FIC: A Man in Chaos, part 2
September 2286
Soldier and protector of the Provence of Thandum, Jamith son of Gargund and Wincalle, had been confined for nearly two summers when the new healer appeared at his bedside. He was weary of this place, the asylum, and the people within it. He felt conspicuous in his strangeness, even among these outcasts of society- missing fingers on each hand made even simple tasks difficult for him, so that he had to ask for assistance for things that should be second nature. He envied the others, their dark red complexions more attractive than his pale pink one, their bodies lithe and ready, their voices sure and tongues fleet in the mother language, the things Jamith tripped over like an infant would.
Jamith no longer entertained the delusions he had when he first came to the asylum. He no longer believed in the worlds he created, "Earth" and "Starfleet." He no longer believed in a 2-meter tall male with heavy brows and dark hair and a smile as beautiful as it was rare. They'd cured him of those delusions, and for that Jamith was thankful. But there were times, rare times that grew further apart as he got better, when he still remembered that life, that fantasy, and thought that he could smell something, a waft of cologne, spicy and warm.
It always faded.
The staff talked, from time to time, about getting Jamith to leave the hospital. They would offer to take him outside when he was having "good" days, but Jamith had been outside, had seen the sky and the moons and it scared him, because the going there always let to pain. In lieu of that privilege, he was given access to paper and pens, to draw and write what he liked.
He didn't though, didn't dare write unless he couldn't stop himself; he knew the doctors and nurses read the things he wrote. He looked in his file once, just the once, and saw a sheet of paper with his own scrawling handwriting across it, a single phrase repeated over and over and over. "I AM JAMES T KIRK." The paper scared Jamith now, as much as it had upset him when he saw it. He recognized the name, of course, it was the alien he believed to be inhabiting his body. What scared Jamith more than anything else was that he had no memory of writing those words. He already couldn't trust his mind to tell him the truth and if he was losing his memory, too, then soon enough there would be nothing left.
The healer who came to his bedside, the new doctor, called himself Ossa. It's not a name Jamith had ever heard before, but he sometimes marveled at how dumb he was in his own culture. It was why the other patients didn't like him, he thought, because for a group of people who cannot live in the present, the past is a constant companion, and Jamith couldn't talk about his childhood; the one he remembered took place somewhere he made up (and he hated his imagination for the things it conjured, the miles of flat nothing and the dead father and the absent mother) with references that were totally alien to the things he must have seen.
The people the doctors called his parents (and Jamith believed them, had to believe them, because if he didn't then he was indulging the lies again) seemed kind; they weren't alive anymore, but there were enough records on file, things that were on his person when he was found, that Jamith could pretend that he knew them. He can imagine morning meals with his father cooking spice cakes and his mother checking his schoolwork. He could vaguely remember playing with other kids, games about the stars and planets, but he wondered, from time to time, if that was a real memory or a delusion.
He wondered that a lot.
Ossa reminded Jamith of someone, like an echo or a ghost. He wondered if it was his father, if that was what the smell of cologne really was, but he didn't ask, didn't dare to wonder if this man was really familiar, of if it was just his stupid mind playing stupid tricks.
The man was kind; of that Jamith was sure. He'd never met a doctor so kind, never known anyone with such soft hands and such a soothing voice. Ossa never looked at Jamith like the others did, the ones who thought he was dangerous.
(And he was dangerous, he knew that, standing on tables and screaming about the Federation. He hurt people then, before the tablets and the injections and the joints that throbbed and ached, he broke someone's arm in an hysterical rage about being the man who never existed.)
Ossa must have known all of this, must have known all the truths of Jamith's illness and proclivities and the little bugs that nested along his scapular ridges. But he didn't seem like he pitied Jamith, he never talked to him like he was dangerous.
"How are you feeling today?"
Jamith smiled up at Ossa, whose dark eyes shined with a familiar something. (And they were so much more attractive than Jamith's blue ones. The nurses said they were a proper purple-brown when he came, they were actually deep and attractive, and somehow over the first six months of his time in the hospital, they had faded to a sickly blue. Jamith had never seen another Kythar
with blue eyes. It's how people knew he was Wrong with just a glance.)
"Well," he said, rather than give a dissertation on eye color.
"We have to talk," Ossa said, and Jamith didn't laugh, but he thought about it. Ossa loved to talk, loved to hear about Jamith's life, his every moment.
"What shall we talk about today?" Jamith asked, "Shoes or ships or sealing wax?"
Ossa, bless him, didn't write that phrase in his notes like the other doctors would have. He didn't even bat an eye at it, like saying insane things was just something he was used to. (He worked in an asylum, Jamith reminded himself, of course he was used to crazy.) Instead he nodded and said, "Are those my only choices?"
"No, there are also... something about kings. I can't remember. Am I making this up?"
Ossa looked stricken for a moment, before he schooled his features back into his impassible Doctor Mask. "It's not from around here," he said, "so maybe you did."
"But you didn't come to talk about that."
"No," he said, and Jamith realized for the first time that Ossa was still standing on the other side of his table, the table where Jamith had been drawing. Today he was drawing a white whale - a creature he made up himself, he thought, being chased across a black sea.
"Would you like to sit?"
Ossa nodded and took the chair opposite Jamith. "What are you drawing?" he asked.
"A dream I had," Jamith said. "Where a man in a boat chases a very big white fish."
"And why does he do that?"
Jamith shrugged. "We all have to chase something, I suppose."
"And what are you chasing?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Jamith asked, and Ossa shook his head before raising his hand, palm up, and then turning it over. It's a gesture Jamith learned here, in the hospital, shorthand for "tell me more" that the doctors used. So Jamith turned over the paper he'd been drawing on and sketched himself, arms outstretched, reaching for what should be a brain, but looked more like a plate of clinically depressed noodles. His hand ached from the simple act of clutching the stain pens, but something was driving him on, something made him want Ossa to understand, to see him clearly.
"Your mind?"
"Isn't that what everyone here is chasing?" Jamith asked, and then he smiled sadly. "Everyone like me, anyway. I don't know what you're chasing."
He hoped it was an invitation; that it was something Ossa would take and open up for. He was a kind man, but a guarded one. Jamith had no idea of the man beyond his brilliantly butter-yellow coat and his sad, deep eyes. But Ossa didn't rise to the bait, just shook his head
"You know you're doing well," he said softly, "and Nurse Latt says you might like to take a walk. Would you like to go outside tomorrow?"
Jamith considered the offer. Plenty of nurses and doctors had asked him before, but he had the distinct feeling that Ossa was asking to go with him alone, and it made the bugs under Jamith's skin crawl.
"Who else will come?" he said, and tried to think of anything besides the burning nerves he would not scratch at.
"I thought just us," Ossa said, and Jamith wondered why all the air had suddenly escaped the room.
"No," Jamith said. "I don't want to go outside."
Ossa didn't look hurt, not really, because that wouldn't be the appropriate thing for a doctor to look. "Is there somewhere you'd rather go?" he asked, and Jamith thought for a moment about shoving his drawing pen up the man's nose and into his brain.
"No," he half-growled, and a year ago he would have tipped the table over and screamed what he thought was his name and a string of numbers until someone sedated him. But he was better now, better in this place, and he could be calm in the face of a man who wanted things from him.
"Would you go with Nurse Latt?" Ossa asked, and Jamith resented the implication.
He made a gesture of hostility and fear. "Why do you want me to go outside?"
"Why do you not want to go outside?"
"I asked first," Jamith snapped, and he felt that plume of anger curl in his belly, warm and tight and terrifying. He expected he'd have his dosages upped, that Ossa would cluck and write little notes about emotional outbursts but the man just considered Jamith's statement for a moment before nodding.
"I suppose you did," he said, his voice maddeningly measured. "I want you to get out of the hospital is all. I think you're doing better, you're doing very well, and I want to see you walk free. The first step for that is going outside, just for a few minutes."
This time Jamith did scream, he did tip over the table, and he was struggling through the throb in his bones, trying to stab Ossa with his pen when his guard grabbed him by the elbows and held him back, containing his flailing limbs until the prick of the sedative needle set Jamith's mind toward sleep.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was Ossa's face, tears welling in the perfect dark eyes. He didn't have time to think on it or make sense of it before the drug took him down to the dreamless place where Jamith spent so much of his time.
October 2286
McCoy hated the stupid planet - he hated the tandem moons, the bluish sun, the red people moving between clay buildings. He hated the heat of the days and the cold of the evenings. He hated the food, the barely edible slop that made a replicator look like a gourmet chef.
And he hated watching Jim struggle against his own mind.
People had asked Leonard, over the years, for the why-and-how of his and Jim's relationship. He never thought it was anyone's damn business, but the truth that he whispered to Jim in the dark of night was that, while those blue eyes drew him in, it was Jim's soaring intelligence and his fiery passion that held him fast.
So if Leonard hated the people of Kythar for what they'd done to Jim (and it wasn't even their fault, they did what they could. Jim had gone to observe their technology and verify rumors of a warlike people preparing to slash their way into post-warp society. It wasn't true, the rumor that they were violent and cruel was unfounded.) well, he tried to leave it out of his reports.
Some of his contempt seeped through, of course, because he was Leonard McCoy and he had never been exactly proficient in keeping his emotions and opinions in check.
In the second month of the mission, when Leonard was starting to feel the fissures opening under his facade, the frustration of Jim-but-not-Jim's reluctance to trust him threatening to overwhelm everything, he sent a report back to Pike in which every other word was fuck.
Nyota commed him the next day.
It was an interesting choice, having Uhura be the mediator. Pike and McCoy were friends of a sort, but they were both too worried about Jim, too emotionally invested in the mission to discuss it on even footing. (And if they were better men or worse officers, both would have recused themselves from the whole procedure, but neither man could see a single colleague who would do the things for Jim that they were willing to do.)
Uhura didn't smile the way Pike did, didn't veil her pity in pretty words. She was a master of words, a virtuoso of communication, and she had a way of showing you she understood just by the tilt of her head or the position of her hand on her cheek.
Uhura let him rant when she called, listened to McCoy's angry howls about the system on Kythar and the damage it did to the people who weren't Jim; the lack of some drugs that would save lives was enough of a subject that Leonard didn't even notice the sun moving across the sky as he spoke.
Finally, his lungs tired and his throat sore, having railed against the government, the moons, and the Hippocratic oath, Leonard slumped back in his chair and waited for Uhura to say something in return.
She stared at him, her black-brown eyes somehow deep and piercing at the same time. After a minute or two of just looking, she finally broke the silence.
"You've been ranting for forty-five minutes," she said, "most of that without taking a breath. But you know what you haven't done in that time?"
He shrugged. "Told you I like the haircut? Because short suits you."
Bless her heart, Uhura laughed. "No, jackass. You haven't mentioned Jim. So I'm thinking he's what's really wrong."
McCoy took a deep breath. "I can't- He doesn't trust me. Or Ossa, if we want to play the game where we're not the same person. Sometimes, it's like he's still Jim. He sits with his legs crossed at the knee and looks at me like he knows me. And I'm getting more of that. But there are still those awful times, the worst times, when he asks the security guards - and he always has guards on him - if I'm real."
Nyota nodded slowly. "So it's not that he doesn't trust you, Len. It's that he doesn't trust himself."
"I don't know how to fix that."
"Then don't fix it. Not now. Now you get him out of there, you get him back to Earth and back to Paris and back to the home you know he still remembers. And then worry about the trust."
Leonard stared, dumbfounded, for a moment. "Jim told me once, a long time- right, he told me, he said, the day he drove his father's car into a quarry, he jumped out of it at the last moment and almost didn't make it. He said that he realized, because he did catch himself, because he didn't fall, he knew that maybe no one else would, but he'd always be there for himself. Even if it was just by his fingertips, he'd get a grip."
"So you know what you have to do."
"Push him off a cliff?"
Nyota rolled her eyes. "Yes, Len, or hold a phaser to his head and ask how lucky he feels."
"I have to make him see it again, I have to get him to not trust this place over himself."
She nodded. "And you know we'll be there - me and Spock and Scotty and Pavel and Hikaru - anytime you need us?"
"I know."
"Go bring our boy home."
Leonard smiled. "How is it you always make me feel twenty pounds lighter?"
"I'm just fantastic is all," she laughed, smiling back. "Call if you need me."
"Always. Thanks Nyota."
Leonard severed the connection, feeling the sunshine on his face for the first time in weeks. She was right. If Jim didn't want to leave the hospital, maybe it was time to change tactics.
The hospital was dark, which made sense, it being night and all. Both the moons had set, and the stars shown faintly between the bars on the windows, little more than lightning bugs in the inky morass outside the hospital.
Leonard missed Earth on nights like this, missed Georgia. He loved Paris and the home he and Jim made together, but a little part of him would always remember camping on lake Tobesofkee with his father, the clear summer sky free of the light pollution that would later become the norm. He knew Jim had similar memories, nights with Sam when they didn't want to deal with home, nights when the Kirk brothers would sneak out and lie in the fields, counting the stars until they fell asleep.
The first thing Leonard was going to do, when he got his Jim back, he was going to take them both camping somewhere quiet and private with the Milky Way painted above their heads, purple and white and blue, a split in the sky. Leonard will point up at the godforsaken star they're orbiting now and whisper how he loves Jim, how he needs him, how he'll always find him, no matter how far.
But for the time being reality was the hospital on Kythar, trying to keep his boots quiet on the vinyl flooring as he made his way down the hallway.
Leonard felt uneasy with what he was about to do. His three months on the planet, working with what was left of Jim's mind made him wonder, perhaps indulgently, if stealing him away was the right thing to do. The prime directive, as he understood it, was about non-interference and allowing people to choose their own destiny, and yet here he was, a newly minted Admiral, preparing to kidnap a man who had no interest in leaving the hospital, let alone the planet, and planning to make him into the man McCoy and the Fleet wanted him to be.
It felt wrong, and yet there he was, his left hand on the knob of Jim's room as his right keyed in his access code.
The door swung inward, casting a column of light into the room. Leonard thought it should fall across Jim's face, illuminate his golden hair and remind him of how in love they were when they were younger. It didn't, instead the light landed across the foot of Jim's bed.
Leonard steeled himself to step into the room - breathing deeply and trying to do things the way Jim would, with confidence and definition - when, from down the hall, a voice called his name.
"Ossa?"
He turned to the voice, hating the name he chose more and more with each passing day. It was meant to jar Jim's memory, help him recover himself. Leonard hadn't been counting on his partner being so far gone that he wouldn't recognize the Latin word for "bones."
The voice belonged to Nurse Latt, the person in the hospital who had the closest thing to a relationship with Jim. She smiled at Leonard, blinking her eyes rapidly, the common sign of emotional distress in the Kytharn.
"Latt," he said, inclining his head to the side and touching two fingers to his bared neck in greeting. She echoed the gesture, drawing close on her silent feet. He envied her stealth.
"Checking on Jamith?"
"I am," he said, forgetting the affirmative motion he was supposed to use. Even after three months, it didn't come naturally to Leonard, and body language was so important to these people, it got messy if you touched the wrong ridge or ran your fingers through your hair. His coworkers saw Leonard as stoic, if only because he erred on the side of caution, choosing to remain still instead of giving the wrong signals. He blinked, as she had done before. "I worry for him."
Her motion of sorrow was sincere. "I worry too," she said, "but now he sleeps."
Leonard used a finger to rapidly trace his right eyebrow in impatience. "I see that he sleeps. I need to check his blood pressure - Thykaa had to sedate him again today, it is why he has no guard."
Latt lifted her left shoulder - that was affirmative. Of course the human gesture for feeling unsure was Kytharn for yes, that was the kind of frustrating fucking place this was. "I was here to do the same thing. You may leave if you wish," she said, leaving her mouth open at the end of the sentence in what Leonard was pretty sure was deference to authority, or maybe indigestion.
"I will do it," he said, and she raised her shoulder again, pressing the blood pressure meter she held into his hands.
"You will need this, then," she told him, and he cursed his luck. Of course Latt would notice, and of course she would be the one to find him there.
"That will be all, Latt," he said, making the impatience gesture again. She regarded him sharply for a moment, blinking like a heartbeat, before turning on her heel without so much as the gesture of good health that was the customary goodbye. If Leonard had any intention of seeing Latt again, he would have been worried. As it was, he would have Jim out of the hospital in under ten minutes, barely long enough for her to convince herself that something was wrong.
In some ways, Leonard regretted that. Latt was sharp in a way he hadn't often seen. Hell, she was the only one of her goddamned people he could remotely stand and he had, on occasion, thought about bringing her back with them, to be a nurse in Starfleet. She would be as good as Christine was, once she was trained, and Christine was the best nurse he had ever worked with, even if she had lost her damn senses and become a doctor. But it was a dream, for so many reasons, and so he stepped into Jim's room, the door clicking shut behind him.
The drugs the Kytharn used were simple by Starfleet's standards; they used a Phenothiazine derivative to sedate Jim and manage his so-called delusions. Leonard paused at Jim's bed, Latt's pressure cuff clutched in his hands, and took a moment to just look.
He hadn't seen Jim sleeping, not really. He'd seen him sedated and laid out, but there was a calmness to Jim when he slept, an evenness that Leonard had missed. It was all he could do not to smooth down Jim's hair and kiss his forehead.
Instead he pulled the hypo from his pocket - it was loaded with a stimulant and tracers, so if Jim tried to run (and he wouldn't, his legs were a little unsteady these days from the degrading prosthetics) Leonard would still be able to call Excelsior and get them both back. Standing over his partner, hypo at the ready, Leonard briefly flashed back to the first time he saw Jim sedated, that first mission on Enterprise, racing off to save Vulcan. These past months hadn't been too different - the unsureness, the fear, the adrenalin of trying to find Jim inside the mess the Kytharn had made. Leonard never really thought, on that first mission that they would fail, but he supposed age had changed him; all he had done on this goddamned mission was think about the ways it could go wrong.
Even now, end in sight, he stood worried about the next few minutes, using the peridoxycine without triggering an allergic reaction, getting out without being caught by Latt or upsetting Jim, having his molecules rearranged... it all seemed too big to Leonard, all of a sudden, too much.
So he took a deep breath and pressed the hypo to Jim's neck. The familiar hiss was deafening in the small room, making the hairs on the back of Leonard's neck stand up straight. He counted to ten, as slowly as he dared, and on 9, one of Jim's eyes flicked open.
"Ossa?" he asked, sleep and drugs and strange language clogging his voice.
"Hello, Jamith," Leonard smiled, extending a hand. He was sure the Kytharn had a meaning for it, the right hand, held with the palm up, but he was counting on Jim to recognize the gesture with his human brain, the instinct that was so ingrained in him.
It worked, Jim reached out and laid his hand on Leonard's, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.
"I was just dreaming about you," Jim muttered. "Dreaming about a spaceship, and stars and something about you."
"Was it a nice dream?" Leonard handed Jim a pair of pants, which he pulled on mindlessly. McCoy had seen Jim naked a few times since he had arrived, in examinations, but he felt like he was seeing his partner for the first time, how his ribs were starting to show and the prosthetics were causing uneven lumps under his skin. It made him want to scream, maybe, or cry, but he swallowed the lump in his throat and handed Jim the dark hooded sweatshirt he had brought.
"I think so," Jim said, pulling on the shirt and smiling at Leonard. He seemed more awake, like the process of dressing had roused him, but there was still a dreaminess about him. "What hour is it?"
"After moonset," Leonard said, and if the way he used the Kytharn language was stilted, people tended to chalk it up to regional differences and education, rather than his non-native tongue.. "I thought that it might be easier for you to step outside in the darkness." Getting Jim outside was a critical part of the plan. They couldn't beam him out because of the mineral content of the walls, or something else that Leonard didn't understand, but once they were in the open air, the transporter could take them. He was supposed to avoid being seen by locals, if possible, but Leonard cared less about how they will explain the mysterious light and disappearance and more about getting Jim the fuck back to Earth.
Jim studied Leonard for a long moment, and McCoy held his breath, afraid that any sudden movement might set Kirk off, as he had so often in the past. Finally, after an eternity of the question heavy in the air, Jim raised his shoulder in affirmation, and Leonard gulped oxygen in relief.
McCoy lead the way, using his code to open the doors as they got further and further from the secure ward where Jim was kept. His brain wanted him to move slowly, hugging walls and shadows and corners, but all the training Pike insisted on came in handy for once, and Leonard fought his instinct down, letting Jim follow as they strode purposefully through the evening-dim halls. Well, Leonard strode, and he fought down the urge not to help Jim, who was slower, and favoring his right leg.
By some grace, and Leonard has no idea what he'd done to deserve it, they don't meet Latt on her rounds. He knew she would stop him; not because she was intent of keeping Jim prisoner, though sometimes McCoy thought that was the purpose of this place, but because she was smart and genuinely cared for her patients and she would know that this was a bullshit exercise.
The walk still seemed to take forever, the halls extending to the horizon and each footstep echoing like an avalanche. It was only a six minute walk, Leonard had timed it, but he still felt a flood of relief and joy when he saw the front desk, mercifully staffed by a nurse who Leonard long ago decided was not the brightest star in the sky.
"Ossa," she greeted him, and he bared his neck to her as he had to Latt earlier.
"Hello, Parchint," he said, as she repeated his gesture. "I am taking Jamith outside for three minutes."
"You will need to sign this," she said, pointing to the patient-guest roster, and he did, marking the symbols that made up both their borrowed names in the appropriate places.
"We will be back shortly," he told her, and she cupped her hands, holding them forward in the gesture of farewell. He spared a moment to imagine Uhura's voice, explaining why the gestures were the way they were, and the excitement she got from it, the passion in her eyes as she had demonstrated this one. Apparently the cupped hands were regional and were meant to represent how a man drank water from the stream - in this arid area, it was a blessing to say something like ‘may the path ahead be full of water.' Leonard knew he remembered it imperfectly, but that wasn't the point now. Now the point was getting Jim to take those seven steps to the outside, and then fifteen around the corner to beam up.
He turned to study Jim, who was blinking in distress at the doors to the outside.
"Are you prepared?" Leonard asked, and Jim looked down at his feet.
"No, Ossa," he said, "I do not think I can do this."
Leonard smiled sadly. So it would come to this - kidnap or cajole. "Will you step up to the doors for me?" he asked, and Jim turned to study his face for a long moment.
"I think I dreamed about you before we met," Jim said, and took a step forward. "I had dreams about a man of your size, but pale like me. He was not called Ossa," Jim took another small step, and Leonard turned to look at the nurse behind the desk, who didn't even have the grace to pretend not to stare.
"Please get him some tharn nectar," Leonard told her softly, knowing the sweet drink was a favorite among the nurses for its elevated caffeine content. He figured she would stop to get some herself, and leave them in peace for the precious few minutes he needed. She scrambled to comply, and when she had left, Leoanrd turned back to Jim. "Tell me more about your dream man," he said, urging another step forward.
Jim took the step. "I think I was in love with him, and I think he loved me back," Jim's voice was stronger, and his next step more sure. "And sometimes when you look at me, Ossa, I think you must have dreamed the same dreams."
Leonard swallowed. "I did," he whispered, and they took a fifth step. "It is why I came, I dreamed about a green-walled home on a far away planet and a tall man with light hair who needed me. I dreamed that I would meet him and he would want to get better if he was sick," one more step, and the automatic doors swished open, letting the breeze buffet their faces.
"I want to get better," Jim said, and took the last step into the night air, turning to look at Leonard. "And I want you to help me."
"I will," Leonard said. "Do you trust me?"
Jim raised his shoulder and slipped his hand into Leonard's. McCoy thought, in that moment, that it was all going to be okay, that Jim was better and they could go home. They took a few tentative steps toward the secluded beam-out site when suddenly, overhead, one of the large insectoids that filled the air at night made its buzzing call. Jim stiffened, and Leonard tightened his grip. There was no time to lose.
Barely thinking, Leonard grabbed for the communicator in his pocket. The moment of distraction allowed Jim to wrench his hand back, his eyes wide with panic. "Why have you brought me here?" he demanded, glaring daggers at Leonard. "What are you holding?"
Leonard made a grab for Jim's arm, but missed as Jim turned to race back to the safety of the hospital. In a decision he would never be able to explain later, Leonard grabbed the flapping hood of Jim's sweatshirt and, as the other man tried to wrench himself free of the grip, of the outside, Leonard screamed into his communicator.
"Excelsior! Now!"
He had never before felt comforted by the feeling of his atoms falling apart, but the relief was not long-lived. As soon as he opened his eyes on the pad back on the ship, McCoy felt a solid fist impact his cheekbone, and he went down, dazed.
Leonard woke in a panic, his heart hammering in his chest. He'd been dreaming of bodies, of severed limbs, of trying to make a functioning whole out of not enough pieces. The dark of the room felt different from his rooms on Kythar; there was no light from the window, no singing of the harymant beetle. Just darkness and the pounding of his blood in his ears. As he relaxed, the faint thrum of engines floated up to his ears, and he remembered, like a bolt, that he was back on Excelsior, with Jim. With what was left of Jim.
"Computer," he called, "lights fifty percent."
The room slid into focus, the framed picture he had brought with him was perched on the dresser grinning back at him like a mockery- Joanna and Jim, laughing in the Georgia sunlight. It felt like a lifetime ago that Joanna was that young, but longer since she and Jim had both been that happy. He turned his head and sat up, rubbing his face where Jim hit him. He thought he would have a rather impressive bruise later; if there's one thing Jim was known for, it was hitting like a kiloton hammer. Apparently a year and a half of malnourishment and wasting away hadn't taken his adrenalin rush from him, or his ability to act in it.
"Computer, location of James Kirk."
"Admiral Kirk is in sickbay isolation room V," the computer replied, the same soothing female voice it had always been. Leonard dimly wondered who she was, the computer voice, and what she did when she wasn't a computer voice.
He raised his shoulder to the computer before remembering himself and smiling. He could stop that, now, he could nod his head and wave his hands and not worry about the implications, because he knew them like breathing. He was still fully dressed, he noted, and assumed that Chekov must have had him put back here after Jim hit him, to recoup.
He moved to his terminal, logging in and pulling up CMO Ochoa's report on Jim. Apparently Leonard had been asleep for long enough for Ochoa to remove the prosthetics and repair most of the damage. Leonard winced as he scanned the list. Jim wouldn't be regaining the full range of motion in his shoulders, and he would have arthritis in most of his upper body for the rest of his life. His legs were better off - a bit of necrotic tissue associated with the prosthetics had been excised, but modern tech meant that it would only be days before Jim was back on his feet, not weeks or years, and for that Leonard was thankful The arthritis was more worrisome; the pain would be managed but still, Leonard's memories of vivacious, bouncing Jim seemed to get further and further from him as he read the report.
There wasn't much in the way of psych, not yet. McCoy assumed this had more to do with Jim being unable or unwilling to speak than any failure on the part of the medical staff. Leonard briefly considered going down there, to see Jim or maybe just to see if Jim will even look at him, but he thought he knew the answer already.
So instead he decided to order a cup of tea and write to Joanna. His part of the mission was over; he'd gotten Jim out, he'd performed the tasks assigned to the best of his ability. It didn't feel great and he wasn't pleased with the whole situation, but once they got back to Earth and Jim was in the hands of the people who knew what they were doing, it would only be a matter of time before things could be normal again.
Leonard stared at the blank page of his letter, the blinking cursor exactly as frustrating as always, trying to figure out what to tell Joanna. She was an adult now, not his little girl, and at thirty-seven years old she was a successful and happy doctor in Proxima. They didn't always have the happiest of relationships or the easiest, but Leonard loved her more than anything else he'd ever known, and she had accepted Jim as a parental figure with grace and ease that had astounded all of them at the time, and she had been there for her father when Jim had disappeared. If anyone did, Joanna deserved to know what was happening.
Leonard just wasn't sure he knew what to tell her.
He was still staring hopelessly when his comm sounded. "McCoy," he offered, flipping it open.
"Doctor," Sulu's warm voice flooded over the connection. "Glad to have you back in consciousness."
"Glad to be back," Leonard offered with a smile Sulu couldn't see. "That man can still punch, huh?"
"Apparently. Will you join me and Pavel for supper?"
Leonard moved to lift his shoulder in the affirmative, but caught himself before the gesture was complete and nodded instead, glancing at the chronometer on his desk. "I would be honored. 1900?"
"We'll see you there. Sulu out."
Leonard wasn't sure how he had forgotten how soothing, how calming Sulu could be. He had somehow let it slide from his mind, and that seemed like a damn crime. He had allotted half an hour to get ready, so he closed the empty letter without saving, and moved to take a shower.
It didn't matter. Jim was back, and Leonard would be holding him close soon enough.
Leonard only saw Jim once on the ship, when he stopped into sickbay to have his prosthetics and his skin and eye pigmentation removed.
He was pleasantly surprised to see that Jim hadn't been strapped down; rather he was sitting calmly on a biobed, talking to a doctor whose name was something like Patel. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he did try to eavesdrop just a little, to get some idea of what was going on in Jim's head. He knew better, as a doctor and a person, to infringe on someone's confidentiality like that, but Leonard had never been an especially patient man, and he wouldn't have been a doctor if he could contain his curiosity.
McCoy didn't end up hearing any of Jim and the other doctor's conversation, because when Jim caught sight of him, he stiffened and his eyes went wide.
There was a bit of Kytharn body language in his reaction; the elevated blinking and the way Jim rubbed the place on his hand where his sixth finger should be. Leonard had to stop himself from whispering in Patel's ear, pointing out the signs of distress Jim had learned to display.
Instead Jim leaned into Patel and made a motion, and Leonard figured his identity was being obtained by the scared man who used to be his partner. He didn't let himself feel his heart skip at that thought, at the idea that even here, even surrounded by the things Jim believed in and fought for, they were strangers.
He heard his name spoken, "Doctor McCoy," but it wasn't Patel's soft alto that said it. Rather it was Dr. Ochoa, ready to see to the work Leonard needed done.
He followed the man into his office for the first procedure, feeling Jim's eyes bore holes in the back of his head as he went and resisting, with every fiber of his being, the outright need to turn and look back.
Masterpost| Part One|Part Two| Part Three| Epilogue
Soldier and protector of the Provence of Thandum, Jamith son of Gargund and Wincalle, had been confined for nearly two summers when the new healer appeared at his bedside. He was weary of this place, the asylum, and the people within it. He felt conspicuous in his strangeness, even among these outcasts of society- missing fingers on each hand made even simple tasks difficult for him, so that he had to ask for assistance for things that should be second nature. He envied the others, their dark red complexions more attractive than his pale pink one, their bodies lithe and ready, their voices sure and tongues fleet in the mother language, the things Jamith tripped over like an infant would.
Jamith no longer entertained the delusions he had when he first came to the asylum. He no longer believed in the worlds he created, "Earth" and "Starfleet." He no longer believed in a 2-meter tall male with heavy brows and dark hair and a smile as beautiful as it was rare. They'd cured him of those delusions, and for that Jamith was thankful. But there were times, rare times that grew further apart as he got better, when he still remembered that life, that fantasy, and thought that he could smell something, a waft of cologne, spicy and warm.
It always faded.
The staff talked, from time to time, about getting Jamith to leave the hospital. They would offer to take him outside when he was having "good" days, but Jamith had been outside, had seen the sky and the moons and it scared him, because the going there always let to pain. In lieu of that privilege, he was given access to paper and pens, to draw and write what he liked.
He didn't though, didn't dare write unless he couldn't stop himself; he knew the doctors and nurses read the things he wrote. He looked in his file once, just the once, and saw a sheet of paper with his own scrawling handwriting across it, a single phrase repeated over and over and over. "I AM JAMES T KIRK." The paper scared Jamith now, as much as it had upset him when he saw it. He recognized the name, of course, it was the alien he believed to be inhabiting his body. What scared Jamith more than anything else was that he had no memory of writing those words. He already couldn't trust his mind to tell him the truth and if he was losing his memory, too, then soon enough there would be nothing left.
The healer who came to his bedside, the new doctor, called himself Ossa. It's not a name Jamith had ever heard before, but he sometimes marveled at how dumb he was in his own culture. It was why the other patients didn't like him, he thought, because for a group of people who cannot live in the present, the past is a constant companion, and Jamith couldn't talk about his childhood; the one he remembered took place somewhere he made up (and he hated his imagination for the things it conjured, the miles of flat nothing and the dead father and the absent mother) with references that were totally alien to the things he must have seen.
The people the doctors called his parents (and Jamith believed them, had to believe them, because if he didn't then he was indulging the lies again) seemed kind; they weren't alive anymore, but there were enough records on file, things that were on his person when he was found, that Jamith could pretend that he knew them. He can imagine morning meals with his father cooking spice cakes and his mother checking his schoolwork. He could vaguely remember playing with other kids, games about the stars and planets, but he wondered, from time to time, if that was a real memory or a delusion.
He wondered that a lot.
Ossa reminded Jamith of someone, like an echo or a ghost. He wondered if it was his father, if that was what the smell of cologne really was, but he didn't ask, didn't dare to wonder if this man was really familiar, of if it was just his stupid mind playing stupid tricks.
The man was kind; of that Jamith was sure. He'd never met a doctor so kind, never known anyone with such soft hands and such a soothing voice. Ossa never looked at Jamith like the others did, the ones who thought he was dangerous.
(And he was dangerous, he knew that, standing on tables and screaming about the Federation. He hurt people then, before the tablets and the injections and the joints that throbbed and ached, he broke someone's arm in an hysterical rage about being the man who never existed.)
Ossa must have known all of this, must have known all the truths of Jamith's illness and proclivities and the little bugs that nested along his scapular ridges. But he didn't seem like he pitied Jamith, he never talked to him like he was dangerous.
"How are you feeling today?"
Jamith smiled up at Ossa, whose dark eyes shined with a familiar something. (And they were so much more attractive than Jamith's blue ones. The nurses said they were a proper purple-brown when he came, they were actually deep and attractive, and somehow over the first six months of his time in the hospital, they had faded to a sickly blue. Jamith had never seen another Kythar
with blue eyes. It's how people knew he was Wrong with just a glance.)
"Well," he said, rather than give a dissertation on eye color.
"We have to talk," Ossa said, and Jamith didn't laugh, but he thought about it. Ossa loved to talk, loved to hear about Jamith's life, his every moment.
"What shall we talk about today?" Jamith asked, "Shoes or ships or sealing wax?"
Ossa, bless him, didn't write that phrase in his notes like the other doctors would have. He didn't even bat an eye at it, like saying insane things was just something he was used to. (He worked in an asylum, Jamith reminded himself, of course he was used to crazy.) Instead he nodded and said, "Are those my only choices?"
"No, there are also... something about kings. I can't remember. Am I making this up?"
Ossa looked stricken for a moment, before he schooled his features back into his impassible Doctor Mask. "It's not from around here," he said, "so maybe you did."
"But you didn't come to talk about that."
"No," he said, and Jamith realized for the first time that Ossa was still standing on the other side of his table, the table where Jamith had been drawing. Today he was drawing a white whale - a creature he made up himself, he thought, being chased across a black sea.
"Would you like to sit?"
Ossa nodded and took the chair opposite Jamith. "What are you drawing?" he asked.
"A dream I had," Jamith said. "Where a man in a boat chases a very big white fish."
"And why does he do that?"
Jamith shrugged. "We all have to chase something, I suppose."
"And what are you chasing?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Jamith asked, and Ossa shook his head before raising his hand, palm up, and then turning it over. It's a gesture Jamith learned here, in the hospital, shorthand for "tell me more" that the doctors used. So Jamith turned over the paper he'd been drawing on and sketched himself, arms outstretched, reaching for what should be a brain, but looked more like a plate of clinically depressed noodles. His hand ached from the simple act of clutching the stain pens, but something was driving him on, something made him want Ossa to understand, to see him clearly.
"Your mind?"
"Isn't that what everyone here is chasing?" Jamith asked, and then he smiled sadly. "Everyone like me, anyway. I don't know what you're chasing."
He hoped it was an invitation; that it was something Ossa would take and open up for. He was a kind man, but a guarded one. Jamith had no idea of the man beyond his brilliantly butter-yellow coat and his sad, deep eyes. But Ossa didn't rise to the bait, just shook his head
"You know you're doing well," he said softly, "and Nurse Latt says you might like to take a walk. Would you like to go outside tomorrow?"
Jamith considered the offer. Plenty of nurses and doctors had asked him before, but he had the distinct feeling that Ossa was asking to go with him alone, and it made the bugs under Jamith's skin crawl.
"Who else will come?" he said, and tried to think of anything besides the burning nerves he would not scratch at.
"I thought just us," Ossa said, and Jamith wondered why all the air had suddenly escaped the room.
"No," Jamith said. "I don't want to go outside."
Ossa didn't look hurt, not really, because that wouldn't be the appropriate thing for a doctor to look. "Is there somewhere you'd rather go?" he asked, and Jamith thought for a moment about shoving his drawing pen up the man's nose and into his brain.
"No," he half-growled, and a year ago he would have tipped the table over and screamed what he thought was his name and a string of numbers until someone sedated him. But he was better now, better in this place, and he could be calm in the face of a man who wanted things from him.
"Would you go with Nurse Latt?" Ossa asked, and Jamith resented the implication.
He made a gesture of hostility and fear. "Why do you want me to go outside?"
"Why do you not want to go outside?"
"I asked first," Jamith snapped, and he felt that plume of anger curl in his belly, warm and tight and terrifying. He expected he'd have his dosages upped, that Ossa would cluck and write little notes about emotional outbursts but the man just considered Jamith's statement for a moment before nodding.
"I suppose you did," he said, his voice maddeningly measured. "I want you to get out of the hospital is all. I think you're doing better, you're doing very well, and I want to see you walk free. The first step for that is going outside, just for a few minutes."
This time Jamith did scream, he did tip over the table, and he was struggling through the throb in his bones, trying to stab Ossa with his pen when his guard grabbed him by the elbows and held him back, containing his flailing limbs until the prick of the sedative needle set Jamith's mind toward sleep.
The last thing he saw before his eyes closed was Ossa's face, tears welling in the perfect dark eyes. He didn't have time to think on it or make sense of it before the drug took him down to the dreamless place where Jamith spent so much of his time.
October 2286
McCoy hated the stupid planet - he hated the tandem moons, the bluish sun, the red people moving between clay buildings. He hated the heat of the days and the cold of the evenings. He hated the food, the barely edible slop that made a replicator look like a gourmet chef.
And he hated watching Jim struggle against his own mind.
People had asked Leonard, over the years, for the why-and-how of his and Jim's relationship. He never thought it was anyone's damn business, but the truth that he whispered to Jim in the dark of night was that, while those blue eyes drew him in, it was Jim's soaring intelligence and his fiery passion that held him fast.
So if Leonard hated the people of Kythar for what they'd done to Jim (and it wasn't even their fault, they did what they could. Jim had gone to observe their technology and verify rumors of a warlike people preparing to slash their way into post-warp society. It wasn't true, the rumor that they were violent and cruel was unfounded.) well, he tried to leave it out of his reports.
Some of his contempt seeped through, of course, because he was Leonard McCoy and he had never been exactly proficient in keeping his emotions and opinions in check.
In the second month of the mission, when Leonard was starting to feel the fissures opening under his facade, the frustration of Jim-but-not-Jim's reluctance to trust him threatening to overwhelm everything, he sent a report back to Pike in which every other word was fuck.
Nyota commed him the next day.
It was an interesting choice, having Uhura be the mediator. Pike and McCoy were friends of a sort, but they were both too worried about Jim, too emotionally invested in the mission to discuss it on even footing. (And if they were better men or worse officers, both would have recused themselves from the whole procedure, but neither man could see a single colleague who would do the things for Jim that they were willing to do.)
Uhura didn't smile the way Pike did, didn't veil her pity in pretty words. She was a master of words, a virtuoso of communication, and she had a way of showing you she understood just by the tilt of her head or the position of her hand on her cheek.
Uhura let him rant when she called, listened to McCoy's angry howls about the system on Kythar and the damage it did to the people who weren't Jim; the lack of some drugs that would save lives was enough of a subject that Leonard didn't even notice the sun moving across the sky as he spoke.
Finally, his lungs tired and his throat sore, having railed against the government, the moons, and the Hippocratic oath, Leonard slumped back in his chair and waited for Uhura to say something in return.
She stared at him, her black-brown eyes somehow deep and piercing at the same time. After a minute or two of just looking, she finally broke the silence.
"You've been ranting for forty-five minutes," she said, "most of that without taking a breath. But you know what you haven't done in that time?"
He shrugged. "Told you I like the haircut? Because short suits you."
Bless her heart, Uhura laughed. "No, jackass. You haven't mentioned Jim. So I'm thinking he's what's really wrong."
McCoy took a deep breath. "I can't- He doesn't trust me. Or Ossa, if we want to play the game where we're not the same person. Sometimes, it's like he's still Jim. He sits with his legs crossed at the knee and looks at me like he knows me. And I'm getting more of that. But there are still those awful times, the worst times, when he asks the security guards - and he always has guards on him - if I'm real."
Nyota nodded slowly. "So it's not that he doesn't trust you, Len. It's that he doesn't trust himself."
"I don't know how to fix that."
"Then don't fix it. Not now. Now you get him out of there, you get him back to Earth and back to Paris and back to the home you know he still remembers. And then worry about the trust."
Leonard stared, dumbfounded, for a moment. "Jim told me once, a long time- right, he told me, he said, the day he drove his father's car into a quarry, he jumped out of it at the last moment and almost didn't make it. He said that he realized, because he did catch himself, because he didn't fall, he knew that maybe no one else would, but he'd always be there for himself. Even if it was just by his fingertips, he'd get a grip."
"So you know what you have to do."
"Push him off a cliff?"
Nyota rolled her eyes. "Yes, Len, or hold a phaser to his head and ask how lucky he feels."
"I have to make him see it again, I have to get him to not trust this place over himself."
She nodded. "And you know we'll be there - me and Spock and Scotty and Pavel and Hikaru - anytime you need us?"
"I know."
"Go bring our boy home."
Leonard smiled. "How is it you always make me feel twenty pounds lighter?"
"I'm just fantastic is all," she laughed, smiling back. "Call if you need me."
"Always. Thanks Nyota."
Leonard severed the connection, feeling the sunshine on his face for the first time in weeks. She was right. If Jim didn't want to leave the hospital, maybe it was time to change tactics.
The hospital was dark, which made sense, it being night and all. Both the moons had set, and the stars shown faintly between the bars on the windows, little more than lightning bugs in the inky morass outside the hospital.
Leonard missed Earth on nights like this, missed Georgia. He loved Paris and the home he and Jim made together, but a little part of him would always remember camping on lake Tobesofkee with his father, the clear summer sky free of the light pollution that would later become the norm. He knew Jim had similar memories, nights with Sam when they didn't want to deal with home, nights when the Kirk brothers would sneak out and lie in the fields, counting the stars until they fell asleep.
The first thing Leonard was going to do, when he got his Jim back, he was going to take them both camping somewhere quiet and private with the Milky Way painted above their heads, purple and white and blue, a split in the sky. Leonard will point up at the godforsaken star they're orbiting now and whisper how he loves Jim, how he needs him, how he'll always find him, no matter how far.
But for the time being reality was the hospital on Kythar, trying to keep his boots quiet on the vinyl flooring as he made his way down the hallway.
Leonard felt uneasy with what he was about to do. His three months on the planet, working with what was left of Jim's mind made him wonder, perhaps indulgently, if stealing him away was the right thing to do. The prime directive, as he understood it, was about non-interference and allowing people to choose their own destiny, and yet here he was, a newly minted Admiral, preparing to kidnap a man who had no interest in leaving the hospital, let alone the planet, and planning to make him into the man McCoy and the Fleet wanted him to be.
It felt wrong, and yet there he was, his left hand on the knob of Jim's room as his right keyed in his access code.
The door swung inward, casting a column of light into the room. Leonard thought it should fall across Jim's face, illuminate his golden hair and remind him of how in love they were when they were younger. It didn't, instead the light landed across the foot of Jim's bed.
Leonard steeled himself to step into the room - breathing deeply and trying to do things the way Jim would, with confidence and definition - when, from down the hall, a voice called his name.
"Ossa?"
He turned to the voice, hating the name he chose more and more with each passing day. It was meant to jar Jim's memory, help him recover himself. Leonard hadn't been counting on his partner being so far gone that he wouldn't recognize the Latin word for "bones."
The voice belonged to Nurse Latt, the person in the hospital who had the closest thing to a relationship with Jim. She smiled at Leonard, blinking her eyes rapidly, the common sign of emotional distress in the Kytharn.
"Latt," he said, inclining his head to the side and touching two fingers to his bared neck in greeting. She echoed the gesture, drawing close on her silent feet. He envied her stealth.
"Checking on Jamith?"
"I am," he said, forgetting the affirmative motion he was supposed to use. Even after three months, it didn't come naturally to Leonard, and body language was so important to these people, it got messy if you touched the wrong ridge or ran your fingers through your hair. His coworkers saw Leonard as stoic, if only because he erred on the side of caution, choosing to remain still instead of giving the wrong signals. He blinked, as she had done before. "I worry for him."
Her motion of sorrow was sincere. "I worry too," she said, "but now he sleeps."
Leonard used a finger to rapidly trace his right eyebrow in impatience. "I see that he sleeps. I need to check his blood pressure - Thykaa had to sedate him again today, it is why he has no guard."
Latt lifted her left shoulder - that was affirmative. Of course the human gesture for feeling unsure was Kytharn for yes, that was the kind of frustrating fucking place this was. "I was here to do the same thing. You may leave if you wish," she said, leaving her mouth open at the end of the sentence in what Leonard was pretty sure was deference to authority, or maybe indigestion.
"I will do it," he said, and she raised her shoulder again, pressing the blood pressure meter she held into his hands.
"You will need this, then," she told him, and he cursed his luck. Of course Latt would notice, and of course she would be the one to find him there.
"That will be all, Latt," he said, making the impatience gesture again. She regarded him sharply for a moment, blinking like a heartbeat, before turning on her heel without so much as the gesture of good health that was the customary goodbye. If Leonard had any intention of seeing Latt again, he would have been worried. As it was, he would have Jim out of the hospital in under ten minutes, barely long enough for her to convince herself that something was wrong.
In some ways, Leonard regretted that. Latt was sharp in a way he hadn't often seen. Hell, she was the only one of her goddamned people he could remotely stand and he had, on occasion, thought about bringing her back with them, to be a nurse in Starfleet. She would be as good as Christine was, once she was trained, and Christine was the best nurse he had ever worked with, even if she had lost her damn senses and become a doctor. But it was a dream, for so many reasons, and so he stepped into Jim's room, the door clicking shut behind him.
The drugs the Kytharn used were simple by Starfleet's standards; they used a Phenothiazine derivative to sedate Jim and manage his so-called delusions. Leonard paused at Jim's bed, Latt's pressure cuff clutched in his hands, and took a moment to just look.
He hadn't seen Jim sleeping, not really. He'd seen him sedated and laid out, but there was a calmness to Jim when he slept, an evenness that Leonard had missed. It was all he could do not to smooth down Jim's hair and kiss his forehead.
Instead he pulled the hypo from his pocket - it was loaded with a stimulant and tracers, so if Jim tried to run (and he wouldn't, his legs were a little unsteady these days from the degrading prosthetics) Leonard would still be able to call Excelsior and get them both back. Standing over his partner, hypo at the ready, Leonard briefly flashed back to the first time he saw Jim sedated, that first mission on Enterprise, racing off to save Vulcan. These past months hadn't been too different - the unsureness, the fear, the adrenalin of trying to find Jim inside the mess the Kytharn had made. Leonard never really thought, on that first mission that they would fail, but he supposed age had changed him; all he had done on this goddamned mission was think about the ways it could go wrong.
Even now, end in sight, he stood worried about the next few minutes, using the peridoxycine without triggering an allergic reaction, getting out without being caught by Latt or upsetting Jim, having his molecules rearranged... it all seemed too big to Leonard, all of a sudden, too much.
So he took a deep breath and pressed the hypo to Jim's neck. The familiar hiss was deafening in the small room, making the hairs on the back of Leonard's neck stand up straight. He counted to ten, as slowly as he dared, and on 9, one of Jim's eyes flicked open.
"Ossa?" he asked, sleep and drugs and strange language clogging his voice.
"Hello, Jamith," Leonard smiled, extending a hand. He was sure the Kytharn had a meaning for it, the right hand, held with the palm up, but he was counting on Jim to recognize the gesture with his human brain, the instinct that was so ingrained in him.
It worked, Jim reached out and laid his hand on Leonard's, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.
"I was just dreaming about you," Jim muttered. "Dreaming about a spaceship, and stars and something about you."
"Was it a nice dream?" Leonard handed Jim a pair of pants, which he pulled on mindlessly. McCoy had seen Jim naked a few times since he had arrived, in examinations, but he felt like he was seeing his partner for the first time, how his ribs were starting to show and the prosthetics were causing uneven lumps under his skin. It made him want to scream, maybe, or cry, but he swallowed the lump in his throat and handed Jim the dark hooded sweatshirt he had brought.
"I think so," Jim said, pulling on the shirt and smiling at Leonard. He seemed more awake, like the process of dressing had roused him, but there was still a dreaminess about him. "What hour is it?"
"After moonset," Leonard said, and if the way he used the Kytharn language was stilted, people tended to chalk it up to regional differences and education, rather than his non-native tongue.. "I thought that it might be easier for you to step outside in the darkness." Getting Jim outside was a critical part of the plan. They couldn't beam him out because of the mineral content of the walls, or something else that Leonard didn't understand, but once they were in the open air, the transporter could take them. He was supposed to avoid being seen by locals, if possible, but Leonard cared less about how they will explain the mysterious light and disappearance and more about getting Jim the fuck back to Earth.
Jim studied Leonard for a long moment, and McCoy held his breath, afraid that any sudden movement might set Kirk off, as he had so often in the past. Finally, after an eternity of the question heavy in the air, Jim raised his shoulder in affirmation, and Leonard gulped oxygen in relief.
McCoy lead the way, using his code to open the doors as they got further and further from the secure ward where Jim was kept. His brain wanted him to move slowly, hugging walls and shadows and corners, but all the training Pike insisted on came in handy for once, and Leonard fought his instinct down, letting Jim follow as they strode purposefully through the evening-dim halls. Well, Leonard strode, and he fought down the urge not to help Jim, who was slower, and favoring his right leg.
By some grace, and Leonard has no idea what he'd done to deserve it, they don't meet Latt on her rounds. He knew she would stop him; not because she was intent of keeping Jim prisoner, though sometimes McCoy thought that was the purpose of this place, but because she was smart and genuinely cared for her patients and she would know that this was a bullshit exercise.
The walk still seemed to take forever, the halls extending to the horizon and each footstep echoing like an avalanche. It was only a six minute walk, Leonard had timed it, but he still felt a flood of relief and joy when he saw the front desk, mercifully staffed by a nurse who Leonard long ago decided was not the brightest star in the sky.
"Ossa," she greeted him, and he bared his neck to her as he had to Latt earlier.
"Hello, Parchint," he said, as she repeated his gesture. "I am taking Jamith outside for three minutes."
"You will need to sign this," she said, pointing to the patient-guest roster, and he did, marking the symbols that made up both their borrowed names in the appropriate places.
"We will be back shortly," he told her, and she cupped her hands, holding them forward in the gesture of farewell. He spared a moment to imagine Uhura's voice, explaining why the gestures were the way they were, and the excitement she got from it, the passion in her eyes as she had demonstrated this one. Apparently the cupped hands were regional and were meant to represent how a man drank water from the stream - in this arid area, it was a blessing to say something like ‘may the path ahead be full of water.' Leonard knew he remembered it imperfectly, but that wasn't the point now. Now the point was getting Jim to take those seven steps to the outside, and then fifteen around the corner to beam up.
He turned to study Jim, who was blinking in distress at the doors to the outside.
"Are you prepared?" Leonard asked, and Jim looked down at his feet.
"No, Ossa," he said, "I do not think I can do this."
Leonard smiled sadly. So it would come to this - kidnap or cajole. "Will you step up to the doors for me?" he asked, and Jim turned to study his face for a long moment.
"I think I dreamed about you before we met," Jim said, and took a step forward. "I had dreams about a man of your size, but pale like me. He was not called Ossa," Jim took another small step, and Leonard turned to look at the nurse behind the desk, who didn't even have the grace to pretend not to stare.
"Please get him some tharn nectar," Leonard told her softly, knowing the sweet drink was a favorite among the nurses for its elevated caffeine content. He figured she would stop to get some herself, and leave them in peace for the precious few minutes he needed. She scrambled to comply, and when she had left, Leoanrd turned back to Jim. "Tell me more about your dream man," he said, urging another step forward.
Jim took the step. "I think I was in love with him, and I think he loved me back," Jim's voice was stronger, and his next step more sure. "And sometimes when you look at me, Ossa, I think you must have dreamed the same dreams."
Leonard swallowed. "I did," he whispered, and they took a fifth step. "It is why I came, I dreamed about a green-walled home on a far away planet and a tall man with light hair who needed me. I dreamed that I would meet him and he would want to get better if he was sick," one more step, and the automatic doors swished open, letting the breeze buffet their faces.
"I want to get better," Jim said, and took the last step into the night air, turning to look at Leonard. "And I want you to help me."
"I will," Leonard said. "Do you trust me?"
Jim raised his shoulder and slipped his hand into Leonard's. McCoy thought, in that moment, that it was all going to be okay, that Jim was better and they could go home. They took a few tentative steps toward the secluded beam-out site when suddenly, overhead, one of the large insectoids that filled the air at night made its buzzing call. Jim stiffened, and Leonard tightened his grip. There was no time to lose.
Barely thinking, Leonard grabbed for the communicator in his pocket. The moment of distraction allowed Jim to wrench his hand back, his eyes wide with panic. "Why have you brought me here?" he demanded, glaring daggers at Leonard. "What are you holding?"
Leonard made a grab for Jim's arm, but missed as Jim turned to race back to the safety of the hospital. In a decision he would never be able to explain later, Leonard grabbed the flapping hood of Jim's sweatshirt and, as the other man tried to wrench himself free of the grip, of the outside, Leonard screamed into his communicator.
"Excelsior! Now!"
He had never before felt comforted by the feeling of his atoms falling apart, but the relief was not long-lived. As soon as he opened his eyes on the pad back on the ship, McCoy felt a solid fist impact his cheekbone, and he went down, dazed.
Leonard woke in a panic, his heart hammering in his chest. He'd been dreaming of bodies, of severed limbs, of trying to make a functioning whole out of not enough pieces. The dark of the room felt different from his rooms on Kythar; there was no light from the window, no singing of the harymant beetle. Just darkness and the pounding of his blood in his ears. As he relaxed, the faint thrum of engines floated up to his ears, and he remembered, like a bolt, that he was back on Excelsior, with Jim. With what was left of Jim.
"Computer," he called, "lights fifty percent."
The room slid into focus, the framed picture he had brought with him was perched on the dresser grinning back at him like a mockery- Joanna and Jim, laughing in the Georgia sunlight. It felt like a lifetime ago that Joanna was that young, but longer since she and Jim had both been that happy. He turned his head and sat up, rubbing his face where Jim hit him. He thought he would have a rather impressive bruise later; if there's one thing Jim was known for, it was hitting like a kiloton hammer. Apparently a year and a half of malnourishment and wasting away hadn't taken his adrenalin rush from him, or his ability to act in it.
"Computer, location of James Kirk."
"Admiral Kirk is in sickbay isolation room V," the computer replied, the same soothing female voice it had always been. Leonard dimly wondered who she was, the computer voice, and what she did when she wasn't a computer voice.
He raised his shoulder to the computer before remembering himself and smiling. He could stop that, now, he could nod his head and wave his hands and not worry about the implications, because he knew them like breathing. He was still fully dressed, he noted, and assumed that Chekov must have had him put back here after Jim hit him, to recoup.
He moved to his terminal, logging in and pulling up CMO Ochoa's report on Jim. Apparently Leonard had been asleep for long enough for Ochoa to remove the prosthetics and repair most of the damage. Leonard winced as he scanned the list. Jim wouldn't be regaining the full range of motion in his shoulders, and he would have arthritis in most of his upper body for the rest of his life. His legs were better off - a bit of necrotic tissue associated with the prosthetics had been excised, but modern tech meant that it would only be days before Jim was back on his feet, not weeks or years, and for that Leonard was thankful The arthritis was more worrisome; the pain would be managed but still, Leonard's memories of vivacious, bouncing Jim seemed to get further and further from him as he read the report.
There wasn't much in the way of psych, not yet. McCoy assumed this had more to do with Jim being unable or unwilling to speak than any failure on the part of the medical staff. Leonard briefly considered going down there, to see Jim or maybe just to see if Jim will even look at him, but he thought he knew the answer already.
So instead he decided to order a cup of tea and write to Joanna. His part of the mission was over; he'd gotten Jim out, he'd performed the tasks assigned to the best of his ability. It didn't feel great and he wasn't pleased with the whole situation, but once they got back to Earth and Jim was in the hands of the people who knew what they were doing, it would only be a matter of time before things could be normal again.
Leonard stared at the blank page of his letter, the blinking cursor exactly as frustrating as always, trying to figure out what to tell Joanna. She was an adult now, not his little girl, and at thirty-seven years old she was a successful and happy doctor in Proxima. They didn't always have the happiest of relationships or the easiest, but Leonard loved her more than anything else he'd ever known, and she had accepted Jim as a parental figure with grace and ease that had astounded all of them at the time, and she had been there for her father when Jim had disappeared. If anyone did, Joanna deserved to know what was happening.
Leonard just wasn't sure he knew what to tell her.
He was still staring hopelessly when his comm sounded. "McCoy," he offered, flipping it open.
"Doctor," Sulu's warm voice flooded over the connection. "Glad to have you back in consciousness."
"Glad to be back," Leonard offered with a smile Sulu couldn't see. "That man can still punch, huh?"
"Apparently. Will you join me and Pavel for supper?"
Leonard moved to lift his shoulder in the affirmative, but caught himself before the gesture was complete and nodded instead, glancing at the chronometer on his desk. "I would be honored. 1900?"
"We'll see you there. Sulu out."
Leonard wasn't sure how he had forgotten how soothing, how calming Sulu could be. He had somehow let it slide from his mind, and that seemed like a damn crime. He had allotted half an hour to get ready, so he closed the empty letter without saving, and moved to take a shower.
It didn't matter. Jim was back, and Leonard would be holding him close soon enough.
Leonard only saw Jim once on the ship, when he stopped into sickbay to have his prosthetics and his skin and eye pigmentation removed.
He was pleasantly surprised to see that Jim hadn't been strapped down; rather he was sitting calmly on a biobed, talking to a doctor whose name was something like Patel. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he did try to eavesdrop just a little, to get some idea of what was going on in Jim's head. He knew better, as a doctor and a person, to infringe on someone's confidentiality like that, but Leonard had never been an especially patient man, and he wouldn't have been a doctor if he could contain his curiosity.
McCoy didn't end up hearing any of Jim and the other doctor's conversation, because when Jim caught sight of him, he stiffened and his eyes went wide.
There was a bit of Kytharn body language in his reaction; the elevated blinking and the way Jim rubbed the place on his hand where his sixth finger should be. Leonard had to stop himself from whispering in Patel's ear, pointing out the signs of distress Jim had learned to display.
Instead Jim leaned into Patel and made a motion, and Leonard figured his identity was being obtained by the scared man who used to be his partner. He didn't let himself feel his heart skip at that thought, at the idea that even here, even surrounded by the things Jim believed in and fought for, they were strangers.
He heard his name spoken, "Doctor McCoy," but it wasn't Patel's soft alto that said it. Rather it was Dr. Ochoa, ready to see to the work Leonard needed done.
He followed the man into his office for the first procedure, feeling Jim's eyes bore holes in the back of his head as he went and resisting, with every fiber of his being, the outright need to turn and look back.
Masterpost| Part One|Part Two| Part Three| Epilogue