Instincts


Ensign Jessep was not exactly in love with his assignment. He didn't mind being a security officer, even knowing the dangers of the profession -- it meant that he got to play with really cool guns, for one, stuff the regular personnel didn't get to play with. He also got to see the most off-ship time. And, on top of those things, he got hazard duty pay.

None of that made this particular assignment enjoyable.

He'd been trading off watching over some comatose kid in sickbay with two other guards, and there were very few things more boring. First, because the kid hadn't moved. Second, because if he did move, Jessep was pretty sure that he wouldn't stand much of a chance of putting up a fight anyway. He wasn't a very big kid, and he sure wasn't very old.

So, basically, Jessep was bored. Not to say sickbay was boring; the past couple of days had been downright exciting. He just didn't get to participate.

Things were getting hectic again, and the security officer watched in fascination, glad for a something more interesting to occupy his attention. He probably should have noted the time, but he didn't. Regardless, when he turned back...

Both the kid and a medical tricorder that was nearby were gone. Vanished. The only evidence of his existence a bright red shirt left laying on the bed.

Jessep swallowed hard and went and looked under the bed. He looked around the room. He tried to imagine how he'd explain to his superior officers that he lost the guy he was supposed to be guarding. He wondered if he was going to be assigned to one of the bad landing parties. He winced. A lot.

After about fifty thousand different horrible scenarios as to his eventual fate ran through his head, he finally swallowed and went to call Mister Scott, who had ordered the guard. He wasn't looking forward to what was going to happen to him.

Mirrors and Reflections
Or: The Brig is the Happening Place to Be!


Whatever was happening to this ship, whoever she was, wasn't good. It sounded like a battle; all around him, he could practically hear the energy shift through her as power was redirected from one place to another, and the shudders of shots taken.

It was a strange place to be trapped, on a ship with no name, surrounded by humans wearing unknown uniforms, in the middle of a battle.

How the bloody Hell did he get here from San Francisco?

Scotty didn't move from his spot, despite the chaos. Whatever had happened that found him waking up in some strange medical facility and required him to be under guard implied one of two things: Either he was under arrest for some crime he didn't commit and this was some sort of civilian vessel, or he was captured by an enemy that he had hitherto not known about. In none of those scenarios did he plan on sticking around to get all of the fine details.

He was a little more calm now than he had been when he'd known for certain he was being pursued; then, he had been so frantic that he fumbled quite a bit when he was pulling these... touch-screen panels off of the access doorways to hot-wire them. If not for the fact that his mind could trace those connections and piece together what was what even in that state -- sometimes especially in that state -- he would have probably been caught.

But he was a swift study; after the first few, he got good enough to spend only about thirty seconds on each one, and replaced the panel like new again once the door was opened. Not out of any sense of duty. Just because he knew better than to leave a trail that could be followed.

Now some calmer, though his head was still hurting and he had realized he was half-starved, he tried to work out some sort of battle plan. If this was a ship, given her size, she was bound to have shuttles. If he could figure out where the shuttle bay was, he might be able to use all of this chaos to his own advantage.

Unfortunately for Scotty, he never quite got the chance.

Between the headache and the fact that he was actually a bit more calm and therefore not running on pure instinct, he didn't hear the approach. A shadow fell across the narrow edge of light between the bulkhead and the sensor probe he'd hidden behind.

He looked up and went from mostly calm, to entirely afraid, to mostly feral just that fast, scrambling backwards with narrowed eyes and tensing for the run, or the fight.

And ran smack into the guard who'd been waiting on the other side.

--

Jessep rethought, pretty quickly, his assessment that the kid wouldn't be able to put up much of a fight. Mostly because by the time that they literally threw him in a cell in the brig, not a single one of the three guards had escaped unscathed.

Between the three of them, there were two black eyes, one split lip, one cracked tooth, many bruises and a number of sore or pulled muscles.

Jessep had almost forgotten how pissed he was when the kid had looked up, hiding in a space too small for the guards to get into, wide-eyed and obviously startled and scared. For that instant, the guard thought that this was just some frightened, baby-faced kid, barely an adult, who was in over his head. Just give him a good talking to, and take him back to sickbay.

And an instant later, that sort of sweet, scared look vanished into something considerably more dangerous and the fight was on. And it didn't stop. And size sure didn't come into play. It took all three of them to half-carry, half-wrestle the kid to the brig, and not once in that entire time did the kid quit fighting.

For their part, they handled themselves admirably and didn't give him any tune-ups along the way. Even if he was a crazy little bastard, they weren't thugs. But by the time they chucked him into the cell, every one of them hoped that they would never have to deal with him again.

"Send a message to Mister Scott that we have his... charge down here," Jessep said. "Don't interrupt him, just send a message." Then, casting one last look at the brig cell, he muttered to a man who couldn't hear, with a small smirk, "Have fun, Chief."

Repairs



The work wasn't hard work, but Scotty was almost painfully grateful for it. It so turned out that his little jury-rigged project had exploited a weakness in the connection points of the lighting system, where each element joined to the next. He scrambled the ones overhead in the little homemade botany lab, with its special modified lights, and it cascaded to blow out the main junctures. If it'd destroyed every one, it'd be days of work. This, only hours.

He was still glad of it. Not of causing the damage, but of having something to do.

Once the older man, somehow a Scott, had showed him and Harold how to make the right repairs, he'd grasped it quickly and then stayed alongside Harold for another twenty minutes or so, helping Harold until he was as smooth as a technician would be; tips on how to hold the tools, how to move aside the fiber-lines, how to wire in new connections. The only show of gratitude he could think to give for now.

Then Scotty moved off to his own work, and found the steady, easy rhythm; that internal quiet he found when he worked with his hands. He loved working with his hands, and things that were concrete and that he could fix. His first real job had been in a salvage yard, taking what was broken and doing all he could to save it. Sometimes he failed. Sometimes he succeeded.

Always, he tried.

Now he worked again, something to keep his troubled thoughts at bay; worked the tangible, what appealed to his senses. Narrow sight, the hum of the energy through reactivated lines in his ears, the cool materials in his fingers. Forgot long since the bruises on his arms, or the fact he was still hungry and now thirsty.

Forgot that he was lost, and worse than he could even begin to understand.

In the work, he was there; he was good, and reached for perfect. Sometimes he failed, and mostly he succeeded, but always he tried.

In the work, he was there; no before, no after, no name or life or past or future. No questions, no answers. Only this.

Fixing what was broken.

Gratitude



After a couple hours of being passed out on a desk, he woke up with a jerk, then winced at the ache in his neck. By now, he was too hungry to go and ignore it, and after a genuinely baleful look at the replicator, he figured that he had to find some source of food that wouldn't feel like a betrayal.

He rolled down the sleeves of the long t-shirt he'd borrowed off of the other Scott to cover up the bruises, did the best he could to finger-comb his hair into some semblance of neatness (not quite succeeding) and tried not to feel too messed up to move. He went to check for another list of repairs he could do, and found access blocked; letting out a quiet, disheartened sigh, he just decided to go with plan A.

The galley wasn't too hard to find. And it was busy. Really busy. He almost balked and left, but after a moment, someone came by and literally shoved a bowl of dough into his hands.

Scotty was a mean cook. Not nearly to his mother's level, mind, but he certainly wasn't a kitchen idiot. He'd been her sous chef enough times in a professional kitchen, those times when it wasn't too much of a hassle to take him along, that he knew his way around there about like he did machines. Cooking was just another form of engineering; put things together, make them work, try not to create any disasters, and he was a natural at it.

So, being conscripted briefly into the galley staff, working to prepare meals for an overcrowded starship, was not too bad a fate. He lost track of time there, too, though he sure didn't lose track of his stomach, which was probably trying to eat itself by now. And after he'd worked long enough that he felt he had earned his meal and two others besides, he stashed some aside to make dinner for himself. There was a broken stove in the back of the galley; he repaired it easily, washed up, then got to preparing food.

It wasn't a masterpiece or anything. Meat, potatoes, noodles and vegetables, all together in one casserole. A hearty meal, meant to fill the belly, and maybe provide some level of comfort, and it didn't take all that much of any one thing to make it. A good bit of the juices from the meat left in with a base. An appropriate amount of herbs and a little spice, just enough to throw a tiny bit of bite into it. Poor man's food, basically, but almost on the same level as comfort food.

He sized out a couple of plates and managed to use a third to bribe another of the staff of the galley to deliver them. One to Harold, one to the other Scott, each with a note that read the same thing: "Thanks for the help yesterday."

Then, with a fourth plate of the casserole set aside, he washed the dishes and put them away, then found one of the few quiet spots in the kitchen to sit down against the wall and eat.

Frayed Edges

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
-Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry, The Little Prince



He wasn't sure why it had all come down on him at once, like being sat down on by a giant, and he was never very forgiving of himself when he cracked like that under pressure; it made him feel like a child, like some helpless kid who couldn't stick up for himself and who didn't have the strength to bear up under things, either. And as hard as he tried to prove to himself otherwise, those moments were often doubly miserable. For the tears, and for the anger against the tears.

But eventually he managed to get himself back under control, feeling exhausted and hollowed out; that miserable wet feeling in his lungs, and his eyes stinging. It was still far too early in the day, though, for him to just give into the notion of passing out for awhile. The last time he'd slept properly was San Fran; here, there was too much on him, from all quarters, to feel comfortable enough to. The snatches of naps helped, at least. He wasn't hallucinating from fatigue.

He dragged himself off of the floor, staggered into the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. Washed it any number of times, enough times that he forgot how many. Then, more on auto-pilot than anything else, he took a shower, got dressed and buckled under to get something to eat out of that replicator thing. Hopefully for the last time. His stomach was a little upset, not made any better by his loathing of the device, but survival was survival.

His brain started kicking back into gear as he was gathering everything up that he'd need. He was going to have to borrow the other Scott's toolkit, if he was to have any chance of actually making a living. With any luck, some hard work and thought would allow him to get ahold of his own tools before the week was up and the Enterprise broke orbit. If not, he would still return the kit -- he wasn't a thief, though he was willing to walk the line of one if it kept him alive.

He needed some space, or at least some space that felt less confining than this; needed to know he had room to run, if he had to run, wherever he would end up going. He could face things better when he knew there was an escape route. If he had the option, at least then he could weigh the rest of it; if he had the choice, then he could more clearly make the right one without his instincts dragging him into the wilderness.

Still, in that numb and hollow space past tears, he could go back and tentatively touch on the conversation that provoked them without it being unbearable. He couldn't quite grasp that the other Scott was actually... him. Even with the common lines and common expressions. Even with the obvious genetic similarities. He believed it, mind; he believed it when he rarely took anything at face value. But it was like a dry fact, not a reality.

It was also somehow strange to him that he was a little grateful that this other Scott had clearly gotten his head on straight, somehow. He couldn't guess as to how, but this older man was mostly more confident and more certain, and definitely more cheerful. Good cheer was something he only felt in rare occasions, and all of those, it seemed, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He doubted that was the case with this alternate him. Whatever had gone differently had lead to a different man, and that wasn't a bad thing.

It still didn't change where he, himself was.

And that was nameless; out of time, and out of synch, and only certain of two things: His right to keep breathing and his ability to fight for that until he no longer was.




It wasn't too hard to get to Risa. The technician from the Starbase, who had come aboard to help with repairs and man the Enterprise, didn't bother to do more than check his communicator code. The communicator itself was a backup that had been in the toolkit, and was registered to the other Scott. He didn't correct the tech's assumption that was who he was, and only a few seconds later, he was standing on the ground.

He had never been to Risa before. For that matter, he hadn't even been off planet all that often. Immediately, the heat and humidity slammed into him; reminded him of jungle-training in Basic, but with something else: Here, he could smell an ocean. And he had to hitch in a breath at the immediate sense of relief that hit him when he did.

The relief was two-fold: One, he had always lived within a few miles of salt-water, and two, where there was water, there were bound to be boats. And he knew how to work on boats, both commercial and recreational powered vessels. For that matter, he could find his way around anything with a motor.

Risa was a whole planet, not just one city. There would be steady work somewhere in this big marble. He was in the major urban center and setting-off point now; beamed down to the public transporter pad, about five city blocks from shore. He walked that distance, rather wishing for a long-sleeved shirt again when people occasionally eyed the fading bruises, but no one stopped him and no one even spoke to him, and he was content with that.

It felt good to walk, and even after growing up in Aberdeen and not really liking hot weather, it felt good right now to have sunlight beating down on him. He could feel that still wet, jagged sensation in his chest, but it faded to something tolerable under the warmth and light; he could feel the fatigue across his shoulders where most of his tension lived, and down his back, but walking was soothing.

There was a very long stretch of white-sand beach; above the beach were little bungalows from various resorts, and a handful of tourist type shops. Down along one end, near out of his range of vision, looked like a highrise set of condos or apartments. And down on the other end was what he was looking for; a large stretch of docks.

Taking a deep breath of salt-and-sunshine painted air, he headed in that direction.




Back on the Enterprise, he left a message to blink on the other Scott's PADD. When he had left it, he knew he was making a mistake; he was opening a door to a world of hurt. Not because he thought this alternate version of him, with the good cheer and seemingly-genuine concern, would actually hurt him intentionally and maliciously. But because when it came to blood, and kin, it was nearly inevitable. There were very few ways that he could look at his own upbringing and not flinch, and so he almost never did. He loved his family, as fiercely as any son, and he still wanted to get as far away from them as he could. He loved them, but if he was going to keep breathing, he couldn't stay.

That was why he'd gone into Basic. Into Starfleet. Because he knew that if he stayed, eventually something in him would die, something important, and from there you can never make it back.

Honestly, he more hoped the door wouldn't be walked through. He wanted to find some way to thank the other one for the concern, and find a way to show that he was still breathing and mostly okay, as okay as anyone could be in this situation. He wanted to dissolve whatever obligation the other thought was there -- he couldn't imagine for a moment that it wasn't a miserable inconvenience to have someone all but dropped on them like that. He knew all about that kind of thing; he was all too used to being that inconvenience incarnate.

But he left the message anyway.

"I borrowed your toolkit, and I'll have it back to you by week's end. I'll keep the backup communicator on me so that you can get ahold of me. And I'll keep thinking about it." And he attached the communicator's and borrowed PADD's unique codes to the message, then sent it.

He didn't sign it.

Different Directions



After a conversation he never expected to have, nor was entirely sure how to grasp, Scotty did the only sane thing a man could do when he was in this situation: He went to bed.

Whatever part of his brain was wired that way it was came in handy in some situations. When he got into something, intently, he could tune out everything internal and external to a degree that was almost eerie. When it came to Basic, playing through the pain had never been an issue; he never acknowledged it, not when he was so intent on something else. For that matter, it had been that way for... at least his teen years. Maybe not before, but at least that long, he had become an expert at shoving aside everything in order to complete a job. Whatever the job.

Unfortunately, coming back down off of that intensity usually meant realizing: Aye, idiot, ye're messed up. What th' Hell were ye thinkin'?

This was one of those times. He'd just... run off at the mouth, and he couldn't even fathom why. He'd talked. He'd talked far more than he usually talked. It left him feeling kind of surreal, and kind of scared, and kind of relieved and really damn queasy. He had to duck off into more'n one public restroom; somewhere in that mess, he commented wryly inside of his own mind that the toilets of Risa would get more face-time from him probably than anyone else.

He didn't think too hard. It was impossible anyway; after he came back down off of that almost desperate raving (what else was it, but raving? Jesus, he sounded like a lunatic), his thoughts scattered in fifty different directions and he couldn't get them back in order. That left him halfway forgetting his way back to his hostel room, and having to stop repeatedly to get his bearings. But finally he made it, fumbling with the door lock a few times before getting it open, then dropping in his bed and curling his blanket around himself.

It was maybe his most sane motion of the day so far, but try as he might, he couldn't seem to regret going out for tea with the other Scott.

What do you do, when the door swings the other way?

He still didn't have any answers. Just a million more questions, and a flu.

Windowpanes


"Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince.

"They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes."

"Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry..."

"They are lucky," the switchman said.

-Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry, The Little Prince



He slept outside, tucked against the edge of a building and the railing of the pier, too exhausted after all of his writing to make it back to the room he had already paid for; a waste of credits, but he couldn't be bothered to feel badly about it. After he wrote Perera's theory, he had spent the rest of the early evening drawing the diagrams to go with it. They were not the crisp lines that would be found on blueprints; these were initial light lines, then heavier ones laid over them until they were complete. It gave them a nearly artistic look.

Then he slept, shivering in the night intermittently, his papers still held close and tight to his chest.

He woke before the dawn, and physically speaking he actually felt better; no fever, though he still had some aches and some weakness left, and still was a little chilled in the pre-dawn light. And for the first time since he'd fallen ill, he felt hungry again. The smell of coffee from a pier-shop didn't make his stomach turn. He figured he could get away with a small cup of that and probably something light and gentle on the stomach.

He kept his papers close and ordered a small coffee and a couple of pieces of fresh-baked bread, ignoring the curious looks of the shop-keepers at the fact he even had papers. "Artist?" they asked. "Engineer," he replied, without thinking, and their surprised looks made him blink. But he shook it off. He didn't have enough credits left now for another night at the hostel, and had to get to earning some quick. At least he was in better shape for it.

The diagrams had made him feel at least slightly accomplished. He figured he would start writing the Aberdeen Solution down later, after work; his answer to Perera's theory. He didn't honestly expect to see the other Scott again -- he figured that when they parted ways, it was probably on good enough terms for the older man to feel better about things, and on iffy enough terms that it would offer some measure of a natural avoidance -- but he wondered if he shouldn't someday send these pages. He didn't know why he thought he had to; he wasn't looking for approval or disapproval.

Maybe some part of him wanted to see if the other Scotty could look at Perera's Field Theory, with its beautiful, airtight math, and feel that something was wrong with it. The best engineers in his own universe couldn't feel it, despite the numerous reviews; older engineers with a great deal of experience. There was not a single thing wrong with the theory, except that it just didn't work in practice. Perera was probably back in their own universe still working on it, and using young Scott's computations and test figures and solutions to find out exactly why.

He wondered if the other would feel it.

Scotty stopped back at the hostel long enough to gather everything up he wouldn't need at work today, get a shower and change into his last set of semi-clean clothes. Harold's cue, and his own non-work items (including his paperwork) were stashed in a rental locker not far from the hostel. He was going to have to do quite a bit of work today if he wanted this to pan out right; regardless, he had a feeling he'd be sleeping on the streets tonight. Given that it had worked well the past one, he wasn't too worried about the prospect.

At the first hints of orange, out of the deep blues and climbing blues, he headed back down to the docks and hoped his luck there would hold out for one more day.

Just one more day.

Atween Wind and Water



By the time they made it back to the hostel room, Scotty was pretty much exhausted beyond any description.

He had fallen quiet in the cab, leaning his head over against the window and almost drifting off, while the unconscious older Scott was laying across his and Harold's laps, and as Harold was doing something or another with the PADD. Thankfully, the ride wasn't too desperately long and they skirted the edge of the city to miss most of the traffic.

Needless to say, when he had woken up on the pier that morning, he could not have remotely predicted this was how he'd end up spending his night. Not in a million years.

In under twenty-four hours, he had woken up and went to work, got chased by irate dockhands and ended up in a far too personal conversation with the other Scott over breakfast, had offered to go fishing -- which had gone wrong -- and had ended up half-drugged and messed up. It could be little wonder why Harold kissing him didn't particularly bother him; there was so much on his plate that he just didn't have it in him to do anything but take it for what it was. Which was a stoned snog in a lake.

The cab deposited them at the hostel, and they managed to wrangle the older Scotty out without bashing him against anything unforgiving. The younger Scotty told Harold the door code to get in, and they were able to get back to the tiny room.

The hostel keeper's daughter still had a wee thing for Scotty, and was very accommodating; she brought extra blankets and pillows, and even a large, self-cooling thermos of water with glasses to set on the shelf. Not one to leave anything in less than Bristol fashion, Scotty made sure everything was put up and away. He and Harold wrestled the older Scott out of most of his clothes and back into his dry civvies so he could sleep this mess off dry and in peace; Scotty covered him over in the small bed, leaving his arms free, and Harold crashed on the floor with the extra pillows and blankets.

After that, he just sort of plunked down to sit, dazed now to barely more than fragments of thoughts. He could feel a heavy blanket of almost peaceful blackness that he'd been fighting off for quite awhile now, weighing down on his overwhelmed mind and rather abused body. He couldn't even begin to figure out what the day had been. He knew he had to find work tomorrow; he was starving and hadn't had anything to eat since before dawn, and he was down to seven credits over all. He also just didn't have it left in him to go find anything this moment.

He fell asleep with his head and arms on the bed below the other Scott's feet, sitting up, down into some kind of blackness beyond any contact with the outside world.

It was the first time since he got here that he wasn't awake before the suns.

The Search for Coffee



Consciousness did not begin without coffee. Unfortunately, coffee did not happen without credits. Credits did not happen without being conscious to work.

Bloody universal paradoxes.

Sleeping in the sand had been pretty pleasant even after the suns went down, but eventually there was a chill in the air as the darkness wore on, and he was awake again well before the suns came back up. He'd still managed a fair amount of sleep, so that was good. Being awake and a little cold without coffee, though, was bad. Well, sort of awake. If you could call sitting under a pier with your arms wrapped around yourself, shivering a bit and staring and yawning at an ocean awake. And sort of bad, if you considered that yesterday was the first day he didn't suffer some kind of asskicking, at least physically speaking.

Considering his luck on Risa, he didn't hold out a ton of hope for today.

Regardless, after shivering and staring out at a dark sea for awhile, Scotty finally made to start the day. Motivation and initiative, at least in the work sense, had never been a problem for him; he wasn't afraid of hard labor or even menial tasks if it kept him fed and sheltered. So, firmly giving himself something of a pep talk (a drowsy, decaffeinated pep talk) he managed to climb back up from his spot and hit the streets. First he went to his locker; quite a hike from his 'bed'. The suns still weren't up, but the horizon was getting lighter. Then he took the complimentary soap from the hostel, and caught a shower in one of the just-opening public beach houses. Still, unfortunately, decaffeinated; the shower felt pretty good, though. Then he took his newly scrubbed and cleaned self and hoped that he could charm someone into giving him a job.

His PADD listed a few odd jobs that were open to college-age workers, and he figured he qualified for that. Courier... he could do that. Escort... Scotty supposed that was probably akin to tour-guide. It paid pretty well. Actually, it paid really well, if all he was going to be doing was escorting people around and rambling on about Risa. After a quick check of local landmarks and attractions, he figured he'd go for the gusto and give it a try.

The guy hiring for that job didn't seem really put off that he had lost his ID -- a technical truth -- in the least. He gave Scotty a once up and down, probably to go and guess if he was physically up for walking tours, and Scotty remained utterly oblivious. Hell, if he managed this, he could probably be fairly well ahead of the curve by nightfall and he would certainly be able to afford a cup of coffee. So, naturally, he put on the best good-natured, well-mannered look he had.

He got the job.

It was the shortest job he ever had.

Three minutes and twelve seconds later, there was a surprised Risan and a very baffled 'agent' looking after a very furiously blushing Scotsman as he stormed out of the building muttering under his breath a number of less than complimentary things about using the right words to describe the right jobs.

And he still didn't have any coffee.

Primitive Law


"He was beaten (he knew that), but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law." -Jack London



He'd gotten stiffed on how much he had made doing the courier bit, but it still was enough for some food. And that was important. He spent the rest of his day just trying to track down the want ads, only to find that the vacancies were filled by the time he got there; apparently, he wasn't the only one looking for work. But he managed some dinner, and some coffee, and tried one more shot at a restaurant gig as a waiter.

It was the second shortest job he had; all of twenty minutes. And that was because when he saw the head chef severely under-cook a fish fillet, he proceeded to explain that the man was a hack. Scotty wasn't usually bold, not like a brash type who liked confrontation, but he did take his cooking seriously enough that he couldn't let such an unprofessional job on a meal go without comment, never mind that it could make someone sick. The result was him pocketing five credits in tips, but nothing from the restaurant itself.

The truth was, Scotty didn't actually like confrontation at all. It was, therefore, a universal irony that he often ended up in it anyway. It wasn't because he sought it. It wasn't because it thrilled him; he wasn't an addict to rage. He wouldn't even drink if his mood was anything less than good, just because he didn't want to risk a fight.

It was a universal irony that he didn't like fighting, but he understood primitive law.

Primitive law was a pair of dockhands he recognized deciding to chase him, and both of them carrying some kind of weaponry. Scotty wasn't a coward; he wasn't really afraid of fighting, whether he liked it or not. But he also wasn't going to be handed a beating, and if he could retreat, he would. This time, he definitely retreated, picking up a decent run and leaving them fairly well behind. He ducked around a street corner, and just that fast, the world exploded.

Whatever it was had come across his cheek so hard that it put him on the ground, and still reeling and not thinking in any terms recognizable as language, he tried to pick himself back up only to be clocked in the head. The words specifically were, "That one was for my face. And this one's for the credits we lost out on," but he didn't understand them. He understood pain, he understood fear and he understood defiance in the face of that. He didn't hear the other dockhands tell the guy to ease up, regardless of the fact they'd driven him into this ambush.

He reached out and snatched the guy's ankle, snarling and fully intending to return the favor. The guy fell, then scowled and aimed a booted kick to his side, which pretty much ended that. It took him too long to catch his breath, and pull his ringing head together, and they left just as smoothly as they arrived with a parting call back that he'd be smart to think next time, before swinging a toolkit.

It didn't help that Risa had decided to schedule this sector for rain tonight.

Scotty understood primitive law, because he learned it the hard way. He didn't learn it in a classroom, or hanging around a lecture hall while humans pretended to reach deeper understanding of it through course books. He learned it young and never forgot it. It was primitive dictates that demanded he defend his life, an instant and instinctive reaction when someone much bigger than him snatched at him, with whatever tools he had on hand. And, really, it was primitive law that allowed him to crawl back up now, reeling and dizzy as the rain started to fall. Calling the police to report it never once crossed his mind. He wasn't even desperately angry over it, except that he hadn't put up a better show than he had.

The rain came down on the city in bands, a good soaking. Scheduled rain. What a concept. He didn't think too hard about it, just headed back for his spot under the pier. Nothing was broken, though it hurt quite a bit. Took him getting lightheaded to realize that half the water running down his face was red.

He just shook his head, pulling off his shirt. It was soaked, but better than nothing. And, fairly well beaten and fairly well detached, he just retreated back to his 'room', barely making it down the support strut without falling.

Scotty understood primitive law. He didn't bother with self-pity, or even really anger. Just curled up on his unbruised side in the comparatively dry spot under the pier, with a wet black t-shirt pressed against his sore head, mostly ignoring the bright and hot pain in his face (mirror would be a bad idea, for awhile), and did his best to sleep it off.

It was also universal irony that they were probably the most familiar moments he'd had since getting here.

Hour-glass



After the last of the party last night, Scotty took his food and bid a goodnight to Harold. From there, he went to grab his stuff from his locker and managed to catch a good shower before the public beach houses closed for the night, then change into his clean clothes. And, since he didn't have to worry about starving, he also finally picked up a comb. It took him about a half-hour to untangle his hair, in all. He hadn't properly combed it in a week, and it was apt to be uncontrollable even when it was neat, let alone when it wasn't.

But finally, after all of that, he went back to his spot.

His last night here. He still didn't want to leave. He still thought those plaintive, childish thoughts that he could be Robinson Crusoe or Peter Pan and just spend the rest of his life under a pier, scraping by, maybe building a small shelter under the eves of civilization. Scotty was only ever one step removed from the wilderness. Not even because he loved wilderness, but because he understood it and it meant not being around people. It meant he could live or die by his own hands.

Still, he had given his word. He hadn't heard back from the other Scott, but he still wasn't all that surprised by it. Man probably finally came to his senses.

He didn't sleep brilliantly, mostly because he was a little anxious and partly because he felt like he was mourning, but he was up with the suns and resolved to carry through on what he said he would. It wasn't easy; he kept having to jerk himself back on task, away from everything in him crying out to run.

The first thing he did was type up his proper transcripts into the PADD, including name, rank, serial number and everything else. He wasn't a member of this Starfleet, but he included all of his Basic Training information, included all of the classes he'd taken and scores -- universally above average -- and then the classes he'd already been released from in Command School thanks to his time at the University of Aberdeen, and his class-credits from those. He was, in his own universe, a first-year Command Cadet, but he was sure that wouldn't translate.

The second thing he did was draw up a contract. He wasn't ready to commit to being in this Starfleet; far from it, he wasn't even sure if he could commit to being in this universe. So, the contract he drew up was that, if accepted, he would work as a privately contracted civilian at a pay-rate of a crewman third class, answerable to senior warrant officers and commissioned officers, but not a member of the crew officially. He could, then, leave if it proved to be a bad idea. He would be able to wear his own clothes, but he would be under the command of everyone from senior warrant officer on up. It was the best he could do to honor both his own Starfleet, who he had made his commitment to, but likewise be fair to the crew of this starship and properly pull his weight, and to put himself under their code of conduct so long as he worked with them.

He read over it a handful of times, then send it off:

To: Yeoman Harold Lee, USS Enterprise
From: Montgomery Scott
Re: Contract Proposal for Captain Kirk
Attached: transcripts.doc, contract.doc

Yeoman Lee,

Herein is my formal request to join the crew of the USS Enterprise as a privately contracted civilian, as well as my qualifications for such a position. Please forward this to Captain Kirk as priority allows. If said contract is approved, please pass on my formal request to work one full shift rotation in the galley, and one half shift rotation as a technician, and any/all pertinent information I would need (reporting officers, schedule, quarters) to adequately perform my duties.

-Montgomery Scott

It was a formal note, but it made Scotty grin briefly. He wondered if he was the first person to send paperwork to the newly minted yeoman as something of a loose introduction to his job. And he imagined Harold's face as he tried to figure out what to do with it, which made him laugh outright.

It was still morning when Scotty was all finished with that.

And all that was really left for him to do then was wait.