Fic: Mother, Can You Hide Them From the Waiting World?
Title: Mother, Can You Hide Them From the Waiting World?
Author: sharpestscalpel
Characters: mirror!Janice Rand/mirror!Christine Chapel (with tangential mirror!Kirk/mirror!McCoy and appearances by mirror!Gaila, mirror!MarlenaMoreau, and interaction with mirror!Uhura)
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4180
Summary: Janice Rand never wanted to be like her mother; perhaps there is another way to be.
Notes: Written for where_no_woman's Mother's Day fest, for the prompt: Motherhood after growing up in an abusive household. (I am a day late posting - I apologize! Travel and then an unexpected party tripped me up. Good party though. *grin*)
WARNINGS: There is mention of a serious physical assault (not rape) and some of the recovery from that; there is repeated, thematic mention of a child/teen; there is mention of sex work in an unhealthy mirror!universe context. This is a mirror!universe but not in the way I generally write it - I'd say it's kinder and gentler but I think it's actually more dangerous in some ways, like an organized crime family.
Janice Rand wore tights. Thick opaque tights, as close to the color of her flesh as she could manage. She was, in many ways, proud of her legs - strong and well-muscled from the endless laps she jogged around the track, endless running toward something, she liked to think, as much as she was running away, trying to find her escape. She’d considered the uniform option with pants, when she’d first joined the Imperial Fleet (when she’d finally found a way to actually escape, not just her old life but gravity, Earth, the entire solar system as well - though there was no escaping the Terran Empire); she’d never been a fan of pants, with her short rise and her long waist and her peculiar height that never seemed to work with anything that was standard issue. So the skirts had been easier, more comfortable. And the tights had done the work of hiding her skin.
And then she had made up a game - it had become a challenge to see if she could make Kirk look at her legs. A dangerous game, because he was in the doctor’s pocket all the time, but a person could still look. Sometimes, the doctor looked, too. And when either one of them did, when she leaned just the right way and the light gleamed on her thigh, she felt like being looked at wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her.
No, the worst thing that could happen to her - that could happen to her again - happened to her on Altaas XVI. Shore leave, and she’d been shopping. Her own fault, really, for going out alone and being too slow with her knives. She’d had so little reason to practice, favored yeoman of a favored captain. The beating had been efficient, she’d recognized that even as her vision had dimmed.
She’d returned with more scars. Not that it should have mattered much; she was a map of backroads and byways cutting out thick paths to and from her house to school and back, the only place she’d been allowed to go. She was already traced with the routes her mother had wanted her to walk.
But it had mattered. She had turned her face to the wall and considered that Kirk was punishing her by letting her live, punishing her for being a target. McCoy’s sickbay was not a purgatory, not the limbo her grandmother had put her to bed with on the bad days, on the days when promises had been broken - McCoy’s sickbay was merely the setting; Janice carried her own hell with her, something in her nature. There was no escaping that, no matter how far out into the black they ventured.
It had mattered, and Janice had eyed McCoy, had wondered if there was enough kindness in him to help her make a final escape, to administer too much of the pain medication she knew not everyone was allowed in the first place: one last favor, if only because she had never been late with Kirk’s paperwork.
The Imperial Fleet took its paperwork very seriously.
Before she could pursue her thoughts, though, before Janice could descend too deeply and too quickly to surface on her own, Chapel had been there. Nurse Chapel, with the scar across her face that tilted one side of her mouth up in a constant smirk. Nurse Chapel, who had been engaged, rumor had it, to the owner of the finger she supposedly kept in a little box in her underwear drawer. There was much shipboard speculation about the contents of Chapel’s underwear drawer, but she had more than knives on her side; Chapel had McCoy, had her team of nurses, had a medicine cabinet full of wonderful torments for anyone who threatened her.
Each of Chapel’s movements was accompanied by the soft hidden rustle of silk - she didn’t wear tights. Her legs were all but bare, more enticing for the whisper of her thighs, clad in the sheerest of stockings, brushing past one another - Chapel was many things; she was ripe and full and heavy. Janice wondered, in her first moment of curiosity since she had materialized back aboard and fallen off the beaming pad, if Chapel was wearing a garter belt under her skirt.
Later, doubtlessly, she would blame it on the fog of drugs - Janice would never have otherwise been so forward; she was still her mother’s daughter, after all, and Rand women knew their place (knew their limits and their worth - pain and all). “Are you the Doctor’s woman?” The captain was what he was - but there had to be some reason McCoy remained so loyal to his head nurse. There was a reason for everything; everything was based on a transaction of some kind.
Chapel’s hand was cool and gentle on Janice’s forehead. “I’m my own woman. Go back to sleep, Yeoman.” The hiss of a hypospray, an injection Janice couldn’t even feel, preceded the inexorable tide of unconsciousness that pulled Janice back under a blanket of cushioned blackness. Somehow, down deep, it was easier to breathe.
Somewhere, perhaps, there was a universe where Janice Rand did not wake back up, where she stayed below the surface, touching her own reflection at the barrier to waking. In that universe, perhaps, her mother mourned the loss of a strong daughter, a loved daughter, a daughter who had not refused and spoiled all efforts to sell her when that Janice understood the family business, understood why her mother slept late and was so angry to be woken by the sounds of play. Perhaps in that universe, it had been a good job, and that Janice had been registered and protected and clean - had never been given to a stranger with a knife, had never faced other strangers who wanted to hurt her simply because they could.
But Janice was not in that universe. She knew it when she found herself again, still wrapped in the cotton of her mind, the pain of her body distant and almost elegant in its scope. In her own universe, she drifted, easy and comfortable, waiting for the pieces of her self to come back together in whatever fashion they would.
Her humor was quick to reassert its presence. She chuckled, low pitched and genuine, at her own observation: McCoy had not only given her drugs, he’d given her really very excellent drugs. She was going to owe him a favor. Unless it had been Chapel - her intuition skated across a frozen pond, a fluid arabesque that melted back into the rest of the ice before it reached the shore. Chapel - she was her own woman. Janice had supposed herself to be the same.
Janice had made mistakes before.
She woke up easy and McCoy was there, propping her up on the biobed and offering water through a straw. His hands were polite as he scanned her, his body relaxed and professionally nonthreatening as he slumped into a chair at her bedside.
“Just so you know, the captain found your assailants,” - the word sounded like something poisonous in his drawling Southern syllables. “Afraid you missed the trial and execution though.” There was a violent light in his hazel eyes, a reminder that the Fleet’s doctors were not only there to preserve life but to take it in the most painful ways when it was deemed necessary. Janice nodded, solemn. She hadn’t wondered; not once in her sleep had she thought of her attackers. But to know it when she was awake satisfied another part of her, something low in her gut that had never been content with escape - as though vengeance had ever been possible. McCoy must had recognized it in her face; he smiled, open and so beautiful it made Janice catch her breath. “The captain takes care of his own, Yeoman Rand. That’s what keeps him - and the rest of us - alive.”
It was a simple truth. She clung to it. But it only answered one question; there were others, not least of which was why anyone would think the captain valued her - or why he apparently did. “What’s wrong with me?” Her body still felt numb and even without much combat experience Janice was familiar enough with the slightly reckless sense of immortality that regen units usually knit into the flesh they healed.
McCoy’s smile remained as he consulted his PADD. “They beat the shit out of your midsection, bruised up just about every organ there, broke some ribs in the process. I healed the bone damage, got most of the tissues sorted. Noticed a few things missing during the surgery.” It was all in her medical history, the whole banal story of violence and infection and removal. She’d made sure it was there herself so there would be no awkward conversations with medical staff wondering why she didn’t show up for the regular birth control shots. “We’re keeping you numbed down because there was some spinal damage - you’ll be wobbly and I suggest you don’t venture out alone during gamma shift - but it should be healed clean in another 24 to 36 hours.”
He was right - though of course he was right. McCoy was the best. She found it in herself, to her own amused surprise, to be surprised that he hadn’t somehow repaired everything as long as he was there, replaced her missing parts with borrowed or replicated organs. There was relief, even in the face of that, to know he had not. Janice had considered motherhood, pretended at it with pillows stuffed under her shirt when she was seven. It had seemed wonderful, like the best magic trick her child mind could imagine.
Her enthusiasm had waned. Her breasts drew too much attention from too many people, her long blonde hair caught too many eyes and fingers. And her mother had watched it all and planned.
Janice’s grandmother had whispered to the frightened colt of a girl - it was hard to be a Rand woman. It was hard to stand on your own when the world was so eager for cruelty, bruises waiting for the slightest unwary motion, blossoming like spring in the back fields. And her grandmother had been right, Janice realized over the years. It was hard to be a Rand woman. The family business built the family reputation. She’d considered changing her name.
Instead, she had entered the dark doorway of the recruiting office, signed her own name on every line the silver-eyed man named Pike had indicated. Perhaps, she had quietly hoped, there would be a star that could carry on her family name. She would never risk being like her mother.
McCoy’s face blurred and Janice blinked back the unwise emotion that moved her. “Thank you. I’ll be careful.” Gratitude was always a good plan of action with McCoy. His satisfied grin was answer enough. Janice let her eyes close and slept as easy as she’d woken up.
The doctor hadn’t been lying - she’d been shaky and weak when he’d released her back to her quarters the second time she found her way back to consciousness. Chapel had stood behind him, a sleek face of calm over his shoulder. “I’ll make sure she gets there safely.” The smooth contralto had surprised McCoy and Janice both. Janice blinked but McCoy rose an eyebrow, just as languid in his response as Chapel had been in her offer.
“Will you now?” If Janice had felt more connected to her skin, she would have shuddered at the pleasure there, the interest in those three words. Chapel might be her own woman, but she paid something for that freedom, Janice suspected and she wasn’t sure she’d have been willing to pay that price. It didn’t seem to phase Chapel though - the nurse arched her own eyebrow and smirked into the anticipatory silence.
In the end he let them go with nothing more than that significant look. Chapel stayed close, close enough that their shoulders brushed when Janice swayed. But the yeoman kept her feet - she had no excuse this time to follow her own urges and curiosities no matter how much she wondered if Chapel would actually move to catch her if she stumbled. Best not to test people in those matters; it was too easy to be disappointed when you hit the ground.
On further reflection, from the comfort of her bed, Janice mused, Chapel might not have disappointed her after all. Janice had been easy to direct, and Chapel had steered her without taking advantage of Janice’s passivity. Meds and a shower (with the door open in case Janice fell), a gentle patient brush through the wreckage of tangles in her hair (McCoy was many things, too - but he wasn’t a hairdresser), a pleasant but nonsexual pair of hands dressing Janice in her nightgown. She was almost always cold but Chapel had pulled up the blankets and tucked her in like Janice was a little girl again. “You can call me Christine, you know.”
Janice smiled at the invitation. The drugs were kicking in. “And I’m Janice.”
“Of course.” She might have imagined the indulgent softness against her cheek but the voice was close to Janice’s ear. She moved toward it, and drifted.
Christine grew no less attentive; as she healed, Janice waited for the other woman to establish distance, a return to the formality and ritual civility that governed the Enterprise and kept the usual struggles for dominance at a minimum. Instead, they grew closer. Janice surprised herself when she invited Christine to share a meal, and then another meal. In the quiet expanse of being between two places, they slowly formed habits: lunch in tiny office given to the nurses in Sickbay, an oasis of calm no matter how hectic their shifts; dinner in the mess, where they were joined by Chapel’s friends (Nyota Uhura with her famous barbed tongue, Gaila with her flinty eyes that eased into welcome for the right people, Marlena Moreau with her practiced seductive wiles - they all had their protective measures); dessert in Janice’s quarters when neither of them could sleep.
It was a comfortable habit, Janice thought four weeks later, smiled to herself as she handed reports to Kirk for his approval. She shifted her weight on her feet and he looked, for the space of a quick glance, at her legs. Janice waited for the old familiar satisfaction - when it came, it was muted. The game had grown too easy. There were, she realized, higher stakes now. Because if Christine looked at her legs... Well. That might lead to other things. Other, enjoyable things.
“Good to see you back and steady on your feet, yeoman.” Kirk returned the PADD to her, his hands as steady as his voice, no sign in it of the retribution he had sought on her behalf. More likely, though, on his own behalf - he would be seen as weak if his crew was so easily preyed upon.
“Thank you, Captain, sir. It’s good to be fully back and useful again.” No matter his motivation, the gratitude was still there. Her job was still there. She smiled at him, a thing she had never dared to do. And Kirk smiled back, his white teeth ferocious in his mouth.
There was nothing reassuring about the expression. But it made her feel safe, nonetheless. Janice retreated, filed the approved reports, and moved on to the next set. It was a surprise when Uhura rang the buzzer for entrance to Janice’s tiny closet of an office next to Kirk’s ready room. Janice’s automatic smile faltered at Uhura’s silence, though, when the lieutenant simply sat without a word. “Is something the matter with Christine?” Janice’s hands followed the shut down procedures for her workstation automatically. If something were wrong with Christine, of course Janice would go to her.
Uhura’s mouth twitched at that. “No, Chris is fine. I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes, if you have the time.”
She hadn’t recognized the fist that gripped at her breath until it let go; Janice sighed her relief and her hands settled back onto her desk, her terminal blinking a query at her that she could answer later; Christine was okay. Janice smiled again, nodded. “Oh, then, of course. You scared me for a minute there.” Perhaps not the wisest admission she’d ever made but Janice took the risk gladly. If Uhura used it again her later, she would live with the consequences.
There was no small talk. “What are you playing at, with Kirk?” While Janice worked to close her shocked mouth, Uhura crossed her legs. “I”ll clarify; if you’re playing with Kirk, what are you doing with Chris?”
“I don’t understand - Chris is my friend.” Janice was, admittedly, not entirely aware of the shipboard gossip but if Uhura thought there was something between Janice and Kirk, well, it was laughable.
“You were flirting with him, on the Bridge.” Uhura was implacable.
And then Janice blinked and understood. “If that’s your threshold for flirting, you set the bar very low, don’t you?” She leaned forward, her elbows on the desk’s hard surface, grounding her. “He saved my life as surely as McCoy and Christine did.”
Her expression was all in her mouth - Uhura had spent enough time with their stoic first officer to learn how to school her features, it seemed, but Janice had spent enough time with her to know: you just had to watch her mouth. Janice did, and saw the disdain. “So you think you owe him something because you’re grateful? You made him look at you.”
Janice snorted, rude and unladylike and unapologetic. “It’s an old game. He looks at my legs - but he never sees what they actually look like.” Her relief that nothing had happened to Christine gave way to anger. Janice stood and plucked at the material of her tights, pulled the material until it was sheer against her thigh and the lacework of her scars peeked through like hands at a dirty window. “Did you want to see?” Her voice hissed out - shouting would draw too much attention, bring security running to keep the peace, invite interventions that were always painful.
“Have you shown Chris?” The disdain was gone, replaced by something like understanding.
Christine had undressed her for the shower, had redressed Janice in her nightgown. “She’s seen.” Seen and never said a word, never asked a question. But there had also never been any disgust when Christine looked at her so Janice counted herself lucky enough even as she wondered if it were possible to win more personal attention. It was frightening. It was risky.
Finally Uhura’s face cracked; her forehead wrinkled and her eyebrows drew together, her pained confusion evident and clear for anyone to see if there had been anyone else to look. “Then what’s wrong? Why do you keep hurting her?”
When Janice was silent, it was generally by choice. But this time it felt like the words had been stolen from her lips; she had been prepared with more anger. When she found her voice, it was small. “What do you mean?”
“You keep rejecting her.” Uhura’s words hung in the air between them.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I need to finish this report.” Janice blinked, somewhere below her own surface, but mostly she considered Christine and the things they had done together.
Uhura’s mouth twisted before the woman left, but Janice hardly registered it. She would deal with it later. Christine felt rejected.
Rejection implied that Janice had missed an invitation somewhere. Uhura might regard some casual back and forth with the captain as flirting, but Janice had far more straightforward standards; perhaps that was the source of this particular downfall. If Christine had regarded some subtle action as a way of signaling interesting, Janice would never have had a chance at catching it.
Janice finished the shut down procedures on her console. Her instincts had been right the first time - she needed to go to Christine. She patted her hair, still plaited in the complicated basket weave pattern Christine had done for her the night before. She took several deep breaths. “Computer, locate nurse Christine Chapel.”
The dry computerized voice was, if not eager to help, at least compliant with direct queries. “Nurse Christine Chapel is currently located in the nurse’s office, Sick Bay, Deck 5.”
That was a good enough location. It was private. Janice followed the path that had become familiar over the weeks - and it was just that simple; Christine was where she was supposed to be. “I haven’t been flirting with anyone.”
Not the smoothest way to begin things, perhaps - confirmed by the step away that Christine took. “I -- what?”
“Can I show you something?” If Janice had considered it before hand, she would have supposed she would be shy or embarrassed. But when Christine nodded, still confused, Janice simply toed off her boots and took off her tights, without shame. She hiked her skirt a little higher on her hips so Christine could get the full view of her thighs, pale and criss-crossed with scar tissue.
Even without shame, it was difficult to know where to begin. “When I was little, I didn’t understand what my mother did. It kept us in moderate comfort, even if it also kept us in moderate isolation.” Janice’s slight smile was rueful. “It wasn’t until I got older, when she decided I should follow in her footsteps, that she began to paint me with scars - that’s what she called it. Painting.”
It was nothing Christine had not seen before - but Janice had never deliberately shown her. And she’d certainly never told anyone any of her own stories before.
The invitation to look was plain so Janice didn’t begrudge Christine the opportunity. When the nurse stepped forward, fingers extended as though she would touch, Janice widened her stance to steady herself. But Christine surprised her - the other woman stopped herself and met Janice’s steady gaze. “What kind of picture did she think she was painting?”
“Trees. Mountains. The landscape where we lived. But mostly, I think, she was painting the freedom she wanted.” Janice had considered it, had traced the raised lines over and over as she huddled in her bunk at the Academy. She had tried to find a way to understand - and had mostly failed. “In hindsight, I think my grandmother did the same to her. Her customers had... specific tastes.”
That hovering hand still waited between them. Janice moved slow, had no desire to startle Christine. She grasped the hand, pulled the fingers to her thighs. “You can touch.” And Janice only tensed a little as, with medical interest and professional curiosity making Christine’s head tilt for a better, the blonde woman examined the scar tissue Janice had been wearing since her late teens.
“Has it faded at all?” That was Christine’s nurse voice.
The yeoman shook her head. “I have a question for you, Christine.” She’d never used the nickname Uhura and the other’s used: Chris. It seemed too casual. Janice wanted import. And that was what she got when Christine raised her head from her examination. “I’d like to kiss you. Will you consent to that?”
“I will. I do consent.” There was no hesitation, only the straightening of Christine’s spine, the settling of her weight on her feet.
Janice closed the distance between them. And realized that, in her bare feet, her mouth was only on level with Christine’s chin. It would have broken the mood to laugh; they could share amusement over it later, after. For the moment, Janice reached up and tugged at Christine’s hair a bit, just a slight encouragement to bend.
It occurred to her, in a moment that paused itself, that Christine would make an excellent mother. The idea was not frightening.
The linear progression of time started again - Christine bent, Janice stretched, just enough on her toes to test Christine’s mouth, pink lips as ripe as the rest of her generous frame. She hesitated, enough to allow for objection, and Christine only sighed into the breath between them. It was enough to encourage her - Janice licked her own lips, tasted Christine’s in the process. Then she pressed forward, nothing more of the tentative or unsure in her motions.
They pulled apart and Janice gasped a deep breath, filling her lungs in the moment before Christine returned to seal their mouths together again. They kissed, and breathed, all in a rush, until the idea of standing, of remaining static, was impossible; Janice might swear, in the future, that Christine was the one to pull her toward the desk, but in private, at least, it had to be admitted: it could easily have been the other way around.
Author: sharpestscalpel
Characters: mirror!Janice Rand/mirror!Christine Chapel (with tangential mirror!Kirk/mirror!McCoy and appearances by mirror!Gaila, mirror!MarlenaMoreau, and interaction with mirror!Uhura)
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4180
Summary: Janice Rand never wanted to be like her mother; perhaps there is another way to be.
Notes: Written for where_no_woman's Mother's Day fest, for the prompt: Motherhood after growing up in an abusive household. (I am a day late posting - I apologize! Travel and then an unexpected party tripped me up. Good party though. *grin*)
WARNINGS: There is mention of a serious physical assault (not rape) and some of the recovery from that; there is repeated, thematic mention of a child/teen; there is mention of sex work in an unhealthy mirror!universe context. This is a mirror!universe but not in the way I generally write it - I'd say it's kinder and gentler but I think it's actually more dangerous in some ways, like an organized crime family.
Janice Rand wore tights. Thick opaque tights, as close to the color of her flesh as she could manage. She was, in many ways, proud of her legs - strong and well-muscled from the endless laps she jogged around the track, endless running toward something, she liked to think, as much as she was running away, trying to find her escape. She’d considered the uniform option with pants, when she’d first joined the Imperial Fleet (when she’d finally found a way to actually escape, not just her old life but gravity, Earth, the entire solar system as well - though there was no escaping the Terran Empire); she’d never been a fan of pants, with her short rise and her long waist and her peculiar height that never seemed to work with anything that was standard issue. So the skirts had been easier, more comfortable. And the tights had done the work of hiding her skin.
And then she had made up a game - it had become a challenge to see if she could make Kirk look at her legs. A dangerous game, because he was in the doctor’s pocket all the time, but a person could still look. Sometimes, the doctor looked, too. And when either one of them did, when she leaned just the right way and the light gleamed on her thigh, she felt like being looked at wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her.
No, the worst thing that could happen to her - that could happen to her again - happened to her on Altaas XVI. Shore leave, and she’d been shopping. Her own fault, really, for going out alone and being too slow with her knives. She’d had so little reason to practice, favored yeoman of a favored captain. The beating had been efficient, she’d recognized that even as her vision had dimmed.
She’d returned with more scars. Not that it should have mattered much; she was a map of backroads and byways cutting out thick paths to and from her house to school and back, the only place she’d been allowed to go. She was already traced with the routes her mother had wanted her to walk.
But it had mattered. She had turned her face to the wall and considered that Kirk was punishing her by letting her live, punishing her for being a target. McCoy’s sickbay was not a purgatory, not the limbo her grandmother had put her to bed with on the bad days, on the days when promises had been broken - McCoy’s sickbay was merely the setting; Janice carried her own hell with her, something in her nature. There was no escaping that, no matter how far out into the black they ventured.
It had mattered, and Janice had eyed McCoy, had wondered if there was enough kindness in him to help her make a final escape, to administer too much of the pain medication she knew not everyone was allowed in the first place: one last favor, if only because she had never been late with Kirk’s paperwork.
The Imperial Fleet took its paperwork very seriously.
Before she could pursue her thoughts, though, before Janice could descend too deeply and too quickly to surface on her own, Chapel had been there. Nurse Chapel, with the scar across her face that tilted one side of her mouth up in a constant smirk. Nurse Chapel, who had been engaged, rumor had it, to the owner of the finger she supposedly kept in a little box in her underwear drawer. There was much shipboard speculation about the contents of Chapel’s underwear drawer, but she had more than knives on her side; Chapel had McCoy, had her team of nurses, had a medicine cabinet full of wonderful torments for anyone who threatened her.
Each of Chapel’s movements was accompanied by the soft hidden rustle of silk - she didn’t wear tights. Her legs were all but bare, more enticing for the whisper of her thighs, clad in the sheerest of stockings, brushing past one another - Chapel was many things; she was ripe and full and heavy. Janice wondered, in her first moment of curiosity since she had materialized back aboard and fallen off the beaming pad, if Chapel was wearing a garter belt under her skirt.
Later, doubtlessly, she would blame it on the fog of drugs - Janice would never have otherwise been so forward; she was still her mother’s daughter, after all, and Rand women knew their place (knew their limits and their worth - pain and all). “Are you the Doctor’s woman?” The captain was what he was - but there had to be some reason McCoy remained so loyal to his head nurse. There was a reason for everything; everything was based on a transaction of some kind.
Chapel’s hand was cool and gentle on Janice’s forehead. “I’m my own woman. Go back to sleep, Yeoman.” The hiss of a hypospray, an injection Janice couldn’t even feel, preceded the inexorable tide of unconsciousness that pulled Janice back under a blanket of cushioned blackness. Somehow, down deep, it was easier to breathe.
Somewhere, perhaps, there was a universe where Janice Rand did not wake back up, where she stayed below the surface, touching her own reflection at the barrier to waking. In that universe, perhaps, her mother mourned the loss of a strong daughter, a loved daughter, a daughter who had not refused and spoiled all efforts to sell her when that Janice understood the family business, understood why her mother slept late and was so angry to be woken by the sounds of play. Perhaps in that universe, it had been a good job, and that Janice had been registered and protected and clean - had never been given to a stranger with a knife, had never faced other strangers who wanted to hurt her simply because they could.
But Janice was not in that universe. She knew it when she found herself again, still wrapped in the cotton of her mind, the pain of her body distant and almost elegant in its scope. In her own universe, she drifted, easy and comfortable, waiting for the pieces of her self to come back together in whatever fashion they would.
Her humor was quick to reassert its presence. She chuckled, low pitched and genuine, at her own observation: McCoy had not only given her drugs, he’d given her really very excellent drugs. She was going to owe him a favor. Unless it had been Chapel - her intuition skated across a frozen pond, a fluid arabesque that melted back into the rest of the ice before it reached the shore. Chapel - she was her own woman. Janice had supposed herself to be the same.
Janice had made mistakes before.
She woke up easy and McCoy was there, propping her up on the biobed and offering water through a straw. His hands were polite as he scanned her, his body relaxed and professionally nonthreatening as he slumped into a chair at her bedside.
“Just so you know, the captain found your assailants,” - the word sounded like something poisonous in his drawling Southern syllables. “Afraid you missed the trial and execution though.” There was a violent light in his hazel eyes, a reminder that the Fleet’s doctors were not only there to preserve life but to take it in the most painful ways when it was deemed necessary. Janice nodded, solemn. She hadn’t wondered; not once in her sleep had she thought of her attackers. But to know it when she was awake satisfied another part of her, something low in her gut that had never been content with escape - as though vengeance had ever been possible. McCoy must had recognized it in her face; he smiled, open and so beautiful it made Janice catch her breath. “The captain takes care of his own, Yeoman Rand. That’s what keeps him - and the rest of us - alive.”
It was a simple truth. She clung to it. But it only answered one question; there were others, not least of which was why anyone would think the captain valued her - or why he apparently did. “What’s wrong with me?” Her body still felt numb and even without much combat experience Janice was familiar enough with the slightly reckless sense of immortality that regen units usually knit into the flesh they healed.
McCoy’s smile remained as he consulted his PADD. “They beat the shit out of your midsection, bruised up just about every organ there, broke some ribs in the process. I healed the bone damage, got most of the tissues sorted. Noticed a few things missing during the surgery.” It was all in her medical history, the whole banal story of violence and infection and removal. She’d made sure it was there herself so there would be no awkward conversations with medical staff wondering why she didn’t show up for the regular birth control shots. “We’re keeping you numbed down because there was some spinal damage - you’ll be wobbly and I suggest you don’t venture out alone during gamma shift - but it should be healed clean in another 24 to 36 hours.”
He was right - though of course he was right. McCoy was the best. She found it in herself, to her own amused surprise, to be surprised that he hadn’t somehow repaired everything as long as he was there, replaced her missing parts with borrowed or replicated organs. There was relief, even in the face of that, to know he had not. Janice had considered motherhood, pretended at it with pillows stuffed under her shirt when she was seven. It had seemed wonderful, like the best magic trick her child mind could imagine.
Her enthusiasm had waned. Her breasts drew too much attention from too many people, her long blonde hair caught too many eyes and fingers. And her mother had watched it all and planned.
Janice’s grandmother had whispered to the frightened colt of a girl - it was hard to be a Rand woman. It was hard to stand on your own when the world was so eager for cruelty, bruises waiting for the slightest unwary motion, blossoming like spring in the back fields. And her grandmother had been right, Janice realized over the years. It was hard to be a Rand woman. The family business built the family reputation. She’d considered changing her name.
Instead, she had entered the dark doorway of the recruiting office, signed her own name on every line the silver-eyed man named Pike had indicated. Perhaps, she had quietly hoped, there would be a star that could carry on her family name. She would never risk being like her mother.
McCoy’s face blurred and Janice blinked back the unwise emotion that moved her. “Thank you. I’ll be careful.” Gratitude was always a good plan of action with McCoy. His satisfied grin was answer enough. Janice let her eyes close and slept as easy as she’d woken up.
The doctor hadn’t been lying - she’d been shaky and weak when he’d released her back to her quarters the second time she found her way back to consciousness. Chapel had stood behind him, a sleek face of calm over his shoulder. “I’ll make sure she gets there safely.” The smooth contralto had surprised McCoy and Janice both. Janice blinked but McCoy rose an eyebrow, just as languid in his response as Chapel had been in her offer.
“Will you now?” If Janice had felt more connected to her skin, she would have shuddered at the pleasure there, the interest in those three words. Chapel might be her own woman, but she paid something for that freedom, Janice suspected and she wasn’t sure she’d have been willing to pay that price. It didn’t seem to phase Chapel though - the nurse arched her own eyebrow and smirked into the anticipatory silence.
In the end he let them go with nothing more than that significant look. Chapel stayed close, close enough that their shoulders brushed when Janice swayed. But the yeoman kept her feet - she had no excuse this time to follow her own urges and curiosities no matter how much she wondered if Chapel would actually move to catch her if she stumbled. Best not to test people in those matters; it was too easy to be disappointed when you hit the ground.
On further reflection, from the comfort of her bed, Janice mused, Chapel might not have disappointed her after all. Janice had been easy to direct, and Chapel had steered her without taking advantage of Janice’s passivity. Meds and a shower (with the door open in case Janice fell), a gentle patient brush through the wreckage of tangles in her hair (McCoy was many things, too - but he wasn’t a hairdresser), a pleasant but nonsexual pair of hands dressing Janice in her nightgown. She was almost always cold but Chapel had pulled up the blankets and tucked her in like Janice was a little girl again. “You can call me Christine, you know.”
Janice smiled at the invitation. The drugs were kicking in. “And I’m Janice.”
“Of course.” She might have imagined the indulgent softness against her cheek but the voice was close to Janice’s ear. She moved toward it, and drifted.
Christine grew no less attentive; as she healed, Janice waited for the other woman to establish distance, a return to the formality and ritual civility that governed the Enterprise and kept the usual struggles for dominance at a minimum. Instead, they grew closer. Janice surprised herself when she invited Christine to share a meal, and then another meal. In the quiet expanse of being between two places, they slowly formed habits: lunch in tiny office given to the nurses in Sickbay, an oasis of calm no matter how hectic their shifts; dinner in the mess, where they were joined by Chapel’s friends (Nyota Uhura with her famous barbed tongue, Gaila with her flinty eyes that eased into welcome for the right people, Marlena Moreau with her practiced seductive wiles - they all had their protective measures); dessert in Janice’s quarters when neither of them could sleep.
It was a comfortable habit, Janice thought four weeks later, smiled to herself as she handed reports to Kirk for his approval. She shifted her weight on her feet and he looked, for the space of a quick glance, at her legs. Janice waited for the old familiar satisfaction - when it came, it was muted. The game had grown too easy. There were, she realized, higher stakes now. Because if Christine looked at her legs... Well. That might lead to other things. Other, enjoyable things.
“Good to see you back and steady on your feet, yeoman.” Kirk returned the PADD to her, his hands as steady as his voice, no sign in it of the retribution he had sought on her behalf. More likely, though, on his own behalf - he would be seen as weak if his crew was so easily preyed upon.
“Thank you, Captain, sir. It’s good to be fully back and useful again.” No matter his motivation, the gratitude was still there. Her job was still there. She smiled at him, a thing she had never dared to do. And Kirk smiled back, his white teeth ferocious in his mouth.
There was nothing reassuring about the expression. But it made her feel safe, nonetheless. Janice retreated, filed the approved reports, and moved on to the next set. It was a surprise when Uhura rang the buzzer for entrance to Janice’s tiny closet of an office next to Kirk’s ready room. Janice’s automatic smile faltered at Uhura’s silence, though, when the lieutenant simply sat without a word. “Is something the matter with Christine?” Janice’s hands followed the shut down procedures for her workstation automatically. If something were wrong with Christine, of course Janice would go to her.
Uhura’s mouth twitched at that. “No, Chris is fine. I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes, if you have the time.”
She hadn’t recognized the fist that gripped at her breath until it let go; Janice sighed her relief and her hands settled back onto her desk, her terminal blinking a query at her that she could answer later; Christine was okay. Janice smiled again, nodded. “Oh, then, of course. You scared me for a minute there.” Perhaps not the wisest admission she’d ever made but Janice took the risk gladly. If Uhura used it again her later, she would live with the consequences.
There was no small talk. “What are you playing at, with Kirk?” While Janice worked to close her shocked mouth, Uhura crossed her legs. “I”ll clarify; if you’re playing with Kirk, what are you doing with Chris?”
“I don’t understand - Chris is my friend.” Janice was, admittedly, not entirely aware of the shipboard gossip but if Uhura thought there was something between Janice and Kirk, well, it was laughable.
“You were flirting with him, on the Bridge.” Uhura was implacable.
And then Janice blinked and understood. “If that’s your threshold for flirting, you set the bar very low, don’t you?” She leaned forward, her elbows on the desk’s hard surface, grounding her. “He saved my life as surely as McCoy and Christine did.”
Her expression was all in her mouth - Uhura had spent enough time with their stoic first officer to learn how to school her features, it seemed, but Janice had spent enough time with her to know: you just had to watch her mouth. Janice did, and saw the disdain. “So you think you owe him something because you’re grateful? You made him look at you.”
Janice snorted, rude and unladylike and unapologetic. “It’s an old game. He looks at my legs - but he never sees what they actually look like.” Her relief that nothing had happened to Christine gave way to anger. Janice stood and plucked at the material of her tights, pulled the material until it was sheer against her thigh and the lacework of her scars peeked through like hands at a dirty window. “Did you want to see?” Her voice hissed out - shouting would draw too much attention, bring security running to keep the peace, invite interventions that were always painful.
“Have you shown Chris?” The disdain was gone, replaced by something like understanding.
Christine had undressed her for the shower, had redressed Janice in her nightgown. “She’s seen.” Seen and never said a word, never asked a question. But there had also never been any disgust when Christine looked at her so Janice counted herself lucky enough even as she wondered if it were possible to win more personal attention. It was frightening. It was risky.
Finally Uhura’s face cracked; her forehead wrinkled and her eyebrows drew together, her pained confusion evident and clear for anyone to see if there had been anyone else to look. “Then what’s wrong? Why do you keep hurting her?”
When Janice was silent, it was generally by choice. But this time it felt like the words had been stolen from her lips; she had been prepared with more anger. When she found her voice, it was small. “What do you mean?”
“You keep rejecting her.” Uhura’s words hung in the air between them.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I need to finish this report.” Janice blinked, somewhere below her own surface, but mostly she considered Christine and the things they had done together.
Uhura’s mouth twisted before the woman left, but Janice hardly registered it. She would deal with it later. Christine felt rejected.
Rejection implied that Janice had missed an invitation somewhere. Uhura might regard some casual back and forth with the captain as flirting, but Janice had far more straightforward standards; perhaps that was the source of this particular downfall. If Christine had regarded some subtle action as a way of signaling interesting, Janice would never have had a chance at catching it.
Janice finished the shut down procedures on her console. Her instincts had been right the first time - she needed to go to Christine. She patted her hair, still plaited in the complicated basket weave pattern Christine had done for her the night before. She took several deep breaths. “Computer, locate nurse Christine Chapel.”
The dry computerized voice was, if not eager to help, at least compliant with direct queries. “Nurse Christine Chapel is currently located in the nurse’s office, Sick Bay, Deck 5.”
That was a good enough location. It was private. Janice followed the path that had become familiar over the weeks - and it was just that simple; Christine was where she was supposed to be. “I haven’t been flirting with anyone.”
Not the smoothest way to begin things, perhaps - confirmed by the step away that Christine took. “I -- what?”
“Can I show you something?” If Janice had considered it before hand, she would have supposed she would be shy or embarrassed. But when Christine nodded, still confused, Janice simply toed off her boots and took off her tights, without shame. She hiked her skirt a little higher on her hips so Christine could get the full view of her thighs, pale and criss-crossed with scar tissue.
Even without shame, it was difficult to know where to begin. “When I was little, I didn’t understand what my mother did. It kept us in moderate comfort, even if it also kept us in moderate isolation.” Janice’s slight smile was rueful. “It wasn’t until I got older, when she decided I should follow in her footsteps, that she began to paint me with scars - that’s what she called it. Painting.”
It was nothing Christine had not seen before - but Janice had never deliberately shown her. And she’d certainly never told anyone any of her own stories before.
The invitation to look was plain so Janice didn’t begrudge Christine the opportunity. When the nurse stepped forward, fingers extended as though she would touch, Janice widened her stance to steady herself. But Christine surprised her - the other woman stopped herself and met Janice’s steady gaze. “What kind of picture did she think she was painting?”
“Trees. Mountains. The landscape where we lived. But mostly, I think, she was painting the freedom she wanted.” Janice had considered it, had traced the raised lines over and over as she huddled in her bunk at the Academy. She had tried to find a way to understand - and had mostly failed. “In hindsight, I think my grandmother did the same to her. Her customers had... specific tastes.”
That hovering hand still waited between them. Janice moved slow, had no desire to startle Christine. She grasped the hand, pulled the fingers to her thighs. “You can touch.” And Janice only tensed a little as, with medical interest and professional curiosity making Christine’s head tilt for a better, the blonde woman examined the scar tissue Janice had been wearing since her late teens.
“Has it faded at all?” That was Christine’s nurse voice.
The yeoman shook her head. “I have a question for you, Christine.” She’d never used the nickname Uhura and the other’s used: Chris. It seemed too casual. Janice wanted import. And that was what she got when Christine raised her head from her examination. “I’d like to kiss you. Will you consent to that?”
“I will. I do consent.” There was no hesitation, only the straightening of Christine’s spine, the settling of her weight on her feet.
Janice closed the distance between them. And realized that, in her bare feet, her mouth was only on level with Christine’s chin. It would have broken the mood to laugh; they could share amusement over it later, after. For the moment, Janice reached up and tugged at Christine’s hair a bit, just a slight encouragement to bend.
It occurred to her, in a moment that paused itself, that Christine would make an excellent mother. The idea was not frightening.
The linear progression of time started again - Christine bent, Janice stretched, just enough on her toes to test Christine’s mouth, pink lips as ripe as the rest of her generous frame. She hesitated, enough to allow for objection, and Christine only sighed into the breath between them. It was enough to encourage her - Janice licked her own lips, tasted Christine’s in the process. Then she pressed forward, nothing more of the tentative or unsure in her motions.
They pulled apart and Janice gasped a deep breath, filling her lungs in the moment before Christine returned to seal their mouths together again. They kissed, and breathed, all in a rush, until the idea of standing, of remaining static, was impossible; Janice might swear, in the future, that Christine was the one to pull her toward the desk, but in private, at least, it had to be admitted: it could easily have been the other way around.