And You May Tell Yourself - Chapter 4
The PADD clattered against the table, skidding halfway down it to bump to a stop against Christine's forearm, and Leonard's elbows landed heavily on the table. His hands were buried in his hair, his posture defeated. "We're getting nowhere."
He heard Geoffrey's intake of breath, like he was about to respond—and he also heard the quiet, frustrated sigh when Geoffrey admitted to himself that there wasn't really anything to argue. They knew how Mike Darnell had died, but not how it had happened or what could have caused it; Spock had had it right up in Jim’s ready room. There were as many theoretical possibilities as they had imagination to dream them up, and nothing they'd found so far was helping theory become fact.
The door to the lab hissed open at his back, and the footsteps that followed were steady and quiet. Leonard wasn't exactly surprised by the cool hand that settled briefly—calmingly—between his shoulder blades before retreating. It belonged to the only other person on the ship that he knew as well as he knew Jim Kirk, and the only person other than Jim who would have dared to lay a hand on him when he was in a mood like this one.
"Tell me your scans tagged something," he demanded, forcing himself upright and running a self-conscious hand through his hair to neaten it.
"I cannot, as they have not yet completed." Spock blinked placidly, uncowed by the bite in Leonard's voice—and knowing just as well as Christine and Geoffrey did that it wasn't directed at any of them in particular. He set down a PADD with code racing across its screen, obviously intended to monitor the progress of the scans from afar, and nudged it to sit parallel to the edge of the table. "I take it your own efforts have yielded less than you would prefer."
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