Refuge

Joy paced just behind the console in headquarters, swishing her Starfleet uniform miniskirt just a little bit on purpose to distract herself from the situation outside. She always wore a uniform when Leonard was on duty, but she wore the old, out of date one -- mostly because it was so cute. Sadness pushed a few buttons on the large control panel in front of her. She was tall and rounded, almost shapeless in her rumpled scrubs, the eyes in her blue face fixed on the screen that filled the front wall of headquarters. She turned briefly in her chair at the center of the console. "I need you on vitals, Joy."

Joy glanced at the vital signs displayed on the small device Leonard was holding before his eyes, then leaned over to direct the information into his working memory. She and Sadness were the only female presenting members of the team, which Joy had always felt gave them a special solidarity, especially when they had to face off against the three guys.

The doctor's arms lifted his patient to a sitting position. Fear sat to Sadness' left, helping Joy keep track of vital signs and making sure the doctor didn't fall while navigating engineering's ridiculous floorplan and its oddly placed stairs. Anger and Disgust manned the outermost seats at the panel, currently keeping watch on the big picture, making note of warning klaxons and messages coming in over the ship's comm system. Together the five of them piloted a person named Leonard H. McCoy, physician, from a space that looked uncannily like the bridge of a starship.

"Captain's calling for warp drive in three minutes," Disgust noted. "Or we're all dead."
Fear hissed between his teeth, but bent back over the console. "Fixing the engine is not going to happen," he said. "That whole end of engineering is sealed. Radiation leak."
Anger sat back from the console for a moment and placed a firm red hand on Fear's slight shoulder.

Joy crossed to the other side of the console to reassure them both. "Jim exaggerates. He just gets caught up in the moment. I'm sure they'll find a way to get the ship moving without fixing whatever that thing is."

Disgust turned half around to roll his eyes at her. "Always full of sunshine, aren't you?"

"That's my job. Oh look, Spock's here!" She always had to suppress the urge to wave, just in case their counterparts in Spock's head could see them. She'd never gotten around to asking if they could, since on the rare occasions when they visited, it was always an emergency of some kind or other and they were too busy.

It was immediately apparent what the Vulcan was planning. Joy's assessment of the amount of trouble the ship was in shot upward. Anger leaned across Sadness to shout into the mike, "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" The words spilled out of Leonard's mouth and echoed around headquarters.

Disgust quipped, "More than usual..." Fortunately, his commentary didn't make it all the way to Leonard's mouth.

"No human can survive the amount of radiation in there!" Fear said. His words, too, were picked up by the mike.

He leaned into Sadness, who gave his arm a squeeze and said, "If he doesn't try, Spock's going to die anyway. And so is Leonard."

Joy gathered the two of them into a tight hug. "It's looked this bad before and they've always managed to figure something out."

"But if they don't..." Fear shuddered.

"People don't last forever," Joy reminded them. "We've known that since Leonard was a little boy. We've had a good life. A really amazing life."

On screen, Spock appeared to reconsider his reckless plan. Anger backed away from the console in relief. "Well, that worked surprisingly well."

Joy and Sadness turned their attention back to the injured Scotty. A pain warning flashed across the console, then the console abruptly went dark. "What just happened?" Anger demanded of the blank screen, then consulted the panel for details. "Right shoulder. Did that pointy eared hobgoblin just nerve pinch Leonard?" He pushed back from the console to to pace the room and smolder.