Title: The Boy and the Sea Dragon (6/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: On an away mission, Captain Kirk encounters an old friend he hasn’t thought of in years. Unfortunately, their meeting is less than fortuitous and bodes ill for the rest of Jim’s crew.
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Part Six

McCoy places a fist against the wall and leans on his body weight on it, head down.

Xenopolycythemia.

Fuck.

He is officially between a rock and a hard place—somewhere that no man with a conscience would want to be. His choice will affect lives, will without doubt condemn someone no matter which way he picks.

Why him?

Damn that monster.

That’s what it is now. A monster. Leonard has tried to understand the creature, what it could possibly want from the crew (maybe, just maybe it wasn’t evil), but now he knows the truth.

It wants to destroy them all.

And it wants McCoy to give the okay to proceed with that destruction.

He trembles in his position, not from the mildly cold air of his quarters, but from the icy dread that grips his insides. It’s not the only thing trying to kill him—that would be the guilt and the fucking disease of which he is beginning to show minute signs.

Here in these quarters, his own, is where it all started. Leonard turns his face towards the bathroom, staring just for a moment at a memory, and then closes his eyes.

Here, he received the worst ultimatum of his life.

Three days prior…

The long, thorough search commenced that evening. All crew are placed into groups of three to five, given time intervals and places to search. The entire ordeal is a headache to organize, and more than once McCoy thinks of how Spock would have calculated and planned the perfect schedule for everyone. But they do not have that Vulcan talent at their disposal.

McCoy is not due for another fifteen minutes in the medical bay. He sits up from his quick nap, scrubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. Leonard is tired beyond compare—more so than usual. His body is still recovering from the sharp, nerve-scrambling stun it had endured. After a minute of feeling sorry for himself and the Enterprise’s God awful situation, he walks into his bathroom and brushes his teeth to rid himself of the taste of staleness. His eyes are red-rimmed and Leonard looks just plain bad.

Damn it, why them? Why Jim and Spock?

Sure those two are like a beacon for every powerful, hungry, or downright evil being in the galaxy—Jim with his arrogance and Spock with his insufferable Vulcan-ness and penchant for jumping after Kirk into the fire.

Leonard doesn’t know what he’s going to do if they can’t get them back.

He leans down to spit out a mouthful of foam and paste. After a quick rinse, Leonard wipes his mouth with a towel and straightens. His quick glance into the mirror makes his body freeze and his heart clench painfully.

Spock is behind him, watching McCoy with dark, unreadable eyes.

Leonard’s mouth drops open and says “Spock.” Idly, he realizes that he is beginnning to sound like a broken record. The doctor spins around, gripping the edges of the counter with white knuckles.

The Vulcan has his arms crossed and one foot propped against the bathroom wall. His posture is strange, too much like Jim when the kid feels particularly cocky. Spock doesn’t do cocky.

McCoy’s mouth leads with the only question that seems relevant just then. “How did you get in here?” It’s an impossible feat without so much as alerting McCoy. The bathroom is like a long narrow galley with a door on each end.

“Doctor, I wish to speak with you.”

“Don’t call me that,” he spits. “You aren’t fooling me. You aren’t Spock!”

The Vulcan tilts his head just as Spock would have but then that mouth curls at the corners like a cat. McCoy is so unnerved that he instinctively grabs something—anything—which happens to be his toothbrush and throws it at the Vulcan’s head. Leonard darts for his open door but strong hands grab the back of his tunic and won’t let go. McCoy is forced into a small space of wall between the counter and the doorjamb. Spock—this thing that looks like Spock, has the exotic smell of incense that Spock carries—blocks any possibility of escape with his tall body wedging in close to McCoy’s.

Leonard struggles once, cursing, against the unbreakable hold on his throat before he goes limp.

“Please,” he says. “C-can’t… breathe!”

It releases him.

Leonard ignores how much he is shaking and lifts his gaze to meet the cold, feeling one. “What have you done with Spock?”

“I am Spock.”

“The Hell you are! Spock would never—”

It says with Spock’s mouth “I am S’chn T’gai Spock.”

“Fuck you! Why are you doing this to us?”

It seems to consider its answer. Leonard desperately tries to think of a way to get past him, to get away and warn people—get a God-damn phaser—when it reaches out with a hand.

McCoy flinches backwards, his head connecting sharply with the wall. “Don’t!”

“It will not hurt… Leonard.”

His body goes stiff as a board when those fingertips brush along his cheek, the side of his nose. Leonard turns his face to the side, helpless.

But the hand pulls back.

McCoy’s body is in serious terrified revolt. He cannot stop its wild heartbeat or profuse chilled sweats.

“You are ill.”

“No shit,” he manages in an unsteady voice. “I’m in the m-middle of a p-panic attack. About to be mind-raped by sadistic fuck like you!” Oh, Oh God he is not there. This is the USS Enterprise, not the other place, the bad place where Spock has a beard and a mind that can shred through Leonard’s like a dagger.

He realizes belatedly that the bathroom is silent. Trying to get himself under control, Leonard says in a hoarse voice, “Please step back. I w-won’t run, I promise. Just give me a little breathing room, okay?”

Surprisingly, it does as he asks. That, unfortunately, fails to mean that it will cease to torture him with words. “You are ill,” it repeats flatly.

“Would you shut up!”

“Your destiny is sour.”

That gives Leonard pause. “What in God’s—you can’t taste fucking destiny! It ain’t peanut butter, for crying out loud.”

“Jem-me,” it says in a voice that is suddenly too strange to be Spock’s. “Jem-me has a good destiny.”

At the mention of Jim’s name, Leonard forgets that he is sick to his stomach and tries to punch the not-Spock. “What did you do to Jim!?“

It swats him back against the wall like a knat. Damn it, it has Spock’s Vulcan strength—that’s for sure.

Leonard doesn’t stop with the dire threats. “You can’t get away with what you’re doin’! We’ll stop you AND when we get Jim and Spock back, you’re goin’ straight to Hell!” His accent thickens the more upset he gets.

Amusement. Leonard doesn’t know how he can sense that, but the emotion seems to seep out of it in waves. “I wait long,” it tells McCoy as if it suddenly forgets proper speech and any pretense at playing the First Officer. “Long time for Jem to grow and reach his destiny. It is ripe now.”

What the fuck—? Leonard swallows hard. “What do you mean?”

“I like this one’s destiny too—is good, strong.”

“You can’t have people’s destinies,” he says almost weakly. God knows that stealing destiny sounds like all kinds of wrong. It’s just not possible.

It smiles knowingly at him, the look utterly foreign on Spock’s face.

“He fights.”

Rage boils unexpectedly to the surface of Leonard’s horror. “I hope he—they both—tear you to pieces from the inside out!”

“Would you fight?” it asks with a simple innocence.

“Hell, yes!”

“I can save you,” offers the creature. “I can save many, if you do not fight.”

“I don’t need savin’,” he fairly spits.

The words are insistent. “You are ill.“

Leonard closes his mouth, saying nothing for a minute. “I’m a doctor. I’d know if I was sick.”

It reaches for him again, this time to his hair with a strange curiosity. The Spock-creature tells him simply, “You will be.”

He can’t resist. “We’ve cured most diseases in this century, in case you didn’t know.”

Suddenly the hand in his hair tightens and drags him forward with a quick pull. Leonard gasps and tries to lean away, the pain of his hair being pulled searing his scalp. His head is turned to the side as it leans in and sniffs at the skin along McCoy’s neck. It is an awkward, falsely intimate position they are in and Leonard grits his teeth, praying that it will let him go.

When it does, he wastes no time and shoves hard into the man’s breastbone, sending him stumbling backwards. Leonard pivots into the center of the bathroom, giving himself more room to maneuver. “Hands off!”

The thing looks directly at him, into him, with Spock’s dark eyes and says very slowly, “Xeno-poly-cy-themia.”

The denial that comes out of his mouth is a whisper. “No.“

It repeats the condemning disease with certainty. It could be Spock himself announcing the most mundane fact.

Leonard locks his knees and shakes his head. “You’re lying to me.” Of course it’s lying.

“You will see. It begins now.”

Leonard’s brain, the traitorous bastard, says exhaustion, McCoy, swelling of the metacarpophalangeal joints. Closing his eyes, he attempts to block out everything. This thing wants to throw him off, needs to upset him in order to…

What, exactly?

He must have said that aloud because he is provided with an answer. “You will need a cure.”

“There is no cure for xenopolycythemia,” McCoy responds tightly. “If you’re not an evil lying SOB, and I really think that’s a moot point by now, then you know I won’t buy false hope.”

“I will give cure to Leonard and Leonard shall save himself and many, many others.”

He stares for too long at this friend of Jim’s that has turned out to be a monster instead. “You’ll give me the cure for xenopolycythemia in exchange for what? My soul?”

“Illness makes your destiny taste bad—we fix—and I will have more, all.”

He goes with his automatic response of “No!”

It approaches him steadily, and Leonard backs up. “Destiny is connected—Jem-me’s destiny, this one’s and yours. I need all.”

Leonard chokes on his next words. “You want me to sacrifice Jim and Spock… for a cure?”

“You will save many lives,” it tells him. “You will be a good doctor.”

“I am a good doctor.” It turns, then, away from him. “Damn you, I am a good doctor!” When Leonard’s back hits the opposite door, the enemy is gone. McCoy drops to the floor and pillows his head in his arms.

I am a good doctor, he thinks. Aren’t I?

Fuck.

He’s dying.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (14/14) – from December 7, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (13/14) – from December 6, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (12/14) – from December 2, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (11/?) – from November 27, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (10/?) – from November 25, 2010