7Title: Along Comes a Stranger (27/28)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: AU. Jim’s life in Riverside is uncomplicated until two men, both equally mysterious and compelling, arrive in town, bringing with them the promise of change.
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26
Italicized passages are scenes out of sequence.
Part Twenty-Seven
The mortician meets two men in the hallway bordering the hospital morgue. He first blinks at the tall, impeccably dressed man and then addresses the other man with the badge and Stetson hat. “You can have ‘im back now, Sheriff.”
“Our thanks,” replies Komack. “Mr. Spock?”
Mr. Spock is still observing the mortician. “Did he say anything of use?”
The small man with glasses shakes his head. “Not really but it’s all on here, I reckon.” He taps the front of his shirt, indicating the wire beneath.
Komack grimaces. “It’ll be about as useful as Rand’s was, I suspect.”
“Deputy Rand’s wire lead us to their rescue,” the lawyer reminds Komack quietly. Spock turns away. “I will collect Jim now. We appreciate your assistance, sir.”
“Glad to be of help. I’ve been following the campaigns. Never liked the look of that Trelane fellow.”
Whether or not the lawyer catches this statement, Komack and the mortician may never know. Komack nods one last time, silent, and trails after Mr. Spock to retrieve Jim Kirk.
“…rest. I will stay.”
“—can’t, Spock, not until—Jim?”
He didn’t mean to twitch his hand but the warmth around it had moved away.
“—Jim? C’mon, Jim, time to open those baby blues, kid.”
Despite the gentle coaxing of the voice, Jim really doesn’t want to open his eyes. He is comfortable and very tired. His hand grows warm again as it is picked up and his knuckles are stroked. Jim sighs almost inaudibly, just a tiny extra puff of air through his nose.
The breath coming out of his lungs makes a faint whistling noise and, crap, it hurts. Breathing isn’t supposed to hurt.
Someone is impatient and says his name more sharply. Jim drags his eyes open, moans at the bright light, and shuts them again.
“Spock, can you get the curtains?”
The light behind his eyelids dims and Jim cautiously opens his eyes again. This time he is able to focus. The vision in front of him immediately forms into a familiar face. It says, relieved, “Jim. Damn it, Jim, it’s about time.”
Oh. “Bones?”
“Yeah. ‘N Spock.”
Jim takes a second or two to comprehend that. “Where?” he asks, frowning at how hard it is to talk. His throat aches. The taste in his mouth is awful, like stale cigarettes.
Bones brushes a thumb lightly across his jaw. “You’re in the hospital, Jim. Just be still for a minute, okay? Still and calm, just like you are.”
Hospital? Last time he was in the hospital, he was with Bones and his mom visiting Wesley. Just visiting.
Mom.
He must have said that out loud because Bones assures him, “She’s here. You know that coffee machine on the third floor? I think she’s havin’ a fight with it.”
Jim does remember that machine. He pictures his mother as her patented no-nonsense stare devolves into cussing and chuckles.
The chuckle turns into a nasty, rattling cough. Leonard tugs him upright and rubs his back, saying, “Easy, easy, breathe, Jim” until the ripped feeling in his lungs subsides. The small bed Kirk is in dips on the other side and Spock holds out a plastic cup with straw. Jim can’t take the cup himself because Bones has his arms pinned, and so Jim tries not to feel embarrassed because he is essentially an invalid.
In fact, once he has had a few sips of water, Jim says defiantly, “Not an invalid.”
Bones is still rubbing circles on Kirk’s back and it’s not fair how drowsy that makes Jim. “’Course you aren’t, kid,” the doctor says softly. “But a hospital is for helpin’ people and right now that’s what you need. Spock and I are glad to help you.” McCoy’s voice gains a funny hitch when he adds, “We’re lucky, so damned lucky that you’re with us, Jim.”
“Goin’ nowhere,” Jim mumbles.
A nose buries in the short hairs along the back of his neck as Bones hugs him from behind. Jim turns his head and catches a flash of Spock’s pained eyes before Spock tamps down on whatever he is feeling. Jim tries to ask, rather dumbly, “Are you okay?” It comes out as a raw whisper.
Spock draws away, though his answer is succinct and unperturbed. “You are alive,” the lawyer says. “That is all I require to be well.”
Liar, Jim thinks.
There is no time to prod further (not that Jim has the emotional energy to do so) because Winona Kirk enters the hospital room, sees her son sitting up, and drops her cup of coffee. Her “Jimmy!” is joyful.
Bones slides off the bed to make room for Winona, and Jim feels the loss immediately. Then Jim is enveloped in his mother’s arms and the sense of loss is overridden by a gentle rocking motion and the tears on his mother’s face as she tells him repeatedly how much he scared her (not to do it again) and how much she loves him (“so much, Jimmy, I love you so much”).
His weariness punches into him like a mean right hook. It’s Winona and an unfamiliar nurse who help him settle on his back and tell him to go to sleep. Bones and Spock are gone.
Mayor Wesley is in Jim’s room the second time he wakes up, talking quietly with Winona. Jim sighs and calls, “Mom?”
She helps him drink some ice water then frowns at the empty ice bucket and tells the two men that she will be right back. Bob waits until Winona is out of earshot before he moves his wheelchair closer to Jim’s bed.
Jim just stares at him blankly. “Hey, Bob.”
Wesley’s smile is genuine but sad. “It’s a shame to see you in here, son. I may be a lonely old man but I didn’t need company that bad,” he jokes half-heartedly.
Jim is silent for a moment, sorting through vague memories of Trelane and fire and an elusive rage.
Bob takes his hand and squeezes it. “Jim?”
“Imma ‘kay.” Jim looks at the I.V. in his left arm. How mad would his mother be if he took it out? Considering a particular past experience, she’d be livid.
Bob’s worried look increases. “Jim, I had—I had a talk with Komack earlier, when you were brought in. He told me.” A low mutter and heavy sigh. “I don’t—Jesus, I’m sorry, Jim. I am.”
Jim observes Bob’s guilty expression. He swallows, wishing the pain in his throat would abate, and asks slowly, “Did you put me in here, Bob?”
“I’m the reason—”
“Did you put me in here?” Kirk asks again.
“No,” Wesley says, still guilt-stricken.
Jim closes his eyes. His mother will knock some sense into Bob once she figures out that he is blaming himself for Trelane’s plotting. She might even try to ‘knock some sense into him’ literally.
Winona returns. Jim wants to know, “Where’s Bones and Spock?”
She strokes his arm. “I don’t know, baby.”
He sleeps again, dreaming of a soft Southern-drawled “I’m sorry, Jim.” When Kirk wakes up next, it is to the faint smell of a familiar aftershave and, strangely, to his leather jacket hanging over the back of a visitor’s chair.
Christine jams her hands into the pockets of her coat and stares across the empty parking lot. “I called a friend who works reception at Derby Hospital. They’re already under strict orders by Komack not to release any information about Jim.” She glances at her colleague and friend. “Someone has called once or twice, making inquiries. No identification. It could have been Trelane.”
“Fuck,” McCoy says sincerely. “I hate that bastard.”
“Leonard, what can we do? From what you told me, this won’t end until Trelane is satisfied that Jim is dead.” Her voice catches and she sucks in a breath, wishing for a brief instant that she had not given up smoking after Roger Korby dumped her.
Leonard looks at her for a long moment. She shivers at the bleakness in his eyes.
At last the man says, “Then maybe Jim ought to be dead.”
Chapel starts. “You can’t mean that!”
They are leaning against her car outside of the Riverside Clinic. Leonard McCoy frowns down at a wet puddle on the pavement left over from this morning’s rain shower.
“It didn’t work before,” the doctor tells her, “but that might be because Trelane had just Rand’s word to go on and I bet Trelane only trusts what he sees happening right in front of him. He has to suspect that Jim died in that fire. So we need to confirm it, Christine.”
“You’re crazy,” she tells him.
His sigh is quiet. “I’m desperate. Sometimes crazy and desperate are the same thing.”
She turns around and unlocks her car door. “Get in, Dr. McCoy. I’ll take you back to Derby.”
Leonard thanks her but there really is no need for the words. She can see gratitude written in every line of his body.
If only Roger had loved her the way Leonard loves Jim, she thinks. If only.
Jim is tired of listening to the fierce argument in the hallway. He grimaces and jerks back the covers of his hospital bed. When Spock tries to tuck him back in, he snaps, “No!” Then, on the heels of his outburst, “I’m sorry, Spock. Help me up?”
Without a word, Spock complies. Together they shuffle to the open door of his room. Jim holds onto Spock with one hand and his I.V. stand with the other. He valiantly ignores the fact that he can feel a breeze through the loosely-tied back of his gown.
Once able to peek around the corner of the doorway, Jim calls, “Mom! Bones!”
Immediately the pair hurries toward him, all yelling forgotten.
Jim doesn’t bother to answer their worried questions or Bones’ blatant appall at a patient sneaking out of bed. Kirk goes straight to the heart of the matter. “I want to do it,” he announces.
Winona pales, probably from fear and fury alike.
“Are you sure?” Leonard asks, brows drawn together.
Jim’s mother intervenes. “No! Not ever again, Jimmy!”
“I’m not a child, Mom,” he says, resigned to hurting her feelings. “You taught me to weigh the odds fairly, and I have. I can do this. It’ll be easy.” After a pause, he adds, “I’ll just lie there.”
“Like you did last time?” Winona says, and Jim flinches. “You almost died!” She plants a trembling hand against her mouth for a second before continuing. “You would have died if Frank hadn’t pulled you out.”
A fact that simultaneously surprises Jim and burns his gut. At least Rand hadn’t bailed on him completely. Later, Jim was told, the police discovered the gun Rand couldn’t find in some bushes along the highway. If Rand had spent another couple of minutes looking for a weapon, the diner would have been too far gone for him to get to Jim. Jim supposes it takes heroic effort to run into a burning building. That fact still didn’t stop Rand’s wife from kicking her husband out of the house when he confessed his sins—or Rand’s daughter Janice from siding with her mother.
Jim feels slightly bad for the rift between the Rand family, even though he knows it isn’t his doing.
McCoy flicks a sad look at Winona before turning away from everyone. “I’ll tell Komack you agreed, Jim. Sorry, Winona.” Leonard heads over to the nurses’ station to use a telephone.
Winona sits down on one of the chairs lining the hallway and hugs herself. Jim is grateful for Spock’s support because he needs every ounce of it as he moves back towards the bed.
He doesn’t realize that he is close to crying until one of Spock’s long fingers catches a tear quivering on the edge of an eyelash. Spock says his name so quietly, so full of sorrow, that Jim leans his head against Spock’s side and confesses his fear: “Trelane won.” The diner is gone. No Trelane behind bars.
“He won’t stay in Riverside,” replies the lawyer as he delicately cups the back of Jim’s neck.
Yet that knowledge is no comfort to Jim at all.
The metal gurney is cold against Jim’s bare skin. This time, as he is blackened with soot, Jim feels no nervousness or strange hilarity at the situation. Though Bones is gentle with his ministrations and talks quietly throughout the process, the chill of the morgue—and the representation of what it means—leeches away anything colorful or potent.
Bones leans over to kiss Jim once, softly, then pulls the sheet over Kirk’s head. Jim keeps his eyes open. He stares at the muted, almost red glow of a light somewhere overhead and thinks he can hear the echo of fire crackling.
They failed to capture Trelane and this… this is just minimizing the collateral damage. Nothing can bring back what his family has already lost.
Bob hasn’t once mentioned The Diner. If Wesley feels guilty for Jim’s injuries, Jim feels guilty for the destruction of a long-standing legacy and haven. Maybe they understand each other better than they realize.
He waits, listening for the cue to play dead. Again.
Spock halts some feet in front of the shrouded figure in the morgue and has to remind himself that Jim is alive under the white sheet. It’s an act. Yet he can easily imagine the opposite: that this is the body of a man he has grown to respect, to like, to feel love for; this is a prelude to an autopsy, to a funeral, and a burial.
The first person Spock lost on a personal level in his life was Leonard McCoy when the two friends parted ways to pursue their careers. Spock had felt something akin to grief during that time but assuaged his emotional turmoil with the knowledge that Leonard was well and undoubtedly happy—would lead a satisfying life, whether or not Spock was a part of it.
Years later, he regained and lost Leonard again in a matter of months. Spock—stubborn beyond compare, his mother often says—refused to accept their end. Spock refused.
Now he fears.
Jim is breathing. Jim will recover physically. But there remains something intrinsically wrong with Kirk that Spock cannot quite pinpoint. Is it Trelane’s escape from justice? Spock does not know. But he fears that, if the root of Jim’s unhappiness is not corrected, he shall lose Jim. He and Leonard—they shall both lose Jim.
That is not a grief Spock wants to experience so soon.
The man calls softly, “Jim, it’s safe.” After a moment, the sheet rustles. Kirk sits up, somewhat slumped, and gives Spock a poor imitation of his usual blinding grin. Then Kirk sucks in a deep breath and pays for it by coughing up lungs damaged by an overdose of inhaled smoke.
Spock tries to soothe Jim’s fit but knows that he cannot help as well as Leonard could. He offers, “I will bring Dr. McCoy.”
Jim, gripping the edge of the gurney as he wheezes, only says, “Where are my clothes?”
Spock turns his back while Jim dresses, hating this feeling of helplessness. There isn’t much he can do; legally, he could tie Trelane up for years but the resolution would not be swift. There must be a swift—and irrevocable—resolution.
Asking Komack to escort Jim upstairs to where McCoy and a group of nurses are patiently waiting to put Kirk back to bed, Spock takes another route through the hospital and outside to a pay phone along the edge of the medical campus.
Then he calls his father.
How could there be a happy ending if Jim is dead? Anyhow, last part up next. More resolutions and more surprises?
Related Posts:
- Along Comes a Stranger (28/28) – from July 10, 2011
- Along Comes a Stranger (26/28) – from July 5, 2011
- Chapter of Doom – from July 4, 2011
- Along Comes a Stranger (25/28) – from June 30, 2011
- Along Comes a Stranger (24/28) – from June 29, 2011
I’m bawling my eyes out here.
Personally I’m sad because I know it’s going to end. Well, as much of an end as there can be considering it’s only beginning. *sniffle*
It sucks surviving the battle only to have lost the war. Hopefully they’ll win in the end. Thanks to Spock’s ruthlessness and Sarek’s efficiency. Aaaaaaugh this was slightly heartwrenching. I think Bones’ part was the worst. There’s such pain there.
Against Trelane? I think so. Hopefully, it will also be the other “minor” battles that are won which improve Kirk’s spirits. I just wrote the “epilogue” portion of the last part. It’s my fervent hope that the heartache here is balanced out by the sweetness to come.
I hope so too.
At least now I understand how everything fell and how all the pieces worked out. I ache every time Jim was coughing. Ouch. I know Jim’s hurting about the diner, it meant a lot to everyone around him, but, with insurance, it can be rebuilt. Lovely update even if there was so much hurt. At least we know that there’s no more bad guys out there, right? *hugs*
*hugs back* Yes, this is a hurt-y chapter. To be resolved soon. I’m halfway through the last part now, so if all goes well, we may know tomorrow! *notices clock* Or would that be later today?? :)