"Can' just call it a Viper," Scotty was agreeing as she poured herself a scotch. "Unless we call eht...a Mark Alpha or something like that."
She cringed. "No...Something it might've been called back home, but different...I was thinking 'Firebird'."
The engineer thought it over, blinking. "I quite like that. What, we gonna paint it red or something?"
"...No, we're not gonna paint it red," she muttered.
After the third night they were able to spend testing her systems, Scotty and Kara struck up a comfortable rapport which came to some kind of plateau the night they managed to put a name to the vessel. It was good to see her focused on something, but of course everyone wondered, without saying so, what the point really was. For Scotty it was just an extracurricular project. Nobody asked her what she thought she was preparing for, if it was anything other than a way to feel closer to home.
If you squinted, her moods were the worst when the top officers came back from the big missions. She'd listen to their accounts with sincere amazement, but with a delicate bitterness running under the surface. She became so agitated with boredom that she would use other people's heroic close calls as an excuse to rile things up: One night after a mission had been rocky but successful, Kirk was in a good enough mood about it for Kara to get away with sort of accidentally throwing a party for him after they'd shared more than a couple drinks and gotten some other people in. McCoy wondered if anyone else realized she was celebrating outward to cover up her own issues; he figured Jim kinda did, but it wasn't his way to make much of it.
Bones ended up joining in when, somehow, this had all started taking place in one of the lower level rec rooms with the sinky couches, the one Gaila had taken upon herself to decorate so that it looked homier. She was there, of course, slinging catty mockery which Kara returned at every given chance. He knew it was a show; at her last check-up Gaila had been particularly talkative and willing to spill that she'd been the one to sneak Kara through the landing bay that one time, imparting, "I think she's getting more than used to me, even with the...you know..."
"The green?" he'd offered bluntly.
The insults between the two were at a knock-one-back-repeat pace, getting meaner with every shot and drawing the increasingly weak warnings of "Ladies..." from Jim. The only reason McCoy was at this little party was because of how this was probably more ingenious than they even realized. Bones had figured out long ago that when his professionalism and/or ego didn't get in the way, Kirk was perpetually, almost embarrassingly protective of any and all women he had ever had sex with even once, and this unspoken-of feature of his bizarre kinds of affection being pitted against itself was just about the funniest fucking thing the doctor thought he'd ever seen.
The seat he found himself occupying for a good percentage of the night was a headache of an ugly color, and he watched the disaster that was Kara's unexplainable contagion make the captain act more and more like a moron as the night persisted. Chekov's music chip had some kind of sleazy trumpeting rock stuff going on and people were kind of dancing on their bare feet but not really, the atmosphere shrugging any little movements into affectionate rhythmic contact; Kirk sort of let her out of a pirouette and then got distracted for a moment. Her socked feet slipped out under her on something somebody had spilled as the C.M.O. was approaching back to his seat, and he managed by pure chance to catch her onto his lap as they both fell back onto the couch. When she shifted and her body was threatening to fall off of his knees, he instinctively grabbed her waist.
And he never thought he'd be quite privy to it, the way she'd cling to just whatever when she was drunk, maybe also lonely. Without a hesitation she seemed to be steadying herself by grasping onto all the wrong places before she even realized who he was, letting out a senseless chirp of a laugh. Only then did she look up.
Slowly, her expression sobered and fell. And then fell even more, like she'd forgotten somewhere she was supposed to be. McCoy didn't know what the hell he must look like cause her eyes were turning into something miles away and he kind of wanted to give her some generic consolation like "Hey, it's okay" even though he wouldn't have any idea what the hell he was talking about.
A roaring laugh broke out across the room. Kara flinched, then reacted like she should have a second ago, scoffing through the slight awkwardness.
"Huh-huh," she giggled. "Hi."
"Alright there?" He swiftly and firmly helped her up with a careful grasp on her arms. She walked off like she'd already forgotten and he got up and left.
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Jim came into medical one day to find it pretty quiet except for the sound of McCoy's pointed humming coming from his office. Kara was stretched out with her feet rested on a tabletop, reading from a PADD, most likely the engineering basics she was trying to get a beginner's handle on.
"Hey," she greeted half-attentively just as McCoy came matter-of-factly storming out of his office and up to Kara.
He scolded, "Until you get the gods damned labeling right..."
She snickered. "Did you just say—?"
"Neuro records are yellow," McCoy interrupted. "You—"
"I changed it cause infections are also yellow," she explained calmly.
"Infections go in the other file—"
"The files all look the same."
"Well, of course they look the same..."
Jim cocked his eyebrow. "Why don't you just use the, uh—"
"No," Bones and Kara interrupted in a unison of annoyance.
A nurse came walking in. Kara leaned back. "Hey, Emilie. Neurology is red now."
The nurse just muttered, "It's about time we changed that" as she finished buttoning up her uniform.
McCoy looked down at Kara, shaking his head with his lips pressed together, and then he walked over to the data screen muttering, "Pain in the ass..."
Jim and Kara exchanged a look of amusement before he finally said, "Well, good news...We're finally hooking back to Earth after all the delays. Should be there in six days, lots of people will get leave if they want it."
"Yeah?" Kara looked like she wasn't sure how she felt about that, almost nervous, but was trying to be casual. "Even you?"
"Well, I gotta debate my case with a few people down at headquarters to keep you under my jurisdiction...No, trust me, I'm persuasive and they should be sympathetic to your position, it'll be a cake walk," he assured her as he saw her concern. "But yeah, I'm gonna...visit Iowa. See my mom, I haven't done that in a while."
"Iowa, huh?" She got a cringe and a nod from Kirk. "What am I gonna do? I'm not going to Iowa."
"Hey, Bones," Jim said with a smirk as the doctor came back by them. "You should take Starbuck down to the east coast with you."
Having already dropped his grumpy demeanor, McCoy just slowly reacted with a chuckle, stopping to lean into the table next to Kara. "Yeah?"
"Why not?" Kara shrugged, realized, "I could meet your daughter."
"You want to meet Joanna," he said dubiously. "I thought you didn't like kids."
"She's not exactly a little girl anymore," Jim put in. "What is she now, ten?"
Bones looked in playful protest at Jim. "Eleven. But she's still my little girl."
"I never said I don't like kids," Kara interjected, almost shyly. In response to his confusion she reminded, "I said I'm not good with them."
"...Okay, yeah, that is what you said." McCoy gave a tilt of his head. "I guess you're kinda like me, then."
"Don't say that. Gods, you're such a mope." Kara absently reached a hand to give his forearm a worrying shake as she got back to studying her PADD. The couple seconds of scrutiny gave away that that surprised Bones before he got back to his work. In another moment, Kara realized Jim was still around and put down her reading again. "We need to talk, don't we?"
"Yes," Jim replied in an unsure tone. "See, we keep having these conversations where I feel like it would be pushy to actually ask you if you want to stay here or not, but...I kind of need to know now."
"What do you think?" Kara demanded, considering.
It wasn't exactly a rhetorical question. When she thought about it the most clearly she wasn't completely sure whether she wanted to go to Earth or just see it. There was this elusive supposed-to she couldn't define about it, and she didn't know why she cared sometimes, because there were big pretty planets right and left out here, but this one still had a name she'd been running after for years.
"Okay," she sighed. "Suppose I actually go to Earth, what the hell would I actually do...?"
Jim shrugged. "Well, we have some great integration programs, mostly for refugees from other planets and things like that...Being unfamiliar with the culture hardly means that you couldn't get an education for whatever you want."
Kara was examining one of her fingernails for a second. "Then there's the other question. What the hell can I even do here. It's not like this candy striper business is really my thing, and..." She lowered her voice. "We both know he's only giving me things to do cause he feels sorry for me."
"I wouldn't put it that way..."
Kirk seemed to be stepping around something she'd just said, and Kara was narrowing her eyes at him when they were interrupted by a voice pitching up from his personal comm.
"Captain?..."
Kirk only had to hear Spock's voice; he blinked, flinched, sighed. "Ah, shit. Sorry, I'll be right there." As he got up he lingered and said, "Tactical meet-up."
She asked without really thinking, "Can I come?"
He narrowed his brows. "Uh..."
"I just wanna watch," she said with a shrug.
She took a chair at the end of the long table in the ready room, studying her PADD while sort of half-listening through a good half hour of Kirk and Spock chewing through several possibilities, finally understanding after a point what kind of mission they were talking about. She curiously leaned forward from her chair to reach for a report that was sitting on Kirk's personal PADD, trying to figure out the meaning of all the graphs they were sketching onto the table's built-in monitors. He had long put it aside and didn't seem to mind; at one point, she and Spock seemed equally surprised when a long bout of thoughtful silence led into Kirk turning to Kara and asking, "What do you think of this?"
She had an immediate question in reply. "How do you know this ship even exists?"
Kirk looked a little impressed, gave a nod as if to say 'Go on.'
"No information about the structural damage or the fuel supply. After an attack they're describing, you'd think they'd need it bad, but there's no information about bargaining because maybe they just want to lead you astray."
"A trap," Kirk said.
"Could be an ambush from those aggressors you never identified several days ago. Could be Klingon trouble. Your plan would be better if you could send somebody on a recon..." Kara crossed her arms, glaring at him suspiciously. She knew what this was, that she was in no place to actually give suggestions. "Do I get an 'A'? Of course you guys have already gone over all this, right? Evaluated the probable risks?"
She couldn't see Spock over her shoulder, but she knew what look he and Kirk were exchanging as Jim shifted into looking a bit uncomfortable. "Look, I think you're right. Having that bird might be an asset later on, but...I can't really let you be a part of any mission yet."
Kara looked for a second like she wanted to demand more of an explanation, but didn't, and the matter was almost dropped before Spock finally spoke up.
"Captain."
"Spock," Jim interrupted, as if the first officer had actually gotten an entire densely worded argument across simply by addressing him. "I don't wanna have this conversation right now."
"You will never want to have this conversation."
"What?" Kara looked back and forth between the two, landing with personal weight on Kirk. "What haven't you been telling me?" she asked impatiently.
The captain sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead into his hand, putting on his best professional indifference and then launching right in.
"It has been...evaluated by Spock...that you are not currently psychologically fit for duty on this ship. At least not in any position you'd want."
There was a gaping, stagnated moment before Kara's mouth was widening in angry awe; she looked straight at Spock, slowly cutting out, "You son of a bitch—"
"He hasn't told me why he thinks this," Jim interrupted his assurance with a brief look of intense frustration, like that was a topic he just couldn't touch without dying of curiosity and had to stay far away from. Kara turned a straight look on Spock, which the Vulcan did not have a hard time interpreting.
"I have kept the specifics of what you told me from the captain," he explained.
Kara was already rolling her eyes as if to sarcastically say 'Oh, thanks.'
"Which did make it harder to explain my evaluation that you are coping with far too much psychological stress..."
She slowly leaned forward, resting her arms on the table, her expression a bit prodding at Spock. In a threateningly low murmer, she retorted, "Yeah, and you wouldn't know a damn thing about coping mechanisms."
"Heeey," Kirk immediately warned, "that's uncalled for. Spock's opinion isn't the only factor. I have my own scruples about you, and please don't ask me to explain them like you don't even know..."
She just looked at him, demanding.
He sighed, his voice sharply matter-of-fact as he explained, "You have an extreme level of distrust of other species. You drink too much. You sleep too little. I would be floored if you were not experiencing some level of post-traumatic stress. Have I touched on anything that you aren't aware of yet? I know it's been hard for you, I know it's not fucking fair, but I don't know...if you need some kind of help or just need a lot of time, or—"
"Alright, whatever," Kara stood up. "I've heard enough."
"We're not done, Kara," Kirk said after her. She didn't stop, and he snapped, "Starbuck."
She slowed, her back still turned to him as she stopped near the door.
"Turn around," he barked, in a tone he had never used with her before, a commanding one. She slowly complied, and he glared at her until she stood up straight and actually looked him in the eyes. "There is no way in hell I'm gonna let you put on the uniform when you're still acting like a trigger-happy paranoiac. But understand me, okay. I want you. I want you on this ship. And if you want it, you're as good as under my command. And for starters, don't walk away from me while I'm talking to you."
With that self-restraining tilt of her head, it was a half bitter, half real "Yes. Sir."
Kirk just looked at her, for what seemed like a long time. In a quieter but still authoritative demand, he asked, "Do you want this?"
"I..." She licked at her lip, her composure wobbling, overwhelmed. She admitted, "I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"I mean that I don't know if I belong here," she returned quickly, flatly.
Kirk looked at Spock, who was probably raising his eyebrow, but she couldn't see. Then he cleared his throat. "I...don't know what to say to that."
She knew that was the best he could do when, for him, things didn't just stack and fit into other things; he tended to rearrange them so that they'd go how he wanted. He wanted to know what she wanted, not just what she thought she should do, and it had been way too long since she'd been able to think about things that way.
She sighed. Somewhat exhausting the protocol charade, she quietly asked, "Permission to leave?"
He hesitated, but he seemed tired. "Yeah. Go."
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A smoke ring, round and white, puffed up from Kara's lips where her face was perched back almost facing the ceiling; a pale arc of neck retracted when she looked back down at her feet that were reclined up at the front edge of the open cockpit. She lazily relaxed back against the seat with a bottle of something bitter leaning against one knee.
Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard the door to the pod bay open. She waited until she heard footsteps approaching right up on her side to turn and see McCoy standing at the bottom of her ladder. She put out the cigar on her boot, did little to acknowledge him as he took a couple steps up and rested his arms on the side of the bird, giving her one of his gentler scowls.
"Computer told you where I was, I'm guessing," Kara mumbled. "Doesn't anybody get any frakking privacy around here?"
"Well, since you asked...There are overrides for things like that..."
"Yeah, but only if you're a member of the crew," she said with a detached bitterness.
"...So that's where my bourbon got to," McCoy mumbled. "I was gonna use that to make a pie, you know."
"Uh-huh," she returned dryly. Almost genuinely apologetic, she eventually added, "I know, I'm a pain in the ass...Maybe you won't even have to deal with it much longer."
He shook his head in a kind of, Oh, here we go. "What do you think you're talking about?"
"I'm taking off for Earth. I don't care if I have to go in this thing or hitch onto some other ship...I'm not any use here, so..." She shrugged sourly.
After a second, Bones just let out a low, jeering laugh. "Oh, girl, Christ. Cry me a river while you're at it."
Kara finally turned her constant glance on him with a sudden flare of extreme annoyance.
"You have no idea how much Jim would love to give you something to do around here. But look, he tells you your behavior's unnaceptable for Starfleet and instead of, I don't know, doing something about it, you just hit the sauce and sulk, and I'm assuming later it'll be finding the only person on this ship you haven't frakked yet..."
The sudden bite to his remarks made Kara start rising up, holding the bottle of alcohol by the neck as if she wanted to quickly make off with it. As she started invasively placing her feet on the steps in front of him, she reminded, "I haven't fucked you yet," with a smirk on her face.
"...No." Instead of getting even slightly uncomfortable, McCoy had a look like she'd fallen right into making it too easy. "D'you know why that is?"
Her cynical laugh made her unable to even respond as she tried to make her way farther down the ladder, indifferent to the proximity to his unmoving body. She finally managed, "I suppose this is where you enlighten me, doctor."
"Because you might actually care about me," Bones enunciated. Kara then only pondered the dilemma of being trapped between McCoy's arms rested on the stepladder instead of looking at him, and though she didn't visibly react she actually didn't say anything, so he quickly added, "Lately you're running low on things that you can afford to screw up or even things to get right, and everyone can tell that it's seriously freaking you out."
"You're a doctor," she interrupted, "not a psychiatrist. Would you move—"
"Come on, Kara," he said, more pleading now, more personal. "I'm not just talking about one thing here. Even I can see it's not healthy, the way you drink like a fish and—hell, you make Jim look like a nun. And I think we both know that whatever all that used to do for you, it ain't working now—"
"What the hell does it matter?" she snapped, pushing at his shoulders more insistently; with a sigh he moved and got down a step, and she made past him and down with the bottle still hanging from her right hand. He was frowning, troubled, lingering at the bottom of the ladder when she gave the last inch at the bottom of the bottle an irritated look and then just threw the thing into the receptacle where they had all the scrapped parts, angrily barking, "I don't know, what I am supposed to be doing. Okay, I spent years thinking, It doesn't matter how frakking bad I screw things up for myself, I'm gonna get these people to a home if it kills me, and that's gone, they died, so now what? Aside from the possibility of some sick almighty cosmic fluke, I don't know why the frak I ended up here—I should just be dead anyway..."
She made it only half a pacing step before he'd stomped up and she was jerked back by the wrist, McCoy demanding, "What?"
The very hint of her pulling back only spurred him to grab her closer, not tolerating her hesitance, repeating, "What?"
Her eyes became flat, grim. "What do you even know about me, doc. How do you know I didn't throw myself into that storm and—"
His hand grabbed her chin, a little hard, his voice rough with something buckling. "God help me, girl, if you ever say one fuckin thing like that to me again..."
But he couldn't even finish that before he cut himself off into a softer, seething aggravation. His other hand had clutched at her right arm at some point and a lot of things were occurring to her: The cold metal of that ring on his pinky she had her own story about, how he'd taken it off a more meaningful finger but couldn't quite make himself get rid of it, and the similar conscious burn of her own past emblazoned on her other arm, the memorized weight of what hung from her dog tag chain tucked away under her shirt; how every time she missed any of them all she could think about was what she'd done, the particular ways in which she'd scalded all the nice guys to the point that she didn't think she even deserved the longing now. It struck her—a strange thought about someone who always looked at her like she was stepping on his foot, was glaring at and gripping her so almost harshly now and just seemed so stung all the time—that somehow, he might be the nicest. And now his eyes were daring to blatantly contemplate, moving to her lips, his head unconsciously, maybe more than unconsciously, moving; something in her stomach collapsed in all directions and she somehow realized through it that this was about to happen because she wasn't doing anything to stop it.
She found it, quickly, the only place in herself that knew to do what she did, if she only managed the protest in a weak whisper just as his mouth came closer to hers.
"Don't."
His eyes just slowly dissolved into a tired expression with something else that was hard for her to witness as he backed himself out of her space. His actions said, 'Fine, okay,' but she didn't think he could be restrained from feeling like the only man she'd ever said no to. He really kind of was, but he'd never pick up on what that meant.
He nearly had his back to her as they were both standing there brewing with thoughts; Kara finally muttered, "Don't be pissed at me."
"Kara...I am not pissed at you," he slowly protested. Something pestered at him and he seemed to think, fuck it, and he walked right back into her space just to say it. "Whatever you did? Whatever's been done to you." He shook his head slowly. "I don't care. And as for your gods or whatever it is, I think it's time you got to thinking maybe there's nothing to all of this but a chance to start over. You got little else but to see it that way, you just don't think you deserve it as simple as that."
Her manners responded with simple exasperation, twinging away, and he just sighed and leaned in close to talk very low, his breath on her hair.
"Just. Calm. Down." He looked her in the face again, shook his head and said, "I'll see you tomorrow morning."
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It was somewhere far past late when she came around to Jim's cabin. She was clutching at her arms looking weirdly small when he answered. He was shirtless, pajama panted, resting against a fist to the threshold. When she volunteered no explanation or excuse like "Ensign Lackerbey snores," he just gave her a tense look mingled with a hint of guilt. Without saying anything he let her come in.
He took his shoes off and got into bed with his uniform still on, looking exhausted and giving off the impression that he'd been too distracted by something to try to sleep before. He handed her a good amount of the blanket for her to situate herself under, and they shifted down, facing each other with almost a foot of space between them. Kara blinked, her mind twitching in a memory of sharing beds with boys back as a teenager: Husky laughs and pillow fights that would feather her mother's coarse words into a distant dust after her sneaking out after dark, trying to pretend it wasn't about that when she came throwing empty cans at their bedroom windows; the memory left just as fast with Jim's brows lowering through the faintest light of the room.
"Sorry about today," he finally offered.
She just shook her head. She didn't want to talk to the captain right now. She'd actually kind of forgotten they had a fight when she showed up at his room because that had just been his job talking. Even though the line between him and that was hard to pinpoint, it was there. This side of him she'd never quite seen before but somehow suspected existed, this Jim who could actually stand to say nothing, had a lot to do with it.
She thought about apologizing, saying something about how it was a bad idea not to be more professional with him if she eventually wanted him to officially be her superior officer, and also explain through her unsteady clarity that he was one of the loose handful of people in the universe she knew much of anything about and treating him like that just wasn't going to happen any time soon.
But when she looked, he'd rolled farther into the bed and had his eyes closed, so she just turned over to hug a pillow under her and sank after him into sleep.