Chasing Shadows (Kirk/McCoy R) 2/3
Title: Chasing Shadows - Part 2
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 6,305 (15,512 overall)
Warnings: political intrigue, angst, hurt/comfort
Summary: When a planet's leader is murdered and Jim and Bones are blamed, they end up stranded on the planet injured and not knowing when they'll be rescued.
Part 1
Everything sounded like it was underwater, all garbled and distant and holy shit, why did everything hurt?
The world came jarringly back into focus while he simultaneously remembered what had happened as he registered the noise through the haze to be Bones calling out his name. "About damn time," Bones muttered as Jim finally focused on his face, taking in the mixture of sand and sweat coating his skin and uniform, and the way Bones was holding his right arm close to his side.
"What's wrong with your arm?"
"Dislocated my shoulder getting out from between the seat and what used to be the console. It's been at least an hour - gotta get some difference between us and whoever's being sent to get us." Bones looked at him expectantly. "Now can you wiggle your toes?"
Jim laughed at the question. "That gonna get us out of here?"
"The tricorder from the other shuttle got damaged when you crashed us into the side of a mountain and I can't access the one in this shuttle without your help since the panel crumpled so badly. Need to make sure your spine didn't get crushed and leave you paralyzed the old-fashioned way."
Leaning his head back against the back of the seat, Jim was starting to doubt his genius idea. "Yeah, I can wiggle my toes. Will you help me out of here, now?"
It took a lot of creative counterbalancing to squeeze out of the harness and then out from under the collapsed console. He kept his mouth shut when Bones lifted what was left of Jim's uniform jacket and the undershirt to palpate his chest and abdomen, checking for internal bleeding and bruised or broken ribs, Jim figured. He had been bleeding, he realized, from where the safety harness had dug into his torso when they'd crashed into the mountain, and he was certain the bruising would be epic, but otherwise Jim felt fine. The obvious grimace when Bones shifted his weight to his right alerted Jim that Bones hadn't fared as well. "Bones, what's wrong with your leg?"
"Fractured tibial shaft. For any future shuttle crashes I'm in I now know it's a bad idea to try and brace for impact." He seemed satisfied that Jim's injuries weren't going to kill him, lowering Jim's shirt. "Wouldn't have dislocated my shoulder if I could've put my full weight on my leg to get out."
"About that…" Jim started, not giving Bones enough time to figure out what was about to happen before grabbing the doctor's forearm, bending it up at the elbow and putting his body weight into it as he then pulled Bones' arm across his body, Bones screaming in his ear from the pain as Jim felt his shoulder snap back into place. "Change of pace to not have to be doing that to myself," he said, pressing his face against Bones' neck as an apology. "Better?"
"Part of me, anyway." He leaned against Jim, taking his weight off of his right leg.
Jim wrapped Bones' arm across his shoulders, hoping the shuttle had managed to get out a distress signal before everything died since both of their communicators, it seemed, had also been destroyed. It was slow moving getting out of the shuttle, not enough room in some places for them to stand up all the way, and Jim needed to use the manual override to get the gangway open. He grabbed the emergency supply kit, both medkits, the Yaeeaarian weapon, two phasers, and the phaser rifle that looked the least damaged in the small weapons cache.
"We need to stay above the tree line," Jim said, remembering why he thought the mountains had been such a great idea to begin with. "There's hundreds, thousands, of abandoned crystal mines. Ship won't be able to pick up life signs in the caves so there'll be watch shifts." Jim only suggested shifts because he knew Bones would just yell at him if he expected him to just hide until they were rescued because of his injury.
"It'll be safest during the middle of the night and day." Bones was talking through clenched teeth, the mountain not too steep but ascending meant every other step required more weight on his right leg than it really should have put on it, even with Jim supporting him. "The Yaeeaarians are ectothermic - they can't thermoregulate and stay indoors when the temperature gets too hot or cold."
That explained the tunnels and the timing of yesterday's ceremony. Jim's briefing reports sent from the admiralty tended to only include cultural notes and information on previous encounters with the race, not physiology.
They hiked for two hours, slow-moving, until the sun was highest in the sky and it was so hot that sweating wasn't even helping as it immediately evaporated off their skin. They'd been looking into each mine they came across, having some reason to dislike each location (didn't face the direction the Yaeeaarians would be coming from, dropped off to a cliff after the mouth of the cave, one just didn't feel right even though Jim couldn't put his finger on why) until pain and exhaustion had them settling on a south-facing cave with a runoff stream in it that really seemed like the best it was going to get.
Jim helped Bones settle against the cave wall before taking the collapsible canteens out of the emergency kit and filling them with water to drink from the stream. The water wasn't as cold as Jim would've liked, but it was better than nothing. He shrugged out of his uniform jacket, which was admittedly more shredded than whole, to get rid of an extra layer as he took a mental note of how many ration bars the kit had contained. He sat besides Bones, relishing that at least the stone floor and walls of the cave felt cool against his heated skin, keeping the phasers and the rifle within reach as he watched Bones go through the two medkits, inventorying what they had (a hypospray with some vials and a laser scalpel) against what they didn't (the dermal regenerator was crushed and neither of the tricorders worked, but with some time it might be possible to repair one with parts from the other, although Jim was hoping they wouldn't be there that long). He watched with some trepidation as Bones loaded up the hypospray. "You're not planning on stabbing me with that thing, are you?"
"Analgesic for me," Bones responded, shooting the drug into his thigh. "Have anti-emetics and antimicrobials, as well, but not enough of the latter for a full round of treatment or even a full day, so it's useless." Jim could see his face relax slightly as the painkiller kicked in before he bent his right leg at the knee, using the laser scalpel at a low setting to cut vertical strips from the bottom hem of his pants to the bend of his leg. It was only then that Jim saw the blood that had been disguised by the black pants of Bones' uniform. Bones poured water from the canteen over a spot a few inches below his knee and to the outside of his leg, revealing the source of the bleeding. Jim could see that Bones' lower leg was swollen and already starting to bruise, the edge of the broken bone just through the skin. "Jim, I need your help for this part."
He startled at the suggestion. "I can't set it - I'm a Starfleet captain, not a doctor," Jim said, mocking the tone he'd often heard from the other man, and took the wry smile from Bones for what it was. Bones wasn't going to give him the chance to back away. "What do you need me to do?" Jim asked soberly.
Bones explained how Jim needed to apply pressure to the broken end as he slipped out of his uniform jacket, shredding it into strips with his hands. He pointed out an abandoned pickaxe that Jim hadn't even noticed near the old mine cart tracks that probably led tens of kilometers through the mountain, and once he'd retrieved it so Bones could cut off the head, it seemed like the best they were going to do for a splint. Jim hoped he wasn't too off the mark when he pushed at Bones' shin with one hand and held the axe handle in place with the other as Bones wrapped the splint to his leg with what used to be his jacket.
"Don't blame me if you end up disfigured," Jim attempted to joke, but either Bones wasn't hearing it or he could tell that Jim was just trying to cover up his nervousness.
"Can just rebreak it and spend some time under the osteogenic stimulator once we get back on the ship." That calmed Jim - the fact that Bones had said when and not if. Or at least as calm as he could get while having the other man's blood on his hands, running slowly between his fingers, and could feel his broken shin shifting unnaturally in his grip. Bones wasn't good at sugar-coating difficult situations, so it was nice to hear that the doctor actually thought they'd be found because even Jim wasn't liking the odds of the Enterprise passing over them in orbit around Yaeeaari during the limited window that they could sit outside the cave when the Yaeeaarians wouldn't be after them.
The first real mission the Enterprise had been given since he was made her captain and not only were the natives after them, but Jim had also managed to total a shuttlecraft and get Bones injured at the same time. Maybe it was too soon, he was too young, too inexperienced, and while the admiralty knew the public would expect them to reward command to the cadet who had saved Earth, Jim wondered if they just should have let him stick to milk runs.
He hadn't noticed that Bones had finished tying off the fabric until Jim felt a hand on the side of his neck, one that he covered with his own even as he avoided eye contact. "This isn't your fault," Bones said, and Jim wished for a moment that the other man didn't know him so well.
+
Jim sat outside the cave on watch as the air cooled until it felt below five degrees outside, enough that he could see his breath but not enough that water would freeze. Dew formed on the sand as the ground was still heated from the intensity of the day's sun, releasing the moisture into the air that allowed Yaeeaari to have native flora. He took one last look at the sky, hoping for a star much too large, much too bright, and moving much too fast to be anything other than the Enterprise, but it remained still. Hefting the phaser rifle, Jim went back inside the cave. It was just too cold to stay out longer, and despite Bones' protests, he really needed the emergency blanket more than Jim did. With the open wound in his leg, Bones couldn't afford to compromise his immune system by being left shivering in the cave, and while they could just both sit outside under it, Jim thought he'd done enough walking for the day.
It took a bit for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the cave. They couldn't risk a fire since its light would be seen from the castle, Jim was sure, and neither of them were willing to risk looking for firewood under tree cover where the Enterprise wouldn't be able to detect their life signs.
Not for the first time was Jim thinking that it might just have been easier to surrender, to sit in some Yaeeaarian prison while they tried to figure out what happened and negotiate with Starfleet over what each side saw as an acceptable means to deal justice. The fact that they'd run away and that Jim had shot one of the guards just served to make them look more guilty. Jim frowned, putting the pieces together in his head.
He slid down the wall next to Bones, sitting to his left and carefully pulling the edge of the blanket over himself so the movement wouldn't jar Bones' right leg, which at some point in the last few hours had been elevated on a rock that Bones must have got on his own. "You're never getting on a shuttle ever again, are you?"
"I remember someone once telling me that they were supposed to be safe."
Bones was pressing something into his hand - a ration bar, and Jim realized he hadn't eaten since in the room after the party when his stomach growled, his body so desperate for food that even the cardboard-like bars seemed delicious. "The level of safety typically goes down when it's getting shot at." Jim was glad for the darkness as he ate the ration bar, preferring to not know what the wrapper claimed it was supposed to taste like. "I think we've been set up," he said after swallowing.
The darkness also served nicely to hide the "gee, ya think?" look Jim was certain Bones was currently leveling at him. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to make out Bones' scowling lips but not enough to tell the degree of how narrowed his eyes were. "Sometimes I wonder about your alleged test scores."
Jim pointedly ignored the remark, mostly because of all the sarcastic remarks he was sure Bones could have come up with, that was the least creative, which made Jim wonder how much pain Bones was in and if he'd at all dosed himself with more drugs since that first injection before the makeshift splint. He instead voiced the thoughts that had been running through his head as he'd sat outside the cave, keeping an eye out for anyone trying to come after them, friendly or otherwise. "I think the princess had this all arranged. She sent the majordomo to get us out - fleeing made us look guilty. The crowned prince wouldn't have killed his father - he'd lose the title if found out, and he was already set to join the Federation once he was made king."
"How's it change anything for the princess?" Bones asked, sounding suitably annoyed to be involved in the planet's political unrest in such a direct way.
This was the part that hadn't been as easy to figure out until he remembered a note about the royal line in the briefing. "There's only one royal family on the entire planet - marriages are arranged through lower families, commoners. The princess is only a princess because she is engaged to the crowned prince. She has no real title, no real power or wealth, until the king dies. The princess doesn't care about Starfleet and the Federation or their opinion of her planet."
"Feel so honored to be a part of it all," Bones said stiffly, shifting his weight so his left side was leaning against Jim's right, and Jim automatically slipped his arm around Bones' waist, holding him tighter and steady. "How long do you think we can stay holed up in here for? The Yaeeaarians do all their mining out here - it can't be completely inaccessible. They could have tunnels leading straight to the mountains, for all we know, and then it's just a matter of time before they get to the shuttle and scent out our trail."
Jim remembered the condensation on the sand outside. "I don't think there'll be much of a trail left to follow. Can't keep moving or your leg will start bleeding again because, in case you forgot, your bone was sticking out, and I don't need sunlight to know how pale you are right now. And I can feel you shivering, even with the blanket and my body heat."
"At least I don't have to worry about compartment syndrome." Jim felt Bones' mouth against his ear and tried not to think about how cool his lips felt against his skin. "You should go, get somewhere open where the Enterprise will find you."
"I'm not leaving you alone."
"Dammit, Jim, I'm not some damsel in distress - I can take care of myself until they send a shuttle to get us out of here, which will take longer if we keep hiding like scared rabbits." Bones pulled his head away, pressing it back against the wall of the cave. "My immune system's compromised, and I'm not liking the mental image of the alien bacteria scampering around the hole in my leg right now; it's just a matter of time before an infection sets in, and I'd like to keep my leg."
He knew Bones had a point - several, in fact - but that didn't mean Jim liked it any better. "You're not a damsel in distress, but I know your skills with a phaser are passable on a good day, forget when you're doped up and in pain." Jim just tried to sound concerned, which wasn't that difficult considering that he was, since he knew that Bones wouldn't think he was being an ass when Bones himself had argued with Jim that there was no point in him becoming more proficient with a phaser than the minimum score Starfleet had let him pass the training with.
This had to work, Jim kept telling himself. The shuttle would've given off a steady distress signal once it had been compromised with the lateral stabilizer getting blown, and even if the crash itself damaged the emergency communications system, there would've been a trail to track of where each SOS had been given off, leading to the mountains. The shuttle had been pulled down the mountain from initial impact to where it eventually stopped, sure, but the trail of damaged rock and downed trees seemed fairly obvious. And they were still on the same mountain, just at a higher elevation.
The trick with the timing was that the ship was in orbit over the planet, so she couldn't stay hovering over the same mountain. If Jim had known the circumference of the planet and its gravitational force he would've been able to calculate the size of the window the Enterprise would be overhead and able to pick them up on her scanners, but he didn't, which almost seemed better. All he knew for certain was that the planet was at least twice the size of Earth, hence the longer days, and while he didn't think the gravitational forces felt that different, it had been nearly a year since he'd last set foot on Earth.
Jim felt Bones' breathing deepening, becoming more even, as he'd fallen asleep pressed up against Jim with the cave wall behind both of them. Jim wondered how much of it was a side effect of the bare minimal dose of painkillers Bones was allowing himself and how much of it was sheer exhaustion as his body tried to heal itself. He tried to think of a scenario where he was willing to do as Bones had suggested and just leave the doctor alone in the cave while Jim got somewhere open for the Enterprise to pick up his readings, but he was having a hard time of it. He'd carry Bones if he had to - and it wasn't just because of what Bones was to him. Jim was the captain, damn it, and he wasn't going to abandon any member of his crew.
Taking one last glance at Bones, his night vision adjusted enough to see the way Bones' eyebrows were drawn together with discomfort, even as he slept, Jim let himself succumb to exhaustion. It felt vaguely like when he was six years old and he and Sam had been huddled under a blanket outside, leaning against the house, falling asleep trying to wait up all night for Mom to come home from a two week stint in space.
+
The first thing Jim noticed upon waking was that whatever adrenaline he'd been running on was apparently gone since between the crick in his neck from sleeping against a cave wall and the soreness from all the bruises he'd sustained when the shuttle crashed, he was in a fair amount of pain. He sat up from where he'd been lying, body pressed against the stone wall, brushing the sand out of his hair when he noticed the second thing: Bones wasn't there. He pulled the blanket off his lap, noting that the medkits had been left open nearby, the tricorders gone, and the phaser rifle was also missing. There was sunlight streaming in through the mouth of the cave, and from the slight breeze, Jim could tell it wasn't too hot out yet - it actually felt pleasant and would've been enjoyable in any other situation.
Exiting the cave, Jim immediately spotted Bones sitting on a boulder that couldn't have been more than a meter tall and had been smoothed to near-perfect flatness by the desert winds. Even from some distance away Jim could see how Bones' eyebrows were knitted together, but if it was from any pain the doctor was feeling or from the concentration Bones was giving one of the tricorders as he cut it open with the laser scalpel, Jim wasn't sure. He made a point to make some noise with his feet on the rocky slope as he approached Bones, not wanting to startle him and end up getting shot as he could see the rifle within easy reach of Bones' right hand. However much he liked the mock Bones' ability with a phaser, Jim knew it only really applied to the type-2s.
"Was starting to wonder if you were ever going to wake up." Bones sounded all right, considering, but Jim could see the beads of sweat at his hairline and if anything the air was still just slightly on the cool side.
Jim sat on the rock so his legs were hanging over the edge. "I'm going to write Starfleet a letter suggesting that emergency kits should come with an inflatable sleeping pad. Or at least a pillow." He rolled his neck, feeling and hearing vertebrae snap, which made the crick feel better but the stiffness was still there. He watched Bones' hands as the doctor popped open a panel in the back of the tricorder that he'd just cut open. "Can you fix it?"
"Depends on what's wrong with it and what parts I have. If it's just the wiring that's fried but it's affecting both of them, I won't be able to do anything about it."
"I didn't know you knew how to do that."
"Used to take my dad's apart," Bones explained, disconnecting wires to expose the power source and motherboard. He paused, looking at Jim and then at the cloudless, reddish sky. "Have you realized it'd be better if you went on without me yet?"
Jim felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on ends, not liking the suggestion anymore than he had however many hours ago. He knew Bones was a stubborn bastard, but he could be one, too. "We have shelter, water, and as disgusting as the ration bars are, it's enough food to last us a week if we eat until we're full, longer if we don't. I don't think risking dying of dehydration or exposure or falling off the side of a mountain is worth trying to get to higher ground, and then you'll be hoping the Yaeeaarians show up to put you out of your misery because of septic shock or whatever." Bones almost looked surprised that Jim had weighed all the options, which made Jim bristle defensively. "Shit, Bones, I thought you, at least, trusted my leadership skills unlike the rest of Starfleet."
Bones put down the laser scalpel and the tricorder he was working on, putting a hand on the back of Jim's neck to force their eyes to meet. "That's not what I was thinking," he said in a way that managed to be gruff yet affectionate. "I thought you were being stubborn out of blind loyalty."
"Well that, too." Jim only adverted his gaze after Bones' hand had slowly pulled away. His anger had been short-lived once he felt Bones' skin on his own, how warm the other man's hand was, and he watched as Bones picked the laser scalpel back up, noticing for the first time that typically steady fingers were trembling slightly. Jim didn't need the tricorder back in working order to figure out that Bones had a fever, the infection he'd been worried about was actually starting to set in, and the doctor wasn't trying to repair the tricorder thinking he'd be able to fix it. He needed the distraction. Jim couldn't help looking at Bones' splinted leg like he was trying to see through the strips of cloth down to the broken skin and bone underneath, like sheer willpower could drive the bacteria away. "How many doses of the antimicrobial do you have?"
"Three. Would need to be taken every six hours for a week without skipping a dose and the bacteria having a natural resistance to the drug." Bones' tone was neutral, calm, like he'd been reciting it in his head until the words had lost their meaning. While Jim was optimistic about their rescue, he doubted it would happen in the next eighteen hours, and that was all the medicine they had. "If the infection has set in the bone, I might as well try to save a burning house with no more than a leaky bucket."
Jim may not have had medical training, but he knew enough to know that the unspoken threat here was sepsis, and that there was no way to know how long it would take the infection to get into Bones' blood, if it wasn't already. He watched Bones' hand come up to brush his bangs away from his eyes as he switched the wiring between the two tricorders, which made Jim smirk a little. Whoever came down to get them would sure be in for a surprise to see the Enterprises's captain and CMO covered in a fine layer of sand with their dress uniforms ripped from the crash and maneuvering out of the downed shuttle with Bones' jacket torn into strips and tied around his leg.
"I'm glad you're finding some amusement in the situation at hand, Jim." Bones flipped over the less beat up looking tricorder in his hands, attempting to turn it on and looking triumphant for a split second when it started to beep but it vanished as the screen spit back nonsense, the data chips obviously damaged so the tricorder no longer knew how to interpret the data it was taking in. Bones scowled at the device like he could will it to work, brushing his hair back again.
"Was just thinking about the reactions the crew will have when they see what a sorry state we're in. Spock's eyebrows might go flying off his head before he starts reciting some regulation about unauthorized modifications to the uniform or some shit like that." Jim noticed the slight twitch at the corner of Bones' mouth as he fought off his own grin. Jim could spent the next hours or days until they were rescued making jokes at his first officer's expense if it meant Bones wasn't all focused on doom and gloom for a nanosecond. "You need a comb."
Bones snorted. "You need a shower."
Not to be outdone, Jim countered with, "You need to shave." He ran the back of his knuckles over Bones' cheek and jaw, feeling the nearly two days' worth of stubble that was growing there. If it weren't for the feverish glaze to Bones' eyes, to how he felt too warm and he couldn't seem to focus on Jim this close, Jim almost would've been able to pretend that they were on shore leave and had decided to rough it alone for a few days, getting some fresh air, sun, and privacy.
"You're just jealous that I can grow a beard at all," Bones replied, this time not hiding the bemused smile on his face, even if it wasn't entirely genuine.
Before Jim could respond, the wind picked up, shifted, blowing more sand at them hard enough that it hurt exposed skin. Jim took back the thought about shore leave - once they got off this rock, he never wanted to see this planet again. Even the weather, it seemed, wanted them dead. He grabbed the phaser rifle and helped Bones up, letting the doctor use him to keep his weight off his broken leg as they carefully made their way back into the shelter of the cave.
+
It had been three days. Local time, anyway. Back on the Enterprise it had been four days and Jim had started wondering what the hell was taking his crew so damn long when two hours ago, Bones started shivering because even being outside on a desert planet in the middle of the day felt too cold to his fever-ridden body. The fact that the doctor was suffering through it without a single complaint was what had Jim fidgeting, pacing, no longer able to just sit still and wait. He'd helped Bones exit the cave, leaning him just inside the mouth of it where there was sunlight but he could scoot into the shade if it got too hot. Bones was clutching the hypospray loaded with antimicrobials, Jim knew, like a security blanket, like Bones was trying to figure out the last possible second he could dose himself as Jim paced, periodically refilling their water from the stream, and trying not to have a panic attack about Bones being hurt and sick. He was the captain; he was supposed to be the one taking care of his crew, his friend, the man he loved, but there was nothing he could do about it but hope that rescue would come soon.
"Jim, you're making my goddamn head spin more than it already is, will you just hold still?"
He stopped, contemplating the tricorders and the laser scalpel where they'd been left on the rock the day before. He contemplated taking them apart to try and fix them, to keep his hands busy, but Bones complaining about his head was the first time he'd complained about anything in several hours and in some twisted way that gave Jim a bit of hope. He sat instead, leaning against the rock, preferring to be over with Bones, but they both knew at least one of them needed to be out in the open, just in case. "I feel useless."
"You feel helpless," Bones clarified, his face flushed and eyes bright from the fever.
"What's the difference?" Jim asked rhetorically, glowering at his hands resting on his knees.
"When I lose consciousness, I'm going to need you to keep me from dying, so I'd like to think that makes you somewhat useful." Bones' I'm-fed-up-with-your-shit tone wasn't as effective with the way his voice wavered, but it still got Jim sitting upright. "You're going to need to keep track of my heart and breathing rates, and you're going to have to keep track of time because when I do pass out, you're giving me this." Bones held up the hypospray, and as much as Jim really didn't like the idea of Bones taking a turn for the worse, it gave him something to focus his mind on.
Jim moved until he was seated directly in front of Bones. "Show me how."
He absorbed every word as Bones taught him how to count his breathing and heartbeats the way they used to hundreds of years ago when doctors still used stethoscopes and had to actually count and multiply while seconds ticked by instead of just looking at a tricorder's readouts. Jim learned how to load and unload the hypospray, how to adjust the dosage, and which arteries to use depending on where you wanted the medicine to go fastest. Sepsis was a blood infection - whether Jim gave Bones the hypo in the leg or in the neck, either artery would give the drug a direct line to Bones' heart to be distributed throughout his body. It wouldn't make things better but it would keep them from getting worse until help arrived, and once Bones got that first dose, they needed to arrive within eighteen hours.
It wasn't a matter anymore of waiting for rescue but for Bones' sepsis to get worse.
Bones then went on to tell Jim how to force him to drink water, explaining that dehydration lowers blood pressure and if it becomes too low, he'll go into septic shock. "It has a forty percent mortality rate and that's in a hospital." Bones took Jim's right hand, placing it on his neck, guiding the way to massage his throat to force him to swallow.
Their proximity and the desperation as the words "forty percent mortality rate" echoed through his head in Bones' much too calm voice had Jim pressing forward. He interrupted Bones with his lips, then his tongue, with a wordless promise that Jim would take care of him while he also silently pled for Bones to tell him that he would be okay. Jim pressed the palm of his hand down, hyper-aware of Bones' pulse beneath the tips of his fingers, as he straddled Bones' uninjured leg, like by somehow getting as close as possible would lend the strength his body needed to knock out the infection.
Jim felt Bones' hand on his chest, pushing him away, so he rocked back on his heels but otherwise didn't move. "You can't die," Jim said, not recognizing his own voice, the way it hitched as he tried to get out that last word. "When Ambassador Spock…" Jim put his hand on Bones' face, mimicking the mind meld. "You don't die before me, Bones."
The sadness and understanding in Bones' eyes made Jim look down at his chest. He felt Bones run a hand through his hair, down the side of his face, but Jim stayed focused on a grain of sand on Bones' shirt. "We're not them. Damn it, Jim, that wasn't the future you saw. You can't chase after your own shadow and try to live up to someone that only one person in this entire universe knew. If you're going to sit here and bitch about what's supposed to happen without you doing a damn thing about it, you better help me stand up so I can kick your ass so hard you'll leave the atmosphere, and you better fucking find the Enterprise while you're up there."
That was the most normal-sounding Jim had heard Bones since regaining consciousness in the crumpled shuttlecraft on the face of an alien mountain nearly two hundred hours ago. Jim was so relieved at the tone that he kissed Bones again but this time less desperately. His mind was running in overdrive at the myriad possible outcomes of their situation and while he'd usually be steadfast in his certainty of success, the fact that Bones was here too, the one person who was both Jim's strength and weakness all at once, who was hurt and sick and getting progressively worse with each passing minute, made Jim second guess his instincts. "You're not dying," he said this time, voice sounding more like a command than a plea.
"I sure as hell hope not," Bones replied, seeming satisfied with Jim's change in tone. "Will you get off my lap now? I don't think Starfleet Medical had your ass in mind when they wrote the section on makeshift tourniquets in an emergency situation."
Jim eased away carefully, bracing a hand against the rock face to press his weight into it as he rocked from a kneeling position into a crouch. "What else do I need to know?"
He let Bones lecture him on making sure he took care of himself as he talked about exposure and how the human brain shrinks when the body gets dehydrated so if Jim was planning on having a flash of genius to save the day, he better keep drinking water. When his words seemed to start to take more of an effort to get out and Bones' eyelids drooped from exhaustion as his body taxed his energy to fight the infection, Jim helped him back into the cave, rolling one of the emergency blankets into a tube to be used as a pillow because, he said, he didn't need Bones passing out and giving himself a concussion on the cave floor.
Bones fell into a fitful sleep in the middle of the day, and once the hottest angles of the sun passed, Jim went back outside to sit and watch their surroundings. The atmosphere started to paint blurry colors across the sky as the sun started its slow descent, and Jim jumped, grabbing the phaser rifle at the sound of movement from the treeline below, only to see the first signs of life since getting shot at by the Yaeeaarian guards. It was a herd of small mammals the size of house cats but looking more like deer with the snout of an aardvark, snuffling across the sand in search of insects. Jim moved slowly back into the cave so he didn't scare them away, wanting Bones to see the odd-looking things that were blissfully harmless and not trying to eat him unlike the last time he got stuck on a barren planet. When his third attempt to shake Bones awake failed, Jim grabbed the hypospray, pressing it into Bones' neck and starting his mental countdown.
Part 3
Rating: R
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 6,305 (15,512 overall)
Warnings: political intrigue, angst, hurt/comfort
Summary: When a planet's leader is murdered and Jim and Bones are blamed, they end up stranded on the planet injured and not knowing when they'll be rescued.
Part 1
Everything sounded like it was underwater, all garbled and distant and holy shit, why did everything hurt?
The world came jarringly back into focus while he simultaneously remembered what had happened as he registered the noise through the haze to be Bones calling out his name. "About damn time," Bones muttered as Jim finally focused on his face, taking in the mixture of sand and sweat coating his skin and uniform, and the way Bones was holding his right arm close to his side.
"What's wrong with your arm?"
"Dislocated my shoulder getting out from between the seat and what used to be the console. It's been at least an hour - gotta get some difference between us and whoever's being sent to get us." Bones looked at him expectantly. "Now can you wiggle your toes?"
Jim laughed at the question. "That gonna get us out of here?"
"The tricorder from the other shuttle got damaged when you crashed us into the side of a mountain and I can't access the one in this shuttle without your help since the panel crumpled so badly. Need to make sure your spine didn't get crushed and leave you paralyzed the old-fashioned way."
Leaning his head back against the back of the seat, Jim was starting to doubt his genius idea. "Yeah, I can wiggle my toes. Will you help me out of here, now?"
It took a lot of creative counterbalancing to squeeze out of the harness and then out from under the collapsed console. He kept his mouth shut when Bones lifted what was left of Jim's uniform jacket and the undershirt to palpate his chest and abdomen, checking for internal bleeding and bruised or broken ribs, Jim figured. He had been bleeding, he realized, from where the safety harness had dug into his torso when they'd crashed into the mountain, and he was certain the bruising would be epic, but otherwise Jim felt fine. The obvious grimace when Bones shifted his weight to his right alerted Jim that Bones hadn't fared as well. "Bones, what's wrong with your leg?"
"Fractured tibial shaft. For any future shuttle crashes I'm in I now know it's a bad idea to try and brace for impact." He seemed satisfied that Jim's injuries weren't going to kill him, lowering Jim's shirt. "Wouldn't have dislocated my shoulder if I could've put my full weight on my leg to get out."
"About that…" Jim started, not giving Bones enough time to figure out what was about to happen before grabbing the doctor's forearm, bending it up at the elbow and putting his body weight into it as he then pulled Bones' arm across his body, Bones screaming in his ear from the pain as Jim felt his shoulder snap back into place. "Change of pace to not have to be doing that to myself," he said, pressing his face against Bones' neck as an apology. "Better?"
"Part of me, anyway." He leaned against Jim, taking his weight off of his right leg.
Jim wrapped Bones' arm across his shoulders, hoping the shuttle had managed to get out a distress signal before everything died since both of their communicators, it seemed, had also been destroyed. It was slow moving getting out of the shuttle, not enough room in some places for them to stand up all the way, and Jim needed to use the manual override to get the gangway open. He grabbed the emergency supply kit, both medkits, the Yaeeaarian weapon, two phasers, and the phaser rifle that looked the least damaged in the small weapons cache.
"We need to stay above the tree line," Jim said, remembering why he thought the mountains had been such a great idea to begin with. "There's hundreds, thousands, of abandoned crystal mines. Ship won't be able to pick up life signs in the caves so there'll be watch shifts." Jim only suggested shifts because he knew Bones would just yell at him if he expected him to just hide until they were rescued because of his injury.
"It'll be safest during the middle of the night and day." Bones was talking through clenched teeth, the mountain not too steep but ascending meant every other step required more weight on his right leg than it really should have put on it, even with Jim supporting him. "The Yaeeaarians are ectothermic - they can't thermoregulate and stay indoors when the temperature gets too hot or cold."
That explained the tunnels and the timing of yesterday's ceremony. Jim's briefing reports sent from the admiralty tended to only include cultural notes and information on previous encounters with the race, not physiology.
They hiked for two hours, slow-moving, until the sun was highest in the sky and it was so hot that sweating wasn't even helping as it immediately evaporated off their skin. They'd been looking into each mine they came across, having some reason to dislike each location (didn't face the direction the Yaeeaarians would be coming from, dropped off to a cliff after the mouth of the cave, one just didn't feel right even though Jim couldn't put his finger on why) until pain and exhaustion had them settling on a south-facing cave with a runoff stream in it that really seemed like the best it was going to get.
Jim helped Bones settle against the cave wall before taking the collapsible canteens out of the emergency kit and filling them with water to drink from the stream. The water wasn't as cold as Jim would've liked, but it was better than nothing. He shrugged out of his uniform jacket, which was admittedly more shredded than whole, to get rid of an extra layer as he took a mental note of how many ration bars the kit had contained. He sat besides Bones, relishing that at least the stone floor and walls of the cave felt cool against his heated skin, keeping the phasers and the rifle within reach as he watched Bones go through the two medkits, inventorying what they had (a hypospray with some vials and a laser scalpel) against what they didn't (the dermal regenerator was crushed and neither of the tricorders worked, but with some time it might be possible to repair one with parts from the other, although Jim was hoping they wouldn't be there that long). He watched with some trepidation as Bones loaded up the hypospray. "You're not planning on stabbing me with that thing, are you?"
"Analgesic for me," Bones responded, shooting the drug into his thigh. "Have anti-emetics and antimicrobials, as well, but not enough of the latter for a full round of treatment or even a full day, so it's useless." Jim could see his face relax slightly as the painkiller kicked in before he bent his right leg at the knee, using the laser scalpel at a low setting to cut vertical strips from the bottom hem of his pants to the bend of his leg. It was only then that Jim saw the blood that had been disguised by the black pants of Bones' uniform. Bones poured water from the canteen over a spot a few inches below his knee and to the outside of his leg, revealing the source of the bleeding. Jim could see that Bones' lower leg was swollen and already starting to bruise, the edge of the broken bone just through the skin. "Jim, I need your help for this part."
He startled at the suggestion. "I can't set it - I'm a Starfleet captain, not a doctor," Jim said, mocking the tone he'd often heard from the other man, and took the wry smile from Bones for what it was. Bones wasn't going to give him the chance to back away. "What do you need me to do?" Jim asked soberly.
Bones explained how Jim needed to apply pressure to the broken end as he slipped out of his uniform jacket, shredding it into strips with his hands. He pointed out an abandoned pickaxe that Jim hadn't even noticed near the old mine cart tracks that probably led tens of kilometers through the mountain, and once he'd retrieved it so Bones could cut off the head, it seemed like the best they were going to do for a splint. Jim hoped he wasn't too off the mark when he pushed at Bones' shin with one hand and held the axe handle in place with the other as Bones wrapped the splint to his leg with what used to be his jacket.
"Don't blame me if you end up disfigured," Jim attempted to joke, but either Bones wasn't hearing it or he could tell that Jim was just trying to cover up his nervousness.
"Can just rebreak it and spend some time under the osteogenic stimulator once we get back on the ship." That calmed Jim - the fact that Bones had said when and not if. Or at least as calm as he could get while having the other man's blood on his hands, running slowly between his fingers, and could feel his broken shin shifting unnaturally in his grip. Bones wasn't good at sugar-coating difficult situations, so it was nice to hear that the doctor actually thought they'd be found because even Jim wasn't liking the odds of the Enterprise passing over them in orbit around Yaeeaari during the limited window that they could sit outside the cave when the Yaeeaarians wouldn't be after them.
The first real mission the Enterprise had been given since he was made her captain and not only were the natives after them, but Jim had also managed to total a shuttlecraft and get Bones injured at the same time. Maybe it was too soon, he was too young, too inexperienced, and while the admiralty knew the public would expect them to reward command to the cadet who had saved Earth, Jim wondered if they just should have let him stick to milk runs.
He hadn't noticed that Bones had finished tying off the fabric until Jim felt a hand on the side of his neck, one that he covered with his own even as he avoided eye contact. "This isn't your fault," Bones said, and Jim wished for a moment that the other man didn't know him so well.
+
Jim sat outside the cave on watch as the air cooled until it felt below five degrees outside, enough that he could see his breath but not enough that water would freeze. Dew formed on the sand as the ground was still heated from the intensity of the day's sun, releasing the moisture into the air that allowed Yaeeaari to have native flora. He took one last look at the sky, hoping for a star much too large, much too bright, and moving much too fast to be anything other than the Enterprise, but it remained still. Hefting the phaser rifle, Jim went back inside the cave. It was just too cold to stay out longer, and despite Bones' protests, he really needed the emergency blanket more than Jim did. With the open wound in his leg, Bones couldn't afford to compromise his immune system by being left shivering in the cave, and while they could just both sit outside under it, Jim thought he'd done enough walking for the day.
It took a bit for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the cave. They couldn't risk a fire since its light would be seen from the castle, Jim was sure, and neither of them were willing to risk looking for firewood under tree cover where the Enterprise wouldn't be able to detect their life signs.
Not for the first time was Jim thinking that it might just have been easier to surrender, to sit in some Yaeeaarian prison while they tried to figure out what happened and negotiate with Starfleet over what each side saw as an acceptable means to deal justice. The fact that they'd run away and that Jim had shot one of the guards just served to make them look more guilty. Jim frowned, putting the pieces together in his head.
He slid down the wall next to Bones, sitting to his left and carefully pulling the edge of the blanket over himself so the movement wouldn't jar Bones' right leg, which at some point in the last few hours had been elevated on a rock that Bones must have got on his own. "You're never getting on a shuttle ever again, are you?"
"I remember someone once telling me that they were supposed to be safe."
Bones was pressing something into his hand - a ration bar, and Jim realized he hadn't eaten since in the room after the party when his stomach growled, his body so desperate for food that even the cardboard-like bars seemed delicious. "The level of safety typically goes down when it's getting shot at." Jim was glad for the darkness as he ate the ration bar, preferring to not know what the wrapper claimed it was supposed to taste like. "I think we've been set up," he said after swallowing.
The darkness also served nicely to hide the "gee, ya think?" look Jim was certain Bones was currently leveling at him. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to make out Bones' scowling lips but not enough to tell the degree of how narrowed his eyes were. "Sometimes I wonder about your alleged test scores."
Jim pointedly ignored the remark, mostly because of all the sarcastic remarks he was sure Bones could have come up with, that was the least creative, which made Jim wonder how much pain Bones was in and if he'd at all dosed himself with more drugs since that first injection before the makeshift splint. He instead voiced the thoughts that had been running through his head as he'd sat outside the cave, keeping an eye out for anyone trying to come after them, friendly or otherwise. "I think the princess had this all arranged. She sent the majordomo to get us out - fleeing made us look guilty. The crowned prince wouldn't have killed his father - he'd lose the title if found out, and he was already set to join the Federation once he was made king."
"How's it change anything for the princess?" Bones asked, sounding suitably annoyed to be involved in the planet's political unrest in such a direct way.
This was the part that hadn't been as easy to figure out until he remembered a note about the royal line in the briefing. "There's only one royal family on the entire planet - marriages are arranged through lower families, commoners. The princess is only a princess because she is engaged to the crowned prince. She has no real title, no real power or wealth, until the king dies. The princess doesn't care about Starfleet and the Federation or their opinion of her planet."
"Feel so honored to be a part of it all," Bones said stiffly, shifting his weight so his left side was leaning against Jim's right, and Jim automatically slipped his arm around Bones' waist, holding him tighter and steady. "How long do you think we can stay holed up in here for? The Yaeeaarians do all their mining out here - it can't be completely inaccessible. They could have tunnels leading straight to the mountains, for all we know, and then it's just a matter of time before they get to the shuttle and scent out our trail."
Jim remembered the condensation on the sand outside. "I don't think there'll be much of a trail left to follow. Can't keep moving or your leg will start bleeding again because, in case you forgot, your bone was sticking out, and I don't need sunlight to know how pale you are right now. And I can feel you shivering, even with the blanket and my body heat."
"At least I don't have to worry about compartment syndrome." Jim felt Bones' mouth against his ear and tried not to think about how cool his lips felt against his skin. "You should go, get somewhere open where the Enterprise will find you."
"I'm not leaving you alone."
"Dammit, Jim, I'm not some damsel in distress - I can take care of myself until they send a shuttle to get us out of here, which will take longer if we keep hiding like scared rabbits." Bones pulled his head away, pressing it back against the wall of the cave. "My immune system's compromised, and I'm not liking the mental image of the alien bacteria scampering around the hole in my leg right now; it's just a matter of time before an infection sets in, and I'd like to keep my leg."
He knew Bones had a point - several, in fact - but that didn't mean Jim liked it any better. "You're not a damsel in distress, but I know your skills with a phaser are passable on a good day, forget when you're doped up and in pain." Jim just tried to sound concerned, which wasn't that difficult considering that he was, since he knew that Bones wouldn't think he was being an ass when Bones himself had argued with Jim that there was no point in him becoming more proficient with a phaser than the minimum score Starfleet had let him pass the training with.
This had to work, Jim kept telling himself. The shuttle would've given off a steady distress signal once it had been compromised with the lateral stabilizer getting blown, and even if the crash itself damaged the emergency communications system, there would've been a trail to track of where each SOS had been given off, leading to the mountains. The shuttle had been pulled down the mountain from initial impact to where it eventually stopped, sure, but the trail of damaged rock and downed trees seemed fairly obvious. And they were still on the same mountain, just at a higher elevation.
The trick with the timing was that the ship was in orbit over the planet, so she couldn't stay hovering over the same mountain. If Jim had known the circumference of the planet and its gravitational force he would've been able to calculate the size of the window the Enterprise would be overhead and able to pick them up on her scanners, but he didn't, which almost seemed better. All he knew for certain was that the planet was at least twice the size of Earth, hence the longer days, and while he didn't think the gravitational forces felt that different, it had been nearly a year since he'd last set foot on Earth.
Jim felt Bones' breathing deepening, becoming more even, as he'd fallen asleep pressed up against Jim with the cave wall behind both of them. Jim wondered how much of it was a side effect of the bare minimal dose of painkillers Bones was allowing himself and how much of it was sheer exhaustion as his body tried to heal itself. He tried to think of a scenario where he was willing to do as Bones had suggested and just leave the doctor alone in the cave while Jim got somewhere open for the Enterprise to pick up his readings, but he was having a hard time of it. He'd carry Bones if he had to - and it wasn't just because of what Bones was to him. Jim was the captain, damn it, and he wasn't going to abandon any member of his crew.
Taking one last glance at Bones, his night vision adjusted enough to see the way Bones' eyebrows were drawn together with discomfort, even as he slept, Jim let himself succumb to exhaustion. It felt vaguely like when he was six years old and he and Sam had been huddled under a blanket outside, leaning against the house, falling asleep trying to wait up all night for Mom to come home from a two week stint in space.
+
The first thing Jim noticed upon waking was that whatever adrenaline he'd been running on was apparently gone since between the crick in his neck from sleeping against a cave wall and the soreness from all the bruises he'd sustained when the shuttle crashed, he was in a fair amount of pain. He sat up from where he'd been lying, body pressed against the stone wall, brushing the sand out of his hair when he noticed the second thing: Bones wasn't there. He pulled the blanket off his lap, noting that the medkits had been left open nearby, the tricorders gone, and the phaser rifle was also missing. There was sunlight streaming in through the mouth of the cave, and from the slight breeze, Jim could tell it wasn't too hot out yet - it actually felt pleasant and would've been enjoyable in any other situation.
Exiting the cave, Jim immediately spotted Bones sitting on a boulder that couldn't have been more than a meter tall and had been smoothed to near-perfect flatness by the desert winds. Even from some distance away Jim could see how Bones' eyebrows were knitted together, but if it was from any pain the doctor was feeling or from the concentration Bones was giving one of the tricorders as he cut it open with the laser scalpel, Jim wasn't sure. He made a point to make some noise with his feet on the rocky slope as he approached Bones, not wanting to startle him and end up getting shot as he could see the rifle within easy reach of Bones' right hand. However much he liked the mock Bones' ability with a phaser, Jim knew it only really applied to the type-2s.
"Was starting to wonder if you were ever going to wake up." Bones sounded all right, considering, but Jim could see the beads of sweat at his hairline and if anything the air was still just slightly on the cool side.
Jim sat on the rock so his legs were hanging over the edge. "I'm going to write Starfleet a letter suggesting that emergency kits should come with an inflatable sleeping pad. Or at least a pillow." He rolled his neck, feeling and hearing vertebrae snap, which made the crick feel better but the stiffness was still there. He watched Bones' hands as the doctor popped open a panel in the back of the tricorder that he'd just cut open. "Can you fix it?"
"Depends on what's wrong with it and what parts I have. If it's just the wiring that's fried but it's affecting both of them, I won't be able to do anything about it."
"I didn't know you knew how to do that."
"Used to take my dad's apart," Bones explained, disconnecting wires to expose the power source and motherboard. He paused, looking at Jim and then at the cloudless, reddish sky. "Have you realized it'd be better if you went on without me yet?"
Jim felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on ends, not liking the suggestion anymore than he had however many hours ago. He knew Bones was a stubborn bastard, but he could be one, too. "We have shelter, water, and as disgusting as the ration bars are, it's enough food to last us a week if we eat until we're full, longer if we don't. I don't think risking dying of dehydration or exposure or falling off the side of a mountain is worth trying to get to higher ground, and then you'll be hoping the Yaeeaarians show up to put you out of your misery because of septic shock or whatever." Bones almost looked surprised that Jim had weighed all the options, which made Jim bristle defensively. "Shit, Bones, I thought you, at least, trusted my leadership skills unlike the rest of Starfleet."
Bones put down the laser scalpel and the tricorder he was working on, putting a hand on the back of Jim's neck to force their eyes to meet. "That's not what I was thinking," he said in a way that managed to be gruff yet affectionate. "I thought you were being stubborn out of blind loyalty."
"Well that, too." Jim only adverted his gaze after Bones' hand had slowly pulled away. His anger had been short-lived once he felt Bones' skin on his own, how warm the other man's hand was, and he watched as Bones picked the laser scalpel back up, noticing for the first time that typically steady fingers were trembling slightly. Jim didn't need the tricorder back in working order to figure out that Bones had a fever, the infection he'd been worried about was actually starting to set in, and the doctor wasn't trying to repair the tricorder thinking he'd be able to fix it. He needed the distraction. Jim couldn't help looking at Bones' splinted leg like he was trying to see through the strips of cloth down to the broken skin and bone underneath, like sheer willpower could drive the bacteria away. "How many doses of the antimicrobial do you have?"
"Three. Would need to be taken every six hours for a week without skipping a dose and the bacteria having a natural resistance to the drug." Bones' tone was neutral, calm, like he'd been reciting it in his head until the words had lost their meaning. While Jim was optimistic about their rescue, he doubted it would happen in the next eighteen hours, and that was all the medicine they had. "If the infection has set in the bone, I might as well try to save a burning house with no more than a leaky bucket."
Jim may not have had medical training, but he knew enough to know that the unspoken threat here was sepsis, and that there was no way to know how long it would take the infection to get into Bones' blood, if it wasn't already. He watched Bones' hand come up to brush his bangs away from his eyes as he switched the wiring between the two tricorders, which made Jim smirk a little. Whoever came down to get them would sure be in for a surprise to see the Enterprises's captain and CMO covered in a fine layer of sand with their dress uniforms ripped from the crash and maneuvering out of the downed shuttle with Bones' jacket torn into strips and tied around his leg.
"I'm glad you're finding some amusement in the situation at hand, Jim." Bones flipped over the less beat up looking tricorder in his hands, attempting to turn it on and looking triumphant for a split second when it started to beep but it vanished as the screen spit back nonsense, the data chips obviously damaged so the tricorder no longer knew how to interpret the data it was taking in. Bones scowled at the device like he could will it to work, brushing his hair back again.
"Was just thinking about the reactions the crew will have when they see what a sorry state we're in. Spock's eyebrows might go flying off his head before he starts reciting some regulation about unauthorized modifications to the uniform or some shit like that." Jim noticed the slight twitch at the corner of Bones' mouth as he fought off his own grin. Jim could spent the next hours or days until they were rescued making jokes at his first officer's expense if it meant Bones wasn't all focused on doom and gloom for a nanosecond. "You need a comb."
Bones snorted. "You need a shower."
Not to be outdone, Jim countered with, "You need to shave." He ran the back of his knuckles over Bones' cheek and jaw, feeling the nearly two days' worth of stubble that was growing there. If it weren't for the feverish glaze to Bones' eyes, to how he felt too warm and he couldn't seem to focus on Jim this close, Jim almost would've been able to pretend that they were on shore leave and had decided to rough it alone for a few days, getting some fresh air, sun, and privacy.
"You're just jealous that I can grow a beard at all," Bones replied, this time not hiding the bemused smile on his face, even if it wasn't entirely genuine.
Before Jim could respond, the wind picked up, shifted, blowing more sand at them hard enough that it hurt exposed skin. Jim took back the thought about shore leave - once they got off this rock, he never wanted to see this planet again. Even the weather, it seemed, wanted them dead. He grabbed the phaser rifle and helped Bones up, letting the doctor use him to keep his weight off his broken leg as they carefully made their way back into the shelter of the cave.
+
It had been three days. Local time, anyway. Back on the Enterprise it had been four days and Jim had started wondering what the hell was taking his crew so damn long when two hours ago, Bones started shivering because even being outside on a desert planet in the middle of the day felt too cold to his fever-ridden body. The fact that the doctor was suffering through it without a single complaint was what had Jim fidgeting, pacing, no longer able to just sit still and wait. He'd helped Bones exit the cave, leaning him just inside the mouth of it where there was sunlight but he could scoot into the shade if it got too hot. Bones was clutching the hypospray loaded with antimicrobials, Jim knew, like a security blanket, like Bones was trying to figure out the last possible second he could dose himself as Jim paced, periodically refilling their water from the stream, and trying not to have a panic attack about Bones being hurt and sick. He was the captain; he was supposed to be the one taking care of his crew, his friend, the man he loved, but there was nothing he could do about it but hope that rescue would come soon.
"Jim, you're making my goddamn head spin more than it already is, will you just hold still?"
He stopped, contemplating the tricorders and the laser scalpel where they'd been left on the rock the day before. He contemplated taking them apart to try and fix them, to keep his hands busy, but Bones complaining about his head was the first time he'd complained about anything in several hours and in some twisted way that gave Jim a bit of hope. He sat instead, leaning against the rock, preferring to be over with Bones, but they both knew at least one of them needed to be out in the open, just in case. "I feel useless."
"You feel helpless," Bones clarified, his face flushed and eyes bright from the fever.
"What's the difference?" Jim asked rhetorically, glowering at his hands resting on his knees.
"When I lose consciousness, I'm going to need you to keep me from dying, so I'd like to think that makes you somewhat useful." Bones' I'm-fed-up-with-your-shit tone wasn't as effective with the way his voice wavered, but it still got Jim sitting upright. "You're going to need to keep track of my heart and breathing rates, and you're going to have to keep track of time because when I do pass out, you're giving me this." Bones held up the hypospray, and as much as Jim really didn't like the idea of Bones taking a turn for the worse, it gave him something to focus his mind on.
Jim moved until he was seated directly in front of Bones. "Show me how."
He absorbed every word as Bones taught him how to count his breathing and heartbeats the way they used to hundreds of years ago when doctors still used stethoscopes and had to actually count and multiply while seconds ticked by instead of just looking at a tricorder's readouts. Jim learned how to load and unload the hypospray, how to adjust the dosage, and which arteries to use depending on where you wanted the medicine to go fastest. Sepsis was a blood infection - whether Jim gave Bones the hypo in the leg or in the neck, either artery would give the drug a direct line to Bones' heart to be distributed throughout his body. It wouldn't make things better but it would keep them from getting worse until help arrived, and once Bones got that first dose, they needed to arrive within eighteen hours.
It wasn't a matter anymore of waiting for rescue but for Bones' sepsis to get worse.
Bones then went on to tell Jim how to force him to drink water, explaining that dehydration lowers blood pressure and if it becomes too low, he'll go into septic shock. "It has a forty percent mortality rate and that's in a hospital." Bones took Jim's right hand, placing it on his neck, guiding the way to massage his throat to force him to swallow.
Their proximity and the desperation as the words "forty percent mortality rate" echoed through his head in Bones' much too calm voice had Jim pressing forward. He interrupted Bones with his lips, then his tongue, with a wordless promise that Jim would take care of him while he also silently pled for Bones to tell him that he would be okay. Jim pressed the palm of his hand down, hyper-aware of Bones' pulse beneath the tips of his fingers, as he straddled Bones' uninjured leg, like by somehow getting as close as possible would lend the strength his body needed to knock out the infection.
Jim felt Bones' hand on his chest, pushing him away, so he rocked back on his heels but otherwise didn't move. "You can't die," Jim said, not recognizing his own voice, the way it hitched as he tried to get out that last word. "When Ambassador Spock…" Jim put his hand on Bones' face, mimicking the mind meld. "You don't die before me, Bones."
The sadness and understanding in Bones' eyes made Jim look down at his chest. He felt Bones run a hand through his hair, down the side of his face, but Jim stayed focused on a grain of sand on Bones' shirt. "We're not them. Damn it, Jim, that wasn't the future you saw. You can't chase after your own shadow and try to live up to someone that only one person in this entire universe knew. If you're going to sit here and bitch about what's supposed to happen without you doing a damn thing about it, you better help me stand up so I can kick your ass so hard you'll leave the atmosphere, and you better fucking find the Enterprise while you're up there."
That was the most normal-sounding Jim had heard Bones since regaining consciousness in the crumpled shuttlecraft on the face of an alien mountain nearly two hundred hours ago. Jim was so relieved at the tone that he kissed Bones again but this time less desperately. His mind was running in overdrive at the myriad possible outcomes of their situation and while he'd usually be steadfast in his certainty of success, the fact that Bones was here too, the one person who was both Jim's strength and weakness all at once, who was hurt and sick and getting progressively worse with each passing minute, made Jim second guess his instincts. "You're not dying," he said this time, voice sounding more like a command than a plea.
"I sure as hell hope not," Bones replied, seeming satisfied with Jim's change in tone. "Will you get off my lap now? I don't think Starfleet Medical had your ass in mind when they wrote the section on makeshift tourniquets in an emergency situation."
Jim eased away carefully, bracing a hand against the rock face to press his weight into it as he rocked from a kneeling position into a crouch. "What else do I need to know?"
He let Bones lecture him on making sure he took care of himself as he talked about exposure and how the human brain shrinks when the body gets dehydrated so if Jim was planning on having a flash of genius to save the day, he better keep drinking water. When his words seemed to start to take more of an effort to get out and Bones' eyelids drooped from exhaustion as his body taxed his energy to fight the infection, Jim helped him back into the cave, rolling one of the emergency blankets into a tube to be used as a pillow because, he said, he didn't need Bones passing out and giving himself a concussion on the cave floor.
Bones fell into a fitful sleep in the middle of the day, and once the hottest angles of the sun passed, Jim went back outside to sit and watch their surroundings. The atmosphere started to paint blurry colors across the sky as the sun started its slow descent, and Jim jumped, grabbing the phaser rifle at the sound of movement from the treeline below, only to see the first signs of life since getting shot at by the Yaeeaarian guards. It was a herd of small mammals the size of house cats but looking more like deer with the snout of an aardvark, snuffling across the sand in search of insects. Jim moved slowly back into the cave so he didn't scare them away, wanting Bones to see the odd-looking things that were blissfully harmless and not trying to eat him unlike the last time he got stuck on a barren planet. When his third attempt to shake Bones awake failed, Jim grabbed the hypospray, pressing it into Bones' neck and starting his mental countdown.
Part 3