When the captives were given trays with hot soup from the food replicator, no one touched anything. They all waited until doctor McCoy lifted the plate to his lips, indifferently, took a gulp of whatever it was they'd shoved in front of him, and sat there for a while, looking unharmed. As the others ate, he pushed the tray away and crawled back into his corner, like a mongrel. He busied himself counting Spocks, and perhaps for the first time in his life, he was genuinely amused.

He didn't know about that other one, but his Spock could never accept his human half. Raised on Vulcan and looking like a Vulcan, he could logically identify as a Vulcan only, which was a notion that excluded all things human in all their illogic. And it made the agony of random and powerful emotional reactions he kept fighting all the more excruciating – because the emotions were so human.

Spock struggled to the point of self-contempt. He felt, and loathed himself for that, and then loathed himself even more, because loathing was illogical. It was a vicious circle he saw no way out of, up to a certain point. Exactly up to the point when Leonard 'Sawbones' McCoy came into his view.

McCoy the impulsive, McCoy the overreactive. He was so stupefyingly, unbearably human in his speech, actions and behaviors: grumpy, sardonic, skittish, mildly ferocious, a bit lustful, not entirely unsympathetic, and infinitely cynical. What struck Spock most was that this little maggot was at such good terms with his humanness. Spock saw a whole being, a man who could actually shrug off his own unpredictability as if it didn't matter and just savor the moment. Which made doctor McCoy a perfect target for a self-hating half-Vulcan to take his hatred out on. From the moment he embarked, McCoy's life at the I.S.S. Enterprise was turned into hell.

That was how the world worked – the strong took what they wanted, and the weak were left to suffer what they could. The suffering didn't last long, though. When you had to move up in rank by assassinating your superiors, you couldn't be anything but coldly efficient. Which was why Spock's behavior seemed odd at first, to put it mildly: he neither had any interest in taking the doctor's position, nor was he inefficient. When the nightmare was just starting, the doctor brooded on that until his brains squeaked. But then, gradually, he stopped thinking seriously about it, or anything else, for that matter. When your brain is falling apart, gyrus by gyrus, thinking seriously becomes a tricky business.

Whatever little was left of his memory, the first forced mind-meld doctor McCoy would remember for the rest of his life. He'd forgotten when it was, or why – maybe they were arguing, or maybe the doctor just happened to pass by, radiating the all-too-human grouchiness and bile as he did. But he would never forget the 'how' of it. He'd always shudder at that sensation of air being pressed out of his lungs as the Vulcan smashed him, back first, into the wall and pressed his fingers against the psi-spots at the side of his face. Spock's mind penetrated the doctor's and burst it open. Brutally, excruciatingly, it twisted every nerve and bent double every brain circuit. It tore the doctor's conscious self away from his body and stuffed it inside again, fractured, smoldering in dysfunction. It was like rape, except that the Vulcan didn't harm his body in any way – it was his mind he thrust into and ripped apart.

There were other melds afterwards. At first, Spock only did it to relieve his dismay at the human's illogic, but then the pattern was lost, or so it looked to the frenzied doctor. It seemed to start and cease chaotically, short-circuiting every neural connection and slowly driving doctor McCoy insane. There was not much use fighting. The Vulcan was five times stronger than him, and a half-hearted nerve pinch was more than enough to paralyze the human into a degrading wide-eyed semi-consciousness, where he'd sense everything and couldn't so much as jerk his eyelids in response. He stopped fighting and let Spock break him into schizophrenia, day by day. The doctor was seeing things that weren't there and getting blind to those that were. He started to hear voices inside his head and was becoming deaf to the buzz outside his own little conflicted world. He hallucinated at nights and broke into fits of convulsing, screaming hysteria, his small body arched and shaking, tears streaming down his face, after which more mind-fucking followed.

He was a wreck now, drifting from one meld to another, and the ethanol-anesthetized, heavily drugged darkness in between. A walking lump of distorted perception, a scapegoat for whatever it was that troubled Spock. Everyone knew, but no one interfered: it was their business, after all. The doctor did his job, and did it surprisingly well, and he was clearly a mental – which was why his subordinate M'Benga never so much as pointed a scalpel in his direction. He didn't want the trouble, and no one did. Everyone was just watching passively and waiting for doctor McCoy to expire in his own time.

The flurry of reminiscences was interrupted when this sickening universe's Spock, M'Benga, and Chapel entered the brig. Kirk, Scotty, and Uhura sprang up to their feet and went on circling the chamber like big cats in a trap, while the doctor remained still. Leaning back against the wall, he watched quietly, from under the drooping eyelids. Crazy he might be, but he was no fool. Something was going on there, and he'd just keep his ears open – he could manage that much, couldn't he.

Spock observed the doctor's relaxed posture, which was such a stark contrast to how the others were behaving. From the moment he stepped down the transporter platform, that other McCoy appeared much calmer than they were, never resisting arrest, never uttering a word. Spock found the peacefulness odd. But it was still better than having a raging psychopath of a doctor on their hands, now, when an officer's life was at stake. And after all, he was technically the same man, with his nimble hand and quick impromptu thinking – just as the situation required.

Spock called out to the doctor, and he lifted his blue-eyed gaze to meet the Vulcan's, his round face perfectly tranquil.

"There is a situation that leaves us no choice but to ask for your help," Spock began, approaching the force field, "A young female officer is dying of an internal injury, and she requires a complex surgery only you can perform, in your counterpart's absence."

Instantly, doctor McCoy's nerves coiled into a tight rope. He lost his cool for a fraction and let his face twitch, but then, he was too overwhelmed by the suddenness. He looked at that other sissy Spock, at the miserable-looking medics, and couldn't believe his luck.

With a titanic thrust of willpower, he recollected himself. Not yet, not yet. You'll spoil everything. He rose to his feet and walked over to the field, slowly, almost on tiptoe.

"I'm listening," he said, his voice perfectly leveled.

Doctor M'Benga briefed him on the details and asked if he'd ever had a chance to do a thoracotomy back in his universe. McCoy nodded, his heart racing.

"Was it successful?" the subordinate doctor asked, squinting at him.

"Nine out of eleven," McCoy replied, truthfully.

The medics exchanged glances. It sounded credible, it was much better than nothing, and it was quite like the original doctor McCoy, who succeeded with ten out of the eleven people he thoracotomized. He lost patients now and then, for various reasons, but he never sugarcoated his mistakes.

"We cannot force you to operate, doctor," Spock said, "We merely ask you as a professional, and in the hope that you will take the chance to demonstrate your goodwill and thus make your experience here more pleasurable."

Doctor McCoy seemed to consider this for a moment. He then looked at the Vulcan and nodded in agreement.

"Sawbones, back to your place" Kirk snapped, suddenly.

This did not sound like an order, Spock thought, his eyebrow arching. It seemed more like a command, as if to a dog. The other doctor McCoy turned to the Captain.

"There's a woman dyin'. Sir," he added, trying not to grit his teeth as he uttered the word.

"Get your brains together, ding-dong! It's a trap, can't you see?" Kirk stormed towards the force field and searched the faces of the medics, "One minute they're lying there belly-up and wagging their tails, next minute they torture something out of you to use against us."

"You are judging others by yourself, Captain, which is quite unreasonable in our case. I assure you that no harm – " Spock said, making another step towards the field.

"He isn't going anywhere!" Kirk growled.

He grabbed doctor McCoy by the shoulder and shoved him back into the corner. As the doctor hit his head, stumbled and clawed at the wall trying to steady himself, Spock's hand drew a phaser with superhuman speed. The nozzle was pointing exactly between Kirk's eyes. The Captain froze in his place, and so did the others, withering the Vulcan with their hateful eyes when he turned off the field to let the doctor out. After McCoy exited, he turned the field back on and pointed his phaser at the doctor.

"You will be watched, of course," Spock said and motioned for him to move forward.

Doctor McCoy touched his bruised forehead and walked dreamily past the force field where the three inmates fumed with rage. He then stopped, turning his head halfway in the Captain's direction.

"When push comes to shove, I did give the goddamn Hippocrates oath, didn't I," he said, and smiled to himself as he deliberately forgot the 'sir' at the end.