Finding a Jim Kirk who didn't want to be found was much easier said than done. Normally, Leonard wouldn't be so adamant about finding the kid, but something about the speed at which Jim had run off, the fact that he'd dropped his communicator (which Leonard was sure was not an accident), and the fact that Pike's last look at him had clearly said good luck and Godspeed told him that this was one time when he couldn't fail.

It was tempting to file a missing persons report to Academy Security, but without his comm, scanning for him would be a dicey prospect at best. And then, of course, if they did find him, Jim would be thoroughly pissed that Leonard had reported him in the first place. No, the potential benefit of contacting Security wasn't worth the trade-off. Leonard was on his own. More disturbingly, so was Jim.

Running directly after Jim had been his first thought, but Jim could outrun Leonard any day of the week, and driven by emotion like that, there was no way he'd catch up with him along the trails. Instead, the search would have to go destination by destination.

Leonard started with his own room, but that would have been far too easy. Jim wasn't there, and there was no note. Same poor luck with Jim's own room, and his roommate hadn't seen him either. No sign of him in the mess hall, or the library, or any of the usual hangouts on campus, not that Leonard had really expected to find him in any of the usual places. So, somewhere in the city, Jim was getting himself lost, drunk, or hurt, and in his state, Leonard didn't want to think about how bad that could be.

He didn't have his own transportation, and it would take far too long on foot, so he checked out a campus bicycle and raced through the front gates. The wind had turned cold, rolling in with a thick fog that slowly swallowed the city - streets, houses, and people alike, uncaring and indifferent to what it overtook. Leonard imagined that if he pedaled fast enough, he could keep it from claiming him, too, and sent out into the universe the futile hope that it wouldn't claim Jim either.

First he swept through the running trails on the slope west of the campus, but he figured it was unlikely that Jim would have stayed there. One full circuit of the paths proved that to be true, so he turned south, then east, speeding into the city.

It was a Monday night, so the bars weren't too crowded. It should have made spotting Jim easier, but instead, with each bar where Leonard stopped, it only made it easier to see that he was nowhere to be found. He tried every bar to which Jim had ever dragged him, then a few others that seemed to be likely prospects, then a couple of unlikely prospects, then a couple of pubs, a billiards hall, and even a strip club. No sign of the kid.

He was shaking with worry and exertion when he finally pulled his bike up to the edge of the park at the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. The paths behind the Academy started up there, and although he'd already checked them, he figured it couldn't hurt to give it one more look. If Jim wasn't there, he could be anywhere, and at that point, Leonard would have no choice but to notify Campus Security. Visions of Jim's body lying in a ditch ghosted through the back of Leonard's mind, and he shook them off as best as possible.

With an unsteady breath, Leonard stepped back up onto the bike's pedals and pushed off, wishing that the bike's headlight did a better job of lighting up the twisting paths. At least the clouds and fog were starting to break up, and the almost-full moon helped a bit. He was about to turn left and take the path down towards the old fort beneath the bridge when a noise off to the right carried over the wind and caught his ear. He squeezed the brakes and the bike ground to a halt. He listened, and heard the noise again. It was a human voice. Male. Yelling. Several voices. And they didn't sound happy.

Heart lodged in his throat, Leonard turned off his headlight and steered the bike sharply down the hill. The shouts became louder as he went, branches rushing past his face in the scant moonlight, and he leaned into the handlebars, not even touching the brakes until the ground leveled out in a clearing. The moon illuminated a group of five men engaged in what first looked like a brawl, but within a split second it became obvious that they were all swarming one of the men, and even in the near-darkness, Leonard didn't have to think twice to recognize the shock of blond hair or the frenzied expression on Jim's face as he swung madly. Jim's fist connected with the jaw of larger man who was rushing him, and a second swing nailed the big guy in the stomach. Another one of Jim's assailants jumped him from behind, wrapping arms around Jim's neck, but a sudden heave sent him up and over Jim's shoulder and back down to where he was slammed into the ground.

For a moment, Leonard couldn't help himself, and he watched the fight with no small amount of amazement at how easily Jim seemed to be handling such a large group. It almost looked like a bizarre dance, where Jim was the leading man, and the others barely knew the steps.

The illusion didn't last long.

The light caught Jim just right, and Leonard saw the blood smeared across his face, and the heavy bruise already forming around his left cheekbone. An instant later, the other two guys had regrouped and rushed Jim from both sides at once. One of them slammed a fist into the back of Jim's head, snapping his head forward sharply, and while he was temporarily stunned they grabbed his arms and held him. Several feet away, the big guy was staggering to his feet, fists balled tightly, ready for retribution.

It had all happened in the span of only a few seconds since Leonard had skidded into the clearing, and he knew that if he waited a few more seconds, the fight would reach a tipping point. Maybe Jim thought he could fight off four guys at once, but Leonard knew his own limits better than that. He had one chance to make this work. Jolting into action, he grabbed a flashlight from the bike's emergency kit, swung off the bike, and stormed forward.

"Hey! HEY! What the hell is going on here?" He only hoped that he sounded tougher than he felt as he thumbed on the flashlight and held it up, aimed forwards, with his other hand positioned alongside it as if he was holding a phaser. "Back away from the kid and clear out or I start stunning people now and taking names later down at Headquarters."

The scuffling went dead silent except for Jim coughing weakly. The big guy held up his hand over his brow and squinted against the sudden brightness of the flashlight. "Who the fuck are -" The guy made a move as if to challenge, but Leonard took another decisive step forward.

"I said back away from him. NOW. I've already put the call into the Academy Security Headquarters," he lied boldly, "so if you want to stick around until the rest of my squad gets here, that's up to you. But if that's how you want to play it, you'll do it unconscious." He waved his hand and the flashlight meaningfully.

There was a moment of silence, then a scramble all at once. The two guys holding Jim dropped him and he slumped to the ground, hitting his knees hard then tipping onto his side. The four of them rushed past Leonard, giving him a wide berth as they raced back up the path towards the road.

One of them yelled back, "You ought to book that guy on charges. He started it." And then they were gone.

Why am I not surprised? Leonard thought as he spun around, rushed across the clearing, and dropped down by Jim's prone form. "Goddammit, Jim! What the hell were you thinking?"

Jim coughed a couple more times and pushed himself onto his knees so he could look Leonard in the face. "What's it to you?" he slurred, eyes not really focused.

"What's it to -" He let his mouth fall open incredulously. "What's it to me is that you're trying to get yourself killed! That's what! Dammit Jim, are you out of your mind?"

Jim snorted and wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip, looking with dark amusement at the streak of blood smeared across the split skin of his knuckles, which were already dirty and bloody from the fight. He laughed drily, still staring at his hand. "Maybe I am. Heh. Out of my mind. Yeah. And why shouldn't I, huh? Why not? I'm just this… this fucked up… pathetic, broken little piece of shit." He sounded like he wasn't really talking to Leonard - just saying his thoughts out loud because Leonard happened to be there. His expression was glazed and distant. There was a whiff of alcohol, but not nearly as strong as Leonard was expecting. The kid wasn't drunk; he had a head injury.

"You've got to be kidding me," Leonard grumbled, shaking his head. "Jim, listen to me for a minute. No, look at me. I don't give out goddamned compliments; I just call it like I see it. You are not pathetic, and you're not a piece of shit, so stop saying crap like that."

"But I'm still fucked up and broken, huh Bones?" He almost looked pleased with that.

Leonard glared at him for a moment, then he actually gave a sideways nod. "Yeah, you're fucked up and broken, but so are most people. So am I. Does that mean I should go running off half-cocked, getting into suicidal fistfights and crap like this?"

Jim's expression darkened, and his mouth twisted into a pained grimace. "I'm not you, Bones."

"No, you're not, and you oughta be grateful for that. You're Jim, and that's good enough. Goddamnit, you're too fucking strong to give up like this. You're smarter than that."

But Jim shook his head, and with a tipsy lurch, flopped backwards and propped himself up with his hands. He looked so young like that, leaning back with his legs sticking straight out in front of him. "Weak," he scoffed at himself. "I'm not strong, Bones. And if I was smart, I wouldn't do shit like this. Fuck - I don't know what I'm doing. Pike tried to give me a fucking pep-talk. And Toland - HA! Terrible Toland goes soft on me. Tried to sympathize with me! I don't want her fucking sympathy. I don't need her to let me be weak."

Leonard leaned closer, watching Jim carefully, almost afraid to ask. "What did she say?"

"That she was there! Can you believe this shit?" He shook his head incredulously, then winced and rubbed his forehead, in obvious pain.

The puzzle pieces from earlier that day suddenly snapped into place as the incomplete flash of realization came to fruition. "Yeah. Yeah, I can believe it," Leonard growled, remembering the look on Toland's face when he'd revealed Jim's past to her. He was furious at himself for not understanding it fully until then.

Jim nodded dizzily. "Yeah, I believe it, too. Wish I didn't."

"What else did she tell you?" he pressed, knowing there was more to this.

"Doesn't matter."

"Dammit Jim, it does matter, so stop giving me that!" He raked his fingers through his hair, nails digging harshly into his own scalp. "You ran off, dropped your communicator - and yes, I know you did that on purpose - and fucking disappeared. And when I finally find you, you're in a brawl that you started yourself in the middle of an empty park where you might not be found for hours if they were to leave you unconscious. Don't tell me that doesn't matter!"

"See?" he asked with a glint of perverse triumph, "I am stupid."

"Jim, you aren't -"

"She told me that if I can survive that," he kept talking right over him, "then I should be able to handle anything. She said they thought I'd died. She told me that the colonists had tried to free me, but each time someone tried, they got executed. She apologized for that. You think I wanted to hear that? She fucking apologized!"

Leonard frowned. "Why would she do that?"

"Because as one of the few Starfleet officers on Tarsus IV at the time," he said, his voice rough with dark sarcasm, "even though she was just a fucking Ensign on a year's leave, she took charge of a bunch of the survivors. And because the people who kept trying to rescue me kept getting killed -" Something twisted flashed in his eyes. "- she convinced them to stop trying."

If the revelations of the past several days had been coming at Leonard too fast already, he was now thoroughly overwhelmed. "Jesus Christ…"

"Had nothing to do with it," Jim said flatly, and then with a sudden heave, he flipped onto his hands and knees, struggled to his feet, and began walking unsteadily down the path towards the back of campus.

Wait. No, he was walking away from campus.

Leonard scrambled to his own feet, caught up with Jim, and spun him around by the shoulders. "Where do you think you're going?"

Jim shook him off. "Out."

"Like hell you are!" Leonard grabbed his arm. "You're coming back to the infirmary so I can patch you up, and then you're gonna tell me about this bizarre death wish you've suddenly developed!"

Jim wrenched his arm out of Leonard's grasp again, staggering slightly as he overbalanced. "Patch me up, Bones? How many times can you patch up something before you realize that it's too fucking broken to fix?"

"Oh, so you're going to go trying to break yourself even more, just to prove it?"

"Why not?" He laughed, like a cry of delirious defiance as he threw his arms above his head. "Why the hell not!"

Leonard couldn't believe he was hearing this. Or maybe he could believe it - he could believe it all too well, and that was what stung the most. Jim's feral expression was carved deeply into his filthy face and bloodstained lip, cast in deep shadows by the moon's thin light.

Leonard shook his head and forced himself to take a deep breath before speaking carefully, with controlled, even tones in one last attempt to undercut the insanity that seemed to have gripped his best friend. "Because it won't fix anything, Jim. What the hell are you fighting for? Do you think that will make up for the shit that happened in the past? You can't keep fighting an enemy that doesn't exist anymore. It's over. They're gone."

Something in Jim's eyes shifted, and his stance went slightly defensive. "Then what else can I do, huh? What else do I have?"

And there he was - the lost and broken boy who honestly believed he had nothing else in the world, who could never be good enough. He'd keep being as goddamned awful as he could be until he ran himself into an early grave, because that's what he believed he deserved. Swallowing thickly, Leonard laid a tentative hand on Jim's shoulder. "You've got the world, kid. You've got the whole fucking world at your feet, and I think you've got the balls to take it."

Jim's head tilted down, but his eyes were fixed on Leonard's face. In the moonlight, the blue of his eyes looked positively eerie, standing out in stark contrast to the dirty smudges on his face and the dark blood still running from his nose. Bones felt a tingle run through his spine. Jim's gaze didn't waver. "And why would the world have me? Because of my name, Bones? Because of a reputation that isn't mine?"

Leonard tightened his grip on Jim's shoulder. "Good God, man - your name's got nothing to do with it! You'll build your own reputation if you give yourself a goddamned chance. You just can't just throw it away like this."

Jim looked away, and Bones thought he might lose him there, so he reached out with his other hand, holding Jim firmly by both shoulders and looking at him until Jim had no choice but to meet his stare.

"And if the world ain't good enough for you," Bones finally said, dropping his voice to a low growl, "you've got me, too."

For another brief moment, Jim looked like he was going to pull away again, but then his shoulders slumped and he slouched into Bones' grasp. "Okay," he rasped. "Okay."

Bones cast a quick glance at the bike, but figured that he'd deal with that in the morning. He started leading Jim down the path towards the Academy's west gate, and as Jim stumbled, he grabbed Jim's arm and slung it over his shoulder, wrapping his other hand around Jim's waist. For once, Jim didn't complain.

They walked like that, with Leonard supporting most of Jim's weight, guiding him back through the west gate of campus, across the deserted quad, and up to Leonard's dorm room where he had luckily left the emergency medical kit from the training sim that morning. Jim was absolutely silent as they arrived. He didn't make a sound as Leonard sat him down on the couch. There wasn't a single complaint as Leonard checked him over, set the tissue regenerators, gave him an antibiotic for the abrasions, and added a painkiller for the headache he was surely going to develop from the moderate concussion he'd received.

"Not going to threaten me with a sedative?" Jim finally asked as Leonard finished up his work.

"No, because I've got to wake you up every two hours to make sure you don't lapse into a coma on me." He shook his head as he removed the dermal regenerator from Jim's knuckles, which were no longer split open.

"A coma?" Jim blurted incredulously. "Come on, Bones, isn't that a bit over the top, even for you?"

Leonard gave him a stern look, then picked up a pen light. After flashing it into Jim's eyes a couple of times and watching the poor iris reaction, which supported the results from the tricorder scan, he frowned and shook his head. "Nope. Not over the top at all. Just be grateful that I'm not dragging you to the infirmary. You're damned lucky that there's no intracranial hemorrhaging."

"Oh." He fell silent again.

Leonard slowly finished packing the supplies into the med kit, hoping that nobody at the supply station in the infirmary would notice what had been used. He mused over the fact that Jim was almost unable to accept or understand that he'd been seriously injured. Maybe it was that he was at the point where simply didn't care about the possible consequences, but it seemed more significant than that. He'd been embarrassed about going into shock before, and now he couldn't seem to grasp that a concussion was a serious injury.

"You're not used to people taking care of you," Leonard finally said as he snapped the kit shut. He glanced out of the corner of his eye to wait for Jim's response.

Jim shook his head in surrender, not even attempting to debate the obvious.

"You're not used to taking care of yourself, either," Leonard continued.

"No."

Leonard sighed. He didn't need to give Jim that lecture just then. He was too tired, and Jim was too dazed. Besides, he was pretty sure the kid already knew what he was thinking, and that would be enough. "Well, Jim, for now, you get some sleep," he grumbled, hearing the exhaustion leeching into his own voice. "If you're feeling right by the morning, you can go back to class. If not, I'm taking you to the infirmary - and don't even try to argue with me."

"Okay," Jim said quietly.

Surprised by the easy acceptance, Leonard softened his tone. "I'll tell them that you got jumped by a gang in the park and that was it. They don't have to know what really happened."

"Okay," Jim said again, even lower this time.

Leonard didn't much like the sudden change in how easily Jim was agreeing with everything, but he couldn't exactly argue against it. So he nodded and stood, intending to leave Jim on the couch and go to his own bed, but Jim made a small sound that stopped him cold. He turned back and looked down at Jim, who was staring at the floor. "Yes?"

"Uh… Bones… could you… uh… fuck, never mind." He grabbed the quilt and began unfolding it, but when he reached out for the pillow, Leonard's hand was already there.

"It's okay, Jim."

"I shouldn't ask," Jim mumbled, looking away and shaking his head to himself.

"And why not?" He sighed heavily, hating himself just then, and not quite sure why. "Jim, when are you going to learn to ask for something you need?" When Jim didn't reply, Leonard grit his teeth and elbowed him over, and sitting down on the couch next to him so that their shoulders were pressed together. "Okay, let me put it to you this way. I'm a doctor; I take care of people. I'm your friend; I take care of you. Until you learn to take care of yourself, I'm not giving you a choice."

"Bones, I shouldn't have… forget it. I can't ask something like that."

"That's why I'm not letting you ask. I'm just telling you that that's how it is, so get used to it." He gave a sideways grin, nudging Jim's shoulder with his own. "Besides, it's not so bad. You might be a cocky, infantile wise-ass, but you're also pretty nice to have around."

"Arrogant. You forgot arrogant." He chuckled drily. "Thanks, Bones."

They arranged themselves onto the couch, and Leonard set the computer's chrono to chime every two hours. Turning off the lights, he relaxed under the reassuring weight of Jim's head on his lap.

He was just starting to drift when Jim spoke up again.

"Bones?"

"Yeah, Jim?"

"Don't ever tell a fucking soul about this."

Bones grinned into the darkness. "Never."

.&.

It was all wrong.

In this universe, there was no sane reason why Doctor Leonard H. McCoy would ever willingly seek out Lieutenant Commander Janice Toland for anything other than the absolutely mandatory requirements of his duties as a doctor and a cadet. And yet there he was, knocking on the door of her office. It was 1337 hours on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and half of the cadets had already left campus, as well as almost the same portion of the faculty and staff, and more were leaving by the minute. Somehow, Leonard suspected that Toland wasn't one of them, and he was right.

His knock was met with a tired, "Enter," and he let himself in to find a somewhat unnerving sight - Janice Toland, hunched over a datapad, boots kicked halfway across her office, hair disheveled, looking vulnerable. She looked up at him and smiled, which was possibly even more unnerving, but he returned the smile as smoothly as he could.

"I'm sorry, Commander, I didn't mean to intrude -"

"Come in, Doctor McCoy, and sit down." She sighed, straightened her back, and put the datapad screen-down on the desk. "You're not intruding. I told you to enter, didn't I?"

He shrugged. "Fair enough, I suppose," he said as he pulled out one of her guest chairs and sat down heavily.

"What can I do for you?" Her tone suggested that she already had a pretty good guess.

"Well, a couple of things, I hope," he said tentatively.

She grimaced. "Well, before you ask, I can already give you the answer on one of them."

"Oh?" A jolt of nerves shot through his gut. He wasn't sure what to feel about the idea that Toland had anticipated one of his purposes in coming to her office.

"Your status as attending physician for training sims - you've been reinstated." She gave him a tired smile. "And no, I didn't divulge anything about Cadet Kirk's personal history in order to do it. I simply wrote in my report that I didn't have all the medical facts about the patient, that you were not overreacting, and that your performance was absolutely acceptable for the simulation circumstances."

"Oh," Leonard repeated, although this time with a sharp exhalation of relief. That was a fair guess, I suppose. "Uh… thank you, Ma'am."

"No need to thank me, Doctor," she said neutrally. "Just the truth. Besides, if you needed any sort of hard lesson about emotional detachment from colleagues and friends during missions, I think you got it anyway."

Leonard nodded slowly. "I did. Not that I wanted it, but I got it." He leaned forward a bit. "But… permission to speak freely, Commander?"

She held her hands out in a welcoming gesture. "We're not exactly standing on formality at the moment, McCoy, and if this is going where I think it's going, we can't. Please, I'm listening."

He pressed his lips together and let out a slow breath through his nose. "Okay. Yes, I got the lesson. Yes, I understand that when the time comes, I'll need to keep a button on it and let my friends do their job. But I'll be damned if I ever stop caring. The day when I give up that scrap of my humanity, the day when I can be totally detached when I triage a crisis, the second I can't see the pain in a person's face behind the tricorder readout - that's when I stop being a doctor, and if I don't have that, I've got nothing. And fuck anyone who calls themselves 'doctor' but can do otherwise because they don't deserve the title." He caught himself, realizing he was edging forward in his seat and getting louder with each word. Even with permission to speak freely, there were limits. He forced himself to sit back and said, "Ma'am," with a tip of his head.

Toland regarded him for a moment, then leaned her elbows heavily on the desk. "I wish I could still work like that, McCoy. And I mean that. Sometimes, I think I hung up my own humanity long ago, and there are days I hate myself for it. But in the five years that I've been working here as training cadre, I've had young officers come back to me and tell me that what they learned in my sims saved their squads, sections, or even their ships. What's that worth?" She paused and gazed over his shoulder at the far wall, thoughts churning behind her eyes for a few moments before she looked back down at him. "Starfleet protocols are in place for a reason: they work. They have the best chance of bringing back the most people alive. It's my job to make sure cadets know how to stick to those protocols when everything goes to hell."

Leonard raised an eyebrow. "Logic and reason over emotion and instinct, huh?"

She grimaced. "I wish there was another way to put it, but yes. Not every cadet is like Kirk. They have to learn by rote, follow standard procedures, and then someday, if they get really good, they can start making it up as they go without letting everything go to hell in a handbasket. Whatever rare natural instincts have blessed Cadet Kirk, most people can't do that."

"You don't hate him," Leonard said slowly as realization dawned. "You envy him."

Even as the words left his lips, he winced, wishing he hadn't let those thoughts voice themselves aloud, but Toland merely nodded. "I do," she said simply, openly. "And I envy you that same ability, even when it scares me half to death that it's going to get people killed." She gave a dry laugh. "No, I don't hate Kirk. Not at all. I don't hate anyone except Kodos, and he's dead. But Kirk… yes, he pissed me off because I was sure that his habit of trying to bypass every regulation and protocol was going to get more people killed. And every time I tried to find a way to get him to see that breaking protocols could cause more deaths, he managed to turn the lesson on its head."

Leonard hated to admit it, but he was really starting to empathize with Toland. She had a really good point, too. Jim could be downright maddening when he refused to play by the rules, and the fact that he still managed to make things work out despite his seemingly reckless decisions was often worrying. And yes, there had been quite a few times when he feared that Jim's personal rule book was going to get him - or someone else - killed. "That's Jim, all right," he said, feeling strangely exasperated on her behalf.

"He's got his own way, I must admit," she agreed. "I needed him to learn that the protocols are there for a reason. I wanted him to understand that protocols save lives." She took an unsteady breath. "But maybe I was wrong."

Leonard raised an eyebrow. "Ma'am?"

"Sure, protocols save lives, but maybe I've lost something bigger." She was watching him carefully, and Leonard knew that she was trying to gauge his reaction. "I followed protocols when I took charge of a group of colonists on Tarsus IV while waiting for the relief and rescue ships. Kirk already told you, didn't he?"

Biting down on the inside of his cheek to keep from flinching visibly, Leonard nodded.

"Good," she said. "Because I wouldn't want to take that away from him, too."

She let her eyes drop away from his, and began fidgeting with a datapad stylus on her desk. "It was sheer insanity on Tarsus IV after the mass execution. A few people said they knew ahead of time, that they'd heard rumors, but most of us didn't believe it until half of us - friends, colleagues, neighbors, family - were suddenly gone. People were in shock. Some lashed out, not that anyone could blame them, but that only got them killed. Somebody had to shut down emotion and take control. I was too young, but I was a Starfleet officer, and I felt it was my duty." She glanced up sideways at him. "Was I wrong?" She looked so uncertain and small, and it was hard to believe that this was the same woman who ran violent training simulations with an iron fist.

Leonard shook his head slowly, suddenly understanding what she had meant the other day - You might think I'm heartless, Doctor, but you and I have the same goals. We want to see life preserved whenever possible. Suddenly, his mouth felt like it was full of sawdust. "You weren't wrong, Commander," he said hoarsely. "You saved lives by stepping up. I'd say that's the highest duty."

She snorted and shook her head. "I've relied on that reasoning every day for the past ten years to convince myself that I did the right thing - to justify what I did in the face of a bigger tragedy - to keep my sanity. Now… I'm not so sure anymore."

She held up the stylus in front of her eyes, staring at it intently as she spoke. "I used logic to insist that for the survival of as many of the remaining colonists as possible, we should simply comply with orders until relief arrived. It was logic that told me that I couldn't bring back my own husband, so there was no point in breaking while there were still lives to be saved. And it was logic and protocols that led me to convince the colonists to stop trying to rescue that poor kid in the central square." She shuddered and let the stylus drop to the desk. "Maybe I saved more lives, but what did I lose?"

The bleak look on her face, the doubt and regret in her eyes - someone had taken Toland the Terrible and broken her with a memory, and Leonard knew there was nothing he or anyone else could ever say or do that would make it right. She looked down at the datapad lying upside-down on her desk, and she tilted her chin. "Go on. Pick it up."

Not sure he really wanted to see what she'd been looking at, but knowing he was going to look anyway, Leonard picked up the datapad and flipped it over. The screen showed a data nodule of image files, and raising his hand over the screen, he tapped the first one. It enlarged, and it only took Leonard a fraction of a heartbeat to know who the kid in the photo was. Taken from a distance away, the picture was just clear enough to make out the bruising on the boy's face and arms, the ripped shirt, and the tight pull of the gag in his mouth. He was blindfolded, tied to a signpost, and guarded by a large man carrying a phaser rifle. The words on the sign were too small to read.

"There were a few colonists who managed to use holovid recorders and cameras without being caught," Toland whispered harshly. "After we came back, I collected as many of those images as possible. Especially the pictures I could find of that boy. I swore I'd never let myself forget him. If I didn't… then maybe I could imagine that his death meant something. If I did forget… I would never have been able to forgive myself. Not that I really did anyway." She closed her eyes and let her head tilt forward. "We all have ways of coping, Doctor McCoy. This is mine."

Listening through the buzz filling his brain, Leonard numbly pulled up the next picture. It must have been taken after the first, because Jim - Jesus fucking Christ, that's really Jim - looked even skinnier and dirtier than he had in the first picture. It looked like the only thing keeping him on his feet were the ropes tying him to the post. Leonard still couldn't make out the words on the sign.

"I just kept telling myself that I was doing the right thing," Toland continued, "even though it didn't feel like it. But almost a dozen people had already been executed trying to rescue him. Five of them had their own young children, and those kids lost their parents. How could I let more of them try, even for the life of another child?" Her breath caught, and she cleared her throat roughly. "But that doesn't mean I didn't blame myself for his death. And for the past ten years, I thought he'd died. For the past ten years, I didn't even know his name."

Her voice finally broke.

Slowly, Leonard raised a shaking finger and pulled up the next image. This one was a much closer zoom. The guard was facing Jim in this picture, either taunting him or lecturing him, and although starved and filthy and bruised, Jim's head was held straight up, as though he could glare right through the blindfold at his captor. His jaw was clenched tightly around the gag, and every line of his body screamed defiance.

And Leonard could read the sign now. In hand-scrawled black lettering, there were the words, "So that the best may survive."

"The best…" Leonard whispered to himself. The best was right there.

"You must think I'm a monster," Toland finally said. "To have sat by and let that child - to let James Kirk suffer through that, knowing that he would probably die that way -"

"No, Ma'am," Leonard croaked, then swallowed thickly. "You're not a monster. You probably saved a dozen more lives." He looked up from the datapad to meet her eyes, which were bloodshot but still dry. "I don't know if I would have had the self-control to do the same."

"But for that," she said, her voice wavering now, just a bit, "who's the better person?"

To that, Leonard wondered if he'd ever have an answer. But then, as he looked back down at the image on the datapad, he found it. Turning the datapad around and handing it to her, he tapped the screen. "He is."

Toland sat there staring at the picture for several long moments, then she nodded. "I think so, McCoy. I think so." She paused for a long moment, then let out a slow breath. "There's one thing I've always noticed about the crazy shit he does in training sims."

"What's that?"

"He never puts anyone else at risk." She nodded reverently towards the image on the datapad. "I thought it was because he wanted the attention and the praise, but… when I told him about what happened, and my decision on Tarsus IV, he… he said that I did the right thing. He didn't even hesitate. And he said that if I had to do it all over again, he'd hope I'd make the same choice. He'd rather die than let anyone else…" He voice trailed off and she shook her head. "He takes the risks so that other people don't have to. And he covers it up by acting cocky and arrogant. I see that now."

"Self-sacrificing," Leonard said, putting yet another puzzle piece in place.

"Yes," Toland said softly. "But he doesn't want anyone to know it. I thought he was nothing like his father, but I was wrong. He's every bit a Kirk, and in the best ways possible." She looked up at Leonard, something fiery sparking in her eyes. "And now, we have to remind him of that, don't we?"

Gritting his teeth, Leonard nodded solemnly. "Well, maybe I've lost my mind, but yeah… that's what I came here about."

"Good," she said evenly. "Because I've spoken to Captain Pike, and he agrees."

Leonard raised an eyebrow, suddenly feeling uneasy. "Agrees with what?"

"Agrees that the best thing for Kirk right now is to throw him right back into the thick of things, and let him prove to himself that he's still capable and competent," Toland said firmly.

Leonard's second eyebrow joined the first one in reaching for his hairline. "Are you out of your mind?" he blurted incredulously. "Do you have any idea what he's been through in the past few days? He's not unbreakable! I know he likes to pretend he is, and you and Pike seem to think he can overcome anything, but… goddammit!" He held up his hands feeling helpless. "When I found him on Monday night… you don't want to know what kind of shape he was in."

"I can guess."

"Oh can you now?" he bit out.

She leaned back in her chair and gave him a level gaze. "I'll say he'd been drinking, but not much. Instead, he was out looking for action, and I'll guess he found it, and when the fists started swinging, he probably didn't give a flying fuck what happened to him. Planning to fight it out until he had nothing left. How many people was he fighting this time?"

Leonard had to force himself to pick up his own jaw. "Four," he said vaguely. "How did you know?"

"I didn't," she said. "I just hazarded an educated guess. All you did was confirm it."

Leonard nodded warily. "Right. Good guess. Yeah, he was in a bit of a state after talking to you that evening, I'll say that much."

"I know." She allowed herself a sympathetic tilt of the head. "And believe it or not, I feel badly about that, but it had to be done, and you know it, too."

Leonard gave her a grunt that could be interpreted as an affirmative. She seemed to understand him.

"He deserved the truth, and so that's what I gave him. But McCoy -" Her eyes hardened just a bit. " - tell me… what has he been like the last couple of days since then?"

With a grumble, Leonard looked everywhere in the room except at Toland as he spoke. "Distant. Unsure of himself. He's going through the motions, but he's not really there. Too fucking quiet for Jim Kirk. He's just wrong, and that's why I came." He glanced sideways at her. "I can fix the concussion and the split knuckles and the bruised organs, but I can't fix this for him, Commander."

"There are some things that nobody else can fix for him, McCoy. Not for a man like Kirk. He needs to fix them for himself."

"And how the hell is he supposed to fix himself, huh? He's broken in ways that he can't understand and would never admit, not even to himself. You don't need a Ph.D. in psych to know that."

"Then what do you know, Doctor?" she prompted neutrally.

Leonard pressed his lips together and grumbled, "I know that he wants to fight something. He wants to fight everything. I can see that. But as crazy as this is, he thinks he's weak and helpless at this point, and he's afraid to act. He needs to fight something, but he's just sinking deeper and deeper. Goddammit, he needs to snap out of this!"

"He does." She gave him a level gaze that seemed far too rational. "You know as well as I do what will happen if he doesn't snap out of it soon."

Leonard took a deep breath and grit his teeth. That was the real reason he'd come, laid out bare in front of him. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"We'll be required to send him to a counselor or therapist," Toland said, not sounding at all enthusiastic about the notion. "It will go on his permanent psych profile."

"I know." Leonard growled softly to himself. He couldn't imagine what it would do to Jim to go through that on top of everything else. It would be almost as bad as leaving him alone. "He'd hate it. And… I'd have to make a report on it. He would know. Yeah, I'm his friend, but I'm also a doctor, and I'd have to report everything. I can't do that to him. It would make things worse, and we both know that." He clenched his hands into fists. "But to throw him right back in so soon?"

She looked at him plaintively. "How much longer do you want him to walk around practically catatonic? I'm one of the adjuncts for the Basic Tactics class he's taking, and because Admiral Mayweather is on leave for the holiday, I taught the class yesterday morning. I've never seen Kirk sit quietly through anything, McCoy, but he sat in the back of the room, staring into space, and as soon as the class was over, he walked out as if he hadn't seen or heard anything I said." She folded her hands on the desk in front of her. "Other faculty already have already begun to notice that he's having problems. I'd say Kirk has a week at most before we'll have no choice but to report this officially. So tell me, what do you think?"

There were so many things Leonard could say.

I think that it's just not natural for Jim to sit still without complaint when I scan him with a medical tricorder. I think my refrigerator hasn't been raided once in the past two days. I think that I want to go back in time ten years, find Kodos, and rip him limb from fucking limb. I think I want to protect Jim from everything, but I know that's the last thing he needs. I think something in that kid's soul has been shattered, and until it's fixed, the world has lost something too goddamned precious to comprehend. I think Jim is bound by his own past and if he doesn't manage to break free soon, something inside of him is going to wither and die, and I can't handle that. I can't fucking handle that.

"I think," he began slowly, "that I want Jim back."

"What are you willing to do to that end?" she asked, her eyes deadly serious.

"Anything."

.&.

(To Be Continued...)