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How Do You Solve A Problem (McCoy/Chapel)
Title: How Do You Solve A Problem
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
urbancate
Fandom: AOS/Reboot
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Movie Adapted: The Sound of Music
Rating: PG
Length: 3500 words
Summary: Chapel gets a new assignment that she doesn't want.
Warnings: Um, tiny bits of de-aged characters, WTF. Also, made up science.
Author's Note: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
reel_startrek . I chose The Sound of Music because it is one my all-time favorites and I mistakenly thought that would make it easy to write. Instead, I wrote The Sound of Music without any singing or twirling on mountaintops or adorable kid stuff.
How Do You Solve A Problem
Christine Chapel, new M.D., is of the opinion - oft-enough proven to be considered fact - that being called to an Admiral's office when you have no idea what the hell for is never a good thing.
Especially when her final ship posting should have arrived yesterday and somehow hasn't yet.
So, while she is quite composed, it is with a tiny bit of fear and curiosity tingling at the base of her spine that she takes a seat in Admiral Pike's office and makes small talk until Pike is ready to get to the point. That he seems hesitant to arrive at the reason for her presence in his office only makes her curiosity stronger - Pike may be sitting behind a desk, but he's not a desk jockey, and he doesn't typically beat around the bush.
"Chapel..."
"Yes, sir?"
"I see you've requested a deep space assignment on completion of your residency."
"Yes, sir. I'm hoping for the Yorktown or possibly the Saratoga."
"Why not the Enterprise? Best ship in the Fleet."
"I was a nurse on Enterprise, sir. And," she pauses - her personal reasons have no place in this conversation - "there's a lot of space still to be seen, and I believe variety will benefit my profession skills and my career."
"Sound reasoning, Commander. For now, though - we need you to take a small detour." He hands her a thin data sheet, and she half expects it to list Enterprise as her new assignment and that she will have to tamp down a whole lot of subsequent anger. Instead...She reads the few lines of text again carefully.
"This is a civilian ship."
"Yes, it is."
"How can Starfleet assign me to a civilian ship? Sir, what is this?"
"I can't tell you much about the situation itself, only that you've been specifically requested - for good reason - and that I would consider it a personal favor if you accept the assignment."
"Admiral, do I have a choice?"
"Of course you do. But this is a rare opportunity. And you're an adventurous soul."
"An opportunity for what exactly?"
"That's up to you."
"Sir..." He's annoyingly correct on one point at least - if curiosity equates to adventurous, then Christine is definitely there.
"Yes or no. Unfortunately, I can't give you time to think about this."
"Well, then," she swallows. Her mind is racing, her blood is racing - and that's what decides it. "Yes."
"Excellent. Now, you have a transport to catch."
- -
The ship in question, which she boards at the general space dock - out of uniform, as per her brief orders - is a simple Vulcan transport. A quiet, serious - typical Vulcan - man shows her to her small passenger quarters and declines to answer her question about their destination. She wonders briefly if she's managed to get herself mixed up in Directorate business. Which Directorate, though? And Pike has always been trustworthy - would he manipulate her so well just to steer her badly? This is connected to Enterprise somehow - she is sure of it in her gut.
The journey - ten hours, at a speed she can't determine because she doesn't have those damn engineering ears - is spent restlessly, questioning her instincts and Pike and the limits of her own damn foolishness.
- -
The ship is not her assignment; the ship's destination is. It's not New Vulcan, but it's similar - a high desert planet in a nowhere corner of the Quadrant, as far she can tell.
- -
A distressingly familiar dark head is waiting for her as she disembarks - alone, apparently the only passenger for this destination - and her gut twists and her heart jumps and she feels downright murderous.
"Chapel, it's good to see you."
"McCoy! I knew it. I should have known! I'm not staying here. Pike can take his grand opportunity and shove it up his -"
"Chris - Christine," McCoy interrupts, his tone almost pleading, and his face - oh, good lord, she should never have looked so close at face - it's haggard and his eyes are tired in a way that is almost defeated.
"What?"
"I'm dealing with a helluva situation here, Chris, and - I need you - they need you."
"They?"
"It's hard to explain. You should - just come see?"
"Fine. I'll see. But why all the cloak and dagger."
He sighs. "You'll understand soon enough."
They walk in tense silence - what is there to say? I'm sorry, I loved you, I know I left you, it wasn't about you, why couldn't you understand? - towards a small cluster of buildings set slightly apart from the main settlement. All-purpose pre-fab - there could be anything here. Then past those buildings, further up a cobbled path to a building she didn't see before - a house? A large house for such a remote settlement, but that's what it seems to be with its native-stone facade and low-walled garden and yard.
The fist in her gut tightens for no reason she can quantify beyond McCoy's gathering tension - she doesn't even have to look at him, it's coming off him in waves. What is in the house?
The wide double entrance doors open as she and McCoy approach the front steps. A small blond head peeks out and then a boy - maybe eight years old - steps out fully into the sun.
"Chrissy!" the boy yells, all excitement and recognition that baffles her for a long moment.
She turns to McCoy - he's staring at her, waiting for something. "McCoy...Is...?"
"Yes, it is."
Hysterical laughter threatens to bubble out of her - the Universe has a real sense of humor - but McCoy's grim look stops her cold.
Jim Kirk, Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, is a child.
- -
Christine sips tea at the bar in the kitchen while Leonard paces and the story pours out.
It was six weeks ago. A routine diplomatic mission - they're never routine, are they - on some backwater, only barely-warp-capable planet. Everything seemed to be just fine and dandy and boring for once. Until the away team came back to the ship. It took days to discount some kind of transporter malfunction as the root, but eight - eight! - fully-grown adults, Enterprise crew, returned to their ship as children. The physical change was complete, and so far irreversible, and though they continued to retain most of their adult memories and personalities, neural pathways and their ability to access memory was affected just by the physical change. Physically, they were all about eight years old. Mentally and emotionally, they were caught betwixt and between childhood and their fully-realized adult selves. Cupcake, of all the unlikely people, had the presence of mind to lock down Enterprise completely. He practically took apart the bulkheads in the investigation, finding only traces of suspicious communications from Romulus to someone on the planet below. And an underlying thread of Federation encryption. McCoy had contacted the other Spock, reluctantly, and they'd been parked here ever since. Enterprise was officially on an exploratory mission, far beyond immediate reach. In reality, the ship was in orbit, hugging the gaseous second moon of this planet, waiting for McCoy and few - very few - trusted Vulcan scientists to find a solution.
"So why bring me here?"
He rubs a hand across his forehead - fatigue - and she hates that part of her that wants to smooth her own hand over his skin, comfort him. "They know you. I know you, and I trust you and I need another goddamn set of intelligent eyes on this."
"So this isn't a glorified babysitting assignment? I'm here to be a doctor?"
"Yes. Goddammit!" He starts pacing again. "You have to understand, Chris, most of the Admiralty doesn't even know about this. There are still too many questions about who's responsible. This - thing - it's working on a genetic level and it hasn't stopped and it's degenerative and I'm losing time, every minute, every day, I'm losing - they're losing a little bit more of themselves and I'm supposed to fix it!"
"Kirk and who else?"
"Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, Roberts, Card, Eshkeri, and - Cawarra, Mina Cawarra - she died three days in."
"Oh my god," the sound barely escapes her. Mina had replaced her as head nurse when Christine headed back to Earth after the first five years, intent on becoming a doctor. "Why not keep them on the Enterprise?"
"Crew morale, automatic computer logs and video surveillance - only so much of it can be turned off - and Jim, he wouldn't give up command while he was still on his ship." McCoy shakes his head. His defeat appears total and something inside her cracks.
"I should get to work, then." She smiles with what she hopes looks like confidence.
"You should seem them first, Chris. They've been looking forward to you being here."
"Okay." She resists the temptation to ask if he had been looking forward to seeing her, too - if he had missed her at all. She's beginning to realize the enormity of the hole he left in her life - she left, by leaving him.
- -
"Doctor Chapel," Spock nods his acknowledgement. His posture and the gesture are exactly as they should be, and she's a little surprised at that because Spock himself is, well, a child. Children are not miniature adults, she thinks, even when they are. Spock's eyes are sad, and that is something she's never seen before.
It is the same with each of them. They are themselves, but their younger bodies betray them, and she knows she is seeing more than how they looked as eight-year-olds - she is seeing how they felt and thought and dealt with the world.
She lets them surround her, draw her in, grill her about medical school and Earth. Back with these friends, this family that saw each other through life and death and all sorts of galactic weirdness - she can almost forget the terrible circumstances. Almost.
- -
Christine is lost in thought, delaying turning out the lights and trying to sleep, when Nyota knocks on her door.
"I'm scared, Christine."
"I will find a way, McCoy and I will figure this out. I promise."
- -
They all come to her eventually with their own admissions of fear, and she makes the same promise. Seven times.
- -
Her days settle into a routine:
Long hours in the lab, running experiments and DNA analyses, picking apart the puzzle, looking for a key.
Lunch with the "kids", because she has to eat and because they are starved for interaction beyond their exclusive little club (Jim's words).
Longer hours at work. More coffee to get her through those hours and the evenings.
She's not a babysitter, exactly, or a mother or an aunt, but she's something to them - normalcy, a sense of themselves as the adults they still are in their minds - and she wouldn't dream of denying them, or herself, the times when she is just Christine Chapel, friend and confidante and contemporary.
- -
She can't say why exactly she does it, except that this defeated version of McCoy is completely unfamiliar to her and it breaks her heart: the subdued growl, the verve and humor that were always there beneath even the most determined grump or tirade and are nowhere to be seen, now. Whatever the reasons, there comes a moment in the lab when McCoy walks away from a revolving DNA projection and looks so utterly hopeless that Christine can only think of one thing to do.
Thought and action are simultaneous and she slaps him - hard - across the face before she even realizes what she's doing. "Since when do you give up! Stop walking around like this! They see it on your face everyday - that you've lost hope! And that is completely unacceptable! You're Dr. Leonard H. McCoy for hell's sake, you're brilliant, you're stubborn, you're an utter pain in the ass, and you never never give up! Do you understand me?! You never give up."
"That's enough, Chapel!" His fingers are tight on her wrist - the hand that slapped him captured in an automatic gesture - and he's fuming, life and color in his every aspect, and it's the most beautiful thing she's every seen.
"I'm not finished!" They're so close, face to face, flushed, breaths heaving and there's a - pause - a moment of awareness - before he growls out a response.
"Oh, yes, you are, Doctor!" And on that, he turns and walks away.
Christine swallows and stares at the door for a long moment after he's gone. What just happened?
- -
She finds him hours later at the back of the house, staring through a window at fading daylight.
"Leonard...I'm sorry. If you want me to go, I'll go. I shouldn't have -"
"Sh," he hushes her and gestures at the window. Sounds are drifting in from the yard - children at play, laughing. "They're laughing," he says almost reverently, as if it's something new and precious. "I can't remember the last time I heard..." He turns to face her and she thinks it must be a trick of the light - the glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes. "It's you, this is why we need you. Hope. And laughter. Christine...please stay?"
"Of course I'll stay." Saying no is unthinkable, impossible. For you, she doesn't add. For them, but for you, too
"Thank you."
They stand together at the window in long, companionable silence and it feels as new and precious and hopeful as the simple game being played outside in the dust and dusky twilight.
- -
"You fixed Bones." Jim corners her for a minute the next afternoon.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"He's walking and talking like Bones again and it's something you said or did. I was right that we needed you here."
"You were right? Even as an eight-year-old, you're never wrong, are you?"
"Nope!"
- -
They find it together - the solution - but she suspects it's largely because something has changed for McCoy. Call it hope, call it whatever, but when he's fired up and working as much on imagination and intuition as science - that's when they find the answer.
One by one - Jim first, because he's the Captain, even as McCoy protests his bullheadedness ("what if it doesn't work, you idiot?", "Bones, it'll work!") - they each receive a hypo of a tailored gene therapy and get beamed back to Enterprise, arriving on the transporter pad as adults.
- -
McCoy wants a whole week of observation and tests and scans, but Kirk is eager to hunt down bad guys - Cupcake and Pike have been investigating and the results are getting close to actionable - so it's only a day in Medical for the seven no-longer-children.
It's almost like old times - Enterprise and Adventure and McCoy and Medical - and it's seductive. Christine will admit that much to herself - that she is tempted, and not just by the familiarity. There is one McCoy, Leonard H., Doctor, in the mix. Nothing has been said, they've done nothing, but lingering eye contact is becoming the order of the day.
- -
"He's still in love with you, you know, Chapel." She's patching up Kirk after the latest skirmish as Enterprise follows the chain of the conspiracy.
"You're still not much of a diplomat," she says evenly, pressing a hypo to his neck.
"What do you mean?"
"The number one rule of diplomacy is not talk loudly and carry a big stick, it's know when to shut your mouth.
"Oh, that hurts, Chapel. That hurts me right where it counts. I've got -"
She rolls her eyes. "Please do not continue on that train. Now hold still."
He mumbles something unintelligible and, well, just double damn her curiosity. "Out with it. Forget diplomacy and just out with it, okay?"
"You're still in love with him, too."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I've got eyes in my head. I've seen the whole thing - the way you two look at each other."
"That was a long time ago, and you know that."
"Never say never. Think about it."
There is nothing to think about, she tells herself.
- -
She runs.
This assignment is technically over, and she should wait for her official assignment - deep space, hopefully Yorktown - on Earth. Those are the excuses.
The truth is, she's scared out of her wits of wanting too much to stay, of wanting to try again at something that she already failed at once - miserably.
She meets briefly with Pike - reports, and requests her official assignment.
"Very well, then, Commander. Yorktown will be in dock in a few days, then for four weeks. When she heads back out, you'll be on board. Lehman is the CMO, you'll be her second. It's a good ship, and One is a good captain."
- -
She answers the door of her small San Francisco apartment - that she's decided to keep while she's away - expecting, well, nothing really. She's not expecting anyone. And she certainly isn't expecting Leonard McCoy.
"You left," he says, but it lacks accusation. "You didn't even say goodbye."
"I couldn't. I...I had to." She sighs and steps aside to let him in. With the door closed, she can't think of anything else to say. They're staring at each other, and if the door wasn't holding her up, she's pretty sure her knees would just give out entirely.
"I messed up, Christine. Before. I'm so sorry. I was a selfish ass. And the fact that it's taken you leaving twice for me to realize that - it's no recommendation, is it. But I'm here, because...," he crosses the small distance between them, "because I love you."
"I do too."
"You do?"
"You what?"
"I love you, Christine Chapel," he smiles - oh, glorious, incredible smile - and then there is no space between them at all.
She laughs and he laughs and then they're laughing into a kiss. When they finally part for air, there is a chance - a small chance - that there are tears in her eyes.
"How do we not mess this up again," she asks, breathing him in, feeling hope rise up in her chest.
"Moment of truth, right. I can't promise to not make mistakes or not be an ass sometimes - or a lot of the time - but I can promise that I'll always talk to you and I'll always listen and I'll always love you." He kisses her again, hard and long.
"That's enough, that's exactly enough."
- -
"Yorktown, huh?" He asks it across her naked skin, much much later, in the lazy aftermath.
"You've been doing your homework," she sighs.
"It's a good assignment."
"Yeah, it is. It's also at the hell other end of the Quadrant."
"I know."
"So ask me. Ask me to come to Enterprise instead."
"Come live with me and work with me and be a doctor on Enterprise, Christine. Please."
"Know anybody who can arrange it?"
"Kirk," they laugh together.
And that is how the happy ending begins.
Author:
urbancate Fandom: AOS/Reboot
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Movie Adapted: The Sound of Music
Rating: PG
Length: 3500 words
Summary: Chapel gets a new assignment that she doesn't want.
Warnings: Um, tiny bits of de-aged characters, WTF. Also, made up science.
Author's Note: Written for
reel_startrek . I chose The Sound of Music because it is one my all-time favorites and I mistakenly thought that would make it easy to write. Instead, I wrote The Sound of Music without any singing or twirling on mountaintops or adorable kid stuff.How Do You Solve A Problem
Christine Chapel, new M.D., is of the opinion - oft-enough proven to be considered fact - that being called to an Admiral's office when you have no idea what the hell for is never a good thing.
Especially when her final ship posting should have arrived yesterday and somehow hasn't yet.
So, while she is quite composed, it is with a tiny bit of fear and curiosity tingling at the base of her spine that she takes a seat in Admiral Pike's office and makes small talk until Pike is ready to get to the point. That he seems hesitant to arrive at the reason for her presence in his office only makes her curiosity stronger - Pike may be sitting behind a desk, but he's not a desk jockey, and he doesn't typically beat around the bush.
"Chapel..."
"Yes, sir?"
"I see you've requested a deep space assignment on completion of your residency."
"Yes, sir. I'm hoping for the Yorktown or possibly the Saratoga."
"Why not the Enterprise? Best ship in the Fleet."
"I was a nurse on Enterprise, sir. And," she pauses - her personal reasons have no place in this conversation - "there's a lot of space still to be seen, and I believe variety will benefit my profession skills and my career."
"Sound reasoning, Commander. For now, though - we need you to take a small detour." He hands her a thin data sheet, and she half expects it to list Enterprise as her new assignment and that she will have to tamp down a whole lot of subsequent anger. Instead...She reads the few lines of text again carefully.
"This is a civilian ship."
"Yes, it is."
"How can Starfleet assign me to a civilian ship? Sir, what is this?"
"I can't tell you much about the situation itself, only that you've been specifically requested - for good reason - and that I would consider it a personal favor if you accept the assignment."
"Admiral, do I have a choice?"
"Of course you do. But this is a rare opportunity. And you're an adventurous soul."
"An opportunity for what exactly?"
"That's up to you."
"Sir..." He's annoyingly correct on one point at least - if curiosity equates to adventurous, then Christine is definitely there.
"Yes or no. Unfortunately, I can't give you time to think about this."
"Well, then," she swallows. Her mind is racing, her blood is racing - and that's what decides it. "Yes."
"Excellent. Now, you have a transport to catch."
- -
The ship in question, which she boards at the general space dock - out of uniform, as per her brief orders - is a simple Vulcan transport. A quiet, serious - typical Vulcan - man shows her to her small passenger quarters and declines to answer her question about their destination. She wonders briefly if she's managed to get herself mixed up in Directorate business. Which Directorate, though? And Pike has always been trustworthy - would he manipulate her so well just to steer her badly? This is connected to Enterprise somehow - she is sure of it in her gut.
The journey - ten hours, at a speed she can't determine because she doesn't have those damn engineering ears - is spent restlessly, questioning her instincts and Pike and the limits of her own damn foolishness.
- -
The ship is not her assignment; the ship's destination is. It's not New Vulcan, but it's similar - a high desert planet in a nowhere corner of the Quadrant, as far she can tell.
- -
A distressingly familiar dark head is waiting for her as she disembarks - alone, apparently the only passenger for this destination - and her gut twists and her heart jumps and she feels downright murderous.
"Chapel, it's good to see you."
"McCoy! I knew it. I should have known! I'm not staying here. Pike can take his grand opportunity and shove it up his -"
"Chris - Christine," McCoy interrupts, his tone almost pleading, and his face - oh, good lord, she should never have looked so close at face - it's haggard and his eyes are tired in a way that is almost defeated.
"What?"
"I'm dealing with a helluva situation here, Chris, and - I need you - they need you."
"They?"
"It's hard to explain. You should - just come see?"
"Fine. I'll see. But why all the cloak and dagger."
He sighs. "You'll understand soon enough."
They walk in tense silence - what is there to say? I'm sorry, I loved you, I know I left you, it wasn't about you, why couldn't you understand? - towards a small cluster of buildings set slightly apart from the main settlement. All-purpose pre-fab - there could be anything here. Then past those buildings, further up a cobbled path to a building she didn't see before - a house? A large house for such a remote settlement, but that's what it seems to be with its native-stone facade and low-walled garden and yard.
The fist in her gut tightens for no reason she can quantify beyond McCoy's gathering tension - she doesn't even have to look at him, it's coming off him in waves. What is in the house?
The wide double entrance doors open as she and McCoy approach the front steps. A small blond head peeks out and then a boy - maybe eight years old - steps out fully into the sun.
"Chrissy!" the boy yells, all excitement and recognition that baffles her for a long moment.
She turns to McCoy - he's staring at her, waiting for something. "McCoy...Is...?"
"Yes, it is."
Hysterical laughter threatens to bubble out of her - the Universe has a real sense of humor - but McCoy's grim look stops her cold.
Jim Kirk, Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, is a child.
- -
Christine sips tea at the bar in the kitchen while Leonard paces and the story pours out.
It was six weeks ago. A routine diplomatic mission - they're never routine, are they - on some backwater, only barely-warp-capable planet. Everything seemed to be just fine and dandy and boring for once. Until the away team came back to the ship. It took days to discount some kind of transporter malfunction as the root, but eight - eight! - fully-grown adults, Enterprise crew, returned to their ship as children. The physical change was complete, and so far irreversible, and though they continued to retain most of their adult memories and personalities, neural pathways and their ability to access memory was affected just by the physical change. Physically, they were all about eight years old. Mentally and emotionally, they were caught betwixt and between childhood and their fully-realized adult selves. Cupcake, of all the unlikely people, had the presence of mind to lock down Enterprise completely. He practically took apart the bulkheads in the investigation, finding only traces of suspicious communications from Romulus to someone on the planet below. And an underlying thread of Federation encryption. McCoy had contacted the other Spock, reluctantly, and they'd been parked here ever since. Enterprise was officially on an exploratory mission, far beyond immediate reach. In reality, the ship was in orbit, hugging the gaseous second moon of this planet, waiting for McCoy and few - very few - trusted Vulcan scientists to find a solution.
"So why bring me here?"
He rubs a hand across his forehead - fatigue - and she hates that part of her that wants to smooth her own hand over his skin, comfort him. "They know you. I know you, and I trust you and I need another goddamn set of intelligent eyes on this."
"So this isn't a glorified babysitting assignment? I'm here to be a doctor?"
"Yes. Goddammit!" He starts pacing again. "You have to understand, Chris, most of the Admiralty doesn't even know about this. There are still too many questions about who's responsible. This - thing - it's working on a genetic level and it hasn't stopped and it's degenerative and I'm losing time, every minute, every day, I'm losing - they're losing a little bit more of themselves and I'm supposed to fix it!"
"Kirk and who else?"
"Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, Roberts, Card, Eshkeri, and - Cawarra, Mina Cawarra - she died three days in."
"Oh my god," the sound barely escapes her. Mina had replaced her as head nurse when Christine headed back to Earth after the first five years, intent on becoming a doctor. "Why not keep them on the Enterprise?"
"Crew morale, automatic computer logs and video surveillance - only so much of it can be turned off - and Jim, he wouldn't give up command while he was still on his ship." McCoy shakes his head. His defeat appears total and something inside her cracks.
"I should get to work, then." She smiles with what she hopes looks like confidence.
"You should seem them first, Chris. They've been looking forward to you being here."
"Okay." She resists the temptation to ask if he had been looking forward to seeing her, too - if he had missed her at all. She's beginning to realize the enormity of the hole he left in her life - she left, by leaving him.
- -
"Doctor Chapel," Spock nods his acknowledgement. His posture and the gesture are exactly as they should be, and she's a little surprised at that because Spock himself is, well, a child. Children are not miniature adults, she thinks, even when they are. Spock's eyes are sad, and that is something she's never seen before.
It is the same with each of them. They are themselves, but their younger bodies betray them, and she knows she is seeing more than how they looked as eight-year-olds - she is seeing how they felt and thought and dealt with the world.
She lets them surround her, draw her in, grill her about medical school and Earth. Back with these friends, this family that saw each other through life and death and all sorts of galactic weirdness - she can almost forget the terrible circumstances. Almost.
- -
Christine is lost in thought, delaying turning out the lights and trying to sleep, when Nyota knocks on her door.
"I'm scared, Christine."
"I will find a way, McCoy and I will figure this out. I promise."
- -
They all come to her eventually with their own admissions of fear, and she makes the same promise. Seven times.
- -
Her days settle into a routine:
Long hours in the lab, running experiments and DNA analyses, picking apart the puzzle, looking for a key.
Lunch with the "kids", because she has to eat and because they are starved for interaction beyond their exclusive little club (Jim's words).
Longer hours at work. More coffee to get her through those hours and the evenings.
She's not a babysitter, exactly, or a mother or an aunt, but she's something to them - normalcy, a sense of themselves as the adults they still are in their minds - and she wouldn't dream of denying them, or herself, the times when she is just Christine Chapel, friend and confidante and contemporary.
- -
She can't say why exactly she does it, except that this defeated version of McCoy is completely unfamiliar to her and it breaks her heart: the subdued growl, the verve and humor that were always there beneath even the most determined grump or tirade and are nowhere to be seen, now. Whatever the reasons, there comes a moment in the lab when McCoy walks away from a revolving DNA projection and looks so utterly hopeless that Christine can only think of one thing to do.
Thought and action are simultaneous and she slaps him - hard - across the face before she even realizes what she's doing. "Since when do you give up! Stop walking around like this! They see it on your face everyday - that you've lost hope! And that is completely unacceptable! You're Dr. Leonard H. McCoy for hell's sake, you're brilliant, you're stubborn, you're an utter pain in the ass, and you never never give up! Do you understand me?! You never give up."
"That's enough, Chapel!" His fingers are tight on her wrist - the hand that slapped him captured in an automatic gesture - and he's fuming, life and color in his every aspect, and it's the most beautiful thing she's every seen.
"I'm not finished!" They're so close, face to face, flushed, breaths heaving and there's a - pause - a moment of awareness - before he growls out a response.
"Oh, yes, you are, Doctor!" And on that, he turns and walks away.
Christine swallows and stares at the door for a long moment after he's gone. What just happened?
- -
She finds him hours later at the back of the house, staring through a window at fading daylight.
"Leonard...I'm sorry. If you want me to go, I'll go. I shouldn't have -"
"Sh," he hushes her and gestures at the window. Sounds are drifting in from the yard - children at play, laughing. "They're laughing," he says almost reverently, as if it's something new and precious. "I can't remember the last time I heard..." He turns to face her and she thinks it must be a trick of the light - the glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes. "It's you, this is why we need you. Hope. And laughter. Christine...please stay?"
"Of course I'll stay." Saying no is unthinkable, impossible. For you, she doesn't add. For them, but for you, too
"Thank you."
They stand together at the window in long, companionable silence and it feels as new and precious and hopeful as the simple game being played outside in the dust and dusky twilight.
- -
"You fixed Bones." Jim corners her for a minute the next afternoon.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"He's walking and talking like Bones again and it's something you said or did. I was right that we needed you here."
"You were right? Even as an eight-year-old, you're never wrong, are you?"
"Nope!"
- -
They find it together - the solution - but she suspects it's largely because something has changed for McCoy. Call it hope, call it whatever, but when he's fired up and working as much on imagination and intuition as science - that's when they find the answer.
One by one - Jim first, because he's the Captain, even as McCoy protests his bullheadedness ("what if it doesn't work, you idiot?", "Bones, it'll work!") - they each receive a hypo of a tailored gene therapy and get beamed back to Enterprise, arriving on the transporter pad as adults.
- -
McCoy wants a whole week of observation and tests and scans, but Kirk is eager to hunt down bad guys - Cupcake and Pike have been investigating and the results are getting close to actionable - so it's only a day in Medical for the seven no-longer-children.
It's almost like old times - Enterprise and Adventure and McCoy and Medical - and it's seductive. Christine will admit that much to herself - that she is tempted, and not just by the familiarity. There is one McCoy, Leonard H., Doctor, in the mix. Nothing has been said, they've done nothing, but lingering eye contact is becoming the order of the day.
- -
"He's still in love with you, you know, Chapel." She's patching up Kirk after the latest skirmish as Enterprise follows the chain of the conspiracy.
"You're still not much of a diplomat," she says evenly, pressing a hypo to his neck.
"What do you mean?"
"The number one rule of diplomacy is not talk loudly and carry a big stick, it's know when to shut your mouth.
"Oh, that hurts, Chapel. That hurts me right where it counts. I've got -"
She rolls her eyes. "Please do not continue on that train. Now hold still."
He mumbles something unintelligible and, well, just double damn her curiosity. "Out with it. Forget diplomacy and just out with it, okay?"
"You're still in love with him, too."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I've got eyes in my head. I've seen the whole thing - the way you two look at each other."
"That was a long time ago, and you know that."
"Never say never. Think about it."
There is nothing to think about, she tells herself.
- -
She runs.
This assignment is technically over, and she should wait for her official assignment - deep space, hopefully Yorktown - on Earth. Those are the excuses.
The truth is, she's scared out of her wits of wanting too much to stay, of wanting to try again at something that she already failed at once - miserably.
She meets briefly with Pike - reports, and requests her official assignment.
"Very well, then, Commander. Yorktown will be in dock in a few days, then for four weeks. When she heads back out, you'll be on board. Lehman is the CMO, you'll be her second. It's a good ship, and One is a good captain."
- -
She answers the door of her small San Francisco apartment - that she's decided to keep while she's away - expecting, well, nothing really. She's not expecting anyone. And she certainly isn't expecting Leonard McCoy.
"You left," he says, but it lacks accusation. "You didn't even say goodbye."
"I couldn't. I...I had to." She sighs and steps aside to let him in. With the door closed, she can't think of anything else to say. They're staring at each other, and if the door wasn't holding her up, she's pretty sure her knees would just give out entirely.
"I messed up, Christine. Before. I'm so sorry. I was a selfish ass. And the fact that it's taken you leaving twice for me to realize that - it's no recommendation, is it. But I'm here, because...," he crosses the small distance between them, "because I love you."
"I do too."
"You do?"
"You what?"
"I love you, Christine Chapel," he smiles - oh, glorious, incredible smile - and then there is no space between them at all.
She laughs and he laughs and then they're laughing into a kiss. When they finally part for air, there is a chance - a small chance - that there are tears in her eyes.
"How do we not mess this up again," she asks, breathing him in, feeling hope rise up in her chest.
"Moment of truth, right. I can't promise to not make mistakes or not be an ass sometimes - or a lot of the time - but I can promise that I'll always talk to you and I'll always listen and I'll always love you." He kisses her again, hard and long.
"That's enough, that's exactly enough."
- -
"Yorktown, huh?" He asks it across her naked skin, much much later, in the lazy aftermath.
"You've been doing your homework," she sighs.
"It's a good assignment."
"Yeah, it is. It's also at the hell other end of the Quadrant."
"I know."
"So ask me. Ask me to come to Enterprise instead."
"Come live with me and work with me and be a doctor on Enterprise, Christine. Please."
"Know anybody who can arrange it?"
"Kirk," they laugh together.
And that is how the happy ending begins.