The Buzz
Title: The Buzz
Fandom: AOS
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: Character death , sanity issues
Summary: Joanna McCoy comes to stay with her father on the Enterprise. The longer she remains the further away McCoy drifts from sanity. Written for This prompt at the wonderful buckleup_meme
Disclaimer: I own nothing at all.
It starts when Joanna comes to visit her father and Jim on the Enterprise.
He’s prepared their quarters for three months now, stocked up on all the latest child friendly holovids, gone over the safety precautions with Spock 40 time. He even wore Jim down enough to let him buy real paint and decorate the small room off of their bedroom purple. That was Joanna’s favorite color, purple. Bones is almost sure of it, though sometimes when he tries to remember his brain does funny things, gets all foggy and he feels a buzzing in his limbs. He had almost commed Jocelyn to ask - he wanted to get all the details right, but when he went to the computer in his and Jim’s room it was voice locked.
Funny. Then he remembers, Joanna’s visit is a suspires, he‘s not supposed to know but of course he does. Jim being Jim would do anything to make sure Joanna was happy. Bones loves him all the more for it. They had only met a handful of times but they were already partners in crime. Jim and Joanna, the two best parts of him.
It was tense in the transporter room on the day that she came. Jim was so careful, so sweet, that he manned the controls himself, not even trusting Scotty to beam aboard Bone’s precious cargo. Or so Joanna tells him latter during one of those long nights that Jim is on the bridge and it’s just the two of them in his quarters. She snuggles up to his chest and he can smell the summertime in her curls. That’s when she tells him about the transporter and how Uncle Jim worked the controls all by himself. Bones doesn’t actually remember it himself. When he tries to think about that day, the day Joanna came aboard the Enterprise, he gets that buzzy feeling again.
Poor Joanna, his sensitive baby. She must feel it too, the wrongness of it because she warps her arms tighter around him and whispers.
“Shhh daddy, don’t think about that.”
She’s so bossy in her little eight year old southern self.
His baby.
So, Bone closes his eyes and sleeps. He’s so happy to have her with him.
~
Bones stops working before Joanna arrives. He has so much to do, preparing and all.
They develop a routine, father daughter time.
They go to the mess hall everyday together. It’s 751 steps from his and the Captain’s door to the mess. He and Joanna count them out loud everyday. It’s a game. No matter how tired they are dragging their feet or how hungry they are, the point is to always take exactly 751 steps to get from point A to point B. Joanna doesn’t like change much, consistency is important.
Poor child, she’s been through so much in her little life. Mostly his fault too, all that confusion. Jim understands. Jim always understands.
There are rarely people in the hallway when they go to eat. Bone chooses it that way, he doesn’t like the looks that some crew members give Joanna.
He holds her hand tightly, swinging it a little while counting the steps.
~
“Daddy.” She says one night as he’s tucking her in. Jim is sitting in the other room just watching with an unfathomable expression in his eyes.
“ I want to stay with you forever.” She looks right at him, giving him the full force of her gray eyes.
“ Please daddy, I don’t want to go yet. Don’t make me go.”
The tears spill down her freckled cheek and his heart breaks. This is his baby, his flesh and blood. He wants nothing more than to keep her here with him - keep her safe.
“Shhh, it’s ok June bug, don’t cry.” He goes to wipe the tear from her cheek with his blue shirt but instead he feels her cool face meet his bare skin. He’s wearing his black undershirt, not his science blues. Funny he doesn’t remember changeing.
Bones looks back to Jim who is till sitting alone on the bed. He wants to ask permission, to beg to let Joanna stay with them. Here on the Enterprise they can be a family, keep each other safe.
Jim is just watching, crying.
~
Jim must of have said it was ok because Joanna stays. They’re always together now. It gives him a chance to make up for lost time and really get to know his daughter. That was what this trip was about anyways.
He’s happy for the first time in a long time.
It’s everyone else that’s off.
First it’s Rand. She’s technically Jim’s yeoman but since the ceremony on Risa then on Earth she has seen as much of Bones as she has of Jim.
It’s a simple request really. Joanna needs clothes and he doesn’t want her to have to wear a miniature version of the ridiculous nurses outfits. Joanna’s tiny, pixie size. Even Keenser’s clothes would be too big on her. She needs something of her own.
The first three times he types out the comm to Rand he doesn’t get a response. He would ask Jim but he’s been so tired these days. Always tired with dark circles under his eyes. He must think Bones doesn’t see it that Bones doesn’t notice because he’s not treating patients right now. He does see it though, the tired. He tried to find a hypo of a sedative to give Jim several nights but all the hypos in their quarters are gone. Then he remembers, Joanna is terrified of hypos just like Jim. It must be their special game - hide the hypo.
After a fourth comm Rand finally shows up at the door. She doesn’t look her normal self, she’s nervous.
“Sir, the clothing you requested.”
“Shh Janice, Joanna is sleeping. Do you want to come in and wait till she wakes up? I’m sure she would love to get a chance to meet you.”
Rand has been distant like so much of the crew. He’s a little hurt. She had always told him how much she couldn’t wait to meet his daughter and now that she’s here Rand won’t even come inside the door.
“No thank you sir, I have to get back.” She hands him the small bundle of delicately folded clothes.
He takes them with smiles. “ Do come back though. Joanna is dying to meet you.”
“ Oh Leo.” She says quietly shaking her head before leaving him at the door.
He feels the buzzing in all of his limbs and thinks , not for the first time, that maybe he’s missing something.
Then suddenly she’s there, pushing her little hand inside his.
“shh daddy, don’t think about it.”
~
Things start to go wrong.
“Daddy, where are all my pictures?” Joanna asks from the table. She’s coloring again and he’s watching her.
“Don’t you like them any more?” She looks so hurt.
He loved the pictures. They were on real paper too, made with crayons that Jim had bought at a Starbase. They had hung them up all over their quarters. They were gone.
Bones looks around the room and notices other things are missing. All the holos of Joanna are gone as well as the holos of his diplomas that Jim insisted they hang up. The calendar too, the one the he had bought for Jim for something… he can’t remember what, something important. They’re all gone.
When Joanna goes down for a nap he tares the place apart. It was funny when it was just the hypos that they hid but everything. Its too much. Jim had no right!
Jim was always hiding things, had been since the academy. If Bones knows anything it’s Jim, so he knows where to look. In the back of the closet he finds it - pillow cases. Ripping one open he finds millions of pieces of paper. In another one he finds the holos of Joanna and other things…
Then it’s hard to breathe. The buzzing in his body feels like fire. Then he’s screaming. Then nothing.
Later, Bones wakes up in his bed to Jim running his fingers through his hair.
“It’s ok Bones, we’re going back. It’s going to be ok.” Jim whispers it over and over again.
His mind isn’t quite working right, it refuses to tell his body to move. He wants to reach out and touch Jim, he looks so sad.
“Daddy ,” says the small voice from the hallway.
“ I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you and uncle Jim tonight?”
Bones looks to Jim but really why would he mind? Jim takes his face in his hands and kisses him gently but can’t look him in the eyes.
“ Of course baby, climb in.”
Joanna nestles into the warm spot in between her father and Jim. This where she fits best, where she’s safe.
Bones drifts off again but vaguely feels moisture on his chest, tears. Joanna must have had one bad nightmare.
~
After the nightmare night Joanna isn’t hungry that much so they don’t go the mess. This worries Jim.
“Bones you have to eat something.”
“We’re not hungry Jim. Now don’t you have something to be doing besides bothering us? Can’t you see we’re playing a game?”
Jim stands there, hands shaking and pressed up against his mouth.
“ I know Bones I know.” then he leaves.
He comes back later with a peach pie from the mess. He cuts Bones a piece and leaves it on the table.
Joanna looks at him expectantly licking her lips. Peach is her favorite. Bones smiles pushing the plate towards her, glad she’s eating again.
“No, Bones. That was your piece.” Jim says swallowing hard. “ I’ll cut…I’ll cut her another ok?”
They all eat their pie together in silence.
~
Bones had stopped working to spend more time with his daughter but Jim insists that he go with him to the surface of Malkern. He orders him in his best Captain voice. Bones and Joanna both sit laughing on the floor till they cry.
Then Jim begs. He pulls Bones into a big hug and actually begs him to go down to the surface.
Malkern, it sounds familiar but when Bones thinks about it he buzzes. Sometimes he thinks he can remember going there before. He remembers Jim lying on the ground bleeding. He remembers a call coming in to sickbay. He remembers feeling something and beaming down. It was the first time he had left the ship since….. It was the fist time since it happened. Something, something important that he was missing.
Now Jim was begging him to go, so he does. He can’t find his science blues to wear but then something makes him remember they wouldn’t fit anyways- too big.
“ It’s ok Bones, you can wear whatever you want.” Jim tells him.
He gets Uhura to watch Joanna for them. He trusts her. Joanna is nervous about being left alone but she likes Uhura. It must be a girl thing.
Bones finds it hard to move. Jim has to help him by pulling his arms around him. A big human crutch, something to lean on.
Joanna walks with them to the transport room and holds his hand.
“Please come back Leo.” Uhura whispers to him as they leave. Come back from where?
Joanna blows him a kiss on the platform. He disappears.
The Malkerns look human expect for their eyes which are purple. All of them, purple eyes. They are also empaths and their home world is rich in dilithum which is apperently the whole point of the mission. Three weeks ago the Enterprise had been sent to Malkern to help in their entrance into the Federation.
Three weeks ago an extremist had tried to murder their queen before she could sign them into the Federation. Jim Kirk had pushed her out of the way.
Bones hadn’t been there. He had been on the ship but had come down because Jim needed him and he was the CMO. He remembers this now. Why were they back?
This time they transport into the main receiving hall. They have an audience.
Bones feels the buzzing again, so bad that he drops to his knee in front of the crowd that seems to have been expecting them.
“What did you do to him?” It’s Jim who asks, or yells, at the queen. She hardly seems surprised that they’re there.
“ Your One, is he not better?”
“Better?”
“ More able to continue? Was this not what you wanted?” She asks him.
“What I wanted? This is not what I wanted! He’s seeing his dea- he’s hallucinating for shit’s sake. You did this, you fix it.”
Bones can’t see anymore through the fog is his brain. He’s so confused that the finally understands, the buzzing in his body has reached new levels.
The queen walks over to him and puts a cool hand on his face and smiles. Her eyes aren’t purple anymore, they’re gray. She’s Joanna, his baby girl, right there in front of him and he remembers.
Four months before their original mission to Malkern Bones stopped eating. His hands shook, he stopped being CMO. He tried to stop being, loaded the hypos. Jim had found him on the floor of their bathroom. He remembers holding him while he sobbed, he remembers sleeping on the floor because he couldn’t sleep with Jim, but had to be near him. Everything had to hurt a little - he needed the hard floor.
He ripped every picture off the wall of their quarters.
He only beamed down to the planet that day because he couldn’t loose Jim too. He didn’t care about any dam queen, but she cared about him. She felt the grief comming in off him in waves so strong she cried. The guilt had brought her to her knees. A guit that was neither she nor Bones deserved but would carry always.
She gave him what he wanted the most. The chance to see Joanna. She just messed it up a bit. Didn’t understand that humans don’t live the same way that they did on Malkern. That everyone always saw the same thing, except for when they didn‘t. That for a person to exist they had to exist for everyone.
“It’s ok daddy.” Joanna says putting her hands on his face.
Bones hurts everywhere. He’s seeing his daughter, who died four months ago, standing in front on an alien planet. He’s seeing her so he must be crazy. He’s seeing her so why would he want to be sane?
“Please don’t leave me Bones, you promised.” It’s Jim again. He’s so tired, they both are. Always so tired.
“Please.” Jim Jim Jim.
“Goodbye.” Bones says closing his eyes and embracing the darkness.
Fandom: AOS
Rating: pg-13
Warnings: Character death , sanity issues
Summary: Joanna McCoy comes to stay with her father on the Enterprise. The longer she remains the further away McCoy drifts from sanity. Written for This prompt at the wonderful buckleup_meme
Disclaimer: I own nothing at all.
It starts when Joanna comes to visit her father and Jim on the Enterprise.
He’s prepared their quarters for three months now, stocked up on all the latest child friendly holovids, gone over the safety precautions with Spock 40 time. He even wore Jim down enough to let him buy real paint and decorate the small room off of their bedroom purple. That was Joanna’s favorite color, purple. Bones is almost sure of it, though sometimes when he tries to remember his brain does funny things, gets all foggy and he feels a buzzing in his limbs. He had almost commed Jocelyn to ask - he wanted to get all the details right, but when he went to the computer in his and Jim’s room it was voice locked.
Funny. Then he remembers, Joanna’s visit is a suspires, he‘s not supposed to know but of course he does. Jim being Jim would do anything to make sure Joanna was happy. Bones loves him all the more for it. They had only met a handful of times but they were already partners in crime. Jim and Joanna, the two best parts of him.
It was tense in the transporter room on the day that she came. Jim was so careful, so sweet, that he manned the controls himself, not even trusting Scotty to beam aboard Bone’s precious cargo. Or so Joanna tells him latter during one of those long nights that Jim is on the bridge and it’s just the two of them in his quarters. She snuggles up to his chest and he can smell the summertime in her curls. That’s when she tells him about the transporter and how Uncle Jim worked the controls all by himself. Bones doesn’t actually remember it himself. When he tries to think about that day, the day Joanna came aboard the Enterprise, he gets that buzzy feeling again.
Poor Joanna, his sensitive baby. She must feel it too, the wrongness of it because she warps her arms tighter around him and whispers.
“Shhh daddy, don’t think about that.”
She’s so bossy in her little eight year old southern self.
His baby.
So, Bone closes his eyes and sleeps. He’s so happy to have her with him.
~
Bones stops working before Joanna arrives. He has so much to do, preparing and all.
They develop a routine, father daughter time.
They go to the mess hall everyday together. It’s 751 steps from his and the Captain’s door to the mess. He and Joanna count them out loud everyday. It’s a game. No matter how tired they are dragging their feet or how hungry they are, the point is to always take exactly 751 steps to get from point A to point B. Joanna doesn’t like change much, consistency is important.
Poor child, she’s been through so much in her little life. Mostly his fault too, all that confusion. Jim understands. Jim always understands.
There are rarely people in the hallway when they go to eat. Bone chooses it that way, he doesn’t like the looks that some crew members give Joanna.
He holds her hand tightly, swinging it a little while counting the steps.
~
“Daddy.” She says one night as he’s tucking her in. Jim is sitting in the other room just watching with an unfathomable expression in his eyes.
“ I want to stay with you forever.” She looks right at him, giving him the full force of her gray eyes.
“ Please daddy, I don’t want to go yet. Don’t make me go.”
The tears spill down her freckled cheek and his heart breaks. This is his baby, his flesh and blood. He wants nothing more than to keep her here with him - keep her safe.
“Shhh, it’s ok June bug, don’t cry.” He goes to wipe the tear from her cheek with his blue shirt but instead he feels her cool face meet his bare skin. He’s wearing his black undershirt, not his science blues. Funny he doesn’t remember changeing.
Bones looks back to Jim who is till sitting alone on the bed. He wants to ask permission, to beg to let Joanna stay with them. Here on the Enterprise they can be a family, keep each other safe.
Jim is just watching, crying.
~
Jim must of have said it was ok because Joanna stays. They’re always together now. It gives him a chance to make up for lost time and really get to know his daughter. That was what this trip was about anyways.
He’s happy for the first time in a long time.
It’s everyone else that’s off.
First it’s Rand. She’s technically Jim’s yeoman but since the ceremony on Risa then on Earth she has seen as much of Bones as she has of Jim.
It’s a simple request really. Joanna needs clothes and he doesn’t want her to have to wear a miniature version of the ridiculous nurses outfits. Joanna’s tiny, pixie size. Even Keenser’s clothes would be too big on her. She needs something of her own.
The first three times he types out the comm to Rand he doesn’t get a response. He would ask Jim but he’s been so tired these days. Always tired with dark circles under his eyes. He must think Bones doesn’t see it that Bones doesn’t notice because he’s not treating patients right now. He does see it though, the tired. He tried to find a hypo of a sedative to give Jim several nights but all the hypos in their quarters are gone. Then he remembers, Joanna is terrified of hypos just like Jim. It must be their special game - hide the hypo.
After a fourth comm Rand finally shows up at the door. She doesn’t look her normal self, she’s nervous.
“Sir, the clothing you requested.”
“Shh Janice, Joanna is sleeping. Do you want to come in and wait till she wakes up? I’m sure she would love to get a chance to meet you.”
Rand has been distant like so much of the crew. He’s a little hurt. She had always told him how much she couldn’t wait to meet his daughter and now that she’s here Rand won’t even come inside the door.
“No thank you sir, I have to get back.” She hands him the small bundle of delicately folded clothes.
He takes them with smiles. “ Do come back though. Joanna is dying to meet you.”
“ Oh Leo.” She says quietly shaking her head before leaving him at the door.
He feels the buzzing in all of his limbs and thinks , not for the first time, that maybe he’s missing something.
Then suddenly she’s there, pushing her little hand inside his.
“shh daddy, don’t think about it.”
~
Things start to go wrong.
“Daddy, where are all my pictures?” Joanna asks from the table. She’s coloring again and he’s watching her.
“Don’t you like them any more?” She looks so hurt.
He loved the pictures. They were on real paper too, made with crayons that Jim had bought at a Starbase. They had hung them up all over their quarters. They were gone.
Bones looks around the room and notices other things are missing. All the holos of Joanna are gone as well as the holos of his diplomas that Jim insisted they hang up. The calendar too, the one the he had bought for Jim for something… he can’t remember what, something important. They’re all gone.
When Joanna goes down for a nap he tares the place apart. It was funny when it was just the hypos that they hid but everything. Its too much. Jim had no right!
Jim was always hiding things, had been since the academy. If Bones knows anything it’s Jim, so he knows where to look. In the back of the closet he finds it - pillow cases. Ripping one open he finds millions of pieces of paper. In another one he finds the holos of Joanna and other things…
Then it’s hard to breathe. The buzzing in his body feels like fire. Then he’s screaming. Then nothing.
Later, Bones wakes up in his bed to Jim running his fingers through his hair.
“It’s ok Bones, we’re going back. It’s going to be ok.” Jim whispers it over and over again.
His mind isn’t quite working right, it refuses to tell his body to move. He wants to reach out and touch Jim, he looks so sad.
“Daddy ,” says the small voice from the hallway.
“ I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you and uncle Jim tonight?”
Bones looks to Jim but really why would he mind? Jim takes his face in his hands and kisses him gently but can’t look him in the eyes.
“ Of course baby, climb in.”
Joanna nestles into the warm spot in between her father and Jim. This where she fits best, where she’s safe.
Bones drifts off again but vaguely feels moisture on his chest, tears. Joanna must have had one bad nightmare.
~
After the nightmare night Joanna isn’t hungry that much so they don’t go the mess. This worries Jim.
“Bones you have to eat something.”
“We’re not hungry Jim. Now don’t you have something to be doing besides bothering us? Can’t you see we’re playing a game?”
Jim stands there, hands shaking and pressed up against his mouth.
“ I know Bones I know.” then he leaves.
He comes back later with a peach pie from the mess. He cuts Bones a piece and leaves it on the table.
Joanna looks at him expectantly licking her lips. Peach is her favorite. Bones smiles pushing the plate towards her, glad she’s eating again.
“No, Bones. That was your piece.” Jim says swallowing hard. “ I’ll cut…I’ll cut her another ok?”
They all eat their pie together in silence.
~
Bones had stopped working to spend more time with his daughter but Jim insists that he go with him to the surface of Malkern. He orders him in his best Captain voice. Bones and Joanna both sit laughing on the floor till they cry.
Then Jim begs. He pulls Bones into a big hug and actually begs him to go down to the surface.
Malkern, it sounds familiar but when Bones thinks about it he buzzes. Sometimes he thinks he can remember going there before. He remembers Jim lying on the ground bleeding. He remembers a call coming in to sickbay. He remembers feeling something and beaming down. It was the first time he had left the ship since….. It was the fist time since it happened. Something, something important that he was missing.
Now Jim was begging him to go, so he does. He can’t find his science blues to wear but then something makes him remember they wouldn’t fit anyways- too big.
“ It’s ok Bones, you can wear whatever you want.” Jim tells him.
He gets Uhura to watch Joanna for them. He trusts her. Joanna is nervous about being left alone but she likes Uhura. It must be a girl thing.
Bones finds it hard to move. Jim has to help him by pulling his arms around him. A big human crutch, something to lean on.
Joanna walks with them to the transport room and holds his hand.
“Please come back Leo.” Uhura whispers to him as they leave. Come back from where?
Joanna blows him a kiss on the platform. He disappears.
The Malkerns look human expect for their eyes which are purple. All of them, purple eyes. They are also empaths and their home world is rich in dilithum which is apperently the whole point of the mission. Three weeks ago the Enterprise had been sent to Malkern to help in their entrance into the Federation.
Three weeks ago an extremist had tried to murder their queen before she could sign them into the Federation. Jim Kirk had pushed her out of the way.
Bones hadn’t been there. He had been on the ship but had come down because Jim needed him and he was the CMO. He remembers this now. Why were they back?
This time they transport into the main receiving hall. They have an audience.
Bones feels the buzzing again, so bad that he drops to his knee in front of the crowd that seems to have been expecting them.
“What did you do to him?” It’s Jim who asks, or yells, at the queen. She hardly seems surprised that they’re there.
“ Your One, is he not better?”
“Better?”
“ More able to continue? Was this not what you wanted?” She asks him.
“What I wanted? This is not what I wanted! He’s seeing his dea- he’s hallucinating for shit’s sake. You did this, you fix it.”
Bones can’t see anymore through the fog is his brain. He’s so confused that the finally understands, the buzzing in his body has reached new levels.
The queen walks over to him and puts a cool hand on his face and smiles. Her eyes aren’t purple anymore, they’re gray. She’s Joanna, his baby girl, right there in front of him and he remembers.
Four months before their original mission to Malkern Bones stopped eating. His hands shook, he stopped being CMO. He tried to stop being, loaded the hypos. Jim had found him on the floor of their bathroom. He remembers holding him while he sobbed, he remembers sleeping on the floor because he couldn’t sleep with Jim, but had to be near him. Everything had to hurt a little - he needed the hard floor.
He ripped every picture off the wall of their quarters.
He only beamed down to the planet that day because he couldn’t loose Jim too. He didn’t care about any dam queen, but she cared about him. She felt the grief comming in off him in waves so strong she cried. The guilt had brought her to her knees. A guit that was neither she nor Bones deserved but would carry always.
She gave him what he wanted the most. The chance to see Joanna. She just messed it up a bit. Didn’t understand that humans don’t live the same way that they did on Malkern. That everyone always saw the same thing, except for when they didn‘t. That for a person to exist they had to exist for everyone.
“It’s ok daddy.” Joanna says putting her hands on his face.
Bones hurts everywhere. He’s seeing his daughter, who died four months ago, standing in front on an alien planet. He’s seeing her so he must be crazy. He’s seeing her so why would he want to be sane?
“Please don’t leave me Bones, you promised.” It’s Jim again. He’s so tired, they both are. Always so tired.
“Please.” Jim Jim Jim.
“Goodbye.” Bones says closing his eyes and embracing the darkness.