NOTES: Happy Thanksgiving to all the Americans who are reading this, and... happy Friday to everyone else. Sorry about the delay in posting this chapter. When I say that Real Life is kicking my ass, I'm not kidding. I've been slammed. Full time work, part time school, and I'm still working on recovering from knee surgery. Well, my knee is doing a lot better, and I have a long weekend, so I had enough time to edit this chapter and send it your way. I hope you enjoy it! And again, sorry for the delay.

*.&.*

Jim was on his feet before Bones had fully stepped through the door of his dorm room, and immediately regretted the rapid movement. "Hey Bones," he said with a grunt, trying to look casual as he shifted his weight gingerly. "I figured you'd have been back by now."

"I was busy. And dammit, Jim, you either skipped your pain meds or overdid it today, and I don't know which would piss me off more," he grumbled as he hung his pea coat on the hook by the door.

Jim rolled his eyes. "I took my meds, Bones. And I'm sore because I've actually been, you know, moving today. Under my own power. It's normal to be sore." He walked stiffly over to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, leaning on the table.

"Uh-huh. Whatever you say." He didn't seem convinced.

"Bones, are your lips blue? And I don't mean good-blue like an Andorian."

"It's just goddamned freezing out there. I forgot my parka."

"Does that mean you'll stop getting on my case about me forgetting mine?" Jim asked hopefully.

"Not a chance." He dumped his bag on the table and fished out his medkit, grabbing his tricorder. "Hold still."

Jim groaned. "Come on, Bones! Seriously?"

"Your other option was daily check-ins at the infirmary."

"Maybe you should check in with the infirmary. You're shivering."

"Thank you for that assessment, Doctor Kirk." Bones stared at the screen of the tricorder with his usual critical scowl.

"See anything you like?" Jim asked sarcastically, trying not to squirm.

"You've got more inflammation than you should have in your pelvis. How much walking did you do today?"

"I had to get to class!"

"And to East Campus, too, right?"

Jim pressed his lips together. "I took the shuttle back. Besides, I know what you're doing right now. I did pass the mandatory psych class last spring. I believe they call this 'deflecting.' Did you walk all the way back from Starfleet Medical? And what the hell happened earlier with the board of inquiry?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Jim." Bones popped the tricorder probe back into its slot and tucked the whole device back into the medkit. In his next move, he'd pulled out a hypospray and snapped a vial into it.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Bones, what the hell is tha – ouch!"

"Anti-inflammatory, you big baby. If you hadn't been walking all over campus, the pills would have been enough. Use the damned campus shuttle for longer distances for the next two days."

Jim blew out an exasperated breath. "Yes, doctor. Now come on, Bones. You're crankier than usual. Tell me what happened."

Bones dropped the hypospray back into his med kit and tossed the spent cartridge into the reprocessor, then went straight for the fridge, burying his face inside it as he rummaged through the sparse supplies. "It was a miserable hour and a half of being indirectly told that I'm inept and incompetent, and I just want to have dinner, do some studying, and get to bed early."

"Wait… they found you guilty? Or… uh… that it was malpractice?"

Bones stood back from the fridge holding sandwich fixings. "No. Not yet." He grimaced. "They're deliberating. The bastards."

"Shit."

"Yeah." He dumped the sandwich supplies on the countertop, and fell silent as he began assembling his dinner.

Normally, silence between them was never an issue. Either they were talking, or they weren't – not a big deal. This time, however, Jim felt the pressure of an uncomfortable pause, and felt the desperate need to fill it.

"I got my score back on the Klingon history essay I wrote while I was stuck at Starfleet Medical. Apparently boredom is good for my grades."

"Your grades are always impeccable, Jim." Silence again. Then a few electronic beeps as Bones requisitioned a drink from the food slot. A moment later, Jim's nose told him that it was a cup of hot tea – something Bones only drank when he felt like shit but wasn't up for booze. Still, the silence still hung thickly in the air.

"The Xenolinguistics Club met this afternoon. Uhura was almost nice to me. I figure, if I'm lucky, it'll last two weeks. Maybe I can even use this to get her to spill her first name. One good thing out of this whole mess, right?"

Bones grunted in reply.

Jim licked his lower lip, wondering why the hell he felt like he couldn't leave it alone. "I had lunch with Thaleb and Freeman… the guys from my flight squad. They're doing pretty well. We won't get to go back in the air as a squad until next week, though. The Academy shrink feels that our team needs time to adjust. At least, that's what they're saying."

Bones grumbled under his breath as he topped his sandwich with the second slice of bread, cut it on the diagonal, and carried the plate over to the table with his cup of tea. He sat without a word and started eating.

Jim sighed. "Listen, I know when you're burned out from a bad day, and you're coming off a bad couple of weeks. I can go back to my dorm room and give you some privacy. Quiet time."

Swallowing his bite of sandwich, Bones glanced sideways at Jim with a look of resignation. "Jim, you don't need to leave. And you're not supposed to leave. I told you – you're here for the week. Just…" He chuckled, but it wasn't a cheerful sound. "You're a goddamned beehive of nervous energy. You've got no outlet for that. I understand. I can't wait until you're cleared for fitness training again. But for fuck's sake, Jim… I'm exhausted. Just give me a few minutes, okay?"

Jim nodded warily, then leaned on his elbows. Bones went back to eating, and after a minute, Jim pulled an apple from the fruit bowl that Bones kept on the table and started munching it sullenly. He often joked that Bones was the epitome of domestication for keeping a fruit bowl, but it was one of those things that oddly defined his friend. And he was pretty sure that Bones kept the apples in there because he knew it was a guaranteed way to make sure that Jim ate some fresh fruit.

He was halfway through his apple when Bones finally spoke. "They've suspended my research project."

Jim dropped his hand to the table, bruising the uneaten side of his apple. "What? Please tell me you're kidding me."

Bones was staring at his tea cup, wrapped tightly in his hands as if he was trying to warm them. "Wish I was."

"Why the fuck would they do that?"

Bones took a sip of his tea. "Probably because the project I'm leading is pretty high-caliber, and I'm currently under investigation."

Jim stared at Bones, blinking in disbelief. "What about your duties at Starfleet Medical?"

The cold scowl turned darker. "I'm going to work a few shifts at the Academy infirmary."

"No way." Bones had been so proud – authentically happy with himself – when he got promoted as a cadet to status as a Starfleet physician. "That's complete bullshit."

But Bones shook his head, waving him off. "It's okay, Jim. Just filling in for a few shifts. They need someone to cover for one of the infirmary doctors who's going on family leave… just for a little while anyway. And it's fine by me. I've spent too much time at the Starfleet Medical ER." It didn't look exactly fine by him, but Jim wasn't about to argue.

"It'll turn out okay, Bones."

At that, Bones turned towards him sharply, a surprised eyebrow raised in inquiry, then lowered in skepticism. "I don't need comforting, Jim."

"Who said I was comforting anyone? I'm just telling you like it is. I know it'll be fine."

For a long moment, Bones stared at him blankly, and then something in his cold façade seemed to melt, just a bit. His shoulders slumped, and he folded his arms in front of him on the table. "Maybe you're right."

"Of course I'm right. I just know these things. I am the great and powerful Oz."

Bones snorted. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

Jim looked at Bones in amazement. "You actually got one of my old film references! Bones! I'm impressed!"

Shaking his head in mock-disbelief, Bones took another slow sip of his tea. "Come on, Jim. I'm not completely inept when it comes to old pop culture. I'm just not a goddamned walking encyclopedia like some people around here, with more brains than sense."

"I've got brains and looks. I keep you around for the common sense."

Bones rolled his eyes. "Nice to know I'm good for something." Then the hint of humor disappeared from his face, and he leaned over the table, catching Jim with a dead-serious stare. "So if that's what you keep me around for, then listen… what you did this morning… snooping around… you've got to stop."

Jim stared at Bones for a moment, trying to see the inevitable crack in the guy's shell. The man was an amateur at the art of bluffing, and Jim had known him long enough to be able to read him. But after several seconds, without any hint of a crack, Jim felt his own jaw drop. "You're not kidding." It wasn't a question.

"No, Jim. I'm not."

"Bones…. I… I wasn't snooping. Fuck it, I'm trying to find out why my teammate was killed. How my teammate was killed. Why I almost ended up as nothing more than a vapor trail caught in the gravity well of Mars! And Bones – I don't trust the investigation team to get it right!"

Still straight-faced as a Vulcan, Bones just stared back at him. "I don't either, kid. But… it's complicated."

Jim slapped a hand down on the table in mock-hilarity with a false chuckle. "Complicated. Of course, it's complicated. Someone went out of his way to break through multiple layers of Starfleet security to sabotage my shuttle, kill my teammate, and almost kill me. Did you expect it to be simple?"

"No. But…" He sighed and scrubbed his face with one hand, still clinging to his tea mug with the other hand. "Listen, Jim… the flight recording is gone. The engineering labs are on lockdown unless we're supervised. The one guy who might have been able to help me get some information… I haven't heard from him. Dunno what happened. And then… that wasn't the usual sort of medical review board I faced this afternoon, Jim. Someone knows I've been fishing."

Jim felt his mouth drop open. "Wait, are you saying that someone within upper the ranks in Starfleet might be connected to the crash? Bones… there could be a Terra Prime sympathizer here at the Academy." In a heartbeat, the veneer of safety provided by the perimeter of the Academy campus seemed to crack and peel away. If the leadership was corrupted, anything was possible. "I tried to do some research at the library before I went down to East Campus, and most of the records on Terra Prime – things that had been public last year – were locked down. They've got to be hiding something, Bones! Shit, if they're trying to keep us from knowing the truth –"

"Jim, you need to stop that! No, just listen for a moment. They're conducting an official investigation, and it's classified. That's all there is to it."

"But you just said you don't trust –"

"I don't trust them." He let out a heavy breath, then shivered. "But sometimes, we don't get a choice in the matter. We're cadets, Jim. And sometimes, that means we shut up and do what we're told."

Jim glared at him. "I never thought I'd hear that out of you."

Bones glared right back. "I never thought I'd have to put my best friend's body back together because he slammed into the side of a planet."

And just like that, Jim felt some vital part of his defense crack. "Bones…"

"Jim… just for now, keep your head down and just leave it alone. Just… focus on classwork, and recovering."

"You sound like Pike," Jim said, not caring that he sounded ludicrously sullen.

Bones raised an eyebrow. "I'm not surprised," he said flatly. "The man gives good advice… even when none of us want to take it."

Jim was just about to ask him what the hell he meant by that, but Bones was already getting to his feet with a groan. Jim stayed in his seat, staring at his hands on the table in front of him, listening to the shuffling sounds of Bones lumbering over to his dresser. He was just realizing how much of a headache he'd developed since Bones had gotten home. No great surprise there.

He half-listened to the sounds of Bones changing into pajamas, tossing his uniform into the refresher unit, and placing his shoes by the door. Familiar sounds that would be soothing, but his head ached, and he was somewhere between devastated and furious. Most disturbingly, he had no idea where to direct those emotions. So, he continued to sit there, glaring daggers at his own hands on the surface of the table, and wondering what the fuck he was going to do next.

"You could try getting some sleep. That's my plan."

Jim looked up, blinking his eyes and finding that the room looked a bit soft around the edges. "What?"

"What you're going to do next. I'd suggest getting some sleep."

Jim frowned. "Oh. I said that out loud."

Bones was in front of him in a heartbeat. "You okay, kid?"

"No, Bones. Why the hell would I be okay right now?"

Bones looked at him for a moment, lips pressed together plaintively, then he reached out a hand and rested it gently on his shoulder. "I understand, Jim. But there's not much we can do now. I'm too tired and distracted to study, and I've got a late clinic shift tomorrow night because someone else covered my shift today. I need some sleep, and so do you. So come on." He dropped his hand from Jim's shoulder and held it out. "Let's get you out of the hip brace and into bed."

Jim wanted to brush him off, tell him to stop fussing, and to leave him alone with his swirling thoughts and directionless anger. Instead, the ache behind his temples and the fuzzy edges in his vision were enough to let him know that it wasn't time to fight. Not now, anyway. He'd save that for later. He'd find another way to keep his promise to Tambe, and to himself.

But for now, sleep sounded like a good plan. He reluctantly clasped Bones' outstretched hand. "Okay."

*.&.*

It was Friday afternoon, and the Academy infirmary was quiet. Aside from a dislocated shoulder from some idiot cadet playing Parisi Squares – I swear, that godforsaken game injures more cadets than hand-to-hand, fitness training, and the Academy's damned survival school combined – there hadn't been any activity in the clinic. Really, he could use the quiet. Even with his resignation over ceasing his own personal investigation, and with Jim's concession to the same, he was a bit overwhelmed at the moment.

Jim was usually tough, capable, and mentally adaptable. Not many people could have gone through the shit he'd experienced and not have fallen to pieces. But still, the kid had been through a lot, and the last thing he needed was more shit piled on top of it all. Some things, Jim didn't need to know.

Didn't need to know that the man who had been helping Leonard investigate the crash hadn't contacted him once. Lieutenant Scott hadn't shown his face in the class that he was supposed to be teaching, even to proctor the midterm exam on the half of the course he'd taught. Leonard wasn't sure he wanted to know what that meant, but he hoped the guy hadn't been caught.

Jim didn't need to know that Leonard had been dragged in for another board of inquiry – but this time, it wasn't for the medical ethics case. No, this was an interrogation from the team investigating the crash. Didn't need to know that the investigation was being bottled tighter than a sample of Tellarite Plague, and that not a single question asked by the investigation team had given him a scrap of insight or a clue. Or that the lead man on the investigation – the same bastard who Leonard had seen in Jim's hospital room interrogating the kid into a panic, and later, in the Warming Hut – was Admiral Romano.

And mostly, Jim also didn't need to know that Leonard had been evaluating his psych status all week. As tough and capable as Jim was... that head injury had left an impact. If his symptoms became apparent to anyone who didn't know Jim as well as Leonard did, then an official Starfleet psychiatrist would have to evaluate him. For now, it was mostly subtle stuff. Most people wouldn't notice. But he was Jim's Bones, dammit, and he could tell.

The paranoia wasn't gone - just subdued. There were mental lapses that Jim covered well enough with humor to hide it from most people. Jim would blank out on parts of conversations, get caught up in his thoughts, and miss connections of logic and reason that usually came as natural to the kid as breathing. And he was –

– distracted suddenly by a commotion in the infirmary lobby.

"Easy there, lassie! Yeh don't need to... oh for the love of – I can walk!"

Surprised by the familiar voice, Leonard stuck his head out of the Attending Physician's office to see what late Friday excitement had just walked through the infirmary's front door. "Lieutenant Scott?"

Scott's head turned quickly away from the young woman who was trying to guide him by the elbow and the slightly older man who was hanging back slightly. "Doctor McCoy! Good t'see a familiar face." He glanced back at the woman, not quite hiding the look of scorn. "Now that'll be enough of that. The good doctor here will patch it right up." And with that, he quickly extricated himself from her grasp and practically rushed past Leonard towards the first empty exam and treatment room.

It was only as he hurried by that Leonard saw the brutal burns on the man's hands, and was able to note the pallor of his face and sweat breaking across his skin. Leonard managed to hide his surprise at Scott's injuries as he gave a dismissive nod to the two people who'd come in with the Lieutenant, then followed the man into the exam room and shut the door before bursting out, "Good God, man! What the hell did you do to yourself?"

The pain finally showed on Scott's face as he awkwardly tried to hop up onto the biobed without using his hands. He accepted Leonard's help with a grateful nod and a wince. "It wasn't what I did, McCoy. It's those damned civie engineers I've been babysittin' for the past week. Before they can start doing live trials of the new engine designs, they're runnin' tests. And more tests. Ooch, easy there!"

Leonard was already scanning Scott's hands with the tricorder, but was also gently testing the nerve response with his own gloved hand. "Sorry, Lieutenant – needed to check for nerve function."

"Aye, well, the nerve's still functioning just fine then." He gritted his teeth, and Leonard could see the tension in his muscles and the pallor of his skin – it had to hurt like hell. Plasma burns were vicious.

"I can see that." Leonard put down the tricorder and hurried to load a hypospray with an analgesic and a broad-spectrum antibiotic. "I'm honestly amazed that you could walk in here on your own, Scott. Almost anyone with burns like that would have gone into shock... although you're pretty close." He gently pressed the hypospray to Scott's neck.

"Ach! Well, I'll tell you, yeh don't get far in theoretical engineering without having a few fine experiments blow up in your hands, Doctor."

Leonard snorted. "I may possibly have noticed that tendency among the engineers here on campus."

"I'm not surprised yeh noticed."

"Uh-huh." He sprayed a fine mist of topical anesthetic over the burns, then sat back, watching and waiting for the meds to kick in before he could start manipulating Scott's hands without causing him even more excruciating pain. "Tell me when the pain goes numb. So, the burns? How'd you get them this time?"

"Well, not so much my fault this time 'round. One of the Terran teams in that damned engine competition was preparing a demonstration for the Engineering Department's top brass tomorrow, and wanted help conducting a test fire." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, riding out a wave of pain, before blowing out a heavy breath and speaking again. "Their engine model has a few bugs to work out, including a nasty bit with an overloaded plasma conduit. Faulty resistance matrix. The bloody thing flashed and vented in my hands when I went to connect it. I tell yeh, I don't know how some of these tinkerin' backyard engineers got their designs this far, as incompetent as they are in practical work. Yeh can do things by the book, McCoy, but I think we both know... the rules aren't always the most important thing, and the book isn't always right." He shot Leonard a meaningful look.

Nodding, Leonard replied, "I'd like to think so."

"I know so... aaah, whatever yeh gave me, the stuff's starting to work. That's a wee bit better." He let out a sigh of relief.

"It should help - I gave you the good stuff." He grabbed a dermagel spray from the cabinet.

"Thanks for that. Yer a good man, Doctor." He flashed a grateful smile.

Leonard nodded and slowly picked up Scott's hand, beginning to spray down the damaged tissue. "I do what I can."

"Aye, and I know that. So do I." His smile faded and turned solemn. "I owe yeh an apology, McCoy. I've been swamped this week with these civie engineers, and I had to cancel all my extracurricular work. I should've notified you directly, but I was up to my ears in this – ouch! That stings a bit there."

"Sorry." He quickly doused the area with another dose of the topical analgesic before returning to the dermagel. "There. Wow's that?"

"Better, thanks."

"Good. And it's okay that you had to cancel. I..." He blew out a breath that it felt like he'd been holding for a week. "I actually was a bit worried that they'd caught on to our investigation." Or worried that I'd misplaced my trust, he thought, but kept that to himself.

Scott let out a bitter sort of laugh. "No, McCoy. They've not caught me."

Leonard pulled back his hands and looked at Scott with an uneasy sense. "Lieutenant?"

Despite the physical stress of the injury, Scott gave him a surprisingly level gaze. "A week ago, the whole Engineering section of the faculty got a briefing – not just those of us working on the investigation. The whole department was there. The Admiral told us that until further notice, all flight recorder data from any shuttlecraft training flight is considered to be secure information, and can only be distributed by official channels. Also told us that any discussion of Kirk's crash is classified, and we're not to speak of it unless we're called into a hearing specifically regarding the crash."

"So they expect the whole campus just to stop talking about it?" Leonard asked cynically.

"No… just any of us who had any chance of being able to make heads or tails of the whole bloody mess." He pressed his lips together grimly. "And then I got pulled off the investigation. Same day I was assigned to civie babysitting duty. Same day it was highly suggested that I not speak to yeh, McCoy."

Leonard suddenly realized he wasn't breathing. Forcing himself to take a few slow, deep breaths, he turned away and dug a pair of regen gloves out of the equipment cabinet. "Lie down," he said flatly. "Regen will take a little while – you've got some deep burns. Might as well make yourself comfortable."

Scott nodded and swung his legs up on the biobed before laying back and holding up his hands for Leonard to put the gloves on. "I'm sorry I didn't tell yeh, McCoy. If they'd caught us for sure, I'd have been assigned to the farthest reaches of the quadrant by now. The fact that I'm still here means they've got nothing solid. But I was afraid that if I did try to contact you, they'd track it further. But I promise yeh, I didn't tell a soul."

"It's okay," he said as he slid the first regen glove over Scott's left hand. He held back his sigh of relief. "I knew you wouldn't tell anyone. But I already knew they'd caught me."

"How?"

"Sources. The fact that I'm working here instead of over at Starfleet Medical. And the fact that Admiral Romano might have overheard me reviewing the flight recorder data."

Scott let out a low whistle. "That cannae be good." He twitched as Leonard activated the regen field before switching to the other glove.

"No, but he's got no proof. As soon as I realized he might have heard, I deleted the whole thing from my PADD before anyone could have had a chance to track it."

"Aye, good thinking there, McCoy," Scott said, nodding slowly in approval. "I'm sorry we lost the data, though. And I'm sorry that I can't help anymore. But I swear, McCoy, I won't say a word to cross yeh."

Leonard finally allowed himself a tired smile. "I know you wouldn't, Scott. And now I'd bet my bourbon on it." He slid the second glove onto Scott's right hand and activated it. "There, let those sit for a half hour. You can take a nap of you'd like."

"I'm unlikely to sleep about now," he said, despite the obvious exhaustion in his voice. "Besides, while we're here… there's the matter of doctor-patient confidentiality, isn't there now?"

"Yes," Leonard said cautiously. "There is."

Scott grinned broadly. "Good. Because I did manage to hammer out some of those theories we were looking at. They won't tell us who did it, but I've got a better idea of how."

Leonard looked at him for a moment, before nodding. "One second." He tapped the comm panel. "Nurse Rivera, I'm going to sit with our burn patient here to monitor his progress. Just page me if we get anything worse than a stubbed toe."

"Yes, Doctor McCoy."

With a heavy breath, Leonard sat down on the doctor's stool, raising the seat so he could comfortably look Scott in the face, and said, "Tell me."

*.&.*

Lieutenant Scott had been right the first time, Leonard thought bitterly. Not a single theory about the cause of the shuttle crash was particularly palatable.

Normally, according to Lieutenant Scott, a drop in efficiency indicated a faulty engine part. However, Scott had accessed the pre-flight inspection log before he'd been taken off the case, and Jim's inspection had been textbook perfect. Which meant that something was wrong with the engine that the standard Level 2 diagnostic inspection wouldn't have caught.

That left only a few systems suspect. First, there was the engine core, which was usually only handled and inspected by engineers, not pilots. Jim wouldn't have touched it in his pre-flight inspection, other than to run a function check indirectly, through the computer. Which led to the second possibility: it could have been the computer core, which was an extremely rare malfunction, but also the easiest place to hide an act of sabotage, if it was placed in a deeply buried subroutine or seldom-used system. It could have been the case that the shuttle was perfectly fine before takeoff, but something happened during the flight... but that negated the possibility of sabotage.

Jim had been sure he'd seen something, even though he couldn't seem to remember what, so Leonard didn't want to negate that unless everything else had been slapped down. Additionally, there was still the matter of the extra four kilograms of weight aboard the shuttle. If that weight was due to a device that had been planted, perhaps the item that Jim had seen, then such a device could have been responsible for any of those malfunctions Scott had described… except for the issue of pilot error.

Which led to the final possible malfunction that could be missed during a Level 2 diagnostic: it could have been a secondary circuit... like the one Scott suspected that Jim had rerouted during his initial attempt to fix the problem.

If it was a secondary circuit, it meant the possibility of something that could have remained undetected for a long time, save for negligible anomalous readings... such as a drop in engine efficiency. And then, whatever device had been planted could be activated from a distance. Or perhaps triggered when a certain action was performed, or a certain function activated.

That led to the final possibility, disturbing and sobering though it was: that Jim's attempt to fix the problem – whether there was an underlying act of sabotage or not – had triggered the whole mess.

Lieutenant Scott had been horribly apologetic that he hadn't been able to come up with anything conclusive, but without the flight recorder feed on hand to re-check things, there was no way to know. And as soon as Scott had left the infirmary, Leonard knew he probably wouldn't see the young officer for quite a while, so any further collaboration on the investigation was unlikely.

For now, all Leonard had were dead ends and empty theories. The worst part was having to accept it.

*.&.*

It took Jim another week to get back to the hangar, but this time, he was supposed to be there. He wasn't hunting for classified information, either. No. Loathe as he'd been to accept it, after two more failed attempts to find any relevant information in the databanks that hadn't been classified beyond his clearance level, he'd given up. For now, anyway. In the meantime, he'd focused on his classes, his physical therapy sessions, and trying to keep Bones from questioning his sanity.

The only thing he was still waiting to do, besides hand-to-hand, was flying. The Flight and Navigation department admins had decided that Nova Squadron needed a couple of weeks to settle themselves before getting exposed to the emotional barrage of being back around the shuttles, where they'd last been together as a full flight squad. Personally, Jim had figured that the longer they waited, the worse it would get.

As he walked through the security gate, however, he wasn't so sure of that.

The shuttle hangar had been one of Jim's favorite places since the start of the semester, especially early in the morning. The oversized building echoed with the footsteps of the few cadets and instructors scattered amidst shuttles and equipment. He always felt dwarfed by the hangar – small and insignificant with the enormous ceiling over his head and the hollow echoes. But then, there was always the anticipation that came with stepping into the hangar - the thrill of knowing that soon, his shuttle would lift off the ground and he'd feel large and powerful in orbit, soaring miles above the earth.

There was no such thrill this time. Today, the hangar seemed cold and empty and foreboding. His team - what was left of it - was meeting for an after-action review of the failed training mission that had taken place almost three weeks ago. They'd review protocols and procedures, go back into the shuttles, run through the inspections, and then possibly do a simulator flight. It felt like being taught how to walk after you could already run.

And at the same time, Jim wasn't sure he was ready to walk yet.

Sure, almost all of his physical restrictions had been dropped at this point, leaving only hand-to-hand combat, level-three fitness training, and running to be cleared by his physician. But that was just the physical. He was still keeping up in all his classes. His peers were generally taking things in stride, and so was he, really. Just back to normal, whatever normal was anymore.

But still, today was different. Today was his return to the place where everything had gone so wrong. Today, he and his team had to come back together as a flight squad, and there would be no ignoring anything.

His stomach clenched as his footsteps echoed in the nearly empty hangar, and the distant voices of other personnel only deepened the dread.

When he got to their regular trainee shuttle bay, Okoru was already there, perched on an equipment container, staring fixedly at a PADD while her feet swung absently in the air. She looked up at the sound of his footsteps approaching, and favored him with an encouraging smile that still looked a bit rusty. "Ready for this, Kirk?"

"Don't have much of a choice, do I?" he said, realizing that his throat was unexpectedly dry. Sighing, he leaned back against the equipment container and heaved himself up next to Okoru. His toes almost touched the ground, which made her dangling legs seem comically short. "But hey, back on the horse, right?"

"You will perform admirably, Kirk," Thaleb said, popping out from the open hatch of one of the shuttles. "Your injuries and sorrows will not hinder your warrior's heart."

Jim felt himself flushing a bit around the collar. Thaleb certainly had a very non-human directness about the way he expressed things, but really, Jim appreciated that about the guy. You never had to guess what he meant. "Thanks, Thaleb. It's still just a little bit disorienting."

"Well," Okoru said thoughtfully, "you've got another fifteen minutes before Captain Tanner is due to show up. Maybe you can take the time to get oriented."

"A wise suggestion," Thaleb said with a nod. "Kirk, I am performing a diagnostic of the navigation system. You may join me, if you wish."

Jim forced a smile. "Sure, why not?" He hopped down, pleased with the lack of ache in his hips when he landed, and led the way into the shuttle.

His movements were smooth and automatic, the result of many hours spent in the shuttles this semester. He immediately took the copilot's seat and began checking the status readouts on the nav computer as Thaleb sat down. It felt familiar as their voices began to bounce back and forth with checks and cross-checks, diagnostic cycles, and sensor readouts. It was good to do something so routine, so normal. Okoru was right - it was good to get oriented again.

"Cross-check atmospheric nav sensors with thrusters," Thaleb recited, in perfect order of the navigation system shakedown.

"Aye," Jim replied easily. "Activating thruster circuits. Cross-checking..." His voice trailed off as the engine began to hum.

In the back of his mind, he felt the surge of excitement he always got at the notion of prepping the craft for takeoff, knowing that soon, he'd be sailing above the clouds. But this time, in a far more immediate and urgent way, he was aware that his breath was suddenly stuck in his lungs, and his palms were starting to sweat. His fingers hovered over the control panel, but he couldn't remember what he was doing, what he needed to press next.

"Kirk? Are you experiencing difficulty?" Thaleb's voice was steady and firm, bringing Jim back to himself... almost.

"Yeah... I mean, no. No. Just..." He took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to suppress the nerves that were suddenly threatening to overtake him. "Cross-checking the nav calculations with thruster pressure. Reading 98.72% accuracy."

"Recalibrating nav computer with thrusters," Thaleb replied. "Cross-check again."

Jim's hands shook as they flew through the familiar sequence on the control panel. "Now reading 99.36% accuracy."

"Recalibrating..."

They finished running through the nav computer checks just before Captain Tanner was due to arrive, and Jim had never been so relieved to get out of a shuttle before. Damn, I'll never give Bones shit about aviophobia again. Fuck...

The actual review of the last training mission wasn't as bad as Jim had thought it would be. Captain Tanner wasn't being pushy or demanding, and he ran it like any other training debriefing. Besides, Jim had already re-hashed the training mission so many times, he'd gotten to the point where he could recite the sequence of events with no more emotion than he got from reading a technical manual. Well, perhaps not that detached, but still better than the first few times. Really though, as he looked around at the faces of his teammates and inevitably back to Captain Tanner, he was was far more distracted today by the simple knowledge that Tanner had contacted his mother to think too much about the crash.

It was the first time he'd seen the Captain since the morning of the crash, and he kept feeling like every time Tanner so much as glanced at him, there was some sort of bizarre pity and familiarity embedded in his demeanor. Maybe he was imagining it. Maybe it had always been there, but Jim had never had a reason to notice. He wanted to confront the man, but at this point, he knew it wouldn't do any good. And really, he was almost grateful for his current state of annoyance. Stewing over Tanner's friendship with his mother was keeping him distracted from the nerves – fear – that had started to overtake him in the cockpit of the shuttle.

Every so often, he'd look over at the shuttle, and his skin would crawl, cold nerves prickling uncomfortably over his arms and neck. The shuttle really did look far too fragile. And if something went wrong, it couldn't always be fixed. Jim had never had a death wish, contrary to some Bones' frequent half-sarcastic insinuations. It was merely that he'd never been afraid of dying, and never saw a reason for fear to hold him back anyway. He'd been living on borrowed time since the day he was born, really.

But it wasn't about him this time. Hell, even Pike had said so.

No, this time, someone else had died, inches away from him. In the vacuum of space, at the bottom of a planetary gravity well, fighting against engines that weren't responding, with only a nanofiber harness and the brittle walls of a shuttlecraft to protect them. The impact of the crash had been brutal, but worse than that, he remembered the sudden sensation of the air rushing out around him, then nothing. No air, no breath, no life, then the hum and tingle of a transporter beam, whisking him away from oblivion just as the shuttle shuddered and dissolved into a fireball around him. And when he'd arrived on the transporter pad in a mangled heap, and air had rushed back into his lungs like a thousand hot knives, all he could do was scream for Tambe.

Suddenly, instead of wanting to get back on the horse, Jim wanted to be as far from the damned barn as possible. One of those shuttles had claimed Tambe. It had almost claimed him. The idea of being trapped in a rickety little shuttle, with its unreliable engines and weak hull that would shatter like glass on impact, exposing him to the suffocating vacuum of space...

"Cadet Kirk? Are you paying attention, Cadet?" Captain Tanner was directly in front of him, but to Jim's surprise, didn't seem particularly angry at having caught one of his trainees not paying attention. In fact, he almost sounded concerned, which only made Jim far more uncomfortable.

"Yes, sir... sorry, sir," Jim blurted, stumbling over his words. "I was... just trying to remember something."

"Well, I hope you remember how to bring a shuttle up to orbit, because we're going to run a simulator mission now, and if that goes well, we'll get the team back in the air next Monday. How's that sound?"

In a flash, it was as if all the air was rushing from the room again, and Jim felt his lungs struggling against nothingness. Only some twisted combination of a year of Starfleet training plus sheer force of will kept him from physically recoiling. Holding the Captain's gaze, Jim nodded. "Ready to go, sir."

Hoping that he was projecting far more confidence than he was feeling, Jim hopped off the crate he'd been sitting on and followed the Captain and the rest of his team off to the flight simulators.

*.&.*