Leonard got the class work for Humanoid Morphologies from one of the residents at the infirmary during his shift, during a brief lull in the constant stream of minor injuries and afflictions that kept pouring through the doors. Fridays were always busy, it seemed. He found himself grateful for that; it helped to keep him from constantly wondering what Jim was doing, if Jim was okay, if Jim needed anything.

He'd left the kid with a spare datapad so he could do some classwork, and strict instructions not to leave the dorm unless there was an emergency - Jim was, after all, restricted from duty for medical reasons. Leonard had received a glare from Doctor Reinhardt upon arrival that morning, letting him know that the senior medical staff were aware that the sick note was teetering on the fine line of professional care and unprofessional favors, so it would look really bad if Jim was seen running around campus. Still, he hated to think of Jim holed up in that tiny dorm room alone, and he hoped the kid would find something to keep himself busy and distracted so that he didn't stew too deeply over his own inner turmoil.

Now, if only Leonard could keep himself distracted.

Although the day was busy enough to keep him mostly preoccupied, his mind still drifted at every opportunity. It wasn't just the professional concern over Jim's mental and physical welfare that sifted through his thoughts. No, this was personal. Had a crisis of this magnitude happened to any other patient under his care, he'd definitely be concerned; it was a huge pill to swallow. But it hadn't happened to just any patient - it had happened to Jim. Whether Leonard liked it or not, he was in this for the long haul, and he decided he wouldn't have it any other way.

Still, that didn't help the fact that he hadn't had much of an appetite all day. It didn't stop the painful details of Jim's story from churning over and over in his head every time he had a spare moment to think. It didn't stop him from feeling a little twist of fear in his gut each time the ER room doors slid open with a new patient for the chance that something horrible had happened to Jim in his absence, or that Jim had done something horrible to himself…

"… McCoy. Hey, Doctor McCoy!"

Leonard blinked twice and looked up, feeling the heat of embarrassment flushing his face. "Sorry, Sir… I was reviewing the rounds from the shift, and -"

Reinhardt gave him an exasperated sort of look. "Your shift is over, and you look like hell. Go home and get some rest over the weekend, would you?"

Leonard nodded vaguely, handing the datapad to Doctor Reinhardt. He had the weekend off because he'd volunteered to work the long holiday, freeing up other medical staff who had family they'd wanted to visit, so as a result, he had this weekend to himself. To Jim, he thought. And that weekend, he realized as he focused on the clock on the wall, had started eight minutes ago. He grinned, feeling like a weight on his shoulders had lifted, just a bit. "Yes, Doctor."

He hurried across campus, relishing the cool breeze and clear sky after the miserable weather of the previous night. He could see the entire Golden Gate Bridge lit by the bright afternoon sun, without even a trace of fog obscuring it. It would be a great night to get Jim out of the dorm and bring him down to the bar. Maybe see if he could relax a little bit and sort through some of his thoughts the way they usually did now that the immediate impact of the whole thing had faded for a few hours. At least, he hoped that's what they could do.

The turbolift to the eighteenth floor took far too long, and he jogged down the hall to his dorm room, rapidly punching his code into the access pad. "Hey Jim," he said lightly, setting his bag down, "what did you do all day?"

He was greeted by silence.

"Jim?"

Stepping slowly into the room, Leonard held his breath as searched for anything that might be out of place, but there was nothing. In fact, even his grandmother's quilt had been neatly folded and draped over the back of the couch where it always was. He glanced around the bookshelf and saw that his bed hadn't been touched, so Jim wasn't asleep there. And the Starfleet regulation boots that were one size too small for him (as he knew from trying to pull them on once or twice by accident) were gone.

Don't panic yet, Leonard, he told himself as he hurried across the room to his comm panel. "Leonard McCoy to James Kirk." No reply. "McCoy to Kirk," he said, a bit more emphatically. Still nothing. "Goddammit."

A dozen possibilities, none of them pleasant, flashed through Leonard's mind. He hadn't cared enough to worry about someone like this since… well… Jocelyn and Joanna. The implications of that were best ignored for now. Of course, there was the chance that Jim had gone back to his own dorm room and was asleep or ignoring his comm. That would be an innocent enough answer.

Without a second thought, Leonard had grabbed his first aid kit like a reflex response and found himself running back out the door and to the turbolift. He couldn't stop himself from rocking on his toes as he felt the surge of adrenaline and worry pushing him to move while he waited for the turbolift to reach the ground floor, cursing it for taking too long. When the doors slid open, he burst out of the dorm building like a racehorse through a starting gate, not caring that cadets and faculty alike were staring at him like he was insane as he sped across the quad. The campus seemed far too wide, and for the first time, he found himself irritated that his advanced degree had given him a senior cadet suite while placing Jim in the freshman dorms at the other end of Crissy Field.

He let his own half-collision with the freshman dorm access pad slow him down, and all but slammed his handprint against the reader. Again, the wait on the turbolift was almost unbearable, and when he finally got to the eleventh floor and Jim's door, he was unsurprised that nobody replied to his hail. It took him two failed attempts to remember Jim's access code before he finally cracked and used his medical override code.

"Jim?" he called as he walked into the room, not surprised to find it dark and the shades drawn. "Computer, lights." There was nothing to see with the lights that he hadn't been able to see without. Jim's roommate wasn't there, which was typical, as he spent most of his evenings at the astrophysics lab. A few articles of clothing were strewn across Jim's unmade bed, but Leonard had the feeling those had been there for a couple of days. No, Jim hadn't been back.

Leonard began pacing, something he hadn't done in years, trying to decide what to do next. He could begin a random search across the campus at Jim's favorite haunts. He could try the mess hall, in case Jim had decided to brave campus food instead of raiding Leonard's mini-fridge like usual. He could page security, but somehow he knew Jim would never forgive him for that, and he was already feeling guilty for his other mistakes over the previous twenty-four hours. Instead, he went with his gut instinct.

He hit the comm panel just a bit harder than necessary, took a deep breath and said, "Doctor Leonard McCoy to Captain Christopher Pike." A tense moment later, Pike's voice came in clear over the speaker. "Pike here. And before you ask, so is Kirk, and he's fine."

The tension unwound from Leonard so fast he almost stumbled. Oh thank God, he thought, at the same time as he desperately tried to squash his own embarrassment at his transparency. There was no point in denying why he'd called. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Sir. I had just expected Jim to be around this afternoon, and he didn't answer his comm. I wanted to see how he was doing." Then, realizing Jim was probably listening, he added, "Sorry, Jim."

"It's okay, Bones," came Jim's voice. He didn't sound hurt, upset, or frantic, and one more knot of tension Leonard hadn't realized he was still carrying loosened. "Captain Pike buzzed me about an hour ago to check in, and said if I felt up for it, he wanted to review my performance at the training sim yesterday. I'm fine. Just didn't realize that you'd get out of the clinic so early."

Leonard nodded, even though they couldn't see him. "No problem, Jim. I wish you'd left a note."

"I did."

Leonard was glad they couldn't see him as his face flushed furiously and he thudded his head lightly against the wall. "Oh. I… guess I didn't see it."

The sound of two voices chuckling lightly in unison. Then a pause. "Bones, are you in my room?"

Bones thudded his head against the wall next to the comm again, and he was sure that Pike and Jim both heard it that time. "Yeah, kid. Comm me when you're done with your meeting, okay?"

"Actually, McCoy," Pike's voice cut in, "we're just finishing up. My office is on the seventh floor of Archer Hall. If you want to meet Cadet Kirk here, he's all yours."

Through the mortification at his own obviousness and stupidity, Leonard got a little rush of the same possessiveness he'd felt yesterday, and pride at Pike's subtle acknowledgement of his right to it. More practically, he was sure that Pike wanted someone to keep an eye on Jim for the day anyway, but still… it felt good. Not that he wasn't still royally embarrassed. "I'll be there in five minutes. McCoy out."

A few minutes later, the turbolift deposited Leonard onto the seventh floor of Archer Hall. Jim was just stepping out into the hallway from Pike's office, looking back over his shoulder, still talking.

"… I will, thank you. I'll report back on Monday. I'm not going to do anything stupid, Sir. I promise."

"That'll be the day," Leonard said gruffly, giving Jim one of his best I-don't-know-why-I-put-up-with-you looks as he walked towards him.

Jim's head snapped around, and he smiled the first decent smile he'd had since Thursday morning. "Well, Bones, if I do something stupid, I've got you to scrape me off the floor and put me back together."

Leonard stopped in front of him and folded his arms across his chest. "I'd really rather not get into the habit of having to put you back together. We've got to leave some medical supplies for the rest of Starfleet, don't we?" He let his scowl soften and reached over to muss Jim's hair, which never failed to get a reaction. "But yeah, I guess I would. Damn troublemaker."

"Hey!" Jim ducked out of the way and quickly ran his fingers through his hair, trying to fix whatever damage Leonard might have caused. "Hands off the software!"

By then, Pike was leaning in the doorway, chuckling to himself. "You kids both stay out of trouble this weekend."

Leonard nodded, putting his hand firmly on Jim's shoulder as if to say, Don't worry about that, I've got him. "We will. Hot shot here is taking it easy. Doctor's orders."

"Bones!" Jim sounded exasperated and just on the amusing side of petulant. Hell, he sounded like Jim again.

"You heard him, Cadet," Pike said evenly. "Doctor's orders. Even I can't override that." He tipped his head. "You two get out of here, and maybe if I'm lucky I'll get to do that soon, too."

Leonard quirked a smile appreciatively, but almost frowned when he got a better look at Pike. He should have known - the Captain might be smiling lightly, but his eyes looked a bit red and strained. A sideways glance at Jim told him that Jim's easy posture and careless grin were a façade, and below that, he was still nursing some raw wounds. The conversation that had just ended in Pike's office couldn't have been easy for either of them. Leonard gave Pike a quick but meaningful nod. "Then you get some rest, too, Sir. Doctor's orders, yes?"

Pike let his shoulders slump, just a fraction of an inch, but he kept his tired grin in place. "Yes, Doc." He looked back at Jim, fixing him with a meaningful stare. "And Kirk… you take care of yourself."

"I'll try, Sir."

There were so many things being said in those few words that Leonard's brain was still processing the multiple meanings as they all said goodbye, and he steered Jim towards the turbolift, his hand still clasped on the kid's shoulder. As the turbolift doors slid shut and they began to descend, however, Jim suddenly slapped his hand against the controls, bringing the 'lift to an immediate halt. Just as abruptly, the light, easy confidence he'd been wearing fell away and he slouched against the turbolift wall, eyes closed and mouth screwed up in a tense line.

Just as quickly, Leonard found himself ready to catch him, fingers on Jim's elbow and legs braced. "Jim? You okay?"

"I'm fine, Bones. Just give me a minute to breathe."

"You're not going to collapse on me, are you?"

One blue eye cracked open. "No." It closed again. "Just need to breathe. And think. There's a lot to think about."

"Yeah, you ain't kidding." Leonard had his own list on his mind, and he figured it only partially overlapped with Jim's.

That one eye opened again, glancing first at Leonard's face, then down at the fingers on his arm and back up again. "I'm not gonna fall over, Bones. I actually followed doctor's orders today and rested. Well, actually, I kinda hid from the world in your dorm room until Pike called me, but seriously, I think I'm managing to pull it together again."

"I'm glad," he said as softly as he could. Releasing Jim's elbow, Leonard turned and leaned back against the turbolift wall next to Jim. He folded his arms and pressed the knuckles of his right hand against his mouth, speaking into the backs of his fingers. "What did you talk about in there?"

Jim held his silence for a moment, then shook his head as he slapped the turbolift controls again. "I'll tell you when I've got a cold beer in front of me."

That sounded more like the Jim that Leonard had come to know over the previous three months. The light grin and casual stance outside Pike's office had been an act, but the progress here, however strained, was real. It was a relief to hear him coming back to himself, even if it took effort. Leonard nodded in acquiescence, and when the doors slid open a few seconds later, he followed his friend out of the turbolift.

Jim led the way across the quad, away from the waterfront, and Leonard followed close at his side, not quite keeping even with the kid. They crossed the walkway and ducked out through the south gate, away from the Academy grounds. The whole time, Jim said nothing, and Leonard figured that was okay.

He expected Jim to lead them to one of his preferred bars, all of which had plenty of noise and plenty of women, the two things in which Jim Kirk seemed to enjoy losing himself. Instead, he found Jim making a left onto the bike path, and going almost all the way to the marina before turning right again, towards Leonard's favorite bar. It was a quieter place with a better selection of liquors, and typically he only persuaded Jim to go there when the day had been rough and all he wanted was amiable silence while he lost himself in his bad habits. For all that Jim was a raucous and flirtatious drunk at the other bars, he had been a surprisingly good drinking buddy on those few nights when Leonard had needed him. They'd never said much, which was fine, he supposed - they technically barely knew each other - but after those evenings, it had always felt as though he'd let the weight of the world off his chest. Sometimes, that was enough.

Tonight, Leonard suspected that it wouldn't be.

Finally, they tucked themselves into a table in the back corner of the bar, Leonard with a tumbler of bourbon in his own hands and Jim clutching an oversized glass of amber-colored brew. For several minutes, Jim sat staring at his beer, watching the condensation collect on the outside of the glass, occasionally running his finger through the gathering droplets, speeding one along its descent to the coaster.

Leonard could practically see him mentally thumbing through a long list of topics that simmered just below the surface - each one pressing and severe and just plain fucked up, each one needing to be dissected and left with its innards to air out like a grotesque sacrifice to the old gods. Jim looked like he was about to be sacrificed himself, and the most twisted part of it was that he looked like he had accepted that fate. That look just didn't fit on Jim Kirk, but there it was. Finally, his eyes hardened just a bit; he'd decided where to start. He took a large chug of beer, set the glass back down, and still staring at the bubbles, spoke just loud enough to be heard over the din of the bar.

"You didn't know my father was George Kirk, did you?" It was less a question than a statement.

It was as good of a place to start as any, Leonard thought. "Was I supposed to?"

Jim laughed drily. "Actually, no. That's why I never even mentioned it. But I figured you did, like everyone else."

Deciding to tread lightly, Leonard knocked back a swallow of bourbon, letting the slow burn clear his head. "I try to avoid that 'like everyone else' thing. Never seemed to work for me, ya know."

"Ha. Good bet. Never worked for me either." He shook his head bemusedly. "Hell, you didn't even overhear people, did you?"

"I try to avoid them, too."

Jim snorted. "Yeah. So you never heard what they've been saying since the day I arrived?"

"What have they been saying?"

"Hell, Bones, I know you're not in any of my classes, but I'm still surprised you missed that." He tossed back another swig of beer. "They said that the only reason I got into the Academy was because of my father's name."

Leonard couldn't prevent his eyebrow from creeping up at the revelation. "I'm sure that's not true, Jim."

With a grimace, Jim shook his head and looked away. "Yeah it is. It's absolutely, completely, one-hundred percent true, and that's why it really sucks. Sure, my aptitude scores were high enough, but my personal track record would have kept me out if Pike hadn't pulled some strings… and agreed to be personally responsible for my academic and professional development… and he did because of my father." He shook his head again. "There are times I hate my last name."

Leonard didn't quite know what to say to that, so he let Jim's words settle in while he sipped at his drink a bit. "I'm sorry for not knowing."

Jim actually looked amused by that. "You're sorry?" he asked incredulously, rhetorically. "Bones, I thought you knew, but you're the one fucking person in Starfleet who didn't seem to expect me to be my father, and then thoroughly express their disappointment that I wasn't. You didn't talk about it, you didn't seem to expect me to talk about it, and you… you… dammit, Bones, don't you dare be sorry. I'm glad you didn't know. I can breathe around you."

Jim's mouth fell open in surprise at his own words, and he quickly hid behind another chug of beer, but when he put the glass down, he didn't seem any more comfortable. "I know you can't forget that I said that, but… now that you know, please don't turn into them. After all of this shit…" He let out a sharp breath between his teeth, as if he was pissed with himself. The hand that wasn't wrapped tight around his drink raked itself harshly through his already-mussed hair. "Fuck, you're the one person who didn't know anything about me, and now you know too much."

Leonard raised an eyebrow. So that's what this is about, huh? He leaned forward, hunched over his own tumbler, and fixed Jim with a stern look. "You've been hanging around with me because I didn't know you, or at least, because I didn't act like I did?"

Jim actually nodded, a wary look in his eye. "You never asked me about stuff, and you treated me like… well… normal."

Leonard couldn't believe that he was hearing this crap. "Kid, what your name is and who you are… those are two completely different things. I don't give a shit about your last name. You're Jim, and as far as I'm concerned, that's plenty. I didn't ask you about stuff because I didn't see a reason to pry into things you didn't want to up and tell me anyway." He paused, and suddenly knew where he was going with this. Knocking back the last swallow of his bourbon, and cringing at the sharp burn, he braced himself for what he knew he was going to have to say.

Jim had opened up. Jim had been vulnerable. Jim had bared his soul. It was Leonard's turn to rip off the bandages so that Jim didn't run off thinking he was the only one who was broken.

"I also don't give a shit about 'normal,' whatever that is. I only care about 'normal' when I'm testing someone's vital signs." He tucked his head down between his shoulders and spoke at his empty tumbler. "My… my wife wanted normal."

"Oh?" A tiny glimmer of curiosity.

Leonard squared his shoulders, unable to meet Jim's eyes as he ripped off the whole bandage in one fast, agonizing blow. "She had it, too… until I helped my father die."

Even as he said it, he felt the hot burn of tears threatening to well up, to blur his vision, to make him break. The quiet and tight intake of breath from across the table matched the stunned look on Jim's face, which was wavering through the tears that Leonard was refusing to blink away.

"You never told me," Jim said, sounding dazed.

Leonard swallowed past the tightness in his throat. "You never asked… and I didn't want to talk about it either."

"You don't have to -"

"Yeah, I do."

Leonard signaled the barkeep for another round, and soon the evening was dissolving into a swirl of liquor and a stream of stories that should never have been told and - if the world didn't hate him as much as he thought - would never be repeated.

.&.

That night, Leonard went to sleep in his own bed, with Jim curled up on the couch, sleeping off one too many rounds of beer. It was dysfunctionally familiar, but different all at once. Despite the fact that he'd spent the evening playing out memories and fears that he'd hoped never to voice to another living soul, he was okay with it. It had been horrible, but, but for Jim, yes, he was okay with it.

He woke in the middle of the night to the sounds of fitful struggling as Jim battled his own demons again, and fell back asleep sitting on the couch with Jim's head on his lap.

When he woke up again, it was morning. The room was empty, but this time he held panic at bay as he looked for a note, and was not surprised that Jim had left one.

Hey Bones,
Before you start, don't worry. I'm just going to change into some clean clothes, and then I just need to go do some thinking. Call if you need to, but I'm fine.

Also, you didn't have to, but thanks.
~Jim

Leonard sighed. Yeah, he'd had to do it, and in retrospect, he'd also wanted to. All of it. And sure, he wanted to go find Jim to verify for himself that the kid was really okay, but this time he knew that he had to sit back and give him some space. Forcing himself to put it out of his mind for a little while, Leonard made himself some breakfast, including a very large cup of mediocre replicator coffee, and sat back on his couch with his Humanoid Morphologies classwork and a painfully quiet dorm room.

The classwork was a thin distraction, and his mind kept slipping back to the things he'd told Jim as the alcohol had loosened his tongue. He'd spent far too many credits on alcohol, sure, but it was okay. It was a small price to pay compared to the other fees and small print.

He'd been told that getting things off your chest helped to ease the burden, but instead, it brought up all those feelings as if they were new and raw. He'd felt sick as he told Jim about his father begging for peace and reprieve from his fate of painful wasting and decay. He'd almost been unable to meet Jim's eyes when he admitted how he'd euthanized his own father, and hadn't even been able to raise his head as he'd explained how the cure had been found only months later. He cursed himself for being a doctor, and a failure of one who couldn't even cure the people closest to him. He had refused to listen to Jim's insistence that he couldn't have known, and that his father made the best decision he could at that time, and Bones had done right by his dad.

I would have done the same thing.

You can't know that, Jim. You're not a doctor.

No, I'm not, but I know what I would have done. He knew what he wanted, and you honored his request.

And my oath? To do no harm? At that point, he'd clenched his fists so hard that the nail marks were still visible now. What kind of a doctor am I? What kind of a son was I?

A son your father would have been proud of. And you got to know him, Jim had said.

Is that always better? Was all Leonard could say in return.

A few hours later, Leonard abandoned his studies for some fresh air. The fog had returned, but it wasn't too thick. He grabbed a sandwich at the small café on the corner of campus and ate as he walked, heading towards the waterfront. He had never lived near open water, but he'd discovered that he liked it over the past few months. The salt in the air felt cleansing, and despite the chill and the fog that often came riding in on it, the wind felt like a constant companion. Sometimes gentle and warm, sometimes harsh and cold. As secretive as it was fickle, it came and went as it pleased, and didn't divulge its secrets to anyone, but it but always there.

A bit like Jim, he mused.

He dropped the sandwich wrapper in the reprocessor unit and made his way down to the old wharf. He kicked off his shoes and sat on the edge, dangling his feet over the side, feeling the occasional mist of water tickling the soles of his feet as a wave against the pilings sent up a chilly spray on the wind. Despite the thin fog wisping along in the breeze, it wasn't too cold for November. And really, he wouldn't have cared if it was.

Very pointedly, he did not think about what he had told Jim about his own personal history. He did not rehash the things he'd learned about the son of the Federation's poster boy of self-sacrifice. He did not mentally replay the image of Jim going slack and gray on the simulation deck, the sound of the medical klaxon screaming, or the feel of Jim's wrist with no pulse in it. He certainly didn't superimpose that with the image of a skinny, dirty, battered kid, tied up and displayed like a grotesque scarecrow. He didn't dwell on how this kid had somehow woven himself into the fabric of his life. He pointedly did not languish over the loss of the one casual friend he thought he'd made; the hyperkinetic, genius-level fuck-up who asked nothing more than to drink his bourbon and leave a Jim-shaped dent on his couch, nor did he ponder what it meant to suddenly substitute that for a friend about whom he knew so much… so very much…

Instead, he swung his feet back and forth over the edge of the dock and whistled to himself. More old songs about Georgia, he supposed, or maybe this one was about San Francisco, too. He remembered the words, but he didn't care to think about what they meant just then.

And Leonard watched as a cadet in a fitness training uniform wove his way along the trails of the woods behind the Academy and down towards the water, before turning west along the beach towards the underbelly of the Bridge. A young man with dirty blond hair and a familiar gait, running with a slightly desperate stride that made it seem as though he was running away from something. He punctuated a line along the edge of the water; the fine line between land and sea, terra and space, life and death, drawn out in those footsteps. He traced the beach away from the Academy, becoming a hazy, gray silhouette through the fog as the distance between them grew. He ran without once looking to the side or slowing down as he went from the sand to the rocks, quick feet and confident footsteps, one in front of the other. Finally, he disappeared around the bend towards the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Leonard considered following him, but that wouldn't do. He knew that feeling - that need to run and break free. Jim needed that right now, and it would do him some good.

The afternoon light shifted as the higher clouds broke briefly, turning the Golden Gate bridge into a ghostly silhouette through the fog, skeletal and beautiful at once. Sometimes, with its spires lost in the fog, it seemed that the bridge went up forever, touching space itself. A silly illusion, of course, but it felt comforting just then.

With a sigh, Leonard settled into absently humming the song he'd been whistling just before he'd seen Jim.

"i left my home in Georgia… headin' for the 'Frisco Bay. i've got nothin' to live for… looks like nothin's gonna come my way. yeah, i'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay… wastin' time…sittin' here resting my bones…"

.&.

Early Monday morning found an under-caffeinated Leonard McCoy on the staging floor of Training Simulation Facility Four. Emergency med kit in one hand and a lukewarm canteen of black coffee in the other, he sighed and looked around the empty staging platform. He was tired, and he was less interested in being there than usual.

He'd been almost unable to sleep the previous two nights, finding the quietness of his empty dorm room strangely disconcerting as he was left alone with his thoughts. He supposed it was odd to feel that his dorm room without Jim felt too empty, as Jim was not a regular fixture in his room, but now it seemed like the kid was supposed to be there. Or maybe with everything that had been happening, the sudden lack of information had left Leonard's brain scrambling to fill in the blanks with speculation, most of it troubling.

Jim had left two text communiqués, just enough to say that he was alive and okay and not to worry and not to come frantically looking for him, but that was it. No new information. No Jim. What remained were Leonard's uncertainty of the situation and his thoughts about his own past, underscored by the simmering feeling that there were still repercussions waiting to boil over. It made for sleepless nights, and there were times when a sedative just wasn't the answer.

He had no time for more introspection. The cadets for the sim would be there soon. The cadre were probably already on the observation deck, and he supposed he ought to simply go and join them. He took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, and crossed the platform to the door of the observation deck.

He was barely two steps inside the door when the clipped voice of Lieutenant Commander Toland caught his ear.

"Doctor McCoy, your schedule has been reassigned and you will no longer be working on training simulations this semester."

Stopped cold in his tracks, he shook his head incredulously. Dropping all pretense at the brittle formality that he'd attempted with Toland in the past, he blurted out, "I'm sorry, but what?"

"You heard me quite clearly, Cadet," she said, not even looking up from the computer console in front of her station. "You may be an excellent doctor by all civilian standards, but your evaluators have determined that you're not yet ready for some of the challenges faced by Starfleet medical staff, even in a training simulation. Your academic advisor will be contacting you after the holiday weekend. You'll be reevaluated for this position next semester."

Leonard felt his mouth fall open. Sure, he didn't really want to be there that morning, but this was not what he'd had in mind. "You think that because I reacted correctly to a medical emergency that just happened to involve an acquaintance of mine that suddenly I'm too soft for Starfleet? Is that it?"

The air on the observation deck turned icy. Two techs who were working on a computer console at the back of the deck suddenly beat a hasty retreat. Toland stood upright and stepped back from the computer console as she turned towards the Lieutenant to her left and said, "Henson, brief the cadets for me and don't start the sim until I return."

Lieutenant Henson gave her a nervous glance, nodded quickly, and all but scrambled out of his seat and hurried to the door.

Toland snapped a level gaze at Leonard. "This way, Cadet."

She led him through a back door out of the observation deck and down a corridor, arriving at an office cluster. Leonard saw her name placard on one of the doors, but instead, she let him into a conference room. Impersonal. Neutral ground. A bit more elbow room so they wouldn't have to get too close to each other. Distantly, Leonard thought he could respect that. However, he was still too flabbergasted by the sudden turn of events to give her the slightest shred of real respect.

"Commander," he began tersely, "regardless of what you may think, I would have done the exact same for anyone else in -"

She spun around to face him, and despite the fact that she must have been at least twenty centimeters shorter than he was, her glare made him feel like he was barely a meter tall. He could suddenly see why this woman was considered to be so formidable. "This is not a matter of what you would have or could have done for anyone else, McCoy, or whether you gave Cadet Kirk preferential treatment. Your medical performance was exemplary, as usual. Your emotional performance, on the other hand, was mediocre at best. What you don't seem to understand is that these training sims are tests for our medical cadets, too. Do you think it's going to be coming up roses out there, Doctor?"

The collar of his cadet uniform suddenly felt too tight. "Of course not." He didn't like the choked sound his voice was making.

Apparently, Toland liked it just fine. She took a step closer to him, looking up but still giving the appearance of looking down, with her facial expression set into a neutral mask. "Good. Because let me tell you something. You already know this, but I don't think it's quite sunk in, so let me put it to you plainly."

Her eyes drilled into him. "Someday, there's going to be a crisis. Someday, you'll be on a ship that will warp into the biggest disaster you've ever seen, and you'll have to watch your colleagues and friends beam down into firefights and explosions and political standoffs, and you'll have to let them go and still maintain your professional bearing as a Starfleet officer. You'll have to accept each time that your friends might come back in pieces, and you'll still need to stand by and let them do their jobs without flinching. And you can't let it distract you or weaken you or break you when you get the report back that your friends have been critically wounded or killed."

"I know that, but -" He didn't even know what he was going to argue, but he felt like he was being crushed by an oncoming tidal wave and he had to struggle, even though he knew it was going to hit him no matter what he did.

Toland seemed to know it, too, and she spoke right over him, nodding slowly. "The universe is indifferent. It doesn't care about you or Cadet Kirk. It doesn't care about Captain Pike or Admiral Archer or me either. It doesn't care about civilians who get caught in the crossfire. And you, as a Starfleet Medical Officer, will need to accept that fact before the shit hits the fan, and learn to control those emotions, because if you can't, you'll never make it… and people will die because you wavered."

Leonard felt his resolve falter as the tide began to wash over him, but not yet. He wasn't about to let it go so easily. He was a doctor, and was not going to let this woman get one up on him when it came to his profession. Bracing himself, he pushed back. "Oh, so you want me to forget that I've dedicated my life to saving people? That human life and health is the crux of everything I do? Do you want me to stop caring?"

"If you care so much that it jeopardizes the mission, then yes, just a bit, yes."

"What's worth the cost of sentient life, Commander?" he growled dangerously, feeling himself gaining momentum in the argument.

She leveled a gaze back at him that could have cut steel. "Even more life," she ground out. "You can't save everyone, McCoy. If you can't pick your battles wisely, if you can't keep a level head, the universe will decide for you, and I'll tell you right now - it's a much less compassionate judge, jury, and executioner than you and I are."

"And when I see something that is unnecessarily dangerous," he pressed, "or if I see something that goes so far outside the limits of what people are expecting that they can't even wrap their dry-docked brains around it, what then? Do I sit back and let a person suffer when it can be prevented?"

"A bit of suffering isn't going to kill him, McCoy."

"Unless it does," he said through gritted teeth.

"I highly doubt that passing out from a panic attack is enough to kill a person," she quipped, actually managing to look down her nose at McCoy despite their height difference.

"Oh, so now you're a doctor, too?" He shook his head; there was no use dancing around the issue. As the blood started to boil in his veins, he knew where this was going. "You can't possibly imagine what Kirk was going through on Thursday. That kind of shock can kill a person."

"From being tied up and hit with a few volts of electricity?"

Through the red haze of fury that had crept up behind Leonard's eyes, he dimly hoped that Jim would be able to forgive him for what he was about to do. "No, from suddenly remembering that he lived through the worst massacre in Federation history."

Leonard hadn't thought he'd ever live to see Lieutenant Commander Toland struck speechless, but he supposed there was a first time for everything. Not only was she speechless, she looked stunned. No, shocked. Her eyes lost their focus, and her mouth was moving, but no words were coming out.

Not feeling particularly sympathetic to Toland's emotional upset, and nursing a strange sense of victory at finally getting one up on her despite the cost of that minor success, Leonard folded his arms over his chest. "Yeah, it was a blocked memory, and because of your little third-year training stunt, he had a flashback. Kirk had an absolutely valid reason for going into shock."

"Tarsus IV," she whispered hoarsely.

Leonard nodded, eyes narrow. "Congratulations on that diagnosis, doc. Must have taken years of training to figure that out. Medical professionals like me who just happen to be cadets must have nothing on you." He was almost surprised that Toland didn't rise to that dig, but when she said nothing, he kept pushing. "And not only was Kirk there," he growled, "but he was one of the only goddamn people on the kill list who made it. The governor decided to make an example of him, putting him on display and trying to starve him to death."

"An example of him?" she asked weakly, her voice sounding distant.

"Oh yeah," he drawled, feeling vindictive. "Tied him up, blindfolded him, beat him - gee, I wonder why that sounds so familiar?" He snorted derisively. "Huh, I guess Jim's always been good at pissing off authority figures who have the ability to tie him up and injure him."

Toland's eyes focused again, and she looked sharply up at Leonard, but behind that pointed stare, there was still a flicker of disorientation and disbelief; she wasn't quite there, and she wasn't okay. "An example of him?" she asked again, her voice marginally clearer, but still not the familiar hard-edged voice of the brutal training officer he thought he knew. This was someone Leonard didn't recognize at all. She broke eye contact and looked at the floor; distracted, preoccupied. When she spoke again, it was as if Leonard wasn't there and she was speaking to herself. "Dear God… could it be? They never identified… he's the right age," she muttered haltingly, as if the words themselves were old and rusty, something dredged up from the past. She shook her head slowly. "I never… I thought he'd died. We all thought he'd died."

An abbreviated flash of realization, not enough to understand what it meant but enough to know that something was wrong, lodged itself in Leonard's chest, but before he could say anything, Toland had composed herself and had already fixed him with an unwavering stare. "You might think I'm heartless, Doctor, but you and I have the same goals. We want to see life preserved whenever possible. Our methods are different, but believe me when I say that I want nothing more than the best for every future Starfleet officer, including Kirk. Maybe I've just become a bit calloused after seeing too many deaths."

With that, she leveled her gaze and strode past him towards the door. He turned and watched her go, unable to think of anything to say, his brain trying to pull together the threads of the net that had tangled around him. Then, at the door, she stopped and turned her head just enough so that he could see her profile, even though she didn't make eye contact with him. "Everyone has a breaking point, McCoy. Starfleet officers just have to have it later than others."

The door slid shut behind her, and Leonard was left standing there, his forgotten coffee canteen in one hand, med kit in the other, and no idea what the hell just happened, or what the hell he was supposed to do next. The only coherent thought he could pull together was that the coffee wasn't nearly strong enough to cope with whatever thoughts might materialize when his brain stopped spinning.

.&.

Without the requirement to provide medical support for the training simulation, Leonard found himself at a bit of a loss of what to do until his next class. He'd been counting on a full schedule to keep himself busy and distracted all day. Now, with yet another thing added to the list already weighing on his mind, he decided to go back to his dorm room to stow the emergency medkit there, as he really didn't feel like showing his face around the infirmary at the moment. He tried to study in his room, but the silence seemed too pressing, so he went to the library and reviewed his notes for Humanoid Morphologies again before running off to his Starfleet History lecture class. As fate would have it, the day's lecture included discussions of the Kelvin mission and Captain George Kirk.

Toland was wrong about one thing, Leonard thought miserably, as he pointedly tried not to think about the subject matter of the lecture. The universe isn't indifferent to me. It actively hates me.

After History class, there was his Xenovirology lab, Starfleet Ethics lecture, and a short shift in the infirmary. Monday was his busiest class schedule, and he was actively grateful for that, because it kept his mind distracted until 1730 hours, when his whirlwind day deposited him on the western corner of the main quad, a sandwich in one hand, his datapad tucked under his arm, and the cold wind finally waking him from his daze.

He didn't want to slow down and stop because if he did, he'd have to think again. Leonard didn't want to let his brain follow the breadcrumbs from his conversation with Commander Toland because he didn't like where he thought it might lead. He didn't want to think about the academic implications of being removed from Training Sim duty. He didn't want to think about the fact that he hadn't seen Jim in almost seventy-two hours, aside from the brief glimpse of him running along the beach.

In the lengthening shadows of the afternoon, Leonard cast one long look over the shoreline, as if the memory of Jim running along the water's edge could make him reappear. Of course, he wasn't there. Where he was, however, was anyone's guess. The mess hall, his dorm room, at a local bar getting wasted too early on a Monday night… or standing next to Cochrane Hall talking to Lieutenant Commander Toland. Leonard's eyes went wide. SHIT.

He had half a mind to barge into the conversation, to defend Jim from whatever vileness that woman might be throwing at him, or to stop her before she revealed anything about their chat earlier, but something in Jim's stance told him that he should walk away as quickly as possible and pretend he'd never seen them. Instead, Leonard went for the middle option. He hid and watched.

He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he sure as hell knew how to read body language. Toland was standing pretty close to the edge of Jim's personal space, but instead of looking confrontational, her shoulders were hanging loosely, the palms of her hands forward and open, and she actually looked short for once. Jim looked almost as small, with his back pressed against the wall of Cochrane Hall, arms folded protectively over his chest, head hunched, staring at the ground. Toland seemed to be doing most of the talking, with Jim alternately nodding or shaking his head in response. Occasionally, he'd say something brief, but he almost never looked up.

As he watched, guilt began to surge from Leonard's stomach to his throat. Guilt over spying on a private conversation, regardless of the public venue where it was happening; guilt over having revealed information that had been shared with him in absolute confidence; guilt over revealing personal things about Jim's past to the one person on campus that Jim probably hated most. He had no idea how Jim would forgive him for this, or if he even had the right to want Jim's forgiveness at this point. Everything seemed to be spiraling out of control, and Leonard realized that he had no idea how to pull the pieces back together and fix them.

Almost in answer to his inner thoughts, a hand suddenly but softly clapped down on his shoulder, and a familiar voice said, "It's okay, McCoy."

Leonard suppressed his own startled reaction and turned to see Captain Pike standing there, looking solemn but thoughtful. "Captain! I'm sorry, I was -"

Pike held up a hand. "Watching. I know. Quite understandable. And if I might venture a guess, I'd say that you had an interesting conversation with the Lieutenant Commander this morning."

The guilt washed over Leonard like a wave of nausea. "Jim's not going to forgive me for that."

He was met with a raised eyebrow. "Haven't you learned yet to stop underestimating James Kirk?"

More guilt over that, too. Leonard shook his head harshly as if trying to dislodge the remorse from between his ears. "This is different, Sir."

Sympathy filled Pike's eyes, but his face remained firm. "Son, this is Starfleet. It's always different."

Leonard was trying to formulate a reply when a sudden movement caught the corner of his eye. There was Jim's back, beating a hasty retreat towards the trails leading through the woods behind the campus and Commander Toland staring after him, looking small and helpless. Jim's feet flew over the grass, then the sand, before he disappeared around the old café and was gone.

Not quite sure what moved him to do it, and not really sure about anything at that point, Leonard stepped around the edge of the shrub he'd been hiding behind, and with Pike following him, he approached Toland. The Lieutenant Commander didn't look at him when he stepped up next to her, but she seemed to almost be expecting him.

"You were right, McCoy."

"How's that?" Leonard bit out.

"He had every reason to go into shock," she said, with a strange sort of awe tinting her voice.

Leonard pressed his lips together, feeling a bit strange to find himself agreeing with anything Toland said. Reluctantly, he nodded. "He's seen a fair bit of shit, hasn't he?"

Toland didn't move, still directing her gaze to the point on the waterfront path where Jim had disappeared, but the way her mouth tightened made it clear that she heard him. "Great men have broken from far less than that. I said that everyone has a breaking point. I didn't realize how far Cadet Kirk had already been pushed towards his… and that it's a hell of a lot further than most people would last. Including most Starfleet officers I've known."

Leonard let out a slow breath. "Yeah, maybe… but I just hope you haven't pushed him past his breaking point now."

To Leonard's other side, Pike stepped forward, shaking his head. "If anyone can make it through this intact, and maybe even better for it, it's Kirk."

Finally pulling his gaze away from the walking path, Leonard looked at Pike, clenching his jaw and furrowing his eyebrows. "Maybe I've been prone to underestimating that kid, but I hope you're not overestimating him. Nobody goes through something like that without some serious damage. A crack here, a chip there. When is it one fracture too many? He's not unbreakable." The familiar twist of worry settled in Leonard's stomach. He looked away from Pike, shaking his head to himself as he pulled his communicator from his pocket and flipped it open. "McCoy to Cadet Kirk."

There was no answer, and his worry resolved into something sharper. Swallowing nervously as he glanced back and forth between Toland and Pike on either side of him, he toggled the comm switch again. "McCoy to Kirk." Still nothing.

Flipping the communicator closed, he started walking… jogging… running in the direction to where Jim had disappeared. "Jim!" he called out, his voice catching in the wind as he rounded the corner of the campus café. "JIM!" He skidded to a halt, looking around, when something small and black on the ground caught his attention. He swooped down and grabbed it, already knowing what he'd found. On the back of the standard issue communicator was the Starfleet ID number that he'd seen just a couple of days ago on Jim's medical records.

He turned in place, holding up the communicator to see Toland and Pike standing there, staring at him, and looking about as uncertain as he felt. A flash of anger welled up. "What did you say to him?"

Toland shook her head slowly. "You'll have to ask him that yourself."

Leonard waved the communicator in front of her, glaring acerbically. "Don't play that game with me right now, dammit! What did you say to him?"

Pike stepped between them and looked at the communicator in Leonard's hand. "He still has a lot of things to work out, McCoy."

"Yeah, I know," he growled, knowing that he wasn't going to get an answer from Toland, and that he was probably already toeing the line too closely. He stepped back, forcing himself to take a slow breath before he said something he'd regret. "I know he's got to work things out… but that doesn't mean he has to do it alone." He looked at the communicator for a moment, then pocketed it. "I'll find him." As he turned and hurried away, an unspoken thought hovered in the air behind him. … Before he breaks.

.&.

(To Be Continued...)