Slap!

Chris groaned and felt his neck snap to the side. His synapses started to come back online and his consciousness whirred into gear; he was spurred on by the unhelpful rough hands determined to bring him back into the land of pain.

"He's still not with us."

"Give him another one."

Pike eyebrows squished together as his muddled mind tried to comprehend what was happening. His attempts to follow the voices were hampered when something hard collided with his face, sending his neck snapping back the opposite way. A moan slipped past his lips and he tasted blood begin to pool in his mouth. The slap hadn't done him much good but what it had done was help to bridge the final connections in his brain, which helped to bring him back to his body, whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. Awake, his injuries were made real, his entire body throbbed and begged for rest, and to top it all off he rejoined the hellish nightmare that he and Una had fallen into.

Una!

Chris forced his eyes open, the only thing on his mind was Number One and her wellbeing, he was already a lost cause but Una could still get out of this, so the first face he looked for was her's. After his vision cleared he found his XO looking worse for where, but alive, kneeling next to him. She was already looking his way, her shoulders slumped in defeat and face plastered in grime and blood. Chris didn't imagine he looked any better. He automatically tried to move his arms but cursed when his hands pulled against thick rope, the aftermath sent shockwaves all the way up his arm to his injured shoulder, causing him to gasp and sway unsteadily forward. Someone grabbed at his shoulder, halting his fall. They pulled backwards and pushed Chris closer to Number One.

The presence behind him leaned down to his ear and hissed threateningly. "Keep your eyes open. You fall asleep again and you won't like what comes next."

Chris didn't want to mention that he didn't like what was happening now, let alone next. Instead of being a smart-ass he swallowed his pride and remained subdued, holding his tongue but making it clear he wasn't about to fall asleep. Thankfully the reaction was enough to mollify his captor, he grunted and released his crushing grip on Pike's arm, stepping away from Pike and Una to give them space.

"Hey." Una whispered urgently. Pike snapped to her, feeling drunk as his vision fought to keep up with his head movements. "Lean on me."

Chris blinked in confusion and started to shake his head, the last thing he wanted to do was put his weight on Number One, especially after she had basically carried him this far.

Una threw him her most withering look and snapped. "Just do it Chris, you look like you're about to topple over any second." She glanced nervously from him over to a group of men huddled near the shuttle. "And then we'd both be screwed."

He followed her gaze and spotted a hive of activity around the shuttle wreckage. Lots of eyes were on them, and he and Una appeared to have two armed guards each, behind and in front. These guys definitely weren't taking anymore chances, even though he was about to fall flat on his face and Una wasn't much better. A shiver suddenly racked through his body, one which indicated blood loss or at the very least the beginning of an infection. The onset of severe dizziness forced his hand. Chris swallowed his arguments and leant his head on Una's shoulder, feeling relief not only from the support but also from the reassurance of hearing her beating heart beneath his ear.

Chris was convinced that his weakness would be reprimanded by one of their guards, which was why he remained tense until a minute passed without interference. The command team stayed like that, kneeling in the dirt and slowly losing the will to stay upright, providing each other comfort and the strength to stay awake whilst the gunman around them prepared to move out.

"How's your shoulder?" Chris whispered against her side, wary of prying guards watching on.

"Feels like someone ripped it off." Una snorted, causing her to hiss in pain when the action caused the wound in question to burn. She craned her neck in an attempt to meet his eye. "I won't even bother asking how you are."

He managed a meek smile, even amongst these dire circumstances Una was still Una. "Don't hold back any punches now." He quipped.

Chris was expecting their verbal sparring to continue so he was surprised when Number One kept quiet. He frowned and glanced to her, a question in his eyes. She just smiled sadly back at him, magnifying his concern and apprehension.

"I'm sorry I didn't get us out of here."

Chris' frown morphed into regret, anguish shining clearly from his expression. "Hey, you have nothing to be sorry for. Your safety is my responsibility." She had done everything in her power to get them out of here, far more than he could have.

Una was having none of it. "You were injured, besides it's the first officer's job to protect-"

"You were injured too Una." He interrupted firmly. "You did more than duty or anyone could have asked of you. You are the reason I made it this far. I only wished you'd listened to me back in the jungle."

Una scoffed, shaking her head incredulously. "I was never going to leave you Chris." She met his gaze seriously, something softer there. "You should know that by now."

His heart clenched painfully. "I do, and the feeling's mutual." Christ, he wished his hands were free, he wanted to gather Una up in his arms and never let go.

Una broke the intense eye contact with a sniffle and choked laugh. "Listen to us." She mocked, an embarrassed air to her. "What do you say we lay off the heavy stuff? I don't want you making me cry, it'll spoil my makeup."

Chris knew what she was doing, moving away from that dangerous path before they both slipped down it. That was the last thing they needed whilst contemplating death.

He followed her lead, swallowing down his own truths and hiding his fears with a laugh. "We can't have that can we-"

"Aren't you two a picture." Alec interrupted with a bitter laugh, shattering what could be their last peaceful moment.

Pike felt Number One stiffen beneath him, they both turned to glare at their captor. They were clearly both slipping, neither of them had sensed the bastard approaching. Chris automatically straightened whilst in Alec's presence, he glared at the psychopath coldly whilst lifting his head up off of Una's shoulder.

Alec smirked at their mirrored display of defiance. Suddenly he crouched down to their level, making them both flinch back and swallow nervously. "What? Not feeling so chatty now?"

Chris and Una kept their mouths firmly shut, jaws clenched and lips pressed together in a thin line of displeasure. Neither of them were going to give Alec the satisfaction of paying him any attention.

Alec got to his feet with a chuckle, staring down at his two captives callously. All of a sudden, Alec's face froze over and his eyes darkened considerably. He withdrew his energy weapon, surprising everyone. Chris tensed at the sight of the weapon and froze when it came to rest against his head, he saw Una shift forward out of the corner of his eye and heard her sharp intake of breath. Pike daren't look away from Alec; it felt like he was still deciding whether to pull the trigger or not.

Alec's eyes widened curiously and he tilted his head to the side like a snake about to strike. "You're not going to ask me not to shoot you."

"I'm not begging for my life." Pike ground out angrily, clenching his fists and straining against the rope. If he could just get his hands on his enemy...

Alec flicked his eyes over to Number One, something playful settling in his gaze. "Would you beg for hers?"

Chris' stomach churned nastily and he started to panic, whilst he was okay giving up his own life he could not say the same about Number One.

Number One interrupted their deadly standoff in a tired tone. "Stop playing games. We get it, you won."

Alec's eyes twitched, indicating how close he was to cracking. After a tense silence, he removed the weapon from Pike's head and smirked. "It does look that way."

Alec rubbed the back of his neck, seemingly lost in thought. He glanced around the space and watched the men salvage what they could from the crashed federation shuttle. The gunman suddenly winced and touched his bleeding forehead with a scowl, the action sparking a memory. "Do you remember what I told you when we were last here?"

Oh shit.

Alec glanced between the two of them and eventually laughed at their continued silence. The fact that they didn't want to play along didn't deter him, in fact it only seemed to improve his mood. "I told you that if either of you tried anything, the other would die."

Double shit, fuck.

"Now." He walked between the kneeling pair, his weapon held loosely. "Let me jog my memory."

Chris was under no illusion that this bastard was playing with them, and worse; he was enjoying it.

Alec pointed the phaser to Una, causing Pike to stiffen and glance anxiously over. Would he really murder one of them, like this, in cold blood?

"I believe it was you who knocked me down." Alec drawled.

"So that means." The phaser suddenly swung to Pike, setting off a chain of events. "The Captain must die." The phaser whirred to life, glowing a deadly red. Alec pressed it against Pike's forehead so hard that he felt it leave an indentation in his skin.

"No! Chris!" Una cried out and leaned towards him, before being grabbed by a guard and hauled back.

Pike stayed very still and held Alec's murderous gaze; he hadn't expected this. Then again if it was this or watching it happen to Una he knew which option he preferred. Everything fell away; in that moment it was just Chris, Alec, and the phaser. They held each other's gaze, Chris looking for the moment when Alec would prove himself a cold blooded murderer. Looking into his eyes now, Chris thought he had it in him. There was no flicker of doubt there, no emotions just cold steel.

A smile suddenly tugged at Alec's lips, quirking them upwards into a nasty sneer. "Then again, I don't want to get rid of my star hostage now do I?"

Chris glared defiantly at Alec, forcing himself to stay silent even though inside he was coiling with rage. He was done with this taunting but Alec wasn't. In a blur of movement the gunman moved the phaser from his head and aimed it at Number One, stilling her struggles instantly. "So, this lands on you." He tipped his head and shrugged, not looking apologetic in the slightest. "Sorry."

Pike had been frozen in place but as soon as he registered the change in targets, he lost it. "No!" He shouted and surged forward, which was foreseen by the burly man behind him who held him back easily. Chris was desperate to stop what was about to happen but he couldn't see how he could, this wasn't supposed to be Una. This was supposed to land on him.

For her part, Number One was quiet. She didn't look at Alec or the gun held against her head, instead she looked to him, acceptance shining from her eyes. Chris did not accept this, he couldn't. Pike panted hard and continued to struggle against the hands holding him, he didn't know if he could do this; he didn't know if he could watch Una be shot down and killed in cold blood.

She seemed to sense what he did; that their captor was done playing, and that this was happening whether they liked it or not.

'It's okay.' Una mouthed to him, remaining strong in the face of death whilst he fell apart.

Time seemed to slow and everything went silent, then there was a shot and a body hit the floor.

A fatal phaser bolt slammed right through Alec's chest, setting off a chain of events which began with him falling to the floor lifeless and carried on with a tactical assault on their position. Chris and Una had all of two seconds to come to terms with the fact that she hadn't just been shot, and that their psychopathic captor was lying dead at their feet, before everything exploded around them.

"Get down!"

"It's Starfleet!"

"Where the hell did they come from?"

"Put down your weapons!"

All the voices seemed to scream out at once. The exact words started to become jumbled when the amount of phaser fire increased dramatically, that and numerous flash bangs and shock grenades filled the air with explosions and smoke. Chris squeezed his eyes shut automatically, it was his only way to shy away from the blinding light of the grenades; his hands just tugged uselessly against his restraints.

Pike began to cough when the smoke filled his lungs. He soon became disorientated and it wasn't long before he started to lose his fight with gravity, not that he would have really known which way was up anyway. The area was too full of smoke and fire for that.

Suddenly something grabbed at his shoulder and he could tell it wasn't a friendly person based on how hard they tugged at him; the appearance of a knife against his throat only confirmed that fact. Chris grunted against the attack but was forced to follow whoever it was that was trying to yank his head off.

"Captain!"

"Let him go!"

"Drop the weapon!"

Pike heard lots of conflicting shouts and struggled to blink through the hazy atmosphere, which was not easy in his current state. He could barely keep up with everything that was happening around him; it was chaos. One minute he'd been about to watch his best friend shot down, then Alec had been shot and now he had a sharp instrument of violence pressing dangerously close to his carotid artery.

When he managed to make out shapes he recognised familiar tactical gear from the Enterprise, and when his captor stopped shaking him around like a rag doll he recognised a few familiar faces, which was a welcome relief. What was even more of a relief was spotting Number One alive and being covered by the security team, who were quickly taking control of the situation. All the other gunman were either stunned, in cuffs or neutralised. So, that just left him and his opportunistic captor.

The Starfleet Officers formed a line, their weapons tracking Pike's captor with steely expressions. Chris winced when the knife shook against his throat enough to draw blood, the security team tracked the movement and all moved forward a step as one.

"Stay back!" His captor warned shakily.

Chris closed his eyes when his captor shook his body, making the blood rush to his head all at once. When he opened them again he saw determination shining back, from Number One who was fighting against the Enterprise security officers to get up and away from the Enterprise crew. Now they were here, they weren't leaving without their Captain.

"Drop it now and let him go." The security team yelled louder, standing their ground. "This is your last warning."

Maybe it was the sight of his colleagues on the floor incapacitated, or maybe it was the sheer number of phasers pointing his way, but Pike's captor surprised everyone when he lifted the knife away from his captive's neck and released his hold on him. The only snag for Chris was that his captor had been the one holding him up, and without him he didn't have the strength left to stand alone, so when the support was removed he slumped to the floor and promptly passed out.

For Chris, the world came back to him in flashes of consciousness and pain. He remembered awakening face down in the dirt and feeling the agonising pain of having his hands untied and brought forward. He heard Una shout out to be careful with his arm and then there was another blank spot. The next thing he saw was Una being helped to a shuttle, and then he was looking up at the ceiling of a shuttle too.

Chris heard the bustle of people nearby, felt hands peeling his bloodied uniform off and secure him for shuttle transfer. He glanced sideways, the shuttle looking blurry and out of focus. He managed to see another figure in the other bed and recognised Una having her wounded shoulder covered. Pike winced when she cried out in pain and he soon mirrored her shouts when hands found their way to his shoulder. Chris felt something press against his neck and the pain from his wounds started to dull, even his shoulder numbed down. He realised sedatives must have been mixed in with the painkillers when the shuttle ceiling faded too black.

He drifted awake again when he felt movement, he was lifted and placed on another bed and Chris recognised the walls of sickbay around him. He groaned when hands pressed down all over him. Pike heard Boyce's voice call for blood and coax him into staying still. Familiar voices promised him he was safe, that Una was safe and that they were going to take care of the both of them. He felt more medication flood his system, providing even more relief and making him feel almost human. Chris also felt something which made him suspiciously sleepy and then darkness descended.

Chris' head reeled when Boyce began his lengthy diagnosis, listing everything that was wrong with his Captain's body assisted by an assortment of angry looking scans. Pike's several cracked ribs had turned into broken and fractured bones, which explained why his chest had been so tight when Una had been dragging him. Those broken pieces of bone had caused no end of trouble for the Doctors, from minor cuts inside his body to severe internal bleeding, and that was without mentioning the bruised spleen which was having to be partly regrown.

The beating he had taken linked with the shuttle crash also caused an unhealthy amount of head injuries. When he'd been wheeled in, Boyce had struggled to recognise his friend underneath all the blood and grime. They'd had to contend with a fractured skull, several contusions and broken bones across his face, but by far the most serious had been a bleed on the brain followed by severe swelling. Boyce had immediately ordered the Captain be sent into an induced coma, they'd been lucky that a clot hadn't reached his brain thus far. Naturally, after the amount of trauma his head had taken, Chris was now suffering from a severe concussion.

To top off his misery, Pike had his sprained ankle strapped up and elevated, he had heavy bandages around his wrists for the rope burns and was still being pumped up with blood due to the amount he had lost on the planet. The most cumbersome injury of them all was his shoulder, it had turned into a complex ligament tear and still required more surgeries when his body was up to it. For now it was wrapped in a sling and held uselessly against his body. Una's move to slot the joint back in place had restored blood flow and thankfully there wasn't any irreversible nerve damage, but it still wasn't easy to use and wouldn't be for a while yet, not without physio at least.

When Boyce was finished listing Pike's lengthy list of ailments he turned onto Number One, thankfully she hadn't suffered nearly as much damage. They shared misery in the sprained ankle department, although Una's had swelled three times as large and looked a lot more painful. Another thing they shared was lacerations from broken glass, nasty facial contusions and rope burns. Una also had a concussion to deal with on top of shrapnel embedded in her legs and arms which Pike had somehow failed to spot.

Without a doubt, Una's most serious injury was the phaser wound in her shoulder. The blast had caused a multitude of burns, muscle damage and damned near shattered her collar bone. The wound wasn't life threatening but it wasn't pleasant either. She had her entire shoulder swaddled in gauze and bandages and had regen sessions every hour, eventually a soft cast would go on and would have to stay on for a few days but for now her arm was as immobilised as Chris' was.

They really made quite the pair.

"So, what's the damage?" Pike quipped, continuing a long running joke between him and the medical department.

Even after hearing the lengthly diagnosis, Chris was most interested in his recovery time. Boyce threw him a deeply unimpressed look over the top of Pike's data pad. He replaced it at the end of the Captain's bed, tapping his fingers against the rail before letting out an amused chuckle. "Well, you won't be anywhere near the bridge for about a week and even then it'll only be light duty."

Enterprise' CMO then glanced backwards to Number One, who was sat upright in bed and naturally sporting a healthier look than Pike considering her less serious injuries. "Number One will probably be out in a few days, if she's lucky."

"We can't stay in here for that long. Who's going to run the ship?" Pike snapped. Una just sighed wearily, consigning herself to the extended stay whilst Chris fought against it. He'd been in here too many times to take this latest sentence laying down.

Boyce's expression remained light although his eyes betrayed just how stubborn he would be on this matter. "You can and you will. The kid has been doing a good enough job and will continue to do so until I clear you for active duty, which could take a while. Before that we've got physio and check-ups to consider."

Chris ignored the threat and focussed on what Boyce had revealed. "The kid?"

"Lieutenant Spock." Una supplied; she must have gotten the information from her data pad and the reports. Somehow she'd sweet talked Phil into letting her have access to a pad and the most recent reports, Chris hadn't had such luck.

"Oh." The answer had taken Chris by surprise, so much so that his intrigue obliterated any thoughts about his extended stay in sickbay. "How's he been?"

Boyce smirked triumphantly, happy that his gambit for distraction had paid off. "He's been great. When communications across the whole planet went down he stayed calm, and he coordinated the relief effort as well as the search for you two. His only regret was that he couldn't find you sooner."

"He did everything right." Una interjected, before putting the pad down a little too forcefully. "There was nothing he could have done to find us any quicker."

Boyce shrugged. "That's what I told him, but it didn't help."

"He was affected by our disappearance?" Pike read between the lines.

"Affected yeah, that's one way of putting it." The Doctor trailed off and stayed quiet for a few moments. "It's funny, I've never seen Spock experience any kind of emotion before but when we found out your shuttle went down... let's just say, Spock wasn't himself until we knew you were safe."

"I wouldn't have expected such a reaction from him." Una interjected before Pike could process what Boyce was saying.

Chris felt the need to defend Spock, even though Una expected no emotional reactions from a Vulcan it was hardly fair to expect it from an inexperienced officer. "This was his first proper command Una."

"True." She conceded flicking her eyes up to him, recognising his challenging tone. "But Spock hasn't shown any such signs when under pressure before."

"Being in charge of a whole ship is a different kind of pressure, not to mention the lives down on that planet."

Chris knew that burden better than most; he also knew how much time it took to come to peace with himself and the decisions he had to make to save lives. It hadn't been easy, self doubt was a beast that had to be slayed early on, otherwise you would never be able to command effectively. As Captain April had once told him, you must have trust in yourself otherwise how are others going to trust you?

"Numbers shouldn't come into it." Una countered.

Chris titled his head and offered her a sad smile. "We both know they do though."

That silenced Una, they'd both been in that situation too many times to duck the harsh reality.

Boyce suddenly scoffed causing them both to put an end to their verbal sparring. "You two..."

"What?" They asked as one.

Boyce was struggling to hold back a laugh, clearly very amused by something. "You sound like my parents."

Chris rolled his eyes, ignored the implication and swiftly moved back onto the matter at hand. "There's clearly something that needs to be worked on. Whether it's unresolved emotions or something else entirely. I'll have a chat with him."

"You want to talk to Spock, a Vulcan, about his emotions." Boyce asked incredulously, even Una looked mildly amused.

"Problem?"

Boyce and Number One shared an equally bemused and equally worried glance which had Pike on edge.

"Maybe we haven't diagnosed all of your head injuries yet..."

Finis