Work Text:
“Doctor McCoy?” Maya looked toward him but did not get out of her seat. Even though this was a planned meeting, she still sounded pleasantly surprised.
Two months had passed since his last visit, and already Maya looked notably better: no visible signs of exhaustion, as if she had gained a little weight. Good for her, it couldn’t be easy to get enough calories if you were subsistence living, let alone with an Augment’s metabolism.
“Good to see you again.” He sat at the table, across from her.
“Well, I’m glad because I don’t know what else you expected to get out of this meeting.” Maya leaned back and ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t have anything new to share that I haven’t already shared in our communications.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “Call me old fashioned, but I like to talk to people in person, even when there’s not much new to talk about.”
Maya laughed softly and shook her head. “I’m surprised your society hasn’t completely moved on from social interaction when it’s so easy to communicate over any distance.”
“Still getting on well with the new case worker?”
“I was. Ferraro doesn’t seem to have a personal vendetta against Augments, and he thinks there might be some place for me in regular society.”
“But you said ‘was,’”McCoy pressed.
Maya froze and blinked before she shook her head and looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I doubt that.”
She still wouldn’t look at him. “You’ll think I’m out of my mind.”
“Maya.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward. Maya dared to look at him again, and his gaze was bold and unblinking. “You can trust me not to pass judgment and not to speak a word to anyone about what you tell me.”
Maya looked away again and let a heavy moment of silence pass. She took a little breath and opened her mouth as if to speak but stopped herself. Another silence before she answered in a whisper. “He’s trying to make me believe things that aren’t true.”
McCoy sat a little straighter. “Well, that is alarming. What kind of things.”
“Things about what my father did.” She spat out the words, but her voice was still soft.
“If this is about what got written in my history books, not to be dismissive, but I doubt if the version you heard from Khan himself was the most accurate account.”
“No, it’s not that.” She ran her fingers through her hair again, a nervous tic at this point. “I mean, that is something I’m struggling to understand, and it feels like my sense of truth has been turned upside down, but I meant that Ferraro is trying to convince me that my father abused me. He may have been unkind, but he never harmed me.”
McCoy nodded and took a moment to let this sink in and to process it. “Well, you’re the only person who can know if you’ve been hurt or not, but bear in mind a person can hurt someone without laying a hand on them.”
Maya paused again and looked down. “Doctor, I’ve seen the worst that humanity has to offer, and it wasn’t in my father, but in my brother. A little unkindness doesn’t compare.”