McCoy finds the bottle awfully tempting. He stares at it a lot, the bottle gleaming all variants of enticing amber under the harsh artificial light. He wants to give in, just once, just…to have a moment where the guilt isn't gnawing at him, and he doesn't hate Jocelyn more than he has the right to, and he's not so fucking pissed off at Jim for not telling him that…that his baby girl would come back to him so different.
He leaves the whiskey alone, locks his bottle of good bourbon in his desk and then passes the key off to Nyota who looks at him with a concerned frown before hiding his key away. He can't be drinking with Joanna so close to death. She needs her father, not his alter ego. Even though she glares at everything with contempt any time she's awake, she needs him, him.
She doesn't show it and she curses and lashes out at anyone near her, but McCoy knows it in some still functioning part of his psychology training. She's allowed to be angry; it's natural. She still needs the support of her parents, and since his ex-wife isn't there, he'll have to do the work for both of them at the moment.
.ststst.
There's too much work to do after the children are rescued from Cerberus, and at the same time, McCoy could never be busy enough. Joanna sleeps in a never end regenerative cycle and although he can see the improvement in her dwindled body, his heart will never recover from this, and he knows some part of her mind never will either.
He sees it already in some of her mannerisms, she's wired tight and angry, but he can see the woman she's becoming, can see the careful way she watches her friends eat, the way she stares at the people handing out food…as if it's all a sick joke, the way she doesn't eat at all. Her once-warm eyes, are sharp and critical of everything edible and she glares at the IV in her arm for the hours that she's not asleep, when McCoy or Carter Winston come to check on her.
Survivor's guilt.
McCoy knows she had to watch someone wither before her still-soft eyes.
She'll be a woman, scarred…but for now she just has gaping wounds.
And for the life of him, Leonard doesn't even know where to begin trying to heal her.
.ststst.
Jim spends a lot of his time down in the medbay, even though McCoy glares at him with unjust anger and bites more viciously than strictly normal. Jim bats it away from him like it's nothing and maybe to him it isn't. McCoy knows Jim has seen him in all sorts of fowl moods, but part of him feels this is the most enraged he's ever been at his friend, and he wants Jim to know that.
He rants and raves, shouts and hollers, and generally just carries on and the fucking prick just looks at him with impeccable blue eyes steadier than McCoy's ever seen them. He stands just inside of the CMO's office, door shut tight against the world and takes it all, breathing even and slow as McCoy is surely becoming blue in the face, his throat aching with just one iota of the despair that clenches at his heart every time he even thinks of Joanna, skin and bones and cold, brown eyes, lying in his medbay.
By the end of it, he's not even yelling at Jim because he's angry at him. He's yelling because his baby is hurt and he can't fix it; doesn't even know how to try.
"And dammit all to hell! What fucking use am I to my little girl if I can't help her when she needs me most?" His voice breaks and it would be humiliating as fuck if he gave one good god damn, but he doesn't and he covers his eyes when they start to burn.
A few, short moments later, Jim is sliding a fleeting hand over his shoulder and rubbing slightly through the hair at the back of his hair. McCoy almost wants to lean in to the embrace, but doesn't think he deserves the comfort. Doesn't think he deserves anything until his Joanna is okay again…until she can smile again.
"All you can do is be there for her, Bones," Jim breathes, ridiculously close and soothing for it. "Trust me…It'll go a long way."
There's a knowledge in his tone, an understanding McCoy doesn't get. When he looks up, Jim is staring at him with unerringly calm eyes, but there is also an undercurrent, a rage in his eyes that says McCoy, for all the years they've been friend, will never know all of Jim.
He nods, knowing in the future that this will be momentous, but for now just going to sit by Joanna, holding her thin, brittle hand in his own while she's asleep.
.ststst.
He wants a shot desperately the day Joanna says that she won't stay in his quarters. He wants to break his damn desk apart to get just one shot as he remembers how cruelly her frown twisted her face and her hardened brown eyes stared at him like he could never, ever reclaim her as his daughter. He wants to drown himself in a vat of alcohol as he remembers every single moment that he missed in her life thanks to his career, his divorce, Starfleet.
Gaila takes on the responsibility of her, and she smiles with perfectly gold-painted lips as his skeletal daughter stares at her lifelessly. He almost thinks that she doesn't see what everyone else sees, but there is a glimmer in her eyes, a sadness that mars her glittering green eyes as she watches the disjointed and painful way Joanna walks to her. She takes Joanna's hand in her own green one, and though there's no response for his daughter, Gaila merely continues smiling and grips her hand firmly as they walk down to Gaila's quarters.
He nearly breaks down and asks Nyota for his key back, but Jim is suddenly next to him, a quirky smile that reeks of distraction and McCoy bends to its will like a flower towards the sun.
He would rather ruin himself with Jim than face the disappointment of Nyota if he broke down and asked for that stupid key.
.ststst.
All of a sudden, Joanna is in Spock's quarters directly next to Jim's. He wonders what happened with Gaila, but when he asks her she only smiles, a little cheerless, and says, "I have nothing left to give her."
McCoy is miserable when he realizes that he shares the sentiment.
He visits her as often as he can, but she's so damn hard to find and even when she's in the Commander's quarters, she's still not there, not really. He tries to convince her to eat now and again, but most of his attempts are met with an angry young woman who suddenly looks nothing like the five-year-old he always recalled when she was angry, and no longer like her mother when she was in the throes of an ongoing rant. She looks like someone else…
Her anger doesn't last long, though it does linger. She's so weak from starvation that by the time she's worked herself up to a good rage she's all out of energy and sinking to the ground. He catches her each and every time, careful not to just pick her up and hold her to his chest.
He knows control and strength is pivotal right now.
God help him if he doesn't want to though; doesn't want to sit with her curled up in his lap like she used to when she was a little girl, chubby and sweet, and stroke her straw-like hair that used to be so soft. God help him if he doesn't wish that would make it all better.
But he can't.
And he feels awful for it.
.ststst.
She only has six days left on the Enterprise, and Jocelyn has just promised that he'll never see her again. McCoy is close to tears at everything that just keeps happening. He can't decide which is more painful, the fact that Joanna is in this predicament at all, or the fact that he can't imagine never seeing her beautiful face again, even if she never smiles the way she used to, even if she never smiles at all. He strides quickly into her temporary quarters—another stab, because she's not closer to his own, and it's not promised that she'll even be there—and enters his override code when he finds the doors locked.
"I can't be you, dammit!" he hears Joanna yelling, voice hoarse and strained with tears he's never seen her cry. "I'm nothing like you! I can't be as strong as you! I can't be as brave as you! I just can't! I can't do this, you asshole! I can't!"
McCoy is stunned and he walks in to see what the hell is going on. Joanna continues to holler at the top of her lungs. When he walks into Spock's living area, sprinkled and littered with candles and language books, he sees both Joanna and Jim. Joanna is pale with exhaustion and she keeps taking hits at Jim, while the captain takes each and every hit, only bothering to deflect the shots aimed at his face, which he does so as gently as he can.
Joanna's face is contorted in rage, guilt, and, sweet Jesus, so much pain, and McCoy is literally moved closer just by the pain the echoes in his own heart.
"I can't handle this! I want them back! I want them to be here and healthy! I shouldn't get to be here if they can't! I want them…I want them…" She keeps hitting Jim, but slowly her punches are becoming open-handed slaps to his chest.
Jim keeps his eyes on her, his hands up to catch her if she falls.
She doesn't, she only keeps glaring and shouting how she wants them. McCoy knows, from Winston, that she watched three of her classmates die, but she's never said a word about it. He tried, but she just looked at him with those dead eyes that looked nothing like his baby girl. Looking at her now, he can't see how she held it all in. There's barely enough room in her skin for her organs, forget all that guilt and pain she is carrying around.
"I'm not Hercules!" she yells, and McCoy suddenly knows just who she looks like when she's angry now.
She looks so fucking much like Jim.
Her furious emotions become submissive as her fatigued body finally takes control of her. Her entire body shakes, and McCoy does the only thing he knows how to do, ingrained since the second she breathed life.
He catches his little girl.
As she collapses into his arms, crying for the first time, Jim slips out of the room. Neither McCoy notices as Joanna weeps so hard, clutching at his shirt with tired, threadlike fingers, letting out everything she's held so tight to her. McCoy holds her to his chest, harder than he probably should, and not caring about his own tears that fall down his cheeks as she howls into his chest, "Just make it go away. Please, just make me forget."
She lets out a heart-wrenching sob and wraps her emaciated arms around his neck, holding onto him like it's the last thing she'll ever do.
"It hurts so much, daddy! It hurts!"
His heart lurches in his chest, and he holds her tighter. He holds her head to his chest and kisses her scraggly, lackluster hair.
"I gotcha, baby. I gotcha."
Because it's the only thing he can think to say.
.ststst.
He and Jim both refuse to let her apologize, and she accepts it with a tired nod and a heartfelt thanks.
She lets McCoy come around more often, and is even in Spock's room a few more times than she has been in the previous weeks. She doesn't go out of her way to be around really anyone, and if she does, it's surprisingly Gaila. She checks in with her class mates, intent on determining their well being herself, even though they routinely come in for daily checkups. She seeks Jim out a few times and one time she even spends the entirety of her day up on the Bridge. She's not interested in medbay, not the McCoy blames her.
Right now, he isn't too fond of it either.
For the most part, though. She is very much alone.
He sees her eat a few times, a nibble on a nutrient bar, a sip of chicken broth and she almost always seems to be with ginger soda these days, taking slow sips from her travel cup as she walks with an unsteady gait around the Enterprise.
She's still ungodly thin, and the clothes they secured for her when her own literally fell off of her jutting hips and protruding shoulders do nothing to hide that fact. McCoy swears he can see each and every one of her ribs through the yellow jersey she wears.
She only has two more days on the ship when McCoy walks into Spock's quarters, desperate to spend any time he has left with his little girl.
Jim must have noticed his urge, because the damn, wonderful man already sent him the shift schedule change, giving him the next five days off.
What strikes him first is the music. It's a deeply dry music piece that's all strings being plucked at viciously. There are no vocals, just staccato tugs at wires.
What barrels at him next is the sight of his little girl, messy hair twisted and snarled through a band, stepping roughly through a dance. She's in a steel colored dress that someone must have altered for her. It flows around her slight form like invisible currents surrounding her, floating as she turns in what must surely be a smooth move but with how thin and unsteady she is it looks jerked.
Of course, as she turns, she catches sight of him, and her eyes, still hard but thawing out, widen considerably as she stops completely.
"Dad," she says, shocked.
"What are you doing, Jo?" he asks curiously, no hint of judgment in his tone.
She looks self-conscious momentarily, but then she pulls herself up, her face relaxing. She almost looks fifteen again, not so much older like she has for the last eight weeks. "It's called the Dance of Devna, a dance of mourning." She smoothes a hand down her light dress, eyes flickering shut for a moment before they open again to reveal so many facets of her soul. "She taught it to me."
For a moment, McCoy is very confused as to why her psychologist is teaching her to dance, but then he remembers where he's heard of the Dance of Devna. Gaila performed it at the memorial for their fallen classmates.
When he nods his understanding, she makes a motion to the music around. "She didn't have her music to dance to, but Jim said that this was pretty close to it. They think it might help."
He regards her carefully, considering all the things he might and should say. They seem to be the best at handling her. Gaila has met so much in her short life and has adjusted to it with a grace unlike any he has ever seen in another sentient being. And Jim…
He can only speculate why Jim is suddenly so good at playing psychologist, and each theory breaks McCoy's hearts just a little more than it already is.
In the end, he simply nods again, telling her softly, "Keep going then, Joanna. I'll start the music over and then get some supper ready for when you're done."
He restarts the song and moves into Spock's little kitchenette area, watching from the corner of his eye as his baby girl starts the steps again, careful and somewhat halting movement at first until she becomes more comfortable, feels less conscious about the fact that he is now in the quarters with her. As he prepares the soup somewhat from scratch, she sweeps through the movements, her brow beading with sweat the further she pushes herself.
McCoy wants to implore that she stop, but he can't force himself to do it. This isn't about her body right now. It's about her mind. It's about healing more than failed organs, brittle bones, or damaged nerves. As she glides into the third and final set, her eyes close and McCoy feels no need to further hide his watching.
Joanna's movements no longer look jerky. She no longer looks sharp or haggard.
In this one moment, while she mourns for everything she lost and McCoy mourns silently, as well, for the loss of her innocence, in this one moment where she make forward movement, she looks like she could hold up the universe on her own.
Nyota keeps the key for three more months.