"Seal that wound! Right here –What? Then whatever you got! Use sealant, gauze, or hell... use your goddamn shirt! I don't care what the hell you use, as long as—"
More screams, shouts. Flaming debris and shrapnel. The man next to him is suddenly missing half his torso, and the floors are slick with his blood. People he'd trained with, laughed with, and drank with are instantly incinerated and impaled and killed before his eyes. Earlier that day his CMO – formerly his xeno A&P instructor – tells him he'd go far, and he'd probably be in charge of his own sickbay in two years. He sees his CMO after the explosion. Dr. Puri is missing his face. Puri's still missing his face when the call from the Bridge comes down: New CMO. He's been promoted. A goddamned promotion.
He laughs coldly after he "respectfully" accepts, and returns to heal the walking dead.
Leonard H. McCoy half-shudders as he stares out over the bay and drinks from a flask. Even at two am he could see scorches and gouges marring the once beautiful San Fran bridge. The full moon highlights nearly three kilometers of scrap metal across the coastline, but that's not what bothers him; tomorrow workers will continue dredging the bay, removing the remainder of Nero's genocidal drill. Once they clean the bay, once they fix the coastline and the bridge, once they fix up Enterprise...it'll be as if nothing ever happened. They'll all return to normal.
Minus six billion Vulcans and three thousand Starfleet cadets.
"What fuckin' bullshit." A bitter, sardonic laugh escapes his lips as he knocks back the equivalent of another double. Goddamn. There's nowhere to go to forget. He sighs deep as a biting breeze cuts across his cheek. Well, this will be the last time, the fucking last.
"To Jim Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise," he mutters to the empty bay. He raises his flask. "Slainte, and Godspeed. You'll need it." Leonard steadies himself against a bench and decides to sit. He probably should be in uniform but he's been quietly soaking all day and frankly, he just doesn't give a fuck. He has decisions to make, and those decisions are best made wide-awake with a little bourbon in him. Besides he keeps seeing the dead. The memorial services made things worse, and the men and women he expected to serve under are either space debris or buried six feet in a lonely grave. So they left him in charge.
I should've never signed up, he thinks, swallowing another mouthful of burning courage. What the hell am I doing here? This place isn't for him – dammit, space isn't for him, he's sure of it now. Leave it to the hotshot kids and their adrenaline-fueled dreams. He's tasted it, and the whole damn experience left a sharp, bitter tang in his mouth.
"Screw it," he sighs. His chin falls gently against his chest. He'd tell Jim tomorrow over a few dozen drinks. Always easier to say goodbye when neither party remembers it.
"Good morning, Doctor McCoy."
"Jumpin' Judas on a pogo stick." Furious, McCoy turns to chastise the person who scared him, be it officer or cadet, but pulls back when a lone Vulcan approaches the bench and stands beside him. "Oh," he mumbles respectfully. He sits up – or tries to – and smooths down his jacket. "Sorry, you scared me. Didn't think anyone else would be out here this late."
"Indeed." A strange, confusing expression in the Vulcan's eyes worries him, but Leonard doesn't comment. "It is a fairly chilly evening. I've always found a coat to be quite useful in San Francisco."
"Yeah, well. I prefer heat to the cold. Give me summers in Georgia any day over this cold shit, pardon my French." He winces at his tongue; he should be more respectful, but he never could control his tongue and on the high side of drunk, forget it. But it hurts to say nothing, and as the silence stretches he takes a quick drink and lowers his head.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "For Vulcan. For..." He loses his will and the words to continue. But instead of the insult he expects or the lecture regarding his illogical statement, the older Vulcan solemnly nods.
"Thank you," the Vulcan murmurs, and Leonard is stunned by the sheer humanness in his voice. McCoy opens his mouth to speak then quickly shuts it, even as the other man makes a move to sit on the bench. "May I?"
"I'd be honored," McCoy says thickly, and he makes room for him. Leonard knows exactly who it is from Jim's stories, and even if he didn't the similarities between him and another Vulcan thorn-in-his-side were unmistakable. Still...he couldn't help feeling uncomfortable. How the hell Jim was gonna keep this from Commander Spock was a mystery to him. "Ah...hm."
"If it makes you feel more comfortable, you may call me 'Ambassador.' "
McCoy lets out a slow breath. "Yeah," he says as a choked laugh tumbles awkwardly from his lips. "Helps me tell you two apart, anyway." He pauses, and unsure of what to do or say puts the flask to his lips. "So...you shippin' out soon?"
"Soon," the Ambassador rumbles, and McCoy slowly nods. They say nothing for a minute or two, and Leonard's not sure if the Ambassador's expecting something from him, or not. Fortunately, the Ambassador is the one who breaks the silence as McCoy takes the last sip of bourbon from his flask. "May I ask what your plans are, Doctor? Will you be staying with the ship?"
McCoy catches the real question in the Ambassador's voice. Instead of answering right away, he hunches forward and rests his elbows on his knees. Sighing, Leonard stares into the San Francisco night and ignores how a gentle breeze ruffles his dark hair. "Is it that obvious--? My God." His hands shake a little and he grips the flask a little tighter. "Ambassador...I don't know what your...McCoy counterpart decided, but to be honest I couldn't give two shits. Doctors, we're – I'm trained to ignore death. We lose patients, we cope. We have to, or we're no damn good.
"But there's a limit to what we can take. And I've had my ever livin' quota the past couple days."
The Ambassador says nothing, and McCoy appreciates the silence. He rolls the flask between his fingers, suddenly feeling very, very old. "Last time I saw so many charred, mutilated bodies," he swallows, "was when an F5 tornado tore through a Macon fueling station. Didn't like it then. Made sure I wouldn't have to by eventually getting my own practice."
"Your Kobayashi Maru," the Ambassador says, and McCoy sharply looks at him over his shoulder. He frowns when the older Vulcan produces a satchel, and pulls out a strange blue bottle and two glasses.
"Guess so," McCoy whispers, returning his gaze to the bay. "We've got medical sims and I can handle those, Ambassador. But see, sims don't reproduce the smells of charred flesh and coppery blood. "
McCoy smirks and violently flings his flask into the bay, where it makes a satisfying kerplunk and sinks to the bay floor. "'Sides, if they made the sims too real, they'd have a bunch'a psychotic docs on their hands." He does a double take as the Ambassador hands him a glass, partly filled with what looked like neon blue coolant. "What's this? Some kinda juice?"
"Not exactly."
And McCoy swears on his sainted aunt five times removed that the green-blooded sadist starts laughing when the liquid burns a new hole in his esophagus. "Good God, man! What the hell is that shit?"
"Romulan ale," the Ambassador says, before smoothly taking a sip. McCoy feels his eyebrow brush his scalp.
"I thought Vulcans didn't drink," he grumbles, taking a slower sip. He realizes it's not too bad; it's strong, but as long as he doesn't knock it back like water it seems pleasant enough on the tongue. "And where'd you get Romulan stuff, anyway? Gotta be illegal."
"In rare incidents, Vulcans have been known to imbibe for diplomatic purposes." McCoy sees the smirk, this time, and he's just sober enough to notice the Ambassador doesn't care to explain the "illegal" part of his question.
"I do wish you would reconsider your determination to leave Starfleet, Doctor."
"Why?" Suddenly angry, Leonard takes a deep drink. "I'm not your McCoy, Ambassador, and I'm guessin' that McCoy's long gone in your time. I can't be him, and I'm not him. So don't expect me to be him or make the decisions you'd want him to make."
"Forgive me, Doctor; you are correct – you are not him," the Ambassador murmurs. His voice is somnambulant and deep, almost hypnotic, and McCoy briefly shakes his head to clear the muddled fuzziness. "If I may, Doctor McCoy...Bones," he says informally, and Leonard rolls his head to the side, fixing him with a soft glare. "I think you have undervalued your importance to the ship, and to her crew."
McCoy snorts and leans his head across the back of the bench. His world is spinning, but the chilled air helps him focus. "Ambassador, any doc with a lick of sense can patch up that foolhardy crew. Hell, I barely scraped my way past xenobio. One of these fresher faces might patch 'em up and work with them better than I ever could." Licking his lips he closes his eyes. "They're all so goddamn green. Just a bunch of fucking snot nosed brats. I can't--"
"You can, Doctor," the Ambassador presses, and McCoy winces at the authority and conviction he hears. Part of him knows the truth, it really does. But the other half...didn't want to face it. Didn't want the scare of losing them, all over again.
"You are letting your emotional state cloud your judgment."
"Of course my emotional state is clouding my judgment." Leonard half-snarls and sits up. "Most my senior class was incinerated. I personally watched more than thirty friends and colleagues die in my sickbay. I saw a goddamned planet die. Of course I'm emotional, you goddamn, green-blooded—"
Embarrassed by his words, McCoy bites off the rest of the sentence by gulping from his cup. "That wasn't fair. I'm drunk, I apologize."
"No," the Ambassador says. And even more surprising to McCoy: "I have actually come to miss it. You are right, I do miss 'my' Doctor McCoy." McCoy doesn't twist his head to look, but he is surprised enough to shut up and listen, for once. "My relationship with you in my reality was...complicated, but equally valuable. Your friendship meant as much to me as it did Jim's. And Jim relied on your judgment as strongly as he relied on mine. He will need you. The crew will need you."
"That's not fair," McCoy mumbles, and he closes his eyes as he drains his cup. "I don't want to know that."
But the Ambassador ignores him. "I could tell you what to do, Leonard. I could lay out the simplicities and intricacies with a mind meld, or I could simply relay the most logical course of action. But ultimately this must be your decision, as it was Jim's. I will only say, that the Leonard H. McCoy I grew to know saved innumerable lives and served as a valuable counter between the Captain's decisions, and my own. He was an extremely competent and capable officer, and I have found myself to be a much more...human individual by having had the honor of knowing him."
The Ambassador stands then, and it's probably a good thing; McCoy is seeing double, and he has just enough sense to return to the academy residence halls to sleep off the drunk.
"Talk to Jim tomorrow," the Ambassador murmurs,and McCoy grunts at him in acknowledgement. "Consider all your options before you make your decisions. Consider the lives you will save, Doctor...not the ones you've lost."
McCoy remains on the bench, and stays long after the soft footfalls of the Ambassador's steps fade into the darkness. He's still drunk, but he can't help thinking about the Ambassador's words. It could've been ten minutes or thirty or an hour before he finally moves.
He smirks at the bottle the Vulcan left behind and he brings it back with him to the dorms, and locks it up, determined not to drink anymore of it unless it's a special occasion.
And the next day, while he suffers through the hangover from hell without aid of a patch or pills (too embarrassing; he's older than these kids, he can take it...yeah, right), he speaks with his best friend and finally shares how he feels. It astounds him when Jim acts far more mature than any twenty-something has any right to act.
His mind's still considering his options while watching Jim's Captaincy ceremony. And during his own review, when Starfleet's Medical Review Board commends him and chooses to make his "acting" "Official", he finally says yes...and is assigned to the Enterprise, on Captain James T. Kirk's recommendation.
You're in it now, McCoy.
He sighs at the viewscreen when Enterprise pulls out of dock and makes her first formal journey into the stars.
"Doin' okay, Bones?" Jim is to the right of him. Commander Spock is looking at him curiously, and McCoy lets out a small laugh.
"Who knows, Jim, who knows." Amused, he shakes his head and softly bounces on the balls of his feet. "But I guess I'm ready to see what the future holds." His smile broadens.
"Jim, you ever try something called Romulan ale...?"