Hello all! Sorry for being so AWOL with this story - I do love it, and this chapter is extra long because it honestly took this long to get it just right. I hope you're all staying safe and sane during these difficult times we live in, and I'd love to know your thoughts on this chapter and the story overall so far. LLAP and again, stay safe! xx

Twenty Six

"Out of the way!" called out Victoria, pushing a gurney at full speed with Homer gasping to keep up. The man on the gurney moaned, and Victoria swore before swerving to avoid a confused ensign, making a beeline for the only turbo-lift on the Science Deck large enough to fit them all in.

"It's been ten minutes!" Homer wheezed, pushing the gurney with one hand and struggling with his PADD with the other. "Do you think –"

"Quiet!" snapped Victoria. The turbo-lift burst open when they were still a few feet away, and she mentally thanked whatever higher power there was that the Enterprise had, as far as starships went, a mind of her own. "Ten minutes is plenty of time."

"Dr. Woodville, I don't feel so good," croaked the officer on the gurney. Victoria sighed and punched in the number for sickbay, giving him a sympathetic look. On the other side, Homer doubled over, hands on his knees as he attempted to catch his breath. "D'you think I should –"

"Trust me, Jake, your best bet right now is Dr. McCoy. I'm out of my depth here," she sighed. "Who told you it was a good idea to touch that stuff anyway?"

"Commander Spock said we had to catalogue everything," persisted Jake. "How was I supposed to know that stuff would do this?"

"Just assume whatever I'm working on isn't meant for you to touch," said Victoria dryly. Homer's PADD beeped, signalling that five of their ten minutes were up. She winced and tapped her comm. "Woodville to sickbay."

"This is M'Benga."

"I'm coming in with Lieutenants Cortez and Homer," said Victoria. "One needs decontamination from exposure to specimen Alpha two three Delta point seven, and Homer just needs something to help him catch his breath. Cortez was contaminated about seven minutes ago and we're about a minute away."

"What the – never mind," M'Benga sighed. "Copy that, Woodville. Dr. McCoy is standing by to deal with Cortez, and Nurse Riley can give Homer something. M'Benga out."

"You know, I'm fine," added Homer, a little sullenly when the comm. disconnected. "Was that necessary?"

"Just some humour to cheer up Jake," said Victoria, winking at the man in question, who smiled weakly. The turbo-lift finally stopped, and she began to push the gurney, slower now, as the doors opened.

McCoy was waiting on the other side, and he took over from Homer, barking orders at the nurses behind him to get a bed ready and nodded tersely at Victoria by way of a greeting. "What happened?" he demanded, running a scanner over Cortez's body as they both pushed the gurney further into sickbay towards the beds.

Victoria quickly recounted what had occurred. "Spock told him to catalogue everything in the lab, the container didn't have a label and he got it all over his hands. I made him wash them but he was already feeling lightheaded by then and the specimen hasn't been analysed enough for me to have an antidote ready so I thought bringing him here was safest."

"You did the right thing. Come on, Cortez," McCoy, along with two nurses, shifted Cortez off the gurney and onto a bed while Victoria hovered behind them. "Nurse, start up the decontamination chamber. How long did you say it's been since he made contact with the specimen?" he threw over his shoulder at Victoria.

"Eight minutes, but I only started keeping count after he told me," supplied Victoria. "Homer was keeping time on his PADD though, if you need an exact reading."

"Nah, should be fine," McCoy was glancing at the readings on his scanner, but his body language indicated to Victoria that he wasn't worried. "We'll put you through a round of decontamination, get an antibiotic hypospray administered and have a look at those burns on your hands. Scans are comin' up normal, so you're gonna be fine, Cortez."

"Thanks, doc," said Cortez, still sounding a little breathless. "And thanks for bringing me here, Dr. Woodville. You're stronger than you look."

Victoria laughed. "Feel better, Jack," she said. One of the nurses helped him up and offered him a walker to get him to the decontamination chamber, and she waved as he was escorted away. McCoy was still standing by her, and she turned to face him. "Well, that's my job done. When can he get back to work?"

"Not 'till tomorrow," said McCoy. He ran a hand through his hair, giving her a look she wasn't sure she knew how to read. "Did he just say you pushed him all the way here in a gurney?"

Victoria grimaced. "Well, he didn't say that."

"Fine. Did I see you pushin' him here in a gurney?"

"We have a gurney on deck in case of emergencies, and I didn't know if he was going to die or not!" said Victoria defensively. "What's wrong with pushing him here? I'm tougher than I look."

"Oh, I don't doubt that," McCoy's lips twitched. "I was just wonderin' how the hell you managed to get him here so fast in those," he used his scanner to point to her feet, and Victoria followed his gaze, laughing when she realised what he meant. She hadn't worn her regulation boots that day, since she had been planning to sit at her desk for her entire shift, and was instead in a pair of black stiletto heels that added at least four inches to her height. She had gotten used to wearing them on the Yorktown base, where uniform rules were much more lax and she had spent most of her time in meetings instead of in labs anyway. More than once, her footwear choices had made better men drool – which had made it infinitely easier to get her way – or at least say something mildly inappropriate. McCoy, on the other hand, just looked faintly amused, and it made her roll her eyes.

"You're the first man I've met who hasn't complimented my legs when I wear these shoes, Leonard," she chided. "What's a girl got to do to get you to unleash some of that Southern charm?"

McCoy smirked and picked up a PADD, beginning to update Cortez's file. Victoria sat on the edge of the bed a few feet away from him, clearly indicating that she wasn't planning on abandoning their conversation. He gave her a look. "I ain't sayin' they don't work for you, darlin'. I'm just impressed you manage to stay upright in 'em."

"Oh, I can do a lot more than that," Victoria winked, and McCoy snorted before looking around pointedly, raising his eyebrows at her. Sickbay was full of people, as always, but no one was paying them any attention, and it had been too long since Victoria had been able to have a harmlessly flirtatious, conversation with Dr. McCoy. It was always amusing, because he was the only man who gave as good as he got, without ever taking it further. It was just… fun.

"I don't doubt that," the Southern drawl she had been trying to wheedle out of him was back, and Victoria tried to avoid giggling like a school-girl even though he was, fortunately, still looking at the PADD in his hands and not at her. "It must be my lucky day that you wore them today, then."

"And why is that?" asked Victoria.

McCoy smirked at her over the PADD. "You can't blame a man for lookin'," he said, and Victoria let out a very unlady-like snort that made him laugh. "Anyway, I have patients to check on," turning off the PADD, he put it on a tray and folded his arms across his chest. "But, I think you and I need to talk."

"About?"

"About that file you gave me last week."

"Ah, that," Victoria wrinkled her nose in distaste. "What's there to talk about though, really? Can't we call it an exchange of information and leave it at that?"

McCoy raised an eyebrow. "What kind of dumbass physicians have you tried that line on that you think it'll work on me?"

Victoria winked. "Plenty, but none were as cute as you."

"Nice try, darlin'," he rolled his eyes. "See me tomorrow, seventeen hundred hours. I know you're off-shift, I already checked."

"Stalker."

"I'm serious. Don't make me pull rank on you, Tori," he warned. "I ain't ever done it before, but I will if you don't show up."

Victoria sighed. "Fine, fine. I know I owe you an explanation, just…" she trailed off, and then grimaced. "Go easy on me, please?"

McCoy's gaze softened, and he rested a hand on her arm. "I ain't here to judge you, darlin', or even to tell you off," he said quietly. "But I do need to talk to you. That file's just the start; there's a whole lot more to what happened, isn't there?" Victoria bit her lip and didn't answer, but she didn't need to. McCoy nodded, seeing something in her expression that told him he was right. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Fine," she sighed again and patted the hand that was still resting on her arm, jumping off the bed and landing on the floor with a sharp click that made McCoy jump and glare at her shoes. Her lips twitched. "Try not to enjoy watching me walk away too much, huh?"

"The only thing I'll be thinkin' of is how many ways you can break an ankle in those death traps," said McCoy dryly. Victoria rolled her eyes and gave him a mock salute, heading back to the Science deck but very aware that Dr. McCoy was still watching her and, despite what he said, she knew he liked what he saw.

!

Leonard McCoy rubbed his eyes tiredly and scanned the screen in front of him. The light was too bring; squinting, he groaned. "Computer, lower brightness."

"Brightness lowered seventy percent."

"Thanks," he mumbled. The computer didn't respond, and he snorted when he realised he was, once again, talking to a machine. "Never mind. Open database search."

"Waiting for input."

"Last name More, first name Victoria."

"Access restricted."

Leonard frowned. "Try again."

"Access restricted. Waiting for input."

"What the hell?" pulling the console closer, Leonard inputted the command manually, only to come up with the same answer. In all his Starfleet databases – Science, Medicine, Mission History – it appeared that all files on Victoria More were restricted to grade Admiral or higher.

Defeated, Leonard leaned back in his seat and stared at the screen, trying to figure out his next move. His meeting with Victoria was in two hours, and he had deliberately set aside this time to do more research on her than he had allowed himself to do previously. The file she had given him had answers in it, of course, but it was a jumbled mess of facts and medical reports that he knew he needed to quiz her on before he could come to any kind of judgement about her, or her health. He didn't know how their conversation was going to go, because he had questions and Victoria had a habit of not giving people answers. And if everything on her was restricted, what was he supposed to do on his own?

"Computer, what databases aren't restricted?" he asked suddenly.

"All non-Starfleet databases are still accessible."

"Same search input, generic civilian databases."

"Search results for last name More, first name Victoria: seven hundred and fifty three. Showing on screen now."

"Gotcha." Pulling the console back towards him, he quickly scrolled through the first page. The second entry was a link to her official Starfleet profile, visible to the public. He started there, and then suddenly Victoria's picture was smiling up at him from the screen, and he blinked. Her hair was red again, and her eyes were green, and even though he knew that was what she had always looked like, the sight confused him for a few moments. He had gotten used to the mousy woman he often interacted with on the ship, and the photo of the smiling – and admittedly, much healthier-looking – woman on the screen in front of him caused him to frown.

Forcing himself to scroll past the picture, he quickly perused her credentials. Nothing about them was news to him – she had mentioned she was an exobiologist with an affinity for botany, she had some weapons training and she had been on the Command track before graduating with honours and returning briefly to teach at the Academy. By the time he had joined the Academy himself, she had already been on three different research missions in the Laurentian System. What shocked him, however, was the sheer number of research papers she seemed to have written. The entries continued on for six pages, more than four a year since her second year at the Academy, and most of them were prize winners. A few were even co-authored; he noted a few recurring names and quickly jotted them down, to remind himself to look them up later. The list of conferences she had spoken at, research projects she had consulted on, and even projects that seemed to be directly influenced by her research were astounding; no wonder she had balked at the idea of joining the Enterprise as a junior officer. She was easily at Spock's level of seniority, and considering there wasn't a drop of Vulcan blood in her, and her age, it was impressive.

Moving on from her profile, Leonard scanned a few more links; a few newspapers mentioned her name when reporting on conferences she had spoken at, and a few independent journals referenced her as well, but the further back he went, the more generic the references got. Finally deciding he wasn't going to learn anything more, he sighed. "Computer, end search."

"Multimedia search pending."

Leonard raised an eyebrow. "Show on screen."

The screen was suddenly filled with photos, most from newspapers and reports on conferences that Victoria had clearly been a speaker at. Knowing he wouldn't find anything in them, nevertheless Leonard flipped through a few and realised that some of the names he had noted down before were in many of the photos with her: a blonde man with pale blue eyes, an older brunette man with greying temples, and another woman who, in every picture – and Leonard counted three – seemed to have different coloured hair. There was one picture with the four of them together, seated in front of another group that was labelled as the crew of the ship that had led the mission to the Laurentian System; Leonard had been reading about the mission and the medical strides their Science department had been making for years. He had never realised Victoria had been on that ship.

Leonard hesitated for only a second before saving the photo of Victoria and her crewmates in his private folder and moved on. There were a few pictures in public record from Starfleet Academy graduation ceremonies that his system had identified as having Victoria in them and he quickly zoomed in on a particular one that caught his eye. The date under the picture was of his own graduation, the one he hadn't attended because he'd been in Georgia visiting his daughter and he hadn't seen the point in going when he had already committed to the Enterprise. But Jim had gone, and had been strangely evasive as to why he had wanted to go. Leonard had never questioned him on it, but now he suspected he knew why. There, right in the corner of the picture, was Victoria, her dark red hair clearly standing out amidst the crowd of cadets in blue uniforms. She was smiling, her arm linked through with a man's; Leonard didn't need to refocus to know that it was Jim she was standing next to. Her eyes were bright with happiness and Jim was smiling down at her, the same boyish look of adoration on his face that he'd had every time Leonard had seen him look at, or even talk about, Victoria. Leonard had always made a point to question Jim and his decisions, because the kid was reckless and tended to lead with his heart instead of his head; but that was also exactly the reason Leonard valued him as a friend. And, as he looked at the picture a little harder and saw the look of pride on Victoria's face as she smiled at Jim in his uniform, he had a feeling he knew where Jim got it from.

!

Victoria skidded into sickbay only ten minutes late for her appointment, giving Nurse Riley an apologetic smile as she paused in front of the nurses' station.

"I'm late, I know," she sighed, and Nurse Riley giggled. "Is Dr. McCoy going to kill me?"

"I wish I could reassure you, Dr. Woodville, but you never know with Dr. McCoy," said Nurse Riley in amusement. "He's in suite two. You can go right in."

"Suite two? What's –" Victoria started to ask a question, but there was commotion behind her and someone wheeled in an ensign on a gurney screaming in pain, and she darted out of the way as Nurse Riley ran to intercept the incoming patient. Victoria half-expected McCoy to storm out of wherever he was and take over, but M'Benga was already there, nodding to Victoria in passing as he rattled off stats to the nurses behind him. Side-stepping the chaos, she spotted a door marked S2 and headed for it, assuming that was where she was supposed to go. When she knocked, the door slid open and she walked in, but when she saw what the room was, she felt her blood turn to ice.

"No," she said flatly.

Leonard looked up from the PADD he was scrolling through and frowned. "What?"

"No, we're not doing this," shaking her head, Victoria stepped back until her back hit the door. The room didn't look threatening to a normal person, but to her, it did: there was a comfortable looking sofa against the wall, with a dark wood coffee table in the middle and a soft armchair opposite it, where McCoy was sitting. The room was even done up in neutral, cosy colours, with some generic paintings on the wall, a food replicator by the door, and a large end table with a vase of flowers on it. It smelled like cinnamon and freshly baked bread, the lighting was just right, and every surface looked like it was perfect for a nap; there was only one room on a starship that looked like the one they were in, and Victoria had too much experience with them to be fooled by the peaceful atmosphere that it was trying to create.

McCoy was still watching her as she turned and tried to open the door, only to find that it wouldn't respond to her commands. She glared at him over her shoulder. "Don't you dare try to keep me in here, Leonard."

"Calm down, darlin'," Leonard tossed the PADD to the side and crossed the room to her side. She felt his hand touch her arm, and flinched. He immediately dropped it, but didn't move away. "What's so bad about this room?" he asked, his voice gentle. It was almost unsettling how fast his bedside manner could change, especially with her; no wonder Jim was always complaining about his mood swings. "It's a standard appointment room," he continued, still talking in that soothing voice that, despite herself, Victoria found quite calming.

Remembering where she was, however, brought the rage right back. "It's not an appointment room," Victoria hissed. She turned around and folded her arms across her chest, just barely suppressing her rage. "This is a counselling room."

Leonard didn't even blink. "So?"

"So?" she wanted to scream. "I don't need therapy, Leonard. I'm not crazy!"

"What? Who the hell said anything about crazy?" demanded Leonard.

"I know what this room is for! You think I've never been in one before?" his audacity was astounding; Victoria could practically feel smoke coming out of her ears as she tried once again, unsuccessfully, to open the door. "I can't believe you told me you wanted to talk and then you –"

"Okay, you need to calm down!" clearly losing whatever patience he had forced himself to adopt for her sake, Leonard pulled her away from the door and held her by the arms, forcing her to turn the heat of her glare onto him. He didn't even flinch. "Yes, this is a counselling room, but not because I think you need therapy. The ship is designed with a recording device in each and every room that can be accessed by the admiralty in the case of an emergency, or if there's a trial. Or someone can hack into it, for the right price. Now, while that's never been done to the Enterprise, I figured you wouldn't want to talk in a room where someone can hear you call me by your real name the whole time, and this is the only place on the ship where no one can record what you're saying because of doctor-patient confidentiality. Now," he released her arms. "How 'bout we try this again?"

His logic was sound; Victoria found herself calming down, though not by much. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she wrapped her arms around herself, almost defensively, and nodded. Leonard's face cleared and he almost looked like he'd smile at her, but her expression didn't change.

"You need to unlock the door," she said flatly.

Leonard looked at her oddly. "It's locked from the inside so no one can come in."

"I don't care. Tell everyone to stay away, make up an excuse, but I can't stay in this room if the door is locked and I can't get out."

"Okay," said Leonard slowly. He side-stepped her and inputted a code into the keypad by the door, and Victoria immediately turned to face the door expectantly. It hissed open, and she caught a glimpse of the chaos of medbay before she turned back to face Leonard, and the door shut behind her.

"Thank you," said Victoria. She forced herself to smile, if only to put the man opposite her at ease. "I haven't done a very good job of proving to you that I'm not crazy, have I?"

"I never thought you were crazy," said Leonard, and the ease with which he said it reassured Victoria. He returned to the chair he had been sitting in, and quirked an eyebrow up at her when she didn't follow. "You're gonna have to take a seat, darlin'. I promise I won't analyse which one you pick."

Victoria scrunched up her nose in distaste. "Don't joke. I've had that one used against me before."

"I'm not sayin' there ain't some truth in it, I'm just sayin' I won't do that to you."

"That's nice," sighing, Victoria sank down onto the ridiculously comfortable sofa. Kicking off her shoes, she tucked her legs under her and leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. "So, why am I here?"

"You're here because you gave me a file with a load of medical details and nothin' personal," said Leonard. Victoria opened her mouth to argue, but he held up a hand to stop her. "I ain't saying there's anythin' wrong with that. Our deal was for your medical file, and you stuck to your end of the bargain. But c'mon, you gotta give me more than that."

"My complete medical history is classified," pointed out Victoria. "Even giving you that much was a risk."

"A risk?" Leonard raised his eyebrows. "Half the jargon didn't make sense and the other half I probably remember wrong since you told me to destroy the file. You did it on purpose."

Victoria smiled. "Nothing gets past you, huh?"

"Be serious, Victoria. You wanna tell me what kind of medical procedure you had done that's got half of Starfleet tryin' to keep you hidden?"

Leonard didn't expect his words to have any kind of special impact on Victoria; after perusing her file, the fact that she had definitely had some kind of procedure done was the only thing he was sure of. To his surprise, she winced at his question and began to pick at her nails, a tell-tale sign that she was suddenly very, very uncomfortable.

"I guess there's no point in even trying to hide it anymore," sighed Victoria. "It's a long story, but I'll try to give you the highlights. When I was a few years out of the Academy, I got one of the most coveted spots on a ship headed to the Laurentian System for research. It was a year in deep space, mining asteroids and uninhabited planets; you name it, the mission had it. I was ecstatic. I'd been on a ship before, briefly, and I was dying to go back into space. Jim had started at the Academy, Ben had just met Hikaru, so for once I felt like it was the perfect time to go off and do something on my own," she began to chew her lip nervously. "So I took the job and left. We were mining for a new mineral and while doing that we discovered a gaseous substance that, after a few tests, we realised had the potential to change the way modern medicine worked; samples had been used to repair organs that were considered irreversibly damaged, and there was even talk that we could regrow limbs. It was revolutionary, but top-secret, only our medical department and Science deck knew about it. We used the codeword GX; I think half the bridge just thought we were all playing some video game in our free time. The planet was uninhabited, so we weren't worried about fighting for it. And then…" she trailed off, suddenly looking a little ill. Every cell in Leonard's body was telling him to offer her some kind of help, because she was displaying signs of PTSD even as she told the story, but he forced himself not to treat her like a patient. She wouldn't appreciate it, and that wasn't why they were in that room anyway.

But, he had to do something. She still hadn't spoken. Wordlessly, Leonard got up and punched a few buttons in the replicator. A glass of water appeared, and he handed it to her before sitting back down, this time on a chair closer to her. Victoria sipped the water and held the glass between her hands, her finger tapping against the crystal rhythmically.

"I was friends with our captain. Not best friends or anything like that, but I liked her, and I watched out for her. Jennifer was young, but she wasn't a scientist; she reminded me so much of Jim, she was so excited about being given a ship that she didn't question us too much on what we did and how we did it. Dimitri, our CMO, was the one who was really in charge. When we were on the planet, a few days into our trip, something happened. Maybe it was the mining, maybe it was the sudden inhabitation of people, or maybe it was because Starfleet hadn't sent ahead scouts since they were so adamant to get their hands on the GX without anyone finding out about it, but the planet just… snapped. It was a mountainous terrain and the mountains started… collapsing, I guess?" she frowned. "I'll be honest, I don't remember much, but we have footage and it just looks like the planet was crumbling all around us. It felt like forever, but it was over in less than an hour. Jennifer was trapped in one of the mines when it happened, and I stayed back to get her out. Dimitri told me not to do it, but she was just so young, and I couldn't stand the idea of her blood being on my hands. I told you once I could never be a doctor," a ghost of a smile played on her lips, and Leonard smiled back a little. "I guess that's why I could never be a captain of a starship either. So I saved her, but I got hurt. We beamed up to the ship, and they were convinced they were going to lose me. That's what is in the files I gave you: I had a punctured lung, my entire right side was completely crushed, including my arm and my leg, and I had severe internal bleeding. Dimitri didn't think he could save me, but Jennifer made him use the GX. We hadn't tested it out properly on humans at the time, and Dimitri said it was a risk he wasn't willing to take, but Jennifer gave him an order and I guess that still meant something, no matter who we thought was really in charge. They managed to synthesise the GX into a solid substance, in a quantity large enough to effectively repair all the damage done to me. I woke up six days later severely dehydrated, but good as new. I was the first and, to date, the only person to survive a transfusion that big. And since the planet that produced the GX no longer exists…"

All the pieces suddenly clicked into place, and Leonard let out a ragged breath. "Don't tell me," he said hoarsely. "You're the only sample left?"

Victoria nodded and cleared her throat again, taking another sip of water. "You're taking that fact pretty well. Jim broke a chair when he found out," she said mildly. "The admiralty were desperate to do more tests, maybe try and harvest it out of me, but my father stopped them before they could even start formulating plans. Dimitri had created the cocktail of hyposprays you give me by the time we returned to headquarters, and my father pulled enough strings that I get access to my medication without anyone raising a single eyebrow. The GX hardly exists in medical texts, science reports, or any kind of public record. My father knew I would spend the rest of my life in and out of labs, with no chance at a normal life, if too many people knew what had happened. Dimitri and Jennifer were my friends, and they understood that. So I was separated from my crew and told never to contact them again, so all our lives could have some semblance of normalcy. The downside, of course, is that I know hardly anything about the GX myself."

Leonard leaned back in his chair. "So you're on the run from the admiralty?"

"Oh, no," Victoria snorted. "As if any of them can go against my dad. No, there's a rogue faction of merchants that tried to harvest the GX before Starfleet got there, and they weren't too happy when they learned we had gotten to it first, and in doing so destroyed the only known source of it. They're the ones after me."

"You're being chased by a rogue faction of merchants?" Leonard's head was aching; the onslaught of information, combined with the look of Victoria's face and the news that he could tell she had been most reluctant to reveal, was wreaking havoc with his blood pressure. "Tell me you're kiddin'."

"I wish I was," Victoria smiled wanly. "If it helps, I've never actually seen them, and I've only come close to being caught once. My dad didn't let me go back into space after I came back from the Laurentian system because he always said it was easier for him to keep an eye on me if I stayed on or near Starfleet bases, and for the longest time I believed him. I moved when he told me to, took jobs way below my established pay-grade, and basically kept my head down for as long as possible. Then, Yorktown happened," she winced, and so did Leonard. "I got hurt, and the paramedics who found me registered my injuries on a public database that was set up to help people find their missing relatives. My dad managed to scramble the data, but the damage had been done; my picture and a list of my injuries was out there, and if you know what you're looking for, it's not that hard to figure out. That's when we decided I needed to pull a disappearing act, so I asked Jim for help. And the rest, you already know."

"So, let me get this straight," running a hand over his face wearily, Leonard tried to organise his thoughts. "Your first big mission, you nearly died and your CMO saved you by usin' an element that doesn't exist in any medical record, is surviving inside you thanks to a bunch of medications I'm responsible for givin' you, and is somethin' you know nothin' about. Am I on the right track?" Victoria nodded. "Good. And on top of that, you're in hidin' on this ship because a rogue group of merchants want to get their hands on the thing keepin' you alive, and we have no idea how in the hell they're gonna get their hands on it without takin' you along as well?" again, she nodded. He felt the vein in his forehead start to throb. "Fantastic. Can I just say –"

"Can I say something first?" she interrupted suddenly. Her voice, despite her expression, was steady. Leonard glared but nodded, and she cleared her throat. "I didn't jump onto this ship with the intention of getting anyone in trouble, or hurting anyone. I know you feel bad for implying that when you first realised who I was, but I don't blame you for thinking that way. Because if you didn't know me, and if you didn't know the situation, that's exactly what you would think. But I promise you, Leonard, I'd never hurt anyone deliberately," her voice was tinged with nervousness and desperation, and Leonard found himself unable to look away from her face. She looked sad, uncertain, and… lost. "I just – I didn't have much of a choice in this matter. I have a family too, and I was putting them in danger every second I stayed in Earth, or in Yorktown. I had to leave, and Jim was the only one I trusted enough to help me."

His anger deflated almost immediately at her tone. He had a soft spot for the woman, he knew that by now; what kind of emotions came along with that, however, he didn't have the time or the energy to look into. Sure, she had more secrets than anyone he'd ever met and he still wasn't sure if he trusted her completely, but there was no doubt in his mind that she meant what she had just said. She didn't want to hurt anyone. Her coming on the ship had been an act of desperation, because a five year mission through unchartered space was exactly what she needed to stay hidden. It wasn't ideal for anyone involved, but it had happened, and Leonard McCoy didn't have a habit of mulling over what could have been anymore. It didn't help, and just made him itch for the bottle of whiskey he kept hidden in his desk drawer.

Coming to a decision, Leonard leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. His head in his hands, he allowed himself a few seconds to recollect his thoughts – and his frustrations – before looking back up at Victoria. She looked concerned, and he smiled dryly. "I should be givin' you that look, darlin'."

His tone and his words did the trick. She giggled quietly, and he leaned back in his chair. Victoria smiled. "I don't want pity, Leonard. I just didn't want you to think I was…" she trailed off.

"I don't," he assured her. He didn't need her to say it; he knew what she meant. "And I am sorry about the way I treated you before, darlin'. I said it before, my bark's worse than my bite."

"There's really nothing to apologise for."

"I'm still gonna apologise, Victoria. I shouldn't have said any of it."

"But I understand why you did."

"But I shouldn't have said it."

She opened her mouth to argue, and then suddenly seemed resigned when she saw his expression. "I'm not going to win this one, am I?" she asked, amused.

"No," Leonard shook his head. "And I know you don't want to hear this –" Victoria groaned, and he could tell she knew exactly what he was about to say, "– but I think you need to talk to someone, about everythin' you've been through."

"I don't need therapy!" she insisted.

Leonard wanted to argue and insist and force her to talk to someone, anyone, but suddenly he was exhausted. He had pulled double shifts for a week, had spent the better part of the day prepping for his meeting with Victoria, and now he wanted nothing more than to have a drink and fall into a deep and hopefully dreamless sleep. Victoria needed counselling, he knew that; he also knew he didn't have the energy to convince her to agree to it. Not today, anyway.

"We can discuss that some other time," he conceded, and saw Victoria's eyebrows shoot up in surprised. He smiled grimly. "Darlin', as much as I enjoy your company, I gotta admit, I'm beat. And I won't win this next argument if I keep tryin' without some sleep."

Victoria laughed. "You've looked better," she agreed. Standing up, she located her shoes on the floor and put them back on, smiling at Leonard's look of disdain when he saw them. "I saw you watching me walk away yesterday," she teased. "Don't act like you didn't enjoy it."

"Yeah, I always enjoy seeing my patients get injured," said Leonard sarcastically. Victoria giggled again and returned the glass of water to the table with the replicator, running a hand through her dark hair. The door opened as she neared it, and she turned around to give him a smile and a wave.

"See you around, Leonard," she winked. He raised a hand in farewell, his eyes lingering on her form as she walked away, through medbay and out the door.

When the door closed behind her, he leaned back in his chair and ran a hand over his face in exhaustion. What the hell had he just gotten himself into?