McCoy had just watch Kirk pass out on the bed when he heard someone gasp.

"What the hell did you do?" Sophie-Anne hissed, motioning to the sleeping James Kirk. She'd appeared out of nowhere, carrying some sort of sensor from Engineering, and McCoy couldn't stop himself from swearing.

"Oh, c'mon. You know if I didn't help him he would just have found some more dangerous way to get on this ship," McCoy answered, a little more defensive than he realized. He'd done the right thing getting Kirk onto the shuttle... right?

The look Sophie-Anne gave him was half amusement and half horror. The medical bay continued to buzz around them, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him to a nearby alcove. "I'm not talking about getting him on the ship, I've seen his sad-ass puppy dog faces. I mean, why is he passed out? He looks like hell."

Pulling his arm back out of her grip they both fell back a little, and he pulled together what he hoped was an indignant expression. "It's just a harmless vaccine, he'll be fine..."

Sophie-Anne's lips pressed together. "You do know he's allergic to pretty much everything, right? Including, I'm sure, whatever creepy crawly vaccination you gave him..."

Of course the kid had never mentioned that, he always seemed hell bent on appearing invincible, but McCoy covered with a smile. "Of course I know that, I am a doctor." He tried to take a quick peek at his PADD, which only resulted in Sophie-Anne breaking out in an infuriating smile. Sure enough, when he pulled up Kirk's medical records the list of allergies ran off the page. McCoy sighed. "Damn it..."

"Just try not to kill him, okay?" Sophie-Anne requested, and as she turned to leave McCoy stopped her.

"You're not going to run off and tell ear boy about this, are you?" He wasn't sure why he disliked the Vulcan so much. He'd made a point to tell Kirk he liked him, only because he knew how much it would piss him off, but when it came down to it he just didn't care for the guy. As far as he was concerned logic was good, but you couldn't ignore the other factors in life. Factors like the pretty girl in front of him, whose mouth had pulled into a frown.

"Ear boy?"

McCoy shrugged. "Your Vulcan friend with the Kirk sized chip on his shoulder."

"Spock's got better things to do than worry about one cadet who wasn't cleared for duty. And so have I, they sent me up here to check out some temperature anomalies in the power grid," she said, brushing past him and walking toward a console. Once she'd plugged in her sensor and typed in a few commands McCoy came up behind her. He had better things to do, too, but a question was wiggling around in his brain and refused to go away.

"You and Jim are awfully close for workout buddies," he commented, earning a snort of laughter from Sophie-Anne.

"Yeah well, you learn a lot about someone when you spend every day beating the crap out of them."

"So that's it? You guys just... spar?" McCoy tested the word, but it sounded strange in his mouth. "Did you ever tell him about us?"

Finally Sophie-Anne stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. She had a kind of funny, far off expression on her face, and it almost looked like she might kiss him. Instead she sighed, finishing her work with a few swipes of the keyboard. "I told him everything."

XXX

Starfleet, 2255

When his adviser had first suggested he spend a little time in the exercise center, James Kirk had been kind of offended. Popular opinion was that he had abs to die for, not to mention a winning smile, but he quickly realized the hand to hand training might give him an outlet for some of his more aggressive tendencies. After all, it was hard not to feel angry when you'd grown up like he did, mother always off planet and asshole stepfather monitoring his every move. That was why he was there that Saturday morning, watching a cute girl beating the hell out of a guy twice her size.

"Damn..." he whistled, coming up behind the crowd that had gathered. A cadet he remembered was named Olson nodded, motioning towards the fight.

"She's undefeated. Even some of the meatheads from Security couldn't take her, though most of the bigger guys were too chicken to try, spouting some nonsense about not wanting to hit a girl," Olson explained, showing Kirk a fairly nasty bruise on his torso. "She doesn't hit much, but when she does, you'll feel it."

The girl was putting on a pretty good show, long braid whipping as she landed a kick on the back of the guy she was fighting. He shot forward onto his stomach with a thud, and when he didn't get up the unofficial referee declared the fight over. "Any one else want to take a shot a Cadet Caldwell?" Most of the other cadets stepped back, more than one making a rude remark about "taking a shot" at her in the bedroom, and finally Kirk could feel himself pushing to the front of the group. He did love a challenge.

"I'll take a turn," he said, shrugging off his coat and stepping into the ring. Someone in the back made a mooing noise, no doubt taking a crack at his reputation as a farm boy (they never even owned a farm), but the girl simply smiled and held out her hand.

"I'm Sophie-Anne Caldwell," she said, big green eyes boring into his.

"Kirk. Jim Kirk," he replied, taking her hand and flipping her over onto her back. It was a dirty trick, but it did start the room howling. She was only down for a moment, springing back onto her feet, and the smile she gave him proved there were no hard feelings.

"I think I'm going to enjoy kicking your ass," she told him, and promptly punched him in the nose. Oh, he liked this girl already...

XXX

She'd completely wrecked him the first day. It was impressive, but probably just dumb luck. To prove himself right he challenged her the next day, where he was beaten so soundly he was sore in places he didn't know existed. Not one to be defeated, the challenges continued for weeks, and each time he came a little closer to beating her... until one day she seemed distracted and he hit her harder than he intended, splitting her lip open. They stopped the match, and when she didn't return right away he went searching for her.

"I'd say we should continue, but when I really do beat you I don't want it to be because you're distracted by all the blood," he said, taking a seat on the bench by her side. She was still holding a towel to her face, but she managed a small smile.

"You know what I like about you, JT? You don't hold back. You don't cut me any slack just because I'm a girl, and I appreciate that," she said. Kirk ran a hand over his hair, feeling strangely embarrassed.

"I'll definitely never beat you if I hold back. How did you get to be so damn good, anyway?" he asked, handing her a fresh towel.

"Just lots of practice, I guess," she said, trying to downplay it.

Kirk wasn't having any of it, shaking his head. "Fi, some days my bruises have bruises. You must be practicing all the time, why?"

She seemed to think for a long time, giving him a searching look before sighing. "When I was a teenager I went through a bad breakup. There was a guy, and I thought... well, I thought he really loved me, but he cheated on me and got this girl pregnant. I went away to school after that, and in my desperate desire to forget about him I started going on these blind dates. One of those guys was older, a real creep, and when I refused to go on a second date he started just... showing up places. He was at every party, even though he didn't go to my school, and was waiting for me after every class. I went back to my dorm room one night and he had broken in. He was just sitting there, completely butt-ass naked, and I thought, this guy is going to chop me up into little pieces. The next day I went down to the local gym and signed up for every martial arts class they offered. I refuse to let some creepy guy make me feel unsafe, so I've been practicing like crazy ever since."

Kirk frowned, he was never big on the idea of harassment. He liked to think of his own attention to the female gender as sort of cheeky and endearing, but he'd definitely heard stories of girls being stalked by freaks. "This creepy guy, what happened to him?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. I left school to join Starfleet, made sure no one at school really knew where I'd went. I guess I figured if I was going to be safe from him anywhere, there wasn't any place better than deep space."

"Well, he's an idiot."

"Yeah, that was kind of the point of the story," Sophie-Anne agreed with a smile, but Kirk shook his head.

"No, I mean the guy that cheated on you. What a fool," Kirk said, standing up and wandering off to lift some weights. Sophie-Anne watched him go with a thoughtful expression. Yes, Leonard McCoy certainly was a fool.

XXX

A/N: So, as far as flashbacks go, you'll eventually get the whole picture on each of these back stories (Spock, Kirk, and McCoy), but not all at once. I think (THINK being the operative word) that I've got a pretty good plan for this thing. Anyway, onward and upward! :)