Thud.

If Nyla was honest with herself, she would rather go back and drown herself in the punch bowl, or let Sulu loose on her with his saber before spending one more moment locked away in the shared cell.

Thud. Thud.

The bars were ancient and flaked away at the edges when her curious fingers brushed them, but they held strong against even her most powerful kick, not that that said much; her strength was on par with that of Kirk on his weakest day. And their imprisonment was her fault without question.

The captain, for his part, appeared to be attempting to breach the stone walls to their back with the mere force of his skull. She and Bones liked to jest that the man had a hard head, but this was no time for him to prove as much. She was not trained in treating concussions. Or the cuts and bruises littering his knuckles for that matter. He looked like someone had set a wild cat loose from his elbows down. All his injuries were self-inflicted, however, earned from his thrashing and catching his extremities against the chinks in their guards' armor.

The guards who dragged them away had not harmed her, their attention focused more on the rampaging Captain. She almost wished they would have so she could have something else to focus on besides the painfully empty dead-end hallway they were unceremoniously deposited in.

THUD.

"Stop," Nyla hissed at Kirk.

He did so only out of distraction from his task, not any obedience he would have shown her.

"I warned you not to bring me," Nyla said, seizing his attention while she could. There was a bruise blossoming over one of his temples that almost reminded her of how a flower would look tucked in the sweaty blonde locks.

"I should have gotten us out of there," he said.

"What's going to happen to us?" Nyla whispered, her soft voice resembling a terrible shout in the deafening silence around them.

"No one will hurt you," Kirk swore, making no mention of his own well-being.

Nyla put her back against the bars that might have grown out of the planet itself. They burned against her exposed back, creating fever chills all down her flesh as if they were sitting right on top of a live volcano. Kirk shrugged off his wool jacket and untucked his formal shirt. He might have started pacing if the height of the room allowed it. As it was, even Nyla's petite form could only stand bent over at the waist.

Not a dungeon, a kennel; that is what this reminded her of. They were not people here, but animals who would be locked away for misbehaving. The one light in the corridor only whispered against the darkness, creating dark shadows along the sharp lines of Kirk's face, though the ones under his eyes were more likely due to their night of unrest. A tap against her ear reminded her of their confiscated communicators and she sent up a silent prayer that Yasmine and the others were smart enough not to get backtraced through them. She hoped Bones was safe.

Her bare feet dug into the moist dirt beneath them, kicking it into a little mound. Heels apparently were considered a weapon, so in any case of escape, she would be doing it with the risk of injury from not only their captors, but the environment as well. Earrings, belt, even her ponytail had all been appropriated, the last leaving a wild mane of hair loose for the humidity of the damned tropical planet to play with at will.

"You got a plan, Captain?" Nyla asked.

"Define plan," Kirk muttered.

"Something that won't get either of us killed."

"Then no," he clipped.

Nyla sighed and stretched her legs out to his side, her toes just scraping the opposite wall from her. Kirk groaned and tried to do the same, a whine of complaint rising when his long legs had to jut between the bars just to fully extend.

"Aren't you Drususians supposed to be advanced? You don't even have electricity or cooling down here!" he shouted into the darkness.

"They don't care," Nyla whispered, letting her head roll forward, massaging the back of her neck.

"No shit."

"Don't snap at me! Perhaps they would have been more hospitable if you had not taken down three of their guards," Nyla said.

"You wouldn't even be here if I had not intervened. That officer and his followers looked at you like…like they wanted to separate us. I know those looks, Doctor. They wanted to hurt you in ways that I will never allow."

Nyla glanced up, her throat raw from the water leaking out through her pores. The steely blue eyes of her Captain burned back more fierce than any enemy could ever boast. "How are you?" she asked truly because she refused to linger on his words, on what might have happened if she had braved this alone.

He just groaned and folded his hands in front of his face. "No 'thank you?' I'm peachy, just fucking peachy. Yourself?"

"I take full responsibility for my actions."

"You're no more responsible for this than Yasmine would be for her ear pieces being taken. I should have watched you more closely, tackled you or something. Maybe a muzzle for if we ever get the chance to do this again." He smiled faintly at the thought, nothing more than a twitch of his mouth.

"Yasmine?" Nyla asked, followed his train of thought easily.

"What about her, Doc?" Kirk grumbled.

"How long have you been sleeping with the Lieutenant?" Nyla asked.

"Few months," Kirk answered without a beat. He leaned forward, elbows against his knees. "Since we're asking about personal lives…"

"I have none. But ask if you want." Nyla shrugged.

"Bones," Kirk stated like he was slamming down the trump card.

Nyla's response was so quick, it sounded computer generated, practiced. "He's not personal."

Kirk just raised his eyebrows with amusement. "Looked pretty personal. Or was that another woman in a purple dress with this mess," he mussed her hair, "blushing and dancing with him?"

"He was the one blushing," Nyla retaliated, hitting his pestering hands away and smoothing down her hair to no avail.

"Noticed that, too. Didn't know the man could, to be honest."

"Yasmine was watching you with Uhura the whole evening."

Kirk's chest swelled slightly. "She was not, because she's too damn dedicated to her job. Good try though."

Nyla shrugged and settled her head to rest between two bars, watching Kirk's head lull against his shoulder. Her left leg was plastered to his thanks to the limited space, the body heat mingling to make the already steaming atmosphere practically boil. He watched her through heavy eyelids, blowing dust that swirled in the air from his nose.

"What about you, Harlow? You got any ingenious escape plans brewing?"

"Maybe. Think you can get a guard down here?"

Kirk shrugged, a haphazard jerk of his shoulders. He wrenched off his boot, crawling to lean against the rails.

"I can't complete the plan if I can't breathe," Nyla complained. "Do you ever wash those things?"

Kirk laughed breathlessly and chunked the shoe as far as he could down the hallway. "You'll be thanking me in a minute," he said just as a guard strode angrily forward, Kirk's boot clutched as far away from his armored body as physically possible.

"Who does this belong to!" the guard demanded.

"Apologies," Nyla called, learning her face between the bars so the lamp light cast a shadow of childlike innocence on her face. "My cellmate has a habit of making himself a nuisance to others."

Kirk protested loudly and Nyla waved a hand to silence him, sitting cross-legged from the guard who eyed her warily.

"What's your name?" Nyla asked.

A hand touched the blade secured at his side for reassurance before the guard answered. "Cadet Donar."

"You're quite young to be a cadet, Donar," Nyla noted.

Donar's chest swelled and his head tilted up. "Top of my class, human. And smart enough not to fall prey to your pretty tongue." He began to stride away.

Nyla cursed silently, running her eyes over him again and again searching for something that could aid their escape. A pristine uniform, a faux confident walk, and his hands fisted at his sides, not swinging with his gate. His thumb traced over the ring on his index finger and two more adorning his pinky. One hand meant a marriage, the other meant loss but she could not for the life of her recall which. Nyla cursed under her breath this time, straining her eyes against the gloom to read his face for pain or longing or anything. It was too dark, however; she had to guess. She had to get him closer to get her hands on the skeleton key dangling from the back of the same belt that held his sword without getting the sharper object impaled in her chest.

"How old?" Nyla called.

"My age is of no concern to the likes of you!" the guard spat.

"Not you. Your children. Twins? You took this job to provide for them and their mother? You look tired. Do the long hours keep you away from your family?"

Oh, he was back now, grasping her by the collar of her dress so that her head smacked against the ceiling. Nyla heard Kirk mobilize behind her back and subtly warded him off. She could handle this. She could do something without fucking it up. The guard's breath smelled as if he had been chewing coffee grinds for fun and his eyes were bloodshot from too many hours on his feet.

"What do you know of my family? Do your people make threats?" he growled, accent so thick around the foreign English that she had to pause to piece together his words.

"No. No threats. Just a curiosity. If we are to be stuck down here together, then we can at least keep the other entertained." Nyla offered a small smile, praying lightning would not strike her where she stood. When he did not answer, she pushed on. "Do you miss them?"

"What does your kind know of such large emotions? War and wreckage is what humans boast of. We are a civil people," he spat.

"I do not argue civility. Merely an understanding of ways."

"Can I have my shoe back?" Kirk leaned past her to reclaim the footwear and, just as she planned, the guard kept his eyes locked on her all the while.

"You are the first human I have met who did not condemn us," Donar said.

"If you let us go, I would be super grateful," Nyla said, knowing the answer before it even left his tongue.

Donar took a step back, smoothing out his uniform and tilting his head back into its superior angle. "This is your place," he said, striding away.

Nyla sank back to the ground, massaging her collarbones where her dress left angry red brush burns. Before Donar disappeared from view he paused and turned to speak over his shoulder. "I am to change guards. Do still your tongue. The next might not be so forgiving."

"I'll be fucked," Kirk muttered as the guard vanished back into the darkness. His foot had thankfully been shoved back into his boot so the air was slightly more breathable. "He cares what happens to his pets."

"Did you get it?" Nyla whispered, scooting to sit across from his.

Kirk produced the key from his sleeve, grinning deviously. "Change in shift is just the distraction we need. You ready?"

"Sure," Nyla said. "Are you sure we can pull this off, James? There's only two of us against a whole planet and we don't know where the rest of our team is and you're really the only one that can fight and…"

Kirk took her hand between his, curling it into a fist. "Use this if you have to, Harlow. We're gonna get out. Both of us."

Nyla nodded, forcing a shaky puff of air into her body as he turned the lock. The gate creaked down the hallway but not a soul appeared. Kirk took the lead with Nyla following hot on his ass as they made their way back to the stairs they had been escorted down hours earlier. Nyla held the skirt of her dress in one and the other was poised to take down any who opposed them. Dirt caked to the bottom of her feet and the brighter lighting ahead pained her eyes to peer through.

Kirk ducked around the bend leading into the stairwell, cursed and connected his punch with the unguarded face of their new warden. He caught the Drususian before he could clang against the floor, easing his unconscious form to the ground. He claimed his longsword and pointed up and winked at Nyla before beginning their ascent. The exertion was hard on her already panicking heart. She huffed and puffed to keep up with his long, elegant strides and when they reached the top he paused to let them catch their breath.

"Bones would be grouching about the lack of a strategy by now." Kirk smiled faintly, his way of steeling himself against whatever was to come.

"I'm really just trying not to throw up, sir," Nyla admitted. "But I can try for a metaphor if it would help."

"No. Keep close." Kirk surged ahead, he yelped as he encountered the hilt of a sword with his cheekbone and quickly retaliated.

Surprise was their only friend as the three guards positioned at the top of the dungeons reacted to Kirk's appearance. The one who had hit him instinctively went down fast, the slam of the flat of Kirk's blade to his temple effectively silencing him. A second guard fell on him while the third turned her attention to Nyla who hovered in the doorway.

"Woah." Nyla splayed her hands to show herself defenseless.

The guard did not back down, but flung a single dagger at Nyla's face. The drive to survive was what made Nyla duck, no formal training to aid in this fight. "Easy! Easy, we don't want to be here anymore than you want us here!" she called.

"I highly doubt that, human." The sneer made Nyla's skin crawl as she skittered away from the blade pointed at her heart.

"What's your name?" Nyla asked, praying the talking would be enough to distract until Kirk could free himself from his opponent.

The guard smiled sweetly, almost sickeningly at Nyla. "Nothing a woman so near death need concern herself with." She lunged and Nyla dodged the dagger, fist swinging up to meet the face of her attacker. Both cried out as it met its mark—one with shock the other with pain. Nyla wished she was the shocked one instead of the one cradling her throbbing hand. The guard was grinning at her, blood turning her teeth crimson. She spat some of the ground and wiped the rest off with the back of her hand.

"So, the animal does have bite," she sang.

Nyla jumped as the guard slumped forward, nearly impaling herself on her own weapon as Kirk heaved to catch himself against his knees. His face looked like a patchwork quilt for all the cuts and bruises he bore and his knuckles matched the sight. "Good work, Doctor," he panted.

"You didn't tell me it would hurt." Nyla shook out her hand.

Kirk grinned sheepishly, blue eyes alight with their success. He took her elbow and Nyla jogged to follow him down yet another corridor.

Kirk stopped suddenly, causing her to plow into the back of him. "You have feelings for him," he gawked.

"Who?" Nyla was busy nursing a hand that would likely feel the aftershocks of this morning for days to come.

"The other Doctor. Bones."

"Seriously? Can we do this when our lives aren't in danger?" Nyla asked.

"You didn't deny it," Kirk teased, resembling a school child.

Never had Nyla been happier to hear the footsteps on oncoming soldiers. It had Kirk back on track in a heartbeat, pulling her down a desolate hallway so they could disappear into the castle. Now they only had to find their landing party and get their sorry asses off this unforgiving world.

After a particularly strange dream involving her crew and purple tutus, "Jim" was the first word Yasmine breathed as consciousness roused her.

Unfortunately Kirk wasn't there, and neither was Nyla or any of the other crew that had been dancing so bizarrely in her mind moments before. The gravity of the new world slammed her back into the reality of the dewy ground she was sprawled on and stretching a stiff limb to her left led her to slow-mo punch the doctor where he was slumbering a foot away. Thank god he wasn't awake yet to hear her breathless call for the captain.

They'd run for half the night, scattered with moments of rest and strategizing more zigzags in their escape pattern, until finally they'd definitively lost their pursuers. The small shack she was now waking up in was so overgrown they barely even discovered it was a building, but had quickly crashed in it anyway.

Upon standing up Yasmine stepped forward and straight onto a rotting board that snapped loudly and woke her partner. "Hey!" he slurred before calming down and rubbing a hand over his grimace.

"Hey." More careful steps took her around the circumference of the room and right back to McCoy where she helped him up. "No change in our situation except that I'm fucking starved."

"I don't have my tricorder to tell you what plant life if poisonous or not, so please don't take that chance."

They spent the next few minutes in restless silence, picking at leaves and stickers littering their hair and clothing and having zero luck with the dirt smudging their hands and faces. Each rub and scratch irked Yasmine even more as she thought of the scrapes and blood Kirk was probably dealing with, though who even knew if he and Nyla were alive. Finally her fist slammed against the wall and she shook it free of any splinters.

"This is not how this was supposed to happen." After a frozen moment, she took a deep breath and turned around. "But I'm…I shouldn't have done that. We need to keep our heads screwed on straight for Jim and Nyla."

"It's alright, you just beat me to it." Maybe McCoy should be a psychologist, too, because for once he put on a knowing smile and spun to more lighthearted conversation. "Now that we're all manners of stranded together, Lieutenant Roy, how about a little get to know me? You got a first name?"

He was right, and she leaned haphazardly against a windowsill as she eased out of tenseness. "Yasmine, and I don't mind any way you wanna shorten in. Yaz, Yazzie, my mom even calls me Minnie. But don't pass that last one along to J—the captain, 'cause he'll never let it go and it's not my favorite."

"Well I'm Leonard, though Jim calls me –"

"Bones," she finished, but at his peculiar gaze she added, "I hear it a lot from him."

He let whatever questions he had slide, and instead gestured toward the rickety door and the sunlight gleaming beyond. "I know for a fact it won't do any good for us to sit here, so let's venture out a bit, Yasmine."

She made a quick spin around the room out of habit, laughably looking for anything she might be leaving behind, yet that spin of her dress caught her peripheral vision and she suddenly noted how the pale fabric was blinding against the muted foliage surrounding them.

"Give me one second before we go, Doc." She had pulled herself free of the cape and both sleeves before he realized what she was doing.

He swiveled away instantly, eyes vehemently covered. "Whoa, hey, has nobody taught you to give a guy warning before all that?"

"You can still look, I promise it's not a big deal," she placated as she shimmied more of the dress off.

"Maybe not to you, but my mother raised me better and would have my head if she found out I didn't give you due decency."

"That's not what this is." With no answer, his stubbornness was starting to irritate her. She paused all yanking at the gown and said, "Doctor, I'm ordering you to turn around and look at me."

"You're trying to pull rank you don't have, Roy."

"Bones, you've gotta have a little faith in me!"

He slowly turned around, eyes still covered. "I'd be happier if you tossed me a hornets' nest, but alright dammit. You win, but I better not hear an HR complaint about this."

Yasmine stood there, dress pooling at her ankles like a small pond and otherwise clothed in the black engineer's jumpsuit she often worked in, sans any Starfleet markings of course. She pulled the pants legs down from their hiked position away from the slit in the dress, McCoy gaping all the while.

"You don't lead a blind man to a cliff without telling him the good news, dammit! You coulda told me you weren't gonna be buck naked in front of me."

She shrugged, reveling in the freedom of the jumpsuit and the few degrees cooler without so many layers. "I had to get out of the loud dress, and we got a little trust exercise out of it. You and your cape can lead the way now, Bones."

His grumbling forged their first steps back into the jungle. "Yeah, now I'm the only one looking damn ridiculous in a cape."

"I'm sure Jim and Nyla won't mind. Max Whitney probably won't either."

The ground was soggy and overgrown with some kind of mildew, which thankfully muffled their steps. After finding a pace dodging back and forth between low-lying branches and traipsing in a direction that neither of them knew to be correct or otherwise, Yasmine began her favorite practice of talking herself through things.

"Now, assuming Jim hasn't busted them out or gotten them exiled already, we've gotta get back to the castle."

McCoy's voice still had all its crystal clear gruffness behind her. "Now I'm gonna try not to age myself with this, but isn't 'Jim' a little informal for your captain? I know we're in a landing party and all but –"

"No, you're right. It's probably rude of me," Yasmine said bluntly. It was hard keeping herself in check to think of Jim as only her captain when concern and longing for him constantly buzzed under her skin, yet she'd brushed it off before and could do it again. "But before we see the castle and the captain, Bones, we'll find smaller towns first. Keep your eyes peeled for humanoids."

The jungle dawn was laced with heavy humidity that hadn't dissipated at all from the night before and kept reappearing in layers around each massive tree, though it did nothing to help Yasmine's parched throat. Each of those monotonous trees in turn held out unwelcoming branches to tear at hair and clothes as they trudged onward, simple blips of distractions that hardly bothered their determined pace. Roy and McCoy weren't gonna be stopped.

Until Yasmine noticed a few strands of her own hair on a tree they were apparently passing again.

"Well shit, I think we're going in circles."

McCoy's reply caught in his throat, coming out as no more than a ribbit as he yanked her back against a trunk. She almost cried out in frustration and discomfort as the bark dug into her back, but trusted his judgement and watched as he silently motioned toward a Drususian in the distance.

The humanoid was alone, clad in simple but bright robes and bent over to inspect what was probably a vegetable garden. Yasmine ran through the limited list of options in her head and skidded to a stop on the last one. Retrieving the phaser still stashed deep in one of her jumpsuit's back pockets, she brandished it and hadn't managed a step forward before the doctor grabbed hold of her again.

"Good god, woman! A phaser with you?" His tense voice was barely audible as he rambled on. "Actually, you know what, not good god. Because in the good god's story the animals go two by two together to the same place, not get separated in twos!"

Yasmine rolled her eyes and whispered, "Trust exercise part two," before creeping forward to close enough range to fire at the Drususian. His form crumpled and when no other signs of alarm surfaced, the pair closed in.

"Is he…?"

"What do you think of me, Doc?" She let out a full laugh at his baffled expression. "Phasers always set to stun."

He laughed, too, though his echoed with the unnerving strain of delirium, and when he didn't stop she finally asked what was so funny.

"That's exactly what Jim muttered when I found the son of a bitch asleep a couple days ago, it was the funniest thing. He wasn't even in his quarters, either, I found him in some random room. I'll have to remember where it was and get a video of him sometime for blackmail purposes."

Yasmine felt it bubbling up but recognized it way too late.

"Room 4112?"

In the blessed second before his reaction she was sure she'd escaped all detection. But no, this day apparently didn't have enough complications as it was.

"Now wait a damn second." All of McCoy's other attentions came to a full displeased stop, the unconscious body between them holding a silent audience to the shit about to hit the leaves on all sides. "He looks at your ass more often than he should, you call him Jim, and you know the room I found him stark naked in? You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

She managed to square her shoulders and meet his eyes, only delaying the inevitable for a moment.

"You've been sleeping with the captain! Not even a one night stand, but current and ongoing!"

There it was. She'd been expecting that first phrase for months now and so resorted to brushing it away as per usual. "As ongoing as the rescue mission, McCoy, so can we focus on that?"

"Oh no you don't." He wagged a finger and bit back a smile, too caught up between agony and delight to let it go. "You've deprived me of giving him shit for this for months, so I'll start with you. I couldn't give a rat's ass about who's rolling around with who onboard, but with the captain? Or apparently it's Jim now?"

Her mind was lagging on how to respond but she managed to nod at a steady pace. The blush on her cheeks was a foreign sensation as she was brought back to grade school days of being called out on a crush, though it now involved much more than a secret kiss at recess.

At her hesitation he added, "And how the hell did this start? Romantic dates by the warp core?"

All at once her fingers expertly locked the phaser's safety and twirled it in her hands. If she couldn't feel in control at least she could look the part. After all, she was fully proud of Jim as a lay. "It's not nearly that formal, Bones. We're all adults, and some of us find relaxation in more creative ways than others."

It was her turn to be brash about it and it had the desired effect. McCoy wrinkled his nose and said, "Don't you dare give me details."

"Like how the first time he –"

"Roy!" he warned again. "I'll have to sit in Dr. Harlow's office for years if you tell me anything. I'm regretting the knowledge in the first place. Jim's so damn proud of anything he won't even be bothered."

"I think you wanna be with Nyla anyway, Mr. Southern Charm."

He turned swiftly on his heel, cape flinging indignantly. "Cut it, Yaz. Now do you wanna tell me why you felt the need to stun this guy in the first place?"

Yasmine basked in her success and gladly obliged. "If he saw us he could put out an alarm for our descriptions, and I'm hoping that path of broken branches will lead us back to the town he came from."

She swung a slender arm toward their new makeshift path forged by the Drususian's levitating vegetable cart he'd been dragging and she wordlessly led the way. McCoy huffed and gruffed his way behind her muttering about indecency and how "the corneater just can't help himself".

There was a tinge of relief gracing Yasmine's small smile. Someone else knowing made it more real, and maybe that wasn't a bad thing. The cavern being scratched into her chest with each passing minute of not being sure of Jim's safety spoke of feelings she'd sworn both of them against. Feelings that nearly tripped her when she realized what she was admitting to herself.

But work was work and sex was sex and that's the way it should stay.

The pair followed the green broken road in an erratic pattern to other little gardens, interrupted only by strange bird calls and the occasional slick patch of mud. McCoy's stomach grumbled just as the forest ended and opened up into a quaint little village, leaving Yasmine slackjawed that they'd stupidly been so close.

"I hope you know by now that I have high moral standards, Yasmine," McCoy muttered as they let the few sparse branches remaining cloak them from the townspeople, "but if I see food that looks like it won't kill me…"

"Roger that. Nobody has to know."

He of all people would know that hungry individuals were not effective ones, and so after creeping from one sloping brown house to the next few they found a bustling market with a fruit stand.

"Having seen you swipe dessert off Sulu with my own two eyes, I'm volunteering you for this," he said with a supportive nudge to the ribs.

Yasmine scoffed but slinked around back of the market and when a squabble between two merchants presented itself as an ample distraction, she pilfered as many little multicolored fruits as would fit in her hands. Her careful steps turned into a proud saunter when she got close to McCoy again and she handed him half of the spoils.

Her first bite of a brilliant teal fruit was delightfully tangy and she absentmindedly juggled the other produce around as they finally got to savor food.

"Are you this handsy with everything you unethically want?" The knowing smirk twisting McCoy's lips made her nearly choke on the piece in her throat.

"Shove it up there, Bones."

"You're far from out of the woods on this, Yaz, but I will let ya know I found the castle." He chuckled while his hands gripped her shoulders to spin her around and point above the village's taller buildings.

The gleaming white spires couldn't be more than a mile away and looked even more regal in the daylight. It was truly a gorgeous spectacle to behold, but the way it held Jim and Nyla dangerously captive made it sinister in a way that twisted Yasmine's gut all over again.

A commotion in the market spurred the pair to make headway toward the castle and as soon as they'd reached the outskirts again McCoy took the lead, his purposeful steps holding more of a bounce than Yasmine had seen before. They were back in the forest but had an optimistic eye out for the tallest castle towers, the tips calling them closer and closer back to where they'd been driven away from hours before.

"I think I can get us back to the spot we're supposed to be beamed from." McCoy's dark hair had long been spiking in every direction and it only swiveled slightly to toss the words back to Yasmine.

"And then it shouldn't be too hard to make it back to the castle from there!"

He slammed to a stop first and Yasmine could remember running into a brick wall that felt the same. "The hell are you talking about, going back to the castle?"

"Doc…" And then the idea struck her. "Of course, Doctor! I'll be sick or beat up or something and you'll be my doctor. That's how we'll get in."

"Now wait a damn second. I believe you've lost all your marbles, Roy. You actually think we should go in there without backup?!" He fervently threw an arm toward the castle and looked at her like she was growing a green tail.

"Backup is gonna take a long time and two people can be much stealthier than twenty. We want Jim and Nyla out of there as soon as possible, right? Who knows what –"

"Alright, alright," he cut her off and wiped a resigned hand down his face. "You're right. But you best believe I'm quitting undercover work as soon as this is over."

A proud smirk crossed her lips and she clapped him on the shoulder. "But at least you get to work with me first, hm?"

"Jim's crazy has been rubbing off on you," he grumbled.

For the first time since they'd beamed onto Drusus, Yasmine could truly breathe as the fog clouding her mind cleared a bit and she fell straight back into her element. Planning on the go was one of her fortes and so as the castle slid closer so did the exact details of their strategy. Dirtying up their clothes once again was the easiest part. The script definitely wasn't.

"…and so as long as they think we randomly crash-landed," McCoy clarified for the second time, "I can speak English and they won't toss us in a dungeon after two words?"

"I really hope so. If you've brushed up on your acting skills recently we should be fine." Yet in the folds of her jumpsuit Yasmine could only cross her fingers and pray.

The castle gates finally came into view and their steps slowed ever so slightly as the camouflage would soon end and the real work would begin. But she didn't feel prepared quite yet. Their ruse would have to be spotless if it was gonna work at all, and she had joined Starfleet and avoided all theatre and art classes for a reason.

"Now Bones." Her next question wasn't gonna go over well and she braced as well as she could. "I'm supposed to be so hurt that they get us to the best doctors and right now I only look a little scuffed up. I'm gonna need you to punch me."

This time she was able to swerve around his screeching halt and run around to face him, only to cringe at the indignant horror etched into his expression.

"You want me to what? For fuck's sake, you already stripped like a madwoman in front of me and now you expect me to hit you, too? Have you not heard that I'm the proper son of a bitch from Georgia?!"

"You're a proper doctor, too! You're the best one to know where to hit me and it not do too much damage." Yasmine wasn't accustomed to using pleading faces but she tried her best. "The sooner you do this the sooner we get to Nyla, Doc."

He scoffed. "Why the hell are you trying to use that on me? You bargain worse than Jim."

But she could tell she struck a nerve. If she played her cards right… "You think you're slick? All due respect but you were grossly smitten last night, Jesus Christ. At least I was able to hide my thing for Jim from you."

A wry grin sprang on his mouth. "And here I was thinking you only had a thing with him? You don't tell the jury your secrets before the verdict, Yaz."

Yasmine's breath caught a hook in her throat and she dangled like a fish above water. But she had the talent to deflect from even herself and her mind immediately flew to Nyla and how the psychologist would have a field day with her little Freudian slip. A sharp cough and expectant gaze from the man in front of her dragged her back and all at once she was fed up with the quarreling lest he pick apart any more of her arguments.

"Doctor. Either hit me once or I'll find a tree branch to make myself more convincingly hurt."

He huffed a sigh that seemed to come all the way from his feet. "I'm locking you in medbay for a week after this."

He took the initiative and manhandled her head to the proper angle before taking a moment to loosen up his hand. His few practice swings touched lightly against her left cheekbone and then he told her to hold still and clench her jaw. The punch itself was still reining in all sorts of strength, but it did the trick. It stung, then it throbbed, and a welt raised slightly under her bronze skin.

"You happy?"

"Was that so hard?"

"Grandma McCoy is somehow gonna find out about this and I'll have to go into goddamn witness protection," he clipped.

She shook her head free of a bit more of the smarting pain. "If it gets that far I'll personally come bail you out."

"Somehow I think you're only as helpful as Jim in a courtroom."

"Try me someday," she offered, then pulled one last rip into the shoulder of her jumpsuit. "Alright, enough filibustering, Bones. I'm ready to play unconscious."

He caught her where she leaned and easily hoisted her up, still giving instructions. "Move that arm over there. No, make your left leg completely limp, I don't care if it swings. Labored breathing will help you seem in worse shape."

Yasmine felt like she was gonna need a real trip to the medbay soon with the unnatural breathing and limbs already cramping but she stuck it out, eyes fluttered shut and waiting in the blind for the steady swaying of McCoy walking to bring them to the castle gates. Her only bit of warning came as his mutter to her under his breath. "Here's hoping, Roy."

His voice then boomed louder as footsteps approached them. "Help! Please, you have to help. We crashed in your woods and this woman is in bad condition. I'm her doctor but your supplies and expertise may be the only thing that can save her."

There was a pause and faint whispering in the native tongue, then an accented voice gruffly said, "Agreed. But only expect base help, stranger."

Yasmine let a slit of her eye open when a shadow fell across her face, enough to see the wrought metal gates getting smaller behind them.

They were in.