Wings Unto the Weary Heart (Kirk/McCoy PG-13)
Title: Wings Unto the Weary Heart
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 5,016
Warnings: reboot interpretation of Cupid and Psyche
Summary: For st_respect's Ship Wars, prompt #5: fairy tale.
Author's Note: Word limit for prompt #5 was 4k, so the first version of this story was more watered down. This story wasn't chosen as the Team Jones submission, so I got to add and extend scenes, which I feel make it more the story I wanted to tell. Special thanks to sangueuk for whipping that first version into shape because, really, this fic needed some serious help.
+++
Acting Captain's log, stardate 2262.238: Nine days ago, Enterprise picked up a distress signal from Apugleius IV, the host of Starfleet's annual medical conference that the Enterprise's Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Leonard H. McCoy, had been attending while Enterprise delivered the Denobulan ambassador to New Vulcan. The message suggested the attacking vessel could not be physically seen or picked up on their sensors.
Enterprise arrived in eleven-point-zero-nine hours at full warp to find Apugleius IV no longer under attack with no sign of the offending vessel. The most damage sustained was to the hospital hosting the conference, suggesting an attack against Starfleet. There were three significant traumas, a dozen lesser injuries, and one presumed loss of life.
Doctor McCoy's communicator was found in the rubble but no body was recovered. Any remains may have been vaporized based on the hospital's structural damage. Doctor Geoffrey M'Benga has been promoted to CMO. In accordance with Starfleet Regulation 619, Captain James T. Kirk has been removed from duty pending further emotional assessment.
+
Jim turned off the welding torch and lifted the mask away from his face. He smoothed a hand over the hull plating of the class J starship, the Prince of Denmark. Micrometeors caught Jim with his shields down, luckily piercing the cargo hold, but he stopped at the nearest planet with a skydock just to be safe. Märchenda wasn't a Federation world, which suited Jim's needs just fine.
"Isn't it dangerous on your own?" the dockmaster asked when Jim returned the equipment.
"Too small for any Klingons or pirates to want to pay me any attention." He'd made modifications over the years, just in case, but they hadn't been tested yet. "Recommend any places to stay for the night?"
The dockmaster gave directions to a motel freighter crews liked. Jim shook the man's hand and waited for the next shuttle to the surface.
+
"Ar'eliy."
"Yes, your majesty?"
"I want the blue-eyed one for myself. Visit him as he sleeps; make him forget his name."
"Yes, my queen."
+
Despite wearing an outfit made of woven metal fibers that rendered Ar'eliy invisible, he waited in the shadows. The queen liked to collect Märchenda's most beautiful visitors, having Ar'eliy dose them with a tonic that gave them selective amnesia. They tended to be freight crew, and even as they forgot who they were - their families and friends, where they came from - they always remembered their work from before. Ar'eliy suspected that the queen wanted them to be grateful to the queen for saving them from that life, but he wasn't one to question.
Ar'eliy followed the man all evening, watched him eat dinner, learned his name was Kirk, and that he lived alone in the black. Another miserable existence to be saved, Ar'eliy thought.
Ar'eliy waited until after Kirk fell asleep to climb in through the window, left open because of the humid night. He kept his back against the wall, opening the vial slowly. All that was required was a single drop on bare skin; Ar'eliy liked his life, wasn't looking to forget.
He reached the side of Kirk's bed, able to make out Kirk's fair hair and skin in the moonlight, but a twitch of Kirk's hand caused Ar'eliy to freeze. He held his breath as Kirk jolted awake, sitting up with a frown on his face as he looked directly at Ar'eliy. Startled, the vial slipped, tilted, a drop landing on the narrow strip of skin between his glove and sleeve. He bit his tongue to keep from swearing out loud, feeling a dull throb in the back of his head that increased in magnitude. He hurriedly ran out of the room and into an alley, collapsed to his knees, and clutched his head in pain.
His last thoughts before passing out came rushing to him like a drowning man's final gasp. Two distinct pieces of knowledge swirled together.
His name isn't Ar'eliy, and Jim.
+
Jim can't fall back asleep. He'd dreamed about Bones, one so real he'd woken up, thinking he could smell Bones' skin, and he couldn't shake the feeling.
It’d been five years since Apugleius IV, since losing the man he loved without even a body to bury. Five years since he lost his ship, his love of space dying with Bones. Jim asked to be honorably discharged before he did something stupid and reckless that got his crew killed. They deserved better than that. Bones' memory deserved better than that.
Jim hadn’t expected his mother to be the one to reach out to him, connected by a shared pain; Jim finally understood that she did the best she could when he was growing up. At least she had her sons.
She was the one to kick Jim out on his ass, pushing him back to space. Jim got the name of a guy who sold decommissioned Federation ships and was willing to give the hero who'd saved Earth from the same fate as Vulcan a good deal. He'd hopped planets on the fringe of known space since, finding odd jobs to exchange services for supplies.
Jim pulled himself out of bed, giving up on sleep. It still hurt too much to think about his life on the Enterprise, his time with Bones. Jim almost preferred the days when it felt like that time had been someone else's life that he had been merely observing. He made his way to the kitchen, wanting a stiff drink but settling for water until he got back to his ship, the Prince of Denmark.
The hairs on the back of Jim's neck prickled. It may have been years since he'd been in any real danger, but instinct wasn't something that just went away. Jim couldn't see anyone around him, no darkened silhouettes in the near-complete darkness, but there was something off about the way the air moved around him, too much to be a draft but not enough for a breeze. He lashed out in front of him, feeling his right fist connect with someone, but there was another person behind him striking the side of Jim's head with something heavy. Jim thought he managed to kick one of them in the groin before he blacked out.
+
"It's unfortunate that you remember," Queen Llevon sighed. "The tonic doesn't work a third time."
Two guards found Leonard in the alley and carried him back, cursing and struggling once he regained consciousness. They weren't holding onto him in the main hall, but he could see them in his periphery. He nearly threw up when he translated the Märchendan date to the Federation stardate. It was 2267.181. Five years he'd been on Märchenda, and Leonard remembered the attack, the Märchendans beaming down to the hospital, taking him to their ship before destroying the building. Five years he'd spent on Märchenda. It made him sick to think that Starfleet, that Jim, thought he was dead.
"Why am I here?" he demanded, crossing his arms against his chest.
"Don't think you're special, Ar'eliy; we needed a doctor, an outsider to help with the poisoning, and you were the first one we came across." The queen's tone was calm, her expression one of someone who thought they'd done nothing wrong. She'd probably get away with it, too. Märchenda wasn't on the Federation's radar, and the metal fiber suit Leonard had worn to appear invisible was used for the Märchendan fleet. Somehow this secret had been able to stay kept from the Federation.
Leonard remembered being brought on the ship, how they had drifted on the far side of the planet until the Enterprise left, Leonard being told his name was Ar'eliy and that his amnesia seemed to be the side effects of the ion storm they had passed. The tonic had made him swallow their lies so easily, accepting that he had voluntarily going to Märchenda to help with the poisoning that affected the people. All he'd remembered was being a doctor, so of course Leonard was going to believe that.
Leonard's teeth clenched at Queen Llevon calling him by the name they had given him. "It's McCoy."
"Well then, McCoy, since you failed your task, I had Kirk arrested. He wouldn't have left Märchenda either way, but if you'd made him forget, he wouldn't be locked up like an animal."
His stomach roiled at the thought of what he'd almost done to Jim, the idea that they could have been living side-by-side, each without a clue as to who the other was. But Leonard remembered, now, and it may have taken a long time for it to happen, all those years lost, but he could do something to get his life back. To get Jim back. He couldn't help but wonder if Jim would even want him anymore.
He forced that thought away, instead thinking of how to get what he wanted. Leonard wasn't a great tactician like Jim was, but there was one thing he had over the queen.
Leonard thought about the medical work he'd done over the last five years, the chronic sickness that affected the entire population of Märchenda. They'd thought it was contaminated water or heavy metal toxicity, but the damage didn't store or accumulate. It got better over time or with treatment before occurring again, seemingly at random, crippling large sections of the population at once. It took him nearly three years to link the sickness with the system's sun. The solar flares released proton storms that affected the Märchendans like radiation sickness. Only those outside, unprotected, were affected. Treatment was simple, but sometimes the numbers were overwhelming.
He considered the probability of back-to-back proton storms; by themselves they weren't fatal, and only individuals already immunocompromised had a difficult time healing between occurrences.
Leonard chose his words carefully. It went against everything he vowed as a doctor, but this was a queen who'd held him captive and brainwashed for five years, tried to do the same to Jim, and it was the only leverage Leonard had to get what he wanted. "You're going to give me Kirk and let us to leave. I'm not treating anyone else until you do."
Queen Llevon gave him a smirk like she was willing to humor him. "I very much doubt it, Doctor." She turned to address the guards. "Take him home and don't let him so much as step outside until he changes his mind."
Leonard didn't struggle when the guards bracketed him, each one grabbing an arm, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to wait too long for the next storm.
+
Jim yelled himself hoarse in all the Federation languages he knew and then the ones he'd picked up from non-member worlds. The guards were either pretending they couldn't hear him or couldn't understand him. He was brought food twice a day and his water never ran out, but otherwise they ignored Jim completely.
Only the food and the light from the small window overhead clued him to the passage of time.
There was no way for him to break out of the cell door and the window was too small for him to crawl through even if he could cut through the bars and break the glass on the other side.
He'd been taken prisoner before, but the reasoning had always been made clear. Someone would come talk to him, interrogate or torture him, try to use him to get to the Enterprise or Starfleet, but the Märchendan guards weren't even acknowledging his presence.
Jim sat against the far wall, hugging his knees to his chest as he ate the bread that they seemed to eat for breakfast.
Of all the times Jim had been held prisoner, this was the first time he was actually afraid of dying slowly, rotting in a cell.
He didn't know how he felt about heaven and hell or the afterlife, but at least a quick death would bring him to Bones faster. He nearly choked when the thought that at least Bones died too quickly to even register it crossed his mind.
+
It took one week. People got sick, but the human doctor was nowhere to be found. They picketed the palace, an angry mob demanding treatment.
Leonard could hear them from his house, the sound of glass shattering when the mob broke the apothecary's windows. Smoke from the fires hung above the city. Leonard passed the time with a marker in his bedroom, mapping out the stars as he remembered them from Earth across his walls and ceiling. Near the floor he drew the horizon, the buildings of Starfleet Academy and the Golden Gate Bridge, the only people in the landscape two small silhouettes, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they contemplated the sky.
Another week passed before they dragged Leonard back to the palace. The queen looked tense but hid it once she saw Leonard. He had put her in a situation where she had no other choice, and Leonard bet she was surprised that he didn't give in. Ar'eliy would've caved to her easily, but Queen Llevon had never met Leonard Horatio McCoy.
The queen's hands, balled up tight in her lap, belied her calm demeanor. "You can have Kirk and leave, but you need to heal everyone first."
Leonard wasn't going to argue with that. He spun on his heel to leave, to head to the hospital to get to work, when Queen Llevon spoke again.
McCoy,” she called out, and it was only the use of his real name that got him to stop and pay her any attention. “I was just looking out for my people.”
Did it ever cross your mind to just ask the Federation for help instead of kidnapping?” His tone wasn't as harsh as he wanted it to be, Leonard not willing to risk angering the queen into changing her mind.
The poisoning wasn't recorded before we got warp technology. The Federation representatives showed up, couldn't convince my grandfather to join, so they tainted our home before they left. I'm not crawling to them for help.”
Leonard almost didn't respond, but he couldn't have an entire planet holding a grudge against Starfleet and the Federation for something they didn't do. “The poisoning is caused by proton storms from your sun. There've been studies describing how testing warp engines in the atmosphere causes rapid ozone deterioration. You did this to yourselves.”
Queen Llevon was quiet as she processed this information. Her posture was rigid, voice sharp, when she did speak again. “Kirk will be kept under guard at your house until everyone's been treated. If he is let out or escapes, the deal is off.”
Yes, your majesty,” Leonard responded with as much sarcasm as he could muster.
+
Jim didn't know what the hell was going on when chaos reigned outside his cell. He actually felt safer locked up than involved in whatever was going on outside and started to wonder if that had been the intention, if all outsiders on-planet had been locked up for their own safety during this, what, riot? It sounded more like mass chaos.
Based on the number of meals he'd received, he estimated two weeks passed since he'd been locked up. After a week the riot had started, after another it ended, and then he was moved to a house. It had no personal touches as far as Jim could tell, but he didn't know what a Märchendan would decorate his home with anyway. He wasn't sure which prison he found more unsettling as he still had no idea why.
There were written instructions on the kitchen table: Jim was not to use any light except for the sun, and the owner of the house would be home after dark.
He immediately started to look for a way out, but the attempt seemed useless. There were guards at every door and window. There was no way he'd be able to overpower them all, and even if he did run away, Jim had no idea where the hell he was or how to get back to his ship. He would have to wait to try and learn what was going on. Jim hoped he could glean some information out of the house's owner. Maybe it was a misunderstanding, and he could talk his way into being let go.
He explored the small house. When he found his unknown captor’s room, Jim was blown away by what he saw. A drawing of constellations he hadn't looked for in years and a skyline he hadn't seen in even longer. Jim found the marker on the bedside table and started adding more, filling in other constellations and the stars in between until he couldn't see anymore.
Jim felt his way back to the kitchen and sat down, waiting for his host to come home. He needed answers.
+
Leonard stayed by the door when he saw Jim sitting at his kitchen table. He couldn't risk Jim recognizing his silhouette; his voice, either, so Leonard had taken a neurotoxic protein that affected his larynx, rendering his voice strange to even his own ears. One of the guards had written the note, too. Leonard fought every urge that was screaming at him to go to Jim, let him know who he was, that he'd been alive the whole time since Apugleius IV, but he couldn't, not yet. At least Queen Llevon let him keep Jim here instead of the cell until they could leave.
"Who are you?" was the first thing out of Jim's mouth, and it made Leonard's heart ache to hear his voice, even as filled with tension as it was. He wanted to turn the lights on, see what grief and five years had done to Jim.
"You'll find out when the time is right," Leonard responded. "Just know that the queen wanted you for herself, but you'll be safe here."
"Aren't those the queen's guards?"
Leonard smiled a little; his Jim was still so sharp. "I have a certain amount of leverage over her. I'm sure you feel like you've gone from one prison to another, but you'll be more comfortable here. You'll be allowed to leave once…" Leonard hesitated on the wording. "Once things have smoothed over."
Jim's quiet for several long minutes, Leonard practically able to hear the gears turning in his head. "Well if we're going to be roommates, I guess you should know my name. It's Kirk - Jim Kirk."
Leonard didn't know if he felt more pleased or disappointed that Jim didn't see through the facade and recognize him. "I'm Ar'eliy," he responded, nearly choking on the lie as much as he was reeling from Jim's introduction, his name delivered the same way it had been on that shuttle out of Riverside over a decade earlier.
+
It had been two weeks since Jim's incarceration was moved to the house, Ar'eliy his only company and then only well after sunset. Jim was surprised when it dawned on him that he wasn't exactly bored. He would go draw in the stars during the day, wondering at his host's past as Ar'eliy always changed the subject when Jim asked if he'd been to Earth. Ar'eliy had his sore spots, clamming up instantly when Jim tried to ask about his life before Märchenda, which Jim didn't begrudge since he wouldn't talk about his time in Starfleet - Bones had been so deeply ingrained in that part of his life - but otherwise Ar'eliy felt like someone Jim had known for a long time.
He worked out the best he could in the house, wishing he could run outside, but the treadmill was better than nothing, even if Jim felt like a hamster in a wheel. Once or twice, he found books in the kitchen, certain Ar'eliy had left them for him, and it was eerie how well the man seemed to know Jim, as if he knew Jim would find them interesting.
He couldn't take it anymore, though, the not knowing what Ar'eliy looked like. Ar'eliy wouldn't let him see, and it wasn't that Jim was shallow, but it was hard to talk to someone without seeing how they responded to their conversations. He wanted to be able to see how emotions played across Ar'eliy's face when he spoke to Jim. It wouldn't be difficult for Jim to sneak into the man's room as he slept. He needed to know.
He had expected anything but this.
Jim dropped the flashlight; it smashed to the floor loudly, jolting the other man awake, and Jim remembered how he'd always been quick to rouse. "Bones?" he choked out, hating how vulnerable, hopeful, and scared he sounded. But there was no mistaking him, that face Jim thought he could only see in his dreams, right in front of him this whole time. He looked a little older now, but Jim knew they both did.
Jim reached out, wanting to touch him, make sure he was real, but Bones bolted out of bed, the room, the house in a matter of seconds, leaving Jim kneeling on the floor, clutching the flashlight, wondering what the hell it all meant, too shocked at finding Bones alive to go after him.
+
Jim stayed in Bones' bed that night and all the next day, breathing in Bones' scent. This explained that first night, when Jim woke up from the dream in the middle of the night. Had Bones been there? Had he known this whole time and kept Jim in the dark, literally and figuratively? And why?
On the morning of the third day, when Bones still hadn't returned, Jim demanded the guards take him to see the queen. They obliged hesitantly, keeping Jim close as they walked him through the city to the palace.
"I know you're involved," Jim said without preamble when he saw the queen. He remembered what Bones said that first night. "Why wouldn't you let me know who he was?" He used his most commanding tone, not wanting the queen to hear his voice tremble if she was behind this.
The queen laughed like the whole situation were a game. "He made that decision on his own. He told me to let him have you, so I did. It's not my fault if he doesn't want you anymore."
Jim let the guards take him back in a daze, feeling like the air was trying to strangle him, the sun an oppressive heat, and everything spun, sending him reeling to the ground. Jim threw up, tears running down his face.
Of all the times he'd dared to imagine Bones alive, he hadn't considered the possibility that he wouldn't want Jim anymore.
He curled in on himself in Bones' bed, staring blankly at the wall. Jim thought he could never have felt worse than the day they'd officially reported Bones as dead. He was wrong.
+
Jim woke feverish. He sensed he was being moved but couldn't bring himself to care and fell back asleep, plagued by nightmares of Bones staging his death so he could get away from Jim.
+
Leonard heard a low moan and was at Jim's bedside instantly. He recognized Jim's fight back to consciousness as he'd seen it so many times before, so long ago. He brought a hand to Jim's hair, sliding it down to touch the side of his face, unable to restrain his smile as those bright blue eyes blinked open.
Jim reached a hand up to touch Leonard's like he couldn't trust his own senses. "Bones?" he asked, hesitant, clearly afraid that Leonard would run away again. Leonard wanted to make Jim understand how badly he felt about that.
"Yeah, it's me." He twined his fingers with Jim's, squeezing gently. "I'm so sorry, Jim."
"What happened?"
Leonard explained the best he could. "I was making sure the critical ward had been cleared when they beamed down, took me back to their ship. They needed a doctor, but instead of explaining what was happening on Märchenda, they gave me this tonic, made me forget who I was but not what. I helped the people for a long time, helped the queen to inflict on others what I hadn't known she'd done to me. She wanted you, too."
Jim sat up, moving their hands from the side of his face to rest in his lap. "You wouldn't do it."
"I was going to, but you woke up. I thought you saw me, and it made me spill the tonic on myself. The second dose must work as an antidote because it made me remember everything. I..." Leonard sat heavily, still feeling enormous guilt for what he'd done. "I wouldn't treat anyone until she let us go. People got sick because of me, Jim, they were scared and suffering. What kind of doctor does that make me?"
"There was nothing else you could've done, Bones," Jim said softly. "Is that where you went during the day? Taking care of those who got sick because you were trying to atone for something?" Jim drew in a sharp breath. "Did you not let me know your true identity in order to punish yourself?"
"I wouldn't have been able to say no to you," was the answer Leonard gave, which was confirmation enough based on the knowing look in Jim's eyes. He reached up to feel the wrinkles at the corner of Jim's eyes, remembering how he only used to be able to see them when Jim laughed. He bet it wasn't joy that had deepened them over the last five years.
"When you saw me... I ran away because I didn't know what else to do, how else to react. It had been so long, Jim; I didn't want to know if you'd moved on, forgotten about me. And then you got sick." Leonard couldn't think of what might've happened if humans reacted differently to the storms. He'd never been caught in one, always stuck between his house, the palace, or the hospital during the day. "I've been training the doctors here, making sure they knew what they were doing so I was no longer needed. I'm done here, Jim. We can leave; we can go home."
Jim's eyes were bright as he placed his free hand on the back of Leonard's neck. "Just stop talking and kiss me, Bones."
Leonard obliged, unable to understand how he'd been able to forget Jim, forget this, as what started as a simple touch of lips deepened, became more hungry, a desperation to relearn a familiar feel and taste. Leonard took all the choked noises coming out of Jim's throat and soothed them away, letting Jim know that Leonard wasn't lost to him anymore.
+
"The Prince of Denmark?" Bones asked, eyebrow arched as he read the ship's name off the starboard nacelle.
"Are you going to mock it or get cocky about how I mourned you and indirectly named my girl in your memory?" Jim felt a little embarrassed that he'd been found out, but he was still too busy feeling completely fucking giddy over the fact that the man he loved had been alive this whole time. It was dumb luck that led Jim to finding Bones, but like all the other instances of dumb luck in his life, Jim had just learned to accept it in case flaunting it made his karma go bad or something.
"Am I supposed to believe that your girl is perfectly safe? Looks like she'd fall to pieces if I so much as sneezed on her."
Jim opened the hatch, letting Bones in first before securing it behind them. Even the complaining made Jim happy, that drawl he'd never thought he'd hear again. "You have no idea how much I missed you," he said, pulling Bones in tight for a kiss. He thumbed the wrinkles between Bones' eyebrows, the gray hairs at his temples when he pulled away, still trying to override the physical differences of this Bones from the one in his memory. "Once we're at warp you'll have my undivided attention. And you'll have to make up to me how you kept me locked up in your house. How do I know I'm not suffering from Stockholm syndrome right now?"
"You're an ass."
"But I'm your ass," Jim responded cheekily as he headed off to the cockpit, hearing Bones right behind him.
+
Leonard was sweaty and sticky. The air on the ship was cooler than he'd be comfortable in while naked, but Jim pressed against his side in the same state more than made up for it.
"How long until we rendezvous with the Enterprise?" Leonard asked, drawing patterns on the small of Jim's back. Jim's jaw was pressed up against Leonard's shoulder, so he more than felt the way it tightened. "Jim?"
"I'm not in Starfleet anymore, Bones - haven't been for years."
Leonard frowned, doing the math. They'd just finished their fourth year when he'd been taken. "You didn't sign on for an additional five years?"
Jim laughed but without any humor. "Technically I never finished the first one. I put in a request to be discharged before they threw me out and even included a glowing report from Spock about my 'degrading emotional state.' They didn't approve it, but I got the same deal they gave Mom after my dad died."
"A furlough with your tour to be completed at an unspecified time?"
"That would be it." Jim looked up the same time Leonard moved to kiss the top of Jim's head, the kiss landing between Jim's eyes. "Do you still want to follow me across the galaxy?"
"Darling, I just got you back. I'm not going to lose you again."
Jim's smile lit up his whole face. "Good because I don't plan on letting you go, Bones." Jim shifted to straddle Leonard's thighs, kissing his mouth before working his way down Leonard's neck, pausing to rest his chin on Leonard's sternum, his grin turning devious. "Now how about a happy ending?"
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Word Count: 5,016
Warnings: reboot interpretation of Cupid and Psyche
Summary: For st_respect's Ship Wars, prompt #5: fairy tale.
Author's Note: Word limit for prompt #5 was 4k, so the first version of this story was more watered down. This story wasn't chosen as the Team Jones submission, so I got to add and extend scenes, which I feel make it more the story I wanted to tell. Special thanks to sangueuk for whipping that first version into shape because, really, this fic needed some serious help.
+++
Acting Captain's log, stardate 2262.238: Nine days ago, Enterprise picked up a distress signal from Apugleius IV, the host of Starfleet's annual medical conference that the Enterprise's Chief Medical Officer, Doctor Leonard H. McCoy, had been attending while Enterprise delivered the Denobulan ambassador to New Vulcan. The message suggested the attacking vessel could not be physically seen or picked up on their sensors.
Enterprise arrived in eleven-point-zero-nine hours at full warp to find Apugleius IV no longer under attack with no sign of the offending vessel. The most damage sustained was to the hospital hosting the conference, suggesting an attack against Starfleet. There were three significant traumas, a dozen lesser injuries, and one presumed loss of life.
Doctor McCoy's communicator was found in the rubble but no body was recovered. Any remains may have been vaporized based on the hospital's structural damage. Doctor Geoffrey M'Benga has been promoted to CMO. In accordance with Starfleet Regulation 619, Captain James T. Kirk has been removed from duty pending further emotional assessment.
+
Jim turned off the welding torch and lifted the mask away from his face. He smoothed a hand over the hull plating of the class J starship, the Prince of Denmark. Micrometeors caught Jim with his shields down, luckily piercing the cargo hold, but he stopped at the nearest planet with a skydock just to be safe. Märchenda wasn't a Federation world, which suited Jim's needs just fine.
"Isn't it dangerous on your own?" the dockmaster asked when Jim returned the equipment.
"Too small for any Klingons or pirates to want to pay me any attention." He'd made modifications over the years, just in case, but they hadn't been tested yet. "Recommend any places to stay for the night?"
The dockmaster gave directions to a motel freighter crews liked. Jim shook the man's hand and waited for the next shuttle to the surface.
+
"Ar'eliy."
"Yes, your majesty?"
"I want the blue-eyed one for myself. Visit him as he sleeps; make him forget his name."
"Yes, my queen."
+
Despite wearing an outfit made of woven metal fibers that rendered Ar'eliy invisible, he waited in the shadows. The queen liked to collect Märchenda's most beautiful visitors, having Ar'eliy dose them with a tonic that gave them selective amnesia. They tended to be freight crew, and even as they forgot who they were - their families and friends, where they came from - they always remembered their work from before. Ar'eliy suspected that the queen wanted them to be grateful to the queen for saving them from that life, but he wasn't one to question.
Ar'eliy followed the man all evening, watched him eat dinner, learned his name was Kirk, and that he lived alone in the black. Another miserable existence to be saved, Ar'eliy thought.
Ar'eliy waited until after Kirk fell asleep to climb in through the window, left open because of the humid night. He kept his back against the wall, opening the vial slowly. All that was required was a single drop on bare skin; Ar'eliy liked his life, wasn't looking to forget.
He reached the side of Kirk's bed, able to make out Kirk's fair hair and skin in the moonlight, but a twitch of Kirk's hand caused Ar'eliy to freeze. He held his breath as Kirk jolted awake, sitting up with a frown on his face as he looked directly at Ar'eliy. Startled, the vial slipped, tilted, a drop landing on the narrow strip of skin between his glove and sleeve. He bit his tongue to keep from swearing out loud, feeling a dull throb in the back of his head that increased in magnitude. He hurriedly ran out of the room and into an alley, collapsed to his knees, and clutched his head in pain.
His last thoughts before passing out came rushing to him like a drowning man's final gasp. Two distinct pieces of knowledge swirled together.
His name isn't Ar'eliy, and Jim.
+
Jim can't fall back asleep. He'd dreamed about Bones, one so real he'd woken up, thinking he could smell Bones' skin, and he couldn't shake the feeling.
It’d been five years since Apugleius IV, since losing the man he loved without even a body to bury. Five years since he lost his ship, his love of space dying with Bones. Jim asked to be honorably discharged before he did something stupid and reckless that got his crew killed. They deserved better than that. Bones' memory deserved better than that.
Jim hadn’t expected his mother to be the one to reach out to him, connected by a shared pain; Jim finally understood that she did the best she could when he was growing up. At least she had her sons.
She was the one to kick Jim out on his ass, pushing him back to space. Jim got the name of a guy who sold decommissioned Federation ships and was willing to give the hero who'd saved Earth from the same fate as Vulcan a good deal. He'd hopped planets on the fringe of known space since, finding odd jobs to exchange services for supplies.
Jim pulled himself out of bed, giving up on sleep. It still hurt too much to think about his life on the Enterprise, his time with Bones. Jim almost preferred the days when it felt like that time had been someone else's life that he had been merely observing. He made his way to the kitchen, wanting a stiff drink but settling for water until he got back to his ship, the Prince of Denmark.
The hairs on the back of Jim's neck prickled. It may have been years since he'd been in any real danger, but instinct wasn't something that just went away. Jim couldn't see anyone around him, no darkened silhouettes in the near-complete darkness, but there was something off about the way the air moved around him, too much to be a draft but not enough for a breeze. He lashed out in front of him, feeling his right fist connect with someone, but there was another person behind him striking the side of Jim's head with something heavy. Jim thought he managed to kick one of them in the groin before he blacked out.
+
"It's unfortunate that you remember," Queen Llevon sighed. "The tonic doesn't work a third time."
Two guards found Leonard in the alley and carried him back, cursing and struggling once he regained consciousness. They weren't holding onto him in the main hall, but he could see them in his periphery. He nearly threw up when he translated the Märchendan date to the Federation stardate. It was 2267.181. Five years he'd been on Märchenda, and Leonard remembered the attack, the Märchendans beaming down to the hospital, taking him to their ship before destroying the building. Five years he'd spent on Märchenda. It made him sick to think that Starfleet, that Jim, thought he was dead.
"Why am I here?" he demanded, crossing his arms against his chest.
"Don't think you're special, Ar'eliy; we needed a doctor, an outsider to help with the poisoning, and you were the first one we came across." The queen's tone was calm, her expression one of someone who thought they'd done nothing wrong. She'd probably get away with it, too. Märchenda wasn't on the Federation's radar, and the metal fiber suit Leonard had worn to appear invisible was used for the Märchendan fleet. Somehow this secret had been able to stay kept from the Federation.
Leonard remembered being brought on the ship, how they had drifted on the far side of the planet until the Enterprise left, Leonard being told his name was Ar'eliy and that his amnesia seemed to be the side effects of the ion storm they had passed. The tonic had made him swallow their lies so easily, accepting that he had voluntarily going to Märchenda to help with the poisoning that affected the people. All he'd remembered was being a doctor, so of course Leonard was going to believe that.
Leonard's teeth clenched at Queen Llevon calling him by the name they had given him. "It's McCoy."
"Well then, McCoy, since you failed your task, I had Kirk arrested. He wouldn't have left Märchenda either way, but if you'd made him forget, he wouldn't be locked up like an animal."
His stomach roiled at the thought of what he'd almost done to Jim, the idea that they could have been living side-by-side, each without a clue as to who the other was. But Leonard remembered, now, and it may have taken a long time for it to happen, all those years lost, but he could do something to get his life back. To get Jim back. He couldn't help but wonder if Jim would even want him anymore.
He forced that thought away, instead thinking of how to get what he wanted. Leonard wasn't a great tactician like Jim was, but there was one thing he had over the queen.
Leonard thought about the medical work he'd done over the last five years, the chronic sickness that affected the entire population of Märchenda. They'd thought it was contaminated water or heavy metal toxicity, but the damage didn't store or accumulate. It got better over time or with treatment before occurring again, seemingly at random, crippling large sections of the population at once. It took him nearly three years to link the sickness with the system's sun. The solar flares released proton storms that affected the Märchendans like radiation sickness. Only those outside, unprotected, were affected. Treatment was simple, but sometimes the numbers were overwhelming.
He considered the probability of back-to-back proton storms; by themselves they weren't fatal, and only individuals already immunocompromised had a difficult time healing between occurrences.
Leonard chose his words carefully. It went against everything he vowed as a doctor, but this was a queen who'd held him captive and brainwashed for five years, tried to do the same to Jim, and it was the only leverage Leonard had to get what he wanted. "You're going to give me Kirk and let us to leave. I'm not treating anyone else until you do."
Queen Llevon gave him a smirk like she was willing to humor him. "I very much doubt it, Doctor." She turned to address the guards. "Take him home and don't let him so much as step outside until he changes his mind."
Leonard didn't struggle when the guards bracketed him, each one grabbing an arm, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to wait too long for the next storm.
+
Jim yelled himself hoarse in all the Federation languages he knew and then the ones he'd picked up from non-member worlds. The guards were either pretending they couldn't hear him or couldn't understand him. He was brought food twice a day and his water never ran out, but otherwise they ignored Jim completely.
Only the food and the light from the small window overhead clued him to the passage of time.
There was no way for him to break out of the cell door and the window was too small for him to crawl through even if he could cut through the bars and break the glass on the other side.
He'd been taken prisoner before, but the reasoning had always been made clear. Someone would come talk to him, interrogate or torture him, try to use him to get to the Enterprise or Starfleet, but the Märchendan guards weren't even acknowledging his presence.
Jim sat against the far wall, hugging his knees to his chest as he ate the bread that they seemed to eat for breakfast.
Of all the times Jim had been held prisoner, this was the first time he was actually afraid of dying slowly, rotting in a cell.
He didn't know how he felt about heaven and hell or the afterlife, but at least a quick death would bring him to Bones faster. He nearly choked when the thought that at least Bones died too quickly to even register it crossed his mind.
+
It took one week. People got sick, but the human doctor was nowhere to be found. They picketed the palace, an angry mob demanding treatment.
Leonard could hear them from his house, the sound of glass shattering when the mob broke the apothecary's windows. Smoke from the fires hung above the city. Leonard passed the time with a marker in his bedroom, mapping out the stars as he remembered them from Earth across his walls and ceiling. Near the floor he drew the horizon, the buildings of Starfleet Academy and the Golden Gate Bridge, the only people in the landscape two small silhouettes, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they contemplated the sky.
Another week passed before they dragged Leonard back to the palace. The queen looked tense but hid it once she saw Leonard. He had put her in a situation where she had no other choice, and Leonard bet she was surprised that he didn't give in. Ar'eliy would've caved to her easily, but Queen Llevon had never met Leonard Horatio McCoy.
The queen's hands, balled up tight in her lap, belied her calm demeanor. "You can have Kirk and leave, but you need to heal everyone first."
Leonard wasn't going to argue with that. He spun on his heel to leave, to head to the hospital to get to work, when Queen Llevon spoke again.
McCoy,” she called out, and it was only the use of his real name that got him to stop and pay her any attention. “I was just looking out for my people.”
Did it ever cross your mind to just ask the Federation for help instead of kidnapping?” His tone wasn't as harsh as he wanted it to be, Leonard not willing to risk angering the queen into changing her mind.
The poisoning wasn't recorded before we got warp technology. The Federation representatives showed up, couldn't convince my grandfather to join, so they tainted our home before they left. I'm not crawling to them for help.”
Leonard almost didn't respond, but he couldn't have an entire planet holding a grudge against Starfleet and the Federation for something they didn't do. “The poisoning is caused by proton storms from your sun. There've been studies describing how testing warp engines in the atmosphere causes rapid ozone deterioration. You did this to yourselves.”
Queen Llevon was quiet as she processed this information. Her posture was rigid, voice sharp, when she did speak again. “Kirk will be kept under guard at your house until everyone's been treated. If he is let out or escapes, the deal is off.”
Yes, your majesty,” Leonard responded with as much sarcasm as he could muster.
+
Jim didn't know what the hell was going on when chaos reigned outside his cell. He actually felt safer locked up than involved in whatever was going on outside and started to wonder if that had been the intention, if all outsiders on-planet had been locked up for their own safety during this, what, riot? It sounded more like mass chaos.
Based on the number of meals he'd received, he estimated two weeks passed since he'd been locked up. After a week the riot had started, after another it ended, and then he was moved to a house. It had no personal touches as far as Jim could tell, but he didn't know what a Märchendan would decorate his home with anyway. He wasn't sure which prison he found more unsettling as he still had no idea why.
There were written instructions on the kitchen table: Jim was not to use any light except for the sun, and the owner of the house would be home after dark.
He immediately started to look for a way out, but the attempt seemed useless. There were guards at every door and window. There was no way he'd be able to overpower them all, and even if he did run away, Jim had no idea where the hell he was or how to get back to his ship. He would have to wait to try and learn what was going on. Jim hoped he could glean some information out of the house's owner. Maybe it was a misunderstanding, and he could talk his way into being let go.
He explored the small house. When he found his unknown captor’s room, Jim was blown away by what he saw. A drawing of constellations he hadn't looked for in years and a skyline he hadn't seen in even longer. Jim found the marker on the bedside table and started adding more, filling in other constellations and the stars in between until he couldn't see anymore.
Jim felt his way back to the kitchen and sat down, waiting for his host to come home. He needed answers.
+
Leonard stayed by the door when he saw Jim sitting at his kitchen table. He couldn't risk Jim recognizing his silhouette; his voice, either, so Leonard had taken a neurotoxic protein that affected his larynx, rendering his voice strange to even his own ears. One of the guards had written the note, too. Leonard fought every urge that was screaming at him to go to Jim, let him know who he was, that he'd been alive the whole time since Apugleius IV, but he couldn't, not yet. At least Queen Llevon let him keep Jim here instead of the cell until they could leave.
"Who are you?" was the first thing out of Jim's mouth, and it made Leonard's heart ache to hear his voice, even as filled with tension as it was. He wanted to turn the lights on, see what grief and five years had done to Jim.
"You'll find out when the time is right," Leonard responded. "Just know that the queen wanted you for herself, but you'll be safe here."
"Aren't those the queen's guards?"
Leonard smiled a little; his Jim was still so sharp. "I have a certain amount of leverage over her. I'm sure you feel like you've gone from one prison to another, but you'll be more comfortable here. You'll be allowed to leave once…" Leonard hesitated on the wording. "Once things have smoothed over."
Jim's quiet for several long minutes, Leonard practically able to hear the gears turning in his head. "Well if we're going to be roommates, I guess you should know my name. It's Kirk - Jim Kirk."
Leonard didn't know if he felt more pleased or disappointed that Jim didn't see through the facade and recognize him. "I'm Ar'eliy," he responded, nearly choking on the lie as much as he was reeling from Jim's introduction, his name delivered the same way it had been on that shuttle out of Riverside over a decade earlier.
+
It had been two weeks since Jim's incarceration was moved to the house, Ar'eliy his only company and then only well after sunset. Jim was surprised when it dawned on him that he wasn't exactly bored. He would go draw in the stars during the day, wondering at his host's past as Ar'eliy always changed the subject when Jim asked if he'd been to Earth. Ar'eliy had his sore spots, clamming up instantly when Jim tried to ask about his life before Märchenda, which Jim didn't begrudge since he wouldn't talk about his time in Starfleet - Bones had been so deeply ingrained in that part of his life - but otherwise Ar'eliy felt like someone Jim had known for a long time.
He worked out the best he could in the house, wishing he could run outside, but the treadmill was better than nothing, even if Jim felt like a hamster in a wheel. Once or twice, he found books in the kitchen, certain Ar'eliy had left them for him, and it was eerie how well the man seemed to know Jim, as if he knew Jim would find them interesting.
He couldn't take it anymore, though, the not knowing what Ar'eliy looked like. Ar'eliy wouldn't let him see, and it wasn't that Jim was shallow, but it was hard to talk to someone without seeing how they responded to their conversations. He wanted to be able to see how emotions played across Ar'eliy's face when he spoke to Jim. It wouldn't be difficult for Jim to sneak into the man's room as he slept. He needed to know.
He had expected anything but this.
Jim dropped the flashlight; it smashed to the floor loudly, jolting the other man awake, and Jim remembered how he'd always been quick to rouse. "Bones?" he choked out, hating how vulnerable, hopeful, and scared he sounded. But there was no mistaking him, that face Jim thought he could only see in his dreams, right in front of him this whole time. He looked a little older now, but Jim knew they both did.
Jim reached out, wanting to touch him, make sure he was real, but Bones bolted out of bed, the room, the house in a matter of seconds, leaving Jim kneeling on the floor, clutching the flashlight, wondering what the hell it all meant, too shocked at finding Bones alive to go after him.
+
Jim stayed in Bones' bed that night and all the next day, breathing in Bones' scent. This explained that first night, when Jim woke up from the dream in the middle of the night. Had Bones been there? Had he known this whole time and kept Jim in the dark, literally and figuratively? And why?
On the morning of the third day, when Bones still hadn't returned, Jim demanded the guards take him to see the queen. They obliged hesitantly, keeping Jim close as they walked him through the city to the palace.
"I know you're involved," Jim said without preamble when he saw the queen. He remembered what Bones said that first night. "Why wouldn't you let me know who he was?" He used his most commanding tone, not wanting the queen to hear his voice tremble if she was behind this.
The queen laughed like the whole situation were a game. "He made that decision on his own. He told me to let him have you, so I did. It's not my fault if he doesn't want you anymore."
Jim let the guards take him back in a daze, feeling like the air was trying to strangle him, the sun an oppressive heat, and everything spun, sending him reeling to the ground. Jim threw up, tears running down his face.
Of all the times he'd dared to imagine Bones alive, he hadn't considered the possibility that he wouldn't want Jim anymore.
He curled in on himself in Bones' bed, staring blankly at the wall. Jim thought he could never have felt worse than the day they'd officially reported Bones as dead. He was wrong.
+
Jim woke feverish. He sensed he was being moved but couldn't bring himself to care and fell back asleep, plagued by nightmares of Bones staging his death so he could get away from Jim.
+
Leonard heard a low moan and was at Jim's bedside instantly. He recognized Jim's fight back to consciousness as he'd seen it so many times before, so long ago. He brought a hand to Jim's hair, sliding it down to touch the side of his face, unable to restrain his smile as those bright blue eyes blinked open.
Jim reached a hand up to touch Leonard's like he couldn't trust his own senses. "Bones?" he asked, hesitant, clearly afraid that Leonard would run away again. Leonard wanted to make Jim understand how badly he felt about that.
"Yeah, it's me." He twined his fingers with Jim's, squeezing gently. "I'm so sorry, Jim."
"What happened?"
Leonard explained the best he could. "I was making sure the critical ward had been cleared when they beamed down, took me back to their ship. They needed a doctor, but instead of explaining what was happening on Märchenda, they gave me this tonic, made me forget who I was but not what. I helped the people for a long time, helped the queen to inflict on others what I hadn't known she'd done to me. She wanted you, too."
Jim sat up, moving their hands from the side of his face to rest in his lap. "You wouldn't do it."
"I was going to, but you woke up. I thought you saw me, and it made me spill the tonic on myself. The second dose must work as an antidote because it made me remember everything. I..." Leonard sat heavily, still feeling enormous guilt for what he'd done. "I wouldn't treat anyone until she let us go. People got sick because of me, Jim, they were scared and suffering. What kind of doctor does that make me?"
"There was nothing else you could've done, Bones," Jim said softly. "Is that where you went during the day? Taking care of those who got sick because you were trying to atone for something?" Jim drew in a sharp breath. "Did you not let me know your true identity in order to punish yourself?"
"I wouldn't have been able to say no to you," was the answer Leonard gave, which was confirmation enough based on the knowing look in Jim's eyes. He reached up to feel the wrinkles at the corner of Jim's eyes, remembering how he only used to be able to see them when Jim laughed. He bet it wasn't joy that had deepened them over the last five years.
"When you saw me... I ran away because I didn't know what else to do, how else to react. It had been so long, Jim; I didn't want to know if you'd moved on, forgotten about me. And then you got sick." Leonard couldn't think of what might've happened if humans reacted differently to the storms. He'd never been caught in one, always stuck between his house, the palace, or the hospital during the day. "I've been training the doctors here, making sure they knew what they were doing so I was no longer needed. I'm done here, Jim. We can leave; we can go home."
Jim's eyes were bright as he placed his free hand on the back of Leonard's neck. "Just stop talking and kiss me, Bones."
Leonard obliged, unable to understand how he'd been able to forget Jim, forget this, as what started as a simple touch of lips deepened, became more hungry, a desperation to relearn a familiar feel and taste. Leonard took all the choked noises coming out of Jim's throat and soothed them away, letting Jim know that Leonard wasn't lost to him anymore.
+
"The Prince of Denmark?" Bones asked, eyebrow arched as he read the ship's name off the starboard nacelle.
"Are you going to mock it or get cocky about how I mourned you and indirectly named my girl in your memory?" Jim felt a little embarrassed that he'd been found out, but he was still too busy feeling completely fucking giddy over the fact that the man he loved had been alive this whole time. It was dumb luck that led Jim to finding Bones, but like all the other instances of dumb luck in his life, Jim had just learned to accept it in case flaunting it made his karma go bad or something.
"Am I supposed to believe that your girl is perfectly safe? Looks like she'd fall to pieces if I so much as sneezed on her."
Jim opened the hatch, letting Bones in first before securing it behind them. Even the complaining made Jim happy, that drawl he'd never thought he'd hear again. "You have no idea how much I missed you," he said, pulling Bones in tight for a kiss. He thumbed the wrinkles between Bones' eyebrows, the gray hairs at his temples when he pulled away, still trying to override the physical differences of this Bones from the one in his memory. "Once we're at warp you'll have my undivided attention. And you'll have to make up to me how you kept me locked up in your house. How do I know I'm not suffering from Stockholm syndrome right now?"
"You're an ass."
"But I'm your ass," Jim responded cheekily as he headed off to the cockpit, hearing Bones right behind him.
+
Leonard was sweaty and sticky. The air on the ship was cooler than he'd be comfortable in while naked, but Jim pressed against his side in the same state more than made up for it.
"How long until we rendezvous with the Enterprise?" Leonard asked, drawing patterns on the small of Jim's back. Jim's jaw was pressed up against Leonard's shoulder, so he more than felt the way it tightened. "Jim?"
"I'm not in Starfleet anymore, Bones - haven't been for years."
Leonard frowned, doing the math. They'd just finished their fourth year when he'd been taken. "You didn't sign on for an additional five years?"
Jim laughed but without any humor. "Technically I never finished the first one. I put in a request to be discharged before they threw me out and even included a glowing report from Spock about my 'degrading emotional state.' They didn't approve it, but I got the same deal they gave Mom after my dad died."
"A furlough with your tour to be completed at an unspecified time?"
"That would be it." Jim looked up the same time Leonard moved to kiss the top of Jim's head, the kiss landing between Jim's eyes. "Do you still want to follow me across the galaxy?"
"Darling, I just got you back. I'm not going to lose you again."
Jim's smile lit up his whole face. "Good because I don't plan on letting you go, Bones." Jim shifted to straddle Leonard's thighs, kissing his mouth before working his way down Leonard's neck, pausing to rest his chin on Leonard's sternum, his grin turning devious. "Now how about a happy ending?"