“BONES!”

His name tore out of my mouth in a sharp, battle cry of a yell as soon as the head of the board concluded the meeting. I ran the last few feet over to where Aria was collapsing and managed to get my arms under her before she hit the brightly polished and unforgiving tile.The reek of booze and urine was overwhelming. She had been beaten to hell.

“Aria? Aria can you hear me? Aria? What the hell happened to you?! Aria?”

Running a hand over her bruised and swollen cheek, I tried to get her attention, taking in her puffy eye and cut up lips. Bones was crouching next to me then, out of breath, no doubt having seated himself at the back of the auditorium due to his hatred of formal gatherings and meetings.

“Good god, man. I can’t believe this is the same girl who kicked your ass at the river.”

“Me either.” I took in her tattered dress, limbs covered in dried blood and fingers that weren’t quite bent the right way.

“I don’t know what the hell happened, Bones. She left the club a little drunk. I offered to walk her home, but she refused. But she was fine, she was fine. Unless she went out to drink more, picked a fight with the wrong people…”

Bones interjected softly, “Jim.”

“I promised to vouch for her, Bones. And then she goes out and picks a goddamn fight? What the hell —”

“Jim.”

My eyes flew up to Bones, finally peeling away from her unrecognizably swollen face. I had to blink rapidly as my focus shifted. I uselessly looked on as Bones crouched next to me and examined Aria’s pupils with a device from his pocket. It felt like I hadn’t taken a breath since she’d started falling to the floor. I forced a shuttering breath in and out of parted lips. It did nothing to ease the indescribable pain gripping at my heart, beating uncomfortably fast in my chest.

Water pooled in my vision as I stared on while Bones conducted a quick and efficient assessing examination. One I’d seen him do countless times before. But this time felt markedly different. Time became slow, nearly unmoving. Each pause seemed overly critical and made my mind race with anxiety.

“We don’t know what happened to her, Jim. Don’t go assuming the worst. Not everyone is you. At least not everyone has done what you’ve done. We need to get her to the Enterprise. We’ll treat her in the med bay there since we’re leaving in a few hours anyways. I’m assuming you don’t want to risk taking her to the hospital here since they may ground her, right? Right Jim? Jim?”

I found myself staring down at her, Bones’ words cracking through my misplaced anger and disappointment from her entrance and appearance. Blinking again through unfamiliar pools of tears in my eyes, I managed to nod my head, and then heard Bones queue up his coms to coordinate an emergency med transport. All I could do was stare down at her. The warm glow of her skin had given way to an ashen, sickly pale color. Her long, wavy hair was matted and knotted. Her dress was destroyed. All the blood, dirt, urine…

Suddenly someone was pushing me back, forcing her hand to fall from mine. When I had taken her limp, cold hand into mine, I didn’t know. How long I had been crouched next to her, I didn’t know. There were crew members from med bay getting her loaded up onto a gurney and into the transport. I couldn’t hear anything. My ears rang as if a phaser had gone off right next to my head.

Everything played out in slow motion — her seemingly lifeless body being loaded up onto the gurney. The needle they were trying to place in her arm. The oxygen mask they placed over her face. The way her hand hung limply off of the side of the gurney, like it was begging to be held again, needing to be held again.

Bones’ voice and hands on my shoulders broke through my thoughts and pulled me back into reality. Back into sound, into movement.

“Jim. They need you on the bridge to get things ready before we depart. You have meetings, schedules and assignments to make. They’ve got a transport for you outside.”

With a shake of my head, I regained focus and began to mull through the list of busy work Bones had just prattled off.

“Okay. Thank you, Bones.” The smallness and fragile tone of my voice was painfully unfamiliar to my own ears.

I gave Bones a firm pat on the shoulder before walking past him towards the grand double doors that led outside. As I was about to push through them, I turned over my shoulder to ask a favor.

“Bones, could you — “

“I’ll buzz you down to med bay when I can, Jim. I promise. As soon as we’ve thoroughly assessed the situation, we’ll let you know.”

I gave him a nod paired with a grim smile as I watched the med bay crew members for a few more seconds. The doors to the transport closed, and the sirens rang out through the now empty hall in a horribly eerie way. People scrambled to get out of the way as the transport peeled away, past me and my own awaiting transport.

Slumping into my seat, defeated and mentally paralyzed, I watched the medical transport turn into a speck from the window. My body and mind sagged. Everything felt heavy, disproportioned. These next few hours would be long and draining. I already felt like I’d been awake for an entire day, even though it wasn’t even 10 a.m. yet. Drama and chaos didn’t usually start until after we were in space.

It left an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that so much had already happened, that so much had gone wrong before the actual mission had even started. It was either a good sign that it would be smooth sailing after this blip, or a bad sign that the trouble was only getting started, and this mission had already turned down a doomed path.

With a deep sigh, I folded my hands together in my lap while my head leaned back against the padded headrest. I tried to gather my thoughts and think about the decisions I would need to make in the coming meetings. Instead, as my eyes closed, my mind drew up images of all the marks and smells and horrors that had comprised Aria’s wrecked body. The whole ride to the Enterprise was a battle to keep my mind right. I couldn’t shake it — this was a bad sign. A bad, bad sign.

The walk down to med bay seemed to take an eternity, even excluding the fact that I was stopped several times by chatty crew members who needed something or just wanted to shoot the shit. I did my best to give them the bare minimum, but couldn’t shut down the near crippling anxiety I felt about finding out what was going on with Aria. Ultimately, I ended up cutting conversations short and expressing that I had somewhere to be.

As I finally rounded the corner to med bay, my eyes caught the time on a digital clock on one of the information screens embedded in the wall. 6 p.m. Where the hell had the day gone? The meetings and discussions had seemed endless, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like a whole day had passed. Why hadn’t Bones buzzed me sooner? What was going on?

My pace quickened as I entered the long hallway with patient rooms lining either side. Bones stood with another doctor in front of one of the rooms towards the end of the corridor. Bones turned to look at me as his peer pointed out that the captain was approaching. The doctor gave Bones a pat on the shoulder and left down the opposite end of the hallway. Bones gave me his signature grim smile. The one that either meant he had bad news, that he was perplexed, or that he was just simply at a loss.

Bones’ arms were folded across his chest as I approached, his gaze peering into the patient's room to his left as I came to his side. I followed his gaze into the dimly lit room behind the square glass window. Aria lay on a bed, just a small sliver of her hospital gown showing by her shoulders from underneath the layers of blankets she was covered by. Her hair was still dull and matted. They had cleaned her up as best as they could, revealing dozens of bruises, cuts and scrapes. Feelings of unbearable dread and sadness washed back over me, fresh and powerful.

My voice came out in a small, raspy whisper. “She’s the best fighter I’ve ever met. How did this happen?”

I was met with heavy silence. As I turned to look at Bones, all the breath punched out of my chest. Tears welled in Bones’ eyes as he kept his gaze locked onto Aria.

“Bones? What’s going on?”

He blinked hard a few times before shifting his gaze first to the floor, then finally to me.

“She was brutally beaten by several men. We managed to get her consent for a sexual assault exam, which was negative. Her body is a mess, Jim. One of the worst physical beatings I’ve ever seen.”

Ringing filled my ears again. My knees wobbled. I had to reach out to place a hand on the glass to keep from collapsing. My hand covered my mouth as my eyes closed, my head shaking back and forth. The words I had said earlier rang through my skull over, and over, and over again.

“I thought she did what I did, Bones. I was mad at her, I was —”

“Stop, Jim. Stop. Don’t do that to yourself. That’s why I told you earlier to not assume. It’s dangerous.”

I blinked fast against the tears in my eyes that continued to gather as I gazed at her broken body.

“Has she been awake at all?”

Bones looked back down to the floor again before meeting my gaze as he stood propped against the window.

“She was awake briefly while we were getting her out of her ruined clothing. She was hysterical. Screaming, thrashing. We gave her a light sedative. It's worn off, and I’ve been in once along with the psych doctor to try and speak with her. To try and get names, information, something to relay back to Yorktown. She didn’t feel comfortable speaking with us, just gave us the bare minimum. You’re the only one who knows her, Jim. Even a little.”

“I’m going to sit with her until she wakes up. I want to be here when she does. I’ll see what I can do, no promises.”

The words came quick. It was what I wanted to do. What I had planned to do since seeing her this morning. But duty, as always, had called. And now, in the evening and through the night, I would not be needed as captain. I was needed as a friend, as a confidant. As support.

With a grim nod and pursed lips, Bones walked past me back down the hallway. As I turned to enter her room, I called out to him before he rounded the corner and out of sight.

“Nothing outside of emergencies, Bones. And I mean immediate peril, galaxy-ending emergencies. Got it?”

“Yes, captain.”

My hand rested on the smooth metal of the door for several moments before I gathered the nerve and strength to step inside. With a deep breath, I pushed my finger to the keypad to the right of the door and stepped into an eerie silence that was punctured with the beeping and whirring of machines. The noises gripped my heart even tighter, making me feel queasy and lightheaded.

Carefully and quietly, I pulled up a chair to her bedside. My gaze remained downcast as I leaned my forearms onto my knees. One of my hands mindlessly reached up to unbutton the collar that suddenly seemed too tight around my neck. I should’ve changed before coming down, into something that would’ve been a tad more comfortable to sleep in than my captain’s uniform. But the minor inconvenience paled in comparison to what lay before me.

After what could’ve been seconds or minutes of watching myself wring my own hands, I finally gathered the nerve to look up at Aria. To see her up close, to see the impact of each and every bruise, the harshness of every scrape, the casts on her fingers… unfamiliar tears that I’d been managing to keep in since this morning finally began to spill over the brims of my tired, weary eyes. And in the silence of her hospital room, with only the beeping of machines to keep me company, I sat and cried for the first time in a long, long time. All of my guilt, grief and anger fully overcame me, and I completely succumbed to the ruthless, swirling whirlpool of my crushing emotions.