Title: Asclepius Revisited

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Star Trek TOS

Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: 76 McCoy episodes. 76 McCoy-centric reflections, codas, and missing scenes.

Notes: McCoy is in four scenes of "Charlie X." What really ended up catching my attention was the way he supported Yeoman Rand in the final scene when she is returned to the Enterprise – it's so subtle, you almost don't see it. That led me to thinking of McCoy as a father, and how that would relate to his discussions with Kirk regarding father figures for Charlie (both in the earlier scene on the Bridge and the later one in the briefing room). As I started to write, it all came together as something of a reflection from McCoy regarding fatherhood, father figures, and how he saw not only the events, but also Kirk and Spock, in this episode. Italicized quotations or anything in double quotes is taken from episode dialogue. As usual, please excuse any blatant errors. Thank you so much for reading and for your support as I explore this world!

2.

"We're in the hands of an adolescent."

Even through the suffocating sense of foreboding in the wake of Charlie's exit, McCoy's eyebrow quirked as he noted the faint hint of horror in Spock's tone…..

….Horror that infused the word 'adolescent.'

Horror that was not nearly so pronounced during Spock's earlier discussion of Charlie's powers.

Horror that now had McCoy seriously wondering about Spock's own adolescence.

Of course Spock was knowledgeable about human development – he could probably recite the hormonal changes as readily as McCoy himself - but one didn't get that vaguely haunted, 'dear Lord, not again' tone from record tape knowledge alone. No, one had to live through it, whether by personal experience alone, or for a second time through raising a child.

Spock didn't have any children, so that meant…

McCoy suddenly found himself considering Spock's adolescent years in a whole new light. Chemically, it must have been hell for Spock. As a physician, he empathized with the uncertain process of an already unstable event complicated by the collision of interspecies genetics. As a parent…..well, he was trying to imagine a frustrated, but 'won't admit I'm frustrated' Sarek touting logic and limits.

Poor Amanda.

McCoy sighed as he brought himself back to the present and Kirk's hard, yet resigned expression. They all knew where this was going…..and part of him hated to be the one to illustrate how it was all going to fall to Kirk, but he couldn't change it, no matter how much as he wanted to.

"Well, for the moment he's stopped. You're an authority he respects Jim."

Kirk knew as soon as the words were spoken. His eyes shadowed briefly before hardening with resolve. His jaw set.

Spock knew it too, voiced it in one syllable. "Agreed."

When Kirk, acting like an embarrassed adolescent himself, came to McCoy on the Bridge earlier asking him to oversee Charlie's developmental education, McCoy had only been half-joking when he had tried to get out of it by suggesting that it come from a strong father figure. Just because he was a physician and understood the details of the physical and emotional changes that took place in adolescence didn't mean he wanted to have that conversation again – no one wanted to have that conversation. It was an oddly unstudied yet universal truth that people, like Kirk in that moment, became jabbering, blushing fools when confronted with the topic of sexual development. Sure, he had the experience of having given that talk to his own child, but that didn't mean he wanted to do it again. Besides, Jo was his daughter and the talk was different with girls. He couldn't promise that he wouldn't slip out of 'friendly, objective physician' and revert back to 'protective father', where the only line of that talk to an adolescent male would have been 'stay away from my little girl unless you're damn well sure you won't break her heart.' But he wasn't just trying to pass the discomfort to Kirk when he told him, "he already looks up to you" – because Charlie did already look up to Kirk. It was done.

Sure, he could have sat Charlie down and talked until he was blue in the face, but it wouldn't have made a difference, because Charlie didn't look up to him that way. What Kirk didn't understand was that that kind of connection was an important foundation, the basis of any of those sensitive conversations….and it couldn't be dictated. It fell where it would. McCoy had been completely serious in his reinforcement that Charlie needed a guide and a father had, as always, depended on McCoy to make it happen, to make it right….but you couldn't "supply or find" a father figure – people latched onto someone and created that connection themselves…..and Charlie had already done so. With Jim.

And so, in the briefing room, after Charlie admitted to destroying the Antares, McCoy had said it again….and Spock agreed. Now, he and Spock didn't argue like cats and dogs nearly as much as the Bridge crew might insist. While he sure wasn't inclined to agree with the pointy-eared computer on a lot of things, there was one matter in which they were in consistent agreement – they both knew and cared about Jim Kirk more than they did themselves. With that single word – "agreed" - Spock's voice showed that he shared McCoy's correct assessment, while the all-too-human eyes showed that he, like McCoy, knew that it would break Jim's heart, that he wished there were some other way…even while knowing one didn't exist. He couldn't make it better for his friend, only be there at the end to help pick up the pieces.

So, together with Spock, McCoy watched Kirk live out the most difficult parts of being a father figure….of being a father: of knowing that the young man who looked up to him was dangerous…..of having to bring that young man pain to save his 'other children' on the Enterprise…..of listening to Charlie plead, bargain, shout, and desperately appeal to those baser empathetic instincts as the Thasians returned for him…..

The Thasian told them what they already knew. Charlie would never be able to harness his power – he would continue to use it, would take more lives before someone was forced to try and take his. And Kirk, bless him, even while already knowing what he had to do, still stood up at Charlie's pained "help me" - both desperate for a chance to make it work for the boy, to allow him to stay with humanity, yet already aware of the choice he had to make in the end. And as he pleaded for one child, another was returned: Janice Rand appeared on the Bridge, a flash of embarrassment before the confusion of shock. Kirk assured her everything was all right, sparing a moment for one frightened child before returning his attention to another.

The Thasian gave the best answer he could, father-to-father. "We offer him life and we will take care of him." The Enterprise couldn't take care of Charlie, and McCoy knew that. Kirk knew that. If the Thasians could…..well, it was what Charlie needed….and sometimes a father had to put his child's need over his child's want.

And so Charlie disappeared, the father figure he didn't want to admit that he needed plucking him from the father figure that he may have wanted. The Bridge was silent, Spock a ready presence at Kirk's back as he sank into his chair, eyes haunted by a decision no less painful for having known that it was the right one.

With one child gone, another shifted against McCoy. When Janice was returned to the Bridge, McCoy did what any father would do, whether for his own child or that of a friend – he pulled her to safety, gently held her back from further heartbreak as Charlie pleaded against her feelings, and absorbed her weight as the storm of emotion reached that desperate moment before release and she sagged against him.

But when that emotion finally came, when the tears started to spill over, Janice leaned forward toward her true father figure.

Toward his friend.

And so he gently propelled her toward Kirk.

And let go.