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spacedogfromspaceThe Doctor, the Hag, and the AU, or, Bones and the Hallmark Christmas Movie Curse
Chapter 2: Enterprise
Bones encounters a familiar face, and runs into a friend.
When he got closer, Bones saw that the sign indicated a single storey, square building with the same green and black band across the top, its white text spelling out Enterprise. The front of the building and around one of the corners was entirely walled in floor to ceiling windows, and he could see a sparse room inside with a service desk underneath yet another sign bearing the name of his ship. Seeing that there was someone behind the desk, Bones walked to the glass front door, noting the ‘open’ sign hanging on the inside of the window. He nearly walked right into the door, but luckily noticed the little placard that read pull above a bar a little lower than halfway down the door. He took hold of the frosty bar, glad for the mittens he wore, and pulled the door open, hearing a chime as he walked in.
The person behind the desk looked up at the sound, seeming surprised, but not as surprised as Bones was.
“Scotty!” Bones exclaimed in relief upon recognizing the chief engineer of the Enterprise. “Thank god, what the hell is all of this? Where are we?”
Scotty blinked at him from behind the counter, looking confused. “Uh… we’re in Smalltown, USA?” He answered warily.
“Do you know what’s happened?” Bones asked frantically, approaching the desk and failing to see Scotty recoil, clearly debating whether or not to press the panic button under the desk.
“I don’t know of anything out of the ordinary, mister,” Scotty said nervously, then gestured to the corded landline on the desk a few feet away. “Uhh… you can use the phone if you need it?”
Bones shook his head, a slightly manic laugh slipping out. “Alright, Scotty, come on. You’re putting on a good act, but you’re in on this, I know it!” He looked around the room, looking to see if there was anyone else hiding nearby. “The jig is up! I know a practical joke when I see one!” He called out to nobody in particular, before turning back to Scotty, leaning on the desk. “Come on, Scotty. Give it up.”
Scotty was rigidly still and awfully pale, his nervous eyes the only thing that dared to move. “Uhh, right, right,” he said with a shake of his head, snapping out of it and manipulating something below the desk with trembling hands.
When Scotty started piling green slips of paper onto the desk - which Bones recognized as an antiquated form of Earth currency - Bones raised his palms, taking a step back, suddenly aware that he was terrifying the poor man. “No, no, sorry. I’m sorry.” Bones said hurriedly, and Scotty paused, looking at him with even more confusion than before. “It’s just… You really don’t know who I am, do you?” He asked, heart dropping at the prospect.
“I… I don’t know who you are, I’m… sorry to say,” Scotty said cautiously, fighting back a nervous stutter. “I’ve never seen you before in my life, I don’t… I don’t know how you know my name.”
“Huh.” Bones looked down at the floor, blinking, trying to process what was happening. He shook his head, exhaled sharply, composing himself before returning his attention to Scotty. “I apologize for my… behaviour. It’s… I’m not from here,” he said, wincing at the poor justification.
Scotty squinted at him, nodding slowly. “No kidding,” he said, flatly.
Bones looked around the mostly empty room again, nervously. “Uhh… What is this place?” He asked. “This Enterprise?”
“This is a car rental agency,” Scotty said, seeming to calm down a bit. “We also rent moving trucks,” he said, wincing as if afraid that this crazy stranger might be moving to town.
“Car rental,” Bones said, thinking. A vehicle might be of use. “Can I rent one?” He asked, doubting that he would be allowed after acting like a mad man and apparently trying to rob the place. Speaking of which, he was fairly certain renting a car involved money, which he did not have.
Despite Bones’ doubts, Scotty nodded. “You can rent a car, so long as you provide a valid driver's license. And a driver’s abstract dated no earlier than December first.”
Not knowing what either of those were, Bones patted the pockets of the coat he woke up in. He raised his eyebrows in surprise when he felt something in one of them, and removed a wallet that wasn’t his, yet upon opening it, found that it bore a photo ID with his face and the name Leonard Horatio McCoy inscribed on it. There was also a sheet of paper tucked into the leather pouch, and he unfolded it. Across the top of the official looking document read Driver’s Abstract.
“Would you look at that,” Bones said under his breath, handing over both the sheet of paper and the plastic card to Scotty. While they were being examined, Bones checked out the other contents of the wallet, finding a few more plastic cards with his name embossed on them, and some of the green paper currency he had recognized earlier. He checked his other pockets, and found what was shaped like a communicator, but had a screen and rows of numbered tactical buttons. He put it away, making a mental note to investigate the device later.
Handing back the documents, Scotty said, “and I’ll need a credit card to keep on file.”
Bones picked one of the other plastic cards, unsure which one was the ‘credit card’ Scotty had requested, and relaxed when it was accepted without any questions.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure how any of this was accepted without questions.
Bones found that, though he had a driver’s license and a clear driving record, he had not been magically given driving skills. Sitting behind the wheel of the little red car, he drove slowly and jerkily, sitting forward in his seat, jaw clenched tight in concentration. It took a few minutes to relax and drive more like a normal person, but he still drove slow and struggled with turns, taking them too wide, but he felt better having figured out the basics.
He decided he would drive around the town, searching for anything that might help him out. There had to be some way for him to get back to his own world – he had determined that where he was now was not in fact his world at all. Some sort of… alternate universe.
He had gained more confidence and was allowing himself to drive faster, though still adhering to the fairly slow speed limits that he noticed were posted every so often. There were few other cars on the road, which he was thankful for, but there were a number of pedestrians out and about, wandering in and out of shops and strolling down the sidewalks, bundled up like he was. It seemed that the town was small enough to be walkable.
He kept his eyes on the road to make sure that he wouldn’t accidentally drive into the sidewalk and didn’t pay too much attention to the people walking, but something caught the corner of his eye as he passed, and a shock ran through him.
“That hag-” he said, turning in his seat to look behind him, certain that it was her. He couldn’t find her through the back window of the car, and was unfortunately so taken by surprise that he didn’t think to stop the car when looking behind him. When he finally turned his eyes back to the road in front of him, it was too late to stop or swerve. He slammed on the brakes just before a man’s body was knocked off his feet onto the hood of the car, then thrown several feet forward onto the slushy pavement as the car came to its sudden stop.
“FUCK!” Bones instantly forgot about the hag, suddenly very concerned that he had just killed someone. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered, struggling out of his seatbelt and throwing the door open, attempting to exit the car. “Shit its gotta be in park, gotta put it in park,” he hissed when the car lurched forward as his foot came off the brake He promptly stomped back down on it, shifting the vehicle into park before rushing out of the car and running over to the prone body, sliding through the slush as he knelt down to help.
“Jesus christ, I am so sorry, are you okay?” He asked, frantically.
“Yeah, I’m alright,” the guy said, seeming a bit stunned as he let Bones help him into a seated position. The man winced at the pain of moving his arm, and Bones knew at a glance that it was broken. “Or maybe not,” the man changed his mind, holding his arm to his side.
Bones should have been helping him, but he was suddenly frozen, staring at him in disbelief. As luck would have it, the guy he had nearly killed was none other than Jim Kirk.
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