(Mirrorverse) One Down, One to Go

[iron_command]

Everything was ready to go, packaged up as tightly as he could manage without the benefit of having his stronger first officer to help him haul it. Pike had only glanced once across his quarters, many fond memories there. He had a small package to help with those memories tucked into his packs, something that had been difficult to acquire without

Comments

[behnd_blueyes]

Eyes dim with the sedatives McCoy had given him were not dull enough that they didn't register the room's new occupant. Kirk sat huddled on the bed, knees to his chest and arms looped around them, swimming in the uniform that had been replaced but not re-sized. It strained his muscles but he didn't touch the wall unless he had to. The walls were alive. Or something. Hadn't worked that out yet, but he wasn't taking any chances. He'd been careful not to let on how much strength he had regained, until he made it to the door of the iso room one day and was repelled by whatever had eaten that corpse in the brig. They'd covered his hand and he'd screamed silently as they crept up his arm, his vocal cords raw and unpracticed, until he'd stumbled backwards and they flowed back to wherever the fuck they'd come from

[iron_command]

Pike stepped forward, letting the door close behind him. He studied the after effects of McCoy's care as it sat like a shivering pup in the wind on the biobed in front of him. Kirk looked more animal than human, but that was little different than normal. Kirk had an animal's cunning and intelligence, mixed with human knowledge that made him a deadly opponent.

His steps were loud in the silence of the room, only the faint sound from the biobed reading out Kirk's life in the form of statics. Pike imagined to McCoy those sounds were music, speaking to him words that only a doctor would truly understand and only a sadist would enjoy. At least, only in this universe. He well imagined that in the other it would be quite a different story.

Kirk resembled a waif, an animal, but Pike would not underestimate him. An animal cornered such as this was far more likely to lash out without warning. "Kirk."

[behnd_blueyes]

There was something about the tilt of Pike's head, about the unblinking stare, that would always put Kirk in mind of a bar in Iowa. Even when he least wanted to remember that night and everything it had brought. Kirk didn't move. Let him think he was too weak to. Let him think what he wanted. Let him get close enough. He couldn't hear the the beeps anymore. Even if they hadn't wormed their way into his subconscious, the rush of sluggish blood in his ears would have drowned them out.

Let Pike think he'd been beaten. That there wasn't anything left of James T. Kirk in this shell he barely recognized as his own.

"Pike," he drawled, his voice dry as the buzz of the field he'd tried to force his hand through, back when he'd had enough strength to fight being put in the brig. It hurt, deep in his throat, just like everything else did.

[iron_command]

"Better than those sounds you were making when we scraped you off the floor of the brig," Pike drawled right back, confident and strong and controlled to Kirk's angry eyes and curled posture. "McCoy's pulled off a miracle again." There had been a while he was not sure if Kirk would become anything like human again, but McCoy had things well in hand.

"Has he been taking good care of you?" His voice and expression remained neutral, but he knew just what McCoy was capable of. It was almost like a scent in the room left behind, an electrical feeling just at the edge of the consciousness.

[behnd_blueyes]

It was a trick question. Had to be. McCoy had saved him. Tended to him. For his own reasons, no doubt about that but the facts were there. Pike had taken him out of Iowa and put him in the brig and taken him out again but it was McCoy Kirk owed this to, to the extent he was capable of recognizing anything like gratitude toward someone who took such obvious joy in his work.

Kirk recognized that electricity, too. It was the only thing he'd had to relieve the grey monotony of his own thoughts and the four moving walls.

"Guess that's your call," he spat, throat grinding. McCoy was a fucking freak but he mostly did what he said and said what he did. And there wasn't much room in him right now for hatred that didn't belong to Pike. He glared at the man with the hazy intensity of a man too far gone to remember he has anything left to lose. "This what you ordered?"

[iron_command]

"You would be dead if I ordered anything less," Pike informed Kirk, wondering if his throat would ever fully heal or he would carry that rasp for the rest of his life. McCoy would either rid it from Kirk completely or would actively work to keep it. The anger in Kirk's expression was directed at him completely and wholly, burning against the coolness of his attitude.

"You wouldn't have been in the brig at all if you hadn't tried to off me," He also decided to inform him, "so you have only yourself to thank for your current predicament."

[behnd_blueyes]

"Wouldn't have been in the brig if I'd succeeded," Kirk said recklessly. Talking was getting easier, or maybe it was the pain it was getting easier to ignore. Wasn't like his body had entirely forgotten how to produce adrenaline, though it seemed to be taking its sweet time remembering most everything else. Better to ignore it. Wasn't his body. His was being kept for him. McCoy had never looked at him that way before. "So what do I have to thank for having a current predicament at all?"

[iron_command]

"Your failure. Thank your own failure." Pike walked up slowly to the side of the biobed, smelling the stink of Kirk's body as it welled up the longer he remained. "Don't worry, I won't be taking up so much of your..." He looked around the room slowly, then met Kirk's eyes again, "precious time."

[behnd_blueyes]

It hurt to move, but it was also hard for him to remain still like this. Partly because he wished to flinch, and would not, and partly because of the sores that plagued him still.

It was only when Pike met his eyes again, and Kirk congratulated himself in remaining still, in meeting them, that he realized he had not made a move while Pike looked away. And that told him more than he wanted to know about himself. He had no hope that he could overpower the man. But the fact he hadn't tried, hadn't instinctively taken that slim window of false opportunity, said something. Perhaps he hadn't broken. But he was bent.

He'd recover. He'd try again. He had to.

"What do you want?"

[iron_command]

He would never get the chance to try again. It was one of the few things Pike was looking forward to, though his instincts would most likely never believe. The simple idea that a man could exist without the constant fear of a dagger being buried in his spine, poison in his food, or any number of other far more gruesome deaths was a very, very powerful idea indeed.

"I came only to give you a few words," Pike's smirk threatened to make itself known. There was, and always would be, a thrill in knowing that someone was divested of everything but their will to survive. That was also a very powerful idea, and it seemed Kirk was tapping into it. "You may want to be far more grateful to McCoy in the future, for what he's done," If Kirk was going to survive under Uhura's reign long enough to get to a decent physical condition, he would find refuge in sickbay. It would, if Pike was accurate, not the most pleasant refuge but it would be one from a quick death under Uhura's blade.

[behnd_blueyes]

Kirk stared at him. His muzzy brain, struggling against restraints psychological and chemical, could not grasp what was going on. For one thing, Pike was talking like he had a future.

He'd seen men in the brig. Hell, he'd tortured them at Pike's command for less than he himself had done. That he was alive at all was an unlooked-for advantage Kirk didn't intend to squander but it didn't make any sense.

He was so tired.

"What difference it make to you what I think of that pervert? What are you doing, Pike?"

[iron_command]

"Best to watch your words now, Kirk," Pike said calmly back, "As I hear it, the walls have eyes and ears now." His eyes and ears, and McCoy's, and soon to be Uhura's.

He struck out, fingers wrapping around Kirk's throat. His other hand gripped the edge of the biobed. As it was connected to the ship's systems, the probes were there within. He made sure no one outside of the room would see the readings on the bed change.

[behnd_blueyes]

His breath was cut off before he could even rasp, and suddenly the beeping was right in his ear, the sound of his abused body trying to keep up, a warning he didn't need. His skin seemed to buzz, but then he decided no, that was the lights he was seeing now, dancing in a way the stars never did.

His eyes slid to Pike's, defiant and stupidly brave, like a dog trained not to know what a death grip feels like, lest it never get in the ring again.

[iron_command]

"Should I cut you down here, and leave McCoy to clean up the mess of you?" Pike's words were whispered promises, unveiled threats that slid into the ear like poison. "I have no doubt the doctor's wrung some pleasure out of this skeletal body in his own fashions..." He let his voice trail, letting Kirk's mind fill with thoughts.

He moved his other hand as he loosened his grip, just enough to allow Kirk to continue to stay conscious, and grasped the dagger at his side. The sound of dagger leaving sheath was barely a breath on the air, and he turned it so that the point rested just above Kirk's thigh where the flesh beneath was most sensitive. "He doesn't require this to take his pleasure, nor does anyone else." The point of the dagger moved to center itself above Kirk's groin, just enough pressure behind it to be felt.

[behnd_blueyes]

McCoy hadn't, not like that. Nothing direct. But the looks... the looks had caught at him back when he hadn't the strength to look away, the dark pleasure in the man's eyes both horrifying and the only point of interest in a world which had telescoped inward until it seemed only McCoy and his own survival existed.

He hadn't touched him in any way a doctor wouldn't.

But now the focus had shifted, everything tipping and sliding down to the point of Pike's blade, the blood rushing underneath, just what he intended sparking in Kirk's brain like fireworks as he forced out a hard-won breath in one word.

"No."

[iron_command]

"No?" Pike questioned back, pressing on Kirk's throat to force the younger man backwards onto the biobed. He did not have to look to guess correctly that there would be the same restraints on this bed that were on all the others. "No what, Kirk?" The point of the dagger did not waver an centimeter.