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Chapter 9: I'm Really Glad You're Not Dead

Nyota's head was spinning with conflicting emotions: grief, joy, relief, anger, and probably a whole lot of others besides. She'd had a truly horrible day, just one hit after another, and she'd just found out that one of her oldest and closest friends, and most probably her roommate were dead. And then...And then there was Ty.

He was alive. Ty was alive, and beat to hell, but alive after all these years of thinking being so sure that he was dead, and God how had she not seen it before? Silence had fallen after Dr. McCoy's comm had beeped, and no one had moved. Kirk was still staring at her like he wasn't all together sure that she was real. She herself still wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't having some insane dream.

She knew her face was wet, a loss of composure she would normally have never allowed herself in the company of her colleagues, but she couldn't help it.

It was Doctor McCoy who finally broke the silence, with an uncharacteristic hesitance. "I should probably go check on Chr-Captain Pike. He'll-" he bit his lip looking conflicted before continuing, "He'll probably want to see you Jim." He looked apologetic, like he knew what was going on, and Nyota found herself wondering if Ty had confided in Doctor McCoy the was she had in Spock.

That seemed to shake Kirk out of the stupor he'd fallen into. He took a deep shuddering breath, and brought his hand to his face, seeming almost surprised when he felt moisture, like he hadn't been fully aware of the tears that he'd been shedding too. Distantly, Nyota felt a tiny jolt of surprise at how much better just one (earth shattering, spectacular, wonderful), new piece of information had made her at reading this man, who she'd thought she'd known, but had clearly spectacularly misjudged.

"I-yeah," Ty said, his voice impossibly even rougher than it had been earlier, "I should-Um, Greenie, do you...?"

His question trailed off, but Nyota was already on her feet. Like hell she was letting him out of her sight this soon after what she'd just found out he was alive. At the moment she was doubtful if she'd ever let him out of her sight again, especially after what'd happened with Kevin.

With a slight grimace of pain that Nyota didn't think anybody than herself and Doctor McCoy saw, Ty levered himself to his feet, the Doctor following right after him. Nyota felt a light brush againsed her fingertips that accompanied a feeling of love and reassurance, and gave Spock a small, grateful smile before following a step behind the Captain and the CMO as they left the conference room.

As soon as the door swished around them, Ty whirled around, a familiar energy that Nyota couldn't believe she hand't recognized at some point in the last three years shining in his eyes, as he made an aborted movement towards her with his arms.

"I-can I-"

A choked sob made it's way out of Nyota's mouth before she was falling into him, her face smashed against his chest, clinging to him as he clung to her in kind as they shook, sobs forcing their way of them both.

"Oh, God."

She wasn't even sure which of them had said it, and she was soaking his shirt, her hair getting steadily damper as his tears made their way from his eyes to where his face was pressed againsed her hers, and he's gotten so damned big, the last time she'd seen him, he'd been so thin, and so hurt, and so much shorter, and now he was curled around her like he could protect her from anything, like he hadn't already, again, and he was here and it might've been the best thing he'd ever done for her.

And it was perfect. Another little piece of her scattered broken family had found his was back to her, even as they lost-'Not dwelling on that right now, Ny,' she told herself.

"I'm really, really glad you're not dead," she mumbled into his chest, "and I'm sorry I've been such a bitch to you."

His arms tightened around her, and he laughed softly. "I was a dick to you so I think we're even Yo-Yo."

Pulling back, she glared at him without any heat, and thumped him lightly. "Don't call me that, James."

This time his whole face lit up in a smile, at the teasing, bright and genuine despite the bruises on his face and around his throat and on his face, and she felt his lips twitching up at the corners in response.

He threw his arm around her shoulders, and leaned into the arm that Doctor McCoy, who'd been watching them with a small smile, had slung around his, and like that they made their way down the corridor. Nyota still had questions though, and she figured that a walk was as good a time as any to have them answered.

"How did you get away?" she asked, "Everyone said that you-" Even now, she couldn't quite bring herself to say it.

The arm around her shoulders tightened a little.

"I was...not very far from dead when Starfleet finally showed up," he said. "I think that Kodos had found out that they were coming a few days before, so he just decided to leave me to rot in the cell...Chris was the one who found me."

No wonder they were so close. Nyota hadn't even known that Captain Pike had been there at all.

"No one knew that I'd been there in the first place; I'd used a fake name, didn't want to be recognized which is why I never told you my real name. And then...If they'd found out that I'd been on Tarsus, I'd never have had another moment of peace. And I thought it might be better to let the others think I was gone, told myself they'd be better able to move on without me, because if I went back to them I'd never let them go. And that was true I guess, but..."

Looking up at him, Ny found that she didn't particularly like the look that was coming across her brother's face. Clearly his guilt complex hadn't gotten any better over the years.

"I couldn't face them," he said quietly, "Not after I'd failed them so badly-"

Not quite believing what she was hearing, Nyota cut him off. "What the hell are you talking about?" she demanded. "When did you ever fail any of us? We're only alive because of you!"

And now he apparently couldn't look her in the eye. "I promised them we'd all come back, Greens, I promised. And you were dead." His voice broke on the last word, and Nyota leaned into him, giving him that silent reminder that she'd made it.

"You're an idiot," she told him, mindful of how close she was to starting to cry again. "All they would've been was ecstatic that you'd survived, and they never would've blamed you because none of it was your fault."

Doctor McCoy beamed at her, and she blinked startled. She hadn't been aware that his face could do that.

"We've been trying to tell this kid that for years," he told her.

Ny assumed that Leonard was referring to himself and Captain Pike. Ty opened his mouth rebelliously, but before he got chance to argue with her, she asked, "So what happened after Captain Pike found you?"

The look Ty gave her was a little startled, but there was a small smile on his face as he answered, so she counted that as a win.

"Chris smuggled me onto his ship, without telling Command or anyone who'd be inclined to tell Command, and they his me there all the way back to Earth, then..."

Ny smiled as she let her brother's voice wash over her. They made the rest of their way to Sickbay like that, with Ty telling his story, arriving just as he was starting to delve into their Academy years.

Christopher Pike couldn't feel his legs. Granted, he could barely feel any other part of his body either, but that was beside the point and he felt that he'd earned the right to a little internal panic. Apparently he had some pretty severe spinal damage. Still, the nurses had told him that with the apparent miracle that Leonard McCoy'd managed to pull off, he'd be able to walk again. Eventually, barring any further complications, a statement that made him really not want to know what complications there'd already been.

The eventually was what he was stuck on though, and despite having only been awake for ten minutes at the very most, he felt as though the stir crazy feeling that he'd undoubtedly become very well acquainted with was floating back from the future to drive him crazy now.

The injured captain had managed to bully one of the nurses into getting him a PADD though, and he was now busy trying to make it work to his satisfaction, despite the severe lack of coordination that being doped up of God knew how many pain meds was giving him. This was taking far longer than it should have, and was the main source of his current frustration.

Finally he managed to get the call-code punched in, because he was almost certain that Jim hadn't had the time to let this particular person know anything. Chris knew that by know she would've found out that something had gone horribly wrong, and that she'd be chomping at the bit trying to figure out what'd happened.

Chris certainly couldn't give her much in the way of details at the moment as he didn't know them himself, but he could at the very least reassure her that Jim'd managed to not get himself killed, and that they were, if not necessarily alright, at least alive.

The screen on the PADD burst into static that resolved itself to show the face of a very worried, extremely old Japanese woman.

"Hey there, Hoshi-san."

Her face broke into a relieved grin, before her eyes narrowed, taking in him presumably far less than stellar appearance.

"What happened to you?" she demanded. "You look like shit."

Chris barked out a short laugh. "I'd feel like it too, I'm sure, except I'm a little drugged up at the moment."

Hoshi Sato's face softened into deeper concern. "What happened, Chris? John called me earlier, telling me that they'd lost all contact with the cadets, and that there was some kind of crisis on Vulcan."

"I don-I don't know of what happened, Hoshi," he admitted, "The Enterprise was the last to get to the scene, and by the time we got here, the rest of the fleet had been completely demolished. I haven't seen the casualty lists, but it was bad. Jim and Len are alive, I know that much, but...Vulcan's gone, and I don't know how many made it off before it went."

The old woman's face had paled steadily throughout his explanation, leaving her a pasty white.

"I heard the distress Vulcan sent out, what they said the crisis was. Chris, it sounded like-"

"It was. Nero uh, he got me pretty good. I was a prisoner on board his ship for most of it, Jim got me out, but all anybody will tell me is that the Narada's been taken care of. He's on his way down here with Len, Jim I mean."

Hoshi swore softly in several languages. "I'll have John look in on T'Pol, if he hasn't already. She can't be doing well."

Chris winced, he hadn't thought of that. "Yeah."

He heard the doors to the Med-Bay swish open, and footsteps making their way in his direction.

"Oh, I think they're here."

Chris was proven right when Len stuck his head in.

"Oh good, you're still up." The Doctor stepped fully into Chris's little room, pulling Jim in with him as Chris turned the PADD around so that they and Hoshi could see each other. Too late, Chris realized that there was someone else with them, as after Jim came one Nyota Uhura, comms officer extraordinaire, who was, and supposed to remain completely unaware of Hoshi's continued longevity.

Her mouth immediately dropped open, and that was when Chris realize that both Jim and he looked like they'd been crying, possibly on each other, if the wet spot on Jim shirt was any indication. What the hell had he missed?

Hoshi was too busy yelling at Jim in increasingly irate Japanese to notice the shell-shocked woman standing beside him, and since Chis barely understood a word of Japanese when she wasn't shouting, he took the time to give his son-in-all-but-blood the once-over that he'd been too out of it to do sooner.

To put it bluntly, the kid looked like hell, bruises all over, and his hand wrapped, but a least he'd gotten some medical attention. Chris took note of the bruise-dark bags under Jim's eyes, and made a mental note to try and make sure that he get some rest as soon a possible. For now he settled for gently tugging him down so that he was sitting of the edge of Chris's bed instead of standing beside it. This earned him a bright smile, and a gentle squeeze to his ankle that he couldn't feel, but appreciated nonetheless.

To Chris's shock, it wasn't Jim, or even Leonard who stopped Hoshi's tirade, but Lt. Uhura who'd gotten over her shock enough to speak.

"Sensei?" it was quiet and shocked, but Chis could feel his eyes widen in surprise as Hoshi's explosion halted in it's tracks. There was only one group of people who called Hoshi that.

And just like that, despite the cocktail of pain killers currently flooding his system, Chris got it. Nyota. Yoda. Christ, no wonder they'd been crying. What Chris wanted to know was how the hell those two had managed to get through three years at the Academy without figuring it out, and what had changed to make them see it now.

Now, Hoshi, Uhura, and Jim were speaking to each other in a slew of other languages, most of which Chris didn't even recognize, so he turned to Len to get his answers.

"Len, not to be rude, but what the hell has been happening on my ship?"

The Doctor laughed, then told him as he ran through the tests to make sure that Chris wasn't going to end up keeling over dead. Chris's brain cycled through several different variations of shock throughout the explanation, mostly surrounding the fact that there were currently four people residing of his ship that hailed from an alternate timeline. And apparently, it had not been one, but two Dr. Leonard McCoy's who had performed his surgery. His brain hurt.

Still, despite everything, he couldn't help but be happy that all of this meant that Jim had found one of his kids, one he had been sure was dead, alive, and as well as she could be during the circumstances. One look at the soft expression on Doctor McCoy's face told him that the usually crotchety doctor felt the same way.

Looking at the way Jim's face lit up, again, and again, despite all that had happened today, Chris couldn't help but think back to the first time he'd seen the kid past his early childhood. It'd been nearly a decade ago now when he'd found him in that god-forsaken dungeon on Tarsus IV. He'd been more than half dead, utterly terrified, and still had managed to nearly kill Chris when he'd found his way into the tiny cell where Kodos'd kept him.

Chris hadn't been able to bring himself to go against his wishes when he'd begged him, shockingly blue eyes pleading, to not tell anyone who he was, or even that he'd survived. Chris and Phil, mostly Phil had managed to keep him both alive and a secret all the way back to Earth, where they'd found him help that they couldn't give him because of the demands of their jobs in the form of a young man, brilliant, far kinder than he seemed and nearly done obtaining his medical degree.

Watching them with a small smile, Chris remembered back to when Jim'd burst into his office, eyes brighter than he'd seen in a long, long time chattering about his grumpy, aviaphobic doctor of a roommate in his first week at the academy, and the surprise of all three of them when they'd realized that Jim's, by then, best firend was the very same med-student who'd saved Jim's life all those years back, something that somehow hadn't happened until halfway through their first year when they'd stumbled across Hoshi.

That kid'd been through so much, yet despite it all he'd survived, and againsed all odds found all of these people again.

Chris felt himself start to drift again, heard the kids end the call with Hoshi, and felt Jim slump over so that his head was resting on the bed beside Chris's hand while Uhura's head came to rest on Jim's shoulder. Hearing the deepening breathing of the kids, Chris dropped off to sleep, barely registering draping blankets over the two exhausted cadets.

Of course, because this was just the day that they were having, that peace didn't last long. Jim's comm chirped, rudely dragging them all back to conciseness, much againsed their will. Chris glared at the obnoxiously beeping device, hoping that he might be able to demolish it with a glare. No such luck.

With an irate grumble at being woken and forced to dislodge Uhura, Jim answered it and Spock's voice filtered through.
"Captain, we're getting a transmission from a shuttle that appears to have come through the worm-hole that destroyed the Narada."

"Patch it through Mr. Spock," He replied swapping concerned looks with the others.

With a "Yes, sir", Spock did, and they were treated to a loud voice discharging a faintly alarming amount of what seemed to be blistering curses in Gaelic. Chris watched with some surprise as the three younger officers swapped looks that said this was recognized.

Uhura gasped. "But that sounds like-"

"Yeah," Jim agreed. "Go get the counterparts and have them meet us on the bridge. I think they might get to see another old friend."

A/N IMPORTANT PLEASE READ THIS

So I'm thinking of ending the main story arch with this chapter (maybe one more, but probably this one), and then adding a collection of oneshots in this universe. Chris meeting the OS characters, maybe one where Spock and Bones talk about the whole Tarsus thing, maybe even a few Tarsus IV flashbacks (though I'm actually thinking about making that it's own fic). I'd really love to know your thoughts on this, so please, please, please let me know what you think in the reviews.

Thanks, and I hope you liked this chapter :)

Shoutouts:

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Alright, that's all for now, thanks all for reading! As always, please review, feedback always makes my day :)

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