Hurt, No Comfort
Title: Hurt, No Comfort
Rating: T
Warning: character death
Genre: can I call hurt a genre? and angst.
Beta: hyde_the_body
Disclaimer: it ain't mine.
"No, Bo-" Jim stops himself. "Just - no, Doctor McCoy."
Leonard paused, startled and wary of the use of his title. "Jim, let me exp-"
"No." Jim's face is utterly unreadable and Leonard hurts because he never thought he'd be on the receiving end of that look. He knows what it means and it spells out anger and pain in bold letters. "You are dismissed, Doctor."
There's a long silence and neither man moves.
"You are," Jim says again, arms crossed and face going cold, "dismissed.”
Leonard doesn't even know where to begin. He fucked up. Their relationship always had a story-book quality to it: a rebel turned hero and a small town doctor who fit so perfectly together it's like fairytale Disney shat out, and Joanna's voice comes unbidden to him and echoes in his ears as he gets up to leave. ...Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall... Leonard doesn't know if he can put it back together again. He stops when he reaches the door and looks over his shoulder at Jim, who is very determinedly not looking at him and staring at the glass tabletop instead. Leonard opens the door then and slips out quietly.
He ignores the ship's rumor mill, which whispers about betrayal and lies and did you see him? it's all the Doctor's fault. He doesn't listen to it, true though it may be, and retreats to his quarters every night, where he stares at a few bottles of booze with longing. It would be so easy, so simple to sink back into the welcoming arms of oblivion every night because, fuck this hurts. It aches to know that there is nothing between them anymore and it's agonizing to know that he's the cause of Jim's heartache. He sees it when they happen to be in the mess at the same time, a rare occurrence since Leonard has been trying to time his shifts so as to prevent overlap with Jim’s, because he can't bear to see those frozen blue eyes. Jim hides it well, but those who know him well (and Leonard still counts himself among them) can see the shards of his heart in his face and hear their echoes in his voice when he speaks.
The rest of the crew, right down to the last ensign, treat him differently now. Leonard doesn't give a shit about what ensigns think, but it's hard to see Uhura and Sulu and Scotty, and even fucking Spock act like he shouldn't be aboard (Spock's laser-stare follows him whenever they're in the same room and Leonard can almost hear the growl when he and Jim are in proximity). He knows they're right, but it doesn't stop the hurt.
Senior officer meetings are his only unavoidable encounters with his Captain (it's easier to think of him like that instead of 'Jim', because the more he thinks about Jim, the harder it is to resist the siren call of the bottles back in his room). They used to be as fun as any meeting can ever be, perhaps more so, since this is the Enterprise and it’s nothing like any other ship in the 'Fleet. Now they're a study in playing pretend. Jim goes through the motions, makes his usual jokes and smiles at his team, but his smiles are thin and fraying at the edges. Leonard pretends he isn't hiding, down at the far end of the table, quietly fiddling with a stylus and answering only when necessary.
He's looking forward to the end of the mission now just as much as he was six months ago, but for entirely different reasons. Six months ago, he thought he'd have a nice long shore leave and then go back out into the black with Jim after a good dose of relaxation. Now he anticipates getting the hell out of StarFleet altogether. He's served more than his term and there's nothing here for him now. Jim won't look at him if there's even a conveniently located chair to stare at instead.
The day before they dock, Leonard gets a message on his PADD. It's from Jim and his heart jumps into his throat.
Captain Kirk: Do you plan to come back aboard?Leonard puts it down and swallows, trying to collect himself before he answers.
Me: Didn't plan to, no.He only resists adding "didn't think you'd want me around" because he doesn't want the answer. Leonard suspects he's not going to like the response anyway.
Captain Kirk: Good. With a bitter quirk to his lips, Leonard puts down the PADD and goes back to putting the office in order for his successor, whoever he, she, e, or it might be. Roiling with self-loathing, Leonard hopes they can keep Jim together better than he did.
He's packing up his quarters when there's another message for him from Jim, with an attachment.
Letter of RecommendationJames T. Kirk ✆ to Leonard H. McCoy 2268.05 (5 seconds ago)
>>Captain James T. Kirk
Reply
Leonard puts down the PADD and sits on the edge of his bed, wishing he could press the call icon and just talk to Jim again, like old times. But he knows his call would be ignored, or worse yet, answered (he has had enough empty "Doctor McCoy"s for a life time). For a long while, he stares at the bottles, which now sit in a box near his left foot. He honestly doesn't know why he's kept them. They're singing, calling his name, insistently whispering that it'll all look better through the bottom of a bottle. Leonard's always had a self-destructive streak and it's been widening recently. He promises himself he'll get rid of the bottles when he gets planet-side. The last thing he wantsneedsdesires is to drink himself into a stupor.
(He never does open that attachment and neither does he delete it. It sits in his inbox until Joanna goes through it decades later. She never knows exactly what happened between her father and Captain Kirk, but the message has been there for eighty years for a reason. She leaves it at the top of her father’s inbox.)
When he's all packed up, all the pitiful little pieces of his life balled up and stuffed in his duffel bag or boxed and under his arm, Leonard takes one last glance at the pearly ship that has been his home for the last fifteen years as his shuttle descends to Earth. He feels like something has been jerked out of his chest, and it's a feeling he recognizes. The first splinter of his already shattered heart (ohgodit'sreallyhappening) has just been torn away from him and stabbed him in the gut - and there will be more to follow. Leonard knows that down the years, his body will close over the wounds he's been collecting since the night be stopped being Bones and started being Doctor McCoy, but he'll still sometimes step on them and the hurt will bleed out again. Just like with Jocelyn, Jim will always stay in his heart. Except a hundred times worse because the end of his relationship with Jim was his own damn fault, whereas Jocelyn was the catalyst in their marriage's demise.
He starts the paperwork to retire without telling anyone. Not even Joanna, and it's weeks before she hears from him.
"I'm coming to Georgia," he says on the comm, his voice grey from exhaustion. StarFleet hadn't wanted to let go of him and had made it hard to muster out.
"Is Jim coming?"
There's something agonizingly sardonic in his eyes. "No, he's not."
Joanna frowns. "Is everything okay with you two?"
Her father's lip curls briefly and doesn't look at the view screen. "No," he murmurs, almost too quietly for the comm to pick up, before looking up at her. "I've retired."
"You're not going back out to space?"
"Jim was what kept me in the 'Fleet, Jo. And now there's nothing to make me stay anymore." He sighs. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want to come home."
"Okay," Joanna says carefully. "We'll put you up for as long as you need us to."
The first semblance of a smile she's seen from him yet crosses his face. "Thank you."
It's a few weeks before Leonard gets another job lined up, where he'll be running emergency relief teams for Doctor Without Borders. He shuttles back and forth between Earth and whatever planet they're needed on most at the moment, and he quietly watches Jim's career progress, sees him negotiate with Klingons and Romulans, make first contact with fabulous new peoples, and save yet more planets from destruction. After one particularly harrowing mission, he sees Spock and Uhura (and oh how he misses them) as they stand behind Jim as he shows off how healthy he is again for the cameras. Leonard knows better, he thinks as he absently stands at parade rest. He can see the tension around Jim's eyes, the pain around his lips. Jim's not healthy yet, and Leonard wishes he could reach through the screen and force Jim back into a biobed someplace and run a tricorder over him.
Leonard learned from the best, he thinks with a touch of bitterness. He never sends his crews where he wouldn't go and tends to join the more dangerous missions, middle aged or not. He tries not to think too hard about why he does it, especially when he knows he'll be facing unfriendly populations and he's wondering how Jim would deal with them.
Neither of them expected to run into each other at a charity event benefiting Doctors Without Borders, Leonard guesses. He hadn't known Jim was coming (he's a doctor, dammit, not a secretary!) and he supposes Jim didn't keep track of what he did after he left Starfleet all those years ago. It's awkward, both aware that the other is in the room and important enough that they'll have to talk at some point.
Jim gives him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes when they're shoved together with glasses of wine, and Leonard gives him a nod in return instead of running away, which is what he'd much rather do. They're back to playing pretend again, and Leonard thinks of command meetings he spent playing with styluses and drawing things in water rings instead of looking at a broken-stringed marionette at the head of the table.
"How have you been?" Jim asks, carefully neutral.
Leonard shrugs. "Busy. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Yourself?" he asks.
"Well enough." There's a long, awkward pause and Leonard mourns the loss of easy conversations and comfortable silences. "Good work you're doing these days."
Because I have a lot to make up for, Leonard thinks but doesn't say. It would cheapen the lives he tries to save and the work he does if he said it was some kind of selfish penance for sins committed, despite the fact that it sort-of-almost is (Leonard thinks, perhaps knows, that he’s at heart a selfish man). Instead, he shrugs. "Thank you."
Jim smiles again and there's perhaps a hint of warmth there. But only maybe, because Leonard knows he'd believe in any illusion of warmth he can get.
Sometime later, a young woman in a command gold dress uniform asks him curiously, "Why did you retire so young?"
Leonard resists the urge to close his eyes or yell at her. He doesn't think she's being malicious and Doctors Without Borders really needs this money if they're going to combat the xantiokian virus in the Beta quadrant. "There were a variety of reasons, Lieutenant, none of which really need airing after twenty years."
She isn't deterred, to Leonard's increasing frustration, and keeps after him. Perhaps she's malicious after all, he thinks darkly. Two decades hasn't been enough to let the rumors die.
It's Gaila who saves him.
She gives him a smile and draws the Lieutenant off. "Are you harassing Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Anderson?" She gives him a smile. "As I recall, he never liked games of twenty questions."
Leonard sends prayers of thanks to whoever allowed Gaila to escape slavery. "Commander Orcandizda," he greets respectfully. "It's been many years."
Gaila shoos the girl off. "Too many, Leonard," she replies.
They spend the rest of the evening chatting as they can, and he finds out that people are indeed still trying to figure out why he left Starfleet.
"It's because Jim's not over you still," Gaila says. "And everyone knows it."
"Twenty years, Gaila. That's a little long to still be hung up on anyone, much less someone like me. And way too long for the rumor mill to still be churning."
She shrugs. "You aren't over him, either."
He sighs. "No, I am over him. I miss him, miss him like a limb, but I'm not in love anymore, Gaila. It took years, but I got over loving him. Now it's just the pain of knowing what I did."
She regards him for a long time before nodding. "Thirty five years later, Leonard, and he's still the savior of the Federation. And you broke part of him," Gaila says (as if Leonard needed to be reminded), "and he never got put back together the same way afterward."
Leonard nods. "If I didn't already know, it’s in front of me," he says quietly. "I really want him to be happy, Gaila. Always have."
"And he isn't," she replies.
Leonard knows she's right. He also knows that Jim probably never will be, in some ways thanks to him.
The evening ends, successfully so, and Leonard tells her that if she ever gets bored of the 'Fleet, she's welcome on his team. She nods and promises to keep in touch with him. Leonard hopes she does. He missed her a lot in his twenty years of exile.
Gaila messages back and forth with him as often as they can for many years after that, talking about their respective works and frequently about Jim, who had refused promotions no fewer than four times since that charity event.
And it's her who tells him on a vidcomm.
"He died today." She's subdued, her eyes dim and she shifts listlessly.
"Jim?" When she nods, he wrangles the details out of her. "That idiot!" he yells after she's explained. "That fucking idiot!" Leonard drops his forehead on the top of his crossed palms, listening to her let out a deep, shuddering sigh.
"He's always lived on borrowed time," Gaila says quietly. "Maybe he just ran out."
"It was routine surgery," he growls, looking up at the screen. "The surgeon should have been able to handle it!"
"L'Tol's new."
"Well congratulate L'Tol for killing the finest Starfleet hero yet!" Leonard snaps before returning his head to his hands. "I would never have lost him like that, Gaila."
"I know," she replies gently. "You were - are - a good doctor, Len." Gaila gives him a weepy smile.
He looks up at her and sighs. "Even a mediocre one wouldn't have lost him on the table to that. That's the sign of someone who never should have been handed a diploma."
"Are you going to come to the funeral?" Gaila asks after a silence.
"Christ," Leonard mutters, feeling ten times his age. He shouldn't be going to a funeral of a man younger than he is. He shouldn't be asked if he's going to Jim's funeral - it should be implied, expected. "I don't know. Is it going to be on Earth?"
"Almost certainly."
He sighs. "If I'm on the planet, I'll...I'll come. No speaking, no being anywhere near a goddamn camera, and I'm going to lurk in the fucking back like I always do."
Gaila nods. "I'll be there with you."
Leonard can't sleep the night before the funeral. He knows that if things had gone differently, that if he had stayed on the ship, then Jim would be walking around today. He would be healthy and whole and alive. But things did not go differently, he didn't stay on the ship, and Jim's not healthy or whole or alive. And god, why did he agree to go to this? Jim wouldn't want him there. He knows it and expects to be told by no fewer than twelve different people that he is unwelcome tomorrow. And it'll be a circus if the press catches him near the ritual. He envisions tabloid covers, each more ridiculous and bizarre than the last. Jim deserves better than that.
So Leonard will comm Gaila in the morning and tell her he isn't going, but that he would welcome company to toast Jim's life with. He hopes she'll come.
Rating: T
Warning: character death
Genre: can I call hurt a genre? and angst.
Beta: hyde_the_body
Disclaimer: it ain't mine.
"No, Bo-" Jim stops himself. "Just - no, Doctor McCoy."
Leonard paused, startled and wary of the use of his title. "Jim, let me exp-"
"No." Jim's face is utterly unreadable and Leonard hurts because he never thought he'd be on the receiving end of that look. He knows what it means and it spells out anger and pain in bold letters. "You are dismissed, Doctor."
There's a long silence and neither man moves.
"You are," Jim says again, arms crossed and face going cold, "dismissed.”
Leonard doesn't even know where to begin. He fucked up. Their relationship always had a story-book quality to it: a rebel turned hero and a small town doctor who fit so perfectly together it's like fairytale Disney shat out, and Joanna's voice comes unbidden to him and echoes in his ears as he gets up to leave. ...Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall... Leonard doesn't know if he can put it back together again. He stops when he reaches the door and looks over his shoulder at Jim, who is very determinedly not looking at him and staring at the glass tabletop instead. Leonard opens the door then and slips out quietly.
He ignores the ship's rumor mill, which whispers about betrayal and lies and did you see him? it's all the Doctor's fault. He doesn't listen to it, true though it may be, and retreats to his quarters every night, where he stares at a few bottles of booze with longing. It would be so easy, so simple to sink back into the welcoming arms of oblivion every night because, fuck this hurts. It aches to know that there is nothing between them anymore and it's agonizing to know that he's the cause of Jim's heartache. He sees it when they happen to be in the mess at the same time, a rare occurrence since Leonard has been trying to time his shifts so as to prevent overlap with Jim’s, because he can't bear to see those frozen blue eyes. Jim hides it well, but those who know him well (and Leonard still counts himself among them) can see the shards of his heart in his face and hear their echoes in his voice when he speaks.
The rest of the crew, right down to the last ensign, treat him differently now. Leonard doesn't give a shit about what ensigns think, but it's hard to see Uhura and Sulu and Scotty, and even fucking Spock act like he shouldn't be aboard (Spock's laser-stare follows him whenever they're in the same room and Leonard can almost hear the growl when he and Jim are in proximity). He knows they're right, but it doesn't stop the hurt.
Senior officer meetings are his only unavoidable encounters with his Captain (it's easier to think of him like that instead of 'Jim', because the more he thinks about Jim, the harder it is to resist the siren call of the bottles back in his room). They used to be as fun as any meeting can ever be, perhaps more so, since this is the Enterprise and it’s nothing like any other ship in the 'Fleet. Now they're a study in playing pretend. Jim goes through the motions, makes his usual jokes and smiles at his team, but his smiles are thin and fraying at the edges. Leonard pretends he isn't hiding, down at the far end of the table, quietly fiddling with a stylus and answering only when necessary.
He's looking forward to the end of the mission now just as much as he was six months ago, but for entirely different reasons. Six months ago, he thought he'd have a nice long shore leave and then go back out into the black with Jim after a good dose of relaxation. Now he anticipates getting the hell out of StarFleet altogether. He's served more than his term and there's nothing here for him now. Jim won't look at him if there's even a conveniently located chair to stare at instead.
The day before they dock, Leonard gets a message on his PADD. It's from Jim and his heart jumps into his throat.
Captain Kirk: Do you plan to come back aboard?Leonard puts it down and swallows, trying to collect himself before he answers.
Me: Didn't plan to, no.He only resists adding "didn't think you'd want me around" because he doesn't want the answer. Leonard suspects he's not going to like the response anyway.
Captain Kirk: Good. With a bitter quirk to his lips, Leonard puts down the PADD and goes back to putting the office in order for his successor, whoever he, she, e, or it might be. Roiling with self-loathing, Leonard hopes they can keep Jim together better than he did.
He's packing up his quarters when there's another message for him from Jim, with an attachment.
Letter of RecommendationJames T. Kirk ✆ to Leonard H. McCoy 2268.05 (5 seconds ago)
>>Captain James T. Kirk
Reply
Leonard puts down the PADD and sits on the edge of his bed, wishing he could press the call icon and just talk to Jim again, like old times. But he knows his call would be ignored, or worse yet, answered (he has had enough empty "Doctor McCoy"s for a life time). For a long while, he stares at the bottles, which now sit in a box near his left foot. He honestly doesn't know why he's kept them. They're singing, calling his name, insistently whispering that it'll all look better through the bottom of a bottle. Leonard's always had a self-destructive streak and it's been widening recently. He promises himself he'll get rid of the bottles when he gets planet-side. The last thing he wantsneedsdesires is to drink himself into a stupor.
(He never does open that attachment and neither does he delete it. It sits in his inbox until Joanna goes through it decades later. She never knows exactly what happened between her father and Captain Kirk, but the message has been there for eighty years for a reason. She leaves it at the top of her father’s inbox.)
When he's all packed up, all the pitiful little pieces of his life balled up and stuffed in his duffel bag or boxed and under his arm, Leonard takes one last glance at the pearly ship that has been his home for the last fifteen years as his shuttle descends to Earth. He feels like something has been jerked out of his chest, and it's a feeling he recognizes. The first splinter of his already shattered heart (ohgodit'sreallyhappening) has just been torn away from him and stabbed him in the gut - and there will be more to follow. Leonard knows that down the years, his body will close over the wounds he's been collecting since the night be stopped being Bones and started being Doctor McCoy, but he'll still sometimes step on them and the hurt will bleed out again. Just like with Jocelyn, Jim will always stay in his heart. Except a hundred times worse because the end of his relationship with Jim was his own damn fault, whereas Jocelyn was the catalyst in their marriage's demise.
He starts the paperwork to retire without telling anyone. Not even Joanna, and it's weeks before she hears from him.
"I'm coming to Georgia," he says on the comm, his voice grey from exhaustion. StarFleet hadn't wanted to let go of him and had made it hard to muster out.
"Is Jim coming?"
There's something agonizingly sardonic in his eyes. "No, he's not."
Joanna frowns. "Is everything okay with you two?"
Her father's lip curls briefly and doesn't look at the view screen. "No," he murmurs, almost too quietly for the comm to pick up, before looking up at her. "I've retired."
"You're not going back out to space?"
"Jim was what kept me in the 'Fleet, Jo. And now there's nothing to make me stay anymore." He sighs. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want to come home."
"Okay," Joanna says carefully. "We'll put you up for as long as you need us to."
The first semblance of a smile she's seen from him yet crosses his face. "Thank you."
It's a few weeks before Leonard gets another job lined up, where he'll be running emergency relief teams for Doctor Without Borders. He shuttles back and forth between Earth and whatever planet they're needed on most at the moment, and he quietly watches Jim's career progress, sees him negotiate with Klingons and Romulans, make first contact with fabulous new peoples, and save yet more planets from destruction. After one particularly harrowing mission, he sees Spock and Uhura (and oh how he misses them) as they stand behind Jim as he shows off how healthy he is again for the cameras. Leonard knows better, he thinks as he absently stands at parade rest. He can see the tension around Jim's eyes, the pain around his lips. Jim's not healthy yet, and Leonard wishes he could reach through the screen and force Jim back into a biobed someplace and run a tricorder over him.
Leonard learned from the best, he thinks with a touch of bitterness. He never sends his crews where he wouldn't go and tends to join the more dangerous missions, middle aged or not. He tries not to think too hard about why he does it, especially when he knows he'll be facing unfriendly populations and he's wondering how Jim would deal with them.
Neither of them expected to run into each other at a charity event benefiting Doctors Without Borders, Leonard guesses. He hadn't known Jim was coming (he's a doctor, dammit, not a secretary!) and he supposes Jim didn't keep track of what he did after he left Starfleet all those years ago. It's awkward, both aware that the other is in the room and important enough that they'll have to talk at some point.
Jim gives him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes when they're shoved together with glasses of wine, and Leonard gives him a nod in return instead of running away, which is what he'd much rather do. They're back to playing pretend again, and Leonard thinks of command meetings he spent playing with styluses and drawing things in water rings instead of looking at a broken-stringed marionette at the head of the table.
"How have you been?" Jim asks, carefully neutral.
Leonard shrugs. "Busy. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Yourself?" he asks.
"Well enough." There's a long, awkward pause and Leonard mourns the loss of easy conversations and comfortable silences. "Good work you're doing these days."
Because I have a lot to make up for, Leonard thinks but doesn't say. It would cheapen the lives he tries to save and the work he does if he said it was some kind of selfish penance for sins committed, despite the fact that it sort-of-almost is (Leonard thinks, perhaps knows, that he’s at heart a selfish man). Instead, he shrugs. "Thank you."
Jim smiles again and there's perhaps a hint of warmth there. But only maybe, because Leonard knows he'd believe in any illusion of warmth he can get.
Sometime later, a young woman in a command gold dress uniform asks him curiously, "Why did you retire so young?"
Leonard resists the urge to close his eyes or yell at her. He doesn't think she's being malicious and Doctors Without Borders really needs this money if they're going to combat the xantiokian virus in the Beta quadrant. "There were a variety of reasons, Lieutenant, none of which really need airing after twenty years."
She isn't deterred, to Leonard's increasing frustration, and keeps after him. Perhaps she's malicious after all, he thinks darkly. Two decades hasn't been enough to let the rumors die.
It's Gaila who saves him.
She gives him a smile and draws the Lieutenant off. "Are you harassing Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Anderson?" She gives him a smile. "As I recall, he never liked games of twenty questions."
Leonard sends prayers of thanks to whoever allowed Gaila to escape slavery. "Commander Orcandizda," he greets respectfully. "It's been many years."
Gaila shoos the girl off. "Too many, Leonard," she replies.
They spend the rest of the evening chatting as they can, and he finds out that people are indeed still trying to figure out why he left Starfleet.
"It's because Jim's not over you still," Gaila says. "And everyone knows it."
"Twenty years, Gaila. That's a little long to still be hung up on anyone, much less someone like me. And way too long for the rumor mill to still be churning."
She shrugs. "You aren't over him, either."
He sighs. "No, I am over him. I miss him, miss him like a limb, but I'm not in love anymore, Gaila. It took years, but I got over loving him. Now it's just the pain of knowing what I did."
She regards him for a long time before nodding. "Thirty five years later, Leonard, and he's still the savior of the Federation. And you broke part of him," Gaila says (as if Leonard needed to be reminded), "and he never got put back together the same way afterward."
Leonard nods. "If I didn't already know, it’s in front of me," he says quietly. "I really want him to be happy, Gaila. Always have."
"And he isn't," she replies.
Leonard knows she's right. He also knows that Jim probably never will be, in some ways thanks to him.
The evening ends, successfully so, and Leonard tells her that if she ever gets bored of the 'Fleet, she's welcome on his team. She nods and promises to keep in touch with him. Leonard hopes she does. He missed her a lot in his twenty years of exile.
Gaila messages back and forth with him as often as they can for many years after that, talking about their respective works and frequently about Jim, who had refused promotions no fewer than four times since that charity event.
And it's her who tells him on a vidcomm.
"He died today." She's subdued, her eyes dim and she shifts listlessly.
"Jim?" When she nods, he wrangles the details out of her. "That idiot!" he yells after she's explained. "That fucking idiot!" Leonard drops his forehead on the top of his crossed palms, listening to her let out a deep, shuddering sigh.
"He's always lived on borrowed time," Gaila says quietly. "Maybe he just ran out."
"It was routine surgery," he growls, looking up at the screen. "The surgeon should have been able to handle it!"
"L'Tol's new."
"Well congratulate L'Tol for killing the finest Starfleet hero yet!" Leonard snaps before returning his head to his hands. "I would never have lost him like that, Gaila."
"I know," she replies gently. "You were - are - a good doctor, Len." Gaila gives him a weepy smile.
He looks up at her and sighs. "Even a mediocre one wouldn't have lost him on the table to that. That's the sign of someone who never should have been handed a diploma."
"Are you going to come to the funeral?" Gaila asks after a silence.
"Christ," Leonard mutters, feeling ten times his age. He shouldn't be going to a funeral of a man younger than he is. He shouldn't be asked if he's going to Jim's funeral - it should be implied, expected. "I don't know. Is it going to be on Earth?"
"Almost certainly."
He sighs. "If I'm on the planet, I'll...I'll come. No speaking, no being anywhere near a goddamn camera, and I'm going to lurk in the fucking back like I always do."
Gaila nods. "I'll be there with you."
Leonard can't sleep the night before the funeral. He knows that if things had gone differently, that if he had stayed on the ship, then Jim would be walking around today. He would be healthy and whole and alive. But things did not go differently, he didn't stay on the ship, and Jim's not healthy or whole or alive. And god, why did he agree to go to this? Jim wouldn't want him there. He knows it and expects to be told by no fewer than twelve different people that he is unwelcome tomorrow. And it'll be a circus if the press catches him near the ritual. He envisions tabloid covers, each more ridiculous and bizarre than the last. Jim deserves better than that.
So Leonard will comm Gaila in the morning and tell her he isn't going, but that he would welcome company to toast Jim's life with. He hopes she'll come.