Hello! Short and sweet, but I think we can all guess what's coming up next ;) Thank you to all the lovely guest reviews I got, you're the best! Enjoy xx

Forty

"You want me to do what?"

"Keep your voice down, Lieutenant, people are working."

"So am I, Spock! Or I was, until you wanted to send me on a suicide mission!"

"It is hardly a suicide mission," said Spock calmly. "I merely assigned you a task befitting your expertise. That is the reason you are on this ship, Lieutenant."

"I'm going to kill you," seethed Victoria, snatching the PADD he had been holding out to her and flipping through the files on it vigorously. "Chop you up into tiny pieces and feed you to the flesh-eating plant I bought off a shady dealer in the Rigel system four years ago. It's never had Vulcan meat before. Maybe it'll develop a taste for it."

Spock raised one eyebrow. "I take your rhetorical threats to mean you accept your assignment?"

"You want me to find a way to develop a vaccine for a pandemic raging across a planet two months' journey away using nothing but the planet's own natural resources?" Victoria scoffed. "Oh yes, Commander, I accept, but I'll have you know these are the most ridiculous parameters I've ever been given. Also, I'm not a medic."

"I would hardly call those parameters ridiculous, Lieutenant, but as to your other concern, I can confirm you will be given access to any medical data you desire, as well as the expertise of every medical professional on this ship. Dr. McCoy has been briefed, and he will be running trials after you create a prototype."

"Fantastic," muttered Victoria sarcastically. "More time in Sickbay. That should make my life easier."

"Your aggression seems to be linked to something other than your given assignment," said Spock. "Would you like to discuss it?"

"No."

"Very well. If your state of mind affects your work, however –"

"Commander, I may seem slightly unstable, but I assure you, I can do my job," said Victoria. She placed the PADD back on her desk and folded her arms across her chest. "I need six weeks to create a prototype, and ordinarily I'd ask for another six weeks of trials, across at least three species. Since I know that's impossible, I can have a prototype ready in four. Can you get McCoy to agree to only four weeks of trials, prioritising Terran species?"

"I leave any convincing Dr. McCoy may require to you, Lieutenant. I assure you, he is more likely to agree to your suggestions than mine," said Spock. If he had been anyone else, Victoria would have snapped at him for the presumption, but Spock's monotone assured her that he wasn't joking.

And, he was right.

"I'll talk to him," agreed Victoria reluctantly. "I'll need a lab."

"Laboratory number six has already been set up to your requirements," said Spock. "Good luck, Lieutenant. I expect a plan of action on my desk by eleven hundred hours tomorrow."

Sighing, Victoria nodded, and Spock walked off, no doubt to pester someone else about pending assignments. She sank back into her seat and stared at her desk morosely for a few seconds before her hands moved of their own accord, pulling her personal PADD out from the pile of loose papers she had been running calculations on by hand. The screen was still on, since she'd shoved it out of the way when Spock had approached her with the mission brief over an hour ago. It was blank, save for the one line message she'd received the night before from her father. She had reread it at least a hundred times since:

We need to talk. Tomorrow, sixteen hundred hours.

She could hear those words in her father's voice, as if she was sixteen again and coming home late from high school parties; or eighteen in college and in deep, unavoidable trouble for the first time; or thirty-one and finally asking for help after trying to navigate the GX alone for almost a year. Those words had never led to good news, and she could feel her stomach churn as the digital clock next to her computer beeped, indicating that she had fifteen minutes to tune into the secure line to speak to her father.

Robotically, she stood up from her desk and slipped out of the lab, headed straight for her quarters. She didn't encounter anyone on the way there, for which she was grateful; she didn't think she had the patience for any interruptions, not at that moment. Until she knew exactly what it was that was making Admiral More change his decision of only contacting his daughter once a week for barely five minutes, she didn't want to see anyone.

The clock on her desk beeped the exact time as Victoria entered her quarters, and she didn't even bother to shrug out of her lab coat before sitting down and turning on her PADD. As she propped it up against the blank screen of her computer, her father's face came into view almost instantly. Victoria cleared her throat. "Hello, Admiral."

"Hey, Vicky," said Admiral More. He smiled, and immediately Victoria was on edge. "How're you doing?"

"I'm fine. What's wrong?" she asked bluntly. "You wouldn't ask to talk ahead of our weekly schedule if there wasn't a problem."

"We don't know if it's a problem yet, but it could be," said Admiral More. He looked at his daughter warily. "Have you been getting enough sleep? You look tired."

"I've been working," said Victoria, dismissing his concern. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong or not?"

"Now, I don't want you to panic," he warned. "It could be nothing, but I knew you'd want to know. As you know, when Dimitri died all of his research became fair game for anyone at Starfleet to request access. I made sure everything about you went into the vaults, no compromises. But it seems there's a few people in Starfleet that can still get their hands on it."

Victoria felt her mouth go dry. "Get to the point, dad," she said hoarsely. "Do I need to get out of here?"

"I'm not sure," said Admiral More. "You tell me, Vicky. Did you ask Jim Kirk to get you Dimitri's files?"

Victoria frowned. "Jim? My Jim?"

"Your captain, yes. I got an alert from Section 31 that your files have been accessed, and it's his name on the request." Victoria felt her veins turn to ice, and leaned back in her chair heavily. Her father either didn't notice, or didn't react, and kept talking. "The higher-ups signed off on it because apparently everyone here owes him a favour. He didn't request your files by name, he just asked for everything Dimitri's ever worked on. Yours just… slipped through the cracks."

"Slipped through the cracks?" Victoria repeated incredulously. Her voice began to get louder with each word. "Are you serious, dad? Do you know how easy it is to forge a digital signature? Or to get access to a captain's key codes? Hell, I have Jim's captain codes for this ship! How the hell did this happen?"

"So I take it the order didn't come from you," Admiral More sighed. "Damn, I was really hoping it wasn't going to come to this."

"Come to what?" Victoria heard her voice sound further and further away as the blood rushed to her head. She was nauseous, and dizzy, and she wanted to cry. Or scream. "What happens now?"

Despite the fact that he'd just delivered news Victoria had been dreading for almost a year, Admiral More still sounded completely calm. "Go ask Jim Kirk if it was him before you try to commandeer a shuttle off the Enterprise," said her father. His placating tone wasn't reassuring. "I'll make some calls, figure out who signed off and whether there's any chance it came from someone other than Jim Kirk."

"Jim wouldn't do it without talking to me first," said Victoria. "And he doesn't even know Dimitri's dead. The only person who knows –" abruptly, she stopped talking, but her father didn't notice. Again.

"Just go talk to him anyway, see if he's noticed anything unusual," said Admiral More. "I'll keep our channel open for the next few days. Call me the minute you find out anything. And stay calm, Vicky. If we need to do an extraction, we will, but we may not have to. Jim Kirk would do anything for you, I wouldn't be surprised if he was planning something to help you without you knowing about it."

Victoria didn't respond, and her father said some more empty, reassuring words before ending the call. As her PADD's screen went blank, she leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath, inhaling as she counted to five, and then exhaling through her mouth. She didn't know how long she sat there, focusing on her breathing and forcing her mind to think of nothing except the steady rhythm of her lungs expanding and contracting. After what felt like hours, she slowly raised a hand and rubbed her eyes, unsurprised to find that they were dry. The familiar, mind-numbing panic was setting in, she registered distantly, and she forced herself to stand up and replicate a glass of ice-water, downing it before replicating another. And another. After three glasses, she finally felt a sharp pain behind her eyes, a result of too much ice in her third glass, and the brain-freeze was the push she needed to unroot herself from the floor, and start moving. There would be time to cry later, she decided. She could do this. She needed to figure out what had happened, what exactly had gone wrong, before she spiralled into panic.

"Computer, locate the captain," she said out loud. Her voice didn't crack, or even shake. Good.

"Captain Kirk is in his ready-room."

Grabbing her PADD from her desk, she shoved it into the pocket of her lab coat and ran out of her quarters. The turbolift was, thankfully, empty, but Victoria remained standing absolutely still in the middle of it, her back painfully straight. If she crumbled now, she knew she wouldn't recover. The last time her father had told her that her location was possibly compromised, she had cried for four hours and had two panic attacks. But she didn't have four hours this time. If it was time to leave, she needed to leave now.

As the turbolift stopped, Victoria stepped onto the bridge and looked around for a familiar face. Finding no one, not even Spock, she managed to slip past the group of officers standing next to the conn, not looking back as the door that led to Jim's ready-room slid open to welcome her. Jim was sitting at his desk, eyes glued to his computer screen.

"Saw you coming," he said, still not looking up at her. "Give me a sec, Tori, I just need to –"

"Jim," said Victoria, cutting into his sentence. "We need to talk."

Her voice still sounded calm, but Jim had known her too long. Immediately, he tore his eyes away from his computer and looked up, brow furrowing in concern. His expression only got worse when he finally looked at her.

"Okay," he said, and his placating tone was almost worse than her father's. "Have a seat."

"I'd rather stand," she said stiffly. Her mouth was dry; she should have drank more water. "I just spoke to my dad."

Jim frowned. "I didn't know you could – actually, never mind. What did he say?"

"He said someone has access to my files."

Immediately, Jim's expression changed. His face contorted, and the guilty look on his face was something Victoria was all-too familiar with. He groaned quietly. "Damn, I didn't think anyone would find out so soon."

"So it was you?" demanded Victoria. The panic that was still creeping at the edges of her brain was now, reluctantly, receding. "Tell me the truth, Jim, I swear I don't have time for any kind of bullshit. What did you do?"

"Nothing!" insisted Jim. "Well, nothing that can be traced back to you! I put in a request for Dr. Nikols' files, and I kept the parameters broad. It was all public access, there were a few marked for Section 31 but I pulled some strings and got those too, the guy in archives was in my class at the Academy. He wouldn't do it just for anyone else, though, because your dad is a basket-case and everyone at HQ is terrified of him, so you don't have to worry that they'll be compromised."

"It was you?" repeated Victoria. She'd barely heard anything after he'd admitted that it was him. Not someone pretending to be Jim; not someone who wanted access to the mineral that was inside her body; not someone who would only keep her alive only long enough to get what they wanted from her. It was Jim.

"Yes, it was." Jim looked at her warily and took a step forward, reaching out a hand. "Tori, I think you need to sit down."

Dumbly, Victoria nodded, just as the relief made her knees buckle. Jim caught her before she fell, however, and dragged her to his desk chair, helping her sit down and saying her name again and again, the panic clear in his voice. Victoria batted him away, taking in deep breaths again to calm herself. In, out… in, out… somewhere between the ninth and tenth exhale, Jim touched her shoulder and held a glass of water to her lips, and her mouth began to feel less dry. Her brain, however, was still catching up.

"I can't believe you," she muttered, her head still spinning. "Why would you do that, Jim? Without even telling me? Do you know what I thought when my dad called me today?"

"I'm sorry, Tori," Jim sighed. "I really wanted to tell you."

"Then why didn't you?" hissed Victoria. She snatched the glass from his hands and took a larger sip, feeling some of the energy return to her body.

Jim groaned. "Oh, man, he's going to kill me."

Victoria choked on her water. "He?" she spluttered. "Who else knows?"

"Okay, look, before I tell you, I need to make sure you're not going to faint," said Jim firmly. "Do you need more water? Coffee? Whiskey?"

"I'm going to punch you," threatened Victoria. She tried to stand up, but Jim kept a firm grip on her shoulder and didn't let her. She glared. "You better tell me what you've been up to, Jim Kirk, or I swear to any and every god that there is that I will –"

"Just stay calm," said Jim soothingly. "Look, there's a really good explanation for this, okay? We just didn't want to tell you right now in case nothing came out of it. False hope, right? We were going to tell you eventually."

Victoria stared at him blankly. "Are you drunk?" she asked. "You just said he, now you're saying we."

"We. Both of us. Me and Bones," confessed Jim, and Victoria heart skipped a beat at the familiar name. "He came to me when Dr. Nikols died and said he wanted to help you, so he asked me to get the files and keep it a secret. Just until he had a chance to look through them, and figure out if there was something he could do."

"Something he could do?" repeated Victoria blankly. Her head was starting to ache. "Leonard did this?"

"To help you," added Jim.

"He has my files?" clarified Victoria. Jim nodded. She massaged her temples slowly. "I can't believe you didn't tell me. I can't believe he didn't tell me."

"Tori, you know why we didn't tell you," sighed Jim. He leaned against the desk in front of her and folded his arms across his chest. "I remember what you looked like when you asked me for help when we were in Yorktown. You were a mess. And Bones has seen how hard it's been for you hiding in plain sight on the ship. He wants to help you, and you wouldn't let him. So he decided to do it himself. We were going to come clean as soon as he was sure there was a way to get the GX out of you without doing any lasting damage. You didn't need to know until we found a solution."

Victoria groaned. "Is this what you two have been thinking about all this time? Poor Tori, she needs a big strong Starfleet officer to save her from herself, because she always makes bad decisions?"

"You know that isn't what I meant."

"I don't need anyone to save me, Jim. You both had no right to keep this a secret from me!" Exasperated, Victoria finally stood up from the chair and began to pace across the floor, her brain scrambling to make sense of all the information she had just been given. "When did this happen?" she asked suddenly, whirling around to face Jim.

"What?"

"When did you two come up with this master plan to lie to me?"

Jim winced. "Tori, come on."

"Answer my question, Jim."

"The day of Julia's wedding," he said reluctantly. "I sent the request that night. I – where're you going?"

"To find Leonard. And I'll deal with you later," snapped Victoria, already halfway to the door. "You can't just go around and make decisions about my life and not tell me about them!"

"Can we please talk about this?" begged Jim. He grabbed her arm just before the doors slid open, and refused to let go. "I know you're mad, Tori, I told him you would be, but he –"

"I'll tell him how mad I am, thank you very much! Computer, where the hell is Dr. McCoy?"

"Computer, override –" Jim began to say, but Victoria turned the full force of her glare onto him, and he faltered. "Computer, answer Dr. Woodville's question," he sighed.

"Dr. McCoy is in his quarters, deck eight."

Victoria tugged her arm out of his grasp, and Jim gave up and let her go. He didn't follow her either; she had no doubt he was about to call Leonard and warn him that she was on her way, and probably instruct him to calm her down. He could try, she decided, as she entered the turbolift and barked out her destination, but it wouldn't work. She was furious, a little offended, but most of all she was confused. Jim's motivations for wanting to help her were at least understandable, but why was Leonard putting so much at risk for her? She had told him nothing would happen between them, and while it was obvious neither of them were actively trying to move on, Victoria still hadn't changed her mind. And he had understood this, or at least he had said he did. It didn't make sense for him to continue wanting to help her when he wasn't going to get what he wanted from her in the end. He hadn't even told her he was trying to help her.

So, what was he thinking?