Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

*CONFIDENTIAL*

The following is transcribed from the final communications and logs of George Kirk, acting Captain of the USS Kelvin, before her demise on Stardate 2233.04

“Shuttle 37, is my wife onboard?”

“Yes sir, she is.”

“I need you to go now, do you hear me?”

“We’re waiting on you, sir,”

“No, just go! Take off immediately! That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

*static*

Uh, acting captain’s log. Autopilot is non-functional, I’m going to have to stay onboard the Kelvin to ensure the shuttles escape this attacking vessel. Before final impact, I’m going to attempt-

*static*

It’s unorthodox, but I have to at least try. Hopefully some remnant of the ship survives-

*static*

“Kirk out.”

Chapter 1

I’m running, running, running.

My arms are full of packed platelets and whole red blood cells. 

I turn the corner and barrel into the surgical suite, skidding to a stop before the line where the sterile field starts and hand the bottles over to an awaiting nurse. 

“Get those hung!” Bones snaps, elbow deep in a hemorrhaging abdomen. 

Christine speaks up from across from him, “I’ve got my fingers on the bleeder, I need a clamp!”

“Of course, of course the blade would hit an artery!” Bones hisses, digging deeper to try and clamp off the spewing artery. “What’s our estimated blood loss?”

“Nearly three liters,” Christine answers gravely. 

Bones curses colorfully, shaking his head. “Vitals are tanking, he’s going into hypovolemic shock. Get that blood on the rapid transfuser already!”

“Already done, doctor,” one of the nurses confirms. 

“Come on… come on,” Bones mutters, still digging around the bloody field. “Got it!” He suddenly cries, victorious. 

“Suctioning with the cell saver,” Christine confirms, trying to clear the field for a better view. 

“Now to repair the rest of the damage…” Bones grumbles, reaching for another surgical tool. He glances up at me for a split second, “Callie, we’re good here. Go see where M’Benga needs you.”

I nod before turning and leaving, ready to head back out to the bustling main bay. 

Before I turn the corner to head down the hallway, I pause to take a steadying breath, to try and calm my nerves. 

A first contact away mission had gone wrong, very wrong. Despite Nyota’s flawless translating, something was misinterpreted, leading to an attack from the planet’s inhabitants. During the melee, one of their warriors hit a security officer square in the torso with their serrated throwing weapon, leading to the chaotic but controlled trauma Bones was running in the OR. 

I typically like surgery, I find the inner workings of bodies of all species fascinating, but the stress from this one has me on edge. 

We knew someone had been seriously injured on the mission, medbay receiving a call to prep for a major stab wound, but we didn’t know who had been stabbed. 

Naturally, we had all silently assumed it was Jim, so my stomach was in my throat until he burst into medbay on his own two feet. His hands and uniform were full of blood, but it clearly wasn’t his as the security officer was rushed into surgery past him. 

Jim and I shared a knowing look, a nod to each other that he was okay, before we both had to turn and see to our respective duties. 

For me, a full-fledged student nurse, that meant going where and doing what I was told, mostly. There are things I can do, minor first aid, some triage, but for the most part, in this case, I need to play gopher. 

Which is fine by me- I pay attention to detail and have medbay memorized, so I can retrieve things quickly and efficiently. 

But as I stand for that split second outside the OR, it becomes apparent that it isn’t fine by everyone else. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Someone snaps, barreling down the hall towards me. 

I jump, looking up, to find one of the nurses, Maria, looking incensed. 

“I just-“

“It is not within a student’s scope of practice to retrieve blood!” She barks at me. “Because you have no scope of practice yet!”

I try to explain, “Bo- Dr. McCoy asked me to get it, everyone else was-“

“I don’t care!” She snarls, “and now you’re lollygagging when we need help in the main bay!”

I wasn’t- and if they needed help so badly out there, why was she here yelling at me?

“I-“

“Go out there and find someone to help, but for the love of god stay out of the way,” she hisses, moving past me. 

I swallow my inclination to explain myself, having found that my autistic instinct to do so annoys people as an ‘excuse’ more than it puts them at ease, and do what she says. 

The main bay is also chaos, the large landing party virtually all injured in some way, M’Benga and Sanchez trying to keep up with everyone and prioritize as needed. 

I try to push down my racing heart, my anxiety over the contradiction of ‘go help’ but also ‘stay out of the way’, looking for somewhere to step in. I’ve discovered that a lot recently, that neurotypicals live in a world of contradictions that they can all seemingly navigate perfectly fine, but confuse the absolute life out of me. 

My eyes land on Jim, arguing with one of the nurses as he tries to keep him on a biobed so he can treat the slash to his forearm I hadn’t seen when he first came in. 

I walk over there, knowing I can calm him down from the rising panic I see on his face. 

“Hey,” I say with a small smile, “now I know you aren’t giving my buddy Kael here a hard time.” I nod to the nurse, who shoots me a thankful smile. 

Jim forces a tight smile in response, “just need to check on the lieutenant,” he says. 

I nod, “Bones and Christine are still working on him. He’s lost a lot of blood, but they’ve found and clamped off the worst bleeder and are working to restore his volume.”

I see his chest deflate slightly at that, nodding before he glances around the rest of the bay. “And everyone else?”

“I’m playing gopher right now, so I’m not sure. Is there anyone in particular you’d like me to check on?”

“No, I just-“

“Calliope,” Maria snaps, having returned with an armful of supplies, “quit socializing with your brother and do something!”

Jim instantly scowls at that, opening his mouth to reprimand her, but I hold up a hand to stop him and jump back, “I’ll report back if there’s anything major.”

I hustle away, looking around to see who needs help. My stomach sinks as I realize- no one does. Everything is pretty much under control and anywhere I could insert myself, I’d just be in the way. 

I chomp on the inside of my cheek before I head over to Sanchez, snapping his gloves off to move to the next patient. 

“Cal,” he glances at me before his eyes roam all the patients, “do us a favor and keep your brother corralled? Boss doesn’t want him leaving until he’s cleared.”

I nod, stomach churning as I think of what Maria will think before I head back over to Jim. 

I blow out a breath as I approach him before I force a smile, and pick up the padd containing his chart as casually as I can. “So,” I say, “wanna tell me how this happened?” I nod to the wound that Kael is healing with a deep tissue regenerator. 

Jim scoffs, “you’ve been hanging out with Bones too much, you’re starting to sound like him.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I smirk, looking over his vitals for something to do as my mind searches for ways to distract him and keep him here. I glance up from the padd, inconspicuously, only my eyes moving, to take in his face, his posture, the tension in his jaw, all things I typically look at when it comes to my brother to determine how he’s really feeling. He masks as well as I do, most often.

But right now, he's pretty easy to read. His eyes are darting around the medbay, roving from person to person, lingering on the most injured. His posture is hunched in the shoulders, even as he keeps his spine ramrod straight, like he’s trying to project an air of confidence but isn’t actually confident. And his jaw, his jaw is tight, like he’s trying to stop himself from grinding his teeth. 

“Hey,” I say, a bit softer, trying to get him to meet my eye, “things are going well, okay? The patient board only has one critical listed, which is the lieutenant in surgery, and everyone else has been downgraded to yellow or green. We’ve already discharged five crewmen, and another three didn’t even need treatment. Let us carry the load for a while, okay? You won’t help anyone, or yourself, by bolting off this biobed before that gash is fixed up.”

Jim’s eyes slide to mine as he struggles to keep from bouncing his knee nervously, “you really have been spending too much time with Bones…”

I shrug, looking over at the progress being made on his wound, “you know I like numbers, facts, tangible evidence. And all of that that I currently have is trending in a good direction.”

“Captain,” Spock’s level voice rings out from behind me. 

I glance over my shoulder before swiftly stepping aside to give the two room to speak. I move closer to Kael, watching his technique intently as he switches from the deep tissue regenerator to the dermal. 

Spock and Jim begin discussing mission details, next steps, leaving orbit, and I tune that all out as irrelevant information. I don’t pay much attention to where we go or what we do, I’m just trying to keep my head above water as I attempt to learn the ropes in medbay. 

Kael smiles warmly and inclines his head, beginning to explain why he’s doing what he’s doing, when Bones finally emerges from the OR. 

His scrubs are covered in blood, and the fact he typically changes out of scrubs like that before coming into the main bay says a lot about what he's about to say. 

I can tell from the look on his face, the way his jaw is set, that it’s not good news. 

Jim attempts to stand, but he’s stopped by nearly all of us, “Bones?”

Bones shakes his head sadly, “I’m sorry, Jim. We did everything we could. But the arterial damage was too severe. We lost him on the table.”

My stomach drops, and I work to keep my features a cool neutral, while also forcing the proper amount of sadness and sympathy. 

Because another thing I’ve discovered in my time working here, my face rarely portrays what I’m actually feeling. People will tell me I’m ticked off when I’m just listening, and they tell me I’m being sarcastic when I’m trying to be funny. 

Trying to form the correct facial expression and hold it for the proper amount of time feels like a full time job in of itself. 

And it doesn’t help that every time someone is gravely injured, the handful of times I’ve heard time of death called, I’m thrown back in time to a motorbike careening over the edge of a cliff, screams echoing off the walls as Vos fell…

I shake myself free of the memory and let the triumvirate talk, discussing next steps again, before I slip away as Kael finishes up healing Jim’s arm. 

Christine is coming out of the OR, pulling her surgical cap off in defeat, so I approach her, my safe person of all the nurses. 

“M’Benga and Sanchez have everyone covered,” I report. “Everyone has a nurse assigned and most of them are almost ready for discharge. They say they don’t need me, so do you need any help?” 

I stand prim and proper, my hands twisted together in front of me as I await instructions. 

She sighs before placing a gentle hand on my upper arm, “you did good work, Cal. You helped us out a lot.”

I shake my head, “I didn’t do-“

“You did,” she corrects firmly, but softly. “You’re way past the end of your shift. Go home, get some rest.” 

“Everyone is working overtime right now,” I object, “and I’ve done the least, so I can-“

“You can go home,” she smiles encouragingly. She nods in the boy’s direction, “those three will be at it a while. I’m going to work on chart notes for the surgery and help the boss where I can with his paperwork for all this mess.”

The message is clear to me, even if she didn’t say it- I’m in the way because I’m basically useless. 

So I force another smile, I nod primly, “alright. I’ll clock out then. But call me if you need another set of hands, as unskilled as they are.”

She stops me as I turn, “hey,” she says. “You’re not unskilled, you checked the type and crossmatch from the lab, that was really helpful when we were elbow deep in blood.”

I shrug, “I mean… the lab did the actual type and crossmatch. Another nurse in the OR checked my check. I was just a gopher.”

“There is no such thing in this job,” she says, reaching out to squeeze my arm again. 

“Maria was not happy I did it, either…” I add. 

She waves a hand, “tension is high during a multi-casualty incident. Especially with the kind of injuries we were dealing with. Pay no mind to anyone stressing.”

I force another fake smile, another nod, hoping she’s too tired to see through me. “I’ll see you later then,” I say as I depart, leaving the actual medical professionals to do the actual medical care. 

As I sit on my shower floor once I get home, the water beating over my head, I try to process it all. Try to wade through all the emotions I felt. 

But I can’t identify them at all. 

Alexithymia, Bones has told me, multiple times. An inability or difficulty identifying or naming emotions. It’s common in autistics. 

But sometimes I feel like it makes me cold, unfeeling, in a way. Almost like I don’t feel anything. 

Although sometimes, I crave that feeling. Crave the numbness I carried for so many years, growing up. The numbness that is harder for me to choose these days, for some reason. 

It feels unfair that Spock, a half-Vulcan, half-autistic-human, seems to get a lot more grace than I do. I know the micro-aggressions he deals with, I see them, and I also envy his ability to let them roll off his back. 

But I suppose when you have the inherent respect of the titles he has, that makes a difference. I haven’t earned any titles yet, so I haven’t earned any respect. Maybe once I have my RN, once I’m useful, people will be nicer to me. Stop acting like I’m just in the way. 

The same way my mom always did. 

I push that thought to the back of my mind as I shut the shower off and just sit for a moment, the steam wafting out of the stall. 

I just want to keep sitting here, would be fine going to sleep right here, staying here all day tomorrow just to avoid another shift of criticisms. 

It’s not like it's everyone that gets obviously and unabashedly annoyed with me, but the ones who do make it so obvious that it feels that way. Their voices ring louder than anyone else’s. 

I know the bosses, the lead medical team, Bones, Christine, M’Benga, and Sanchez, don’t seem to have any issues with me, but sometimes I worry they’re being too nice. That there’s nepotism at play. Because it’s such a stark contrast between how they treat me versus how Maria and a couple other nurses treat me. 

The contradiction exhausts me, because I can’t make sense of it. It’s not logical, at least to me. Why some people act like I screw everything up, act like they can’t stand me, and yet others say I’m doing fine, that I’m helpful, even, and are nice to me. 

How can everyone be presented with the same evidence, but draw different conclusions? 

What I don’t know is that’s a question that will rule my life for the next few months. 

Chapter Text

We’re all trying to find our new normal, our routines, our places, in this five-year-mission we’ve embarked on. Some things stay the same as they were before Khan, and others change completely. 

One big change is Carol Marcus joining the crew. 

I mean, a lot of people joined the crew after the rechristening, because so many either died or left before it. 

But with Carol it’s different. She doesn’t exactly feel like she’s a part of the little group that Jim and I mainly interact with, the group we still eat meals with, that come over for game nights, but she doesn’t feel like she’s totally on the outside, either. 

And I don’t necessarily want her on the outside, I just like things- relationships, people- in neat little boxes with clearly defined labels. But people and relationships aren’t that clear cut or easy. 

I’m in my room one evening when I hear Jim and Carol talking in the living room and I don’t want to intrude, so I stand there for a moment to try and gauge if it’s a conversation I can walk in on or not. When I hear my name, my ears really perk up. 

“Even if your friends don’t care… won’t Callie mind?” Carol is asking, her lilting, soft voice full of concern. “I mean, game nights have been a tradition for much longer than I’ve been aboard.”

Oh, he wants her to come to game night on Friday. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. 

I can hear the head shake in Jim’s voice, “nah, she won’t mind. I don’t know why she would.”

“I’m already taking up so much of your time. With both of you working shifts all day, the evenings are really the only time you two get together.”  

“Carol, you’re not taking up my time,” Jim implores. “I’m sharing my time with you. And game nights aren’t a private affair for just me and Callie anyway. You’re not intruding, I promise.”

While I agree with the sentiment that it’s not something for just Jim and me, it is true that game nights are already hard for me. It’s a lot of people and a lot of conversations all at once and a lot of foods and smells. I fight sensory overload the whole time. Jim has become my safe person on those evenings. I sit next to him and can lay my cheek against his arm if the room starts to spin. 

If Carol comes, his attention is going to be even more divided, if not on her entirely. 

But maybe it’s time I stop leaning on Jim so much, anyway. Both metaphorically and physically. 

“Well, if you’re sure…” Carol trails off. 

“You’ve been with us for months now. I want you to feel like you belong in the family,” he says. 

And god, she deserves that. She lost her dad, she deserves to have a family here. 

“You’re sweet,” she says back, and I can picture her pecking his cheek. “I’ll come then. What can I bring?”  

And when I walk out of my room a few evenings later to the group gathered to play Scotty’s pick- some old board game- I have to keep my steps from faltering as I find Carol in the spot I usually sit in, leaning close enough to Jim that I can tell she wants to wrap her arms around his for support. 

And god, I can’t blame her. She must feel nervous and awkward and out of place. But dang it if it doesn’t hurt all the while. There’s a spot open on Jim’s other side, but sitting there would just feel… competitive, somehow. 

I scan the chairs, eyes looking for a spot next to Nyota, but they’re filled by Spock and Sulu. As we are waiting for Chekov to arrive, there are a few empty seats I could take, but I feel my body being drawn back to my room as if by magnetic force. 

And Nyota has become less and less of a safe person, anyway. Not that she’s done anything, but since my birthday months and months ago, we’ve interacted less and less. It’s not purposeful, just life on a starship. I’m becoming closer with Christine because that’s who I see everyday now. 

I want to run. I want to hide. I don’t want to sit rigidly all night, trying to not encroach on someone’s bubble. It’s why I feel safe(ish) at dinner in the mess, because I’m sandwiched between Bones and Jim, like two tall walls between the rest of the world and me. I don’t feel bad sitting next to either of them, especially not in between them, because I know if my arm brushes one of theirs or if I sneeze or if I bump someone’s leg when crossing my own, they aren’t going to be annoyed at me or feel uncomfortable. 

So my eyes naturally then search for Bones, and I find him making a drink at the wet bar by the window. I follow his line of sight and find he’s also studying Jim and Carol, trying to hide a scowl on his face. He finishes pouring his drink and I expect him to take the spot next to Jim, but instead he strides to the couch, sitting near the end by Scotty. 

So then, I don’t want to sit by him, seeing as how he and Scotty have a bond and friendship built on being the older ones onboard. It would feel intrusive. 

I’m overthinking every step, and my chest is getting tighter with each heart beat. As much as I had hoped working in medbay would make me used to people, get better at socializing, it seems to have had the opposite effect. 

I’m just about to slowly back back into my room, when Carol looks up and smiles at me, “Callie,” she says happily. “Good evening,” 

All the eyes in the room turn to me and I have no choice but to step forward and wave as casually as I can, “hi…”

Barely pausing in his conversation with Scotty, not even breaking eye contact with him, Bones pops up and walks over to me, gently takes me by the shoulders, and steers me to the couch. I curl up in the spot next to him as he sits down, pulling my knees to my chest, trying to make myself as small as humanly possible. 

My eyes roam all over the board game in front of us all, trying to get a semblance of how the game is likely played based on the pieces and game board. Trying to find some logic, something solid, in this situation to grasp onto. I barely notice my breathing speeding up. 

As Bones resettles next to me, still engrossed in conversation with Scotty, he carefully puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his side. 

He lays a hand over one of mine that’s got a death grip on my knee, stoking the back of my white knuckled hand gently with his thumb. 

I take the hint and loosen my grip, trying to suck in air. 

The front door swooshes open and Chekov comes in, looking frazzled as he carries a bowl full of presumably piroshky, as he typically makes a batch every week. More often if he’s feeling homesick. 

As he comes over and takes the empty seat on Jim’s other side, it just leaves the spot next to me open, meaning I’m really basically in between Bones and Carol. 

The thought makes me curl into him just a bit more, and as the game starts, he brings his other arm closer to me, sharing the cards he’s been dealt so I don’t have to play an unknown and new-to-me game on my own. 

He talks lowly in my ear in between his quips with Scotty, explaining the game and calming me down. 

I somehow expect myself to start to feel uncomfortable, to feel awkward or like I’m being too needy. But it never happens. I slowly relax, little by little, until I’m casually leaning into Bones’ side, laughing at the story Sulu is telling. 

Still, he keeps an arm around me the whole evening, until the game ends and everyone starts to stand and clean up. 

I expect Jim to settle back into the couch for a movie like we typically do, Bones staying as well, and I even expect Carol to stay. I’ve accepted it, I’ve accepted that I’m not going to be able to fully relax tonight, that Carol is probably here to stay, not just tonight, but for the long term. 

What I don’t expect is for Jim to announce to me and Bones, after everyone else has left, that he and Carol are going to go for a walk through the arboretum, check out the view of the nebula we are studying from there. 

Bones and I share a very brief but very knowing look that they’re going to be checking out a view, but not one of the nebula. 

As the two hurriedly leave, we both roll our eyes as we finish pushing the chairs back where they go. “Some view…” I grumble. 

Bones snorts, “as long as it’s not a view I’m walking in on.”

“Aren’t like- well, like-“ I find myself stammering, my autistic filter worn down after a night of masking. My cheeks flush, “don’t people typically do that stuff with the lights off?”

He glances up, surprise in his eyes, but he just shrugs casually as he ties up the trash. “Depends. Not always.”

I shudder, hating the idea of anyone ever not only getting me naked, but seeing me naked. 

I huff and look around, before I shrug, “alright. Well. Guess I go to bed.”

“Are you actually tired or just bored?”

I sigh, rubbing at my arm uncomfortably. “I mean… no, but… I just really need to decompress, I suppose.”

“I've got the remake of Contagion, finally. We could watch it since Jim’s gone and it’d freak him out to see.”

“The remake of the remake?”

“The remake of the remake of the remake,” he nods towards me with a smirk. 

I snort before I nod, “sure, yeah.” 

He goes to get the movie and I change into sweatpants, scrub the makeup off my face, and throw my hair into a bun. I’ve felt overstimulated all night not just from the people, but the literal mask of proper clothing and makeup I’ve had on, and I’m eager to shed it. 

That’s something that’s been hard for me in medbay, having to mask all day. Everyone tries to tell me not to, but I see the strange looks people outside of the senior medical team give me when I do. No one gets my sense of humor, they think I’m being sarcastic when I’m trying to be nice, and I can feel everyone studying my every move, both bodily and facially. 

Every day I come home and scrub my body down in a hot shower, trying to scrub off both germs and judgment. Then I only have an hour before I have to get dressed yet again in something socially acceptable- not sweatpants and a messy bun- and go to the mess for dinner, where I’m expected to make even more conversation. The constant masking is really taking a toll on me, and I’m desperately trying to not let it show. 

So the evenings when it’s just me, Jim, and Bones have always meant so much to me, because I can actually unmask and unwind. 

But weirdly enough, when it’s just me and Jim, I have difficulty doing that. He wasn’t there when I got the autism diagnosis. He wasn’t there when I was slicing into my skin because I was so overwhelmed. He wasn’t there when Section 31 tried to use my diagnosis against me to take me away. He wasn’t there when Bones taught me to unmask. 

So when it’s just me and Bones… it makes me feel guilty that that’s when I’m most comfortable. That’s when it’s easiest for me to unmask. 

Even more so, because I spent a year with him as my caregiver more than Jim was, he can read me like a book way better than Jim can. 

Bones is the one who can set down food in front of me and distract me enough to get me to eat it. 

Bones is the one who can see when my hypermobility is acting up because I’m trying to hide my winces of pain. He’s also the one I can more easily admit things to about when I don’t feel good. 

Bones is the one who can tell when I start missing my mom without me saying anything. Because he’s a dad who misses his own daughter. 

Bones is the one who can see me start to either get flustered or shut down when I’m doing clinicals without me even saying anything, and then sends me somewhere quiet to compose myself. 

And now, Bones is the one who sees when I feel lost because Jim is becoming more focused on Carol than he is me. 

Or him, for that matter. 

Bones and Jim spent three years in the academy as roommates. Bones was the first and only person Jim ever told about Tarsus. Bones was the one who snuck him onto the Enterprise and is the whole reason he even has command. Bones was the one who was there with him almost every night for the near-year before I came along. Dinners, drinks, movies. So I know Bones has to be feeling his absence just as much as me, if not more. 

Jim’s evening plans have become elusive to us, and we only figure out where he actually is when we ask the computer or hear from someone like Scotty that he saw them- him and Carol- strolling the halls. 

And Jim is entitled to his privacy, he’s entitled to his own relationships, especially after dying and rehabbing for a year. 

I can’t tell if they’re sneaking around because it’s a superior/subordinate relationship they aren’t ready to label, or because they don’t want any scrutiny or questions, or maybe they don’t even know what the relationship really is yet. (Which makes zero sense to my autistic brain because how can you not know exactly what your romantic status is with someone?!)

All I know is that Jim dips out most evenings after dinner, and somewhere along the way, with me busy in medbay and him with his own duties, we stop meeting for lunch. So I really only see him at breakfast, dinner, and in passing, otherwise. 

I’ve always spent my free time alone, my whole life. It’s not like it’s a problem for me. I’m fine being alone. I often think it’s better that I’m alone, since I’m so bad with people and relationships. It’s just that I had gotten used to someone else always being around for the past year or so. 

I’m not far out from my 18th birthday, which means I’m not far out from the anniversary of my mom getting her xenopolycythemia diagnosis. Sometimes I have to wonder if that was just another lie, because I have no idea what, if anything, she told me about her diagnosis was true. 

So without Jim, and without my mom, I’m feeling extra lonely lately, even if I do have Bones. I’m desperately trying not to be a burden on him, trying to not give him any reasons to worry about me. But I know he does, anyway. Christine is busy lately with doing correspondence programs to get her MD, and Nyota and Spock became closer than ever during our year off, so while I know they’re still there for me, I’m always trying to not bother them, either. 

The group chat between me, Auggie, and Cayde is alive and well, but long distance friendships are extremely hard to feel very connected to. But in a way, I feel closer to them than anyone else. Yet, knowing they’re living their own lives, lightyears and lightyears away, forces me to remember how alone I really am. 

And unfortunately, alone, even when it’s your normal, does sometimes get lonely.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

It’s past 12am and I’m still up and about and vacuuming the floors in our quarters. 

It became a weird habit for me, living with my mom, that I’d stay up until early in the morning cleaning. It was the only time of day she wasn’t around to watch and nitpick. The only time of day I was truly alone, was able to go about my business and not be perceived by anyone, let alone anyone as judgemental as her. 

And now that Jim is spending so many nights at Carol’s- genuinely thinking I don’t know he’s gone- I’ve reverted back to the old habit. It’s calming, in a way, to get everything clean and tidy before bed- and while no one is around- so I can wake up to a clean space in the morning. It takes some of the day’s pressure off of me. 

Of course, I don’t need to do any cleaning. We have a porter for that reason, and even Jim’s yeoman, Janice, tidies up the place if need be. But Jim is a neat freak and I don’t want to make anyone clean up after me, so neither of them are much needed. 

Still, I need free time to do something without any pressure on me when I get off of my medbay shift for the day. Coming home to laundry that needs done or a bathroom floor that needs mopped, simply so no one else has to do it, just makes me even more exhausted than I already am at that point in the day. 

So nights like this when Jim is gone, mopping the bathroom floor turns into mopping the floor around the wet bar, since I have the mop out. Doing my laundry turns into grabbing Jim's as well to make it a full load. Tidying up my room turns into tidying up the living room, folding blankets and fluffing pillows. 

So I’m vacuuming, moving from my room to the living room, lost in my own little world, when the door between our quarters and Bones’ slides open and scares me half to death. 

I yank off the headphones I’m wearing, noise cancelling, naturally, and the music I have blaring automatically pauses as I turn off the vacuum cleaner. 

Of course I knew the door was unlocked, it pretty much always is. It’s not like Jim or I walk around undressed, so it’s safe to leave unlocked. And the nights when I’m alone, I actually check to make sure it is unlocked, just in case… I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just so I feel less alone. More safe. 

Bones is scowling at me, and I sheepishly set the vacuum upright and turn to face him. 

“Why are you up?” He drawls. 

“Did I wake you? Was I making too much noise? I’m sorry, I-“

He holds up a hand, “I was up. Why are you up?”

I shrug, “cleaning.”

I can tell he holds in a sigh, “is Jim not here?”

I shake my head, “he thinks I don’t know but… yeah, I know when he’s gone.”

“Wait- you’re telling me he’s gone overnight? And often?”

Another sheepish nod. 

“What, he’s sneaking out like a damn teenager?!”

“Hey…” I object with a pout. “I’m a teenager and I don’t sneak out.”

“No, but you stay up all hours cleaning.” He shakes his head, “and why are you?”

I look at the time, 0115. “Not tired,” I answer flatly. 

“Did you take your meds?”

“Not yet,” I lie. I have taken them. They just haven’t been working lately. The times when my brain works overdrive like it has been, when I mask so hard around people that I don’t even know who I really am when alone, not even my sleeping meds can shut it off. 

“That’s why you’re not tired…” he grumbles. “Take your meds at a decent time, and you’ll be in bed by a decent time.”

“But this is my cleaning time!” I object, trying to justify my lie. “This is when it’s quiet and I don’t have anything to do or anywhere to be or anyone to see and I can actually get stuff done.”

“You’re going to burn yourself out if you’re not resting and sleeping enough.”

“I’m a nursing student,” I scoff. “When do I have time for rest?”

He frowns, “are you not getting enough downtime?”

“Of course I am!” Another lie. 

“Then why are you up cleaning instead of sleeping?”

“I told you-“

“Do you do this every night?”

“Yes, but-“

“Then you aren’t getting sufficient rest for your autistic brain and hypermobile body.” He jerks his head to my room, “go take your pills then bring back your blanket and pillow.” 

“Why?”

“Just do it…” he huffs without any real malice. 

I throw my head back and groan but pretend to go do as he says. 

He’s waiting for me in his quarters as I trudge in with my fuzzy blanket and pillow in my arms. “Are you gonna watch me sleep like a creep or something?”

“Something like that,” he says as he waves a hand for me to follow him. 

After the ship was remodeled post-Khan, they gave all the senior staff upgraded rooms, most including a second bedroom to be used as an office. At least, that’s the official reason. Seeing as how we are the first ship with a non-Starfleet long-term occupant, they figured they might as well prepare for the inevitable and plan for bigger quarters with more than one sleeping area. 

So Bones’ quarters now include a second bedroom as opposed to just being a studio style. Instead of making it into an office space, it was my understanding he was keeping it open for Jo, since Jocelyn told him she wasn’t going to fight him on her visiting anymore. But also seeing as how we are planning to be in deep space for 5 years, I think that’s more wishful thinking than anything else. 

That is until I see the room now, for the first time. 

I had expected pink and frills and a room that screams of Joanna, but the room is basically bare, just the standard Starfleet shades of grey. The first thing I notice is a weighted blanket, and my eyes narrow suspiciously. There’s a noise machine on the nightstand, already humming with soft white noise. The room itself is cool, almost frigidly cold. 

It’s strangely the perfect conditions for me to sleep in, specifically. 

I swivel my head to look up at him at the same time he takes my pillow out of my hands and tosses it on the bed. “Wha-“

He takes my blanket and spreads it over the top in one swift motion. Then he looks at me and hold out a hand, “padd.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s bedtime. Gimme your padd.”

I bristle, “I’m not a baby.”

“No, but you need to shut your mind off.”

“What if I want to read?!”

“I’ll get you a book.”

“You want me to just stare at the ceiling?!” I ask, near panic. 

“No,” he sighs. “I can see the exhaustion on your face. Who knows how long you’ve been runnin’ around sleep deprived. I’m just asking you to try and go to sleep. If you’re still wide awake in 20 minutes, fine, come get your padd back. But you need to sleep. You’re going to get burnt out otherwise.”

Oh, if he only knew… 

But he can’t know. 

I sigh, “but I need my padd for an alarm in the morning.”

“I’ll wake you up.”

“I have a bed of my own, you know.”

“Yeah, and you ain’t in it, and you don’t have a brother at home to put you in it. So,” he points, “get in this one.”

I roll my eyes dramatically but relent and crawl under the covers. I ball my fuzzy blanket in my fists up by my face as I lay on my side and let out a breath. 

“Thank you,” he says, self satisfied. 

I grumble, but close my eyes. 

He leans over to drop a kiss on my head before he leaves, and I feel my shoulders relax. I’ve been going to bed so late and so full of tension lately, and so alone, that melting into the bed with someone nearby is more calming than I’ll admit. 

I will also refuse to admit just how quickly I fall asleep. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

One night, I wake up in my bedroom drenched in sweat and thrashing, shaking, barely keeping myself from crying out. I can barely even remember what I was dreaming about, it might have been about Khan, might have been about failing a nursing exam, might have been both. 

I push myself from my now-soaked sheets and change out of my soaking clothes, putting on fresh underwear, sweatpants, and an oversized sweatshirt. 

Still shaking, I turn back to my bed and sigh. I could- should- get in bed on the other, dry side and go back to sleep… But…

I bite my lip and look towards my door, as the memories and details of the nightmare become clearer. I was in medbay, Jim was in surgery with Bones, and it was my job to take care of everyone in the main bay. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t remember anything, not even what the normal blood pressure range is for a human. Everyone started deteriorating under my care, and when the monitors all started to wail, the same way Jim’s had when he was in the SFM ICU and his heart stopped- that’s when I woke up. 

Crossing my arms over myself, shaking like a leaf, I know I need to see Jim at least, to convince myself he’s okay. 

I pad barefoot to his room and find the door open- and his bed empty. 

He had clearly waited until I was asleep to slip out this time. I don’t even need to ask, but I do anyway, “computer- locate Captain Kirk.”

Captain Kirk is on deck 35, crew quarters, cabin 131

He’s with Carol. Of course. 

Still shaking, I go back to my bedroom and stop in the doorway, staring at my bed. 

My ears ring and roar as I strain to hear something, anything. But the silence is a reminder that I’m utterly alone. 

I’m tired, I have an early morning, and I need to go back to sleep, but I know I’m not going to be able to if I’m alone. Not after that nightmare. And god, when did that become the case? When did I become so needy?

I weigh my options, ponder the outcome of each, the consequences of not getting enough sleep tonight, and I sigh, resigned. 

I stalk into my room and grab my pillow and my spare fuzzy blanket before turning on my heel and heading into Bones’ cabin. 

I walk lightly, tiptoeing, not wanting to disturb him yet needing to be in close proximity to someone safe.

But I underestimate the hearing of a man who has years of being a doctor and a dad under his belt, a man who can wake up at the drop of a hat. 

I’m halfway down the hall when his bedroom door slides open and he peers out, jumping slightly when he sees me. He quickly becomes worried instead of surprised, “what’s wrong?” He drawls, voice thick with sleep. 

“Nightmare,” I shrug, pulling my pillow closer to my chest. “Jim’s with Carol and I don’t… I can’t… I won’t go back to sleep if I’m alone.”

His eyes rake over me, and I can tell he’s taking in my damp hair and red eyes, the slump of defeat in my shoulders but the tension on my face. 

He gives a nod before he puts a hand on my back and guides me into his spare room. 

I expect him to leave after I’ve gotten in bed, but instead he perches on the edge, moving to brush my hair back away from my face. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Absolutely not. He doesn’t need to know how terrified I am of being inept. He’s going to doubt me if I’m doubting myself. 

I turn on my side and shake my head, “no.”

He hums in acknowledgment but keeps brushing my hair back, fingers lightly trailing my scalp and making me close my eyes as I start to sink into the pillow. 

“I went to find Jim…” I murmur. “Didn’t want to wake him up. Just wanted to see him… I didn’t want to wake you up either…”

“Sh, it’s fine, darlin’,” he hushes me. “Just go back to sleep. I’ll be here if you need me. I promise.” 

“‘M just being a baby…” I pout, already half asleep. 

“No you’re not,” he soothes. “We’re here for you because you need us. Or… we should be…”

“D’n’t be mad at Jim…” I slur. “D’n’t tell ‘im I came here…”

I hear him sigh, and I plead, “please. He deserves… happy…”

“Didn’t he wonder why you weren’t in your room when you slept here last week?”

“He din’t know I was gone.”

“Didn’t-“ he sighs again, and I can tell he’s shaking his head, but he keeps gently brushing my hair back. 

“Please…”

“Alright, I won’t yell at him. But one more time of you needing him and he’s not around, I’m going to say something.”

“Kay…” 

I fall asleep long before he stops stroking my hair. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Ignacio Sanchez: you still up?

Bones glanced at the time, 0239. He shouldn’t have been up, but yet, he was. He just never slept well while in space. Disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence, and all. 

Not that he’d ever let Callie find out he was a fellow insomniac. He had to set some sort of example, especially if Jim wouldn’t. 

He truthfully didn’t even know how often Jim was sleeping at Carol’s. Or with Carol. Not that he wanted to know the latter. He just wanted to know that Callie was looked after. And it seemed the looking after was more so up to him, most days. 

Jim was very good at putting on a front, he always had been. So he knew to show up to breakfast and dinner without Carol and act like everything was normal. He knew not to talk about her. He thought that sneaking out at night to see her would go unnoticed. He thought the constant messaging with a smirk dancing on his face would go unnoticed. But Jim was underestimating both his best friend’s and his sister’s perceptive powers. 

And he had to wonder exactly how Carol felt about basically being Jim’s little secret. Not that anyone who cared to couldn’t figure things out. They were private, subtle, but with as many geniuses as there were on the Enterprise, there were probably more people that knew than they thought. 

And then he had to wonder how secrets being kept affected Callie- whose mother had kept so many secrets from her for her entire life. And he had started to worry that it was an example she’d end up following- keeping secrets she shouldn’t. 

He was able to keep an eye on her more than ever, with her working in medbay every day. If his eyes weren’t on her, one of the other senior medical team members had her in their sights. He insisted she eat in the mess as much as possible. He wouldn’t let her weasel out of their Tuesday night coffee dates. But the fact she could still hide when she wasn’t sleeping was troubling him. Not only because Jim should have been there to make sure she was sleeping, but also because it meant she wasn’t asking for help when she needed it. And that was a slippery slope for her. 

There was a lingering worry in the back of his mind that there were other things she was hiding, but he wasn’t sure. She was still wearing her safety pin necklace he’d gifted her, religiously, he always checked. But knowing she was spending evenings alone without someone to look after her and confide in and be there when she woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare ate at him. 

He answered Sanchez, yeah. what’s up?

Callie is down here, in your office. Says she can’t sleep so she came to use the medical library. She’s refusing to let us give her anything so she can go to bed. 

He sighed. Keep her there. I’m on my way. 

He knew Callie would just grab the padds she allegedly needed and run off to hide somewhere she could hole up and study until she had to get ready for her shift. 

The fact that Igancio had clearly clocked right away that something was off wasn’t a good sign, either. 

Ignacio was becoming more and more of an aid in identifying when Callie was struggling, since he had lived experience from doing the same with Auggie. 

Still, she was a slippery one, that girl they all loved, and could hide her struggles better than anyone, maybe even better than Jim. So having tangible evidence that she was struggling was going to be the first step in helping her. Even if she didn’t want it. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“So here’s the thing…” Sanchez says to me as I try to leave medbay, arm full of padds. “The boss has a rule that if you show up here for any reason, we’ve gotta call him.”

“But I’m not here because I’m sick,” I object. 

A lie. My head is pounding. That’s the real reason I’m in medbay at almost 3am, I’m trying to sneak some painkillers. 

“Any reason,” he shakes his head. 

I roll my eyes, “that’s idiotic. Don’t go waking him up for no reason. I’m going back home now.”

The look on his face makes me roll my eyes again, “you already called him, didn’t you.”

“If it makes you feel any better, he was already awake.”

“You’re such a snitch,” I roll my eyes one last time, seeing flashing lights as my head pounds behind them. Then my eyes narrow as I ask, “why?”

“He’s always up late,” he shrugs. 

“He’s always-“ my eyes widen, even as the motion makes them water with pain. “Is he a closet insomniac?”

He tries to hide a wince that tells me I probably wasn’t supposed to know that. 

When Bones walks in then, I whirl on him, then have to hide the vertigo the movement gives me, “are you a closet insomniac?”

He shoots Sanchez a withering look and he sheepishly shrugs. 

He looks back at me, “I don’t need much sleep.”

“Oh, but when I say that, I get drugged!” I snap. 

“Because I don’t want you to become a chronic insomniac.”

I scoff, “psh, too late.”

He gives me a look, and Sanchez wisely scurries off before the war begins. 

“Is Jim not home again?”

“No, he is,” I shake my head, a mistake, as it sets off the jackhammer again. “He went to bed early, actually. But he’s there.”

“Why can’t you sleep?”

I shrug, “dunno. Just can’t tonight.”

Lie, lie, lie. 

Would anyone in medbay gladly give me painkillers? Yes, of course. But do I want to have to come up with an excuse for why I have a headache? No, no I don’t. 

Because I simply can’t find a lie to cover it up, that I’m having more and more headaches like I used to. They’re coming on more frequently as I work more and more with people, the more I need to mask and the more pressure I put on myself to keep my head above water. 

The studying, the tests, the long clinical hours, all of it is hard enough for any nursing student. But add my autism, add the fact I have to socialize even outside of school/work, then add my hypermobility which makes my body ache after being on my feet all day, it’s all a whirlwind of overstimulation and stress. 

Then there’s the stress of missing Jim, of not having someone to unwind with, to confide in, to blow off steam with. I have no idea when the last time we threw mek’leths was. I alternate between having pent up energy and burnt out exhaustion all day every day. 

Bones sighs at me, “do you think we need to change your sleeping meds?” He asks softly. 

I shrug, “I don’t know. They work sometimes. Sometimes is better than nothing. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

He cocks his head, raises an eyebrow, “no patient of mine is ever going to be a beggar,” he shakes his head. “‘Sometimes’ isn’t good enough. Let’s try something new.”

“Tomorrow night?” I cut him off. “Please? I don’t want to be drowsy all day tomorrow.”

“You mean today?” He snorts before shaking his head. “Fine, but you do need to go to sleep sometime soon.”

“Which is why I came for reading materials!” I lie. 

He eyes me, “hmph. Fine. But if you’re still not asleep in an hour, I’m taking you off the schedule for the morning.”

“And how would you know?” I snark. “Gonna watch me sleep again?”

“If you actually slept, I wouldn’t have to,” he grumbles, placing a hand on my back to steer me towards the turbolift. 

I can only hope the painkillers from Bones’ personal stash in his desk that I was able to slide up my sleeve before Sanchez found me help knock both the headache and me out. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“Hey, Auggie,” I sigh into the camera without really meaning to as I fall into the couch the next day. I never went to sleep, and my day was particularly rough even without that adding to it. “Sorry I’m late. It’s been a day.”

He cocks his head at me from his and Cayde’s dorm back in San Francisco, “you’re like, two minutes late.”

“Yeah, I know. A whole two minutes. I’m the girl that’s always a half hour early to everything. I’ve always said I’m going to be early to my own funeral. Being late dysregulates me like you wouldn’t believe.” I rub at my eyes, “anyway. How was your day?”

He shakes his head at me, “back it up. What’s going on? What happened today?”

I sigh, glancing around the living room as if to double check that I’m really alone, even though I know I am. 

I always am. 

“Just a long day,” I roll my eyes, yanking my hair out of the tight ponytail it’s been in all day. “We had injuries from an away mission to treat all afternoon. A so-called routine scouting mission that turned not so routine when the freaking plants started attacking. The away team came back with injuries ranging from a sprained ankle to a partially severed femoral. I was cleaning and dressing a lesser-injured science officer’s wounds by myself when the guy decided he needed to make sure I was actually qualified to not only treat him, but be in medbay at all by asking all these weird personal questions. How old was I again? Why am I not an academy graduate? Did my brother get me my assignment? Did I even want to be there or would I rather just be off playing video games?”

“He actually asked you that?”

I nod miserably. “And I mean, I get it. I’ve spent my life wary and not trusting any medical providers. But it was just like…” I shake my head. “I dunno. I’m so bad with people, it’s like I take everything way more personally than I should and I know it’s a problem but…”

“But it’s hard not to when it’s literally a personal attack.” He points out. 

I bury a hand in my hair and tug at it gently. Maybe a little rougher than gently. “Then when I was done with him, I went and asked one of the other nurses what else needed to be done. She looked me up and down, rolled her eyes, sighed, and told me to go stock the supply closet. I tried to tell her that I knew that there were still at least a dozen people waiting for treatment- it was a huge away team- but she snapped at me and told me that until I’m a real nurse, I need to realize that I’m just going to be in the way more often than not.”

“Jesus. What did anyone say about that?”

I shrug, “nothing. Because who would I tell?”

“Uh, McCoy, for one?”

I shake my head, “I can’t go running to Bones every time someone is mean to me.”

“But you can tell him when someone is being unprofessional. You know he doesn’t tolerate that type of thing. I know he doesn’t because Boyce doesn’t.”

I pull on my hair again, “I’m not going to get someone reprimanded because they were having a bad day or shift.”

“Yeah, but if I recall correctly, which we both know I do, that’s not the first time another coworker has talked down to you.”

“I’m a student, they're my preceptors. What else should I expect? And I mean, even if they were deserving of a talking to, it would just come off as them needing to treat me better because I’m the captain’s sister, not because I actually deserve respect.”

“Which you do,”

“I guess it’s just stuff I’m used to. Does it eat at me? Yeah, yeah a lot. I hate being disrespected and talked down to and dismissed. It reminds me too much of my mom. But I also know that I’m autistic and people don’t like me simply because they can sense I’m not like them. That I don’t care about social structure and hierarchies. Even when I try to. But also, they all think I don’t care because I think I’m at the top and untouchable because of who my guardians are. It’s a big circle of crap circumstances that I can’t change or control.”

“But you’re going to be miserable if people keep treating you that way.”

I rub at my forehead, my makeup already worn off from running around all day. “I’m already miserable…” I huff quietly, thinking he can’t hear me.

I look up, “everyone says it’s the book work that’s hard in nursing school. The memorizing and learning complex systems and rules and proper steps and procedures. But that stuff has never been hard for me. I love learning and I love learning things that make logical sense, that have rules, like bodies do. But the things that don’t make logical sense? That don’t follow black and white rules? That don’t have set guidelines? Like social interactions and the, quite frankly, customer service side of healthcare… it’s a lot harder than I anticipated.”

He pauses, fiddling with the padd in his lap. “I know what you mean about dealing with people all day, as coworkers, patients, and teachers. It’s a lot. For a while I thought that the only way to survive was by enjoying my downtime. But then I started to hate everything other than my downtime. I started to hate even the parts of nursing I love. And I thought that I just had to push through it. But Boyce picked up on the fact that something was wrong and made me fess up after I quit my meds a while back. After that, he assigned me more time in areas with less forced interactions, less people. Because he said that burning myself out was a very hard place to bounce back from.”

I know what he’s implying I need to do, but I brush him off. “I’m glad you’re on the right track now,” I smile. “I’d hate to lose my studying buddy.”

He doesn’t let me worm out of it as he pointedly says, “and I’d hate to lose mine if she burns out and ends up hiding in the floors somewhere again.”

I snort, again attempting to brush him off again, “that was like, three times, max!”  

He gives me a look that’s all too much like his brother, and I sigh. 

“You have a whole hospital to learn in,” I object, “plus the campus clinic. I only have medbay. I can’t be reassigned or do anything to give me less to do with people. Being with people isn’t just part of my training, it’s going to be part of my job. I have to suck it up and get used to it.”

“You can’t get used to being burnt out, Cal.”

“I just have to build up a better tolerance. A better mask. Then I won’t get burnt out.”

He hesitates, “I think you’re already there.”

I roll my eyes, “then I’ll just have to start sleeping more.”

“You’re barely sleeping at all.”

“Which is why I’m going to start running laps before bed.” Before bed, at midnight when I can’t sleep, same difference. “It’ll clear my mind.”

He hesitates again, that autistic stubbornness of not wanting to let something go when you know you’re right seeping out. “Just… tell someone, if things don’t improve. Please?”

I flash him a small smile, “of course. It’s not like I’ve ever been successful at hiding things from these people anyway,” I snort. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Callie was trying to hide more things than just the sleeping issues from him. 

Because when Bones went into his desk drawer for his spare stylus, of course he noticed a packet of OTC painkillers missing. And he knew not even Jim was so bold as to pilfer meds. 

There had been ten packets there when he’d clocked out the evening before, as there always was, and Callie had been in his office after that, alone, trying to use the flimsy excuse of needing medical texts as her reason for being there. 

It wasn’t as if the meds were under lock and key, anyone on staff, especially everyone in medbay, knew they could ask for them at any time. 

But asking was the regulation. He’d let it slide to even just informing- ‘hey, boss, I grabbed some painkillers.’ Enough away teams returned screaming that headaches weren’t uncommon for his staff. 

But Callie, unable to sleep, clearly in enough pain at three in the morning to the point that she couldn’t ignore it and needed meds, that wasn’t common. Which was likely why she hadn’t asked. She knew he’d ask questions. Questions she clearly didn’t want to answer. 

Because it clearly wasn’t a one off thing, if it had been, if it had been a random headache or even cramps, she wouldn’t have hesitated. But if it were an ongoing issue she knew she’d have trouble covering up, that’s when her swiping meds made the most sense. 

He sighed as he sank into his chair, scrubbing a hand over his face as he tried to decide what to do. 

Normally, he would have gone straight to Jim, asked him if he knew what was up with her. But the way he’d been disappearing more and more anytime he was off shift, he didn’t think Jim knew much of anything going on with Callie. 

He missed the kid, even if he didn’t want to admit it. 

He wanted him to be happy, more than anything else. And damn it, he deserved to be happy, especially after… everything. 

But his happiness couldn’t come at the cost of his sister’s wellbeing. 

So he resigned himself to having a conversation he really didn’t want to have. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

0245 is when I officially give up on sleep. 

You’d think that not sleeping at all the night before would knock me out, but alas, sleep still isn’t coming. 

I change into leggings and a tank top, slide on sneakers,  and slip out of our quarters without even checking to see if Jim is home or not. 

The more stressed I get, the more my body seems to ache. The fact I’m on my feet most of the day doesn’t help, either. The days I’m off, I spend mostly sleeping, and then trying to hide the fact I spent all day sleeping from Jim and Bones. But my hips ache as I lay in bed, even as I toss and turn as I doze in and out. My knees tend to sublux and near dislocate if I sleep super heavy. My ankles keep swelling. And my shoulders, already aching from moving patients around in their beds, snap, crackle, and painfully pop no matter how I lay. 

So my idea to wear myself out by running, I figure, is a good idea, because not only will it get my nervous energy out, it might help strengthen my muscles and stamina for work. 

I pull my hair back in a ponytail as I make my way towards the track, the ship silent well into its gamma shift. My blasting music in my headphones cuts through the quiet as I begin to run, not bothering to even stretch first. 

I savor the burning of my muscles, enjoy the breathlessness running provides, and relish the pounding of my heart in my chest. 

I eventually come to a screeching halt, gasping for air like a person drowning, and lean my hips back against the wall. I place a hand on my chest as I struggle for oxygen, pulling it in as fast as I can. My touch lingers on the necklace I haven’t taken off since Bones gave it to me, the signal to him that I’m okay. 

I gently pull on it, rocking the safety pin from side to side.

As I sink to the ground, my back sliding down the wall, I can’t help but think about taking it off. 

Not as a signal to Bones that I’m not okay, but just an acknowledgment to myself that maybe I’m not. 

But then I scold myself for being overdramatic. I’m fine, I’m just tired. This is a schedule that tons of people keep, easily, at that. So many people have so much more on their plate, how can I possibly feel so burnt out?

I shake my head, angry at myself for being so whiny, so weak.

Who cares if my body hurts? If I’m not sleeping? Can barely eat? Feel nothing but exhaustion and a deep seated pain that I don’t want to fully acknowledge? Because how can I be feeling all that when I don’t even have any real responsibilities? When I’m doing something that I truly do love? I live with my brother for free, I have all my meals cooked for me, I have access to the best education possible and a built-in tutor next door, I have basically nothing to worry about.

I don’t deserve to feel this stressed and burnt out.

I bury my head in my hands, wiping the sweat off my face as I do so. I have to get past this. I have to suck it up. I have to be an adult. 

I have to realize that Jim is also an adult with his own life and schedule. 

I have to realize the same for Christine and Nyota. 

I have to remember Auggie has his own schooling to focus on. 

I have to stop leaning on Bones so much. 

I’ve forgotten, it seems, over the last couple of years what it’s like to be truly self-sufficient. I was purely self-sufficient for years, growing up with my mom. I didn’t count on anybody because I didn’t have anybody. 

And I need to realize again that all I really have is myself. That everyone eventually moves on with their own lives, and that I need to do the same. 

I push myself to my feet and start back towards our quarters, exhaustion finally weighing me down. 

As I climb into bed after a quick shower, I resolve resolutely to start to focus purely on my work and studies, because that’s what adults do. I have to stop thinking that I can thrive right now, and focus on just surviving. I need to let people go and do what needs to be done. 

Because as it has been proven to me time and again, all I really have is myself. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

As loathe as he was to have to stare out the viewscreen, Bones did spend a lot of his time on the bridge. 

He would say it was because most everyone on the bridge were the people who most often ignored their medical needs and required a close eye be kept on them. But sometimes, he just liked visiting his friends. Not that he’d ever admit to that. 

So when the turbolift doors opened and he stepped foot onto the bridge, no one was surprised to see him. Spock even gave him a respectful nod as he made his way up to Jim’s side where he sat in the captain’s chair. 

“Bones!” Jim smiled up at him happily, “to what do we owe the honor of your presence?”

He tucked his arms behind his back, “just making my rounds,” he said nonchalantly. “I have a report to go over with you, if you have a moment. Privately.”

Jim nodded, standing immediately, “I’ll be in my ready room, Mr. Spock,” he called out. “You have the conn.”

Once they were in the ready room, Jim plopped himself behind his desk and looked at his best friend expectantly, “where’s the report?”

“It’s more of a verbal one,” he said, crossing his arms as he remained standing. “It’s about Callie.”

Jim stiffened, leaning forward with his forearms braced against the desk, “what about her?”

He sighed, dragging a hand down his face before putting his hands on his hips. “She’s struggling and hiding it. She’s not sleeping, she’s hiding pain, she swiped painkillers without saying anything-“

“She stole meds?” Jim gasped. 

“No, she dipped into the OTC stash without askin’ first. And that ain’t like her. I mean, it is, but she’s never gone that far before. She usually owns up to needing help, at least she had started to…” 

“She hasn’t said anything,” Jim said quickly, shaking his head. “And I haven’t noticed anything-“

“Have you been around to?” He cut in softly. 

Jim’s face hardened just a smidge, “what do you mean?”

“I mean you ain’t as subtle as you think, kid. I mean that when you’re gone overnight, Callie misses you. So much so she ends up sleepin’ in my spare room.”

Jim seemed to pale slightly at that, “she does?”

“A few times now, yeah. After I’ve found her awake in the middle of the night. I don’t know exactly why she’s not sleeping, but bein’ alone ain’t helpin’.”

Jim cursed under his breath, leaning back in his chair. “I didn’t… I mean, I don’t…” he sighed and cursed again, more colorfully. He rubbed at his forehead, “she’s almost eighteen. I don’t want her to feel… babysat. She’s busy all day, everyday, I kind of just thought she’d want time alone after being around people all day.”

“And that’s a thoughtful gesture,” he nodded gently, moving to sit down in one of the two chairs across from his desk. “You understand that she has a tolerance threshold. And, like you said, she’s almost eighteen. But,” he paused poignantly, “she’s almost eighteen. She’s still a kid, Jim, even if she don’t wanna admit it. She’s a kid who needs the only blood relative in her life to actually be in her life. To be more than a ship passing in the night. She doesn’t need babysat, but she needs you present, even if she doesn’t say so. Even if she doesn’t think she does.”

Jim fiddled with his hands in his lap, same way Callie did whenever she got nervous. “I was on my own, at her age,” he said roughly. “And it sucked. It sucked not having anyone to lean on. Anyone to count on.”

“And I’m not sayin’ that you’re the only one she has. I’m just sayin’ you’re her blood- and as much of a duty you have towards your crew, you also have towards your blood.”

He nodded, “you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” he said gruffly, but with a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth all the while. “She just needs to know you’re there for her, and actions matter more than words, given her history.”

“I don’t have much experience with blood family sticking around long enough to even have the chance to show up for them,” he mused. 

“Well, now you do,” he said gently. He pushed himself to stand, “don’t mess it up.”

“What are you going to do?” Jim asked suddenly, worry in his voice. “About the meds, I mean.”

He shrugged, “I’m not going to corner her about it. Not yet, at least. If I push her too soon… she’ll close herself off even more. I want to avoid that, see if we can draw her out. Together.”

Jim nodded before pausing, “…why didn’t I know about this stash of free for all meds?”

Len rolled his eyes and turned to leave, “I think you know the answer to that.”

Jim smirked good naturedly, but stayed seated even after he left. 

For long minutes, he sat, lost in thought, his friend’s words echoing through his head. Especially the part about loyalty to his blood.

Then he turned his attention to the monitor on his desktop, and, after a few more minutes of contemplation, he opened a message he’d been avoiding. 

Chapter Text

Bones alters my sleep meds prescription and it predictably does nothing. But I lie to him, tell him it’s working fine, and make sure he can’t catch me out of bed again. 

A couple weeks go by, and I realize that Jim has been sleeping at home nearly every night. We come back after dinner in the mess and he doesn’t immediately run off, his pocket crinkling with a condom he doesn’t realize I can hear, like he has been so often. 

I sit and do my homework, he sits and works on his own reports, and Bones trails in eventually with a stack of charts to work on. It’s nice. It’s homey. It’s peaceful. 

But it feels off in a way I can’t explain. 

I mean, this is what we did before Khan, we’d sit in companionable silence, watching movies, doing whatever. Even in Georgia, we’d sprawl out across Eleanora’s massive living room and watch whatever movie Joanna convinced us to. 

But now it feels… forced, almost. Like it’s what we’re supposed to do, but isn’t quite right. 

And my Tuesday coffee nights with Bones also feel off, somehow. Like there’s something he wants to say or wants me to bring up, but I have no idea what. There could very well be some cue I’m missing, because I’m always missing cues, but I’m almost afraid to find out what cue, or what he’s upset about. So I just sit and lambast him with medical questions until an hour goes by and I can run out. 

Our next stop, Jim announces to the crew, is Deep Space K-7, one parsec from the nearest Klingon outpost to neutral space. At dinner, Chekov grumbles that it’s close enough to smell them, and I can't blame him. 

The last time we were in Klingon space, the ship was dead in the water before Jim ended up dying himself. 

We’re all a little on edge out here, I think. 

As the days pass as we head out there, quite a few crewmen come into medbay with a haunted look in their eyes that I know all too well. They disappear into Bones’ office with him or the quiet room, and come out with red puffy eyes, oftentimes rubbing at their necks from what I can only assume is a hypo of anxiolytics or some sedatives for much needed sleep. It starts to happen so often that Sanchez, his psych degree finished, starts taking patients aside because Bones is slammed. 

With Bones and Sanchez handling so many psych cases, and Christine working on her MD courses, M’Benga takes on the daily load. Walk-ins, injuries, illnesses, physicals, etc. That then leaves me and my precepting fully to the responsibility of the other nurses. 

Some of them are truly nice and really helpful, Maggie and Rebecca especially. But then there are others, like Alison and Maria, who always seem to be annoyed with me for some reason. I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong, why they so clearly don’t like me, but I can’t even explain what it is they do that makes it clear they don’t like me. The vibes are off, I get snapped at, have little jabs made at me, but none of it is blatant enough to do anything about. It could all be explained away as teasing or me being too sensitive. So of course I keep my mouth shut about it, simply having mental arguments with them where I dress them down and rip them to shreds in the way only an autistic can, as I take my nightly runs. The ones I’m hiding from Jim and Bones. 

Then there’s Jerry, who sometimes lets me help with more complex, hands-on things I need to do to learn and gain experience. But then other times he sends me off with a sneer to do work he’s been assigned but doesn’t want to do. 

It’s like how my mom would somethings have a day she was nice and would take me shopping, then two days later she’d be screaming about how ungrateful I was for said shopping and would then ignore me for the following week. 

The rest of the nurses are generally kind and really good workers, compassionate people that I can tell Bones has handpicked, but they’re all so busy with their own work that we don’t interact much. 

And I mean, Bones has handpicked his entire staff, including Jerry, Ali, and Maria, so that’s another reason I never complain about anyone, let alone directly to him. He picked them, he didn’t pick me. They’re more valuable than me. Because really, what value is a student to a medbay? I truly am the liability I overhear Maria saying I am. Multiple times. 

After we arrive at K-7, Jim asks me and Bones to go get drinks with him on the starbase, apparently they have a nice bar there. It’s been months since I’ve been off the ship, so I jump at the chance. 

Jim goes ahead of time to get us seats before Bones and I get off shift, trying to beat the happy hour rush for tables. 

I’m trying to hide how exhausted and overstimulated I am after a long day as Bones and I share a turbolift back to the command crew residential deck. 

A crewman came in with the flu today and was mad he had been ordered to medbay. That, I totally understand. What I couldn’t understand was the pure lack of empathy the guy had for possibly getting others sick. He wasn’t mad about being sent to medbay, he was mad that people were bothered by him coughing all over them. We found out while he was there that he had somehow skirted a ton of vaccines, and that was an entirely new fight where he slung insult after insult at us all. 

I have to fight the urge to rub at my temples, throbbing with each heartbeat, as I distractedly go through my padd, double checking that I logged his temperature before I left. Which I know I did, but I’m always triple checking everything, so desperate to not make any mistakes. 

Somehow, the issue always ends up being something I didn’t second guess. I will triple check that what I’m saying is factually correct, but then the way I say it gets nitpicked, which I hadn't anticipated. 

“…Callie?”

“Hm?” My head jerks up, Bones’ tone indicating he’s called my name a few times already. 

“You okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I nod, glancing at the doors as they swoosh open, thankful for an escape. “Just double checking something.” I flash him a small smile before striding off the turbolift without so much as a second glance. “Just come get me when you’re ready to go,” I say, not even looking at him as I punch in the door code. 

It sounds like he wants to say something else, but I’m gone before he gets the chance. 

By the time we’re down in the transporter room, having changed into civvies, my head is pounding even worse and I’m struggling to stay on-kilter. We’re beaming over with a whole group of people granted shore leave to the station, so thankfully Bones doesn’t have much opportunity to focus on me as we make the trip. I know that if he did, he’d clock the wincing I’m doing at every sound and flash of light. 

I trail him through the station to the bar, bypassing people trying to sell their wares on the promenade, one man in particular loudly trying to sell clearly fake gemstones. 

Bones keeps turning to check and make sure I’m still behind him, and if things weren’t so crowded, I’m sure he’d be pulling me beside him with a hand on my back so I don’t feel like I’m facing the crowd on my own. But I’m trying to not be so needy, so I hang back and let him part the crowd. 

So his broad shoulders are blocking my view of Jim when we finally enter the bar, and are also blocking my view of the man he’s with, until I hear Jim’s uncharacteristically unsure tone of voice as Bones moves aside. 

I’m surprised that there’s someone with Jim, and even more so, I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to a night out with just us. I’m hoping it’s someone just stopping by to say hello, but those hopes are quickly dashed. 

“Cal, Bones,” he says slowly, "this is Sam.”

He looks directly at me, “our brother, Sam,” he clarifies, putting a hesitant but seemingly protective hand on his shoulder. 

A sharp intake of breath, and I’m raking my eyes over the man. 

He’s the same height as Jim, almost exactly. His hair has the same wave to it both of ours does, even though it is a much lighter blonde. A darker shade dusts his face, jaw, and upper lip, in a not-quite beard and a not-quite mustache. 

But even through the scruff, I see the same strong chin that Jim has- our dad’s chin. Our dad’s jawline. I look up into his eyes, and don’t see our dad’s cobalt blue irises that Jim and I share, but our mom’s light hazel ones. Not the same shade of hazel as Bones’, Bones’ eyes are a deep, warm, and full color. This man’s- Sam’s- are light and almost a bit… dull. Like he’s somewhere far away, the same look my mom always had in her eyes. 

The medical eye I’ve been training then takes in his posture, his build, little things like how fast he’s breathing and the dilation of his pupils. He’s almost eerily calm, his stance trying to convey casual, but my autistic sixth sense feels like it’s a bit forced, as is the smile he gives me and Bones. He’s about as broad as Jim, but nowhere near as muscled. 

Bones snaps me out of my stupor as he reaches forward to shake Sam’s hand and introduce himself, but I still stand frozen because I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. Surely I’m not meant to hug the man? 

A group that enters the bar tries to move past us, and I take moving out of their way as an opportunity to scoot closer to Bones, slightly behind him, almost, as I latch onto his closest hand with both of mine. I don’t mean to squeeze as hard as I do, but I feel the shaking that indicates I’m grasping way too hard for my muscles. 

I swallow dryly before forcing a smile, giving this man- my brother- a small nod. 

He returns the smile, but his eyes linger on my hands wrapped around Bones’, and I suddenly feel extremely self conscious. I try to let go as Jim motions to the table for us all to sit down at, but Bones doesn’t let me free, taking my hand back in his underneath the table as we settle across from my brothers. 

I can tell without even seeing them that my knuckles are white, cold sweat soaking my palms as he rubs a thumb over the top of my hand, trying to calm me down. My nails are probably digging into his hand, but if I don’t have something firm to hold onto, I’m going to end up clawing at either my legs or arms, and that’s the last first-impression I need to make. Still, my leg bounces of its own free will as I try to self soothe. 

Jim, ever the picture of a Starfleet diplomat, speaks first, “Sam is actually the reason we diverted here to K-7,” he says. 

Bones raises an eyebrow, but patiently waits for him to continue. 

“He has some… intel that Starfleet has decided to look into. He’s going to travel with us as we investigate.”

Jim looks at me as he says this, as if he’s searching my face for approval. 

He won’t find it. 

“Where will we be traveling to?” Bones asks levelly. 

Jim glances over at Sam before he answers, “we aren’t fully sure yet. We’re going to start with a lead on a nearby planetoid and see what info it yields.”

“Info on what?” Bones asks, and I don’t miss the way Sam slightly bristles at the question. 

“That’s classified for now,” Sam answers, speaking for the first time. But he quickly covers up his abruptness with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “but hopefully we’ll be able to share soon.” He looks at me, “it’s really good to see you, Calliope.”

I have no idea what to say to that. I have zero memories of the man in front of me. And the only facts I have about him are that he left me and Jim with Frank, but not in the way Jim left me with Frank. Jim left me to protect me, Sam left simply for himself. And I know I can’t entirely fault him for that, and that there’s so much about the situation I don’t know because Jim never, ever talks about it, but I don’t like knowing Jim ended up being shipped to Tarsus because of how he reacted to Sam leaving. 

“It’s good to see you, too,” I finally lie. I don’t know what to say next, ‘what have you been up to?’ ‘Did you know our mom faked her death?’ ‘Where have you been for the last sixteen freaking years?’ So I clamp my mouth shut awkwardly. 

“You sure about that?” He asks with a small laugh, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” His tone is meant to be light, but I feel the offense in it. Like he’s upset I’m not jumping into his arms. 

“Well… you kind of are one,” I can’t help but fire back, feeling like if he’s not going to play by the niceties handbook, I don’t have to either. Which I’m fine with, of course. My autistic butt never got the proverbial human politeness guidelines. 

Jim hurries to jump in then, “Sam has been busy traveling for quite a while, doing all sorts of interesting work.” He looks at Bones, “a lot in the sciences,” he says as if begging for his approval now. 

Bones looks at Sam, “what kind of science do you study?”

“I’ve done quite a bit as a research biologist,” he says, folding his hands on top of the table. “The past few years I’ve been focusing primarily on the biology around transporters and their usage.”

“Scattering our atoms all over space?” Bones says with a smirk. 

Sam laughs good naturedly, “something like that. More so focusing on what happens when someone is kept inside the beam during the matter-energy conversion process.”

“I take it the molecular pattern and therefore physical makeup start to deteriorate after a certain amount of time?”

Sam nods, “exactly. But the physical makeup is surprisingly less affected than the synaptic makeup. Which, I'm sure you can understand, doctor, leads to an entirely new set of problems.”

“The brain turning to mush before the body does would absolutely be an issue,” Bones nods. “I just prefer to avoid the darn things altogether.”

Sam chuckles, “fair and valid, friend.”

“Sam and Scotty are going to brainstorm quite a bit, and I’m sure Chekov will be needed as well,” Jim adds, “while this research is done as we travel and investigate. We’ll probably be pretty busy, so I wanted to get us all together to chill and relax before we’re swept up in everything.”

“Just don’t go doin’ anything stupid like lockin’ yourselves in a matter stream,” Bones shudders. “I’d hate to see what comes out after being suspended in transit for a long time.”

Sam cocks his head, “you’d be surprised who can survive.”

“Who… or what?” Bones asks pointedly. 

Sam smirks, “that’s part of what we’d like to find out.”

“Hmph,” Bones grumbles, moving to look at the drink menu on the table. 

Yearning for something to do, I lean over, my cheek on his arm, and peer at the menu as well. 

“Shall we sneak you a good drink?” Sam muses. 

My eyes snap up to his the same time Bones’ do, and I feel him tense. “She can’t drink,” he says quickly. 

“Ah, a little underaged taste never hurt anyone,” he says with a half-cocked smile. 

I know what Bones mean, I can’t drink on my meds, but he doesn’t want to tell Sam that. Can’t tell Sam that without breaking confidentiality. 

“He means because of some meds I take,” I clarify vaguely. Then I shrug casually, “wouldn’t want to get the captain here in trouble, anyway.” I send a smile Jim’s way, and I can tell from the bit of tension that leaves his face he’s thankful for my reply. 

Sam shrugs, “suit yourselves.” 

We order drinks- bourbon for Jim and Bones, a beer for Sam, and a mocktail for me- and I let the men descend into conversation. Jim is, like I said, a diplomat, and Bones is a doctor used to small talk, so they converse easily. I listen intently for as long as I can, trying to keep an interested look on my face and raise my eyebrows as necessary, until I start to dissociate, uninterested in what they’re saying, and overwhelmed by the rising noise around me as the bar fills with off-duty crewmen.

I find myself stifling yawn after yawn, and I fight the urge to rub at my eyes like a toddler, but I do press my fingers to each inner corner, trying to wipe away the sleep that’s threatening. 

As I start to completely zone out, eyes blurring over as they lose focus on something in the distance, Bones squeezes the hand he’s kept holding mine this entire time. “Callie and I both have an early morning,” he says casually. “Last minute medbay staff meeting,” he explains. “We should probably head out, let you guys keep at it.”

I have no idea what meeting he’s talking about, but I probably just wasn’t told about it, or missed a message.

So I nod, move to get up, and force a smile for Jim and Sam. For my brothers. “See you guys later,” I manage to say, eager to leave. 

Sam looks disappointed, but Jim nods understandingly, and they say their goodbyes. 

I’m still zoned out the entire way back to the ship, not really coming back to myself until Bones and I are alone in the turbolift, and I flinch hard as I feel a hand land gently on my back. 

He looks down at me, a question in his eyes, but before he can even ask it, I throw my arms around him and begin to sob into his chest. 

I don’t think he was expecting quite that level of response, because he staggers just slightly before he wraps me in his arms and holds me tight. 

I blubber on, trying to choke back and quiet my cries as we make our way down the hall and to our quarters, him punching in the code to mine and Jim’s and ushering me inside. 

Once we’re in the privacy of the captain’s quarters, I start sobbing so hard again that I can barely breathe. I barely register being steered to the couch, being sat down, being told that everything is okay. 

There’s so much wrong, so much that has been going wrong lately. Work is a nightmare, I can’t sleep, I feel like I’m losing everyone I thought I had gained, and now suddenly there’s this new person added into the mix and I have no idea how to respond. 

And I should be happy, I should be excited. Sam is my brother. And if I can’t be excited or happy for myself, I should at least be for Jim. So in addition to feeling overwhelmed, I feel guilty. And guilt was one of my mom’s favorite weapons to use, which makes me feel even worse. 

I’m wrapped up tight, face smushed against a hard chest as I fight for air, fight to try and calm myself down. 

I’m being so overdramatic, but this is just one more thing piled on top of me and I feel like I can’t take any more. 

I just want Jim back. I’ve not had my Jim back since he died. He was recovering, then he was with Carol constantly, and now he’s going to be tied up with Sam. I know I’m nearly an adult, but, god, I miss Jim. I miss the brother that came and rescued me from Iowa. The brother that held me when I would cry at night or slept in my bed when I got sick and didn’t want to tell Bones. I’m trying so hard to not rely on Bones so much, but without Jim, I don’t have anyone else to literally cry on. I’m starting to feel so utterly alone again. And it hurts. It hurts more than I could have ever known it would. Because it’s not like just going back to how I used to be, the circumstances I lived under back on earth, because I’m actually losing something now. I’ve seen a better life and it’s slowly slipping away. 

A hand comes up to cradle my face, hold it against the chest I’m crying into. We rock back and forth as I feel a thumb stroking my cheek, trying to brush my waterfall of tears away. 

I feel like I need to explain myself, explain why I’m overreacting so badly, but all I can choke out is, “I miss Jim…”

“I know, I know,” Bones murmurs into my hair, still rocking me back and forth. 

It seems like he’s chewing on his words, trying to figure out how to calm me down, and that makes me feel even more guilty. This shouldn’t be his job- this isn’t his job, guardian or not. 

So I force myself to pull away, wipe the smeared mascara from under my puffy under-eyes, and draw my knees to my chest to try and create some separation between us. 

I can’t look at him as I struggle to stifle the sobs that want to escape, because I know if I do I’m just going to lose it again. 

And I can’t keep losing it like this anymore. 

I have to grow up. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

She pulled away from him and curled into a ball, clearly choking back her meltdown, instead of just giving into it like she needed. He knew that if she didn’t release the pent up emotions; the anger, the hurt, the fear, she was just going to internally spiral. 

She was becoming so distant, and they had all wanted to believe it was because she was becoming more independent, but now, he had to wonder if there was more going on. 

He knew there was more going on, he just couldn’t prove it. 

What he did know for a fact, though, was that when she got to the meltdown stage of too many emotions, it was impossible for her to pull herself out of it. She needed help. 

They had spent so much time struggling for control, him having to rip it away at times in order to get her to compose herself enough to be able to safely take it back. To teach her that it was okay to trust him, to let him take it. It had been a while since he’d had to do that, but he knew this was going to be one of those times. 

He had to push down the seething rage beneath the surface, the immense amount of anger he was feeling towards Jim for springing this on her, especially when he should have known better, should have known something that massive wasn’t something he could surprise her with. 

Bringing Sam back into their lives was not what he meant when he’d told the kid to be loyal to his blood. 

But anger wasn’t what she needed right then. She needed someone composed to hold her emotions for her, not someone to commiserate with. 

So he took charge, standing before gently but firmly pulling her up to her feet. She looked confused, like her brain was reeling and struggling to understand what was going on, what she was ‘supposed’ to do. 

He took her shoulders and steered her into her room, set her on her bed, and smoothly went into her attached bathroom. He went back to her with a warm rag, wet with makeup remover, and gently swiped at her face, one hand holding her chin. 

She held herself stiffly, legs criss-crossed under her, though he could tell she was feeling the urge to relent control and let him take it. 

He went and got a second washcloth, warm with soap to finish the job, and then he tucked her hair behind her ear. He didn’t miss the way her lip wobbled, the way her hands were gripping her ankles so hard it looked like she might bruise. 

The more she stifled her emotions, the farther away she looked. He’d easily seen the way she had been dissociating in the bar, how she seemed to drift further and further away from reality as the conversation went on. Jim had either ignored or not caught the looks he’d been shooting his way, trying to silently communicate that they needed to wrap things up. So he lied to get her out of there, knowing she was teetering on the edge of fully losing touch with reality. 

The way she losing touch then, eyes focused on the wall in front of her as he tossed the washcloth aside and stifled a sigh. 

“Callie,” he said softly, trying to get her to look at him. 

She blinked, but didn’t respond. 

He gently pried her hands off her ankles, holding them in his and pumping them firmly. “Cal, come back to me.”

“I’m here,” she forced out with a slow blink, voice rough from crying. 

“You’re trying to shove everything down. You know you can’t do that.”

“Sure I can,” she whispered. 

“Not if you want to stay functional.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

He blinked at that, at that admission. She hadn’t said anything like that in… in a long time. His eyes flitted over to her bedside table, where he knew she kept her meds. He knew she was taking them, because her being off them was hard to miss, but clearly something was wrong. 

His eyes then flitted to the necklace he’d given her, their signal that she was okay. She was wearing it, always was, but it was tucked under her shirt. 

“I don’t want this,” she said, trying to keep her voice from wobbling, he could tell by the way her throat bobbed when she swallowed. “I should, but I don’t. I should want my family in my life. I should be excited. I should…” she cut off as her voice broke, eyes welling with tears again. 

“You’re never going to be a person who is happy with change or finds it easy,” he said lowly. “And that’s okay. Someone showing up out of the blue and wanting to be in your life would be hard for anybody.”

“It wasn’t hard when it was Jim,” she said, voice barely audible. “Jim made me… made me feel safe for the first time in my life. But the past year and a half…” she bit her lip. 

“There’s been nothing but uncertainty and changes for the past year and a half,” he supplied. 

“I just want it to stop,” she choked out, eyes finally meeting his, bloodshot and wet. “I just want things to be easy. I want… I want things to go back to the way they were before Jim died but-“ she let out a sob, ripping one of her hands away to cover her mouth. “But I don’t think that will ever happen,” she shook her head, shoulders starting to quiver with reigned in sobs. 

She wanted stability, she wanted predictably, she needed those things. 

He thought about how Jim needed those things, but fought so hard against them. How he’d never in his life had stability, not until Starfleet. But even then, he could see him get restless, see the feeling of being caged deep in his eyes. 

Both Kirk’s needed stability, but they reacted differently to it. 

Jim got self-destructive, Callie got suspicious of it. 

Jim fought it, but Callie yearned for it. 

And when something new happened, some new challenge- or person- presented, Jim threw himself into it when all Callie wanted to do was hide. 

But he couldn’t let her hide, not within herself, not in her fears. He couldn’t let her lock herself away, because in the dark corners of her mind was where she spiraled the worst. She had to have someone anchoring her to the light. 

Jim needed an anchor too, someone to ground him to reality. But he was harder to convince of that and was at that moment, and oftentimes, not present. So on Callie he would focus. 

“Things rarely stay the same forever, and I know that’s really hard for you,” he said gently. “So it’s okay to ask for help, it’s okay to look for ways to stay anchored even when the winds change and we aren’t quite ready to hoist the sails yet.”

“But I can’t keep Jim to myself. I can’t- and don’t want to- and shouldn’t want to- keep him from Carol or Sam or anything else he wants to give his time to. But I miss him.”

He had to hold back from saying he missed him too. Instead he said, maybe a bit hypocritically, “you should tell him that.”

She shook her head, wiping her eyes, “he’s already so busy. And so am I. I just… I’m so afraid…” she took in a shaking breath, “I’m so afraid of losing him again!” 

His own eyes watered as her sobs renewed, deep and so pained that he felt them ring through his own chest. 

There had been so many changes in her life, her entire existence the past few years, and the changes just kept coming. She couldn’t catch a break. Her mom ‘dying’, moving her life to outer space, facing her anxiety with medication, Section 31 kidnapping her, her hEDS diagnosis, Jim dying, both Jim and her mom not being dead, her autism diagnosis, therapy, him being her guardian, living in San Francisco, then Georgia, being assaulted, nursing school, Jim entering a relationship with Carol, and now Sam showing up… 

He realized then, for the first time perhaps, that he had probably been the most present and stable thing in her life for the previous years. 

And he had been trying to give her space, space to grow, to learn on her own without him hovering. And maybe that had been the wrong approach. 

He’d had over three years being the most stable person in Jim’s life, tied with Pike, until Pike died. He knew how much being there for Jim had meant, what it had done for him to have someone unwilling to leave him no matter what. Jim was finally in a place where he was spreading his wings without him, and he had somehow mistakenly thought Callie was, too. 

But as he took in the sobbing blonde before him, he mentally kicked himself, hard. 

He moved forward and pulled her back into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin and rocking them both back and forth again. “You’re not losing anybody,” he said, petting her hair back with one hand. “Things may change but I’ll always be here. I won’t leave you.” He could have added, ‘not unless you want me to,’ but he knew she needed to not have to think, to make choices then. To worry or wonder about the future. 

She cried into his chest, her hands gripping his forearm with a ferociousness that could only come from pure fear, as he rubbed her back slowly, trying to keep her grounded. 

She probably wasn’t even entirely sure why she was so upset, and just felt overwhelmed. Again he wanted to slap Jim upside the head for doing this to her with no warning, whilst knowing how much she struggled with people. 

But he also had to look at things from Jim’s perspective, from the perspective of a kid who finally had his big brother back, and how thrilled he had to be about it, despite the history surrounding how he had lost him. 

But that was often Jim’s issue- leaping without looking. It was what got him to enlist, to sneak aboard the Enterprise, to save Spock on Nibiru, to go after Khan, to climb into the warp core. Things somehow always turned out okay, but still had serious consequences that followed. 

So he could only hope that Jim leaping without looking into his brother’s arms wouldn’t have the same dire consequences that his other big decisions had brought about. 

But those were thoughts for after he’d seen to the girl currently in his arms. 

He let her cry, relieved she wasn’t stifling down her feelings, rocking her gently while being her anchor. 

Her cries eventually slowed, but didn’t quite taper out, and he could tell from the tension in her body and the pain in her cries that they weren’t going to; not now that he’d gotten her to open the floodgates. 

Once she was down to sniffling cries, he pulled away and looked at her gently but firmly. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go make you something warm to drink, and you’re going to put on pajamas and get in bed. Got it?”

She nodded mutely, but he could see the relief in her eyes at being told what to do. 

Good. 

He leaned forward and kissed her on the head before he left to go replicate her a hot chocolate- and slip some sedatives into it. 

She was in pajamas and under her emotional support fuzzy blanket when he returned in his own sweatpants, her back pressed against her headboard. 

He handed her the mug which she cradled in both hands before he walked around to the other side of her bed to sit beside her. He turned on a movie he knew she liked, the one he usually caught her watching when she didn’t feel good, and she hastily scooted into his side and put her head on his shoulder, sipping her drink. 

He held her close as he leaned his head back against the wall, periodically glancing down to make sure she was still drinking. 

When her eyes started to roll and droop, he gently took the empty cup from her and set it aside. 

“Dunno why I’m so sleepy…” she mumbled, tongue sounding thick and heavy. 

“Eh, you’re just worn out from people-ing,” he shrugged as he helped her lay down. “Bar was loud and bright too. Plus a good cry is always tiring.” She didn’t need to know he’d drugged her. 

“Mm,” she hummed, fighting sleep. “Set my… mm… alarm. Alarm for the morning.”

“Oh yeah,” he brushed her off as he stood up, “we actually don’t need you to come in until the afternoon.” 

“Meeting?” She queried. 

“An excuse to get you outta that bar.”

She snorted, “nice.”

“Mmhm,” he hummed, brushing her hair back as he bent beside her bed. “I’ll have your breakfast sent up in the morning. Sleep in, okay?”

“If I can…” she grumbled. 

That made him furrow his brow, again worrying about her sleep schedule. She’d told him she’d been sleeping since he changed her meds, but…

But that would have to be a worry for the next day, as he watched her breathing even out as she fell into blissful sleep. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

It wasn’t entirely a lie about the medbay early morning staff meeting. There was one, it was just for Bones, M’Benga, Sanchez, and Christine. 

After they covered the mundane but necessary topics, Bones asked his senior staff if they had anything else to add before they adjourned and went about their days. 

He fiddled with a padd on his desk, eyes downward, before he brought up his own concern, if a bit reluctantly. “Can you all keep an eye on Callie for me, please?”

They all looked at him, concern flashing across all of their faces. 

“I have one of those gut feelings,” he said, keeping his eyes down, shaking his head. “I think we’ve all gotten it into our heads that she’s becoming comfortable and independent, but something tells me that’s only what she wants everyone to think.” He looked up at them, “the captain has been… busy, lately. And I found out last night that there’s a new project that’s going to have him occupied. If he’s not around and we’re all busy, there’s really no one looking after her. She’s so smart, but…”

“But she is still a baby,” M’Benga said softly from his spot in the armchair in front of Len’s desk, his paternal instincts coming through. “She still needs support.”

“She’s also autistic,” Sanchez said the obvious, clearly thinking of Auggie as he perched on the arm of the sofa along the wall. “That makes absolutely everything ten times harder for her. Even things like eating and sleeping, let alone school.”

“She does every task assigned to her so well… I think it’s easy to forget how young and green she is. As well as how hard school in this field actually is.” Christine added, sitting with one knee to her chest on the side of the couch opposite Sanchez, who then scoffed, 

“Good lord, I burnt myself out so badly my first year of medical school…” he shook his head, “and I know how much support Auggie needs and gets from Boyce. That’s the only reason he hasn’t burnt out.” 

“What is Phil doing for him?” Len asked. 

“He had to pull him from bedside, recently. He wasn’t so much struggling with patients, but more so coworkers and the struggles of the deficits in communication autistics have, the judgment and lack of understanding and the downright ignorance and teasing that goes along with it.”

Len looked at Christine, “how are the nurses handling her?”

She bit her lip for a split second, looking guilty. “I haven’t heard. But that’s because I haven’t been paying attention. They also all know how close we all are to her and the captain. If they did have any issues… I’m not sure they’d voice them outside of themselves.” She put her hand over her forehead, “they’ve been rotating who the charge nurse is while I’ve been doing correspondence work. I thought that not hearing any issues was a good thing, but… we know how Callie is about speaking up if something is wrong.” She looked up at her boss, “do you think there’s an issue?”

He shrugged, “like I said, just a gut feeling that there’s something more than Jim being distracted going on.”

“Were they not eating lunch together, for a time?” M’Benga asked. 

The realization hit them all at the same time as Len hurriedly pulled up her mealcard on his desktop computer. “I see her eat breakfast and dinner, but…” he cursed colorfully as her replicator history came up. 

M’Benga leaned forward to peer at the screen, “the question seems to become- where is she going during her lunch hour and what is she doing, if she is not eating?”

“Probably hiding in a closet…” Sanchez grumbled, sounding annoyed with himself. 

“So let’s start with keeping an eye on her while she’s working, and make sure she’s eating lunch, if Jim ain’t gonna do it…” Len ground out. 

They all agreed and started to file out, but Sanchez stopped and hung back, chewing his words like he had something to say but didn’t quite know how. 

“Spit it out, Ignacio.”

“Why is he not getting it?”

“Who isn’t getting what?”

“The captain. Callie has had her autism diagnosis for what, over a year now? Yet he just… quits eating lunch with her? She needs routine. Does he not get that?”

“You and I grew up with dads for doctors. You guys knew Augustin was autistic from the time he was little. Your whole existence as a big brother has been colored by knowing your little brother is autistic. Jim… Jim’s experience as a big brother for most of her life was to leave her alone to keep her safe. Even when he was recovering from Khan, the TBI drove a wedge between them and sometimes it was safer for them both for her to not be there. I think he forgets how much she needs him because for so long, she’s been safer without him.”

Sanchez put his hands on his hips and sighed, “Auggie had us all in his corner from the day he was born, autistic or not. But who does Callie have?”

He placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently, “us. That’s why we’ve gotta step it up.”

He nodded to the floor before looking back at his boss, “you’ve got senior staff meetings all afternoon. I can make sure she eats lunch today.”

“Thanks, but I sedated her last night. Don’t expect her up for a few more hours. I’m going to get a late breakfast in her before I duck into my meetings.”

His brows furrowed, “why? What happened?”

“…I don’t know how much I can say right now. Basically, Jim sprung something on her that he absolutely should not have. It sent her into a tailspin. She tried, pretty desperately, to swallow a meltdown, but I got her talking until she gave into it. The whole thing just really made me wonder how often that’s happening, that’s she swallowing her feelings, I mean.”

He looked thoughtful, “I wonder if Auggie knows anything…”

He shrugged, “it’s worth asking, I suppose.”

“I’ll call him tonight, then.” 

“I talk with Cayde tonight, too, so I’ll see if he has anything I can get him to confess when he calls.” He looked at the time, “I’ve got to get her breakfast real quick. Message me if you find anything out.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“…well I’m glad the flight sims are going okay, most of my class in the medical track spent them puking,” Ignacio said to his brother. 

Auggie snorted via the video call, “the lights and noises are awful, sure, but the shaking is weirdly grounding.”

“You did always like anything that spins…”

“That’s why Boyce lets me sit in the spinny chairs when I’m working.”

“How is work going?”

“Fine,” he shrugged. “I’ve discovered I really love surgery, I think because there’s less talking to people and more step-by-step rules and logic.”

“The surgical team usually chats throughout though, no?”

“Some do, some don’t. We have one surgeon in particular that I get on with well because he doesn’t talk much and neither do I. So days I’m doing surgical rotations he makes sure I’m on the team.”

“That’s nice, that’s really nice,” he nodded. “Medical can be a really hard field to make connections in, sometimes.”

“Yeah.”

“Some people are competitive for no reason… some people have massive egos and treat students like crap… especially if they’re neurodivergent or younger.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean at least you have choices for departments! Some postings you’re stuck with a small team and if you don’t get on with someone, it can make everything miserable.”

“Yeah.”

“Can lead to burnout.”

“Yeah.”

He held in a sigh. Auggie was giving him nothing. But he couldn’t exactly blame his autistic brother for not picking up what he was putting down.

“But you’re doing okay with all that?”

“Yeah.”

“Good…” he nodded, trying to look contemplative. “Y’know sometimes we worry about Callie having those issues and not saying anything about it.”

He didn’t miss the flash of guilt in his little brother’s brown eyes, but Auggie stayed silent, staring him down. 

“It would be a real shame for her to get burnt out and try to hide it. Especially when she does have support here.”

Auggie nodded. 

“…so has she said anything to you?”

“About what?”

He had to close his eyes so as to not roll them. “How things are going for her?”

“Oh yeah, she loves the courses. We were just studying-“

“I meant mentally? Emotionally?”

“…why don’t you ask her?”

“Because I doubt she’d tell the truth if she was struggling.”

“If she didn’t want to tell you, what makes you think I would?”

He shrugged, “just curious.”

Auggie narrowed his eyes, beginning to pick up on the hints, finally. “Are you trying to imply something with all these questions?”

“We’re just a bit worried about her is all.”

“Worried about what?”

“She doesn’t seem like herself. We worry she’s having trouble eating, sleeping.”

Auggie stayed silent. 

“Makes us wonder what’s going on that she’s not sharing.”

More silence. 

“…so is she okay?”

“Ye-“

“Do I need to remind you what happened when you started struggling and Cayde and Callie both kept their mouths shut?”

He scowled. 

“You blew all my transporter credits in a panic.”

“I was worried about my friend!”

“And are you worried about her now? Are you helping her hide her struggles the same way she did for you?”

“…I have nothing to say.”

“That’s not a no.”

“I’m pleading the fifth.”

“The US Constitution doesn’t apply to deep space.”

“Good thing I’m on earth.”

“What are you both hiding?”

“…I have to go.”

“Augustin-“

“This was nice, call again soon-“

“Auggie-“

“Bye!”

The screen switched back to the Starfleet logo on his desktop and he sighed. 

He hoped his boss would have more luck with his nephew.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“You talk to your mom recently?” Bones asked his nephew. 

Cayde shrugged, “yeah, I sent her a picture the other day.”

He cocked his head, “let me rephrase- you called your mom lately?”

He rolled his eyes, “yeah, like, a couple weeks ago.”

He gave him a look, “call your mom.”

“Oh please, like you don’t report back to her after we talk?”

His brow furrowed, “no,” he shook his head. “She doesn’t even know we have a regular night that we comm.”

“…really?”

“Yes, really. I told you this was a thing for us, so you could have someone to talk to who understands ‘fleet life. Not so I can spy for your parents and mamaw.”

“Oh…”

“Having someone to talk to is always important, but especially during school. I know how hard it is… speaking of,” he tried to segue naturally, “has Callie been in touch with you guys?”

He looked confused, shrugged a bit, “she video-calls Auggie at least once a week to study but I’m never home when she does. We all message each other in our group chat but not ever about anything serious. Why?”

“We’re just a bit worried about her out here.”

“How so?”

“She just doesn’t seem like herself. We wanted to check with you and Augustin and see if you knew if anything was going on.”

“Oh, so you don’t spy on me for my mom, but you want me to spy on my friend for you?”

He rolled his eyes, “it’s not like that…”

“Then what’s it like?” The teen challenged, crossing his arms. 

“We’re worried,” he admitted. “And not just because we’re worrying to worry. We have reasons we’re worried.”

“What reasons?”

“She’s just… not herself.”

“Well she hasn’t said anything to me.”

He looked at his nephew, the kid that had been in his life so long he was practically his own. “Cayde,” he said slowly, “you remember what happened when Auggie started spiraling and you didn’t know if you should say anything?” He prompted as gently as he could. 

“I don’t think Callie is spiraling,”

“No, but you do have something you’re not saying. I can read you like a book, kid.”

Cayde blew out a breath, looking away from the screen and leaning back in his chair. Eyes locked on something off camera, he answered, “…Auggie has… he’s mentioned some things. Things he says that he does when he’s not doing well that I guess she’s struggling with.”

“Like?”

“I know she’s not sleeping.”

Well that wasn’t exactly news. But it was something. 

“Any idea why?”

“No. But I also know,” he said slowly, “that she’s having issues with some people while working.”

That was news. 

“And that those issues are wearing her out. But as to how she’s worn out yet isn’t sleeping, I don’t know. I don’t know all those details. I just know Auggie is worried, but she’s very good at making it seem like she’s fine in the group chat so I can’t point out anything that I’ve noticed.”

Bones cursed mentally. Cursed colorfully at himself, at Jim, at all of them for not paying closer attention. 

“I know Auggie has told her she needs to talk to you but… she won’t.”

And if that wasn’t a knife to the heart. 

Not only was she suffering, she was suffering in silence. She was suffering in his medbay, and he hadn’t known or done anything about it. 

He drummed his fingers on his desk, trying to stay calm as his mind raced. Trying to figure out why she was forcing herself to suffer in silence. 

“Well,” he finally said, “thank you for telling me. We’re going to try and get her to come clean about whatever it is that she’s going through.”

He nodded, “I know Dr. Boyce has done some stuff for Auggie to make things easier for him. Maybe you can ask him for ideas?”

“Not a bad idea, kid. Thanks.”

He nodded, “well, I need to go. I’ve got a test to study for. Just don’t tell Callie I ratted on her, please?”

“It’s between us, don’t worry.”

They said goodnight, and after that, Len sat in the silence of his office, slowly spinning side to side in his chair. He racked his brain, trying to figure out how to word things so that she actually opened up and didn’t just deny everything and anything. 

He knew that Ignacio hadn’t gotten anything out of Auggie, that’s why he pushed Cayde for info. The fact that Auggie was worried enough to tell Cayde about it said a lot. And the fact he wouldn’t tell Ignacio about it meant things were bad enough that Callie knew they’d take action if they found out. 

Teenagers were a whole different beast, caught between childhood and young adulthood, needing oversight as well as room to grow. He’d thought Jim, at 22, was a handful, especially with all his own traumas and issues. Then he’d had another traumatized Kirk, barely 16, enter his life with similar and yet totally different issues. Healer at heart he was, he’d taken her into his care immediately and without question. But father at heart he was, he found himself wanting to protect her way more than he wanted to just heal her. 

He sent Ignacio a message, letting him know what Cayde had said. They agreed that asking her outright about their concerns was going to be the best plan of action, seeing as how she’d likely ignore or not even get any hints they dropped. They planned to talk to her the next day, taking her for lunch to make sure she ate one. 

And with plans set, he went about his evening. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

I wake up to the smell of breakfast on my bedside table and a message to take the day off. 

I berate myself for overreacting to everything, for bursting into tears and melting down just because I felt overwhelmed. Even worse, I had tried to stifle the meltdown, had tried to swallow my dysregulation, and had failed miserably. 

I’ve gotten so good at it lately, at hiding how I’m feeling. 

Hiding how annoyed, confused, and hurt I am when someone at work goes off on me or blames me for something that’s not my fault. 

Hiding how lonely and sad I am with Jim as busy as he is.

Hiding how exhausted I am every minute of every day- except when it comes time to actually sleep. 

Hiding how empty I’m starting to feel, like everything is meaningless and all we’re doing in life is trying to make it through day after day until we die. 

I sit up in bed and rub my face, the smell of the food starting to make my stomach turn. I appreciate that Bones brought it for me, but I simply can’t stomach it today. I get up and put it in the replicator, recycle it back into the system, before I drag myself into the shower. 

I sit on the floor as the water beats down on my head, my shoulders slumped and my jaw slack. I’m completely worn out from the epic meltdown, feeling almost drugged in my exhaustion. 

I sit for so long, mind completely empty, that I don’t notice when the water turns cool. When it’s cold enough to finally shock me back into reality, I turn the temperature hotter and try to force myself to go through the motions of washing myself down. 

Then my brain starts to spin, replaying the events of the night before. 

Sam. My brother. 

But in some weird way, he doesn’t actually feel like my brother at all. I knew Jim, growing up, but I only knew of Sam. He was an idea more than a reality. 

For him to just show up out of nowhere is not only shocking but confusing. Because why? Why is he here now? Why wasn’t he around for Jim after Tarsus or when Nero happened? Where has he been for so many years and what has he been doing that he either didn’t know or didn’t care about these massive, life altering events? 

And why is he here now? 

If he really was just some researcher, following “leads” all the way out here, he’d surely have gone to Starfleet, not straight to Jim. Or had he gone to Starfleet and I just didn’t know? It’s not like Jim was sharing anything with me lately. 

And since when is any research classified? Especially about something as mundane as transporters. After all the secrecy surrounding Section 31, Khan, our mom, I hadn’t thought Jim was too keen on keeping secrets anymore. But we are all keeping his death and resurrection a secret, so maybe Jim has way more than I know about. 

I mean, he’s been trying his best for months to keep how hot and heavy things with Carol are a secret. The fact he’s been failing so hard at it must have fooled me into believing I knew everything going on with him. But apparently I don’t. 

And that not only scares me, it makes me incredibly sad. 

I know I’m not entitled to know everything he does or everything about his life, but I’m starting to feel like I’m on the outs, in a way. 

And lord, not even just with Jim. I’m on the outs with everyone and everything, my ‘friends’, my coworkers, the crew, Bones. 

Everything feels so incredibly heavy yet so entirely hollow at the same time, including my heart. 

After an hour, or maybe way longer? I get out of the shower and force myself to get dressed. It’s long past lunchtime, not that I’ve been eating lunch lately anyway, and I decide then that I’m skipping dinner, too. I have no idea if Sam will be at dinner, and maybe that’s why I’m so bent out of shape. 

I don’t know anything. Jim didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t even warn me about Sam, didn’t even drop any hints. I feel like he should know better, when it comes to me, but maybe I’m the problem here. Maybe I need to suck it up and learn to go with the flow, to accept changes and surprises. 

But not tonight. I’m way too tired, still. I know I won’t be able to mask properly, even if Sam isn’t there. 

There’s a shipwide newsletter of sorts, a general masterlist type thing that keeps everyone on the same page of what we are doing and where we are going. I pull it up and check what it says, and to my surprise, it’s very vague. It says basically what Jim said last night, that we are going to be doing some research and to see your department heads for further details on if you’ll be assigned to assist. 

Jim believes in transparency, in being honest with his crew. Especially since being ordered to Klingon space where many of his crew ended up dying. And here we are, at the edge of Klingon space yet again, and he’s being cagey. Normally I’d ask Bones if he knew anything, but he seemed as surprised as I was last night. I suppose if medical gets any tasks assigned, I’ll find out then. If anyone bothers to tell me, that is. Christine always keeps me updated, but when she’s not around, people don’t tell me anything and they really don’t like me asking questions. Christine and Bones, even Sanchez and M’Benga, understand and respect my need for context. They know I’m not questioning things to be rebellious or disrespectful, they know I just want the full picture. 

Not everyone else gets that, I’ve discovered. The hard way. 

When Jim doesn’t come home after alpha shift ends, I don’t even ask the computer where he is. I figure if he wanted me to know, he’d tell me. If he wanted me to come to dinner, he’d ask me. If he wanted to spend time with me, he would. 

I settle down in my bed with padds surrounding me as I study. I’m over a year ahead of where I should be in book work, because of course that’s never the part that’s hard for me. 

No, the hard part is the hands-on stuff, the people-centric stuff. 

It’s not like I’m stupid, it’s not like I had expected being around people constantly would be easy, but I had thought that doing something I was interested in would negate the bad stuff. But so far, it hasn’t. If anything, it makes things harder, the fact that part of me loves what I’m doing and part of me hates it. 

More like the people hate me, but, I’m used to that, I suppose. 

It’s partly like being back in high school, being so much younger than everyone but being on the same level academically, so many people took it as an insult, as an invitation to be mean to me. 

Except now, people remind me every chance they get that I know less than them, that I’m a student. Every chance they get, they talk to me like I’m inept, look over my shoulder to pettily check even my spelling. And again, they can always brush it off as doing their jobs, making sure I’m not making mistakes, that I’m being too sensitive. So there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can say. 

Yesterday, Maria went off on a tangent about how when she was in nursing school, she had to do it while working full-time and caring for her sick father. So I need to appreciate how easy things are for me, how good I have it. 

So many thoughts went through my head, so many of my own struggles that make things so hard for me, but I knew from experience she would just take whatever I’d say and twist it, laugh at me, berate me even more, scream at me when no one else was around. Or even worse, when other people were around but they were people who didn’t care to stick up for me. Who just accept that ‘that’s how she is’.

I try to push the thoughts out of my mind and focus on the padd in my lap, as if learning more will somehow make them understand that I do belong there. That I’m not just in the way. But any time I say something correctly, point out something accurately, it seems to add fuel to the fire that I’m just an annoyance. That I don’t know how things really work and once I’m out of school, then I’ll learn how miserable things really are. As if they aren’t miserable already. 

I rub at my temples, sighing at the incoming headache. I get up to go get myself water, and as I’m standing at the replicator, Jim walks in. 

He shoots me a smile, that broad smile of his that crinkles his eyes, and he tells me they missed me at dinner. 

I shrug him off, tell him I got busy studying and had a late breakfast. 

Moving towards his bedroom, he says, “I’m going to change and then head out, I’ve got some plans to go over with Sam.”

I follow him down the hallway, “what kind of plans?”

“We’re finalizing some stuff for an experiment we’re going to present to Scotty tomorrow. Trying to make sure there isn’t anything we’re missing.”

I wrap my arms around myself and hum in acknowledgment.

“If things go well, we’re going to get even busier than we have been,” he says as he pulls clothes out of his dresser. 

“What’s the whole deal again?” I ask. “You’re messing around with transporters?”

“Something like that,” he smiles at me, but this time it's not a genuine smile. It’s one of those cagey smiles he gives when he’s trying to hide something. “Sam has a theory he’s been studying, and if it works, Starfleet is going to give us the go-ahead to start searching for… something.”

I raise an eyebrow. 

“That’s all I can really say for now,” he shrugs, sitting down to pull off his regulation boots. “But it’s exciting stuff, that’s for sure!”  

I hum again, before I move to step out so he can change. 

“We might end up doing a lot of traveling from planet to planet,” he says as I turn. “So Sam may be with us for a while. We should really all sit down again, hang out more.”

It takes everything in me to turn back and force a smile. He sounds so eager, so sincere, almost desperate to get us all together. 

Part of me gets it, because we’ve never really had blood family. But the other part of me doesn’t understand, because our blood family has done nothing but leave us. Jim’s chosen family has saved his life, literally and figuratively, so I’m a little confused why he’s so eager to jump into the arms of a brother who left him at the hands of Frank. 

But maybe I’m just too autistic to understand, too autistic to grasp normal sentimentality. 

So I keep the forced smile on my face and nod, tell him to let me know when they’re both free from their so-called research. 

After he leaves, the place feels way too silent, too lifeless. I used to thrive in the hours I spent alone at home in Iowa, the times my mom wasn’t around to pick a fight. But since living with Jim, I’ve gotten used to someone being around. Even more so, I’ve gotten used to two someone’s being around, as Bones was over more often than not, before Jim died. Before Carol came aboard. Before Sam did. 

So without Jim home, Bones isn’t here, either, and I’m left to entertain myself. 

I lay in bed and shoot off a meme to Auggie and Cayde, hoping for some sort of human connection, but not getting my hopes up. 

To my surprise, they both respond. Cayde laughs at the meme in the group chat, and Auggie messages me directly, asking me how work was today. 

I tell him I got the day off, but don’t tell him why. I deflect and ask him about his day. He tells me, then says he’s happy I get a break since I’ve been struggling lately. I tell him I’d be happy, too, if it weren’t for the fact that people seem to resent when I get a day off, even if it’s not truly a day off, like I’m taking tests or something. I tell him how the next shift I have, certain people go out of their way to load me up with work, since I had a ‘break’. That they make comments about how lucky I am to get more days off than they do, even though they also never hesitate to remind me that I’m just a student. 

He replies that people don’t make sense, and I laugh and agree. 

Cayde sends a message that Cress has been asking about me, and I smile and tell him I miss her and Jo, as well as Eleanora’s cooking. But I don’t tell him I haven’t been hungry and that eating has been extremely difficult lately. 

The boys keep me entertained with stories of Cayde’s attempts to recreate his mamaw’s cooking for them, with the very small amount of cooking tools they have in their dorm. 

But after a while, the conversation naturally slows, and I tell them they should go to bed. I know their schedules, and know they both have early mornings, and I feel guilty for monopolizing their time. 

So now I’ve studied, I’ve talked to people, and said people have their own lives to get back to without me, Jim included. There’s nothing to clean in our quarters, seeing as how I scrubbed everything yesterday before we met Sam, and today Janice swooped in and did the laundry and tidying while I was asleep. 

I lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling, wondering what everyone else is doing. 

Jim is with Sam, Nyota is likely with Spock, Christine is probably asleep by now since she’s taking early morning correspondence classes for her MD, and Bones is probably relaxing for the first time today. 

I sigh, trying to tell myself that the tears pricking my eyes are ridiculous. I have no right to feel lonely, especially when I’m surrounded by people all day. 

I put on a movie, take my meds, thinking maybe I can fall asleep early, but of course, that doesn’t happen. 

0200 is my cutoff time for trying to sleep before I allow myself to get up and go for a run, as I’ve been doing for weeks now. 

Really the only reason I go on these runs is because the workout areas of the ship are always deserted this time of night. The track runs along the upper walls/windows of the stern of the ship, a ring that looks down over the area that is used for free weights, basketball, group classes, and the like. 

Sometimes I end up just sitting with my feet dangling over the edge, staring out the window at whatever stars we’re zipping by. 

But tonight, my brain is overwhelmed with the feeling of loneliness, even though that seems like a contradiction. All I want is to blast music through my head and exert myself until I can’t feel anything anymore. 

I'm trying to decide which playlist I’m going to deafen myself with when I hear the clanking of weights below me. It makes me jump because I’ve never once seen someone here this time of night. 

I cautiously peer over the rail down into the open space below, and see someone staggering back away from the weight rack near the mirror. When I see them drop to a knee and hang their head, my medical senses kick in and I turn around to run towards the stairs that lead down. 

I skid to a stop in front of the person and drop to a knee myself, reaching out to put a tentative hand on their shoulder. 

As I do, they lift their head, and my face scrunches in confusion, “Sanchez?”

He looks just as confused to see me, although I’m not sure if he’s plain confused, or if something more is going on. He’s panting a bit, sweat beading across his forehead and temples, as he squints up at me, “Callie? What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I asked you first.”

“I’m not the one who looks like they’re about to pass out, so you answer first.”

“I worked beta shift today,” he shakes his head as if trying to clear it. “I wanted to work out before bed. Your turn.”

“Mm, no, not my turn, still doesn’t answer why you’re about to pass out?”

He squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand, “uh,” he tries to think. He puts both hands on his knee as if he wants to push off and stand up, but instead, he completely crumbles before me. 

I squawk as I try to cushion his head as he falls so he doesn’t crack it open, then my hands fly away, one to the pulse point in his neck, the other to my communicator in my pocket. 

I comm medbay in a rush, trying to tamp down my panic as I’ve been taught to in situations such as these. 

I know that if Sanchez was on beta, then either Bones or M’Benga are likely to be on call for the overnight shift, and a small part of me hopes it isn’t Bones so I don’t have to answer any questions about why I’m up this late and not in bed. 

Standby for transport, a level voice responds to my call, one of the night shift nurses I don’t know that well, it seems. Avelyn, I think. 

When we materialize, I go through the explanation I already gave once again, which is basically that I don’t know anything. I found him shaky, confused, and clammy, then he passed out when trying to stand, but his pulse is steady under my fingertips. 

I step back and let the nurses on duty take over, transferring him to a biobed and beginning to gather his vitals. 

The medbay doors swoosh open behind me, and it’s Bones’ voice I hear over my shoulder as he asks to be brought up to speed. I feel him glance at me, but he keeps his focus on Sanchez as he’s told what little they know. 

“Get his blood sugar,” is the first thing out of his mouth before he steps closer and peels back his eyelids, peering into his pupils. “Who found him?”

“Me,” I pipe up for the first time, taking a tentative step forward. “I heard a loud noise in the gym from the track up above and looked down and he was on his knee. When I got to him, I tried asking if he was okay, but he just passed out.”

He nods curtly, keeping his eyes on the tricorder now in his hands. “His blood sugar is 45,” he says with a curse before asking for glucose. “Someone log into his CGM history and see if it can tell us anything, how his sugars have been trending. Pull up his mealcard as well.”

The realization dawns on me and I can’t help but ask aloud as the nurses scurry off, “he’s diabetic?”

Bones’ eyes flash to me for just a moment before he nods, “yeah, type one.”

“Is that why he always offers to be my guinea pig for blood draws and injections practice? Because he’s used to needles?” 

“Most likely.”

I curse, then force myself back into a medical mindset, “do you need me to do anything?”

“Yeah,” Bones grumbles, “you can stick around and explain what you were doing in the gym at 0200 after we get him stable,” he shoots me a look. 

Busted. 

“Not what I meant.”

He sighs, “go grab supplies for a glucose infusion, 20%. Since he’s your usual guinea pig, you can start the IV.”

By the time we get him stabilized enough to wake up, I’ve already ran to the medbay replicator and back to get him a tray of complex carbs and protein. I leave it outside the privacy bubble that isn’t quite containing the lecture Bones is giving him about knowing better, especially as a doctor, than to let his sugars get as bad as they did. 

I take it as my chance to sneak away, hoping Bones will have worn and worried himself out with one lecture under his belt for so early in the day. 

But I’m only half a step out of the medbay’s doors before I’m grabbed gently by the elbow and turned around by a less-than-impressed looking Bones. “And just where do you think you’re going?”

“…to bed?”

“Liar.”

I roll my eyes, “I-“

He cuts me off, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to point at his office, the look on his face telling me to go wait there for him while he finishes with Sanchez. 

I fidget uncomfortably in the armchair across from his desk, trying to find excuses and words to explain. To lie. He already knows I haven’t been sleeping, so I can’t play this off as a one time thing. We’re going to end up in a conversation about not only my meds, but how if I’m not sleeping, it’s probably connected to the rest of my mental health. 

I know I’m on my way to burnt out, but he certainly doesn’t need to know it. He can’t. 

I’m frustrated and more than a little defensive when he finally comes in and sits across from me with a sigh, but I try to act causal, like I’m not sure what he wants. 

He stares at me. 

I stare back.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

She was trying for all the world to look confused, like she had no idea why he wanted to talk to her. 

Unfortunately for her, he could read her like a book. She knew why he wanted to talk to her, but she was going to stay silent until kingdom come if he didn’t speak first. 

“So what were you doing in the gym at 2 in the morning?” He finally drawled. 

She shrugged, poorly feigning nonchalance, “going for a run.”

“Instead of sleeping?” 

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“And you chose not to say anything because…?”

“Because everyone has nights they can’t sleep,” she said as if it were obvious. 

“I think you and I both know those types of nights are becoming increasingly common for you,” he countered. 

He didn’t miss the flash of annoyance that crossed her eyes, if only for a moment. The flash of emotion that only showed when she felt trapped or caught. 

He forced himself to soften his tone, “like I said, maybe we just need to change up your sleeping meds a little. Again. It happens, sometimes, that stuff just stops working. Or,” he said, building up to it, “when we’re stressed or burnt out.”

She gave him nothing, sitting stone faced. 

“So let’s change things up, okay? We can try another new medication, move your clinical shifts to after lunch-“

“No,” she objected harshly, harsher than she’d meant to, if the way she bit her lip was any indication. “No,” she said a bit softer, “I don’t need to move my schedule around. It’s fine.”

His brows furrowed, “it’s not a big deal-“

“It’s a big deal to everyone who already has to plan their day around putting up with me. I don’t want to disrupt their days and schedules yet again. Really, it’s fine.”

“You need to sleep-“

“Yeah, and so does everyone else! You want to give me something stronger, fine, I’ll- I’ll go to bed earlier, but I don’t need a schedule change.”

She sounded so panicked that he was having trouble gauging why. Was it because she didn’t want her set schedule altered because she needed routine? Or was there something else she wasn’t telling him?

“We can keep your schedule how it is,” he said with a single nod, watching her chest deflate. “But we need to get to the bottom of why you aren’t sleeping.”

She didn’t respond, afraid to give up any info. 

“We both know that you have trouble sleeping when things are stressful. So what’s going on? Is it Jim not being around?”

“No,” she rolled her eyes, annoyance dripping off her. 

“Is something going on during the day? Are you feeling overwhelmed or dysregulated?”

Her face paled and her grip tightened on her crossed arms, “I’m fine.”

“Callie, you need to talk to me,” he pushed. “If something is wrong, we can-“

“Nothing is wrong!”

“Clearly something is!” He countered, unwilling to let her off the hook. Not after what the boys had told them. 

He tried to go for humor, “now quit bein’ a brat and-“

She had become so open, so willing to accept help, and so used to him, that her popping up out of her seat and stalking towards the door wasn’t what he had seen coming. 

Thankfully, as soon as the door slid open, she walked into Sanchez, who had clearly been waiting for that exact occurrence. 

Her shoulders slumped in defeat as he took her by them and turned her around, marching her back inside the office. 

Len’s attention went to him, “and just what are you doing out of bed?”

Ignacio deposited Callie back in her chair with a shrug, “I’ve been discharged.”

“Dis- on whose authority?”

“…my own.”

He felt his eyebrow go sky high, “your own?”

“I knew you were going to need help-“

“-so you signed out AMA?!”

“It wasn’t against medical advice,” he said casually as he sat in the chair next to Callie’s, “I gave myself medical advice.”

“Oh, the same medical advice you gave yourself when you didn’t eat all day then went to workout?”

“I’m fine, Len. My blood sugar is stable-“

“In a pig’s eye you’re fine! I-“

And that was when they both noticed Callie wincing. 

He glared at the younger doctor before him, “we’ll discuss this at breakfast- where I’ll test your blood sugar myself.”

Ignacio rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. Instead, he spoke to Callie, “now, you know he’s kidding about you being a brat, right?”

And that was when he noticed how glassy her eyes were, like she was fighting tears. His heart shattered. He looked at Ignacio, confused. Was that why she had started to run out? 

“Of course I know,” she spat, very unconvincingly. 

The two doctors shared a knowing look, worry dancing in both sets of eyes. 

Unwilling to make eye contact, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest and set her jaw, physically closing herself off as much as she could. 

“And you know we aren’t fighting, right?” Len began, “that I’m just worried-“

“I’m not stupid,” she sneered, looking up at him. “I know that I’m always taking everything and everyone too seriously, I like, I get it!” She pulled one knee to her chest, “I know when people are teasing… people are always teasing…”

But did she know? 

Cayde’s worries rang through his head, that she was struggling socially during her days in his medbay, and he hadn’t known it. And was that why? Was she taking teasing too seriously? 

Or, an even worse possibility, was there teasing that was serious but that people were trying to write off as lighthearted? 

He knew the girl before him, he knew how her brain worked. And he knew she had a tendency to believe the worst about herself. So if there was anyone even “lightheartedly” telling her things that weren’t true, she was likely to believe them. 

‘…everyone who already has to plan their day around putting up with me,’ she had said. 

Who was making her feel like they had to put up with her? 

For her to have jumped up to run out because she thought he was actually calling her a brat… for her to tuck tail and try to run instead of arguing back just wasn’t like her. Not the her she’d come to be, at least. 

If she was struggling more than usual to read social cues, to sleep, to eat, if her pain was flaring, along with the sudden arrival of a long-lost family member, she was heading towards burnout, and fast, if she wasn’t there already. 

But to get her to admit to burnout would be the tricky part. Trickier still would be getting her to admit it to herself. 

As he was struggling to find the right words, Sanchez spoke. “So I actually finished my last year of med school at the academy,” he said casually. 

Len looked at him, he knew that, of course, he had been there when Igancio enrolled. 

“They’ll tell you that changing med schools, especially in your final year, is foolish, if not impossible. But to also enroll in freakin’ Starfleet Academy in your final year… Well, you’re just a glutton for punishment. And everyone let me know it; my academic advisor, my classmates, my coworkers, even Dr. Boyce had no confidence, though admittedly, he was a lot nicer about it. Everyone else… not so much. Being told to your face every day that you’re going to fail; that you’re too young, too new, too clueless to make it, takes its toll. And that’s not to mention the actual school part of it, the coursework- both for Starfleet and medical school, the clinical rotations… And I was trying to do it living away from family for the first time. The support system I’d grown to rely on and need. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I burnt out. Fast and hard.”

She looked over at him curiously as he spoke, and as he did, he wisely didn’t make eye contact with her. 

The older brother of an autistic teen… He knew what he was doing. 

“I got so physically burnt out that I couldn’t eat, couldn’t think, couldn’t even sleep even though I was exhausted beyond measure. Mentally I started slipping, started forgetting basic things I’d known since high school chemistry. Then emotionally…” he shook his head, “I was an absolute wreck. So,” he pushed himself up in his chair, “everyone was right. I couldn’t do it.”

Her brow furrowed, trying to gauge his point. 

“But they were all wrong about one detail. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, it was that I couldn’t do it alone. My academic advisor was so done with me, had so little faith in me, that he dumped me off on another doctor to be my mentor, to try and get out of wasting his time on me himself. Now this guy,” he snorted, shook his head again, “had a reputation. He was ruthless when it came to patient care, only ever accepting and giving the best to his patients. He had no tolerance for excuses, no time for careless mistakes, and no one was really sure he even wanted to be there, let alone be a mentor. So of course, trying to impress him made me burn out even quicker. But the issue was he didn’t want to be impressed, he just wanted to see competent care. Of course, I didn’t realize that. Not at first. So obviously when I was running on empty, he noticed. I was about five minutes from passing out flat on my face during a shift when he pulled me aside. I thought oh great, here it comes, the speech where one more person tells me I need to just give up. Instead, he took me into the on-call room, put a cup of chamomile tea in my hands, and told me a story. 

“He said when he was a kid, he grew up near a farm. He and his father would go help the farmer, who was old fashioned, stack up his hay bales by hand when the farm got busy. So while his dad was moving the large bales easily by himself, he would move the small ones. One day he ran out of the small ones. So his father told him to go ahead and try moving some of the bigger ones. He gathered up all his strength in his little body, and moved them. Then he ran out of those. So his father said go ahead and move the biggest bales- you’re going to have to use all your strength. So he huffed and puffed and pushed and pulled and couldn’t move them an inch. He said, dad, I can’t do it, I’m sorry. And his dad said son, you’re not using all your strength. So the little guy went back and tried until he was red in the face, but still couldn’t do it. His father told him again, son, you’re not using all your strength. And he said dad, what do you mean? I’m giving it everything I have, how can you say that to me? And he said, son, you’re not using all your strength because you’re not using me. 

“So this, to be frank, grumpy doctor, tells me his point is that when you’re young and not strong enough to do something on your own, the only way you’re going to get it done is by using the power of those around who truly do want to help you. I told this guy, look, that’s a nice story, but my daddy isn’t here to help me carry this load. I told him about everything I had going on, everything I was trying to do, and how it was all up to me to take care of myself. And he shook his head and he said, no, son. You’re not using all your strength. Because let me ask you- have you asked for help once? And it dawned on me then… no I hadn’t. I had spent so much of my time trying to prove myself that I hadn’t even considered asking for help. So the doctor, the guy all the nurses were afraid of, sat with me and helped me figure things out. He helped me look at my schedule and rearrange it so it worked better, told me who to talk to and what to say to make it happen. Took me to Boyce, who helped me figure out the other parts of my schedule that needed tweaking. Then because he actually knew what I was dealing with, he was able to stand up for me when people were giving me crap unfairly. He was able to help me in the areas of patient care I was deficient in because I was honest about where I was lacking. He made sure I slept, ate, exercised, and actually took care of my blood sugar. Without his help… I never would have made it.”

“Except where did all his hard work go, if you’re passin’ out from not eatin’ yet again…” Len grumbled. “‘S not like I didn’t give you the same recipes I was usin’ on Jim to keep him runnin’,” he groused, accent thicker and thicker the more tired he got. 

Callie’s eyes flicked between them as she finally registered that he was the doctor in Ignacio’s story. 

“Anyway,” Ignacio rolled his eyes at him, “point is. There are people around here who not only want to see you succeed, but want to help you do so. But you’re only going to get their help if you ask for it. If you’re honest about what you’re struggling with and what you need.”

Len spoke up, “we know you’re struggling, sweetheart,” he said softly. “We just want to help.”

She nodded slowly, and they both waited with bated breath to see what she would tell them. 

“…I’m fine,” she finally said, breaking both their hearts all over again. “I’ve got nothing to complain about, nothing I should need help with.”

Should need, they both caught. 

She pushed herself to standing, “I’ve gotta be back here in a few hours. I’m going to go to sleep.” She looked up at Len, “you can give me new drugs for tomorrow night. But I’ll be too groggy if I take anything else now.” She shrugged sadly before looking to Ignacio, “thank you for the story.” She glanced between them, “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

They were both a bit too stunned by her dismissal to stop her. 

Chapter Text

I barely get in an hour of sleep before my alarm is blaring at me. 

I move like I’m swimming through molasses as I get ready and go to breakfast. 

Keeping my head down, I weave my way through the tables to the one we all always sit at, but I skid to a stop when I see Sam sitting at the table. 

In my seat no less. 

I scold myself, it’s not my seat, that’s ridiculous. It’s just… just the seat I’ve sat in for the past two years. I genuinely consider just leaving, just taking my tray to medbay, but that would entail eating with the night shift crew who are all trying to wrap up their charting and leave, and I don’t want to bother them. Let alone the fact I don’t know them that well. 

So I alter my path and move as casually as I can to slide into the seat in between Sulu and where Scotty sits at the end of the table opposite Jim at the other end. 

Sam and Jim are talking animatedly at the other end of the table, but the mess is too loud for me to make out exactly what they’re on about. I truly believe I’m acting normally until I jump clean out of my skin when Scotty softly asks, “you okay there, lass?”

I look down at the oatmeal I’ve been absentmindedly stirring for god knows how long before I look up at him and see the concern painted on his face, hiding behind a gentle smile. 

I nod, “just a bit tired. Thanks, I’m alright.”

He nods back, looking a bit unconvinced, but I ignore it. 

People start to disperse, heading off to their shifts, and I’ve yet to force a single bite of food down my throat. 

“Oh, there’s Callie,” someone says, making my head pop up. 

Sam is smirking at me, but something in his smile isn’t quite genuine. 

I realize then that everyone except Jim, Sam, and Bones has left, so I pick up my tray and move into Spock’s empty seat beside Jim, across from Sam. 

“Get any sleep after all that sneaking around?” Jim quips, and I look at him, confused. “You slipped in just before we did, last night,” he explains. “Saw you in the hallway on our way back.”

Our way back. 

I can’t help but glance at Sam, who adds, “late night out?”

I can’t help the creepy-crawly feeling that goes through me as I realize Sam was around while I slept unawares. 

The accusation in his tone, too, takes me aback. It’s not a tone of voice I’ve heard aimed at me since before my mom died. 

I also can’t help but bristle and wonder why he even cares?

I must be silent for a beat too long because Bones finally speaks up and answers for me, “she was with me.”

Jim nods, seeming to not care at all, but Sam looks over at him seemingly for an explanation. An explanation I don’t think he’s owed, but an explanation Bones gives. 

“We had a medical emergency,” he says lightly before waving a hand, “all good now,” he says to Jim. “But we were caught up for a bit.”

“She works on call overnight?” Sam scoffs a bit, “isn’t she a student?”

“I was out and about when I happened upon someone passing out,” I find myself supplying. “I had to call for help and then I ended up staying while we stabilized the crewman.”

Still, Jim doesn’t care at all, but still, Sam pushes, “you don’t have a curfew?”

My jaw tightens as I glare at him, “no.” 

He gives a shrug that even my autistic butt can tell is insincere. “Oo-okay…” he glances at Jim, “lucky kid.”

My eyes flit over to Jim, as he replies, “she’s almost eighteen. Plus there’s not far she can get to on a starship,” he smiles at me. 

Sam doesn’t let it go, “you and I both know you don’t have to go far to get into trouble,” he says with a half-cocked grin. 

Jim laughs, and again my skin crawls. 

I move to get up, “my shift starts in ten, I don’t feel like being scolded for being late.” That’s all the goodbye I give as I stalk out and dump my full tray of uneaten food back into the replicator system. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The glare Bones was giving Jim wasn’t quite reaching their mark with Sam in between them. He either wasn’t noticing or just didn’t care that his best friend was shooting daggers. 

He had been worried enough about Callie when Scotty shot him a concerned look over her head- heck, even Sulu had looked over at him a bit unsettled- but it was the way she slipped and mentioned being scolded that really distressed him. Even more so than the full tray of food she didn’t even try to pretend she took a bite from being dumped did. 

So as much as he wanted to follow Jim up to the bridge and rip him a new one for letting his brother talk to her the way he did, he instead excused himself to follow her to medbay. 

He kept an eye on her throughout the day as best he could without noticeably hovering. She tended to stick closer by Maggie and Rebecca than any of the other nurses, and none of their interactions seemed worrisome. If anything, the two nurses seemed to be able to draw her out, get her to laugh, more than any of the others. So he couldn’t imagine it was either of them giving her a hard time. 

He started looking for her when it neared her scheduled noon lunch break, to make sure she actually ate, but she was nowhere to be found before or when noon came. 

He approached Maria, one of the nurses that had been with them a good while, and asked her if she’d seen her. 

She shrugged, eyes still on her padd as she answered, “beats me where that kid is always slipping off to.”

His brow furrowed, “what do you mean?”

She rolled her eyes, “I just mean she’s always disappearing. Can never find her when we need her.”

“What do you need her for?”

“We had some tasks we thought would be good practice for her. We always keep an eye out for easy things, things she can’t mess up, you know? But most of the time she’s off doing something she doesn’t need to be.”

This was the first he was hearing of anything of the kind. “Like?” He pushed. 

“I already said I don’t know what she goes off and does,” she snapped. 

He’d never cared for her attitude, but Maria had never had any patient complaints or slip ups, and always had her tasks completed. But her tone then was irritating him. “Then how can you know she’s doing things she doesn’t need to be, if you don’t know what she’s doing?”

She rolled her eyes again, dropping her padd to her side as she leaned in closer to him, “look,” she said lowly. “I know that she’s the captain’s sister, but there are so many times when she’s just in the way down here. We haven’t wanted to say anything… but she can be a real hindrance to how things run.”

Again, that was news to him. No one had even hinted at anything like that. He was about to ask what exactly she meant when she went on,

“Plus there’s all the time she spends hiding in the bathroom, probably playing on her padd. We just all aren’t sure what she’s even doing here.”

As much as it was in his nature to defend Callie, he did know she had a tendency to run and hide when overwhelmed. And the nurses did spend more time overseeing her than any of the doctors did, that was the whole issue they’d discussed. 

So he nodded seriously, “I’ll look into things,” he said. 

She shrugged as if she didn’t believe him as she walked away, “send her my way when you find her. I have supply logs she can sort through.”  

He didn’t feel like reminding her that Callie spent her afternoons in classes, so he just let her go. He pulled out his own padd and directed the computer to find her. It pinpointed her in her quarters, saying she’d been there for only five minutes. Before that, she’d been in medbay. So he still wasn’t sure why he hadn’t seen her, but he pushed that thought aside as he pulled up her replicator records. Nothing, as he’d figured. 

He sighed and headed for the captain’s quarters. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

I spend my morning either fighting dry heaves as I work alongside Maggie, or actually dry heaving in the medbay bathroom. I can only hope no one notices or takes issue with how often I duck into the bathroom, usually fending off either a meltdown or diarrhea. 

Wednesdays are inventory days, and Maria has taken to making me do hers while she takes an extra 15 that no one knows about. Then she comes back and criticizes everything I’ve done, no matter how closely I match her directions. I know if I complain to anyone about it, they’ll just tell me she deserves the extra break and that I need the experience anyway, that she's allowed to have her own way of doing things, so I keep my mouth shut. 

All that along with having to deal with Sam’s snide comments that felt off in a way I can’t explain and no sleep makes for a rough morning.

I leave for my lunch break without telling anyone, because half the time if I do, people take it as me saying I have nothing else to do and just need more tasks assigned to me. And I need the time alone to decompress before I sit down to take notes on lectures and do simulations in the afternoons. 

I’m sitting in my bedroom closet, lights off and my nose buried in a sweatshirt that still somehow smells like Georgia, trying to self-regulate, when I hear my name being called. I stay put, not mentally stable enough to deal with anyone during this precious alone time. 

Someone knocks on my bedroom door and I ignore it. 

Someone overrides the lock and I ignore it. 

Someone keeps calling me as they walk around my room, and I ignore it. 

But when I start hearing the sounds of my dresser drawers being opened and closed, my ears perk up. 

I’m just about to crawl out of my hiding spot when another voice pops in, and the noises in my room abruptly stop. 

I can tell that the second voice is Bones from the cantor of his speech, but the second voice I’m having trouble hearing because it’s deeper. I crawl closer to the closet door and press my ear against it and listen. 

“…was just looking for Callie,” the deeper voice is saying. “Jim wanted the three of us to get lunch.”

Oh, it’s Sam talking. It was Sam going through my stuff… or maybe I just heard wrong? Because why would he do that?

And- Jim? I check my padd- I have no messages of the sort about lunch. 

Bones speaks, “I came looking for her for the same reason, wanted to make sure she ate. She didn’t eat at breakfast.”

“Yeah, what was that?”

I hold my breath as I wait for Bones’ answer. 

“Oh, she’s always got a lot on her plate- figuratively, that is. Just wanna keep tabs on her.”

Vague, but concerned. 

“Smart idea. At her age… psh. The trouble I’d get into…”

“Well, she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“Yet here you are, having to make sure she eats?”

“Well, I do the same for Jim. I do the same for everyone, really.”

“Mm… sure.”

A pause. 

“Well, if you find her, don’t bother telling her about lunch. Jim and I have things to discuss, anyway.”

“Alright. Take care.”

“You too, doc.”

There’s silence before footsteps sound in my room yet again, “Cal? You can quit hidin’, wherever ya’are.”

I press the button to open my closet door and crawl out, looking up at him from the floor. 

His shoulders drop a bit, “hiding from your brother?”

“Something like that,” I shrug. He doesn’t need to know I come hide from life every lunch break. “What’s up?”

He kneels down in front of me, “wanted to make sure you ate lunch after skippin’ out on breakfast.”

I hum, “I’m fine.”

He raises an eyebrow at me and I know right then and there he’s going to put food in front of me whether I want it or not. 

I exhale and push myself to stand, ignore the wave of dizziness that washes over me as I do. 

Bones waves a hand for me to follow him and I do as he replicates a protein smoothie for me before wordlessly putting it in my hand. 

I’m beyond thankful that he’s quiet as I sip on it and just sits and works on his padd. 

When I finally finish the smoothie and go to recycle it back into the replicator, he speaks when my back is to him. “So I was talking to Maria a bit when I was looking for you,” he says, clearly trying to sound casual. 

I do my best to stop myself from shaking, to stifle the roll my stomach does as I keep my back to him. 

When I don’t respond, he continues, “she was saying sometimes she has trouble finding you, too…”

He is trying to draw me out, but I don’t want to open my mouth. 

My hand shakes as I press the buttons on the replicator for it to dissolve my empty cup. I’m suddenly really regretting drinking it all. “Oh?” I finally answer. 

He can’t know. 

He can’t know how often I’m puking during my shifts. 

But if he doesn’t know, he’s going to be like Maria and assume I’m slacking off. 

And screw her for putting that into his mind. Screw her when I’m the one doing half her work. 

This is exactly why I’ve never said anything about her and Alison and Jerry, because I know they’re more believable than me. 

And it’s why I keep my distance from Maggie and Rebecca even though they’re always nice to me- I know I can't trust anyone. 

The more upset I get, the more my stomach rolls. 

And now Sam is here, insinuating over and over that I’m going to get myself in trouble because I’m a teenager. 

Why is it that when I’m trying to put myself out there, trying to learn, trying to mask and fit in, that everyone makes it harder and harder? People weren’t even this mean to me when I ignored everyone and wasn’t trying to fit in. It’s like the more I try to fit in, the more people realize I don’t. 

“She just wants to be able to find you when there are cases available for you to learn from,” he says casually. 

I nod, swallowing the saliva pooling in my mouth. 

“She said they look out for patients for you to learn from, so-“

The scoff that comes out of my mouth at that- because the only thing they ‘keep an eye out for’ is things they don’t want to do- turns into a gag. 

I clap my hand over my mouth, wrapping my other arm around my middle, and I bolt for the bathroom. 

My legs give out in the bathroom doorway, shaking too badly for me to make the final three steps to the toilet. Bones is close on my heels and swiftly slips his hands under my arms and hauls me over to it as the gags turn into retches. 

The smoothie swiftly comes up, followed by pure green, burning bile. 

Whenever I think it’s slowing down, I remember why I’m throwing up and it starts all over again. 

I start to sob, and that just makes it worse as my nose stuffs up and getting in air becomes difficult. 

Bones is rubbing my upper back in soothing circles with one hand, holding my hair back with the other. He’s trying to calm me down, telling me things are okay, that I’m not in trouble, that he’s not mad, that everything is okay. 

I don’t believe him. 

I make myself take in big breaths of air, trying to regulate my nervous system enough to stop puking. I lay my head on my arm, resting on the toilet seat, and watch my mouth drip drool as my tears continue to fall in the toilet bowl. 

Bones sighs softly, “this is why she can’t find you, isn’t it? And why you haven’t been eating lunch?”

I close my eyes and refuse to answer. 

“Callie, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me,” he pleads. 

“I don’t need help.”

“Clearly you do.”

“I can handle them.”

“‘Them’ who?” He saws lowly. 

Crap. I meant to say ‘it’, not ‘them’.  

“Just…” I shake my head. “Just everyone. I know I need to do better. I’m trying, but-“

“What are people doing to you that you’re not telling me?”

Deflecting questions is easy for me, it always has been. And I’ve known Bones long enough now to know exactly how to lie to him. Issue is, he’s known me long enough to know when I’m lying. And he knows that the more direct the question, the harder of a time I have dodging it.   

“Look,” I finally say, eyes still closed. “I know that I’m just a student, a student who only has this opportunity because I’m a ‘fleet brat, a nepo baby. I know that I’m in the way, that I’m a liability, that no one needs to hear what I think about a situation, and that part of my responsibilities include helping people out with things they’re too busy to do. I know I have an easier schedule than they all do and that I don’t have the stress and responsibilities they do. And I know I don’t do things the way they want, even when I try to. Like, I get it.” 

I push my forehead into my arm, trying to press away the building headache behind my sinuses. “Some days it just gets to me is all. I feel guilty and foolish, like I’m just a kid underfoot. And yes, I know I’m younger than everyone so they don’t like me putting in my two cents or asking questions. I am also very well aware that I’m autistic and that makes things harder for everyone. I’m sure there are tons of social cues I miss that annoy people, rightfully so. But I am autistic, I do have pattern recognition, and I notice when people don’t like me, but I never know why, even though I do know that’s my fault, and-“

“Callie, I swear if you blame yourself one more time…” I hear him shake his head and I look up, confused. 

“…but,” I say as I open my eyes and glance from side to side, “I’m right?”

He’s kneeling in front of me on one knee, before he lets go of my hair and leans back to get a washcloth from under my sink. As he reaches up to wet it, he says, “no one should be making you feel like you’re in the way, or god forbid, a liability, because you’re not. The only way a person could even think that is if they’re pushing things off on you they shouldn’t be, which,” he brings the wet rag to swipe across my mouth, “it sounds like they are.”

I blink slowly as he wipes down my chin. 

“Also,” he huffs, “people on my team know better than to rely on subtleties. I’ve always been very clear that direct communication for both patients and coworkers is required, especially given not everyone here is human and has the same communication style. If anyone is mad that you’re not picking something up, it’s their fault for not being clear. And just because someone wants something done a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s the only correct way.”

He tosses the rag in the sink, “finally,” he wipes his hands on his pants, “it sounds like people don’t like being questioned and it seems they are doing their best to make you feel lesser-than and are assuming the worst of you, in addition to being painfully jealous. And that’s simply not okay.”

“But-“

“No ‘buts’. Now, if you won’t give me names,” he raises an eyebrow and I shake my head in confirmation. “You’re at least going to tell me the truth and give me details about what’s going on and being said.”

I chew my lip and look down again. “But I’m sure people are just joking and I’m being-“

“Callie,” he warns. 

I sigh. 

So he gets it out of me, mostly, what’s been going on. The things people say to me, the things they make me do for them, the things they won’t let me do. I tell him I didn’t want him to change my clinical shift to the afternoons because I know certain people will just assume I’m being given preferential treatment or more time to sleep when they’re the ones who actually deserve those things. I even tell him about the time I got screamed at that because I'm the youngest child in my family, I’m a spoiled brat and my brothers must rightfully hate me. 

That’s when his eyes really flare, even though I tell him it was probably a joke. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he says. “This isn’t a punishment or any reflection on you, but I’m going to take you off the clinical schedule and you’re just going to focus on sims for a while.”

My head snaps up, an objection on my lips, but he holds up a hand in a plea for silence, to let him finish explaining. 

“The sims will still count as clinical hours. And when you’re not doing sims, you’re going to shadow us doctors, see real cases where we actually let you learn and ask questions instead of shoving you in a closet.” He shakes his head in anger. 

“At least I can’t bother anyone in the supply closet…” I say in a small voice. 

“Yes you can, because it bothers me,” he says. “Part of learning in this field is asking questions, suggesting solutions and diagnoses, talking through things out loud, and if others aren’t allowing you to or aren’t making you feel welcome to do that, then you aren’t going to get a proper education. And it’s on me to see that you do.”

“But-“

“Also, you do not have an easier schedule. You have a schedule that works for you. But let’s be honest- it isn’t currently working for you. Not when you aren’t sleeping.”

“But if someday I end up working somewhere else, no one will ever be this accommodating or understanding. I have to get used to these things now.”

“Just because other people had it hard, doesn’t mean you need to. Killing your young is a practice that left medicine a long time ago. Or should have, at least.” He reaches forward to tuck my hair behind my ear, “you’re going to get used to things. I promise. As you develop routines- the routines your autistic brain needs- things will get easier.”

“But why am I allowed to develop routines while destroying everyone else’s?”

“Because there’s a difference between insisting on routines because they make your life easier because you’re too lazy to adapt, and establishing loose, less-rigid routines to help yourself survive and still be able to adapt as needed.” 

“…this still sounds a whole lot like the preferential treatment everyone says I get…”

“Trying to control what people think of you, or even being bothered by it, is a waste of energy.”

“But… how can you be self-aware if you just ignore what everyone else thinks? Or live in an echo chamber?”

“There’s a difference between being self-aware and hating yourself. You have to be conscious of putting yourself in an echo chamber of negativity, and much as you do one of positivity. And besides, you live life with an autistic brain, you’re always painfully self aware because you hate being perceived.”

I finally sink back onto my heels, giving my knees a break, as I stare at the floor. “…I just don’t want people to be mad at me,” my voice comes out wobbly as I snake my arms around myself. 

“I know, sweetheart. And I know nothing I say will make you worry about that any less. So just let me handle everyone for a while, okay?”

I nod, my lower lip precariously shaking. 

“It’s going to be okay, Callie. I promise.”

I nod. 

“You know I’ve never broken a promise to you,” it’s not a question, but a fact. 

I lean forward to place my forehead on his upright knee and close my eyes again. 

He places a hand on the back of my head and gently strokes with his thumb. “So this is one of those times I’m going to make the decision for you, darlin’,” he says gently. “I’m going to make sure you’re eating three times a day, at least, and you’re not gonna fight us on it. And we are going to change around your sleep meds to try and get you back on schedule, and you’re gonna be honest about if they work or not.”

“Okay,” I whisper. 

“You’re also gonna tell me if your pain is flaring instead of just swiping from my OTC stash, got it?” He says firmly. 

I suck a breath in and hold it, waiting to be lit into for that. 

“Also,” he adds, moving on, “if you feel like hiding from anyone- people in medbay or Sam or even Jim- you come find me instead of hiding in a closet or being forced into a bathroom.” He pauses, “is it just vomiting or anything else, too?” 

Without even realizing it, I squeeze the arms wrapped around myself defensively. 

“Callie…”

“I’m not answering that.”

I hear him click his tongue and practically hear him roll his eyes. “Well, we’ll see if reducing stress helps with any of that.” He pauses, “now do you wanna meet Chris in the lab to do some practice sims, or do you want to lay down for the rest of the afternoon?”  

I pick my head up, “Christine is free today?”

He smiles softly, “thought you might like that. Yeah, she’s going to be free on Wednesday afternoons to do sims with you. Her correspondence schedule just changed for a new semester.” 

I nod eagerly, genuinely excited to have her help again. 

“And as for dinner tonight, let’s stay in, yeah? I’ll make the chicken pot pie Jim hates, the one with the okra, so he leaves us alone.”

So Sam leaves me alone, is the hidden meaning that even I pick up on. 

But I don’t argue, appreciative for not having to deal with Sam for another meal. 

He cups my face with one hand for just a moment, barely long enough to thumb away a tear track still on my cheek, before he pulls away and stands up. “You gonna be okay?”

I know he doesn’t want to leave me while I’m still on the bathroom floor, but he also knows I don’t want him hovering. 

I nod, moving to stand up to show him I’m not going to keel over. 

He nods back once, “call me if you need anything, okay?”

“I will.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

A couple days later, I’m shadowing Sanchez for the morning. Unfortunately, Alison is the nurse assigned to him, and she’s been giving me weird looks all morning. Anytime Sanchez asks for my thoughts or explains something to me, she seems to get huffy. 

One patient comes in, a science officer in her early 20’s, who has been dealing with stomach pain off and on for years, and is currently having a flare up. 

I’m listening intently as her history is gone over again, her medication history, first day of her last period, what she eats in a day, if she’s stressed, everything. 

Then it hits me.

I double check where she’s at in her cycle and look up, a question forming in my mouth. 

Alison shoots me a look to be quiet, as if she’s sensing I’m considering speaking, but Sanchez also sees my mouth twitching, and he raises an eyebrow at me. 

I shake my head, “it’s probably nothing.”

“What are you thinking?” He asks encouragingly, “talk me through it.”

“Well…” I bite my lip, resisting the urge to look at Alison for permission to speak. “She… You said,” I correct, looking directly at the patient, making sure to talk to her and not about her. “That you’re mid-cycle right now?”

She nods, looking slightly annoyed, “the pain isn’t period cramps,” she starts to say, but I shake my head. 

“No, no, I’m not saying that. I’m just… I’m wondering, because I don’t see it as a differential diagnosis in your chart, has anyone ever checked for endometriosis?” I chew the inside of my cheek, working hard to not rock side to side nervously. 

“I-“ she thinks for a moment, scrunching her brow as she does. “I don’t think so?” She looks back up at me, “how would that connect to my stomach though?”

“Because it literally can,” I explain right away, ready to jump into the scientific and anatomical explanation. “If endometrium grows outside the uterus, then it can fuse organs together, including the intestines and stomach. It becomes one big painful clump. And then anytime you ovulate, whenever estrogen increases, it feeds the endo, makes it greedy and angry. Also, the ovaries working to pump the egg out can irritate it all. So it could explain why the pain comes and goes. Because our hormones rise and fall not only with monthly cycles, but they rise and fall over the course of our lives- with stress, with diet changes, changes in exercise, duty assignments, with anything, really. If that’s what the issue is- it’s totally not your fault! It’s unpredictable and a lot of time uncontrollable when not managed medically, pharmacologically.”

I realize after all my infodumping that Sanchez never stopped me, didn’t cut in or interrupt. 

“And how would we diagnose endometriosis?” He goads me. 

“We can check hormone levels, and we can order an in-depth gynecological scan, to look at the different levels of tissue, muscle, and fascia, and see if there are any adhesions or clear signs of endo without having to do anything invasive.”

The crewman winces, “no pelvic exam though, right? Those kill, they’re so painful.”

Alison jumps in then, “they’re not painful,” she somewhat scoffs, earning a glare from both our patient and me. 

“They are for me,” the crewman bites back. 

I can tell we are losing her, so I reach out to touch her wrist softly, “that’s another symptom of endo, actually. Pain with exams, intercourse, tampons, even. And no, I don’t think a pelvic is needed…?” 

I look at Sanchez and he nods, “correct. Not in this case. Especially not if it’s a known pain trigger.”

She deflates, looking relieved as I pull my hand back. “And how is it treated?” She asks. 

Sanchez explains, “we have medications we try as a first line. If those don’t improve things within one cycle, then we move to using sound waves to try and break up any attached endometrium and adhesions. If that doesn’t work, we schedule an excision surgery. But we’re a long way off from any of that. We still need to even diagnose it first.”

“But you… think that’s what it is?”

Sanchez shoots me a small smile before answering, “I think it’s a pretty good differential, so we should run with it.”

I hadn’t realized my heart was pounding until it begins to slow, the fear of being wrong or speaking up inappropriately dying down. 

My adrenaline is still buzzing, my hands shaking, as I go to get the gynecological scanners for Sanchez. 

As I head back with them, Alison catches me, scowling, “you shouldn’t do that,” she bites. 

“Do… what?” I ask confused, looking down at the scanners in my arms, wondering what I’ve done wrong with them. 

“You’re not a doctor- you’re not even a nurse! You shouldn’t be offering up your thoughts like that. It’s inappropriate and not your place,” she hisses. 

“But he… he asked me?” I say, befuddled. 

“Because you were chomping at the bit to make yourself look smart!” She snaps. “You’re here to learn, not contribute!”

“But don’t I have to ask questions to learn?” I push, not trying to argue, but still trying to understand what I did wrong. 

“Why do you have to push everything?” She huffs, sounding exasperated. “Just because the senior staff coddles you and lets you get away with running your mouth doesn’t mean it’s okay!”

“Running my mou-“ I try to ask, but she cuts me off again, 

“You know exactly what you’re doing, so don’t play dumb.”

“What am I doing?”

She glares at me, long and hard, before she just shakes her head and says, “go take those to Dr. Sanchez. And keep your mouth shut next time. Quit begging for attention.”

She stalks off after that, leaving me shaking in her wake. 

I take a breath to steady myself before returning to Sanchez, but he steps out of the privacy bubble to take the scanners from me. “You wanna watch?” He asks, nodding towards the opaque bubble. 

I nod, moving to follow him, still trying to calm my shaking. “Dame pan y dime tonto…” I grumble to myself. An idiom Auggie taught me- ‘give me bread and call me stupid’. Basically, call me what you want/think of me how you will, as long as I get what I want. It’s something he tells himself when dealing with difficult coworkers while knowing he’s doing the right thing for his patients despite what they think. 

Sanchez’s head whips around, and I curse myself for somehow forgetting I’m learning Spanish from his own brother- it’s his first language, too. 

“Quien te llama tonta?” (Who is calling you foolish?) He queries instantly. 

I glance down the medbay and see Ali punching the orders into the patient chart. Worried she’s still in earshot, I respond, “it’s nothing.”

“Chispita…” he warns, using that pet name for me. ‘Little spark’.

I sigh, “yo necesito callate la boca.” (A very harsh way of saying I need to shut my trap.) 

He furrows his brows, “¿por qué?” (Why?)

I glance over at Ali again, a bit pointedly this time, before looking back at him with an eyebrow raised. 

He shakes his head, looking for an explanation. 

“I think you know why,” I challenge, knowing all too well that Bones has told them all what’s been going on, why I’m shadowing the doctors now instead of the nurses. 

“Desembucha,” he urges. (A casual but direct way of telling me to spit it out.)

I roll my eyes, “ella dija, ¡ubicate!” (She told me to know my place, harshly.) 

He turns a bit red, staring her way, “¿ella dija eso en serio?” (Literally, ‘she said that in a serious way?’) 

I nod, eyes wide, trying to visually plead with him to not say anything. 

Jaw tight, he looks back at me, “that’s not okay.”

I shrug again, “what can ya do?”

“It needs to be handled,” 

“No proof,” I say, unsure of how to say that in Spanish. 

“Why don’t you say anything when it happens?”

“And get called dramatic? Or told it was a joke? Or even worse, have the person double down on the statement and make me feel even worse?” I shake my head, “I have my reasons for keeping my mouth shut.” I see her coming back over our way then with more equipment for the tests and scans, and I take a breath as I force myself to move forward to help her. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Sanchez shot off a message to Bones, can you pull security footage from outside bay 4 from about five minutes ago? With audio, preferably? Callie suggested a diagnosis for my patient, a really good one, honestly, but when I was out of earshot, apparently Alison told her to know her place. I want to see if the cameras caught it. 

A few minutes later, the reply came, my mother raised me to never call a woman the name I wish to assign to Alison. Because she did say that, and more, clear as day when you isolate the audio. I knew Maria was an issue, but I hadn’t thought Alison would be just as bad. SMH. Do me a favor… when you’re done with your patient, take Callie to lunch. I’m going to have a chat with some of the nurses. 

You sure that won’t just make things worse for her?

Something has to be said. This has gotten too far out of hand already. I won’t stand for bullying in my medbay. Especially when I have proof and can actually do something other than make vague threats while people deny it. 

Having been on the receiving end of your threats about proper behavior in your medbay… I’ll be glad to be excused while you’re on the warpath. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“I’m not hungry,” I object as I follow Sanchez down the hallway. 

“Too bad,” he says over his shoulder as he keeps walking determinedly towards the mess. 

“I can get Jim to give you back the transporter credits Auggie blew, if you agree to let me go!”

“Not happening.”

“But-“

He stops and turns, “if you think that there is anything that is going to get me to disobey my boss’s orders regarding you, you are sorely mistaken.”

I growl in frustration, “if he’s so concerned, why isn’t he the one dragging me to lunch?”

He turns back around and starts walking again, “I don’t ask questions. Learn from me.”

“Fat chance…” I grumble as I take up pace behind him. 

Once I’m sat across from him in the mess, stirring my soup around with my spoon, he sighs at me. “Am I going to have to tell you how many bites to take before you’re allowed to get up?” 

I shoot him a glare, “I told you I wasn’t hungry.”

“How long has Auggie been teaching you Spanish?”

I blink at the sudden subject change, “uh, a few months, maybe?” I look down, embarrassed. I hate people knowing I’m learning something, that I’m not perfect at it yet. 

“How did that start?”

“Well, you know he gets stuck in Spanish when he gets stressed out,”

“Yeah,”

“Well he kept logging into our video chats babbling in Spanish because he was so wound up. I sort of had to learn so I could calm him down.”

“…thank you for that,” 

I look up, question on my face. 

“Most people just let him babble on until he flips back to English. To learn what he’s saying and to also learn enough to be able to respond back… I’m sure that means a lot to him. So it means a lot to me.”

I shrug, stirring my soup again, “he’s my friend.” What I don’t add is that he’s the first one I’ve had in… I don’t know how long. 

“Has he taught you the good curse words yet?”

I look up suddenly, “…some.” I say with a slow smile. 

He laughs, taking a bite of his sandwich. “Eat some of that soup, and I’ll teach you the ones the boss doesn’t know.”

I grin wickedly, scooping up a spoonful, “now that is what I call a bribe.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“So in conclusion,” Bones said, sending a pointed glare at certain people in the group. “If I even get a hint there is an atom of bullying happening in my medbay, heads are going to roll.”

Silence hung, thick and heavy around him. 

“Do I make myself clear?” He pushed, waiting for affirmative noises and nods. When they came, he dismissed the group of nurses and stalked to his office, plopped down behind his desk. He had explained in detail just what bullying was, as if a group of adults didn’t fully know, and how even any so-called sarcastic or joking comments weren’t going to be tolerated. 

Plus, he told them he’d caught what they’d been saying in high definition, but left out exactly what he’d heard, letting them assume he knew every detail. What killed him, though, was that he didn’t know every detail. Callie wasn’t giving that info up, and he knew none of the bullies would own up to it either. 

A knock came lightly at his open door frame, Nurse Maggie Hartwell stepping in and pressing the button to close the door behind her. She was petite in stature, but curvy in build, with a head full of dark brown ringlet curls. Like many of the other nurses, she’d been with them since Nero. But unlike many of them, she tended to fly under the radar, preferring to keep her head down and do her work, and do it well. He supposed maybe that was partly why Callie seemed to get on with her so well.

“Can I sit?” She asked warmly, softly, motioning to one of the chairs across from his desk. 

He waved a hand, “please.”

She tucked a tuft of curls behind her ear as she sat, smoothing the skirt of her uniform dress under her as she did. “If I can be so blunt,” she began, folding her hands in her lap, a bit nervously at that, “I hope you know that not all of us feel the same way about Callie that… others do.”

He raised an eyebrow, leaning back in his chair. 

“You know….” she bit her lip, “Nero changed a lot of things for all of us that were at the academy when the attack on Vulcan happened. We all saw the same things and came out of that experience changed, but in different ways. Some of us saw our instructors, our classmates, our friends, die in front of us and it made us realize just how precious life is. How special this assignment is. It softened us. But for some of us, the opposite effect was had. It made some people bitter. Mistrusting. Selfish.” 

She paused and met his eye. He nodded, urging her to go on. 

“Then… then the attack on the Daystrom happened. And we were on our way to get justice for Captain Pike- the man that we all saw sacrifice himself during the Nero incident. Then suddenly the head of Starfleet was trying to kill us, medbay was full of ancient people in cryotubes, the ship was falling out of the sky, then finally the captain was brought in here- we all assumed dead- and we were all ushered out.”

He was thankful they’d kicked all but everyone out for that.   

“Now that… that I think was when the divide truly happened. Those of us who had taken all these experiences and tried to grow from them continued to do so. But those of us who had allowed resentment and mistrust to build… well, learning that even Starfleet itself couldn’t be trusted to keep the captain and the flagship safe, that did a lot of heads in.”

“Which is why so many of the crew left or took ground assignments after that,” he offered. 

She nodded, “yes, but this is the flagship, the most coveted position in the fleet. But also… well, you’re a psychologist,” her deep brown eyes met his. “You know that when people have control and safety ripped from them over and over, they can either work to heal that trauma and learn and better themselves, or they can let it eat them alive. Try to regain a sense of safety by controlling others. And I think trauma has eaten a lot more of us alive than we’d care to admit.”

“And those of us who have let it eat at us…” he drawled, “what? Can’t stand seeing someone who isn’t hardened by battle be allowed to serve here?”

“That,” she nodded, looking down. “I mean there’s definitely an arrogance problem when you think someone doesn’t deserve something. But mostly what I’m getting at is that, well, we’re taught in this field, well, in nursing school, at least, I don’t know about medical school,” she stammered. “That once you lose your empathy, that’s a sign that it’s time to get out. But too many people take losing their empathy as a sign that they’re the perfect person for a job where we inevitably lose people we’re close to. They wear their harshness as a badge of honor, they’re proud of it. And yes, we do have those people on this ship- in this medbay. But,” she shook her head, “those of us who think the opposite way do outnumber them.”

He swayed side to side in his chair for a moment. “You asked if you could be blunt,” he finally said. “So go ahead and be blunt. Throw professionalism out the window and just be honest with me, as someone who has also been through Nero and Marcus.”

“Okay,” she nodded, before taking a deep breath. “Maria, Alison, and Jerry have been getting away with piss-poor patient care for a while. They just know how to cover their tracks and how to make everyone else scared to speak up. They don’t like Callie because they’re jealous, cocky, and callous, while she’s appreciative, humble, and kind. We’ve all known they’ve been giving her a hard time, but none of us have had any proof. Any time someone tries to stand up for her, they make things as miserable as they can for them. But the rest of us, as far as I know, actually still love our jobs here and also love Callie. So please don’t let them push her out. Especially not when she’s as good at this as she is.”

“I’d never let them do that,” he shook his head. “That’s why I’m trying to nip it in the bud now. I just wish I’d known there was an issue even before Callie. Piss-poor patient care under my watch makes me a pretty piss-poor CMO.”  

“No,” she shook her head. “They’re very, very good at hiding things. Trust me, you’re not the first person to have the cameras checked after an interaction.” She brushed non-existent lint off her skirt as he raised an eyebrow. “Anyway. I just wanted you to know that most of us do want Callie here, and not just to do our grunt work. We were even tossing around the idea of seeing if you’d think it was a good idea to bring her along on low-risk away missions.”

A medical officer was assigned to every away mission, usually a nurse, given there were more of them than there were doctors. He himself had accompanied Jim on many-a diplomatic dinners simply to make sure the idiot didn’t send himself into anaphylactic shock. (Spoiler alert, he often managed to anyway.)

“You think she’s ready for that?” 

She snorted, “oh please. That girl is so ahead of the game… that’s part of why certain people are so jealous of her. She shows them up on the daily.”

He smiled softly, “now that I believe.”

“She reminds you of your daughter, doesn’t she?” 

As he looked up, she slapped a hand over her mouth, “I’m so sorry, that was inappropriate-“

“No, no,” he waved a hand, “you’re right. I mean- not that it’s inappropriate, but you’re right in that it’s true. I do,” he admitted, glancing over at the pictures he kept tucked at the side of his computer screen. A picture of Joanna, and the picture he’d taken of Jim and Callie asleep together when she’d been locked down in medbay after her biking accident. “I mean, it’s no secret that the captain and I are close. He’s family to me. And so is she. But in a different way.”

“The captain is finally capable of standing on his own two feet against the universe,” she smiled softly. “But his sister still needs some support.”

Jim still needed support at times, not that he’d tell a subordinate that and undermine him. But she was right about Callie needing more of it than Jim. 

“Well I’m very glad to know that you’re around to give it to her,” he nodded to her. “If you don’t mind, can you make sure if she’s not with one of the senior medical staff, she’s with you?”

“Gladly,” she smiled warmly. 

“Even on an away mission?”

Her smile grew, “I think we’d both love that.”

“One last thing,” he said as she began to stand, “do me a favor and keep a paper trail, would you? Just… things you hear, see, know about. Even if people can claim it’s your word against theirs, a paper trail of a history is harder to refute.”

She nodded, “will do. And I’ll pass the message along.”

After she left, he opened his computer and started scrolling through paperwork. An assignment request had come through for a nurse for an away mission the next day. Jim, Sam, and an engineer would need to be accompanied by at least one medical officer, per regulation. What the mission actually was wasn’t exactly clear, but it had been labeled as exploratory, information gathering, and low risk. So he assigned Maggie as the medical officer and sent Ignacio a message that it was safe to bring Callie back to medbay, that he needed to talk to her. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

I’m fiddling with my tricorder at my hip, making sure the strap is the right length as I stand near Maggie in the transporter bay. We’re waiting for Jim and Sam to arrive, ‘we’ being Maggie and I, Lt. Adyian from engineering, and Lt. Moriyama, a science officer. 

From what Maggie tells me, oftentimes the medical staff aren’t fully briefed on what the mission is about, just given the assignment to look after everyone. 

Lieutenants Adyian and Moriyama are talking together, heads bent over a padd, seemingly discussing their assignments, and I wonder if I’m finally going to get a clue about what exactly it is that my brothers have been so hush-hush about investigating. 

When the doors to the transporter room finally slide open and Jim and Sam walk in, I see the flicker of movement in Jim’s body that I can tell means he’s about to come over and kiss me on the head, but he stops himself, just smiles and gives me a nod instead. I appreciate it, in this setting, him treating me like everyone else. 

Sam, however… Sam looks less than thrilled to see me when his eyes land on me. His brow furrows in a way that reminds me all too much of our mother, the way that means he’s deeply displeased but is trying not to show it. 

He moves towards Jim and says something about something or someone ‘being in the way’, and I self consciously step back half a step, so I’m more so behind Maggie than beside her. So I can try and indicate in neurotypical language that I understand my lesser role here, in case it’s me he’s talking about. 

Everyone moves to stand at attention in the presence of the captain of the Enterprise, me included, if a bit slower as I try to process what to do, but Jim waves a hand with a small smile and gives the ‘at ease’ order. 

Everyone drops their shoulders, not into parade rest, but into the casual body stances that Jim prefers. Again, I see that flicker across Sam’s brow that means he’s not too happy. I may have the autistic struggle of not always reading facial expressions properly, but I also have a lifetime of having to learn exactly what my mother’s tells were for when she was about to blow up under my belt. 

Jim stands with his shoulders back, chest open as his eyes roam over everyone briefly. “Thank you all for reporting promptly,” he smiles. “Today’s mission is simple, we are going to be investigating debris of a starship that one of our scans picked up on the planetoid below. We believe the debris to be of Starfleet origin, and that is what we are aiming to confirm or deny. If it is, then we will begin combing through the computer records for a lost transporter pattern. Lt. Moriyama, Mr. Scott reports that you have expertise in antiquated starships and transporters, is that correct?”

She nods to affirm that she does. 

“I do as well, sir,” Adyian speaks up. “I did my senior thesis on transporters.”

“Excellent,” he smiles. “We’ll need that knowledge should this debris be what we think it is.”

“And what is that, sir?” Lt. Moriyama asks. “What ship do we think this is?”

Jim glances over at Sam for just a moment, before his eyes flick to me for an even shorter moment. “…we are looking for debris from the USS Kelvin.”

Chapter Text

My stomach drops, my eyes bulge, and it takes everything in me to not gape or ask questions. 

The Kelvin?

Like… the ship our dad died on?

Everyone seems a bit taken aback by that little factoid from Jim, so much so that there’s a loud silence as everyone tries to figure out what to say. 

Maggie finally breaks through it and asks, “will the standard practice medical kit be sufficient, or are you expecting to encounter anything that could cause specific injuries?”

“The standard medkits should be fine, yes,” Jim nods. He looks between us, “just remain vigilant, as always.”

I know that’s for me from the way his eyes lock with mine for just a second. He’s trying to let me know exactly what my job is so I’m not confused. And while I appreciate it, I do wish he could consistently tell when I’m struggling or better yet, could tell at all that all these life changes are killing me. 

But now isn’t the time for that. For now, he’s my captain way more than he is my brother, and I try to force myself to stay in that mindset. 

“So we’ll beam down, examine the debris field in person, and if we are able to find any working technology, that’s the goal!” Jim looks at everyone as he speaks. 

Sam finally steps into the conversation when he shortly adds with a bit of a sneer, “just don’t touch anything if we do find any tech. Verify it’s working, then immediately inform me.”

“…Or me,” Jim says after seeming to wait and see if Sam would say it but doesn't. 

Questions whirl in my head but I remind myself that not only am I just a student, I’m not even Starfleet. I have no right to ask anything. I’m here to learn and observe, not participate. 

It seems I’m not the only one with questions unvoiced, if the expressions of everyone else’s faces are anything to go by. But it also seems I’m not the only one to not want to question anything, because everyone simply nods in affirmation. 

Sam leans forward and whispers something to Jim, looking upset still, and his eyes flick over to me. I hear something about ‘her’ and ‘hear’, but I can tell from Jim’s body language that he’s doing his best to just brush him off, and Sam finally huffs and steps aside. I worry that it’s me Sam is upset about, but I can’t be sure. 

…that is until what Sam said suddenly clicks, like my brain has to glitch and process it first before I could truly hear it. It wasn’t ‘hear’, it was ‘here’. He said, ‘she shouldn’t be here. I don’t want her here.’ 

So it must have been me he was talking about when he said someone would be in the way. 

My stomach flips as I look over at Jim again, looking for some sort of affirmation that it’s okay that I’m here, but he’s oblivious to my silent plea. 

Sam, however, is looking at me, a glare on his face that he doesn’t bother to hide when I meet his eye. 

If Sam doesn’t want me here, then why is Jim allowing it? I don’t even totally understand why I’m here to begin with. 

Bones randomly called me into his office after Ignacio dragged me to lunch to ask if I wanted to tag along with Maggie on a routine away mission to learn how they’re done. 

I didn’t exactly want to say yes, but I certainly wasn’t going to say no, either. 

After we came back from lunch, after I had calmed down from Alison scolding me, things in medbay seemed… different. Like the vibe was off, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then when Bones asked to assign me to the mission, I figured maybe it was to do with that. Maybe people were upset about it. But I tried not to think about it, tried to immerse myself in the Starfleet regulations for away missions even after Bones went over them in detail with me. 

And now not only do I have to deal with medbay people being mad about it, but Sam as well. It’s like my mere existence annoys people, and I have no idea how to fix that. 

Jim waves a hand towards the transporter pad, and the six of us climb up it. I check my pants pocket for my communicator, my scrub top pocket for my personal padd, and pat my tricorder one last time as I hear Jim command, “energize!”

We rematerialize on rough, rocky terrain. It reminds me of volcanic rock, all pitted and edgy. I look up to see a completely orange sky, the warm glow of the nebula above the planet creating an illuminated atmosphere. There is a sun in the system, but it’s far past the nebula. So while it causes the nebula to shine bright, it doesn’t provide much heat. I can see my breath faintly before me, and it’s then that I wonder what the atmosphere is like. 

As if reading my mind, Maggie steps towards me with her tricorder out, “Dr. McCoy has it as standard practice that the away team medical officer is to always double check that the atmosphere is safe for all on the team upon beaming down to any surface.” She holds the screen up for me to see, “this planetoid has a higher concentration of oxygen than earth, but it’s still a breathable atmosphere for most humanoids. Since everyone on this away team is human, we can give a general warning and inform the away team leader.”

She raises her voice, reading out the percentages of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide in the air. “The risk for fire is greatly elevated in an atmosphere like this, sir,” she says to Jim. “And we should be careful to avoid exertion so as to not risk hyperoxygenation, especially with this being a cold and dry environment.”

“Understood, lieutenant,” Jim responds, eyes on the horizon. He points to something nearby, something that could easily be mistaken as a rock formation. “The debris should be that way, let’s check out that structure at our 3 o’clock.”

As we head over, Jim and Sam leading the way, I watch my footing carefully. The ground shifts with each step, never feeling solid. It seems to just be layers and layers of rock underneath us, and I’m worried about rolling my bad ankle. At least I’m in scrub pants if I fall, the other women are all in uniform dresses, and these rocks look less than forgiving. 

It doesn’t take but a few minutes to tell that we are indeed approaching a debris field, not just some rock formation. And what also quickly becomes apparent, is that this debris has seen battle. 

Pieces of metallic materials are scattered about, but many of them show scorch marks, dents, and cracks. 

The science officer, Lt. Moriyama, has her tricorder out and is excitedly scanning the pieces. “The duranium and tritanium alloy composition does match that of the recorded shell of the Kelvin,” she announces. 

I fight the creepy crawly feeling that goes down my spine. Am I seriously looking at the rubble from the ship my dad died on? 

Every breath stings as I draw it in, and I know it’s due to breathing too fast in such a high oxygen environment. We seem to be on an incline, and I have to dig my ankles deep into the rock to climb it. 

Everyone suddenly stops dead as they approach what looks like the ledge of whatever incline we’ve been climbing. When I move closer, I see why. 

A few hundred feet below, in a self-made crater, is an intact piece of a starship. 

It takes a long time to get down into the crater, and I roll my bad ankle more than once, but thankfully no one wipes out. 

I’m frequently checking over Maggie’s shoulder to watch what she’s doing, to take mental notes on what to do. 

We approach the crash site, and everyone seems a bit hesitant when it finally gets to the point we’re about to step ‘onboard’, to step into the guts of the remains of the ship. I see Jim hold his breath as he steps over the threshold, like a kid stepping over cracks in the sidewalk. 

We cautiously file in to what seems to be a corridor, and everyone but me pulls out a flashlight. I didn’t know I was supposed to bring one. So I pull out my padd and turn on its flashlight. 

The lights bounce off the different surfaces, and the corridor has branching hallways, as well as what appear to be various rooms lining it. 

“Alright,” Jim says as his eyes roam, “let’s split into two teams and see what we can find. Lieutenants Moriyama and Hartwell, and Callie, with me, Lt. Adyian, accompany Mr. Kirk, please.”

The teams are a bit uneven, but I know they likely don’t want to separate me from Maggie. Everyone nods in agreement and peels off to their designated group. 

Our little group follows Jim to one of the doors down the corridor, and after attempting to open it from the panel without success, he wiggles his fingers into the split where the doors meet and tries to pry them apart. Lt. Moriyama and Maggie are quick to jump in and each take a side, helping him pull it open until the door gives and they override whatever mechanism was keeping it closed. 

We trail in cautiously, shining our lights all around to try and figure out what we are walking into. It’s a large, rectangular space with not much else but tables and chairs, most of them in broken pieces. Windows line the far wall, but are covered with the thick solar film that was standard on all starships at the time, keeping the room very dark. 

“I think this was a galley of sorts,” Lt. Moriyama says. “On most of the single-nacelle ships of the time, from the Saladin-class to the Kelvin-type, there were galleys with kitchens as opposed to the type of mess hall we have now.” 

“So this is where the crew of the Kelvin ate…” Jim thinks aloud as his eyes roam the room. 

My chest tightens as I read between the lines- this is where our parents ate. This is where our mom probably got her fix for whatever pregnancy cravings she had while Jim was growing inside her. This is where she and our dad probably made memories of uneventful dinners that would hold meaning and haunt her after he died. 

“…so we aren’t likely to find replicators, let alone any working tech,” the lieutenant is saying. 

A quick once over of the room confirms that, and we head out to keep searching. The next room we come across has an open door, and everyone sweeps the small office we determine it to be, finding nothing. 

And so it goes, we search room after room, and even when we do come across wall panels in the corridors, Jim and Moriyama can’t get them to power up. 

“What exactly are we looking for within any working tech?” I ask Maggie quietly, needing context. 

She shakes her head, “I’m not sure,” she answers just as quietly. “It’s not my assignment. I’m focused on monitoring the team.”

I nod, moving to pick my tricorder up from where it hangs crossbody at my hip, so I can monitor vitals as well. 

My own heart rate is high, and I try to dismiss it as a side effect of the high oxygen, though I know it’s more so anxiety and adrenaline. 

Jim is about to say something when his communicator beeps, and he picks it up off his belt. But before he can even say anything, Lt. Adyian’s voice comes through, shrill and panicked. “Sir! We have a fire! Get your team out of the wreckage ASAP!”

Jim curses, before turning and sprinting towards the way we came in. 

Everyone falls into step behind him, hustling down the corridor, as he tries to get more info. “Do you require assistance?”

“Yes!” Adyian cries, “-locked us in-“ his communicator is starting to cut out, and everything that does come through comes in staticky. “-destroyed the console-“

“We’re on our way, Lieutenant!” Jim says, moving faster. He glances back, “Moriyama, I’ll need your expertise in these starships to get the door open, Hartwell, sounds like we’ll need your medical assistance, so you two, with me!”

He doesn’t specifically tell me what to do, so I decide to help Maggie in any way I can, and I continue to follow her down the corridor. 

The corridor starts to fill with black smoke the further down it we go, until we get to a set of doors it seems to be leaking out of. I remember Jim and Bones once saying that fire is the greatest danger on a starship, and the way this door is struggling to contain the smoke drives that point home. Current starships have advanced sealing systems and technology on the doors, but this older and damaged ship surely doesn’t have any intact. 

Jim tries to use the panel to open the doors, but it doesn’t work. He pounds on the door, yelling for Sam and Adyian, but he gets no response. 

He’s about to try to pry the doors open when they seem to part themselves, smoke billowing out and filling the hall, blinding us all. 

Everything that happens next, happens in a blur. 

Somewhere in my mind, I’m cognizant of the fact that the high oxygen content in the atmosphere coupled with the smoke is likely making us all extra lightheaded, and the high oxygen levels are likely making the fire burn worse than a normal fire would. 

It’s basically a recipe for disaster, and all I can think to do is stick as close to Maggie as possible, which means following her into the smoking room. 

There’s yelling happening, my eyes and throat begin to burn, and I lose sight of Maggie. I turn in a circle which I immediately realize to be a mistake as I lose what little bearings I had when we came in. 

I start to get dizzy, my head starts to hurt, and I struggle to figure out what I should do. 

I open my mouth to call out to someone, anyone, but before I can, the pain in my head multiplies tenfold, and the world starts to go black around the edges. 

And I can’t stop it from overtaking me. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Pain. 

All I know right now is pain. 

I don’t wake up slowly, like on a lazy morning without an alarm clock. I wake up abruptly, loudly, and painfully. 

My eyes fly open but everything is blurry, my eyes itching and burning something terrible, like my contacts are dirty. I move to rub at them, pulling my hand away from something gripping it, but it’s swiftly yanked back. I feel the sting of a needle and I go to object, but find I can’t get any words out. 

In fact, I can barely get any sounds out. As I tense the muscles in my chest to try and at least grunt, I realize just how much pain my entire diaphragm is in. 

Worst of all, I discover that breathing hurts. Something is on my face, pushing air into my lungs, air that feels spicy and cold. It burns, burns worse than the air on the planetoid did. Burns worse than when the fire broke-

The fire. I was in a fire, there was a fire! I saw the smoke, felt the heat right as everything started to go black, when my head started to pound. 

Again I try to bring a hand up, but someone grabs my arm and pushes it back down beside me. 

It’s then that my hearing comes back, and I hear the cacophony of voices yelling around me,

“…o, no, no, don’t try to move-“

“I need a blood gas now!”

“-can’t tell if there are burns on her body-“

“-eeds pain meds-“

“Where’s the bronchodilator?”

Along with blaring alarms that are familiar enough to make me aware I’m in medbay.

I try to arch my back, but everything hurts so bad that all the breath I have leaves me, and that sends me gasping for air. Gasping for air causes more pain, more burning in my throat and chest, more aching in my ribs. 

I start to panic, feeling like the air is burning too much to get any quality oxygen into my lungs. The alarms get louder, and I turn my head from side to side as I drag a hand up to pull at the mask stuck on my face, over my nose and mouth. 

“No-no-no-no-no,” someone commands, pulling my hand away from my face and straightening the mask again. “You need to leave that on,”

“Hurts,” I croak out with all my might, and it still barely comes out above a whisper. 

“I know, the pain meds will kick in soon and the bronchodilator has anti-inflammatories which will take the swelling down which will also help.”

I shake my head once more, hating the burning of the medication being forced down my lungs. My heart is pounding, and I know it’s not just from the pain and adrenaline. A bronchodilator is the opposite of a depressant, of something like a sedative. It’s made to open the airways, to wake up your body to make it work. For me, it’s waking up my anxiety, my overstimulation. 

When I feel my clothes start to get pulled at, when I hear the scissors cutting through fabric, I start fighting with fresh vigor. “No- no!” I say as loudly as my throat and lungs will let me, trying to pull away from whoever is violating me. 

“It’s just Christine, she’s going to make sure you didn’t get burned,” the voice keeping my hand from pulling off my mask says soothingly. 

Still, I shake my head, trying to open my eyes and blink away the smog. I use my hand not being held to swat at the air near whoever is trying to cut my clothes away. 

“Let Chris check you out,” a second voice joins. “I’m going to take your contacts out so we can flush your eyes.” I may not be able to see, but I recognize Bones’ voice. 

I whine in objection, feeling cool air hit my body along with the desire to curl in on myself. But almost as soon as the cool air hits, I feel myself being covered up again. Christine’s voice announces, “no burns that I can see on the front, once she’s stable I’ll check her back.”

I realize then that Bones has been pulling my contacts out while she cut my clothes off, thankfully meaning he wasn’t looking. The dirty haze on the world lifts, but is soon replaced by the blurriness of liquid in my eyes. A squawk of protest leaves my burning chest as I try to turn my head away, squeezing my eyes shut, wincing as the liquid runs down my temples and soaks the fabric under my head.  

“Callie, baby, please don’t fight me, please,” he begs. “We need to flush this soot out.”

Still, I pull my head away as I fight against every burning breath, not wanting to breathe but being forced to by my own body and the mask being held to my face. My heart continues to pound, making my chest hurt even more than it already does. 

I try to push away the hand keeping the mask on my face, but it stays firm, not moving an inch. 

“No, no,” I’m told again, “this has to stay.”

“Burns!” I choke out, before my eye is pulled open and flushed again. 

The longer I’m awake, the more energy and force my limbs regain, despite how much moving them hurts. My legs start to weakly kick in protest, my heels digging into the biobed under me. 

As my other eye is forced open and flooded with liquid, my hands draw up to push at Bones’ wrist, to try and make it stop. 

The hand keeping the mask on my face moves to pull at my wrists, to bring them down and hold them against my stomach. 

I start to panic again at being restrained, at having a mask strapped to my face and water forcibly flushing through my eyes. I choke on a cry of frustration and pain, a grunt of annoyance and fear. 

The rattle in my throat from the exclamation causes searing pain, and I gasp in air at the shocking agony of it. Gasping in air just causes my lungs to burn more, and a rattling cough soon escapes me. 

Mucus fills my throat, cutting off my ability to breathe, and I fight to sit up so I can get it out. The hands holding me down swiftly change gears to help me sit up and lean to one side, yank my mask off, and then an emesis basin appears in front of my mouth. “Good girl, good, get all that up,” Bones is saying from behind me as he pats my bare upper back. 

Sanchez is in front of me, holding the basin with one hand, and the gown Christine must have tossed over me to my collarbone with the other. 

A finger taps on the band of my bra from behind me, “Cal, is there an underwire in this?”

I try to turn and scowl, to give him a dirty look, a warning look, but my chest rattles so hard that coughing overtakes me again and all I can do is nod as my eyes squeeze shut. 

“Chris?” I hear Bones holler, before footsteps hurry over. “Get her bra off, the metal in it might interfere with the scans, let alone her breathing, and I still don’t know if we’ll end up doing any procedures.”

Again I try to turn, to argue, to bat away her hands when they swiftly undo the clasp. She tuts at me, “none of that, you’re covered up, I promise.” She pulls it off me before she reaches around from behind to weave my arms through the holes in the gown before I feel her tie it in the back. 

“Ignacio, get the mask back on her, we can’t count on the pulse ox being correct. Until her blood gas is back, we’ve got no idea what her oxygenation is looking like, so keep her on 100% o2 along with the bronchodilator.” Bones says as he appears behind me again. “I’m giving her tri-ox now,” he adds, moving around to inject something into the IV in my hand. 

Sanchez reattaches the mask back on my face, even as I scrunch up my nose in objection. 

“Callie, you need to lay back down,” Bones says as he continues flying about the bay I’ve been placed in. “We need to do a scan of your chest to look at your lungs.”

My chest aching too much to fight back, I let Sanchez help me lay down and grit my teeth through the pain reverberating through me. 

I see Bones hand Sanchez the mobile CT scanner, and Bones comes to stand out of the way behind the bed at the head as Sanchez starts waving it over me. 

I tilt my head back to look up at Bones, eyes watering as they continue to flush out soot and struggle to focus without the aid of contacts. 

He pulls a penlight out of his pocket and pulls the oxygen mask off, before he tells me to open my mouth so he can look down my throat. I can tell he doesn’t like what he sees by the subtle shake of his head, but what’s even more worrisome is the sharp and explicit exclamation that comes out of Sanchez’s mouth. 

The mask gets slapped back over my face as Bones hustles to look at what Sanchez is pointing out on the scanner’s screen, out of my line of sight. 

I’m already forcing myself to sit up to try and see what they’re angling the screen away so I can’t see, when I see Bones nod and mouth ‘bronchoscopy’. I start to panic, the idea of having something forced deep down into my lungs freaking me out. 

My breathing picks up, and I start to shake my head no, but my increase in breathing makes my chest rattle and the coughing start up again, causing me to force myself all the way up. 

They look at me before sharing a knowing look with each other, Bones nodding to Sanchez once more before he hurries away, punching orders in on his padd. 

I keep shaking my head no while coughing, trying to pull the mask off again so I can talk, so I can beg him not to do this to me. 

He pulls my hand off the mask and holds it in my lap, catching the other one as it tries to do the same thing. “Listen to me, listen,” he tries to say, but I ignore him, shaking my head still. “Callie-“

“No!” I cough out in a wail.

He presses his lips into a line and lets go of my hands, bringing his up to cradle my head behind my ears, tilting my face up to look at him. “Sh, sh,” he hushes, bringing his forehead to mine. “Listen to me, you have to listen, okay? I’ll hear you out, but you need to listen to me first, deal?”

I swallow roughly, but nod. 

“Okay, good girl, thank you,” he says, staying close. 

My hands come up to grip his wrists, not to pull them away, but to have something solid to hold onto. 

“You have atelectasis, you know what that means?”

I know why he’s using the medical term, not just because he knows I know what it means, but because he knows it’s a whole lot less scary than the layman’s term- a collapsed lung. 

I nod, and he nods against my head. “Good. The scan showed your alveoli in your right lower lobe can’t inflate because of two reasons. One, it looks like there’s soot causing a blockage. Two, that’s the side you broke your rib and it healed wonky, pushing too far against your lung, so the inflammation has nowhere to go but inward. You with me so far?”

I blink and nod again, and he pulls away to kiss my forehead before he puts his back against it and keeps explaining, eyes on mine. “We need to do a bronchoscopy to clear out the debris, I know,” he adds when my grip on his wrists tightens. “That that sounds scary. And you know that normally I would knock you out so you don’t have to deal with being awake for it. But darlin’…” he shakes his head, closing his eyes for a moment as if reconsidering before reopening them. “Babygirl, I’m so sorry, but we can’t risk depressing your nervous system and breathing with heavy sedation or general anesthesia right now.”

My stomach flips and my lip starts to wobble. 

“I will do everything I can to make this as easy as possible for you, I promise. But we can’t wait. The scan was worrisome enough to tell us we need to clear out what’s in your lungs ASAP. I don’t like how your throat looks, either, which leads me to believe the scans are accurate.”

I’m shaking now, my grip on his wrists near bruising in force. 

“It won’t take long. Breathing will be easier when it’s done, and what sedatives we can give you will give you a nice nap once it’s over.”

I hear Sanchez come back and drop supplies on the foot of the bed, and my heart rate picks up along with my shaking. 

“Ignacio is going to max you out on pain meds, that alone will make you more comfortable and a little loopy.”

I feel my hand sting as confirmation. 

I hear him start to say something else, but I also feel my eyes roll to the back of my head and my grip on him falter as the meds hit. 

He pulls away from me then, propping the bed up so I’m not laying flat and can breathe better as they move me to one of the back radiology procedure rooms. 

Even as the world seems to start to sound far away, he keeps explaining what’s happening, telling me they’re giving me drugs to sedate me as much as is safely possible. I feel the bed detach from its base and start to move, and my hands search the air for someone to hold onto. 

A hand much larger than my own takes mine in it, squeezing hard enough to ground me and long enough to let me know they aren’t leaving. 

Still, as I register the change in smell that means we’ve gone into the more sterile procedure room, panic starts to overtake me. My lip starts to tremble again and I feel the beginnings of sobs at the back of my throat. I try to stay quiet, but a cry seeps out of me, before another and another follow. 

“No-no-no, don’t cry, try not to cry, you’ll create more mucus and won’t be able to breathe,” Sanchez says to me, and I realize he’s the one holding my hand. 

My hand stings again and I start to feel a sensation that I can only describe as floaty. It’s like balloons have been attached all over my body and I’m slowly floating away. It feels like there’s no one touching me, I barely notice when my throat gets sprayed with numbing medication, and I barely even feel the oxygen mask be replaced with a nasal cannula and the tubing get tucked behind my ears. 

What I do feel, though, is the bed being laid flat and a hard mouth guard being pushed in between my lips and teeth. That makes my eyes fly open and my head twist away, my hands scramble for purchase. “No!” I scream as loud as I can, sheer terror overtaking me. 

They’re going to stick a tube down my throat, down my throat and into my lungs. What if they have to flush the soot out? And make me feel like I’m drowning? What if I can’t say anything? I don’t want to be awake for this, I can’t do this, I can’t- 

Warm hands appear on my temples from above/behind me at the head of the bed, fingers lightly trailing over my jaw, gently stopping my thrashing. I think that means the tube is coming, so I bring my hands up to try and push them off, to keep fighting. 

“Callie- Callie, you have to calm down, it’s okay,” I hear Bones say from in front of me. “We need you to stay still for this, it’s important that you don’t move.”

The unyielding plastic in my mouth that reminds me all too much of a horse’s bit makes responding near impossible, so I just keep shaking my head as whimpers flow even as my eyes continue to roll. 

I hear someone sit behind me, whoever it is that is holding my head, Sanchez, I assume, and he brings his face close to my ear. “Chispita, sh-sh, listen,” his thumbs stroke lightly over my cheeks as he tries to get me to settle.   

My hands have made their way to cling to my gown at my stomach, so hard they’re shaking, even as I hear someone else come in and start stacking warm blankets on top of me. One of the nurses, I assume, and the thought makes my eyes fly open. Not just because I’m worried it’s one of the ones that’s mean to me, but because I finally remember that Maggie was with me- other people were with me on the away mission. 

It’s thankfully Rebecca in the room, and I pull my hands out from under the stack of blankets she put on me to try and pull at the mouth guard. 

A chorus of ‘no’s’ comes, followed by Rebecca taking my hands and squeezing them reassuringly. I shake my head, frustrated that I have no way to explain I’m not trying to take it out to be difficult. 

I turn my head to try and look at Sanchez, and he pulls back slightly so he can look me in the eye. “Ji-? -aggie?” I eek out. 

“Jim and Maggie?”

I nod quickly. 

“They’re okay, everyone is okay,” he nods back. 

He answers just a hair too quickly and my eyes narrow, “-iar.”

His eyes flick over to Bones as if seeking permission or guidance on what to say. 

I hear Bones sigh and move closer, putting a hand on either side of me so he can lean over me so I can see him. 

“Lt. Adyian didn’t make it,” he says softly. 

My eyes fill with tears again, and he hurries to add, “but Jim, Maggie, Sam, and Moriyama will be okay.”

I look back up at Sanchez as he brushes away the tears that stream down my temples. 

“You can’t cry, Cal, please try not to cry,” Bones implores as he brushes a hand down my arm. 

I turn my face towards Sanchez and he comes close to my ear again. “Escúchame, querida,” (listen to me, my dear,) he murmurs, trying anything to get and keep my attention on him instead of what’s going on. “I know you’re scared, I know you don’t want to do this. We don’t want to do this to you either. But- listen, listen-“ he implores as I squeeze my eyes shut again. 

He pets my hair back with one hand while he strokes my cheek with the thumb of his other. He switches back to Spanish, knowing I have to focus more on that to understand and that it distracts me from whatever Bones is doing. “No estás sola,” (you are not alone,) he says. “Estoy aquí por ti, y todo va a estar bien.” (I’m here for you, and everything is going to be okay.)

All the panicking I did must have made the sedatives rush through my system, because I start feeling them in full force. Like a tide slowly pulling me out to sea, even as I try to dig my fingers into the sand to stop it. 

“No luches contra ello, chispita, solo respira.” (Don’t fight it, chispita, just breathe.) He keeps up the gentle stroking of my face and hair, and Rebecca is also rubbing her thumbs reassuringly over the backs of my hands. My eyes go from being squeezed shut to fluttering underneath their lids as they roll. “Bien, bien,” (good, good,) he commends me. 

I’m still tensing, still waiting for something to start shoving its way down my throat, but I try to just focus on what’s being said to me. It’s like my brain won’t let me focus on both at once. 

“Lo estás haciendo muy bien, mi dulce niña,” (you’re doing so good, my sweet girl.) he says softly. “Todo esto terminará pronto.” (This will all be over soon.)

It’s then that I feel pressure deep in my throat. It’s not painful, but it’s foreign, and I certainly don’t like it. The pressure is deep enough to tell me that I didn’t notice the tube first being threaded down, but also that it’s probably entering my trachea right now. 

A muffled whimper torpedos out of me as I try to resist the urge to pull away, to turn my head from side to side and escape the discomfort. 

“I know, I know,” Bones says from somewhere above me. “I’m so sorry, darlin’, I’m so sorry.”

Sanchez speaks quickly, keeping my head steady, “¿alguna vez Auggie te contó la historia de la primera vez que vino a visitarme a la academia?” (Did Auggie ever tell you the story of the first time he came to visit me at the academy?) He doesn’t wait for an answer he knows I can’t give. “Así fue el Día Academia de la Famila…” (So it was the Academy Family Day…)

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

When they beamed Callie directly into his medbay unconscious, completely covered in soot, and with her o2 stats in the toilet, he had barely been able to put his doctor persona on in time to start running the trauma. 

He grabbed Sanchez to help him and let M’Benga take over the official announcement of time of death for Lt. Adyian, knowing he’d grab Christine and the other nurses to then move on to triaging and treating the rest of the away team. According to preliminary reports, everyone had at least mild smoke inhalation, but somehow Callie… Callie was the worst off of the survivors. 

Part of him was furious. Furious at himself for letting her go, furious at Jim for not keeping her safe, furious at Sam for showing up and dragging them on this mission to begin with. 

But mostly he was terrified. He hadn’t even been that scared when he’d found her in that bathroom with Jed. He hadn’t been that scared when they rolled Jim’s dead body in on a gurney. Not when his arm got stuck in a torpedo, not when he’d been running through the jungle on Nibiru, not when Spock shot Jim off to Delta Vega, not when he found out deck 6 and Dr. Puri were both gone meaning he was CMO of the flagship as a cadet at 31 during a disaster, not when Jocelyn threw the custody ‘agreement’ in his face and took ‘the whole damn planet’ from him… The last time he had been so scared and uncertain was the night his dad died. 

But she was alive, and that’s what he had to focus on. He had to focus on keeping her that way. So his brain swiftly transitioned into doctor mode as he began operating on years of experience and instinct. She couldn’t be the girl he loved like his own daughter in that moment, she had to be a patient. 

So he gave the orders to get her clothes off, to draw her blood, to start an IV, to put a suffocating oxygen mask on her face with unpleasant medication pumping through it. All things he knew she would hate, knew he would normally talk her through, but things he knew needed to be done quickly and without preamble.   

He almost sagged in relief when she started to stir, even if it meant she started to fight them, because it meant she was still with them, was still herself. 

As professional as they were all trying to be, when he heard the expletive that flew out of Ignacio’s mouth at the results of her CT scan, he knew things were bad. He murmured the same expletive under his breath when he looked at the scan himself and saw the deflated alveoli, the inflammation in her lung. His heart sank as he confirmed with the younger doctor that a bronchoscopy was next, and when he realized Callie had seen him order it, he felt even worse. 

He cradled her head in his hands, pressing his forehead against hers, not caring about getting soot on his own skin as he did, listening to the rattling in her breathing as she panted in fear. It all but broke him to tell her what he was going to have to do to her, and he worried he wasn’t going to have the strength to do it. He considered having Ignacio do the procedure while he held her head still, pet her hair and kept her from crying, but he knew as her PCP and the senior doctor he needed to be the one to do it. And when Ignacio grabbed her hand on their way to the procedure room, then gently took her head in his hands and began to trail his fingers soothingly over her jaw, he knew he’d made the right decision. 

But it was still hard, still heartbreaking, to have her be awake, whimpering and doing her best not to fight him and he advanced the scope down her trachea. 

Rebecca was going back and forth between watching her face and watching what was going on on the screen, what they were seeing in her airway and lung. He’d sent for her specifically, knowing she’d treat Callie well. The fact he even had to consider who would be best for that infuriated him.

He tuned into the story Ignacio was telling her, his own Spanish competent enough to understand, about the first time his family had come to visit him at the academy. Which was the first time he’d met them, namely Auggie, when he’d run off during a meltdown. Little did the Sanchez family know he’d be found by a psychologist with a neurodivergent nephew of his own. He was used to chasing after kids who didn’t want to be found. He was still doing it to that day. He found himself smiling during the story, even as he had to flush and suction thick soot out of Callie’s lung. 

Just as her alveoli began to reinflate, he caught a mop of familiar blond hair, marred with soot, in the window outside the procedure room. He shot Jim a warning glance to stay out, then proceeded to scope out Callie’s other lung. It was in better shape, so he left it alone, and pulled the scope out as gently but quickly as he could. 

“Alright,” he said as he set the scope aside and removed his gloves. “Rebecca, if you could please get her into a room and start washing the worst of the soot off her body, make sure we didn’t miss any burns? The sedatives should keep her under for a while now. Ignacio, go see what M’Benga needs? I’m going to go brief Jim,” he nodded towards the pacing captain outside the doors. 

He held the door open as Rebecca pushed the biobed out and down the hall, Jim’s eyes on his then-sedated sister as she was taken away. Once they were alone, Len crossed his arms and took Jim in, “you get checked out?”

“Yeah, yeah, just had a burn on my wrist, one of the nurses had it healed in no time. Callie- tell me about Callie!” 

He looked down before reaching for his wrist to examine it himself, make sure the kid had actually gotten himself seen to like he had claimed. Sure enough, fresh, pink skin at his wrist confirmed recent dermal regeneration. “Your lungs check out okay?”

“Minor smoke inhalation, I did a breathing treatment, I’ll come back for another tonight and one tomorrow morning- Callie, Bones! Callie!” 

No wonder the kid was darn near vibrating. The steroids in the breathing treatment had him even more on edge than he’d naturally be. 

“She’s going to be fine, Jim,” he tried to soothe. “She-“

“She sure didn’t look fine when you had a tube down her throat just now!”

“It was a scope,” he corrected gently. “And it was to clear soot out of her lung so it could inflate properly. When she came in, it couldn’t. Now it can. We’ll keep her on oxygen and medication to help her airways relax, along with painkillers. I flushed her eyes already, Rebecca is going to wash her skin off and treat any burns, not that Chris saw any, and when she’s awake we’ll get her drinking to flush her throat and then we’ll flush her nose and ears. Now,” he recrossed his arms. “Care to tell me what happened down there?”

Jim ran trembling hands through his hair, making the soot stains worse. “I don’t know,” he said as he shook his head. “Callie, Maggie, Moriyama, and I were in one part of the wreckage-“

“Wreckage, what wreckage?” He interrupted. 

Jim laughed a bit hysterically, “we found a piece of the Kevin.”

His eyes about fell out of his head, “the Kelvin? Like, your dad’s ship the Kelvin?”

Jim nodded, “that’d be the one. That’s what Sam has been helping us look for.”

“And you couldn’t share that why?!”

“It’s been… it’s been busy and Sam wanted it kept hush-hush.”

Well that hurt. He didn’t know the last time Jim kept things from him. Probably not since the academy. Not since he’d found out about Tarsus had there been any secrets between them. 

And now it felt like he was choosing Sam over him. But… could he blame him? It was his brother. 

But also… yeah, he could. It was the brother who abandoned him. 

Additionally, Jim never kept secrets from him on a professional level, not when he was his CMO. Not when he needed to prepare contingencies for contingencies to keep the crew safe and healthy. So for him to be kept out of the loop was more than a little odd. 

He rubbed at his eyes, “okay, so you’re in one part of the wreckage,” he waved a hand, signaling him to continue. They’d deal with the reasons behind the secrecy later. 

“Right, and Sam and Adyian went to another section. We were all searching for any working systems or technology. I got a call over comms that they need help, that a fire broke out, that they were locked in, so we all took off running. God- I should have- I should have told Callie to wait outside. I was in charge, it was her first away mission… I should have known she wouldn’t hesitate to jump in and try to help…” 

“She is your sister, after all,” Len tried to add ruefully, but it fell flat. 

Jim buried his face in his hands and took a shaky breath, “by the time we got to them, everything was engulfed in smoke. I lost sight of everyone as soon as we got the doors open. I was able to spot Adyian collapsed near the door and dragged him out of the room, into the corridor. Then Moriyama and Maggie came out with Sam between them. Before we knew it, the doors to the room closed again. There had to be some short in the wiring that made them keep closing like that. The smoke started to clear and when I started counting everyone up, I realized we were one short,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing. 

“Callie,” Len whispered. 

He nodded gravely, “somehow she ended up trapped in that room. When we realized, I- god, Bones, I lost my mind. I went ham on the door, trying to pry it open but it wouldn’t budge. Someone was screaming, I thought it was Callie, but… I think it was me.” 

He swallowed hard again, “Sam ripped off the electrical panel and hotwired it open somehow. We ran in and went opposite directions, Sam found her on his half of the room. She was barely breathing…” he choked on his words, eyes brimming with tears, “god, Bones, just tell me she’s going to be okay?” 

He took Jim into his arms, let him bury his face in his shoulder. “She’s gonna be fine, kid, okay? We’re going to take care of her.”

Jim choked on a sob. 

“The main worry with smoke inhalation after the initial exposure is watching for heart damage, making sure the heart is strong enough to keep up with the strain. But she’s young, she’s got the best medical care available, she’s going to be okay, alright?”

“It was supposed to be an easy mission,” Jim cried. “That’s the only reason I let her go. It was supposed to be safe! Research! Practically a casual search! Sam said Adyian started the fire when he tried to boot one of the consoles up. Faulty wiring, probably damaged in the crash. The high oxygen environment made it spread fast. Sam didn’t want her to go, and I should have listened. He had a better sense as a brother than I did!”

“I know, I know,” he soothed as he rocked them gently from side to side, a hand on the back of his neck. “Remember, I signed off on her going, too. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s always my fault, I’m the captain! The deaths will always fall on me.”

He sighed, “as CMO I sign off on the deaths, too, kid. You’re not alone in carrying the burden of lives, here.”

“But the crew shouldn’t even be involved in this mission,” Jim sniffled. “I told Sam, I told command, that asking my crew to do something without telling them the whole truth about why is what got so many of them killed a year ago.”

He stiffened minutely as he asked, “what are we looking for, Jim? You said we were looking for the Kelvin, but what exactly on it are you searching for?”

“Not ‘what’, exactly,” he said as he pulled away. Looking down, he dragged a hand down his face before he distantly said, “it’s who. …We’re looking for my father.”

Chapter Text

Len blinked, trying to find a delicate way to phrase his next question. “As in… his body?” 

“No…” Jim said, almost miserably, looking around to make sure no one was nearby. “You remember how I said Sam has done a lot of research in biology in relation to transporters?”

He nodded. 

“Well… he has a recording. An audio log our father recorded just before the Kelvin crashed into Nero’s ship. One that Starfleet- Section 31- tried to bury. It’s garbled, parts missing, but…” 

He sighed, pulling his padd out of his back pocket, “I’ll play for you what we were able to restore after Sam sent it to me that interested command enough to green-light this mission.”

George Kirk’s voice filled the hallway, fear and determination both clear in it. “Uh, acting captain’s log. Autopilot is non-functional, I’m going to have to stay onboard the Kelvin to ensure the shuttles escape this attacking vessel. Before final impact, I’m going to attempt-“

Static garbled and Jim added, "this is the part we cleared up," before the recording continued, “to store my transporter pattern inside the buffer and-“

More static, then, “It’s unorthodox, but I have to at least try. Hopefully some remnant of the ship survives,”

When static started up again, Jim pocketed his padd. “That’s all we’ve been able to get. The communications team here on board is still working on restoring more of it. But our working theory is that if we can find intact Kelvin technology, their computers, we may be able to find his transporter pattern in the buffer.”

He blinked again. He remembered how M’Benga and Christine had described keeping critical patients in the transporter buffer in a sort of limbo as they waited for the means to save them on J’Gal, but he’d never heard of someone’s pattern surviving for very long. Let alone over 27 years. 

“So…” he shook his head. “So why all the secrecy? Why did they try to bury it?”

“Well, Winona abandoning us kids with Frank to go search for our dad off in deep space answers that, doesn’t it? They knew if she was aware of this log, she’d never stop looking. But even still, she knew him well enough to know what he’d try, even without hearing that. The Kelvin disaster was just that- a disaster, something they wanted to bury and memorialize, not continue saving face over. So they kept it from everyone. It’s not like the odds are great that his attempt even succeeded.”

“Then why agree to search for him now?”

“Because Sam has been hounding them about it for years. And… me as well.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, but kept silent, giving him space to go on. 

“Sam has been trying to get in touch with me for… a while. I… I ignored him for obvious reasons. Archieved all his messages. But after you talked to me about loyalty to Callie, loyalty to blood… I finally opened his comms. And command is a bit afraid to tell me no these days.”

He was still confused, questions swirling in his head at a dizzying rate. “But- what- how did Sam even find out about the recording?”

Jim snorted, “Callie and I aren’t the only geniuses in the family, Bones. Sam’s whole schtick is computers- transporters, systems, technology. He hacked into Starfleet files because he’s also always been the one determined to be a ‘Kirk’. He always wanted to know more about our dad, and… he sure found more.”

Len’s brow furrowed, “he hacked into Section 31 and no one came knocking? You don’t find that strange?”

Jim’s jaw ticked, “maybe Winona stopped them from going after him, I don’t pretend to know how 31 operates.”

He couldn’t help but push more, despite Jim’s prickliness, “what came first here, the chicken or the egg? Did his interest in tech come first, or the obsession with your dad?”

“I’d hardly call it an obsession,” Jim countered quickly. “Winona? Yeah, she was obsessed, and at the detriment of her kids. Sam? Sam’s just a guy who lost his dad. Lost his whole family, really.”

“So are you,” he said gently, but still trying to imply that even still, Jim wasn’t the one hacking into classified records. That Jim wasn’t the one who willingly walked away from his family. That something wasn’t quite adding up.  

“Yeah, well, let’s save all that for later,” Jim waved his hands dismissively, signaling the conversation was over. For him, at least. “You’re sure Callie is going to be okay?”

“I’m as sure as I can be for right now,” he nodded. “I’m going to keep her here, keep an eye on her, let M’Benga run things so I can sit with her. We'll do a breathing treatment later. You can go take care of what you need to, take a shower, for one.” An uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. “Be careful, kid. Keep me posted, alright?”

“You too, please? Let me know when she wakes up?”

“Will do.”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

When I wake up again, things are blurry due to my contacts being gone, but I do know I’m in one of the back medbay extended stay rooms. An oxygen mask is once again strapped over my nose and mouth, making me feel trapped even if I am propped up this time instead of being laid flat like I was last time I woke up. 

I reach a hand up to pull at it, and the amount of effort it takes is much greater than I expect. When I see my hand, I’m surprised to find my skin is much cleaner than the last time I saw it, and I start to worry that someone saw me naked while I was drugged up. 

I feel the urge to clear my throat, but when I try, I realize just how dry it is and nearly choke when it feels like the walls of it get stuck together. 

“Hey, darlin’, hey,” Bones says as he appears at my side. 

I turn my head from side to side in frustration, discomfort blossoming in my throat and I keep trying to cough or gurgle or make any sort of noise. 

“Here, here,” he says, putting a hand under my neck and gently sitting me up. “Water. This will help.”

I gratefully try to take the cup from him, but he keeps one hand on it, knowing all too well I’ll most likely drop it as I gulp it down. 

“Slow, slow,” he cautions. “The last thing you need is to throw up right now. You’re parched but on an IV so not too dehydrated.” 

I stop drinking and finally clear my throat to say, “so that’s why I have to pee so bad.”

He snorts, a smile flashing on his face before he moves forward to kiss my temple. “That’s how I always know you’re okay, when you start complaining about your IV.”

“Cuz you always gotta give me one,” I grumble, letting him take the water away. 

His hand still on the back of my neck, he readjusts it to help me lay back down, and I wince harshly when he hits a sore spot. 

His face furrows immediately with concern and he leans me forward as he stands up to peer at the back of my head. I hiss in pain as he presses around, and he comes back to face me before sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Follow my finger with your eyes,” he commands gently as he holds my chin with one hand. He pulls his penlight out of his pocket and shines it in my eyes, making me wince again. “I didn’t see it when I flushed your eyes earlier, and the scans had more important things they were flagging, but you’re concussed,” he says with a shake of his head as he pockets it. “Do you remember hitting your head?”

“No,” I say, rubbing at my eyes. “I don’t remember much after the smoke got bad.”

“Why did you run into it to begin with?” He asks, not exactly scoldingly, but I can hear the undertone of exasperation. 

“I didn’t mean to, I was just following everyone, then suddenly smoke was everywhere and I didn’t know which was up. Then… then I woke up here.” My stomach flips, “it all happened so fast…” too fast. I could have died and never even saw it coming. “What happened?”

“We still don’t exactly know, sounds like a damaged console sparked and set the whole thing off. Jim is off trying to piece it all together. For now, you just need to rest.”

“But I-“ I cough then, so hard it’s like every muscle in my body tenses.

As I keep coughing, harder and harder, Bones puts the mask back on my face before he comes behind me and pulls my arms up over my head. As stupid as I feel, I do feel relief and the ability to get more air in. 

He lets my arms drop once I catch my breath, and I look at them again before asking, “who washed my skin?”

“Rebecca cleaned the soot off your arms, face, and neck while you were sleeping. Once you feel up to it, Chris can help you take a shower, the steam will help you work up mucus anyway. Flush your ears and sinuses while you’re up, too.”

“I can bathe myself,” I roll my eyes. 

He gives me a look, “you’re concussed.”

“I didn’t even sprain anything this time!”

“This-“ he snorts, then laughs. Truly, genuinely laughs, before it looks like he’s fighting tears and he pulls me into his arms. I lay my cheek against his collarbone, letting him tuck my head underneath his chin. “God, you scared us, darlin’,” he says softly. 

“I didn’t mean to,” I say smally. 

“I know, sweetheart, I know. Just…” he sighs, before he moves to sit next to me in bed, to lay back and tuck me into his side. “We’re all a little shaken up is all. You’re going to have to let us fuss over you.”

‘Let him fuss over you,’ it’s what Boyce said to me when I was in SFM with a self-inflicted bleeding leg while Jim was still in a coma. When I was still learning to trust Bones. 

My hand finds its way to cling at his shirt, to pull myself closer. “How’s everyone else?” I ask quietly. 

“Fine, for the most part. Minor smoke inhalation, minor burns-“

“How did Lt. Adyian die?” I blurt. 

I feel him tense. I can feel the hesitation in him, like he doesn’t want to tell me. “…we still need to finish the post-mortem,” he says slowly. “I need to finish it, as CMO and the one with the forensic pathology degree.”

“…but?” I push. 

“But…” he drawls, “most likely smoke inhalation. He probably just… fell asleep.” 

He’s trying to be comforting, but my autistic brain wants to push back, argue that he didn’t die peacefully, he probably died scared and with every breath burning. 

I bite my lower lip, hard, struggling to keep my emotions in check. I didn’t even know him, I met him that morning. ‘Met’ is practically overstating it, I didn’t even know his first name. 

I’m the type of autistic that doesn’t get emotional when people die. Even when people get hurt, I struggle to act emphatic enough, let alone feel empathetic, even when I do feel bad for them in some way. Even when my mom died, (well, ‘died’,) I sat through her funeral stoic, my hands clenched in my lap, more focused on all the eyes I could feel on the back of my head rather than what was being said, what I was or wasn’t feeling. 

But this feels different, somehow. I was there. I was mere feet away when he died. And I almost died, too. 

“When my mom supposedly died,” I grind out, my voice shaking. “I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry at the hospital. I didn’t cry when I called Jim. I didn’t cry at her funeral.” I pause, struggling to explain what I mean. 

“I remember,” he says softly. 

I tilt my head to look up at him curiously. 

He glances down at me before he nods, “you sat through that funeral with your legs crossed, hands in your lap, clenched so hard your knuckles were white. You didn’t even sniffle. Jim and I didn’t discuss it, but we were both concerned by it. Concerned about how you were handling losing your mom while seemingly stifling any feelings about it.”

“That’s the thing,” I shake my head. “I’m not sure if I stifle feelings, or just genuinely don’t feel them. At least not like everyone else. But with this… It… it hurts, and I don’t know why. I’m upset, and I don’t know why.” My lip wobbles precariously, “it’s not like I could have done anything to prevent it or to save him once it happened, but he was there, and now he’s not, and, and,” I burst into sobs and bury my face in his chest, frustratedly pushing the oxygen mask down around my neck. 

I cry thick tears that leak into his blue shirt, black still staining some of the salty liquid coming out of my eyes. He rubs my back and just lets me cry, doesn’t try to tell me something reassuring, he just lets me get all the pent up feelings out while encouraging me to keep going. 

When he hands me tissues to blow my nose, gobs of black streak the mucus that comes out, and I cough again, having brought up more of it in my throat. 

“What happened today was unexpected in many different ways,” he says. “And until we piece together exactly what happened, closure might not come easily. But what we do know for sure is that something really scary and really bad happened to you, darlin’. And just because someone else died doesn’t mean you almost dying doesn’t mean anything.”

Hearing him say that I almost died hits me square in the chest. I already knew that, but having it said out loud by someone else, someone who took care of me when I was hurt, makes it even more real.

“What happened today was traumatic. And trauma just doesn’t go away because we want it to. You know that very well.”

I rub at my eyes again, frustratedly, not wanting to admit he’s right. The last thing I want is to add something else to my list of traumas, something else to avoid talking about. 

He reaches down and pulls the oxygen mask back up over my face. “Why don’t we-“

A knock sounds at the door, and both of our heads snap towards it. 

Sam is there in the doorway, and he walks in slowly, looking us both over. “Sorry to interrupt,” he says a bit awkwardly. “Just wanted to come check up on my favorite sister,” he gives me a half-cocked smile, the kind that Jim does. It’s the first time I notice a mannerism of his that’s similar to Jim, and it’s disarming. 

“You’re not interrupting,” Bones says, moving to get up. But as he does, I struggle to not scramble for his hand, to stop him from leaving me. 

Sam smiles tightly at him, nodding slightly. “So how’s she doing, doc?”

Bones glances at me, looking for permission to disclose anything about my care and condition to him. So I nod to let him know it’s okay. 

“She’ll be fine. Still dealing with the effects of smoke inhalation, that’s why we’re keeping her on oxygen.”

“Ah, that’s why the prison sentence?” He quips. 

I see Bones bristle minutely, in a way only those who know him well can pick up on. “Well I understand you were the one to get her out as quickly as you did,” he says, trying to remain positive. “So it’s thanks to your quick actions she’s doing as well as she is.”

Sam waves a hand in dismissal before pulling at the back of his neck, another Jim move, one Jim usually makes when he’s nervous. “Least I could do,” he says casually. 

I clock it the same time Bones does- a burn on Sam’s forearm, visible when he flipped his arm to pull at his neck. 

Bones steps forward, “wicked burn you’ve got there, they not have time to see to it yet?”

Sam glances down and shrugs, “oh, yeah, they were all busy and it’s not a big deal-“

“It looks pretty painful,” Bones winces, reaching out for him slightly. 

But Sam steps back, trying- and failing- to seem casual about it. “It’s fine, really,”

“I can have it healed in under five minutes,” Bones says disarmingly. “Way better than being miserable for weeks, if you ask me,” he smiles. 

Sam seems to force himself to laugh lightly before he looks down at the burn again. “…yeah, yeah okay, sure. I’ve got to go track down Jim, but if we can make it quick, sure.”

Bones looks back at me, “do you need anything else?”

I shake my head, fully intending to sneak off for an unsupervised shower as soon as he’s gone. 

He gives me a knowing glare, before telling me Christine will be by soon to make sure I’m still in bed when she arrives. 

Then he and Sam are off. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

“It’s really fine,” Sam tried to say as he tried to make his way towards the medbay doors. 

Bones waved a hand at an empty bay, “please, I insist,” he said as amicably as he could. “I don’t like lettin’ people leave here injured or hurtin’. Your brother’ll tell ya I’m a bit weird about people bein’ in pain.” He always let his accent slip when people were nervous. It seemed to disarm them, having someone speak more casually. 

Sam smiled tightly but made his way over to the indicated biobed. 

As he sat, Len picked up the bay’s padd and navigated through the system to Sam’s chart- or at least, he tried to. He couldn’t find it. “Any allergies?” He asked, knowing Jim’s medical history all too well. 

Sam shook his head, “none that I know of.”

He set the pads down, pulled on gloves, and reached for his arm, gently taking it to examine the burn. “The dermal regenerator has a burn setting that debreids as necessary before it heals. Might take an extra five minutes, but we should have ya outta here quickly.” He reached for the machine and placed it over the elder Kirk’s arm before programming it accordingly. “I’ll be right back,” he said casually, “just need to check with Dr. M’Benga about something.”

Sam nodded, looking a bit uncomfortable, but stayed put. 

Len found M’Benga in the medbay staff lounge, sipping coffee on the couch with padds scattered all around him. “Hey, Joseph,” he breathed, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry to bother you, I know you’re probably catching up on charting from this mess today right now.”

“Indeed,” he said softly, setting his coffee aside. “But it is no bother. What can I help you with?”

“You may have it in your pile there, I’m looking for Sam Kirk’s chart? I’ve got him in bay 4 doing dermal regen for a burn now, but can’t find him in the system.”

“Ah, that would be because there is very little to chart. I could not even verify if Samuel is his first name, so I have not built him into the system yet.”

His brow furrowed, “didn’t you treat him for smoke inhalation?”

“I did,” he nodded. “But he was very resistant to any sort of treatment. We are all used to the captain’s, shall we say… dislike? Of medical treatments. His brother takes it to a whole other level.”

“How so?”

“The captain is resistant, but otherwise sensible, yes? He can be reasoned with, more often than not.”

“Debatable,” he scoffed, “but I get your point.”

“Mr. Kirk, on the other hand, was wholly obstructive when it came to his care. He wanted no treatment whatsoever. Nothing for his burns, nothing for his smoke inhalation. He did not want to be examined, given pain medication, or to even sit on the biobed. It took ten minutes just to convince him to let us take his vitals.”

“I mean…” he sighed. “That’s honestly not too unlike Jim though, right? You didn’t know him back in our academy days, but kid once cracked his head open, passed out, and when he came to in the SFM ED, he about threw me into the wall trying to escape.”

“Yes, but that…” it was M’Benga’s turn to sigh. “I have seen war,” he said quietly. “I know the look of someone haunted. Of someone reacting out of trauma. I also know the look of someone acting out of mendaciousness.”

“You think he’s hiding something?”

“You can attest to the fact that after many years of doing this… and,” he smiled fondly, “after having a child, it is easy to pick up when someone is not being fully honest with you.”

He nodded, “but you were finally able to treat him?” 

“Only for the smoke inhalation and only after the captain intervened.”

He raised an eyebrow, “Jim encouraging medical care?”

“But as I said, it was only the smoke inhalation we were able to treat. He has other injuries he refused care for.”

“Let alone the fact,” he sighed, “that he’s been on board for weeks and doesn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.”

“Regulations have become more strict simply due to Calliope’s permanent status aboard. Anyone staying on board long term must submit to a physical. And if they become injured in any way, it must be done as soon as the injury is treated.” He finished for him. 

Len nodded miserably. “Well. Won’t this be fun,” he shook his head. 

M’Benga smiled wryly, “I do not envy you.”

“I should make you go argue with him since you dealt with him already,” he smirked. 

He shook his head, “no, no, I do not think that would be wise.”

He grew serious quickly, “why not?”

“Let’s just say I do not think the pushing I did to treat the smoke inhalation did me any favors.”

He frowned. M’Benga was nicer and had a better bedside manner than he did. For Sam to be so difficult was concerning, especially when M’Benga should have won brownie points for being so pleasant when he had every right to be pushy. 

“Hmph,” he hummed. “I’ll take whatever charting you did get done and just add on to it, if you have it.”

He handed him a padd from his pile with another wry smile, “good luck.”

The dermal regenerator was nearly finished by the time he returned to Sam, and the blond was nearly vibrating with a clear urge to bolt. 

“While we have you here,” he said as casually as he could, tapping away on his padd. “Regulations require we get a baseline of health for anyone traveling with us for an extended period of time, so if I could just get some basic info from ya-“

He was more surprised than he supposed he should have been when Sam jumped up and ripped the dermal regenerator off. “No thanks,” he said shortly, before moving towards the door. 

Len countered, stepping into his path, “we just need to make sure you aren’t susceptible to certain communicable diseases, to get your basic medical history in case-“

“I’ll be fine,” he snapped, moving aside again. 

He turned to follow him, versus blocking his path and making him feel trapped as he tried once more, “in case there are any more away mission mishaps, we just want to be able to-“

Sam whirled on him, fire and fury dancing in his eyes in a way that looked all too much like Winona. “I don’t really care what reasons you have. You don’t need any of my info because I won’t be back here again,” he growled, leaning in. 

Now, Leonard McCoy could take a lot from patients. Screaming, crying, throwing things, you name it. But when someone tried to intimidate him or his staff, that’s where he drew the line. That was partly why he was ready to gut the medbay staff for Callie’s sake. So to have someone in front of him where the only factual thing he knew about him was that he abandoned his brother when he needed him most, to only show up again when he needed him, he wasn’t about to let someone like that intimidate him in his own medbay. 

Jaw set, he responded, “well when you get brought in here unconscious and have a negative reaction due to something we weren’t aware of, including but not limited to death, don’t come crying to me.”

Sam smiled a smile that nearly sent a chill down his spine, “I’m clearly not the one you need to worry about.”

“That’s my other concern,” he snapped as Sam tried to turn away. “You’re not the only person on this ship. I have nearly a thousand other crewmen to look after, and if you’re ever a threat to any of them, I pull rank to step in.”

“And what kind of threat are you deeming me to be, Doctor?” He said lowly, flatly. 

“I’m not deeming you one,” he ground out. “But be sure to understand that I outrank even Jim when it comes to healthcare and medical matters on this ship. And I don’t take that responsibility lightly.”

“I don’t take my responsibilities to my brother lightly, doc,” he said pointedly with a sneer. 

Len nearly had to literally bite his tongue to stop himself from asking ‘since when?’ and also from asking just what he meant, as he let Sam turn on his heel and walk out. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Bones saw to the rest of his patients in medbay before he locked himself in the back lab they used as a morgue when needed to begin the post-mortem on Lt. Adyian. 

He had a doctorate in forensic pathology, the actual science and detailed process of the exam was never difficult for him, it was the emotional side that was. 

After well over a decade in the medical field, he had honed the ability to shut off certain parts of himself, to tamp down the emotions and just go through the motions, but he also held a strong belief that becoming emotionless was just as detrimental as being too emotional. 

But Adyian was in his early 20’s, as most of their crew was. Nero’s attack on Vulcan and the responding ships had wiped out much of the Terran-system based armada and a large number of Starfleet Academy cadets. Most of Starfleet’s active duty servicemen were on the younger side because of that. 

But that fact didn’t make a death any easier. 

Adyian wasn’t just an officer- he was a son, a brother, a friend. He was one of them. He had been a part of the Enterprise family. And would be, even after death. 

So he took a deep breath, then let it out. 

Then did it once more. 

Only then did he tell the computer to begin recording as he started the exam. 

He pulled back the white sheet covering the young man’s body, clenching his jaw as he got a good look at the damage for the first time, and began to speak aloud. 

He narrated the stardate, the time, their current location in the lab, his name, and his rank. Easy things. Facts. 

He swallowed, “victim is Lieutenant Tavish Adyian, security officer. Age 25.”

Jesus. He was the same age Jim was when he’d taken command. 

He mentally shook himself and continued, “preliminary scans and exams done by Dr. Joseph M’Benga suggest cause of death to be smoke inhalation and thermal injury, due to a high-oxygen fire event on an away mission. I’m beginning the physical examination now.”

He kept his tone clinical as he worked, chronicling his findings. Later, when typing up his narration, he would write-

External findings:

Extensive second-degree burns across anterior thorax and upper extremities. Pattern consistent with flash fire in high-oxygen environment.

Hands show partial charring with embedded soot; fingernails intact. No defensive wounds. 

Notable contusions around the anterior neck. Diffuse pattern, across the laryngeal prominence. No obvious finger pad impressions. Given circumstances, consistent with self-inflicted trauma during agonal struggle for air.

Note - Related internal findings:

-Scanner detects mild hemorrhage in strap muscles of the neck. Pattern not inconsistent with thrashing or self-grasping during airway obstruction.
-Hyoid and thyroid cartilage intact. 

Internal findings:

Airway: scanner confirms carbonaceous deposits in oropharynx and proximal trachea. Mild edema in vocal cords. Visual exam consistent with scanner readouts. 

Note - Soot deposition appears lighter than expected given reported lung findings via scanner. 

Lungs: scanner flags pulmonary edema and erythema. Trace inhalation burns present; scanner calculates 70% probability of smoke inhalation as primary cause of death.

Toxicology: elevated carboxyhemoglobin (38%), consistent with exposure to fire gases in oxygen-rich environment. No drugs or anomalies found. 

Cardiovascular: no significant anomalies.

Subject was in exceptional physical health prior to death. 

Summary:

Victim presents with thermal burns and respiratory findings consistent with death by smoke inhalation. Soot distribution lighter than expected, but consistent with findings of significant Co2 exposure, suggesting high-oxygen environment led to flash fire that resulted in rapid loss of consciousness. Bilateral neck contusions consistent with self-inflicted damage during airway compromise. Cause of death determined to be asphyxiation secondary to inhalation injury.

When he was done typing it all up, he sat back in his desk chair, pressing his back against it in an effort to stretch out the aching muscles. 

He was just about to get up to check on Callie when his office door opened and another Kirk walked in. 

Stormed in, rather. 

Len had lived with Jim long enough to be able to read even the hints of anger he kept masked behind that cocky persona. 

Jim at that moment, however, wasn’t masking his feelings. And he was livid. 

“What the actual hell, Bones?” He snapped by way of greeting, throwing his hands up. 

“Good evening to you, too,” he deadpanned, too spent for whatever argument he was there to have. 

“Don’t be snarky,” Jim bit, and had he not been so bone-tired, he may have even flinched at his tone. “You know damn well why I’m here.”

He sighed, continuing to lean back in his chair, “no, I don’t. I’m going to take a wild guess and say this is Callie-related? You’re mad I’m keeping her here- or she is, you’re mad I assigned her to the away team, maybe you’re mad that I haven’t updated you in a few hours. Whatever the case, we’re taking care of her-“

“This isn’t about Callie,” he hissed. “It’s about Sam. And the way you ambushed him and tried to force and threaten him into an exam!”

His brow furrowed, “what?”

Jim scoffed, “don’t deny it, Bones. We both know how you get when a patient tells you ‘no’.”

“Jim,” he said, placatingly, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I have a feeling something’s been lost in translation-“

“Oh, so you didn’t tell him you outrank me and can make him do what you want?” He crossed his arms defiantly. 

“Not in those exact words-“

“God, Bones! You know! You know what we both went through with Frank. You know how I am about doctors! Why would you treat Sam like that?” His fingers trembled as they squeezed his crossed arms. 

“I didn't treat him with any less kindness or professionalism than I show anyone else on this ship,”

“Well he’s not everyone else, is he? This is my brother we’re talking about!”

He sat forward slowly, resting his forearms on the edge of his desk. “Jim, you know regulations have changed because of Callie’s permanent status here as a passenger. I have to have a physical on file in case-“

“So you’re going to act like it was about regulation? Not the fact you clearly don’t like or trust him?”

“Would you stop interrupting me?” He asked levelly, jaw tight. “I’m not the one yelling here. I’m trying to have a conversation.”

“Feels more like you’re trying to defend yourself and make excuses, but sure, call it a conversation,” Jim scoffed. 

“Well when my captain walks in and accuses me of something I didn’t do, yeah, I’m going to defend myself.”

Jim shook his head, “so you care more about how you look than how you made Sam feel from the second you met him?”

He closed his eyes and took a breath, “no, Jim, of course not. I only care about the best interest of everyone onboard this ship, crew or passenger.”

He couldn’t deny not liking Sam, and he thought he had been pleasant and professional enough, but maybe he was wrong. 

“That includes both of your siblings,” he added. 

“What does that mean?” Jim asked, voice hard. 

“I mean that I don’t think you’re recognizing how hard Sam’s sudden appearance has been on Callie,” he said gently. 

“He’s her brother too,” he snorted, “why would it be hard on her?”

“She’s autistic, Jim. Change is hard for her.”

“You sure you’re not just worried she’s going to like someone you don’t?”

He finally stood, to look at him eye to eye, “you’re not being fair here, Jim. I’m just worried.”

“Yeah, well, don’t be,” Jim snarled, taking a step back. “Sam is my brother, my actual brother, and you don’t need to worry about him.”

He held up his hands placatingly, “okay, kid. Okay.”

But Jim was not in a mood to be placated. “Just… leave Sam alone, okay?”

He didn’t wait for a reply before he stormed out.

Len sat back down in stunned silence, trying to decipher what had just happened, and what he was supposed to do about it. 

It seemed to be a pattern that every Kirk had a fear and distrust of doctors, all based on bad experiences. So he had to wonder why exactly Sam had been through that made his distrust as extreme as his sibling’s. Because it had to be something more than doctors neglecting to report abuse. Sam’s reaction to him, and apparently his report to Jim about him, had to come from something done, not just not done. An action, not an inaction. 

He navigated into the Starfleet Medical system from his desktop console and searched for his records. His parents had both been active duty for the first years of his life, so surely at least his neonatal and pediatric records would be on file with SFM. 

So he was more than a little confused when nothing came up when he searched for Samuel Kirk. Or Sam Kirk. He didn’t know his birthday, so he couldn’t search that, either, and he knew better than to ask any of the Kirks for it. 

He was about to put his head in his hands and pull at his hair in frustration when he heard pattering footsteps approaching. 

Callie loitered in the doorway to his office, wet hair loose down her back, still clad in a hospital gown, but was wrapped in her favorite hoodie and had a pair of fuzzy socks on her feet. He wondered who had gone and got them for her. 

“What are you doing out of bed?” He asked, voice exhausted, from his spot at his desk. 

She shrugged, cautiously stepping inside, pulling her hoodie tight around her. “‘S too quiet.”

He leaned back in his chair, “I do recall leaving you on oxygen which tends to cause at least some noise.”

“Check my chart, my repeat blood gas is fine.”

He scowled before turning and pulling it up and seeing she was correct. “How did you get access to your chart?”

She tucked her feet under her as she sat down on the couch against the wall, “Christine may have left it open on her padd when she went to get me my hoodie.” Ah, that’s where it came from. 

But he was a bit surprised it hadn’t come from Jim. Surely Jim had gone to see her, right? But… when would that have been? Before or after his ranting at him? Had he not gone to see his sister?

“Mmhm,” he hummed, leaning back once more as he swiveled back from his console to face her. 

He watched as she silently picked at a loose string on the hospital gown, and it struck him suddenly that she wasn’t throwing a fit about wanting to be in her own clothes for once. She wasn’t even throwing a fit about wanting to be discharged. What was going on? 

He softened, “what’s wrong, Cal?”

She shrugged again, not looking up. “Just… just lonely. Usually Jim comes to stay with me anytime I’m in medbay overnight but… I guess he’s busy.”

His heart shattered. Because she was right. Anytime he’d kept her overnight- her biking accident, her shoulder surgery, Jim was there, sleeping in her bed with her. Even when he kept her the night before her wisdom tooth surgery, Jim had tried to barge in and rescue her. 

“Which, I mean,” she stammered, snapping him from his thoughts, “I understand. I’m sure he’s got reports and-and condolence letters to write and his own crap to deal with- I mean, you do too, that’s why I kept to myself all night-“

“You’ve been alone since I left with Sam this afternoon?”

“No,” she shook her head, looking up. “Christine came and took me to shower. Sanchez came in and gave me more pain meds. M’Benga stopped by to do a breathing treatment. I haven’t been alone…”

That wasn’t what he meant. He looked at the chronometer on his desk, it was well after 0100. “Did you take your nightly meds?” 

“Yeah, Christine brought those, too.”

“But you’re still not asleep?”

“Too wound up, I guess.”

He stifled a sigh, then a groan of pain as he stood with stiff muscles. “Well, I at least want you to lay down, even if you don’t sleep.”

She looked at him with panic written all over her face, and he stopped in his tracks, “what?”

“I like…” again, she fiddle-fiddle-fiddled with her gown. “I’ve never been able to sleep, like, ever. I mean, you know that in general, but I mean as in my whole life. And it drove my mom nuts. She’d always tell me to just go and lay down and force myself to go to sleep and it… that’s never worked for me. And if she found me up reading or anything she’d blow a gasket, like I was willfully disobeying or was deliberately being stubborn. So I dunno I just… I don’t like laying in bed wide awake when I know I’m not going to sleep.”

Ah, so there was the reason she was there. She was lonely, too wound up to sleep, and too traumatized to lay in bed while alone and especially while alone and wound up. 

So there also seemed to be the real reason he often found her up cleaning at midnight, and why she’d run into Ignacio in the gym at 2 in the morning. 

He couldn’t imagine ever knowing that Joanna was laying in bed awake, unable to sleep, and demanding she just stay there until she did. 

And his chest ached when he remembered taking her padd away and ordering her to bed when he tucked her into his guest room. The panicked excuse she’d tried to give him that she needed her padd for an alarm- the poor kid just didn’t want to lay in the dark all alone. 

“I’m not here to ask you to come sit with me or anything,” she added quickly. “Just… maybe… I could sit with you? Unless you’re about to leave, then I’ll just go read or something, I’ll be fine,” she rambled on. “I mean,” she scoffed, “it’s not like this is the first time I’ve almost died, probably won’t be the last, at this rate.”

His steps towards her faltered as her words hit him. God, she was right. This wasn’t her first brush with death. She could have very easily gone over that cliff into the quarry instead of Vos. Let alone the times she’d been onboard while they were under attack, when she’d been kidnapped, and when Section 31 chased them into town in Georgia and shot at them. And she wasn’t even 18 yet. 

“I’m done here,” he finally said, “was just wrapping things up. I can-“

“Oh,” she said, popping up. “Then I can just go back to bed. You can go home, don’t worry about me.” She began to back towards the door. 

“No, I can come sit-“

“No, no,” she shook her head, “it’s fine, really. You’ve been working all day, you should go home. I’m good. I can… play a movie on my padd or something.”

She was doing everything she could to not be alone with her own thoughts, he realized. 

“I could even go reorganize the linens closet,” she tried to joke. 

He cocked his head, “the whole point of keeping you here overnight is to monitor you. We can’t do that if you’re not in bed.”

She coughed then, loud and wet into her elbow. 

“And I don’t care how good your blood gas looks. With the sound of that cough, I want you near oxygen tonight even if you’re not on it. Let alone the fact I want another EKG.”

“I’m sure the night shift nurse can-“

“You know full well a physician has to sign off on an EKG reading. I’m not about to wake up Igancio to come read it when I’m already here. Come on, let’s get you back to bed,” he said, placing a hand on her back. 

Steering her back to her room, his hand brushed across her wet hair. “Good lord,” he muttered, “this hair’a yours is more than halfway down your back now.”

“‘S longer when it’s wet,” she coughed again as she climbed back into bed. 

“Ever hear of a haircut?” He grumbled as he went over to the cabinet on the wall to start pulling out equipment. 

“I have trust issues with hairdressers,” she quipped. 

He had to stop himself from asking whom she didn’t have trust issues with. 

“Plus they get too close and breathe on me,” her nose scrunched in displeasure. 

As he walked over and dropped supplies on the bedside table, her eyebrows raised, “what are you doing?”

“Told you I want another EKG.”

“The biobed can do that,” she said as she watched him open wrappers. 

“I want a 12-lead.”

“Whyyy?” She whined, nose scrunching up again. 

“I dunno, why don’t you tell me?” He shot back. 

She rolled her eyes, “a 12-lead gives a more complete picture of cardiac function, obviously.”

“And what specifically cannot be identified without a 12-lead?”

“ST elevation.”

“Mmhm,” he nodded, still opening wrappers. He handed her six, “you know where these go on your chest?”

“Yes…” she grumbled as she took them. 

He looked down as he moved to push aside her fuzzy socks and place a lead on each ankle, letting her reach into her gown and place the six along her chest, four of them in a line under the left breast extending to the outside of her ribcage. 

“You know,” he said as he attached the last two leads to each wrist, “it is Tuesday. I can’t let you off the hook that easily.”

She huffed as he stepped aside to punch at the biobed’s screen that extended from the wall, “then where’s my coffee?”

“If you lay down and let the bed take the EKG, I’ll compromise and get you a hot chocolate.”

“Fine,” she huffed once more, but there was no real ire behind it. 

Not wanting to leave her alone with her thoughts for too long, he was back from the medbay replicator within a minute and set the mug down as the biobed continued taking its readings.  

He decided to start slow, “so other than the obvious awful parts… how did you like going on an away mission?”

“It was fine,” she answered quickly. Too quickly. 

He gave her a look and she sighed. 

“It was a lot of work,” she admitted, her hands coming together to stim and twist her fingers. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing the whole time. Maggie was great, she kept showing me everything she was doing and telling me why, so it’s not her fault. I just felt out of place.”

He nodded, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms. “So you mean it was a lot of masking?” He translated. 

She nodded, “yeah. Just trying to mimic everyone else. But while also remembering I was pretty much in the way.”

“What do you mean ‘in the way’?” His brow furrowed. 

She shrugged, “like being here. I’m not useful, I’m learning, not working, so I’m in the way.”

“That’s not true,” he shook his head.  

“I mean even Sam told Jim I was going to be in the way, so-“

“He said what?” He had to work to keep his voice level. 

“Y-yeah?” She blinked, her poor little brain trying to figure out why he was upset, what she’d done wrong. 

The biobed beeped then, indicating it was done taking the readings. As he walked over and looked at the screen to interpret them, he asked, “what did Jim say?” 

“He kinda just ignored him, but I didn’t really hear much. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop or anything, I just… overheard. I’m always trying to make sure I’m listening to everyone, that I’m not missing some obvious social cue.”

“Understandable…” he said distractedly as his eyes roamed over the waves in the reading. 

“But I mean… maybe if they hadn’t all been so distracted with me, things would have turned out differently.”

His eyes snapped to hers, “what? What do you mean?”

“Like, maybe we wouldn’t have split up. Maybe the fire wouldn’t have started. Maybe no one would have burns or smoke inhalation at all had they not had to come back for me. Maybe Adyian wouldn’t be dead.”

“How do you- I for some reason thought that you didn’t remember anything?”

“I knew that everyone on an away mission has to file an after-mission report. So before I did mine, I read through everyone else’s. Except my brothers’, those are both private I guess. But I found out what really happened after I blacked out.” She bit her lip looking down, struggling for more words. 

No wonder she was so wound up, she’d found out just how bad things really were. 

He began to gently peel the leads off her ankles, before he said, “I don’t think anyone expected you to file a report.”

“Regulation,” she said. “I didn’t want to assume I got to skirt it just because I’m a student. I really didn’t want anyone else to think I got to skirt it at all, for any reason.” 

He contemplated telling her about the talk he’d had with the nurses regarding bullying, but he decided against it. It’d just make her worries of special treatment even worse. Instead, he said, “you weren’t even there when the fire started. None of what happened is your fault or resulted because of your presence.”

She bit her lip before asking, “you did the autopsy?”

He tossed the leads in the recycler, “yes.”

“And?”

“Smoke inhalation,” he said simply, moving towards her. “Jim told me earlier that the fire started due to faulty wiring. A console sparked when they tried to activate it. The high oxygen level of the atmosphere then led to a flash fire. Higher temperature, more smoke. He lost consciousness quickly.” He left out the fact that it wasn’t quick enough to avoid clawing at his throat as he gasped for air. 

“So… he died before I even got there?”

“Most likely, yes.”

She hesitated, “still. Maybe if we hadn’t split up-“

“You can’t do that to yourself, Cal,” he said gently. “Away missions are complicated things with thousands of small choices, each with their own domino effect. What happened is not your fault.”

“But… I don’t like knowing I wasn’t just useless, but also helpless. It’s like…” she trailed off, looking like she was disappointed in herself for saying too much. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” he said softly. 

She sighed, moving to pull the leads off her chest, “it’s like I always need saving. From Vos, Section 31, my own brain… I’m constantly in danger and it’s gotta be so tiring for everyone.”

“For everyone? What about for you?”

“What do you mean me?”

“You’re the one who's been kidnapped, who has to remember to take meds every day. Let alone everything with your mom’s ‘death’ and Jim’s ‘death’ and now Sam showing up.” He took the used leads from her hand and tossed them all in the recycler. 

“Yeah but like, that’s all my own stuff for me to worry about. You and Jim and everyone else having to worry about all of that stuff too is what isn’t fair.”

He shook his head, moving to sit at the edge of her bed, “babygirl, we worry about you because we love you. And loving someone isn’t a burden or tiring. No matter what your mom tried to teach you.” He paused, “and everything you’ve been through is scary, traumatic. There are going to be nights like this where it’s okay that you don’t want to be alone with what’s going on inside your head. It’s okay to ask for company when you feel this way.”

“But you have your own stuff- Jim has his own stuff. That’s why I never see him anymore.” Her voice was so small it broke his heart. He refrained from making any comments about what he thought of Jim’s ‘stuff’.

“Well, tonight my ‘stuff’ is you, so get under these blankets then scoot over.” He helped her under the Starfleet issued hospital sheet, then fluffed her blanket Christine brought down over her too. He toed off his boots and moved to sit beside her atop the blankets. 

“Don’t you want-“ she began tentatively. 

“Nope,” he cut her off, laying back. “You don’t want to be alone with your thoughts so I will keep you company.”

“But you-“

“Hush up and lay down.”

“But my hot chocolate!”

“It’s on the overbed table, you can reach it.”

She grabbed the mug and pulled it into her lap before she scooted herself down underneath the covers. Against the raised head of the bed, she laid her temple against his arm as they reclined. 

And as they started talking about unrelated things, namely Ignacio’s story about Auggie’s first campus visit, her eyes got heavier and heavier. Until he had to take the mug from her and set it aside so she could fully relax, and avoid spilling it all over herself when she nodded off.  

As he reached, she took it upon herself to tuck herself under his arm, pressing her cheek against his chest. He couldn’t help but smile, the snugglebug in her coming out as usual when she didn’t feel good. 

As he wrapped his arm protectively around her, he supposed he should be thankful that she finally felt safe enough with him to trust him in that way, to seek out that comfort from him. But mostly he just felt honored. Because as much as it made him miss Joanna, it filled a hole in him he never knew was missing. 

Chapter Text

After the away mission, it shocks me how quickly things return to normal. 

There is a memorial service being planned for Adyian, but no one really talks about what happened. Jim avoids bringing it up when he’s home (which isn’t often, again), there are no whispers of the body in the back lab when I return to medbay after being medically cleared to do so, and it seems like life just… carries on. 

There’s a part of me that’s incredibly saddened by that, the fact that someone can die and life doesn’t slow down because of it. But that also makes me reflect on when I thought my mom had died. I had no choice but to move forward, just like we have no choice now. 

I get medically cleared to return to medbay, but not to resume clinical shifts. To be honest, I think Bones only clears me so he can keep an eye on me during the day while I watch lectures and take exams. 

I hate the feeling of being watched, being perceived, especially by people who don’t seem to like it when I’m sitting down, so I retreat into Bones’ office to study. 

But even that seems to ruffle some feathers; as I duck inside with an armful of padds, I see the side-eye shot my direction, as if I’m getting awarded some special privilege by being allowed in there. 

And maybe I am. Maybe this is just one more of those things that I don’t understand. Can’t understand. It seems logical to me- to stay out of everyone’s way this way, but perhaps it isn’t fair. 

My first meal back in the mess hall is breakfast a couple days after the fire, and I nervously chew my lip as I force myself to walk in and get in line. I would be fine eating all my meals at home, but Bones has started hinting that he wants to see me eat, and I’d rather not have him sit and watch me, which will inevitably happen if I keep skipping group meals. 

I hug a tray to my chest as the line moves slowly, trying to figure out what I can force down. My stomach still hasn’t settled from the stress of everything, not just the fire, but Sam’s sudden presence as well. 

I dissociate badly enough that I don’t even realize I’ve gotten to the end of the buffet without putting a single thing on my plate. I sigh through my nose and head for the replicators on the wall, punching in my typical breakfast order of oatmeal with peanut butter. I’m pretty sure Bones has fiddled with the recipe to make it protein oatmeal, but as long as the taste and texture remain the same, I don’t much care. 

I shuffle over to our usual table, head down, and find Sam in my usual seat again. As I chew on the inside of my cheek, trying to decide where to sit, Sam surprises me and calls me over to sit next to him, in Bones’ usual spot. 

I hesitate, but Bones appears from behind me, coffee in hand, and he places his free hand on my back to guide me forward, to signal it’s okay to take his seat. (See? Sometimes I do pick up on unspoken cues.)

He settles on my other side, and I can suddenly feel tension radiating on either side of me. I get the feeling the Bones and Sam don’t want to sit next to each other, though I have no idea why. 

I can’t help but sit slightly closer to Bones instead of sitting directly in between the two men, because it’s like I can’t bear the thought of my arm even just brushing my brother’s. 

My heart pounds in my chest as I try to calm down, the disruption in my routine dysregulating me far more than I’d care to admit or acknowledge. Something as little as where I’m sitting shouldn’t bother me so much, but it does. 

As I try to force down my food while simultaneously trying to focus on what everyone is discussing, I feel more and more overwhelmed.

My mouth starts to tingle, almost. Like I’ve eaten something very spicy or very cold, or both, one after the other. My mouth then starts to water profusely, and I begin to worry I’m in the beginning stages of throwing up, but I don’t feel nauseous. 

I try to take deep breaths to regulate myself… but it feels like breathing is hard. Great, I must be fighting off a panic attack. Either I swallow it and mask, or I find an exit, and seeing as how the exit is a good few hundred feet behind me, that doesn’t seem like the best option. 

So I try to literally swallow… and can’t. It’s like my throat is a cross between scratchy and dry, like I can’t get the saliva down all the way. I try to subtly clear my throat, but it doesn’t work. It’s almost like when I woke up from the scope with a throat so dry it felt like it was stuck together. I reach for my drink and try to take a sip, but again it feels like it can only barely trickle down. 

Suddenly I’m cold and clammy all over, panic really setting in. I feel a deeper sense of panic than I usually do when I melt down, almost like a sense of impending doom. As the cold flashes throughout my body, it sends my skin alight, like all my nerves wake up and prickle at once, making me insanely itchy. 

I scratch at my forearm and find my skin turning red, but only in splotches and patches. Hives? Why am I getting hives? I’ve had weird skin reactions to panic before, but never hives. The only time I’ve ever had hives was when I held the class gerbil in elementary school, when I-

When I had an allergic reaction to it. 

Crap. 

Oh crap. 

It finally clicks that my throat feels like it’s starting to close in on itself, and panic rises into my chest. I begin to take shallow breaths, but when I turn to say something to Bones, I start coughing uncomfortably, more like I’m wheezing. 

One of my hands flies up to my throat and I struggle to not claw at it. 

Nyota, across from me, notices something is wrong first. “Cal, are you okay? You don’t look-“

She can’t even get the words out before I’m frantically shaking my head, eyes wide but starting to feel puffy. 

I feel Bones turn and look at me, and a split second later he’s spitting out a few very colorful expletives at the same time he throws down his fork and jumps up. “Jim,” he snaps, striding over with his hand out, “EpiPen. Now.”

“What-“ Jim starts, before his eyes lock on me and he’s suddenly scrambling. He reaches into his boot before he slaps the EpiPen Bones makes him carry at all times into his outstretched hand. 

I’m still taking shallow breaths, but quicker and quicker as breathing gets more difficult. 

A few people from the table have stood up in concern, like they want to do something to help, but Bones waves a hand at them to stay in place as he stalks back to me and kneels beside me from where I’m now sitting sideways on the bench, still struggling to breathe. “Hittin’ you in the thigh, darlin’, he warns before he slams the EpiPen down onto my leg. 

I’m too panicked and focused on trying to breathe to even feel the needle, but I do quickly feel the rush of epinephrine course through me. It’s like a bucket of cold water being poured over my head, and my heart begins to race even more than it already is. But after just a few seconds, I’m able to gasp in a full lung’s worth of air, and I tip my head back as I suck it in. 

“Easy, easy,” Bones says as he reaches up to brush my hair back. “Take controlled breaths, try to breathe normally.” He glances over at Spock, I assume to tell him to call medbay, but I can hear his level voice already speaking to Christine, apprising her of what’s happening. Ever the proper Head of Sciences aboard. 

Jim had been watching as he stood at the head of the table, but now he comes over to kneel down by me, too, hesitantly putting a hand on my knee. “I know the epi sucks,” he says as he brushes his thumb back and forth. “But Bones is right, just breathe. You’ll feel better soon. Trust me, I would know,” he laughs nervously. 

As breathing becomes easier, I become more and more aware of the fact that everyone in the mess hall is staring at me, and I feel my face flush even redder if at all possible. My panicked eyes search for Bones’, and when they lock on his, understanding flashes immediately. 

He stands up and looks around before hollering that everything is under control and to quit rubbernecking. The din of noise slowly starts back up, but the table I’m at is still filled with tension, half of its occupants still standing in horror.

Bones places a hand on my back and leans down slightly to ask if I think I can walk, or if I need beamed to medbay. As much as I hate the idea of walking out of here in front of all these eyes, I croak out I can walk and shakily start to stand, Bones’ hand at my elbow. 

Jim stands, too, prepared to follow, which I expect, but when Sam stands, I’m surprised. I look up at Bones again, panic surely coating my features, and again he understands immediately. I don’t want Sam right now. I want Bones and I want Jim, not an audience. 

Bones makes a sweeping glance at everyone at our table before announcing, “Jim and I have it from here, guys. Nyota, thanks for sounding the alarm.”

She nods, her eyes wide in terror, and I shoot her a small smile in thanks. 

I barely have any coherence during the trip to medbay, other than Bones taking my pulse in the turbolift on the way there, his fingers warm and grounding on my clammy skin. 

My heart is still thundering as Jim helps hoist me onto a biobed, picking me up under my arms like a child, while Bones runs off for supplies. He pets my hair back while he’s gone, smiling nervously as he continues to tell me that everything is going to be okay, over and over again. Almost as if he’s telling himself. 

Bones is back swiftly, and is quickly pulling one of the hands squeezing my knees off to start an IV. “Antihistamines, steroids, and fluids,” he explains as he works, slapping a dressing over the IV port. He hangs the bottles at lightning speed, before he’s pulling out a penlight and telling me to open my mouth. 

I let him work without complaint, as he feels around my throat, picks up my arms to examine my skin, and takes my pulse again. 

Jim is gripping the hand that doesn’t have an IV, and I use my free hand to claw at my neck and chest, “Bones,” I croak out. “Make it stop,” I all but beg. 

He looks at me with sadness in his eyes before he gently pulls my hand away from where it’s scraping at my skin. As he rubs a thumb over my knuckles, he shushes me, “it’s okay, you’re okay. I know you feel like crap right now. But it’s going to pass. Especially once the antihistamine starts flowing, you’re gonna calm right on down, probably get a bit sleepy.”

I nod as I look back at Jim and squeeze his hand, closing my eyes as I continue to focus on breathing the sweet air I seem to have taken for granted my whole life. 

“What happened?” Jim asks Bones. “Other than the obvious.”

“I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “I’ve always kept an eye on her if she’s eating stuff you’re allergic to, but she’s never had a reaction to anything.” He looks at me, “what did you eat? Anything different than usual?”

I shake my head, “no, nothing. I’m the autistic stereotype of eating the same things over and over, it was the same breakfast as always.”

His brow furrows as he checks the biobed readings, “maybe the kitchen made things differently, added new spices or ingredients.”

“I got my food from the replicator,” I say weakly. 

“I’ll have Spock look into it,” Jim says quickly. “He’s the science chief, he can get into the nitty gritty of small changes better than I can.”

Bones nods in agreement, “good. In the meantime,” he looks back at me, “you’re going to stay put for a while. Let us make sure you don’t have any more symptoms.”

My adrenaline crashing, too worn out to argue, all I can do is nod. I take in a shaking breath before letting it out in a sigh, looking at Jim apologetically. “I’m sorry,” I say with a wince. “I didn’t mean to bring the drama to breakfast.”

Jim laughs almost a bit hysterically while Bones barks in laughter, “oh please. Your brother has ‘brought the drama’ to many’a dignitary dinners and banquets. Usually he passes out before we can even get him back here, so you’re way less dramatic,” he adds with a wink. Then he leaves to go grab a few more things, saying he’ll be back soon. 

Jim grabs my head before pulling me close and kissing my crown, and I feel him still shaking slightly. “Maybe leave the allergic reactions to me, yeah?”

I chuckle, “why don’t you ever like to share?” 

He snorts, letting me go, “I have a reputation to uphold, you know.”

When Bones comes back, I feel tension in the air between the two of them, and while reading facial expressions isn’t my forte, my autistic pattern recognition can tell something is really off. Because first it was Bones and Sam, and now it's also Bones and Jim that have sussy air between them. 

He hands Jim a new EpiPen, thanking him for his quick reaction in the mess hall. Jim nods silently, not quite looking him in the eye as he takes it and fiddles with it a bit. “I'm going to make a ship-wide announcement once I get to the bridge, but remember the service for Lt. Adyian is this evening. It’s, uh, we don't do this often, so, it may be a bit rocky, but…” he shakes his head as if to clear it, “you don’t have to come if-“

“I want to,” I say quickly, before looking at Bones. “I’ll be fine by tonight, right?”

He nods hesitantly, “should be, but I’m not making any promises. We need to do an allergy prick test ASAP but won’t today since you’re fresh off a reaction and have had antihistamines. So as long as you don’t have any more symptoms of anaphylaxis, yeah, you'll be good to go. If you want to,” he adds.

I rub at my face, still puffy, “I was supposed to do phlebotomy simulations today,” I moan. 

He clicks his tongue, “always chasing after the next skill, you are.”

I scowl at him. 

“Tell you what,” he says, putting a hand on the biobed beside me and leaning in. “You stay out here where we can keep an eye on you, and I’ll round you up some real life volunteers for you to practice on.”

“I don’t want the whole medbay staff to look like they have track marks!” I object. 

He snorts, “I hardly think you’re that bad at it, given that Ignacio is your guinea pig and I would have never known by the look of his arms.” 

“You just want me to agree to stay where you can see me,” I grumble. 

“Yes, yes I do,” he nods. “We’ve got physicals all day today and I need an eye on you all day even if it ain’t mine.”

I sigh, choking on a cough as I do, my throat still not back to normal. “Fine,” I grumble. Then I look back at Jim, “thank you for coming down here. I know you need to go. I’ll see you at the service?”

He nods, stepping back, “yeah, sure thing. See you then.” And without saying anything to Bones, he leaves. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

I wake up hours later, not remembering falling asleep, feeling dry all over. My mouth, my nose, my eyes, the antihistamine really hit me hard. But at least I don’t feel like my heart is hammering at warp speed anymore. 

I reach over to the padd that’s been left on the bedside table and open it, look to see what they charted about me while I was asleep. Am I supposed to look at my own chart? No, no I’m not. Do I care? Also no. 

Bones put the last note in about a half hour ago, that all signs of anaphylaxis have resolved, my vitals are normal, and I can be discharged when I wake up. 

Well, I’m awake. So I’m discharging myself. 

I get up and peel off the IV dressing and pull the catheter out, pressing a cotton ball down on the site before I look around to see if anyone is watching. 

I step forward once I see the coast is clear, but just as I do, Maria appears from around the corner. I try to give her a casual wave and keep walking, but she makes a telling beeline for me. 

“Callie,” she smirks, looking me up and down. “Finally decide to put in some work today? Or are you running out again?”

‘Again’? When the heck do I ever ‘run out’? I might Irish-goodbye her most days, but in my book, she’s not entitled to any respect she doesn’t give me, outside of professional courtesy. 

I look down at myself and remember I am in scrubs, I was dressed to come here after all, before things went awry. I say as much when I tell her, “I had a… medical problem this morning.” I’m unwilling to give her any details that she can scoff at, just like she did when I couldn’t come in for a week when I had a fever so bad Bones nearly admitted me. “A little cold?” She had said, voice mock-sympathetic, the kind that’s clearly sarcastic but not in a way you can call out. “Must be nice to be able to take off whenever you don’t feel good,” she had pouted, making it seem like I was an infant. 

“I'm actually just leaving from dealing with it,” I add. 

She nods, still smirking, “mmkay. Well, enjoy your day off.” Then she walks away. 

My blood boils and my stomach churns, frustration building in me. Why does everyone have to act like I’m either in the way or have life so easy? No one even knows anything about me, Sam doesn’t know the first thing about me, neither does Maria, or Ali, or Jerry, or anyone! 

I don’t want a ‘day off’. I don’t want preferential treatment. I don't want to be monitored for some new medical problem. I just want people to treat me like I’m one of them, not like I’m the outsider they can’t stand. I’ve felt that way my entire life. When I came here, I somehow started to idiotically think that I belonged somewhere, that Jim’s friends were mine, that maybe people didn’t mind me. 

But the longer I’m around people, the more I realize that will never be the case. 

Angry tears sting my eyes as I stalk to the turbolift and take myself home. 

I obviously didn’t finish a single bite of breakfast, nor did I have lunch, yet when dinner time comes around, I’m too on edge to even consider eating. 

For one, I don’t want the eyes in the mess on me after this morning. For another, I didn’t want to sit by Sam this morning and still don’t now. Jim and Bones and even Sam and Bones have some weird tension going that I don’t want to literally be in between. Maria completely ruined my capacity for being social for the rest of the day. All of that is making me too worked up and nauseous to eat, and most of all, I’m terrified to try and eat anything. Because if I had an allergic reaction to something I’ve been eating for months, what else am I going to react to? A body can only take so much. 

Jim doesn’t come home after alpha to take me to dinner anyway, because he rarely does anymore. Tonight I’m grateful for that. 

I sit on my bed with wet hair as I reapply the makeup I smudged and cried off during the events of earlier, after taking a shower to scrub the biobed smell off me. 

Bones, of course, started messaging me as soon as he realized I was gone from medbay, and I held him off by answering I was fine, according to his own chart notes, btw, and was taking a shower and that he had better leave me alone. 

He leaves an EpiPen of my own outside my bedroom door on his way to dinner, and tells me to let him know if anything feels off when I eat. 

Little does he know, I am absolutely not eating tonight. 

Not at dinner, not during the cocktail hour they hold after the memorial service, and not when I duck into my room and lock the door when I hear Sam’s voice coming up the outside hallway with Jim. 

Seeing as how I’m now not reporting to medbay until afternoons with this new schedule, it’s easy enough to also skip breakfast and lunch the next day. When Bones messages and asks me how I am, I tell him I’m still sleeping off the antihistamines but will be fine for my shift. 

Without realizing it, I swiftly and smoothly fall back into habits long abandoned, from times when eating was just too hard Drinking water and diet soda when I’m hungry, laying down for a nap when that stops working, getting myself a bowl of cereal that I take two bites of before dumping. 

Bones asks me if I’m coming to dinner, and I tell him he can check my replicator records and see that I ate. I replicate myself a smoothie for good measure, for show, but I’m too scared to take a sip, so I recycle it back into the system before Jim comes home, along with Sam, as is becoming his habit, it seems. 

I don’t know exactly when it went from Bones being here every single night to Sam, but I don’t like it. I hate hearing his voice outside my door, I hate remembering the hostile way he looked at me on the away mission, the way he hissed to Jim that he didn’t want me there. It makes me realize that he seems to always look at me that way, anytime we are in the same room. Like I’m not wanted. It’s a look I know very well. 

The next morning, Bones asks if I’m coming to breakfast, and I can tell he’s not only worried about another allergic reaction, but he’s worried if I’m eating. So again, I replicate a smoothie, send him a picture, then dump it down the toilet. 

I do the same thing at lunch, replicate myself a grilled cheese, so that when Sanchez comes knocking to try and take me to the mess, I have something to show him. He scowls at me, clearly not quite believing me, then invites himself in and sits on the couch. 

I look at him with an eyebrow raised, waiting for an explanation. “I wasn’t just sent to make sure you eat, boss wants you to come to medbay early for an allergy test.”

My stomach flips, fear washing over me. It must show on my face because he instantly tries to reassure me, “just a scratch test, nothing that will cause any major reaction. We’re just still trying to figure out what you reacted to.”

“Well, what did Spock find out about my breakfast that day?”

He shakes his head sadly, “nothing, I’m afraid. Nothing was changed.”

“So it’s possible I just pulled a Jim and developed a severe allergy out of nowhere?” I deadpan. 

He stifles a snort before he shrugs, telling me they aren’t sure, thus the test. 

I sigh and take my grilled cheese to my room, telling him I’ll eat and change and be right out. Only half of that is true, however. 

The dizzy spell that hits me when I bend over to put socks on is a surprise, but I ignore it. 

Bones puts me in a gown with my back exposed when I get there, and tells me it’s up to me how I want to do it. He can either do as many allergens as will fit on my back, or break it up and do a few every week. I try not to let on how scared I am to eat when I tell him to just do it all. 

I end up leaving medbay without doing a clinical shift with 90 different allergens taped to my back and instructions to leave them on for 24 hours. 

So I’m more than a little uncomfortable- I’m itchy, have weird tape crinkling on my back, and no bra on- when out of nowhere, Sam walks in. And literally, he just walks in, no ringing first. It means Jim has given him the door code to our quarters and I don't like that. Not in the least. It’s bad enough he’s always around, and now I know that I’m not… safe. That I can’t hide, even in our own quarters. 

I’m sitting on the couch when he appears, trying to wade my way through making flash cards for a test on humanoid spinal nerves, with no subtle escape route. 

He smiles casually, sitting a few feet away from me, and tells me he’s here to meet Jim before dinner.

I shift uncomfortably, trying to not claw at my back as I nod absently. 

“What are you working on?” He asks, peering at my padd. 

“Oh, spinal nerves,” I say, a bit surprised. I glance away as I begin to ramble, “in humans, there are 31 pairs. Each nerve has two roots, and each nerve innervates a dermatome, and some nerves form plexuses, and-“ I stop myself when I look up and find him staring at me. Not just like, looking at me while I talk, but full on staring. “…yeah.” I finish lamely. 

He keeps staring without saying anything, making me even more uncomfortable. “So, uh, is- where is Jim?”

“He should be on his way,” Sam says as he leans back, making himself comfortable in the midst of my discomfort. “You coming to dinner?”

“Oh, no,” I stammer, “I need to work on this. I have a test tomorrow.”

“You seem really well prepared,” he comments. “I guess you got the brainy autism,” he smirks. 

My world freezes as my vision goes tunnel-like to narrow in on him. “How did… Who told you I’m autistic?” I ask a bit more flatly than I intend. 

“Oh,” he says casually, crossing his ankle over his knee, “your doctor friend, McCoy.”

“Bones would never do that,” I snap. 

His eyes widen and his head jerks back like I’ve said something shocking, and he holds his hands up like he’s afraid of me. “Woah, take it easy,” he says patronizingly. “It’s not like it isn’t obvious that something is off.”

My eyes narrow, “and just what is that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t exactly have the same personality that Jim and I do,” he says. “And-“

“Oh, so you finally realized I’m not the irresponsible brat you keep implying I am?” I push. I’m done. I’m so done. I’m so tired of him, of his little comments and sideways looks and stares. I’m tired of him infringing on my space and life, and now my private business. 

“Well you seem to have the brat part down,” he fires back. 

My brain flashes back to Frank- to all the times he called me a spoiled brat. The time he screamed at me that I was a useless brat and waste of space when I ran out of the barn when I was 14. The first time I learned that my so-called family only wanted one thing out of me. 

My fingers tighten on the padd in my lap, “don’t pretend like you know anything about me,” I say lowly. 

“How could I? The way you avoid me!”

“You mean the way you don’t want me around,” I spit back. He’s talking in circles and it’s infuriating me. Saying he knows my personality yet I avoid him too much for him to know me at all. 

He’s about to snap back, fire raging in his eyes, when Jim walks in and Sam manages to school his face to neutral. Too much like the way my mom could always shift moods. Jim’s smile falls nearly instantly as he senses the tension in the room. 

Before he can ask what’s wrong, I demand, “did you tell him I’m autistic?”

He has the good sense to flinch slightly, but that’s where his good sense ends, it seems. “He’s your brother, Cal. He has a right to know.”

“A right?” I laugh viciously as I move to stand. “You mean the brother that left us when I was a baby and you were 11, and only deigned to show up again once he needed something?”

Jim’s face hardens in a way I’ve never seen towards me, “Callie, calm down.”

“Me calm down?” I shake my head, “maybe you should quit being so passive and actually stand up for me, remember that I’m in your life, too. Not just him and not just Carol, but Bones and I still exist, too!” 

“I know that,” he grinds out, “but you have to understand-“

“Don’t tell me what I need to understand,” I snap. “What I understand is you tell him my business when I am sure you haven’t told him half of yours.” My eyes dance alight with fire, and he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Jim thinks he can tell Sam my business when I’m sure Sam has no idea about Tarsus or Khan or any of it. 

“I needed to know why you act so mental all the time!” Sam yells, standing up as well. 

“Oh, is that why you were going through my room before? Searching for evidence of how ‘mental’ I am?” My eyes narrow again. 

“That shows exactly how mental you are, because I did no such thing.”

“You-“ I snarl, before Jim cuts in,

“That is enough,” I think he’s talking to Sam, but then I see his eyes are on me. “Callie,” he says, “I think you need to take some time to go calm down. Now,” he adds, nodding to my room. 

Anger raging through my veins, I scoff, disbelief churning. He thinks he can send me to my room? When he hasn't been around for the past year and a half? When he hasn’t been there for me since he died?

I shake my head again, sneering at them both before I turn and walk the opposite way of my room, to the door to Bones’ quarters. 

Because right now, they feel much safer than my own. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Bones ran a hand through his hair on his way back to his quarters after his shift ended. He was a sweaty mess from an unexpected emergency appendectomy where the appendix had ruptured and left them with quite the mess to clean up. He hadn’t even had a chance to check in on Callie since he’d sent her home from her scratch test. 

All he wanted was a hot shower before he dragged himself off to yet another awkward dinner, likely without Callie there to literally buffer the space between him and Sam. Although he could feel the tension wafting off her anytime her eldest brother was near her, so it wasn’t much of a buffer. 

He sighed as he entered his rooms and began to rip off his scrub top, before he heard a screech that made him stop. 

Callie sat on his couch, hands over her eyes, “don’t flash me, I’m right here!” 

He harrumphed, “excuse me for thinking I could take my shirt off in my own-“ he stopped dead when she dropped her hands and he saw how beet red her eyes were. “What’s wrong?” Was his instant reaction. 

She looked away from him, curling in on herself as she sat curled up in the corner of his couch, feet tucked underneath herself. 

“Are you feeling okay?” His eyes roamed over her, looking for any signs of an allergic reaction. 

She nodded, still refusing to meet his eye. 

He stepped closer, and she flinched- flinched.

So he sat himself gingerly down on the other end of the couch, trying to give her space.

Something was wrong, really wrong.

“What happened?” He asked softly. 

She shook her head, eyes welling up with tears and she stared into the distance. “I…” she choked on that single word and his own throat bobbed. “We had a fight,” she finally got out. “Me and… my brothers.”

He waited for her to elaborate as his heart thundered, as he tried to not react before he had all the facts. 

“Sam… he called me mental and Jim… didn’t stand up for me.” Tears escaped both her eyes at the same time and trailed down her cheeks. “You didn’t tell him I’m autistic, did you?” Her tone of voice wasn’t questioning, it was a statement. 

Brow furrowed, he shook his head, “no. I would never do that.”

She nodded, looking away and zoning out a bit again. “So that means Jim did.” 

Silence fell, as he struggled to find words. 

“I didn’t mean to bother you or anything,” she said as she swiped at her wet face. “It’s just that Sam is always there and I can always hear his voice and he has the code to our rooms and I just… I needed to feel safe.”

His heart both swelled and shattered at the fact that she felt safer with him than she did her own brothers. 

“You’re never a bother to me, sweetheart,” he said softly. He debated asking if she wanted to talk about it, but he knew better. 

She nodded again, “I won’t be in the way, I promise, I can go sit in the spare room, I’ve just been studying for a test. Maybe I’ll take a break. I don’t know. I’ll be quiet,” she met his gaze earnestly. 

She was falling back on habits and coping mechanisms she’d abandoned, trying to make herself small and unseen, and he had to tamp down the fury that rose at her brothers because of it. “What did I tell you when you stayed with me when Jim was in the hospital?” He asked softly. 

“To not hide in Jo’s room.”

“Mmhm,” he nodded. “And that still stands. Now,” he said as he stood with a grunt, “I’m going to go shower and then figure out dinner, as I assume you’re not going to the mess tonight?”

“No, but you don’t have to-“

He held up a hand, silencing her. “Believe it or not, I’m not Sam’s biggest fan, either. I’m happy to stay in tonight.”

Something on her face shifted at that bit of info, like she was surprised by that. He supposed he sometimes forgot how much she hid her struggles with reading body language and social subtleties, so it was likely she hadn’t picked up on the cause of the tension between him and the eldest Kirk. 

But she also looked a little guarded, like there was some reason she didn’t want him around. “If that’s okay?” He asked. 

She nodded immediately, “yeah, of course.”

“Okay,” he nodded back, before he stepped forward to drop a kiss on the top of her head on his way to the bathroom. “I’ll be out in a bit.”

Once he was out of the shower and in comfortable clothes, he walked out into the living room to see what he could get Callie to agree to eat for dinner. He found her looking restless by the door to Jim’s rooms, one arm wrapped around herself, the other hand nervously pulling at her bottom lip. 

She shifted from foot to foot the same way Jim did when he got anxious, and his brow furrowed in concern as he approached her. 

She looked up at him, blue eyes flashing with what looked to be embarrassment and fear before she looked back at the door. “I keep waiting for them to leave, they should have gone to dinner like, 15 minutes ago, but they’re still there, and, well, I…” she huffed at herself, shifting her weight again. 

“I’m…” she bit her lip, cheeks flushing bright red. “I got my period. Early. I’m bleeding,” she forced herself to admit. “Like, a lot. Like, through everything. It- I didn’t- it’s early, or else I would have… well, I… I need to go get clothes. But I… I can’t… I don’t want…” she bit her lip again, trying for all the world to not break down into sobs. 

It didn’t surprise him at all that all the stress she’d been enduring had screwed with her hormones enough to trigger an early cycle. Part of him wondered if that was why she had actually stood up for herself against Sam, though he’d never voice the thought aloud. 

He carefully placed a hand on her arm, slowly, so she could see it coming and wouldn’t jump. “I can go,” he said. “If Sam has the door code and has been staying late, I take it you want to sleep here anyway?”

Looking down, she nodded as if ashamed to admit it. 

“You’ll need your meds, pillow, blanket, all that stuff too,” he said. “The tape on your back is waterproof, so just go get yourself cleaned up and I’ll be back with clothes for you.”

“But I like… I need… I need pads…” she mumbled looking down, cheeks flushing again. 

“I know?” He said matter-of-factly, with a small shake of his head. “It’s fine, I’ll get everything. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” Trying to make her understand it was no big deal, he patted her arm before turning to get his shoes. “I leave your things outside the bathroom door once I get back,” he said over his shoulder on his way out. “I’ll be quick,” he promised as the door closed behind him. 

While he didn’t want Callie to have to deal with her brothers, it wasn’t like he was looking forward to dealing with them, either. He and Jim were on such rocky ground that he hadn’t even used the door between their quarters, he’d gone into the hallway and then rang from the outside, even though he had the code. 

Jim answered the door, looking surprised to see him, not immediately stepping aside to let him in like he usually would. “Bones,” he said lightly, “what’s up?”

“I’m just here to grab a few things for Callie,” he said, motioning with his arms, making Jim finally step to the side. “She's going to stay with me tonight, so she needs her meds and a few other items.”

Jim nodded stiltedly, swallowing thickly and looking down. “Sure, sure,” he said before motioning to her room with the drink he held in his hand, “go right ahead.”

He eyed the near-empty bottle of scotch on the ottoman in front of the couch, schooling his face to neutral even as he knew it had been full when he last saw it, and he knew Jim wasn’t as big of a drinker as people thought. 

“Med-pass time, is it?” Sam quipped from his spot on the couch. 

Len’s steps faltered at the term, looking over at him curiously. 

“Gotta medicate people on schedule, right?” He smirked. 

He tamped down his irritation and continued into Callie’s room. 

Before the door closed, he heard Sam complain, “oh sure. She accuses her own brother of going through her room yet she has no problem with him rifling through her stuff like a creep.”

He could feel his blood pressure rising, but he worked to breathe through it. 

Doctor, girl-dad, girl-uncle, brother to a sister, and (ex)husband, he knew what to grab her, exactly what to get from under her bathroom sink and the top drawer of her dresser. Somewhat intimate items that he didn’t take lightly that she trusted him to get. Along with everything she’d need to sleep there, get up the next morning, and her textbook padds. 

He had a duffel bag full of her things by the time he was done, and he took a steadying breath before he opened her door back to the living room. Where he heard Sam complaining about him again, and that time, it wasn’t something he could ignore. 

“Don’t you think it’s weird for him to be alone with her?”

His grip tightened on the handle of the duffel, “I do happen to have a daughter of my own,” he said evenly. 

“Yeah, but Callie’s not yours,” Sam shot back immediately. 

“But I am her guardian,” he said, looking over at Jim for any sort of help. 

“Bones is right,” Jim said, if a bit reluctantly. “I trust him with Callie implicitly.”

‘With Callie’. Not in general. 

“I don’t appreciate the accusation,” Len said levely, “especially when I was the one who took care of her for a year.”

Sam looked over at Jim, “what’s he talking about?”

Jim’s jaw tightened as he shot Len a glare. He couldn’t possibly have not told him? Of course he wouldn’t tell him he’d died, but surely he’d at least told him about his coma and recovery?

He looked back over at his brother, “I… we had… well, I’m sure you saw the news, I mean, I assumed you had, about the crash in San Francisco about a year and a half ago?”

Sam shook his head, “I’ve been… out in deep space for so long…”

Len’s brow furrowed. How could he possibly know how to contact Jim on the Enterprise, where it would be, without knowing about it being grounded for a year?

“Well, I was… pretty banged up from the whole thing. I was unconscious for two weeks, in the hospital for months, there was no way for me to legally stay on as Callie’s guardian. So Bones stepped in.” Jim looked at him softly, “he was there for her when I couldn’t be. He still is.”

A look passed between the two friends, many things being silently said. 

Before Sam interrupted, “so he gets custody of her and diagnoses her as crazy so he can keep her… under him?”

“Just what are you implying?” He finally snapped. 

“I think you know exactly what I’m implying,” Sam said with a smirk, sipping his scotch. 

He felt his ears turn red with rage at the accusation, the implication that he would ever be inappropriate with her. 

“I mean, why get so upset if it’s not true?” He added. 

Jim had blanched, staring at Sam in shock as he tried to find words to respond. “Sammy, Bones would never- I-I know Bones-“

“You’re gonna trust some guy you met in college over your own brother and his intuition? A guy that doesn’t even have custody of his own kid?”

He felt like he’d been slapped as he looked to Jim for an explanation as to how and why Sam knew that. 

Jim was getting paler and paler as his eyes flicked between the two older men. “Let’s take a breath here,” he said, trying to pull on his Starfleet diplomat hat. 

“You don’t think that after growing up with Frank you might not have a very good gauge for who a good guy is?” Sam pushed. 

Then it was Jim’s turn to look like he’d been slapped, and Len had had it. 

“And just who left him with Frank?” He snarled, protectiveness overtaking him. 

“The one who sacrificed his own body protecting him from Frank!” Sam yelled back, standing up. “Some doctor and so-called father you are, expecting one child to stick around to protect another!”

“Do you even know-“ Len stopped himself. Stopped himself from asking him if he knew what had happened to Jim after he left. Because he knew he didn’t. He knew there was no way Sam knew about Tarsus. Not if he didn’t know about Khan. 

So he rephrased, speaking slowly, “you have no idea how the way you left him affected him. And how many of us have done all we can to heal the hurt you caused.” He shook his head, “this ‘guy he met in college’ was the first real brother he’d had since he was eleven. And now he’s being a better brother and father-figure to your sister than you are.” 

He looked at Jim, “I will never leave you, no matter how hard you push, kid.”

And with that, he turned and left a blubbering Sam and a teary-eyed Jim in his wake as he returned to said sister. 

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Bones knocks on the bathroom door while I’m in the shower to tell me he’s leaving a duffel bag of my things outside for me. 

My cheeks burn hot with embarrassment as I rifle through it, pulling out clean undies and thick pads, knowing he had to go through my underwear drawer and my basket of pads under my sink, gauging which ones to bring back. 

He’s also brought back pajamas I change into, and when I go into his spare room to drop off the duffel, I find my pillow and emotional support fuzzy blanket and tribble stuffy on the bed, and my textbook padds and meds on the nightstand. 

I keep my hair up in the messy bun I threw it into for the shower and pull on my favorite zip up hoodie and wrap it around myself tight as I venture out into the living room.  

Bones is standing at the replicator, tapping through the options as I come up behind him. “Did everything go okay?” I ask quietly.

He nods, “yeah, of course. I fed Bennett while I was there, too.”

“Thanks…”

“How do you feel about sushi?” He asks lightly as he continues to scroll. “Not sure how I feel about the replicated stuff, but, we can try it…”

My stomach rolls even as my head pounds from low blood sugar. “I uhm… I’m not hungry,” I tell him. “Really,” I add hastily before he can object, “I just feel nauseous.” Not a lie. 

He turns to look at me, concern written on his face, “are you in pain?” 

I look down to pull my sleeves over my hands and reply, “yeah? A little? I don’t know… I know I can’t have any anti-inflammatories because they’ll mess up the allergy test, I’ll be fine, I’m just… uncomfortable, more than anything. The tape and itching are annoying me more than cramps. It’s- it’s a lot of reasons I’m not hungry…” I trail off. 

“You can have an analgesic, though,” he says. “You don’t have to be in pain. Maybe once you feel better you’ll feel like eating,” he tries to reason. 

I nod, simply to make him feel better, “yeah, okay, sure.”

“Find a movie while I’m gone, yeah? I know you’ve been studying all day, you need a break.”

“Have not…” I pout as I sit on the couch. 

He snorts, shaking his head, “you’re just like Jim was in the academy…” then he catches himself, winces, looks at me apologetically for mentioning Jim, and I just shrug in response. “I'll be back,” he says softly as he ducks out.

As I sit in the silence, my ears roar and ring as I listen for any noise, any hint that Jim and Sam are still next door, still having a grand ol’ time without me. 

Biting my lip, I get up and creep towards the door to Jim’s rooms and press my ear against it, and am surprised to find it dead silent in there. Maybe they finally left after all. 

I sigh and go back to the couch, pick up my padd to message Auggie. I was less than forthcoming about everything that happened with the fire, but glazing over my throat swelling shut was harder to do. You can tell someone you had some mild smoke inhalation that was fine after a breathing treatment, but you can’t really dial down an anaphylactic emergency. 

How’s your back doing? He’s asking. 

Itchy. 

:(

I’m still like. New to the whole autism thing. Have you ever had anyone tell you that you’re crazy because you’re autistic?

Oh yeah, for sure. Lots of kids at school. Even my cousins. Why? Who called you crazy? Better not have been anyone you work with >:(

No… it was Sam. Which is why I’m mad. Because like. He doesn’t even know me. How can he say that when he hasn’t done anything but make assumptions about me since he got here?

Sounds like he’s projecting. 

Exactly. 

Says more about him than you. 

But it still hurts. Especially when Jim didn’t stand up for me. 

Woah, what???

Yeah.

Grosero…

Translate?

Rude/jerk. 

Ah, I’ll add that to my vocabulary. 

Well, speaking from experience, brother relationships are complicated. Especially when one of them spends a long time having to be very protective. I can imagine even more so if they’re closer in age like your brothers are. As the younger/protected brother, going against the person who always kept you safe can feel like betrayal. 

Yeah, but in Jim trying to not betray Sam, he betrayed me :( I just wanted him to say that I’m not crazy. That I’m not a burden to have around. It’s almost like being with my mom all over again. Not good enough. 

Don’t say that :( 

I’m staying with Bones for now. I’m mad at Jim and Sam is always around anyway. 

Sounds like a good idea.

I’m so stressed out from the allergic reaction that I’m afraid to eat anything now. Plus I’m stressed out about my brothers. And work. Eating is getting hard again. 

Have you told anyone?

No. And I’m not going to. Because they’re just going to force me to eat. 

If you’re staying with McCoy you’re not going to be able to hide it for long. 

Watch me. 

Chapter Text

The first thing he noticed was the silence. 

Sure, Callie always moved around like a cat, having been trained for 16 years to be neither seen nor heard, to never be in the way, and to never disturb anyone, but Bones was a man adept at hearing through the silence. Not only figuratively- reading micro facial expressions, interpreting lab results, but literally- as a doctor who had to be aware of a slight shift in a patient’s breathing, as a Starfleet officer, always on the defense during a first contact, and as a father who had learned to listen for the pitter-patter of little feet sneaking around. 

So he could always hear her get up in the night, right from the first night she’d stayed with him in San Francisco while Jim was off… being Jim. The night before their entire lives hit the fan. 

He figured it was a sensory thing, that she hated being thirsty and always had a water bottle nearby, and he didn’t much care because most people- himself included- drank more caffeine than they did water. 

During her worst nights, even the nights he’d had to sedate her and hold her through nightmares, her rolling out of bed to shuffle to the bathroom and back around 0300 became a reassuring sound. It reminded him she was still there, was still fighting, was still her. 

So it was noticeable when she stayed in her room all night after showing up in his quarters earlier in the day. She’d refused dinner, and he’d reluctantly not pushed as hard as he wanted, simply due to the day she’d had. Having your long-lost brother show up simply to take over your safe person and call you crazy just when you finally got stability for the first time in your life, well, that’d be enough to ruin anyone’s appetite. So not waking up to soft footfalls down the hallway was a surprise, but not worrisome. 

No, worrisome came when she went four nights without getting up. 

At first he thought maybe he was crazy, maybe he was getting old and was just sleeping through it. Until on the fourth night he was up all night, sitting in the living room with the lights dimmed low as he muddled his way through overdo reports, and at one point he realized it was 0600 and she hadn’t appeared. 

His brow furrowed, he glanced around the little dining area he’d put together, a table and chairs near the replicator, (because his mama had once vidcalled to see him eating on the couch and ripped into him about having a proper dining set) the small wet bar area with a bar sink, coffee maker, hot plate, and tea kettle, and the mini fridge in the corner. He scanned the surfaces for reusable bottle Callie had been carrying around as long as he’d known her, the one covered with stickers, the newest addition being a rainbow infinity symbol for autism awareness that Auggie had sent her through Igancio, but it was nowhere to be seen. 

He became worried she’d left it at Jim’s and hadn’t wanted to go back for it or ask him to go, so he asked her about it when she appeared that morning, tapping at the replicator, (as she was still refusing to step foot in the mess hall, saying she didn’t want to see her brothers). 

“I’ve been meanin’ to ask you,” he began casually, not missing the way her shoulders stiffened and her jaw clenched. “Did you get everything you needed from your room? Do you need me to go back for anything?”

Still facing away from him as a smoothie replicated, she shook her head, “no, I got everything. I went over when Jim was on the bridge and got the rest of my things.”

“Just haven’t seen much of your stuff around,” he said as he picked up his coffee mug. 

She shrugged, picking up her glass with a shaking- shaking?- hand. “‘S not like I have a lot of stuff.”

“Don’t want you thinkin’ you’re in the way or need to hide anything…”

“I don’t,” she chirped, her voice pitching up in the way it did when she lied. 

She glanced at him with a small but forced smile before her eyes caught on the wall chronometer, “aren’t you going to breakfast?”

He shook his head, “nah, I’m good. Just going to grab some oatmeal before I lay down for a bit. I’m not on until beta shift today.” 

He could see her brain processing the info, her eyes flicking back and forth slightly as she thought, a bit more sluggish than usual, he noticed. 

“You know you can go without me, right?” She finally said. 

He nodded, “I do know that, yes.”

“And that I don’t need a babysitter? I’m fine eating by myself.”

“Well maybe I’m not.”

Her brow furrowed, and he knew she needed him to clarify- “not fine with you eating by yourself.”

“Oh,” she said as understanding clicked. But then the cogs in her brain turned again, “why?”

“Because you don’t deserve to be alone at meals just because your brother is a jerk.”

“But just because my brother is a jerk doesn’t mean you have to eat meals away from your friends,” she objected. 

He shrugged, “eh, Starfleet encourages the whole ‘togetherness’ thing for morale, but… I’d much rather have a quiet meal here, given the choice.”

She nodded, eyes zoning out on the carpet, it seemed, before she jumped and shook herself ever so slightly, as if to return to herself. 

Again, his brow furrowed in concern, “you sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” she said lightly, stepping towards the hallway. 

“Nightmares? Night sweats? Restless legs?” He pushed.

“Nah,” she called over her shoulder, continuing towards her room. (Because of course it was her room, it was never the spare.) 

When her door slid shut and left him in silence, he let himself frown. Something more than Sam being a jerk and the aftermath of her allergic reaction was setting her off kilter. 

Her scratch test results had come back unremarkable- she was allergic to grass, dust, rodents, a few of the more common environmental allergens, but not a single food allergy came back with a reaction. They were stumped. They had put some samples into the computer for some deeper scans and examination by the computer, but it was going to take time for results, if any came at all. All they could do in the meantime was tell her to do was carry her EpiPen and start meals slowly in case of a reaction. He had put her on an antihistamine regimen just to add some cushion, and he wondered if that was what was making her drag. 

He had been on beta since the day after she’d come to stay, so he hadn’t been sharing meals with her. She’d usually take a smoothie to her room for breakfast, take something to go on her way to her shift that started just after lunchtime, and she’d always (allegedly) eaten dinner by the time he’d returned from his own shift. 

He checked the logs, because, of course he checked the logs, and yeah, she was ordering food. Mostly bland, nearly hypoallergenic food, but it was nutritious. Balanced. …perfect, almost. 

His frown deepened. One of the ways she tended to mask was by acting the opposite of casual- by becoming deliberate in every action, precise with every word, and exact in every way possible. Like she thought that if she managed to be just perfect enough, people wouldn’t see her, that she wouldn’t be in the way, that everyone would leave her alone. 

He drained his coffee and stood to wash out his cup. It wasn’t a replicated mug, it was one Jo had hand painted that he took great care of. As he washed both the cup and the spoon he’d used to stir in his cream- a treat for when he actually had time to enjoy his coffee- something began to gnaw at him. Some uncanny valley detail that he couldn’t quite place. 

He tucked the mug back in its cabinet and when he opened the drawer to put away the spoon, one of the few pieces of cutlery his mom had insisted go with him on their 5-year-mission, he saw the neat stack of reusable straws in the tray, too, and it finally hit him. 

Callie’s smoothies never had a straw in them. He knew her well enough to know she’d never sip a smoothie without one, she’d whine and throw a fit about getting foam and gunk on her upper lip. 

His stomach turned as he glanced down the hall at her door. He supposed she could be holding her nose and chugging it, just to force the nutrients down, but that just… wasn’t her. 

When her door suddenly slid open he jumped, a bit guiltily, and went back to fumbling around in the drawer. 

But he watched out of the corner of his eye- watched as she carried her things into the bathroom- a stack of clean clothes, a towel, a hairbrush… and her smoothie, still full. 

Crap. 

He knew in his gut right then that she was dumping it, not drinking it. And if she wasn’t getting up in the middle of the night to pee, she probably wasn’t drinking regular fluids, either. And if she was faking eating breakfast and not drinking water, he could bet all his transporter credits (god awful things,) that she was barely eating at all. 

“Dammit, Cal…” he muttered under his breath as he hung his head. “What are we going to do about this?”

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

The second thing he noticed was the candy. 

There was a mass influx of crewmen all within one hour, smack in the middle of their shared afternoon shift. There had been a chemical leak in engineering that somehow wafted through three other decks before it was contained. Everyone exposed needed to be cleared, and not everyone was happy about it. 

Some people had been woken up from sleeping off their delta night shifts, others had been pulled from time sensitive work, others simply just didn’t want to be there. 

Medbay was a cacophony of voices, most of them unhappy. 

Since most of the work was simple triaging- checking vitals via tricorder against a baseline, Callie was able to fully step in and help, efficiently scanning and sending her patients either to M’Benga for treatment or back to whatever they had been doing. 

As the crowd and noise continued to increase, every time he caught a glimpse of her, she looked more and more tense, her smile a little more forced. 

When there was the smallest of lulls, he shared a knowing look with Ignacio and the two approached her in unison, from opposite ends of the room. “Hand your tricorder over to Sanchez, darlin’,” he said as she looked between them, wide-eyed. “Let him take over your line- you’re not in trouble- don’t look at me like that,” he shook his head casually as he gently pulled her by the elbow. 

She clumsily fumbled her tricorder over, like her fingers were slow to respond to her command, and another knowing look was shared before he guided her into his office. 

Her mask was slipping even before the door closed, and he didn’t miss the shaking breath she took in once it did. But she kept the mask in place instead of letting it fully fall, and in the safety of his office, that was an oddity. 

She was still watching him warily as he sat her down on the couch and walked over to his desk, retrieving something from one of the drawers. When he returned, he sat on the coffee table across from her and held out one of the chewy sour candies she had come to love, ever since he had given her one at Pike’s funeral to ground her from panic. “Looks like you might need some help comin’ back to us,” he said softly. “It’s been a rough afternoon.”

He watched her cogs turn slowly again, slower than usual, as she stared at the wrapped candy in his fingers. Processing. 

Processing. 

Processing. 

His brow started to furrow and he was about to open his mouth to speak when she did, 

“I’m okay.”

He had to work to not recoil from the shock. “…you sure?” He knew he sounded disbelieving. 

She nodded, “yeah. I don’t- I’m grounded,” she flat out lied. He could see her floating away in front of him. 

He lowered the candy, “you may be grounded, but you’re still masking hard,” he challenged. 

“I’m at work,” she scoffed. “I have to.”

He didn’t miss the shaking of her hands as she shoved them between her thighs. He had noticed her trembling more and more, and he thought it was residual anxiety as she settled in away from her brothers, as she waited for a shoe to drop. But when it didn’t drop and the shaking didn’t stop, he couldn’t help but clock it constantly. It sunk in then that it wasn’t her normal anxiety or stimming- it was different.

“Trust me, I’m fully aware of everything happening inside and out of my body.” She added. 

A little too aware, more than likely.