Disclaimer: I don't own anything Star Trek related. Isula, however, and the plot, are mine.
Chapter 2.
Izzy awoke, some indeterminable amount of time later, to two different sounds. One was of a constant, steady beeping, the other of someone snoring. Her eyes opened slowly, and she instantly had to keep herself from having a meltdown at finding herself hooked up to several machines, one of which was giving off the constant beeping. She knew the past five years with Starfleet couldn't have been a dream. It had been too vivid, too real. She opened her eyes again, even slower this time, if only to prove it to herself, and tried to determine the source of the snoring. She looked to her left, and found a man in a blue uniform sleeping in an uncomfortable looking chair next to her bed. Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy. She sighed in relief. It hadn't been a dream. Starfleet really had rescued her, and she really was on the U.S.S. Enterprise.
"Dr. McCoy," she said, trying to wake him. He shifted and mumbled something, but remained lost in his dreams.
"Dr. McCoy!" she tried again, this time louder. This time he didn't even move, just grunted in his sleep.
"Bones!" she said, trying a different approach. He jerked awake, eyes darting around the room until they landed on her.
"I see you've decided to join the land of the living," she said.
"I could say much of the same about you," he said, stretching in his chair. He then stood and went to check out the various machines.
"How long was I out?" she asked, nervous after his retort.
"Three days," he said. "You fainted after the fighting in the Engine Room was over. Nearly gave Scotty a heart attack."
"Three days!" she shouted. "What's been happening?"
"Starfleet arrived just after the Klingons boarded us," Bones said, checking some of the machines' readings. "Took care of the war birds and helped us finish off the last of the ones on the ship. You know, a good chunk of them Klingons were taken out by you."
"How could you tell?" she asked, grinning.
"Well," he said, "you were the only one leaving charred flesh in their wake. By the way, how did you manage to do all that without hitting anyone on the crew?"
"Lots of control, lots of practice," she said, shrugging it off. She looked out the window and was surprised to see a grassy clearing with a moon high in the sky. "Where are we?"
"Earth," he said. "They're doing some repairs on the Enterprise and trying to figure out how the Klingons got so close without anyone noticing them."
"Maybe they've figured out how to cloak themselves from our radars?" Izzy asked.
"It's possible," Bones said, heading for the door, "but unlikely. Now, I want you to stay in that bed, and try not to fall asleep. I have to go find Jim and let him know you're awake."
"More questions for me?" she asked. Bones nodded, a ghost of a smile playing on his usually down-turned lips, and left. Izzy busied herself by looking out the window, watching the wind blow over the grass, trying to figure out where exactly on Earth they were. A few minutes later, Kirk came in and sat in the chair that Bones had so recently vacated, looking slightly disheveled, as if he had just woke up. The silence lasted for a few more moments, and he was the first to break it.
"So what happened?" he asked plainly, knowing she'd know what he was talking about.
"Power exhaustion," she said simply. "I haven't used my powers that much in years, and it was too much for my system to take. It probably looked like I was hit by a stunner, and, once hooked up to machines, like I was in a coma."
Kirk nodded. That had been, according to witnesses and the medical personnel that had seen to her since, exactly what it had looked like.
"In reality, I was just in a deep slumber for the past three days. My body was restoring it's energy resources, repairing all of my overstressed organs," she said, slipping into academic mode as she explained it. "Scared the whey out of my parents first time it happened. One minute I'm running around the kitchen, hands aflame, next the fire's gone and I'm passed out, face down on the floor."
"Does this happen every time you use your… powers?" he asked. She shook her head.
"Only when I use them too much," Izzy said simply. "My body usually sends out a warning shot of endorphins that tells me to stop."
"So what happened this time?" Kirk asked, concern for one of his new crew members drawing his eyebrows together.
"I simply ignored it," she said, looking him in the eye. "When I saw the Klingons bursting through the door, all I could think of was those three years they had swirled their sticky fingers in my brain, and something snapped. My body's warning shot hardly registered, as determined as I was that they weren't gonna get me again." She looked out the window again, trying to figure out what time it was. Not knowing their location made it nearly impossible. "What time is it?" she asked.
"It's about four o'clock in the morning," Kirk said.
"Why was Bones sitting at my bedside at four in the morning, Captain?" she asked. Kirk laughed.
"First off, call me Jim," he said. "Most everyone else does. Second, I thought that'd be obvious." Izzy shot him a questioning look, and Kirk, Jim, shook his head. "He was worried about you. Hell, we all were. Scotty because your hands lit on fire without any visible influence, though he calmed down once Bones and I explained that that was normal for you, and then we were all worried because you weren't waking up."
"Has he been sleeping here for the past three days?" she asked. Kirk, Jim, she reminded herself again, shook his head.
"Mostly he just talked to you," he said. "Talking about everything and anything that came to his mind, trying to stimulate you into waking up. Sometimes me and Scotty had to force him out of here to make him eat. The first night, we dragged him to his quarters, hoping he'd get some sleep, but I have a strong suspicion that he just came back here and slept in this chair. When we could get him away, one of us would stay here, in case you woke up."
"But why devote so much attention to me?" she asked.
"Well, Scotty did it because he sees you as a friend, and I did it because you're a member of my crew. Bones, I think, feels guilty."
"For what?" she asked. "It's not his fault I ignored my body's warnings!"
"Because he didn't stop you from leaving the Med Bay," Jim said. "He felt personally responsible for you getting hurt."
"There wasn't anything he could've done to stop me," she said strongly. "Those engines were going critical, and I had to do my bit to help."
"I know that," he said, "which is why I'm not punishing you for disobeying my orders."
"Oh yeah," she said, looking down at her lap.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "If you hadn't, if I may repeat your own words, we'd all be space dust by now." He stood and stretched, ruffling his hair. "Now I want you to devote all of your time getting better. We can't leave until you are."
"Yes, Captain," she said quietly as he turned to leave. "One more question, Jim."
"Yeah?" he asked, turning back around.
"The other day, when I was telling Scotty to shut down the engines, why did you tell him to listen to me?"
Jim laughed. "Contrary to what you might think," he said, patting her on the shoulder, "I actually did read your file."
With that, he left. She leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes, only to open them again a few minutes later as the door opened and Bones walked into the room. "Hey, Bones," she said, startling him.
"Aren't you supposed to be asleep?" he asked. She laughed.
"I've spent the past three days sleeping," she said. "My body's done recovering."
"So I heard," he said, shaking his head. "Do you have any idea how much you scared us?"
"Us who?" Izzy asked. "I understand I worried you, and if I had had more time before the Klingon attack, I would've told you this might happen, but I don't know about scaring anyone."
"Well you sure as hell scared me!" Bones said, looking her dead in the eye. "You ran out of the Med Bay like a bat outta hell, and the next time I saw you was after Jim had paged me, telling me you collapsed."
"I had to run," Izzy said. "If I hadn't, those engines would've blown us to bits. And I didn't have time to explain it to you, because I know my engines." Bones slumped into the chair and sighed. "You know, Bones, it's not your fault." He looked up sharply.
"What do you mean?" He said. It was Izzy's turn to sigh.
"Jim told me that you feel guilty for letting me out of the Med Bay," she said. "Trust me, it's not. If anyone's to blame, it's me. I didn't listen to my own body. If I had, I would've known that it was okay for me to stop. That I could trust the crew to take care of the rest of the Klingons. But my fear of being taken again overpowered me."
Bones's eyebrows drew together, as if he was in deep thought. After a few moments, he spoke. "Something's been bothering me. And not just that," he said.
"And what would that be?" Izzy asked.
"How did you know the engines were overloading?" he asked. "When the Klingons attacked, we were in Med Bay, and neither of us had any contact with any of the engineers. How did you know?"
"I'd tell you," Izzy said with a nervous chuckle, "but you'd probably just think I'm crazy."
"After the events of three days ago," Bones said with a smile, "I think I'm learning to roll with the punches."
"Just trust me on this," Izzy said. Bones thought for a moment before deciding to let it drop.
"So, if you won't answer that question, and you insist that you don't need to sleep, then answer another," he said. She looked up at him and shrugged.
"Sure," she said. "What did you want to know?"
"Your pyrokinesis," he said. "Any ideas on how it happened?" She shrugged.
"It's not an unheard of phenomenon," she said, yet again slipping into academic mode. "Abilities like mine have popped up here and there throughout history. It's not in any means common, but it's not unheard of. Basically, it's a quirk in my genetics. As you must have noticed while you were treating me, my body temperature runs a little higher than normal humans." He nodded, and she continued. "That's another quirk of my… abilities. I can't be burned, and I can't be electrocuted. Nobody really knows why or how I ended up this way. But my pyrokinesis isn't the only special ability out there. And I wasn't the only one the Klingons were experimenting on. I remember one girl they brought in front of me. My memories from those three years are kind of jumbled, and most of them repressed. But I tried to remember the human faces I saw, simply for the matter that, if I ever got away, I could send help for them. Anyway, I remember them trying to get this girl to tell them what I was thinking. At first she wouldn't, but then they did things to her… horrible things. Eventually she cracked, and she told them that I was trying to commit her face to memory. Which, as I said, was exactly what I was doing."
"But how could she know that?" Bones asked.
"Because she was a mind reader," Izzy said. "And before you scoff, I could probably contact her and prove it to you. When Starfleet rescued me, they got her too, as well as a few others. The girl, Rayne, is currently working with the Academy, helping them sort out disciplinary issues."
"Were there any others?" Bones asked. They spent the next hour or so going over who all Starfleet rescued off of the ship, what they could do, and where they were now. Afterwards, stifling a yawn, Bones asked her the big question.
"After five years at Starfleet, why did you have a relapse in the med bay?" he asked. "Surely you've undergone physical examinations since your rescue."
"I have, and I honestly don't know," Izzy said, shaking her head. "But my biggest theory is that it was the first time I'd seen a med bay in space. I know it seems stupid, but that's the best I have. I don't even properly remember the rescue," she said sadly. "They tell me that it took three months before I could regain consciousness without thinking I was still on that ship, in Klingon clutches."
"That must've been difficult," he said. Izzy nodded.
"For myself and the medical techs," she said, stifling her laughter. "Apparently it's not nice to throw flaming objects at people who are trying to help you."
"Ouch," was all Bones could say.
"In all fairness, I only did it the first time," she said. "After that they kept everything out of my reach." Bones 'hmphed,' covering another yawn. "And I may be wide awake, but you sound like you could use some rest." He began to protest, but she cut him off. "Proper sleep is an important part of physical health. And I'm sure that chair can't be comfortable. Go to your quarters, Doctor. I'm fine, and there's no reason for you to feel guilty over anything."
Bones must have agreed, because he left, and Izzy resigned herself to counting the ceiling tiles until someone slightly more alert decided to check on her.
A/N: Live long and prosper.