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Emotionally Compromised
Ch. 2
McCoy would later admit that his next move was to leap before he looked. Or, as he put it when feeling a little more self-forgiving, "My Southern chivalry done rose up and bit me in the ass. If you don't believe me I'll drop trou and show you the scars. One set of many." At the time all he was thinking was that somewhere a dark-haired Vulcan dame was in distress, protected only by a dog small enough to sit on a buttermilk biscuit with room leftover for butter and honey. Alone and lost, rattling around the big ship or already beamed back to the space station, forlorn and friendless. Honor demanded he commit rescue upon her. It was one of many life-altering decisions he made while under the influence of rampaging virtue.
The computer found her quickly enough: two Vulcans on the Enterprise, one male mixed-breed, one female purebred…didn't take many seconds to sort that little problem out. He tracked her down in a tiny lounge off of one of the minor Engineering offices, one that served the third deck life support vents. The room wasn't much more than a cubicle, with a small table, a couple of chairs, a dried out portion of a former pizza with one bite out of the tip slowly turning to stone on a plate on the coffee stand, and a beer mug filled with what looked like a wad of cotton swabbing immersed in an unknown liquid, labeled with a sign saying, "Please do not jostle the cellulose nitrate generator: gun cotton goes bang."
Shahtau was sitting on a chair as far away from the mug as possible, with a PADD in one hand. Her dog was curled in a tight ball under her seat, snoring slightly, and Shahtau was sniffling and wiping her nose on a tissue. McCoy gave a moment's worried thought to what she was reading. Her last communication with her lost children? A love letter from her deceased husband…or whatever the hell passed for a love letter on Vulcan? Or maybe just a genetic read-out on the children she might have with Spock if Uhura relented and let the making of little Vulcans commence…
He took one cautious step into the doorway, and knocked gingerly on the frame. He almost hoped she would fail to hear, or choose to ignore him. Instead she looked up, her face shifting from moody reserve to calm…amusement. Again, amusement.
"Mind if I come in?" he asked.
She cocked her head. "No. Nor do I see that I have much say. It is a public space, according to your computer."
"Yeah, well. Not much of a space," he said, looking around the gloomy little cubby. "Better than the residents' lounge where I interned, though." He settled into the remaining chair and leaned his elbows on the table. "I tracked down Spock and forced a confession out of him, so I know why you're here. Doctors almost have to be nosy on some level. I'd apologize but I wouldn't mean it."
"Then please, spare yourself the effort," she replied, with apparent seriousness marred only by that eternal glimmer of humor. "I hope you didn't do him much harm."
"Harm?"
"Spock. When you forced the confession."
"Oh, that. No. No, I just appear to have a genius for rattling his cage. But in my medical opinion it keeps his brain from calcification, so I consider it therapeutic. If I were in private practice I'd charge him for the service."
"Ah, but if you were in private practice you wouldn't be able to impose therapy. He would no doubt turn down your services and die with solid bone from one ear to the other. At least with both of you in Starfleet you can refuse to allow him to be a complete bonehead."
He snorted, and looked at her in true amazement. "Lady, you are funny. That's cheating."
The brows went up and a near-smile glimmered at mouth and eyes. "Cheating?"
"You, ma'am, are Vulcan, and are not supposed to be funny."
At that a true smile twisted her mouth, but not a particularly happy one. "A virtue among humans is a vice among Vulcans." She lifted the PADD she still held in one hand. "I have low tastes and questionable personal habits. One more reason I was chosen for this particular venture."
"So…what are you reading, then?"
"Anne of Green Gables. I find the final 'e' in her name and her ability to fall into error with the best of intentions…a comfort." She sighed, and put the PADD on the table between them. "Tell me, Leonard McCoy, are that poor boy and his nice young woman going to be all right, or have I completely banjaxed their partnership?"
"Banjaxed?"
She shrugged. "Once, what seems like a million years ago, I taught human literature at a very minor academy in Shi'kar. My English vocabulary is the result. Now, about --"
"'That poor boy and his nice young woman.'" McCoy shook his head. "You take the cake. I can't tell you for sure. But I suspect from what I have seen of those two they're going to find a way to patch things up. Pragmatists, both of 'em. Or maybe it's just they have their priorities straight."
"Unfortunately for all of us, the elders will not agree with your assessment." She pondered the fact, and sighed. "I am afraid that I will be sent right back here again after I report. Or, worse…they could send Tsla."
"Tsla?"
"Younger than I am. Far less comfortable with human ways…or, really, anything new. Very low diplomacy rating. However, she is among the few likely alternates available for the position…"
"Concubine?"
Again the uneasy smile twisted her lips. "No. Or yes. We prefer to think of it as 'Mother to the Race.' It is slightly less daunting than 'brood mare' or 'walking womb.' Let it never be said of the women of Kaiidth that we were not willing to make ourselves useful. In this case the number of women the elders are willing to toss at a half-blood who refuses to come lend a…hand…in our recovery is limited to a few of us whom they believe capable of reproduction, but also unlikely to object too loudly to what is seen as a purgatorial life sentence among the unwashed of the Federation."
"The humility of Vulcans never ceases to amaze me."
"Yes. Well."
"So -- for some reason they think teaching a few courses in Shakespeare and Danielle Steele means that you're going to be tickled about being sent…here?"
"Oh, that and a few other little things. I am, shall we say, among the lesser of Surak's followers. Or, more honestly, I am simply dreadful at the disciplines. And I have been … other than a wife previously. A mistake made in youth with lasting consequences. Thus the wise ones have determined that I am a perfect match for a young man only slightly more than half my age. To their credit they were not fully aware of the depth of his current commitment. Which didn't make this afternoon any easier." Her voice was getting tighter and tighter…then she came to a dead stop and drew in a deep breath and rose, pacing uneasily in the tiny room. The dog woke up and trotted along side, looking eagerly up and her and wagging its tail. She turned on her heel and glowered across the room. "To be brutally honest, I am an emotional mess by the standards of my people, and thus considered a wonderful match for a brilliant and promising young officer of a good family who unfortunately was disbarred from a more respectable alliance as a result of his clearly unworthy maternal relations." She took one more step backwards…and the mug perched behind her slipped slowly from the edge of the coffee stand.
McCoy moved very, very fast.
He caught the mug.
The dog stood, yapping merrily at the wonderful new game some nice human had decided to play. He darted towards McCoy and away. Shahtau picked him up quickly and tucked him under her arm.
"Nice catch," she said, very quietly.
"I should try out for the major leagues," McCoy responded, wiping his hair out of his eyes with his free hand.
"Leonard McCoy, can you tell me precisely what 'gun cotton' is?"
"Just call me…hell, just call me Bones. And I have no idea. It goes 'bang.'"
"Ah," she said, still painfully quiet. "Just like my life, then." And, very slowly, she folded to the ground and held the little dog in her arms, her head down. McCoy could not tell if she was crying or not: the dog was licking her too fast to be sure. Then she gave a hiccupping little sob, resolving the question entirely.
It finally became completely clear to him. By the standards of his own people this woman was quiet, reserved, witty, and endowed with amazing self-control and resilience. She had survived too much for him to easily believe, with what appeared to be both grace and humor. But by the standards of her own people she was the woman who dances on tables at parties wearing a lampshade and not much more -- without having to get drunk first. Or the crazy if beloved aunt who laughed too loud at holodramas and cried her way through every wedding. The result was that some wizened old Vulcan rat-bastard had chosen to kill two birds with one stone and insult both her and Spock by shipping her out as, yes, a walking womb because Spock was just barely good enough for her, and she was just barely good enough for Spock…and Uhura frankly did not enter into the equation. Which, of course, had only ended in one more painful blow to a strong spirit. The result being that the woman was doing the first truly sensible thing he had ever seen a Vulcan do, and having a damned good cry about it.
"You know," he said as gently as he could, "I have a bottle of aged bourbon that would go pretty well with that crying jag. If you think it would help."
She looked up, then, and gave him a very crooked smile. "My word, you really are a brilliant doctor, aren't you?"
"I'll do for an old country hack." He poked around in the cabinet space under the coffee stand, and found a bundle of disposable napkins. He handed them to her, and watched as she mopped her face dry from tears and dog drool. "What's with the little black mop, anyway?"
She patted the creature on the head and sighed. "I was on Earth when…anyway. It was a long time before I was ready to go to Kaiidth. This fellow was at the school I had gone to for some research -- a stray. He…I don't know. It was just easier to let him stay with me."
"Understood," McCoy said, having spent most of the period of his divorce hearings feeding a mouse that had gnawed its way into the kitchen of the studio apartment he'd been living in. Sad was bad. Sad and lonely was worse.
"What's his name?"
"Toto. Because it seemed like I wasn't in Kansas anymore."
"I should have known."
End Ch. 2