Return of the Away Team, Rescue Complete?
The message came in from the bridge, and Bones jumped, even though he'd been waiting for it ever since he'd woken up.
Away team, beaming straight to sick bay.Everyone had been notified about the away team's departure while he was unconscious, and they had assembled in sickbay. Now turning to look at them, he took a deep breath and nodded ( Read more... )
Away team, beaming straight to sick bay.Everyone had been notified about the away team's departure while he was unconscious, and they had assembled in sickbay. Now turning to look at them, he took a deep breath and nodded ( Read more... )
The stir around him was a shock after the quiet hum of the Narada, barely seeing the nurses around him as he instinctively scanned sickbay for the others. Sam, George, the other Spock, all being treated. Jim--
Jim.
The link was still active, of course, and it meant that they were still connected, in a more immediate way than they had ever experienced before. The younger man was still out, but Jim felt a rush of relief that he was here, alive, that they'd succeeded. No thanks to him. What had he done but endanger Pike's Spock, and his own? There was a faint buzz to his skin, still, pain unrelated to his own minor injury connecting the two men because Jim didn't know how to turn it off. And his own shields, untrained and instinctive, could not withstand the strain of over a day of this constant drain on his resources.
He was running on adrenaline now, batting away the hands of the nurse trying to patch his shoulder as he realized the one missing.
"Spock!" he shouted. "Where's Spock?"
The response came from another source, and while Jim was not happy about it, he understood. It allowed him to calm down, to the extent that was possible with the general unease he felt in sickbay and the specific quivers of pain/anxiety coming from his link with the other Jim, from watching the other Spock, from echoes down the wire from the shadow connections that held many of them together. He was sweating profusely, fighting the hypo McCoy had given the other Kirk without knowing that's what he was doing.
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He could hardly help it. But it was more than an awareness--it was a searing pain, in his skin, his elbow, his hand, mirroring Kirk's injuries without any external sign of them. He cried out as the pain, the terror, flooded his mind, his vitals spiking. It was not nearly as bad as Kirk himself--it was still the echo of Kirk's condition, filtered through the link and what remained of Jim's natural defenses. But he was not Vulcan. He was not Pike. He was not trained to this. And for a moment, he could not even place what was happening or why.
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"Jim," she said. "Goddamnit, what did you do?"
She held him down with her elbows and her own body, cupped his face between her hands. "Breathe, be calm. It's not you. Jim, it's not you."
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"Fuck," he gasped, just to hear his own voice, to assert his presence to himself. "Hurts... he hurts... linked up with him, to give him strength. Didn't... shield... 's'like feedback."
The words came out at the speed of the thoughts, no slower, and it was all he could do to force it back enough to be that coherent.
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"You can stop, now," she said. She stroked his face, calming, soothing. "You need to stop. You're keeping him conscious, and we can't treat either of you if you're both in this much pain."
She looked into his eyes, trying to get him to focus on her, not on the sensations coming to him from outside. "Come on, Jim," she coaxed. "You can do this. Bring yourself back from him. He doesn't need your strength right now."
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He walked over and looked over Jim. Damn, more then ever, he wished he was advanced enough to start a mind-meld on his own. He looked to the young girl, Chapel? it seemed. His eyes were dark, focused.
"If he can't control it himself, there is something you can give him that will temporarily stop the neural connection, but it will also stop his connection to his Spock."
They had used it several times, in the past. A combination that, on a human, would stunt the parts of the brain capable of psi-connection. It was used for humans who had been forcibly melded upon.
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No.
It did not budge. He couldn't get to that space where he had made the connection, and his mind had no other context for this. He couldn't retool the method for the present circumstances, and his efforts--his eyes fixed on Chapel's but turned inward--met only with a throbbing pain like a blow to a wound.
But it was Pike's words which brought him up short. Which snapped his head up and over to look at him, Jim Kirk once more, the effort visible but successful.
"No," he said quietly, his words forced but firm. "I won't do that to him. I can't... I don't know how to sever the link with Jim. But Spock can't be put off balance. He's still there, Pike. Still with them. He'll falter..." He pressed his eyes shut, trying again but knowing it was futile, Jim screaming over there, was it aloud or just in his head? "Knock me out," he said, and then opened his eyes, finding Tina's again. "Knock me out and I can't fight whatever you're doing to him. Spock and I will lose contact but... it's better than him feeling me gone."
If they blocked the connection, it would be possible to beam over, take Spock back. But would either of them be in any condition to escape? Jim didn't know what it would do. He'd seen what happened when McCoy had been taken, and that link had just been dulled, not blocked entirely.
Out cold, Spock would worry but not overmuch. But he'd be alone, entirely alone, over there. Jim wasn't sure if Bones could reach him.
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She pressed it against the artery in his neck. "Relax. Let it happen." She pushed the button.
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There was a second, a faraway look as Jim sent a message to Spock. His eyes were already dulling with the effect of the hypo, but he managed a sloppy, bedroom-eyed smile at Tina.
"Haven't forgotten that hug I owe you," he said. His gaze wandered over to Pike. "You c'n have one too, if'y want."
And then he flopped back gently onto the bed, his face relaxed and younger than it had looked in days.
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"Don't put him under again unless you have to," she told the nurse who had taken over monitoring him. She knew that Jim's request that he be allowed to wake up as soon as possible wasn't the standard anxiety of a patient uncomfortable with unconsciousness. The way he'd talked about his Spock -
Damn it. It had slipped her mind in the furor. She'd talked to Jim's McCoy, but hadn't yet contacted their own Spock with Jim's information.
It was easy enough to address now, at least. She stepped out into the hall and snagged a passing yeoman.
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There was some disorientation, but it was pleasant for the moment, a lingering loving calm from what he and Jim had shared in the... dream, or whatever it must have been. He knew he was in sickbay. Knew their problems were not over. But for the moment, he was alive, Jim was alive, Spock would come back, and they would be all right.
The first thing he saw, when he opened his eyes, was not what he had hoped. Nor expected. It was Pike.
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