Lee was sitting in McCoy's chair, a warm hoodie he dug from his civilian clothes on her shoulders, and a glass of a protein shake in her arms. He couldn't bear her standing and exhausting herself any longer; so when she'd refused to come back to bed, he agreed to stay in the office on several conditions: she would sit still, drink the shake, accept a hypo and try not to worry too much.
Jim had positioned himself in front of her, a cup of coffee in his arms. Lee'd agreed to talk, so McCoy, at last, followed his orders and commed the Captain so he could also hear the tale.
The kid looked tired. Cleaning up the mess after the Klingons, though as relatively easy as it was, was still a nuisance, with the necessity to oversee hull damage repairing and to question the prisoners. The Captain had a lot to do these days, and the Doctor reminded himself to order his CO to rest.
Like the kid would listen, McCoy thought bitterly. He was leaning against the wall and watching Lee closely. She had regained control over her feelings and was looking remarkably normal. It was as good as they were about to get at this point of her recovery.
"I'm glad you're alive," Jim was saying, "Getting rid of the slave traders would have been a pain in the ass if you hadn't helped. But the next time, please, let me know what you are up to. I am a better actor than the good Doctor here."
She gave them a polite smile.
"I really hope there won't be the next time, you know."
"No kidding," Jim huffed, "I don't think I can manage another gang of your buddies in the brig."
McCoy wondered how she felt about the pirates she'd sacrificed to get the Enterprise out of trouble. There must be some remorse, right? It didn't sit well with him; the fact that she could use living people as her 3D chess pieces and not give a damn about them after they played their role was outright disturbing.
She was in her interrogation mode, so she didn't do so much as twitch. Even if she cared, she didn't want to show it.
"What are you going to do to them?" she asked calmly.
Jim's expression shifted from semi-relaxed to all business.
"It depends on what you'll tell me. You know I want you on the ship. I saw your solution to the T'ror equation, and it's brilliant, but I believe you are capable of so much more. We can help you to become a great scientist, though you probably already are one. I get you don't like Starfleet much, but give it a chance. I've been there, I should know. I used to hate the damn establishment too, but here we are now. I found family here, and you can also do that. You can stop running and have a home. And we both can go out there and make sure things like Tarsus would never happen again. What do you say?"
She sighed.
"You are very optimistic in believing you can let me stay. How are you going to explain to the command why exactly you want a criminal without proper education on your ship?"
"Again, it depends on what you'll say. The command doesn't have to know your story. I have to."
She smiled sadly.
"I'm just afraid you'll change your mind once you hear the truth."
Jim shook his head in determination.
"I won't. You deserve this chance. Of all people, you deserve it."
They met each other's eyes, two people who had outlived a massacre, gone through hell and back, and who probably understood each other better than anyone in the Universe.
"Tell us how you became you," Jim said quietly, "And I promise not to judge. I know how it feels to live the life you are living. I know how hard it is to break free from it. And I know that sometimes we need the outside force to drag us out. One good man did this for me," pain blinked in Jim's eyes at the memory of Christopher Pike, "Let me do the same for you."
Lee and Jim held each other's eyes for another minute. Then she took a deep breath and nodded.
"Okay. Where do I start?"
McCoy caught himself shivering in anticipation. He'd been waiting for this since her first day here.
Jim leaned back in his chair.
"Well… My Comm. officer believes you are half-Irish, half-Icelandic. She will have my hide if I don't ask you if this assumption is correct. You can start with that."
Lee's features softened.
"She's right. My father was from Dublin, I was born there too. When I turned four, we moved to my mother's farm in East Iceland."
"So Irish father and Icelandic mother, huh?" McCoy huffed, "I've always known you Northerners are crazy."
She snorted.
"Can say the same about the Southerners. Who the hell lives in this frying pan you call Georgia? Your brains get boiled before you say 'oh fuck it's hot'."
He rolled his eyes, and she gave him that warm smile that never failed to melt his heart.
"When did you leave for Tarsus?" Jim asked and broke the spell. The coldness of reality hit McCoy again and he bit the back of his lip in frustration. Lee's face went neutral, and she continued in an indifferent tone indicating she was in full control of her emotional and physical state.
"I was eight when we left. My parents got an offer from the Tarsus Academy. They were both coders, pretty good ones, and they agreed."
Her face remained calm and detached when she was talking about her parents, but there had to be the pain behind this mask, and McCoy's heart ached for her. It was all wrong to fight back the sorrow of losing her family and keep herself in check. He'd lost his father eight years ago, and it still hurt like hell when he was forced to talk about his dad. Besides, he was an adult, the man who had the luxury to know his father for twenty-eight years before losing him. Lee had never had this opportunity. She'd been just a kid when her family had been torn away from her, and making her suppress her feelings on the topic was just wrong.
McCoy focused on the story again, brushing away the thought about the storm that might have raged underneath this insanely steady composure.
"You remember Tarsus before the famine," Lee leaned back in the chair too, making herself comfortable, "It was beautiful, with beautiful and happy people building their bright beautiful future. And then there was that fungus. It came from nowhere and destroyed the food."
Her voice remained as steady as always. McCoy envied such self-control a little, come to think of it. She looked like she was talking about the weather.
"My parents were smart, but I have never been like them. I've had an eidetic memory, but I didn't know what to do with all the information I knew. I didn't know how to process it; sometimes I couldn't even follow the simplest tasks at school. It all was just too much, and I didn't know what to do with it. This is why they decided to get rid of me. You saw how everything went."
McCoy observed her very closely in case of any unwanted emotions to cut the conversation off and avoid another cardiac arrest. He saw nothing.
"How did you survive?" Jim asked, adopting this detached way of speaking too.
Her face didn't change a shade at the memory of the execution.
"There was a hatch at the bottom of that pit. People who built the colony probably used it for something and then left it there. They threw me literally onto it. Cut my eyebrow on the handle when I fell."
Her grip on the glass tightened as she was finally letting her emotions be seen.
"I saw wood and fuel tanks. I might not know what to do with all the information I was getting, but I was never stupid. I knew what they wanted to do to us."
Her gaze went dull and distant.
"I still have no idea how I managed to open the hatch with both arms broken, but I did It. I was just in time. They were done with all the kids and were about to start the fire. There was darkness at that hatch, and I didn't know what was down there, but… It would still be a better death. To fall somewhere and die from the impact than to be burned alive. So I let myself fall."
I wouldn't let it happen again, McCoy vowed silently, you wouldn't fall into nothingness alone anymore. I wouldn't let you.
"It wasn't deep, maybe six feet, maybe less," she continued, "But the hit was hell, and I blacked out. Used every curse word I knew back then when I came to consciousness," she chuckled darkly, "Oh hell, I was so angry I hadn't died," she shook her head at that memory, "I hoped everything would end, and everything would be peachy and simple. Should have known better. Simple was never the case for me."
She sighed and took a sip from her glass.
"So I needed to make a decision. Either to stay put and wait for my death to come or to try to get somewhere. I always hated waiting for anything, so I figured if I had to die, I might at least not do it bored."
McCoy fought back dark laughter. So she had always been a pain in the ass. Never able to be still, always curious, always moving. Wild, untamed girl. Dear God, he loved her so much.
"The right arm hurt less, so I crawled to the right. Don't know how long I crawled, but when I got out, it was night. The tunnel I was in was some kind of an old sewage pipe. I think they used it at the very beginning of building the colony and then made new pipes and abandoned the old ones. My pipe ended in the bushes. No one was around, and I just lied there. I think I used all the energy I had left, and I was happy. Like, really happy, because I knew it would end soon. Then I passed out."
Her eyes dropped to the glass in her hands as she was fiddling with it unconsciously.
"I woke up in bed. Nothing hurt, and I was pretty comfy. Someone had found me, treated me and put me into bed. Guess who it was."
There was only one possible answer to this question, the answer that, however improbable, explained everything, bright and clear.
"Klingons?" Jim voiced the obvious fact.
She nodded.
"Correct."
McCoy shook his head in disbelief.
"Why the hell did they rescue a human child?"
Her lips twitched, but she didn't meet his eyes.
"Oh, they had a perfect reason; it had everything to do with a Klingon called W'tok Mirsenn. He was the one who saved me. Believe it or not, but he was kind, in some twisted way a Klingon can be kind. He said they found me and rescued me from the cruel creatures that my kind is. I remember him talking for hours beside my bed, talking about the crimes the Federation committed, about their dishonor and vileness, and I believed him because I knew from experience the truth of his words."
"I think I can see the logic in his actions," Jim said grimly.
"Oh yes. W'tok had an idea. He thought he could take a child, an abused child from a different world, save them and make them soldiers of the Klingon Empire. His plan failed many times, and he stopped trying. Kids just died because they couldn't keep up with the Klingon training, or they didn't want to go against their own folk. The High Council had already given up on the plan, but W'tok happened to be passing by Tarsus, and he saw what was going on. They saw me escape. W'tok decided to give it another go. He thought such brutality would turn me against the Federation. So he saved me, treated my wounds, and made sure I hated the Federation with all my being. He succeeded."
She shivered and pulled the hoodie tighter to her body, and McCoy silently tapped at the wall computer, adjusting the room temperature to four degrees warmer.
"When I was healthy and all, they gave me a choice: to get back to the Federation or to stay. My parents were dead, and I didn't want to be part of the world that tortured me. So I stayed."
Her eyes turned darker, though her voice and her face didn't change.
"When I agreed to stay with them, they gave me a present. They caught the man who was the executor, that man with the hammer. They were keeping him just for me, they said, so I could avenge myself and my parents. They chained him to a pillar and drenched him in fuel. Then they gave me a key, a phaser, and a lighter. I could either let him go, shoot him, or… use a lighter. Guess what I chose."
"Something tells me he died, and it wasn't painless," Jim replied coolly.
McCoy shuddered. Burning people alive was wrong. Child abusers or not, it just wasn't a right death.
And Jesus Christ.
She was just a kid, what monsters make a kid do that?
Lee pointedly didn't look at them.
"It wasn't," she said in her mild way of telling horrible things, "I was nine. They saw what I'm capable of and decided to try one last time. They started to teach me. They taught me how to fight and how to use the resources I had. They found out I have an eidetic memory and they showed me how to control it.
My life hadn't been the same ever since. I started to be good at math. They had pretty good experts, but soon I became better than them."
McCoy bit his lip in anger. A gifted mathematician, she could have done so much good should anyone had given her a chance. Even in their own world and for their own sake, Klingons could have turned her into a scientist who'd have made their lives better. Instead, they turned her into a weapon.
"There was that fighting," she was going on, "They had a special academy for special children who were to become special forces, the elite. I was training among them. They were Klingons, and I was a Human, an outsider, so I had to be better than any of them, and I became better. I was angrier, more vicious than them. Can you imagine that?" she smiled crookedly, "A Human kid, running on pure hatred, overpowering Klingon kids. They taught me how to use my size against my rivals, they taught me how to be fast, and it became my saving grace against their strength. The rest of the kids didn't stand a chance against me. They were just violent folks, but I wanted revenge. W'tok made sure I remembered everything that happened to me, he reminded me every day, and I remembered, oh hell, I remembered. With every passing day, I hated the Federation more and more and more. I doubt I felt anything but hate those days. In the end, there was nothing I wouldn't do. I could tear my enemy's throat with my bare teeth, I could skin my enemies alive, or set them on fire without a second thought. My instructors encouraged me to do it, they needed me ferocious, and they needed my loyalty."
A picture of a teenager Lee slicing her victim's skin off with her dagger made McCoy weak in his knees. He hoped it was just a figure of speech, but something told him she was just listing the facts from her life.
She was silent for several seconds, staring into space, then shrugged the memories off and went on.
"They had it. The Federation tortured me and almost killed me, Klingons saved me. So I hated the former and was ready to do anything for the latter."
"So there wasn't any coercion," Jim concluded.
She shook her head.
"No. I was ready to die for the Klingon Empire, let alone fight and kill. They had me where they wanted me in the first place. I was too talented to use me just as a killer, so they showed me how to break into computers. Aside from the math, it was my biggest talent. Must be a family thing," her lips twitched a little, "I was as good as I was at theorems, and soon they started giving me simple tasks. Then not that simple. And then there was that bank, my first big case.
I broke into it through the inside. I literally walked into the building, hid into the vent shafts and when everyone was gone, came to the main computer and did everything I needed."
She shifted in the chair and stopped clutching at the hoodie.
She was warmer now, good.
"This is what I became famous for. But I was still a trained killer, the best they had out there, so they used that as well. A small human girl who doesn't look dangerous or suspicious was too damn good to use her as just a hacker. So they sent me wherever someone needed to be killed, and I went where they'd told me to go. I didn't care. I hated the Federation, I hated Starfleet, and I killed them wherever I could.
Those were my teenage years, and you know how teenagers are. I hated pretty much everybody, and with all the training I had, it was a dangerous combination. I've always loathed the Federation, but I started to loathe Klingons too, because I realized what they'd done to me and why. I stopped distinguishing friends from foes in my quests, and the Council let me do it. W'tok was the only one I reported to, and he allowed me to do anything I wanted. I don't think it worried him. He only cared if among the people I eliminated there were the people he wanted to be eliminated. Nothing else mattered, so I could slay pretty much everybody and get away with it. I mean, the High Council wouldn't do anything to me because I brought more good than evil to them. I had a task, I completed it, and everyone who crossed my path was dead. Remember how the slave traders reacted to my threats?"
Jim tilted his head.
"Reputation like this doesn't happen overnight."
"Yeah. It took years of violence and rivers of blood to create an image everyone was afraid of. I became the best, and I killed like nobody did, sometimes not as fast as my victims would have preferred. Ten years of an unrestrained fury, and everyone was shitting their pants whenever they saw me."
"Why did you stop?" McCoy mused. It was hard to believe anyone with such baggage behind their backs would abandon those kinds of fun.
Her eyes were fixed on her glass, refusing to make eye contact.
"I was growing older, and this lifestyle was growing older too. One day I found myself literally elbow-deep in the blood of five bastards whose only fault was that they were harassing a waitress. They did nothing bad, but I followed them and killed them with a wrench, turned them into one bloody mess."
McCoy cursed his vivid imagination that produced an image of Lee with a wrench, covered in blood and her victim's intestines. He was glad she wasn't looking at him.
"I realized who I had really become. I was twenty-one. I cleaned myself and went straight to W'tok. I said I wanted to quit, to leave. Funny thing is, I think he was happy to hear that. I started to bother him, but killing me was impossible at that time, I was too good. So he let me go."
"Just like that?" McCoy didn't believe his ears. How in seven hells was it even possible? Retiring at such an early age wasn't an option if one intended to live long enough to enjoy the retirement. Or he so believed.
But Lee nodded, turning her glass into her hands.
"Just like that. He knew I hated everyone too much to join anybody, so he let me go in the hope I wouldn't bother him. This is how my career as the Fox ended. I was still an outlaw though. It was the only thing I knew, so I joined the pirates, traveled with slave traders, traveled on my own, stealing here and there. It was nothing serious, so for people who were looking for me, I disappeared. And actually, that is pretty much it. I was floating like that for five years, and then I met you."
She finally lifted her head, a small but genuine smile gracing her beautiful lips.
"I was long past actively hating the Federation. I recognized you straight away, but I didn't want to kill you. The times when Starfleet uniform was a good reason to end someone's life in the most horrible way possible had gone. I was just curious to hang out with the decorated heroes, so I introduced myself."
"What about torture?" McCoy raised the topic that worried him the most since he had seen her burned skin and ripped-off nails.
"What torture?" she looked puzzled.
"The one you've got yourself into before Tari. All the burns, where did you get them?"
She couldn't forget that someone had done this to her, could she?
"Ah. It's a very funny story," she nodded as in being tortured there was nothing wrong at all, "I was with the guys that are now in your brig. We wanted to steal some stuff, and we got what we needed. When we were leaving, I stepped into an old-fashion trap, no electronics, just a net on a hook, can you imagine that?" She chuckled, and this time there was mirth in her voice.
Unbelievable.
"The fuckers left me because the people we were stealing from were coming back," she continued in a much more cheerful tone than she used before, "And that stuff happened to be very important, as they were the owners, a local gang as far as I understood. They thought I was a spy from another gang and tried to get some information. Obviously, they got nothing, because I had nothing to do with their bloody local roughhouse. I escaped, but it took time, and they had a good opportunity to have fun with me. I might have caught that flu in the process. So that is how I ended up here."
She shrugged as it was nothing, finished her shake and put the glass aside. McCoy stared at her in disbelief.
Only now he understood the true extent of her strength. He knew just a fraction of what had happened to her, and he was one hundred percent certain that had these things happened to him, he would've broken. This girl… She wasn't broken. There were fractures and scars, she was beaten badly, but she wasn't broken. Broken people didn't crawl in the dark on the off-chance that somewhere out there they might find a rescue or a better death. Broken people didn't stop when they realized they did the wrong things. Finally, broken people didn't emerge from the torture chamber and forget about it several days later.
Broken people didn't fight. They lied down and cried and gave up. She cried too, but as soon as she was finished, she was wiping tears, getting on her feet and continue fighting. He would never understand where she found so much strength to carry on, but he knew for sure that from this moment she wouldn't be facing her storms alone.
"What do you think of the Federation now?" Jim's voice dragged him out of his thoughts back to reality.
"Dunno. After everything I've seen, it's no better nor worse than the other worlds. Shitty people, good people, cowards and heroes in equal amounts. Honestly, I don't care. The Federation might have almost killed me, but Klingon turned me into a killing machine, so I'm not very thrilled to join them again. Besides, the debt the Federation owed me for that execution is paid, so we are good at that. And I've been a soldier my whole life, I don't think being a Starfleet officer is harder than being a Klingon warrior. But… Are you sure? What if Starfleet ever find out?"
Jim's expression was firm.
"They won't. We'll create a new identity for you, a new life. I'll think of something. Right now, I need to be absolutely sure you aren't a spy and are telling the truth."
She nodded.
"Fair enough. But how would you know that aside from just taking my word for it?"
"I…"
Jim's comm beeped, and he swore.
"I told them not to disturb me," he grumbled, flipping the comm. open, "Kirk here."
"Captain," Uhura's professional voice rang through the room, "You are needed in the ready room. We've been hailed by the Headquarters and they said it's an emergency. They ask you to contact them as soon as possible."
"Understood."
Jim grimaced.
"I've got to go. We are not done though, I still need to finish this conversation."
"I understand, Captain."
Jim nodded, and without further ado marched out of the room.
McCoy pulled out his tricorder. Lee rolled her eyes.
"I'm fine, honestly!"
"Leave it to me to form a conclusion."
He scanned her, trying to focus on the data, not on that they were now alone and probably bound to discuss the story that had been just told.
The readings were satisfactory. He finished the examination and looked at her. She was deliberately avoiding his eyes.
"See," she said in this indifferent voice he hated so much, "I'm no equal to you. You're a decent human being. I… I don't know who I am, but I definitely shouldn't be allowed to even stand near you. I just wanted you to know that. It's fair for you to know."
One more second of staring at this neutral facade of her, McCoy thought, and he would be screaming.
"Oh no," he growled and crossed the distance between them, kneeling in front of her and taking her face into his hands, "Don't use this mask on me, darling. Not any more. Show me the real you, and we'll talk this over properly."
She shook her head violently.
"I can't," she whispered, still fighting everything back, though it was obviously harder with every second passed, "It's just easier to talk about this like that. I let it loose, I realize it was me, it was all me, and I just can't…" her voice wavered and she closed her eyes.
He caressed her cheeks with his thumbs and she inhaled sharply.
"But it wasn't you," he said angrily, "They made you do it. They twisted your mind, the mind of a hurt kid, and made you their tool. But even after that, you were still able to stop. It took time, but you figured it out, all by yourself, and it makes you way better than the ones who were taught to be kind in the first place. You went against your training, against everything they told you was true and did the right thing. So no, Lee, it wasn't you, it was all them."
She looked at him with bloodshot eyes.
"It's not entirely their fault," she muttered, "We are all responsible for what we're doing. No one threatened me or anything. All I did… I did it because I wanted it."
"They exploit your pain!" he all but shouted at her, and she winced. He inwardly cursed himself for that and continued in a much lower volume, "They took a traumatized child and screwed up their psyche. The fact that this child ever stopped is a miracle. So don't blame it on yourself. You are trying to become a better person, and with all the things happened to you it's a remarkable thing. So stop insulting my woman, will you? She's amazing and I don't want anyone to think otherwise."
He took her into his arms, dragging her down to his lap. She didn't protest, and once settled, hid her face into the crook of his neck.
They sat in silence for a while.
"I'm lucky I met you," she said suddenly without changing her position, "You showed me that compassion and kindness can still live in people. You know… All my life I was looked at like I was a thing. A pathetic dying thing, a killing thing, a pretty thing to have sex with. I was never looked at like I am a living being. But you looked at me like that. You looked at me and saw a pretty girl, and you also saw past this face. You looked at me and saw a person, not a doll, and you always treat me like a person. And you care so much…," she sighed, "I've never seen a person who cares so deeply about the people around them. After this Engineering incident, you fought for every one of them. You… you are a kind man, Leo. Probably the kindest person I've ever known. You are trying to hide it, but everyone knows. You are a self-sacrificing idiot, but this is the people like you who still hold this stupid world together. You are wonderful, and though I really don't deserve you, I'm going to grab you and not to let go."
He kissed the crown of her hair.
"Stop saying you don't deserve me, will you? I suggest we agree that we deserved each other quite a lot."
He felt her smile at his skin.
"Okay, it might be true," she chucked.
"My whole sickbay doesn't even pay attention to us anymore. They've got used to us," McCoy continued, sensing a change in her mood and determined to make her stop brooding.
"They'd better be."
She raised up her head to face him. She looked so young and fragile it was hard to believe she was indeed a weapon of mass destruction. She was it though, a killer, a spy, a cyber thief. He accepted that probably too easily to feel comfortable with the quality of his conscience, but still. She was a product of her surrounding environment, so should this environment change, maybe she would change too.
Or maybe she wouldn't.
He loved her the way she was: crazy, unbearable, stubborn. Also brave, strong, smart and caring. He loved her and he accepted her with all her dark past and a slightly screwed mind.
And God, she was beautiful. Of all women he had, Lee was the most beautiful of them all. Her beauty wasn't as sleek and classy as his ex-wife's. It also wasn't as cute and polished as his other passing affairs'. Her beauty was consuming, addictive and wild. She was fire, dangerous and unpredictable, but warm and obedient if treated correctly. She was passion, and he liked passion. He liked it very much since the day she forced him into a kiss and proclaimed his anger being sexy. They were both hotheads, and it probably was the thing that had attracted them to each other in the first place. They felt each other's rough temper, and they liked it.
Damn, what marvelous sex they could have had.
What marvelous sex they still could have.
He blinked and realized he was staring at her silently. She was giving him a curious look, but her lips were already twitched in a mischievous grin.
Oh hell.
"I recall you can control your heartbeat?" he asked, suddenly out of breath.
The grin grew wider.
"Yes, I can."
"Can you do it now?"
She raised her chin proudly.
"Sure."
"Do it then."
Without waiting for a reply he cupped her cheeks, leaned down and kissed her.
It was slow and gentle at first. No tongues, just gentle lips' brushes, as they were savoring the simple fact of being together.
She shifted, and a moment later was straddling him and ruffling his hair. It kicked all softness out of the scene. His hands automatically flew to her waist and yanked her close. She gasped at the impact of their bodies' collision, and he held back a moan. How come he was already hard? They had started it thirty seconds ago.
They parted for air and looked at each other, their faces inches apart. Lee's eyes were dark again, and a wave of unrestrained desire hit him. He shuddered.
They'd already established they were together, and she indeed could control her heart rate, so he didn't resist the impulse to kiss her hard, without thinking about being gentle. She had been driving him crazy since the first day, so she could finally pay for it.
In the back of his mind, he registered she was returning the kiss with the same urgency, but it wasn't important now. All the restrained desire he felt, all love, and fear, and terror let itself loose, and he for once didn't want to control it. Without breaking the kiss he lifted her up and carried her to the couch, for the first time not caring how light she was. The only thought on the topic was that with such weight it would be very convenient to fuck her just like that, without looking for a surface to lean on. He dumped her gently on the couch and lowered himself on top of her. A moment later he was kissing her again, brushing his thumb against her waist and using his forearm for support.
She was making beautiful whimpering sounds and her hands traveled south, to his chest, to his abdomen, and then lower. He heard a long agonizing moan and realized she reached the hardness in his pants and that this moan was his.
The feeling was almost enough to send him over the edge, and it wasn't how it should be ending. He caught her hands and put them above her head, holding her wrists with one hand while another came back to its position on her waist.
Abruptly, her body stopped squirming beneath him, and she turned her head aside, interrupting the kiss.
"Stop," she breathed.
He froze. The impropriety of their position suddenly became very clear to him. He took a girl who panicked whenever anyone tried to restrain her moves, pinned her to the couch and held her arms. What had he been thinking? Clearly, he hadn't been thinking at all.
He let go immediately and pushed off of her.
"Damnit, Lee, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"
"Hey, where're you going?" she protested, wrapping her arms around him, "I just started losing it. Control over my heartbeat I mean. Personally, I don't care, but you would have shouted at me if I hadn't told you."
He realized she wasn't freaking out and sagged in relief.
"Fuck you," he moaned, hiding his face into her hair and shifting part of his weight on her.
"Yes, please. Can we do that?"
He heard a smirk in her voice and drove his tongue over her neck. The smirk became a gasp.
"No, seriously," she continued, panting, "When can we have sex? It's all about my heart, I know, we can't risk it now. So when? Please tell me you can hypo me with something and we can finally do it."
He took several deep breaths that didn't help a bit to calm the violent throbbing in his pants. Her words didn't help either, inviting him to just go for it. He wanted her, she wanted him, why the hell couldn't they do it?
"Gastrointestinal surgery with weak tissues repaired," he growled into her hair, "Ovarian cyst removal and heart surgery. The first means your body shouldn't be pushed or hit in any way, the second suggests everything near your ovaries should be treated gently and the third demands no tiring activities. I shouldn't have even touched you."
"It's not fair," she asserted and hugged him tighter, "I saved your damn ship. I deserve a reward."
"That's your reward."
He dropped several kisses on her neck. She moaned and jerked her hips up, hitting him just in the right place and making him hiss. But his mind had already cleared, and the rational part of it ordered him to stop this.
He listened.
With a frustrated huff, he gently freed himself from her arms and sat up. She emitted an exasperated whining sound, but let him go and straightened up too.
"Still not fair," she stated.
He put his arm over her shoulder and held her close.
"It's not the right time, and you know it."
She sighed.
"Yeah… It's just… Never mind."
She rested her head on his shoulder and something warm that had nothing to do with desire rose inside his chest.
"We can still kiss, though," he suggested and lifted up her chin. She smiled in reply, and he leaned down.
Their lips had barely touched when the wall comm chimed.
McCoy growled in irritation. The wall comm meant it was work interrupting whatever he was doing.
"I have to answer this."
She didn't protest, recognizing the call of duty when she saw it.
"Okay."
He dragged himself to the wall and pushed the button, one of his best menacing grimaces on his face.
"McCoy."
"Doctor," Jim addressed to him with his official rank, making McCoy remove a scowling expression and feel concern, "You are needed in the ready room. Send Lee to bed and come up here. And hurry up. Kirk out."
McCoy frowned at the dark screen. Something was off there.
"Leo?"
Lee approached him and took his hand. McCoy turned to her, feeling his arousal rapidly fading.
"Something happened up there."
She squeezed his hand, then let go.
"Go then. I know where my room is, no need to walk me there."
He nodded and pulled her to him once again.
"Behave, yes? We'll finish this when I'm done."
She gave him a wicked smile.
"Oh yes. We will so finish this."
"Damnit, woman."
He took her head and kissed her. He couldn't help it, not when she was giving him that devilish grin. It was like they were back to normal again, the way they used to be before all this Klingon mess; the way they were when she'd been kicking him out of his lonely shell with her stunts and late visits to his office. He missed these simple times.
She responded to the kiss but pulled back almost right away.
"He's waiting," she remarked, smoothing his hair adoringly "For the love of God, go, or I'll lock us up until we have enough of each other."
He huffed.
"Might be a while then."
She beamed at him, and he beamed back, surprised he still could do that. Then she waved her hand at the direction of the door, reminding him to get going.
He left the office with a silly grin on his face he tried to hide but failing.
His mood dropped when he stepped into the ready room. Jim was there alone, standing with his arms folded over his chest and an agitated grimace on his face.
"Take a seat, Bones."
McCoy arched an eyebrow and mirrored Jim's stance, ignoring the offer.
"Jim, what happened? Is anybody hurt?"
"No. Not yet."
"Not yet," McCoy echoed, feeling coldness building inside him.
Jim sighed, rubbing his eyes.
"It's all this fucking system update," he groaned, "It's goddamn automatic. Ship's main system updated that night. Now, if the ship's under attack, the distress call is sent immediately. The attack is assumed to be any hull damage. If the connection is dead at the time of the attack, the system checks the last week of the ship, and if anything bad happened, sends it to the command right away. The system did that check right after the update."
There was a tremor in McCoy's hands, so he clenched them to stop it.
"So they know about the attack," he concluded blankly.
"Yes. But it's not the best part. They analyzed what Lee did there, looked at what she hacked and how she did it."
Jim wouldn't meet McCoy's eyes.
"They are not idiots, some of them at least. They came to the same conclusion I had. Archer contacted me twenty minutes ago. He didn't ask for a report. He didn't ask for an explanation. He ordered to sedate her and lock her up. He ordered all my security department to guard her," he sighed, "They are not questioning her identity, Bones. They know. They are coming for her."
McCoy forced a wave of terror back and tried to concentrate on the things he could do, not on what he was helpless to do.
"But we are in the middle of nowhere. Are we turning back to the nearest starbase?"
Jim looked apologetic and very sad.
"Scotty's transwarp beaming equation," he explained, "They are going to use it, so it won't take them long to reach us."
McCoy took a deep breath. Panicking wouldn't help.
"How much time do we have?"
"They need to gather forces. There's no way they're not sending an army to get her. It means we have an hour, two at best. After that…"
"No," McCoy didn't want to get hysterical, he really didn't, but the fear of what was about to happen was too strong to be just pushed back.
"They sent her criminal record," Jim continued, "It's ten-pages long. The things she did are enough to throw her in jail for twenty life imprisonments. They are coming to get her, Bones. I'm sorry."
McCoy's legs gave up, and he lowered himself into the nearest chair.
"So they will put her in jail," he said flatly.
Jim's face went stern.
"Probably not. Have a look at her crimes."
McCoy turned to the screen shoved in front of him. There was a file marked classified, and sections with titles in it.
Espionage, one page long. One page of cybercrimes. Seven pages enumerating people she killed, 1549 in total, and his head started spinning when he saw the number. The last page said 'Tortures', listed eleven people and the ways they were maimed.
He was absolutely positive he would regret looking at it, but his eyes were already scanning the text.
The first guy on the list had been skinned alive and died when his heart had exploded because of the amount of pain. The next victim bled to death as everything that could have been cut from the body had been cut from it. Another one lost eyes, fingers, and tongue. This one was alive when they'd found him, but he'd committed suicide two weeks later because the man had definitely gone mad.
McCoy's vision darkened, and he turned away from the screen. His heart screamed in agony. It couldn't have been her. Just couldn't.
But his mind knew better.
These were the crimes of a person with the reputation frightening enough to scare Orion armada away. These were the crimes of a person capable of not only surviving Klingon upbringing but eventually becoming a leader these Klingons would follow.
The crimes of the woman he loved.
Jesus.
McCoy shook his head, realizing Jim was still talking.
"Most of them, tortures especially, are accounted for in her teens, from fifteen to seventeen," the Captain was saying, "Since seventeen, she was mostly a hacker, killing Federation people now and then, but nothing special. Until her seventeenth though, she was going on a rampage. The record stops at twenty-one. She told us the truth."
"Not like it's gonna help her," McCoy muttered, "They'll lock her up for the rest of her life."
Jim sighed.
"I doubt there will be a court, Bones. She's too dangerous and no cell would hold her should she decide to run. There's Section 31 involved, and they don't do courts."
The terror McCoy felt a moment ago stepped aside and let an acute panic come to its place.
"So they will kill her. Jim, she has to run!"
He sprang to his feet, unable to sit still anymore, ready to run, to hide her, to help her escape…
Jim put his 'I'm the Captain and everybody listens to me' face and shook his head.
"No, she doesn't. If she runs now, we lose her. You lose her. I won't have that. I'll try to convince them she gave up on this, and that she's ready to be more than a raging psycho. Besides, it's too late, anyway. She runs, they'll still catch her."
McCoy gripped the edge of the desk to make physical sensations convince him it wasn't a nightmare.
Jim was right. The only possibility for her to escape now was transwarp beaming, and in her current state, it might as well kill her. Should she run any other way, they would get her.
McCoy's body started to shake slightly.
"How are you going to help her?" he didn't intend to sound pleading, but his voice cracked on its own, and he fought back a sob.
Jim's jaw tightened.
"I have a plan. But first, I need to talk to her. Alone."
The friends shared one long look. There were eight years of friendship between them, eight years of bickering, snapping at each other and saving each other's lives, doing the impossible now and then. If anyone could save Lee, McCoy decided, it would be Jim.
So he nodded.
"Okay. Just promise me it will work."
Jim looked away, and McCoy gritted his teeth to suppress a despairing growl.
"Let's go," the Captain strode out of the room, and McCoy followed, feeling almost as helpless as when he'd thought he lost his best friend for good.
Only this time there wouldn't be any reviving super-blood to lean on.
Fucking fuck, McCoy thought as they were rushing to sickbay, he fucking hated space.