Archive of Our Own

The Right Choice is Often the Hardest


Allegedly, human beings were adaptive, and capable of learning. If that were truly the case, Leonard McCoy should have long learned by now that nothing good could come out of staying in Medical when he was already off duty, especially for an experiment he could have as well set up tomorrow.

So if Leonard was truly adaptive and capable of learning, he would have long been in bed by now. There went yet another theory down the drain. It was the middle of gamma shift, and every sane person on this ship who wasn't on duty was asleep. But Leonard wasn't sleeping. In fact he was barely out of Sickbay and on his way to the turbolift to finally turn in for the night, when the ship suddenly lurched to the side with a sickening crash. Leonard was caught completely unawares, and the force of the impact threw him into the wall of the corridor. He twisted his arm as he tried to brace himself, and another lurch had him ending up on butt rather gracelessly, wondering what the hell was going on.

"Senior Officers to…Bridge…tical alert!" Sulu's static-interlaced voice sounded over the comm system before it was interrupted by a dull thud and a groan and the eerie silence that came from an untimely terminated transmission. A second later the alert lights were flashing and the klaxon sounded, raising everybody on the ship for tactical alert.

Technically, that order wasn't meant for Leonard. He was a Senior Officer, but his place during tactical alert was in main Sickbay. However, he was standing right in front of the turbolift doors that would take him to the bridge. And that thud and groan he had heard coming through the comm sounded as if someone on the bridge might need medical attention. Chapel was manning Sickbay during this gamma shift, and the tactical alert would raise M'Benga to come to her help. Unless there were many casualties, Sickbay was staffed sufficiently for now.

So the bridge it was.

The ride was mercifully short and uninterrupted by further impacts, but as the lift door opened, Leonard caught a glimpse of phaser fire and chaos on the view screen. Before he could even take a second to assess the situation, there was another explosion that rocked the ship and threw Leonard to the side until he managed to grab a hold of the empty chair in front of the science station and stop his momentum. Someone was screaming behind him, and distantly he heard the sound of an extinguisher unit being turned on somewhere to his left.

Just brilliant. The last thing they needed right now was a fire on the bridge.

Leonard quickly straightened up and looked around the bridge. He had been here during many tense situations, even during the occasional firefight. But never once before had there been chaos on the bridge. Not when Spock or Jim had the conn.

Now there was.

Two crewmen were extinguishing a fire in a console on the right-hand wall of the bridge, and two more were crowding around a prone form on the ground beside the Captain's Chair. One lone ensign was manning the pilot's console. Leonard had been a doctor for over ten years now, and his reaction to seeing a prone body was Pavlovian. He didn't have his med-kit with him, but still he immediately went over and knelt down beside the unconscious man. It was Sulu, he realized. The young pilot was obviously unconscious, and there was blood in his hair from a wound that was hidden from view by the dark strands. There was a sizable pool of blood beneath his head already, but Leonard wasn't immediately concerned about that. Head wounds always bled badly. Sulu's pulse was strong and steady, and his breathing was regular, even if a bit flat for Leonard's liking. But all in all he probably wasn't in any immediate danger.

Leonard looked up, for the first time taking a closer look at the two crew members who were kneeling beside him. Ensign Sakata was a petite young woman, but Ensign Hiller was muscular and well-trained. That should do it.

"Hiller, take the Lieutenant to Sickbay."

"Yes, Sir."

Hiller slung Sulu's arm over his shoulder and carefully he and Leonard moved the unconscious Lieutenant into a standing position. Sulu wasn't going to be much help walking, but Hiller would manage getting him to Sickbay.

"Just watch out that you don't jolt him around too much, and don't let him hit his head again."

Hiller nodded in lieu of a verbal answer, and when the turbolift doors opened Leonard helped him drag Sulu through it before he engaged the panel for G-Deck. He could have gone with Hiller and helped him, but he wanted to take a look around the bridge first and see if anybody else needed medical attention.

On a causal glance, nobody did. But what the four remaining crewmembers did looked anything but organized, and it didn't seem to follow any kind of protocol or plan. Leonard cast a quick glance at the view screen to see what had caused this damn uproar in the first place.

There was the uninhabited moon they were orbiting, the one where an away team was currently on a survey mission. There as nothing unusual about that sight, not as far as Leonard could tell. But he distinctly remembered that the huge starship that was looming behind the moon hadn't been there the last time he had looked through one of the observation portholes.

Just brilliant.

"What is going on here?"

The ensign who was manning the pilot's seat, what was her name…Wilkerson…Wilmington, that was it. Ensign Wilmington turned around and looked at him.

"We're under fire from an unknown vessel. Lieutenant Sulu tried hailing them, but they didn't respond. They simply opened fire."

Yeah well, not every species went into space for making new friends. However, Enterprise was equipped to respond in kind, should the need arise. Only, they were not, which was something Leonard didn't understand.

"Then why the hell aren't we firing back?"

"Sir," Wilmington seemed uncomfortable, "we took a direct hit without the shields up, and then suddenly Lieutenant Sulu was down, and now…well, we were hoping that a bridge officer was going to come answer the Lieutenant's hail."

Leonard looked around and suddenly the realization hit him like a punch to the gut. Ensigns Wilmington and Sakata were the highest ranking crewmembers on the bridge right now, the rest were simple crewmen. It was the middle of gamma shift, and it wasn't just an empty saying amongst Starfleet Cadets that gamma was the Greek word for graveyard. Hardly anything ever happened during those hours of endless boring travel at warp speed, and it was often the time when less experienced crewmembers were given bridge duty under the surveillance of a senior officer.

But now that senior officer was down, and none of the people present had any experience with taking command, let alone the legal right to assume command.

Neither did Leonard, when it came down to it. True, he had received tactical training and instructions over the past couple of months, upon Jim's insistence. As had all Senior Officers who weren't yet qualified to assume command of the bridge. Jim wanted to make sure that as many officers as possible were able to take command should the need arise. But despite all the theory and practical exercises, Leonard wasn't yet certified officially, and he wouldn't be until the next time they returned to Earth and he could take the exams.

"Sir? Shields are holding, but they don't seem able to withstand their weapons entirely. They're down to 76 percent. What are we supposed to do?"

Wilmington looked as if she was fully expecting Leonard to make a choice and give her an order. Which she probably was, come to think of it. He was the highest ranking officer on the bridge after all, and the fact that he had no right to give any kinds of commands probably didn't factor in for her at all.

Just as Leonard was about to draw breath and demand that she hailed Spock, Scotty or hell even Chekov over the comm, a bright flash of phaser fire flashed over the view screen, and the fragment of a second later the ship lurched again as the shot impacted somewhere in the lower levels of the ship. Again, Leonard was thrown around like a rag-doll and had to hold on to the edge of a console so that he didn't fall down on his ass.

Right. He had it.

Enough was enough.

If nobody was here to give orders, then Leonard was damn well going to jump in and give them, whether or not he was supposed to. Screw Starfleet regulations, because right now Leonard McCoy was one very pissed off CMO. These uncommunicative bastards in that other ship shouldn't think that they could just come and shoot at the Enterprise, injuring people who would then fill up Leonard's sickbay and make his life even more difficult.

Oh no.

If these aliens thought they could ruin Leonard's well-earned rest after a double shift, he had news for them, and it wasn't good.

"All right everybody, listen up! Man the stations and make note in the ship's log that I'm assuming command until an officer who is actually certified for command deigns to show up for duty. I'm assuming full responsibility for this. Wilmington, evasive maneuver Delta 4-2, let's see how they like that."

He cast a short glance around to see who else was actually on the bridge and who held which station. When he saw the slightly helpless glances that were cast back in his direction, he made a mental note to talk to Jim about manning the bridge during gamma shifts. This was ridiculous.

Wilmington was manning the pilot's console, and Ensign Sakata had taken over the tactical console that was Chekov's during alpha shift. Else, there were crewmen Bell and Santiago, the former manning the science station and the latter another of the consoles that belonged to tactical.

Kids, that's what they were. Probably, Jim had managed to put the youngest and most green crewmembers on the bridge for this shift, and now that Sulu was out of commission they were totally lost and helpless. And Leonard himself didn't have any experience in commanding a starship, either. Just brilliant.

This was like a complicated brain surgery done by a doctor who had never performed the procedure before, assisted a bunch of students who were barely out of med-school. Leonard had serious doubts that the patient was going to get through this unscathed. But to hell with it, they had to try.

But he wasn't going to sit down in the command chair. There had to be a limit to how far he was willing to take this, after all, and maybe someone who actually belonged on this bridge was going to come and take over from him anytime soon. Hopefully someone was going to come.

"Santiago, try to reach Spock again. Try his quarters, and the science lab. Make a ship wide announcement for all I care, just get him up here. Bell, go to the communications console and try to hail the other ship. If they don't respond, hail the away team and tell the Captain what's going on, just in case they missed the fireworks."

Inwardly, Leonard was cursing a blue streak. Jim had chosen just the right moment to sign up for an away mission that actually asked for engineers and science personnel, and not the Captain. There was no sentient life at all on that moon despite the fact that it had an atmosphere. There was nothing worth making first contact with. Earth had been well-acquainted with rock and meager plant-life for millennia, their Captain really didn't need to leave the ship to say hello to that. But that was Jim, and Leonard had long ago given up trying to understand the other man's need to be in the on the off-chance things got dangerous. Once he got back, though, there were going to be words. Angry words, and Jim shouldn't think that he was going to deter Leonard from that conversation with the promise of sex. Oh no. This time, Jim was going to listen to what he had to say about assigning duties on the ship.

"Sir, the alien vessel is not responding to our hails. And I can't raise the away team, either."
Leonard should have guessed that it wasn't going to be this easy. With a sigh, he turned back to crewman Santiago.

"What about Spock?"

The young man shook his head. "Sorry, Sir. Communication seems to be down. Bell could try again from his station, but it seems that the ship wide comm is down."

And wasn't that just bloody great. Leonard did some quick thinking, but it wasn't as if he had any other choice. Three was the absolute minimum number of crewmembers on the bridge by Starfleet regulations, and with him there would still be four of them if he sent one of them away now. Besides, it wasn't as if he had been acting anything according to regulation over the past minutes.

"Bell, you're a member of the science team?"

Startled, the young man nodded. "Yes, Sir."

"Well, congratulations. You've just been promoted to impromptu Communications Officer. Get me Spock up here, or Chekov. Hell, while you're at it try to find Uhura, Scotty or anybody else you can find who actually has any damn business being up here on the bridge."

"How Sir? Santiago is right, the comm system is down."

And really, Leonard wanted to slap himself. Or something. Preferably someone else, actually. Crewman Bell seemed like a good target right now.
He didn't want to further complicate matters by introducing physical violence to the situation, but he couldn't stop his tone from turning icy as he replied.

"How do you guess people communicated with one another before the comm was invented?" He pointed towards the turbolift doors. "Go out there and figure out what's going on aboard. If nobody can report in through the comm, I want to know where the senior officers are, what's going on in Engineering and whether or not we're about to blow up anytime soon, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Good. Then go."

Bell got up from his seat at the communications console, and Leonard gestured for Santiago to take his place. But the turbolift doors opened before Bell had even reached them, and ensign Hiller returned. Some of Sulu's blood had dripped onto his uniform shirt, and he was panting as if he had run on his way back.

"Sir, there's substantial damage from the hits we took. Turbolifts don't work below G-Deck, and ship wide communication is down."

"Tell me about it." The bad news just didn't stop. Medical was on G-Deck, which meant that everyone between the bridge and there still had access to Sickbay, but all the decks beyond didn't. There were two smaller medical bays in different parts of the ship, but only the main Sickbay was outfitted for bigger casualties and procedures. If there were injuries in Engineering or the living quarters below G-Deck from those hits they had taken, things were going to get complicated.

But one thing after another. There was nothing Leonard could do about that now. He nodded towards Bell who was still standing in front of the turbolift doors, as if Hiller's news had discouraged him from leaving the bridge.

"Bell, just go already. If the turbolifts don't work, climb down the ladders in the service shafts or use the crawlspaces. Lifts aren't the only way to get around the ship, for crying out loud. If you can, get down to Engineering and see what's going on there. And get someone to repair the damn comm system."

"Aye, Sir!" Bell sprinted off, and Hiller took a seat at an empty tactical console.

"Someone give me a status report. I want to know what damages we sustained, and give me the status of the engines."

"Weapons are online and targeting scanners are locked on the alien vessel. Shields are holding and still at 76 percent," Sakata replied immediately. "No incoming damage reports, but Impulse and Warp engines are online."

Well, at least that was something.

"Ensign, scan the alien vessel. I want to know as much about their ship as possible."

"Yes, Sir."

"Sir, they're preparing to fire again."

"Evasive maneuver, Wilmington."

"Aye Sir. Evasive maneuver Beta 3-1."

Leonard nodded to himself, mentally going through the list of maneuvers he had memorized. When he realized what they were about to do, he sprinted towards the pilot's console.

"Hold that order, Ensign. Evasive maneuver Delta 2-2. Damn it, you don't use a maneuver that puts the moon between us and the enemy if we still have an away team on that moon!"

Leonard looked up at the view screen and watched how they were flying a curve away from the moon, the alien ship in pursuit. Again the ship fired its weapons, hitting them directly in the aft shields. The impact wasn't as jarring, but still they were hit.

"Shields holding at 48 percent."

Their evasive maneuvers weren't helping much apparently, and damn it, Leonard had already overstepped his professional capacities more than once this night, what was another infraction in the light of that? And although he had vowed not to do it, he was tired of being jostled around and nearly getting thrown on his ass while they were being pursued. It wasn't as if anybody was going to care at this point.

Leonard said down in the command chair, although he had never felt more uncomfortable than he was doing now. This was way over his head, and the worst thing was that he knew they could not just try to escape the alien ship and try to dodge their weapon's fire. Especially since their shields weren't going to stand many more of those hits.

Leonard had thought he'd never have to give that particular command in real life, not even after getting certified for bridge command had become an issue. How likely was it that he as CMO was ever going to take the bridge, let alone get engaged in a firefight?

Apparently, not as unlikely as Leonard had always thought.

Hell, he was probably facing a court martial for assuming command, anyway, might as well make it worth it.

"Sakata, lock weapons on their shield generators. Or whatever resembles shield generators on their ship."

"Aye, sir."

Leonard drew a deep breath, but there was no doubt that this was an order he had to give.

"Fire."

It was surreal to see the phaser burst shoot through space and to know that he had ordered this. As a doctor, Leonard had always seen it as his task to save lives. Life was something precious to him, and giving an order that could potentially destroy lives seemed like a sacrilegious act. It was crossing a line that went against every oath he had ever sworn.

But he was giving that order to save lives, that was the one thought he had to hold on to. Right now, by some crappy coincidences, the lives of every crewmember aboard was in his hands, and though Leonard felt woefully inadequate to carry that responsibility, he simply had to accept it and act to the best of his knowledge.

Enterprise hadn't taken the first shot. The initial aggression had come from the alien vessel, so they had to take into consideration that Enterprise was going to fire back.

The shot impacted in the lower section of the alien vessel. The shields glowed visibly for a second, then the ship let forth another burst of fire towards the Enterprise.

"No visible damage to the alien vessel," Sakata reported unnecessarily. Leonard could see that for himself. "Their shields are still holding up at a hundred percent."

"Fire at will, ensign. Maximum yield."

"Aye, Sir."

Leonard had watched firefights before, even form this very bridge. But he quickly realized that it was something else entirely to be watching a firefight when somebody else was in command. Before, he had always been able to put his faith in Jim and convince himself that he was going to come up with an ingenious idea to get them even out of the worst situation. Right now, Leonard could only watch as the alien vessel took their fire without so much as a hitch in its smooth maneuvering, while Enterprise barely managed to dodge most of their phaser bursts. The only thing they did manage was to draw the enemy ship away from the moon, and the defenseless away team that was still stuck there, and that was a long way from something worth being called a victory. It was barely a temporary reprieve.

They took two more direct hits that rocked the ship and had Leonard cling on to the captain's chair. There were still no damage reports coming in, which pretty much meant that all intra-ship communication was down. In turn, that meant Leonard couldn't really trust any of the readings he was getting from all over the ship, because if the other stations couldn't report in, updates on engine and shield status were unreliable, at best. Once their shields were down, they'd be completely lost without that data.

"Damn it, I need communications! We're flying blind here, I need to know what's happening on the ship!"

"Communications are still down, Sir." Hiller replied. "I tried to get the system back online, but it seems the problem is in the main communications server. Something must have overloaded during those first hits we took. It looks like the system needs manual repairs in the communications server room."

"Yeah well, it doesn't seem likely that anyone of us is getting down there anytime soon now, does it? So we can only hope that someone else is already trying to fix it. What else can you give me?"

Hiller shook his head. "Nothing much. Engines are still online, warp drive is fully functional. Assuming of course that the data is correct. Without any damage reports, I don't know how reliable it is."

Leonard vowed never again to complain if the tolerance levels of the scanning chamber results in Sickbay went up to 0.2 percent. Never again. That was still a lot more reliable than this total blindness as to what was going on in the ship.

The ship rocked with another hit.

"Shields at 15 percent, Sir. They won't hold up many more of those hits."

Damn it, damn it, damn it.

Without shields, all they could do was tuck in their tail and run off. Or face a firefight with an alien vessel that was technically superior to them without shields, but that was going to be the shortest firefight in the history of the Federation. Leonard wasn't going to be the one who lost Starfleet's flagship like that.

Damn it.

"Sir, they're veering off."

And it spoke volumes about the severity of the situation that not even those words were a relief to Leonard. Not even the most irrational alien started a firefight, only to stop once they had rendered their opponent nearly defenseless.

"Where are they headed, Ensign?"

Wilmington tapped her console frantically, then she turned back with wide eyes.

"They're headed towards the moon."

"Follow them. Put us between the moon and their ship, and put whatever energy we have into the shields. Draw power from anything that isn't life support or the engines if necessary."

"Aye sir."

By the time the alien ship fired its first phaser burst towards the moon, they barely managed to put Enterprise in the way of the weapon's fire. Leonard knew that it was a dumb move. Now the aliens knew for a fact that there was something they considered worth protecting on that moon, and that they were ready to place their damaged ship in the line of fire to protect it. If the aliens hadn't been interested in the moon before, now they definitely were.

But there was no way Leonard could not give that order. The away team was even more defenseless than they were, and the shuttle's shields would not withstand even a single blast from the enemy weapons, so there was no way they could leave the moon without drawing fire towards themselves.
Enterprise just had to bear the brunt, although Leonard had no idea what they were going to do once their shields failed.

Another hit rocked the ship.

"Shields are holding at 10 percent, Sir. They won't hold much more of that."

Wilmington was working hard to keep Enterprise always in between the enemy ship and the moon, but Leonard knew that in the long run he could not risk the lives of hundreds of crewmembers to draw the fire away from the team on the moon.

"Goddamnit! Their ship has to have a weak spot. A plasma outlet, a generator, anything we can hit that actually causes some damage. For crying out loud, there's gotta be one thing we can use to our advantage!"

Sakata shook her head. "No Sir, our scans show nothing of that sort. The only thing…"

"What?" Leonard snapped impatiently. "Good Lord woman, if you have found anything that could help us then spit it out!"

"Well, according to our scan their ship probably cannot go faster than warp 4. It seems to have been build for strength, not speed. We should be able to easily outfly it."

No.

Not an option.

They were not going to fly away at maximum warp while the away team was still on that moon. Not while Jim was still on that moon, a selfish little voice in the back of his head whispered. Not if Leonard had anything to say about it.

Another blast rocked the ship, and the alarms that had been ringing in the background for the entire time increased in volume and intensity.

"Shields are failing, sir. They can take out our engines with the next shot. And if they hit the warp core, we'll all be dead. We can't sustain another hit."

Leonard knew the choice he had to make even before Sakata finished speaking. Had known it for the entire firefight, really. Their weapons couldn't damage the alien ship, their shields were too weak against their firepower, and the only thing Enterprise was actually in advantage over them was speed.

They could only get out of this alive if they left.

"They're charging weapons."

Leonard felt as if he was standing beside himself, looking down at the desperate man in the captain's chair who was about to make a decision that was going to impact the life of everyone on board, worst of all his own. In a voice that wasn't his own, Leonard heard himself give the command.

"Take us out of here, Ensign. Maximum warp."

"Aye, sir."

Wilmington punched in the appropriate commands. The last thing Leonard saw was the alien ship firing another phaser volley, then the image on the view screen turned into the blurred lines of stars at warp, and Leonard sank back in the chair with the feeling that a vital part of him had just been left behind. Without Enterprise as a shield, that last phaser blast had been aimed directly at the moon.

"Sir, the alien vessel is not following."

Leonard merely nodded, not trusting his voice to speak. He had to make sure to get the ship to safety, reestablish ship wide communications and get started on the repairs. If he only kept thinking about that, he wouldn't have to contemplate what he had just done.

"Sir," Bell said in a timid voice. "The Captain and the away team, we can't just leave them behind."

Something roared up inside of Leonard, something dark, sad and ugly. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before, and he was powerless against it. Bell hadn't earned to be on the receiving end of this, but he was the unfortunate soul who had dared to open his mouth.

"Ten minutes ago you were all looking for someone to give you orders. I did, and your concerns are duly noted. But unless you have an idea how we can stand a chance against that ship when all we have is inferior firepower and no shields, I suggest you shut up now and make sure we get the hell out of here."

Bell had the decency to blush slightly, but Leonard didn't care.

"Take us a safe distance away and then drop out of warp. Watch the long-range sensors for any sign of the alien vessel, and then find out what the hell is wrong with our ship. I want the shields back online and communications reestablished as soon as possible, do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir!" A chorus voices answered, and Leonard sank back in the chair, feeling suddenly deflated and boneless.

He had just ordered six men to be left behind in the presence of an aggressive unknown species who had seemed all too keen on shooting first and asking questions later. They had all but dodged out of the way of that last phaser burst and left the away team unprotected and directly in the line of fire. And until repairs were done and shields were back in working order, there was no way for them to go back there and see what had happened. Not without risking the entire crew.

It had seemed like the right choice at the moment, but Leonard couldn't shake the feeling that if someone more experienced had had command at the time, they'd have found a better way to deal with the situation. A way that wouldn't have cost the lives of six crewmembers, one of whom was Jim.

Jim.

Leonard couldn't afford to think about that now, but it was as if his thoughts were able to circle around one thing, and one thing only. He had just given the order to sacrifice Jim to save the ship, and that thought made the bile rise in his throat. It was a floodgate of thoughts and feelings that had opened, one he was unable to stop or control.

Jim.

Jim with those incredibly blue eyes Leonard could lose himself in, with that impish grin that could fool so many but turned into that soft, tender and real smile only for him. Leonard couldn't, and didn't want to imagine what life would be without Jim. He could barely understand anymore how he had managed to live with half a heart for twenty-eight years of his life. He had never taken Jim for granted, not with the lives they led, but the thought that it had been him and not some heroic act in the line of duty that had ended Jim's life was one that felt like an impossible weight on Leonard's chest.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

It was supposed to be them together for as many years as they could cheat the universe out of, and five years of knowing each other, three years of loving each other in a way Leonard had never experienced before simply wasn't enough. Damn it, he wanted more, and after all the crap life had thrown at him so far he thought he was entitle for more.

He wanted Jim beside him when he fell asleep in the evening, and he wanted Jim there when he woke up again in the morning. He wanted Jim to come interrupt him in Sickbay whenever he got bored on the bridge, because even though he griped and grumbled about it every single time, Leonard was looking forward to seeing Jim whenever he could. He wanted to patch up and berate Jim whenever he managed to get himself bumped up on an away mission, and he wanted to see that underlying trust in Jim's eyes when he smiled crookedly at him and said 'Good thing you're always there to fix me up'.

He didn't want to face the fact that he was never going to touch Jim again, feel him quiver under his hands, see those incredible eyes go wide and dark with arousal when they were together.

He wanted more time.

More time with Jim.

He wanted more time to finally get over all those stupid self-doubts and hesitations and tell Jim that he wanted this to be forever. He wanted to finally get a chance to get over himself and take that ring out its hiding place in his office desk drawer and ask Jim if he wanted forever, too.

But now there was no more time, and it was Leonard's own damn fault.

There had been no other choice, he knew that, but that didn't take away any of the pain. It was his fault, that's what it all came down to. It was his fault that Jim had been left behind. His fault that Jim was gone.

"We're dropping our of warp, Sir."

Leonard nodded, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. There were other things to focus on right now, important things to make sure that the crew and the ship were going to get out of this unharmed. He could have his breakdown once all that was over and done with. Once he was alone. That was a state he had to get used to, anyway.

The image on the view screen changed from the bright stripes of war travel to the view of nothing but empty space and stars as they dropped out of warp. He drew a breath to give the order that somebody better finally find Spock and drag him here by the tip of his pointed hobgoblin ears if necessary, but at that moment the alarms fell silent and the lights went back on.

"What he hell?"

Leonard turned the chair as the doors to the turbolift opened.

"Not bad, Bones. Not bad at all."

Leonard couldn't breathe. He must have hit his head at some point during the firefight, and now he was unconscious or hallucinating. Emerging from the turbolift were Spock, Sulu and Jim, who was grinning widely at him.

Jim.

Alive and unharmed. Alive.

Leonard got out of the captain's chair and stood on legs that didn't seem to belong himself. He blinked rapidly, but the image in front of him didn't change. Jim was here, on the bridge with him. Whatever had happened, Jim wasn't on that moon. He was here, and he was alive.

Leonard didn't understand what the hell was going on, but right now his brain seemed incapable of processing anything beyond the thought that Jim wasn't dead.

"What…"

"Doctor." Spock had a PADD in hand which he consulted before he continued. "There are some details we need to discuss, but let me extend my congratulations. You passed."

Next to Spock, Jim was bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet, like a kid in the moments before his birthday surprise. Leonard didn't understand a damn thing of what was going on.

"Passed? What the hell is going on here?"

Jim stopped bouncing and his grin widened even more.

"Your Bridge Officer's Test, Bones. You just passed it with flying colors. Congratulations."

Leonard didn't know what to say. But he knew the feeling that was rising up inside of him at this very moment. He knew it very well. It was fury.Red was creeping into the edges of Leonard's vision as he focused his gaze on Jim. From the corner of his eyes he saw Sulu step forward, probably to offer his own congratulations, but as the rage crept into Leonard's gaze he took a step back and continued to rub the fake blood out of his hair with a towel.

A wise choice, because Leonard felt his tenuous control on his anger slip rapidly, and he'd much rather it focused on someone who really deserved it once it broke free.

Jim seemed like the perfect candidate.

"My Bridge Officer's Test."

The voice wasn't one he recognized as his own, but his lips were moving, so Leonard simply assumed that he had growled out the words. The smile on Jim's face faltered a little.

"Yes. The exam that we did all the tactical and command studies for, remember?"

"All this," Leonard gestured around the bridge, which with the normal lighting restored and the alarms turned off looked ridiculously normal, "all this was just a simulation?"

"Indeed." If Spock noticed that he was walking on thin ice by getting involved in this conversation, he didn't let it on. "The Captain suggested, and I agreed, that the exam would provide the most unbiased results if the simulation wasn't announced as such. Starfleet Command was receptive to the idea and approved of a trial run. Your test results confirm the assumption, Doctor. Since you didn't know you were supposed to take command, it took you a bit longer than expected in Starfleet's guidelines to assume it, but that is a deviation which is due to the nature of the simulation, and I will make note of this in my report. I will give you a detailed analysis of your behavior during the simulation before I forward it, but the synopsis is that all your decisions and commands followed protocol and Starfleet guidelines. You discovered the false order and – most importantly – you gave the order to take the ship to safety when it became apparent that remaining in a firefight with the alien vessel was going to lead to the destruction of the ship. Barring a detailed analysis, I can already tell you that your test result is going to be well over 95%"

Spock looked up, and Leonard guessed that this was the moment when the examiner was supposed to smile and offer his congratulations. Spock didn't smile, and he had already offered his congratulations, so it was only fitting that he closed his little speech with what would count for a jab amongst Vulcans.

"However, I will forward the Starfleet guidelines on appropriate command language to your personal console and I suggest you devote a few hours to a renewed study of them."

Leonard searched for a possible reply to this, but for the first time in his life he came up empty. He was still too hung up on the fact that it all hadn't been real. The adrenaline of the past half hour was ebbing away rapidly, leaving him feeling strangely numb and empty.
And angry.

Oh hell, was he angry.

"I'm going to give you something appropriate, Commander. What in hell were you thinking when you came up with that test? Is that your Vulcan idea of fun? Oh, I'm bored, so let's just throw McCoy onto the bridge, cut him off from all communication and see how long until he wrecks the ship? Because I'm not laughing here, Spock, and if there wasn't a bunch of impressionable crewmen around I'd show you exactly just what I think of this test! I was completely blind for anything that was going on aboard, how the hell was I supposed to know that my next order wasn't going to blow up the entire ship? This test was a design to make me fail in the most embarrassing and painful possible way, nothing else."

Spock merely raised an eyebrow at Leonard's outburst.

"This test was not meant as an insult, Doctor. On the contrary. Since as CMO of a Starfleet vessel you are accustomed to making vital decisions for the safety of the crew even under great pressure, it was only logical to adjust the difficulty of your exam to that previously existing competence."

"Great, so because I'm good at my job I'm supposed to do the impossible? Of all the hare-brained, idiotic schemes the two of you have cooked up, this one easily takes the damn cake. I passed the damn test? Well, jolly. Just hope I'll never have to assume command while the two of you are away from the ship, because I'm gonna strand your asses on the coldest, most dangerous planet I can find."

His voice had risen progressively with his last words, and Leonard drew a deep breath to reign in his anger. It wasn't Spock he was really angry at. Well, he was pissed at the First Officer, true enough, but there was a fine distinction between being pissed and really angry. There was. He got pissed very easily, especially with Spock. But only Jim managed to make him really angry. It happened rarely, but when it did, it was always bad.

Jim looked as if he was about to say something, and Leonard decided that he had to go. Right now. He didn't want there to be any bloodshed, not with so many witnesses present. He just shook his head and turned around towards the turbolift.

He should have known that it wasn't that easy.

Jim slipped into the turbolift behind him just as the doors were about to close. For a second, Leonard contemplated leaving the lift again straight away, but that would bring him straight back to the bridge where Spock and the others were, and they had been given enough of a show already.

Jim hit the emergency stop button pretty much the moment the lift started moving.

"What the hell is your problem, Bones?"

"My problem?" Leonard couldn't believe that Jim didn't get it. "My problem is that you've just put me through hell, Jim. And you have the audacity to waltz onto the bridge and grin like it's all just been a big game!"

"It was a simulation, one you knew was going to come at one point."

"Yes, once we're back on Earth, under Starfleet surveillance. Not in the middle of an ordinary gamma shift, damn it!"

Jim shook his head at those words, running his hand through his short hair with a sigh. Leonard didn't understand why Jim was the one who acted as if he had to struggle to keep calm when it was him who had every right to be outraged.

"Spock told you why we changed the setup. People react differently when they know it's a simulation."

"So what, you decided to spice things up by making me chose to abandon members of the crew to their certain death?"

That received only a resigned shake of Jim's head as a reply.

"That has always been part of the Bridge Officer's Test, Bones. You'll still have to do the theoretical exams of course, but that's what the simulation is all about – behavior during a crisis situation, and whether or not you're capable to make tough decisions."

"Like sacrificing people."

"Sacrificing someone under your direct command, or giving the order for someone to sacrifice themselves, yes. Any officer who wants to take command needs to be able to make that decision. If you can't, you fail the test, it's simple as that."

Simple.

Leonard didn't know if he wanted to laugh or scream in frustration.

Or maybe punch someone.

"And because all that is so simple, you rigged up this little scenario. Well congratulations, Jim, I think you're entitled to an award for this. Sulu is a dead ringer for best supporting actor, and I'm guessing I have my own people to thank for the make-up department."

"Bones…"

"No Jim, really. Brilliant work. A completely convincing display on the view screen, and I bet Scotty had one hell of a time figuring out a way to rock the ship as we had been hit by weapon's fire."

Jim drew a breath to answer, but Leonard cut him off. He was on a roll, and he wouldn't stop until Jim had heard every last word he had to say.

"And I bet you had it all planned out. I should have known, really. One Senior Officer and a bunch of green crewmen on the bridge while an away team is on a mission, that should have make me realize that something was off. But of course, if you cause just enough chaos, nobody's going to question what's going on. Just give stupid, gullible Leonard a bleeding body and he'll shut up and not question a damn thing."

A frown-line had appeared between Jim's eyebrows, and he was shaking his head emphatically.

"No. Don't you dare put words in my mouth, Bones, because this is not what this was all about and you know it! But of course the simulation had to contain a situation in which you couldn't help but take command."

"Yeah, so you picked the greenest and most inexperienced crewmembers you could find. Did you tell them to play dumb, too? Because if those were your stage directions, congratulations! Their acting was brilliant."

"They were under orders to not take any kind of initiative, and to look to you for decisions rather than suggesting them on their own. And one of them was ordered to use a wrong and potentially dangerous maneuver, to see if you would stop it or simply accept their suggestion."

"The evasive maneuver that would have put the moon right in the line of fire."

Jim nodded. "Yes."

Leonard got it now. He got that it was so much worse than just a simulation. It had been a play, one in which everyone had been given a part and their text, but one for which Leonard hadn't ever seen the script. He had been subjected to the cruel illusion that he had been in charge of the whole situation, when in fact he hadn't been more than a lab rat under constant surveillance.

"Listen Bones, I get that you're pissed you didn't know what was going on, but I really think that this is the only way to find out if someone has what it takes to assume command even in a crisis. Not a simulation in a Starfleet exam setup, but something that seems like it's happening for real."

Leonard was breathing harshly, even though he couldn't have said why. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his sternum and he was still so angry. In fact, it felt as if his anger was rising with every second that passed, with every point Jim tried to make in an attempt to explain why Leonard had no right to be angry. The distance to what had happened on the bridge might be growing with every moment, but Leonard's temper wasn't cooling down in the slightest.

Damn it, Jim still didn't understand why this simulation wasn't a stroke of genius, or a great new way to test possible command officers, but the cruelest thing Leonard had ever been through in his life – and that included one very ugly divorce form a very, very ruthless woman.

"So just because you cooked up yet another scheme that you think is the best invention since sliced bread you go and screw with the normal workings of the ship? What if something had happened, can you tell me that? What if I had ordered to fly the ship into the damn moon? Then your shiny new simulation would have blown up right into your face, right along with the ship around you. Or worse, what if something had happened for real while everyone else was too busy watching your little show on the view screen? What if Klingons had attacked the ship at right that damn moment? What would you have done then, huh?"

Jim was looking at him as if he had grown a second head, then he shook his head with an exasperated sigh.

"First of all, if we had been attacked by Klingons, then I guess we should have given them a fucking medal for making it this far into the Neutral Zone without being detected. It was a simulation, for crying out loud! Which means that we had this whole thing under control the entire time, okay? Spock, Sulu and I were in the briefing room directly beneath the bridge, in case something had happened we'd have been there in less than fifteen seconds! We were watching every single thing that happened on the bridge, and we rigged helm control so that Engineering could have taken over at any time in case you decided to do something stupid. And everything that happened, the tactical alert, the communications blackout, everything was contained to the bridge and didn't even affect the rest of the ship! We had it under control the entire time, okay?"

"Oh, okay then. Everything's just peach, Jim. You just keep on scheming these simulations for any officer who needs to take the damn test, but don't expect me to help you in case you need to make somebody look half-dead."

Leonard made move to push the emergency stop button again to finally get out of the claustrophobic tight space of the lift, and the close proximity to Jim it forced him into, but Jim batted his hand away.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"With me?" And if Leonard had been in another kind of mood, he might have dragged Jim to Medical for an examination of his mental state right away. "Nothing's wrong with me. I just want nothing to do with this parody of a simulation, all right?"

"You passed, Bones. You made all the right choices and you passed the test. Shouldn't that be the only thing that counts?"

Leonard was clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides, fighting against the way he was suddenly itching to bury his fist somewhere. Preferably in Jim's face.

"What if I hadn't?"

"What?"

"You heard me, Jim. What if I hadn't passed the goddamn test?"

Jim shrugged, as if the answer should be obvious. "Then you'd still be the best damn CMO in the whole fleet. The only thing different would be that you'd not be eligible for command. Wouldn't change a damn thing."

It wouldn't, because it wasn't even the point.

"And what if I had failed because it was you? What if I had been willing to abandon the away team to their deaths, just not as long as you were part of it?"

Jim looked at him for a long moment with something like sadness in his eyes.

"Then the answer is the same – I wouldn't let you assume command. Because when it comes to the crunch and such a decision has to be made, it's pretty likely that I'm going to be in the thick of things. And then what happened in the simulation is just the kind of choice you'd have to make."

It was the dispassionate tone of those words, the way Jim made them sound like a matter-of-fact statement, something that was inevitable in the long run which he had long come to terms with, that made Leonard see red. Jim just didn't understand it. He didn't understand that Leonard had lived it. It might have only been a minute, probably even less, but it was a minute during which Bones had lived in a world without Jim. A world he had created. And he remembered the pain, that mind-numbing and all-encompassing emptiness that had come along with losing the man he loved.

Leonard had lived it, and it was nothing he ever wanted to consider inevitable, a fate he had no choice but to resign to. The thought that, in a way, Jim did exactly that, made the rage that had been rising inside of him for the past minutes boil over.

"God damn it!"

And then his fist was moving, blindly, with no aim, but with as much force as he could put behind it. He wanted to hurt Jim, wanted to make him feel just a little of how badly Leonard had been hurting.

He wanted to punch Jim, as badly as he had ever wanted to punch somebody in his life.

He had no idea how instead of burying itself in Jim's face, his fist ended up breaking through one of the side panels of the turbolift. There was the groan of splintering synthetic wall panels, and pain exploded in his right hand, but despite all that it felt good.

Damn it, it felt good. So good that he wanted to draw his hand back and do it again, and again, even as his rational mind was analyzing the potential damage – cuts, lacerations, sprains, bruises, abraded knuckles, and the sharp pain in his middle finger told him that he might have cracked a bone. But that was okay. It was physical pain, and Leonard knew how to deal with that. If it made him stop feeling echoes of the kind of pain that came from losing Jim, he welcomed it.

Jim was yelling something Leonard couldn't hear, and he was sorely tempted to just smash his fist into the wall again. Instead, he slammed his palm against the emergency stop button, to the screaming agony in his hand, and sighed a small sigh of relief when the lift started moving again, stopping on G-Deck as second or two later.

Jim only reacted when Leonard was halfway out of the lift already.

"Bones, where are you going?"

Leonard turned around, glaring at Jim who was still standing inside the lift.

"To Medical, to grab some damn sleep! Because right now? I really don't want to see you, Jim."

He caught a glimpse of Jim's stricken expression before the lift doors closed, and though something inside of him lurched painfully at the sight, right now he didn't care. He was hurting, too, and Jim didn't even understand why. It was for the best if they went their separate ways for a while.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo


Leonard had planned to pass right through Medical and at least try to get some sleep on the cot in his office, but it wasn't meant to be. Of course it wasn't. Noting tonight had been going according to plan because apparently the universe had chosen today of all days to screw him over, so Leonard shouldn't be surprised that once more he wasn't going to get sleep when he planned on it.

The moment he entered the main Sickbay and Christine Chapel, nurse extraordinaire, saw his cut and bleeding hand, she wordlessly pointed towards the nearest biobed and went to get her medical tricorder. There were a lot of things Leonard was willing to dare in this lifetime. Disobeying his head nurse normally wasn't on that list – he wasn't suicidal, after all – but right now he really wasn't in the mood for this.

"Damn it, Christine, I'm fine."

Chapel just raised an eyebrow to shut him up. It was something she had learned from him, she didn't even have the fucking right to try and use that against him. Though the scariest part probably was that she had the movement down to pat, and that it worked perfectly. Leonard sat down on the biobed she had indicated, and even the curse he muttered under his breath sounded like a weak attempt at protesting against what was going on. Christine for her part seemed content with his level of compliance and carefully took the hand and inspected the torn skin and flesh around the knuckles.

One thing Leonard really liked about Christine Chapel was that she was a no-nonsense nurse, one who had seen pretty much anything there was to see medically. She wasn't easily unsettled by anything, not even by the appearance of her direct superior whose hand looked like it had just lost a fight against a bulkhead. Or at least if it fazed her, she didn't let it on as she ran the medical tricorder over his hand.

"Do I have to expect someone to come in with a face to match the state of that hand?"

"Not unless the wall panel in turbolift 1 decides to drop by," Leonard ground out from behind clenched teeth, trying to cover up a wince as her hand prodded a particularly painful spot.

"Yes, that would explain the shards embedded in the wound. Hold that hand out, I'm going to get the tweezers."

Leonard grumbled, even though he obliged and held out his hand. Chapel wasn't someone you just talked back to, not when she was absorbed in her work like this. Still, he was her boss, that should count for something even if she had forced him into the role of the patient.

"I can do this myself."

"Of course you can. I know that you're more than capable of treating a painful wound on your dominant hand by yourself, but since it's such a boring shift, indulge me."

Chapel pulled up a stool and sat down with the tweezers poised and at the ready.

"So," she said after she had pulled the first shard out of his hand, "does that mean we have to take down the 'Congratulations'-banner and change it into one that says 'Better luck next time'?"

Leonard swallowed down a growl. Of course Chapel had known about the test. It seemed every-damn-body on the ship had known about this stupid test but him.

"There is no second attempt for the Bridge Officer's Test, Christine."

Chapel took it in stride, never once interrupting her search for more splinters in Leonard's hand.

"That's all the same to me. I'd much prefer having you here in Medical during a crisis, anyway."

And really, Leonard might be pissed as hell about how the whole thing had gone down, but that didn't mean he was taking it lightly at his head nurse simply assumed he had failed.

"I passed the damn test!"

That made Christine stop and look up at him.

"Of course you did. I'm so sorry, I should have realized that people are prone to get into fistfights with inanimate objects when they're happy. Anything I should know about?"

And that was one of the things about his head nurse that Leonard really appreciated – she looked out for people. She took notice when something was not right with someone. She looked after their patients, and whether he wanted to or not, she always looked after Leonard, too.

And Leonard really appreciated that trait in her, but that didn't mean he have issues with her bedside manner. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as Christine pulled another fragment of the wall paneling out of his flesh. She could have given him a local anesthetic, but Leonard knew his head nurse well enough to know that this was a lesson about pain brought on by stupidity. He wasn't dumb enough to argue with her about it though, because he really didn't need the lecture to go along with the treatment.

"So, if you passed your test, how come you ended up breaking your hand?"

Leonard shook his head with a sigh that was not born out of appreciation for her concern, but out of relief that the torment with the tweezers had just stopped.

"I'm all right, Christine."

She looked at him for a few seconds, then she nodded.

"If you say so, Leonard."

He liked it when she called him that. Christine Chapel was the only person aboard who called him Leonard, and at times it felt as if he would have forgotten his own name by now if it weren't for her.

"Yeah, I do."

She shrugged her shoulders in a gesture that clearly said if you say so and reached for the instrument tray beside the bed.

"What I know is that your hand won't be all right until you've gone a round with both, the osteogenic stimulator and a dermal regenerator. You managed to break the proximal phalange of your middle finger when you went up, close and personal with the turbolift wall."

The tone of her voice left no doubt about just how stupid she thought that had been, but the movements of her hand were gentle and precise as she applied the osteogenic stimulator. Mending a bone wasn't a comfortable process by a long shot, and Leonard was rather glad that it was a minor fracture that required only one round of treatment. But between that and the application of the dermal regenerator, a little more than half an hour passed before Chapel let go of his hand and declared him fit to leave.

"No surgeries tomorrow, Leonard. Give those fine motor skills a day's rest. And I won't even bother telling you about follow-up treatment, because I think you're actually the only person aboard I can trust to take care of that himself. Now get out, I have a book waiting for me and was hoping for a quiet shift to finish it."

Leonard grumbled his thanks and slipped off the bed. He had taken maybe three or four steps towards his office when Christine called out to him.

"Leonard!"

He turned around even though he was completely unwilling to go down that road right now. Instead of answering, he merely raised an eyebrow.

"You're off duty, in case you've forgotten. And yours and the Captain's quarters are this way." She gestured towards the doors leading out of Medical. "Did you by any chance hit your head against the turbolift wall as well once you were done breaking your hand?"

Leonard only shook his head.

"Not tonight, Christine. Just…just don't ask."

Yet another thing about Christine Leonard appreciated very much – she didn't pry. Oh, she was as curious as the next person on this ship, but she knew when to leave someone be. Now too, she merely nodded with a soft smile.

"Good night, Leonard."

"Night."

Leonard breathed a sigh of relief as his office door finally closed behind him. This room had become his sanctuary over the past years, a place where he could grab a few minutes on his own during busy shifts, or during those rare moments when he simply needed to get away from Jim and their quarters.

The cot he had put there had actually been intended for catching occasional naps during emergency situations when leaving Medical was out of the question. Never once in those three years that he and Jim had been sharing quarters had he come here for the night because they had been fighting, or because one of them had been angry with the other.

Well, there was a first time for everything, Leonard supposed.

He kicked off his boots, stripped down to his boxers and undershirt and turned off the lights before he crawled under the thin covers and tried to find a comfortable position.

But of course, sleep wouldn't come.

No, because that would have been entirely too easy.

Earlier, when he had left Medical at the end of his shift, he had wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and sleep for as long as he could, but that was before this day had turned from exhausting to downright crappy.

And he couldn't close his eyes without going back to the bridge, to that moment when he had given the command to leave Jim behind. He couldn't stop thinking about that moment, about the feeling that something vital had been torn right out of him the moment he had abandoned the man he loved to a certain death.

And it scared him that all it ever came back to was Jim.

There had been five other crewmembers on that away team. Five other lives Leonard had decided to sacrifice in order to save the ship. And even though it all hadn't been real in the end, at that very moment it had been all too real for him. For a minute, until Jim had shown up on the bridge, it had all been real. And while Leonard had left six crewmembers behind, he had only been able to think about Jim. What did that say about his ability to command? Whatever it was, he doubted it was a good thing.

He knew that each of those deaths at his command would have devastated him in its own way, but Jim's death…there weren't words to describe it. If that short moment on the bridge had been a glimpse of what life without Jim was going to feel like, Leonard didn't ever want to contemplate the possibility again. And he had no idea what to do about it, because it could happen any damn day that they were on the ship. Jim being Jim, it could probably happen just as well anywhere else, but there was no denying that the life they led was dangerous.

It made him so incredibly angry that Jim didn't see why Leonard had been so absolutely livid about the unannounced simulation, and Jim's nonchalant reaction.

It was Leonard's damn job to make sure that Jim lived to see another day. And he was going to get that job done, even if that meant clinging to Jim's life every damn time he had managed to get himself beaten, shot, stabbed or mauled half to death again. If one day all that clinging to Jim's life and all his medical knowledge wasn't enough anymore, then he was going to have to find a way to deal with it. One day, Jim might do that to him.

But Jim couldn't force Leonard to be the one to pull the proverbial trigger, and to make it feel real.

He couldn't do that to him.

Leonard didn't know for how long he had been tossing and turning, but the chrono above the door informed him brutally that it was a 3:30 in the morning. The asscrack of dawn, if there had been such a thing as dawn in space, and he was tossing and turning with the thoughts buzzing through his head like a melodramatic teenager.

He was too old for this shit.

He was too old to spend his nights brooding about what ifs and could have beens, wallowing in morose thoughts until he wanted to give himself a sedative just to make it all stop.

And he was definitely too old to lie on this lumpy mattress in the cold office when there was a perfectly warm and comfortable bed waiting for him just a few corridors away. Especially since there was a Jim to curl around in that particular bed, and considering that only a few hours ago Leonard had thought he'd never get to see, hold or talk to Jim again, it was stupid to storm off and hide out here like a pouting teenager.

No. He was going back to his quarters and his own damn bed right now. And then he was going to tell Jim just why exactly this whole mess was his fault and could have easily be avoided if the alleged genius only used his huge brain for thinking about consequences once in a while.

And once that was all over and dealt with, he was going to sleep.

There. It sounded like a good plan to Leonard, and he was going to go through with it right now.

Deciding that shirt and boots were going to be too much of a hassle to put on for walking down two corridors and riding one turbolift, he simply put on his pants and left his office.

Outside in the main room of Sickbay, Christine Chapel was sitting at her desk, immersed in something on the PADD in her hand. She didn't look up when Leonard passed her, but her lips curled into a knowing smile that made Leonard roll his eyes. Why everyone on board thought they had Jim's and his relationship figured out better than they themselves had, he would never understand. Not that she, or anybody else, was right in thinking that, but Leonard wasn't going to burst their bubble. And if Christine thought he was predictable, Leonard was curious whether she saw it coming that she was going to do inventory on all their vaccines tomorrow. That was going to teach her about his predictability.

Leonard met nobody on the way to their quarters, which was probably for the best. He was still in such a strange mood, somewhere between the anger that was still boiling up occasionally and the exhausted desire to just get the hell back to normal. Or whatever counted as normal in his life.

But still he hesitated for a second before he punched in his access code and entered the room. Much to his surprise, the light was still on in the living area, dimmed down as if Jim had left it on in case Leonard decided to come home.

As if he had needed another thing added to the confused mess of emotions inside of him.

Leonard knew what it was like to take a person you loved for granted. It had happened in his marriage, and after the spectacular end of that he had vowed to never let it happen again. But Leonard guessed that to a certain degree, it was something not even the best intentions could avoid. He hadn't taken Jim for granted, not as such. But he had pushed the knowledge of what might happen every single day that they were out here in space to the back of his mind whenever he could.

He realized that now, as he entered the bedroom. Just seeing Jim there, alive and breathing and not blown to smithereens on that cold moon, it hit Leonard that at some point over the last three years he had somehow come to take this for granted – seeing Jim in their bed like that at the end of each day, no matter how stressful, hard or gruesome it might have been.

Today he had gotten a glimpse of what could be, and he didn't think he could live that life. He didn't want to live it, not ever.

Jim wasn't asleep. He was sitting up in bed, reading a PADD in the light of the lamp from the bedside table. But there were shadows under his eyes and he was blinking tiredly at him as Leonard entered the room.

"Hey," Jim said softly.

Leonard wanted to respond in kind. How the non-committal 'hey' he had planned on replying back turned into a stream of words that didn't want to stop, he had no idea. But it happened, and he was powerless to stop it.

"It was real. To you it might have been just a simulation, but to me it wasn't. And I get it, Jim. I'm not stupid. I get that everyone who takes command of a starship has to be able to make that kind of decision. That isn't my problem. Hell, the real problem isn't even that you included yourself in that scenario. You're right, if it ever comes down to it, you're going to be the one who draws the short stick, and if I ever have to take command, I need to be prepared for that. It's not any of that. The thing that I can't wrap my head around, that makes me absolutely fucking furious with you, is that you and Spock spent all this time trying to make the scenario as real as possible, but you didn't consider for one moment that it was exactly that to me? You just come waltzing to the bridge and expect me to congratulate you on your genius move of creating the perfect test setup, when a minute ago I thought I had lost you. That's what pissed me off, Jim. Not the test, or the scenario. But that you didn't consider for one second that to me it was real."

Jim looked at him for a long moment, PADD forgotten in his lap. There was something in his gaze that Leonard couldn't quite place, but he could read the other signs. The way Jim was rubbing the side of his neck, and the way his teeth were worrying his lower lip. His words had hit home.

"I'm sorry, Bones."

Leonard did a mental double take. It wasn't that Jim was never wrong – far from it – or that he didn't acknowledge it when he was. Normally, he just had a different way of acknowledging it when he had been wrong about something. Not any less sincere, but far less direct. Jim wasn't dishonest or arrogant enough to gloss over wrong decisions or mistakes, but he had far too many issues to easily admit weakness this openly, even to the people close to him.

It meant something that he did so now.

Leonard nodded, throat suddenly tight. "Okay. Because the next time you'll forget, I will kick you so hard you won't need a warp drive to reach the next solar system, are we clear on that?"

A small smile tugged at the corners of Jim's mouth. "Yes, we're clear."

"Good. Because it's four in the morning and I haven't slept for a minute. I need to be up again in a little over three hours, and I really need to sleep now."

Jim's smile widened.

"Then finally get your ass in bed. You know that I can't sleep without you."

And yeah, in a way Leonard was still unsettled, and maybe a little pissed about what had happened. But truth was, it wasn't going to get better if he kept denying himself sleep, and over the past three years he had fallen into the habit of falling asleep with Jim beside him. He wasn't going to get any rest until that happened.

It was warm underneath the blankets, and the bed was soft beneath him unlike the lumpy mattress on the cot in his office. Jim extinguished the lights as Leonard settled beside him, and after a second of hesitation Jim began wrapping himself around Leonard just as he did every night.

Leonard allowed himself to relax into the hold, feeling the tension of the past hours finally drain out of his limbs and muscles. Jim was here, alive and warm in his arms, and that was all that counted.

"Bones," Jim mumbled, pressing his face into the crook of Leonard's neck. Leonard tightened his own arms around him, pulling him closer even though there was barely any space between them anymore as Jim continued to mumble against the skin of his neck. "Missed you."

Leonard snorted. "I was just two decks away, you idiot."

"But you were pissed at me." One of his hands moved up to Leonard's shoulder and squeezed the still tense muscles. "Still are."

"A little," Leonard admitted, staring ahead at the darkness of the room over Jim's shoulder. "At you. At myself, at anybody who was on that bridge earlier, I don't even know. I just…it was probably the worst thing that could have happened."

"I'm sorry," Jim repeated, but Leonard cut him off with a shake of his head Jim had to feel more than he could see in the darkness of the room.

"Stop, Jim. Just leave it be for tonight. I'd really like to make the best of those three hours of sleep that are all I'm going to get."

He felt Jim's lips curl up into a smile against his neck. "Well, if you hadn't stormed away earlier, I'd have had enough time to tell you that you're off until beta shift tomorrow. The simulation counts as an on-call duty shift. We can sleep in tomorrow."

That was the first piece of good news in ages. Right now, that prospect sounded heavenly, and Leonard most certainly wasn't going to complain.

Jim shifted a little in his arms. "How is your hand?"

"I'll live," Leonard grumbled, not really willing to talk about that now. If he was stupid enough to slam his hand into a wall and break a finger in the process, he had no right to go around asking for anyone's pity. Jim seemed to have a different idea, however, because his hand moved from where it had been resting against his shoulder, ran down the side of Leonard's body and unerringly reached for Leonard's hand. Intertwining their fingers, he brought their hands up between their chests and gently ran the tips of his fingers over Leonard's knuckles.

Complaints about numb limbs and uncomfortable sleeping position lay on the tip of Leonard's tongue, but he swallowed them down and relaxed against Jim's body. The movement of Jim's fingers was soothing, and he felt himself drifting off.

"It scared me," he mumbled, and it took a second to realize that he had said it out loud.

"What did?" Jim's voice still sounded alert and awake, even though he had to be just as tired as Leonard was.

"That I could do it."

Jim drew a deep breath and exhaled, the movement of air warm against Leonard's neck.

"I know. The first time I…it was so easy in the simulation, when I took my Bridge Officer's Test. No consequences. But the first time I had to make such a choice when there were real lives on the line…it scared the crap out of me that I could do it. That I didn't even have to think about making that choice."

"Doesn't make it any easier to live with."

"No." Jim nuzzled closer, as if searching for reassurance in Leonard's skin. "But it's part of command. I mean, other than this shiny ship Starfleet also gave me responsibility for its entire crew. Keeping them safe, that's got to be the main concern of everyone who ends up taking command. Sometimes, that means making that kind of choice."

And really, it was a responsibility Leonard didn't envy Jim for. It was crushing, and he knew he couldn't bear it day in, day out. Not if he ever wanted to be able to sleep again.

"The only thing I could think about, after I gave that order to go to warp, was that there hadn't been enough time." Leonard's throat felt tight all of a sudden, but the words just kept tumbling out. He must have caught something. Some alien pollen that turned him into a romantic sap, there was no other way to explain it. "I kept thinking that we needed more time, that we had earned more time. But all of a sudden there was nothing left but all the things we never got around to doing. All the things I never said or did, and that it was too late to get my head out of my ass and just do them."

Jim shifted, raising his head from where it was burrowed against Leonard's neck to look at him in the darkness.

"Then what's stopping you now?"

Leonard rolled his eyes, even though the gesture was meaningless when Jim couldn't even see it.

"The little fact that I was more in the mood to punch you in the face than to declare my undying love for you earlier, for one."

Jim dropped his head to Leonard's chest, and Leonard swore he could feel the grin against his skin.

"Does that mean you were too angry to take that ring out of your desk drawer and finally muster up the courage to ask me?"

And the only thing that surprised Leonard was that he wasn't surprised. Not really. It was hard to keep anything a secret from Jim. Strangely, it didn't even feel wrong that Jim knew about the ring, and the question and decisions that came attached to it. It was…kinda fitting for them really, and Leonard didn't feel any embarrassment at the thought that Jim knew. He playfully swatted the back of Jim's neck.

"You will forget all about that until I think the moment's right. That's what you get for snooping around in my stuff."

Jim laughed and pressed a kiss against Leonard's chest. "I love you."

And Leonard had to admit that this was the one thing he didn't get tired of hearing. Running his hand through Jim's hair, he closed his eyes with a sigh.

"I love you too, Jim."

Jim smiled. "Good."

"I'd love you even more if we could finally go to sleep."

Jim chuckled. "Even more than the undying love for me which you weren't in the mood to declare?"

"Shut up and go to sleep, you idiot." Leonard said fondly.

"That's okay. As long as I get to be your idiot."

Jim sounded tired now, his voice taking on the husky quality it always had when he was about to drift off.

"Good night, Jim."

"Nigh'…ones."

Leonard was tired, but even as Jim's breathing evened out and he fell asleep with his head still pillowed on Leonard's chest, sleep pulled at him but didn't yet manage to pull him under.

He had Jim back. Had never lost him, actually. They had been allowed some extra time. How much, Leonard had no idea either. With the lives they led, probably not as much as Leonard wanted, or needed. They'd just have to make do, and try to make it count.

Jim mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep, shifting as he tried to press himself even closer. Leonard adjusted, his body moving without the need for conscious thought to accommodate Jim's shift in position.

They were going to make do with whatever time they had, Leonard thought as he eventually drifted off.

They always did.


The End