounded, well, nice. And not Southern-manners nice, or I'm actually going to beat you over the head but I'm pretending I'm not nice. More-
More let's be nice to the broken captain nice.
Well, fuck.
* * *
He woke up one morning, maybe a couple days before they reached Earth, to hear McCoy and Kirk having an argument in the hallway outside his room.
"Jim, you have two choices at this moment. You can go to your quarters and not leave them for twelve full hours, or I can take you off duty for the next forty-eight."
"You can't do that!"
Both men were hissing, trying to be quiet, but Chris could clearly hear them. He sighed.
"Besides," Kirk said a moment later; his change in tone made Chris think he'd probably lost a staring contest. "My quarters suck."
Chris frowned. Kirk was acting captain; wasn't he using the captain's quarters?
He heard McCoy's sigh clearly. "Go use mine."
"You sure?"
"'Course I'm sure. Would I offer if I weren't sure?"
"Nah, probably not." A thwapping noise was probably Kirk clapping McCoy on the shoulder. "Thanks, Bones."
McCoy came in a moment later, probably to check on him.
"Why isn't he using the captain's quarters?" Chris asked by way of greeting.
"Oh, you heard that?" McCoy said, looking up. "Sorry."
"It's not like I ever got to use 'em."
"What? Oh, the quarters." McCoy sighed. "He won't. And, to be fair, I'm not entirely comfortable using the CMO's quarters, but I have to be near Sickbay."
"Mmm," Chris said. "Phil wouldn't mind."
McCoy looked at him oddly. "Dr. Puri was the CMO."
Whose first name was Arjun. "Oh, right." Huh. "Do you happen to know why it wasn't Dr. Boyce?" He probably knew but that was in the part of his memories that were blocked.
"He was in surgery, apparently."
"Lucky him." Chris sighed. "Next time I'll drag him out of surgery myself." He realized, the minute he said it, that there was almost no chance that there would be a next time. Closing his eyes, he sighed, and thought as hard as he could about anything but that.
McCoy didn't say anything, just finished checking the biobed's readout and left.
* * *
Phil-Dr. Boyce-apparently pulled every string he'd ever had, and got Chris transferred straight to an isolation room in Starfleet Medical, without anyone interfering or trying to ask him stupid questions. After the nurse checked him over, Phil threw everyone else out of the room and sat in the chair. "How are you?" he asked.
"Tired," Chris said.
"Yeah, I figured," Phil said. "Jesus, Chris-I don't even know where to start."
"I know," Chris said. "Neither do I." He yawned. "I guess with getting rid of the memory-blocker."
"Yeah," Phil said. "You've been on it long enough to get resistant. I'm surprised you aren't remembering yet, or at least having nightmares."
He had been, actually, having nightmares, but even injured and drugged, he was an excellent liar. "Lucky me."
Phil's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything. "We'll lower the dose this evening. In the meantime, you're about to fall asleep."
"Yeah," he said, blinking long and slow.
Phil leaned over and squeezed his hand, and then leaned in farther, kissing him on the forehead. "That's from Alicia," he said, naming his wife.
Chris tried not to flinch, but didn't manage.
Phil's eyes narrowed again, but he didn't ask any questions, just said, "She'll be by later, if that's okay."
Chris nodded, and closed his eyes.
* * *
The next time he woke up, McCoy was standing at the foot of his bed, making notes on a PADD with a stylus. "You're awake," he said.
An image of McCoy rushing at him as Jim Kirk dragged him off the transporter platform, helping him onto a gurney, surfaced, and Chris started shaking, a fine tremor in his hands and chest. "Yes," he managed, after a moment or two.
McCoy looked at him critically, and said, "You're remembering."
"Uh-huh," he said.
* * *
He didn't like to think about the next twenty-four hours.
* * *
Phil brought in Dr. Elizabeth Dehner a day or so after he remembered; introduced her as the best of Starfleet's psych division. She smiled at him, tall and blonde and oh so young.
"Are you sure she's old enough for this?" Chris asked him after she'd left.
"Yes," Phil said.
* * *
It was sausage, of all things. The symbolism wasn't lost on him.
He'd lost so much weight over the last few weeks of forced inactivity and lack of appetite and drugs with strange side effects that none of the doctors particularly cared what he ate as long as he ate it. So just after he met Elizabeth "call me Liz" Dehner, he asked for a wonderfully cholesterol-laden breakfast to start his day: scrambled eggs, toast, and the aforementioned sausage.
One of the orderlies brought it to him, and he dove in, cutting a sausage link in half and eating it.
Except when he chewed, he-
There was something about the texture and the odd squeak that sausage always made, that-
And suddenly, he wasn't in an isolation room at Starfleet Medical; he was on a future-Romulan mining ship. He wasn't feeding himself; he was being force-fed a fucking bug-
And a moment later, the blessed relief of unconsciousness.
"That," Liz said later, completely unnecessarily because he'd already figured it out, "was a flashback."
He'd served thirty years in active duty; there was no way he could have avoided everything that would have given him symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Before this, though, the drugs and occasional counseling session had largely worked, and he'd gone on his merry way, with only a few nightmares to keep him awake.
He said as much to Liz, who shrugged. "Four hundred years of vaguely-modern medicine-much more for other species-and we still don't know exactly how the brain works."
"That's not an answer," he said.
"I don't know what to say, then," she said, spreading her hands. "Two people will go through roughly the same situation and one will come away with PTSD and the other won't. We can predict that there are situations with higher likelihood of permanent changes to brain chemistry-prolonged torture is one of them-but we don't know." She paused, and added, "I wish we did."
"Me too," Chris said bitterly. "Now what?"
"Now we give you tools to manage it."
* * *
There was something horribly cruel about being forced to start psychotherapy and true physical therapy at the same time, but it wasn't as if he had much of a choice. He suffered through the initial testing, and desperately tried not to think about the numbers: how much mobility he'd lost, how much dexterity he'd lost, and how much it was possible to expect him to gain back.
(Mostly they didn't know, thanks to McCoy's experimental techniques. It didn't make it easier.)
What was also uncomfortable was the number of people who wanted to visit him and, he didn't know, commiserate or something. Or they expected him to share his feelings with them. For fuck's sake, he'd been tortured. He didn't need any more of that shit.
Even when it was people he liked, or at least was related to.
"Is he awake?"
He is now, Chris thought crankily. Whoever had said that wasn't exactly quiet. And now that his brain was starting to come back online, he recognized the voice as Admiral Joshua Pike-his father. Of course.
Okay, to be fair, he did want to see his parents, but he wished he'd had some warning. He vaguely remembered that they'd been vacationing on Casperia Prime recently, but they had apparently returned.
A nurse poked his head into the room, and said, "Ah, Captain Pike? You have visitors. Are you up for them, sir?"
"My parents, right?" Chris said, struggling to sit up somewhat.
The nurse hurried over to his side and pushed the button to prop the head of the bed up partway. "I'm not sure, sir," he said. "I could ask?"
"Never mind," Chris said. "Just send them in."
"Yes, sir." The nurse left, and a minute later, in came Admiral Joshua Pike and Dr. Wilhelmina (Mina) Pike, both retired.
"Oh, Chris," his mother said, and came to the side of the bed, clasping one of her hands in his. "You're alive."
"I am," he said. He had no idea what to say to that; he had the horrible suspicion that his mother was about to start crying, and he had no idea what to do about that, either.
"Chris," his father said; tall, imposing, square-jawed, and white-haired, he looked nothing like his son. He shuffled, visibly uncomfortable, by the door. That makes two of us, Chris thought. "We were, ah. Worried. Came back early."
"Yeah," Chris said. "Um. Thanks? I'm glad you were safe. Where were you?"
"We were on Andoria, on the way back from Casperia Prime," Mina said. "Your father called in about every marker he had to get us a ride back to Earth as soon as possible."
"How long did it take the news to reach Andoria?" he asked, flailing for a conversational topic.
His parents actually let him redirect the conversation away from him, his injuries, and everything else for a good ten minutes, until his father finally asked point-blank, "Are you going to walk again?"
Chris paused and blinked. "I don't know," he said evenly, after a good long pause in which he and his father had a staring contest, and his mother said nothing. "I've got the best doctors in the Federation staring at scans of my head and spine on a regular basis. They've called in Dr. Poole-April to consult, even, as well as the Denobulans and Andorians. I think they'd be asking the Vulcans except they have their own problems to deal with."
He took a deep breath, and continued. "Phil won't blow smoke up my ass, and he hasn't told me either way. They-Phil, Dr. McCoy who actually did the surgery, the Surgeon General-all say that it's too soon to tell."
"It doesn't matter," Mina said, glaring at Josh. "Even if you can't, I'm sure there's stuff that you can do on Earth, with Starfleet and the Federation."
"Yes," Josh said, after she elbowed him in the side.
"I'm sure there is," Chris said. "I haven't made any plans. It's still, as I mentioned a minute ago, too soon to tell." He dug his index fingernail into the nail bed of his thumb; it hurt, but that was the point. He could concentrate on the small, sharp pain, rather than on-nope not gonna think about it.
After another silent conversation with Mina, elbows and eyebrows flying, Josh Pike said, remarkably reluctantly, "I guess they're going to make you an admiral?"
"What?" Chris said without thinking.
"Oh, that's a good way to tell him," Mina said, acid in her tone. "Chris, for your heroism in the Battle for Vulcan, Starfleet is going to promote you to admiral."
"My . . ." He trailed off. Heroism? You mean getting caught in a trap so obvious that I had no way of avoiding it, and getting tortured, and having to be rescued like a damsel in distress by a fucking cadet who was suspended for cheating at the time? He closed his eyes. "Wow. Kicking me upstairs already."
"No, that can't be it," Mina said.
Chris sighed. "No, that's exactly it." If I'd died, then I'd be a martyr like George Kirk, and a hero, but I survived, and I'm broken, which means they have no fucking clue what to do with me and fuckit- He was starting to shake. "Could you come back later?" he asked as politely as he could-they were still his parents, after all.
His father frowned, but as his mother was not possessed of the sensitivity of a rock, she elbowed Josh in the side again and hustled him out of the room without more than a perfunctory kiss on Chris's cheek.
Chris opaqued the windows, locked the door (ineffective, as any medical personnel could come in, but symbolic), and squeezed his eyes shut.
Of course, he didn't actually get any peace, as only a few breaths later (he'd lost all ability to estimate actual time), the doors swooshed open, and he heard a quiet, "Captain Pike?"
Haven't you heard: it's going to be 'admiral'? But he didn't say it; the words were stuck in his throat. Besides, the questioner was Dr. McCoy, and he owed the man a little more than yelling at him to get the fuck out of my room.
"I can help," McCoy said, still quietly.
Chris nodded once, stiffly.
"Can you open your eyes?"
Chris shook his head. If he did, he'd . . . nope not gonna think about it no no no
"Okay. I'm going to touch your right arm, just below your shoulder, just long enough to give you a hypospray. That's all. Nothing else."
He nodded, and felt the cool touch and hiss of the hypo, just as McCoy had said.
"That should kick in in about a minute. You might fall asleep. Meanwhile, I'll make everyone go away for a few hours, okay?"
Chris nodded. A few soft footfalls and another whoosh indicated that McCoy left, but it took what felt like forever for the drug to kick in.
He didn't even remember relaxing, just falling asleep, like the warp core in his brain had abruptly been ejected and inertia had suddenly stopped working. Waking up a couple hours later, he recognized the peculiar floating feeling of still being drugged, and let his thoughts drift.
If Chris hadn't been his patient for the last few weeks, he'd have had no idea that McCoy was capable of, well, being nice. He'd recruited the man because he was a genius, and because even if he was an abrasive asshole, he could either sit in a lab all day and not deal with people, or he could do trauma-related medicine, where it didn't matter how nice one was, just how fast. (Phil would probably have his head for making that oversimplification, but oh well.)
Then again, he'd primarily seen McCoy either in class, where he would excoriate one of his less-gifted classmates; around Jim Kirk, who brought out the best and worst in people; or drunk. It was no wonder he'd thought McCoy was always sharp-tongued.
It wasn't like Chris couldn't respect having a low tolerance for fools, anyway.
A chime sounded at the door, and Chris looked up, still too drugged to startle. "Computer, who is it?"
"Dr. Philip J. Boyce is at the door."
"Ah. Let him in." Not that Phil couldn't just have come in, but it was polite to have the illusion of choice in the matter.
Phil came in with the look that usually meant he wanted to swoop in with a tricorder and fix everything, but only sat next to the bed. "I hear your parents stopped by."
"Yeah," Chris said. "Apparently some asshole in the admiralty thought that my dad would be the best person to welcome me to their ranks."
"Well, fuck. Could have asked practically anyone who knows either of you; they'd have told them where to shove that idea." Phil paused, shifted in his chair. "Mina came to talk to me."
The elder Pikes, of course, knew Phil fairly well, for various reasons, so it wasn't entirely surprising. "Oh?"
"She's worried about you."
"Well, yeah." Chris shrugged. "I almost died, or something."
"You're still pretty drugged up, aren't you?"
"Yep."
Phil leaned forward. "Then I can say this: Chris, at some point, you're going to fall apart. For real, and no, the first few hours when you were remembering don't count."
Vaguely, under the haze, Chris could feel anger trying to build, but it wouldn't coalesce. "Okay," he said, "but not in front of my fucking father."
"All right, but I suspect you've got such a long list of 'not-in-front-ofs' that you're trying to hold it off by sheer force of will. Not in front of any of your visitors, I suppose. Definitely not in front of Jim Kirk or anyone ranked below captain, because that would undermine your authority."
"Phil," Chris said, a warning.
"You need the physical and emotional catharsis of crying," Phil said bluntly. "It would be easier on you if someone else were around to help you pick up the pieces. You also need to grieve, but you've been extremely successful at not thinking about what happened so far. I know you've only been off the cyrpro for a few days now, but you can't put it off forever."
"Go fuck yourself, Phil," Chris said. It was getting a little bit easier to find the heat of anger, but it still wasn't quite working.
"Yeah, I love you too, Chris. It doesn't have to be me. I won't be offended if you decide to cry all over Liz instead; she's better trained at this sort of thing than I am."
"Phil. Go. The fuck. Away."
Phil stood. "I've said what I needed to say. Alicia says hi. Groucho says hi." Groucho was their oversized chocolate-lab mix-possibly mixed with a Newfoundland, or else a bear.
He hated it when he was mad at Phil but was forced to be polite to the man for the sake of his wife, who certainly didn't deserve any ire. "She can stop by if she likes." In other words, Phil himself wasn't currently welcome.
"I'll tell her that." Message received. With that, he left, and Chris was alone, with his drugged thoughts.
Well, not for long. Dr. McCoy appeared a moment or two later. "Everything all right in here?"
Chris sighed. "Yeah. My best friend is an asshole, that's all."
McCoy snorted. "Don't I know that feeling. You going to be up to your session with the PT at 1600?"
"What time is it now?"
"Just past 1400."
Chris sighed. "Yeah, sure."
* * *
McCoy was there again-probably not coincidentally-when Chris got out of PT. "How'd that go for you?" he asked.
"There are no words sufficient to explain how much I hate physical therapists," Chris replied. He was too tired to keep much heat in his tone, though.
"I've heard that before. Ah, a JAG officer showed up to visit you while you were in with the PTs-Commander Alicia Cortez?"
"Yeah, not unexpected."
McCoy probably thought that he was holding a politely interested look, but he transparently wanted to know who she was and why she was showing up to talk to him.
"She's married to Phil," Chris said.
"Oh," McCoy said. "Huh."
Chris smiled half-heartedly. "Dr. McCoy, how long have you worked with Dr. Boyce?"
"Couple years now."
"Talk to him much?"
"Not really," McCoy said. "Only about work. I knew he was married because he wears a wedding band when he's not in surgery, but . . ."
"You know those mornings when he shows up whistling?"
"He shows up whistling every morning," McCoy said. "It's one of his most annoying qualities. Meaning no disrespect, of course."
"Well, Alicia Cortez, to whom he happens to be married and has been for the last thirty years, is the reason why. Chew on that for a while."
"Rather not, thanks," McCoy said, and grimaced.
* * *
Captain Number One and Commander Caitlin Barry were the next to show up for a visit; or at least they were the next to get through Phil and Liz's stringent screening process. Between Phil, Alicia, McCoy, and Kirk's infrequent visits, Chris never quite felt like he was left alone, but he rarely saw anyone else. One and Cait's visit, though, was welcome; he and his XO had settled into a comfortable friendship over the last ten years or so, since their romantic relationship had ended.
One of the things he liked the most about One was that she was so unflappable; she came into his hospital room, greeted him, and sat down, serene as always. One of the things he used to like about Cait, the Yorktown's chief engineer, was that there was rarely any guessing with her; she found it very difficult to hide strong emotion. So he probably should have expected the look on her face when she saw him.
Everyone else, including his parents, hadn't commented on the changes he knew must have happened-the shorn head only the most obvious, although his hair was a centimeter long or so at that point. He'd caught glimpses of himself in the mirror in the bathroom a time or two, but he hadn't actually looked. He knew he was thinner, that his skin was pale in ways he generally wasn't when planet-side, and that he felt tired all the time, but he hadn't wanted to confirm.
"That bad, huh?" he said to Cait, trying to smile.
She shook her head, but the lie was obvious.
The two women managed to stay for a half hour or so; by the end of that time, Chris could feel the strain. After they left, he actually did the unthinkable and called the nurse to administer a dose of pain meds.
* * *
He managed to stave off Phil's prescribed crying fit for a good week. Unfortunately, what set it off wasn't anything he might have expected, such as a really bad day in terms of pain, or his father being a jerk, or more reminders that the Enterprise would no longer be his.
Oh, no; it was because Phil had brought his academy ring back to him and it slipped off his finger.
Because he couldn't fucking eat half the time without panicking.
When it was over, he thought he should be more embarrassed that his psychiatrist was leaning about a meter over the side of his bed so he could cry on her shoulder, but he was just too exhausted to care.
Back to Master Post | On to Part Two
Author: circ_bamboo
Artist: ellipsisthgreat
Mixer: da_angel729
Betas: imachar and boosette
Series: AOS/ST:XI
Characters/Pairings: Pike/McCoy; Phil Boyce, Jim Kirk, and Elizabeth Dehner are the other major canon characters.
Warnings: Smut, PTSD, panic attacks. Emetophobes and those triggered by ED-related situations may also wish to beware. If one needs more info, please PM or email me (circ dot bamboo at gmail dot com).
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 23000
Summary: Pike, after the events of the Narada, must put himself back together before he can fall for McCoy.
Link to fic: Master post on LJ | On AO3
Link to art: Artings here!
Link to mix: Music here!
Notes/acknowledgments: Thanks due to my artist and mixer for being extraordinarily easy to work with and very talented, and again to boosette, for giving me the original prompt (for what was supposed to be a drabble).
Christopher Pike's brain went from zero to maximum warp almost instantaneously, and he would have shot straight to a seated position except his legs didn't seem to want to work properly. He tried to breathe, resulting in some sort of gasping for air that felt like inhaling knives and razor blades. It was dark in the room he was in, although that weird sort of incomplete darkness common to spaceships. Something was stuck to his temples, and he fumbled a hand up to find the discs that doctors used to monitor brain activity. Wait-what happened to his hair?
Dragging in another painful breath, he raised his other hand to pull the discs off, and realized that there was something taped to his arm-something stuck in his arm-and the monitors above his bed went wild. A moment later a doctor appeared: Dr. Leonard McCoy, one of the cadets, not set to graduate until later this year. Where was Dr. Boyce or, barring that, Dr. Puri?
Also, what the fuck was he doing in Sickbay? The last thing he remembered was-
Was-
A white-hot flood of images rushed through his brain. Through it, he was dimly aware that Dr. McCoy was speaking, and then he felt the pressure of a hypospray against his upper arm, and then-nothing.
* * *
The second time Chris woke up, it was like swimming through murky water. He blinked, took slow, clear breaths, and finally broke the surface, the room around him-still Sickbay, in an isolation room-becoming clearer. An odd grating noise confused him until he turned his head slightly to the left and saw Jim Kirk, of all people, snoring in a chair.
"Kirk?" he said, voice barely above a whisper.
Nonetheless, Kirk heard him, and startled awake. "Captain Pike. You're awake. Let me go get Bones."
'Bones' was Jim's idiosyncratic nickname for Dr. McCoy, Chris knew, but was still fuzzy enough to keep wondering why he was in Sickbay and what Jim was doing there. Kirk was still a cadet; hadn't graduated either. And he couldn't remember why he himself would be on a ship anyway.
It only took about thirty seconds for Kirk to return. "He'll be here in five minutes or so. At least he got a few hours of sleep."
"What's going on?" Chris asked.
"He was sitting here-" Jim indicated the isolation room with a careless gesture. "-for a full 24 hours, until Nurse Chapel begged me to help kick him out."
"Oh," Chris said. "Why? And what happened?"
Jim paused and blinked. "Well, that answers that question. Just a moment, sir, and he'll be here."
McCoy appeared in much less than the advertised five minutes, which was good as Chris couldn't get any more information out of Kirk. He watched, feeling strangely detached, as McCoy performed a short exam, explaining carefully what he was doing and always keeping his hands where Chris could see them. Nice, and useful, but not necessary; Chris was about to tell him so, when McCoy sighed and sat down in the chair next to the bed. "Jim, scram," he said, and strangely enough, Jim did.
Hm.
"Captain Pike," McCoy said, oddly hesitant. "I've got you on cyrprogian. It provokes temporary short-term memory loss. Can you tell me-what's the last thing you remember?"
Chris frowned. "Kirk was set to take the Kobayashi Maru for the third time. After that-nothing. When was that?"
"Almost four weeks ago," McCoy said.
"What?" That . . . didn't make sense. What on-fuck, he did not want a gap in his memory that big. He struggled to sit up, realized there was an IV in his arm-old-fashioned as it was. "McCoy, tell me now," he ordered, but the coughing fit marred the order.
"I could lower your dose of cyrprogian, and you'll remember yourself," McCoy said. "It won't be pleasant, and we don't have a ship's psychiatrist or even a run-of-the-mill therapist at the moment."
"Do it," Chris said, his jaw tightening. "Also, where the fuck am I, Cadet?"
McCoy's own jaw tightened. "At the moment I am the acting CMO of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Jim Kirk is currently acting captain. You are in one of the isolation chambers on that ship, having been injured in the line of duty."
Oh, jesus fuck, what the hell happened? He didn't say anything out loud, but McCoy continued. "I will lower your dose of cyrpro, but I am profoundly uncomfortable with allowing you to go through this without proper support. I've had you in a medically-induced coma for the last two weeks due to your physical injuries, but I cannot allow your condition to deteriorate any more."
Chris had never heard McCoy speak so formally, every word bitten off precisely, despite the occasional twangy vowel. "Dr. McCoy," he said, feeling as though he were repeating himself for the twentieth time. "I understand that what happened was probably awful, and that you don't have high hopes for my sanity after the incident. But can you give me some idea of what I've forgotten so I don't lose my sanity twice?"
McCoy sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "A distress signal came in from Vulcan." In a few short sentences, he described the last few weeks.
Chris knew that McCoy was leaving out more than he told, but he was capable of filling some of it in himself. Some astronomically high percentage of the cadets dead, the majority of the Vulcans in the galaxy dead-and of course, the torture he'd undergone-he was surprised, in a distant way, that his hands were starting to shake, and then surprised at his surprise. "I think," he said carefully, "that perhaps you shouldn't lower the dose until we're back at Starfleet Medical."
It was cowardly of him, Chris knew, but McCoy's face relaxed. "It'll be another two weeks-sixteen days, actually. I've already contacted Dr. Boyce. He'll have everything set up for you when you get back."
"Okay," Chris said, his eyes starting to close. He didn't hear McCoy leave.
* * *
When he woke up the next time, he demanded more facts about his physical condition; McCoy explained as best he could about experimental neural grafts. The fact that Chris didn't care about McCoy's inability to say he'd walk again, let alone return to active duty, let him know that he was still highly drugged.
On the other hand-
"Wait, so the bug chewed on my what?" He looked down at his feet, lumps under the biobed blanket. He could feel them, sort of; that is, when McCoy or one of the other medical professionals poked at them, he knew there was someone poking at his feet. "Shouldn't I be paralyzed?" Or dead?
"You are," McCoy said. "Partially, at the moment. Primary issue was keeping your autonomic functions working, and they do-you can breathe, swallow, blink, et cetera, and your heart still beats. But nerves take a long time to regrow, even with grafts and a regen, and the fact that you have some sensation in your legs at all is a miracle."
"Either that or you're a damn fine surgeon."
McCoy shrugged. "Little of column A, little of column B."
Chris laughed as intended.
He still only managed to stay awake for an hour or so at a time, but at least he still had feet.
* * *
It got better. Sort of. He could stay awake for longer stretches, but that only let him see the number of haunted-looking people aboard the ship. Even though he was told that the Aquino had come to give them much-needed supplies and relief crew, the Enterprise crew all still looked worn and drawn thin. Many of them never seemed to sleep-no matter when he woke up, both Dr. McCoy and the de facto head nurse, Christine Chapel, were both there. Kirk stopped by regularly, but even he was wearing down; the dark circles under his eyes looked like they might become permanent.
Chris didn't want to know how he looked, and no one was foolish enough to offer him a mirror.
It was mostly boring, though, being hurt but not remembering it; being stuck in bed. At least he slept most of the time.
A week or so after he woke up from the medical coma, McCoy asked him to wiggle his toes.
"I can't," he said. He'd tried, when he woke up in the middle of the night.
"Yes, you can."
"No, I can't."
With a significant amount of effort and what Chris would call "threats" but McCoy called "encouragement," he did manage to wiggle his toes briefly, but the pain almost made him black out. When his vision returned, he said, "That hurt."
"Pain's good; means you're alive," McCoy said.
"What the hell kind of bullshit is that," Chris said, still hauling in breaths as fast as he could. "Some sort of Buddhist nonsense?"
"No, medical fact," McCoy retorted. "Can't feel pain if the nerves are dead."
"Also can't feel pain if the doctors are giving you sufficient levels of drugs," Chris said. Not that he wanted more drugs-his head was fuzzy enough as it was and any time he thought about it, he still felt guilty about leaving the ship in the hands of the cadets-children-who were running the place. He closed his eyes and sighed.
"Captain Pike?" he heard McCoy ask.
"Go away, Dr. McCoy," he said, suddenly exhausted.
"All right," McCoy said, "but if you need anything. . . ."
He didn't say anything, and a moment later, he heard the door shut as McCoy's footsteps receded. It was strange, though-for a moment, there, McCoy had actually sounded, well, nice. And not Southern-manners nice, or I'm actually going to beat you over the head but I'm pretending I'm not nice. More-
More let's be nice to the broken captain nice.
Well, fuck.
* * *
He woke up one morning, maybe a couple days before they reached Earth, to hear McCoy and Kirk having an argument in the hallway outside his room.
"Jim, you have two choices at this moment. You can go to your quarters and not leave them for twelve full hours, or I can take you off duty for the next forty-eight."
"You can't do that!"
Both men were hissing, trying to be quiet, but Chris could clearly hear them. He sighed.
"Besides," Kirk said a moment later; his change in tone made Chris think he'd probably lost a staring contest. "My quarters suck."
Chris frowned. Kirk was acting captain; wasn't he using the captain's quarters?
He heard McCoy's sigh clearly. "Go use mine."
"You sure?"
"'Course I'm sure. Would I offer if I weren't sure?"
"Nah, probably not." A thwapping noise was probably Kirk clapping McCoy on the shoulder. "Thanks, Bones."
McCoy came in a moment later, probably to check on him.
"Why isn't he using the captain's quarters?" Chris asked by way of greeting.
"Oh, you heard that?" McCoy said, looking up. "Sorry."
"It's not like I ever got to use 'em."
"What? Oh, the quarters." McCoy sighed. "He won't. And, to be fair, I'm not entirely comfortable using the CMO's quarters, but I have to be near Sickbay."
"Mmm," Chris said. "Phil wouldn't mind."
McCoy looked at him oddly. "Dr. Puri was the CMO."
Whose first name was Arjun. "Oh, right." Huh. "Do you happen to know why it wasn't Dr. Boyce?" He probably knew but that was in the part of his memories that were blocked.
"He was in surgery, apparently."
"Lucky him." Chris sighed. "Next time I'll drag him out of surgery myself." He realized, the minute he said it, that there was almost no chance that there would be a next time. Closing his eyes, he sighed, and thought as hard as he could about anything but that.
McCoy didn't say anything, just finished checking the biobed's readout and left.
* * *
Phil-Dr. Boyce-apparently pulled every string he'd ever had, and got Chris transferred straight to an isolation room in Starfleet Medical, without anyone interfering or trying to ask him stupid questions. After the nurse checked him over, Phil threw everyone else out of the room and sat in the chair. "How are you?" he asked.
"Tired," Chris said.
"Yeah, I figured," Phil said. "Jesus, Chris-I don't even know where to start."
"I know," Chris said. "Neither do I." He yawned. "I guess with getting rid of the memory-blocker."
"Yeah," Phil said. "You've been on it long enough to get resistant. I'm surprised you aren't remembering yet, or at least having nightmares."
He had been, actually, having nightmares, but even injured and drugged, he was an excellent liar. "Lucky me."
Phil's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything. "We'll lower the dose this evening. In the meantime, you're about to fall asleep."
"Yeah," he said, blinking long and slow.
Phil leaned over and squeezed his hand, and then leaned in farther, kissing him on the forehead. "That's from Alicia," he said, naming his wife.
Chris tried not to flinch, but didn't manage.
Phil's eyes narrowed again, but he didn't ask any questions, just said, "She'll be by later, if that's okay."
Chris nodded, and closed his eyes.
* * *
The next time he woke up, McCoy was standing at the foot of his bed, making notes on a PADD with a stylus. "You're awake," he said.
An image of McCoy rushing at him as Jim Kirk dragged him off the transporter platform, helping him onto a gurney, surfaced, and Chris started shaking, a fine tremor in his hands and chest. "Yes," he managed, after a moment or two.
McCoy looked at him critically, and said, "You're remembering."
"Uh-huh," he said.
* * *
He didn't like to think about the next twenty-four hours.
* * *
Phil brought in Dr. Elizabeth Dehner a day or so after he remembered; introduced her as the best of Starfleet's psych division. She smiled at him, tall and blonde and oh so young.
"Are you sure she's old enough for this?" Chris asked him after she'd left.
"Yes," Phil said.
* * *
It was sausage, of all things. The symbolism wasn't lost on him.
He'd lost so much weight over the last few weeks of forced inactivity and lack of appetite and drugs with strange side effects that none of the doctors particularly cared what he ate as long as he ate it. So just after he met Elizabeth "call me Liz" Dehner, he asked for a wonderfully cholesterol-laden breakfast to start his day: scrambled eggs, toast, and the aforementioned sausage.
One of the orderlies brought it to him, and he dove in, cutting a sausage link in half and eating it.
Except when he chewed, he-
There was something about the texture and the odd squeak that sausage always made, that-
And suddenly, he wasn't in an isolation room at Starfleet Medical; he was on a future-Romulan mining ship. He wasn't feeding himself; he was being force-fed a fucking bug-
And a moment later, the blessed relief of unconsciousness.
"That," Liz said later, completely unnecessarily because he'd already figured it out, "was a flashback."
He'd served thirty years in active duty; there was no way he could have avoided everything that would have given him symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Before this, though, the drugs and occasional counseling session had largely worked, and he'd gone on his merry way, with only a few nightmares to keep him awake.
He said as much to Liz, who shrugged. "Four hundred years of vaguely-modern medicine-much more for other species-and we still don't know exactly how the brain works."
"That's not an answer," he said.
"I don't know what to say, then," she said, spreading her hands. "Two people will go through roughly the same situation and one will come away with PTSD and the other won't. We can predict that there are situations with higher likelihood of permanent changes to brain chemistry-prolonged torture is one of them-but we don't know." She paused, and added, "I wish we did."
"Me too," Chris said bitterly. "Now what?"
"Now we give you tools to manage it."
* * *
There was something horribly cruel about being forced to start psychotherapy and true physical therapy at the same time, but it wasn't as if he had much of a choice. He suffered through the initial testing, and desperately tried not to think about the numbers: how much mobility he'd lost, how much dexterity he'd lost, and how much it was possible to expect him to gain back.
(Mostly they didn't know, thanks to McCoy's experimental techniques. It didn't make it easier.)
What was also uncomfortable was the number of people who wanted to visit him and, he didn't know, commiserate or something. Or they expected him to share his feelings with them. For fuck's sake, he'd been tortured. He didn't need any more of that shit.
Even when it was people he liked, or at least was related to.
"Is he awake?"
He is now, Chris thought crankily. Whoever had said that wasn't exactly quiet. And now that his brain was starting to come back online, he recognized the voice as Admiral Joshua Pike-his father. Of course.
Okay, to be fair, he did want to see his parents, but he wished he'd had some warning. He vaguely remembered that they'd been vacationing on Casperia Prime recently, but they had apparently returned.
A nurse poked his head into the room, and said, "Ah, Captain Pike? You have visitors. Are you up for them, sir?"
"My parents, right?" Chris said, struggling to sit up somewhat.
The nurse hurried over to his side and pushed the button to prop the head of the bed up partway. "I'm not sure, sir," he said. "I could ask?"
"Never mind," Chris said. "Just send them in."
"Yes, sir." The nurse left, and a minute later, in came Admiral Joshua Pike and Dr. Wilhelmina (Mina) Pike, both retired.
"Oh, Chris," his mother said, and came to the side of the bed, clasping one of her hands in his. "You're alive."
"I am," he said. He had no idea what to say to that; he had the horrible suspicion that his mother was about to start crying, and he had no idea what to do about that, either.
"Chris," his father said; tall, imposing, square-jawed, and white-haired, he looked nothing like his son. He shuffled, visibly uncomfortable, by the door. That makes two of us, Chris thought. "We were, ah. Worried. Came back early."
"Yeah," Chris said. "Um. Thanks? I'm glad you were safe. Where were you?"
"We were on Andoria, on the way back from Casperia Prime," Mina said. "Your father called in about every marker he had to get us a ride back to Earth as soon as possible."
"How long did it take the news to reach Andoria?" he asked, flailing for a conversational topic.
His parents actually let him redirect the conversation away from him, his injuries, and everything else for a good ten minutes, until his father finally asked point-blank, "Are you going to walk again?"
Chris paused and blinked. "I don't know," he said evenly, after a good long pause in which he and his father had a staring contest, and his mother said nothing. "I've got the best doctors in the Federation staring at scans of my head and spine on a regular basis. They've called in Dr. Poole-April to consult, even, as well as the Denobulans and Andorians. I think they'd be asking the Vulcans except they have their own problems to deal with."
He took a deep breath, and continued. "Phil won't blow smoke up my ass, and he hasn't told me either way. They-Phil, Dr. McCoy who actually did the surgery, the Surgeon General-all say that it's too soon to tell."
"It doesn't matter," Mina said, glaring at Josh. "Even if you can't, I'm sure there's stuff that you can do on Earth, with Starfleet and the Federation."
"Yes," Josh said, after she elbowed him in the side.
"I'm sure there is," Chris said. "I haven't made any plans. It's still, as I mentioned a minute ago, too soon to tell." He dug his index fingernail into the nail bed of his thumb; it hurt, but that was the point. He could concentrate on the small, sharp pain, rather than on-nope not gonna think about it.
After another silent conversation with Mina, elbows and eyebrows flying, Josh Pike said, remarkably reluctantly, "I guess they're going to make you an admiral?"
"What?" Chris said without thinking.
"Oh, that's a good way to tell him," Mina said, acid in her tone. "Chris, for your heroism in the Battle for Vulcan, Starfleet is going to promote you to admiral."
"My . . ." He trailed off. Heroism? You mean getting caught in a trap so obvious that I had no way of avoiding it, and getting tortured, and having to be rescued like a damsel in distress by a fucking cadet who was suspended for cheating at the time? He closed his eyes. "Wow. Kicking me upstairs already."
"No, that can't be it," Mina said.
Chris sighed. "No, that's exactly it." If I'd died, then I'd be a martyr like George Kirk, and a hero, but I survived, and I'm broken, which means they have no fucking clue what to do with me and fuckit- He was starting to shake. "Could you come back later?" he asked as politely as he could-they were still his parents, after all.
His father frowned, but as his mother was not possessed of the sensitivity of a rock, she elbowed Josh in the side again and hustled him out of the room without more than a perfunctory kiss on Chris's cheek.
Chris opaqued the windows, locked the door (ineffective, as any medical personnel could come in, but symbolic), and squeezed his eyes shut.
Of course, he didn't actually get any peace, as only a few breaths later (he'd lost all ability to estimate actual time), the doors swooshed open, and he heard a quiet, "Captain Pike?"
Haven't you heard: it's going to be 'admiral'? But he didn't say it; the words were stuck in his throat. Besides, the questioner was Dr. McCoy, and he owed the man a little more than yelling at him to get the fuck out of my room.
"I can help," McCoy said, still quietly.
Chris nodded once, stiffly.
"Can you open your eyes?"
Chris shook his head. If he did, he'd . . . nope not gonna think about it no no no
"Okay. I'm going to touch your right arm, just below your shoulder, just long enough to give you a hypospray. That's all. Nothing else."
He nodded, and felt the cool touch and hiss of the hypo, just as McCoy had said.
"That should kick in in about a minute. You might fall asleep. Meanwhile, I'll make everyone go away for a few hours, okay?"
Chris nodded. A few soft footfalls and another whoosh indicated that McCoy left, but it took what felt like forever for the drug to kick in.
He didn't even remember relaxing, just falling asleep, like the warp core in his brain had abruptly been ejected and inertia had suddenly stopped working. Waking up a couple hours later, he recognized the peculiar floating feeling of still being drugged, and let his thoughts drift.
If Chris hadn't been his patient for the last few weeks, he'd have had no idea that McCoy was capable of, well, being nice. He'd recruited the man because he was a genius, and because even if he was an abrasive asshole, he could either sit in a lab all day and not deal with people, or he could do trauma-related medicine, where it didn't matter how nice one was, just how fast. (Phil would probably have his head for making that oversimplification, but oh well.)
Then again, he'd primarily seen McCoy either in class, where he would excoriate one of his less-gifted classmates; around Jim Kirk, who brought out the best and worst in people; or drunk. It was no wonder he'd thought McCoy was always sharp-tongued.
It wasn't like Chris couldn't respect having a low tolerance for fools, anyway.
A chime sounded at the door, and Chris looked up, still too drugged to startle. "Computer, who is it?"
"Dr. Philip J. Boyce is at the door."
"Ah. Let him in." Not that Phil couldn't just have come in, but it was polite to have the illusion of choice in the matter.
Phil came in with the look that usually meant he wanted to swoop in with a tricorder and fix everything, but only sat next to the bed. "I hear your parents stopped by."
"Yeah," Chris said. "Apparently some asshole in the admiralty thought that my dad would be the best person to welcome me to their ranks."
"Well, fuck. Could have asked practically anyone who knows either of you; they'd have told them where to shove that idea." Phil paused, shifted in his chair. "Mina came to talk to me."
The elder Pikes, of course, knew Phil fairly well, for various reasons, so it wasn't entirely surprising. "Oh?"
"She's worried about you."
"Well, yeah." Chris shrugged. "I almost died, or something."
"You're still pretty drugged up, aren't you?"
"Yep."
Phil leaned forward. "Then I can say this: Chris, at some point, you're going to fall apart. For real, and no, the first few hours when you were remembering don't count."
Vaguely, under the haze, Chris could feel anger trying to build, but it wouldn't coalesce. "Okay," he said, "but not in front of my fucking father."
"All right, but I suspect you've got such a long list of 'not-in-front-ofs' that you're trying to hold it off by sheer force of will. Not in front of any of your visitors, I suppose. Definitely not in front of Jim Kirk or anyone ranked below captain, because that would undermine your authority."
"Phil," Chris said, a warning.
"You need the physical and emotional catharsis of crying," Phil said bluntly. "It would be easier on you if someone else were around to help you pick up the pieces. You also need to grieve, but you've been extremely successful at not thinking about what happened so far. I know you've only been off the cyrpro for a few days now, but you can't put it off forever."
"Go fuck yourself, Phil," Chris said. It was getting a little bit easier to find the heat of anger, but it still wasn't quite working.
"Yeah, I love you too, Chris. It doesn't have to be me. I won't be offended if you decide to cry all over Liz instead; she's better trained at this sort of thing than I am."
"Phil. Go. The fuck. Away."
Phil stood. "I've said what I needed to say. Alicia says hi. Groucho says hi." Groucho was their oversized chocolate-lab mix-possibly mixed with a Newfoundland, or else a bear.
He hated it when he was mad at Phil but was forced to be polite to the man for the sake of his wife, who certainly didn't deserve any ire. "She can stop by if she likes." In other words, Phil himself wasn't currently welcome.
"I'll tell her that." Message received. With that, he left, and Chris was alone, with his drugged thoughts.
Well, not for long. Dr. McCoy appeared a moment or two later. "Everything all right in here?"
Chris sighed. "Yeah. My best friend is an asshole, that's all."
McCoy snorted. "Don't I know that feeling. You going to be up to your session with the PT at 1600?"
"What time is it now?"
"Just past 1400."
Chris sighed. "Yeah, sure."
* * *
McCoy was there again-probably not coincidentally-when Chris got out of PT. "How'd that go for you?" he asked.
"There are no words sufficient to explain how much I hate physical therapists," Chris replied. He was too tired to keep much heat in his tone, though.
"I've heard that before. Ah, a JAG officer showed up to visit you while you were in with the PTs-Commander Alicia Cortez?"
"Yeah, not unexpected."
McCoy probably thought that he was holding a politely interested look, but he transparently wanted to know who she was and why she was showing up to talk to him.
"She's married to Phil," Chris said.
"Oh," McCoy said. "Huh."
Chris smiled half-heartedly. "Dr. McCoy, how long have you worked with Dr. Boyce?"
"Couple years now."
"Talk to him much?"
"Not really," McCoy said. "Only about work. I knew he was married because he wears a wedding band when he's not in surgery, but . . ."
"You know those mornings when he shows up whistling?"
"He shows up whistling every morning," McCoy said. "It's one of his most annoying qualities. Meaning no disrespect, of course."
"Well, Alicia Cortez, to whom he happens to be married and has been for the last thirty years, is the reason why. Chew on that for a while."
"Rather not, thanks," McCoy said, and grimaced.
* * *
Captain Number One and Commander Caitlin Barry were the next to show up for a visit; or at least they were the next to get through Phil and Liz's stringent screening process. Between Phil, Alicia, McCoy, and Kirk's infrequent visits, Chris never quite felt like he was left alone, but he rarely saw anyone else. One and Cait's visit, though, was welcome; he and his XO had settled into a comfortable friendship over the last ten years or so, since their romantic relationship had ended.
One of the things he liked the most about One was that she was so unflappable; she came into his hospital room, greeted him, and sat down, serene as always. One of the things he used to like about Cait, the Yorktown's chief engineer, was that there was rarely any guessing with her; she found it very difficult to hide strong emotion. So he probably should have expected the look on her face when she saw him.
Everyone else, including his parents, hadn't commented on the changes he knew must have happened-the shorn head only the most obvious, although his hair was a centimeter long or so at that point. He'd caught glimpses of himself in the mirror in the bathroom a time or two, but he hadn't actually looked. He knew he was thinner, that his skin was pale in ways he generally wasn't when planet-side, and that he felt tired all the time, but he hadn't wanted to confirm.
"That bad, huh?" he said to Cait, trying to smile.
She shook her head, but the lie was obvious.
The two women managed to stay for a half hour or so; by the end of that time, Chris could feel the strain. After they left, he actually did the unthinkable and called the nurse to administer a dose of pain meds.
* * *
He managed to stave off Phil's prescribed crying fit for a good week. Unfortunately, what set it off wasn't anything he might have expected, such as a really bad day in terms of pain, or his father being a jerk, or more reminders that the Enterprise would no longer be his.
Oh, no; it was because Phil had brought his academy ring back to him and it slipped off his finger.
Because he couldn't fucking eat half the time without panicking.
When it was over, he thought he should be more embarrassed that his psychiatrist was leaning about a meter over the side of his bed so he could cry on her shoulder, but he was just too exhausted to care.
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