Author's Note: Sorry this took so long! Double upload time. :-)

Deep psychological damage, mwahaha!

Betad by the amazing sailinginthenoondaysun.


Chapter 9: Sweet Dreams

Isara's POV

I was awoken by a hoarse yell. I sat bolt upright in bed, fighting against the strangling sheets and looking frantically around to identify the source. It took me a moment to realize that my throat was sore from screaming.

I looked over to apologize to Nyota and Alanna for waking them up, but they were both asleep. Alanna was wrapped up in her sleeping bag on the floor, moaning and whimpering as she tangled with her own dream. Nyota was breathing shallowly and rapidly as she tried to clutch at the empty air in front of her.

I took a few deep breaths through my nose and tried to relax and recall the dream which had awoken me. Then, with the force of a photon torpedo, it hit me. I let out an involuntary whimper at the echoes of panic that washed through me.

There was a small commotion from the next room, and I cautiously stood up and untangled myself. I crept to the door that connected the two rooms as Alanna jerked awake behind me. I gently tapped Nyota as I went by to rescue her from her dream. The door creaked open softly and I poked my head around the corner to investigate. Kirk was bent over with his head between his knees as though he was trying not to get sick. The other two guys were clearly awake, but they didn't respond to the sound of the door or Kirk's worried noises. They just huddled under the blankets.

"Hey," I called softly, trying to capture their attention without startling them. Even Spock looked confused and anxious. I clicked on the light and they all jerked their faces up toward me. "You know how the point of this trip was for me to be able to deal with my issues with my friends? I think it's time for that group therapy."


We sat cross-legged on the floor in a circle. The lights were on low, we all had blankets wrapped around our shoulders, and the small, cheap bedside clock was flashing 2:27 AM. Nyota's head rested on Spock's shoulder, and he was absentmindedly stroking her shoulder. Kirk and Alanna were sitting next to each other but refraining from touching or holding hands. Bones and I had no such qualms, and were completely supported against each other.

"Okay," Bones finally said. "Go around in a circle and explain the gist of your nightmares. You don't have to be specific. Three words is fine. We can go from there." He looked around at everyone's unresponsive faces and sighed. "I'll start. Isara, Jocelyn, Joanna."

"Pike, crew. Responsible."

"Lonely. Afraid. Outsider." I glanced at Alanna but she just looked at the floor.

"Nyota. Pike. Vulcan."

"Spock. Bridge crew."

"Bones, friends. Antidisestablishmentarianism." Kirk glared at me and I held up my hands defensively. "I'm just trying to make the most of my three words." More glaring, and I decided that it might not be the best time to try and lighten the mood. "Fine. Bones, friends, Jimmy."

"Okay, now we're getting somewhere." I tentatively reached into my own mind and tugged at the memory of my dream, careful not to dislodge too much emotion with it.

It was my first day of officially being stationed on the Enterprise. I was setting up in the medical bay, determined to do my best. The usual steady stream of illness and anxiety was trickling through my ward, attracted automatically to the gleaming "Head Doctor" nameplate. I thought that I was doing well, and Bones apparently did too, because he kept rewarding me with kisses after each patient. I probably should have realized that I was dreaming when he deviated from his usual grumpy doctor routine.

Suddenly, with no story to explain it, I was thrust into the same battle-crazed mess that I had had to deal with when we were fighting Khan. There was blood everywhere, and crewmembers were dropping like flies.

The bodies that I treated, gave up on, and covered began to look familiar. First was Chekov, the adorable young Russian helmsman, then Sulu. Ensign Chancey and CE Scott made appearances. Then I froze as I was confronted with a prone Nyota, her blood-reddened eyes already dull and sightless. Spock's stiff hand was still firmly clutched in her own; he had clearly tried to shield her to the very end.

Tears streamed down my face as I moved their bodies to make room for more patients. Kirk was next. He was in bad shape, just barely hanging on. I could practically see right through him to the biobed. He was gasping and whimpering, but I knew that he was already gone; his body was shutting down. I had lost him.

I turned away, too distressed to work on him at all, and saw a clearly dead Alanna slumped over the table behind me. Bones was striding over, apparently to relieve me of some of my load, when the explosion struck. A huge section of floor ignited directly under his feet, throwing him towards me and lighting him entirely on fire.

"Bones!" I screamed, throwing myself down to where he was helplessly clutching at my shoes. "Bones!"

He gasped something through trembling, charred lips, and I leaned in to try and hear what he was saying. "I… I… I love… I…" A trickle of blood wound its way down from his mouth and he began shaking violently with the effort of holding his head up. I gingerly grasped his shoulders and lowered him down, making inhuman noises and ululations. He was gone, too, his blackened fingers sliding gently down my shoe to rest in a crimson pool on the floor.

I looked up, feeling like my heart was being ripped in half as I wailed and shook and cried and screamed. It took me several full minutes to realize that I was the only one moving in the entire med bay. Rows and rows of sightless eyes met my frantic, searching stare. I was alone.

"Feeling a little lonely, are we?" My head snapped up to meet a pair of cold, blue eyes. Jimmy stood there, black tunic strangely perfect amidst the scene of devastation around him. He mock-pouted. "I guess I got the last laugh, huh?"

"Isara? Isara, are you OK?"

Bones was gently shaking my shoulder. I nodded slowly and glanced at the clock; it was only 2:29. I hadn't missed anything in the time that I had been zoned out.

"You were muttering."

"Yeah." I sighed shakily. "Just reliving the dream. It was… horrifyingly vivid. I'll talk about it when it's my turn."

He nodded and put an arm around my shoulders. "All right, I guess I'm first."


Bones's POV

He slowly started to recount his dream in greater detail, his voice occasionally breaking with the emotion of his words.

He was in the Enterprise med bay, hypospraying some hapless first-timer who had been space sick. Thankfully there hadn't been enough time in their voyage for Kirk to get them into serious trouble yet, but the day was still young. The only things that he was really certain about were that the woman he loved was working hard alongside him and all of his friends were somewhere on the ship within easy reach. He decided that that was enough to know for certain, and he could take the rest as it came.

He turned around to make some wonderfully clever comment to Isara, but was stunned and horrified to be met with the leering face of Jocelyn Hatfield.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he spat, feeling brave on his home territory. He held up the hypospray aggressively. "Where's Isara?"

"That little slut is spending some quality time with the captain at the moment," his evil ex explained lightly. "And, since I was just hired on here, I'm determined to make the most of every opportunity to prove myself. I can do anything that girl can do ten times better."

He spluttered. "What? Jim and Isara? And since when have you worked here?" He was quickly becoming nauseated, but was determined not to show it. "Also, don't you dare call her a slut. You have no right to call anyone less than…" He struggled to think of any woman famous for sleeping around, but couldn't find anyone more guilty than Jocelyn. On top of that, his brain appeared to be shutting down slightly. Jim and Isara? No. Really?

"By the way," she continued to drawl in her nasally voice, "you might be interested to know that you missed Joanna's wedding."

Suddenly he was flooded with memories of a handsome young man that she had met on a trip to New York. His memories stopped short of an engagement. "What?" The panic he was feeling was strong and very, very real now. How had he felt so secure a second ago, when now he was simultaneously unraveling and drowning in quicksand?

Jocelyn checked her immaculate nails. "Yep." She smiled wickedly up at him. "Are those your innocent little girls there?"

He whipped around to see a disheveled Isara leaning on Kirk's shoulder, looking a little drunk and very mischievous. Next to her lounged a twenty-something Joanna, clad in the shortest imaginable dress, fishnet tights, and heavy eyeliner. Her handsome new husband stood next to her, handing her a cigarette, which she took with a smile. He couldn't decide which was the more pressing problem, so he settled with simply yelling something unintelligible and waking up.

He could see Isara's mouth twisting, though he couldn't tell whether it was from imagining the adorable Joanna dressed so inappropriately or herself with the captain.

"You think that I'm trying to steal Isara from you?" Jim asked, looking appalled. "Bones, you know I'd never do that."

He sighed. "I know. I think it's more the idea of losing her in general. It could just as easily have been Scotty in my dream."

"Okay, aside from the fact that I would never date, much less sleep with, either Kirk or Scotty, can I just assure you that the fear of losing your daughter to an idiot is common and totally reasonable? It's also something that you don't have to worry about for a very long time."

"Again, I know. I never said my fears were rational. You guys should know this about me by now."

Isara nodded and leaned acceptingly into him, reaching around to hold his hand soothingly. "We understand. It's okay."

Kirk muttered something. "What was that, pretty boy?"

"I said, 'At least you didn't dream about space diseases that make your eyeballs bleed.'"

He chuckled darkly. "Obviously I'm getting better. Your turn, Jimboy."

"What's with the weird nicknames all of a sudden?"

"They make me feel better."

"Mocking me makes you feel better?"

"Yes."

"Fine."


Kirk's POV

It had started out as such a nice day. He had woken up next to a lovely Orion girl whose name he didn't know, but who was very appreciative of him. He had eaten breakfast with Bones and lunch with a couple of blondes he had met the previous week. In the afternoon he had attended a comparatively painless briefing, and he was just getting ready for dinner with Spock and Uhura when his comms had bleeped to alert him that Pike wanted a word.

As he strolled through the long corridors leading to the Admiral's office, they seemed to fluctuate between the hallways of the old headquarters building and those of the Enterprise. Occasionally smoke would billow from a sparking conduit or a strangled yell would echo down one of the branching hallways, but he was never quite able to identify the source. Finally, he knocked and was admitted entry to Pike's office, only to discover that it had been transformed into the bridge of his ship.

"Admiral!" He ran to the captain's chair, where Pike was slumped sideways over one arm. He gently clasped his superior officer's shoulders and raised him to an upright position, but quickly realized that the blank eyes, burn marks and blood indicated that he was too late. He suppressed a sob, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid the horrifying image in front of him.

"Captain." He turned around at the sound of the gasp to see Spock collapsed against his science console. Green rivulets ran down from his ears and nose. Before the distressed captain could even crouch down to examine his science officer, he realized that there were even more people on the bridge who needed attention.

Crawling towards him from behind was a badly-wounded Checkov, who was trying to drag the unconscious Sulu away from a small fire burning on the navigation console. Bones looked incredibly pale from blood loss, but he was struggling to stand and make his way over to help Spock. He couldn't see Uhura at first, but then realized that she and Scotty were piled in a heap of red shirt in the entrance to the turbolift.

Fighting the urge to vomit, Kirk staggered to his feet and slapped the comms unit on the wall. "Medical team to the bridge, stat! This is an emergency."

"Speak for yourself," an exhausted-sounding Isara snapped. "We're full. I literally can't get out the door for all the bodies down here. I'm not doing so hot myself, either."

"Come on, Jones! Bones and Spock and everyone are up here."

"The turbolifts are out of operation and I'm swamped and bleeding. I'm way past the point of caring, honestly."

The comms switched off with a distressing "bee-oop" and a shower of sparks. Kirk sighed and slumped against the wall.

"What can I do, Bones?" He simply stood there and watched his slow, pained progress across the bridge, knowing full well that there was nothing he could do. Spock had long since collapsed.

The older man winced as he fell against the captain's chair, causing Pike's head to loll over to the other side. "Do I look like a damn miracle worker, Jim? I can't fix your mistakes."

"My mistakes?" Bones fell to a kneeling position and shook Spock's shoulders, ignoring his captain.

"Come on, you oversized elf. Wake up."

"Bones? What did I do?"

The doctor glared at him. "It was all over a woman, wasn't it? That's how it always is with you. You and your stupid, fickle, teenage heart. And now you've gone and gotten everyone on this stupid ship killed." He shook his fist weakly at the amazed blond. "Now shut up and leave me alone. I can't see Isara, I can't save Spock, or Nyota, and Sulu's been gone longer than Checkov's realized. This is me, cleaning up your mess. Again." And with that angry outburst, Bones collapsed to the floor.

"No." The single quiet word seemed to hang, heavy, in the iron-laced air of the bridge. The perfect white of the consoles and information screens were tinged a delicate bloody pink with lacy black smoke scallops. His beloved crew lay around him, dead. Possibly the only other person alive on the entire ship was trapped in the med bay by piles of bodies, and even she wouldn't last much longer. He looked at the faces of his friends, somehow still expectant even in their motionlessness. They seemed to ask him, "How could you have done this to us? How could you, our brave, wonderful captain, have failed?"

He didn't have an answer.

Everyone was staring at him. He knew how hard it would be for them to understand his fears, his recurring visions- for they were recurring, however many times he told people he was fine- when they had never held what was rightly referred to as "the burden of command."

"Captain," Spock began, "you must understand that my role as First Officer includes preventing you from making illogical, emotionally biased decisions that would endanger the crew."

"Wow, thanks, Spock. That makes me feel so much better."

The rest of them burst into the conversation.

"Jim, you're doing just fine as Captain."

"Yeah Kirk, you're pretty good."

"Umm, I wouldn't know, but your reputation seems to disagree with what you think of yourself."

"Yeah." He sighed. "I know. It's just hard to keep that in mind when I know that there are several dozen families who are about to get letters with my signatures on them." There was a long silence. Alanna solemnly put her arm around Kirk's shoulders, and he leaned into her. Eventually, he cracked a pained smile. "I know there's not much that you guys can do about it. It's just something that bothers me."

"Hey Kirk," Isara added softly. "Just so you know, there is no one, no one, who blames you for Pike's death. No one expected Harrison to attack there, and you gave everyone a few extra seconds with your quick thinking. Please don't beat yourself up."

His eyes glistened a little, but it could have just been the low lighting. "Thanks, Isara. He was just… well, like a father to me. I can't believe he's gone." He sniffed, then shook himself and sat straighter. "But I can keep doing my best, keep saving lives. What else is there?"

The rest of them smiled. Now he was getting it.


Alanna's POV

She laughed darkly, self-consciousness taking hold of her. "My problems seem so insignificant in comparison." She took a deep breath and looked around, only to see five expectant faces. She sighed. "All right then…"

One last mirror check before her dinner out: black pumps, short, ruffled pink dress, glittering black necklace and chandelier earrings. She nodded and watched the latter dance and sparkle against her neck. Her wild, curly blonde hair had been loosely tamed and teased up to the top of her head, where it was pinned and tied so that it would hopefully stay put. Black mascara and eyeliner added an edgy look to her bubblegum pink lips, and she had to admit that she looked pretty damn good.

"Someone looks nice." She smiled as her brother appeared in the mirror behind her. "Too bad Mom and Dad are never around to see you when you've put in so much effort."

She shrugged and turned to mess with his hair, still barely able to reach it even with her tall pumps. "It's OK, Roger. They have fun, we have fun. We'd just get in each others' ways."

"Touché," Roger sighed. "Speaking of the parentals, I brought you your budget." He handed her a sleek black clutch, and she knew without looking that it contained more money than some people in New York earned in a week.

"Cool." Alanna stretched up to kiss her brother on the cheek. "Thanks, bro. They're at the Whitmans'?"

"Yeah. You'll be…?"

"I'm just meeting some Starfleet friends."

"OK, be careful."

"I know."

A quick subway ride found her waiting on the sidewalk for her friends to show up, shivering slightly as discarded trash blew around her bare legs. This seemingly remote street corner, so far away from the growl and bustle of the city's heart, was supposedly home to the best Italian food in town, according to Isara. She really hoped this was worth it.

"Hey Alanna!" She turned and waved, narrowing her eyes as always at Carol Marcus. She would be the last to admit it, but she had always been after the cute farmboy that was leading the British blonde on his arm. Isara and Bones were hand in hand as well, and Spock and Uhura completed the image of three happy couples. She sighed at the usual seventh-wheel feeling.

"So, Italian?" she asked, eyeing their hoodies, jeans, and scarves.

Isara glared at Kirk. "Um, did he say Italian?" The young man in question shrugged, and Isara rolled her eyes. "I told him to tell you pizza!"

A long, awkward pause. Alanna looked down at her expensive dress and found it garish compared to the muted, casual clothes her friends wore. She forced a smile and met Isara's concerned eyes. "Sounds good! I was hoping not to have to sit through another fancy dinner. My parents' business dinners- ugh!" She waved her hand, trying not to notice the disgusted look that Marcus wore. "I've just had to be on my best behavior for too long, yeah?"

"Uhh, yeah," Bones said cautiously. He was clearly fighting the urge to raise an eyebrow at her clothes.

"Let's get some pizza," she said hurriedly, and shooed her friends into the dimly-lit doorway. The inside was strung with low-power LEDs, and scarves and curtains over the lamps and windows served to further mute the light. The floor was sticky, the tables were grimy, and the patronage looked shady at best. They sat down at a corner booth and examined the menu. Eventually, Bones beckoned over a hunched, leering waiter. He gestured at himself and Isara.

"Two Romulan ales for us, whiskey for the pretty boy, raspberry vodka for Nyota and chocolate for Carol, water for Spock, and…?" he looked expectantly at Alanna, and she realized that he knew everyone's drink orders but her own.

"Uhh, um, red wine?" she stammered, spouting the first drink that came into her head. "Just whatever you have, I don't care."

The man looked at her suspiciously, then glanced at her dress and smirked. "Coming right up, lady."

Alanna watched as he shuffled away, then leaned in and hissed, perhaps a little too loudly, "Isn't Romulan ale illegal?"

Isara looked a little embarrassed. "Well, technically, yeah. Trade sanctions and all that. But it's good. And, you know, it's not a big deal." Bones nodded.

"Oh, OK, sorry." She noticed that a few people around her giving her strange looks, and it suddenly hit her how out of place she was here. Her friends knew what they were doing, they were comfortable, and she was making a fool of herself. "You know, I should go. I just remembered that Roger has a… thing… that I need to do. Enjoy your pizza." With that she stood up to leave, her face burning.

As she left the restaurant, she could hear her friends muttering. Carol, of course, was the first to start.

"She just can't help showing off, can she?"

"I don't think she meant it like that."

"I'm 99% sure I told her pizza. Well, maybe Italian. Isn't pizza Italian?"

"Who's going to pay for her drink?"

"I'm glad she had the decency to leave before she made a total fool of herself."

She ducked out of the doorway just before the tears could start spilling down her face.

"Why am I a jerk in everyone's dreams?" Kirk asked, amazed. "Am I really that annoying?" There was an awkward silence. "Oh." He clasped Alanna's hand and held it to her face, which had become as red and tear-stained as in her dream. "Look, we don't think you're showy."

"Indeed, Commander, your behavior does not suggest the wealth which you seem to be worried that we will ostracize you for." Everyone looked at Spock, and Nyota whispered something in his ear. He frowned, confused, and entered into a short side conversation with her about etiquette.

"Alanna, you're my best friend from the Academy. You've always been there for me. I don't care if you're the Queen of England, because it doesn't matter. You're lovely and funny and smart and pretty, and I love you for all of it." She smiled at Isara and her fierce outpouring of loyalty.

"Thanks, Isara."

Bones smiled at her, too. "Also, I've never seen you drink anything other than whiskey or straight vodka, and you're not one to refuse a little Romulan ale when it comes your way. I think you're a little insecure, darlin', and I wouldn't worry so much."

Isara raised an eyebrow. "Was there an illegal booze party that I missed?"

Alanna shrugged. "You were out of town."


Nyota's POV

Spock really needed to stop looking at her like that. It was hard enough to intercept and translate Klingon communications at the best of times, but he was making it near impossible. After several minutes of feeling his dark eyes boring into her back, she decided to confront him. She picked up her PADD, first making sure that the transmission was being recorded and backed to the main computer, and leisurely strolled past the Captain's chair. It was the middle of what passed for night on a starship in deep space, so Spock had the con while Kirk got a few hours of sleep.

"If all you're going to do is stare," she whispered, "then you can stop distracting me." Before she could even make it into the turbolift, he had skipped in ahead of her and tersely ordered the doors to close.

"Lieutenant-" Spock's sentence was cut off by a deep kiss from Nyota, which he happily reciprocated. After a few seconds, he gently extracted himself from her arms. The expression on his face was what would pass for a deeply regretful smile on Vulcan, but was barely different from his normal appearance. Fortunately for Nyota, she knew him well.

"I know." She smiled at him, smoothing a few wrinkles out of the chest of his uniform. "But you were staring at me."

Before Spock could respond, the doors to the lift slid open with their usual whisper. Nyota grimaced but waved a cheerful goodbye as she stepped in the direction of the med bay, deciding to pay a visit to Isara on graveyard duty. She could feel Spock's dark gaze on her back, but determined not to turn around.

"Nyota!" Isara ducked out of the doorway directly ahead of her, the blood splattered up to her elbows startlingly red against the blue of her uniform. "Come quickly, you've got to help me with Checkov."

She gasped. "What happened?"

The grim response was "See for yourself."

As it turned out, the poor helmsman had been involved in a freak accident while he was visiting a friend down in engineering. He lay on a biobed, gasping for breath, as a haggard, out-of-uniform Dr. McCoy bent over him.

"It's OK, kid. We're going to get you through this."

More gasping was the only response, and it was sounding more and more like sobbing. McCoy looked up, trying to hide is panic from the patient. "Jones, get over here."

"Sir." Isara jogged over and grabbed tools to begin working. She glanced over her shoulder at Nyota. "Go talk to Sulu, keep him occupied. Tell him I'll be right there."

Nyota nodded, prepared to comfort Checkov's friend, but quickly realized that Sulu was also injured. She grimaced and tried to keep him occupied, but his quiet sobs and pleas for help eventually overcame her sympathy and she found a sedative, putting him to sleep until the doctors could get to him. She spun to check on their progress, and discovered that the med bay was suddenly full of her friends. Isara ran past, the blood covering her now suspiciously green. She just shook her head at Nyota's horrified look, too busy to do anything else.

"Isn't there anything I can do?" the linguistics officer muttered to herself. She knew that there wasn't, but waited for an answer nonetheless. An eerie silence echoed around her in the gory air, and she squeezed her eyes shut rather than see the carnage. A tear, dark with eyeliner, streaked down her chin. "Spock." The trembling whisper hung on her lips, too tentative to leap any farther. There was no reply.

Her eyes suddenly flew open, only to be met with the blank face of a dead Vulcan. "No!"

Spock was squeezing her so tightly to his side that it was almost uncomfortable, but she welcomed the contact after reliving her dreadful dream. A shudder passed through her at the blank, slightly concerned expressions on the faces of her friends, so similar to their still faces in her nightmare.

"Nyota, why was everyone dead all of a sudden?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "It just happened. I'm worried about my friends, however capable they are."

Kirk grinned suddenly. "Hey, I wasn't harassing you in your dream!"

"No," she responded flatly. "You were dead."

In the silence that followed, she breathed deeply through her nose and focused on the connections that she felt with each of the people in the circle. She could feel the adrenaline retreating from her fingers and toes, inching its way in from her extremities until it was just a loose knot in her heart.

"Spock, you're next." Dr. McCoy prompted her boyfriend after everyone had had a while to think.

"I do not choose to reveal such an intimate experience in the presence of those who I am not closely familiar with." He inclined his head at the two women opposite him. "My apologies."

"Of course. We understand." Isara smiled sweetly, and Nyota silently thanked her.

"All right then, that just leaves you, Isara." Nyota sat upright, interested to hear what had cause Isara to yell out loud.

"Okay…"


Isara's POV

I wondered what Spock would think of me sharing my dream with him and the rest of the circle, then decided that I didn't care. I was going to have my group therapy, self-consciousness be damned.

"Well, it started out with me on my first day in the med bay. It was going really well. Then we sort of went into battle mode…" I described my dream, leaving out some of the more grisly details. I noticed Nyota sniff when I mentioned that she and Spock died holding hands, and Bones winced when I described his death. When I was done, I sighed quietly and leaned over onto Bones. I allowed myself to get lost in his familiar scent and the way that his thumb was drawing small circles on my shoulder.

Kirk opened his mouth to comment, but I cut him off. "Maybe we can save the discussion and analysis for daytime? I'm worn out." He nodded.

"TV anyone?" Alanna suggested, and we all agreed to the distraction. The three couples- Kirk and Alanna were holding hands again- scooted back so that their backs were against the beds. BBC America was running a Sherlock Holmes marathon, and we all focused intently on the complex stories. After a while, Bones and I sat up on a bed, and Spock and Nyota took the other one while Kirk and Alanna remained on the floor. We each cuddled up together and shared our blankets and warmth without really noticing what we were doing. The hours crept by, and we were all reluctant to slip back into sleep.

That is, until Kirk let out a loud snore, and we became aware of each other again. Someone shut the door to the other room, and we all slid down between the sheets and held each other in our arms. In this way, we finally succumbed to exhaustion just as the rosy-fingered dawn made itself known through the filmy curtains. The screen shut itself off and we all enjoyed a few hours of peaceful sleep, safe and secure in the company of our friends.