How did that ancient song from the classical music archives go? You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone?
It’s that one line running on nagging refrain in the back of Christopher Pike’s head as he sits by Marie Batel’s bedside at the med center in Starbase 1. He can’t always be there, but he comes by as often as he can.
The Enterprise is a skeleton crew on restless standby, Federation scouts searching for signs of the Gorn fleet, sensors pinging throughout all quadrants. He doesn’t know where the hell his abducted crew is, and he’s feeling helpless and furious at not being able to do anything. He can’t do anything here, either, but at least doctors and surgeons have been pouring research into her body in stasis. It’s their first time retrieving someone so quickly from Gorn infestation, their first time getting them into stasis and able to study the egg implantation, and they’re confident they’ll be able to save her —
But, still.
He’s practically pacing a groove into the floor as the weeks crawl onwards. The doctors undertake robotic surgery: specialised phasers and lasers and controlled bursts of radiation and sonic waves hammering into her arm, trying to burn out those eggs, practically ripping them out of her veins. Her arm is wrapped in gauze and the skin has been regrown, but it’s still going to ache like hell when she wakes up (if she wakes up—).
The doctors have pronounced Marie Batel’s vitals stable and fine, but Chris is still sitting in a chair in the med bay, chin propped in his hand, half-dozing as he waits for her to eventually wake. The five o’clock shadow has grown in again, that grey beard coming in a little unkempt, an uneasy throwback to his forced downtime on Earth.
She’s one of the only people who had seen him like that.
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post-s2, spoilers abound.
Date: 2024-01-12 07:18 am (UTC)It’s that one line running on nagging refrain in the back of Christopher Pike’s head as he sits by Marie Batel’s bedside at the med center in Starbase 1. He can’t always be there, but he comes by as often as he can.
The Enterprise is a skeleton crew on restless standby, Federation scouts searching for signs of the Gorn fleet, sensors pinging throughout all quadrants. He doesn’t know where the hell his abducted crew is, and he’s feeling helpless and furious at not being able to do anything. He can’t do anything here, either, but at least doctors and surgeons have been pouring research into her body in stasis. It’s their first time retrieving someone so quickly from Gorn infestation, their first time getting them into stasis and able to study the egg implantation, and they’re confident they’ll be able to save her —
But, still.
He’s practically pacing a groove into the floor as the weeks crawl onwards. The doctors undertake robotic surgery: specialised phasers and lasers and controlled bursts of radiation and sonic waves hammering into her arm, trying to burn out those eggs, practically ripping them out of her veins. Her arm is wrapped in gauze and the skin has been regrown, but it’s still going to ache like hell when she wakes up (if she wakes up—).
The doctors have pronounced Marie Batel’s vitals stable and fine, but Chris is still sitting in a chair in the med bay, chin propped in his hand, half-dozing as he waits for her to eventually wake. The five o’clock shadow has grown in again, that grey beard coming in a little unkempt, an uneasy throwback to his forced downtime on Earth.
She’s one of the only people who had seen him like that.
You don’t know what you got, etc.