Chapter Text
Part 3: Righting Arm
Clean out yer mouth, this is not what it's for,
There's still a bloodstain from the spill of the war.
Pick up yer sorrow, this is not who we are,
I won't cry uncle having come so far.
It's all right, it's all right,
It's just blood under the bridge,
And I'm too tired to fight,
The affliction will be fixed;
Oh, it's all right, it's all right,
It's just blood under the bridge,
Put down the knife
And watch the blood under the bridge go by.
-Frightened Rabbit, Blood Under the Bridge
Chapter 1:
Saturday, April 15th, 2243
Malone Road Dormitory, Room 17
Starfleet Engineering Academy
Belfast, Ireland, Earth
The world didn't look the same on the other side.
The sun was out, which seemed to be a miracle in Belfast. As days went, it was gorgeous; lazy strings of white clouds drifting across the spring sky, tracing shadows across the lawn, playing light across the floor of the room and it was surprisingly soothing to Corry, who felt very worn and hollow.
He had called the first chance he had gotten and had his transfer held off. Since Security wanted to grill him about the incident in #22, it wasn't an issue he could debate anyway. Harland & Wolff wanted to know why their slip had been broken into, Starfleet wanted to know why they had no less than two curfew violations, one arson and one wounded cadet to deal with, and Corry really, really wanted to know who had hurt his best friend and set the Lady Grey ablaze.
So most of the night was spent running around, and now in the late morning, he had a chance to sit down, a chance to really think rather than simply react. He knew he should have been trying to get clues into who had committed such an act, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere trying right that moment and paddling against the current wasn’t going to do anything more than frustrate him.
The only thing to come of thinking about it was anger, hot and painful, and Cor was honestly tired of being so damn angry all of the time.
So instead, he found himself thinking about his own actions.
As threadbare as he felt, he didn't flinch internally as badly as he had the night before when Scotty had initially given him notice of what was really going on outside of his world of medical research, but he still felt sick to the very bottom of his heart at everything that had been said before that.
It was hard to grasp how it had all gone so wrong; it all seemed to be falling apart now. He had thought the world had come to an end when his father had taken ill, and admittedly, that had been terrible in every sense of the word.
But he hadn't been the one to do that; he hadn't been the one causing that suffering.
This time, he was the guilty party. Not the only guilty party, no, because whoever had sabotaged the Lady Grey had some fault in it, but if he hadn't turned around and hurt his best friend, then none of it might have happened.
It wasn't easy walking in someone else's shoes, especially Scotty's. It wasn't easy to realize that not only had the other cadet thrown himself into the project, but Jansson and Albright had backed him up; that all three of them had rallied around Corry to protect his grades, and Scotty had fought at the forefront to try to protect him during all this, even as bad as Cor was messing things up.
It wasn't easy seeing any of that, and being too late to really do more than try to clean up the awful mess he'd made of things.
The Lady Grey wasn't in as bad a shape as he had expected, at least. After the smoke had cleared, the paramedics had let him go and he had to give his reports; between sessions of that, he had a chance to look the schooner over. From the thickness of the smoke, he had expected her to be ash, but she wasn't. Her amidships ribs and crossbeams were charred, and her keel in that area had taken some scorching, but aside that, she was intact.
What had really caught was the stockpile of wood, and it had only just caught onto the Grey a little before Scotty had shown up. If he hadn't been there, and if the fire had continued, she would probably be unsalvageable. That was no doubt the plan of the saboteurs.
Like his ship, Scotty hadn't fared as badly as he seemed to initially. Corry had made damn sure to get the paramedics on scene as quickly as possible; at first, he was expecting it to be something critical, if not fatal, just from the amount of blood and the fact his best friend was passed out cold, but all it took was a shot of tri-ox and something else that Cor didn’t catch to bring Scotty back around. He was kind of dazed, but the paramedic didn’t seem worried; Corry would have hovered more and bombarded said paramedic with more questions than the dozen he already had asked, but by that time, the authorities were demanding his attention in no uncertain terms.
Whatever had happened after that, he didn’t see except in moments, but somehow Scotty had managed to get out of a trip to the campus infirmary -- which, given the staff only consisted of a few almost-retired doctors and nurses, wasn’t actually a shock -- and was already back in their room asleep in bed by the time Corry got back after sunrise. So, he had to at least be okay enough.
Physically, anyway. Cor wasn't so sure mentally. But he'd have a chance to figure that out later; right now, he just wanted to try and come up with an apology and figure out how to repair the damage he did.
And find out who did the rest of it for some good, old-fashioned payback. That sounded like a good plan.
An unhappy little noise pulled him away from his thoughts and Corry winced in sympathy, tiling his head at his roommate. "Welcome back."
"--huh?" Scotty asked, looking dazed half out of his mind as he sat up, putting his shoulder to the wall, squinting against the light.
Corry frowned. "The stabilizers they shot you up with are probably throwing you for a loop; how're you feeling?"
"Awful," Scotty replied, thickly, closing his eyes again. That eloquently summed it up with a word.
"You look awful," Corry said, eyebrows drawn. Scotty looked a lot worse than he was medically; tangled black hair a sharp contrast to his ghost white face, all together just exhausted. "It'll get better, though, and you don't have a concussion, so that'll cut down how long you feel miserable."
"Good." Apparently not entirely awake, Scotty just put his back to Corry and dragged his blanket back up over his head, closing himself off in no uncertain terms.
Corry gave a slow nod to himself, heart heavy but determined. Message received.
Waking up was a slow process; all fits and starts and brief flickers at the edge of his mind of older fears, before the familiarity of the dorm room brought him back to the present again.
The night before was a series of fragments; Scotty remembered a paramedic scanning him with a tricorder and he remembered sitting still while the paramedic sealed up where his head had been sliced open -- apparently that second pipe swing had found its mark -- and he remembered feeling cold and detached, removed from himself.
He remembered the flash image of his blood on Cor's hand and sleeve. And the way the smell of smoke stuck to everything, hanging in the mist.
He didn't remember how he managed to talk his way into being released. Or where Corry had gone after the first few minutes. He vaguely remembered running through the sonic shower once he was back in the dorms, some kind of common sense telling him not to crawl into his bed covered in ash and smoke and blood, but everything else was lost.
Now, it was dark; he blinked a few times, turning to look at Cor's clock, feeling stiff and sore pretty much from head to foot, some spots worse than others. The glowing numbers refused to come into focus, though. His chest ached some and his throat felt scraped raw, but at least not as bad as they had the night before.
Still, the faint -- and familiar -- sound of Corry's breathing across the room told Scotty all he really needed to know.
He closed his eyes, letting out a breath, then just shook his head. Something to be dealt with later, if at all. In the meantime, he could smell smoke clinging to him; when he reached up and prodded at where he'd been cut, there was still some blood dried hard in his hair. It was faintly sore, that spot, but mercifully a mostly-healed kind of sore.
Any which way, he didn't want to spend any more time wearing the scent of arson and anger.
Scotty had never in his life come so close to a line he'd sworn to himself that he would never cross as he had the night before, pinning his best friend to the ground, a swing of his fist away from something that there would be no taking back. Because it was one thing to break O'Sullivan's nose, it was one thing to fight in self-defense, it was even one thing to fight over matters of pride, but it was a whole different thing to pin someone you cared about to the ground with the sole intention of hurting them.
It was a whole different thing to come so close to beating someone else for the sick satisfaction of it; as if all those layers of pain could be erased by turning someone else into pulp. As if being hurt was a reason to cause hurt.
Just the memory of Cor's face -- his fear -- was enough that Scotty had to pause on the edge of his bed and bury his face in his hands, trying to breathe off the queasiness, trapping a cracked sound behind his teeth, hunching over his own knees.
He’d fought from his single digits; fought in self-defense, fought over slights that felt like daggers at the time, fought classmates and local lads and cousins, fought until he was expelled from one school and he’d mostly stopped fighting then because--
Because--
Stop, he told himself, gritting his teeth, a rolling shudder crawling from his spine to the rest of him. It’s the 15th of April, 2243. Take a damn shower.
That was enough to get him up, at least; he still felt dizzy and shaken, but not in any danger of passing out. He moved as quietly as he could, getting fresh clothes out of his dresser; he could barely deal with himself right now, let alone deal with Cor if he woke Cor up, so slipping out the door was a necessarily silent affair.
It didn't take too long to wash the blood out of his hair. There was a hell of a red and purple bruise across his middle from his first encounter with the pipe, but it wasn't too tender so long as he didn’t go pressing on it; much higher, he might’ve ended up with broken ribs. But the steam from the shower eased a bit of the ache in his chest and throat, at least.
Most of that time in the shower was spent with his head laid way back in the hot water spray, breathing careful, measured breaths whenever he bothered to drop his chin to take them. Scotty had no idea what he was going to do after. He doubted he'd be able to get into the shipyards, security would certainly have been tightened. And if there was even a point to going; if all that was left of the Lady Grey was charred wood, then going there would be a particularly mean bit of self-punishment.
Going back to their room was even more fraught. That didn't leave too many options.
Still, he couldn't very well spend all night in the shower room; it wouldn't solve anything, only delay it. He finally made himself reach out and shut off the water, though it took another minute to actually move beyond that; to get out and dry off and get dressed.
There was a fair bet that even the usual escape route -- the basement window -- was now cut off, but testing it was the only idea Scotty had; if it was still open, maybe he could go walking the piers again. And if it wasn’t, then at least he could get himself a bottle of water from the automated commissary on the ground floor and maybe sit in one of the study rooms until he felt less-- less paralyzed by it all. Until he felt less like just shattering into tears and sobbing until he was wrung out. Or shattering because he was.
It was just his luck, though, that he stepped out of the stairwell doors and found himself face to face with his roommate in the otherwise darkened lobby.
They stood in silence for a longer-than-comfortable moment, tense and on guard, but then Corry was the first to break it. “Hey,” he said, voice on the quiet side.
There was no part of Scotty that wanted to do this; somewhere between the scattershot of fight-or-flight sparking all through his arms and legs, and the sharp pressure of grief and anger in his chest, he managed an icy nod back and made to go around Cor to go and get that bottle of water he’d been thinking about.
Corry side-stepped to give him more room, but turned to follow anyway, though not too close. “You look a bit better.”
There was a half-moment where he wanted to turn back and snap, but truth be told, Scotty didn’t even know what he would snap. Or what good it would do. Instead, he punched in his student code and snatched the bottle of water when it was delivered.
“Maggie was asking after you. She said she’d come by tomorrow-- well, today, and see how you were.” There was a beat, then Cor went on, “And Jerry stopped me on my way back from the cafeteria to tell me I was one of the biggest assholes in the whole Federation. That I didn’t deserve the Lady Grey. ”
That was actually a little satisfying to hear. Scotty pressed the bottle to the side of his face for a moment, just so the cold on his skin would distract him from everything else he was feeling, then said, “I’ll have to thank him when I see him next.”
He still didn’t want to do this, but he knew full well from past experience that Cor would just keep following him until they had this out. So, half-resigned and half still-- something, angry or-- or frustrated or hurt or-- whatever it was, he turned around and put his back to the wall, cracking the cap on the water to take a sip, and less than thrilled by the fact his hands were trembling some while he did it.
Still, Corry looked about as contrite as a man could. He clasped his hands behind his back, quirking his eyebrows in an expression that could only be called self-effacing. “He was right. You were right.” He closed his eyes for a moment, visibly swallowing, then opened them again to add, “I-- I don’t know. I didn’t think. Or-- I guess maybe I thought too much. I couldn’t get it out of my head, what happened to Dad. Just-- the helplessness of it. But I should have-- I should have tried harder to remember that I have obligations here--”
That was enough to set Scotty bristling. “I’m nae--”
“-- no, never,” Corry interrupted, in a rush, hands coming out as if he could somehow pat down invisible hackles. “I meant my classwork. My degree. My commission. My position as project lead for the Lady Grey. Never you.”
There were about four or five different things Scotty wanted to do then; run, maybe, or put the cap on the water bottle, or snap that he didn’t want to do this-- there were so many things that he didn’t end up doing any of them, just pressed his shoulders back tighter against the wall, teeth locked together hard enough his jaw was aching from it.
Cor apparently took that silence as room to keep going, though, because he did. “I’m not gonna pretend I’m not interested in going into medical or sciences now, because-- I really am. But-- I should have balanced those things. I should have--” He closed his eyes and laid his head back for a moment, breathing out towards the ceiling before finishing, throat bared and voice tight, “--I should have done a lot of things better than I did. I didn’t mean what I said to you. I swear, if I could go back in time and shoot myself before I did, I would.”
“That’s a paradox.” Not that Scotty hadn’t thought the same at least once since everything had started deteriorating around them, but maybe if they just-- just got this over with, maybe--
Maybe what? he wondered. What comes next, after all this?
“I know. I mean-- no. I mean--” Corry took another deep breath, then plowed on, voice ragged, “I mean that what I said to you, what I did, was cruel. And that no, I don’t deserve the Lady Grey. And I don’t deserve a friend like you. What I mean is, god, Scotty, I’m sorry.”
The force of the apology was almost a physical thing; the weight and the sincerity of it. Scotty couldn't remember a single time he'd ever been apologized to like that by anyone else, not as a reflex, but as if it really mattered.
And it never occurred to him that Cor was lying to him with it, not even for a heartbeat.
In a way, that was an answer all its own.
He closed his eyes and leaned his back against the wall, throat aching in a manner completely unrelated to smoke inhalation. Tried to find some kind of-- direction, maybe. He knew he wasn't blameless in all of this; that he hadn't listened to Cor past a certain point, that they'd both ended up in some spiral of distance and avoidance and the consequences of both those things.
But he'd never had to-- to decide whether to repair a friendship before. They'd both crossed or near-crossed lines they shouldn't have, and if it happened once, it could happen again, but--
“Why?” he asked, finally making himself look at Cor again, though he wasn’t even sure what he was trying to ask; some combination of things, maybe. Why rebuild? Or why try to start over?
Why not just walk away before they could do any more damage to one another?
He didn’t quite even know what he was asking, but Corry apparently did.
“Because I know you,” Cor said, unhesitant, eyebrows drawn, tone raw. "I know you can't stand people getting too close to you, 'cause if they do, then they know how to hurt you. I know that I'm the last person in the world you wanna trust right now, because that's exactly what I went and did. I know that the Grey's something special, and that you went through hell and back for me, not because you had to or anything, but because that's you. And I know me well enough to know that even if you want me to go, even if I leave now and we don't speak again, you're still the best friend that I've ever had and ever will have."
It was an echo of what Scotty had said himself, the night before, and he was aware of that; more, though, that it was the truth. That he didn’t even doubt that it was the truth.
Which was still an answer, all its own.
He took a slow, deep breath, slow enough that it only trembled a little on the exhale; closed his eyes for a moment and then took a leap of faith. “Did ye get into the slip?” he asked, carefully, capping the bottle of water and then crossing his arms with it still in hand.
Corry blinked, no doubt caught off guard by what had to feel like a non sequitur, but after his own pause, he nodded just as cautiously. "She had some damage on the keel, more on the port side. It can be patched, at least. Six of the port side ribs are completely unsalvageable, and two of the starboard. The crossbeams between them are pretty bad; it hadn't really caught on good by the time you got there, and all of the damage is amidships."
Just the knowledge that the Lady Grey wasn’t a pile of ash was enough that Scotty felt like sliding down the wall. It took another moment of just breathing to get his knees steeled back up, that was how intense the relief was. "...we'll have to get Jerry to pull his templates."
Cor looked like he was still working his head around the not-quite topic switch, but he nodded. “We’ll need to order a whole new stockpile of wood, too. That was most of what burned.”
All right. All right. They had something like a plan, anyway. Scotty nodded himself, starting for the stairwell. “Let’s go upstairs, pull the schematics.” This didn’t exactly solve everything, but it was more than they’d had ten minutes ago.
Though--
He stopped parallel to Corry; thought for a second, then just said, “I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
Cor didn’t answer that in words; instead, he bumped their shoulders together in that casually affectionate, easy way of his before turning for the stairwell himself, and gave back a little smile as he held open the doors. “We’ll see what we can get done before we have to start answering questions all over again. I’ll show you what I noticed and you can tell me how we plan on fixing it.”
If being apologized to with such weight was new to him, so was being granted forgiveness in such a graceful manner; in unfamiliar waters, Scotty nodded back and started up the stairs.
Corry apparently wasn’t quite done, though. “Scotty?”
“Aye?” Scotty asked back, pausing and looking back, half-bracing in case he wasn’t going to like what followed.
“Thank you.” Corry pressed his mouth into a line briefly, then elaborated, “I woulda probably given up on me a long time ago.”
Somehow, Scotty doubted that, but he just snorted. “I suppose ye better be thankful I’m not you, then.”
It was a poor joke, or an attempt at one, but Corry answered it in all sincerity, “More than ever.”