A/N. Ok, killer headache from writing almost half of this chapter in one go. I know, nothing really happens, but we find out two people died, and Emma meets up with Bones. Ok. Uhh, Reveiws are Love. Love is good. Love makes the world go round. Love y'all anyway....
Love, Jay. (I don't own Star Trek, I'm too sucky. If It belonged to me, Karl Urban would be gettin' shirtless A LOT MORE!!)
Emma looked over to Jim, quickly pulling her hand down. A smile spread over her face as she saw Jim look around in relief and joy; he really did love this ship. She looked around for Scotty, surprised she hadn't heard any witty remark lathered in his Scottish accent.
"Mr Scott!?" Jim yelled, followed by Emma's "Oi, Scotty!" in a poor imitation of his accent. There was three loud knocks from the large tank next to them.
"Mr. Scott, can you hear me?" There were three more knocks interrupted by a slightly louder clang, and then Scotty came out, flowing into the tube of water.
"Oh no... Oh, god, yebatʹ, yebatʹ, yebatʹ! poluchitʹ yego tam pryamo syeĭchas!! Jim!" Emma squealed.
"Hold on a second! Emma, I can't understand you!" Jim yelled as they ran, following Scotty down the pipes, desperately looking for ways to get him out, offering panicked words of comfort through the tube. Jim pulled off his jacket and looked up, following the tube and his eyes grew wide. Emma followed his eyes to where he was looking, whilst pulling her own jacket off and not watching her feet; she fell to the floor in a heap before pointing out the consul to Jim.
"Jim! Hurry!" Jim pushed several buttons and released the valve, dropping Scotty to the ground. Emma pulled herself off the floor and moved to Scotty, hugging him tightly.
"You alright? You alright!?" Jima asked of him, prying Emma off him so that the man could breath. Scotty took deep gulps of air and ignored Emma's sheepish apologies.
"My head's buzzin' and I'm soaked, but otherwise, I'm fine" Emma threw her arms around him again.
"Alrighty, come on, we gotta go!" Jim said as he pulled them up and dragged them off; by now Spock would have seen them and security would be after them. They followed Jim over and around, Emma lost her way and gave up on trying to remember how to get there.
They were caught up by security, and both Scotty and Emma were out of breath and so confused that all they could do was turn to Jim.
"Halt! Come with me, cupcake" The burly, rather unattractive security guard told them before leading them up to the command deck. When they got out of the elevator, Emma was staring at her feet; she didn't want to see this, didn't want to see where Uhura should have been, where her best friend would have wanted to be.
"Who are you?" Spock's voice, clearly recognisable, rang out over the silence and Emma worked hard not to look up.
"I'm with him" Scotty replied, unsure.
"He's with me" Jim explained. Emma took a deep breath and looked up, her eyes immediately connecting with those hazel eyes. They stared back in shock, as if thinking the same thing; you were meant to be dead. She moved to take a step forward, but cupcake grabbed her arm, holding her back. She didn't struggle, how could she? The man she was staring at was dead, how could she struggle when her brain refused to wrap itself around the chance that the knowledge it had perceived to be the last truth she would ever care about, was wrong? He didn't move either, so they just stared, until Jim's shout broke the trance.
"You never loved her!" Spock roared as his fist connecting with Jim's jaw, forcing cupcake to stumble and release his grip on Emma, she didn't move. Her eyes, along with everyone else's, were trained on the weak struggles of Jim as he tried to survive against the Vulcan, until finally, Spock's hands came to rest on her throat, and Jim was choking as he lay against the control board. Emma gasped a little, and Scotty looked to her before looking back to the pair, and everyone waited to see what would happen. Emma tried to shout, but nothing would come out of her mouth, no noise would escape.
"Spock" a strong voice, from a Vulcan that must have come aboard while she had been on the ice planet, stopped Spock from killing the man Emma considered a brother. Emma's eyes flew wildly from the older Vulcan, to the younger, to Jim, to Bones, to Scotty before resting on her Leo.
She barely registered the fact that Spock had given up command as she took incredibly slow steps towards Leo; skirting around the back way to give the delusion time to fade away. She ignored Scotty's witty comment – she felt she should have laughed, so she gave a trembling smile that may have been mistaken for a silent whimper- and then his voice broke through the silence.
"Well, congratulations Jim, now we've got no Captain, and no goddamn first officer to replace him" He had yet to see her moving around the back, relying heavily on the railing.
"Yeah we do" Jim stated, exhausted.
"What?" Bones huffed, confused and pissed off.
"Pike made him first officer" one of the boys in gold said and Emma didn't know his name just yet, and didn't care.
"You gotta be kiddin' me" Bones exclaimed and Emma chuckled, of course he was grumpy, he was Bones.
"Thanks for the support" Jim told him sarcastically.
"I sure hope you know what you're doing, Captain" the voice broke through her daze, and Emma stumbled over the threshold and threw her arms around Uhura, sobbing. Uhura was shocked for a few seconds before it registered and her arms wrapped around Emma.
"I thought you were dead, oh I thought you were dead!" Emma sobbed as Uhura hugged her and started to laugh. Nyota pulled back and looked at Emma, wiping the tears from the shorter, but slightly older girls' face.
"No, not dead, just too busy working to keep the ship alive, and a certain doctor" Uhura grabbed Emma shoulders and spun her around to face Leo, smiling as the girl took a deep breath and looked shyly at the doctor. Leo took two steps toward her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and just breathing in the smell of her.
"Emma" he breathed and she sobbed again, her arms tucked in against his chest before winding up around his neck and working their way into his hair, pulling his closer. When he finally put her down, he pressed his lips to her forehead and stroked her cheek.
"I like what you did to your hair" he offered with a small smile, and she laughed.
"How did you manage to avoid any and every scratch?" she asked with a grin, glad that he was unharmed.
"I've been dealing with everyone else's" he told her gruffly.
"That's my Leo, you're the smart one" she spoke softly, before kissing his cheek lightly. She heard a small cough behind her and looked around expectantly, tilting her head when she saw the young boy with the Russian accent... Chekov?
"Uhh, Cadet Avery, Engineer Olsen left you in charge before he died, did he not? And when you left, who did you leawe in your stead?" She raked her mind; who had she left in charge?
"I... I didn't leave anyone behind. The last person I spoke to was Munder, but I didn't leave anyone in charge... I didn't plan to leave"
"Munder? He got dragged into Med bay, only slightly conscious but still fighting it. Last I heard, he wasn't doing so well" Bones threw in helpfully, and Emma winced.
"What was it that you needed, Chekov?" Emma asked, already feeling the pull of the engineering decks.
"Zere are several things zat are not working, and we need a skilled engineer to fix zem" He told her, looking slightly sheepish; she sighed and nodded.
"Alright, I'll go down there now" She smiled to the boy and he turned and left. She turned to Bones.
"I want to have a better look at your hand first" Leo said, with an eyebrow raised, already holding her hand.
"Leo, I gotta go. I don't know who is in charge down there and it's making me nervous. You can deal with the hand later; it's still working, ain't it?" She tugger her hand away and kissed him quickly before lightly hugging Uhura, giving Jim a quick 'good luck' and stepping into the elevator, eyes locked on Bones until Scotty jumped into the elevator with her.
"So, you and the doctor, aye? Well, he seems to be a good lad, and I'm sure that if ye picked him he's at least good for somethin', then eh?" He sent her a knowing grin and Emma smirked back wickedly.
"Oh, Scotty, you have no idea" She joined the Scotsman in a chuckle. The doors opened to one of the sub decks and Emma winced. The held the doors open with her body, but held her arms out to keep Scotty in the elevator.
"What's wrong lass? Apart from this mess" he motioned toward the calamity visible from the elevator.
"I need you to go back up to the command deck, get a uniform and tell Bones to send someone, anyone but him, down here with a hell of a painkiller. I'm going to need it very soon. Oh, and Scotty, get a towel and dry off before you drip all over the floors" She ordered and closed the doors, sending him back up to the command deck and throwing herself into the mess, fixing it each little situation at a time. It only took the nurse three minutes to get to her, but by then it was too late; she had a killer migraine.
By the time she got word of their plan, it was too late for Emma to go up and give Jim a farewell hug; so late, in fact, that she looked out the window just in time to see them drop out of warp and arrive in the red dust that was Titan's atmosphere.
Her head was pounding terrible, and she had had to get Bones to order the nurse to follow her around with a bucket, because she had been throwing up quite a bit, and now she had the nurse worried and he wouldn't leave her side. The nurse's name was Brian, and he was 28, blonde and stunning. Had she not been falling in love with Bones, she would have been chasing him around wildly. He regretfully informed her that the nurse who had helped her out earlier; whose name turned out to be Ana, had died, as had Troy, the cocky engineer who she had met earlier.
She looked out the window for a brief second before looking to Brian.
"If they don't come back in one piece, I'm going to kill them" Brian grinned and patted her on the shoulder.
"Don't worry. What're they gonna do? Get shot by Romulans? Ha! Not likely. C'mon now Emma, you've got work to do" She glared at him before sighing and heading towards the engine room to make sure the people in there were doing the right thing, trying to be inconspicuous about rubbing her head.
She had just finished throwing up after checking the engines out, when Sulu's voice came over the comm.
"The Romulans have activated the same beam they used on Vulcan and dropped it into Earth's atmosphere; I think the two of you should get up here" Emma heard Scotty's reply before giving her own ; they couldn't do anything up there and they had stuff to do down here. She grinned when Scotty told her that he was coming her way. Her head pounded and she reached out for something, anything, to keep her steady; instead of a wall, she found Brian, who looked to her with a crease in his forehead.
"Emma, I know you need to work, but maybe you're taking too much of a load?" His voice was sincere and just a tad bit pitying. Emma growled at him, her lip pulled back over her teeth in disgust, even as she grunted in pain.
"Don't you pity me, Mr. Brian sir. Don't you pity me. You were a football player, weren't you? In high school?" When Brian nodded in confusion, she continued, "Well, I was a water polo player. I was a swimmer. I was a basketball girl occasionally, too. I had a boyfriend on the football team once... He never wanted to be a nurse... If you can't tell, Brian, I'm trying to distract myself, so how about we walk and talk at the same time? Give me your life story" She almost begged as she began to move off to sub space communications, which had been fixed, but she needed to check over them while she had time; before another problem popped up. Brian looked at her in confusion, before jogging a little to catch up to her.
"You really wanna know about me?" He asked, and when she glared at him, he continued, "I grew up in California, and my parents divorced when I was little. My mum was in Starfleet and my dad was a police officer, so I was always gonna be one of the two. My mum got custody, so I was a Starfleet boy, right from the grand old age of six. I played football through high school, and had a girlfriend for my junior and senior years, but I caught her cheating on me on my graduation night, with this guy from our rival school. I graduated, went to college, and at the age of 23, graduated that too. Then I went travelling for a year and a half and when I came back, I met my current girlfriend. We didn't start dating until my 26th birthday though. So, I enrolled into Starfleet the day we became official. All in all, pretty boring. What about you?" Brian talked while Emma moved around the subspace comm. deck, talking to engineers as she went. When Scotty finally caught up to them, Emma hugged him before pulling back sharply and hurling into the bucket that Brian had offered for her.
"Lass, what're yeh doing?! You cannae be down here if yer sick as a dog. Go up to yer man and have 'im fix yer" Scotty told her, rubbing her back as she leant over the bucket slightly, shaking all over.
"I can't Scotty, I need to be down here. Besides, why would I wanna miss all the action?" She asked weakly. Scotty rolled his eyes and looked to Brian expectantly.
"She can take pain medication in a few minutes, but not before hand. If we do, she'll be too close to overdosing. I gave her a shot not yet an hour ago, so wait a few minutes. But, Doctor McCoy said that if I have to drag her in, kicking and screaming, he'll be ready for her. He also said that Engineers were the worst patients ever. That you guys were always the one who had the most injuries and always the last to come up to med bay. He was thinking of sending some people down when he could to check you all out down here" Scotty thought about this for a moment, before rolling his eyes and sighing.
"Fine, but I want yeh to take it as easy as possible. I won't have yer bein' too sick" He offered her a small smile.
"Scotty, get back to that transporter room. You never know when they're going to need you" Emma told him weakly, her shoulder slumped. Scotty chuckled and hugged her quickly, before heading back to the elevator and the transporter room. Emma moved sluggishly over to the window, peering out at space, searching for the Romulan ship, before remembering Brian's question.
"I was the product of a one night stand, and a mother who didn't believe in abortion. Until the age of nine, I was passed back and forth every month. When I was nine, I put the foot down and said I wanted a foster family, and I lived with that family until I was sixteen. Then, I wanted out, so I moved to Russia for a few years. It's where I met my ex almost husband. Then I travelled the world for a while. And then I joined Starfleet. But, other than hating my parents for eternity and beyond, I'm rather boring too. Do you love your girlfriend?" She jumped a little as the ship went to warp, and Brian joined her at the window.
"Yeah, I do. I think I might propose soon... She's the one, I think. She's always in my head and she's just... perfect, in every way. She's beautiful, she's so smart and she's the nicest, gentlest person I've ever met. She's my everything. If my heart were a house, she'd be home" He finished, before blushing and looking to the ground. Emma grinned, and put her head on his shoulder.
"Battle's about to begin, we gotta get ready" Her voice was weak, and Brian shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the pain medication.
"Here goes nothing" He said quietly, and gently injected it into her neck. She hissed a little but breathed a sigh of relief as the medication started to work its way up to her head, washing out the pain and helping her to clear her head and start to think properly again. She yawned and grinned, looking to Brian and back to the window, where they came out of warp guns blazing.
"Here goes everything" She told Brian, beaming before she ran to the weapons station.
