Hello all! I hope you've enjoyed the road so far... sorry if there will be some time between updates from now on, I have to go back to school and educate myself.
Any comments, criticisms (as long as they're constructive) or praise would be heavily appreciated :)
Chapter Three.
Jenny stared critically at the handsome, albeit incredibly disillusioned with pretty much everything, man who'd gruffly introduced himself as "Doctor McCoy", and sighed. He had her chin grasped between two fingers, holding her head still as he surveyed the silvery scars littering her head, and the dark purple bruise that was spreading across her jaw.
'Medical' was pretty much like any other hospital Jenny had seen on TV, white and clean and clinical, devoid of any human touches, anything that could tell her about the people who surrounded her. There were no knick-knacks, no posters promoting healthy living, not even cartoon bandaids to liven the place up. The pure absence of the place freaked her out; when she went to be stitched up, it was usually in some backroom of Lydia's pub or the Underhill, an old rag clamped between her teeth and a little vodka, if she was in bad enough of a state for Peter to stop being such a tight-arse, to numb the pain. She'd never been anywhere this fancy.
"Don't huff at me, girl," he muttered exasperatedly, probably trying to ignore the Vulcan loitering over his shoulder.
Jenny let loose another pointed sigh, just to irritate him, grinning when he gave her an are you serious stare. He shook his head, muttering to himself.
"Miss Swift, are you currently aware of John Harrison's whereabouts?" the Vulcan guy asked her- Slock? Smock?
"No."
"Do you have any idea where he could be?"
"Yes."
His eyebrows rose even further (she hadn't though it possible). "Really?"
"Hah. No." Jenny said, pleased to see Doctor Grumpy-pants' scowl disappear for a moment, replaced by a tiny grin.
The pretty dark-skinned woman, whose name escaped her (God she was bad with those), sighed again. "Miss Swift-"
"Call me Jenny."
"Jenny," she amended,"please be serious."
She huffed again. "Fine, fine."
"Jenny," Eyebrows asked her, testing the word in his mouth and rolling his tongue over the syllables, as if she was some experiment. He was clearly uncomfortable at using her nickname; "it would be exponentially helpful if you could outline how you met John Harrison, and how you came to part ways with him."
Jenny bit her lip. She didn't particularly enjoy revisiting that part of her life, but it was necessary. "I met him when I was seventeen." She paused, furrowing her brow.
"Elaborate." He said, perhaps a little too brusquely.
Aurora or whatever tsked at him, which he seemed to take on board. He cleared his throat. "My apologies. If you would-"
Jenny waved her hand at him impatiently. "I get it, mate."
Eyebrows frowned. "I am not your sexual partner. Uhura-" he cut himself off, pressing his lips together.
Oh, Jenny thought. Well then.
Who she now presumed to be Uhura looked away, chewing her lip in an effort to stop from laughing. Or maybe shouting. "Oh my God," she muttered.
Doctor Grumpy-pants snorted unprofessionally, almost spraying Jenny with his spit. "It's slang, Spock," he said in his rough tones. His voice made her think of the burn of whiskey, golden and sharp.
Eyebrows- Spock- frowned again. "Oh. A colloquial term."
"Yeah," she said, "I'm gonna ignore that."
"Continue."
"Um, we met through some people in the same line of work as me. Thievin', and that. He needed me to do some work for him."
"What kind of work?" this time, it was Uhura who spoke. "Did he want you to steal some kind of technology?" she twisted her hands together, as if she were itching to use them in another way- maybe to hit someone, presumably Spock.
"No," she shook her head. "He needed me to hack into a Starfleet database."
The three others in the room visibly tensed, staring at her. Jenny knew what was running through their minds- they thought she was responsible for the death of their friends. She was thinking it herself, to be honest.
"Why?" Spock asked.
"He needed information on someone."
"D'you know who?" Doctor Grumpy-pants asked.
"No," and at the group's disappointed looks, she added, "but I can find out."
Spock looked sceptical (he somehow managed this with only a slight raise of his eyebrows), asking, "how?"
"I, uh, wasn't allowed to see exactly what the documents were," Jenny responded, sheepishly, "and that kinda… pissed me off. So I… um,"
"Spit it out, kid," Doctor Grumpy-pants griped. "So…?"
"So, I put a marker on the file. Like, a little flag that can only be accessed by me, so I could open it later. I never really got round to it, though." She chewed her lip. It was almost bitten raw from the amount of times she'd sunk her teeth into the flesh.
"Why?"
She grimaced. "When J- Harrison and I stopped workin' together, he ah, left me with a little… partin' gift." With another twisted expression, Jenny tugged down the collar of her shirt to reveal the scar.
Upon seeing the mangled, twisted injury that marred her skin from her collarbone down to her hip, Spock's eyes widened marginally, Uhura grimaced, and Doctor Grumpy-pants spat out a shocked "well, shit,".
Leaning closer, he examined the scar critically. "Harrison did this to you?"
"Yeah." After everything we'd been through together, after I trusted him, she wanted to add, but the words stuck in her throat, clogged with years of bitter feelings of betrayal and hurt.
"Take off your shirt." He said.
Jenny automatically recoiled, tensing her body, bringing up her knee in preparation to slam it into his balls, if needed, and so that the knife she'd hidden in her boot was within reach. Yeah, Jim had caught her out with one of them, but he hadn't thought to ask her about a second blade. "What?" she snapped.
"Cool it, kid," he said, rolling his eyes, as if she was overreacting. "I just wanna better look at it."
"Why? There's nothin' you can do for it, anyway." Jenny said defensively, remaining tense.
He levelled her with a stern stare. "Just do it."
She looked away from Doctor Grumpy-pants, past Spock and to the kind, albeit tired, face of Uhura. The older woman nodded, saying, "He won't hurt you."
Jenny fought the urge to scoff. If he tried, she could always take him on. He was a doctor, not a soldier, didn't matter whether he was Starfleet or not. She nodded, and slipped the shirt over her head so she was sitting on the examination table in nothing but a pair of dark pants and the one bra she'd taken with her, since Jim hadn't allowed her to pack. "Asshole," she hissed quietly, so only the Doctor could hear. He grumbled something intelligible in return. Jenny entertained the thought that it was some form of apology for a moment, and then thought better of it.
Her bra was black, not particularly sexy or revealing but still a bra, with frayed lace around the edges and a small blue bow in the middle.
She felt exposed, not fragile yet somehow weaker than before, subject to these strange men's gazes and Uhura's shock.
The scar was an unforgiving, ugly thing, a dark pink colour despite the fact it had been two years since the injury had been inflicted upon her, coursing between her breasts from her right collarbone, across the wiry muscle of her abdomen to her left hip.
"This was deliberate." Doctor Grumpy-pants said harshly, his long callused fingers flexing for a moment, as if deliberating whether or not to trace the scar, and then seemingly changing his mind.
Good, she thought. She didn't know whether she'd be able to hold back from whipping her knife across his scrunched-up face if he'd done so. "Yes. It was." She affirmed, teeth gritted.
"Why?"
Jenny barked out a half-laugh, the sound harsh and grating even to her own ears. "No. I finished the job, and next thing I knew he'd pinned me-" she cut herself off, voice catching. She cleared her throat. "It wasn't quick, as you can probably tell. It hurt,"
"No shit," Doctor Grumpy-pants said, and she focused on the mocking undertone to his voice rather than the piteous gaze of Uhura and the emotionless stare of her Vulcan boyfriend. "Who healed you?"
Jenny frowned, her lips twisting as she recalled the moment she'd woken up after fainting from the pain of Jo-Harrisoncarving into her skin. "Nobody. At least, nobody I remember. I woke up," she said, gesturing to the scar, "and it was closed up. No stitches that I could see. I think someone healed me and left before I woke up."
There was silence for a moment. Then, Uhura said, "that's lucky, I guess." Her voice was disbelieving, but Jenny didn't care.
"Recount the moment John Harrison did this to you, please." Came the abrupt sound of Spock's voice, flat and somewhat irritating.
She took a deep breath, exhaling noisily through her nostrils. "Well, he uh- he was holding me down. He's strong," she said, "stronger than you can imagine. And he used the knife to cut open my shirt, then he- uh."
"He…?" Uhura asked, gently encouraging.
"He cut me."
"Is- is that all?" the Lieutenant asked, dark eyes concerned and warm.
"Yes." Jenny replied, answering the unspoken question, the question she'd seen in Jim's eyes when he first saw her, fighting off those men in such a way she knew that he knew she'd done it before, for the same reason. She saw the way his gaze had flicked over her scantily-clad form, not appraising but wondering if she'd ever failed to fight them off before.
"Did you at least get a hit in?" Doctor Grumpy-pants asked, and Jenny huffed out a laugh.
"I got to my own knife, managed to cut open his cheek," she said, and suddenly her mind was flooded with images of hisface, piercing eyes boring into hers as the crimson blood dripped from his chin, mixing with the blood that flowed from her open wound. His eyes had almost been shocked, and then his lips had quirked at the corners as if he was amused. Then, the warmth of his hands was gone and he was walking away. All she'd seen before her vision had gone fuzzy and dark was his long, black coat that he wore even in the Perth heat swishing around the corner of the small apartment he'd lived in.
"And when you woke up, you were healed?"
"Sort of. The wound was closed, but I had to wait until a friend came to check up on me to make sure it wouldn't split again."
"Thank you, Jenny." Uhura said warmly, resting a slim hand on her shoulder.
The others seemed to decide it was better to not question her further.
"Yes, thank you."
"No problem, Spock."
"Miss- Jenny," the Vulcan corrected himself, "will your history with John Harrison be a problem in his capture?"
"What do you mean?" she asked, frowning.
"Will he be more likely to be hostile towards-"
"No," Jenny could almost feel Harrison standing behind her, like he always had, reassuring and constant, if a little cold and serious. She'd spent weeks trying to get him to laugh when they'd started working together, holed up in that little apartment. She'd told him every joke she could think of, from knock-knocks to long, elaborate stories to political to sexual (which had made him decidedly uncomfortable). In the end, she could only ever get a small quirking of the lips, and it seemed more as if it was only to appease her instead of actual amusement.
He isn't constant, she reminded herself. He tried to kill you, in the end. He isn't reassuring. He means nothing. "I meant nothing to him."