Was he ever. If he were here, I could probably identify every scar he wouldn't sit still long enough for me to heal and tell you what year it was from.
Starfleet'd been after me for a while. Ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce, so off I went.
[ He's found that that's a good solution around these parts. ]
Rainbow coins. [ Here are a few. ] I'll cover you. Least I can do for a familiar face.
They'd been after me for a while. Things were a little more stressful in my timeline, what with time-traveling Romulans blowing the shit out of the Kelvin and then disappearing.
[ If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? ]
Your timeline... [gets another exasperated headshake.] It's a wonder you're alive. Time traveling Romulans, adolescents steering the ship, planets getting blown to bits...
[That booze had better get here quickly.]
And now you're stuck here. You've got some luck and not a lick of it's good.
They'll be interesting after you live through 'em.
[Oh, look. Their combined grumpiness did encourage quick service. Thank the maker for that. He pays the woman with that rainbow money, slides younger-him a bottle, and wastes no time in starting in on his own.]
I had to get him on the ship somehow. Giving him the symptoms worked out until he had the reaction. Luckily we were on the ship by then.
[ A lot of things were lucky, really, no matter how much bad luck he and this other McCoy know he has.
Twenty. Goddamn. He's only 31, and this other him is three years into a five year mission and has a daughter. There's a low whistle, appreciative, before he takes a drink. ]
Trust Jim to make any plan go south, on purpose or not.
[McCoy nods absently, mood going from grumpy to grumpy with a side of regret.]
She is. Smart as a whip--can't imagine where she got that brain of hers. I hear from her every now and then. Somehow she's forgiven me for being the worst father in the galaxy.
[He glares at his bourbon.]
You've got kids younger than Jo on that ship of yours... kids you might end up stitching back together. I don't know why they station 'em on a ship when they're so young.
Had to chase him all over the damn ship to patch him up, too. 'course, turned out he kept us all from dying, so that wasn't too bad.
[ He knows that look. ]
Kids are like that, I suppose.
[ He wouldn't know. And it feels... strange, trying to comfort his other self and knowing that anything he says probably won't work. This is, after all, him. ]
Sort of figure the likes of Chekov wouldn't have it any other way, but after what happened... None of us would be on a ship, usually. They figure we proved ourselves.
[He just shrugs and shakes his head, working up to a good brood--figures that other-him won't mind.]
You prove yourselves and you all get the honor of going right back up into that vacuum? Some honor. I'd like to see the politicians shuttled into space, see how they like it.
Youngest Starfleet captain in history, some of the late George Kirk, a young crew -- most of which were still cadets -- saving Earth. The only ship to survive going out to Vulcan. We're symbols now, got to look good to keep people from freaking out so they can meet their recruitment quota.
[ There's a snort into his bourbon. ]
One more reporter asks me what it's like to take a Centaurian slug off someone's brainstem and I'll be askin' if they'd like to find out.
Wait a minute there. George Kirk is dead? And I know for a fact that I didn't get into Centaurian slugs--outside of med school, anyway--until I was a helluva lot older than you.
[That's an exaggeration, but this him looks so damn young.]
He and his wife were out on the Kelvin when the Romulans came back in time. They opened fire. George Kirk was made captain, his wife went into labor and had Jim in the escape shuttle. He stayed behind to make sure they got away.
[ It's weird, talking about Jim's father like this, and he pauses to take a drink. ]
The Romulans used them on Pike to try and get security codes.
[Pike too? McCoy can't even wrap his head around how different this other McCoy's timeline is; he makes the mirror universe sound downright familiar by comparison. Momentarily lost for an answer, he consults his bourbon.]
This is like looking into a mirror and talking to a stranger.
[He's still digesting that information about the senior Kirk and Chris Pike, listening more intently to this other him than he was at the beginning of their conversation, not shrugging off the things he says that are flat-out contrary to what McCoy thinks he knows.]
Now I know I'm a doctor and not a temporal physicist and I figure the same's true for you, but how'd those Romulans change reality like that? Everyone being sent up into space so soon, everything playing out differently...
[That encourages a not wholly un-Vulcan-like raise of an eyebrow.]
In the future -- your future -- a star's gonna go supernova. Spock told the Romulans he'd help, but the star swallowed up Romulus right before he got there. He put some red matter into the star, created a black hole. A mining ship of Romulans was nearby, and their captain... well, he'd just watched his planet break in half.
They got sucked into the black hole, went back in time. First the Romulans, where they found the Kelvin and blew the shit out of it. Your Spock didn't come through until about twenty-five years later on our end, though it was just seconds for him.
[ At least, that's what he's gathered from Jim, from the reports. ]
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no subject
I never knew Jim when he was real young, but I figured he was trouble. What I don't get is what you were doing at the Academy.
Physics? Chekov?
[He'll just... shake his head. At everything. Ever.]
Rainbow coins.
no subject
Starfleet'd been after me for a while. Ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce, so off I went.
[ He's found that that's a good solution around these parts. ]
Rainbow coins. [ Here are a few. ] I'll cover you. Least I can do for a familiar face.
no subject
I didn't think to go right to space after that fiasco. Across the country, sure, but the old lady didn't exile me from the planet.
[He doesn't trust this rainbow money. Fortunately, he does still trust himself.]
I'll pay you back sooner or later. You having anything?
[McCoy gets the attention of a pretty girl who looks like she works there and requests a bottle of bourbon. They are so far beyond mere glasses.]
no subject
They'd been after me for a while. Things were a little more stressful in my timeline, what with time-traveling Romulans blowing the shit out of the Kelvin and then disappearing.
[ If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? ]
The same.
[ It's both an answer and his own order. ]
no subject
Your timeline... [gets another exasperated headshake.] It's a wonder you're alive. Time traveling Romulans, adolescents steering the ship, planets getting blown to bits...
[That booze had better get here quickly.]
And now you're stuck here. You've got some luck and not a lick of it's good.
no subject
Trust me, I've got no idea how the hell I've made it this far in one piece. The next five years'll be interesting.
[ Considering how grumpy they look, it probably will. ]
This last weekend, the place convinced me that a sixteen-year-old from Victorian times was my daughter.
no subject
They'll be interesting after you live through 'em.
[Oh, look. Their combined grumpiness did encourage quick service. Thank the maker for that. He pays the woman with that rainbow money, slides younger-him a bottle, and wastes no time in starting in on his own.]
Was she anything like Jo?
no subject
Have you been through them already, then?
[ He's having a hard time telling just how much older this McCoy is, probably because... well, he's never been this McCoy. ]
We never did have kids.
[ And that hurt, really, because he'd wanted to. ]
no subject
Three out of five and I'm still kickin'. Seems my timeline's a safer place than yours; I'm not too worried about myself.
[This McCoy can't figure out why this other McCoy isn't where he was when he was that age. It's easier to drink.]
Could be for the best. Leaving Joanna with that mother of hers... that hurt like nothing else ever will.
She'd be coming on twenty, my Jo. She's off studying medicine on Cerberus.
no subject
[ A lot of things were lucky, really, no matter how much bad luck he and this other McCoy know he has.
Twenty. Goddamn. He's only 31, and this other him is three years into a five year mission and has a daughter. There's a low whistle, appreciative, before he takes a drink. ]
She sounds like a smart one.
no subject
[McCoy nods absently, mood going from grumpy to grumpy with a side of regret.]
She is. Smart as a whip--can't imagine where she got that brain of hers. I hear from her every now and then. Somehow she's forgiven me for being the worst father in the galaxy.
[He glares at his bourbon.]
You've got kids younger than Jo on that ship of yours... kids you might end up stitching back together. I don't know why they station 'em on a ship when they're so young.
no subject
[ He knows that look. ]
Kids are like that, I suppose.
[ He wouldn't know. And it feels... strange, trying to comfort his other self and knowing that anything he says probably won't work. This is, after all, him. ]
Sort of figure the likes of Chekov wouldn't have it any other way, but after what happened... None of us would be on a ship, usually. They figure we proved ourselves.
Plus there's all the damn politics involved.
no subject
[He just shrugs and shakes his head, working up to a good brood--figures that other-him won't mind.]
You prove yourselves and you all get the honor of going right back up into that vacuum? Some honor. I'd like to see the politicians shuttled into space, see how they like it.
no subject
[ Of course he doesn't mind. ]
Youngest Starfleet captain in history, some of the late George Kirk, a young crew -- most of which were still cadets -- saving Earth. The only ship to survive going out to Vulcan. We're symbols now, got to look good to keep people from freaking out so they can meet their recruitment quota.
[ There's a snort into his bourbon. ]
One more reporter asks me what it's like to take a Centaurian slug off someone's brainstem and I'll be askin' if they'd like to find out.
no subject
Wait a minute there. George Kirk is dead? And I know for a fact that I didn't get into Centaurian slugs--outside of med school, anyway--until I was a helluva lot older than you.
[That's an exaggeration, but this him looks so damn young.]
no subject
[ It's weird, talking about Jim's father like this, and he pauses to take a drink. ]
The Romulans used them on Pike to try and get security codes.
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This is like looking into a mirror and talking to a stranger.
no subject
[ He considers his own bourbon for a long moment. ]
Your Spock was there, too.
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Now I know I'm a doctor and not a temporal physicist and I figure the same's true for you, but how'd those Romulans change reality like that? Everyone being sent up into space so soon, everything playing out differently...
[That encourages a not wholly un-Vulcan-like raise of an eyebrow.]
My Spock? How'd he get mixed up in this?
no subject
They got sucked into the black hole, went back in time. First the Romulans, where they found the Kelvin and blew the shit out of it. Your Spock didn't come through until about twenty-five years later on our end, though it was just seconds for him.
[ At least, that's what he's gathered from Jim, from the reports. ]
no subject
How far in the future are you talking? Last I checked, Romulus wasn't in any danger and I've never even heard of this red matter.
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According to your Spock, it's synthetic. The Vulcan Science Academy created it.
no subject
[He shakes his head.] Trust the Vulcans to toy with something that creates black holes.
no subject
[ He sighs slightly. ] Yeah, well, doubt they'll be able to now.