Switch 40/50
Nov. 27th, 2009 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceres_liberaTitle: "Switch" (40/50)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceres_libera
Rating: R to NC-17
Summary: The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses.
Characters: McCoy/Kirk, with eventual appearances by all other ST:XI characters.
Notes: Well ... long weekends make it easier to write, even stuffed with turkey and pie. I'm warning for tissue, but I promise you that it won't be as bad as you think. Just ... necessary. /being obscure.
+
Leo was unconscious for just an instant, although the respite from the surge of pain that had short-circuited his systems was blessed. There was something … a kind of knowing that crept into his mind before he lost all control, and he felt it, like an echo in his consciousness, as he became aware again.
“Mr. Scott!” Jim’s voice was sharp, authoritative in a way that Leo had not heard it before. “I thought that there were no power sources in this section of the ship.”
“That’s right, Captain,” Scott said.
Leo tried to make his mouth work, only then becoming aware of the blood in it. He reached up a hand, intending to spit into it, only to bat at his face ineffectually, hidden as it was behind the shield of his forgotten hazmat helmet. Right. He caught himself just before he expectorated, swallowing the lump of blood and saliva.
“Bones?” Jim’s voice still had that uncharacteristic thread of panic in it, and as Leo looked up at him, he realized that Jim had picked him up from the deck and was holding him in his arms. He could hear the fan on Jim’s helmet running, even as he noticed the fogging of the respiration on the inner shield. Jim’s chest was heaving against his arm and back, his eyes wide and wild.
If Leo hadn’t already been well and truly shocked, that might have maybe done the trick. Jim Kirk, the man who had concocted an almost suicidal plan to save Earth without batting his pretty eyes, was absolutely fucking terrified. Leo felt a swell of love that was warm and encompassing -- at the same time that he realized that he felt something else warm and encompassing.
“Goddamnit,” he said. His bladder had let go when he’d been shocked. He wondered how humorous Jim would find his current situation.
“Bones!” Jim said with relief in his voice, looking in his eyes as one of Leo’s staff scanned him.
“Captain?” Scott asked over the comm.
“Bones is OK,” Jim said, in a far more relaxed tone. “He’s complaining and everything, but I still want to know what the fuck happened here.” The last was said with a hard tone, making it quite clear that this was an order, and not a request.
“Understood,” Scotty answered.
“How’s Dehner?” Jim asked a corpsman.
“She’s dead, Jim,” Leo said, struggling to sit up so that the urine wouldn’t run up his back.
“What?” Jim asked in confusion.
“She’s dead,” Leo said surely.
“She is,” the corpsman confirmed.
“And she just shocked the shit out of you before she went?” Jim asked.
“Well,” Leo drawled, knowing that the medical staff had to know what had happened anyway. “Not the shit, exactly.”
Jim’s eyebrows disappeared into the covered part of his helmet. “Bones!” he said, eyes twinkling.
“Yes, Jim," he said, breaking out of Jim’s embrace to stand, wincing as he felt the liquid running down into his boots. “The irony is not lost on me.”
“Static electricity?” Scotty said suddenly over the comm.
Leo took the tricorder from the corpsman to look over Dehner’s results.
“From what?” Jim answered, without missing a beat. “The materials in here are insulated to prevent just that kind of thing. Besides, Bones was wearing boots that wouldn’t have conducted a charge from the deck.”
“It came from her, Jim,” Leo said assuredly. “But you’re right –- no galvanic charge should have been able to pass from her to me, especially in this suit.”
Hanlon piped up from next to Leo. “That’s how it looked to me, too, Doc. I swear I saw a spark jump from her to you. Plus ..” he hesitated. “Did her eyes look weird to you?” Leo turned around to look at Cupcake. “I know I was farther away than you, but … they just didn’t look right.”
“Bones,” Jim said. His hands were on his hips as he listened, his face somber.
“I agree,” said Leo, “although I couldn’t tell you what the hell it was – reflection, cataracts from the electrical shock.” He shrugged. “Maybe on autopsy.”
Jim didn’t answer, seemingly absorbed in thought.
“Jim?” he asked.
“Isn’t she –- wasn’t she -” Jim corrected himself, “-that psychiatrist with the unbelievably high psi scores?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said, wondering how the hell Jim knew that.
“And that’s a kind of energy, right?” Jim asked.
“It doesn’t carry a charge, though, Captain,” Scott answered from his comm.
“Hmm …” Jim said thoughtfully. “Not as far as we know,” he said.
“Jim,” Leo said, “they’ve been measuring this stuff almost since back in the day of the EKG. I’m sure someone would have noted if there was an electrical discharge associated with the heightened brain wave activity.”
Jim nodded like he was listening, but continued to stare down at Dehner’s body. “Maybe it only happens when they die.”
“Jim, that’s …” Leo thought that over, surprised. “I don’t know what that is, exactly,” he said bemusedly, amazed at how Jim's mind worked. “Or how we’d figure that out.”
“Well …” Jim said, “something happened.”
“Aye,” Scott said over the comm.. “And I’m for keeping that section in isolation and in situ for a wee bit while we try and figure out what.”
“She’s …” Leo began.
“Oh, I know what ye said, Doctor,” Scott said, “and the other lad there, but until we have some sort of confirmation that it wasn’t the surroundings, I’d rather not have other people working in there. Just in case.”
“I concur,” Jim said.
Leo opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. Elizabeth Dehner was beyond his care, and it wasn’t like anyone on the Enterprise would be disrespectful. “Fine,” he said, noting that Jim looked relieved. “I need to get to Sickbay, anyway.”
Practically as soon as he finished saying the words, he heard the Engineer say, “Locking onto your comm now, doctor and sending you for decontam,” and the world was swirling sparkles of white light around him.
+
Clean and dry in new scrubs, Leo strode into surgery to check on the most severely injured of the patients. He stepped into the sanitizing spray and strapped on a face shield before he went to Gaila’s bedside, watching M’Benga deftly repairing some of Gaila’s veins. “How’s the damage?” he asked.
“The radiation poisoning is severe,” M’Benga answered. “we’re going to have to wait to do most of the repair work when she’s had more treatment. Her bones are still breaking down –- she won’t tolerate a regeneration, or even a graft.”
“Stem cell infusion?” Leo asked.
“At least 24 hours away,” M’Benga answered. “She’s pretty hot.”
Leo nodded, and stepped out of the containment field and into the spray before he stepped into Fleury’s field. Her patient had a crushing chest injury on top of radiation poisoning, and between shattered cartilage and frayed lung tissue, she had a mess on her hands. “Transplant?” Leo asked.
Fleury’s expression was grim. “We’ve got to get there first, boss,” she said.
Leo looked over the field. “You’ll do it,” he said surely. “Need a hand?”
Fleury’s eyes flicked to his face, and she looked amused and gratified. She’d been a battlefield surgeon for at least a decade, but a new CMO was an unknown quantity. “Not unless you’d like to join in,” she said, making it clear that he’d be welcome if he did so.
“Well,” Leo drawled, watching her sweep lung tissue for fragments of pulverized cartilage. “You do look like you’re having fun there and all, but … I’ll pass.”
“The offer’s open anytime, sir,” Fleury said, smiling openly as she continued working.
“All right, then,” he said. “Comm me if you need me.”
“Will do,” she answered.
Leo stepped out and through the spray and and into the anteroom for another decontam before he went into the hot room where the isolation beds were reserved for the most critical patients. “How we doing, Simpson?” he asked.
The nurse turned around at his approach and handed him a PADD with readouts. “Pretty good, sir,” she said. “They’re hot, there’s no doubt, but the damage could be a lot worse.” She gave him relevant details about the bed’s occupants, noting that the woman in the third bed had a skull fracture and a minor brain bleed. “Nothing that can’t be fixed, but she’s at least 24 hours from the stem cell infusion, and I worry about brain damage with our inability to regenerate right now.”
Leo nodded, lips pursed as he studied her readings since Lieutenant Keenan had been admitted. “Engineering,” he said. “Is that where they were?”
Simpson shrugged and shook her head. “No idea, sir. I thought it was the shuttle bay.”
“Hmm…” Leo said. “We’ll keep a close eye on this one, Simpson. The others?”
“Cadet Sen is a third year,” Simpson said, shaking her head. “He’s irradiated, of course, and that’s impeding healing his broken wrist, but other than that and a concussion, he’s going to be fine. I think he’ll need limited stem cell therapy.”
“That’s fine,” Leo said, peering through the isolation hood to look at Sen who was already looking more like himself. “And these two?” he looked at the readings of the remaining filled isolation beds.
“Jihesh is a Jihari national,” Simpson answered, pointing at the Saurian being. “She’s a bit more resistant to the radiation than a humanoid, but not much. She’s contused, but she should be fine.”
“Standard fertility re-establishment protocols, I’m assuming,” Leo said.
“Absolutely,” Simpson said firmly. “For everyone. Our last patient is one Lieutenant Jovanovic. Other than the radiation sickness, he doesn’t have any complaints. He seems to have gotten through the whole ordeal with nothing more than a few bumps.”
Leo nodded. “Good,” he said. “Other than Keenan, and the two in surgery, I’m relatively unconcerned. Fleury’s patient,” he said, and Simpson checked the list on his PADD and pointed, “Ensign Heke will be in critical condition when he gets in here, and Lieutenant Gaila won’t be much better.”
Simpson nodded.
“All right,” Leo said, handing back the PADD and heading out to re-sanitize in the anteroom and head back into the main Sickbay. “Let me know when Gaila and Heke make it to the hot room, please.”
“Yes sir,” Simpson nodded.
Leo reviewed the patient census from the wall console while he waited for the sanitizing cycle to end. There’d been no more deaths since he’d last checked, although there was serious concern for T’enev, who remained in Sickbay, and was mostly silent and still, nearly catatonic, despite all efforts of the staff to reach her, not to mention that of the Vulcan elders. Leo sighed.
“Attention all hands,” Jim’s voice over the comm was serious and sober. “This is Acting Captain James T. Kirk reporting that we were able to rescue six of our colleagues and friends from the Farragut. Lieutenants Gaila, Heke and Keenan, Ensigns Jihesh and Jovanovic and Cadet Sen are all being treated in Sickbay. In addition, we have welcomed more than 100 evacuees from the planet Vulcan aboard, and I thank those of you who have changed accommodations to ensure the comfort of our guests.” Jim paused, and the signal bleeped to let Leo know that he was through the cycle. “I am sorry to report we do not expect to bring any additional beings aboard at this time. After a thorough examination of sensor reports, Captain Pike and I have reluctantly concluded that it is time to turn our course toward the Beta Prime Spacedock.”
Leo sighed and stepped out of the anteroom. He knew this had to be killing Jim, not to mention Pike –- eight of his peers were dead, a generation of Captains that were supposed to ascend to the admiralty, not to mention the brace of officers and all the crew under them that had been trained to replace them. It was most of a generation of Starfleet personnel.
“Before we leave this sacred space where so many that we knew and loved died, however, we are going to set a marker, and yes, it is a beacon for the ships that will come after us to retrieve them and bring them home, but it is also a symbol of how we remember, how we are promising that we will not forget – not them, or Vulcan. I ask that if you can, you stand with those of us on the Bridge as we launch this beacon, and for a full moment of silence before we leave this place.”
Leo stepped out of anteroom into the hushed Sickbay. Those who could stand were doing so, shoulders back and chins raised defiantly in some cases, although Leo could see tears streaming unchecked down more than one face.
“On my mark, Mr. Sulu,” Jim said quietly. “Launch.”
Many of the staff in Sickbay, Pike included, saluted. From somewhere behind him, Leo could hear the sound of someone crying, and he swallowed, feeling the sting in his own eyes as everyone around him was still and solemn.
“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.” Jim recited, his voice harsh but true.
Leo could hear him swallow before he said. “From For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon. The beacon has been set.” He paused. “Thank you all.”
People didn’t immediately move back to the work they had been doing before the moment of silence, but stood, heads bowed, lost in thought. When Leo turned, he was unsurprised to see that many of the staff were hugging, not just each other, but the patients. From across the room, he caught the eye of Chris Pike, who was holding onto the hand of a young man whose head was down on Pike's bed as he sobbed. He didn’t need to look twice to realize that Pike had probably called Pak over before the ceremony to tell him privately that there was no chance that his wife had survived the Farragut’s destruction. Christine Chapel was hovering nearby with a hypo in her hand, but Pike shook his head at Leo, running his hand compassionately over the young doctor's head, and Leo nodded in understanding. A sedative would only postpone the grief that Dr. Pak would surely be feeling for a long time to come.
He strode across the room to Pike’s bedside, snagging an unoccupied chair from another bed and pushing the grieving man down into it. Then he activated the privacy curtain when Pike flicked his eyes upward. Leo stepped out of the curtained off area and began to move to his office, noting with some surprise that the T’enev had turned in her bed to face the sound of Pak’s crying, her eyes open and seemingly focused for the first time since she’d been admitted to the Sickbay. Leo shared a questioning glance with the Vulcan elder who stood by her bed, noting that he seemed almost worried by what was most likely an unseemly display on T’enev’s part.
Leo shook his head and continued into his office. He preferred to see it as progress.
+
Hours later, in the middle of the night assigned to the ship, Leo got up from his desk to see for himself how the patients in the ICU were doing. Sen was expected to be released to a bed in the main bay for regeneration and fertility therapy sometime in the next twelve hours, and Jovanovic was even farther along than he was. The other four, however, including the Saurian female, were still in danger.
Leo was heading to get into the gear necessary to go into the room when he saw Nyota standing at the window across the way, staring into the isolation room, her arms wrapped around her middle as if she were hugging herself. He stopped and changed direction, coming around the long wall that would lead him to her, and was surprised when he heard Jim’s voice. He couldn’t hear exactly what Jim was saying, but his tone was meant to be reassuring.
He rounded the corner in time to see Nyota spin and face Jim, the long tail of her hair airborne as she moved. “Do not!” Nyota said firmly, her tone loud. “Don’t even say her name to me, Jim Kirk!”
Leo was taken aback by the level of fury in her voice, and the stricken, guilty expression on Jim’s face.
“I’m sor-“ Jim began to say.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Nyota said, staring up at him, her back rigid. “I don’t. Maybe she’ll forgive you, but I don’t have to. She cried, Jim.”
Jim’s eyes widened in such a way that Leo thought that he might be going to cry as well, but he swallowed hard and didn’t say anything.
“Congratulations,” Nyota said scornfully. “Great job.” She turned back to face the window into the hot room, looking suddenly haggard.
Jim moved as if to put an arm around her, but Nyota put a hand up and pushed against his chest.
“No,” she said firmly. “Just leave me alone.”
Jim ran a hand through his hair, looking like that was the last thing he wanted to do, and then pressed a hand up against the glass of the hot room before he turned and nearly bolted for the door.
Nyota closed her eyes as the doors whisked closed behind her and pressed her forehead against the glass, her shoulders beginning to shake.
“Nyota, darlin’,” Leo said, coming up to stand next to her.
“I heard you coming,” she said, wiping her tears. “And before you say anything –- he deserved that.”
Leo looked at her closely, and saw that she meant it, even though she did feel badly. “What can I do for you?” he asked her, because there was clearly a story to tell, and he’d much prefer that Jim be the one to tell him.
There was a long pause, and Leo watched her reflection in the glass as Nyota struggled to form the words. “Tell me she’s going to be all right,” she finally choked out.
Leo sighed and wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders and Nyota let him, dropping her head against his chest after a few seconds, so Leo wrapped his other arm around her, too. “Nyota, darlin’” he said, “she is strong and she is young, and there are people here,” he gently emphasized, “that love her. Now, if you press that button right there,” he raised a hand to indicate which one, “you’ll be talking right to her, and you can let her know that you’re out here waiting for her. Will you do that for her?”
Nyota straightened out of his embrace and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She nodded briskly. "Yes,” she said. She looked up at Leo. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to go check on her now,” he said, and she nodded again and he turned and walked away, heading back into the anteroom. “McCoy to Bridge,” he said into the comm while he waited for the signal that he was clear to get back into his hazmat gear.
“Ensign Richie here, Doctor McCoy,” came the response.
“Is Captain Kirk on the Bridge?” he asked.
“No, he’s not,” Richie answered. “I thought he was in Sickbay.”
“He was,” Leo answered, “but he’s gone now.”
“Ah,” said the Ensign. “Then I’d check Engineering or comm him directly.”
“I’ll do that, thank you,” Leo said, stepping into the sanitizing spray. “McCoy out.”
+
Leo had ended up spending more time in the hot room than he'd intended, tweaking the treatment of the four most troublesome patients. He was reasonably certain that the Saurian female was going to do much better with the adjustments to her isolation unit, but was worried about both Keenan, who was showing signs of a potentially compromising brain injury, and Heke, who was just a mess. About Gaila's progress he was feeling a bit more sanguine. She was still critical, but she was right on target for where she should be.
He turned to give Nyota an encouraging gesture, and was not truly surprised to see that Spock was standing next to her as she kept her vigil, murmuring into the speaker that fed into Gaila's unit. Spock had the air of a man who'd been rousted from his bed, although not a hair was out of place, and there certainly wasn't a pillow crease on his face. His expression was as alert as ever, but there was something that told Leo that Jim must have woken him and told him to get his ass down to Sickbay. Perhaps it was just a momentary fracturing of the façade that had hidden his exhaustion –- God knows they were all so tired that they could sleep for the week it was probably going to take them to get to the Spacedock. In any case, Spock had nodded fractionally at him when he gave a 'keep going' gesture to Nyota, while Nyota's smile had been nearly blinding. She flashed it at Spock before she turned back to the speaker with renewed energy and Leo had been surprised by the look of softness that had crossed Spock's features as he looked at her.
"I'll be damned," he said aloud into his helmet. The hobgoblin did love her.
"Sir?" The night nurse was looking at him with concern, glancing from the PADD in his hand to the bed and back.
"As you were, Ritter," Leo said. "I've been on a damned long time, and I was talking to myself. Comm me if there are any changes that need looking after."
"Yes, sir," Ritter said. "Good night, sir."
Leo looked back at Spock and Uhura as he began to make his way across the hot room, but Spock's expression, whatever it had been, was no longer in evidence. He shook his head. "Will wonders never cease," he murmured, then stepped out of the hot room to begin the sanitizing cycle anew.
+
Jim wasn't answering his comm, and Scotty, who clearly still hadn't been to bed, said that he'd been by and left more than an hour before. Leo had threatened Scotty with hyposprays and forced sedation unless he agreed to rest, and finally received the man's begrudging promise before he'd continued his search.
Leo had considered going back to his room after the Bridge had turned up similarly empty, with the exception of the skeleton crew that ran the ship in the deepest hours of the night, but didn't think that Jim would have gone back there alone. Pike was asleep, and Leo had no idea what name they'd finally decided on for the elder version of Spock that he had yet to meet. Somehow, he doubted that Jim would have gone there for solace. No. It was more like his boy to brood, to find someplace solitary to lick his wounds.
He studied the ship's layout looking for the kind of hiding places that would appeal to Jim, hoping against hope that wherever he'd gotten to wouldn't involve Leo having to crawl through Jefferies Tubes. The gyms were a possibility –- but Leo remembered that Jim had said that he'd preferred running in the Engineering section of the Farragut -- something he doubted that he'd be doing in the beleaguered section here on Enterprise. And it occurred to him suddenly that the losses on the Farragut were personal and real to Jim. He'd spent ten weeks on that ship, with Captain Garrovick and his crew.
Leo sighed, and found where the observation decks were on Enterprise, going to the large forward one first only to find it empty, before he realized that Jim was more likely to be looking back at the space they were leaving behind, where Vulcan had been, where so many had died. He moved the length of the ship more swiftly then, surety giving his tired footsteps a burst of fleetness as he hustled from lift to corridor and from deck to deck.
The ship was mostly quiet at this hour, although he was surprised to see the number of Vulcans wandering the corridors. He greeted them politely, but none of them, not even those in groups of twos and threes, seemed inclined to speak any further with him. Even with their stoic facades, and their habitual placid expressions, they seemed lost to him – but perhaps he was projecting, seeing what he wanted to see and translating it into a more emotional affect.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the door whisked open to the smallest aft observation deck. The lights were off, but the viewscreen was not shuttered, and Leo could make out Jim's dark figure leaning against it, his head turned, he was sure, to look in the direction of the graveyard they'd just left behind.
"Jim," he said quietly.
"Found me, Bones," Jim answered after a moment's pause. He was voice was thready with exhaustion and regret.
Leo walked over to the observation window, noting the secondary hull below them and the gleaming nacelles beyond that.
"How are they?" he asked.
"Sen should be released into the main Sickbay tomorrow morning," Leo said.
"And Gaila?" Jim asked, finally turning to look at him.
"She's holding her own, Jim," Leo said. "She's got a tougher fight because she was hurt worse, but she'd doing better than I had expected."
Jim searched his expression for any hint that Leo was soft-pedaling things, but he stared back without flinching, arms crossed over his chest.
"OK," Jim breathed out, turning back to look at something far in the distance. The only sound in the room, aside from their breathing, was the hum of the engines below them. "They're all dead," Jim said after a while. "Garrovick and Ameixoeira," he paused. "Gonzo. Wiz." His voice dropped. "Gary."
"Yeah," Leo said. "I expect so."
Jim shook his head, a half-laugh escaping him. "You know, Pike challenged me to do better than my father did, did you know that?"
"No," Leo answered, wondering at the sharp turn in the conversation.
"That was his recruiting speech to me – that my father saved 800 lives in the twelve minutes that he was Captain of the Kelvin, and I was so determined," Jim said. "To prove that I could do better."
"Jim," Leo said, puzzled. "You saved billions of lives yesterday."
"Did I?" Jim asked bleakly. "Vulcan is gone. The Farragut, the Hood, the Antares, the Armstrong, the Wolcott, the Newton, the Truman, the Mayflower …" he drew in a breath and shuddered. "Gone."
"Jim," Leo said, "you did what you could."
"By any means possible," Jim said with blithe sarcasm.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm not even supposed to be here," Jim said.
"Yes," Leo said, beginning to see where this was going. "Yes, you are."
"No," Jim said.
"Pike," Leo emphasized, "said that the Enterprise was your assignment."
"I know," Jim said, turning his face back to the stars. "But the only reason I'm here is because of you." He turned to look at Leo. "You changed history by bringing me aboard."
"Jim," Leo said, half-exasperated and totally exhausted. "I brought you aboard because you were supposed to be here."
Jim nodded. "That's what Spock, the other Spock, said, too. That the universe would try to heal itself, to make things be as they should be."
Leo shook his head to refute the argument, knowing full well that the universe hadn't swayed him to bring Jim aboard, no matter how large his own desires were.
"But the fact remains," Jim said, raising his voice to stifle Leo's protest, "that I should have been back on Earth because of what I did." He shook his head ruefully. "This whole fucked up chain of events," he said, "it's all one long loop of causality," he looked at Leo, "all dependent upon me being an asshole." He laughed, short and harsh. "Which, by the way, I'm really, really good at."
"Jim …" Leo said, not knowing where to start with whatever the fuck was going on here. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The Kobayashi Maru," Jim said. "Did you figure out how I did it?"
Leo stared at him. "You altered the parameters of the exercise," he said slowly, quoting back his own language to him.
"I hacked it," Jim said clearly. "I hacked it. But the security was too high, so I had to hack an account of somebody who had the clearance to get me to the sim."
"Gaila," Leo said, as the penny dropped.
"Yep," Jim said. "Gaila. You know I asked her to help me, and she said no." He turned toward the window again, and Leo watched his reflection on the glass. "So. We didn't speak for a while. You know me, Bones, I'm good at cutting people out, right?" Jim nodded bitterly at him before turning back to the glass. "And then, when I needed a little intel to get me over a hump in the hack, I started hanging out with her again, you know," Jim shook his head at himself. "So I was in her room the night before the test, and I'd gotten the info that I needed from her, because I'm a sly bastard, and then …"
Leo didn't need a road map to know where things were going, and he felt a little sick at the idea. He knew, of course, that Jim had been obsessed with cracking the Maru, but he hadn't actually thought that he'd have gone this far.
"She told me that she thought she loved me, Bones," Jim said, spitting out the words. "You know, we used to talk about love, she and I, because what Orions call love is not what Terrans call love, and she was trying to understand it." He laughed. "Like I fucking know, right?" He glanced over at Leo. "Anyway. She said it, and I immediately tried to divert her," he made a face, "and then Uhura came home and she made me hide, and that, Bones, that is how I found out about the Klingon attack –- hiding under Gaila's bed after I'd used her."
There wasn't anything that Leo could say to that, and he wasn't about to try.
"After I won," Jim said, rounding his mouth over the word like it tasted horrible, "Gaila came to see me." He turned and looked at Leo again. "I think I would have felt better if she'd just punched me, or kicked me in the balls, or something," he said. "But she said to me, 'I thought you were my friend'," Jim's voice cracked a little bit on the last two words. "She said, 'I told you that I loved you, because I thought you were my friend, and we weren't allowed to have friends, because a friend would be your peer, and I wasn't allowed peers.'"
Leo's eyes were filling with tears, despite himself, and he knew that Jim could see them.
"Then she said that I wasn't her friend, because Uhura had explained to her that a friend loved you for who you were, and that someone who loved you wouldn't do to her what I had done," Jim said with finality, "And then she told me to stay away from her."
"Jim …" Leo said. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't waste your sorry on me," Jim said. "I'm not worth it."
"Jim …" Leo said, reaching for him.
"No," Jim said, blocking him. "No." He shook his head and then turned and determinedly walked away.
+
Leo had sat there for a long time and stared at the stars as they streamed past, thinking about causality and fate and choice and the capriciousness of it all. Then, he'd dragged his weary bones down to Sickbay and checked on his patients one last time before he'd returned to his silent and dark cabin and laid himself down to attempt to rest.
But his mind whirred with all the knowledge that he'd gained, and he worried, unable to commit himself to sleep. He lay there instead, floating in grey restlessness until he heard the snick of the door to his quarters, and opened his eyes.
When they'd adjusted, he could see the shadow of Jim's figure in his room, standing there like a dark ghost, his fists clenched at his sides. He knew he should get up, and try to heal at least the physical hurts, the ones he knew he was capable of doctoring, but instinct told him that it was the surest way to drive Jim back into wandering the halls, or whatever he'd been doing for the last few hours. Instead, he flipped the covers back in invitation, sliding over to make room for Jim, the action coming naturally to him after all this time.
When Jim spoke, his voice was infinitely more weary than it had ever been. "I don't deserve your friendship,Bones," he said quietly.
Leo held out a hand in answer, and after a moment, heard the sound of Jim's boots hitting the deck, and his shirt and pants following. He crawled into the bed, facing Leo but trying, at first, to stay separate from him, still denying himself the solace that he craved. But Leo, mindful of Jim's bruises and his brittle weariness, carefully pulled him into his arms. He felt the shudder that ran through Jim's frame as he accepted the comfort that Leo was offering, hiding his face against Leo's neck.
"Jim," Leo said quietly. "That would only be true if you wouldn't admit that you'd done wrong, and if you didn't regret it."
Jim made a noncommittal noise as Leo tucked him in closer, pulling the covers up and over him like a shield, but he wrapped his arms around Leo and held on.
"Horatio told me a long time ago that the difference between a good man and an evil one is the humility to admit your sins, and the willingness to not commit that particular wrong again." Leo kissed the top of Jim's head. "Assholes don't tell the truth, Jim. They hide it. They deny it. They lie and make excuses."
He could feel Jim, tired as he was, summoning up a counterargument, so he ran a hand down his back carefully and continued talking. "Go to sleep, Jim," he said. "Whatever needs to be put right will wait until tomorrow. I promise."
+
Switch 41
Author:
ceres_liberaRating: R to NC-17
Summary: The life and times of Leonard H. McCoy MD/PhD … If Leonard McCoy's life could get any fucking weirder, it would be … Jesus, he didn't even want to think what that could possibly mean, because it's already been too fucking weird to make any kind of rational sense.
Canon: Based in the ST:XI universe, but strongly influenced by all canon ST-verses.
Characters: McCoy/Kirk, with eventual appearances by all other ST:XI characters.
Notes: Well ... long weekends make it easier to write, even stuffed with turkey and pie. I'm warning for tissue, but I promise you that it won't be as bad as you think. Just ... necessary. /being obscure.
+
Leo was unconscious for just an instant, although the respite from the surge of pain that had short-circuited his systems was blessed. There was something … a kind of knowing that crept into his mind before he lost all control, and he felt it, like an echo in his consciousness, as he became aware again.
“Mr. Scott!” Jim’s voice was sharp, authoritative in a way that Leo had not heard it before. “I thought that there were no power sources in this section of the ship.”
“That’s right, Captain,” Scott said.
Leo tried to make his mouth work, only then becoming aware of the blood in it. He reached up a hand, intending to spit into it, only to bat at his face ineffectually, hidden as it was behind the shield of his forgotten hazmat helmet. Right. He caught himself just before he expectorated, swallowing the lump of blood and saliva.
“Bones?” Jim’s voice still had that uncharacteristic thread of panic in it, and as Leo looked up at him, he realized that Jim had picked him up from the deck and was holding him in his arms. He could hear the fan on Jim’s helmet running, even as he noticed the fogging of the respiration on the inner shield. Jim’s chest was heaving against his arm and back, his eyes wide and wild.
If Leo hadn’t already been well and truly shocked, that might have maybe done the trick. Jim Kirk, the man who had concocted an almost suicidal plan to save Earth without batting his pretty eyes, was absolutely fucking terrified. Leo felt a swell of love that was warm and encompassing -- at the same time that he realized that he felt something else warm and encompassing.
“Goddamnit,” he said. His bladder had let go when he’d been shocked. He wondered how humorous Jim would find his current situation.
“Bones!” Jim said with relief in his voice, looking in his eyes as one of Leo’s staff scanned him.
“Captain?” Scott asked over the comm.
“Bones is OK,” Jim said, in a far more relaxed tone. “He’s complaining and everything, but I still want to know what the fuck happened here.” The last was said with a hard tone, making it quite clear that this was an order, and not a request.
“Understood,” Scotty answered.
“How’s Dehner?” Jim asked a corpsman.
“She’s dead, Jim,” Leo said, struggling to sit up so that the urine wouldn’t run up his back.
“What?” Jim asked in confusion.
“She’s dead,” Leo said surely.
“She is,” the corpsman confirmed.
“And she just shocked the shit out of you before she went?” Jim asked.
“Well,” Leo drawled, knowing that the medical staff had to know what had happened anyway. “Not the shit, exactly.”
Jim’s eyebrows disappeared into the covered part of his helmet. “Bones!” he said, eyes twinkling.
“Yes, Jim," he said, breaking out of Jim’s embrace to stand, wincing as he felt the liquid running down into his boots. “The irony is not lost on me.”
“Static electricity?” Scotty said suddenly over the comm.
Leo took the tricorder from the corpsman to look over Dehner’s results.
“From what?” Jim answered, without missing a beat. “The materials in here are insulated to prevent just that kind of thing. Besides, Bones was wearing boots that wouldn’t have conducted a charge from the deck.”
“It came from her, Jim,” Leo said assuredly. “But you’re right –- no galvanic charge should have been able to pass from her to me, especially in this suit.”
Hanlon piped up from next to Leo. “That’s how it looked to me, too, Doc. I swear I saw a spark jump from her to you. Plus ..” he hesitated. “Did her eyes look weird to you?” Leo turned around to look at Cupcake. “I know I was farther away than you, but … they just didn’t look right.”
“Bones,” Jim said. His hands were on his hips as he listened, his face somber.
“I agree,” said Leo, “although I couldn’t tell you what the hell it was – reflection, cataracts from the electrical shock.” He shrugged. “Maybe on autopsy.”
Jim didn’t answer, seemingly absorbed in thought.
“Jim?” he asked.
“Isn’t she –- wasn’t she -” Jim corrected himself, “-that psychiatrist with the unbelievably high psi scores?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said, wondering how the hell Jim knew that.
“And that’s a kind of energy, right?” Jim asked.
“It doesn’t carry a charge, though, Captain,” Scott answered from his comm.
“Hmm …” Jim said thoughtfully. “Not as far as we know,” he said.
“Jim,” Leo said, “they’ve been measuring this stuff almost since back in the day of the EKG. I’m sure someone would have noted if there was an electrical discharge associated with the heightened brain wave activity.”
Jim nodded like he was listening, but continued to stare down at Dehner’s body. “Maybe it only happens when they die.”
“Jim, that’s …” Leo thought that over, surprised. “I don’t know what that is, exactly,” he said bemusedly, amazed at how Jim's mind worked. “Or how we’d figure that out.”
“Well …” Jim said, “something happened.”
“Aye,” Scott said over the comm.. “And I’m for keeping that section in isolation and in situ for a wee bit while we try and figure out what.”
“She’s …” Leo began.
“Oh, I know what ye said, Doctor,” Scott said, “and the other lad there, but until we have some sort of confirmation that it wasn’t the surroundings, I’d rather not have other people working in there. Just in case.”
“I concur,” Jim said.
Leo opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. Elizabeth Dehner was beyond his care, and it wasn’t like anyone on the Enterprise would be disrespectful. “Fine,” he said, noting that Jim looked relieved. “I need to get to Sickbay, anyway.”
Practically as soon as he finished saying the words, he heard the Engineer say, “Locking onto your comm now, doctor and sending you for decontam,” and the world was swirling sparkles of white light around him.
+
Clean and dry in new scrubs, Leo strode into surgery to check on the most severely injured of the patients. He stepped into the sanitizing spray and strapped on a face shield before he went to Gaila’s bedside, watching M’Benga deftly repairing some of Gaila’s veins. “How’s the damage?” he asked.
“The radiation poisoning is severe,” M’Benga answered. “we’re going to have to wait to do most of the repair work when she’s had more treatment. Her bones are still breaking down –- she won’t tolerate a regeneration, or even a graft.”
“Stem cell infusion?” Leo asked.
“At least 24 hours away,” M’Benga answered. “She’s pretty hot.”
Leo nodded, and stepped out of the containment field and into the spray before he stepped into Fleury’s field. Her patient had a crushing chest injury on top of radiation poisoning, and between shattered cartilage and frayed lung tissue, she had a mess on her hands. “Transplant?” Leo asked.
Fleury’s expression was grim. “We’ve got to get there first, boss,” she said.
Leo looked over the field. “You’ll do it,” he said surely. “Need a hand?”
Fleury’s eyes flicked to his face, and she looked amused and gratified. She’d been a battlefield surgeon for at least a decade, but a new CMO was an unknown quantity. “Not unless you’d like to join in,” she said, making it clear that he’d be welcome if he did so.
“Well,” Leo drawled, watching her sweep lung tissue for fragments of pulverized cartilage. “You do look like you’re having fun there and all, but … I’ll pass.”
“The offer’s open anytime, sir,” Fleury said, smiling openly as she continued working.
“All right, then,” he said. “Comm me if you need me.”
“Will do,” she answered.
Leo stepped out and through the spray and and into the anteroom for another decontam before he went into the hot room where the isolation beds were reserved for the most critical patients. “How we doing, Simpson?” he asked.
The nurse turned around at his approach and handed him a PADD with readouts. “Pretty good, sir,” she said. “They’re hot, there’s no doubt, but the damage could be a lot worse.” She gave him relevant details about the bed’s occupants, noting that the woman in the third bed had a skull fracture and a minor brain bleed. “Nothing that can’t be fixed, but she’s at least 24 hours from the stem cell infusion, and I worry about brain damage with our inability to regenerate right now.”
Leo nodded, lips pursed as he studied her readings since Lieutenant Keenan had been admitted. “Engineering,” he said. “Is that where they were?”
Simpson shrugged and shook her head. “No idea, sir. I thought it was the shuttle bay.”
“Hmm…” Leo said. “We’ll keep a close eye on this one, Simpson. The others?”
“Cadet Sen is a third year,” Simpson said, shaking her head. “He’s irradiated, of course, and that’s impeding healing his broken wrist, but other than that and a concussion, he’s going to be fine. I think he’ll need limited stem cell therapy.”
“That’s fine,” Leo said, peering through the isolation hood to look at Sen who was already looking more like himself. “And these two?” he looked at the readings of the remaining filled isolation beds.
“Jihesh is a Jihari national,” Simpson answered, pointing at the Saurian being. “She’s a bit more resistant to the radiation than a humanoid, but not much. She’s contused, but she should be fine.”
“Standard fertility re-establishment protocols, I’m assuming,” Leo said.
“Absolutely,” Simpson said firmly. “For everyone. Our last patient is one Lieutenant Jovanovic. Other than the radiation sickness, he doesn’t have any complaints. He seems to have gotten through the whole ordeal with nothing more than a few bumps.”
Leo nodded. “Good,” he said. “Other than Keenan, and the two in surgery, I’m relatively unconcerned. Fleury’s patient,” he said, and Simpson checked the list on his PADD and pointed, “Ensign Heke will be in critical condition when he gets in here, and Lieutenant Gaila won’t be much better.”
Simpson nodded.
“All right,” Leo said, handing back the PADD and heading out to re-sanitize in the anteroom and head back into the main Sickbay. “Let me know when Gaila and Heke make it to the hot room, please.”
“Yes sir,” Simpson nodded.
Leo reviewed the patient census from the wall console while he waited for the sanitizing cycle to end. There’d been no more deaths since he’d last checked, although there was serious concern for T’enev, who remained in Sickbay, and was mostly silent and still, nearly catatonic, despite all efforts of the staff to reach her, not to mention that of the Vulcan elders. Leo sighed.
“Attention all hands,” Jim’s voice over the comm was serious and sober. “This is Acting Captain James T. Kirk reporting that we were able to rescue six of our colleagues and friends from the Farragut. Lieutenants Gaila, Heke and Keenan, Ensigns Jihesh and Jovanovic and Cadet Sen are all being treated in Sickbay. In addition, we have welcomed more than 100 evacuees from the planet Vulcan aboard, and I thank those of you who have changed accommodations to ensure the comfort of our guests.” Jim paused, and the signal bleeped to let Leo know that he was through the cycle. “I am sorry to report we do not expect to bring any additional beings aboard at this time. After a thorough examination of sensor reports, Captain Pike and I have reluctantly concluded that it is time to turn our course toward the Beta Prime Spacedock.”
Leo sighed and stepped out of the anteroom. He knew this had to be killing Jim, not to mention Pike –- eight of his peers were dead, a generation of Captains that were supposed to ascend to the admiralty, not to mention the brace of officers and all the crew under them that had been trained to replace them. It was most of a generation of Starfleet personnel.
“Before we leave this sacred space where so many that we knew and loved died, however, we are going to set a marker, and yes, it is a beacon for the ships that will come after us to retrieve them and bring them home, but it is also a symbol of how we remember, how we are promising that we will not forget – not them, or Vulcan. I ask that if you can, you stand with those of us on the Bridge as we launch this beacon, and for a full moment of silence before we leave this place.”
Leo stepped out of anteroom into the hushed Sickbay. Those who could stand were doing so, shoulders back and chins raised defiantly in some cases, although Leo could see tears streaming unchecked down more than one face.
“On my mark, Mr. Sulu,” Jim said quietly. “Launch.”
Many of the staff in Sickbay, Pike included, saluted. From somewhere behind him, Leo could hear the sound of someone crying, and he swallowed, feeling the sting in his own eyes as everyone around him was still and solemn.
“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.” Jim recited, his voice harsh but true.
Leo could hear him swallow before he said. “From For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon. The beacon has been set.” He paused. “Thank you all.”
People didn’t immediately move back to the work they had been doing before the moment of silence, but stood, heads bowed, lost in thought. When Leo turned, he was unsurprised to see that many of the staff were hugging, not just each other, but the patients. From across the room, he caught the eye of Chris Pike, who was holding onto the hand of a young man whose head was down on Pike's bed as he sobbed. He didn’t need to look twice to realize that Pike had probably called Pak over before the ceremony to tell him privately that there was no chance that his wife had survived the Farragut’s destruction. Christine Chapel was hovering nearby with a hypo in her hand, but Pike shook his head at Leo, running his hand compassionately over the young doctor's head, and Leo nodded in understanding. A sedative would only postpone the grief that Dr. Pak would surely be feeling for a long time to come.
He strode across the room to Pike’s bedside, snagging an unoccupied chair from another bed and pushing the grieving man down into it. Then he activated the privacy curtain when Pike flicked his eyes upward. Leo stepped out of the curtained off area and began to move to his office, noting with some surprise that the T’enev had turned in her bed to face the sound of Pak’s crying, her eyes open and seemingly focused for the first time since she’d been admitted to the Sickbay. Leo shared a questioning glance with the Vulcan elder who stood by her bed, noting that he seemed almost worried by what was most likely an unseemly display on T’enev’s part.
Leo shook his head and continued into his office. He preferred to see it as progress.
+
Hours later, in the middle of the night assigned to the ship, Leo got up from his desk to see for himself how the patients in the ICU were doing. Sen was expected to be released to a bed in the main bay for regeneration and fertility therapy sometime in the next twelve hours, and Jovanovic was even farther along than he was. The other four, however, including the Saurian female, were still in danger.
Leo was heading to get into the gear necessary to go into the room when he saw Nyota standing at the window across the way, staring into the isolation room, her arms wrapped around her middle as if she were hugging herself. He stopped and changed direction, coming around the long wall that would lead him to her, and was surprised when he heard Jim’s voice. He couldn’t hear exactly what Jim was saying, but his tone was meant to be reassuring.
He rounded the corner in time to see Nyota spin and face Jim, the long tail of her hair airborne as she moved. “Do not!” Nyota said firmly, her tone loud. “Don’t even say her name to me, Jim Kirk!”
Leo was taken aback by the level of fury in her voice, and the stricken, guilty expression on Jim’s face.
“I’m sor-“ Jim began to say.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Nyota said, staring up at him, her back rigid. “I don’t. Maybe she’ll forgive you, but I don’t have to. She cried, Jim.”
Jim’s eyes widened in such a way that Leo thought that he might be going to cry as well, but he swallowed hard and didn’t say anything.
“Congratulations,” Nyota said scornfully. “Great job.” She turned back to face the window into the hot room, looking suddenly haggard.
Jim moved as if to put an arm around her, but Nyota put a hand up and pushed against his chest.
“No,” she said firmly. “Just leave me alone.”
Jim ran a hand through his hair, looking like that was the last thing he wanted to do, and then pressed a hand up against the glass of the hot room before he turned and nearly bolted for the door.
Nyota closed her eyes as the doors whisked closed behind her and pressed her forehead against the glass, her shoulders beginning to shake.
“Nyota, darlin’,” Leo said, coming up to stand next to her.
“I heard you coming,” she said, wiping her tears. “And before you say anything –- he deserved that.”
Leo looked at her closely, and saw that she meant it, even though she did feel badly. “What can I do for you?” he asked her, because there was clearly a story to tell, and he’d much prefer that Jim be the one to tell him.
There was a long pause, and Leo watched her reflection in the glass as Nyota struggled to form the words. “Tell me she’s going to be all right,” she finally choked out.
Leo sighed and wrapped an arm around her slender shoulders and Nyota let him, dropping her head against his chest after a few seconds, so Leo wrapped his other arm around her, too. “Nyota, darlin’” he said, “she is strong and she is young, and there are people here,” he gently emphasized, “that love her. Now, if you press that button right there,” he raised a hand to indicate which one, “you’ll be talking right to her, and you can let her know that you’re out here waiting for her. Will you do that for her?”
Nyota straightened out of his embrace and wiped the tears from her cheeks. She nodded briskly. "Yes,” she said. She looked up at Leo. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to go check on her now,” he said, and she nodded again and he turned and walked away, heading back into the anteroom. “McCoy to Bridge,” he said into the comm while he waited for the signal that he was clear to get back into his hazmat gear.
“Ensign Richie here, Doctor McCoy,” came the response.
“Is Captain Kirk on the Bridge?” he asked.
“No, he’s not,” Richie answered. “I thought he was in Sickbay.”
“He was,” Leo answered, “but he’s gone now.”
“Ah,” said the Ensign. “Then I’d check Engineering or comm him directly.”
“I’ll do that, thank you,” Leo said, stepping into the sanitizing spray. “McCoy out.”
+
Leo had ended up spending more time in the hot room than he'd intended, tweaking the treatment of the four most troublesome patients. He was reasonably certain that the Saurian female was going to do much better with the adjustments to her isolation unit, but was worried about both Keenan, who was showing signs of a potentially compromising brain injury, and Heke, who was just a mess. About Gaila's progress he was feeling a bit more sanguine. She was still critical, but she was right on target for where she should be.
He turned to give Nyota an encouraging gesture, and was not truly surprised to see that Spock was standing next to her as she kept her vigil, murmuring into the speaker that fed into Gaila's unit. Spock had the air of a man who'd been rousted from his bed, although not a hair was out of place, and there certainly wasn't a pillow crease on his face. His expression was as alert as ever, but there was something that told Leo that Jim must have woken him and told him to get his ass down to Sickbay. Perhaps it was just a momentary fracturing of the façade that had hidden his exhaustion –- God knows they were all so tired that they could sleep for the week it was probably going to take them to get to the Spacedock. In any case, Spock had nodded fractionally at him when he gave a 'keep going' gesture to Nyota, while Nyota's smile had been nearly blinding. She flashed it at Spock before she turned back to the speaker with renewed energy and Leo had been surprised by the look of softness that had crossed Spock's features as he looked at her.
"I'll be damned," he said aloud into his helmet. The hobgoblin did love her.
"Sir?" The night nurse was looking at him with concern, glancing from the PADD in his hand to the bed and back.
"As you were, Ritter," Leo said. "I've been on a damned long time, and I was talking to myself. Comm me if there are any changes that need looking after."
"Yes, sir," Ritter said. "Good night, sir."
Leo looked back at Spock and Uhura as he began to make his way across the hot room, but Spock's expression, whatever it had been, was no longer in evidence. He shook his head. "Will wonders never cease," he murmured, then stepped out of the hot room to begin the sanitizing cycle anew.
+
Jim wasn't answering his comm, and Scotty, who clearly still hadn't been to bed, said that he'd been by and left more than an hour before. Leo had threatened Scotty with hyposprays and forced sedation unless he agreed to rest, and finally received the man's begrudging promise before he'd continued his search.
Leo had considered going back to his room after the Bridge had turned up similarly empty, with the exception of the skeleton crew that ran the ship in the deepest hours of the night, but didn't think that Jim would have gone back there alone. Pike was asleep, and Leo had no idea what name they'd finally decided on for the elder version of Spock that he had yet to meet. Somehow, he doubted that Jim would have gone there for solace. No. It was more like his boy to brood, to find someplace solitary to lick his wounds.
He studied the ship's layout looking for the kind of hiding places that would appeal to Jim, hoping against hope that wherever he'd gotten to wouldn't involve Leo having to crawl through Jefferies Tubes. The gyms were a possibility –- but Leo remembered that Jim had said that he'd preferred running in the Engineering section of the Farragut -- something he doubted that he'd be doing in the beleaguered section here on Enterprise. And it occurred to him suddenly that the losses on the Farragut were personal and real to Jim. He'd spent ten weeks on that ship, with Captain Garrovick and his crew.
Leo sighed, and found where the observation decks were on Enterprise, going to the large forward one first only to find it empty, before he realized that Jim was more likely to be looking back at the space they were leaving behind, where Vulcan had been, where so many had died. He moved the length of the ship more swiftly then, surety giving his tired footsteps a burst of fleetness as he hustled from lift to corridor and from deck to deck.
The ship was mostly quiet at this hour, although he was surprised to see the number of Vulcans wandering the corridors. He greeted them politely, but none of them, not even those in groups of twos and threes, seemed inclined to speak any further with him. Even with their stoic facades, and their habitual placid expressions, they seemed lost to him – but perhaps he was projecting, seeing what he wanted to see and translating it into a more emotional affect.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the door whisked open to the smallest aft observation deck. The lights were off, but the viewscreen was not shuttered, and Leo could make out Jim's dark figure leaning against it, his head turned, he was sure, to look in the direction of the graveyard they'd just left behind.
"Jim," he said quietly.
"Found me, Bones," Jim answered after a moment's pause. He was voice was thready with exhaustion and regret.
Leo walked over to the observation window, noting the secondary hull below them and the gleaming nacelles beyond that.
"How are they?" he asked.
"Sen should be released into the main Sickbay tomorrow morning," Leo said.
"And Gaila?" Jim asked, finally turning to look at him.
"She's holding her own, Jim," Leo said. "She's got a tougher fight because she was hurt worse, but she'd doing better than I had expected."
Jim searched his expression for any hint that Leo was soft-pedaling things, but he stared back without flinching, arms crossed over his chest.
"OK," Jim breathed out, turning back to look at something far in the distance. The only sound in the room, aside from their breathing, was the hum of the engines below them. "They're all dead," Jim said after a while. "Garrovick and Ameixoeira," he paused. "Gonzo. Wiz." His voice dropped. "Gary."
"Yeah," Leo said. "I expect so."
Jim shook his head, a half-laugh escaping him. "You know, Pike challenged me to do better than my father did, did you know that?"
"No," Leo answered, wondering at the sharp turn in the conversation.
"That was his recruiting speech to me – that my father saved 800 lives in the twelve minutes that he was Captain of the Kelvin, and I was so determined," Jim said. "To prove that I could do better."
"Jim," Leo said, puzzled. "You saved billions of lives yesterday."
"Did I?" Jim asked bleakly. "Vulcan is gone. The Farragut, the Hood, the Antares, the Armstrong, the Wolcott, the Newton, the Truman, the Mayflower …" he drew in a breath and shuddered. "Gone."
"Jim," Leo said, "you did what you could."
"By any means possible," Jim said with blithe sarcasm.
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm not even supposed to be here," Jim said.
"Yes," Leo said, beginning to see where this was going. "Yes, you are."
"No," Jim said.
"Pike," Leo emphasized, "said that the Enterprise was your assignment."
"I know," Jim said, turning his face back to the stars. "But the only reason I'm here is because of you." He turned to look at Leo. "You changed history by bringing me aboard."
"Jim," Leo said, half-exasperated and totally exhausted. "I brought you aboard because you were supposed to be here."
Jim nodded. "That's what Spock, the other Spock, said, too. That the universe would try to heal itself, to make things be as they should be."
Leo shook his head to refute the argument, knowing full well that the universe hadn't swayed him to bring Jim aboard, no matter how large his own desires were.
"But the fact remains," Jim said, raising his voice to stifle Leo's protest, "that I should have been back on Earth because of what I did." He shook his head ruefully. "This whole fucked up chain of events," he said, "it's all one long loop of causality," he looked at Leo, "all dependent upon me being an asshole." He laughed, short and harsh. "Which, by the way, I'm really, really good at."
"Jim …" Leo said, not knowing where to start with whatever the fuck was going on here. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"The Kobayashi Maru," Jim said. "Did you figure out how I did it?"
Leo stared at him. "You altered the parameters of the exercise," he said slowly, quoting back his own language to him.
"I hacked it," Jim said clearly. "I hacked it. But the security was too high, so I had to hack an account of somebody who had the clearance to get me to the sim."
"Gaila," Leo said, as the penny dropped.
"Yep," Jim said. "Gaila. You know I asked her to help me, and she said no." He turned toward the window again, and Leo watched his reflection on the glass. "So. We didn't speak for a while. You know me, Bones, I'm good at cutting people out, right?" Jim nodded bitterly at him before turning back to the glass. "And then, when I needed a little intel to get me over a hump in the hack, I started hanging out with her again, you know," Jim shook his head at himself. "So I was in her room the night before the test, and I'd gotten the info that I needed from her, because I'm a sly bastard, and then …"
Leo didn't need a road map to know where things were going, and he felt a little sick at the idea. He knew, of course, that Jim had been obsessed with cracking the Maru, but he hadn't actually thought that he'd have gone this far.
"She told me that she thought she loved me, Bones," Jim said, spitting out the words. "You know, we used to talk about love, she and I, because what Orions call love is not what Terrans call love, and she was trying to understand it." He laughed. "Like I fucking know, right?" He glanced over at Leo. "Anyway. She said it, and I immediately tried to divert her," he made a face, "and then Uhura came home and she made me hide, and that, Bones, that is how I found out about the Klingon attack –- hiding under Gaila's bed after I'd used her."
There wasn't anything that Leo could say to that, and he wasn't about to try.
"After I won," Jim said, rounding his mouth over the word like it tasted horrible, "Gaila came to see me." He turned and looked at Leo again. "I think I would have felt better if she'd just punched me, or kicked me in the balls, or something," he said. "But she said to me, 'I thought you were my friend'," Jim's voice cracked a little bit on the last two words. "She said, 'I told you that I loved you, because I thought you were my friend, and we weren't allowed to have friends, because a friend would be your peer, and I wasn't allowed peers.'"
Leo's eyes were filling with tears, despite himself, and he knew that Jim could see them.
"Then she said that I wasn't her friend, because Uhura had explained to her that a friend loved you for who you were, and that someone who loved you wouldn't do to her what I had done," Jim said with finality, "And then she told me to stay away from her."
"Jim …" Leo said. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't waste your sorry on me," Jim said. "I'm not worth it."
"Jim …" Leo said, reaching for him.
"No," Jim said, blocking him. "No." He shook his head and then turned and determinedly walked away.
+
Leo had sat there for a long time and stared at the stars as they streamed past, thinking about causality and fate and choice and the capriciousness of it all. Then, he'd dragged his weary bones down to Sickbay and checked on his patients one last time before he'd returned to his silent and dark cabin and laid himself down to attempt to rest.
But his mind whirred with all the knowledge that he'd gained, and he worried, unable to commit himself to sleep. He lay there instead, floating in grey restlessness until he heard the snick of the door to his quarters, and opened his eyes.
When they'd adjusted, he could see the shadow of Jim's figure in his room, standing there like a dark ghost, his fists clenched at his sides. He knew he should get up, and try to heal at least the physical hurts, the ones he knew he was capable of doctoring, but instinct told him that it was the surest way to drive Jim back into wandering the halls, or whatever he'd been doing for the last few hours. Instead, he flipped the covers back in invitation, sliding over to make room for Jim, the action coming naturally to him after all this time.
When Jim spoke, his voice was infinitely more weary than it had ever been. "I don't deserve your friendship,Bones," he said quietly.
Leo held out a hand in answer, and after a moment, heard the sound of Jim's boots hitting the deck, and his shirt and pants following. He crawled into the bed, facing Leo but trying, at first, to stay separate from him, still denying himself the solace that he craved. But Leo, mindful of Jim's bruises and his brittle weariness, carefully pulled him into his arms. He felt the shudder that ran through Jim's frame as he accepted the comfort that Leo was offering, hiding his face against Leo's neck.
"Jim," Leo said quietly. "That would only be true if you wouldn't admit that you'd done wrong, and if you didn't regret it."
Jim made a noncommittal noise as Leo tucked him in closer, pulling the covers up and over him like a shield, but he wrapped his arms around Leo and held on.
"Horatio told me a long time ago that the difference between a good man and an evil one is the humility to admit your sins, and the willingness to not commit that particular wrong again." Leo kissed the top of Jim's head. "Assholes don't tell the truth, Jim. They hide it. They deny it. They lie and make excuses."
He could feel Jim, tired as he was, summoning up a counterargument, so he ran a hand down his back carefully and continued talking. "Go to sleep, Jim," he said. "Whatever needs to be put right will wait until tomorrow. I promise."
+
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-28 04:34 am (UTC)Oh, God, you've given us a human Jim, dragged all his faults and failings into the light, and let us all know that despite all the crap and the bad things he's done, he's still a good person.
This is...
*hides face in sweatshirt*
*cries*
no subject
Date: 2009-12-02 04:02 am (UTC)