FIC: Not in Our Stars (Star Trek AOS, R) Part 4/5
Title: Not in Our Stars
Author: Emluv emluv
Beta: Lindmere lindmere
Fandom/Spoilers: Star Trek AOS, borrowing from TOS
Characters: Leonard McCoy, Jim Kirk
Rating: R
Length: approx. 36,300 words complete
Warnings: Some swearing; minor violence; angst; mentions of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in a captive situation as described by a character after the fact.
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by the Roddenberry estate, Paramount Pictures, and probably a few others who are not me. No profit made, no infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: April 19, 2012
Summary/Author’s Note: Written for a prompt on the buckleup_meme requesting a fic in which brilliant young medical student Leonard McCoy volunteers for a Doctors Without Borders-type organization and ends up helping with the rescue efforts on Tarsus IV, where he meets a teenage, traumatized Jim Kirk, who will, for whatever reason, allow only McCoy to treat him. I have played fast and loose with TOS information about Tarsus IV and its location, making it closer to Earth so that McCoy could feasibly make it there and back in one summer.
Title taken from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act I, scene ii: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in our selves...”
This fic is complete and will be posted in five parts at regular intervals. Additional notes follow the final part.
Back to Part One
~*~
Part Four
~*~
It was slow going, but Jim managed to consume an entire bowl of broth with no ill effects. Leo sat by his bedside and talked to him while he ate, recounting more stories about his grandparents’ horse farm, learning to ride, mucking out stalls summers when he was growing up. Jim concentrated on his lunch, spooning up tiny sips of soup at a steady pace, but Leo could see he was engaged by the conversation by the way his gaze would flicker sideways whenever Leo paused for more than a few seconds.
Once he was certain Jim was keeping the food down, Leo sent a comm. to Sheila, who brought Tommy in for a visit. The older boy shuffled gingerly into the ward, clearly wary of putting weight on his newly mended leg, but as soon as he caught sight of Jim, he bounded the rest of the way into the room and climbed onto the bio-bed, sending the sensors into a frenzy. Leo quickly adjusted the settings to account for the additional presence, then backed off, leaving the two boys with their heads bent as they talked quietly, Jim soothing Tommy by holding his hand.
“We ran a tox screen on him,” Shelia said when Leo joined her. “Not a trace of any drugs in his system, just like Jim. Whatever they used on him, whatever caused this regression, we’re shooting in the dark,” she said, voice laced with frustration.
“If we knew what the goal was, maybe we’d be able to work backwards from there,” Leo suggested. “Determine the drug based on why they were drugging them all in the first place.”
“Perhaps, but I fear it’s a moot point. Without Kodos himself or someone in his inner circle, someone with a modicum of power, we’re not likely to learn their motivations. From what you told me, Jim doesn’t know, and I doubt any of the other children do, either.”
Leo wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. He suspected Jim knew quite a lot that he wasn’t ready to share yet. Oh, he had no doubt the kid was in the dark about what drugs were administered to them. But as for the bigger picture--the reasons for their being drugged--Leo was willing to bet that Jim had at least some idea what was going on.
They watched the boys from a distance for a few more moments until Leo became aware that Jim was shooting him glances over Tommy’s shoulder, and that the boy was starting to rock ever so slightly. “Looks like he’s reached his limit,” he said quietly.
Sheila nodded. “He’s doing better but it’s all clearly been traumatic for him,” she agreed, stepping forward.
“I’ll see you again tomorrow, Tommy, okay?” Jim coaxed the other boy, rubbing his hand as Leo and Sheila drew near the bed.
“I don’t wanna be by myself,” Tommy said.
“You’re going to be fine,” Jim told him. “I bet the doctor will let you go visit with Liza and Kevin and Tal and the others later, right?” he added, turning to look at Sheila.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Come on, Tommy. Let’s get you a snack and maybe a nap, and then you can see the rest of your friends.” She urged him gently from the bed and murmured to him as she led him back out of the room.
When Leo turned back toward Jim, he was unsurprised to find the boy’s eyes pinned to the doctor and Tommy as they made their slow progress off the ward. Even when he resumed his seat next to the bed, Jim’s focus remained steadfast. Instead of saying something to get his attention, Leo sat quietly, watching Jim as more emotions flittered across his face than he was accustomed to seeing in his guarded expressions.
“Leighton,” he murmured finally, staring unseeingly toward the now-empty doorway. “His name is Tommy Leighton. His parents are part of some kind of research expedition, so he was staying here with his brother and sister-in-law until they were back on Earth.”
Leo nodded. “Thanks for telling me, Jim. Someone will get hold of his parents.”
Jim closed his eyes and sank backward into the mattress, lips pressed together in a tense line. Leo watched him for a long moment, then rose and went over to the doorway. He stuck his head out and signaled to the security detail assigned to screen Jim’s visitors. “I’m going to close the door so the kid and I can talk,” he murmured. “Could you give us a warning knock if Puri or anyone else wants to come in?”
“Sure thing,” the ensign told him. “Bryce said you might need some privacy,” he added with a knowing nod.
“Thanks.” Leo pulled the door into place, fastening the latch. It was flimsy, giving more of an illusion of privacy than serving as a true barrier, but it was enough to keep approved visitors from barging in, and Leo hoped that it would make it easier for Jim to open up.
Turning back toward the bed, he found Jim watching him, his gaze no more than slivers of blue peering out from under heavy lids. He was under no illusions that the kid was actually willing to talk about anything beyond what he felt absolutely necessary, even if he had seemed resigned to doing so earlier, but Leo suspected that if the options were being forced to speak with someone else and having a conversation with him, Jim would choose talking to Leo as the more familiar and comfortable option. At least he hoped that was the case.
“Okay, kid,” he murmured, settling back in his chair, aware of the weight of Jim’s attention. “Here’s what I think. Everyone wants a name from you, they want to be able to track down some family members for you, get you the support you need and a safe place to go when you get off this rock.”
“I’ve told you, I haven’t got anywhere,” Jim murmured.
“I know you did. And I believe you think that’s true. Maybe it is,” he added quickly, when Jim started to protest. “But your name isn’t that important to me.” He leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, hands dangling. “If it makes you feel safe to keep that information to yourself, that’s fine. Bryce and the lot of them can ship you off to my parents’ in Georgia if they’ve got no place else. You can go to high school there and help out with the horses if you want, even trade for room and board.”
Jim stared at him, eyes huge in his thin face. “Why would you do that? Why would you even offer that? You don’t know me.”
Leo shook his head slowly. “I know you,” he replied softly. “I know the important stuff. You’re a good kid, smart, brave, generous. You protected your friends best you could. I know enough.” He watched Jim take that in, struggle with it.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he continued. “That’s fine. And it’s just one offer, one option. But I want you to understand, there are options out there. Okay?”
Jim’s gaze flickered toward the closed door. “So if you don’t want me to tell you my name, why’d you shut us in?”
“Because I want you to talk to me. Really talk to me,” he urged. “You’ve gone through hell, taken on all this responsibility, when adults around you just let the worst happen. Let it go, Jim,” he whispered. “Let it out. It won’t change anything, but I can promise you’ll feel better, not holding it all in. Talk about it. Whatever you want to tell me, whatever you need to unload.”
He sat back again, just waiting while Jim seemed to digest his request. He played with the edge of the covers and stared wordlessly at Leo for a long moment before finally nodding his head ever so slightly.
“I, we--the kids, knew something was wrong for a while,” he began softly. “Or at least that something was going on. They started testing us in school, more than just regular class work. Aptitude tests, that kind of thing. And they sent the adults a questionnaire. Supposed to be part of a census for the colony, but they asked weird questions for a census. There was some normal stuff, like how many people were in the household and how old they were, who had jobs or was in school, but then they asked medical questions too, like what shots everyone had gotten and whether they’d had certain diseases.”
“They were asking colonists these things?”
Jim nodded. “I thought they sounded like things you’d ask someone before they moved here, not after.”
“Anything else strange?”
He shrugged. “That was it, at the beginning. But after the tests, they started separating us into different classes at school. Not by age or what we were studying but by how smart we were.”
“Profiling,” Leo murmured.
“Then the crops went bad,” Jim continued, exhaling harshly. “All at once.”
“Wait, what do you mean all at once?”
“Most of the kids at school lived on farms. The colony--there were shops and stuff, in the settlement, people who had all kinds of jobs, like anyplace--but most of the population was still made up of farmers, and most of the kids came from farming families. So one morning we all got to school and everybody was talking about the fungus that was destroying the crops. All on that same morning. It was like in one day, everybody’s farms were infected.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I’m no farmer, but a fungus would have to start somewhere, wouldn’t it? Then spread from one farm to another?”
Jim nodded. “Unless it was something that was already there, that got triggered by weather or whatever. Fungi grow. Spores travel on wind or equipment or by some kind of animal.” He clenched his hands over fists full of covers. “This fungus just... appeared.”
Leo was beginning to comprehend exactly what Jim was suggesting, but he didn’t want to keep asking questions and interrupting him, so he simply nodded his understanding.
“It was only a few days before the announcement came, that there would be a food shortage. They established martial law right away. Said it was for the colonists’ protection, to keep them from panicking. Kodos sent his police force through the whole colony, gathering food, cleaning out people’s kitchens. Then every family got a ration card and they were supposed to send one person into town to get their supplies for the week based on what the card said.”
“And this was all after the supposed census?”
Jim nodded.
“No one questioned the timing?”
“They talked about it, like over the dinner table, with neighbors and stuff. But the crops were dying and people were scared they’d run out of food, so they mostly just kept quiet,” he muttered, fingers clenching restlessly.
“I think they figured it would be fine if they cooperated, just until help came. Everyone was waiting for supply ships to show up. They thought it was temporary. Then Kodos blew up the main communications array for the settlement. Claimed it was someone protesting the rationing, but that was just a rumor he tried to float. After that, the only communications set up still live was in the governor’s mansion. He sabotaged the long-range transports, too. There was no way out, no way off the planet, and to get a message through you’d need to get past Kodos’s goons.”
Jim paused, staring blankly ahead as if visualizing something. Noting his dry, chapped lips, Leo leaned forward and passed him the water bottle from the bedside table. It took a minute for Jim to focus before reaching out to take the drink, a faint, crooked smile ghosting across his face. He gulped it down quickly, draining the entire bottle before handing it back to Leo. “Thanks,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
The short break seemed to help him regain his focus. “We were still going to school every day, but one day the teachers were gone. Some guy we’d never seen before came into our class--”
“Your particular class?”
“Yeah, we were the advanced kids,” Jim said, eyes dropping. “They had us all together after the testing. Twenty of us. So this guy comes in, tells us we’re being pulled for a special program, due to our ‘impressive scholastic achievements and potential.’ Has us all leave our PADDs and stuff behind, says we’ll get new supplies. Tells us to follow him. So we all head out of the school building, just our class, and toward the governor’s mansion--the side where the government offices and stuff were. We go in, down this long corridor and down some stairs, and then there are guards with us, armed with phasers. They push us all into a big room, like a cell, with beds and a bathroom in the corner and not much else, and lock the door behind us.”
“They didn’t say anything? Why you were there?”
“No. Nothing.” He shifted slightly to one side, curling into himself. “We were down below ground level. There were these tiny windows running along one wall, way up by the ceiling. Only way to see out was to climb up on one of the beds and give each other boosts. There was a big empty yard, fenced in. After a long while, people started to arrive in groups. Just shuffling in, standing around, looking kinda lost. We could mostly just see their feet if they got too close, we were so low. They didn’t seem to be able to see us though. Windows must have been shielded.”
Leo swallowed hard. He knew enough of what had happened in the colony to have a pretty good idea what was coming next. Even if he hadn’t known of the basic events, he would have suspected something terrible, just from Jim’s bleak, deadened tone. But he had asked the kid to talk to him, encouraged him to open up. If Jim could speak about it--hell, if Jim could live through it--the least Leo could do was sit quietly and listen to every word.
Taking a shallow, shuddering breath, Jim pressed on. “We could hear the announcement over the loudspeakers. It would have been broadcasted throughout the whole settlement. Kodos telling everyone about their ‘great sacrifice.’ How in order for the best to live, the rest of them had to die.” He started trembling, faint tremors coursing from his shoulders down his arms and torso. “All those people,” he murmured. “All on some list Kodos made, because he decided they weren’t good enough,” he spat out, the words barely audible, his teeth beginning to chatter as if the temperature had plummeted. Leo reached out and grabbed his hand, feeling slender fingers clench painfully around his own.
“We could see all the other kids out there. The ones we’d left behind at school. Really little ones, too, who would have come from home with their parents. They had no idea what was going on, why they were there, until Kodos’s speech. And even then, they just stood there when the guards went out and started shooting. The yard lit up with phaser fire and bodies were dropping, and that’s when it finally dawned on them what was really happening, and they started screaming and shoving and trying to run.” He shook his head slowly, back and forth, eyes shut tightly against the memory.
Despite his resolution, Leo found himself unable to remain quiet. “Jim,” he murmured, “You can stop if you want, it’s all right.”
The head shaking grew more rapid and forceful, as if he were trying to expel the memories instead of just deny them. He swallowed, the action causing him to cough harshly until Leo helped him sit up, rubbing a palm over his back in a useless attempt to soothe and comfort. “Shh,” he whispered, fighting to hold back the tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. “Whatever you want. Whenever you’re ready.”
Jim swallowed again, then exhaled hard, clearing his throat. “I’m fine,” he insisted, voice strained. He leaned back again, pulling Leo’s hand, still clutched tightly, until it was pressed up against his chest.
“The guards left the bodies lying there for hours,” he continued without inflection. “Later they came back and loaded them onto the backs of hover-barges, the kind the farms used to bring their crops into the settlement for distribution and transport. We found out later they took them out to the forest and dumped them into mass graves. None of us knew for sure who was killed and who survived. Who was on that list. It was too crowded when they were all standing around in the yard, and after...” He took a deep breath, let it out. “Afterwards they were all just piled on top of each other. Did you know that dead bodies, when there’s a lot of them like that, they stop looking real?” he asked softly, his blue gaze meeting Leo’s for the first time since he’d started speaking.
Leo started at the question, was even more disturbed to realize that, despite all he had gone through and the difficulty he had recounting the events, Jim was utterly dry-eyed. “I... yeah, I suppose I know what you mean,” he said quietly, thinking of the cadavers they used in med school, and the way they objectified them. “What made them the person you know is gone.”
Jim nodded, his gaze skittering off again.
“Do you want to take a break, Jim?” Leo ventured.
But he didn’t answer, just went back to telling of the horrors he’d witnessed. It was as if now that he had started, the only way out again was to work his way through to the other side. Seemingly on auto-pilot, he spoke about the first night locked in the cell, no one responding to their demands for answers, most of the kids in shock, huddled on their cots, a couple of them crying themselves to sleep.
“Then in the morning they came and took the girls away,” Jim murmured. “When they came back a few hours later, none of them would tell us what happened, but they’d all been crying. They took us next, the boys, so we had a pretty good idea what the girls went through then.”
Leo swallowed hard, afraid to ask, but Jim soldiered on.
“They took a bunch of samples from us. Hair and skin, scrapings from inside our mouths.” He paused, shook his head slightly. “Other stuff.”
“DNA samples,” Leo said. “Sperm samples too?”
Jim nodded, fingers tightening around Leo’s hand. Then he exhaled hard, and Leo realized he was trembling.
“They did this with all of you?”
Another nod.
“Even the little kids? Liza and Kevin?”
Jim shook his head. “They weren’t with us,” he said. “Youngest was ten, oldest seventeen.”
Leonard took in this information, understood what that meant about the survival rate for that group of smart, special kids. He wanted to ask how they’d gotten free, how Jim came to be one of the kids who made it out, but he would suture his mouth closed before he rushed the kid or asked him to alter his story in any way.
“After that they started drugging us. Some days they’d feed us first and see if we could keep the food down after they shot us up with whatever. Other days it was on an empty stomach. They said it was for the good of humankind, that we should be proud of our contributions,” Jim murmured.
“Did you have any idea what they meant by that?”
“It was pretty obvious by then.”
Leo agreed, but he wanted Jim’s take, so he just waited for him to continue.
“They’d tested us to see who was smartest, so next they were going to see how tough we were. What our bodies could stand. Then he could take all that genetic material and create brand new versions of us. Ones that hadn’t already seen and heard too much.”
“Eugenics at its most extreme.”
“Those people he had killed in the yard--he’d already decided they weren’t good enough. I don’t know what he would have done with everyone else. Some got killed anyway. I know he sent guards out to check, make sure no one who had been on the list had somehow gotten away, not answered the summons to the mansion that day.”
“Is that what happened with Kevin and Liza? Their parents didn’t bring them with them?”
Jim nodded. “They lived near each other. Kevin’s older sister was watching them both because their parents thought they were too young to come to the meeting. She hid them in the root cellar when Kodos’s guards showed up to search the house. Kevin claims he doesn’t know what happened to her, but I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
“How long did the drug treatments go on?” Leo asked, knowing there was much more to Jim’s story before he came across the younger children.
“Not sure. The days kind of blurred, you know? Sometimes I wasn’t sure I hadn’t blacked out for a day or two. I’d wake up suddenly and it’d be dark and one of the kids would be missing from their bed, and I wouldn’t remember them being taken away. But they started not coming back,” he choked out. “This one girl, Toula--she was my age, about--she just stopped breathing one night. There were these gasping sounds and then nothing. I tried to get someone to come, pounded on the door. I know they had to have some kind of surveillance on us, but they just left her there until morning. Then they carried her out, two guards, no stretcher or anything, like she was furniture.”
“Oh, kid,” Leo whispered, voice gentle, even though he was seething underneath his careful façade.
Jim shook himself, clearing trying to gather his resolve to continue. “By the time they brought Tommy back, there was just nine of us. I figured they were going to keep testing drugs on us until we were all dead, so we were better off trying to escape. Even if we didn’t make it and they shot us, at least it would be quick. We didn’t have anything to lose. I just needed to get one of the keys for the door. All the guards had them, so if I could get one as they were going off shift, they wouldn’t notice until they came back on duty.”
“But you said they had surveillance.”
“Yeah, but it seemed like they weren’t paying much attention at night. I thought it was worth the risk.”
Leo nodded, feeling his pulse speeding up. He had seen Jim’s tricorder readings, knew his body bore the signs of far worse treatment than he’d already described. Part of him truly did not want to know what happened, but he stayed silent.
“I waited for a detox day.”
“What was that?”
“Detox day. When they wanted to test something new, they’d flush the old drug out of our system and give us a day off between testing,” Jim replied. “I knew I could count on not feeling too sick or fuzzy headed that way. So, the next time they cleaned us out, I waited for the following evening, when the guards came with the doctor to check our status, and I pretended to be unresponsive. I knew nothing would show up when they scanned me, that they’d need more equipment to figure out what was wrong, and they never brought the equipment into the room with us.”
“So they’d take you somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I thought...” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “I figured they’d check me out and then bring me back, like with Tommy, just the one guard, and I’d have a chance to lift the key without anyone else there to notice.”
“That didn’t happen?”
“No. They could tell I was faking it. I guess my brain waves didn’t mesh with how I was acting, or whatever. I knew it was a long shot but it was all I could think of,” he murmured. “The doctor told me how disappointed he was in me, how they needed our ‘honest responses’ for their study. Like I was supposed to care about their research results.”
He was shaking again. Leo could feel the fine tremors through the hand Jim still held, so he flexed his fingers, giving him a quick squeeze of encouragement.
“He and two guards took me back to the room, and he told everyone that I’d been ‘uncooperative’ and that they were going to show them all what happened to children who didn’t do as they were told. Then he had the guards hold me down while he beat me in front of everyone.”
Jim’s voice was steady now, so matter-of-fact that Leo had to wonder what it would take to get some kind of reaction out of him. He sounded almost as if he thought the beating was earned. Leo was tempted to say something, but it was clear the kid had fallen back into his disconnected, story-telling mode, his eyes unfocussed, a small furrow marring his brow.
“I thought they’d leave me there, but they didn’t. The doctor had the guards drag me back out. I could hear the kids crying, panicking that they were taking me away again, but I wasn’t in great shape,” he said. “They sounded kind of far away. I think the doctor probably nailed me in the head a couple of times. I could just keep track of where we were going, down this hallway to another room. This one was small--like a walk-in closet--with just one cot, no windows, and the door was solid instead of having a window in it. They dumped me in there and left.”
“No one checked you out to see what kind of damage they’d done?”
Jim shrugged. “Don’t think they really cared. It was a while before anyone came back. I’d lost all sense of time by then, just knew I was thirsty and my head felt like it was going to fall off. A guard showed up with water but that was it. No drugs, but no food either. That happened a couple of times before I finally just asked if I could have something to eat, and he said maybe, if I did what he wanted.”
Leo watched as Jim ducked his head, making it impossible for him to see the kid’s expression or the look in his eyes. “Hey,” he whispered. “None of this is your fault. Don’t you be embarrassed for anything you had to do in there, you hear me?”
The blond head lifted almost imperceptibly, a small acknowledgement, but Jim still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I told him I’d do anything he wanted, but he had to bring the food with him. He agreed, so the next time he came back he had a plate with some sort of food on it. He set it on the floor by the door, as far from the bed as possible, and then he came at me.” Jim shuddered. “He stripped me down. I just lay there and let him do what he wanted to me. It...went on for a while. And when he was done he collapsed on top of me, like he’d forgotten I was even there. He wasn’t asleep or anything, but he was pretty out of it, just lying there with his pants down around his ankles.” Jim swallowed hard. “So I wiggled out from under him, pretended I was going to get the plate off the floor, and grabbed his phaser instead.”
Leo waited quietly while Jim paused, obviously trying to recapture that detached place where he could recount what happened without breaking down. When he failed to resume his horrific story, Leo leaned in a little closer and gave his hand a shake to try and get his attention.
“You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to, but I’m here when you’re ready, Jim. I’m not going anywhere, kid.”
Blue eyes peered through white-blond bangs, blinking rapidly. Then Jim sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m okay,” he murmured. “Let’s just get it over with.”
“Only if that’s what you want.”
Another nod. “So I... I got his phaser, and he tried to come after me, but he got all tangled in his pants and fell, so I... I shot him. I mean, it was set to stun, but I upped it to kill and I just... fired.” A shuddering breath. “He didn’t scream or call out or anything, but I didn’t know if anyone was guarding the door outside. I got dressed, and he was just there on the floor, dead. He looked kind of pathetic, half naked like that. It was... weird.” Jim gave himself a little shake. “I didn’t eat the food. Didn’t trust he hadn’t done something to it. Took his keys and unlocked the door, peeked out into the hall. No one was around, and the lights were dimmed, like at night, so I figured I’d lucked out and it was late. I found the other room without any problems and snuck in. Everyone was asleep.” He paused again, swallowing. “There were a couple more kids missing. I had to wake them up one by one, put a hand over their mouths so they wouldn’t call out. But I got them all up. No one was drugged, so I think maybe... maybe they were just getting ready to do something else to us. Test something different. I don’t know.”
He paused again, looking around. “Can I... is there more water?”
Leo started, brought abruptly back to reality. “Yeah, sure, just a second.” He carefully disengaged from where he and Jim had been clasping hands and rose to grab another water bottle. “Here you go. You want anything else? I don’t suppose you feel like eating something.”
Jim scrunched up his face and shook his head. “Maybe in a little while? After?”
Leo nodded, understanding that food and this particular conversation did not go together. He resumed his seat while Jim drank down a good third of the water, taking the bottle when he passed it back to him to set on the bedside table.
“Okay,” Jim said, reaching out toward Leo again, his expression shy. Leo just slipped his hand into the kid’s and squeezed in acknowledgement. Jim took a deep breath and dove back into his story.
“At that point, the other kids were doing a lot better than I was. I wasn’t moving so fast, and I didn’t want to hold them up, but I needed to get them outside while it was still dark, before the morning check in. We all snuck down the hall to the stairs where we’d come in that first day and got up to the main level that way. All the rooms were dark and it seemed pretty quiet, and I could see the entrance to the government offices, the area off limit to the public. So I gave the phaser to Jerry--he was maybe a year or two older than me--and told him to get everyone out and head toward the nearest farms, that I was going to try to get in to the communications console to send a message.”
Leo stifled a hiss of dismay. He’d seen this coming almost from the first, had suspected Jim was the smart, brave kid who got word out to Starfleet, but hearing the reality of how everything had played out gave him no sense of satisfaction for being right.
“They didn’t want to leave without me,” Jim continued, “but I said someone needed to do it, and that I’d try and catch up. Jerry got it, even if he wasn’t happy about it. He and Tal had to practically drag Tommy with them, because he didn’t understand, but even he knew enough to stay quiet.”
Jim’s eyes took on that faraway look again as he fell back into the story. “I crept down the hall toward the restricted side of the building, trying to stay low because I could see they had security cameras sweeping and I had no way of knowing what they were picking up.”
“Jesus, Jim!”
He shook his head and kept talking. “It didn’t matter. I figured no one out there knew what was going down in the colony, and if someone couldn’t get word out then we were all as good as dead. If I left with the others, I’d never be able to sneak back inside.” His voice had taken on a hint of the sheer stubborn determination that Leo knew must have kept him going through all of this.
“Okay, okay,” he soothed. “I get it. What happened?”
“They did have a guy in front of a bank of monitors, right when I first accessed the wing, but he was turned away from them, watching a vid or something on his PADD. I could see the yard out in front of the building though, on a couple of the screens. They had guards walking the perimeter but spaced pretty far apart. I guess they weren’t anticipating anyone trying to get in after they’d killed so many colonists already. So I watched until I saw Jerry and the others show up. I could tell he’d been watching the guards, too, waiting to figure out the timing when they could make a run for it. As soon as I’d seen them clear the fence, I dropped down and crawled past the monitor desk and into the next stretch of hallway. There were a couple of offices with their doors closed, just one that had light coming out from under the door. But I could see the comm. center down at the end of the hall, so I kept going.”
“Were there more cameras?”
“I didn’t really stop to look. I was going either way,” he said with a small shrug. “The lights were off but the equipment was plenty bright all by itself, with the indicator lights and screens and stuff. I found the main comm. panel and set it to transmit on the main Starfleet channels.”
Leo wondered briefly how Jim knew what the Starfleet channel codes were, but the kid kept talking and he refocused, not wanting to miss a word.
“I just typed out a brief distress call, really. I wanted to send more, but I figured better to get out a short message and then try to send a second one than to try and tell everything in one go and get caught before I could transmit. So I’d just started on the second comm. when I heard something going on back down the hall, like phaser fire. Then Jerry came running at me, alone--he’d doubled back after getting the kids out. I didn’t know there was someone behind him until they shot him--he dropped practically on top of me and I landed hard. It’s the only thing that kept me from getting taken out too, before I managed to grab the phaser out of Jerry’s hand and return fire.”
Leo nodded, not wanting to interrupt but feeling the need to acknowledge what Jim was telling him.
“After that I just ran for it. When I got to the bank of monitors I saw Jerry had phasered the guy there. I doubt he even realized the phaser wasn’t on stun. He must have thought he’d be coming after us any minute. But no one seemed to have heard anything because the entryway was empty. I crept outside and waited, watched the perimeter guards same as Jerry and the others had, and then I made for the fence as fast as I could. I was sure someone would see me, come after me, but I got out and there was no one. The kids must have been watching--they were huddled across the park behind a cluster of trees--because Tal came out to help me. They wanted me to rest, but the sky was starting to get light and I knew we needed to get the hell out of the settlement before sun up, so we kept going.”
“Where?” Leo asked softly.
“Wasn’t safe to stay at any of our own homes. They were all empty anyway.”
“You were sure everyone’s families had been on that list?”
Jim shrugged. “Pretty sure. Sure enough not to risk it. But four thousand people leave a lot of houses empty. We stayed in alleys and shadows until we got to the end of town and then made a run for the nearest farm. They were pretty much all deserted close in. We rummaged there and the next few places we came to, pulled together enough clothes and shoes for all of us.”
“You ran out of there barefoot?”
“Not like we had a choice. They had us in scrubs or those medical gowns.”
Leo’s gaze flicked to the small scrubs Jim was wearing. “Damn, kid, no wonder you’ve got no love for doctors.”
Jim just gave his hand a squeeze and pulled it back up to his chest again. “I didn’t want to stay in one of the empty farm houses. I figured Kodos would send his guards looking there straight off. But I didn’t know where we should go instead. That’s when we started looking for someplace with a cellar or attic space, something kind of hidden where we could take cover fast if we heard anyone coming.”
“And found Liza and Kevin,” Leo said.
“Yeah. Third place we checked. They had a little bit of food left, and the well worked, so we stayed there the first day, just to rest up. Then that night all of us took off and headed for the woods. Cut through to get up to the mountain range. I’d been camping up there a couple of times with… with the people I’d lived with, so I knew there were some caves where we could hide.”
“You didn’t try to approach anyone for help?”
Jim met his questioning gaze, his blue eyes holding so much anger that Leo nearly flinched backward. “People saw us, Doc. They saw us sneaking through town, saw us that morning passing their farms--all those people Kodos let live because they were ‘worthy,’” he spat out. “Not one of them did a fucking thing to help us. Oh, sure, they didn’t turn us in, but they didn’t help either.”
“What about the rebellion?”
Jim snorted. “What rebellion? You know when people started to fight back? After Kodos spotted the first ‘fleet ships coming into range, he locked his advisors in and blew up the computers, set the whole place on fire. Without him giving orders, the guards went rogue, started looting the food stores, and that’s what the colonists rebelled against. Not until then.”
“People react to fear in different ways,” Leo said, but his tone lacked conviction. Jim had every right to resent the colonists for failing to help him, when he himself had put so much on the line.
“Whatever. You know that’s bullshit.” Jim released his hand and curled into himself, steady gaze resting on Leo. “So is that what you wanted to hear?”
Leo sighed. “It wasn’t a question of wanting to hear it. You needed to talk about it.”
“Is this the part where you tell me how my story doesn’t fit in with what everyone else has been telling Starfleet?”
“No one else we’ve spoken with went through what you did, Jim,” Leo said gently. “That doesn’t make one of you more right than the other. Even if some of them saw you escaping, they had no way of knowing what happened to you and the others while you were being held.”
Jim blinked. “So, you believe me?” he asked tentatively.
Leo frowned. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”
Blue eyes dropped under a heavy fringe of lashes and Jim shrugged. “People don’t always believe me when I tell them things,” he murmured.
Leo shifted out of his chair and sat carefully on the edge of Jim’s bed, his sudden proximity causing Jim to jerk his head back up. “It’s okay,” Leo soothed. He reached out and cradled the back of Jim’s head with one hand, dropping the other to rest over one clenched fist, leaning in so their eyes were level, faces only inches apart. “Listen to me,” he said. “I believe every single thing you’ve told me, and I think you are an incredible person. What you went through? It was horrific. I can’t imagine how terrified you were through it all, or how you managed to keep it together the way you did. And I can see you feel bad about how some things happened, that you couldn’t save all the kids, that you were forced to do things you didn’t want to do. But Jim? You survived. You lived through it, and you made it out the other end, and that makes you an amazing kid in my book.”
Jim trembled within his grip, his eyes suddenly damp. “I can’t turn it off, you know?” he whispered, words barely audible. “In my head. I keep trying to figure out what I could have done differently.”
“None of this is on you. You did more than anyone could expect. Hell, kid, you brought in the damn cavalry.”
“It doesn’t help. All those people dead. Why not me? What makes me so different from them? And what makes me so different from Kodos?” He shuddered. “We’re both human beings, right? What would have to change in me to turn me into someone like that?”
Leo tightened his hold, bringing Jim closer so their foreheads touched. “The fact you even ask the question means it’s never gonna happen, kid, you got that?” Feeling dampness on his cheeks, he released Jim so he could brush at his face. Only then did he realize that the tears were Jim’s. “Hey, infinite diversity, right? That was true even before first contact. We’re each the sum of a lot of different factors, both nature and nurture.”
Leo offered Jim what remained of his bottle of water, and the kid took it with a nod of thanks. He finished it off in a few gulps and took a couple of shuddering breaths before he seemed less likely to break down.
“How do you feel?” Leo asked finally.
“I don’t know. Tired,” Jim admitted.
“That was a lot to get off your chest,” Leo agreed. “You want me to leave so you can rest?”
“No,” Jim replied instantly. “I mean, I’m tired of talking but you don’t need to go. Maybe you can tell me more about your family?”
Leo smiled. “Sure, I can do that. You settle down and get comfy.” He helped Jim shift lower on the bed, plumping up the pillows behind him. Then he slumped into his own chair and began to talk, rambling wherever his memories took him as he tried to focus on lighthearted moments--family gatherings featuring his grandmother’s peach pie, pranks he had pulled as a kid with his cousins. Within minutes, Jim had fallen asleep to the rhythm of Leo’s steady drawl.
~*~
Part Five
Author: Emluv emluv
Beta: Lindmere lindmere
Fandom/Spoilers: Star Trek AOS, borrowing from TOS
Characters: Leonard McCoy, Jim Kirk
Rating: R
Length: approx. 36,300 words complete
Warnings: Some swearing; minor violence; angst; mentions of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in a captive situation as described by a character after the fact.
Disclaimer: Star Trek is owned by the Roddenberry estate, Paramount Pictures, and probably a few others who are not me. No profit made, no infringement intended.
Archive/Distribution: Please ask.
Date: April 19, 2012
Summary/Author’s Note: Written for a prompt on the buckleup_meme requesting a fic in which brilliant young medical student Leonard McCoy volunteers for a Doctors Without Borders-type organization and ends up helping with the rescue efforts on Tarsus IV, where he meets a teenage, traumatized Jim Kirk, who will, for whatever reason, allow only McCoy to treat him. I have played fast and loose with TOS information about Tarsus IV and its location, making it closer to Earth so that McCoy could feasibly make it there and back in one summer.
Title taken from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act I, scene ii: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in our selves...”
This fic is complete and will be posted in five parts at regular intervals. Additional notes follow the final part.
Back to Part One
~*~
Part Four
~*~
It was slow going, but Jim managed to consume an entire bowl of broth with no ill effects. Leo sat by his bedside and talked to him while he ate, recounting more stories about his grandparents’ horse farm, learning to ride, mucking out stalls summers when he was growing up. Jim concentrated on his lunch, spooning up tiny sips of soup at a steady pace, but Leo could see he was engaged by the conversation by the way his gaze would flicker sideways whenever Leo paused for more than a few seconds.
Once he was certain Jim was keeping the food down, Leo sent a comm. to Sheila, who brought Tommy in for a visit. The older boy shuffled gingerly into the ward, clearly wary of putting weight on his newly mended leg, but as soon as he caught sight of Jim, he bounded the rest of the way into the room and climbed onto the bio-bed, sending the sensors into a frenzy. Leo quickly adjusted the settings to account for the additional presence, then backed off, leaving the two boys with their heads bent as they talked quietly, Jim soothing Tommy by holding his hand.
“We ran a tox screen on him,” Shelia said when Leo joined her. “Not a trace of any drugs in his system, just like Jim. Whatever they used on him, whatever caused this regression, we’re shooting in the dark,” she said, voice laced with frustration.
“If we knew what the goal was, maybe we’d be able to work backwards from there,” Leo suggested. “Determine the drug based on why they were drugging them all in the first place.”
“Perhaps, but I fear it’s a moot point. Without Kodos himself or someone in his inner circle, someone with a modicum of power, we’re not likely to learn their motivations. From what you told me, Jim doesn’t know, and I doubt any of the other children do, either.”
Leo wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. He suspected Jim knew quite a lot that he wasn’t ready to share yet. Oh, he had no doubt the kid was in the dark about what drugs were administered to them. But as for the bigger picture--the reasons for their being drugged--Leo was willing to bet that Jim had at least some idea what was going on.
They watched the boys from a distance for a few more moments until Leo became aware that Jim was shooting him glances over Tommy’s shoulder, and that the boy was starting to rock ever so slightly. “Looks like he’s reached his limit,” he said quietly.
Sheila nodded. “He’s doing better but it’s all clearly been traumatic for him,” she agreed, stepping forward.
“I’ll see you again tomorrow, Tommy, okay?” Jim coaxed the other boy, rubbing his hand as Leo and Sheila drew near the bed.
“I don’t wanna be by myself,” Tommy said.
“You’re going to be fine,” Jim told him. “I bet the doctor will let you go visit with Liza and Kevin and Tal and the others later, right?” he added, turning to look at Sheila.
“Of course,” she agreed. “Come on, Tommy. Let’s get you a snack and maybe a nap, and then you can see the rest of your friends.” She urged him gently from the bed and murmured to him as she led him back out of the room.
When Leo turned back toward Jim, he was unsurprised to find the boy’s eyes pinned to the doctor and Tommy as they made their slow progress off the ward. Even when he resumed his seat next to the bed, Jim’s focus remained steadfast. Instead of saying something to get his attention, Leo sat quietly, watching Jim as more emotions flittered across his face than he was accustomed to seeing in his guarded expressions.
“Leighton,” he murmured finally, staring unseeingly toward the now-empty doorway. “His name is Tommy Leighton. His parents are part of some kind of research expedition, so he was staying here with his brother and sister-in-law until they were back on Earth.”
Leo nodded. “Thanks for telling me, Jim. Someone will get hold of his parents.”
Jim closed his eyes and sank backward into the mattress, lips pressed together in a tense line. Leo watched him for a long moment, then rose and went over to the doorway. He stuck his head out and signaled to the security detail assigned to screen Jim’s visitors. “I’m going to close the door so the kid and I can talk,” he murmured. “Could you give us a warning knock if Puri or anyone else wants to come in?”
“Sure thing,” the ensign told him. “Bryce said you might need some privacy,” he added with a knowing nod.
“Thanks.” Leo pulled the door into place, fastening the latch. It was flimsy, giving more of an illusion of privacy than serving as a true barrier, but it was enough to keep approved visitors from barging in, and Leo hoped that it would make it easier for Jim to open up.
Turning back toward the bed, he found Jim watching him, his gaze no more than slivers of blue peering out from under heavy lids. He was under no illusions that the kid was actually willing to talk about anything beyond what he felt absolutely necessary, even if he had seemed resigned to doing so earlier, but Leo suspected that if the options were being forced to speak with someone else and having a conversation with him, Jim would choose talking to Leo as the more familiar and comfortable option. At least he hoped that was the case.
“Okay, kid,” he murmured, settling back in his chair, aware of the weight of Jim’s attention. “Here’s what I think. Everyone wants a name from you, they want to be able to track down some family members for you, get you the support you need and a safe place to go when you get off this rock.”
“I’ve told you, I haven’t got anywhere,” Jim murmured.
“I know you did. And I believe you think that’s true. Maybe it is,” he added quickly, when Jim started to protest. “But your name isn’t that important to me.” He leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, hands dangling. “If it makes you feel safe to keep that information to yourself, that’s fine. Bryce and the lot of them can ship you off to my parents’ in Georgia if they’ve got no place else. You can go to high school there and help out with the horses if you want, even trade for room and board.”
Jim stared at him, eyes huge in his thin face. “Why would you do that? Why would you even offer that? You don’t know me.”
Leo shook his head slowly. “I know you,” he replied softly. “I know the important stuff. You’re a good kid, smart, brave, generous. You protected your friends best you could. I know enough.” He watched Jim take that in, struggle with it.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he continued. “That’s fine. And it’s just one offer, one option. But I want you to understand, there are options out there. Okay?”
Jim’s gaze flickered toward the closed door. “So if you don’t want me to tell you my name, why’d you shut us in?”
“Because I want you to talk to me. Really talk to me,” he urged. “You’ve gone through hell, taken on all this responsibility, when adults around you just let the worst happen. Let it go, Jim,” he whispered. “Let it out. It won’t change anything, but I can promise you’ll feel better, not holding it all in. Talk about it. Whatever you want to tell me, whatever you need to unload.”
He sat back again, just waiting while Jim seemed to digest his request. He played with the edge of the covers and stared wordlessly at Leo for a long moment before finally nodding his head ever so slightly.
“I, we--the kids, knew something was wrong for a while,” he began softly. “Or at least that something was going on. They started testing us in school, more than just regular class work. Aptitude tests, that kind of thing. And they sent the adults a questionnaire. Supposed to be part of a census for the colony, but they asked weird questions for a census. There was some normal stuff, like how many people were in the household and how old they were, who had jobs or was in school, but then they asked medical questions too, like what shots everyone had gotten and whether they’d had certain diseases.”
“They were asking colonists these things?”
Jim nodded. “I thought they sounded like things you’d ask someone before they moved here, not after.”
“Anything else strange?”
He shrugged. “That was it, at the beginning. But after the tests, they started separating us into different classes at school. Not by age or what we were studying but by how smart we were.”
“Profiling,” Leo murmured.
“Then the crops went bad,” Jim continued, exhaling harshly. “All at once.”
“Wait, what do you mean all at once?”
“Most of the kids at school lived on farms. The colony--there were shops and stuff, in the settlement, people who had all kinds of jobs, like anyplace--but most of the population was still made up of farmers, and most of the kids came from farming families. So one morning we all got to school and everybody was talking about the fungus that was destroying the crops. All on that same morning. It was like in one day, everybody’s farms were infected.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I’m no farmer, but a fungus would have to start somewhere, wouldn’t it? Then spread from one farm to another?”
Jim nodded. “Unless it was something that was already there, that got triggered by weather or whatever. Fungi grow. Spores travel on wind or equipment or by some kind of animal.” He clenched his hands over fists full of covers. “This fungus just... appeared.”
Leo was beginning to comprehend exactly what Jim was suggesting, but he didn’t want to keep asking questions and interrupting him, so he simply nodded his understanding.
“It was only a few days before the announcement came, that there would be a food shortage. They established martial law right away. Said it was for the colonists’ protection, to keep them from panicking. Kodos sent his police force through the whole colony, gathering food, cleaning out people’s kitchens. Then every family got a ration card and they were supposed to send one person into town to get their supplies for the week based on what the card said.”
“And this was all after the supposed census?”
Jim nodded.
“No one questioned the timing?”
“They talked about it, like over the dinner table, with neighbors and stuff. But the crops were dying and people were scared they’d run out of food, so they mostly just kept quiet,” he muttered, fingers clenching restlessly.
“I think they figured it would be fine if they cooperated, just until help came. Everyone was waiting for supply ships to show up. They thought it was temporary. Then Kodos blew up the main communications array for the settlement. Claimed it was someone protesting the rationing, but that was just a rumor he tried to float. After that, the only communications set up still live was in the governor’s mansion. He sabotaged the long-range transports, too. There was no way out, no way off the planet, and to get a message through you’d need to get past Kodos’s goons.”
Jim paused, staring blankly ahead as if visualizing something. Noting his dry, chapped lips, Leo leaned forward and passed him the water bottle from the bedside table. It took a minute for Jim to focus before reaching out to take the drink, a faint, crooked smile ghosting across his face. He gulped it down quickly, draining the entire bottle before handing it back to Leo. “Thanks,” he murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
The short break seemed to help him regain his focus. “We were still going to school every day, but one day the teachers were gone. Some guy we’d never seen before came into our class--”
“Your particular class?”
“Yeah, we were the advanced kids,” Jim said, eyes dropping. “They had us all together after the testing. Twenty of us. So this guy comes in, tells us we’re being pulled for a special program, due to our ‘impressive scholastic achievements and potential.’ Has us all leave our PADDs and stuff behind, says we’ll get new supplies. Tells us to follow him. So we all head out of the school building, just our class, and toward the governor’s mansion--the side where the government offices and stuff were. We go in, down this long corridor and down some stairs, and then there are guards with us, armed with phasers. They push us all into a big room, like a cell, with beds and a bathroom in the corner and not much else, and lock the door behind us.”
“They didn’t say anything? Why you were there?”
“No. Nothing.” He shifted slightly to one side, curling into himself. “We were down below ground level. There were these tiny windows running along one wall, way up by the ceiling. Only way to see out was to climb up on one of the beds and give each other boosts. There was a big empty yard, fenced in. After a long while, people started to arrive in groups. Just shuffling in, standing around, looking kinda lost. We could mostly just see their feet if they got too close, we were so low. They didn’t seem to be able to see us though. Windows must have been shielded.”
Leo swallowed hard. He knew enough of what had happened in the colony to have a pretty good idea what was coming next. Even if he hadn’t known of the basic events, he would have suspected something terrible, just from Jim’s bleak, deadened tone. But he had asked the kid to talk to him, encouraged him to open up. If Jim could speak about it--hell, if Jim could live through it--the least Leo could do was sit quietly and listen to every word.
Taking a shallow, shuddering breath, Jim pressed on. “We could hear the announcement over the loudspeakers. It would have been broadcasted throughout the whole settlement. Kodos telling everyone about their ‘great sacrifice.’ How in order for the best to live, the rest of them had to die.” He started trembling, faint tremors coursing from his shoulders down his arms and torso. “All those people,” he murmured. “All on some list Kodos made, because he decided they weren’t good enough,” he spat out, the words barely audible, his teeth beginning to chatter as if the temperature had plummeted. Leo reached out and grabbed his hand, feeling slender fingers clench painfully around his own.
“We could see all the other kids out there. The ones we’d left behind at school. Really little ones, too, who would have come from home with their parents. They had no idea what was going on, why they were there, until Kodos’s speech. And even then, they just stood there when the guards went out and started shooting. The yard lit up with phaser fire and bodies were dropping, and that’s when it finally dawned on them what was really happening, and they started screaming and shoving and trying to run.” He shook his head slowly, back and forth, eyes shut tightly against the memory.
Despite his resolution, Leo found himself unable to remain quiet. “Jim,” he murmured, “You can stop if you want, it’s all right.”
The head shaking grew more rapid and forceful, as if he were trying to expel the memories instead of just deny them. He swallowed, the action causing him to cough harshly until Leo helped him sit up, rubbing a palm over his back in a useless attempt to soothe and comfort. “Shh,” he whispered, fighting to hold back the tears pooling at the corners of his eyes. “Whatever you want. Whenever you’re ready.”
Jim swallowed again, then exhaled hard, clearing his throat. “I’m fine,” he insisted, voice strained. He leaned back again, pulling Leo’s hand, still clutched tightly, until it was pressed up against his chest.
“The guards left the bodies lying there for hours,” he continued without inflection. “Later they came back and loaded them onto the backs of hover-barges, the kind the farms used to bring their crops into the settlement for distribution and transport. We found out later they took them out to the forest and dumped them into mass graves. None of us knew for sure who was killed and who survived. Who was on that list. It was too crowded when they were all standing around in the yard, and after...” He took a deep breath, let it out. “Afterwards they were all just piled on top of each other. Did you know that dead bodies, when there’s a lot of them like that, they stop looking real?” he asked softly, his blue gaze meeting Leo’s for the first time since he’d started speaking.
Leo started at the question, was even more disturbed to realize that, despite all he had gone through and the difficulty he had recounting the events, Jim was utterly dry-eyed. “I... yeah, I suppose I know what you mean,” he said quietly, thinking of the cadavers they used in med school, and the way they objectified them. “What made them the person you know is gone.”
Jim nodded, his gaze skittering off again.
“Do you want to take a break, Jim?” Leo ventured.
But he didn’t answer, just went back to telling of the horrors he’d witnessed. It was as if now that he had started, the only way out again was to work his way through to the other side. Seemingly on auto-pilot, he spoke about the first night locked in the cell, no one responding to their demands for answers, most of the kids in shock, huddled on their cots, a couple of them crying themselves to sleep.
“Then in the morning they came and took the girls away,” Jim murmured. “When they came back a few hours later, none of them would tell us what happened, but they’d all been crying. They took us next, the boys, so we had a pretty good idea what the girls went through then.”
Leo swallowed hard, afraid to ask, but Jim soldiered on.
“They took a bunch of samples from us. Hair and skin, scrapings from inside our mouths.” He paused, shook his head slightly. “Other stuff.”
“DNA samples,” Leo said. “Sperm samples too?”
Jim nodded, fingers tightening around Leo’s hand. Then he exhaled hard, and Leo realized he was trembling.
“They did this with all of you?”
Another nod.
“Even the little kids? Liza and Kevin?”
Jim shook his head. “They weren’t with us,” he said. “Youngest was ten, oldest seventeen.”
Leonard took in this information, understood what that meant about the survival rate for that group of smart, special kids. He wanted to ask how they’d gotten free, how Jim came to be one of the kids who made it out, but he would suture his mouth closed before he rushed the kid or asked him to alter his story in any way.
“After that they started drugging us. Some days they’d feed us first and see if we could keep the food down after they shot us up with whatever. Other days it was on an empty stomach. They said it was for the good of humankind, that we should be proud of our contributions,” Jim murmured.
“Did you have any idea what they meant by that?”
“It was pretty obvious by then.”
Leo agreed, but he wanted Jim’s take, so he just waited for him to continue.
“They’d tested us to see who was smartest, so next they were going to see how tough we were. What our bodies could stand. Then he could take all that genetic material and create brand new versions of us. Ones that hadn’t already seen and heard too much.”
“Eugenics at its most extreme.”
“Those people he had killed in the yard--he’d already decided they weren’t good enough. I don’t know what he would have done with everyone else. Some got killed anyway. I know he sent guards out to check, make sure no one who had been on the list had somehow gotten away, not answered the summons to the mansion that day.”
“Is that what happened with Kevin and Liza? Their parents didn’t bring them with them?”
Jim nodded. “They lived near each other. Kevin’s older sister was watching them both because their parents thought they were too young to come to the meeting. She hid them in the root cellar when Kodos’s guards showed up to search the house. Kevin claims he doesn’t know what happened to her, but I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
“How long did the drug treatments go on?” Leo asked, knowing there was much more to Jim’s story before he came across the younger children.
“Not sure. The days kind of blurred, you know? Sometimes I wasn’t sure I hadn’t blacked out for a day or two. I’d wake up suddenly and it’d be dark and one of the kids would be missing from their bed, and I wouldn’t remember them being taken away. But they started not coming back,” he choked out. “This one girl, Toula--she was my age, about--she just stopped breathing one night. There were these gasping sounds and then nothing. I tried to get someone to come, pounded on the door. I know they had to have some kind of surveillance on us, but they just left her there until morning. Then they carried her out, two guards, no stretcher or anything, like she was furniture.”
“Oh, kid,” Leo whispered, voice gentle, even though he was seething underneath his careful façade.
Jim shook himself, clearing trying to gather his resolve to continue. “By the time they brought Tommy back, there was just nine of us. I figured they were going to keep testing drugs on us until we were all dead, so we were better off trying to escape. Even if we didn’t make it and they shot us, at least it would be quick. We didn’t have anything to lose. I just needed to get one of the keys for the door. All the guards had them, so if I could get one as they were going off shift, they wouldn’t notice until they came back on duty.”
“But you said they had surveillance.”
“Yeah, but it seemed like they weren’t paying much attention at night. I thought it was worth the risk.”
Leo nodded, feeling his pulse speeding up. He had seen Jim’s tricorder readings, knew his body bore the signs of far worse treatment than he’d already described. Part of him truly did not want to know what happened, but he stayed silent.
“I waited for a detox day.”
“What was that?”
“Detox day. When they wanted to test something new, they’d flush the old drug out of our system and give us a day off between testing,” Jim replied. “I knew I could count on not feeling too sick or fuzzy headed that way. So, the next time they cleaned us out, I waited for the following evening, when the guards came with the doctor to check our status, and I pretended to be unresponsive. I knew nothing would show up when they scanned me, that they’d need more equipment to figure out what was wrong, and they never brought the equipment into the room with us.”
“So they’d take you somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I thought...” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “I figured they’d check me out and then bring me back, like with Tommy, just the one guard, and I’d have a chance to lift the key without anyone else there to notice.”
“That didn’t happen?”
“No. They could tell I was faking it. I guess my brain waves didn’t mesh with how I was acting, or whatever. I knew it was a long shot but it was all I could think of,” he murmured. “The doctor told me how disappointed he was in me, how they needed our ‘honest responses’ for their study. Like I was supposed to care about their research results.”
He was shaking again. Leo could feel the fine tremors through the hand Jim still held, so he flexed his fingers, giving him a quick squeeze of encouragement.
“He and two guards took me back to the room, and he told everyone that I’d been ‘uncooperative’ and that they were going to show them all what happened to children who didn’t do as they were told. Then he had the guards hold me down while he beat me in front of everyone.”
Jim’s voice was steady now, so matter-of-fact that Leo had to wonder what it would take to get some kind of reaction out of him. He sounded almost as if he thought the beating was earned. Leo was tempted to say something, but it was clear the kid had fallen back into his disconnected, story-telling mode, his eyes unfocussed, a small furrow marring his brow.
“I thought they’d leave me there, but they didn’t. The doctor had the guards drag me back out. I could hear the kids crying, panicking that they were taking me away again, but I wasn’t in great shape,” he said. “They sounded kind of far away. I think the doctor probably nailed me in the head a couple of times. I could just keep track of where we were going, down this hallway to another room. This one was small--like a walk-in closet--with just one cot, no windows, and the door was solid instead of having a window in it. They dumped me in there and left.”
“No one checked you out to see what kind of damage they’d done?”
Jim shrugged. “Don’t think they really cared. It was a while before anyone came back. I’d lost all sense of time by then, just knew I was thirsty and my head felt like it was going to fall off. A guard showed up with water but that was it. No drugs, but no food either. That happened a couple of times before I finally just asked if I could have something to eat, and he said maybe, if I did what he wanted.”
Leo watched as Jim ducked his head, making it impossible for him to see the kid’s expression or the look in his eyes. “Hey,” he whispered. “None of this is your fault. Don’t you be embarrassed for anything you had to do in there, you hear me?”
The blond head lifted almost imperceptibly, a small acknowledgement, but Jim still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I told him I’d do anything he wanted, but he had to bring the food with him. He agreed, so the next time he came back he had a plate with some sort of food on it. He set it on the floor by the door, as far from the bed as possible, and then he came at me.” Jim shuddered. “He stripped me down. I just lay there and let him do what he wanted to me. It...went on for a while. And when he was done he collapsed on top of me, like he’d forgotten I was even there. He wasn’t asleep or anything, but he was pretty out of it, just lying there with his pants down around his ankles.” Jim swallowed hard. “So I wiggled out from under him, pretended I was going to get the plate off the floor, and grabbed his phaser instead.”
Leo waited quietly while Jim paused, obviously trying to recapture that detached place where he could recount what happened without breaking down. When he failed to resume his horrific story, Leo leaned in a little closer and gave his hand a shake to try and get his attention.
“You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to, but I’m here when you’re ready, Jim. I’m not going anywhere, kid.”
Blue eyes peered through white-blond bangs, blinking rapidly. Then Jim sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m okay,” he murmured. “Let’s just get it over with.”
“Only if that’s what you want.”
Another nod. “So I... I got his phaser, and he tried to come after me, but he got all tangled in his pants and fell, so I... I shot him. I mean, it was set to stun, but I upped it to kill and I just... fired.” A shuddering breath. “He didn’t scream or call out or anything, but I didn’t know if anyone was guarding the door outside. I got dressed, and he was just there on the floor, dead. He looked kind of pathetic, half naked like that. It was... weird.” Jim gave himself a little shake. “I didn’t eat the food. Didn’t trust he hadn’t done something to it. Took his keys and unlocked the door, peeked out into the hall. No one was around, and the lights were dimmed, like at night, so I figured I’d lucked out and it was late. I found the other room without any problems and snuck in. Everyone was asleep.” He paused again, swallowing. “There were a couple more kids missing. I had to wake them up one by one, put a hand over their mouths so they wouldn’t call out. But I got them all up. No one was drugged, so I think maybe... maybe they were just getting ready to do something else to us. Test something different. I don’t know.”
He paused again, looking around. “Can I... is there more water?”
Leo started, brought abruptly back to reality. “Yeah, sure, just a second.” He carefully disengaged from where he and Jim had been clasping hands and rose to grab another water bottle. “Here you go. You want anything else? I don’t suppose you feel like eating something.”
Jim scrunched up his face and shook his head. “Maybe in a little while? After?”
Leo nodded, understanding that food and this particular conversation did not go together. He resumed his seat while Jim drank down a good third of the water, taking the bottle when he passed it back to him to set on the bedside table.
“Okay,” Jim said, reaching out toward Leo again, his expression shy. Leo just slipped his hand into the kid’s and squeezed in acknowledgement. Jim took a deep breath and dove back into his story.
“At that point, the other kids were doing a lot better than I was. I wasn’t moving so fast, and I didn’t want to hold them up, but I needed to get them outside while it was still dark, before the morning check in. We all snuck down the hall to the stairs where we’d come in that first day and got up to the main level that way. All the rooms were dark and it seemed pretty quiet, and I could see the entrance to the government offices, the area off limit to the public. So I gave the phaser to Jerry--he was maybe a year or two older than me--and told him to get everyone out and head toward the nearest farms, that I was going to try to get in to the communications console to send a message.”
Leo stifled a hiss of dismay. He’d seen this coming almost from the first, had suspected Jim was the smart, brave kid who got word out to Starfleet, but hearing the reality of how everything had played out gave him no sense of satisfaction for being right.
“They didn’t want to leave without me,” Jim continued, “but I said someone needed to do it, and that I’d try and catch up. Jerry got it, even if he wasn’t happy about it. He and Tal had to practically drag Tommy with them, because he didn’t understand, but even he knew enough to stay quiet.”
Jim’s eyes took on that faraway look again as he fell back into the story. “I crept down the hall toward the restricted side of the building, trying to stay low because I could see they had security cameras sweeping and I had no way of knowing what they were picking up.”
“Jesus, Jim!”
He shook his head and kept talking. “It didn’t matter. I figured no one out there knew what was going down in the colony, and if someone couldn’t get word out then we were all as good as dead. If I left with the others, I’d never be able to sneak back inside.” His voice had taken on a hint of the sheer stubborn determination that Leo knew must have kept him going through all of this.
“Okay, okay,” he soothed. “I get it. What happened?”
“They did have a guy in front of a bank of monitors, right when I first accessed the wing, but he was turned away from them, watching a vid or something on his PADD. I could see the yard out in front of the building though, on a couple of the screens. They had guards walking the perimeter but spaced pretty far apart. I guess they weren’t anticipating anyone trying to get in after they’d killed so many colonists already. So I watched until I saw Jerry and the others show up. I could tell he’d been watching the guards, too, waiting to figure out the timing when they could make a run for it. As soon as I’d seen them clear the fence, I dropped down and crawled past the monitor desk and into the next stretch of hallway. There were a couple of offices with their doors closed, just one that had light coming out from under the door. But I could see the comm. center down at the end of the hall, so I kept going.”
“Were there more cameras?”
“I didn’t really stop to look. I was going either way,” he said with a small shrug. “The lights were off but the equipment was plenty bright all by itself, with the indicator lights and screens and stuff. I found the main comm. panel and set it to transmit on the main Starfleet channels.”
Leo wondered briefly how Jim knew what the Starfleet channel codes were, but the kid kept talking and he refocused, not wanting to miss a word.
“I just typed out a brief distress call, really. I wanted to send more, but I figured better to get out a short message and then try to send a second one than to try and tell everything in one go and get caught before I could transmit. So I’d just started on the second comm. when I heard something going on back down the hall, like phaser fire. Then Jerry came running at me, alone--he’d doubled back after getting the kids out. I didn’t know there was someone behind him until they shot him--he dropped practically on top of me and I landed hard. It’s the only thing that kept me from getting taken out too, before I managed to grab the phaser out of Jerry’s hand and return fire.”
Leo nodded, not wanting to interrupt but feeling the need to acknowledge what Jim was telling him.
“After that I just ran for it. When I got to the bank of monitors I saw Jerry had phasered the guy there. I doubt he even realized the phaser wasn’t on stun. He must have thought he’d be coming after us any minute. But no one seemed to have heard anything because the entryway was empty. I crept outside and waited, watched the perimeter guards same as Jerry and the others had, and then I made for the fence as fast as I could. I was sure someone would see me, come after me, but I got out and there was no one. The kids must have been watching--they were huddled across the park behind a cluster of trees--because Tal came out to help me. They wanted me to rest, but the sky was starting to get light and I knew we needed to get the hell out of the settlement before sun up, so we kept going.”
“Where?” Leo asked softly.
“Wasn’t safe to stay at any of our own homes. They were all empty anyway.”
“You were sure everyone’s families had been on that list?”
Jim shrugged. “Pretty sure. Sure enough not to risk it. But four thousand people leave a lot of houses empty. We stayed in alleys and shadows until we got to the end of town and then made a run for the nearest farm. They were pretty much all deserted close in. We rummaged there and the next few places we came to, pulled together enough clothes and shoes for all of us.”
“You ran out of there barefoot?”
“Not like we had a choice. They had us in scrubs or those medical gowns.”
Leo’s gaze flicked to the small scrubs Jim was wearing. “Damn, kid, no wonder you’ve got no love for doctors.”
Jim just gave his hand a squeeze and pulled it back up to his chest again. “I didn’t want to stay in one of the empty farm houses. I figured Kodos would send his guards looking there straight off. But I didn’t know where we should go instead. That’s when we started looking for someplace with a cellar or attic space, something kind of hidden where we could take cover fast if we heard anyone coming.”
“And found Liza and Kevin,” Leo said.
“Yeah. Third place we checked. They had a little bit of food left, and the well worked, so we stayed there the first day, just to rest up. Then that night all of us took off and headed for the woods. Cut through to get up to the mountain range. I’d been camping up there a couple of times with… with the people I’d lived with, so I knew there were some caves where we could hide.”
“You didn’t try to approach anyone for help?”
Jim met his questioning gaze, his blue eyes holding so much anger that Leo nearly flinched backward. “People saw us, Doc. They saw us sneaking through town, saw us that morning passing their farms--all those people Kodos let live because they were ‘worthy,’” he spat out. “Not one of them did a fucking thing to help us. Oh, sure, they didn’t turn us in, but they didn’t help either.”
“What about the rebellion?”
Jim snorted. “What rebellion? You know when people started to fight back? After Kodos spotted the first ‘fleet ships coming into range, he locked his advisors in and blew up the computers, set the whole place on fire. Without him giving orders, the guards went rogue, started looting the food stores, and that’s what the colonists rebelled against. Not until then.”
“People react to fear in different ways,” Leo said, but his tone lacked conviction. Jim had every right to resent the colonists for failing to help him, when he himself had put so much on the line.
“Whatever. You know that’s bullshit.” Jim released his hand and curled into himself, steady gaze resting on Leo. “So is that what you wanted to hear?”
Leo sighed. “It wasn’t a question of wanting to hear it. You needed to talk about it.”
“Is this the part where you tell me how my story doesn’t fit in with what everyone else has been telling Starfleet?”
“No one else we’ve spoken with went through what you did, Jim,” Leo said gently. “That doesn’t make one of you more right than the other. Even if some of them saw you escaping, they had no way of knowing what happened to you and the others while you were being held.”
Jim blinked. “So, you believe me?” he asked tentatively.
Leo frowned. “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”
Blue eyes dropped under a heavy fringe of lashes and Jim shrugged. “People don’t always believe me when I tell them things,” he murmured.
Leo shifted out of his chair and sat carefully on the edge of Jim’s bed, his sudden proximity causing Jim to jerk his head back up. “It’s okay,” Leo soothed. He reached out and cradled the back of Jim’s head with one hand, dropping the other to rest over one clenched fist, leaning in so their eyes were level, faces only inches apart. “Listen to me,” he said. “I believe every single thing you’ve told me, and I think you are an incredible person. What you went through? It was horrific. I can’t imagine how terrified you were through it all, or how you managed to keep it together the way you did. And I can see you feel bad about how some things happened, that you couldn’t save all the kids, that you were forced to do things you didn’t want to do. But Jim? You survived. You lived through it, and you made it out the other end, and that makes you an amazing kid in my book.”
Jim trembled within his grip, his eyes suddenly damp. “I can’t turn it off, you know?” he whispered, words barely audible. “In my head. I keep trying to figure out what I could have done differently.”
“None of this is on you. You did more than anyone could expect. Hell, kid, you brought in the damn cavalry.”
“It doesn’t help. All those people dead. Why not me? What makes me so different from them? And what makes me so different from Kodos?” He shuddered. “We’re both human beings, right? What would have to change in me to turn me into someone like that?”
Leo tightened his hold, bringing Jim closer so their foreheads touched. “The fact you even ask the question means it’s never gonna happen, kid, you got that?” Feeling dampness on his cheeks, he released Jim so he could brush at his face. Only then did he realize that the tears were Jim’s. “Hey, infinite diversity, right? That was true even before first contact. We’re each the sum of a lot of different factors, both nature and nurture.”
Leo offered Jim what remained of his bottle of water, and the kid took it with a nod of thanks. He finished it off in a few gulps and took a couple of shuddering breaths before he seemed less likely to break down.
“How do you feel?” Leo asked finally.
“I don’t know. Tired,” Jim admitted.
“That was a lot to get off your chest,” Leo agreed. “You want me to leave so you can rest?”
“No,” Jim replied instantly. “I mean, I’m tired of talking but you don’t need to go. Maybe you can tell me more about your family?”
Leo smiled. “Sure, I can do that. You settle down and get comfy.” He helped Jim shift lower on the bed, plumping up the pillows behind him. Then he slumped into his own chair and began to talk, rambling wherever his memories took him as he tried to focus on lighthearted moments--family gatherings featuring his grandmother’s peach pie, pranks he had pulled as a kid with his cousins. Within minutes, Jim had fallen asleep to the rhythm of Leo’s steady drawl.
~*~
Part Five