Author's Notes and Warnings: I still haven't found a satisfactory way to summarize this story other than the fact that I enjoy writing it and I hope that you'll enjoy reading it. There are multiple/various pairings present of both the het and slash variety so if that doesn't float your boat maybe this story isn't for you. In this chapter there is an instance of attempted rape and as the story goes on there'll be various examples of violent behaviour--would you expect anything less from the Mirrorverse?

1

Maybe it was the fact that she hadn't joined in with the catty little bitches when they accused him of being too old for Starfleet, that he wouldn't be able to keep up with the real men—not that Nyota Uhura believed for one second that the skinny pieces of blond fluff had ever known a Real Man in their lives, otherwise their daddies would have informed them long ago that 'Yeoman' was only the official title for lickspittles and whores and anyone going through that track got what they deserved. Maybe it was the fact that it was none of her business to begin with but she had gone out of her way to trip the lead heckler while they were passing in the hall. Neither foot nor hand moved of it's own accord in Starfleet, there were no accidents; and yet Nyota didn't stop to share the familiar "You owe me" looks with the other cadet. He didn't thank her either, not that she expected him to. She may have brought them more trouble than a few insults were worth in the long run; that ultra tanned cadet could be hiding some powerful friends behind all that hairspray and cheap perfume, and Nyota could be facing more action than she really wanted at the moment.

For whatever reason Nyota may have chosen to physically tell that girl to shut up (boredom being amongst the top when she lay down to sleep that night), she couldn't understand his at all for hauling that security goon off her later on that week. It was crazy enough to believe he'd hypo-ed the cocksucker before any penetration had occurred—on her side at least; one of Nyota's daggers had got the bastard twice in his meaty side before sheer mass and gravity had taken over—but instead of leaving her to her own devices the older cadet had pushed the goon over and offered Nyota a hand up. There was skin not her own under her nails. Her bottom lip was split rather badly, blood rolling down her chin and smeared heavily across her puffy cheek, which wasn't helped when the man boldly reached out to tilt her head this way and that. Medical track. Fucking great. Her uniform was torn up over her hip and as Nyota shrugged the man's attentions off she could feel again the sting of scratch wounds on her inner thighs.

But she was still standing and the goon wasn't so points to her.

"Have anyone to help ya with that?" He gestured lazily at her would-be assailant and Nyota crossed her arms. It was a stupid question because it implied an assurance of trust and when did cadets ever have that. Anyone she could have possibly messaged would have had this bit of knowledge to hang over her head for the rest of her Goddamn life. She raised an eyebrow.

"I suppose you could fuck him up as he would have me and then he wouldn't be so willing to talk." His responding chuckle was full of gravel smoothed by years of drinking. By his accent she would have guessed whiskey. Or bourbon.

"I like my partners breathin' darlin'."

"He is."

"No he ain't."

2

Under most circumstances no sane person would ever enter Starfleet laboratories. The scurrying mad scientists that survived in those sanitized rooms were always on look-out for more experimental materials and weren't in the habit of asking nicely, but Leonard McCoy—that was what her partner in crime had introduced himself, as if names didn't have power in the Empire—had refused to bring supplies into the winding mazes of the Linguistics department, his own colourful descriptions of her track peers enough to curl her mouth painfully, like he had given her a present, and so Nyota had set out with only his word (not a promise) that the labs would be mostly empty at 0600 and that with her boots she'd probably be the most dangerous thing there anyway.

She didn't respond to his flattery. What would it get her?

He was, however, found exactly where he said he would be, dermal regenerator at the ready. Nyota watched him watch her from the doorway, watched him watch her take a flask out of her regulation jacket and tip it back, throat moving. Then again. It burned her lip far worse than sliding down her esophagus and she had to wipe away a line that dribbled down her chin, but it would have been incredibly rude to give McCoy a drink without first proving it wasn't poisoned. She left it on the counter and moved over to the bio bed, doors swishing closed behind her.

"He sure knew how to piss you off."

It was true. Until Nyota had stabbed him the goon had been more concerned with destroying her mouth. The attempted rape was secondary to making sure she'd never form consonants again and Nyota was lucky his one good hit hadn't been perfect and that she still had her teeth. Blondie had done her research it seemed. They didn't shoot you or dig out your heart or cu off your hands or lobotomize you in Linguistics; the preferred methods of ladder-climbing ambition was to cut out your rival's tongue, to drug them and pull out their front teeth, to slice their smiles from ear to ear. In effect it was to perform a mental as well as a physical torture, to leave your enemy with all their knowledge but inadequate to use it to perfection. Few cadets would willingly put their livelihoods in the hands of Medical personnel. . .but here she was. Nyota's fear of McCoy's scalpel was decidedly less than her desire for the new Flagship, the Enterprise. She had to be the best. A split lip wasn't going to stop her. She imagined a lost tongue wouldn't either.

But she wasn't stupid and Nyota hadn't closed her eyes as he worked, hadn't taken them off his face, relentlessly watched his ticks and blinks. He wasn't significantly older than she, perhaps thirty to her twenty two? His eyes were sharp with tired lines already at the corners that spoke of many late nights and whatever baggage that had brought him to Starfleet when the mortality rate of the average cadet was just less than that of a shipboard officer. Not that Nyota had ever considered herself average. Maybe Leonard McCoy didn't think so either. Light brown hair and insistent eyebrows. Fit, not slim or sleek.

"At least I know what to expect next time." It would be worse and there would be more to fight off. He chuckled with a drawling grin.

"I have a friend in command track takin' care of that. He enjoys stupid women."

Nyota's clear brown gaze instantly narrowed into hot pin pricks of anger and suspicion—and not just at the laughable idea that he would claim someone as 'friend.' She didn't want to owe any more favours, in fact as far as she was concerned they were a blank slate as it related to who owed whom, and to get involved with command track was to hand your ass over on a silver platter. They were there for a reason after all; those assholes never forgot a favour. "Don't frown darlin', I could send this laser into your upper palate and then where would ya be?" Medical track. Fucking great.

When he was finished no one would have thought her features any different (which was good for him) with the exception for her cheek. The regenerator couldn't help the bruise there, it would have to fade on it's own. McCoy hadn't lowered his machine, in fact it was held loosely by four fingers while his thumb rubbed back and forth over her lower lip, over his handiwork. He looked smug. "Plump an' perfect." And then his free hand moved warm and heavy onto her leg, fingernails slipping just under the hem of her skirt. "Will I take care of those as well?" Nyota smiled silkily, the dagger she kept hidden up her sleeve suddenly resting comfortably alongside his jugular.

"Why not? But be gentle. I'm a lady after all."

3

Leonard McCoy had an oral fixation.

Nyota realized this after she decided they were going to have sex—(in her dorm only, he was to leave directly afterwards, and if she thought he was packing any rope she was going to gauge his eyes out)—when the long necked bottles and toothpicks finally made sense. Sucking, licking, swallowing, tonguing, biting, kissing. As long as his mouth was doing something Len was satisfied and that worked fine for Nyota specifically as the cadet was rather talented at using it. He didn't need rope to restrain her though; Nyota's own stockings worked just as well. He was fast. He'd gotten one wrist tied to the leg of her bed before she'd slashed his bicep. There was a panting pause where she should have done more, should have stabbed the motherfucker in the groin (daggers were her specialty and she had always been an attentive student); instead Nyota watched Len watch her while he leant over to lick the wet flat blade of her knife.

It didn't take long to get back in the moment: legs wrapped around his waist with his freckled arms wrapped hard around hers, sitting on her bed with a breast sucked tightly between his teeth and her one free hand clamped vice like in his hair. Thrusting and thrusting and thrusting.

She met his 'friend' purely by accident, picking out the swaggering bright-eyed peacock as he flirted with a beautiful red haired female during a break in an impromptu Field Tacticles only because he smelled of the same cologne that often clung fitfully to Len's uniforms and underwear. Roommates? It was too odd to think about the man who sucked her clit using those same skills on this boys cock. Nyota openly stared, scrutinized, until the command track cadet looked up and stared back, quirking a grin on his pouty mouth before he clearly recognized her (through Len's descriptions most likely) and the grin turned salacious. He winked and Nyota turned back to face the instructor once again.

James Tiberius Kirk, Captain Christopher Pike's Goddamned Golden Boy.

Or whipping boy, depending on whom one asked.

Fucking great.

He had the gall to grab her arm after class.

"You're going to be my communications officer one day Uhura." He actually smiled when he said it, with teeth as white as a shark's.

"I'm going to be someone's communications officer Kirk," she answered with a sharp jab of her nail. If one didn't demand their personal space it quickly got taken away. "So I guess you're half-right."

He walked away with a very confidant chuckle and Nyota didn't have to speak with him for another two years. She tried to avoid Len for that long as well then, but his mouth was more persistent.