Oh my holy cow. Guys, I am SO sorry that it's been almost a month. I am so amazed if you've stuck with me, thanks so much. Please review to let me know what you think of this chapter, or even just to rant about how long it's been.
I'm doing NaNoWriMo in November, so updates will still be slow, but I will try to make them more frequent than they are right now.
Chapter Eleven
Whenever Mazhara was transported somewhere by beaming, she temporarily lost her sight. She'd been this way for as long as she could remember. Her mother often said she'd thought about getting it looked into, medically speaking, but since she suffered the same thing she saw no reason to waste money on it. They'd just have to manage.
It was this temporary blindness that brought her back to her sense.
It was this temporary blindness that saved Kirk's life.
As instinct was beaten back, she ripped her hands from his neck, lurching away from him. She put so much distance between them that she fell off the transport pad, struggling to stay on her feet. She felt panicked, sucking in lungsful of air in a desperate attempt to calm herself. If anything, it made the terror flooding her veins far more evident.
Kirk hunch over, stomach screaming in agony from where she punched him. His neck had been attacked after, and suffered just as much. He breathed in deeply, wincing as his lungs continued to burn. His head pounded – from the lack of oxygen most likely, though it didn't help that Scotty was screaming something.
"Scotty, quiet." He said, voice scratchy.
The Scotsman's sentence stumbled to a halt. He looked flustered. "Capn, she was trying to kill ye!"
"I know, Scotty." He said, offering the engineer a weak smile. "You really pack a punch, you know that?"
Z didn't respond.
He glanced over, a frown settling on his face. She was across the room, arms splayed out as if to ground herself. Terror and horror filled her eyes, her chest heaving as she vainly battled to regain her composure. Oh no, he thought, slowly stumbling towards her.
"Z, listen to me, you're alright. Ok? You're fine, I'm fine." He gently settled his hands on her shoulders.
It was as if she hadn't heard him. She was stuck in her internal war, senses diminished. Her gaze was fixed in the middle distance. She shuddered, still drawing giant breaths which were certainly not helping anything.
Not taking a moment to think, he moved his hands to her face, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"Listen to me, Z. You need to slow your breathing or you're going to hyperventilate. Do you understand?"
She didn't respond, but a hint of determination showed on her face. She calmed herself, doing as he instructed. Her gaze never left his eyes as she used him to ground himself to reality, to pull herself out of her own mind. Eventually, she took her hands off the wall and her breathing slowed to a natural rate.
"You see? You're alright."
She nodded. "Thank you, Captain."
He wanted to smile, but there was something off in her expression – like she was holding something back. "How's your head?"
Z looked at him, once more, as if he were stupid. "In need of attention. As, I'm sure, are you. It's best to get to Medical."
He nodded slowly, still trying to find what she was hiding. Failing, he reluctantly let her go and stepped back. "Then we'd better get a move on." He turned to Chekov – who had remained surprisingly silent the entire time and was eyeing Z with concern and a bit of healthy caution. "Mr. Chekov, alert Medical of our imminent arrival."
"Aye, Keptin."
"Chekov, could you comm Ri first, and let her know that I need her?" Z asked immediately. She slowly sat down on the floor, looking unsteady as she did so. She yelped as her head thunked back against the wall, but didn't move.
"Z?" Kirk asked, worry raising his voice a couple of notes.
"I'm fine, Captain, just like you said."
"No you're not." He reprimanded. "Come on, let me help you to medical."
She flinched when he reached for her. He stepped back, brow furrowing.
Mazhara sucked in a sharp breath, trying not to drown in the swarm of emotions quickly surrounding her. Pain, she focused on the pain. Ironic, as usually she, like others, shied from pain but it seemed better than the alternative. She kept her eyes shut, so intent on surviving, on not getting sucked under.
She opened her eyes, immediately recognizing this as a mistake.
The delicate control she managed broke when her gaze connected with Kirks. The control snapped, and an almost blinding anger rose. She struggled to her feet, pushing away his offer at help. Even when she almost slumped back to the ground.
"How dare you?!" She snarled, back hitting the wall as she tried to put some distance between them. She wrapped an arm around her stomach, fighting to remain upright. "You-" She turned around, knowing that if he kept looking at her with that confusion and hurt that she'd want to hit him.
After a few moments of her silence, he spoke up. "Z?"
Her head came up, but she didn't turn to face him. "You'd better get to medical, Captain, you've sustained quite a bit of damage. I'll be along shortly."
"If you need help-"
"Just…go."
He hesitated. He hesitated and she thought she wouldn't be able to stop herself from screaming at him. Finally, though, he left. When the doors slid shut behind him, she slumped against the wall, slowly sliding down to sit in a crumpled heap on the floor.
She didn't hear Chekov locate or call Ri. She didn't hear Scotty muttering under his breath to the Russian. She'd disconnected from the world, in a manner of speaking. Her brain simply refused to receive information travelling from her senses.
Rather, it had.
Then a familiar hand pressed against her shoulder, a familiar form coming into her vision. The figure kneeled in front of her, and she recognized Ri's face. The nurse looked so worried that it would have pained Mazhara in any other situation. But not then.
Then she had enough of her own pain to contend with.
Pain that burst form the corners of her eyes in a torrential flood of tears as the nurse pulled her into a delicate embrace. Tears continued to fall, even when Ri tightened her hold and began rubbing circles into her friends' back. Even when her friend buried her face in her shoulder, as a child would with their mother.
She smoothed Mazhara's hair back, withdrawing her hand when she discovered the blood. A look of horror crossed her face. "Zara, what happened?"
Her friend lifted her head, a maddening swirl of emotions in her eyes. "They put me in the cage, Ri. They made me fight. And when I was almost beaten, they decided that the Captain," she spat. "Ought to be the one to have my final fight."
And suddenly the emotions made sense. The horror at the situation. The sadness at Kirk's evident betrayal. The pain from her wounds – not only the physical but those of spirit also.
And the terror. The utterly blinding fear that Mazhara felt knowing that Kirk had placed his life in her hands in a situation where she would have taken it without hesitation. Overrun by instinct, she wouldn't have been able to stop herself – wouldn't have even been aware of it until the deed was done.
Until his blood was on her hands.
"Come on, Zara." Ri said softly. "We need to get your wounds looked at."
Her friend nodded numbly, offering no resistance and as little assistance as she could manage.
They'd been down similar paths before, Ri reminded herself. They'd managed just fine then. Yes, the Captain had added a more complicated route to her friend's overall recovery, but that was an obstacle they'd climb over when they got to it. They could do it, even if it took years. They'd manage.
Didn't they always? Yes, they'd been through tough spots. And yes, they'd been joined by others who didn't always recover. But the two of them? They always made it.
Ri was determined that now would be no different.
"Jim! You're back." Bones greeted, clasping the Captain's arm. His slight smile faded as he noticed that his Captain was alone. "Where's Mazhara?"
"I tried to get her to come, Bones. She's got a head wound that's not looking to good, but she demanded to be left alone until Ri could get to her."
The medic scowled at his friend. "I know that, Jim, Chekov told me. Which is why she needs to be in here – Ri was working until you arrived. You knew she needed to be here, and that Ri would in all likelihood be here, so why'd you leave her?"
"Bones, I didn't have much of a choice."
"Damn it, Jim. You go back there right now and-"
"Bones!" Kirk snapped. "She's fine. Ri is probably with her right now, fussing over her like a good nurse should. They'll be here soon enough, you'll patch her up and everything will be sunshine and daisies again."
He stormed over to an empty station and sat on it, waiting to be scanned. Bones eyed him, not following. Nurse Chapel looked at the doctor, silently asking if she should tend to the Captain. At his negative, she bustled off to check on the other patients – burn victims of Engineering, as per usual. After a minute or so, he followed his Captain.
"You said she has a head wound?"
Kirk nodded. "There were a few fights. She's probably gotten a few more bruises, but the head was the big one."
"Only that from a few fights?"
He shook his head, understanding Bones' skepticism. "She was something else, Bones. I'm not sure how to describe it – she says she runs entirely on the instinct to survive." He groaned as Bones prodded his stomach with the scanner. "Something I obviously don't do."
"And this mass of bruising on your abdomen, that was from these few fights?" The doctor asked, a furrow forming in his brow. "This is pretty severe, Jim, I'm surprised nothing was ruptured."
"That's because she went after my throat rather than –"
His mouth shut as the doctors eyes widened. "By she you mean-"
"It wasn't her fault, Bones, it was all me and I take total responsibility." Kirk interjected quickly.
"Oh yeah? And how the hell was this you're doing?" The doctor snapped gruffly. "Did you guide her hands?"
"I told you, she runs on survival mode when attacked – and she will survive at any means. We didn't have much of a chance the way things were, so I…hit her. Then she hit back, just, much harder." He rolled his shoulders, groaning as they popped. "Luckily Scotty and Chekov beamed us up. Something about that stopped her."
After a moment of silence, the doctor shook his head. Stabbing Kirk in the neck with a hypo – and getting a bit too much satisfaction from the pained look on his face – he snapped at his friend. "I can't believe you'd be such a moron."
"Look, Bones, I knew what we were facing, and I knew just how she'd react. It was better for the both of us, in that situation."
Bones shook his head. "Oh, I'm sure it was. Absolutely. Wouldn't affect her in the slightest to be the one to have ended your life." He ran another scan. "You'll be fine, but you're not leaving the med bay until I say so."
Kirk grumbled slightly, but didn't object.
"Oh, and Jim?"
He turned to face the doctor, just as Bones' fist connected with his face, breaking his nose. Much to his chagrin, he let out a yelp of surprise, pinching his nose to stem the blood flow. His eyes were wide as they landed on the typically nonviolent doctor.
Said doctor whose eyes burned with fury. Mazhara was his friend – so much like his own daughter that he wanted to snap Kirk in two for what he'd done to her. Bones knew why she'd stayed behind, and didn't blame her. Not now. He wouldn't want to be around someone who'd forced his hand either.
When he spoke, his voice was dangerously calm. "Do something like that to her again, and I'll break more than your nose."