ceres_libera (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ceres_libera) wrote2010-06-07 10:31 pm
ceres_libera) wrote2010-06-07 10:31 pm
Entry tags:
Unexpected 2/4
Title: "Unexpected 2/4"
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceres_libera
Rating: R mostly for language and adult concepts
Disclaimer and Notes in Part 1
+
Jim couldn't really see the point of taking someone so hugely pregnant on such a trek, but the Kings had insisted that they all must go to the site of their Holiest of Holies. Of course, like everything else about Voe'o’ society, that meant that tradition had to be observed. So, while the King had been borne on a litter for much of the way, after a certain point, the servant class had been enjoined from going any farther. A few more revolutions around the mountainside on the steep, mountain path, and much of the palace court party was left behind, sitting at a sacred marker to wait and pray. There was a brief ceremony, conducted by Vaa’lash, who seemed to have a significant role in their religion, as well as being the King’s midwife.
Those restricted from going further included everyone on the away team, with the exception of himself, Spock and Bones. Jim was sure that Vaa’lash knew how piqued being left behind made Uhura, but since the midwife had gone out of his way to make it clear that Uhura had been deemed an ‘Unworthy', there was little Jim could do. The goal of these negotiations was typical: to woo the Voe'o', and their mineral-rich planet into an alliance with the Federation. The ire of a crewmember, even if she was the Communications Officer and a member of the command staff, over inappropriate treatment at the hands of their hosts would not be deemed a worthy reason for forcing the issue -- not that Jim disagreed with her ire. After more than a year as Captain, he'd begun to find more and more disturbing the disconnect between Federation beliefs and practices. There was something unseemly, at least as far as he was concerned, about using the tenet of tolerance, of IDIC, as a foundation for ignoring practices that had been long deemed immoral by most Federation worlds. The Voe'o' might not call their lowest caste slaves, but it was clear that they did not enjoy the freedoms or material goods of the aristocrat class, or even those above them.
And he couldn't help but find it disturbing that the lower the stated class of the Voe'o', the more women there were in it. Especially since the aristocrats purported to place such a high value on women, but only those of the artistocratic caste.
And there were precious few of them. Only a handful were accompanying Bones, Spock and himself up to the mountaintop pool, and Jim had to admit that the ones who were with them were rather … large. Not one of the aristocratic women that he'd seen were built like Uhura, thin and willowy. In fact, if he were only observing the aristocrats, he would have believed that the Voe’o’ weren't particularly dysmorphic by gender, until he'd noticed that among the lower castes, not only were the women of a slighter build, but the men were as well. This, in turn, made him wonder if this class dysmorphia was due to deprivation. He knew that his experience at Tarsus led him to be more sensitive to the possibilities of eugenics theories being expressed societally, but … he had to admit that it made him uncomfortable to see such enforced disparity, even if, generally, the society was functioning well. The Voe'o' had recovered from the planet-wide illness of more than twenty generations ago that had left them on the brink of extinction, and ultimately with a disproportionate number of males in their upper castes, where women were outnumbered by at least 2:1. How exactly this had occurred biologically, he wasn’t sure, but he’d be interested to hear Bones’ take on it.
It seemed, however, that women who looked, for lack of a better term, more male -- broader and bigger like the men of the royal caste -- were the standard of beauty for the aristocrats. And that seemed to be working for them. The Kings, for example, were clearly in love, with the King-consort coaxing and aiding his very pregnant partner as she labored up the steep path, stopping now and then to take her hands from his and press them against the rock.
"She's gonna have that baby, Jim," Bones said to him in a low, urgent voice. They'd been warned not to use their electronic equipment in the sacred space, and he could see that Bones hands were twitching with the need to diagnosis. "She's been in labor for a while now, and she's going into hard labor, or maybe even the transition."
Jim knew that his mouth was hanging open. "Bones, no," he said, alarmed. "We're miles from nowhere! Should I get an emergency beam out?"
Bones looked at him with grumpy fondness. "It's a baby, Jim, not a ruptured spleen. For all we know, the King has to come to the sacred place to have it."
Jim looked around the group that was with them, all viziers and chancellors, and not one of them young. The journey up had been hard, yet no one had asked that they stop, although they all rested gratefully whenever the King did. Up until now, he'd thought that their desire to get to the top of the mountain had been about showing them their sacred space. Now, through Bones' eyes, he saw their excitement differently. "Bones, my man, I think you're right."
Bones harrumphed, but a small smile dimpled his cheek. This, in turn, forced Jim to stifle the urge to kiss or lick said dimple, just like he had had to do the previous 371 times it had appeared during their four plus years of friendship. Not that he was counting, or noting that no one else had ever made that dimple appear more than a few times, here and there.
"Well, now," Bones drawled, seeming not to notice the way Jim shifted at the sound of the thick syllables. "We'll have to mark this day on the calendar, and have you make your 'X' for a signature."
"Bones …" Jim began to protest, and he was not whining -- he actually liked it when Bones teased him! Of course, but it was then that all hell began to break loose, in the form of a rock-slide. When the dust settled, Spock was behind a chest-high wall of rock that he assured Jim would be easily taken care of. Jim was dusty and a little banged up.
Bones had a scrape on his forehead, and he was even more dusty, but he was already attending to Vaa'lash. The Kings were pressed against the wall, the pregnant one clearly panting now.
"His leg is broken," Bones said, waving his tricorder over the midwife despite his protestations. "Hold this over him so I can get a position on the break."
He walked briskly to the Kings. "How close are those pains now, ma'am?" he asked politely, but firmly.
"Sir," King Oo'Veaira corrected, bending forward with a cry.
"I beg your pardon," Bones said with emphatic courtesy, just barely restraining his eyebrow.
"They are twenty-two partaleeks apart," King Oo'Eara'i said worriedly. He indicated his heartbeat when Bones' brows drew down in consternation.
Bones nodded. "Sir, you're gonna have that baby real soon, and we need –"
"--to get to the Lifewater," the laboring King replied. "We must go. NOW." She was practically wailing, her deep alto voice raised in pain. "It must be as it was foretold."
"But Vaa'lash …" King Oo'Eara'i said helplessly.
"I'll bring him," Jim said grimly.
Bones stalked over, grumbling about damned fools and superstitions and assbackward thinking, waving his tricorder and dialing up some concoction from his magic bag. "You'll be able to get up there, now," he said to the midwife. "With help. You lean on Jim and hop along, let the boneset work as well as it can until I can get to you. Do not put your weight on that leg."
"Your partner is a very determined man," Vaa'lash said tightly, as Jim hefted him up and slung his arm over his shoulders.
"Hmm?" he said questioningly, before he decided against correcting the midwife. "You don't know the half of it," Jim continued, not bothering to check the fondness in his voice as he heaved Vaa'lash up the steep path toward the plateau only a few meters above them. "He's the best doctor in the galaxy. There’s no need to be worried about your King."
"I see," Vaa'lash said, and the diamond-shaped iris of his eye winked purple in the light that was washing over the edge of the plateau. "He does seem particularly skilled."
"He's trained in more fields of medicine than any five doctors," Jim boasted. "And he's more than proficient in them all. Death," he continued cheerfully, huffing a little as he heaved Vaa'lash's not inconsiderable weight alongside him, "is afraid of him."
"Ah," Vaa'lash said. "Still, I would prefer that you get me as close to my King as possible. My place in the Mysteries can be occupied by no other."
Jim felt a little insulted on Bones' behalf, but quashed the feeling, dragging the nearly dead weight of the elderly midwife to where Bones was squatting in front of the King. She was seated on a chair with a split seat that looked no different than any other part of the plateau, the color of rocky loam that was neither brown nor red but a combination of both, her voluminous skirt divided to show her pale pink legs, and the engorged near maroon of her gigantic belly looming above them. Her husband stood behind her, holding her hands and murmuring words Jim tried not to overhear.
"Ma', Sir," Bones began, "I beg your pardon, but I've got to know how your physiology works. Jim," he said, over his shoulder.
Jim made his way to Bones' side.
"Help me sterilize," Bones ordered, pulling off his blue tunic. Bones was wearing one of the sleeveless regulation t-shirts, leaving his strong, sinewy arms bare. He handed Jim a sonic tool that cast a phosphorescent red light over his hands as Bones rotated them, making sure that the light touched his nails, his wrists and all the way up to his elbows. When the light flashed green, Bones made a little grunt of satisfaction and turned toward the laboring King.
"Wait!" the midwife ordered. "Thou must anoint thy hands in the Lifewater."
Bones' eyebrows were doing that thing that said he was five seconds from telling someone that they were fucking crazy, and wanting to avoid an intergalactic incident, Jim hastily scanned the water, showing Bones the readout on the screen. "Hmmph … " he muttered, reading. "All right," he said tightly, but Jim could tell he didn't like it.
He couldn't say that he blamed him. The water was almost luridly blue-green and seemed somehow … sentient? Jim scanned the results again, looking for lifeforce, where Bones had been looking for impurities. He shook his head, not seeing what he was looking for. Behind him, the King cried out in pain and he heard the splash of Bones' hands in the water and he looked up, watching the ripples rolling outward from Bones' plunging his forearms in, dissipating across the ten-meter wide pool.
He turned back and looked at Bones, who was kneewalking over to the laboring King, holding up his dripping hands as the iridescent water ran off his elbows. Or was it? Jim squinted. It seemed like the water was clinging to Bones, but his concentration was broken when the midwife began chanting behind him, in rising tones that the King, aiding his laboring partner, began to echo. When he turned back to Bones, his hands were hidden from view somewhere at the apex of the King's legs, and Jim swallowed hard, aware that he was intruding on a very private moment. And seriously, he thought somewhat hysterically, the last place he'd ever expected to find himself was attending a birth. Then again, this was probably as close as he'd ever get to the experience.
"The Miracle of Life," the midwife breathed out next to him. "The Great Mystery."
Jim nodded dumbly, hoping he had a suitably reverent expression on his face, only to jump at the sound of the guttural scream that echoed all around them as the King pushed. God, he hoped that the Great Mystery hadn't brought more rocks down on Spock's head, but now was not the time to use his communicator.
"All right now," Bones drawled, not one thing hurried about his speech. He had one hand on the King's rippling belly, and the other was where Jim couldn't see, probably in a position to catch. "Poppa," he said sharply to the King holding onto his partner's hands. "On the next push, I need you to help the King forward and in position to push down and out. And Sir, if you breathe down and push from here," he patted a spot on the pregnant King's belly, "that baby's head will c'mon out. All right?" he asked. "Here we go, Poppa," he said to the King above. "In three of them counts: 3, 2, 1 … now."
"He knows the rhythms, without instruction," the midwife said, looking at Bones.
"I told you he was good," Jim reminded him. "I've seen him be a doctor for rock people."
"Rock people?" Vaa'lash said, astonished.
"That was real good," Bones said. "Rest for five of them partaleeks, then we're going to push again.
"Rock people," Jim said firmly, foregoing a more definitive explanation. "If it lives, he can fix it."
"Indeed," the midwife observed. His eyes narrowed at something and Jim turned his head, surprised to see that the Lifewater was lapping at the side of the pool where Bones was kneeling at the feet of the King.
Bones had been counting down, and Jim dimly heard him saying, "One more push and the head will be out."
"The Lifewater knows," the midwife breathed out.
That the princess was being born? Jim wondered what the midwife was talking about, but the King was screaming and Bones was counting and encouraging and then the King's cry broke off as Bones made a triumphant noise.
"There you are, darlin'," he crooned.
Jim leaned forward as Bones straightened up, revealing the slime-covered infant that he was cradling one-handed. The midwife leaned forward with a sharp intake of breath, but Bones continued on, unhurried, talking to the babe, whose chest, Jim noticed with a sinking heart, was utterly still.
"Now, now," Bones said to the baby. "Time for you to sing for us, baby girl. C'mon."
He put one hand over the water and Jim felt his hair stand up as the water seemed to reach for Bones. Bones never noticed, cupping his hand underneath the surface and then rubbing his finger under the infant's nose, flinging some violet mucus onto the loam floor. He rubbed the baby's breast bone, and then flipped her over, turning to dip his other hand in the water, and then chafing her back with his now cleaner hand. The baby jerked and Jim heard her expel something before she began to cry. "There you go," Bones said softly to the baby girl, turning her back over and cradling her against his chest. His free hand was deftly removing the gore from her body, dipping back and forth into the water, which seemed to be rippling ecstatically.
The baby wailed, and Jim felt the surprising prick of tears in his own eyes at the sight of Bones soothing her as he cleaned her up. "Aw now, we'll get you all warmed up and to your parents in just a minute there, baby girl. C'mon now, it ain't so bad out here in the wide world. There's plenty of arms to hold you and love you, you'll see," he continued on, and the babe quieted, opening milky blue eyes to blink blearily at Bones. "Now, now, I'm not who you want to see there, darlin'," he said, wrapping the baby in his blue tunic. He stood, cradling the baby, and only then did Jim become aware that the Kings were both crying, this time with joy. "Here she is," Bones said, handing the baby to the King who'd given birth. "She's a real beauty," he said sincerely to the Kings, smiling, and wiping at the trickle of blood on his forehead with his wet arm.
And at that moment, with Vaa'lash still leaning against him, and the treacherous Lifewater still radiating toward Bones, Jim had looked at the quieted baby with her heart-shaped face and her blue eyes, being cradled in the loving arms of her parents, and he'd looked at Bones and he'd wanted.
The one thing he knew he'd never have.
+
Bones' muffled cry of pain brought him back to the present, and he turned, finding Bones bent over his desk and clinging tightly to the edge. "Bones!"
His cry was nearly simultaneous with the Spock's urgent, "Doctor McCoy!"
"I'm fine, Jim," Bones said, but his white-knuckled grip on the desk did not ease, and Jim could feel the tension in his muscles when he put his arm around him.
"I doubt that, Doctor," Spock said severely.
Bones straightened up with difficulty. "If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that my musculature is realigning itself to create a womb," he said heavily.
There was a momentary pause before Jim said, "You have to go to Sickbay, Bones," in a tone that brooked no argument.
"I concur with the Captain," Spock said swiftly. He reached for the desk comm and hailed M'Benga. "Doctor," he said, "please prepare a private room to receive Doctor McCoy."
"Already done, sir" M'Benga assured him.
"Jim," Bones grabbed at the front of his shirt. "The water – you remember the chalice?"
"The ceremonial drink," Jim said, looking at Spock. "But I thought you said that the water alone couldn't have done it. I drank from the chalice, too, Bones."
"But I had more exposure to it," Bones gasped out, looking pale. He'd begun to sweat. "What if there was a virus in the water?" this last question was directed at Spock.
"You suspect a form of gene therapy?" Spock asked.
"It seems logical to me," Bones said.
"Fascinating," Spock said, tapping something on his padd.
"Captain," Scotty's voice said from the comm, "unless you're intending to go along with Dr. McCoy to Sickbay, you need to step away."
"Jim," Bones said, pushing him away. "You figure this out."
When he dissolved into a beam of sparkling white light, looking haunted and pained, Jim was still reaching for him.
Jim's chest was heaving in the room that felt suddenly vacant, but he turned and looked at Uhura. "Nyota," he began.
"I'm already on it," she said, pressing the console key. "Chekov?"
"Almost there," the navigator said in a worried tone, his accent heavy. "They have tried to keep us out of their archives, but I am downloading all of the sacred texts and histories as swiftly as possible. I should have them all within the next ten minutes. If you give me a list of the keywords, I can help you sift through them to find the sections for translation."
"I'm on my way," Uhura answered already starting for the door before she turned to look at Jim, realizing that she had not been dismissed. "Captain?"
"Go, Nyota," Jim said. "Please." He turned back to look at Spock. "Gene therapy?"
"Of an ancient variety, yes," Spock said, not looking up from his padd. "Essentially, a viral vector was used to permeate the cell walls and effect change, although it was conceived and utilized as a corrective form. However, its application in this way would be theoretically possible."
"So, if it's a virus," Jim said slowly, "then it would be possible to create an antivirus."
Spock tilted his head, tapping at the padd.
"Spock!" Jim snapped. "Tell me that you can figure out how to fix this."
Spock took in a small breath and looked up. "I will do my best, Jim."
Jim nodded, and put a hand on Spock's shoulder, sorry for snapping at him. "I'll be in Sickbay," he said.
+
Unexpected 3
Author:
ceres_liberaRating: R mostly for language and adult concepts
Disclaimer and Notes in Part 1
+
Jim couldn't really see the point of taking someone so hugely pregnant on such a trek, but the Kings had insisted that they all must go to the site of their Holiest of Holies. Of course, like everything else about Voe'o’ society, that meant that tradition had to be observed. So, while the King had been borne on a litter for much of the way, after a certain point, the servant class had been enjoined from going any farther. A few more revolutions around the mountainside on the steep, mountain path, and much of the palace court party was left behind, sitting at a sacred marker to wait and pray. There was a brief ceremony, conducted by Vaa’lash, who seemed to have a significant role in their religion, as well as being the King’s midwife.
Those restricted from going further included everyone on the away team, with the exception of himself, Spock and Bones. Jim was sure that Vaa’lash knew how piqued being left behind made Uhura, but since the midwife had gone out of his way to make it clear that Uhura had been deemed an ‘Unworthy', there was little Jim could do. The goal of these negotiations was typical: to woo the Voe'o', and their mineral-rich planet into an alliance with the Federation. The ire of a crewmember, even if she was the Communications Officer and a member of the command staff, over inappropriate treatment at the hands of their hosts would not be deemed a worthy reason for forcing the issue -- not that Jim disagreed with her ire. After more than a year as Captain, he'd begun to find more and more disturbing the disconnect between Federation beliefs and practices. There was something unseemly, at least as far as he was concerned, about using the tenet of tolerance, of IDIC, as a foundation for ignoring practices that had been long deemed immoral by most Federation worlds. The Voe'o' might not call their lowest caste slaves, but it was clear that they did not enjoy the freedoms or material goods of the aristocrat class, or even those above them.
And he couldn't help but find it disturbing that the lower the stated class of the Voe'o', the more women there were in it. Especially since the aristocrats purported to place such a high value on women, but only those of the artistocratic caste.
And there were precious few of them. Only a handful were accompanying Bones, Spock and himself up to the mountaintop pool, and Jim had to admit that the ones who were with them were rather … large. Not one of the aristocratic women that he'd seen were built like Uhura, thin and willowy. In fact, if he were only observing the aristocrats, he would have believed that the Voe’o’ weren't particularly dysmorphic by gender, until he'd noticed that among the lower castes, not only were the women of a slighter build, but the men were as well. This, in turn, made him wonder if this class dysmorphia was due to deprivation. He knew that his experience at Tarsus led him to be more sensitive to the possibilities of eugenics theories being expressed societally, but … he had to admit that it made him uncomfortable to see such enforced disparity, even if, generally, the society was functioning well. The Voe'o' had recovered from the planet-wide illness of more than twenty generations ago that had left them on the brink of extinction, and ultimately with a disproportionate number of males in their upper castes, where women were outnumbered by at least 2:1. How exactly this had occurred biologically, he wasn’t sure, but he’d be interested to hear Bones’ take on it.
It seemed, however, that women who looked, for lack of a better term, more male -- broader and bigger like the men of the royal caste -- were the standard of beauty for the aristocrats. And that seemed to be working for them. The Kings, for example, were clearly in love, with the King-consort coaxing and aiding his very pregnant partner as she labored up the steep path, stopping now and then to take her hands from his and press them against the rock.
"She's gonna have that baby, Jim," Bones said to him in a low, urgent voice. They'd been warned not to use their electronic equipment in the sacred space, and he could see that Bones hands were twitching with the need to diagnosis. "She's been in labor for a while now, and she's going into hard labor, or maybe even the transition."
Jim knew that his mouth was hanging open. "Bones, no," he said, alarmed. "We're miles from nowhere! Should I get an emergency beam out?"
Bones looked at him with grumpy fondness. "It's a baby, Jim, not a ruptured spleen. For all we know, the King has to come to the sacred place to have it."
Jim looked around the group that was with them, all viziers and chancellors, and not one of them young. The journey up had been hard, yet no one had asked that they stop, although they all rested gratefully whenever the King did. Up until now, he'd thought that their desire to get to the top of the mountain had been about showing them their sacred space. Now, through Bones' eyes, he saw their excitement differently. "Bones, my man, I think you're right."
Bones harrumphed, but a small smile dimpled his cheek. This, in turn, forced Jim to stifle the urge to kiss or lick said dimple, just like he had had to do the previous 371 times it had appeared during their four plus years of friendship. Not that he was counting, or noting that no one else had ever made that dimple appear more than a few times, here and there.
"Well, now," Bones drawled, seeming not to notice the way Jim shifted at the sound of the thick syllables. "We'll have to mark this day on the calendar, and have you make your 'X' for a signature."
"Bones …" Jim began to protest, and he was not whining -- he actually liked it when Bones teased him! Of course, but it was then that all hell began to break loose, in the form of a rock-slide. When the dust settled, Spock was behind a chest-high wall of rock that he assured Jim would be easily taken care of. Jim was dusty and a little banged up.
Bones had a scrape on his forehead, and he was even more dusty, but he was already attending to Vaa'lash. The Kings were pressed against the wall, the pregnant one clearly panting now.
"His leg is broken," Bones said, waving his tricorder over the midwife despite his protestations. "Hold this over him so I can get a position on the break."
He walked briskly to the Kings. "How close are those pains now, ma'am?" he asked politely, but firmly.
"Sir," King Oo'Veaira corrected, bending forward with a cry.
"I beg your pardon," Bones said with emphatic courtesy, just barely restraining his eyebrow.
"They are twenty-two partaleeks apart," King Oo'Eara'i said worriedly. He indicated his heartbeat when Bones' brows drew down in consternation.
Bones nodded. "Sir, you're gonna have that baby real soon, and we need –"
"--to get to the Lifewater," the laboring King replied. "We must go. NOW." She was practically wailing, her deep alto voice raised in pain. "It must be as it was foretold."
"But Vaa'lash …" King Oo'Eara'i said helplessly.
"I'll bring him," Jim said grimly.
Bones stalked over, grumbling about damned fools and superstitions and assbackward thinking, waving his tricorder and dialing up some concoction from his magic bag. "You'll be able to get up there, now," he said to the midwife. "With help. You lean on Jim and hop along, let the boneset work as well as it can until I can get to you. Do not put your weight on that leg."
"Your partner is a very determined man," Vaa'lash said tightly, as Jim hefted him up and slung his arm over his shoulders.
"Hmm?" he said questioningly, before he decided against correcting the midwife. "You don't know the half of it," Jim continued, not bothering to check the fondness in his voice as he heaved Vaa'lash up the steep path toward the plateau only a few meters above them. "He's the best doctor in the galaxy. There’s no need to be worried about your King."
"I see," Vaa'lash said, and the diamond-shaped iris of his eye winked purple in the light that was washing over the edge of the plateau. "He does seem particularly skilled."
"He's trained in more fields of medicine than any five doctors," Jim boasted. "And he's more than proficient in them all. Death," he continued cheerfully, huffing a little as he heaved Vaa'lash's not inconsiderable weight alongside him, "is afraid of him."
"Ah," Vaa'lash said. "Still, I would prefer that you get me as close to my King as possible. My place in the Mysteries can be occupied by no other."
Jim felt a little insulted on Bones' behalf, but quashed the feeling, dragging the nearly dead weight of the elderly midwife to where Bones was squatting in front of the King. She was seated on a chair with a split seat that looked no different than any other part of the plateau, the color of rocky loam that was neither brown nor red but a combination of both, her voluminous skirt divided to show her pale pink legs, and the engorged near maroon of her gigantic belly looming above them. Her husband stood behind her, holding her hands and murmuring words Jim tried not to overhear.
"
Jim made his way to Bones' side.
"Help me sterilize," Bones ordered, pulling off his blue tunic. Bones was wearing one of the sleeveless regulation t-shirts, leaving his strong, sinewy arms bare. He handed Jim a sonic tool that cast a phosphorescent red light over his hands as Bones rotated them, making sure that the light touched his nails, his wrists and all the way up to his elbows. When the light flashed green, Bones made a little grunt of satisfaction and turned toward the laboring King.
"Wait!" the midwife ordered. "Thou must anoint thy hands in the Lifewater."
Bones' eyebrows were doing that thing that said he was five seconds from telling someone that they were fucking crazy, and wanting to avoid an intergalactic incident, Jim hastily scanned the water, showing Bones the readout on the screen. "Hmmph … " he muttered, reading. "All right," he said tightly, but Jim could tell he didn't like it.
He couldn't say that he blamed him. The water was almost luridly blue-green and seemed somehow … sentient? Jim scanned the results again, looking for lifeforce, where Bones had been looking for impurities. He shook his head, not seeing what he was looking for. Behind him, the King cried out in pain and he heard the splash of Bones' hands in the water and he looked up, watching the ripples rolling outward from Bones' plunging his forearms in, dissipating across the ten-meter wide pool.
He turned back and looked at Bones, who was kneewalking over to the laboring King, holding up his dripping hands as the iridescent water ran off his elbows. Or was it? Jim squinted. It seemed like the water was clinging to Bones, but his concentration was broken when the midwife began chanting behind him, in rising tones that the King, aiding his laboring partner, began to echo. When he turned back to Bones, his hands were hidden from view somewhere at the apex of the King's legs, and Jim swallowed hard, aware that he was intruding on a very private moment. And seriously, he thought somewhat hysterically, the last place he'd ever expected to find himself was attending a birth. Then again, this was probably as close as he'd ever get to the experience.
"The Miracle of Life," the midwife breathed out next to him. "The Great Mystery."
Jim nodded dumbly, hoping he had a suitably reverent expression on his face, only to jump at the sound of the guttural scream that echoed all around them as the King pushed. God, he hoped that the Great Mystery hadn't brought more rocks down on Spock's head, but now was not the time to use his communicator.
"All right now," Bones drawled, not one thing hurried about his speech. He had one hand on the King's rippling belly, and the other was where Jim couldn't see, probably in a position to catch. "Poppa," he said sharply to the King holding onto his partner's hands. "On the next push, I need you to help the King forward and in position to push down and out. And Sir, if you breathe down and push from here," he patted a spot on the pregnant King's belly, "that baby's head will c'mon out. All right?" he asked. "Here we go, Poppa," he said to the King above. "In three of them counts: 3, 2, 1 … now."
"He knows the rhythms, without instruction," the midwife said, looking at Bones.
"I told you he was good," Jim reminded him. "I've seen him be a doctor for rock people."
"Rock people?" Vaa'lash said, astonished.
"That was real good," Bones said. "Rest for five of them partaleeks, then we're going to push again.
"Rock people," Jim said firmly, foregoing a more definitive explanation. "If it lives, he can fix it."
"Indeed," the midwife observed. His eyes narrowed at something and Jim turned his head, surprised to see that the Lifewater was lapping at the side of the pool where Bones was kneeling at the feet of the King.
Bones had been counting down, and Jim dimly heard him saying, "One more push and the head will be out."
"The Lifewater knows," the midwife breathed out.
That the princess was being born? Jim wondered what the midwife was talking about, but the King was screaming and Bones was counting and encouraging and then the King's cry broke off as Bones made a triumphant noise.
"There you are, darlin'," he crooned.
Jim leaned forward as Bones straightened up, revealing the slime-covered infant that he was cradling one-handed. The midwife leaned forward with a sharp intake of breath, but Bones continued on, unhurried, talking to the babe, whose chest, Jim noticed with a sinking heart, was utterly still.
"Now, now," Bones said to the baby. "Time for you to sing for us, baby girl. C'mon."
He put one hand over the water and Jim felt his hair stand up as the water seemed to reach for Bones. Bones never noticed, cupping his hand underneath the surface and then rubbing his finger under the infant's nose, flinging some violet mucus onto the loam floor. He rubbed the baby's breast bone, and then flipped her over, turning to dip his other hand in the water, and then chafing her back with his now cleaner hand. The baby jerked and Jim heard her expel something before she began to cry. "There you go," Bones said softly to the baby girl, turning her back over and cradling her against his chest. His free hand was deftly removing the gore from her body, dipping back and forth into the water, which seemed to be rippling ecstatically.
The baby wailed, and Jim felt the surprising prick of tears in his own eyes at the sight of Bones soothing her as he cleaned her up. "Aw now, we'll get you all warmed up and to your parents in just a minute there, baby girl. C'mon now, it ain't so bad out here in the wide world. There's plenty of arms to hold you and love you, you'll see," he continued on, and the babe quieted, opening milky blue eyes to blink blearily at Bones. "Now, now, I'm not who you want to see there, darlin'," he said, wrapping the baby in his blue tunic. He stood, cradling the baby, and only then did Jim become aware that the Kings were both crying, this time with joy. "Here she is," Bones said, handing the baby to the King who'd given birth. "She's a real beauty," he said sincerely to the Kings, smiling, and wiping at the trickle of blood on his forehead with his wet arm.
And at that moment, with Vaa'lash still leaning against him, and the treacherous Lifewater still radiating toward Bones, Jim had looked at the quieted baby with her heart-shaped face and her blue eyes, being cradled in the loving arms of her parents, and he'd looked at Bones and he'd wanted.
The one thing he knew he'd never have.
+
Bones' muffled cry of pain brought him back to the present, and he turned, finding Bones bent over his desk and clinging tightly to the edge. "Bones!"
His cry was nearly simultaneous with the Spock's urgent, "Doctor McCoy!"
"I'm fine, Jim," Bones said, but his white-knuckled grip on the desk did not ease, and Jim could feel the tension in his muscles when he put his arm around him.
"I doubt that, Doctor," Spock said severely.
Bones straightened up with difficulty. "If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that my musculature is realigning itself to create a womb," he said heavily.
There was a momentary pause before Jim said, "You have to go to Sickbay, Bones," in a tone that brooked no argument.
"I concur with the Captain," Spock said swiftly. He reached for the desk comm and hailed M'Benga. "Doctor," he said, "please prepare a private room to receive Doctor McCoy."
"Already done, sir" M'Benga assured him.
"Jim," Bones grabbed at the front of his shirt. "The water – you remember the chalice?"
"The ceremonial drink," Jim said, looking at Spock. "But I thought you said that the water alone couldn't have done it. I drank from the chalice, too, Bones."
"But I had more exposure to it," Bones gasped out, looking pale. He'd begun to sweat. "What if there was a virus in the water?" this last question was directed at Spock.
"You suspect a form of gene therapy?" Spock asked.
"It seems logical to me," Bones said.
"Fascinating," Spock said, tapping something on his padd.
"Captain," Scotty's voice said from the comm, "unless you're intending to go along with Dr. McCoy to Sickbay, you need to step away."
"Jim," Bones said, pushing him away. "You figure this out."
When he dissolved into a beam of sparkling white light, looking haunted and pained, Jim was still reaching for him.
Jim's chest was heaving in the room that felt suddenly vacant, but he turned and looked at Uhura. "Nyota," he began.
"I'm already on it," she said, pressing the console key. "Chekov?"
"Almost there," the navigator said in a worried tone, his accent heavy. "They have tried to keep us out of their archives, but I am downloading all of the sacred texts and histories as swiftly as possible. I should have them all within the next ten minutes. If you give me a list of the keywords, I can help you sift through them to find the sections for translation."
"I'm on my way," Uhura answered already starting for the door before she turned to look at Jim, realizing that she had not been dismissed. "Captain?"
"Go, Nyota," Jim said. "Please." He turned back to look at Spock. "Gene therapy?"
"Of an ancient variety, yes," Spock said, not looking up from his padd. "Essentially, a viral vector was used to permeate the cell walls and effect change, although it was conceived and utilized as a corrective form. However, its application in this way would be theoretically possible."
"So, if it's a virus," Jim said slowly, "then it would be possible to create an antivirus."
Spock tilted his head, tapping at the padd.
"Spock!" Jim snapped. "Tell me that you can figure out how to fix this."
Spock took in a small breath and looked up. "I will do my best, Jim."
Jim nodded, and put a hand on Spock's shoulder, sorry for snapping at him. "I'll be in Sickbay," he said.
+
Unexpected 3
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And then all the longing Jim felt, and how awesome and loyal he is by making Bones his first priority, no matter what. It really shows the depth of his caring for Bones.
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