if I or she should chance to be - act one, part four
The pill is burning a hole in his pocket and has been for four hours. Jim’s sure that Spock could estimate a far more precise time, but Jim’s good with the vagaries of it all. He holds a pill in his possession that will bring Bones back to him - in a manner of speaking. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out if he gives it to him or if they continue on with this life that they’re trying to forge together.
He must look like a disaster when he gets back because he’s hardly in the door before he’s being collected by Sam’s greedy and insistent hands, which feel as if they’re everywhere. He lets himself be tugged inside as his body goes passive. He drifts into a deepening abyss until he can barely hear what she’s saying.
“...would you look at you? Honestly, Jim, I’m not a miracle worker, I can’t fix all your ills, especially if you keep coming back looking like...”
Suddenly they’re in the bathroom and he can see himself in the mirror while she buzzes around him and starts to peel off his clothes. First goes the shirt and then she’s crouching over to get his pants loose. Distantly, Jim hears water running and can see steam floating off the edges of the tub. She’s going to bathe him. She’s going to take care of him.
“...and we’ll just get you freshened up and then we can get some dinner and drinks, huh? I think you owe me about three from our poker game last night,” she jokes idly and Jim can hear the nervous edge in her voice - it’s the one that’s wondering what happened to Jim down on a planet that’s already taken so much from her. Jim thinks, and somehow manages to suppress a laugh, that the planet had taken from both of them more than they even knew. It’s hilarious and it’s so depressing that he wants to choke on laughing gas and let whatever is fated to happen happen.
Suddenly before he even realizes she’s made as much progress as she has, he’s undressed and shuffled to stand in front of the mirror in his bathroom. The bathtub is a luxury only afforded to him because one of their diplomatic associations resulted in Jim being gifted the tub while Starfleet has yet to order a retrofit to take it away.
He sheds thoughts of him and Sam in the tub like a skin meant to be peeled away. He can’t think that, not without the guilt creeping back up to devour Jim whole.
“Jim, say something,” Sam barks at him.
Her hands are firm on his shoulders and he’s absolutely naked before Sam - who is clad in nothing but a long nightshirt. It would be so easy to push it off and ease her into the lukewarm water of the tub, fuck away all the grief and malicious depression trying to eat away at him.
Except he could never do that to her.
“Sam, I need you to take out the pouch from the pocket of my pants,” he speaks, dully. Standing with all his skin bare, it’s only the humiliation that she’s about to see right through him that stings and burns with embarrassment. “It’s the blue one.” She stares at him suspiciously, but crouches to dig it out, holding it in the palm of her hand.
Jim could take it away from her and hide it. He could push it down the drain and they could forget it ever existed.
They could have a new life.
Spock knows the truth as well as the members of the security detail. More importantly is the fact that Jim knows the truth. Could he really lie in bed with Sam night after night and stare into her eyes knowing what he does? Could he genuinely take Bones’ life away from him like this, moreso than the Chrysenthians have already done? He knows that he could have a happy life with her, but it’s going to take more ignorance than Jim possesses or wants to.
“There’s a pill in there. I need you to take it,” he says, his voice scratchy. It feels as if he’s taken a blow to the stomach because he can’t breathe for the life of him. “It’ll give you back your memories, Sam. You’ll remember everything,” Jim insists, trying to grin and bear it, make it through these next few moments.
She hesitates and curls her fingers around the woollen pouch. “Jim…” she says uneasily.
“What is it?”
“Are you still going to want me when I can remember everything?”
Jim wishes that Sam didn’t look the way she did when she said that. Bones isn’t supposed to look so hopeless and dejected, especially not when Jim holds the fate of his future in the form of a pill. He still has time to take it away and to tell her that they should just start anew. Years of friendship echo around him and push him to remember that he can’t always be selfish. He needs to think of his crew and right now, he needs to think of Bones.
Jim just stares at Sam and feels raw. His eyes are red and he can’t breathe and he wants nothing more than for Sam to take the pill, blink, and then Bones will be back and her eyes will light up and she’ll say, ‘Well, Jim, took us long enough to get here’. “Sam, I’m always going to want you,” he promises, swallowing the anxious lump in his throat. “You have no idea how terrified I am,” he admits, laughing wearily, chest heaving with the bursts of heavy breaths that used to be laughs. “Oh god,” he exhales, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Sam, I’ve been so scared. I think…I really think I love you,” he admits as his fingers find his uniform pants and he slides slowly into them while staring at Sam.
She looks stuck in place, a deer in headlights, and Jim’s attention is all on the pill in her hand.
“I didn’t want to because I thought it meant I was unfaithful to Bones, but ever since we found him, I know. I know,” he says, the laughs still not subsiding and he knows that he’s laughing at himself, at his own god-damn luck in this situation. He tugs his shirt on haphazardly, hair falling askew and he forces a smile, trying to reassure her that everything is going to be all right.
She stares at him longingly and Jim wants to throw something against the wall, wants to watch it shatter and break and wants to feel the rage in his fingertips subside.
“I need you to take that pill, Sam,” Jim says, his mind made up. “I’m going to go eat something in the mess hall and you need to take that pill.”
“Jim,” Sam says, sounding young and scared. “Stay with me. Please don’t leave me while I do this. I have no idea what I’m going to remember.”
I do.
He can’t say that, so he shakes his head and stubbornly looks away from her. “No, Sam. I can’t. This has to be on your own.” Impulsively, desperately, just in case it’s their last, he leans in and wraps his arm around her back and pulls her close for a goodbye kiss, dipping her halfway to the floor and closing his eyes to indulge in the feeling of his lips on hers. He can feel a protest tumbling forward, but he kisses that away and holds on as tightly as he can. Jim reluctantly eases away when he knows that if he touches her or kisses her a second longer, he’s going to change his mind.
He stares at her for a long moment and nods stubbornly, trying to keep himself composed.
“I’m going to want you no matter what,” he reminds her and makes the hardest journey he’s ever had to make. He only falters once and that’s in the hallway right outside the room.
Jim presses his back against the wall in the corridor and stares at the ceiling, thinking about all the ways this could go. He decides that he needs to go to the mess hall and wait for Bones. Sam is going to take the pill and she’s going to come looking for him and Jim has to be ready for that. An amnesiac girl had been one kind of big problem. Bones with all his memories and a new form that isn’t going to go anywhere is something else all-together, but Jim is more than willing to help with that.
He sits in the mess with dessert and stares at it rather than eating it. He portions half for himself and half for Bones. When ten minutes pass, he eats the portion for himself and leaves the rest of the banana pudding for McCoy. When twenty minutes pass, he lets the plate be taken away. When an hour passes and Bones still hasn’t arrived, Jim knows that something must be wrong.
He goes back to his room and braces himself for the result. This is a big change and all the memories hitting at once could be a problem.
…maybe she hasn’t taken the pill. Maybe she flushed it and is waiting for Jim…
Jim puts aside all hypotheticals and enters the keycode to his room, heading inside with as much courage as he can manage, biting his lower lip as he searches the room in desperation. “Bones?” he calls out sharply. “Bones! C’mon, Bones, we need to talk,” he insists desperately even though the silence that echoes back at him tells him that Bones is nowhere to be found.
An hour and a half after Jim had left Bones to reclaim his memories, he finds the note.
Once upon a time, Jim had free-fallen down to the surface of Vulcan with no ground beneath him and no end to the feeling of the plunge. He hasn’t felt anything comparable until this moment here when his heart and stomach take the fall and don’t find any kind of bottom.
Jim,
I know you’re going to hate me for this. Hell, I already hate me for this. The pill worked. I started to remember everything and I mean everything. Let it not be said that there’s a side to you that doesn’t know how to treat a woman with respect, a prisoner with care, and a best friend with all the devotion that’s due to one. I can’t be here, Jim. This can’t be reversed and I need to figure this out and I can’t do that with you at my side.
You make everything a blur of chaos. I used to love that about you. I need to not have that in my life while I try and understand just what’s happened to me.
You did good, kid. Don’t forget that.
Please don’t look for me.
Yours,
Sam
*
Pike is making the slow rounds around Jim’s quarters. His gait is still slow, but he’s able to walk. That thought brings him back around to Bones and Sam, but all his thoughts do nowadays. He feels lost, adrift in space, not knowing what to do and knowing that he just wants her back in his life. He’d done the mature thing and now he’s paying for it. Pike stops when he comes to Jim’s desk and lifts one of the picture frames up. It’s not the picture of his parents from when they were just young lovebirds. It’s not the senior-staff picture they’d all taken and it’s not Jim’s grad photo, nor McCoy’s.
It’s a small photocapture from the night of the dance when Chekov had swirled around the room with his newest camera and begged to take photographs of everyone there. Jim knows that Pike is looking at a picture of Jim pressing a fond kiss to Sam’s temple and of her reacting with joyous laughter while she holds onto Jim’s neck with a possessive and adoring grip.
He knows that he looks radiant in it because she had looked radiant that night and all the pieces had started to fall into place with Jim’s heart. It had been immediately put on his desk when Chekov delivered the picture - already framed - to his door.
“I thought she’d be taller,” is Pike’s demure observation. “She’s tall, obviously, but not as tall as McCoy used to be. And smaller, somehow.”
He’s right. Bones hadn’t been thin. If anything, her hips curved out more than a normal woman’s and the rest of her had followed suit. She’d been lithe, but she managed to sport a decent width measurement of hips and fairly broad shoulders considering the new, smaller proportions.
“She’s very pretty,” Pike notes evenly.
“She’s beautiful,” Jim replies defensively about a woman and a best friend that had left him without anything more than a note. He hasn’t ventured out of his quarters in the last few days, but the staff has come to see him. Uhura and Spock had called Pike in when Jim’s depressive mood hadn’t been lifting and he’s not sure how much help the Admiral can be when all Jim wants is to have Bones back, no matter what he looks like. “She’s…” He gets out, but his breath catches. He doesn’t know what to say because he doesn’t know what to do. Jim leans forward, head in his hands, and lets out a soft groan of confusion. “I gave Bones the pill thinking he’d get his memories back and deal with them, but he just left a note and vanished. No one knows where he’s gone. He distracted the transporter team and beamed himself away somewhere. I don’t know where to because he used an algorithm that screwed up our logs.”
When Jim looks up, Pike’s staring at him sympathetically and Jim feels like screaming, crying, and breaking something all at once.
Pike wanders his way to Jim’s side and sits down beside him, pressing a hand to his shoulder. In ways, Pike’s the father that Jim’s not sure he ever wanted, but has always needed.
“Jim,” Pike says, his words heavy. “It’s okay to grieve.”
“I’m so tired of grieving, sir,” Jim admits, his eyes rimmed with red. “I spent weeks mourning Bones thinking he was gone and I mourned him and then I found out that I’d been protecting Bones and falling for her. And now she’s gone too and I’m mourning her. And I don’t have my best friend and I don’t have Sam and I don’t have my CMO!” Jim is perilously close to losing his temper, his words getting louder and louder as he starts to shout. “I don’t have any of them and I don’t want to grieve them because I made the right choice! For once in my life, I was responsible and look where it got me!”
Pike’s giving him a warning look. “Jim,” he says evenly, calmly.
Jim rubs at his eyes and wishes he had a lot more alcohol, but even that reminds him of Bones. He can’t sleep because the bed reminds him of Sam, he can’t go to medical because both of their ghosts linger there and he can’t even eat without thinking of Sam picking off of his plate or of Bones accusing him of eating garbage. He never realized how far into Jim’s life Bones has come until this moment and now it’s going to drive him mad.
He wants, more than anything, to talk to his mother and ask her how she’d managed to go on for those first few days after the Kelvin, but he doesn’t want to remind her of those dark times. Jim doesn’t have a child to pour all his attention on. He can’t even focus on his ship because he has to find a new CMO and that just brings him back to his grief.
“I can’t do this,” Jim says, panic gripping him tightly. “I can’t let the crew see me like this, but I can’t do this. I just want to find Bones, I want to go down to Earth and track down every last place we’ve ever been to just in case he’s there.”
“Jim, if he left, there’s a good reason,” Pike warns. “I’ve known Leonard McCoy since he enlisted and he might run in the face of a bad situation, but he does it for good reason. And you know if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”
“I’ll call Jocelyn, I’ll check his family house, I’ll go back to our dorm at Starfleet, I’ll…” Jim is throwing out every last idea with desperate hope, clinging to the hint of optimism he’s got left.
Pike doesn’t seem to share in that optimism. “Put yourself in his shoes for just a minute. Just one. Your whole life’s been taken out from under you and there’s no way to go back to the way things are. So first of all, McCoy’s dealing with a sex change that he didn’t want. So pretend you’re him for a moment. Now add in the fact that your best friend’s been taking care of you and is blatantly in love with you.” Jim follows along because he already knows how this story goes. “And not only is your best friend in love with you,” Pike lectures evenly, “but he’s given you a home, protection, the promise of a future. Suddenly you get your memory back and you’re still a stranger and now your best friend is expecting someone else to be there, someone he wants to be with, possibly marry … don’t argue with me, don’t tell me you didn’t think about it, I’ve spoken to your staff. What would you do if you were him, if you were in his shoes?”
Jim goes quiet, his eyes cast low on his lap.
“I just want Bones back,” he says hoarsely. “He doesn’t have to love me, he doesn’t have to be anything, he just has to be here.”
“He can’t do that right now. And you have to be Captain Kirk right now.”
These are the words that he’s summoned Admiral Pike in order to hear. These are the things that he knows are meant to boost him up and motivate him to be the best damn Captain in the Fleet through his heartbreak and his grief. He’s supposed to put the picture of the both of them down and stop staring into the clear eyes of someone who can see right through him and resume command.
Jim curls the picture closer to him as he finds his way under the covers of the bed.
“Thank you for coming, Admiral,” Jim says quietly, his eyes only on the picture as if there’s an answer in the details that he’s been missing all along and will only find if he keeps his eyes open and his mind attentive to everything within. All he can see is the joy on his own face and the fondness on hers and how well they fit together.
“Jim,” Pike sighs heavily. “Don’t do this.”
“I really can’t go back to work right now. Spock is Acting Captain while I’m emotionally compromised. I’ll register that with Acting CMO M’Benga,” Jim speaks hoarsely, hating that even the act of removing himself from duty reminds him of Bones in every way. “Thank you for coming,” he says again, as if somehow the second iterance of the same words will hold more gravity than the first. “But right now, I just want to be alone.”
It’s how he’s functioned until he had met Bones. It almost seems fitting in a depressingly pathetic way that he has to learn how to do it again.
Pike hesitates and sighs, bringing the blankets up as if he’s a father tucking in a son before bed. “Don’t let yourself waste away,” he directs sternly. “I’ll have Yeoman Rand in to check on you and I’ll make sure Lieutenant Sulu and Uhura are also swinging by occasionally to ensure you don’t manage to make yourself worse off.”
“Do I have permission to search the grid for him, sir?”
Pike looks back from here he’s standing at the door. “You can search all you want, Jim. I have the feeling Doctor McCoy doesn’t want to be found.”
*
It’s been almost a year and six months since Jim’s seen either hide or hair of Leonard McCoy. There’s no dodging the fact that there’s only one form that he can be in, but no matter what planet Jim searches, there’s never a woman with unruly brown hair flickering in alien-winds, looking at him with hazel eyes that know him inside and out. On a desert planet, he thought he’d found Bones, but it had been a hallucination induced by the planet’s heat. M’Benga (who has inherited sick bay) had pumped Jim with as many liquids as was possible and gave the same news that had come in every day. There’s no news about Leonard McCoy. Jim’s used to those six words because he’s heard them in every vocal intonation and from every crew member and the only two people who won’t tell him that are Jocelyn Darnell and Joanna McCoy.
Jocelyn tells him that she has no idea what he’s talking about and he’s never permitted to talk directly to Joanna.
One year and six months, but Jim hasn’t given up on hope just yet. Instead, he’s going through his duties as Captain and keeping an eye out for every medical facility on every feasible planet that Bones might have gone to. It doesn’t matter what shape Bones is in. Jim’s lost his best friend and he never expected that to ache as much as it does.
--he’s lost more than that if he thinks about nights staring at her, wondering why she can make him feel the way he does, wondering who this woman is, what’s her real name, why can’t everyone else understand him like she does--
There is a masked ball near the Charleston Space-Dock on this particular evening. It’s a fundraiser for the second Farragut that’s crawled back to Earth and is in need of repairs that range too deep for the pockets of Starfleet. This is the easiest way to make money and all the Captains are expected to make their appearance in their lavish suits with embroidered gold leaf while the influence of the seventeenth-century dances around them. Jim’s mask covers his whole face and his suit fits perfectly.
Somewhere near him are Spock and Uhura, who are never too far in situations like these when they might need to rescue Jim from a particularly bad night in which he reverts to form and drinks too much. So far, however, he’s behaving impeccably. He’s danced with several of the Admirals’ wives and politely accepted food from the waiters’ trays. He’s even started to play a game with himself that involves trying to guess who each dancer that swirls past him is.
The warm laughter of children clad in lavish dress in the faint distance keeps him from descending into thoughts too deep and depressing for a night like this and it’s on the precipice of one of these thoughts that he feels another light tap on his shoulder. He turns and sees the pale-emerald green dress of a woman before he sees her face (or rather, the mask) and smiles half-heartedly. He knows he’s in the deep end when he doesn’t even take a long moment to eye the cleavage on display that the gold-embroidered corset pushes up.
Her hair is piled in curls with green jewels adorning the strands and shimmering in the light. Her face is as obscured as his and the colour of the dress signifies that she’s someone in Starfleet, but Jim’s a couple drinks too far to remember the colour scheme. The gold insignia on his suit mean command crew, but he forgets what the shades of green are supposed to signify.
“May I have this dance?” is her soft question and lost in the thoughts of before, Jim accepts and allows himself to be pulled around the floor. Jim’s eyes are on his white-gloved hand as it slips in with her fingers and all he can think about is the night that he had danced with her and his eyes track up to look at the light-brown eyes past the mask and instead, Jim sees the flash of Bones’ eyes, before and after.
They’re pulled in close and Jim can feel the heat from her body radiating off the skin on display and with every graceful move, golden jewellery jangles softly. She’s staring up at him like he’s some kind of hero, but Jim’s just tired of playing Captain when it’s become lonelier by the day. As opposed to the Admirals’ wives, she doesn’t speak to him as they dance and Jim’s grateful for that. He doesn’t mind the political waters that Starfleet involves, but he far prefers this gentle silence. His fingers brush against her palm and he brings her knuckles to his lips to press a kiss there when the music ends.
Her breath catches.
Jim stares for a long moment as old impulses begin anew and tell him all the things he could do tonight that involve that little catch of breath. That impulse is curbed suddenly by the same flickering of a feeling that told him to give the pill to Bones, to give him his memories back and he slides away from her and offers a low bow.
She presses a small purse to her side and offers a nod in return rather than a curtsy and it seems effortless when she turns and disappears into the crowd, something falling from the little satchel as she goes. Jim’s nothing if not a gentleman of a Captain. He bends down gracefully and swoops up a little leather ID card that belongs to an out-of-state hospital, leaning against the wall as he looks at the security clearance.
Right. He remembers now. Green means medical in relation to the scrubs they wear at Starfleet hospitals on Earth.
He’s almost ready to follow that train of thought while figuring out the colour-scheme for everyone else when he looks closer at the photo identification and the name staring back up at him. Immediately, Jim feels like he’s back in that desert and staring up at the cliff-face. He clasps the card tighter in his palm and starts to move fast.
“Hey!” he shouts after the woman, who’s descending the stairs. “Wait up!” He’s intent on parting the crowd like the Red Sea and shoves anyone who’s in his way, ripping off his mask as he stumbles down the stairs (three at a time) and bursts out into the cold evening, staring at the line of limos taking guests to their destination. He watches her with a child at her side (hands entwined) and they’re both resplendent in their wear and their masks are both being held in their hands, ribbons fluttering softly in the breeze.
Jim’s never felt more like he’s having a heart attack than he does at that particular moment.
He keeps sprinting and descending stairs as clumsily as he can at the rate he’s going. He’s breathless, but he’s so close and he doesn’t need breath if he can just have her.
“Bones,” he gasps when he reaches the procession of stopped vehicles and grabs hold of the door of their limo before it can be closed and Bones can go ahead and drive out of his life one more time. He’s caught them in time because the driver doesn’t charge off and leave him there in the dust. He’s in time to stare into the abyss of the limousine and at Bones. He doesn’t even hesitate as he climbs in and shuts the door behind him.
He ignores Joanna in Bones’ lap because the girl is half-asleep and curled up and it’s been eighteen goddamn lonely months of confusion. It’s been eighteen months since Jim lost both the girl of his dreams and the man who understood him better than anyone. Jim doesn’t know what to do except lean over Bones, clasp her cheek with one hand, brush at her neck with the other, and press a lengthy kiss against her lips until he can’t breathe. The exertion from running and the too-short kiss force him to collapse back on the seat opposite Bones and to catch his breath as he stares at her in disbelief.
The masks are gone and they’re seeing eye-to-eye.
“Jim,” Bones remarks civilly.
“You look pretty frilly. You get conned into this?” Jim notes, sliding back into familiar patterns as if they’re going to keep him from saying all the things he’s been saying aloud in his dreams on a nightly basis. He grasps at a glass of champagne sitting there fully-poured and fully-neglected and watches for familiar tics and cues on Bones’ face only to discover that he doesn’t know Bones as well as he once did.
Bones shifts uncomfortably and moves long tapered fingers to brush through Joanna’s hair and eyes him warily. “It’s been eighteen months, Jim. I’ve seen every general practitioner and specialist and xenobiologist and gone through every test I can. I’m going to be this way forever, so I made adjustments. Jocelyn’s been helping,” Bones adds hesitantly. “I can’t change my biology any more than you can force the sun to stop from setting. I’ve come to grips with that, finally, and I’m secure in knowing who I am, frilly dresses, medical-issue pants, jewellery, or not,” she calmly finishes. “I haven’t come to terms with you, though.”
Jim sets the glass down and shifts until he’s on the same bench of seats that Bones is on and sits on her right side, where Joanna isn’t shifting and snuffling around softly. He adjusts until he’s leaning with his head against Bones’ citrus-scented hair. Bones has always been there to support Jim. Now’s no different.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going back to the house,” Bones murmurs and it’s almost imperceptible, but she leans her cheek against Jim’s shoulder and the three of them form a strange and silent pieta there in the back of the car. “I mean it, Jim, I don’t know how to accommodate for you in my life right now.”
Jim doesn’t say a word and just turns and presses a furrowed brow and a press of lips to Bones’ neck and breathes her in. It’d been easier when it was just a strange woman sharing his quarters and laughing at his jokes. Eating dinner while their feet brushed together. Discussing strategy and chess moves. The surreptious glances Jim would sneak when she would change for the night before crawling onto the cot they kept right beside the bed. And when it had all come to light that it had been Bones that whole time, a part of Jim hadn’t been surprised.
He had been surprised with the overwhelming and crushing knowledge that he was in love for the first time in his life and he didn’t know what to do about it.
It feels like his life is going to splinter and fraction into pieces that will harm him if he lets Bones walk away again because this is his best friendand the woman he loves and he and she are one and the same and right now, Bones smells like white roses and citrus. It’s heady to the point that Jim’s so far gone that he might as well abandon all hope of getting back to where he started.
“Bones, I missed you,” he confesses and his voice is steady, if a bit lower. It’s hoarse and he wonders how widows do it, how they go on with their lives without the shadow of someone they loved draped over them the whole of the time. “You don’t get it, but I’m not the genius celebrity of Starfleet without an anchor. And Spock does his best and Uhura has been incredible, but it was you at the end of the day who would give me shit for my decisions and it was you that sat with me and was so patient and when you came back changed from that planet, it was you that I got so swept up in.”
“Jim, stop it,” Bones protests uneasily and shifts Joanna into her arms so that Joanna is hugging her and sleeping at once.
Jim shakes his head desperately and eases tighter, one arm wrapping around her waist. “No,” he says (begs) and tries to keep as close as is humanly possible. “I don’t want you to go. Not without me,” he adds stubbornly.
They drive in silence through the night and Jim tries to take it as a good sign when Bones leans against him. Joanna’s small hands shift to fist a handful of the fine fabric he’s wearing and in the space between the both of them, Jim almost feels as if he’s home. If it’s possible, he doesn’t want things to ever end, but the car slowly pulls to a steady halt and this seems to be the end of the line.
Bones pulls away from Jim, eyeing him up and down. “We’re here.”
Jim’s not going to let this end, though. When Bones gets out, he follows. He doesn’t intend to let her out of his sight if his life depends on it.
act two, part one of four