[ST] What Remains 3/6

[castofone]

Safe Haven

May 2261

Something was missing.

Just because he didn’t know what it was - couldn’t know what it was - didn’t make the feeling any less real. Active designation, Romeo, but born James Tiberius Kirk, was searching. There was a giant hole right down his middle and the other pieces that spilled in to fill that void weren’t right.

And all wounds left scars. Even with as much care that Pike, Chekov and Sulu took the best they did was cauterize a wound in the hopes of saving what remains of the body. So Romeo was left wanting, stuck in a routine that only seemed to amplify the void. It even made the food taste differently.

“Is this seat taken?” India stood across the table, tray in his hand, waiting.

“Please, have a seat.”

India was his friend, had been his friend since as far back as his he could remember, which admittedly wasn’t very far. He had always found India’s ears interesting because no one else in the barracks had ears like that. Romeo liked to think that they made India a very good listener.

“You are sad.”

Romeo looked up, no longer pretending to be interested in his meal. “I think I lost something.”

“Is it important?”

India took a mouthful of his steamed broccoli as Romeo considered the question. “I don’t think I can be my best without it.”

“Well, if it is important, you will find it.” India spoke with such certainty, but still in the same dream-like doll-state tone. “It is important to be your best.”

It was something that was heard a lot around the barracks. That was what they were here for: to learn to be their best. But Romeo still had his doubts.

“Are you?” He asked.

“Am I what?”

“Are you your best?”

“I -" India started to respond with the automatic answer and stopped. “I do not know. I hope that I am my best.”

Romeo looked at his friend, little gears spinning in his head. He recognized that what he needed was India working alongside him. That felt right, but it didn’t fill the hole. “I think that together we could be our best,” he said. “We could help each other.”

“I would like that.” India must have recognized that too. “And I will help you find what you lost.”

Romeo nodded and then looked up, checking to see where the various handlers and aides were. They were too nosy and always watching him. It was probably not something he was meant to be aware of but he knew a lot more than he let on.

“Not now, I will find you later,” he said, leaning over the table a little. Then he sat back up and a bit louder announced, “I think I will go for a swim. I like swimming.”

One of the biggest problems with the barracks was that there was no private space. Strictly speaking there wasn’t a need for any. The actives didn’t need privacy. They didn’t have shame. And more importantly, they were supposed to be easy to observe and keep track of.

However, that did not mean there weren’t dead spots throughout the building. And Romeo had been keeping a mental list of all those places.

Three days after their lunchtime alliance, he waited for India in one of those dead spots. Just as he walked by, Romeo pulled him into the alcove by his shirt.

“You must be careful, it is important that we do not touch.” India shook free of Romeo’s grasp.

“Why?”

He stumbled for a moment, unable to come up with any real answer. “I do not know why. It is just not something I do. No one has ever come close. Not even Dr. Chapel.”

Romeo smiled. He was getting India to think. Thinking was the first step.

“Can I try something?” Romeo raised his hand, hovering his pointer and ring finger above India’s temple with his thumb, not quite touching his jaw. The memory he had of this felt like a dream sometimes.

There was a man on ice world. He showed him another life, a strange tale of a man who looked like him, but was not he. It had awakened something, sparking dozens of connections in his brain to fire, routing around layers of programming to create something new. From that dream a cascade of other possibilities flowed. It allowed him to see that something was wrong here. And just when he thought the answer was within reach it all fell back into his void.

“I am not sure.” India stiffened, pulling away just a little.

“Trust me.”

“I will do my best,” he said closing his eyes.

Romeo pressed his fingertips to the points, just like what he remembered from the dream, and waited. After a minute standing there, India opened his eyes. “I don’t believe anything happened.”

“So it didn’t work?” He had hoped the man from the ice world had given him the same ability - that he too would be able to show his friend another life, to help him wake up. “It was just, this worked for me in a dream or maybe a memory, but I can never seem to remember anything outside of this place, can you?”

India was quiet. “I like it here. I find no reason to consider life anywhere else. Although, sometimes I do feel as if there is something beyond this place that is calling for me, but I cannot be sure that is anything.”

That was the thing. Romeo watched the others leave acting different somehow, but by the time they returned it was like nothing had ever changed. At some point they had to exist beyond these walls, because Romeo knew deep in his gut that there was more to the world than the barracks, but no one else seemed to be aware of it.

Perhaps he had got the dream wrong. Except, the man in the dream had pointy ears just like India’s ears.

“I want you try what I did to you on me.”

That made India pause, a flash of something in his eyes. “I am not sure.”

“You want to be your best, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then try it.”

India swallowed and raised his hand, mirroring what Romeo tried on him just a moment before. Since nothing had happened before, India wasn’t expecting anything to happen this time. There was no reason for him to be any different than Romeo.

It would be nothing more than a hesitant first touch.

But it was so much more than that. The touch was electric. It reached something in him that he had forgotten existed.

Our minds, one and together.

From three simple points of contact pieces of memories, thoughts, something came leaking through in uneven waves into him. It was such an impossible thing to forget. A strange thing to forget.

As he was helpless to save his planet, I would be helpless to save mine.

He pulled back in shock.

Uneasy pieces were moving in his head now, he almost felt unbalanced, like at any one moment he was going to explode, or snap.

“India, are you alright?”

India took a steady breath in and out, trying to refocus. “I do not believe that any of us are all right.”

“Then you will help me?” There would be no going back now. He was awake, he was Spock, but he was also something else. As things fired in his own head he could sense a great darkness there, bound up by a thread of light that seemed to bring him some small sense of comfort.

“We will have to be careful.”

Romeo smiled again, this time more openly than before. “We’ll have to be our best.”

###
It was a short van ride out of the ATL. McCoy wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Not when he realized where the van was headed. “You gotta be kidding me,” he said as the van turned down an unmarked dirt road. A dirt road that he would never forget. He just tucked it away most of the time. “This is safe haven?”

Jim laughed, gaze set on the road ahead as he drove. “That’s what they are calling it now?” Despite the laugh, his voice was hollow with just a faint bite to it.

The irony was clear between all of them. By many accounts the McCoy homestead wasn’t anything great. It was 40 acres of land just shy of the middle of nowhere. He never thought he would be back here. He never wanted to come back here because he never thought it was a possibility after he left. And now it was apparently the one safe place left in the world - where people could die as they were born.

Fuck, and this was where it all started. A second year med student, really no more than a boy then, got a bit curious about the work his dad was doing on the elasticity of the brain. It had started so innocently and slowly barreled into an obsession. Leonard McCoy had fallen deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. It was so deep that now he came out on the other side and the whole world was backwards and upside down.

“The McCoy residence provides an ideal location.” Spock turned around to look at McCoy. “We are able to keep an eye on the activities in the ATL and it is generally considered too close to the source to be a likely place for the resistance to have set up camp. It was a rather logical option, especially as the former owner would have no use for it.”

McCoy supposed he was right, locked away in the attic he didn’t really have need for a place to call home. Except this place hadn’t been home in far too long.

A good portion of the yard had been re-appropriated into a vegetable garden. They were growing all sorts of things that looked ripe for the picking. In the middle of the tomato plants was a small boy, surely no more than four, pulling weeds. He was intensely focused on the task at hand. McCoy would never admit it, but it was a welcome sight, to see something that normal could still exist. The young boy looked up as the van came to a stop. A bright smile flashed across his face. He removed his gloves, throwing them in the dirt as he ran toward the van.

Inside the van, Joanna unbuckled and ripped the door open. “Grayson!” she shouted. He beamed again and she jumped out to meet him halfway.

“Joanna,” the boy replied, trying to contain his excitement. “I believe the tomatoes are ready to be picked, can you help me?” He extended his hand out to her and she took it without hesitation.

“Sure thing, kid, I think some fresh tomatoes with dinner would be nice, don’t you?”

The pair walked away and McCoy turned to the two men still sitting upfront. “Something you neglected to mention?”

Jim glanced back at McCoy and then looked away. “Hey, the Vulcan was the one with the plan, but yeah, Jo’s been with us for a few years, I wasn’t about to let her stay with ‘I don’t know if I’m a man or woman’ Darnell - no kid deserves that.”

That did something to him he wasn’t ready to name - still didn’t know if it was real. Jim cared about him, or at least his daughter enough to make sure she was safe. Of course that also meant that someone, probably Spock, threw Joanna at the ATL. What it came down to really, was that none of this was adding up.

Everything was all fucked up.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked over to the garden. Joanna was a natural with the small boy. God, she had become quite the young woman in his absence. Now that he had a moment to really look at the child, McCoy noticed something strange about him. Well, not so much strange as inhuman. The kid had slightly pointed ears. And while the green tint to his skin was masked by the rich olive skin tone, it was still there. A small smile tugged on his face. He might not have liked the Vulcan, but it was reassuring to know that despite this being the end of the world as it were, children were still being born. Life continued.

“Is Nyota around here, then?” It wasn’t difficult to jump to a conclusion. The difficult part was the unknowing reality that question was not the right one to ask.

Both Spock and Jim tensed like those words had shoved something right through the middle. Before the tension mounted anymore, Spock cleared his throat. “I believe my assistance is required elsewhere, he said before taking his leave.

McCoy still didn’t like him, but for a moment he almost felt bad for the Vulcan. “Some world,” he said, scrubbing his face.

Jim came around the van, shaking his head. “Thanks for the insight, any other great thoughts you want to impart on your humble creations?”

McCoy sighed, looking over at Jim. What happened to him? Happened to any of them? It never used to be this hostile. But those weren’t questions he wanted to ask. McCoy could already assume the answers and really what he thought was far better than the truth.

Still, there was one he couldn’t help but ask because he needed to know. “So, Nyota’s dead? Or just gone?”

Jim shook his head. “Now you care about her? You got her kicked out of the program, practically end the world and now the bleeding heart comes through because there might be a kid without a mom?”

McCoy opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. Nothing he could say would make things better with Jim. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to make better. That life was nothing but a memory he wasn’t even sure he fondly held onto. There had always been too many secrets between them. Maybe it was one too many things stacked against them.

And it was better for Jim to hate him.

“Don’t you get it? We’re all orphans. No one has family anymore, but we’re not alone and no one here is giving up that fight. Every damn day we risk our lives to undo what you caused.” Jim paused. “Shit, if only you could have trusted -” He shook his head. That wasn’t really a sentence worth completing.

“We lose people every day, that’s how this game works, and you’d do best to not talk about people who aren’t here. In fact, while we’re at it, just stop asking questions altogether because you’ve been out for the last half and we’re down.”

Before McCoy could even think of something to say, Jim walked away. There really wasn’t anything left to say.

It might have been called Safe Haven, and it might have once been home for him, but McCoy neither felt like he belonged or that this place was particularly safe. Jim went out of his way to ignore him and everyone else didn’t know what to make of him.

The only one who didn’t seem to mind was Spock. Although McCoy thought that largely due to the fact that Spock needed him. Meal times were the absolute worst, with everyone gathered in one room. No one could avoid him then.

“So let me get this straight, you planned all this?” said McCoy as he took his seat at the far end of the table. It was a conversation he had been trying to have for the past couple of days.

Jim shot him a warning look, but he ignored it. He needed answers now.

“You wanted to get me captured and taken to the ATL? Then you sent Joanna, my daughter, into that place to what? Make me comply?”

“I volunteered!” Joanna shouted from the far end of the table where she was helping three-year-old Grayson with his dinner.

McCoy threw up his hand to silence her. “Oh, don’t even start with that bullshit.” It might have been an old argument, but it was still plenty valid.

“I did!” “She did!” Jim and Joanna shouted at the same time.

“Shut up, I’m talking to the hob-goblin.” McCoy was not having it. If Spock was the man with the plan, he better well start talking now. “Well?”

“I needed to assure that the necessary conditions were in place so that we could achieve the results we desired.”

It was easily the tone more than the words that riled McCoy up even more. “The necessary conditions? We all could have been killed! And if not that, I could have created something worse!”

“It was a necessary risk. More so, that hypothetical situation is now a moot point. You are a good man, Doctor McCoy, and I do not believe that you would have created anything worse as you claim.”

“None of us are good men!” He spat the words and everyone around the table went silent. “Hell, none of us are men.” That was a point that none of them could argue.

Each and every adult around their table had blood on his hands - had played a part in the game that brought about the world as it were. More so, there was no such thing as a good man anymore. Good men didn’t have a place in this world. Good men were quickly relegated to red shirt status.

“Perhaps,” Spock continued, “but with the work you did we now have the basic structure to re-engineer the world with a signal pulse.”

“No, I’m done with that.” McCoy stood, suddenly not very hungry anymore. “I’m not messing with any more heads.”

It was a far step from any sort of forgiveness or bridges being mended, but Jim stood up, grabbing McCoy's arm before he could storm off. “Not even if you could reset everyone to before this all started?”

“You think you can reset the human race?” McCoy’s voice broke when he asked the question. That was the one dream he wouldn’t let himself have. It would mean in a lifetime of sins, he could get one thing right.

“We’ve been looking into possibilities, running a few different scenarios-”

“I can do it, said Spock interrupting Jim, “and you will help me.”

McCoy chortled. “I will?”

“Yes, you will because you are the only one able to do it.”

“You smug bastard,” said McCoy. He turned away to pace some, letting the idea settle in his head. He knew the science around it. Spock wasn’t wrong. A theoretical model had been created. Except - “Even if I could, any sort of pulse we created would reset everyone with active architecture - there’s no way to specify it.”

“So, we’d all lose the last decade?” asked Jim, sounding far smaller than McCoy ever remembered him being.

It was strange how McCoy still wanted to reach out and try to fix that. For as much as the last decade of his life had sucked miserably, he didn’t want to forget it all. It made him who he was and more importantly it felt too easy of a way to find absolution. He would have to earn that the hard way.

“I have considered such an outcome, Doctor. The pulse would remain bouncing around the atmosphere for a few years, but might eventually become weak enough for it to no longer affect us. We would simply have to find a way to go ‘off the grid’ for a few years.”

“Alright, so we’ll steal a ship,” said Jim far too casually.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Never. We’ll take the Enterprise, and then reset the world.” Jim shrugged, of all the things he had done since getting out, stealing a ship didn’t even really seem like much of a challenge. “I mean the ship is meant to be mine, or at least parts of me think that.”

McCoy wasn’t sure that he liked it. He hated space. And he wasn’t sure he could be stuck in that tin can with these people for a year.

“It is a rather ambitious plan.”

“No, Spock, it’s just crazy enough that it will work.” Jim smiled, not quite reaching his eyes, but as close to honest as he got these days.

McCoy rolled his eyes. It was clear he didn’t have much of a vote in this situation. That was nothing new. “Great.”

Things moved forward from there, the main crew settling into a sort of pattern. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but it wasn't horrible either. Mostly they were all happy to have something to work toward - something that might actually work out in the end.

They had a beautiful lie to believe in.

That was what the McCoy Homestead had become. People were real people here - or at least as close to real people as anyone could be. It was a strange thought. The leaders of the revolution for actuals were anything but.

Of course the argument could be made that everyone was a construct of his or her reality. The television shows people watched, the people a person chose to hang out with or even the family a person was born into. All of those factors and more shaped who a person was.

Chekov, McCoy or any of the others who controlled the technology weren’t that different. Really all people did something because someone else told them to. It was just one person controlling all of those factors. One person made the decisions and overwrote anything there before. They could remove bad memories, addictions, or help people deal with traumatic events. Instead they created new people, supposedly better people.

And then the ability to live forever. To let the poor and unimportant men be regulated to nothing more than meat suits for those who thought they mattered more.

It was a rant that Spock had the pleasure of hearing almost daily as they were forced together. Without Chekov, Spock or rather the India Composite was the closest thing they had to that sort of mad genius needed to compliment McCoy’s more rational genius.

"God damn it!" McCoy pushed the 3D model away from him.

Spock looked away from his monitor and over at the doctor. “Doctor McCoy, I do not believe your sudden out burst is founded.”

“Yeah, well, your hands work properly!” McCoy ran his hands through his hair, unable to look at them anymore. The tremor was worse when he was under stress. “The biggest damn joke of all.”

“Given the alternative was death, one might assume that shaking hands could be considered inconsequential.”

McCoy snorted, shaking his head. “I’m a doctor!” He slammed his hands down on the table. “A doctor who can’t keep his damn heads steady - I might as well be dead!”

It was never something that Spock apologized for. McCoy wasn’t even sure if he wanted the apology, it wasn’t like India actively made the choice. There were a lot of people to blame and really the apology wouldn’t change anything.

“That is correct, however, I believe that if you try to keep calm, you will be significantly more productive.”

“I think I’ll be significantly more productive if you shut up for the next twenty minutes.”

Spock nodded. Leonard McCoy was always an odd person for him. He was openly hostile and yet showed moments of unprecedented kindness - especially around the children.

Outside the former horse barn turned lab, the other residents of safe haven were going about their daily tasks. The lie continued for a little while.

Then the sirens started. Bright blaring sounds vibrating throughout the property. And that beautiful lie was smashed in an instant.

Outside people were yelling. More horns were going off. Amidst all of the commotion Spock had gone completely still.

“What the hell is going on here?”

The question snapped Spock out of his state. He pushed up from the workbench and went right for the locked cabinet. He keyed it open and pulled out a set of phasers.

“We have a perimeter breach.” He handed one of the guns to McCoy. “Perhaps you will manage to keep your hands steady enough for this.”

McCoy hung back for a moment, taking the gun in his hand. “Green blooded son of a bitch.” Shaking his head, he followed Spock outside.

A half dozen people had spilled out of the main house, armed and ready to go.

Joanna came running down the path toward them. “We got a reinforced vehicle that just turned onto the property.” She too had a gun, ready to fight, to defend. His little girl had become a warrior. It was still a lot to take in, but especially that she wasn’t particularly little or even really his. “Where the hell is Jim?”

A new wave of commotion erupted. Their leader was missing.

Down the dirt road aways was a fierce dust cloud, masking a large truck as it barreled closer. They were looking to take prisoners, otherwise they would just bomb the place. Not that it was a surprise, the not-people here were always far more valuable alive.

And there was Jim Kirk, strolling out of the house, not with a gun or any great plan, but Grayson propped up on his hip and an easy smile on his face. Trouble. Never anything but trouble.

Everyone was looking toward him. Everyone except for Spock who was looking right down the road, through the dust to see that truck - a very familiar truck. “Jim,” he said sternly.

The man came over and slapped Spock on the shoulder. “Nothing to worry about, I called for help and it looks like the cavalry has arrived.” He turned down to look at his people, all ready to go. “So you can stand down, because this is no way to greet our guests.”

“I fail to see why we require their assistance.” He took a step away from Jim. Lowering his voice, he turned into Jim. “She is out of control.”

“We need them, Spock.”

Spock reached for Grayson, taking him from Jim’s arms.

“If we’re going back, we won’t be able to do it alone.” Jim continued, still trying to plead his case.

The van came to a stop just a few feet away from the group, kicking up another cloud of dirt.

It was a massive six-wheel truck with a grill, lights and all sorts of reinforcements on the outside. The vehicle was perfect for mowing down dumb shows and red shirts alike. It got you to where you needed to go. Perhaps, the only thing more intimidating than the truck itself was the people inside.

First out was a burly bald man with a ring of metal triangles on the right side of his face. He was dressed in the standard MACO uniform, guns and other weapons displayed all over him and at easy reach. Around his neck was a chain with data chips. That alone was scary enough. What made him terrifying was the big smile on his face like a kid in a candy store. He turned around and started shouting to the other people in the truck in some ancient dialect of Romulan.

Next out was a scrappy brunette man whose Romulan had a funny accent and a blonde whose elaborate hairdo did nothing to make her any less terrifying.

Spock shook his head. “I cannot abide working with these…tech heads.”

The last person jumped out from the driver’s side. As her feet hit the ground, Spock, with Grayson in tow, walked back into the house. He would not be apart of this.

There was no point trying to talk to him now, his mind was made up. Hopefully, he would come around. Turning back to the four tech heads assembling, Jim smiled again.

“Cupcake, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.” The burly man just grumbled at him causing Jim to laugh.

The last person came around the truck. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a customary high ponytail. The silver upload sites on her face stood out more against her skin tone. She was giving her team instructions in the same ancient dialect of Romulan and they all fell into place.

“And the lovely Nyota.”

She gave Jim a cheeky smile and pulled one of the data chips from around her neck. Clipping it into the upload module she pressed it to the right side of her face. There was a flash of pain before she put the device back. “What can I say? I heard that you were running a big party and you know me, never one to miss such an event.”

“I would never dream of throwing a party without you.”

It wouldn’t be long now. There were just a few more pieces to put together before they headed back to San Francisco.

It might have been selfish, but McCoy was glad to have a few other people around who also seemed to be stranger than all the other misfits and oddities that called this place home. And despite whatever other history behind them, McCoy and Uhura sought each other out. It was that or not talk to anyone at all.

Today, McCoy found her out by the truck, cleaning her weapons. “This seat taken?”

Uhura looked up, something like a smile on her face. “If you dare.”

McCoy shrugged and sat down. “Not like they can hate me anymore than they already do.”

“You really think that?”

Honestly, he wasn’t sure. Things with Jim had been getting better, but it still wasn’t the same. Not that he could ever go back to what was - that wasn’t even real.

“I know I messed up.” He ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up some. “And I live with that knowledge every damn day of my life.” Even if it weren’t a real life, it would haunt him the exact same way. And this was worse than the tremor in his hands because he did this all by himself. “It’s just…if I think I can fix something - is that arrogance or genius?”

“Do you really want me to answer that question?”

“No.” He knew the answer. Genius and arrogance weren’t mutually exclusive. If anything they were the exact same thing and look where that got him. He might not have pulled the trigger, but he built the bomb. Only he had never seen it as a bomb. For him the technology was a solution, means to end pain and suffering.

“It could have been a beautiful thing,” he said quietly.

Uhura shook her head. She might have argued that it was beautiful in a way that only violence could be, but she didn’t. “No one should have the power to be a god, Leonard.”

Was that what he created? Was that what they had become?

His response was pure reflex. “Says the woman who made herself one.”

She looked away, pressing her eyes closed. It was strange for him to see her like this. In his head, Uhura had always been untouchable - a pure force that was best dealt with by stepping out of her way. If he were being honest with himself he would have known it was a disguise. After all he did the same thing, except his was easier to see through.

“Sorry.”

Uhura shook her head, taking a steadying breath in as she allowed their conversation to fall flat. There was nothing to say, everything laid in the silence between them.

The only noise across the front of the house was the creaking side door and the steady patter of two sets of footsteps. McCoy had come to recognize those footsteps, especially with how frequently they were paired together. Joanna and Grayson out on another chore.

This afternoon the task at hand was the wash. Little Grayson had a basket bigger than he was, but he had a smile on his face, feet shuffling twice as quickly to keep up with Joanna. She set down her basket and turned to help Grayson. McCoy couldn’t hear what he said, but the sound his daughter’s laughter brought a small smile to his face.

“That’s some kid you have there,” said Uhura.

There was no hint of a smile in her voice.

“I barely even know her.” Only wasn’t the only one with a child who might as well be a stranger. So, he didn’t just let that comment linger between them. “But I want to get to know her, I want to be able to show her the world that I knew before it all went to hell. So, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that her generation isn’t lost and if that means fighting until I have nothing left, well, I never had much of anything to begin with.”

She turned to look at him, considering the speech for a second, and something finally clicked into place. “Bones.”

The name startled him. It sounded so much more unfamiliar coming from her.

“That’s what Jim calls you.”

“Not anymore.”

That was what Jim called him before the attic, before he destroyed any last chance he had.

“We didn’t create that.”

McCoy narrowed his eyes, a very serious and a little bit dangerous glare beginning. “What are you on about?”

“It was never written into his programming to call you Bones, Jim…Romeo created that all on his own.”

He could have doubted that fact, but at this point, she had no reason to lie to him. The plan was more likely to get them all killed than actually work. And Nyota Uhura was not nice enough of person to give him some kernel of false hope. Not anymore.

It was a lot to think about. And that sort of thinking was better done away from people who could complicate matters. “I should go before Spock gets upset that I’ve been away so long.”

“Before you run off.” Uhura pulled the chain from around her neck and removed a small data chip from it. “When you’re ready, load this.”

McCoy quirked an eyebrow at her but ultimately took the data bit she was offering.

“It’s not a memory,” she said, “It’s security footage from the barracks.”

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what she kept there, but he was never good with just letting things go. “Thanks.”

Once McCoy left, Uhura turned her attention back to watching Joanna and Grayson work together. In the time that she had been back at Safe Haven she did not approach the boy. If anything she did everything she could to avoid speaking with him. For a former xenolinguist, she didn’t know what to say to him. Spock was even more of a hurdle.

###
July 2261

Things between Uhura and Spock had always been difficult. She had been the one to shepherd him and Jim out of Starfleet, pointing them in the right direction, while she tried to keep her distance.

It was a careful dance that came to a breaking point just outside of Cincinnati. Uhura sat in the kitchen, tinkering with a data reader she was modifying while she had some time alone. It was the sort of thing that Spock and Romeo were better off not knowing about.

This was why Spock’s sudden appearance in the kitchen made her jump in her seat. Then it just became more complicated.

“We are bonded.”

Of all the things… Taking a deep breath in, she put down her device, not wanting to bring further attention to it. However, they had bigger things to deal with.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She sighed, scrubbing her face with her hands. “That is...complicated.” And while in this world, many things were, their situation seemed just a little bit worse.

“I believe I know, but I wish to hear the answer from you.”

Uhura leaned back in the chair, not able to look at him as she tried to avoid telling their story. Not that it would do any good. “Before you entered in the program we knew each other, we were friends, perhaps something more, but you were a professor at the time and…” She paused, shaking her head. “It was never easy, but I always thought it was worth it.”

Spock crossed the room trying to meet her gaze. After a moment he came to one final conclusion. “You loved me.”

Another woman might have been surprised at the statement, would have wanted to hear some use of the ‘we’ pronoun, but Uhura had always known what she was getting into. She might not have always made the smart decision, but she always made the best one.

“No, Spock, I do love you.”

“How can you love me when I am not the man I was before?”

Even with their original imprints, whether or not they were real people was a popular point of contention because there were other pieces, really other people, there as well.

“You were always troubled because you were a man of two worlds. Now there are just more divisions.”

“Nyota, you have not answered my question.”

“Yes. I mean, no, I haven’t because it wasn’t really a choice after the Narada Incident you lost it...you ... well, Chekov thought the only way to bring you back from it was to find you another bond mate.”

Any mention of the Narada Incident or Nero had always ripped something wide open in him and now he knew why. His home world had been destroyed, his people made near extinct.

“And you were a suitable alternative?”

She shook her head, looking away from him. “I volunteered.”

“That was unwise, given the status of my mind must have been in at the same time.”

Uhura laughed lightly. Nothing about the situation now was funny and nothing had been funny then. “It was the only option I had.”

“I do not believe - “

She stood up, cutting him off before he started on some long logical rant. “It was the only option I had because I wasn’t letting them do anything else. Okay?” She sighed, stepping away from him. It was tiring. The whole world was tiring. “Let’s just leave it at that, you can hate me, dissolve our bond - whatever you need to do, but I don’t regret what I did and I’m certainly not apologizing for saving your life or even that it allowed us to come this far and to think of the things we could do…”

Not that it was just about the fight, but if he did not return her feelings it was enough of a sentiment to keep her going. And sometimes even the leader of the revolution needed a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

“Nyota,” he had always said her name like some prayer and it unsettled her. “I am a Vulcan, hate is an illogical and unnecessary emotion. Furthermore, I have no reason to dissolve our bond. I merely wish that you could reap from it what I do.”

She turned around to look at him. He couldn’t possibly-

“I have been far too negligent a bond mate to you and I wish to rectify this. As such, I suggest that we retire to your bedroom for the evening because I do not believe any more progress will be made with your project tonight - in fact, I believe some time away could be beneficial for productivity and…general morale.”

This time when she laughed it was honest. It was far from the smoothest pick up line she had ever heard, but it certainly beat ‘you can handle me and that’s an invitation.’

Reaching for his hand, she led him up the stairs to her tiny room. It was little more than a bed and a dresser, but it was the end of the world, there was little time for luxuries. She brought him to the bed. Each move was deliberate but gentle. This was new for him - new and hauntingly familiar because he knew the lines of her body, the way her curves moved under his hands. They folded together, she could be what he needed and she would take what she wanted.

Uhura sat back on the bed as he removed his shirt, watching the way he moved as he exposed himself to her.

“Spock, you’re bleeding.”

He titled his head, looking at the smear of green blood on the discarded shirt. “It is nothing to worry about, I would have thought the mark would have healed by now, however, I must have miscalculated how quickly I would heal given all the other stresses I am undergoing.”

“Mark?”

Spock nodded. “I would have thought you were aware of the trend going around the ‘actuals’ - they mark their bodies with a saying unique to them - typically including their name.”

“What does yours say?”

He turned his back to her so that she might see the still healing scar on his back. In rather uneven writing - likely Jim’s - was ‘I was born Spock, son of Sarek, but I have become greater.’

“That’s not a dialect of Vulcan still used.”

“You would be correct,” he said turning back toward her. “It is the dialect used around the time of the Awakening, I thought it would be appropriate.”

“Of course you would.” Peeling off her own shirt she pulled him toward her. They had been apart for too long and she just needed to feel him again - completely.

Spock would never get the chance to find her birthmark, written in the same dialect of Vulcan. Two weeks later before they were planning to move on to the ATL, he instead found her packing her things.

“I was not aware that we had been planning to relocate today. I shall go wake up Jim and we can be on our way within the hour.”

“Spock.” She said his name an apology. “We are not going anywhere.”

“I do not understand.”

“You and Jim have your plans, you know what you need to do and you can do so many things that I can’t. I’m holding you back.” She turned around to face him and he noticed a bandage on her face that had not been there before. “I’m not one of you, I’ve never been more than a handler and you don’t need to be handled anymore, you need to go figure this out on your own and I…I need to go fight my war.”

She pulled her duffle bag up over her shoulder.

“You might not be men, but you are good - both you and Jim and right now the world needs some people who aren’t so good to make sure you have a chance to save the day.”

“Nyota.”

“Nothing you can say will make me stay. I have to go.”

“What am I to do without you?”

“What you always have done - find ways to survive.”

She didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t look back. She just walked past him out of the kitchen and out of their lives. Uhura was needed on another front of the war.

It would be a little less than a year before he saw her again. Only he wouldn’t recognize her and she wouldn’t stay. Her fight was elsewhere, but she would leave a piece of herself with him for safekeeping.

###
While Uhura had a number of hang-ups, Grayson was a curious and bold four year old. Finished with the laundry he wandered toward her, watching her almost as closely as she had been watching him. She should have known better than to think a quarter-Vulcan would have anything less than the top observational skills.

“You and your friends seem to have some sort of upload ports on your face, what is their purpose?” It was some way to say hello, but it was far less complicated.

At least she had an answer to this question. “Just that - to upload data right to my brain.” She pulled out the chain around her neck, showing him the data chips there. “The problem is that to put something new in there, I have to take something else out.”

“So there are pieces of you missing.”

“Not missing. They are just saved somewhere else while I don’t need them.”

“But what sort of things can you go without?”

“Oh you’d be surprised.”

It was strange to be having this conversation - to be having a conversation at all with a child she gave up when he was only a few weeks old. There was no place for a child in her life. Hell, with the world as it was, there wasn’t even really any chance for them to be children at all.

Child bodies were preferred for those wanting the full second, third or even sixth life experience. Who would willingly want to go through puberty again was beyond her, but that wasn’t her prerogative. All Nyota Uhura ever wanted was to live the one life she was given. And that was enough of a challenge.

“Grayson!”

The two of them jumped at the stern voice interrupting what might have been a nice moment between mother and child.

“I believe you have duties to attend to in the kitchen. The vegetables will not cut themselves.”

The boy nodded and scurried quickly into the kitchen. Of course that left the two of them in a place they didn’t want to be - alone in a room together on the same side of the war, but at very different ends.

“I do not wish to have my son exposed to any of the technology.”

Uhura pushed to standing. “It’s a world full of nothing but tech, what do you hope to accomplish by that?”

“A normal life.”

She laughed at that. There was no normal. Certainly not for them.

But this was a fight four years in the making - one that they had both avoided. There was no going back now. It was finally now or never.

“I did what I had to do - what was needed to make sure that there was a world worth anything for you to bring back. Someone had to step up and protect your happy group of vigilantes.”

“You chose to be steeped in it,” he said, his emotions getting the better of him, but Nyota always complicated things now. She made the water cloudy. “You have been seduced by it.”

“Is that what you think? That I’ve been some little girl yearning for what you and Jim have? Please.”

“All the same, my son will not be exposed to such…tech heads. It is not part of the future we are fighting for.”

She wanted to punch him. Wanted to make him hurt, but that wasn’t likely going to work.

“Then I guess I’m not part of that world either.” She turned and left, storming outside to go find the rest of the team. Maybe they would be up for some target practice because if she was going to have to be stuck in a vehicle with him she was going to have to get some of her anger out.

“No, Nyota, you made your choice. We all did. There is no place for any of us in this world.”

###
Back in the laboratory, McCoy did what he did best: obsess. He felt like he was Pandora and Uhura had just told him not to open the box. Except they were well past that point, he had already let all the terrors out into the world. Maybe this was the one thing that had remained.

McCoy wasn’t sure how long he sat there staring at the chip. Or even how many times he loaded it into the computer, only to close it out at the last moment. It wasn’t like anything on there would change anything. It certainly wouldn’t heal the world or even him. Really, it was just bound to cause him more hurt and he wasn’t sure he could handle that.

“McCoy!”

He jumped at the harsh sound of his actual name from that voice.

“What has you so caught up that you not only missed dinner, but haven’t moved an inch in the past ten minutes.”

Behind him, Jim was casually leaning against the door frame, a plate of food in hands.

“You’ve been standing there for ten minutes?”

Jim shrugged. “What can I say? I’m stealthy.” He set the plate down on an empty patch of table. “So what has you all worked up?”

McCoy turned around, brow furrowed. Could he have no more secrets?

“And yes, you are that easy to read.”

He would have liked that it was only Jim who saw through him, but that was just dumb romanticism that wasn’t helping the situation any.

“Nyota gave me some security footage from the Project, she thinks it might help.”

“So, what are you waiting for?” Jim pulled up a chair next to him. Too close and yet not close enough.

“I think it’s about us.” Both men fell silent - neither sure what came next.

“Are you going to watch it?”

“Will it change anything?” McCoy countered, already knowing the answer. There was no going back.

Of course this was Jim Kirk, add that to Leonard McCoy and there was only one viable next move.

“I’ll keep my promise to Spock and get his approval before killing you.”

“That’s reassuring.”

Jim elbowed him in the side, the two of them slipping into something that felt like it should have been. Finally he loaded the footage.

###
“You do know what you are doing?”

Chekov jumped. “Hikaru!” He shouted, more annoyed than excited. “It is not nice for people to surprise me when I am working. Also I have done this many times. So, why must you continue to insult my genius? And the constant watching over my shoulder, this does not help me work any better.”

It was almost a decade ago. Both men looking far younger than they were now, before everything went to hell.

“But this is a very unique situation.”

Chekov made a gagging noise, rolling his eyes like a cartoon character. “I am quite tired of you all trying to tell me how to do my job. Yes, I understand, long-term imprints create larger risks. Chapel and McCoy would not leave me alone until I read their reports and the two of them teaming up on that…it it just not right.”

“Remember, we talked about the breathing…”

“I am breathing! This is just - there is a lot of weight on my shoulders, making sure all of the actives are ready, that India won’t … you know again and then McCoy! I do not like him one bit, he is keeping secrets from me, Hikaru, and you do not keep secrets from the programmer! Because I find out all of the secrets eventually.” Chekov let out a large exhale and looked up from his screen. “But I suppose you want a report on the updated Jim Kirk imprint.”

“That is what we are all waiting on.”

Shaking his head, Chekov punched a few buttons to pull him the updated brain map for Captain Jim Kirk. The giant brain with appropriately color coded regions floated between them. “It is a very beautiful brain.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Hired guns, no appreciation for the science or the art of it.”

“The point?”

Chekov pulled up Jim Kirk’s original scan from when he first entered the program as well as his Romeo brain map. “You can see there is not too much different from the original Kirk and the one I’ve put together - although I did make some nice additions and removed some pieces.”

Sulu still didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. Ask him to hit a target from a hundred meters away or drive anything with an engine - no problem. But get him to understand this level of biochemistry? Not a chance. Although the colors did have some similarities, perhaps that was what Pavel was talking about.

“And McCoy?”

“McCoy,” he said trying not to grimace and failing, “is still there or here actually.” Chekov pointed to a region. “It did not even take much to insert the protocol in the active imprint. It was easy even, like those pathways have been there all along.”

“And that doesn’t worry you?”

“You worry far too much, it is easy because I am not just good, but very good at what I do.”

“I get paid to worry. That worry keeps us all safe.”

“Well, my man-friend, I have everything under control for Romeo and McCoy, so perhaps you go do your job and bring them up here so we can put all this behind us and one day laugh about how you worry so?”

“Fine, but Pike wants the full report after this is all done.”

Chekov waved him off. “The captain always wants a report, this is not a worry, now go. I have a very important relationship to triple check, as you say, there is no room for error.”

###
It was Jim who reached up and stopped the video there. And while it seemed like a good time to say something, neither man offered any sound.

McCoy didn’t have a clue what to make of what was on the footage. So, Jim Kirk had brain patterns that indicated he knew McCoy before. That or Chekov was out on some crazy limb about soul mates and true love.

And because McCoy wasn’t sure either of them had a soul at all, he would have to go with the first option. “We knew each other before.”

Jim looked at him like he was an idiot. Maybe he was. “When did we meet?”

“Officially? I think that would be the time you shot me.”

Jim shook his head, a sad smile pulling at his face. That obviously wasn’t the right answer. Except he didn’t have any idea because that was the first memory of Jim Kirk he had - other than that strange urge to find the man with the too blue eyes.

It had sent him digging into the Project in the first place.

“Look, the memory is there, just buried under everything else you repress.” He laughed. Something had changed between them, really in Jim. “I guess that makes us a good pair after all. Or it just makes us even more fucked up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Just keep watching the tape, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Uhura wouldn’t have given it to you if she didn’t think you could learn something.”

He turned to leave and before Jim reached the door the words just fell out of his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Jim stopped dead in his tracks, his expression dropped, but then softened. “I know.”

“But that’s never going to be enough,” said McCoy.

“I didn’t say that.” Jim shook his head. “You’re the only one unwilling to let go of all your guilt, like it makes you righteous.”

“I’m not the righteous man here.”

“No, you’re just the man seeking absolution. Well, I forgive you, Bones. Or at least I will once we pull this off, so don’t fuck it up.” He slapped McCoy on the shoulder.

Watching him go, McCoy wasn’t sure what to think. Jim had worked to raise his daughter in his absence. They were still entwined, still wrapped up in each other.

And they had a past. But could they have a future?

Maybe once they survived San Francisco.

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