Chapter Text
“...a mind meld with bilateral consent and careful preparation can be a very useful tool in certain situations, for example to verify the testify of someone in a hearing if there is otherwise reasonable doubt to it.”
It was 0900 on the academy campus, and the medical students of the current class, including Dr. Leonard McCoy, or Cadet McCoy, as he was officially called nowadays, were busy scribbling notes in theirs PADDs to the newest lecture of “Vulcan biology II”. Most of them were quite interested in the topic of today – a nice change to viruses and diseases – and the rapt, concentrated silence of the cadets listening intently to their lecturer showed how popular anything to do with telepathic abilities was amongst the students. That their lecturer wasn´t actually a Vulcan – there was only one Vulcan professor in the academy as far as Leonard knew, and he hadn´t even met him in person yet, just knew him from hearsay – only added to the suspense of the lecture, since humans tended to make them more story-like.
“Still, a mind meld is somewhat of a double-edged sword and should not be used if there are other, safer ways since it is always a strain on the participants, depending on how experienced the Vulcan is and how good a grip on their emotions the other party has. That depends of course not only on their state of mind but is also dependent on what species they are. Generally, only mind meld´s between Vulcans and those species with a similar emotional control are even a part of mind melds, as other species tend to have a lot more difficulties to stay calm and concentrated during the meld.”
Bones, as his best friend Jim called him so frequently that the nickname had basically replaced his first name even in his own head, felt a small shudder run down his body while listening to professor Graz, but not because of happy excitement. He took a quick look around, checking the other faces, but no one seemed to notice how agitated he was growing, much less mind his little shudder. They all were too absorbed into the lecture. Good, at least he wasn´t embarrassing himself.
“If the emotions of one of the participants of the meld are too turbulent, it can unsettle even the most experienced Vulcans, making it necessary for them to meditate for hours afterwards.”
Bones pressed his eyes together, trying to drown out all this talking about mind melds, but as much as the lecture made him uncomfortable, he couldn´t help but soak up every damn word. He might have looked through every digital book he stumbled upon with the phrase “mind meld” mentioned in a footnote from the academy´s library, but there might still be something he didn´t know about it, especially since it often gave him a headache just going halfway through a book written by some Vulcan on a good day and the library was so extensive that he couldn´t possibly have seen even half the books that actually covered the topic yet.
“But it is much worse for the recipient of the mind meld, if the Vulcan is inexperienced and cannot fully control the meld. There is rarely a thing more dangerous than an uncontrolled mind meld and the potential of harm is enormous. This is one of the reasons why Vulcan children are trained from a very young age to strictly control their emotions and they will also start early on to train short, carefully guided mind melds with their parents and later with their teachers, to some extent, to make sure they can end a mind meld before it spins out of control.”
Bones wasn´t surprised by what he heard, although it did nothing to ease his queasiness. And that was only talking about mind melds with explicit consent...
As if she had heard him thinking, the teacher went on, talking in a no-nonsense manner to the cadets, her voice indicating that this was something truly sinister they shouldn´t make any jokes about.
“A whole other level of potential harm is opening, when we talk about forced mind melds. If you ever in the future have the misfortune of getting a patient suffering from that, you should immediately consult a Vulcan medic as a consult, as even for them, it can be difficult to undo any damage inflicted, not to speak of those of minor experience such as we humans are, in matters of the mind, comparing to them.”
Bones shuddered again, paling a little. It sounded like a bad thing not to do anything after a forced meld, illusory even to hope that things would just go back to how they were, given enough time. Dammit.
“Because of the serenity of such a thing – for Vulcans this is the equivalent of the most horrid crime – there are only few cases of forced mind melds recorded and they have been most severely punished, still getting the highest penalty possible in the law of the United federation of the planets.”
Bones took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.
“One example from 40 years back shows how dramatic a forced mind meld can end. In that case, the victim, a young Vulcan, was first showing signs of trauma and PTSD, quickly added by an increasing madness. Despite various treatments from Vulcan healers, the victim died after four years...”
Panic gripped at Bones heart and he didn´t heard the rest of what the professor was saying over the rush of his blood and the dense fog of fear that was suddenly surrounding him. His breath hitched and he instinctively drew in his shoulders and hid his face in his hands, trying not to completely loose his shit in the middle of a classroom surrounded by cadets all younger than himself.
He must not have done a stellar job, because suddenly, the cadet to his right was poking him and he flinched together, looking up only to see the professor stand much closer to him than she previously had, staring at him in worry.
“Are you not well, Cadet McCoy? Do you need to go outside?” she asked, watching him. Dammit, now the eyes of every single cadet in the room were upon him, just what he had wanted to prevent.
He tried to smile although it probably looked more like a shaky grimace. “I´m alright, sorry ma’am, just a little...” he tried to find an appropriate word, but his brain felt completely empty, so he just trailed off.
Dammit, could he make this any more embarrassing? Maybe it would be better if he indeed got out of here...
“Actually, I think a little fresh air would help, I am feeling a little queasy,” he admitted, his face probably tinged red by now.
“Sure, do you need someone to go out with you?” she asked, still sounding concerned.
“No, no, it´s not so bad,” he assured her, hastily picking up his bag. “I´m sorry for the disturbance,” he added guiltily.
“Don´t be,” the professor brushed off his apology with a swing of her arm, moving back towards her usual spot, picking her lecture back up where she had left, while keeping an eye on him.
She probably thought I might faint in here, Bones thought, the embarrassment at least taking some the edge of his panic.
He shuffled out of the room as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, which sadly was still gaining a lot of attention, and took a deep breath of relieve once the door was swishing close behind him and he was in the empty corridor. He was still shaky, cold and hot at the same time, and his head was feeling like someone had lit a fire in it.
“Dammit,” he coursed heartily, stumbling along the floor for a while and tiredly sliding down a wall, once he felt he had gained enough distance to that classroom, so someone taking a bathroom break wouldn´t see him crashed down right in front of it. They were in the medical wing, of course, so he did not vent too far to not stumble upon a doctor.
“Fuck this world,” he whispered, finally allowing himself to lose some of his countenance, and threw his arms around his knees, laying his head on top of them. He was over the verge of a panic attack and he knew it. His breaths came quick and shallow and he knew he should do some goddamn breath technics to calm himself, but damn, it all was so messed up. He was messed up... “Dammit, I don´t wanna die or go crazy,” he thought, more shudders running through his body.
He should not linger here, changes were high that someone might stumble upon him and be alarmed, but damn, he wasn´t in any good condition to walk across the open campus towards Jim and his dorm yet, either. He needed to regain some control first.
“Calm the fuck down,” he whispered to himself, still huddled to a ball, keeping his head down and his eyes firmly closed to keep any liquid from gathering there. Why was it so hard to get a grip on himself?
Belatedly, he noticed that steps were nearing his position, and not the hesitant steps of a cadet, but the firm, confident steps of some higher up.
Too late not to be seen, he didn´t look up but kept his curled-up position, hoping that however was coming closer, would not care about a cadet sitting on the floor and hopefully just pass him, so that he could continue losing his shit without anyone to witness his mental breakdown.
Of course, that kind of luck wasn´t with him and he didn´t even have the luck of it being someone who didn´t recognize him.
“Cadet McCoy?” a familiar voice asked him and damn, did it have to be Dr. Boyce, his mentor? He didn´t wanted him to think he was unstable. It might endanger the reputation he was trying to build, and as a doctor, reputation was everything if you wanted to get a pick of the good postings.
He made a non-commitment noise, lifting his head the tiniest bit to stare at him with enough disdain to hopefully scare him away. It didn´t work.
“Damn, you look like shit, what happened?” Dr. Boyce asked instead, kneeing down beside him.
“No’ing ‘appened,” Bones mumbled, with a groan. Dr. Boyce wasn´t impressed by that, if anything, he only furrowed his forehead more, and, after thinking for a second, seemed to come to some sort of conclusion of his own.
“Come on, let´s get you somewhere more comfortable,” he said to him in a still too soft voice, taking his arm and slowly standing up, leaving Bones no other choice than to stand up with him if he didn´t wanted to embarrass himself further.
Bones groaned; he could imagine what Boyce had in mind with “more comfortable”.
“I´m alright,” he started, sounding short of breath admittedly, but Boyce firmly shook his head before he could even finish. “You don´t look like it,” he simply said.
Sighing, and still trying to calm down his breath, he let the head of the medical division lead him to his workplace, where he of fucking course had a little patient room with a single biobed adjudged directly to his office, how very convenient. At least it was by far better than dragging him into the main medical centre, where a lot more people would see him. Not that that option was far off, in case Boyce would find something treat-worthy.
“Sit down,” he commanded, once they were there, letting go of Bones arm to grab a medical scanner off the shelf right behind the door.
Bones grimaced and sat down, looking stubbornly on the ground while Boyce waved the little scanner all over him.
He crossed his arms, not only to keep some warmth to his still cold feeling body, but also in an attempt meagre to supress his shudders.
Boyce took one look at Bones still slightly shivering form though and turned back towards the shelf, taking a warm blanket out of one of the compartments. He turned back around towards him and wrapped it around him in quick movements, before he could protest.
“Thanks,” he grumbled, instinctively hugging himself tighter into the soft blanket, thankful for the warmth the soft fabricate was providing, even if it felt exaggerated to be treated like that. If he hadn´t been embarrassed before, he would be now at the latest.
“No need to feel embarrassed,” of course Dr. Boyce could read him too damn well. Only then did he look at the results of his scanner, frowning his forehead in concentration and then looking at him calmly but still with a hint of worry in his eyes, which wasn´t hard for Bones to detect since he had been working quite closely with him in his practical shifts, learning from the best whenever he could, while Boyce was always happy about the additional help from a cadet who actually had worked as a doctor before and who could assist him in complicated surgical procedures.
Bones meanwhile was working on slowing his breathing. At least he wasn´t on the verge of hyperventilating anymore.
“You were having a panic attack, like I suspected,” the doctor´s verdict came without surprise.
Bones just nodded, without offering an explanation, although Boyce would probably ask him about it before he would let him go.
The CMO grabbed a hypo next, “you know what I´m about to give you?” he asked, out of habit checking whether his med student was remembering the correct treatment for himself.
Bones answered immediately, without having to think about it, since he had administered it to patients himself more than enough times to knew the medicine by heart, and Boyce nodded in satisfaction, while hypoing him in the neck. A slight hiss signalled the release of the drug and Bones felt his body relax and his breathing became deeper.
“Thank you, doc, I´m feeling much better already,” he said softly, closing his eyes for a few seconds as he felt himself getting a little drowsy.
But he shouldn´t display too much tiredness or Boyce might keep him there all day. He ripped open his eyes again, maybe a little too wide since Boyce looked at him in amusement, and made a move to brush of the blanket, but Boyce was having none of it.
“Not so fast, Leonard,” he laid a hand on his blanked-covered shoulder, stopping him from unwrapping himself.
“First, I´d like to hear what had you so shaken,” he asked mildly, looking at him in a way that made him feel like he was looking inside his soul. It was a look that he had seen him use on many patients before, and they all talked when he gave them that look, feeling touched by the depth of it. It was only one of the many reasons why Dr. Boyce made such an extraordinary doctor.
The look, together with his use of Bones first name gave him the feeling it would be impossibly rude not to answer. Dammit, Bones didn´t wanted to tell him, but what could he say? His head still felt shockingly empty, so there was no way he would come up with a sufficient excuse. He might as well tell him enough of the truth to be hopefully satisfied. Bones sighed.
“It was just, I was in a lecture and the prof said something which made remember some... unpleasant incident from the spring ship posting,” he said with a low voice. All cadets, medical or command or other division, had a six-month mandatory ship posting following the first three semesters.
It was the beginning of his fifth semester now, so his posting hadn´t been long ago and it tended to last a little longer than the normal end of semester, so it had only been weeks ago. He shivered again just thinking about it. Not that the ship or the work upon it itself had been so bad, he had rather enjoyed the challenge of it (apart from the aviophobia, which had acted up quite a bit at the beginning), but that one away mission...
“What happened on that ship? You were on the Mayflower, right? Was it an accident I haven´t heard about?” the CMO asked, still scrutinizing him with his eyes.
“It wasn´t an accident,” Bones sighed, drawing his shoulders in a little.
“Someone did something, then? Did you report it?” Boyce asked, his voice turning sharp. Dr. Boyce was a man of ethics – he would let hell lose if he got wind about someone harassing or mistreating a colleague or, even worse, someone under the culprit´s own rank.
Bones quickly shook his head, trying to calm him. “No one from the crew. It wasn´t even on the ship,” he hastily told him, before silently cursing himself for telling so much. They were getting dangerously close to what happened.
“They let you participate in an away mission? The trip to space port 14? I heard there was some sort of hiccup about that, but as far as I knew, the delivery of the medical equipment went smoothly?”
Boyce obviously was well in formed in the space gossip, plus, the CMO of the USS Mayflower was friends with him as Bones had heard from the man itself, when Bones had first come abord the Mayflower. Bones sighed.
“The delivery went smoothly, yeah. It was where we accidentally beamed after, that everything went to shit, well, at least for my part,” he spilled out, before looking down, not wanting to revisit that part, and pulling his shoulders in even more. A bell dinged in the hallway and he startled, surprised by the sudden sound, signalling the end of the current lectures.
Boyce ignored the bell and frowned at him more deeply, clearly waiting for him to continue.
Bones took another breath and thought, what the fuck, he won´t let me go until I´ve told everything anyway, I´ve told too much already and if I don´t tell him the rest, than he will ask the Mayflower´s captain, which would be bad since then it would be discovered that he more than glazed over a part of his mission report from that day and he might get into trouble for that.
Recording to his report, which he had written together in a half-dazed state of mind, not really being himself, all that happened was that they had accidentally landed in a parallel universe for a short while, on a ship not unlike the Mayflower, until they had figured out how to return.
That ship had been the double, duplicate, or whatever you would call it of not the Mayflower, but the Enterprise, the famous flagship of the Fleet and apparently, in that universe, that ship had been just as famous, just in a much darker way.
He had then, according to his log, been separated from the rest of the away team for merely a few minutes, just to make sure the unconscious first officer of the ship, a Vulcan, would be making a recovery. He just couldn´t have let him lying there like that, possibly dying, not when he knew he would be able to help and heal. He had been damn stupid and naive.
The captain had let only let him be alone with the Vulcan, cause apparently, it was the double of their own very highly respected and only Vulcan professor in the academy and he had said, “if there is everyone still decent on this cursed ship, it´s Spock´s double. Make it quick and then join us in the transport room.”
“It will be easier once you told someone, just talk it off your chest,” Boyce said in a soft voice, when Bones, lost in his dark thoughts, wasn´t answering for too long, guessing correctly that he at least hadn´t been exactly forthcoming with his report of whatever had happened.
“a’right, I´ll try,” he said, somewhat unwillingly, and Boyce nodded in encouragement.
“After the captain had ordered to beam us back to the Mayflower, that wasn´t where we landed. Instead, we found ourselves in the bowels of another tin trap. And very soon, it became obvious that the crew there wasn`t exactly welcoming,” Bones told with a grimace.
Boyce listened with rapt attention, but glanced at the biobed´s display now and then to check that Bones heartrate wasn´t getting too high again.
“Also, their uniforms were strange. A bit like Starfleet uniforms, but different. The crew was human, though. Everyone was quite puzzled by it, but we didn´t had the time to really explore much or find out why. The captain and security officers managed to stun the approaching crew members, and then the science officers did all they could to replicate the condition which they thought landed us there – I didn´t understand much of that – while I was making sure that the none of the crew was in critical condition and the captain talked to their Vulcan crew member,”
– at this point, Boyce rose his eyebrows in surprise –
“...the only one that seemed to be somewhat sane, and apparently, he looked just like some other Vulcan that the captain knew and respected, he even called him his double. Although, if you ask me, maybe he was exaggerating a bit, I mean, a lot of Vulcans do look quite similar, what with their bowlcuts and shiny hair, and all wearing the same darn clothing...” he drifted off a bit, turning back to the topic at hand, only when he noticed Boyces look of half-amusement, half sternness.
”But then our science officers came back, and, thinking that the captain was in danger, they stunned the Vulcan, all at the same time and from a close distance. He fell like a rock, of course.”
Dr. Boyce grimaced at the description. He knew best how dangerous multi stunning could be, let alone from a close distance. Bones wasn´t able to feel the same sympathy though – not after what that monster had done to him.
He barely repressed another shudder (and only thanks to the blanket still wrapped around him), before continuing in a bleak voice:
“The science officers announced that they´d done their thing and that we should be able to beam back to the Mayflower, but I said I would check him over, at least make sure he´ll live, I couldn´t just leave him like that.”
Dr. Boyce nodded understandingly, waiting for him to continue, while Bones took a few breaths, but not pressing him.
“Anyway, the captain agreed, but said I should hurry and then come after them to the transport room. They made sure that no one else could surprise me, first, and then went ahead to get ready for the beaming process and wait for me.”
Now came the hard part, and he bit his lip in a fit of anxiousness, something so untypical for him that Boyce’ expression grew more worried again, and he quicky thought what to say next, wanting to get over with it. His belly felt queasy, a heavy clump seemed to sit right in it. Should he really tell him? He might be slowly dying if he didn´t... But damn, he also didn´t wanted to know how long he had until he would go bonkers or die and the chances that Boyce, or anyone else had the means to help him were slim, was he to believe what little he had found out in the books he had read.
Supposedly, he needed at least a Vulcan healer, and they didn´t had one here. They had a Vulcan, sure, but as far as Bones knew, professor Spork, or Spott or whatever was his name, was teaching tactical strategies or something the like and he had never seen him step even a foot into the medical wing. In fact, he had hardly gotten a glance at him at all since he started at the academy. He knew he was somewhat famous, sure, but he wouldn´t even be able to tell anyone what his face looked like, he just wasn´t interested in remembering some famous or not whoever, not if that person wasn´t relevant to his own studies, which he was not.
And in the more recent time, he had turned around at just a whiff of shiny black hair somewhere in sight – he wasn´t feeling ready to be around ANY Vulcan, or even anyone else why might look somewhat similar to his attacker, not so soon after....
“It was a shit show,” he finally spilled, “once we were alone and I gave him a hypo, that Vulcan psycho sprang up from his bed like he never had been unconscious in the first place and just grabbed me like I weighted nothing and had me pinned against the nearest wall in a second,” he gulped out, shuddering, and Boyce rubbed his arm in a calming gesture, his worry lines growing deeper as Bones went on.
“Then he... he grabbed my head right and left, and he was suddenly inside my head,” Bones pressed out, making Boyce gasp in horror, “I... I felt his presence there, and he was putting scenes in my mind, terrible scenes,” he stuttered, his heart racing again despite the medicine, and cold beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
He had a quick backflash to one of the scenes he had seen: the Vulcan holding a young man in a steel grip, while a crazed looking doctor, was torturing that man, with glee in his eyes. That this doctor had looked disturbingly similar to himself, if quite a bit older, was maybe the worst part, it was like watching himself torture someone... Later, that same doctor in the Vulcan´s quarters, submitting to him, letting him have fun with his body in the most sickening way, a terrible scene that he couldn´t get out of his mind again, no matter how much he tried. Also, it was terrible how rough and ...degrading the Vulcan officer was handling him in many of those scenes.
Because of the similarity, it was like he felt a sick connection to that doctor, but that was crazy, that doctor was evil and crazy and it couldn´t possibly be him, not in a million years, but still he looked SO MUCH like himself that he couldn´t help but feel like the Vulcan was showing him some utterly disturbing future scenarios or where these scenes truly memories of him?
He couldn´t wrap his head around the how and why, but then again, there was no sense in even trying, since he wouldn´t ever step back a foot in that evil parallel universe or whatever it was.
Anyway, he didn´t told Boyce about the resembling – or he might judge him crazy – but forced himself to tell the rest of the story, his voice stuttering:
“I tr..tried not to see it, I really tried, but I couldn´t do anything, it was like a flood, I was f..forced to watch everything... And then, kind of at the same time, I don´t know how he did that, there were other memories, from me, and I knew he was watching them, taking them apart, and I could do nothing at all to stop him doing it. It was like he searched for something, but I don´t know what, and he didn´t found it, or I think he didn´t, because I felt him getting angrier, I was getting angrier, too, and it hurt so fucking much... And then s..suddenly, after what felt like ages, it stopped, but my head still hurt like a shuttlecraft had landed on it and I was dizzy and confused and before I could even attempt to get my bearings back, he dragged me behind him towards the transport room, telling me to act as if nothing happened, and I don´t know why, but it felt like I had to do as he said while he was in my presence, or maybe I was just too dazed and numb, I hardly heard a word of what was spoken between him and the captain, before we were beamed up,” he shuddered from the dark memory, forcing the words out in a rush.
“And then someone asked if anyone was injured and I wanted to say that I should better check myself over, but somehow, I couldn´t. I was still dazed, and then the captain said no one was injured, all fine, “we were hardly there for five minutes,” to the Mayflower´s CMO, and that h..he wouldn´t need to check anyone, and everyone should call it a day,” Bones pressed out one sentence after the other in one go, until his breath was gone and he needed to gasp for air, dizzy from telling Boyce about all of it, much more that he had intended to tell him, but it all kind of needed to get out once he had started.
If Boyce had looked worried before, while Bones talked, his expression now flashed shortly with anger, making Bones lean away from him in instinct, and then to one Bones had never seen on him before. He looked terrified, a little spooked even. It certainly did nothing to help him with his new bout of anxiousness. It unsettled him further, how much his mentor was shocked by what happened.
If he, who was so much more experienced than any other doctor around here, was that much horrified, there was no way that all this could end well for him, right?
Bones involuntarily made a sound of distress, half sob, half gasp, that at least seemed to shake the doctor out of his shell-shocked state. Not too early, as just then some alarm on the biobed beeped, picking up on the distressed state of its patient.
“I´m sorry,” Dr. Boyce gasped, and Bones wasn´t sure if he meant not paying enough attention to his vitals, or the horrible experience he just told him about, or both, but anyway, he padded his arm once more, now pure sorrow in his normally so friendly and optimistic looking eyes, and stood up from where he had been sitting on the edge of the biobed.
Boyce then reached for another hypo, one that would make him even more drowsy, no doubt. He fumbled with it, preparing the right dose, while Bones hastily tried to dry his eyes, which turned out difficult with both of his arms still tucked under the blanket.
He forced one of them out of it, quickly brushed over his eyes and had just put his arm back down when Boyce turned back around, leaning over him once to give him the second hypo.
“I´m sorry if this will make you fall asleep, but I can´t give you another dose of Apastun and you certainly won´t be visiting any more lectures today anyway,” he decided, showing him the hypo, before he pressed it against his skin. Yup, it was just the one Bones would´ve chosen himself. And this time he didn´t even test him for knowledge, he really must be worried... Dammit all...
He nodded grimly, the day couldn´t get any better anyway, so he might as well sleep through it. There was just one small thing that was bothering him about it.
“Don´t you need to keep the bed free? I can sleep it off in my dorm, if I can get there, that is. I could call Jim, he would be happy to get me there,” he mumbled, half asleep already.
Doctor Boyce gave a dry laugh, he knew a lot of stories about Jim, many of them from Bones himself.
“I don´t doubt that for a second, McCoy. Still, it´s best if you stay here, where I can monitor you and don´t you worry about occupying the bed, the changes of stumbling about another cadet in distress today are slim, and even if it would happen, you know that the clinic is pretty close,” he ended with some forced sounding humour, pressing a gentle but strong hand against Bones´ upper body, to make him lie down.
Bones didn´t have the strength to resist him, and lying down was in fact sounding more and more inviting, so there he was, his head hitting the soft mattress and his eyes closing basically by themselves. Jim would be worried when he wouldn´t show up in the “federation laws” lecture (not that he would miss that one much, it was horribly dry and theoretic), which must´ve started already, even if he overheard the second bell, he thought dimly.
“Oh, and don´t even think about leaving when you wake up and I´m not in the office. You´re staying here for the foreseeable future, until I release you, is that clear?” he asked, and Bones groaned, but nodded reluctantly, knowing that he couldn´t just ignore an order from someone as high up the chain as Dr. Boyce. His eyelids were growing heavy and it became harder and harder to keep them open, so he closed them.
“Wait, I´ll get you a pillow,” Dr. Boyce said more softly, and right, he didn´t had one under his head, but before the doctor even got to his shelf, Bones was out like a light.