7It just occurred to me last night that there could definitely be a post-Into Darkness fic where Leonard realizes he has xenopolycythemia (no Yonada or Fabrini in sight) and his time is short. He tells Jim, and Jim – devastated of course – argues the case to use Khan’s blood to cure him. Leonard can’t agree because he promised himself he’d never use it again; essentially that way lay madness.
Any thoughts?
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Ummm…yeah a few thoughts. I can’t believe you thought of this. It wasn’t too long ago that I commented to someone who writes reaper bones that our bones injecting jim with khan’s blood can be likened to reaper bones injecting jim with the c24 serum. Reaper bones had many ethical quandaries about using this serum and he too kept its existence a secret. jim didn’t even know it existed. This is a fabulous storyline. The angst and emotional fallout would be endless. I imagine the arguments between these two would be epic. I’m thinking this is a great idea but i would need time to prepare myself for all possible outcomes…
You’ve heard me say before that Reaper!Bones/Jim fics should be abound after Into Darkness. It gives the possibility of a happily-ever-after that doesn’t involve the use of C-24. But more to your point, if Reaper!Bones replaces the non-Reaper one then yeah, Jim was injected with the equivalent of the C-24 serum -except without the guarantee it could make Jim superhuman. If Reaper!Bones would have had any hesitations over this, you know good ol’ Bones did. I can’t believe for a second he didn’t feel troubled over the kind of “miracles” Khan’s blood can perform. I’m not saying he felt guilt for saving Jim’s life – I doubt that -but what about making a discovery that could ultimately cure any human illness? At first that sounds like a wonderful thing. Then one begins to think about it and what it really means, which is that anything they can use for good can also be used for evil. And it’s not a solution cultivated purely through a deep understanding of a condition and what’s required to fix said condition; it’s a cure born of pure luck – luck that Khan is a human with regenerative powers. I don’t know. It’s all morally dodgy territory. My thinking is this: what Leonard did, he did for Jim, not for science and not for the greater good. If someone had approached him and said, “I have a man here whose blood you can harvest to cure all your ailments” he would have balked at the notion. He probably would have said invincibility isn’t worth the price a man has to pay to get it.
I am in total agreement with you that Bones did this for Jim without giving a thought to anything else but getting Jim back. It is I believe something that a Bones faced with a different set of circumstances and some time to think would have said “no”. He is the moral compass as we have discussed. I believe the only slight difference with the c24 serum, if I remember correctly, is that you can test a gnome and tell if the person will turn into a monster or not. In the scenario you present, it is the same dilemma but with “time to think”. Bones is in the same position as before in that he must decide about using the serum but actually has the time to think it through. It is poor Jim who is now “bones” but unfortunately he is faced with a bones who has had many hours to think while sitting next to jim’s bed waiting for him to wake up. Oh lordy, I don’t envy either one of them. Bones I think will always put Jim first and knows, as his moral compass, that this is wrong. Unfortunately what is good for jim is also not good for jim. Life without his bones will not work out very well and I am afraid that jim will be joining bones in the afterlife before to much time has passed. I guess bones has to decide whether he should save Jim or Jim’s soul because in this instance I don’t think he can do both.
Oh wow… now this would be a massive dump of angst… of biblical proportions! The idea certainly appeals to me, hell yeah. I’ve only actually watched Into Darkness once – yay for poor students – and you’ll have to correct me if I’m wrong, but between the destruction of San Francisco and the start of their five-year mission, there was apparently a missing year (I thought at first that Kirk was referring to the destruction caused by Nero when I was actually watching the film, but the Vengeance crash certainly makes more sense)? If so, then… what happened in that year? That very convenient missing year will likely have involved Jim’s coalescence, the repair of the city, the burying and tributes to the dead, an upheaval and restructuring of a corrupt Starfleet Command and one hell of a lot of hard questions for the crew’s medical personnel to answer, especially McCoy as their leader and decision-maker. At the point in the film where he dies, Kirk is done. The Enterprise has survived its death plunge and, barring a little more action, there is now only Kahn to catch and subdue, followed by clean-up. Kahn is right in the heart of the Federation; granted they are reeling from the deliberate crash-landing of the Vengeance, but there is no way for Kahn to escape at this point, especially with Spock after him. Though Kirk’s presence would probably help, he is not needed to close the situation. And McCoy, beneath any anguish over Jim’s death, will have known that. So that brings up the question: why did he revive Jim? It certainly wasn’t because he had information that noone else did; from what I remember, there was always at least someone else around whenever important information was revealed and he would never want to bring Jim back just so the admiralty could grill him on why he made his decisions. Yourself and hora_tio have also already made the valid point that he likely didn’t care about the science and would baulk at the idea any other time. So, the only conclusion we can come to is simply that he didn’t want his best friend to die. It was a selfish decision based on selfless love; it is the most powerful motivation and yet is the hardest to justify to those outside of the situation and to yourself after all is said and done. I think Bones will really struggle with that. I don’t recall any specific descriptions of how xenopolycythemia progresses. But as McCoy becomes more insensate, it will then be Jim placed in that moral dilemma; but this time with McCoy’s refusal to consider as well. Once McCoy is beyond putting up any resistance beyond his standing word… what should Jim do? We all know that Jim’s career would not survive in the long run without McCoy and Spock both; we know from the original timeline that the two of them can go on and survive without Jim. But the question is, could Jim go on without one of the two people who balance him? Could he? Ack, I’m squirming with the amount of character introspection one could do here! It’d be one hell of a subject to tackle, but you’d get one hell of a fantastic story out of it once you get your head around it all.
First, yes there is a year between when we see Kirk recovering in the hospital and later giving a speech. That’s a missing year that can give rise to a lot of stories, don’t you think? You make a very interesting point about McCoy knowing deep down that the mission had been accomplished and he could have let Jim go. But to answer your question, that fact wouldn’t have compared to simply this: Leonard wanted Jim to survive for reasons which had nothing to do with Starfleet’s need for Kirk and everything to do with his need to have Jim alive. So, yes, it was a selfish decision. It’s a decision a lot of people, when given the chance to save someone they care for, would make. There is no justification for that, really – not one that exists beyond “he’s my friend” or “I love him”. It’s ironic how that wouldn’t be a two-way street to McCoy. He saved Jim for personal reasons and at a personal cost, but ends up denying Jim the chance to do the same. This is why Jim would have to be angry, a desperate kind of angry which is very dangerous, and why Leonard would never blame him for that desperation or anger. He’d understand both. But would it change his mind? What could change his mind? I don’t know. I see a lot of resignation on McCoy’s behalf, no matter how much he wants to live. And I foresee him sticking to his guns, so to speak. Everything you said is true. I’d be very afraid to write this. Pretty much everything about it would make us cry.
…I was just going to comment to the effect of HOOOLYCRAPDOIT, and then saw all the far more intelligent discussion going on about it. *creeps back into hole in embarrassment*
No need to be embarrassed. It’s an amazing yet frightening concept for a story.