This idea began swimming around in my head and I just couldn't seem to leave it be. It will probably only be a one shot, but I do have the beginnings of a story line worked out if anyone is interested. This is my first time publishing anything on this website (though I am quite the lurker) so I'm still getting used to the layout. I hope you enjoy the story, it's rough, completely unedited and unresearched, and well, that's it. Live long and prosper.
"Lina!" Leonard "Bones" McCoy repeated for the umpteenth time as he pounded on the worn, wooden door. He could hear muffled movements on the other side and knew good and well that the woman he sought was only a few inches from him, lingering with her hand on the locked handle.
"Lina," McCoy said again, softer this time, knowing she could hear him, "Damnit, Lina, let me in. Please." He could practically feel her through the door, he could see her with his mind's eye. Her blonde curls would be swept up in a messy bun, a few falling loose to frame her angelic face and though Lina's face would be a portrait of anger, McCoy knew her blue eyes were glistening with unshed tears. Tears he'd caused, long ago.
"Damnit, woman," McCoy grumbled to himself as he turned up his coat collar against the chill of the autumn night, feeling a little too much like a fool for his liking. Except, he just couldn't help it.
There was a time when the woman on the other side of that door had been the light of his life, when Lina Darnell had been his first thought in the morning and his last before sleep claimed him each night. Lina Darnell had been his best friend and he'd loved her, he just hadn't realized how much until it was far too late. By the time it hit him he was already standing at the altar with her sister.
This sure as hell wasn't how he had pictured spending the small amount of shore leave he was granted before the Enterprise set sail on her five year mission, standing outside in the cold San Francisco air, let alone at nearly one in the morning, begging the woman whose heart he broke to see him. It definitely wasn't Leonard McCoy's idea of a good time. But he had to try.
He'd gone out with Kirk and Scotty the night before to a local dive for drinks after Kirk gave one hell of a speech, though Bones went much against his will. Even still, being ignored in the middle of the night, he was glad he had. He'd been nursing a whiskey, not really paying attention to Scotty's ramblings about the new and improved warp core (God only knows whose bed Jim had wandered off to) when he'd spotted her.
McCoy hadn't been able to believe his eyes at first and blamed the whiskey as he took a double take. And then a third. And damned if it wasn't Lina Darnell, Lina who he hadn't seen since, well, since the day he married that soul sucking she-devil Jocelyn. But sure enough, there she was, sitting idly on a bar stool with a foot stretched out, obviously saving the one next to hers for someone. God, had she always been that beautiful? Even from across the dim, crowded bar he could see the way her eyes lit up when she smiled, the way her curls bounced with her shoulders when she laughed. She hadn't aged a day in nine years.
He'd wondered where she'd gone, what had become of her. Even though her sister had had his heart in a vice at the time, Lina was still his closest friend in the world and the pain of losing her due to his hellish sham of a marriage had haunted him ever since, all together hardening him to the idea of love. Still, seeing her there, McCoy couldn't help but smile when it dawned on him that he should have known all along where she was. She'd always wanted to see California.
Almost as if Lina felt McCoy's dark eyes on her, she turned in her stool. He watched her scan the crowd until her eyes locked onto him. It pained Bones to watch her smile melt from that lovely face, to see pain and memory flood her ocean blue orbs. Her mouth parted slightly and she looked like she was on the verge of hyperventilating. He knew as he watched her slight form fleeing the bar that he had to find her. He couldn't just let her go. Again.
"Lina, Baby, I'm sorry," he murmured against the door, "I should have listened to you, I should have gone with you when you begged me to, I should have-"
"Go away, Leonard," Lina's muffled voice spat, the venom in her tone not lost in the wooden barrier between them.
She'd obviously reacted violently to his old pet name for her and Bones couldn't even say that he blamed her. But time, heartache, and distance couldn't change that Lina would, in some way, always be his baby. As much as he hated to admit it.
"Lina, it's been nine years, will you at least talk to me?" McCoy didn't like the desperation in his voice any more than he liked the unadulterated fury in hers.
McCoy had been standing there for so long that when the lock clicked and the latch turned, he could have sworn it was all in his mind. And then the door swung open, revealing Lina in very much the state he imagined her to be in. She leaned against the frame, her face sculpted into anger, though puffy from crying. Something she had obviously done a great deal of lately.
"How did you even find me?" Lina demanded tiredly, crossing her arms over her chest as she did so.
"Phone book," McCoy answered lamely, "they're still a thing, you know."
Lina stared at him for a long, hard moment, as if she were trying to dissect him with her eyes. He felt like a frog under the icy azure scalpel of her gaze, "Well, it's cold." Lina muttered finally, stepping aside to allow Bones inside, "Come in before you freeze."
"I'm already frozen," Bones mumbled as he shuffled inside the warmth of Lina's small apartment.
She ignored him as she took a seat on large, far too bright, red sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table in front of it.
"Fire," she murmured, a soft smile gracing her lips when the fireplace became shrouded in warm, orange flame.
McCoy watched her for a long moment, watching the way the flames danced off her hair, reflected in her eyes. It reminded him of the warm Georgia sunsets they'd watched as youngsters in Medical School together.
"Lina," her name escaped his lips in a breath as he sat in the chair across from her.
"Leonard," Lina cut him off with a sad smile, a single tear sliding down her bronzed face, "I told you. I told you she who she was and what she was like. I told you she'd leave you with nothing but your bones."
McCoy decided to refrain from telling her that he was actually known as 'Bones' now. "I know you did, Baby."
"You don't get to call me 'Baby' anymore, Leonard," Lina ground out, though the anger on her face faded to an agonized mixture of regret and memory.
"I can't help it," he admitted solemnly, wiping his face with his large, calloused hands. "I've missed you, Lina. I've worried about you."
Lina's dark laugh drew his attention to where she sat, her tears flowing freely now. "I could've sworn you loved me once," she mused as she stood and crossed to the mantle, pouring herself a drink from the bottle of whiskey that perched there. She offered one to McCoy and to both of their surprise, he declined.
He didn't realize it until now, but he had been waiting for this moment for a long time, he'd been itching deep down in the pit of his soul to make things right. And now that he was here, doing just that, he wanted to feel all of it.
Lina, feeling quite the opposite, downed her glass in a single gulp before plopping back down on the sofa.
"Hell only knows how much I love you," she continued after a long moment, either not realizing or not caring that she had failed to use the pass tense of love. "You were always there for me, you made me feel safe and wanted, you even helped me get into medical school," Lina took a break to wipe her eyes before she continued adding onto the guilt Bones had suppressed for years. "You hurt me," she sobbed finally.
It didn't take much to rebreak his heart all over again. Lina peered up at him with those big, blue, tear soaked eyes and he was done for. He knew what she was trying to spit out. It was her last year of medical school and she had been chosen to study for a year off planet in an Andorian hospital station.
She had been over the moon excited, mainly just because Lina had always had a fascination with space. Even when they were young kids and Lina would grow tired of her father's often physical wrath and she would sneak out of her bedroom window and meet him every night in a field close to both of their homes and lie there, watching the stars until she would fall asleep curled up next to him on an itchy bed of wheat.
Bones had been excited for her, knowing it was one of Lina's dreams to spend time in Space. When she'd shown McCoy the letter his heart had become so swollen with pride for her that took took her into his arms, twirling Lina as he held her against him.
It wasn't until he'd returned her small feet to the floor that their eyes truly met and it dawned on him that he wouldn't be seeing those eyes for an entire year. She'd be gone and in space, no less. Space was a darkness and disease, he couldn't stand the thought of it, even back then. Before his mind became too clouded with the images of exploding shuttles, McCoy crashed his lips down onto hers, his hands knotting in her soft curls as he kissed her. A soft moan escaped Lina, her small hands winding their way up to cradle the back of his neck as she returned his embrace. They fell into bed much the same way, and didn't bother to leave it for the next two days.
Bones could still feel her soft lips against hers, the feeling withstanding the tests of the years. He'd been so stupid to let Jocelyn in. That damned harpy woman had probably cost him what could have been the happiest years of his life and he could see that Lina was thinking the exact same thing.
"I missed you," he offered quietly, unnerved to find hot tears stinging the back of his eyes, "I missed you so much. Hell, I'd never been without you for more than two days before you left- Damnit woman, let me finish," he scolded as Lina had been about to interrupt him, "I know it wasn't an excuse. But even though you hated your sister Lina, she reminded me of you in so many ways. When she found me in that old dive trying to have a life without you, she pulled me right in."
"But I came back," Lina argued weakly, anger slowly regaining its hold of her soft features, "I came home expecting to run into your arms and instead I find my sister shoving a fucking meteor sized diamond in my face, Leonard."
Lina stood, pacing the room in her frustration. "You knew how I felt about my sister, you knew how she treated me, and I leave for one year and what do you do?"
"I fell in love with that she-devil," Leonard answered quietly, taking Lina aback in his honesty. "I didn't want to. Didn't mean to. But I did and it's haunted me every waking moment of my life since then, Ba-Lina," he corrected her name hurriedly, standing from his chair, "I was a weak target and she knew it, just like you said."
"She asked me to be her maid of honor," Lina spat as she nearly slammed into Bones, having been to fervid in her pacing to notice he'd stood.
She didn't fight him when he moved to steady her, didn't brushed his hands away from her shoulders as he held her. Lina peered up at the doctor with haunted eyes and Bones couldn't stop himself from wiping the tears away from her face with the pad of his thumb. His heart hurt, every inch of him quivered in agony. The woman he held still loved him with everything in her, she had trusted him. And all he did was break her.
"And when I wouldn't do it, she made you ask me for her. She knew I wouldn't say no to you."
Bones had been furious with himself when he first realized the motivation behind Jocelyn's actions had been purely to hurt Lina, he was outraged to know he had played a part in her pettiness. The anger he felt then did not even begin to compare to the pure rage that coursed in him now that he had Lina once again in his arms, confessing her anguish to him. Bones felt the pressure threatening to break him.
That had been the last time he saw Lina. She'd quit medical school, packed her things, and hauled ass without a word to anyone right after the wedding. Bones wondered idly if she even changed out of her bridesmaid dress before she skipped town.
"I should have listened to you," he murmured beside her ear, placing a soft kiss to Lina's temple as a tear of his own fell. "I should have run away with you as soon as you stepped off that shuttle from Andoria."
"But you didn't," Lina reminded him grimly a small smile gracing her lips even through her tears.
"I know, I let you down. The one person that truly loved me, I failed." Bones' voice was laced with self loathing as he peered down at the angel in his arms, wondering how he could have ever likened the snake he now knew Jocelyn to be to Lina.
Jocelyn had never been content, with anything. He saw now that he had merely been a pawn in her vengeful game of spite against her younger sister. McCoy worked 72 hour shifts to ensure that Jocelyn had the best of everything and never wanted for anything, yet she always made him feel guilty for being too absent in their relationship. When he took time off to be with her, she complained that there wasn't enough money to support her lifestyle. But Lina, the ethereal beauty he clutched to desperately, she had spent hours with him in the university library as he poured over medical texts in preparations for exams. She never disturbed him, never pawed for his attention. She merely sat with him because she enjoyed his company and knew he enjoyed hers. She was selfless. And he'd let her go while the woman he married took everything he built and worked for away from him.
"Damnit woman, why are you smiling?" McCoy demanded when he returned from his memories of the distant past to find Lina smiling up at him.
Gently, she trailed her long slender fingers across the small silver emblem embossed on the left side of his chest. "Starfleet," she replied simply.
"I'm senior medical officer aboard the USS Enterprise," he told her with a quirked brow.
"You hate flying."
"Trust me, I know," he replied flatly, though a small smile crept onto his lips as well.
God he'd missed her. He hadn't realized how much, but with her there in his arms, Bones felt a wholeness in his chest that he hadn't even known he was missing. She completed him, she always had. And he'd been too stupid to see it.
"Let me back into your life," he begged her quietly, crushing her against him. Bones rested his chin on top of Lina's head, unwilling to look down and see the refusal in her eyes, "Give me a chance to be anything."
"Not that I have much choice," he could hear the smile in her voice and a warmth churned in his gut at the sound, "but how could I ever say no to you?"
Bones held her back so that he could peer at her face, "What do you mean 'have much choice'?"
Lina simply nodded to the black uniform draped over the back of the couch, "Lina Darnell, new senior security operative aboard the USS Enterprise," she replied in mock introduction.
"Well hell," Bones didn't even bother attempting to hide his delight from her as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. He couldn't help it, the action just came naturally to him with her. He didn't question why she had gone into security, he knew that would be a tale for another time. At that moment all Bones wanted was to feel Lina in his arms.
"Leonard?"
"Hmm?" He rested his head atop hers, allowing the scent of her hair and the warmth of the fire to lull him into the false reality of what he could have had.
"Please don't leave."
He looked down to see Lina peering up at him with hopeful eyes and it wrenched in his soul to see the weakness he had created in her. "No baby," he murmured dipping his head slightly. He placed a feather light kiss to her lips when she didn't back away from him, reveling in the sensation of her returning his affection. "Never again."
