Title: Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
Title: Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer & Warnings: They don't belong to me. Be advised there is a heavy theme of death.
Word Count: 5,781
Summary: Jim thought they'd have more time. The universe doesn't work like that, sometimes.
Notes: This is the end of the Hard-Earned Rights series. It all began when Jim was in a shuttle crash and he met a strange girl. Thank you for reading along with me! Title comes from a Stars song. Thanks endlessly to loveflyfree for the beta.
Hard-Earned Rights // Just About Time // The Graceful Waltz // One // The Grave Memorial Of A Life Unlived // Houses & Heartwarmings // Guess Who's Coming To Dinner // Enterprise On My Mind // Your Fate's Not In The Stars // A World of Solemn Thought // Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
Every week, there is a message lying in wait for her from the Enterprise. She plays it and lets it go to the trash-box without feeling much hesitance (though always the underlying press of guilt upon her conscience). This week is no different than the rest. She returns home on a Tuesday afternoon and the little light is blinking to alert her that Jim is making another protest on her father’s behalf.
She slides off her jacket and hangs it with her schoolbag as she leans over to press the PLAY button.
No matter how angry she is at the both of them, no matter the strength of her three-month-long grudge, she always plays the messages to ensure that Jim and her father are still both alive and safe. She might not want them in her life, but she still doesn’t want anything bad to happen to either of them.
On that Tuesday afternoon, she starts to wish that she hadn’t let three months of silence pass.
Joanna.
I know you don’t want to hear from me.
His voice is hoarse and rough and Joanna starts to worry. All her anger flies out the window and concern replaces it as she clasps the edge of the table with her hands, staring at the machine as if that will coax Jim to go on faster. His pauses are dominating the conversation and so often all he lets out is a soft ‘uh’ before the silence takes over once more.
I just need you to listen to me. Please hear me out. Joanna, I know that you’re upset about what your father did, but that’s in the past and this is the now. This is important, Jo, and I don’t want this to guilt you into anything, but you need to come aboard the Enterprise as soon as possible, Joanna.
Her stomach twists and Joanna knows that whatever is happening up there in space, it can’t be very good at all.
We’re just above Earth now and we’ll be here for weeks while the upgrades are installed and while we do some searching for a solution. Jo… your dad is dying. I just thought you’d want to know in case that changed things.
Joanna’s rationality flies out the window as she starts to throw clothes haphazardly into the closest bag she can find, absolutely dashed and trying to focus on something. She tells herself that if she focuses on the folding of a shirt, then she won’t keep hearing the desolate despair in Jim’s tone as he tells Joanna that her father is dying before she’s even grown up - that he’s dying before they even saw this fight to full fruition.
She nearly trips on her way down the stairs, standing anxiously in the den where her mother is flicking through bills, pinching the bridge of her nose as she looks up at Joanna. “Sleepover?” she distractedly asks.
The sheer minutia of an event like a sleepover strikes and collides with Joanna and she suddenly wishes that it were that. Joanna shakes her head firmly and feels like her voice is caught in her throat. She hasn’t felt a sense of dread this pervasive since the shuttle had started to go down and the man beside her clasped her hand and whispered, ‘Just hold on’.
Jim had told her to just hold on.
“I have to go to the Enterprise,” she announces with as much authority as she can muster. “Jim called. He needs me to go up before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what, Joanna?”
“Dad is…Daddy is…” she keeps trying and finds herself stumbling. If she tells her mother, then it’s almost as if she’s giving the family permission to start grieving in advance when there could still be a possible cure. “Jim says Daddy is dying,” she gets out, lip trembling until she presses them firmly together to steel herself. She’s made of sterner stuff than this, she tells herself.
She tells herself to think of what her father would say in a situation like this, but that just sets her off some more and she lets out a choked sound. Jocelyn is at Joanna’s side instantly and pulling her close against her torso. Joanna clings as hard as she can while her fingers claw at Jocelyn’s sweater.
“He’s probably so mad at me,” she gasps out the words between sobs. “I was so mean, I said so many things, I don’t want him to die thinking I hate him.”
“Did they say when they could beam you up?” Jocelyn demands instantly, her voice strong and firm.
“I just have to send a comm.”
“When you get there, you’ll be representing me as well,” Jocelyn says, her even-keeled tone slipping some as hints of her original accent slip in. “So you give that man a slap and tell him that if he even dares to go close to the light, he’ll have both you and me to answer to.” She squeezes Joanna tightly once more as they go about signaling the Enterprise.
Joanna knows that her mother has to stand back so that her biosignature can be traced and recognized, but she still feels cold and alone as she stands there.
“I love you, JoJo,” her mother says firmly. “Be strong and safe.”
“I will,” Joanna promises, feeling like it’s a flimsy promise, but the best one she can currently muster.
She doesn’t hesitate as soon as she fully rematerializes above the ship. She throws down her bags to the ground and tightens her coat around her as she takes off sprinting down the halls in her worn sneakers, going up levels and never stopping until she arrives at Medical, cursing the doors for not opening fast enough and trying to pry them open faster with her long digits. “Where is he!” she demands anxiously, staring around the biobeds and looking for her father in one of them. Her tone is fraught with panic and she catches Nurse Chapel’s attention with a desperate cry lodged in her throat. “Christine, where’s my Dad? Jim said he was…he was…” She can’t get the words out, but Chapel has to know what she means. “If he’s sick, why isn’t he here?” she demands, feeling ill to her stomach and helpless.
Nurse Chapel simply shakes her head and Joanna hates the notion that they’ve already started some grieving process for a man who isn’t dead. “He signed himself out,” she responds gently. “He’s in his and the Captain’s quarters and has been for the last week.”
Joanna knows that she’s little more than a petulant teenager, but she’s the CMO’s daughter and she deserves better. Her nostrils flare slightly as she takes a deep breath. “You should have kept him here,” she accuses sharply.
Chapel looks almost mollified even though she seems to be rolling her eyes. “Trust me when I say that had that been a viable option, he would still be tied to a bed.”
“Which way to their quarters…?” she asks, hating that she’s forgotten after the time spent apart and without communication.
Chapel wordlessly directs her with a hand pointing to the left out of Medical and Joanna feels as if her heart is trying to desperately leap out of her chest. She has to keep hold of her emotions before she can let them get the best of her because there’s so much to say and she feels almost as if she’s going to run out of time to say it.
She doesn’t even know how long her father has left. What if she’s too late already? She sprints down the halls and ducks ensigns and people who stare at her with incredulity. She hears her name shouted here and there but ignores it as she focuses on her boots pounding on the floor of the ship and the endless thumping of her blood through her body.
She’s panting desperately by the time she arrives and punches in her personal keycode, entering the room to see her father half-bent over to the ground, a hand on the arm of a chair to support him as he picks up socks from the ground, muttering to himself. “…goddamn dying and I have to pick up his dirty socks…”
It takes six strides to get properly in the room and only on the fifth does her father realize he isn’t alone. She nearly jumps forward to wrap her arms desperately around him, burying her face in his worn white t-shirt and holding on as hard as she can.
She doesn’t even know what’s wrong, but already she wants to fix it.
“Daddy,” she lets out a tiny sound. “I haven’t forgiven you, yet,” she stubbornly says, as if she needs to qualify that. “But I’m sorry for telling you to get out of my life.” She doesn’t even know if he can hear what she’s saying given that her words are muffled by his shirt. “Daddy, please don’t die,” she pleads, so tired of crying, but her eyes well up again with tears and she clings even harder, a desperate sob escaping her lips when he wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. “What is it? What do you have? How long do you have left? Where’s Jim?” She has a dozen other questions, but starting with these is the best she can do right now.
She hears him struggling slightly, his breath labored, and she pulls off immediately, helping him to a much-used bed by the looks of the sheets.
“Jim’s gone down to Iowa,” he explains, clasping onto her forearm as he slides back into bed and gestures to the hypospray. Joanna’s done this before in her training for Starfleet and injects it firmly into her father’s neck, disposing the empty capsule and setting the mechanism down on the table as she perches on the edge of the bed and tries to ignore her shaking hands or the fact that this is her reality now, this life where her father is going to die before he even reaches forty.
She doesn’t let go of him because she doesn’t think she can bear to. If she holds on tightly enough, she can keep him with her until Jim comes back and they can charge every last supernova and galaxy in the universe to find the answer.
“Daddy,” Joanna insists again, voice breaking. “What is it?”
“Xenopolycythemia. They think I contracted it several months back,” McCoy murmurs, eyes closed. “I’ve got two months left. Three at the outside. There’s no cure.”
Joanna understands that pit in her stomach. It’s the same one she felt when she had found out about her grandfather and it’s the sensation of inevitability. She’s going to lose her father because no one’s figured out the cure to a terrible disease that she doesn’t understand. It’s going to take him away and she’s never going to have her father ever again.
She barely restrains her choked sob before she clambers onto the bed and holds onto her father’s frame as tightly as she can. “Please don’t go,” she begs. “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sick. Please don’t go.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Jim told me,” she insists wildly, breathing sharper and shallow now. “He told me how rundown you were in those messages. He said that you were listless, that me cutting off ties made you…made you weak, Daddy, I didn’t mean to do this to you.”
“Stop it right now, Joanna Portia McCoy,” he barks at her. “You didn’t get me sick. And you came back,” he adds, sounding more tired as he goes on. “You came back to me, that’s all that matters.”
She wants the bed to swallow her up whole. She wants nothing more than to stay here with him and try and take some of the burden from him, but she knows that’s impossible. So she settles for lying as close as possible, whispering the same thing over and over again.
“Please, Daddy. Please don’t die.”
*
Jim has been standing on this doorstep for eternity.
It clicks and ticks and slides past him to the point that Jim wonders if he gives up, if he’ll be carried away down a lazy river that will never end because it’s stuck in a monotonous time-field that’s destined to continue on forever. He knows this place and could navigate it with his eyes shut, but he’s still not entirely sure why he’s here.
He’s found rather than finding the courage to go inside.
“Mom,” Jim greets with a brief and tremulous smile, unable to spill every last secret he’s holding in him, making his chest feel like it’s bound to burst at any moment.
She’s instantly concerned and Jim wonders if she can read him that well or if his pain and distress is written all over his face. She surges forward and wraps her arms tightly around him, hugging him so close that Jim feels the last breath seep out of him without a second’s delay.
“Jim, what is it?” she demands instantly.
Jim steels himself. He’s faced the darkest that space has to offer and he’s lived for so many years not knowing who he is, exactly. Why is this so much harder? Why, he knows, is because he doesn’t want to end up like his mother. He doesn’t want to sit on Earth staring at the sky and cursing it for taking away the person he loves the most. He doesn’t want to live each day of his future wondering how it would different with Bones at his side.
“Bones is dying.” He manages to eke out the three words without his voice breaking the once. “We don’t think he has more than two months.” The unspoken words happen to be ‘how am I going to do this, Mom’ and ‘I’m not strong enough for this’ and an endless wealth of pleas that he can’t say aloud.
Winona only holds him tighter and that’s when Jim lets out the first choked sob.
“I just needed to talk to someone who understands,” he says as he draws away and pulls in a deep breath of air, looking Winona in the eye and understanding suddenly what she must have felt like to lose his father. He’s standing at the precipice and looking down at a life without Bones in it and it hurts so badly because he’s built up everything around him and Bones, Bones and him. Joanna’s already slipping away into the periphery and now Bones is going to be gone forever.
He hates leaving for even two days to come and see his mother, but he needs advice because he’s running out of ideas. He can’t stay on the ship and live in that hopeless pit of agony that’s starting to grow deeper and deeper.
Bones is snapping more. He’s weaker and so his verbal assaults grow sharper because it’s one of the few strengths he has left to him.
“Mom, I’m about to lose him,” Jim says wildly, shaking his head because no matter how many times he’s said it aloud, it still makes little to no sense to him. He can’t lose Bones. Bones has been taking care of him since the Academy. He’s patched up every injury and he’s made bad things go away. How can Bones be struck down by some incurable disease? “I can’t. I can’t,” he insists again, more of a whispered insistence than anger. “Mom, I can’t,” he babbles desperately, so lost in this inevitable and crushing defeat that he’s stopped seeing all the details.
He sees, hears, feels, touches, and tastes this and only this:
Bones is dying and Jim is never going to have him back ever again. He thinks that maybe this is how Spock-Prime feels and though Jim’s done his best to carry forward his anger at the man for having a Bones in some universe, he feels some of that fury falter now that they’re going to be two in the same boat - up shit creek without the paddle.
“I can’t do this,” he continues on, his speech absolutely desperate. “I need to find a cure, but I’ve been looking and there isn’t one. He gets weaker and weaker,” Jim says, his voice shaky, but not unsteady. He’s been through some of the darkest spots in the universe and he knows that he has to be brave.
Winona clasps hold of his hand and takes ownership of her son as she leads him into the house. “Come with me, Jim. Come have a drink with me and tell me everything that’s happened since the wedding. Okay?”
Jim knows what she’s doing. It’s crystal clear that she’s just trying to take his mind off of Bones and funerals and deaths. Even though it’s patently clear what’s going on, he’s still more than a little grateful to her for doing it.
He just hates that his mother knows exactly what to do in the face of impending loss.
He follows her instead and walks the familiar pathways into his home, feeling like it’s far smaller than he recalls in his memories. He feels cold and uncomfortable and like there are eyes in each of the walls watching him and judging him for this. Bones is alone so many miles above him and here he is, trying desperately to find advice on how not to break. He watches her carefully make tea and splash alcohol into it, sliding the saucer across a low table to Jim.
He cups the tea (in a mug passed down by his grandparents) and stares into the light-brown liquid.
“What’s he said about his death?”
“He talks about it all the time,” Jim says, voice sharp with complaint, “like he’s already given up. He’s the most stubborn man in the world when it comes to everything else, but his own life isn’t worth being a pain in the ass about. He rewrote his will and made me call all the important relations and had me bundle up the family house and…” And just speaking about it makes him so angry. It makes him angry because they’re supposed to be in this together and Bones is already pretending as if he’s moved on to the great beyond and left all the responsibility on Jim’s shoulders. “God, Mom, I hate him for it and I hate him for dying and I hate myself for falling so hard and now I’m going to lose him. I wanted…I wanted more time.”
“Jim,” Winona says gently. “There is never enough time. No matter what happens, no matter how long you get, there is never enough time. I loved your father more than I thought possible and it consumed me almost as much as the grief of losing him did. And we had time together, but it wasn’t enough.”
She leans forward and clasps hold of his shoulder firmly, keeping him in her hold.
“You are my son,” she says, voice low. “You’re a good boy, Jimmy, and you’re a Kirk. You will find a way to go on.”
“I don’t want to go on,” Jim protests quietly. He thinks of the shuttle crash and hurtling to the ground as the sun catches glints through the windows. He thinks of his supposedly dying thoughts of ‘I was supposed to make it there to your side’ and he thinks of the graveyard he visits with Bones to see a father long gone. “I don’t want to just go on.”
“Sometimes, life doesn’t give you that choice, sweetie.”
Jim grits his teeth together to try and stubbornly argue that he can take life, look it in the eye, and challenge it. One look from his mother quiets that impulse to rage against the dying light - such as it is - and he falls back against the waiting cushions of the couch. “I just don’t want him to die,” he protests weakly.
“I don’t want him to leave you either, Jimmy,” Winona swears. “Drink your tea. There’s more where that came from.”
*
McCoy knows that he must be hallucinating because the next time he opens his eyes, it’s not Joanna or Jim’s face that swims into his vision. It’s not even any of the crewmembers. Instead, he sees the ravages of age prying at every feature on Spock’s face. Rationality and reason swim slowly into his vision and he understands that this isn’t their First Officer. This is the Ambassador.
“Guess they told you the news, huh,” McCoy says when he finally can piece words together coherently. It’s becoming more of a challenge lately.
He feels something at his hand and realizes belatedly that the Ambassador has taken hold of his hand and is brushing his fingers affectionately over the span of skin.
“I’m a married man, Spock,” McCoy gets the words out, feeling like they’re sticking together. “What you’re doing is off-limits.” I’m off limits, he says in his mind, sending Spock as many signals as he can. Even though he’s dying, he’s going to be faithful.
“Forgive me, Leonard,” Spock remarks gravely, his fingers not inclined to leave McCoy’s hand. “I am experiencing a strange resonation and mirror effect. This is not the first time I have watched you fall prey to this disease, though the circumstances are greatly different. In my time, before us, you took a wife.”
“Spock, get to the point,” McCoy pleads quietly, gripping his hand as if there’s some mild solace to be found there. “My days are somewhat numbered.”
“No, Leonard,” Spock says and suddenly McCoy pays attention to what is going on. “You are not as pressed for time as you might believe.” He leans forward into McCoy’s vision and he fixates on brilliantly warm brown eyes and reaches out to clasp his face, weak fingers brushing strained and older skin as he tries to seek out an answer. He knows that Spock must be skimming his mind like this, but he can’t bring himself to mind. “You took a wife and in the chain of events, we discovered a cure. I am only sorry that it has taken me so long to retrieve it from my memories. Were you still with me, this might have expedited the process, but the period in which you carried my katra did weaken the precise formula and…”
“Spock, shut up,” McCoy begs weakly, letting out a soft exhalation that he doesn’t know what to call. His fingers brush against Spock’s cool skin and he stares up at him, trying to understand what it must be like from his end.
Spock softens, somewhat. “It is…difficult,” Spock answers the unasked question for him.
McCoy finds himself staring up at Spock and trying to probe deeper, begging to be shown the future, wanting to know what the McCoy of his world had done, but there’s nothing to be done about it because Spock refuses to show him any of this.
“You loved me,” McCoy accuses.
There is a great wave of something like awkwardness as Spock clears his throat and shakes his head. He pulls away from McCoy and the contact severs and McCoy is faced with something like a blank wave of emotion coursing his way. “To imply that such emotions are only felt in the past tense would be imprecise, Doctor.”
McCoy can’t help his derisive scoff at that. “Are all Vulcans like you or do you just overcompensate for that damn human half of yours? Can’t you say you love a man without reverting to professional titles in the same sentence?” he demands. The only strength McCoy has anymore is in his razor-sharp words. He can barely stand and some days, he doesn’t wake.
He can still cut a man down to size in the span of several comments with ease, however. There has to be something said for that.
McCoy doesn’t let his eyes stray as Spock brings up something on a datapadd and presents it to McCoy. His hands are steady, but they look so old like the rest of him and McCoy has to wonder what it’s like to live for so long and to watch anyone you’ve ever loved shuffle away from you. He’s finally come to terms with his death sentence, but he hasn’t accepted what it’s going to do to the people all around him. He’s trying to catch a look in those old Vulcan eyes when the Ambassador turns the screen towards him.
“I believe,” Spock begins simply, “that it would benefit you greatly to read this.”
So McCoy looks. He almost doesn’t believe what he sees at first, but grabs for the information when it all starts to clear in his head.
“Get me Jim. Right the fuck now,” McCoy barks at one of his nurses. He’s had to be moved to Medical during a poor episode in the middle of night when he’d needed a burst of adrenaline to convince his body to not give up on him just yet. It looks like they’d made the right call. “You had this from the other universe. This happened to me there, too.”
“You did not die. You lived on to save my life.”
“Is this your payback for my carrying you?” McCoy has to wonder incredulously, a distinctly light-headed feeling going through his mind, as if he’s floating high on dreams and drugs and none of this can possibly be real. It is, it has to be, these formulas all make sense and though it looks likely to be painful, it’s going to let him live.
Spock seems to consider him for a long moment and finally assents with a nod. “Though I do not believe I shall ever be able to repay you, perhaps this is a start.”
The world grows fuzzy as another dose of pain medication is administered - the last round of pain medication - and he can barely make out Ambassador Spock’s form, leaning over him to close his eyes and to murmur ‘sleep’ in Vulcan.
When next he awakes, his blood is burning and he lets out a shout of furious pain.
He scrabbles to grab at the IV in his arm, desperate to get it out.
“No! Bones, don’t!” Jim shouts with alarm. He’s on one side of him and his other hand is being held down, which means that someone else is there. In a sweat-soaked haze, McCoy turns and finds Joanna there, kneeling down on his forearm and staring at him with panicky desperation in her eyes. He turns back to Jim and tries to eke out anything he might say, but it’s trapped in his throat with the cry of pain.
“We started you on the treatment,” Jim explains, brushing back McCoy’s heavy strands of hair from his forehead. “He told us it was going to be painful. Jo and I haven’t left your side, have we, JoJo?” Jim says, beaming away with exhausted pride. “You can’t leave us, Bones. It’s not done yet. We’re not done yet.”
McCoy wants to find something that makes sense in all of this mess, but all he can find is something like pain and gratitude and a weak echo of something that should be relief but feels almost like fear. He’d almost been dead and now he’s alive and well and healing. He turns to Joanna to look her in the eye and not have to see the reflection of a weak man.
Lightly, he clasps her cheek and presses his forehead to hers. “I always thought Jim was going to send me to an early grave,” he murmurs, letting out a shaky exhalation. “I didn’t expect him to pull me out of a shallow one.”
He can feel Jim’s grin of pride even though he isn’t looking anywhere near and McCoy feels almost hollowed out, like he’s been purged of everything good, bad, and in-between and left to start all over again, though he isn’t anywhere near young enough to be unpracticed at this.
He lets out a push of a shaky exhalation and clasps at Jim’s hand, clutching it tight to his heart.
“Don’t go anywhere, Bones,” Jim whispers against his ear.
McCoy closes his eyes and presses Jim’s hand tighter to his heart as Joanna curls up with him, her soft sighs of relief sounding like music to his ears.
“I’m home, Jim. I don’t need to be anywhere else.”
*
The family house in Georgia has gained cobwebs and dust balls since they’ve last seen it. McCoy usually calls someone in to clean it up before they come, but his sudden recovery means that impromptu trips are on the books and no plans in advance are being made. Jim is carrying the suitcases like a mule and grunting by the gates while Joanna helps him. They’ve all been silent and it’s enough to distress McCoy slightly.
The gate creaking is the loudest noise any of them have made since Scotty sent them to the edge of the road leading to home.
McCoy’s busy with his thoughts. That’s his excuse. He’s thinking about putting the horses out to pasture and driving to town in the rickety pick-up to get food for the animals and for themselves. He thinks about turning over the mattresses and remnants of a painful treatment that he wants to see in the past. He thinks about a grave he should visit with Joanna at his side and he thinks about an apology he hasn’t quite said yet. He’s leading the group of them because he can’t bear the looks of pity they kept throwing over their shoulder.
He may have been a dying man less than seventy-two hours ago, but some aspect in the universe like fate or chance has decided to give him a second chance. He’s not about to turn it down.
“Bones, do you want some hel..”
“I’ve got it,” he tersely replies, unlocking the door and nudging his way inside. He’s been told that he needs a good long break. He drops the bags in the front hallway and makes for the back door without delay. The fields will be awaiting him and the kitchen will be blissfully quiet.
He’s heading for the tire-swing that’s still out there. He had seen it as they pulled in, swaying haphazardly in the wind back and forth. He can hear Jim behind him and Joanna, to an extent (she’s busy calling Jocelyn and ensuring their safe arrival), but he doesn’t stop until he’s outside with a hand on the old tread-tracks on that tire.
He stays in quiet introspection until someone arrives and places a soft hand on his back. Then there’s a low hum and McCoy knows that it’s Jim with him here under the same sun that had set when Jim had promised McCoy that their lives were going to change. McCoy leans heavy back into the touch as he rests his hand on the tire swing, fingers tracing the treads of it.
“Bones, say something,” Jim coaxes desperately when too many moments of silence pass. “Tell me you’re angry or frustrated or okay, just let me know that things are going to change from how we’ve been living it these last few months.”
And more than anything, McCoy wishes he could do that.
“I was ready, Jim. I was absolutely ready to die.” McCoy turns and looks him in the eye, tired and not knowing what’s supposed to come next. “I got a second chance at life, but I’m still not ready to step out of the shadows. I mean, what comes after marrying the guy who chased you down through the stars?”
“I kind of figured we’d just live,” Jim says, some mild irritation in his voice. “Bones, you’re making this complicated when I just want to be the simplest guy around,” he admits. “Okay, not simple in the way that implies I’m stupid, but…”
“I get it, Jim,” McCoy interrupts with a bemused smile on his face. “Though, sometimes you act pretty stupid…”
“Hey! Lay off,” Jim mock-sulks, a smirk chasing that petulant look off his face. He wraps his arm around McCoy’s startlingly thin waist and tugs him into the tire-swing, collapsing on the inside as it sways haphazardly around the thick tree trunk. The house is clearly in view and McCoy leans closer to Jim for warmth. It’s getting colder out again and the house isn’t as incredibly warm as it is in the summers, but it still feels cozy.
They stay there for a long while and watch the sun start to descend in the sky while Joanna begins to open up the house - light by light illuminating the house and welcoming the family home.
“Bones, we’re gonna be okay,” Jim assesses firmly. “I know it took us a long while to get here and I know you think some higher-power might steal this away from us at any second, but Spock got you the Hail Mary cure. You’re here, you’re alive. And I have to say that I’m pretty sure that we earned this,” he says slowly. “I know we’re not perfect. I know you and me are just two mortal guys trying to do well by the universe and we’ve suffered no more than other people…”
“I beg to differ that,” McCoy mutters under his breath.
“…but I figure that after all the good we’ve done, the universe owes us something,” Jim insists, his eyes on the house. His whole face brightens when Joanna descends the steps and comes to join them. McCoy feels rather than sees Jim pressing his lips to McCoy’s neck. “We earned this. I earned you. And you earned happiness,” Jim promises softly. “Don’t be scared of that.”
“Hey,” Joanna greets as she approaches. “What are you guys talking about?”
Jim is the one that reaches forward to yank her back into their arms, earning a shriek of surprise from her. “The rest of our lives, kiddo,” he says cheerfully. “But I figure we’ll just take it one step at a time.”
Restraint from Jim Kirk, of all people.
Maybe the universe is starting to change from the way it’s always been.
Or, as McCoy knows better, Jim’s just waiting to dive in head-first. After all, it’s how they got to where they are. How can McCoy begrudge him that when it’s made them as happy as they are?
“Daddy,” Joanna’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“I’m gonna be just fine, baby,” McCoy promises and he actually, fully, wholly means it with all his heart. They’re all going to be just fine.
THE END
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer & Warnings: They don't belong to me. Be advised there is a heavy theme of death.
Word Count: 5,781
Summary: Jim thought they'd have more time. The universe doesn't work like that, sometimes.
Notes: This is the end of the Hard-Earned Rights series. It all began when Jim was in a shuttle crash and he met a strange girl. Thank you for reading along with me! Title comes from a Stars song. Thanks endlessly to loveflyfree for the beta.
Hard-Earned Rights // Just About Time // The Graceful Waltz // One // The Grave Memorial Of A Life Unlived // Houses & Heartwarmings // Guess Who's Coming To Dinner // Enterprise On My Mind // Your Fate's Not In The Stars // A World of Solemn Thought // Time Can Never Kill The True Heart
Every week, there is a message lying in wait for her from the Enterprise. She plays it and lets it go to the trash-box without feeling much hesitance (though always the underlying press of guilt upon her conscience). This week is no different than the rest. She returns home on a Tuesday afternoon and the little light is blinking to alert her that Jim is making another protest on her father’s behalf.
She slides off her jacket and hangs it with her schoolbag as she leans over to press the PLAY button.
No matter how angry she is at the both of them, no matter the strength of her three-month-long grudge, she always plays the messages to ensure that Jim and her father are still both alive and safe. She might not want them in her life, but she still doesn’t want anything bad to happen to either of them.
On that Tuesday afternoon, she starts to wish that she hadn’t let three months of silence pass.
Joanna.
I know you don’t want to hear from me.
His voice is hoarse and rough and Joanna starts to worry. All her anger flies out the window and concern replaces it as she clasps the edge of the table with her hands, staring at the machine as if that will coax Jim to go on faster. His pauses are dominating the conversation and so often all he lets out is a soft ‘uh’ before the silence takes over once more.
I just need you to listen to me. Please hear me out. Joanna, I know that you’re upset about what your father did, but that’s in the past and this is the now. This is important, Jo, and I don’t want this to guilt you into anything, but you need to come aboard the Enterprise as soon as possible, Joanna.
Her stomach twists and Joanna knows that whatever is happening up there in space, it can’t be very good at all.
We’re just above Earth now and we’ll be here for weeks while the upgrades are installed and while we do some searching for a solution. Jo… your dad is dying. I just thought you’d want to know in case that changed things.
Joanna’s rationality flies out the window as she starts to throw clothes haphazardly into the closest bag she can find, absolutely dashed and trying to focus on something. She tells herself that if she focuses on the folding of a shirt, then she won’t keep hearing the desolate despair in Jim’s tone as he tells Joanna that her father is dying before she’s even grown up - that he’s dying before they even saw this fight to full fruition.
She nearly trips on her way down the stairs, standing anxiously in the den where her mother is flicking through bills, pinching the bridge of her nose as she looks up at Joanna. “Sleepover?” she distractedly asks.
The sheer minutia of an event like a sleepover strikes and collides with Joanna and she suddenly wishes that it were that. Joanna shakes her head firmly and feels like her voice is caught in her throat. She hasn’t felt a sense of dread this pervasive since the shuttle had started to go down and the man beside her clasped her hand and whispered, ‘Just hold on’.
Jim had told her to just hold on.
“I have to go to the Enterprise,” she announces with as much authority as she can muster. “Jim called. He needs me to go up before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what, Joanna?”
“Dad is…Daddy is…” she keeps trying and finds herself stumbling. If she tells her mother, then it’s almost as if she’s giving the family permission to start grieving in advance when there could still be a possible cure. “Jim says Daddy is dying,” she gets out, lip trembling until she presses them firmly together to steel herself. She’s made of sterner stuff than this, she tells herself.
She tells herself to think of what her father would say in a situation like this, but that just sets her off some more and she lets out a choked sound. Jocelyn is at Joanna’s side instantly and pulling her close against her torso. Joanna clings as hard as she can while her fingers claw at Jocelyn’s sweater.
“He’s probably so mad at me,” she gasps out the words between sobs. “I was so mean, I said so many things, I don’t want him to die thinking I hate him.”
“Did they say when they could beam you up?” Jocelyn demands instantly, her voice strong and firm.
“I just have to send a comm.”
“When you get there, you’ll be representing me as well,” Jocelyn says, her even-keeled tone slipping some as hints of her original accent slip in. “So you give that man a slap and tell him that if he even dares to go close to the light, he’ll have both you and me to answer to.” She squeezes Joanna tightly once more as they go about signaling the Enterprise.
Joanna knows that her mother has to stand back so that her biosignature can be traced and recognized, but she still feels cold and alone as she stands there.
“I love you, JoJo,” her mother says firmly. “Be strong and safe.”
“I will,” Joanna promises, feeling like it’s a flimsy promise, but the best one she can currently muster.
She doesn’t hesitate as soon as she fully rematerializes above the ship. She throws down her bags to the ground and tightens her coat around her as she takes off sprinting down the halls in her worn sneakers, going up levels and never stopping until she arrives at Medical, cursing the doors for not opening fast enough and trying to pry them open faster with her long digits. “Where is he!” she demands anxiously, staring around the biobeds and looking for her father in one of them. Her tone is fraught with panic and she catches Nurse Chapel’s attention with a desperate cry lodged in her throat. “Christine, where’s my Dad? Jim said he was…he was…” She can’t get the words out, but Chapel has to know what she means. “If he’s sick, why isn’t he here?” she demands, feeling ill to her stomach and helpless.
Nurse Chapel simply shakes her head and Joanna hates the notion that they’ve already started some grieving process for a man who isn’t dead. “He signed himself out,” she responds gently. “He’s in his and the Captain’s quarters and has been for the last week.”
Joanna knows that she’s little more than a petulant teenager, but she’s the CMO’s daughter and she deserves better. Her nostrils flare slightly as she takes a deep breath. “You should have kept him here,” she accuses sharply.
Chapel looks almost mollified even though she seems to be rolling her eyes. “Trust me when I say that had that been a viable option, he would still be tied to a bed.”
“Which way to their quarters…?” she asks, hating that she’s forgotten after the time spent apart and without communication.
Chapel wordlessly directs her with a hand pointing to the left out of Medical and Joanna feels as if her heart is trying to desperately leap out of her chest. She has to keep hold of her emotions before she can let them get the best of her because there’s so much to say and she feels almost as if she’s going to run out of time to say it.
She doesn’t even know how long her father has left. What if she’s too late already? She sprints down the halls and ducks ensigns and people who stare at her with incredulity. She hears her name shouted here and there but ignores it as she focuses on her boots pounding on the floor of the ship and the endless thumping of her blood through her body.
She’s panting desperately by the time she arrives and punches in her personal keycode, entering the room to see her father half-bent over to the ground, a hand on the arm of a chair to support him as he picks up socks from the ground, muttering to himself. “…goddamn dying and I have to pick up his dirty socks…”
It takes six strides to get properly in the room and only on the fifth does her father realize he isn’t alone. She nearly jumps forward to wrap her arms desperately around him, burying her face in his worn white t-shirt and holding on as hard as she can.
She doesn’t even know what’s wrong, but already she wants to fix it.
“Daddy,” she lets out a tiny sound. “I haven’t forgiven you, yet,” she stubbornly says, as if she needs to qualify that. “But I’m sorry for telling you to get out of my life.” She doesn’t even know if he can hear what she’s saying given that her words are muffled by his shirt. “Daddy, please don’t die,” she pleads, so tired of crying, but her eyes well up again with tears and she clings even harder, a desperate sob escaping her lips when he wraps his arms around her and holds her tight. “What is it? What do you have? How long do you have left? Where’s Jim?” She has a dozen other questions, but starting with these is the best she can do right now.
She hears him struggling slightly, his breath labored, and she pulls off immediately, helping him to a much-used bed by the looks of the sheets.
“Jim’s gone down to Iowa,” he explains, clasping onto her forearm as he slides back into bed and gestures to the hypospray. Joanna’s done this before in her training for Starfleet and injects it firmly into her father’s neck, disposing the empty capsule and setting the mechanism down on the table as she perches on the edge of the bed and tries to ignore her shaking hands or the fact that this is her reality now, this life where her father is going to die before he even reaches forty.
She doesn’t let go of him because she doesn’t think she can bear to. If she holds on tightly enough, she can keep him with her until Jim comes back and they can charge every last supernova and galaxy in the universe to find the answer.
“Daddy,” Joanna insists again, voice breaking. “What is it?”
“Xenopolycythemia. They think I contracted it several months back,” McCoy murmurs, eyes closed. “I’ve got two months left. Three at the outside. There’s no cure.”
Joanna understands that pit in her stomach. It’s the same one she felt when she had found out about her grandfather and it’s the sensation of inevitability. She’s going to lose her father because no one’s figured out the cure to a terrible disease that she doesn’t understand. It’s going to take him away and she’s never going to have her father ever again.
She barely restrains her choked sob before she clambers onto the bed and holds onto her father’s frame as tightly as she can. “Please don’t go,” she begs. “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sick. Please don’t go.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Jim told me,” she insists wildly, breathing sharper and shallow now. “He told me how rundown you were in those messages. He said that you were listless, that me cutting off ties made you…made you weak, Daddy, I didn’t mean to do this to you.”
“Stop it right now, Joanna Portia McCoy,” he barks at her. “You didn’t get me sick. And you came back,” he adds, sounding more tired as he goes on. “You came back to me, that’s all that matters.”
She wants the bed to swallow her up whole. She wants nothing more than to stay here with him and try and take some of the burden from him, but she knows that’s impossible. So she settles for lying as close as possible, whispering the same thing over and over again.
“Please, Daddy. Please don’t die.”
*
Jim has been standing on this doorstep for eternity.
It clicks and ticks and slides past him to the point that Jim wonders if he gives up, if he’ll be carried away down a lazy river that will never end because it’s stuck in a monotonous time-field that’s destined to continue on forever. He knows this place and could navigate it with his eyes shut, but he’s still not entirely sure why he’s here.
He’s found rather than finding the courage to go inside.
“Mom,” Jim greets with a brief and tremulous smile, unable to spill every last secret he’s holding in him, making his chest feel like it’s bound to burst at any moment.
She’s instantly concerned and Jim wonders if she can read him that well or if his pain and distress is written all over his face. She surges forward and wraps her arms tightly around him, hugging him so close that Jim feels the last breath seep out of him without a second’s delay.
“Jim, what is it?” she demands instantly.
Jim steels himself. He’s faced the darkest that space has to offer and he’s lived for so many years not knowing who he is, exactly. Why is this so much harder? Why, he knows, is because he doesn’t want to end up like his mother. He doesn’t want to sit on Earth staring at the sky and cursing it for taking away the person he loves the most. He doesn’t want to live each day of his future wondering how it would different with Bones at his side.
“Bones is dying.” He manages to eke out the three words without his voice breaking the once. “We don’t think he has more than two months.” The unspoken words happen to be ‘how am I going to do this, Mom’ and ‘I’m not strong enough for this’ and an endless wealth of pleas that he can’t say aloud.
Winona only holds him tighter and that’s when Jim lets out the first choked sob.
“I just needed to talk to someone who understands,” he says as he draws away and pulls in a deep breath of air, looking Winona in the eye and understanding suddenly what she must have felt like to lose his father. He’s standing at the precipice and looking down at a life without Bones in it and it hurts so badly because he’s built up everything around him and Bones, Bones and him. Joanna’s already slipping away into the periphery and now Bones is going to be gone forever.
He hates leaving for even two days to come and see his mother, but he needs advice because he’s running out of ideas. He can’t stay on the ship and live in that hopeless pit of agony that’s starting to grow deeper and deeper.
Bones is snapping more. He’s weaker and so his verbal assaults grow sharper because it’s one of the few strengths he has left to him.
“Mom, I’m about to lose him,” Jim says wildly, shaking his head because no matter how many times he’s said it aloud, it still makes little to no sense to him. He can’t lose Bones. Bones has been taking care of him since the Academy. He’s patched up every injury and he’s made bad things go away. How can Bones be struck down by some incurable disease? “I can’t. I can’t,” he insists again, more of a whispered insistence than anger. “Mom, I can’t,” he babbles desperately, so lost in this inevitable and crushing defeat that he’s stopped seeing all the details.
He sees, hears, feels, touches, and tastes this and only this:
Bones is dying and Jim is never going to have him back ever again. He thinks that maybe this is how Spock-Prime feels and though Jim’s done his best to carry forward his anger at the man for having a Bones in some universe, he feels some of that fury falter now that they’re going to be two in the same boat - up shit creek without the paddle.
“I can’t do this,” he continues on, his speech absolutely desperate. “I need to find a cure, but I’ve been looking and there isn’t one. He gets weaker and weaker,” Jim says, his voice shaky, but not unsteady. He’s been through some of the darkest spots in the universe and he knows that he has to be brave.
Winona clasps hold of his hand and takes ownership of her son as she leads him into the house. “Come with me, Jim. Come have a drink with me and tell me everything that’s happened since the wedding. Okay?”
Jim knows what she’s doing. It’s crystal clear that she’s just trying to take his mind off of Bones and funerals and deaths. Even though it’s patently clear what’s going on, he’s still more than a little grateful to her for doing it.
He just hates that his mother knows exactly what to do in the face of impending loss.
He follows her instead and walks the familiar pathways into his home, feeling like it’s far smaller than he recalls in his memories. He feels cold and uncomfortable and like there are eyes in each of the walls watching him and judging him for this. Bones is alone so many miles above him and here he is, trying desperately to find advice on how not to break. He watches her carefully make tea and splash alcohol into it, sliding the saucer across a low table to Jim.
He cups the tea (in a mug passed down by his grandparents) and stares into the light-brown liquid.
“What’s he said about his death?”
“He talks about it all the time,” Jim says, voice sharp with complaint, “like he’s already given up. He’s the most stubborn man in the world when it comes to everything else, but his own life isn’t worth being a pain in the ass about. He rewrote his will and made me call all the important relations and had me bundle up the family house and…” And just speaking about it makes him so angry. It makes him angry because they’re supposed to be in this together and Bones is already pretending as if he’s moved on to the great beyond and left all the responsibility on Jim’s shoulders. “God, Mom, I hate him for it and I hate him for dying and I hate myself for falling so hard and now I’m going to lose him. I wanted…I wanted more time.”
“Jim,” Winona says gently. “There is never enough time. No matter what happens, no matter how long you get, there is never enough time. I loved your father more than I thought possible and it consumed me almost as much as the grief of losing him did. And we had time together, but it wasn’t enough.”
She leans forward and clasps hold of his shoulder firmly, keeping him in her hold.
“You are my son,” she says, voice low. “You’re a good boy, Jimmy, and you’re a Kirk. You will find a way to go on.”
“I don’t want to go on,” Jim protests quietly. He thinks of the shuttle crash and hurtling to the ground as the sun catches glints through the windows. He thinks of his supposedly dying thoughts of ‘I was supposed to make it there to your side’ and he thinks of the graveyard he visits with Bones to see a father long gone. “I don’t want to just go on.”
“Sometimes, life doesn’t give you that choice, sweetie.”
Jim grits his teeth together to try and stubbornly argue that he can take life, look it in the eye, and challenge it. One look from his mother quiets that impulse to rage against the dying light - such as it is - and he falls back against the waiting cushions of the couch. “I just don’t want him to die,” he protests weakly.
“I don’t want him to leave you either, Jimmy,” Winona swears. “Drink your tea. There’s more where that came from.”
*
McCoy knows that he must be hallucinating because the next time he opens his eyes, it’s not Joanna or Jim’s face that swims into his vision. It’s not even any of the crewmembers. Instead, he sees the ravages of age prying at every feature on Spock’s face. Rationality and reason swim slowly into his vision and he understands that this isn’t their First Officer. This is the Ambassador.
“Guess they told you the news, huh,” McCoy says when he finally can piece words together coherently. It’s becoming more of a challenge lately.
He feels something at his hand and realizes belatedly that the Ambassador has taken hold of his hand and is brushing his fingers affectionately over the span of skin.
“I’m a married man, Spock,” McCoy gets the words out, feeling like they’re sticking together. “What you’re doing is off-limits.” I’m off limits, he says in his mind, sending Spock as many signals as he can. Even though he’s dying, he’s going to be faithful.
“Forgive me, Leonard,” Spock remarks gravely, his fingers not inclined to leave McCoy’s hand. “I am experiencing a strange resonation and mirror effect. This is not the first time I have watched you fall prey to this disease, though the circumstances are greatly different. In my time, before us, you took a wife.”
“Spock, get to the point,” McCoy pleads quietly, gripping his hand as if there’s some mild solace to be found there. “My days are somewhat numbered.”
“No, Leonard,” Spock says and suddenly McCoy pays attention to what is going on. “You are not as pressed for time as you might believe.” He leans forward into McCoy’s vision and he fixates on brilliantly warm brown eyes and reaches out to clasp his face, weak fingers brushing strained and older skin as he tries to seek out an answer. He knows that Spock must be skimming his mind like this, but he can’t bring himself to mind. “You took a wife and in the chain of events, we discovered a cure. I am only sorry that it has taken me so long to retrieve it from my memories. Were you still with me, this might have expedited the process, but the period in which you carried my katra did weaken the precise formula and…”
“Spock, shut up,” McCoy begs weakly, letting out a soft exhalation that he doesn’t know what to call. His fingers brush against Spock’s cool skin and he stares up at him, trying to understand what it must be like from his end.
Spock softens, somewhat. “It is…difficult,” Spock answers the unasked question for him.
McCoy finds himself staring up at Spock and trying to probe deeper, begging to be shown the future, wanting to know what the McCoy of his world had done, but there’s nothing to be done about it because Spock refuses to show him any of this.
“You loved me,” McCoy accuses.
There is a great wave of something like awkwardness as Spock clears his throat and shakes his head. He pulls away from McCoy and the contact severs and McCoy is faced with something like a blank wave of emotion coursing his way. “To imply that such emotions are only felt in the past tense would be imprecise, Doctor.”
McCoy can’t help his derisive scoff at that. “Are all Vulcans like you or do you just overcompensate for that damn human half of yours? Can’t you say you love a man without reverting to professional titles in the same sentence?” he demands. The only strength McCoy has anymore is in his razor-sharp words. He can barely stand and some days, he doesn’t wake.
He can still cut a man down to size in the span of several comments with ease, however. There has to be something said for that.
McCoy doesn’t let his eyes stray as Spock brings up something on a datapadd and presents it to McCoy. His hands are steady, but they look so old like the rest of him and McCoy has to wonder what it’s like to live for so long and to watch anyone you’ve ever loved shuffle away from you. He’s finally come to terms with his death sentence, but he hasn’t accepted what it’s going to do to the people all around him. He’s trying to catch a look in those old Vulcan eyes when the Ambassador turns the screen towards him.
“I believe,” Spock begins simply, “that it would benefit you greatly to read this.”
So McCoy looks. He almost doesn’t believe what he sees at first, but grabs for the information when it all starts to clear in his head.
“Get me Jim. Right the fuck now,” McCoy barks at one of his nurses. He’s had to be moved to Medical during a poor episode in the middle of night when he’d needed a burst of adrenaline to convince his body to not give up on him just yet. It looks like they’d made the right call. “You had this from the other universe. This happened to me there, too.”
“You did not die. You lived on to save my life.”
“Is this your payback for my carrying you?” McCoy has to wonder incredulously, a distinctly light-headed feeling going through his mind, as if he’s floating high on dreams and drugs and none of this can possibly be real. It is, it has to be, these formulas all make sense and though it looks likely to be painful, it’s going to let him live.
Spock seems to consider him for a long moment and finally assents with a nod. “Though I do not believe I shall ever be able to repay you, perhaps this is a start.”
The world grows fuzzy as another dose of pain medication is administered - the last round of pain medication - and he can barely make out Ambassador Spock’s form, leaning over him to close his eyes and to murmur ‘sleep’ in Vulcan.
When next he awakes, his blood is burning and he lets out a shout of furious pain.
He scrabbles to grab at the IV in his arm, desperate to get it out.
“No! Bones, don’t!” Jim shouts with alarm. He’s on one side of him and his other hand is being held down, which means that someone else is there. In a sweat-soaked haze, McCoy turns and finds Joanna there, kneeling down on his forearm and staring at him with panicky desperation in her eyes. He turns back to Jim and tries to eke out anything he might say, but it’s trapped in his throat with the cry of pain.
“We started you on the treatment,” Jim explains, brushing back McCoy’s heavy strands of hair from his forehead. “He told us it was going to be painful. Jo and I haven’t left your side, have we, JoJo?” Jim says, beaming away with exhausted pride. “You can’t leave us, Bones. It’s not done yet. We’re not done yet.”
McCoy wants to find something that makes sense in all of this mess, but all he can find is something like pain and gratitude and a weak echo of something that should be relief but feels almost like fear. He’d almost been dead and now he’s alive and well and healing. He turns to Joanna to look her in the eye and not have to see the reflection of a weak man.
Lightly, he clasps her cheek and presses his forehead to hers. “I always thought Jim was going to send me to an early grave,” he murmurs, letting out a shaky exhalation. “I didn’t expect him to pull me out of a shallow one.”
He can feel Jim’s grin of pride even though he isn’t looking anywhere near and McCoy feels almost hollowed out, like he’s been purged of everything good, bad, and in-between and left to start all over again, though he isn’t anywhere near young enough to be unpracticed at this.
He lets out a push of a shaky exhalation and clasps at Jim’s hand, clutching it tight to his heart.
“Don’t go anywhere, Bones,” Jim whispers against his ear.
McCoy closes his eyes and presses Jim’s hand tighter to his heart as Joanna curls up with him, her soft sighs of relief sounding like music to his ears.
“I’m home, Jim. I don’t need to be anywhere else.”
*
The family house in Georgia has gained cobwebs and dust balls since they’ve last seen it. McCoy usually calls someone in to clean it up before they come, but his sudden recovery means that impromptu trips are on the books and no plans in advance are being made. Jim is carrying the suitcases like a mule and grunting by the gates while Joanna helps him. They’ve all been silent and it’s enough to distress McCoy slightly.
The gate creaking is the loudest noise any of them have made since Scotty sent them to the edge of the road leading to home.
McCoy’s busy with his thoughts. That’s his excuse. He’s thinking about putting the horses out to pasture and driving to town in the rickety pick-up to get food for the animals and for themselves. He thinks about turning over the mattresses and remnants of a painful treatment that he wants to see in the past. He thinks about a grave he should visit with Joanna at his side and he thinks about an apology he hasn’t quite said yet. He’s leading the group of them because he can’t bear the looks of pity they kept throwing over their shoulder.
He may have been a dying man less than seventy-two hours ago, but some aspect in the universe like fate or chance has decided to give him a second chance. He’s not about to turn it down.
“Bones, do you want some hel..”
“I’ve got it,” he tersely replies, unlocking the door and nudging his way inside. He’s been told that he needs a good long break. He drops the bags in the front hallway and makes for the back door without delay. The fields will be awaiting him and the kitchen will be blissfully quiet.
He’s heading for the tire-swing that’s still out there. He had seen it as they pulled in, swaying haphazardly in the wind back and forth. He can hear Jim behind him and Joanna, to an extent (she’s busy calling Jocelyn and ensuring their safe arrival), but he doesn’t stop until he’s outside with a hand on the old tread-tracks on that tire.
He stays in quiet introspection until someone arrives and places a soft hand on his back. Then there’s a low hum and McCoy knows that it’s Jim with him here under the same sun that had set when Jim had promised McCoy that their lives were going to change. McCoy leans heavy back into the touch as he rests his hand on the tire swing, fingers tracing the treads of it.
“Bones, say something,” Jim coaxes desperately when too many moments of silence pass. “Tell me you’re angry or frustrated or okay, just let me know that things are going to change from how we’ve been living it these last few months.”
And more than anything, McCoy wishes he could do that.
“I was ready, Jim. I was absolutely ready to die.” McCoy turns and looks him in the eye, tired and not knowing what’s supposed to come next. “I got a second chance at life, but I’m still not ready to step out of the shadows. I mean, what comes after marrying the guy who chased you down through the stars?”
“I kind of figured we’d just live,” Jim says, some mild irritation in his voice. “Bones, you’re making this complicated when I just want to be the simplest guy around,” he admits. “Okay, not simple in the way that implies I’m stupid, but…”
“I get it, Jim,” McCoy interrupts with a bemused smile on his face. “Though, sometimes you act pretty stupid…”
“Hey! Lay off,” Jim mock-sulks, a smirk chasing that petulant look off his face. He wraps his arm around McCoy’s startlingly thin waist and tugs him into the tire-swing, collapsing on the inside as it sways haphazardly around the thick tree trunk. The house is clearly in view and McCoy leans closer to Jim for warmth. It’s getting colder out again and the house isn’t as incredibly warm as it is in the summers, but it still feels cozy.
They stay there for a long while and watch the sun start to descend in the sky while Joanna begins to open up the house - light by light illuminating the house and welcoming the family home.
“Bones, we’re gonna be okay,” Jim assesses firmly. “I know it took us a long while to get here and I know you think some higher-power might steal this away from us at any second, but Spock got you the Hail Mary cure. You’re here, you’re alive. And I have to say that I’m pretty sure that we earned this,” he says slowly. “I know we’re not perfect. I know you and me are just two mortal guys trying to do well by the universe and we’ve suffered no more than other people…”
“I beg to differ that,” McCoy mutters under his breath.
“…but I figure that after all the good we’ve done, the universe owes us something,” Jim insists, his eyes on the house. His whole face brightens when Joanna descends the steps and comes to join them. McCoy feels rather than sees Jim pressing his lips to McCoy’s neck. “We earned this. I earned you. And you earned happiness,” Jim promises softly. “Don’t be scared of that.”
“Hey,” Joanna greets as she approaches. “What are you guys talking about?”
Jim is the one that reaches forward to yank her back into their arms, earning a shriek of surprise from her. “The rest of our lives, kiddo,” he says cheerfully. “But I figure we’ll just take it one step at a time.”
Restraint from Jim Kirk, of all people.
Maybe the universe is starting to change from the way it’s always been.
Or, as McCoy knows better, Jim’s just waiting to dive in head-first. After all, it’s how they got to where they are. How can McCoy begrudge him that when it’s made them as happy as they are?
“Daddy,” Joanna’s voice interrupts his thoughts. “Are you okay?”
“I’m gonna be just fine, baby,” McCoy promises and he actually, fully, wholly means it with all his heart. They’re all going to be just fine.
THE END