lifegenerating: (MELANCHOLIA I)
dr. carol marcus ([personal profile] lifegenerating) wrote2013-02-23 11:16 pm

sunday morning, praise the dawning / closed to [personal profile] captain_jtkirk

[The next year is miserable.

Carol still laughs and smiles the same amount, still cries over Dorothy's shenanigans as always, and still fumes over her daughter's antics and her work. There is, however, a certain lingering touch of melancholy in the back of her mind; it creeps up anytime the silence becomes too unbearable and overtakes her like a monster.

It was the same as the year before and the year before that. It's different though this time. Before, Carol didn't know what it felt like; she imagined, yes, dreamed, fantasied, hoped, as many scientists are prone to do, as they wait for their cultures to evolve or for test results. For five weeks, she knew what it was. A little more than a month, and Carol knew what it was like to be happy or, at least, content and at peace.

Then she had to blow it by kicking him out, but what can you expect from a crazy person like Carol Marcus? She pushed Jim Kirk away because if she didn't, she reasoned, he would leave in due time and that would hurt even more. Fear of the pain she doesn't want, yet do anything she could to bring it about. So, she broke up with him; the pain wouldn't hurt so much if she did it to herself, and perhaps she was wrong, perhaps she was right, we can never know. It's the result of her higher education; Carol could never really enjoy anything without coming up with a story or an explanation for it. Ultimately, it's what made her a good scientist, but a bad pagan. She could never take things as they were, and enjoy things with an easy conscience. In this case, it is the basic principle of depreciation that ended their relationship; the longer and further one was away, the lower the happiness with their significant other was.

It's the economy, stupid.

Really, it was going to happen eventually, Carol simply got it over with at an earlier time. And with less heartbreak and shattered furniture too. She didn't love Jim, it was merely a silly school's girl crush that was the result of watching him swagger about and shoot clever comebacks (not to mention proton torpedoes) at imposing figures. She didn't love him and she never did, she would remind herself.

If that's true, though, she wouldn't have put her entire life on pause when Jim catches something -- something -- from Psi 2000. Immediately after she gets the message from Spock, Carol drops Dorothy off at a friend's house, takes an undetermined amount of leave from work, and catches the first Starship heading towards Starbase 11. She then proceeds to work herself to the bone and help find the cure for Jim and several other of the Enterprise personnel. When she isn't working or under the close eye of Spock (who keeps insisting that she does these things called "sleep" and "eat"), she's in Jim's room, with a chair pulled right up to his bed. Mainly, Carol talks, though he can't hear as she tells him about Dorothy, and her current projects, random observations, and her nonsensical ramblings when she clearly needs sleep and omg get her to bed before she follows through with them!

Before she arrives at the hospital on Starbase 11, Dr. McCoy places Jim and the others in medically induced comas. "It would slow the disease's rampage on them and allow us time to discover a cure", he tells her during her briefing. The eight of them are in their comas for almost a week until Carol and McCoy finally find a cure (it was a team effort, although it was Carol's stem cells that was the key to kicking the virus in their equivalent of genitals). Even if the tests prove that it does overwhelmingly work, Carol can't help but still feel worried and scared that it won't. As if that's a new feeling, though. After the cure is administered and the eight receive their "wake-up calls", Carol plants herself in the chair next to Jim's bed and waits for him to wake up, hopefully alive and healthy.

Her arms used as a pillow, she's resting her head on the edge of his bed, and her frankly haggard face is turned away from him. The faint beeps of the EKG machine lulls her to sleep, and it's probably the most restful sleep she's gotten in days.]
captain_jtkirk: (carry on fools carry on)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-25 07:04 am (UTC)(link)
What, that I love you?

[He couldn't have stopped that from coming out if he'd wanted to, and he... didn't. So. That's that. Totally the first time he's said it to someone and meant it but whatever.]

I could get it tattooed somewhere, if it's not obvious enough for you.
captain_jtkirk: (i refuse to leave this chair sir)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-25 07:57 am (UTC)(link)
[Kirk moves his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together after a moment. That wasn't so terrible, even if he has less idea of where they stand now than he did before. Before, it was firmly in the broken up category and that wasn't best but it was tolerable and now they are firmly back in undecided.]

So tattoos don't do anything for you? Good to know.
captain_jtkirk: (i just feel like we're going to die)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-25 08:29 am (UTC)(link)
[He just... doesn't want to keep hurting her, any more than he wants to be hurt by her again. Jim Kirk's not a hopeless romantic, he doesn't think that anything has been solved right now, and this is one of the few times in his life that he doesn't have a plan mapped out on what to do next.

Kirk turns his head after the kiss, and leans his to rest against hers, and it's nice and not just because he's still a little lightheaded and she's something solid to lean against.]


So what now?
Edited 2013-02-25 09:31 (UTC)
captain_jtkirk: (orders orders orders)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-25 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
[He does make a little bit of a face at that, but accepts the inevitability of McCoy coming to examine him at some point. He's awake and feels better than before, so he'd call it good enough but he knows that isn't how McCoy works.]

Let's just get it over with.
captain_jtkirk: (this gold clashes with my hair a lot)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-26 07:05 pm (UTC)(link)
[What and leaving the honor of sticking Kirk with needles to McCoy?]

I'd feel best if you were doing all of it.

[Jim Kirk, he almost died from a brand new disease and he's still thinking about sex.]
captain_jtkirk: (glancing over my shoulder)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-28 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
[Kirk would rather sleep with him.

If this is relationships, where one minute you're broken up and fighting and mean to each other, and the next you're... something else and flirting and kissing, then... okay. Maybe he's just tired enough to not really question it a lot right now. He was out for over a week but that wasn't really sleep and he almost died and all that.

He kisses her back for a long moment.]


Deal. Where is she, by the way?
captain_jtkirk: (stop following me around Bones)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-28 02:08 am (UTC)(link)
[True facts, they both can't be freaking out so one of them has to calm down.

He nods slightly. That's smart, and he can only imagine how traveling with a small child is anyway. But he does miss her, and kind of wishes that he could see her now.]


Do you know how we picked it up?
captain_jtkirk: (boobs? where?)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-28 04:13 am (UTC)(link)
[Kirk doesn't really plan on doing this again but that's a good plan to have.]

Has Spock contacted Starfleet and had the planet quarantined?

[It's hard to shut the captain instincts off sometimes.]
captain_jtkirk: (glancing over my shoulder)

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-28 06:38 am (UTC)(link)
[It helps him feel normal, and to not focus on the fact that he almost died, to go on like everything's okay. That stepping onto a planet previously deemed to be safe for humans almost cost him everything.]

I didn't know you were such a big fan of the Prime Directive. [He's
captain_jtkirk: (my smug captain face)

wow i didn't finish that tag, whoops :c

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-02-28 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
[That fucking figures.]

I don't know if you listen to some conspiracies, they didn't leave us alone like three thousand years ago.
captain_jtkirk: (happy face. for serious.)

i'm drunk like plurk

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-03-01 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
[Honestly, Kirk still struggles with the decision to let anyone die instead of interfering, even if it is considered 'natural'. Because it doesn't feel very natural to him to stand by and watch.]

What if I had them mine gold for you?
captain_jtkirk: (real captains ride motorcycles)

but gdi i try to keep up

[personal profile] captain_jtkirk 2013-03-01 02:43 am (UTC)(link)
Duly noted. [See Kirk is a nice guy sometimes even if he wouldn't really ever have an alien race mine gold for her.

He squeezes her hand again lightly.]
You wanna get Bones, so I can sleep?