Switch 42/50
Dec. 6th, 2009 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Title: "Switch" (42/50)
Author:
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: The last night on the Enterprise ... for now.
+
When Leo raised his head from the pile of paperwork at the sound of the door to his office whisking open, the expression on Christine Chapel’s face was far from happy. And just in case he had any questions, the hands planted on her hips were a further clue as to her state of mind.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Seriously, you’re not my type,” Christine growled, as Leo raised a brow. “And while I appreciate compassion as much as the next person, need I remind you that the Orion Lieutenant is still in fairly serious condition?”
“No,” he muttered, getting up. “I just got caught up in my paperwork.”
“Something I could do if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t get a goddamned clear reading on one of my patients,” she scolded.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, going out onto the floor. “Why didn’t you just roust Uhura yourself?”
Chapel’s smile had a truly evil edge. “And take the pleasure away from you?” she asked. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, it was your bright idea.”
Leo turned his head and saw that Pike was awake, and not surprisingly, smirking. “One word out of you and I’ll hypo your ass,” he said crossly to Pike. “And why are you awake?”
Pike shrugged while Chapel fussed with the covers on his bed.
Leo rolled his eyes while Pike smiled. He went to deactivate the privacy screen around Gaila’s bed, only to stop short when Commander Spock appeared at the foot of the bed, his arms behind his back.
“Commander,” he said, and then knowing why the man was there, but feeling a need to cover his surprise, blurted out, “is the Captain on the Bridge?”
“He is nearby,” Spock answered. “In his ready room, reviewing Mr. Scott’s preliminary analysis of the repairs necessary to the ship.
Leo looked over his shoulder, but Pike seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Chapel. “I see,” he said. He opened the curtain to reveal Gaila and Nyota, fast asleep. “There’s a pretty picture,” he observed with a smile, looking from the women to the confused tangle of readings at the head of the biobed.
“Yes,” he heard Spock agree. Even more astonishing, he turned to find Spock looking at the two women with an uncharacteristically soft expression on his face. He was even more taken aback to see that Spock had laid a gentle hand on Gaila’s uninjured foot. His other hand was holding a pair of kick ass boots -- women’s boots. “It is a wonderful picture.”
Before Leo thought to open his mouth to try and rouse Nyota, Spock had moved to her side of the bed and leaned over her, breathing out a single word, his voice a low susurration of sound, as he ran his index and middle fingers over the same fingers of the hand that she had draped over Gaila’s side. Leo felt his skin flushing. He was familiar enough with Vulcan customs to know that he was witnessing the equivalent of Spock waking Nyota with a kiss, and he shot a glance to where T’enev slept, amazed that Spock would be so public with such an intimate display and thinking that Jim had been more correct about Spock's potential emotional compromise than he had given him credit for at the time. T’enev slept on, but although the elder at her side was hooded, his face in the shadows, arms tucked up into long sleeves, Leo had no doubt that he was neither meditating nor sleeping, but closely watching everything that was going on at Gaila's biobed. He felt an uncharacteristic swell of protectiveness, and tried to tell himself that it was only Nyota's privacy that he was bristling about –- but knew that it was untrue. Spock, galling bastard that he was, was part of everything that had happened to them in the past two days. They were all of them inextricably bound together now, and Spock's gestures of friendship and affection to the two women on the biobed, both of whom were dear to Leo, had forged another link of commonality between him and Jim's First Officer.
Nyota smiled as she turned to look up at Spock, dark eyes blinking awake. She kissed Gaila's forehead before she slipped her arm out from underneath her neck, wincing a bit at the rush of blood that came back into the limb. The smile that she gave to Spock as she placed her hand atop his palm and let him effortlessly raise her to a sitting position was meant for his eyes only. Leo busied himself running a scanner over Gaila as Nyota swung her legs over the side of the biobed and stretched upward and arched her spine like a cat, since continuing to observe then felt like such an intrusion.
When he looked up again, Uhura had released her hair from its loose ponytail and was rebinding it, and Spock was nowhere to be seen. He was puzzled until Spock straightened up from where he’d obviously been putting the boots on Nyota’s feet.
Well, then ... Leo had to admit that that was right gentlemanly behavior, the kind of service that one should do for one’s beloved, and it continued to improve his opinion of the green-blooded hobgoblin. Maybe he wasn’t a total bastard after all. Arrogant, yes. But perhaps not irredeemable.
Nyota put her hand on Spock’s offered palm as she jumped lightly down from the table, his unoccupied hand coming up to steady her at the waist, although she was all grace and no hesitation, just as she had been when she’d climbed atop the biobed to hold onto Gaila.
“How’s she doing, Leonard?” Nyota asked, turning around.
Spock stood at her back but a step away from her with his arms clasped behind him as she asked the question, his expression betraying his interest in Leo's answer. Even though he was no longer touching Uhura, there was something in his posture that referred to her, as if he were in orbit around her. Leo, who knew a little something about personal stars, found himself smiling -- not only because his early observations had proven to be true, but because he'd also thought that what he’d observed might be one-sided regard, and he was happy to be wrong.
“Well,” he said, waiting for the readings to settle down now that Gaila was alone in the bed. “She’s looking good,” he said. “She’s got a ways to go, and she might yet need one more surgery, but she’s going to be fine, Nyota.”
Nyota's smile was wide and immediate, her face beatific with happiness. She turned and looked at Spock, and for a second, Leo thought she was going to throw her arms around him, but she didn't.
Spock's face retained its characteristic Vulcan stillness, but there was a quirk to his lips that was enough of a telling response to Nyota's joy. Leo had the impression that even without words, and without touch, that Nyota and the man he was now sure was her lover had had an entire conversation. Spock held a hand out to motion Nyota in front of him and she moved with a dancer's grace around the end of the bed, stopping only to lean up and press a kiss to Leo's cheek. "Thank you, Leonard," she whispered to him, then moved to join a waiting Spock.
There was not one thing about Spock's expression that changed when his eyes moved from Uhura to look at Leo, but he got the message all the same, the one that said that one kiss is all you're getting, without Spock having so much as raised an eyebrow.
Leo raised his own in answer and tried to convey a return message of try not to be a total jackass, hobgoblin.
He shook his head and turned back toward his office after they left, as Chapel came to get a clean download of Gaila's latest readings. Pike's eyes were shuttering bemusedly as he passed and Leo stopped to check him out before he returned to his paperwork, feeling the hooded regard of the watcher at T'enev's bedside on his back.
+
Sickbay had been quiet for a couple of hours while Leo dealt with the virtual mound of paperwork that was involved in turning over his charges, both the living and the dead, to the care of the medical staff at the Spacedock. The lights had been turned down in the main room, and the windows in his area had been polarized so that he could see out into the bay without the brightness of his erstwhile office disturbing his charges' sleep. In the peaceful atmosphere, the sound of his door whisking open sounded unnaturally loud.
He spoke without first raising his head, continuing to check off categories with his stylus. "How's T'enev doing, Ambassador Spock?"
The hooded figure stopped in his approach to his desk, and Leo raised his head, watching in surprise as a rueful smile crossed the ancient Vulcan's face as he pushed his hood back.
"You recognized me," he said in a sure, deep voice, his eyebrow raised. "Fascinating."
"Not as such," Leo said, getting his first look at the man, and finding new sources by which to be confounded.
The elder Spock cocked his head to the side. "Meaning?" he asked.
"Contrary to what people might believe of me, y'all don't look alike," Leo said slowly, noting the twinkle in this Spock's eye. "And you … now that I see you, look a mite different than what I expected."
"And yet, you knew that it was I who was sitting next to T'enev's bed," Spock said, still standing, until Leo remembered his manners toward his elders and waved him to a seat. Spock sat down, taking the offered seat with the slow dignity that came with extreme age.
"Well," Leo said, not bothering to not look at him, now that he had the opportunity. "My temperament tends toward the observational," he drawled, "-- a professional habit, you understand. And you've been the only visitor to T'enev's bedside so determined to remain unrecognizable."
The Vulcan nodded slowly, his dark eyes taking in the details of the office. From the look of him, Leo assumed that he was on the latter side of a century and a half, younger than T'Pau and yet … he looked older. Perhaps this was an effect of his human heritage, or perhaps, Leo thought with a pang of sympathy, the events of the past few days had aged him.
"But even so," Leo continued on slowly, cataloguing the face of the Vulcan in front of him, seeing the structure that underlay the age, "I do believe that if I were somehow able to procure an image of you at the same age as the Commander Spock that just left here a few hours ago, and compared that image to his, that I would not see a man that looked like his identical twin. In fact, I'd imagine that although there'd be a resemblance, that brothers or maybe cousins would be more likely my guess of the relationship between the two of you."
"You are different as well, old friend," Spock said softly, the emotion so evident in his voice that Leo felt his hackles rise.
"I'd say 'hooray for noticing'," Leo said, "but that would seem a bit crass."
Once again, he was surprised by the soft smile that crossed the Vulcan's face at his words.
"Your counterpart explained to me that it was the habit of humans from your region of Earth to disclaim an insult before they leveled one. A clever ruse that allows one to say what one wills while retaining a veneer of innocence," Spock explained. "It pleases me to see that this, at least, remains a constant of your personality."
Leo stared at the man across the desk from him. "So, you're no longer holding to your theory that we, the you that is here now and the I that sits across from you, hail from the same universe -- the universe that you told Jim would try to heal itself and return things to their proper order?"
The expression on the Vulcan's face was shrewd but wise at the same time. "Jim confides much in you," he observed.
"And your Jim did not?" he asked, then hurried on, not sure if he wanted to know the answer to that particular question. "This Jim," he said, before clarifying, "my Jim, has been my best friend for years now."
"So I have gathered," Spock said, tucking his hands into his sleeves, dropping his head into the cowl of his robe for a moment. "The meld, of course, conveys information in both directions."
Leo held up a hand to forestall the sharing of whatever confidence this Spock wished to share with him. As always, whatever secrets Jim Kirk had to tell, he'd rather be told by Jim.
Spock ignored him and spoke on. "But I admit that I did not dwell on that information until after your Jim Kirk had left Delta Vega."
"Meaning?"
"As you have already surmised, Doctor," Spock said. "I came into this … situation believing that it was just that, an altered timeline of the universe from which I had come."
"And now?" Leo said, pressing for the answer that Spock seemed reluctant to give.
"Well …" he said, with a shake of his head, "what is now? As a concept of time, or otherwise, to me? I am … out of my time," he said heavily. "And had thought, had hoped, unwisely it seems, that I was still within my universe." He looked up at Leo. "Considering the experiences that I had when I served on the Enterprise, I should have known better. The possibility of alternative universes, some vastly different than the one I knew as reality, had already been shown to be factual. But none of those other experiences involved such a massive time shift."
Leo felt a true pang of sympathy. "How much time?" he asked.
"129 years, from my perspective," Spock answered. "Although the black hole through which the Narada erupted opened 154 years ago in your timeline."
"The Battle of the Kelvin," Leo said, nodding.
"There is so much that is confounding about the experience," Spock said, and Leo snapped his mouth shut on the retort of how much of an understatement that was, letting the older man speak. "From my perspective, I entered the black hole and appeared here two days ago, after a trip of mere seconds. From the perspective of those here, in this universe, that same trip took an additional 25 years from the appearance of the Narada. The knowledge that time is relative as a theory has a far different impact when played out in reality in such a way."
Leo nodded, his head reeling. "I can … I was going to say I can only imagine, but I'm afraid that I can’t actually do so." He paused. "So, you believed that the appearance of the Narada had changed your timeline, in your original universe, and now … you no longer do. Why?"
The Vulcan looked at Leo seriously. "The Jim Kirk that I knew was born in Riverside, Iowa in March of 2233," he said. "His parents were in Starfleet, yes, but they did not serve together on the same starship until his early adolescence."
Leo pushed the chair back from his desk and regarded the man across from him. He wondered if the phrase early adolescence was code for 'when Jim went to Tarsus', but did not ask the question. He found that he respected this dignified man's desire to protect the privacy of the man he'd known, and clearly loved, as Jim Kirk. "So it was already different, even before the Narada appeared. Therefore, you have traversed into my universe."
"Yes," Spock observed. "And although I recognize you as Leonard McCoy, it is as you observed of my counterpart here, in that if I were somehow able to produce an image for you of he that I knew as Leonard McCoy, you would see for yourself that despite similarities of speech and affect, there are subtle but real differences in your physical selves that are not explainable by the fact that you are younger than the Leonard McCoy that I first met. The same is true for this Jim Kirk."
"I'm sorry, Ambassador," Leo said quietly after a moment.
The elderly gentleman smiled ruefully. "You should not feel sympathy for me, old friend," he said, "what has come to pass is much my fault."
Although Leo had certainly felt that this was true, and implied as much to Jim, he found that he could not help but feel differently when he actually considered all that this man had lost. "Your intention was altruistic," he said surely. "Jim told me that you were trying to prevent the destruction of Romulus."
"Yes," Spock said his voice heavy with irony. "My life's work, in the universe that I left behind, was to bring about a reconciliation between the Vulcans and those from whom we had been parted so many millennia ago …" his voice drifted off. "I plotted, and I schemed, the kind of plans," he said to Leo in a confidential tone, "of which my Jim Kirk would have approved." His eyes drifted away from Leo. "Or perhaps not. Perhaps I needed Jim's tactical genius, which I have sorely missed, to avoid this catastrophe of my own making." He looked back at Leo. "A spectacular fuck-up, I think Jim would have deemed this."
The bark of laughter that broke from Leo's mouth was one that he tried to quell immediately, but it broke the heavy air of confession and regret that had been cast over the room. He should have known by the advanced age of the man in front of him, but still, hearing Jim referred to in the past tense -- knowing that there was a universe in which the Jim Kirk who'd had the happy childhood his Jim had been denied, but had maybe still ended up on Tarsus, before he captained the Enterprise and then died -- hit him hard.
The curve of Spock's mouth was softer but more ironic this time as he spoke again. "I would not have you curb your laughter, Leonard," he said. "Even if you are not my Doctor McCoy, I have missed that laugh these past few years."
Leo's brows drew down at his words. "Past few years?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
"An imprecision on my part, perhaps explicable by the number of years I've lived, or simply more evidence of the influence of my human friends on my mode of expression. The number is actually 15.4 Terran years, as they were measured in my universe, although we should by no means assume that the length of years, or passage of time is analogous in both timelines, considering the other hypotheses that have been proven false in the past days," Spock said with the kind of crisp precision that he'd heard his counterpart use more than once already. "However, I can say with some assurance that your counterpart was remarkably long-lived for your species, although he firmly denied that he was descended from the augmented remnants of Terran genetic engineering."
"So, the Eugenics Wars happened in your universe," Leo said, stunned. "Keniclius existed."
"Yes," Spock said slowly. "He did. And more than that, I probably should not say."
"You've become more circumspect," Leo observed.
"I have," Spock agreed. "Things are … similar," he said slowly, "but they are not the same, and it is appropriate that I exert a degree of caution in influencing outcomes, do you not think?" Spock's head had turned as he spoke, and Leo noted that he was looking at Pike, who was sleeping deeply on his biobed.
"You knew Captain Pike in your universe," he observed.
"I served as Captain Pike's officer for more than a decade aboard the Enterprise," Spock said quietly. "Long before you or Jim ever came aboard."
Leo knew that there was much more to the story, but decided to listen and not press.
"His fate here," he continued, "seems both more kind and more ironic."
"Bittersweet then," Leo said.
"Yes," Spock agreed.
Leo indulged his curiosity then. "How is it that you were able to keep your presence here in Sickbay hidden from your counterpart? I was of the understanding that the psychic connections between Vulcans would make that impossible."
"A shrewd question," Spock said, "worthy of your counterpart, and somewhat more politely posed than his would have been."
Leo raised an eyebrow, and the elder Spock smiled softly.
"The easiest answer is that I, like my counterpart in this universe, am particularly gifted in psi abilities, but I have the advantage of another century's practice at shielding my thoughts," he paused. "The diversion was made all the more easy by my younger self's general disdain of the Elders of his home planet. As you observed, he has decided to behave as if he does not care for their opinions, as if the hurtful words and prejudices shown to him, as they were to me, have not had an effect on him or the choices he has made. He has, I admit, taken a somewhat different path than I did."
"Disdain?" Leo was astounded.
"He would never characterize it as such," Spock said, "but that is the best emotional construct with which it can be named in your tongue."
"Spock went to Vulcan to retrieve the Elders from the surface," Leo protested, even as he found it odd that he, of all people, was defending Spock's behavior during the Battle of Vulcan.
"Spock went to Vulcan to retrieve his mother, first and foremost," the elder Vulcan said, his voice ringing with a quiet authority. "And I am heartily sorry at the outcome of that task. My own excellent mother lived far longer." He seemed on the verge of saying something else, but stopped himself, looking around the office, his eyes lighting on the holos that were not Leo's. "You were not appointed to the role of Chief Medical Officer on this version of the Enterprise," he said. "Who was your predecessor?"
"Yashvir Puri," Leo answered.
The Vulcan tilted his head. "He is unknown to me," he said. "Do you know a doctor named Mark Piper?"
Leo shook his head and picked up his PADD. "No," he said. "But I can check and find out where he is, or was, serving."
"That will not be necessary," Spock said. "What about Philip Boyce?" he asked.
"Dr. Boyce is the head of Starfleet Medical," Leo answered.
"Fascinating," Spock said. "Things are different, and yet, there are some constants."
"Jim likened it to a deck of cards," Leo said. "All of the players from your universe, but shuffled and dealt differently."
"A crude, but incisive metaphor," Spock said with a smile. "And yet, all of you here on the Enterprise in command posts, so young and untested, are as before. The constants."
Leo could not quell his curiosity, and asked, "So, you and your Nyota?"
A shadow crossed the Vulcan's expression. "She was a friend," he said slowly. "A great friend of my life, my youth, but no …" he said softly. "Not as here."
Leo felt a sorrow behind the words that he chose not to explore, but instead acknowledged with a slow shake of his head.
"Things, as you rightly observed, are not the same here is this universe." He looked at Leo for a long moment, and then asked delicately. "May I ask after your family?"
Leo stared at the Vulcan for a beat, but then gave an answer that he hoped would not lead him to regrets for a life that was not his. "My parents are both dead," he answered slowly. "My mother died when I was a boy, as did my sister. My father died three years ago. I am divorced, and have no children." He stopped himself from adding more to the answer, but saw a flash of something in the Vulcan's eyes
"I see," Spock said, then paused. "I grieve with thee."
Leo searched the Vulcan's eyes but saw nothing beyond that simple fact. "I grieve with thee, Ambassador Spock," he said slowly, "for all that you have lost." He wondered then, if there were children that this Spock had left behind, and a spouse, lost in a warp of time and circumstance that was both unfathomable and suddenly, horrifically, wrong to him.
The answering smile on Spock's face was not wholly unexpected by now, but considering the circumstances, seemed slightly out of place. "One of the constants of any Dr. McCoy," he said slowly, "is surely the compassion that is so characteristic of your true self, despite the demeanor that you have so carefully cultivated. You proved that with your ability to reach T'enev, and I knew then that you were still unalterably yourself, Leonard. I cannot tell you how much comfort that notion brings me." He stood up. "You have much yet to do," he said cryptically, "and I shall leave you to it." He turned and walked toward the door, then stopped. "One last observation –- a clarification, in truth. In my time, and in the other universes to which I have been," he paused, but did not expound upon that amazing statement other than to say, "there is always a Kirk, a Spock, a McCoy, an Uhura, a Scott, a Chekov and a Sulu together aboard the Enterprise. Or should I say, when there is not, no good can come of it?"
Leo felt the hair on the back of his neck rising.
"There are others, too, but you seven comprise a particular nucleus, a family of choice, my Jim Kirk once called it," he said. "And even though they are lost to me now, I shall take pleasure in seeing what you, my old friends made young in a different guise, accomplish together." His smile was soft and loving, Leo was sure of it. "Good night, Leonard," Spock said. "It has, as ever, been remarkably pleasing to speak with you again, whatever the circumstance."
Leo sat stock still, struck dumb for an instant, while the Ambassador drew his hood back up over his head. He was almost to the door when Leo, compelled by an impulse that he could not deny, stood up and spoke again. "Spock," he said, waiting until Spock turned. "In this universe, my family calls me Leo."
"Indeed?" Spock answered, tilting his head. "Fascinating." He looked at Leo for an instant longer. "Good night then, Leo." He inclined his head as he said this, his ancient eyes sparkling with warmth.
"Good night, Spock," Leo said.
Then the door whisked shut and he dropped back into his chair, and stared at the walls blankly for a few minutes, shaken.
His whole life, he had mused on other universes where other Leonard McCoys lived, considering the notion that there was only one physical universe as scoff-worthy as the belief that Terrans had had hundreds of years ago that they were singular and unique as sentients in the galaxy. The more scientists and seekers learned about wormholes and the potential for temporal rifts, the more they discovered about subspace, the more he had believed in the real potential of inter- or extra-dimensional universes. But even admitting that as possibility could not begin to capture the experience of meeting someone, sitting and talking to a being that had lived a whole other life with another Leonard McCoy, another Jim Kirk –- to observe that being watching himself live another life –- it was breathtaking and strange and astounding.
It's not that he'd ever not believed that there were other Leonard McCoys somewhere beyond his understanding. It's just that it had become a mental shorthand of his, a notion that he'd had -- particularly when things were bad -- that if he could, he'd switch into one of those other lives, one of those other universes where things were undoubtedly better for his other self.
He'd never once really considered that there was a true possibility of doing so.
Or of how devastating it could be to the one who moved from one reality to the next.
Leo placed this hands palm down against his desk, reassuring himself of his physical solidity, of the rightness of his place here and now in this world, this time, this life with all of its horrors and tragedies. He was where he belonged.
Wasn't he?
+
Leo was not made to suffer existential crises, at least not alone. He had the stifling sense for a few panic-stricken moments that everything that he knew was a mirage, that he was the one in the wrong universe, the one where Jim was dead and gone, and he knew that he was exhausted and neurotic and mistaken, but he still he couldn't shake it. A few more minutes of perturbation and disturbed thoughts were more than enough for him to sync his PADD up with his console, grab his stylus, slide his medkit over his shoulder just in case and leave Sickbay, in search of Jim.
The patients were sleeping and Chapel acknowledged him with a nod before she returned to her own work. He was sure that M'Benga was somewhere in the back of the bay, along with Fleury. There was no point in trying to sleep when there was so much to do, especially since once they transferred their patients, they'd be free to sleep the rest of the way back to Earth.
He passed into the quiet corridors of the Enterprise, noting that there were a number of crew who were roaming the halls, some obviously still on shift or on task, others just roaming. He noted faces where he did not know names, which was more often than not, unfortunately.
He exited the turbolift and entered the Bridge, surprised to not recognize a single face of the crew members that were present.
"Lieutenant Commander?" a yeoman by the door asked, saluting.
"McCoy," Leo answered. "Is Captain Kirk in his ready room?"
"Yes, sir," she answered. "Just across the hall."
"Thank you," Leo said, and then added, "as you were," when he realized that the crew was still at attention.
The door chime had even finished sounding when the door was whisking open. "Yeah," Jim said, not looking up. A cup of hot coffee steamed at his elbow.
"Coffee?" Leo asked. "Where'd you get coffee?"
"Bones," Jim said in surprise. "You want a cup?" He waved his stylus in the direction of a carafe and mugs on the coffee table in front of the couch.
"Jim," Leo said, "this is very civilized for you."
Jim grunted out a wry smile, and finished writing his sentence, then turned to tap at the keyboard in his desktop. "Yeah, yeah," he said. He finished his thought while Leo poured himself a cup of coffee, then looked up at Leo, blue eyes weary.
"You all right there, Jim?" Leo asked, making his way to the chair in front of his desk.
Jim sprawled backwards in his chair, long legs thrust into the open space below his desk. "Funny, Bones," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. "I was going to ask you the same question."
Leo put his PADD down on the desk, and shifted the chair so that when he sat, he could fit his legs alongside Jim's. He slouched into it and put the mug on his chest and bent his head, blowing on the liquid to cool it before he took a sip.
"Bones," Jim said, nudging Leo's left knee with his own left knee, "you're stalling."
Leo stared at Jim, his Jim, and wondered what the other Jim Kirk had looked like. He tried to picture him with green eyes, or brown, to make his jawline less sharp, but found that the idea made him feel slightly ill. Jim Kirk with his eyes the color of a perfect, warm June sky, with his honey-colored hair and elegant long limbs and expressive hands -- that was his Jim Kirk.
His Jim Kirk was currently smirking a little as Leo studied him, and he wondered if that was a characteristic of the type, if all McCoys were sarcastic and all Kirks were smartasses.
"Spock came to see me," he said, taking a sip of his coffee.
Jim's expression became alert. "Ambassador Spock," he clarified.
"Yeah," Leo said. "It was weird."
Jim nudged him with his leg to keep him talking.
"I dunno, Jim," he said. "I wanted to be mad at him, to hold him responsible for all the death and ruination, but …" he shook his head.
"I know," Jim said, leaving his leg next to Leo's. "It sounds stupid to say he didn't mean to do it, but …" he looked up at Leo. "He didn't."
"But that's the thing, Jim," Leo said. "How do we know that this isn't the way things are supposed to go in this universe?"
"Bones, you don't believe in predestination," Jim said wryly.
"But I believe in causality," he said steadily. "I believe in Newton's Third Law. What if what we do in this universe not only affects the reality that we perceive, but other realities we don't?"
"Jesus, Bones," Jim said, rubbing at the back of his neck. "When you go existential, you go all out." He paused, deliberating. "But Spock used the red matter, something physical, to create the wormhole."
"And what exactly is red matter?" Leo asked.
"I don't know," Jim said. "Although I will tell you that it does not exist – " he corrected himself, "- has not yet been discovered or extracted or … something here."
"I tend to think," Leo said, "that its existence should be a closely held secret. After all, if it existed there ..."
"It exists here," Jim said grimly. "And I agree about the secrecy, as does Pike. You might want to … omit your knowledge of it in your debriefings."
"Understood," Leo said, sipping at his coffee and feeling better, more human, more real by the minute, despite their conversation. The weight of Jim's leg against his was warm and known and grounding. "What're you working on?"
Jim blew out a breath, puffing his lips. "Retrofit requests," he said. "Based on what Scotty asked for. You would not believe," he said to Leo, "the unfucking surreal number of forms that need to be filed."
Leo lifted up his own PADD and shook it at him. "The people repairs also require ridiculous amounts of paperwork. Speaking of which, I never got you for that second round of regeneration."
"Get me when we're on the Potemkin," Jim said. "I honest-to-God don't have the time until then."
Leo sighed, slipping his tricorder out of the case and leaning forward to scan Jim, who rolled his eyes at him. "Jim," he said accusatorily, "you didn't eat anything today."
Jim looked modestly surprised, then squinted at him. "Did you?" he asked in a no-nonsense voice.
Leo sighed and went over to the food slot, calling up some chicken soup for the both of them. When it appeared a few seconds later, he brought the covered bowls over to the table and handed Jim's to him.
They toasted each other with the bowls, and went back to their work, legs slowly migrating back toward the other's under the desk, as companionable as they'd been on those long nights that they'd studied in the past, the only noise Jim's occasional grunts when Leo nudged him to remind him to eat.
"Bones," Jim said, after he'd tilted his bowl up to get the dregs of his soup. He showed the empty bowl to Leo with an 'OK, Mom?' expression on his face. "Does that mean you think that you changed history in all the universes?"
"Huh?" Leo said, scooping up the last of his soup.
"You changed history," Jim said slowly.
"How'd you figure that?" Leo asked, puzzled.
"You brought me aboard," Jim said.
"Are you still stuck on that?" Leo asked.
"Yes, Bones," Jim said seriously. "I'm still stuck on that. But that doesn't answer my question."
"Was it serious?" Leo asked. "'cause I'm thinking that if I have the same general character traits, which Spock said I do, then I'd pretty much always do the same kinds of things, right? Like he said, and Jim this was weird, that in all of the universes that he knew of that we were always on the Enterprise. Which I guess means I'm always a doctor."
Jim nodded. "That makes sense. He told me that I'm supposed to be the Captain." His expression was brooding.
Leo decided to shake Jim out of his mood. "Did you know that Spock and Uhura are a couple?"
Jim looked up at him in surprise. "You mean our Spock, right?"
"I may have to object to that characterization there, Captain," Leo drawled out. "Especially since I think I may like the older Spock better. And you knew?"
Jim was laughing as he nodded. "Bones –" he held up a hand in a motion that indicated that he was swearing. "They kissed in front of me."
Leo nodded.
"What!?" Jim said. "Man, they are totally indiscreet."
"Jim," Leo protested, "it's just hands. Most people wouldn't even notice –- what?"
"Not hands," Jim said, "lips."
Leo raised both eyebrows.
"Although I'm pretty sure tongues were involved, too."
"Jim …"
"I am serious," he said, talking over Leo's protest. "Scotty was there, you can ask him."
"Wow," Leo said.
"Hands …" Jim scoffed. "Please. Although, you know, he did have one of his hands kinda low on her …"
"Jim," Leo said. "This is your crew you're talking about." Jim's console bleeped. "Also," he continued, "I'd like to point out that Spock will kick your ass from here back to Earth if he hears you talking like that."
"Oh," Jim said, smirking, "like you're going to tell him? Kirk here," he said into the console.
"Captain," Chapel said, after identifying herself. "Captain Pike is awake and has some questions about the Engineering Report."
Jim sighed and scrubbed his face with his hand, looking exhausted, but before he could speak, Leo said, "Chapel? Who the fuck gave him a PADD? And why is he awake at …" he looked for a chrono.
"0530," Chapel said drily, then he could hear muffled voices, as if she had her hand over the comm. "Captain Pike has instructed me to tell you to quote 'Watch your fucking language for once and that's an order' unquote."
Chapel was really having too much goddamned fun at her job. He scowled at a smirking Jim as the voices on the other end of the comm were muffled again.
"He has also further stated that quote, 'Captain Kirk should get his ass down here now, and bring him a cup of coffee'."
"No coffee," Leo said firmly. He could hear Pike's muffled protest but knew that he wouldn't be getting any coffee out of Chapel, either.
Jim finished syncing the data to his PADD. "Tell the Captain I'm on my way, Nurse Chapel. Kirk out." Jim stood up and eyebrowed Leo. "What's up with Pike and Chapel?" he asked, moving toward the door.
Leo grimaced and swallowed his now cold cup of coffee before he slung his tricorder over his shoulder and picked up his PADD and followed Jim out the door. "I haven't caught them making out, it that's what you're asking," he said acerbically.
"Yet," Jim tossed over his shoulder with a smile, pushing the button for the turbolift and then turning back to waggle his eyebrows at Leo. "If you ask me, it's just a matter of time." He smiled and stepped into the occupied lift, greeting the crewman before saying, "Coming, Bones?" in a voice that was just a tad too sweetly mocking to be anything other than completely dirty.
Leo ignored him and stepped into the elevator, nodding to the crewman. He fixed his eyes determinedly on the deck counter as they moved, and fervently hoped that somewhere, in some universe, Leonard McCoy was getting laid.
Goddamnit.
+
Switch 43
Author:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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: The last night on the Enterprise ... for now.
+
When Leo raised his head from the pile of paperwork at the sound of the door to his office whisking open, the expression on Christine Chapel’s face was far from happy. And just in case he had any questions, the hands planted on her hips were a further clue as to her state of mind.
“Fuck,” he said.
“Seriously, you’re not my type,” Christine growled, as Leo raised a brow. “And while I appreciate compassion as much as the next person, need I remind you that the Orion Lieutenant is still in fairly serious condition?”
“No,” he muttered, getting up. “I just got caught up in my paperwork.”
“Something I could do if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t get a goddamned clear reading on one of my patients,” she scolded.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, going out onto the floor. “Why didn’t you just roust Uhura yourself?”
Chapel’s smile had a truly evil edge. “And take the pleasure away from you?” she asked. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, it was your bright idea.”
Leo turned his head and saw that Pike was awake, and not surprisingly, smirking. “One word out of you and I’ll hypo your ass,” he said crossly to Pike. “And why are you awake?”
Pike shrugged while Chapel fussed with the covers on his bed.
Leo rolled his eyes while Pike smiled. He went to deactivate the privacy screen around Gaila’s bed, only to stop short when Commander Spock appeared at the foot of the bed, his arms behind his back.
“Commander,” he said, and then knowing why the man was there, but feeling a need to cover his surprise, blurted out, “is the Captain on the Bridge?”
“He is nearby,” Spock answered. “In his ready room, reviewing Mr. Scott’s preliminary analysis of the repairs necessary to the ship.
Leo looked over his shoulder, but Pike seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Chapel. “I see,” he said. He opened the curtain to reveal Gaila and Nyota, fast asleep. “There’s a pretty picture,” he observed with a smile, looking from the women to the confused tangle of readings at the head of the biobed.
“Yes,” he heard Spock agree. Even more astonishing, he turned to find Spock looking at the two women with an uncharacteristically soft expression on his face. He was even more taken aback to see that Spock had laid a gentle hand on Gaila’s uninjured foot. His other hand was holding a pair of kick ass boots -- women’s boots. “It is a wonderful picture.”
Before Leo thought to open his mouth to try and rouse Nyota, Spock had moved to her side of the bed and leaned over her, breathing out a single word, his voice a low susurration of sound, as he ran his index and middle fingers over the same fingers of the hand that she had draped over Gaila’s side. Leo felt his skin flushing. He was familiar enough with Vulcan customs to know that he was witnessing the equivalent of Spock waking Nyota with a kiss, and he shot a glance to where T’enev slept, amazed that Spock would be so public with such an intimate display and thinking that Jim had been more correct about Spock's potential emotional compromise than he had given him credit for at the time. T’enev slept on, but although the elder at her side was hooded, his face in the shadows, arms tucked up into long sleeves, Leo had no doubt that he was neither meditating nor sleeping, but closely watching everything that was going on at Gaila's biobed. He felt an uncharacteristic swell of protectiveness, and tried to tell himself that it was only Nyota's privacy that he was bristling about –- but knew that it was untrue. Spock, galling bastard that he was, was part of everything that had happened to them in the past two days. They were all of them inextricably bound together now, and Spock's gestures of friendship and affection to the two women on the biobed, both of whom were dear to Leo, had forged another link of commonality between him and Jim's First Officer.
Nyota smiled as she turned to look up at Spock, dark eyes blinking awake. She kissed Gaila's forehead before she slipped her arm out from underneath her neck, wincing a bit at the rush of blood that came back into the limb. The smile that she gave to Spock as she placed her hand atop his palm and let him effortlessly raise her to a sitting position was meant for his eyes only. Leo busied himself running a scanner over Gaila as Nyota swung her legs over the side of the biobed and stretched upward and arched her spine like a cat, since continuing to observe then felt like such an intrusion.
When he looked up again, Uhura had released her hair from its loose ponytail and was rebinding it, and Spock was nowhere to be seen. He was puzzled until Spock straightened up from where he’d obviously been putting the boots on Nyota’s feet.
Well, then ... Leo had to admit that that was right gentlemanly behavior, the kind of service that one should do for one’s beloved, and it continued to improve his opinion of the green-blooded hobgoblin. Maybe he wasn’t a total bastard after all. Arrogant, yes. But perhaps not irredeemable.
Nyota put her hand on Spock’s offered palm as she jumped lightly down from the table, his unoccupied hand coming up to steady her at the waist, although she was all grace and no hesitation, just as she had been when she’d climbed atop the biobed to hold onto Gaila.
“How’s she doing, Leonard?” Nyota asked, turning around.
Spock stood at her back but a step away from her with his arms clasped behind him as she asked the question, his expression betraying his interest in Leo's answer. Even though he was no longer touching Uhura, there was something in his posture that referred to her, as if he were in orbit around her. Leo, who knew a little something about personal stars, found himself smiling -- not only because his early observations had proven to be true, but because he'd also thought that what he’d observed might be one-sided regard, and he was happy to be wrong.
“Well,” he said, waiting for the readings to settle down now that Gaila was alone in the bed. “She’s looking good,” he said. “She’s got a ways to go, and she might yet need one more surgery, but she’s going to be fine, Nyota.”
Nyota's smile was wide and immediate, her face beatific with happiness. She turned and looked at Spock, and for a second, Leo thought she was going to throw her arms around him, but she didn't.
Spock's face retained its characteristic Vulcan stillness, but there was a quirk to his lips that was enough of a telling response to Nyota's joy. Leo had the impression that even without words, and without touch, that Nyota and the man he was now sure was her lover had had an entire conversation. Spock held a hand out to motion Nyota in front of him and she moved with a dancer's grace around the end of the bed, stopping only to lean up and press a kiss to Leo's cheek. "Thank you, Leonard," she whispered to him, then moved to join a waiting Spock.
There was not one thing about Spock's expression that changed when his eyes moved from Uhura to look at Leo, but he got the message all the same, the one that said that one kiss is all you're getting, without Spock having so much as raised an eyebrow.
Leo raised his own in answer and tried to convey a return message of try not to be a total jackass, hobgoblin.
He shook his head and turned back toward his office after they left, as Chapel came to get a clean download of Gaila's latest readings. Pike's eyes were shuttering bemusedly as he passed and Leo stopped to check him out before he returned to his paperwork, feeling the hooded regard of the watcher at T'enev's bedside on his back.
+
Sickbay had been quiet for a couple of hours while Leo dealt with the virtual mound of paperwork that was involved in turning over his charges, both the living and the dead, to the care of the medical staff at the Spacedock. The lights had been turned down in the main room, and the windows in his area had been polarized so that he could see out into the bay without the brightness of his erstwhile office disturbing his charges' sleep. In the peaceful atmosphere, the sound of his door whisking open sounded unnaturally loud.
He spoke without first raising his head, continuing to check off categories with his stylus. "How's T'enev doing, Ambassador Spock?"
The hooded figure stopped in his approach to his desk, and Leo raised his head, watching in surprise as a rueful smile crossed the ancient Vulcan's face as he pushed his hood back.
"You recognized me," he said in a sure, deep voice, his eyebrow raised. "Fascinating."
"Not as such," Leo said, getting his first look at the man, and finding new sources by which to be confounded.
The elder Spock cocked his head to the side. "Meaning?" he asked.
"Contrary to what people might believe of me, y'all don't look alike," Leo said slowly, noting the twinkle in this Spock's eye. "And you … now that I see you, look a mite different than what I expected."
"And yet, you knew that it was I who was sitting next to T'enev's bed," Spock said, still standing, until Leo remembered his manners toward his elders and waved him to a seat. Spock sat down, taking the offered seat with the slow dignity that came with extreme age.
"Well," Leo said, not bothering to not look at him, now that he had the opportunity. "My temperament tends toward the observational," he drawled, "-- a professional habit, you understand. And you've been the only visitor to T'enev's bedside so determined to remain unrecognizable."
The Vulcan nodded slowly, his dark eyes taking in the details of the office. From the look of him, Leo assumed that he was on the latter side of a century and a half, younger than T'Pau and yet … he looked older. Perhaps this was an effect of his human heritage, or perhaps, Leo thought with a pang of sympathy, the events of the past few days had aged him.
"But even so," Leo continued on slowly, cataloguing the face of the Vulcan in front of him, seeing the structure that underlay the age, "I do believe that if I were somehow able to procure an image of you at the same age as the Commander Spock that just left here a few hours ago, and compared that image to his, that I would not see a man that looked like his identical twin. In fact, I'd imagine that although there'd be a resemblance, that brothers or maybe cousins would be more likely my guess of the relationship between the two of you."
"You are different as well, old friend," Spock said softly, the emotion so evident in his voice that Leo felt his hackles rise.
"I'd say 'hooray for noticing'," Leo said, "but that would seem a bit crass."
Once again, he was surprised by the soft smile that crossed the Vulcan's face at his words.
"Your counterpart explained to me that it was the habit of humans from your region of Earth to disclaim an insult before they leveled one. A clever ruse that allows one to say what one wills while retaining a veneer of innocence," Spock explained. "It pleases me to see that this, at least, remains a constant of your personality."
Leo stared at the man across the desk from him. "So, you're no longer holding to your theory that we, the you that is here now and the I that sits across from you, hail from the same universe -- the universe that you told Jim would try to heal itself and return things to their proper order?"
The expression on the Vulcan's face was shrewd but wise at the same time. "Jim confides much in you," he observed.
"And your Jim did not?" he asked, then hurried on, not sure if he wanted to know the answer to that particular question. "This Jim," he said, before clarifying, "my Jim, has been my best friend for years now."
"So I have gathered," Spock said, tucking his hands into his sleeves, dropping his head into the cowl of his robe for a moment. "The meld, of course, conveys information in both directions."
Leo held up a hand to forestall the sharing of whatever confidence this Spock wished to share with him. As always, whatever secrets Jim Kirk had to tell, he'd rather be told by Jim.
Spock ignored him and spoke on. "But I admit that I did not dwell on that information until after your Jim Kirk had left Delta Vega."
"Meaning?"
"As you have already surmised, Doctor," Spock said. "I came into this … situation believing that it was just that, an altered timeline of the universe from which I had come."
"And now?" Leo said, pressing for the answer that Spock seemed reluctant to give.
"Well …" he said, with a shake of his head, "what is now? As a concept of time, or otherwise, to me? I am … out of my time," he said heavily. "And had thought, had hoped, unwisely it seems, that I was still within my universe." He looked up at Leo. "Considering the experiences that I had when I served on the Enterprise, I should have known better. The possibility of alternative universes, some vastly different than the one I knew as reality, had already been shown to be factual. But none of those other experiences involved such a massive time shift."
Leo felt a true pang of sympathy. "How much time?" he asked.
"129 years, from my perspective," Spock answered. "Although the black hole through which the Narada erupted opened 154 years ago in your timeline."
"The Battle of the Kelvin," Leo said, nodding.
"There is so much that is confounding about the experience," Spock said, and Leo snapped his mouth shut on the retort of how much of an understatement that was, letting the older man speak. "From my perspective, I entered the black hole and appeared here two days ago, after a trip of mere seconds. From the perspective of those here, in this universe, that same trip took an additional 25 years from the appearance of the Narada. The knowledge that time is relative as a theory has a far different impact when played out in reality in such a way."
Leo nodded, his head reeling. "I can … I was going to say I can only imagine, but I'm afraid that I can’t actually do so." He paused. "So, you believed that the appearance of the Narada had changed your timeline, in your original universe, and now … you no longer do. Why?"
The Vulcan looked at Leo seriously. "The Jim Kirk that I knew was born in Riverside, Iowa in March of 2233," he said. "His parents were in Starfleet, yes, but they did not serve together on the same starship until his early adolescence."
Leo pushed the chair back from his desk and regarded the man across from him. He wondered if the phrase early adolescence was code for 'when Jim went to Tarsus', but did not ask the question. He found that he respected this dignified man's desire to protect the privacy of the man he'd known, and clearly loved, as Jim Kirk. "So it was already different, even before the Narada appeared. Therefore, you have traversed into my universe."
"Yes," Spock observed. "And although I recognize you as Leonard McCoy, it is as you observed of my counterpart here, in that if I were somehow able to produce an image for you of he that I knew as Leonard McCoy, you would see for yourself that despite similarities of speech and affect, there are subtle but real differences in your physical selves that are not explainable by the fact that you are younger than the Leonard McCoy that I first met. The same is true for this Jim Kirk."
"I'm sorry, Ambassador," Leo said quietly after a moment.
The elderly gentleman smiled ruefully. "You should not feel sympathy for me, old friend," he said, "what has come to pass is much my fault."
Although Leo had certainly felt that this was true, and implied as much to Jim, he found that he could not help but feel differently when he actually considered all that this man had lost. "Your intention was altruistic," he said surely. "Jim told me that you were trying to prevent the destruction of Romulus."
"Yes," Spock said his voice heavy with irony. "My life's work, in the universe that I left behind, was to bring about a reconciliation between the Vulcans and those from whom we had been parted so many millennia ago …" his voice drifted off. "I plotted, and I schemed, the kind of plans," he said to Leo in a confidential tone, "of which my Jim Kirk would have approved." His eyes drifted away from Leo. "Or perhaps not. Perhaps I needed Jim's tactical genius, which I have sorely missed, to avoid this catastrophe of my own making." He looked back at Leo. "A spectacular fuck-up, I think Jim would have deemed this."
The bark of laughter that broke from Leo's mouth was one that he tried to quell immediately, but it broke the heavy air of confession and regret that had been cast over the room. He should have known by the advanced age of the man in front of him, but still, hearing Jim referred to in the past tense -- knowing that there was a universe in which the Jim Kirk who'd had the happy childhood his Jim had been denied, but had maybe still ended up on Tarsus, before he captained the Enterprise and then died -- hit him hard.
The curve of Spock's mouth was softer but more ironic this time as he spoke again. "I would not have you curb your laughter, Leonard," he said. "Even if you are not my Doctor McCoy, I have missed that laugh these past few years."
Leo's brows drew down at his words. "Past few years?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
"An imprecision on my part, perhaps explicable by the number of years I've lived, or simply more evidence of the influence of my human friends on my mode of expression. The number is actually 15.4 Terran years, as they were measured in my universe, although we should by no means assume that the length of years, or passage of time is analogous in both timelines, considering the other hypotheses that have been proven false in the past days," Spock said with the kind of crisp precision that he'd heard his counterpart use more than once already. "However, I can say with some assurance that your counterpart was remarkably long-lived for your species, although he firmly denied that he was descended from the augmented remnants of Terran genetic engineering."
"So, the Eugenics Wars happened in your universe," Leo said, stunned. "Keniclius existed."
"Yes," Spock said slowly. "He did. And more than that, I probably should not say."
"You've become more circumspect," Leo observed.
"I have," Spock agreed. "Things are … similar," he said slowly, "but they are not the same, and it is appropriate that I exert a degree of caution in influencing outcomes, do you not think?" Spock's head had turned as he spoke, and Leo noted that he was looking at Pike, who was sleeping deeply on his biobed.
"You knew Captain Pike in your universe," he observed.
"I served as Captain Pike's officer for more than a decade aboard the Enterprise," Spock said quietly. "Long before you or Jim ever came aboard."
Leo knew that there was much more to the story, but decided to listen and not press.
"His fate here," he continued, "seems both more kind and more ironic."
"Bittersweet then," Leo said.
"Yes," Spock agreed.
Leo indulged his curiosity then. "How is it that you were able to keep your presence here in Sickbay hidden from your counterpart? I was of the understanding that the psychic connections between Vulcans would make that impossible."
"A shrewd question," Spock said, "worthy of your counterpart, and somewhat more politely posed than his would have been."
Leo raised an eyebrow, and the elder Spock smiled softly.
"The easiest answer is that I, like my counterpart in this universe, am particularly gifted in psi abilities, but I have the advantage of another century's practice at shielding my thoughts," he paused. "The diversion was made all the more easy by my younger self's general disdain of the Elders of his home planet. As you observed, he has decided to behave as if he does not care for their opinions, as if the hurtful words and prejudices shown to him, as they were to me, have not had an effect on him or the choices he has made. He has, I admit, taken a somewhat different path than I did."
"Disdain?" Leo was astounded.
"He would never characterize it as such," Spock said, "but that is the best emotional construct with which it can be named in your tongue."
"Spock went to Vulcan to retrieve the Elders from the surface," Leo protested, even as he found it odd that he, of all people, was defending Spock's behavior during the Battle of Vulcan.
"Spock went to Vulcan to retrieve his mother, first and foremost," the elder Vulcan said, his voice ringing with a quiet authority. "And I am heartily sorry at the outcome of that task. My own excellent mother lived far longer." He seemed on the verge of saying something else, but stopped himself, looking around the office, his eyes lighting on the holos that were not Leo's. "You were not appointed to the role of Chief Medical Officer on this version of the Enterprise," he said. "Who was your predecessor?"
"Yashvir Puri," Leo answered.
The Vulcan tilted his head. "He is unknown to me," he said. "Do you know a doctor named Mark Piper?"
Leo shook his head and picked up his PADD. "No," he said. "But I can check and find out where he is, or was, serving."
"That will not be necessary," Spock said. "What about Philip Boyce?" he asked.
"Dr. Boyce is the head of Starfleet Medical," Leo answered.
"Fascinating," Spock said. "Things are different, and yet, there are some constants."
"Jim likened it to a deck of cards," Leo said. "All of the players from your universe, but shuffled and dealt differently."
"A crude, but incisive metaphor," Spock said with a smile. "And yet, all of you here on the Enterprise in command posts, so young and untested, are as before. The constants."
Leo could not quell his curiosity, and asked, "So, you and your Nyota?"
A shadow crossed the Vulcan's expression. "She was a friend," he said slowly. "A great friend of my life, my youth, but no …" he said softly. "Not as here."
Leo felt a sorrow behind the words that he chose not to explore, but instead acknowledged with a slow shake of his head.
"Things, as you rightly observed, are not the same here is this universe." He looked at Leo for a long moment, and then asked delicately. "May I ask after your family?"
Leo stared at the Vulcan for a beat, but then gave an answer that he hoped would not lead him to regrets for a life that was not his. "My parents are both dead," he answered slowly. "My mother died when I was a boy, as did my sister. My father died three years ago. I am divorced, and have no children." He stopped himself from adding more to the answer, but saw a flash of something in the Vulcan's eyes
"I see," Spock said, then paused. "I grieve with thee."
Leo searched the Vulcan's eyes but saw nothing beyond that simple fact. "I grieve with thee, Ambassador Spock," he said slowly, "for all that you have lost." He wondered then, if there were children that this Spock had left behind, and a spouse, lost in a warp of time and circumstance that was both unfathomable and suddenly, horrifically, wrong to him.
The answering smile on Spock's face was not wholly unexpected by now, but considering the circumstances, seemed slightly out of place. "One of the constants of any Dr. McCoy," he said slowly, "is surely the compassion that is so characteristic of your true self, despite the demeanor that you have so carefully cultivated. You proved that with your ability to reach T'enev, and I knew then that you were still unalterably yourself, Leonard. I cannot tell you how much comfort that notion brings me." He stood up. "You have much yet to do," he said cryptically, "and I shall leave you to it." He turned and walked toward the door, then stopped. "One last observation –- a clarification, in truth. In my time, and in the other universes to which I have been," he paused, but did not expound upon that amazing statement other than to say, "there is always a Kirk, a Spock, a McCoy, an Uhura, a Scott, a Chekov and a Sulu together aboard the Enterprise. Or should I say, when there is not, no good can come of it?"
Leo felt the hair on the back of his neck rising.
"There are others, too, but you seven comprise a particular nucleus, a family of choice, my Jim Kirk once called it," he said. "And even though they are lost to me now, I shall take pleasure in seeing what you, my old friends made young in a different guise, accomplish together." His smile was soft and loving, Leo was sure of it. "Good night, Leonard," Spock said. "It has, as ever, been remarkably pleasing to speak with you again, whatever the circumstance."
Leo sat stock still, struck dumb for an instant, while the Ambassador drew his hood back up over his head. He was almost to the door when Leo, compelled by an impulse that he could not deny, stood up and spoke again. "Spock," he said, waiting until Spock turned. "In this universe, my family calls me Leo."
"Indeed?" Spock answered, tilting his head. "Fascinating." He looked at Leo for an instant longer. "Good night then, Leo." He inclined his head as he said this, his ancient eyes sparkling with warmth.
"Good night, Spock," Leo said.
Then the door whisked shut and he dropped back into his chair, and stared at the walls blankly for a few minutes, shaken.
His whole life, he had mused on other universes where other Leonard McCoys lived, considering the notion that there was only one physical universe as scoff-worthy as the belief that Terrans had had hundreds of years ago that they were singular and unique as sentients in the galaxy. The more scientists and seekers learned about wormholes and the potential for temporal rifts, the more they discovered about subspace, the more he had believed in the real potential of inter- or extra-dimensional universes. But even admitting that as possibility could not begin to capture the experience of meeting someone, sitting and talking to a being that had lived a whole other life with another Leonard McCoy, another Jim Kirk –- to observe that being watching himself live another life –- it was breathtaking and strange and astounding.
It's not that he'd ever not believed that there were other Leonard McCoys somewhere beyond his understanding. It's just that it had become a mental shorthand of his, a notion that he'd had -- particularly when things were bad -- that if he could, he'd switch into one of those other lives, one of those other universes where things were undoubtedly better for his other self.
He'd never once really considered that there was a true possibility of doing so.
Or of how devastating it could be to the one who moved from one reality to the next.
Leo placed this hands palm down against his desk, reassuring himself of his physical solidity, of the rightness of his place here and now in this world, this time, this life with all of its horrors and tragedies. He was where he belonged.
Wasn't he?
+
Leo was not made to suffer existential crises, at least not alone. He had the stifling sense for a few panic-stricken moments that everything that he knew was a mirage, that he was the one in the wrong universe, the one where Jim was dead and gone, and he knew that he was exhausted and neurotic and mistaken, but he still he couldn't shake it. A few more minutes of perturbation and disturbed thoughts were more than enough for him to sync his PADD up with his console, grab his stylus, slide his medkit over his shoulder just in case and leave Sickbay, in search of Jim.
The patients were sleeping and Chapel acknowledged him with a nod before she returned to her own work. He was sure that M'Benga was somewhere in the back of the bay, along with Fleury. There was no point in trying to sleep when there was so much to do, especially since once they transferred their patients, they'd be free to sleep the rest of the way back to Earth.
He passed into the quiet corridors of the Enterprise, noting that there were a number of crew who were roaming the halls, some obviously still on shift or on task, others just roaming. He noted faces where he did not know names, which was more often than not, unfortunately.
He exited the turbolift and entered the Bridge, surprised to not recognize a single face of the crew members that were present.
"Lieutenant Commander?" a yeoman by the door asked, saluting.
"McCoy," Leo answered. "Is Captain Kirk in his ready room?"
"Yes, sir," she answered. "Just across the hall."
"Thank you," Leo said, and then added, "as you were," when he realized that the crew was still at attention.
The door chime had even finished sounding when the door was whisking open. "Yeah," Jim said, not looking up. A cup of hot coffee steamed at his elbow.
"Coffee?" Leo asked. "Where'd you get coffee?"
"Bones," Jim said in surprise. "You want a cup?" He waved his stylus in the direction of a carafe and mugs on the coffee table in front of the couch.
"Jim," Leo said, "this is very civilized for you."
Jim grunted out a wry smile, and finished writing his sentence, then turned to tap at the keyboard in his desktop. "Yeah, yeah," he said. He finished his thought while Leo poured himself a cup of coffee, then looked up at Leo, blue eyes weary.
"You all right there, Jim?" Leo asked, making his way to the chair in front of his desk.
Jim sprawled backwards in his chair, long legs thrust into the open space below his desk. "Funny, Bones," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. "I was going to ask you the same question."
Leo put his PADD down on the desk, and shifted the chair so that when he sat, he could fit his legs alongside Jim's. He slouched into it and put the mug on his chest and bent his head, blowing on the liquid to cool it before he took a sip.
"Bones," Jim said, nudging Leo's left knee with his own left knee, "you're stalling."
Leo stared at Jim, his Jim, and wondered what the other Jim Kirk had looked like. He tried to picture him with green eyes, or brown, to make his jawline less sharp, but found that the idea made him feel slightly ill. Jim Kirk with his eyes the color of a perfect, warm June sky, with his honey-colored hair and elegant long limbs and expressive hands -- that was his Jim Kirk.
His Jim Kirk was currently smirking a little as Leo studied him, and he wondered if that was a characteristic of the type, if all McCoys were sarcastic and all Kirks were smartasses.
"Spock came to see me," he said, taking a sip of his coffee.
Jim's expression became alert. "Ambassador Spock," he clarified.
"Yeah," Leo said. "It was weird."
Jim nudged him with his leg to keep him talking.
"I dunno, Jim," he said. "I wanted to be mad at him, to hold him responsible for all the death and ruination, but …" he shook his head.
"I know," Jim said, leaving his leg next to Leo's. "It sounds stupid to say he didn't mean to do it, but …" he looked up at Leo. "He didn't."
"But that's the thing, Jim," Leo said. "How do we know that this isn't the way things are supposed to go in this universe?"
"Bones, you don't believe in predestination," Jim said wryly.
"But I believe in causality," he said steadily. "I believe in Newton's Third Law. What if what we do in this universe not only affects the reality that we perceive, but other realities we don't?"
"Jesus, Bones," Jim said, rubbing at the back of his neck. "When you go existential, you go all out." He paused, deliberating. "But Spock used the red matter, something physical, to create the wormhole."
"And what exactly is red matter?" Leo asked.
"I don't know," Jim said. "Although I will tell you that it does not exist – " he corrected himself, "- has not yet been discovered or extracted or … something here."
"I tend to think," Leo said, "that its existence should be a closely held secret. After all, if it existed there ..."
"It exists here," Jim said grimly. "And I agree about the secrecy, as does Pike. You might want to … omit your knowledge of it in your debriefings."
"Understood," Leo said, sipping at his coffee and feeling better, more human, more real by the minute, despite their conversation. The weight of Jim's leg against his was warm and known and grounding. "What're you working on?"
Jim blew out a breath, puffing his lips. "Retrofit requests," he said. "Based on what Scotty asked for. You would not believe," he said to Leo, "the unfucking surreal number of forms that need to be filed."
Leo lifted up his own PADD and shook it at him. "The people repairs also require ridiculous amounts of paperwork. Speaking of which, I never got you for that second round of regeneration."
"Get me when we're on the Potemkin," Jim said. "I honest-to-God don't have the time until then."
Leo sighed, slipping his tricorder out of the case and leaning forward to scan Jim, who rolled his eyes at him. "Jim," he said accusatorily, "you didn't eat anything today."
Jim looked modestly surprised, then squinted at him. "Did you?" he asked in a no-nonsense voice.
Leo sighed and went over to the food slot, calling up some chicken soup for the both of them. When it appeared a few seconds later, he brought the covered bowls over to the table and handed Jim's to him.
They toasted each other with the bowls, and went back to their work, legs slowly migrating back toward the other's under the desk, as companionable as they'd been on those long nights that they'd studied in the past, the only noise Jim's occasional grunts when Leo nudged him to remind him to eat.
"Bones," Jim said, after he'd tilted his bowl up to get the dregs of his soup. He showed the empty bowl to Leo with an 'OK, Mom?' expression on his face. "Does that mean you think that you changed history in all the universes?"
"Huh?" Leo said, scooping up the last of his soup.
"You changed history," Jim said slowly.
"How'd you figure that?" Leo asked, puzzled.
"You brought me aboard," Jim said.
"Are you still stuck on that?" Leo asked.
"Yes, Bones," Jim said seriously. "I'm still stuck on that. But that doesn't answer my question."
"Was it serious?" Leo asked. "'cause I'm thinking that if I have the same general character traits, which Spock said I do, then I'd pretty much always do the same kinds of things, right? Like he said, and Jim this was weird, that in all of the universes that he knew of that we were always on the Enterprise. Which I guess means I'm always a doctor."
Jim nodded. "That makes sense. He told me that I'm supposed to be the Captain." His expression was brooding.
Leo decided to shake Jim out of his mood. "Did you know that Spock and Uhura are a couple?"
Jim looked up at him in surprise. "You mean our Spock, right?"
"I may have to object to that characterization there, Captain," Leo drawled out. "Especially since I think I may like the older Spock better. And you knew?"
Jim was laughing as he nodded. "Bones –" he held up a hand in a motion that indicated that he was swearing. "They kissed in front of me."
Leo nodded.
"What!?" Jim said. "Man, they are totally indiscreet."
"Jim," Leo protested, "it's just hands. Most people wouldn't even notice –- what?"
"Not hands," Jim said, "lips."
Leo raised both eyebrows.
"Although I'm pretty sure tongues were involved, too."
"Jim …"
"I am serious," he said, talking over Leo's protest. "Scotty was there, you can ask him."
"Wow," Leo said.
"Hands …" Jim scoffed. "Please. Although, you know, he did have one of his hands kinda low on her …"
"Jim," Leo said. "This is your crew you're talking about." Jim's console bleeped. "Also," he continued, "I'd like to point out that Spock will kick your ass from here back to Earth if he hears you talking like that."
"Oh," Jim said, smirking, "like you're going to tell him? Kirk here," he said into the console.
"Captain," Chapel said, after identifying herself. "Captain Pike is awake and has some questions about the Engineering Report."
Jim sighed and scrubbed his face with his hand, looking exhausted, but before he could speak, Leo said, "Chapel? Who the fuck gave him a PADD? And why is he awake at …" he looked for a chrono.
"0530," Chapel said drily, then he could hear muffled voices, as if she had her hand over the comm. "Captain Pike has instructed me to tell you to quote 'Watch your fucking language for once and that's an order' unquote."
Chapel was really having too much goddamned fun at her job. He scowled at a smirking Jim as the voices on the other end of the comm were muffled again.
"He has also further stated that quote, 'Captain Kirk should get his ass down here now, and bring him a cup of coffee'."
"No coffee," Leo said firmly. He could hear Pike's muffled protest but knew that he wouldn't be getting any coffee out of Chapel, either.
Jim finished syncing the data to his PADD. "Tell the Captain I'm on my way, Nurse Chapel. Kirk out." Jim stood up and eyebrowed Leo. "What's up with Pike and Chapel?" he asked, moving toward the door.
Leo grimaced and swallowed his now cold cup of coffee before he slung his tricorder over his shoulder and picked up his PADD and followed Jim out the door. "I haven't caught them making out, it that's what you're asking," he said acerbically.
"Yet," Jim tossed over his shoulder with a smile, pushing the button for the turbolift and then turning back to waggle his eyebrows at Leo. "If you ask me, it's just a matter of time." He smiled and stepped into the occupied lift, greeting the crewman before saying, "Coming, Bones?" in a voice that was just a tad too sweetly mocking to be anything other than completely dirty.
Leo ignored him and stepped into the elevator, nodding to the crewman. He fixed his eyes determinedly on the deck counter as they moved, and fervently hoped that somewhere, in some universe, Leonard McCoy was getting laid.
Goddamnit.
+
Switch 43