Kirk hadn't thrown out her toothbrush. This gave her some pause in the morning when she'd been about to borrow his and remembered the yellow one had been hers. She brushed vigorously with just water, having never figured out what contraption dispensed the toothpaste and simply being used to doing without all that time.
Her movements slowed as she was confronted with her reflection: When she tilted her body a certain way, her eyes shifted into a glare at the tattoo on her left arm.
She tried to even imagine stuttering it out, something like: I am widowed. Her mind dryly added, very widowed, curling away from the waiting sting of it. All the old friends, all those men and their names in monosyllables tapping through her pulse. Their dead and gone smells, the dust of them probably only so many inconsequential particles gravitated into white-hot stars somewhere...She hardly had the energy to keep the memories at bay these days.
She jumped as Jim came into the bathroom; she spit, rinsed, gave him a tired half-smile. They slouched into a comfortable silence, doing their thing in front of the mirror until Jim, talking around his toothbrush, mumbled, "Yew okay?"
She shrugged as she plucked at her molars. "I don't know," she managed to reply.
A minute later when Jim was about to shave, he sighed. "I'm just...wondering, cause you've definitely flossed your entire mouth like three times ever since I came in here..."
Her shoulders sank down, and she agitatedly stopped and threw the floss away, her breath quickening in a kind of growl.
"Hey, did Bones come talk to you last night?" Jim asked, suddenly curious. "He seemed worried after I told him why you never went back to med bay."
"Yeah," she said bluntly. She ran the water again and leaned over, slowly clapped some water over her face. She dried off with a little white towel, rubbing hard at her eyes, then tossed it down. She said, "He tried to kiss me."
There was that morning's lagging half-second before Jim reacted, and then his eyes were widening, one eyebrow cocking, like he was extremely impressed. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," she said, nearly accusingly.
"What do you want me to do about it?"
She scoffed. "Nothing, I guess. It's not like you'd talk to him..."
"Oh, I will most definitely be talking to him about it," Jim said in a slight chuckle. There was a long pause before he jumped at a sudden bang and looked directly at Kara for the first time in a few minutes; she'd launched an angry kick at the cupboard and was throwing tense hands up, clawing at nothing.
"For frak sakes, I just can't deal with this bullshit right now." Her voice was wound tight as she muttered, starting to make her way out of the bathroom; she was stopped by Kirk's light grasp on her arms, his casually soothing words.
"Hey, hey, hey—hold on. Babe? Take it easy." He kind of cautiously leaned her back against the sink, rubbing at her arms a little when his hands decided she wasn't something about to explode. "Take it easy. Jesus, just...you know. Fucking breathe for a second."
After a second of grudgingly letting a couple breaths in and out, Kara looked up, lightly narrowed her glance at Jim. His eyes looked far and away for a moment before he let out a scoff.
"What's funny?"
"I don't know if you'd find it funny, but I just randomly got reminded of it." He paused to collect the memory a little. "Sometimes I remember when we were on this planet, in the Tantalus system, when I was maybe half a year into captaincy, and um...Let's just say something really pissed me off, so badly I actually couldn't think straight, and it really wasn't a good time to lose my head. And I'm just very unprofessionally freaking out, and you know, of course I'm trying to take deep breaths and everything; and then Spock just takes a few steps over to me, all smooth and calm, of course..."
Kara gave a sardonic look to agree with the 'of course.'
Jim paused, burying his smile to compose a good enough impression of a slightly irritant, drawn-out monotone: "And he just says...'Through the nose, Captain'."
Kara broke out into a kind of slow giggle like she wasn't sure if she found it funny or just strange. Jim was grinning wide, and she knew he always found it funnier in retrospect than anyone else did, but that made it more amusing somehow.
"I mean, he was unkindly telling me to pull my ass together, but he was also watching out for me in his own way. I think one of the reasons I remember that is because it was when I realized he was finally starting to act like he was really my friend."
She said, "It's hard for me to imagine you freaking out that bad, honestly."
"Uh..." Jim's look got a bit heavier. "Well, we'd just had a casualty. Just something really stupid that could've been avoided, and it was the first crew member we'd lost under my command, so I was pretty wound up. I guess I was still in that place where even though you know it eventually happens, you kinda think, not to me, not here. Not under my watch."
Kara, considering all the long-gone echoes in how he described it, leaned back and rested on her hands behind her, considering him for a moment. "You've changed," she accused thoughtfully.
He looked a little baffled. "Wuh..."
"No, I don't mean since I met you," she interrupted, knowing he'd get it.
"Oh. Well, it happens," he replied, half shrugging it off.
She smiled. "People keep saying I'm so much like you. I'm starting to wonder if they actually mean it as a compliment."
"They fucking better," Jim cut back. Kara started to snicker.
"And there's this story about the day you got command that you keep stepping around actually telling me..." She shook her head. "I'm onto you, Kirk," she teased as she nudged off the counter top.
Jim squinted at her, somehow sheepish and defiant at once. "Is that so?"
"Yeah."
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It hadn't been enough sleep, of course, and around 2200 Kara was a sleeping mess over a PADD book on protocol, half-awakened by the rude motion of the chair being pulled out under her, a familiar voice insisting, "Alright, come on, let's go..."
"Mruh," she mumbled in exhausted protest, and with lids mostly shut, her expression creased more as McCoy started scooping her out of the chair before her body had the chance to flop down away from the table. Offended, she grumbled, "Nuh-uh. C'mon, no, don't carry me..."
He just chuckled at her drowsy protests, quickly hitching her up with a surprising ease. She glared and let out another protesting groan, but pulled up her loosely hanging arm and set her head into his shoulder, too exhausted to really resist.
"Haven't been frakking carried to bed since I was—"
"Oh, shut up," he cut off in a gently authoritative tone he sometimes used with Kirk. "Sick of you falling asleep all over the place. I know you won't thank me, but your back might."
Without seeing it she felt that they were turning into his office, and in a moment her body was being lowered quickly but gently onto the long futon across from his desk. He'd already moved a pillow there and her head rocked limply into it before she reached up a lazy hand to brush some of her hair out of her face. Her breath hitched slightly, and then she winced, rubbing her palm against her forehead.
"What?"
"I got a migraine. Anything you can give me?"
"Must be pretty bad for you to ask," he remarked, giving a single hard pat to her leg before he went to get her something.
When he came back and put a capsule into her hand, she narrowed her brows at it. "This is a pill," she observed.
"What, you think we vaccinate for headaches?"
She shrugged, swallowed it.
He handed her a cold pack. "Mess with that till it kicks in."
She lay with her eyes closed holding it against her head. It took her a moment to even think about the fact that he hadn't gone away, was just sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, waiting for her to give it back. They'd been far from giving each other the silent treatment that day, but it was the first time they'd been anything like alone since the pod bay. Her being only half-awake made it easier for both of them. When McCoy finally mumbled something, it seemed like he'd wanted to say it all day but hadn't wanted to have to corner her, make her feel like she had to say something back.
"I'm sorry if I was out of line last night," he said, like he was talking to himself.
Her silence was a particular lack of response that seemed gradually accepting. It must have been a couple minutes that went by, before the question rasped out of her mouth.
"Did you love your wife?"
He reacted as if it was a perfectly sensible question; he turned his head far enough for her to see his face, and the incredulous look all over it wasn't in response to the fact that she'd asked. "Are you kidding?...Terribly."
She didn't ask anything further. But after considering for a moment, he meandered into the next thought and just quietly spoke his mind.
"I think people always want to ask, but they don't, whose fault it was, or who left who..." He shook his head. "The story, officially, is that she took a year or so of her sweet time very slowly leaving me. But by the end of it neither of us were clean. I said some fuckin awful things to her, I don't even think I felt like myself for a long time after saying those things. And then she files for the divorce, and people came around to console me, and I just couldn't do it. I went it alone, I started cutting people off, just missing the hell out of her...When you start to think you don't even deserve to miss someone, when that's all you've got left of it, that's the part that's really fucked up."
He heard her legs shifting behind him, and when he looked over she seemed to have pulled herself in tighter; she was lying more on her side now, her hands gripping at her forearms like she was a little cold, the head pack just sitting next to her now. Instead of making much of an effort to look like she was fine, she just flatly said, "I think I'm getting pretty frakked up, doc."
"...Look." McCoy shifted over slightly, resting his right arm up on the couch. "I'm not looking to replace anything or anybody for you, it doesn't work like that. I just keep thinking that all of this is really gonna hit you one of these days, everything you've lost. It's not easy to hear it, but I don't think you're out of the woods. And I'm not just talking on behalf of myself trying to make you realize you don't have to be alone when all that happens."
Her shoulders and her frowning gaze slowly moved to face the ceiling; after a second he got up and came back with a blanket. The air whisped cool under it before it fell along her body, and her lids were resistant, pulling shut. She was just barely clinging onto consciousness and she heard his voice creep through the sleepy dust; she'd probably never heard him say anything so quietly before, but she heard it, a slipping mumble of something that only half made sense, was only half said:
"...'Night, bird."
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Kara had slept for five or six hours when she was awoken by a swift presence in the room; Nyota Uhura was walking by and gasped just as she stirred slightly.
"I...didn't think anyone was in here," she quickly said, her tone only giving away a note of confusion at finding Kara sleeping in here.
Kara blinked, looking around as she detected a vague sense of emergency about Uhura. "What's up?"
"I was just checking in on the way to the ready room to see if McCoy showed up here, nobody knows where he is." In response to Kara's confusion she added, "You hadn't noticed the comms are completely blown?"
"The disruption got worse? Why...Why do they need him, what's..." Kara shifted herself up to sitting as Uhura took in a breath, halting in a few steps she'd taken to quickly leave as if she wasn't sure if she should take the time to explain. She interrupted, "Never mind if it's a long story. If you need to get back there, I could look for him. I have no idea where he could be, but I'll look..."
"Thanks." Uhura briskly turned and left while Kara worked herself up on her feet.
It had taken several weeks of being on the ship for Kara to feel very comfortable using the communications system, but she was more than able to grasp now how much of a pain it would be to not have them at all. She honestly thought the best way to find McCoy would be to just wait till he got back to medical, but realized maybe Uhura left him a note of some kind, so she pulled on her hooded sweater and started meandering through the halls to check the limited number of locations where she thought he might be out of the same bored sense of duty she took to the tedium of her volunteer work.
After no success, she was ready to give up and head back to medical bay when she ran right into the CMO as he was exiting the observation deck. She cocked her eyebrow in surprise that he would even be in there, but it seemed like he might have just popped in for a moment; upon seeing her, he put his arms out in a gesture of sharing puzzlement.
"We've stopped," he remarked as if asking if she'd heard anything about it.
"They need you in the ready room." She took stride along next to him. "We've stopped completely? I wonder if the subspace disruptions mean we can't risk warp speed."
He cast her a moderately bewildered glance and she was glad he didn't make some comment about how she must've been reading more about whatever the fuck. "I got no idea. This whole thing, losing the comm systems, it's weird."
"Makes you wonder what's gonna go next," Kara muttered.
"Ah, Jesus, don't say that." McCoy swiftly turned to enter as soon as they got to the ready room. Kara started continuing down the hallway. "Where do you think you're going?" he demanded.
"I..." Kara didn't quite manage an awkward protest before she stopped, crossed her arms and followed him into the room.
Inside, she hardly felt self-conscious, too taken aback by the unusual amount of officers and noise level in the room. There were some fifteen people, all restlessly standing rather than sitting at the table and delving into muttered hearsay while Kirk and Spock were intently trading their own asides at the end of the table closer to the door, their backs bent over something on the main computer screen. As she passed by where McCoy was joining the two of them she heard some static from Kirk: "If they had some way of calming the tetryon movements in the subspace, that would've fuzzed a big hole in communications that we noticed before but didn't hit our own comms until we got into the middle of it..."
Kara simply gave a subdued grimace at Scotty as she took a place leaning against the wall close behind him. A minute later Kirk was trying to talk to Uhura and paused, reached up and gave a cutting-off gesture that made everyone go quiet.
Uhura was explaining, "The message was encoded on a radio signal radiating from the neutron star we passed earlier—"
"How did you...I mean—"
Uhura shrugged. "The system picks up any abnormal sound patterns. Normally I would dismiss it, but I kind of had a hunch, that if somebody was unable to communicate because of the disruptions..."
One of the ensigns expressed some general confusion, so Kirk briskly and loudly explained, "We've received what seems to be an automated distress call from an unknown vessel embedded in a radio signal. The coordinates attached are close enough to where we were about eight hours ago for us to assume they're no longer there. Which leads us to believe we may be dealing with a hostage situation, especially in the case that someone out there is intentionally causing this disruption so that they're hidden in an undetectable bubble."
Kara was already working it out in her head and could figure why Kirk looked extremely irritated by the situation; normally if they didn't have any certainty of what they were up against, they'd contact some other Starfleet vessel, call in help, but they'd have to veer too far off from any definite idea of where to find this ship while giving the captors even more space to get away.
Sulu pitched up, "Wouldn't their own systems be affected by it too?"
"It is doubtful, for one thing, that they are able to use warp speed," Spock granted. "But given that we do not know what kind of device would create the subspace distortion, it seems that in the case it was used to enable illegal activity it may create a small field around its own ship that would make their systems immune to the communication disruption and would essentially cloak them from being detected anywhere from within the disruptive field."
"The trick is finding where that damn barrier begins," Kirk muttered. "We'll be lucky enough if we can find them just on visual."
Uhura shook her head with a sigh. "It seems like the message should've had more information...The audio goes on for hours and hours, but it's just this tapping static, like the message was damaged. Otherwise, we might be able to identify language and species..."
Gaila hopped up from where she was leaning against the table close to Scotty. "Wait...Let me listen."
She moved around the table and squeezed in-between Kirk and Uhura to put on the one earpiece that would work without the wireless system; after a moment her eyes widened excitedly, and she nudged Kirk by the waist to get her hands moving with their own nimble eagerness over the computer screen, punching in numbers and commands in the non-verbal habit of many of the programmers.
Kirk gave her a narrow look. "Gaila?"
"It might be a form of Orion messaging technology they don't really use any more...The noise is basically a morse-coded binary set—Sometimes it can be used to transmit images, if I can just remember the formula..." She paused. "Give me a minute."
The room had escalated into murmers again. Kara took the moment to lean in and tap Scotty on the shoulder. As they exchanged some whispers, Kirk noticed and cast the briefest slightly wary glance in their direction.
"Yes!" Gaila finally hissed, proudly made some last jotting configurations with the stylus pen and bopped an image up onto the 3-D projection. A rough black-and-white chart came up, and Kirk was giving Gaila some mutter of approval as he studied the version she had on her screen.
"It's a schematic of their ship?" somebody said.
"Looks pretty rough."
Gaila was squinting at the diagram with a vaguely less than pleased expression. "It's just a default code that gets sent along with any message, but it gives us an idea how many passengers and what kind of group we're dealing with."
"But you'd confirm this is definitely an Orion vessel?" Kirk checked. Gaila nodded, and he was scrutinizing her. "What can you tell us?"
"This class was discontinued from combative use a long time ago...What's left of them were generally pawned off for all kinds of independent use. Most of these are inhabited by people whose living calls for constant traveling. There are probably about three hundred people living on this ship, possibly without much of an organized leadership system..." She shrugged, then after watching Kirk study his notes with a lot of wheels turning, offered more shyly, "Captain, I know you might not take this into consideration, but I don't think we can assume that these are just innocent traders. We could be dealing with any kind of black market dealers, even if it's not full-on organized crime...There could be some shady people on board. If you're serious about taking a big risk to help them, I just hope you'll keep in mind that they may not be the kind of people who would do the same for us."
Kirk looked up at her after a moment of hesitation, muttered a distracted, "Thank you, Gaila," his manners still looking indecisive.
As the chattering picked up again, Kara just said, "Gangs on gangs?" The ensign to her left shrugged. She nudged closer into the table, leaned in. "Hey. Gaila."
The Orion stepped around Kirk and Spock to the corner closer to Kara.
"You said they could be slave traders...Do you think if that's the case, the ship might be filled over capacity?"
Kirk had heard; he looked back at Gaila, who nodded and told him, "That's a good point."
Kara had her lips pressed together, her eyes fixed on Kirk until he met them. "So what's the plan, sir?"
"Don't know yet," Kirk said bluntly. In another minute he still sensed her eyes on him, looked up to see her waiting with her arms crossed. The conversing bustled on around them as he slowly leaned forward to rest against the table on his hands, returning the look. "Thrace, if you've got something to say, we better get it over with."
The room quieted a little. Kara cleared her throat.
"You have a broad range of coordinates where you think this ship might be?"
"Chekov is getting on a very good guess," Kirk replied.
She leaned forward, echoing his bent posture. "We have a vessel that is not only considerably ideal for navigating without subspace technologies, but we have one that is possibly, maybe small enough to go undetected or at least be mistaken for a spacial distortion, given that their sensors are even working better than yours."
Kirk made a motion of self-containment, reaching up to rub one of his eyes. "And you're suggesting?"
Annoyed at his demand for clarification when he had to know exactly where she was going with this, she said, "Let me take the Firebird and get a head-start. I do a reconnaissance check to see what's really out there and if we're outnumbered, I might get lucky and be able to start taking out their systems before they realize what's going on. When they do, I kick back into gear and run for cover in the soup. I intercept Enterprise on the way and report on their location, or I don't. Either way, if you're going to do this, it couldn't hurt."
One second passed, and Kirk let out a laugh like she was just wasting his time. "And what makes you think I'd let you do that? Do you not remember what happened when you tried to take on one ship single-handedly? We have no idea how many vessels are even on these guys."
"I have a faster bird now. And I'm still a damn good pilot."
"Look, I've let by some crazy stuff, but this is seriously, seriously pushing your luck. I mean, the chances of even—Spock, what are her chances of survival?"
The first officer announced, "The circumstances being uncertain, it is difficult to define a precise probability, but I would determine roughly a forty-five percent chance of Thrace's survival." Then he interrupted Kirk. "I would add, however, that if she is willing to take such a risk, it is worth considering how much would be gained in terms of protecting lives. I do think our entire crew is at a considerable risk if we attempt to enter into this conflict without any aid she can offer to weaken our opponents in advance."
Kirk paused, turning it over, but only for a brief moment. He shook his head. "No. I don't like it."
She seethed out a breath. "Look, you know this is the best plan we'll come up with. Just because I'm not qualified to—"
"That's not the beginning of it, Kara," Jim snapped. "You need to get it through your head that we don't do that. We don't just send people to die. We come up with something else."
"To hell with that, okay, 'something else' is gonna be wading back to contact Starfleet— By the time we make it back to this region it could be too late to even find them again. You might be able to accept that we tried, but I'm willing to take the risk—"
"Oh, no." Kirk shook his head tightly, severely. His voice was considerably raised as he suddenly barked, "I will throw you off this ship and on your ass if you are even trying to imply that I take this kind of thing lightly—"
"Dammit, both of you fucking can it!" McCoy roared. "Jim—"
The captain hoisted himself into some composure enough to give McCoy some lazy pacifying motion. "Bones, yeah, I know what you—"
"I don't think you do," the doctor interrupted. In response to Kirk giving him some full attention, he flatly insisted, "You're gonna let her do it."
"—We..." Kirk's voice fell flat.
The entire room was looking with varying reactions of shock at McCoy, all except Kara, who looked away, bristled her shoulders and took the moment to unzip her sweater and start shrugging it off like she was content to start getting ready to go while they had it out.
Kirk was turning a look at Spock, as if the science officer might change his mind in order to disagree with Bones just so that there would be some order in the universe after all, but only saw an eyebrow cocked in quiet surprise. The captain looked back at his CMO and finally managed to stutter out, "You...?"
"Don't even try to tell me you wouldn't try to do something this stupid," Bones cut off.
"Yeah," Kirk nodded. "That's exactly why you're supposed to be freaking out about how completely insane it is, what the fuck do you—"
"Hey," Kara interrupted with a tone of something shifted, putting her hands up. "You know what, I'm done waiting around for you to debate this. I'm taking the bird, I'm doing this. If you don't want me back here afterwards I'll just have to deal with it and find something else."
Kirk's face was knocked into helpless shock; nobody had a chance to get out anything before she turned to leave, shouting, "Who can get me suited up?"
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Suddenly it seemed like everyone on the ship had something they were supposed to be doing; several officers were hauling out and checking and double checking the mechanics on the Firebird before they buckled it in for take-off, and somehow in spite of the disabled comms some ensign Kara had never met knew to help her step into a space jumper, fastening the weird 'X' over her chest and nipping out instructions on the emergency settings in case of ejection, as if she wasn't completely frakked if she ended up having to jump ship.
"Now, on the off-chance that you'll be able tuh use the warp speed, you'll probably need to, so I'm not gonna bother reminding you that we haven't even tested it yet. You'll just havta trust our girl. Jus' don't stress on your thrusters as soon as you punch it in, it'll feel pretty weird, but just..." Scotty trailed off as Kara nodded in response to the tenth cautionary instruction he'd given her, mentally trying to jot it all down along with the tips she was getting right and left from people bustling in and out of the closed landing bay. She could barely give anything her full attention as McCoy immersed from the crowd, only realizing his proximity as he reached to move her hair off her neck.
"What is it?" she demanded, already anticipating the prick of the vaccination.
"Just a stimulant. You haven't slept enough."
"Will it—"
"No."
Something about him right then was by its own definition uncomfortable and clumsy: He wasn't himself, sending her off like this, it was all the wrong size on him, it made the briefest touch of his fingers against her neck a little unsteady, too careful. She may have opened her mouth to say something but got snagged on the hesitance to call him anything like "Doctor," and he was putting her hair back in place as if it hadn't already looked like hell when Kirk was coming up by her and pulling her to attention by the arm. When she just barely glanced back, McCoy had already disappeared behind the crowd.
Jim was going over the projected coordinates that one of the technicians was currently installing into her avionics, and she didn't interrupt when he went over stuff she'd already been told; his tone was carefully professional, avoidant of the circumstances as he rambled off the fastest, but he was good at explaining things, she realized. She tried not to register the punch to her gut, a place in her pulled off of its balance just a second ago, that she might not be coming back to learn anything else about him, about anybody; she nodded tersely as they reached the Firebird and the last programmer was crawling out of it and signaling to her that he was done.
"Remember, as soon as you find it, if you need to assess the situation, take cover under the Orion vessel; your best bet is that the enemy sensors will make you blend right into their ship if they don't immediately pick you up. Whatever you do, don't go blasting their ships to hell without knowing what you're shooting. We can't have you blowing up their life support systems—"
"Yeah, Jim, I know." Kara sighed, recited, "Don't act until I have a relatively good chance of disarming them or giving you guys an in. First priority is weakening their energy output so that the disruptions might pan out."
"And we are just eyeballing right behind you at about the same speed, if it comes down to waiting, the leeway's only about ten minutes."
Kara was eagerly on her way up to situate herself in the cockpit; Kirk was after her, standing at the top of the ladder, his face betraying his collected demeanor and falling into his particular agitation that usually came in response to feeling profoundly and unquestionably out of control of a situation.
"You were just pulling my leg, right?" he said. "About not coming back?"
Kara rubbed at one of her eyes. "Jim, not to get existential on your ass, but I gotta tell you I'm really not sure where I'm supposed to be right now. Look, I obviously don't have time to think about this, I haven't even made it out alive yet..."
He responded with a mere glare of dismissal. She was considering something for a second, her shoulder slumping in a sigh, before she abruptly teethed her right glove off and dug under her collar to remove the chain around her neck. Jim watched as she slipped the silver band on her thumb, pulling the chain through to remove it, and then held out the single tag hanging from the bronze links.
She shook her head at herself. "I'll...let you figure out who should keep that if I don't come back."
The thing was in his hand somehow, and it was her clarity that practically horrified him. He gave some motion like he didn't want it, gave a frustrated breath and then just clutched at the edge of the cockpit. "Jesus—Kara, you're not really—"
"You've got one thing to say to me," she sternly interrupted, "and you know what it is."
He bit against some outburst again, gave a kind of irritated half-kick against the ladder. Then he collected himself enough to utter with rich emphasis, "Good hunting."
She saluted him. When he got to the bottom of the ladder and pulled it away, barking a couple orders around the deck, Kara was giving the thumbs-up and pulling the glass over her head.