Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Chapter 7:

Friday, April 14th, 2243
Malone Road Dormitory, Room 17
Starfleet Engineering Academy
Belfast, Ireland, Earth

The shuttle was due to pick him up at the terminal down the road in an hour, and Corry was packed to go. He had everything clean, neat and organized. All that was left was to carry his two bags and his one carryon out, present Security with his transfer orders by the gate, and walk away for good.

It sounded so simple, but it wasn't.

It was supposed to be simple. He wasn't supposed to second-guess this. He’d worked really hard to even convince headquarters he should be allowed to transfer, and it was stupid to wait around any longer than he had.

He sure as hell wasn't supposed to be feeling like this, like he had just-- just set fire to a hard-won bridge.

Sweeping his half of the floor with a broom, Cor was stalling and knew it, making excuses not to go yet.  That he was waiting for his roommate -- former roommate? -- to come back so he could-- maybe explain or patch things up, or apologize, or--

Not that Corry had been wrong. Oh no, he was right about everything that he said. He had to be right about it, because if he wasn't, then he'd just done something unspeakable. And he wasn't capable of being that cruel; even at his angriest, he'd never once turned around and tried to really hurt someone. And Scotty was still his best friend, no matter how machine-absorbed and odd he was.

And now-- now Scotty was probably off fuming about all this.

Finally unable to stand it in his peripheral vision, Cor dropped the broom and picked up the model of the Lady Grey; her main mast had snapped and it caused all the rigging that had been so painstakingly put into place to snarl up into a bird’s nest.

He shook his head to himself, and didn't stop shaking it, as he tried and failed to put the pieces back together, a futile task without both glue and patience.  Anyway, Scotty had to be off fuming. It really wasn't hard to offend him, and of course he'd be offended by this, and he’d maybe even be right to be, but that was all it was. He probably headed back to the real Lady Grey, even, to go bury himself back into work.

Had to be.

Scowling, Cor set the broken model on Scotty’s dresser, then picked up and threw the broom into the corner, pacing a few steps back and forth. Why did they have to get into a fight, instead of just saying 'see ya later?' like everyone else? That way, in a month or two, they could have met up in a bar somewhere, tossed back a few drinks and it would have been just like it always was; joking and laughing, being silly and calling each other chicken over whatever they possibly could.

There wouldn't be the accusing silence that faced him now.

"Shut up," Corry whispered, as if someone had said something. But there was a reason that he'd fought back like he had.  And it wasn't like Scotty was innocent of any wrongdoing; he had spent the last couple of months completely absorbed into working on the Lady Grey, instead of taking a minute and listening. He'd been down there day and night, not even trying to be a good friend, just working on that ship like it was the only thing in the world, the only thing that meant anything, as if somehow--

--as if somehow that ship could make up for Corry being lost in medical books, snappish and impatient and emotionally absent, when he wasn't literally physically absent.

For the first time, Corry began to understand what had been going through his roommate's mind, and for the first time, he began to try to see himself as Scotty might have seen him lately.  To wonder what it must have felt like, being confronted with one’s best friend as a half-absent ghost, who only showed up long enough to be short-tempered.  Who just took for granted--

Cor looked into his mirror, nearly having to force himself to do it, and when he did, something inside of him cracked so hard that his hands started trembling.

What he saw there-- the anger on his face, in his eyes.  The bitter twist of his mouth.  What he saw there was-- was what?  

Miserable.

Was what?

Mean.

And what had he just done with it?

There was nothing-- not career, not anything worth this.  A sick feeling creeping into his veins and twisting in his stomach, he grabbed his coat and pulled it on, then dashed out the door.

Maybe it wasn't too late to stop this bridge from becoming ash.

His feet had it in for him. Still stunned and bewildered, Scotty wasn't even thinking of where he was walking.  He just was. Where didn't matter anymore, or even why, though his feet seemed to know where they wanted to take him, and that was back to the shipyards.

He’d stumbled away from the fence in no particular direction and with no particular plan; now, he still had none of those things, just muscle-memory leading him to the same place he’d been walking now for months.  As if he hadn't had enough heartache there.

But it didn't matter, because at least there he would be able to get in out of the cold, misting rain, crawl up onto the Lady Grey, and hopefully sleep through the next decade or so in peace.  Finding somewhere even peripherally safe had become his sole concern in life all over again.  Beyond that just-- didn’t exist.

Belfast was quiet. It was a heavy quiet, almost tangible in its weight. The streets were slick from water, black pools on a black road; a black world altogether. No moonlight shining through the clouds, and even the street lights and business lights didn't cast so far as they normally did, cut off by the mist. Back at the Academy, the dorms were winding down and everyone was going to bed, and in the industrial district, no one was out and about. No one passed him on the bridge.

The shipyards were just as silent. So far, Scotty had been the only one who actually stayed there into the deep night hours; in the daytime, the entire area was filled with the sounds of industry and shipbuilding. The students who had projects, the Harland & Wolff employees building dyna-carriers in the massive berths down the way.

Not now, though. Now it was a place best suited for ghosts and emotionally exhausted cadets.

Except-- the air tasted strange.

It pinged in his subconscious, just like the monitor turning off had when Corry had found out about his father. It wasn't a feeling that slammed into him, but it was still enough to make him take notice. An uneasy feeling; something was wrong. Instinctively, even on the edge of dropping, he knew something was wrong.

He didn't stop walking, but he did manage to focus on that. Before, he'd known fairly quickly what it was that had disturbed him enough to register, but this time there was no one to tell him. Frowning, Scotty picked his pace up a notch or two, trying to reconcile in his head what could have given him pause like that. It had to be something.

Crossing around the side of the slip three down from his, he tested the air like an animal might, trying to gauge what was off about it. The mist was there-- that was normal. The salt water, it was ever present and one of the constants in his life. It was something else, something that didn't belong; something that he, being only human, had a hard time discerning.

A hint, drifting in and out; a ribbon of it when the air shifted.

...

It was smoke.  It was woodsmoke.

The Lady Grey screamed.

It was a sensation that, later in his life, Scotty would become very good at recognizing; the feeling of knowing something he loved was in danger. It wasn't a literal noise, it existed only in his head, and he had never felt it before now, but in the time between one breath in the next, he knew beyond any doubt that his ship was in danger.

That instant, nerve-shattering realization was enough to set him running before he had time to decide to run.

Skidding around the corner, he was off balance and barely able to recover before he ended up sliding out into the wet concrete. The mist made it hard to see, even with the lights on every berth, and it was only when he got closer that he was able to make out #22, and the wisps of black smoke curling out from under the door.

She was still screaming; a wail that reverberated in his head, bouncing between his ears and completely driving any remnants of thought from his mind; a keening shriek, an alarm, a plea. If he had more experience in getting past that initial terror, he might have seen the black-clad figures vanish into the shadows, and he might have realized what danger he was in, but he didn't.

So Scotty had no way of knowing if it was he who ran into the pipe or if the pipe ran into him, but it caught him across the abdomen hard enough to drop him in his tracks and knock the air from his lungs.

The pain was enough to temporarily get him past the Lady Grey, and more than enough to make him wish, with a calmness that would have been amusing if not for the situation, that he had worn some sort of body-armor. Trying to get a breath of air, he looked up just in time to see the pipe swing again, heard someone shout, and by willpower alone found enough concentration and strength to scramble backwards before the metal could take his head off of his shoulders.

It literally parted his hair, and someone cursed -- apparently his ability to recognize English had suffered -- and still gasping, Scotty dragged himself to his feet, about ready to start swinging back. Pipe or no.

The smell of smoke came on even harder then, though, and the entire fight and any concept of pain fled with it. Not even glancing back at his assailants, he took off for the slip.

Corry was a good several minutes behind, jogging steadily and trying to figure out what to say. He had no idea of the drama that was being played out, aside from his part in it. If he had, he would have run until he collapsed or until he got there, whichever came first, but he didn't know.

All he knew was that he had a lot of self-examination coming, and if he was lucky, he could somehow save a friendship before it was too late.

He did notice a small group of people, though, a tight little knot of bodies walking on the opposite side of the street across the bridge. They were just shadows in the fog and rain and blackness, moving quickly. They were talking, too, but too softly for him to hear, and before he had a chance to take a closer look, they were gone, vanishing into the night.

Noticing them gave him a distinctly uncomfortable feeling. What the heck were people doing out in the industrial district this late? It was too dark to work outside, and most of the shipyards and mills had closed hours ago. There was only one restaurant in that area, a little family place that was open in the day, so they weren't out to eat. Frowning to himself, Cor figured that they must be cadets, out after curfew and trying to remain inconspicuous-- but why in this part of town?

Something wasn't right. He knew very well where most cadets hid out, and it sure wasn't around there. It was as far away from campus as they could reasonably get, far enough that they weren’t automatically bounced out for being cadets, and where there were night clubs made for those who didn't want to be asked questions, where sweethearts could rent a room and where the younger cadets could play pool and have a few beers. Corry had spent his entire first two years in places like that.

Unconsciously he picked his pace up, crossing a dark road and fumbling to key in the entrance code for the Harland & Wolff main personnel gate. Muttering a few obscenities when he punched it in wrong once, then twice, he was just about ready to climb when the lock clicked open.

He knew Scotty well enough to know that he'd be with his ship, down in #22, and though it was a long walk, it wasn't so long that he wanted to turn back. He could always catch the 0300 shuttle and still be able to report on time in Maryland; apologizing couldn't wait like the shuttle ride could.

Not if he wanted to keep his friend.

He was just rehearsing how he was going to explain or mend things when the smell of smoke hit him full in the face like a slap, stopping him cold in his tracks.

He knew instantly: The Lady Grey was on fire.  Whoever was crossing the bridge before was responsible.

Scotty was in there.

Gears turning in his head at a frantic pace, he broke into a run.

The sight of the smoke pouring out of the door when he got there, boiling out black, jolted him so hard he stumbled a pace before finding his stride again. But without a backwards thought, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes and then plunged through the smoke and through the door.

Heat blasted his face; every instinct he had screamed for him to leave.  So, he found the wall and kept pushing on instead.

Logically, he would find Scotty working on the environmental control panel; the panel had to be malfunctioning, or it would have already sounded the alarm, sprayed the suppressant down from the ceilings and out of the walls, suctioned the smoke out-- he had to be there, somewhere in that nightmare.

Eyes closed involuntarily, Cor groped along the wall, trying to remember the layout of the building. The mold loft was up high, and fireproof. The building itself wasn't in any danger; it could withstand several thousand degrees celsius; the schooner was in dire straits, though, and so were they, if they didn't get out of there.

Moving as fast as he dared, he ended up running smack into another body.

Existence had been reduced back to one breath at a time for Scotty.

He didn't remember having a future, a past, a name; all he had was the breath he was holding, hopefully the next one that would replace it, and his hands.

He had always been good at fixing things, working on things; he could do almost anything with a thought in his head, his instincts and his own two hands. It was one of the things that set him apart from almost every other engineer in Starfleet.

That talent was being tested like never before.

The slip was black, pitch black, and he was blind in the smoke, deprived of the ability to even see what he was doing. He couldn't fight his eyes open even if he had been able to see farther than his nose. Sounds were muffled, mostly crackling; no roar, just a distant crack or pop that said there were flames somewhere in all of that darkness.

He didn't have the ability to breathe with any certain regularity; if he risked it, and tried, he'd pass out before a minute was up.

So there was nothing but the scream, the air he had and his hands. He'd managed to feel his way along the wall, trying to find the environmental control panel, the main access to the fire-suppression unit that would have kicked in if it was working properly. It was a chance in a million, a literal shot in the dark.

The building would be fine; oh, it was fireproof, but the Lady Grey's only chance at rescue lay in the hands of her head shipwright, a smoke-blind and desperate cadet.

The air closer to the floor wasn't uncontaminated, but it was clean enough to keep him from choking; he kept having to duck low to get even half a breath. It burned, something he took no notice of after he’d finally found the panel.

After fumbling for half a second, he found his multitool in its usual pocket. Not even really thinking, just letting his hands think for him, he somehow pried the panel free, so focused that even with his eyes closed, the smoke rolling, the scream in his mind, the need for oxygen, he was able to find his way around the inner workings of the unit on the wall.

No air.

Blackness wasn't closing in, because it was already black, but the scream was fading and so was everything else. Jaw knotting, he ducked down again, took another breath, felt it scorch his throat and upper chest, then went right back to work on what little air he had.

When someone ran into him, he shoved them back hard without thinking; he didn’t know who it was, and didn’t care.  At least whoever had rigged the panel had done a shoddy job on it. There were only two wires disconnected; one to the main system, one to the backup.  He found them when something zapped one of his fingers, low enough voltage to sting, and felt his way to the others.

He didn't even have air left now; he was on borrowed time, fighting the instinct to breathe.

As disconnected as the wires were, he experimentally touched two ends together. No sound, no sight; touch was his last sense.

A spark. He felt that.

He snapped his hand up and tripped the breaker off, then quickly twisted the wires together; he didn’t know if he was reconnecting the backup or the main, but it didn’t matter.  Once the two ends were reconnected, he flipped the breaker back on again, waiting.

Someone tried to drag him off before he could confirm the system had booted and he shoved them away again. Then the reflex to breathe finally overrode his conscious decision not to; with his lungs full of smoke, even his sense of touch was fading to nothingness.

By then, all that was left was courage, struggling for oxygen.

Having been pushed off twice and getting close to suffocating himself, Corry was to a point where even he didn't have logic or sense left. Picking himself up from the floor, a new breath of air in him -- however contaminated -- he felt his way back down Scotty. Just as the calibration on the panel finished running, the alarm came on, and the fire-suppression system kicked in full force, he latched onto Scotty's arm with a grip that brooked no argument and started dragging him back for the door.

Breaking out into the fresher air of the Belfast night had to have been the biggest relief he'd ever felt. Letting Scotty go, he staggered a few steps, coughing and choking on the smoke that he'd taken in.

Clean air had never tasted so good, so full of promise that he'd survive to do something right with his life.

Finally getting his breathing under his control, at least somewhat, he forced his mind away from the thoughts of being alive and basically in one piece and turned his focus back to his roommate, who was still struggling for air, down to his hands and knees, coughing up a storm. "Scotty?"

Scotty didn't answer immediately; even when he managed to stop hacking up a lung, he was still fighting for air, so Corry did what came automatically and reached out to help, even if it was just a hand on his back--

--and that was when Scotty landed on him like a hurricane, slamming him back to the ground, knocking the air right back out of his lungs.

Corry froze with a little wheezing cough, the shock of his landing jolting through his limbs and sparking in his vision from where the back of his head hit the pavement; above him, pinning him to the ground, Scotty looked downright lethal, wearing the black from the soot and the blood pouring down the right side of his face like warpaint, teeth bared in a flash of white and eyes narrowed.

And before Corry could even start to think of words, Scotty had found his:  "Care tae say somethin' now, ye sorry son of a bitch?! C'mon, Cor. C'mon, tell me all about what I’ve written off!"

“I-- I’m sorry, I--” the words were out before Corry even realized his mouth was moving.

"Sorry?!" That clearly wasn't what Scotty wanted to hear. He drew back his fist without so much as a pause, one hand twining through the fabric of Corry's coat, and Corry closed his eyes and waited for the blow to land, and-- and--

--and then it didn’t.

Corry pried his eyes open just in time to see Scotty open his hand, looking stunned and soulsick; he let Corry go and scrambled back, then to his feet, shaking hard and breathing harder.

Blinking a few times, Corry followed suit and picked himself up, shivering. With a certain dazed detachment, he wondered how it was that his best friend had held back. He had recognized that look, burning black in Scotty's eyes, and what made Cor feel just as soulsick was that he had seen that in himself not even a half an hour before. "I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of it," he said, the first words that came to mind; truth, even if it was too late to take back the damage he’d already done.

"Bloody lot o' good that does now." Reeling, Scotty brushed a hand across his forehead, and seemed vaguely surprised to see it come away red.

Overlooking a potential flare up, Corry took a cautious step towards Scotty, ready to duck out of the way if need be. "You better sit down," he said, halfway reaching out to offer a steady hand, heart twisting.

Lip twitching in a warning snarl, Scotty stepped backwards, biting his words off and seemingly unaware of the tears that were cutting tracks in the mask of smoke and blood. "What d'ye care, anyway? Ye should be on the damn transport, headin' off f'r that glorious future ye've got all planned out!  Doesna matter if anyone cares, if anyone mighta been willin' tae do most anything tae keep ye from screwin' yer life up, no."

"You were always down here!" Corry finally cried, exasperated. "How the hell was I supposed to know?!"

Scotty's eyebrows drew together and after a long beat of silence, he asked, "Ye dinna get it, do ye?" Shaking his head with a half-sobbed laugh, he turned and started to walk away, unsteady and battered.

Corry debated a full two seconds, then gave chase. "Get what?" Not getting an answer, he grabbed Scotty's shoulder and dragged him back, still half-expecting to be decked. "Get what, Scotty?"

"I was buildin’ her for ye," Scotty replied, smiling a half-smile that had nothing to do with humor. Looking at Corry, he said simply, "That's why I was here."

It made sense, then, and Cor almost wished that it didn't. It clicked, the final tumbler to the whole equation, and he had never, ever felt like such a miserable human being as he did in that moment.

Swallowing, he had to clench his teeth against the-- the heartache before he could say, "God, I'm sorry."

"Doesna much matter now." Scotty closed his eyes, wavering a little on his feet. "Wish I woulda realized sooner, though, that ye dinna deserve her."

He was right. Maybe that was the hardest part to face-- Scotty was right. Corry didn't deserve the Lady Grey, and he certainly didn't deserve a friend who would have poured heart and soul into her for his sake. He could see it all now, a master plan by a master engineer who worked better with his skill than words, he could see the thought behind it, and the pure selflessness in it. He could see the driven need to finish her before it was too late, the reason Scotty hadn't had him removed from the project, the desperate hurt in his eyes when Corry had turned around, thrown the model at his feet and dashed that hope.

Trying to find some way to say all of that, he looked back up, heart in his throat.

Not that Scotty was likely to hear it; he gave a faint half-shake of his head and then his knees buckled and Corry barely managed to catch him before he hit the ground, heart on the pavement just the same.