Fic: Que Sera Sera (14/15)
Fandom: TOS/TNG/ST XI -slight AU where there isn’t a 16 year gap between the events of Generations and Star Trek 2009.
Pairings: Kirk Prime/McCoy Prime/Spock Prime, Kirk/Spock/McCoy, Scotty/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: minor character death
Summary: Spock Prime went to save Romulus from a supernova and failed, leaving him in a universe that is similar and still so different from his own. Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy Kirk Prime was freed from the Nexus by Captain Picard and survived. Not believing that Spock Prime is dead Kirk Prime goes in search of him, and travels to the universe created when Nero went through the black hole. In that universe Kirk and Spock are starting on their five year mission, determined to write their own destinies after their encounters with Spock Prime. Unlike them McCoy doesn’t trust destiny as far as he can throw it, and he has his own problems to deal with, like getting custody of the three year old daughter he didn’t know he had.
Que Sera Sera
Bones sat at the kitchen table with his daughter and the others just as he had for nearly a week, and like the first day he was there he was picking at his food. This time it was not out of guilt, but a total lack of appetite that kept him from eating. The treatments were going poorly. They had slowed the progress of the disease, but they had not stopped it and were not going to stop it. McCoy had expressed his sympathies and he desire to help his young counterpart. They had searched for something else to try and had found something that might work, but it would be risky.
All worrying was cut short however when there was a knock on the door.
“Now who could that be?” Jim asked.
“I will see who it is,” Spock said, and got up from the table.
Bones steeled himself. He knew who it was before they came in. He could only cover his tracks for so long and Kirk wasn’t stupid. Sure enough as Spock came back into the kitchen Bones was met with blazing blue eyes and furrowed pointed eyebrows from the men he brought in with him. They both meant the same thing: Bones was going to get it.
After looking at the other men at the table and muttering, “I should have known he’d bring them here too,” Kirk turned his attention back to Bones. “I should have you court martial you know that? After everything we’ve been through you just run away to try a bunch of experimental crap when you’re-“
Bones cut him off with a pleading look and pointed at Joanna.
“You’re…eating breakfast,” Kirk finished clumsily.
“How come Uncle Jim is mad, Daddy?”
“He doesn’t want me to try a new medicine, because it might not be safe. But daddy has to try the medicine because if it works lots of other people can use it and they’ll get better too.”
“Oh.”
“Joanna, there is a new game on the computer you may play if you would like to.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” the elder Spock said.
“Wash your hands first.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Bones waited until his daughter was out of ear-shot and then rounded on his former crewmates.
“How dare you! Those files were private!”
“Doctor, the testing is in its infancy-”
“Don’t change the subject!”
“Bones, I wouldn’t have done all that if you just told me what the hell you were doing and why!”
“I did, Captain. I filed all the paperwork and I assigned a replacement as Chief Medical Officer. I did everything by the book and you had no right to hack my files. If I weren’t dealing with more important things right now I would bring you to the authorities.”
Before Kirk or Spock could give a reply McCoy cut in.
“Hold up, he’s your chief medical officer?”
“Yes his is,” Kirk answered, “and he went over my head to-“
“As CMO of the Enterprise I have the authority to name my replacement and take sick leave without your approval, Captain.”
McCoy looked at his counterpart curiously. “Wait a minute, Boy, just how old are you?”
“Thirty,” Bones answered tersely.
McCoy sat back in his chair, his eyebrows going up.
“Oh, oh how marvellous, he’s thirty!”
The sarcasm could be cut with a knife and Bones glared at McCoy.
“What did you think I was on that ship? An orderly?”
“I thought you were the junior doctor. At your age you’re supposed to be under someone! You can’t leave a starship sickbay in the hands of a child!”
“You know what, Jim, he’s right you should find someone older. Maybe he’d like to do it, and then you don’t even have to change the paperwork when this is all over.”
“I don’t want anyone else, Bones, I want you!”
“Jim, I’m dying. What part of that don’t you understand!? The treatments have only slowed down the progress of my disease. This new type of drug and surgery it could save hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.”
Kirk had looked up what Bones and his counterpart apparently wanted to do as he waited for the Enterprise to finish its patrol of the region and get back to the Vulcan colony. He had been worried about Bones and there had been nothing else to focus his energy on. The treatment was dangerous. Like the medieval days of chemotherapy and radiation the cure could do just as much harm as the disease itself.
“It could kill you, Bones.”
“Maybe, but even then the knowledge gained by the trial could still help countless others. One man’s life against all of them, Jim? I think it’s a fair trade. The needs of the many outweigh-“
“The needs of the few,” Jim continued.
“Or the one,” both Spocks finished in unison.
Kirk shivered.
“I wish you guys wouldn’t do that, it’s so creepy.”
Bones shoved his chair back angrily and stood up. “I knew it! I knew that’s what this was really about!”
“Oh, now what the hell did I do, Bones?!”
“You just won’t get off this whole were a bunch of copies of them kick. Well you know what? If there’s some all-powerful force controlling my destiny, it’s got the skills of an office temp with a bad attitude!”
“We don’t have to be like them!”
“Did you ever think that maybe I want to?!”
Kirk gaped at him. “What?”
“Maybe it never crossed that macho mind of yours, you thinking you’re young and invincible and all, but I like the idea of having people to grow old with. Hell I like the idea of getting to grow old!”
The younger Spock quirked an eyebrow. “Explain.”
“Look you two, especially you, Jim, you’re at home in the stars. Traveling to new worlds, meeting new civilizations, that’s the passion that drives you. Me I’m a doctor, I’m about healing. I can do that on Earth, Mars, or the Enterprise. I know, thanks to seeing these guys, that they’ll be a time when our lives won’t be all about work anymore and I want to have something else besides my daughter to share it with.”
Jim looked at his own country doctor.
“Bones, you don’t really think that do you?”
“It’s true, Jim. I want to help people. Now the frontier is where the best of that happens. Learning new techniques, seeing your work play out in front of you, but my passion isn’t tied to the stars like yours. Why do you think I’ve adjusted so well to us being here? I can help here or in our own universe it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m with you two.”
“And speaking of help we have to go,” Bones said, as he and McCoy brushed past Kirk and Spock and made his way to the front door. “And look on the bright side, Jim, if this treatment doesn’t work then I have changed our destinies haven’t I?”
“Bones, look we-“
He glared at Kirk and Spock. “Don’t follow me,” he said, and slammed the door.
***
The day passed pretty much in silence after that. Bones giving McCoy one word answers to everything as they made sure everything was prepared for the procedure the following day.
They didn’t talk about anything personal until they were making their way home for the night.
“So have long have you wanted to be with them?” McCoy finally asked.
Bones shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it was around the time Spock got injured trying to save my sorry ass and Jim camped out in my sickbay until he was released.”
“Yeah that sounds about right.” McCoy shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed.
“It’s so strange you know. In my world I was the one running for the hills when this came up.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh, I was burned by the divorce and losing Joanna. I was convinced that getting involved with people intimately only got me hurt. I vowed never to do that again.”
Bones gave him a knowing look.
“Do the best ideas really happen in brown cheap motel rooms at 4am?”
McCoy laughed. “Probably not. But the point is you’re in a better place than I was at your age, and for about a decade beyond this, so that’s good. If they come around, and even if they don’t, you’re emotionally healthy. Don’t sell yourself short just because they are acting like a couple of thick headed idiots.”
Bones kicked at the sand. “It would help if I didn’t love them so much.”
“Of course it would.”
They went inside to find everyone waiting for them in the living room.
“Don’t you have a ship to get back to?” Bones asked tersely.
“You said we couldn’t come with you. You didn’t say we had to leave.”
Bones just glared and Kirk got off the couch and came over to him.
“I’m sorry, Bones, you’re right we shouldn’t have just barged in like this, but we’re worried about you. In fact if you you want we could…” Kirk trailed off, letting his fingers come up and run along Bones’ arm
Bones batted his hand away.
“What are you offering me, Jim? Love or a going away present?”
“What the hell do you want, Bones?”
“I know what I want, Jim, you and Spock are the ones chasing past lives. You figure it out on your own what’s more important, dreams or reality. I’m going to lie down.”
Bones went into the spare bedroom to find his daughter already asleep in the bed.
“I love you, Joanna. I always will, even if I won’t be here to say it to you anymore.”
When Bones left the room and Kirk slumped down on the couch next to Spock. “Now what?” he asked.
“We support him, Jim, even if he doesn’t want us to,” the younger Spock declared.
“Yeah.”
Jim looked at the two of them.
“Not to make an issue out of an already bad situation, but this is what I mean, Spock, when I say that us being here isn’t really helping anyone. They’re here and I think they have a right to existence without us telling them what’s ‘destined’ for them.”
“I submit that the empire is illogical,” McCoy muttered.
Jim glared at McCoy. “You want to repeat that, Bones?”
“Just thinking out loud, thinking that it might be hypocritical, Jim, to berate Spock for something you yourself once did.”
“So now you want to stay too!?”
“No, no I’m just saying there are no easy answers here. You once thought you should help another universe even if it might have cost us our only chance at getting home. Now Spock wants to help this universe become better just like you did, for him it will just take longer.”
“Our own universe may need us. What if the timeline speeds don’t differ? Our own timeline could be going to war with the Romulans again for all we know.”
“That’s why we agreed you and Leonard could leave, Jim,” Spock said.
“I know, but I didn’t fight so hard for this just to lose you again, Spock.”
“This relationship is that important to you?” the younger Spock asked.
“You’re damn right it is!” McCoy and Jim exclaimed.
Spock sat back on the couch thinking over their blunt assertions; perhaps his initial assessment that a relationship with a human could not be a long lasting one had been incorrect. Still his older self had still lost those men once, and he and Kirk could perhaps lose Doctor McCoy far sooner than they wished. It was better not to have pursued anything with him.
“Is it really our destiny to be together?” Kirk asked.
Jim shook his head in annoyance. “How the hell should we know, Kid? We got together in our time because we wanted to, not because some divine being told us we were supposed to.”
“So how do we know if we should do that too?”
Jim looked at his younger counterpart sternly. “If your Bones means as much to you as you say he does then you’ll make the right choice.”
Kirk fidgeted on the couch. “It seems…difficult.”
“Most things worth having usually are,” Jim said.
Chapter 15
Pairings: Kirk Prime/McCoy Prime/Spock Prime, Kirk/Spock/McCoy, Scotty/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: minor character death
Summary: Spock Prime went to save Romulus from a supernova and failed, leaving him in a universe that is similar and still so different from his own. Meanwhile in another part of the galaxy Kirk Prime was freed from the Nexus by Captain Picard and survived. Not believing that Spock Prime is dead Kirk Prime goes in search of him, and travels to the universe created when Nero went through the black hole. In that universe Kirk and Spock are starting on their five year mission, determined to write their own destinies after their encounters with Spock Prime. Unlike them McCoy doesn’t trust destiny as far as he can throw it, and he has his own problems to deal with, like getting custody of the three year old daughter he didn’t know he had.
Que Sera Sera
Bones sat at the kitchen table with his daughter and the others just as he had for nearly a week, and like the first day he was there he was picking at his food. This time it was not out of guilt, but a total lack of appetite that kept him from eating. The treatments were going poorly. They had slowed the progress of the disease, but they had not stopped it and were not going to stop it. McCoy had expressed his sympathies and he desire to help his young counterpart. They had searched for something else to try and had found something that might work, but it would be risky.
All worrying was cut short however when there was a knock on the door.
“Now who could that be?” Jim asked.
“I will see who it is,” Spock said, and got up from the table.
Bones steeled himself. He knew who it was before they came in. He could only cover his tracks for so long and Kirk wasn’t stupid. Sure enough as Spock came back into the kitchen Bones was met with blazing blue eyes and furrowed pointed eyebrows from the men he brought in with him. They both meant the same thing: Bones was going to get it.
After looking at the other men at the table and muttering, “I should have known he’d bring them here too,” Kirk turned his attention back to Bones. “I should have you court martial you know that? After everything we’ve been through you just run away to try a bunch of experimental crap when you’re-“
Bones cut him off with a pleading look and pointed at Joanna.
“You’re…eating breakfast,” Kirk finished clumsily.
“How come Uncle Jim is mad, Daddy?”
“He doesn’t want me to try a new medicine, because it might not be safe. But daddy has to try the medicine because if it works lots of other people can use it and they’ll get better too.”
“Oh.”
“Joanna, there is a new game on the computer you may play if you would like to.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” the elder Spock said.
“Wash your hands first.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Bones waited until his daughter was out of ear-shot and then rounded on his former crewmates.
“How dare you! Those files were private!”
“Doctor, the testing is in its infancy-”
“Don’t change the subject!”
“Bones, I wouldn’t have done all that if you just told me what the hell you were doing and why!”
“I did, Captain. I filed all the paperwork and I assigned a replacement as Chief Medical Officer. I did everything by the book and you had no right to hack my files. If I weren’t dealing with more important things right now I would bring you to the authorities.”
Before Kirk or Spock could give a reply McCoy cut in.
“Hold up, he’s your chief medical officer?”
“Yes his is,” Kirk answered, “and he went over my head to-“
“As CMO of the Enterprise I have the authority to name my replacement and take sick leave without your approval, Captain.”
McCoy looked at his counterpart curiously. “Wait a minute, Boy, just how old are you?”
“Thirty,” Bones answered tersely.
McCoy sat back in his chair, his eyebrows going up.
“Oh, oh how marvellous, he’s thirty!”
The sarcasm could be cut with a knife and Bones glared at McCoy.
“What did you think I was on that ship? An orderly?”
“I thought you were the junior doctor. At your age you’re supposed to be under someone! You can’t leave a starship sickbay in the hands of a child!”
“You know what, Jim, he’s right you should find someone older. Maybe he’d like to do it, and then you don’t even have to change the paperwork when this is all over.”
“I don’t want anyone else, Bones, I want you!”
“Jim, I’m dying. What part of that don’t you understand!? The treatments have only slowed down the progress of my disease. This new type of drug and surgery it could save hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.”
Kirk had looked up what Bones and his counterpart apparently wanted to do as he waited for the Enterprise to finish its patrol of the region and get back to the Vulcan colony. He had been worried about Bones and there had been nothing else to focus his energy on. The treatment was dangerous. Like the medieval days of chemotherapy and radiation the cure could do just as much harm as the disease itself.
“It could kill you, Bones.”
“Maybe, but even then the knowledge gained by the trial could still help countless others. One man’s life against all of them, Jim? I think it’s a fair trade. The needs of the many outweigh-“
“The needs of the few,” Jim continued.
“Or the one,” both Spocks finished in unison.
Kirk shivered.
“I wish you guys wouldn’t do that, it’s so creepy.”
Bones shoved his chair back angrily and stood up. “I knew it! I knew that’s what this was really about!”
“Oh, now what the hell did I do, Bones?!”
“You just won’t get off this whole were a bunch of copies of them kick. Well you know what? If there’s some all-powerful force controlling my destiny, it’s got the skills of an office temp with a bad attitude!”
“We don’t have to be like them!”
“Did you ever think that maybe I want to?!”
Kirk gaped at him. “What?”
“Maybe it never crossed that macho mind of yours, you thinking you’re young and invincible and all, but I like the idea of having people to grow old with. Hell I like the idea of getting to grow old!”
The younger Spock quirked an eyebrow. “Explain.”
“Look you two, especially you, Jim, you’re at home in the stars. Traveling to new worlds, meeting new civilizations, that’s the passion that drives you. Me I’m a doctor, I’m about healing. I can do that on Earth, Mars, or the Enterprise. I know, thanks to seeing these guys, that they’ll be a time when our lives won’t be all about work anymore and I want to have something else besides my daughter to share it with.”
Jim looked at his own country doctor.
“Bones, you don’t really think that do you?”
“It’s true, Jim. I want to help people. Now the frontier is where the best of that happens. Learning new techniques, seeing your work play out in front of you, but my passion isn’t tied to the stars like yours. Why do you think I’ve adjusted so well to us being here? I can help here or in our own universe it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m with you two.”
“And speaking of help we have to go,” Bones said, as he and McCoy brushed past Kirk and Spock and made his way to the front door. “And look on the bright side, Jim, if this treatment doesn’t work then I have changed our destinies haven’t I?”
“Bones, look we-“
He glared at Kirk and Spock. “Don’t follow me,” he said, and slammed the door.
***
The day passed pretty much in silence after that. Bones giving McCoy one word answers to everything as they made sure everything was prepared for the procedure the following day.
They didn’t talk about anything personal until they were making their way home for the night.
“So have long have you wanted to be with them?” McCoy finally asked.
Bones shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it was around the time Spock got injured trying to save my sorry ass and Jim camped out in my sickbay until he was released.”
“Yeah that sounds about right.” McCoy shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed.
“It’s so strange you know. In my world I was the one running for the hills when this came up.”
“Really?”
“Uh huh, I was burned by the divorce and losing Joanna. I was convinced that getting involved with people intimately only got me hurt. I vowed never to do that again.”
Bones gave him a knowing look.
“Do the best ideas really happen in brown cheap motel rooms at 4am?”
McCoy laughed. “Probably not. But the point is you’re in a better place than I was at your age, and for about a decade beyond this, so that’s good. If they come around, and even if they don’t, you’re emotionally healthy. Don’t sell yourself short just because they are acting like a couple of thick headed idiots.”
Bones kicked at the sand. “It would help if I didn’t love them so much.”
“Of course it would.”
They went inside to find everyone waiting for them in the living room.
“Don’t you have a ship to get back to?” Bones asked tersely.
“You said we couldn’t come with you. You didn’t say we had to leave.”
Bones just glared and Kirk got off the couch and came over to him.
“I’m sorry, Bones, you’re right we shouldn’t have just barged in like this, but we’re worried about you. In fact if you you want we could…” Kirk trailed off, letting his fingers come up and run along Bones’ arm
Bones batted his hand away.
“What are you offering me, Jim? Love or a going away present?”
“What the hell do you want, Bones?”
“I know what I want, Jim, you and Spock are the ones chasing past lives. You figure it out on your own what’s more important, dreams or reality. I’m going to lie down.”
Bones went into the spare bedroom to find his daughter already asleep in the bed.
“I love you, Joanna. I always will, even if I won’t be here to say it to you anymore.”
When Bones left the room and Kirk slumped down on the couch next to Spock. “Now what?” he asked.
“We support him, Jim, even if he doesn’t want us to,” the younger Spock declared.
“Yeah.”
Jim looked at the two of them.
“Not to make an issue out of an already bad situation, but this is what I mean, Spock, when I say that us being here isn’t really helping anyone. They’re here and I think they have a right to existence without us telling them what’s ‘destined’ for them.”
“I submit that the empire is illogical,” McCoy muttered.
Jim glared at McCoy. “You want to repeat that, Bones?”
“Just thinking out loud, thinking that it might be hypocritical, Jim, to berate Spock for something you yourself once did.”
“So now you want to stay too!?”
“No, no I’m just saying there are no easy answers here. You once thought you should help another universe even if it might have cost us our only chance at getting home. Now Spock wants to help this universe become better just like you did, for him it will just take longer.”
“Our own universe may need us. What if the timeline speeds don’t differ? Our own timeline could be going to war with the Romulans again for all we know.”
“That’s why we agreed you and Leonard could leave, Jim,” Spock said.
“I know, but I didn’t fight so hard for this just to lose you again, Spock.”
“This relationship is that important to you?” the younger Spock asked.
“You’re damn right it is!” McCoy and Jim exclaimed.
Spock sat back on the couch thinking over their blunt assertions; perhaps his initial assessment that a relationship with a human could not be a long lasting one had been incorrect. Still his older self had still lost those men once, and he and Kirk could perhaps lose Doctor McCoy far sooner than they wished. It was better not to have pursued anything with him.
“Is it really our destiny to be together?” Kirk asked.
Jim shook his head in annoyance. “How the hell should we know, Kid? We got together in our time because we wanted to, not because some divine being told us we were supposed to.”
“So how do we know if we should do that too?”
Jim looked at his younger counterpart sternly. “If your Bones means as much to you as you say he does then you’ll make the right choice.”
Kirk fidgeted on the couch. “It seems…difficult.”
“Most things worth having usually are,” Jim said.
Chapter 15