Big Bang 2010 - If Wishes Were Horses 10/18
Title: If Wishes Were Horses
Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: Mentions an attempted sexual assault
Length: 3335
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything recognisable in this fic and I’m not making any money from it.
Notes: Beta by seren_ccd
Summary: All her life Janice Rand had wanted one thing - to figure out just what she was supposed to do with herself. She drifted into Starfleet on a whim, and to her surprise, found a niche to fill. But being assigned to the Enterprise brings with it a challenge to her neat and ordered way of life, and Janice is unsure as to how much she's willing to let James T. Kirk affect her. But since when has love ever been easy? And will Janice let her heart stand in the way of her career?
Later that week, Janice wished she had still been wearing her trouser uniform. Or better yet, one of those suits of armour you still saw in museums at home. That might have been more of a deterrent, although, after Janice read the reports of Scott, Spock and McCoy, she knew that nothing she was wearing had anything to do with why the captain had decided to try and rape her.
Not that it was the captain, she kept telling herself, and the psychiatrist that she had to have therapy with after the incident. It wasn’t him, not really.
It was his...evil side, for want of a better word. The part of him without kindness, or regard for others. The nasty little voice that lives in every brain, surfacing now and again to remind you that no matter how far from the Earth you fly or how much technology you have, you’re never really far away from your primitive roots.
The truth came out in fits and starts, and she heard most of it while bundled up in Nyota’s comfort blanket in a private room in sickbay. Christine had stuck by her like glue as soon as she was escorted in, shaking and crying with blood on one of her hands, and Nyota and Gaila had arrived soon afterwards, like grim-faced avenging angels. They had stood outside the door to her room, discouraging gawpers and gossip with pointed stares and not-too-subtle reminders about the power that computer engineers had over the closed systems of a starship.
Spock had been the one to do the questioning, along with McCoy. Kirk had hesitated outside the doorway to her room but had retreated, looking pale and nauseous.
Stumbling in her recount of events, Janice hesitantly told the officers about her return to her quarters and the surprise entrance of Kirk from her bathroom, clutching a bottle of Saurian brandy. McCoy had exchanged a significant look with Spock at that point, although Janice only found out later why that was important, how McCoy himself had given the bottle to the evil Kirk, not recognising that his own best friend had been altered. Kirk had talked to her using the same tone of voice he had that night at the party, telling her how beautiful she was, and how he couldn’t restrain himself any more.
Then he had pounced on her, using his superior strength and abilities to crush her to his chest as he kissed her, forcing his tongue past her lips.
“I tried to fight back,” she had said dully, looking at the floor, away from the gentle pity in McCoy’s face and the impassive stare of Spock. “But he was so strong, I couldn’t...”
She broke off and tried to stifle a sob, and Christine passed her a tissue.
“Does she really have to do this now?” she heard the nurse hiss furiously, a protective arm winding around Janice’s shoulders. “She’s still in shock.”
“It is important,” Spock said gravely.
“I’m fine,” Janice insisted, taking a few deep breaths. Christine’s hand rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. “He threw me to the floor, but I managed to get an arm free,” she continued. “So when he tried to kiss me again, I scratched his face.”
She looked down at her hand, with her bloodstained nails and fingers, and then back up at the two officers.
“I got him good,” she said eventually. “It was enough to make him get off me, and I ran for the door. Ensign Louvakis was passing in the corridor, and he saw Captain Kirk grab at me again. He wrestled with the captain, and got him to break his grip. The captain ran down the hallway, and Ensign Louvakis brought me here and alerted you, Commander Spock.”
“I’m going to take a sample of the blood underneath your nails, yeoman,” McCoy said gently. “I’m going to touch your hand to do it. Alright?”
Janice didn’t respond, just extended her hand. She wasn’t nervous of McCoy right now. She was angry, and she was scared of the change that had come over Kirk, who she could tell was still hovering outside the door to her room, but the doctor held no fear for her. He gently scraped some of the dried blood out from her nails, and then placed it inside a scanning unit.
“It’s the captain’s blood,” he said without emotion. “There’s no denying it.”
“And there is also the testimony of Ensign Louvakis,” Spock said, stepping away from Janice. “Until we discover what has happened, I must order the detention of the captain in the brig.”
McCoy nodded grimly. Janice started to cry again, and tried not to feel guilty.
Luckily, it was at this point that Commander Scott had worked out the connection between the faulty transporter, the unusual ore on Technician Fisher’s uniform and the two alien creatures that had emerged on the transporter pad when only one had beamed up from the survey team below. The survey team that Kirk had been leading. One creature was docile and pleasant, one was vicious and aggressive, lashing out at anyone who went near it.
Janice missed the rest of the drama of the day; the hunt for the captain’s evil double, the problems getting a shuttlecraft down to the rapidly-freezing surface of the planet, the deterioration of the ‘good’ Kirk and the desperate showdown on the bridge before the risky re-integration process. She spent her day in Sickbay, wrapped up in Nyota’s blanket and comforted by Christine. Nyota and Gaila had joined the search teams for the ‘evil’ Kirk, and Janice shuddered to think what would happen if either of the women caught up with him. She wasn’t entirely sure who she was the most worried for, them or him, and in the end settled for a general, medium-level concern for everyone.
Christine had stayed with her, abandoning her usual job. Janice had tried to make her go back to work, but Christine had merely raised an eyebrow and continued sitting exactly where she was, cuddled up with Janice on the bed. Occasionally McCoy poked his head around the door and did a form of silent communication with Christine, but then he would leave. Janice opened a connection to the captain’s data feed, and pieced together what was happening from there.
“I want to go back to my room,” Janice said eventually, sometime after she had obediently eaten the light meal that Christine had put in front of her.
“Are you sure?” Christine fussed, picking up Janice’s hand. “Because you can always stay here for a while longer.”
“I’m not ill, Christine,” Janice sighed. “And I don’t want to hide. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Christine said fiercely.
“And neither has the captain,” Janice continued.
Christine stiffened, and her face took on a grim look.
“He hasn’t,”Janice said firmly. “It wasn’t him that attacked me, not really.”
Christine continued to say nothing, but instead started to tidy up the small room.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to do something really awful?” Janice asked pointedly. “Something terrible, something really, really bad?”
“Yes,” Christine said eventually, looking unsettled.
“Me too,” said Janice honestly. “So has Nyota. So has Gaila. So has McCoy, and Louvakis and everybody else on this ship. Even Spock has emotions, really strong ones too. But the reason we don’t act on those bad feelings is because our better sides win out. Our kindness, our morality, our logic. But the captain didn’t have any of those things when he attacked me, because they were all ripped out of him by the transporter. Do you think he would ever do anything like that normally?”
“No!” said Christine, sounding slightly shocked at the idea.
“Me either,” said Janice pointedly.
“I suppose you’re right,” Christine said sighing. “But when Louvakis brought you in...”
“I was upset, and hurt, and angry and frightened and a hundred other things,” Janice said. “But I’m calmer now, thanks to you. And I want to go home.”
“Alright then,” Christine said. “I’ll walk you there.”
It was more of an order than an offer, and Janice knew when she was beaten. Christine went with her into her room and tried to muffle a shocked intake of breath when she saw the smashed bottle of brandy, the canvases thrown to the floor and the upturned furniture.
Together the women mopped up the spilled liquid, righted the furniture and stacked the finished, unframed canvases back against the wall.
“This one’s beautiful,” said Christine, holding it up to the light fixture and staring at it.
“Thank you,” Janice replied proudly. “Please, take it.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Christine said, but her gaze kept drifting towards the wild colours on the canvas.
“I insist,” Janice said firmly. She looked around at the canvases that had stacked up. “It’s not like I’m going to miss it, and I want you to have it.”
“Thank you,” Christine said, hugging Janice while balancing the canvas under her arm. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright? I can stay, for as long as you want.”
“I’ll be fine,” Janice replied, perhaps more firmly than she felt. “Thanks for everything today, Christine, but I just want to be by myself now.”
“Alright then,” Christine said. “Remember, your first session is with Dr. Noel at 0900 tomorrow.”
Janice nodded her understanding, got one last hug and Christine left, clutching her painting under one arm. Then Janice threw everything she had been wearing that day down the recycling unit, used most of her week’s bathing water ration in the longest hot shower she’d ever had, cried for another half an hour and eventually fell asleep, emotional exhaustion finally getting the better of her.
An off-hand comment made by Dr. Noel during the session about Janice using her downtime to try and relax after her ordeal confused her, until Janice checked her duty log and discovered Kirk had given her a week off-duty.
Her blood immediately began to boil. Who the hell was he to banish her from his sight? What was she supposed to be made of, glass? When did she become something that he had to protect? Would he act like this for any other crew member?
By this point she was in a turbolift headed straight for the bridge. She walked calmly across the busy workplace, deliberately ignoring Nyota’s confused expression. She signalled her entrance at the door to the ready room and entered at Kirk’s call.
He looked up from his data screen, a furrow in his forehead so deep it looked like it went all the way down to his brain.
“Yeoman,” he said uneasily. “I thought you were off-duty.”
“I’m fine, sir,” she said plainly, sitting down in her usual seat and picking up a spare PADD from the desk to log into the ship’s systems.
There was silence as Kirk eyed her warily for a moment. You could cut the tension in the room with a butter knife.
“You’re not hurt?” he asked eventually.
“No sir,” she replied truthfully. There had been some bruising from the tussle on the floor, but Christine had sorted that out as soon as they had started to show. The one saving grace of the whole situation was that Janice had actually hurt her attacker more than he had been able to hurt her.
“Right,” he said carefully. “Well, the regulations for cases like this include the right for the victim to be protected from any contact with their attacker, so...”
“Sir, permission to speak freely?” Janice interrupted.
“Permission granted,” Kirk replied, a dubious look on his face.
“I’m not a victim,” Janice said forcefully. “Stop calling me one. And stop treating me like one.”
“Janice, I attacked you,” Kirk said, dropping all pretence at rank and distance. “You should hate me, God knows I hate me.”
He pushed his chair away from the desk suddenly and strode to the other end of the small room, putting as much physical distance between himself and Janice as he could. He rested the palms of his hands flat against the wall and leaned against it, resting his forehead against the transparent window surface.
Quietly, Janice stood up and walked up behind him. When he didn’t react to her presence, she carefully laid one hand on his back. She could feel the strong muscle tense under her hand, and then relax.
“I’m only going to say this once,” she said quietly. “So I want you to shut up and listen to me. Understand?”
He nodded curtly, still facing the back wall.
“I thought the man that attacked me was you for about thirty seconds. As soon as he started to talk, alarm bells were going off in my head. And as soon as he touched me, I knew he wasn’t you. I don’t know how, or why, but I just knew.”
“You don’t have to say this, Janice, “ interrupted Kirk, and Janice sighed loudly.
“Did you, or did you not, just promise to be quiet?” she asked rhetorically, and in the reflection of the window she saw a ghost of a smile on Kirk’s lips. It faded almost as soon as it appeared, but its sign was a good omen.
“As soon as I read the report from Commander Scott, and the one from Commander Spock, it all started to make sense. I don’t hold you responsible for what happened, captain. It wasn’t you.”
“It was the evil side of me,” Kirk said bitterly, and seemed surprised when Janice snorted sarcastically.
“You think we all haven’t got those lurking deep inside us? I know I have. Ask Simone Rees, her hair was purple for a month after she stole my first boyfriend.”
“That’s hardly the same,” Kirk pointed out.
“We’re not the same,” she told him pointedly. “And my thirteen year old self didn’t have access to charged phaser pulse rifles, or I would still be working off my sentence in a New Zealand penal colony right now. God, I hated her. Hated her. So I did the one thing I knew would cause me pleasure and her pain, and by God, I enjoyed it.”
They stood there for a while, staring out at the darkness outside the window. Janice didn’t remove her hand from Kirk’s back, and started to rub gentle circles with it without realising what she was doing.
“What’s your point, Janice?” Kirk asked eventually, relaxing under her impromptu massage.
Janice sighed. “My point is, get over yourself. You have a nasty side. You and the rest of the ship. You locking me away in a room isn’t going to protect me from the dangers of my job. I don’t want to be protected from the dangers of my job, and I resent the implication that you think I can’t handle them.”
He turned around at that, his face a perfect mask of concern.
“I think you can handle anything,” he told her, the honesty in his speech apparent in every word.
“Damn straight,” she told him indignantly. “Can I point out that it wasn’t me that was left bleeding and in pain at the end of our encounter?”
“Point taken,” Kirk said, trying to smile but not quite succeeding. “But you can’t blame me for feeling bad about this. I’m not sure how I would react, if someone tried to rape me.” He stumbled over the word, stuttering as he pronounced it. Janice closed her eyes for a moment and tried to stop her heart from breaking, just a little, for him.
“You’d react the same way you do whenever anyone threatens you,” Janice said plainly. “You’d fight them tooth and nail.”
Kirk rubbed the side of his unblemished face thoughtfully. Janice smiled.
“My nails are just as strong as yours are,” she told him and walked back to her seat, where she picked up her PADD and sat down. “And I’m ready to work now, captain.”
Kirk paused for a long moment, just staring at her. His face was buffeted by emotions he was fighting valiantly to control. Janice hadn’t mentioned what the creature had said about him wanting her, desiring her; he was struggling with the concept of almost causing her physical harm. There was no need to compound his guilt. But she knew that he must be thinking about his emotions, and how their repression had been the cause of his double’s attack.
Life would be so much simpler, she thought sadly, if he didn’t sit in the captain’s chair.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” he asked finally, taking back his seat opposite her.
“Today you have to review the in-service training records for some of the enlisted crew,” Janice told him. “And approve the courses they want to take during their next year of service.
Feeling bold, she put her name at the top of the list and sent it to his screen, signing herself up for the first contact training that was traditionally an officers-only course. Kirk looked at her for a long moment, then tapped his screen. Her record appeared back on her PADD, with a big green ‘approved’ tagged next to the request. He had also transferred the seven days sick time he had granted her to her annual leave allowance.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and that was that. For a while, anyway.
They had worked through about fifty of the enlisted crew before Kirk suddenly downed tools in the middle of approving Petty Officer Paige’s request to train as a yoga instructor to look at Janice thoughtfully.
“If Ensign Louvakis hadn’t come along, you would have had real trouble,” he said suddenly.
“I would have managed,” Janice said defensively, although privately she was planning to do something very nice for the young man as soon as she could figure out what he would appreciate.
“That’s not good enough,” Kirk said stubbornly, and pulled her record back up on his screen. Despite her frown he began tapping away at it. Janice pulled up her copy and studied it carefully.
“You’re recommending hand-to-hand combat classes?” she said in disbelief.
“No, I’m ordering them,” he replied, poking at the screen again. “If you’re going to be going on away missions and meeting potentially hostile alien lifeforms, you’re going to have to defend yourself.”
“Well,” said Janice, somewhat mollified. “I suppose, when you put it like that, it makes sense.”
He paused for a moment, clearly hesitating before speaking.
“Out with it,” sighed Janice. “Sir,” she added, just in case her allowance for plain speech had expired.
“You can say no and I won’t be offended,” he said slowly. “And I understand that it might just remind you about what happened, but, would you let me teach you?”
Janice looked at him, astounded. “I was a tutor at the Academy,” he went on. “And I even got Bones to pass the class, which is incredible because without a hypospray in his hand he’s useless. But I understand if you don’t want to.”
“No,” she said in a rush.
“Oh, alright,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “Don’t worry, I’m sure that the security team will have someone that you’d prefer to...”
“No, I mean, I want to,” Janice clarified, in the least clear way that she could. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Right,” said Kirk with a beaming smile.
“Right,” echoed Janice, smiling back.
Then their lovely, embarrassing, squirmy-feeling-in-the stomach moment was spoiled by the red alert siren going off and the ship listing an unexpected ninety degrees to port.
“Sorry!” Scott said over the ship’s comm system. “Sorry! That was us. Don’t worry, I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy.”
A ‘jiffy’ turned out to be a Scots term for three uncomfortable hours spent crawling around the ship at odd angles while trying to keep your dignity in a short skirt; but at least their bizarre predicament put the events of the day before out of her head for a while, and that was the best she could hope for.
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Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: Mentions an attempted sexual assault
Length: 3335
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything recognisable in this fic and I’m not making any money from it.
Notes: Beta by seren_ccd
Summary: All her life Janice Rand had wanted one thing - to figure out just what she was supposed to do with herself. She drifted into Starfleet on a whim, and to her surprise, found a niche to fill. But being assigned to the Enterprise brings with it a challenge to her neat and ordered way of life, and Janice is unsure as to how much she's willing to let James T. Kirk affect her. But since when has love ever been easy? And will Janice let her heart stand in the way of her career?
Later that week, Janice wished she had still been wearing her trouser uniform. Or better yet, one of those suits of armour you still saw in museums at home. That might have been more of a deterrent, although, after Janice read the reports of Scott, Spock and McCoy, she knew that nothing she was wearing had anything to do with why the captain had decided to try and rape her.
Not that it was the captain, she kept telling herself, and the psychiatrist that she had to have therapy with after the incident. It wasn’t him, not really.
It was his...evil side, for want of a better word. The part of him without kindness, or regard for others. The nasty little voice that lives in every brain, surfacing now and again to remind you that no matter how far from the Earth you fly or how much technology you have, you’re never really far away from your primitive roots.
The truth came out in fits and starts, and she heard most of it while bundled up in Nyota’s comfort blanket in a private room in sickbay. Christine had stuck by her like glue as soon as she was escorted in, shaking and crying with blood on one of her hands, and Nyota and Gaila had arrived soon afterwards, like grim-faced avenging angels. They had stood outside the door to her room, discouraging gawpers and gossip with pointed stares and not-too-subtle reminders about the power that computer engineers had over the closed systems of a starship.
Spock had been the one to do the questioning, along with McCoy. Kirk had hesitated outside the doorway to her room but had retreated, looking pale and nauseous.
Stumbling in her recount of events, Janice hesitantly told the officers about her return to her quarters and the surprise entrance of Kirk from her bathroom, clutching a bottle of Saurian brandy. McCoy had exchanged a significant look with Spock at that point, although Janice only found out later why that was important, how McCoy himself had given the bottle to the evil Kirk, not recognising that his own best friend had been altered. Kirk had talked to her using the same tone of voice he had that night at the party, telling her how beautiful she was, and how he couldn’t restrain himself any more.
Then he had pounced on her, using his superior strength and abilities to crush her to his chest as he kissed her, forcing his tongue past her lips.
“I tried to fight back,” she had said dully, looking at the floor, away from the gentle pity in McCoy’s face and the impassive stare of Spock. “But he was so strong, I couldn’t...”
She broke off and tried to stifle a sob, and Christine passed her a tissue.
“Does she really have to do this now?” she heard the nurse hiss furiously, a protective arm winding around Janice’s shoulders. “She’s still in shock.”
“It is important,” Spock said gravely.
“I’m fine,” Janice insisted, taking a few deep breaths. Christine’s hand rubbed her shoulder reassuringly. “He threw me to the floor, but I managed to get an arm free,” she continued. “So when he tried to kiss me again, I scratched his face.”
She looked down at her hand, with her bloodstained nails and fingers, and then back up at the two officers.
“I got him good,” she said eventually. “It was enough to make him get off me, and I ran for the door. Ensign Louvakis was passing in the corridor, and he saw Captain Kirk grab at me again. He wrestled with the captain, and got him to break his grip. The captain ran down the hallway, and Ensign Louvakis brought me here and alerted you, Commander Spock.”
“I’m going to take a sample of the blood underneath your nails, yeoman,” McCoy said gently. “I’m going to touch your hand to do it. Alright?”
Janice didn’t respond, just extended her hand. She wasn’t nervous of McCoy right now. She was angry, and she was scared of the change that had come over Kirk, who she could tell was still hovering outside the door to her room, but the doctor held no fear for her. He gently scraped some of the dried blood out from her nails, and then placed it inside a scanning unit.
“It’s the captain’s blood,” he said without emotion. “There’s no denying it.”
“And there is also the testimony of Ensign Louvakis,” Spock said, stepping away from Janice. “Until we discover what has happened, I must order the detention of the captain in the brig.”
McCoy nodded grimly. Janice started to cry again, and tried not to feel guilty.
Luckily, it was at this point that Commander Scott had worked out the connection between the faulty transporter, the unusual ore on Technician Fisher’s uniform and the two alien creatures that had emerged on the transporter pad when only one had beamed up from the survey team below. The survey team that Kirk had been leading. One creature was docile and pleasant, one was vicious and aggressive, lashing out at anyone who went near it.
Janice missed the rest of the drama of the day; the hunt for the captain’s evil double, the problems getting a shuttlecraft down to the rapidly-freezing surface of the planet, the deterioration of the ‘good’ Kirk and the desperate showdown on the bridge before the risky re-integration process. She spent her day in Sickbay, wrapped up in Nyota’s blanket and comforted by Christine. Nyota and Gaila had joined the search teams for the ‘evil’ Kirk, and Janice shuddered to think what would happen if either of the women caught up with him. She wasn’t entirely sure who she was the most worried for, them or him, and in the end settled for a general, medium-level concern for everyone.
Christine had stayed with her, abandoning her usual job. Janice had tried to make her go back to work, but Christine had merely raised an eyebrow and continued sitting exactly where she was, cuddled up with Janice on the bed. Occasionally McCoy poked his head around the door and did a form of silent communication with Christine, but then he would leave. Janice opened a connection to the captain’s data feed, and pieced together what was happening from there.
“I want to go back to my room,” Janice said eventually, sometime after she had obediently eaten the light meal that Christine had put in front of her.
“Are you sure?” Christine fussed, picking up Janice’s hand. “Because you can always stay here for a while longer.”
“I’m not ill, Christine,” Janice sighed. “And I don’t want to hide. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Christine said fiercely.
“And neither has the captain,” Janice continued.
Christine stiffened, and her face took on a grim look.
“He hasn’t,”Janice said firmly. “It wasn’t him that attacked me, not really.”
Christine continued to say nothing, but instead started to tidy up the small room.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to do something really awful?” Janice asked pointedly. “Something terrible, something really, really bad?”
“Yes,” Christine said eventually, looking unsettled.
“Me too,” said Janice honestly. “So has Nyota. So has Gaila. So has McCoy, and Louvakis and everybody else on this ship. Even Spock has emotions, really strong ones too. But the reason we don’t act on those bad feelings is because our better sides win out. Our kindness, our morality, our logic. But the captain didn’t have any of those things when he attacked me, because they were all ripped out of him by the transporter. Do you think he would ever do anything like that normally?”
“No!” said Christine, sounding slightly shocked at the idea.
“Me either,” said Janice pointedly.
“I suppose you’re right,” Christine said sighing. “But when Louvakis brought you in...”
“I was upset, and hurt, and angry and frightened and a hundred other things,” Janice said. “But I’m calmer now, thanks to you. And I want to go home.”
“Alright then,” Christine said. “I’ll walk you there.”
It was more of an order than an offer, and Janice knew when she was beaten. Christine went with her into her room and tried to muffle a shocked intake of breath when she saw the smashed bottle of brandy, the canvases thrown to the floor and the upturned furniture.
Together the women mopped up the spilled liquid, righted the furniture and stacked the finished, unframed canvases back against the wall.
“This one’s beautiful,” said Christine, holding it up to the light fixture and staring at it.
“Thank you,” Janice replied proudly. “Please, take it.”
“Oh, I couldn’t!” Christine said, but her gaze kept drifting towards the wild colours on the canvas.
“I insist,” Janice said firmly. She looked around at the canvases that had stacked up. “It’s not like I’m going to miss it, and I want you to have it.”
“Thank you,” Christine said, hugging Janice while balancing the canvas under her arm. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright? I can stay, for as long as you want.”
“I’ll be fine,” Janice replied, perhaps more firmly than she felt. “Thanks for everything today, Christine, but I just want to be by myself now.”
“Alright then,” Christine said. “Remember, your first session is with Dr. Noel at 0900 tomorrow.”
Janice nodded her understanding, got one last hug and Christine left, clutching her painting under one arm. Then Janice threw everything she had been wearing that day down the recycling unit, used most of her week’s bathing water ration in the longest hot shower she’d ever had, cried for another half an hour and eventually fell asleep, emotional exhaustion finally getting the better of her.
An off-hand comment made by Dr. Noel during the session about Janice using her downtime to try and relax after her ordeal confused her, until Janice checked her duty log and discovered Kirk had given her a week off-duty.
Her blood immediately began to boil. Who the hell was he to banish her from his sight? What was she supposed to be made of, glass? When did she become something that he had to protect? Would he act like this for any other crew member?
By this point she was in a turbolift headed straight for the bridge. She walked calmly across the busy workplace, deliberately ignoring Nyota’s confused expression. She signalled her entrance at the door to the ready room and entered at Kirk’s call.
He looked up from his data screen, a furrow in his forehead so deep it looked like it went all the way down to his brain.
“Yeoman,” he said uneasily. “I thought you were off-duty.”
“I’m fine, sir,” she said plainly, sitting down in her usual seat and picking up a spare PADD from the desk to log into the ship’s systems.
There was silence as Kirk eyed her warily for a moment. You could cut the tension in the room with a butter knife.
“You’re not hurt?” he asked eventually.
“No sir,” she replied truthfully. There had been some bruising from the tussle on the floor, but Christine had sorted that out as soon as they had started to show. The one saving grace of the whole situation was that Janice had actually hurt her attacker more than he had been able to hurt her.
“Right,” he said carefully. “Well, the regulations for cases like this include the right for the victim to be protected from any contact with their attacker, so...”
“Sir, permission to speak freely?” Janice interrupted.
“Permission granted,” Kirk replied, a dubious look on his face.
“I’m not a victim,” Janice said forcefully. “Stop calling me one. And stop treating me like one.”
“Janice, I attacked you,” Kirk said, dropping all pretence at rank and distance. “You should hate me, God knows I hate me.”
He pushed his chair away from the desk suddenly and strode to the other end of the small room, putting as much physical distance between himself and Janice as he could. He rested the palms of his hands flat against the wall and leaned against it, resting his forehead against the transparent window surface.
Quietly, Janice stood up and walked up behind him. When he didn’t react to her presence, she carefully laid one hand on his back. She could feel the strong muscle tense under her hand, and then relax.
“I’m only going to say this once,” she said quietly. “So I want you to shut up and listen to me. Understand?”
He nodded curtly, still facing the back wall.
“I thought the man that attacked me was you for about thirty seconds. As soon as he started to talk, alarm bells were going off in my head. And as soon as he touched me, I knew he wasn’t you. I don’t know how, or why, but I just knew.”
“You don’t have to say this, Janice, “ interrupted Kirk, and Janice sighed loudly.
“Did you, or did you not, just promise to be quiet?” she asked rhetorically, and in the reflection of the window she saw a ghost of a smile on Kirk’s lips. It faded almost as soon as it appeared, but its sign was a good omen.
“As soon as I read the report from Commander Scott, and the one from Commander Spock, it all started to make sense. I don’t hold you responsible for what happened, captain. It wasn’t you.”
“It was the evil side of me,” Kirk said bitterly, and seemed surprised when Janice snorted sarcastically.
“You think we all haven’t got those lurking deep inside us? I know I have. Ask Simone Rees, her hair was purple for a month after she stole my first boyfriend.”
“That’s hardly the same,” Kirk pointed out.
“We’re not the same,” she told him pointedly. “And my thirteen year old self didn’t have access to charged phaser pulse rifles, or I would still be working off my sentence in a New Zealand penal colony right now. God, I hated her. Hated her. So I did the one thing I knew would cause me pleasure and her pain, and by God, I enjoyed it.”
They stood there for a while, staring out at the darkness outside the window. Janice didn’t remove her hand from Kirk’s back, and started to rub gentle circles with it without realising what she was doing.
“What’s your point, Janice?” Kirk asked eventually, relaxing under her impromptu massage.
Janice sighed. “My point is, get over yourself. You have a nasty side. You and the rest of the ship. You locking me away in a room isn’t going to protect me from the dangers of my job. I don’t want to be protected from the dangers of my job, and I resent the implication that you think I can’t handle them.”
He turned around at that, his face a perfect mask of concern.
“I think you can handle anything,” he told her, the honesty in his speech apparent in every word.
“Damn straight,” she told him indignantly. “Can I point out that it wasn’t me that was left bleeding and in pain at the end of our encounter?”
“Point taken,” Kirk said, trying to smile but not quite succeeding. “But you can’t blame me for feeling bad about this. I’m not sure how I would react, if someone tried to rape me.” He stumbled over the word, stuttering as he pronounced it. Janice closed her eyes for a moment and tried to stop her heart from breaking, just a little, for him.
“You’d react the same way you do whenever anyone threatens you,” Janice said plainly. “You’d fight them tooth and nail.”
Kirk rubbed the side of his unblemished face thoughtfully. Janice smiled.
“My nails are just as strong as yours are,” she told him and walked back to her seat, where she picked up her PADD and sat down. “And I’m ready to work now, captain.”
Kirk paused for a long moment, just staring at her. His face was buffeted by emotions he was fighting valiantly to control. Janice hadn’t mentioned what the creature had said about him wanting her, desiring her; he was struggling with the concept of almost causing her physical harm. There was no need to compound his guilt. But she knew that he must be thinking about his emotions, and how their repression had been the cause of his double’s attack.
Life would be so much simpler, she thought sadly, if he didn’t sit in the captain’s chair.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” he asked finally, taking back his seat opposite her.
“Today you have to review the in-service training records for some of the enlisted crew,” Janice told him. “And approve the courses they want to take during their next year of service.
Feeling bold, she put her name at the top of the list and sent it to his screen, signing herself up for the first contact training that was traditionally an officers-only course. Kirk looked at her for a long moment, then tapped his screen. Her record appeared back on her PADD, with a big green ‘approved’ tagged next to the request. He had also transferred the seven days sick time he had granted her to her annual leave allowance.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and that was that. For a while, anyway.
They had worked through about fifty of the enlisted crew before Kirk suddenly downed tools in the middle of approving Petty Officer Paige’s request to train as a yoga instructor to look at Janice thoughtfully.
“If Ensign Louvakis hadn’t come along, you would have had real trouble,” he said suddenly.
“I would have managed,” Janice said defensively, although privately she was planning to do something very nice for the young man as soon as she could figure out what he would appreciate.
“That’s not good enough,” Kirk said stubbornly, and pulled her record back up on his screen. Despite her frown he began tapping away at it. Janice pulled up her copy and studied it carefully.
“You’re recommending hand-to-hand combat classes?” she said in disbelief.
“No, I’m ordering them,” he replied, poking at the screen again. “If you’re going to be going on away missions and meeting potentially hostile alien lifeforms, you’re going to have to defend yourself.”
“Well,” said Janice, somewhat mollified. “I suppose, when you put it like that, it makes sense.”
He paused for a moment, clearly hesitating before speaking.
“Out with it,” sighed Janice. “Sir,” she added, just in case her allowance for plain speech had expired.
“You can say no and I won’t be offended,” he said slowly. “And I understand that it might just remind you about what happened, but, would you let me teach you?”
Janice looked at him, astounded. “I was a tutor at the Academy,” he went on. “And I even got Bones to pass the class, which is incredible because without a hypospray in his hand he’s useless. But I understand if you don’t want to.”
“No,” she said in a rush.
“Oh, alright,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “Don’t worry, I’m sure that the security team will have someone that you’d prefer to...”
“No, I mean, I want to,” Janice clarified, in the least clear way that she could. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Right,” said Kirk with a beaming smile.
“Right,” echoed Janice, smiling back.
Then their lovely, embarrassing, squirmy-feeling-in-the stomach moment was spoiled by the red alert siren going off and the ship listing an unexpected ninety degrees to port.
“Sorry!” Scott said over the ship’s comm system. “Sorry! That was us. Don’t worry, I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy.”
A ‘jiffy’ turned out to be a Scots term for three uncomfortable hours spent crawling around the ship at odd angles while trying to keep your dignity in a short skirt; but at least their bizarre predicament put the events of the day before out of her head for a while, and that was the best she could hope for.
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