Fic: "Fear, Itself" (2/?) ST:XI/Doom Xover, R
An ST:XI/Doom crossover, written per 
vinniebatman's prompts. The awesomeness of this idea is all hers. I'm just filling in the little details to the best of my ability.
Fear, Itself (2/?)
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: ST:XI/Doom
Pairing: Eventually McCoy/Chekov, Spock/Kirk, but other pairings, as well.
Rating: R, so far
Notes/Warnings: Set post ST:XI by three years. Spoilers for ST:XI and for Doom. Violence. Minor character death.
Summary: The crew gets more than they bargained for on Leave.
From Acting Captain's Log:
. . . receiving a barrage of distress calls from crewmembers on Leave, at approximately 13:09 hours, Lieutenant Uhura and I are leading a security team down to V’Plenniak 5 to meet with Ambassador Kurak regarding the nature of these distress calls. . . .
“. . . constabulary was able to establish that around the same time, several other of your crew members began behaving irrationally, some of them even running off, screaming and flailing as if they were being chased,” Uhura translates for the Ambassador, who’s ringing her smallish paws with worry. “We were able to intercept a few of them and sedate them-carefully, through the efforts of one of our most distinguished scientists, Dr. Korva-so they couldn’t harm themselves or cause themselves more distress. But we can revive them whenever you’re ready, and hopefully piece together what happened. Oh, me.”
Sulu and Uhura share a glance, then Uhura chitters something at the Ambassador, who sighs and shakes her head, clearly embarrassed. When she replies, it’s brief and tentative, interrogatory.
“She offers her sincerest apologies, and is willing to help us coordinate our efforts with the local peacekeepers to get the matter quickly resolved,” Uhura adds. Sulu nods and paces to the window of the Central Office. From there he can see many mutli-colored V’Plenniak rushing about their business, some pausing to stop and chat with each other, some gathered in serious groups of threes and fours. The mile-wide Central Square is a-flash with bright golden eyes and bright golden jewelry.
There's absolutely no sign of the sixty-plus officers who’d beamed down, excited for Leave. No sign of the Captain, Spock, McCoy. . . .
Or of Pavel.
Sulu ignores the slight stinging behind his eyes. He’s never cried in his life, and doesn’t intend to start now. Anyway, crying isn’t going to get Pavel back. Figuring out what’s going on and putting a stop to it is the only thing that could do that. Which means adding up the few facts they have:
Fact 1: Two hours into a seemingly routine Leave, almost every one of the crew dirtside had become very afraid of something or someone that they couldn’t have possibly run into on V’Plenniak 5, such as clowns, Tarkalean razor-boars, ghosts, crocodiles, Klingons, Napolean, etc. (Though the V’Plenniak penchant for dying their fur might have led to Yerkes thinking she was being surrounded by clowns.)
Fact 2: This fear, which had seemingly affected everyone at approximately the same time, had damaged their reason to the point that they hared off into an unknown city with no thought for safety, or the protocol for the very situation in which they found themselves.
Fact 3: Tracing their comm-badges had revealed most of those badges lying in piles of four and five, not far from the last places their owners had been seen or heard from.
All of which means wherever the crewmembers are, they’re with people who know what the comm-badges are, and don’t want to be traced. And if they don’t want to be traced, that means this was a deliberate, conspiratorial act of interception and abduction.
Which likewise means there’s a mole in the V’Plenniak government. Someone who wants to send a message to Starfleet and the Federation, and has no qualms about using dozens of innocent people to do it. . . .
Of course, the last bit is only conjecture, but Sulu has a hunch he's right, that this . . . abduction has nothing to do with profit and everything to do with making an example and sending a warning.
Sulu sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache. Standing around brooding and blue-skying won’t get anyone anywhere, let alone his crew back, safe and alive.
He turns back to the room and manages a tight smile. Steps over a prismed rainbow of soft cushions and pillows, to get to the Ambassador. He nods, holding out his hands in the V’Plenniak gesture of friendship.
The Ambassador makes a strange wa’ah sound and comes to take his hands, squeezing them tight.
“The Ambassador is humbled by our understanding and our friendship,” Uhura murmurs. Sulu manages a genuine smile, and looks down into the Ambassador’s worried golden eyes, which study his face from a fluff of cerise-colored fur. She looks terribly small in her colorful, ornate office.
“Please thank her for her assistance, Lieutenant, and advise her we’d appreciate any help she can offer.”
*
“Chekov?”
Sitting tailor-style, staring off into space, Pavel doesn’t respond to the soft, scratchy voice at his side. Nor the insistent poking of his shoulder that follows.
“Listen, kid, ya gotta snap out of it. We’ve gotta. . . .” the voice trails off for a few moments. Then the poking and the talking resumes. “Those clowns took some of the others outside and . . . they came back without ‘em. I think they’re dead . . . Spock, Tagawa, Fine, Heller, Santiago . . . a bunch of others. All gone, now.”
“Da. Gone,” Pavel agrees, nodding, because they are. Almost everyone Pavel cares about is gone. Dead at the hands of the Romulan kidnappers. So is anyone who comes looking for them, including Hikaru. . . .
Even the Keptin is dead. Since the Romulans dumped him unceremoniously in the midst of the remaining crewmembers, he’s not so much as twitched. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing.
It’s all hopeless. They will die here, and no one will know what happened to them. Pavel will never get another chance to talk with his Papa or sit with his Mama. Never play soccer with Yuri and Katya again, never hear another story from his Grandmother. Never get to go drinking with Hikaru again, never find the courage to tell Dr. McCoy-
“C’mon, kiddo, anyone home in there?”
When Pavel finally looks over, he finds himself staring into a familiar, strong-featured face, surrounded by a fluffy afro. “Lieutenant Y-yerkes?”
The lieutenant nods once, her brown eyes so wide the whites are showing around them. “You’re the only one who’s not freaking out or falling apart. So you’ve gotta help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Help me get outta here, to get help for the others, before . . . before the clowns do worse than kidnap us,” she says, shuddering and glancing around at their captors.
Pavel looks, too, but all he sees are Romulans. To a man, they look like Nero. Like they’ve all been cloned from the same DNA.
“Their laughter’s driving me batshit,” the Lieutenant moans softly, clutching her head and rocking a little. “God, they’re gonna kill us all if we don’t get help.”
Pavel looks around, confused. Thinks perhaps his command of standard is failing him, because he definitely does not see any clowns whatsoever. All he sees are crewmembers, huddled together and weeping or shaking or both. Surrounding them on the ground floor and on walkways above the dusty warehouse, are Romulans with projectile- and pulse-pistols. Pavel shakes his head sadly. “How are we going to get away from them? They are armed and many-“
“I don’t know!” Yerkes exclaims, panting, her eyes rolling like a frightened horse. “I don’t know anything but that we have to get away from them!”
“But how--?”
“You’re the genius, can’t you . . . figure something out?” Yerkes grabs his hands in her own clammy ones. “Please, just-tell me what to do, and I can do it. I can be brave for long enough to get us out of here if you’ll just tell me what to-”
Suddenly, one of the Romulans on the walkway shouts something down at one of the Romulans on the ground, and that Romulan rushes over to Pavel and Yerkes, hissing and chittering like a wild animal. He gestures with his pulse pistol for them to separate.
“Fuck you, clown!” Yerkes grits out, jumping to her feet. Her whole body is vibrating with fear and nervous energy.
“Lieutenant, sit down!” Pavel says as firmly as he can, but it sounds more like a plea than a command. Yerkes shakes her head, staring down the Romulan, teeth bared in a silent snarl.
“It’s stand or fall time, kid,” she replies, balling her fists and taking a step toward the Romulan, who sneers. We all--all--“ she continues, raising her voice so that it rings off the warehouse walls. “We all have to stand up to these assholes! They can’t do this to us! We’re stronger than this-than cowering on a dirty floor waiting for them to cut our throats!”
Pavel sneaks a glance around at his fellow officers. Some of them are starting to perk up, to stop their muttering and clutching of each other. The catatonic ones don’t seem to be moving, though. They simply stare up at the ceiling and occasionally tremor or tic.
Another glance upward shows all the walkway guards have their weapons trained on Yerkes, as do the guards on the floor.
“Lieutenant,” Pavel begins, tugging on the leg of her trousers. But she shakes him off. “They will kill you!”
“I’d rather die fighting than wait to get slaughtered like an animal.” She looks at down at him, resignation in her dark eyes. Then she smiles grimly, before turning back to the guard with the pistol, who barks something at her Pavel can’t understand, but he knows means sit down and shut up, Human.
Yerkes looks around her, meeting every eye that will meet hers. And there are more than a few, now, some bright with remembered courage and fearlessness.
“We’re Starfleet officers!” she exclaims in a familiarly brassy tone. “We have to start acting like it and save ourselves! Will some of us be hurt or killed? Yes. But some of us won’t. And the ones that don’t will make it out of here and back to the Enterprise. Back home . . . who wants to go home?”
Several tentative replies are sounded, and the guard with the pistol aimed at Yerkes aims it and his attention toward the loudest of the replies; silent and quick, Yerkes rushes him, tackling him to the ground.
They tussle for the pistol between them, to the soundtrack of brutish Romulan laughter and Human cries of distress. For a few moments, it even appears that Yerkes has the upper hand, despite the enormous strength of the Romulan. But only for a few moments. They can’t have been rolling around for more than a half minute when the pistol goes off and they both stiffen-
Seconds later the Romulan pushes Yerkes away from him and jumps to his feet, aiming the pistol at her head and growling.
“No!” Pavel shouts, scrambling towards her to shield her body with his own. He crouches over her head and torso and stays that way. Even when the cold, metal tip of the Romulan’s pistol touches the back of his head.
The Romulan mutters something and Pavel can hear the slow easing back of the trigger, can hear the click in his own throat as he swallows reflexively, his body preparing to die.
Suddenly there’s a shout from above and after a few tense seconds, the pistol is gone, and the Romulan huffs.
So relieved he can barely control bowel and bladder, Pavel looks down into Yerkes's wide, frightened eyes, then down at her stomach. The hole there is so big, so torn and red . . . he could catalogue her organs, were there more than strips and scraps left of them.
“Oh, Lieutenant. . . .” he moans, and she laughs, pained and forced. Blood bubbles through her libs and around her teeth.
“Sally,” she says, and when Pavel meets her eyes again, she actually grins, pained though it is. “Tell . . . my mom and pop . . . I'm sorry. And . . . I love them.”
“You can tell them yourself,” Pavel whispers, about as convincingly as he’d commanded her to sit down.
Yerkes--Sally--grabs his hand, her eyes intent and piercing. “Promise me . . . you’ll tell them. . . .”
Tears running down his face, Pavel nods. “I-I promise.”
She holds his gaze for what feels like an eternity before she sighs softly and stops breathing.
The Romulan behind Pavel snorts, and moves away. Around Pavel, the few crewmembers that’d shown signs of life go back to their weeping and shaking with renewed determination.
But Pavel pays them no mind. He can’t take his eyes off of Yerkes’ own. He doesn’t even realize that the blood that stains Yerkes jersey a darker shade of red has spread around them in a rapidly cooling pool.
*
When Jim comes to his entire skull aches, and he can barely sit up, his body is such a mass of pain and soreness.
For a long while he lies there, too disoriented to understand why he should be in so much pain. But it’s the sound of soft weeping, on the background of brief screams and cries, and muttered snatches of conversation that makes him struggle over onto his side.
As his blurry vision clears, he can make out a spreading puddle of red making its way toward his face, and he pushes himself upright slowly on shaking arms. What he sees causes him to blink, as if to clear a hallucination from his sight.
A quick count reveals over thirty crewmembers sitting or laying on a the filthy floor of a huge, empty space, in clumps and groups. Most of them are either rocking or shaking. Some seem to be catatonic, sprawled on the floor and staring straight up, their breathing slow and erratic. Among them and above them on creaking walkways, V'Plenniak with weapons stroll back and forth.
Not five feet away is Ensign Chekov, chafing the hand of Lieutenant Yerkes, who is also prone, but not because she’s sleeping. Indeed, she is the source of spreading red that’d caused Jim to sit up. There's a large, gruesome wound that's turned most of her torso into hamburger, and Jim can smell the copper-piss-shit stench of death so strong, he wonders if he'll ever be able to smell anything else.
What the hell happened? "Chekov?"
Chekov shakes his head no once, and squeezes Yerkes's hand, muttering something in Russian.
Oh, boy, Jim thinks, getting to his knees, ignoring the throb of head and ankle. He crawls over to Chekov's side-or as close as he can get without kneeling in the puddle of blood the kid is sitting heedlessly in-and touches his shoulder. Chekov flinches, but doesn't move away.
"Pavel, look at me," Jim says softly, and when Chekov looks up his dark blue eyes, which are wide and staring in bruised, shocked hollows, seem to have trouble focusing on Jim.
Jim means to say something comforting to the kid-who is, for all his genius, still just that-something that’ll take away that haunted, far-away look. But what comes out is: “Where's Spock?”
And with that name, memory descends upon Jim: V'Plenniak 5, the Fear, the running, and being caught. Then being caught up entirely when Spock's fingers touched his face . . . lost and delirious in feelings of newness and belonging. Of comfort and familiarity, even in the midst of strangeness. . . .
Jim shakes his head even though it makes the room spin unpleasantly. Focuses his attention on Chekov, who's biting his lip and sniffling like a very small child. Tears cut clean trails down his pale, dirty face. "Where's Spock, Pavel?
“The Commander is dead. And so are we all, Keptin.”
And with that, he lets go of Yerkes's hand and lays down with his back to the corpse, seemingly unaware (or uncaring) that he's laid down in a pool of blood.
Jim knows, distantly, that he should help the kid at least move to a dry spot, but he can't seem to move, himself. All he can focus on is Chekov's flat-toned words: the Commander is dead.
Unable to process this, Jim looks down at his scraped, grimy hands and remembers the meld . . . the feeling of completeness that’d been so vast, so endless, he thought he might die of it. The sense that here, at last, was a part of himself that he hadn't realized he was missing until that moment, and that once found, that part could never be separated from him again.
Even now, he can still feel Spock, somewhere in the back of his mind, a cool-hot presence like a desert at night. Can feel phantom fingertips on his face as he’s swept up and away in a sea of emotions so complex, so powerful, he can’t catalogue them all, or even understand them all. Only . . . he does, somehow, know them and understand them, despite the fact that they're-mostly-not his own. Jim knows Spock better than Spock knows himself, and vice versa.
And so, Spock can’t be dead if Jim they know each other so keenly. He just can’t. They're two halves of the same person, and Jim's still alive, so Spock has to be, too.
Yet . . . Spock isn’t here. Neither is half the crew that beamed down for Leave.
They’re dead, and in the end there was nothing Jim could do to save them. To save him.
For the first time since Pike dared him to do better than his father, Jim feels like he's not even half the man his father was. Hell, he couldn't even keep sixty people safe. Couldn't keep the man he . . . cared about safe. . . .
For a while, he simply gazes at Yerkes's ruined body. At Pavel Chekov, lying in her blood, his eyes wide and staring-unmoving but for minute facial twitches and the occasional shudder.
Hanging his head, Jim Kirk weeps for the first time in his life.
TBC
vinniebatman's prompts. The awesomeness of this idea is all hers. I'm just filling in the little details to the best of my ability.
Fear, Itself (2/?)
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: ST:XI/Doom
Pairing: Eventually McCoy/Chekov, Spock/Kirk, but other pairings, as well.
Rating: R, so far
Notes/Warnings: Set post ST:XI by three years. Spoilers for ST:XI and for Doom. Violence. Minor character death.
Summary: The crew gets more than they bargained for on Leave.
From Acting Captain's Log:
. . . receiving a barrage of distress calls from crewmembers on Leave, at approximately 13:09 hours, Lieutenant Uhura and I are leading a security team down to V’Plenniak 5 to meet with Ambassador Kurak regarding the nature of these distress calls. . . .
“. . . constabulary was able to establish that around the same time, several other of your crew members began behaving irrationally, some of them even running off, screaming and flailing as if they were being chased,” Uhura translates for the Ambassador, who’s ringing her smallish paws with worry. “We were able to intercept a few of them and sedate them-carefully, through the efforts of one of our most distinguished scientists, Dr. Korva-so they couldn’t harm themselves or cause themselves more distress. But we can revive them whenever you’re ready, and hopefully piece together what happened. Oh, me.”
Sulu and Uhura share a glance, then Uhura chitters something at the Ambassador, who sighs and shakes her head, clearly embarrassed. When she replies, it’s brief and tentative, interrogatory.
“She offers her sincerest apologies, and is willing to help us coordinate our efforts with the local peacekeepers to get the matter quickly resolved,” Uhura adds. Sulu nods and paces to the window of the Central Office. From there he can see many mutli-colored V’Plenniak rushing about their business, some pausing to stop and chat with each other, some gathered in serious groups of threes and fours. The mile-wide Central Square is a-flash with bright golden eyes and bright golden jewelry.
There's absolutely no sign of the sixty-plus officers who’d beamed down, excited for Leave. No sign of the Captain, Spock, McCoy. . . .
Or of Pavel.
Sulu ignores the slight stinging behind his eyes. He’s never cried in his life, and doesn’t intend to start now. Anyway, crying isn’t going to get Pavel back. Figuring out what’s going on and putting a stop to it is the only thing that could do that. Which means adding up the few facts they have:
Fact 1: Two hours into a seemingly routine Leave, almost every one of the crew dirtside had become very afraid of something or someone that they couldn’t have possibly run into on V’Plenniak 5, such as clowns, Tarkalean razor-boars, ghosts, crocodiles, Klingons, Napolean, etc. (Though the V’Plenniak penchant for dying their fur might have led to Yerkes thinking she was being surrounded by clowns.)
Fact 2: This fear, which had seemingly affected everyone at approximately the same time, had damaged their reason to the point that they hared off into an unknown city with no thought for safety, or the protocol for the very situation in which they found themselves.
Fact 3: Tracing their comm-badges had revealed most of those badges lying in piles of four and five, not far from the last places their owners had been seen or heard from.
All of which means wherever the crewmembers are, they’re with people who know what the comm-badges are, and don’t want to be traced. And if they don’t want to be traced, that means this was a deliberate, conspiratorial act of interception and abduction.
Which likewise means there’s a mole in the V’Plenniak government. Someone who wants to send a message to Starfleet and the Federation, and has no qualms about using dozens of innocent people to do it. . . .
Of course, the last bit is only conjecture, but Sulu has a hunch he's right, that this . . . abduction has nothing to do with profit and everything to do with making an example and sending a warning.
Sulu sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache. Standing around brooding and blue-skying won’t get anyone anywhere, let alone his crew back, safe and alive.
He turns back to the room and manages a tight smile. Steps over a prismed rainbow of soft cushions and pillows, to get to the Ambassador. He nods, holding out his hands in the V’Plenniak gesture of friendship.
The Ambassador makes a strange wa’ah sound and comes to take his hands, squeezing them tight.
“The Ambassador is humbled by our understanding and our friendship,” Uhura murmurs. Sulu manages a genuine smile, and looks down into the Ambassador’s worried golden eyes, which study his face from a fluff of cerise-colored fur. She looks terribly small in her colorful, ornate office.
“Please thank her for her assistance, Lieutenant, and advise her we’d appreciate any help she can offer.”
*
“Chekov?”
Sitting tailor-style, staring off into space, Pavel doesn’t respond to the soft, scratchy voice at his side. Nor the insistent poking of his shoulder that follows.
“Listen, kid, ya gotta snap out of it. We’ve gotta. . . .” the voice trails off for a few moments. Then the poking and the talking resumes. “Those clowns took some of the others outside and . . . they came back without ‘em. I think they’re dead . . . Spock, Tagawa, Fine, Heller, Santiago . . . a bunch of others. All gone, now.”
“Da. Gone,” Pavel agrees, nodding, because they are. Almost everyone Pavel cares about is gone. Dead at the hands of the Romulan kidnappers. So is anyone who comes looking for them, including Hikaru. . . .
Even the Keptin is dead. Since the Romulans dumped him unceremoniously in the midst of the remaining crewmembers, he’s not so much as twitched. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing.
It’s all hopeless. They will die here, and no one will know what happened to them. Pavel will never get another chance to talk with his Papa or sit with his Mama. Never play soccer with Yuri and Katya again, never hear another story from his Grandmother. Never get to go drinking with Hikaru again, never find the courage to tell Dr. McCoy-
“C’mon, kiddo, anyone home in there?”
When Pavel finally looks over, he finds himself staring into a familiar, strong-featured face, surrounded by a fluffy afro. “Lieutenant Y-yerkes?”
The lieutenant nods once, her brown eyes so wide the whites are showing around them. “You’re the only one who’s not freaking out or falling apart. So you’ve gotta help me.”
“Help you do what?”
“Help me get outta here, to get help for the others, before . . . before the clowns do worse than kidnap us,” she says, shuddering and glancing around at their captors.
Pavel looks, too, but all he sees are Romulans. To a man, they look like Nero. Like they’ve all been cloned from the same DNA.
“Their laughter’s driving me batshit,” the Lieutenant moans softly, clutching her head and rocking a little. “God, they’re gonna kill us all if we don’t get help.”
Pavel looks around, confused. Thinks perhaps his command of standard is failing him, because he definitely does not see any clowns whatsoever. All he sees are crewmembers, huddled together and weeping or shaking or both. Surrounding them on the ground floor and on walkways above the dusty warehouse, are Romulans with projectile- and pulse-pistols. Pavel shakes his head sadly. “How are we going to get away from them? They are armed and many-“
“I don’t know!” Yerkes exclaims, panting, her eyes rolling like a frightened horse. “I don’t know anything but that we have to get away from them!”
“But how--?”
“You’re the genius, can’t you . . . figure something out?” Yerkes grabs his hands in her own clammy ones. “Please, just-tell me what to do, and I can do it. I can be brave for long enough to get us out of here if you’ll just tell me what to-”
Suddenly, one of the Romulans on the walkway shouts something down at one of the Romulans on the ground, and that Romulan rushes over to Pavel and Yerkes, hissing and chittering like a wild animal. He gestures with his pulse pistol for them to separate.
“Fuck you, clown!” Yerkes grits out, jumping to her feet. Her whole body is vibrating with fear and nervous energy.
“Lieutenant, sit down!” Pavel says as firmly as he can, but it sounds more like a plea than a command. Yerkes shakes her head, staring down the Romulan, teeth bared in a silent snarl.
“It’s stand or fall time, kid,” she replies, balling her fists and taking a step toward the Romulan, who sneers. We all--all--“ she continues, raising her voice so that it rings off the warehouse walls. “We all have to stand up to these assholes! They can’t do this to us! We’re stronger than this-than cowering on a dirty floor waiting for them to cut our throats!”
Pavel sneaks a glance around at his fellow officers. Some of them are starting to perk up, to stop their muttering and clutching of each other. The catatonic ones don’t seem to be moving, though. They simply stare up at the ceiling and occasionally tremor or tic.
Another glance upward shows all the walkway guards have their weapons trained on Yerkes, as do the guards on the floor.
“Lieutenant,” Pavel begins, tugging on the leg of her trousers. But she shakes him off. “They will kill you!”
“I’d rather die fighting than wait to get slaughtered like an animal.” She looks at down at him, resignation in her dark eyes. Then she smiles grimly, before turning back to the guard with the pistol, who barks something at her Pavel can’t understand, but he knows means sit down and shut up, Human.
Yerkes looks around her, meeting every eye that will meet hers. And there are more than a few, now, some bright with remembered courage and fearlessness.
“We’re Starfleet officers!” she exclaims in a familiarly brassy tone. “We have to start acting like it and save ourselves! Will some of us be hurt or killed? Yes. But some of us won’t. And the ones that don’t will make it out of here and back to the Enterprise. Back home . . . who wants to go home?”
Several tentative replies are sounded, and the guard with the pistol aimed at Yerkes aims it and his attention toward the loudest of the replies; silent and quick, Yerkes rushes him, tackling him to the ground.
They tussle for the pistol between them, to the soundtrack of brutish Romulan laughter and Human cries of distress. For a few moments, it even appears that Yerkes has the upper hand, despite the enormous strength of the Romulan. But only for a few moments. They can’t have been rolling around for more than a half minute when the pistol goes off and they both stiffen-
Seconds later the Romulan pushes Yerkes away from him and jumps to his feet, aiming the pistol at her head and growling.
“No!” Pavel shouts, scrambling towards her to shield her body with his own. He crouches over her head and torso and stays that way. Even when the cold, metal tip of the Romulan’s pistol touches the back of his head.
The Romulan mutters something and Pavel can hear the slow easing back of the trigger, can hear the click in his own throat as he swallows reflexively, his body preparing to die.
Suddenly there’s a shout from above and after a few tense seconds, the pistol is gone, and the Romulan huffs.
So relieved he can barely control bowel and bladder, Pavel looks down into Yerkes's wide, frightened eyes, then down at her stomach. The hole there is so big, so torn and red . . . he could catalogue her organs, were there more than strips and scraps left of them.
“Oh, Lieutenant. . . .” he moans, and she laughs, pained and forced. Blood bubbles through her libs and around her teeth.
“Sally,” she says, and when Pavel meets her eyes again, she actually grins, pained though it is. “Tell . . . my mom and pop . . . I'm sorry. And . . . I love them.”
“You can tell them yourself,” Pavel whispers, about as convincingly as he’d commanded her to sit down.
Yerkes--Sally--grabs his hand, her eyes intent and piercing. “Promise me . . . you’ll tell them. . . .”
Tears running down his face, Pavel nods. “I-I promise.”
She holds his gaze for what feels like an eternity before she sighs softly and stops breathing.
The Romulan behind Pavel snorts, and moves away. Around Pavel, the few crewmembers that’d shown signs of life go back to their weeping and shaking with renewed determination.
But Pavel pays them no mind. He can’t take his eyes off of Yerkes’ own. He doesn’t even realize that the blood that stains Yerkes jersey a darker shade of red has spread around them in a rapidly cooling pool.
*
When Jim comes to his entire skull aches, and he can barely sit up, his body is such a mass of pain and soreness.
For a long while he lies there, too disoriented to understand why he should be in so much pain. But it’s the sound of soft weeping, on the background of brief screams and cries, and muttered snatches of conversation that makes him struggle over onto his side.
As his blurry vision clears, he can make out a spreading puddle of red making its way toward his face, and he pushes himself upright slowly on shaking arms. What he sees causes him to blink, as if to clear a hallucination from his sight.
A quick count reveals over thirty crewmembers sitting or laying on a the filthy floor of a huge, empty space, in clumps and groups. Most of them are either rocking or shaking. Some seem to be catatonic, sprawled on the floor and staring straight up, their breathing slow and erratic. Among them and above them on creaking walkways, V'Plenniak with weapons stroll back and forth.
Not five feet away is Ensign Chekov, chafing the hand of Lieutenant Yerkes, who is also prone, but not because she’s sleeping. Indeed, she is the source of spreading red that’d caused Jim to sit up. There's a large, gruesome wound that's turned most of her torso into hamburger, and Jim can smell the copper-piss-shit stench of death so strong, he wonders if he'll ever be able to smell anything else.
What the hell happened? "Chekov?"
Chekov shakes his head no once, and squeezes Yerkes's hand, muttering something in Russian.
Oh, boy, Jim thinks, getting to his knees, ignoring the throb of head and ankle. He crawls over to Chekov's side-or as close as he can get without kneeling in the puddle of blood the kid is sitting heedlessly in-and touches his shoulder. Chekov flinches, but doesn't move away.
"Pavel, look at me," Jim says softly, and when Chekov looks up his dark blue eyes, which are wide and staring in bruised, shocked hollows, seem to have trouble focusing on Jim.
Jim means to say something comforting to the kid-who is, for all his genius, still just that-something that’ll take away that haunted, far-away look. But what comes out is: “Where's Spock?”
And with that name, memory descends upon Jim: V'Plenniak 5, the Fear, the running, and being caught. Then being caught up entirely when Spock's fingers touched his face . . . lost and delirious in feelings of newness and belonging. Of comfort and familiarity, even in the midst of strangeness. . . .
Jim shakes his head even though it makes the room spin unpleasantly. Focuses his attention on Chekov, who's biting his lip and sniffling like a very small child. Tears cut clean trails down his pale, dirty face. "Where's Spock, Pavel?
“The Commander is dead. And so are we all, Keptin.”
And with that, he lets go of Yerkes's hand and lays down with his back to the corpse, seemingly unaware (or uncaring) that he's laid down in a pool of blood.
Jim knows, distantly, that he should help the kid at least move to a dry spot, but he can't seem to move, himself. All he can focus on is Chekov's flat-toned words: the Commander is dead.
Unable to process this, Jim looks down at his scraped, grimy hands and remembers the meld . . . the feeling of completeness that’d been so vast, so endless, he thought he might die of it. The sense that here, at last, was a part of himself that he hadn't realized he was missing until that moment, and that once found, that part could never be separated from him again.
Even now, he can still feel Spock, somewhere in the back of his mind, a cool-hot presence like a desert at night. Can feel phantom fingertips on his face as he’s swept up and away in a sea of emotions so complex, so powerful, he can’t catalogue them all, or even understand them all. Only . . . he does, somehow, know them and understand them, despite the fact that they're-mostly-not his own. Jim knows Spock better than Spock knows himself, and vice versa.
And so, Spock can’t be dead if Jim they know each other so keenly. He just can’t. They're two halves of the same person, and Jim's still alive, so Spock has to be, too.
Yet . . . Spock isn’t here. Neither is half the crew that beamed down for Leave.
They’re dead, and in the end there was nothing Jim could do to save them. To save him.
For the first time since Pike dared him to do better than his father, Jim feels like he's not even half the man his father was. Hell, he couldn't even keep sixty people safe. Couldn't keep the man he . . . cared about safe. . . .
For a while, he simply gazes at Yerkes's ruined body. At Pavel Chekov, lying in her blood, his eyes wide and staring-unmoving but for minute facial twitches and the occasional shudder.
Hanging his head, Jim Kirk weeps for the first time in his life.
TBC