Sabine and McCoy avoided one another for several days after the fight in his apartment. Neither of them was ready to apologize to the other. Sabine was frustrated that Leo had thrown her lies and mistakes in her face, in addition to refusing to believe her when she was finally trying to come clean. She had always worried that if she told him the truth, he would either laugh in her face or leave her in a fit of anger. His reaction so far was not reassuring. She also didn't care for how condescending he had been about Section 31. Why did he think it was impossible for a covert-ops organisation to exist? Was she just jaded by her own experiences? Did everyone in this modern society really believe that things were as peaceful as they were told via the news? Leo was smart – why couldn't he open his mind to the fact that there might be something more – something dark – out there? Especially since she was trying to warn him for his own damn safety?
Meanwhile, McCoy was beyond irritated that even though she had admitted to lying, Sabine thought he would believe some ridiculous new story about secret organisations and trained killers. It sounded like something out of one of those old holomovies from the 20th century with spies and ridiculous villains who used top hats to kill people. How stupid did she think he was? Starfleet was built on the idea of peaceful exploration. Sure, bad things still happened from time to time – there were species like the Romulans and Klingons who might like to bring around the downfall of the Federation. But rationality and equanimity had prevailed up to now. This wasn't a war-torn universe that needed secret groups to assassinate political leaders. The whole thing got more ludicrous each additional time he thought about it. To say nothing of his girlfriend, who was maybe 120 pounds soaking wet, and who had devoted herself to the study of medicine and healing people, being a trained killer. That was just a bridge too far.
They both wondered if this was the end of their relationship and took it out on the people around them. After four days, Jim, the Resurrection crew, and Cass were all ready to lock both of them in a room until someone came out alive or they killed one another. Anything was better than the two of them acting like angry badgers.
They shared a shift at the clinic five days after the fight and neither of them was looking forward to spending twelve hours together. The first couple of hours, they avoided each other in stony silence. The staff noticed the frost in the air immediately and set about speculating. In the third hour, McCoy was trying to perform a minor surgery on an Andorian cadet but complications kept arising and he called out for assistance. Sabine was the first to hear and she came to his side.
"What do you need?" she asked tightly.
"Can you apply pressure right here so the patient doesn't bleed out on my table?"
She pressed down where he'd asked her and they finished the surgery together, each troubleshooting every complication that arose. After, they were both exhausted and covered in blue Andorian blood.
"You've, uh, got a little something on you there," McCoy said, gesturing to Sabine's entire body.
"You do not look so great either," she retorted.
They stared at one another for a moment and McCoy finally broke the silence.
"Are we gonna talk about this?"
"I do not know. Are you going to accuse me of more lying?"
"Only if you keep lying." They moved to the break room and tossed their disposable surgical aprons in the biohazard rubbish bin.
"So you are still convinced I am lying about what I told you the other night?"
"Can you give me a good reason to believe you?"
"I cannot make you believe me," she sighed. "I want to tell you everything. But I cannot. And I do not want to hear how ridiculous you think my story is. If you think this is outlandish, just wait. It does not get better. If you do not want to be with me, there is nothing I can do to change that."
"I want to be with you. Dammit, woman, I wanna be with you more than I can say. But you're so goddamn frustrating. Just give me a straight answer." He turned away from her and she heard him mumble, "Everything's a fuckin' riddle with you."
"I cannot give you a straight answer," she yelled. "That is the fucking point. I want to be honest – I hate lying – I am not even good at it! But I need you to trust me for one damned fucking shitty-ass minute when I tell you I need time." If he hadn't been so annoyed with her, he would have laughed at her attempt to use every curse word in one sentence.
A nursing cadet walked in on both of them and they turned to glare at her. She slunk back out. This was the problem with work relationships, she thought to herself, on the way to tell all the other nurses the doctors were fighting.
"Where was all this when we started dating? Why couldn't you have just told me then that you needed time before you could tell me anything? Why all the lies and how am I supposed to know when the lies stop and the truth starts?"
They glared at one another for a moment and McCoy decided to press the issue.
"You won't even tell me why you think in a dead language no one has spoken since WWIII."
She was taken aback by his words. While Sabine had suspected from his question the other night that he knew more about the language issue than she was comfortable with him knowing, he had now confirmed it. She didn't know how he'd figured it out – had his mother said something to him? It didn't seem likely based on her interactions with Eleanora but how was she to know? She'd met the woman for a week whereas Leo was her child – if Eleanora thought he should know, Sabine couldn't fault the woman too much.
"I speak a dead language because where I am from, it is not a dead language," she chose her words carefully. The difference between 'where' and 'when' was how many more questions he would ask.
"And where is that?"
"I am not ready to tell you yet," she replied sadly.
"Of course not." McCoy sank down into one of the chairs, exhausted from trying to solve the puzzle that was his girlfriend. If she was still his girlfriend.
"I know I have done nothing to win your trust," Sabine said quietly, crossing the space between them and kneeling beside him, one hand on his knee and the other on top of his hands. "But I am asking for it anyway because I love you and I do not want this to end. If you want to be with me then give me a chance. I am asking for two months. Give me two months. I will tell you everything, I will have proof, and if I fail to tell you everything by this time in March, then leave me."
He pondered the offer as they stared at one another. Goddamn, he'd missed her the past few days. Could it be she wasn't lying and there really was some mysterious Starfleet group following her, coercing her to lie about her past? It seemed so farfetched. On the other hand, he knew she'd lost several people she loved…could she be in some danger? What kind of partner was he if he didn't believe her and she turned out to be right? And had she really killed before? He couldn't picture it but there were a lot of things about Sabine he hadn't expected.
"Two months?" he asked, skepticism in his voice.
"Two months. I swear on the souls of my parents."
Sabine wasn't sure what had made her choose those words – her parents seemed like the most sacred things she could make an oath on and she needed him to know she was serious.
McCoy caught the hitch in her voice when she mentioned her parents. Everything he thought he knew about her led him to believe she was being sincere. But did that mean she was sincerely insane? Still, if she could provide proof….
He stared at her for a minute and it felt like water torture waiting for him to accept her offer. She broke off eye contact and gazed at the floor wondering if he would reject the timeline, reject her explanations, reject her altogether. But then he tipped her face up to bring her eyes back to his. When she looked in those eyes, she knew he had agreed.
"It's a deal," he said softly, standing up and pulling her up too. He took her in his arms and rested his head on top of hers. She wrapped her arms around him in return and the four nursing cadets who had snuck outside the break room door to see if they could hear the fight found themselves sighing happily instead as they watched the couple embrace through the window.
"The nursing cadets are spying on us," she whispered.
McCoy took his shoe off and chucked it at the door while holding onto Sabine with his other arm. They both heard the clamor and cries as it hit the door.