Title: Clash of the Titans
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS, Doom
Characters: Reaper!McCoy (both of them)
Disclaimer: I don’t own either Star Trek or Doom characters. I’m just entertaining myself with ’em.
Summary: STXI/Doom Crossover. Mirror!verse. John needs a little excitement and challenging bloodshed in his life. The USS Enterprise is the perfect place. Written for reaper_lives contest. Based (loosely) on the prompt: I never thought it was you.

“Bones?”

Poor James T. Kirk says the name in a soft, lost whisper. John smiles and readjusts the tightness of the straps.

“Jimmy-boy, you are such a fool,” he says in McCoy’s Southern accent. “Did you really think I was your Bones?” Jimmy-boy? Even the names here are pathetic.

Kirk’s eyes are a dark blue. “No. There’s no way you could have—”

“—reconfigured the transporter to swap you, Uhura, Scotty, but not myself with our other… mirror counterparts?” John chuckles and the sound is entirely too ominous. “Captain, there is so much that you don’t know.” He pauses, smiling sardonically. “Good news is that I am officially convinced this is a different universe.” Grimm turns his sharp gaze to the left, seeking the remaining captives’ stares with satisfaction. “I made no secret of what I am. And I don’t intend to keep up a ruse.”

The Captain wavers between confusion and a strange curious horror. The man’s face is bruised and swollen along the jaw-line. John had no trouble putting Kirk out of commission when he had stormed the Bridge. Spock was a brief but entertaining fight. Grimm still prefers the bearded Vulcan; his Spock used cunning to evade the Reaper’s wrath on the ISS Enterprise. This one has its head in the sand—and that makes for a weak opponent.

John Grimm—the Reaper, a title he well deserves and has branded along his forearm for good measure—paces the length of the brig. He has discarded his medical uniform for the more nostalgic black fatigues. Most of his prisoners are still stunned into silence or unwilling to draw attention to themselves. There is one exception, of course; the Captain has a penchant for nattering on at the enemy. John figures he’ll just smash in all Kirk’s teeth, possibly cut out his tongue, to shut the kid up. Any deal that may be between Kirk and the Reaper resides in a parallel universe. He only gives a brief moment’s thought to how pissed his doppelganger probably is. From what Grimm has gathered over the course of his fortuitous stay on the USS Enterprise, this Southern doctor—McCoy, the man thinks disgustedly (his alias is simply to satisfy fools of the Empire)—is fairly beloved by the crew.

A good man.

That’s not something John wants to contemplate; it’s too ludicrous. Foreign.

He stops in front of the First Officer and science officer of this starship. The Vulcan is in a healing trance. John decides that Spock has been under long enough to repair any major damage. (He’d enjoyed breaking those strong bones, had briefly considered flaying Spock’s fingertips.) The first back-handed blow is none too gentle.

Grimm ignores Uhura’s gasp and answers Kirk’s shout of “McCoy!” with “Name’s not really McCoy, dipshit.” He grins over his shoulder at the trussed-up Captain. “You can call me Reaper.”

He hits Spock again at the proper angle to knock the Vulcan’s head into the wall of the brig. Spock’s eyes blink open.

“Morning, sunshine.” John’s lips curl into a smirk. “Time to wake up, Mr. Spock.”

The Vulcan’s voice, despite his slow return to consciousness, is modulated carefully enough that Grimm doesn’t hear a hint of the pain that the First Officer must be experiencing. “Doctor… McCoy. You are under arrest—”

John’s sharp bark of laughter is genuine. He reaches out and pats a dark bruise on along Spock’s cheekbone. “Some things always remain the same. Good.“

Grimm steps back and announces to all present, “I’ll be a Southern gentleman and let y’all decide amongst yourselves who’ll be the first to die. You’ve got… ten minutes.” He drops the accent. “Keep in mind that every one of you will die. Though… I might be lenient enough to let you choose how you go. I’ve got plenty of time.”

With those words, the Reaper resets the code on the brig and leaves them to their imaginations. The corridors are silent and littered with dead. He steps around the bodies of security officers and others that John hadn’t bothered to acknowledge before he’d ripped into them. The workout had been rather enjoyable, a tad exhilarating, darting phaser blasts and snapping necks. There are still plenty crewmen alive; most have sought shelter, remain huddled and terrified in their quarters or locked down in their departments.

As if that will save them from Reaper.

He’ll take his time, too, with this Enterprise crew. Maybe a few will be spared and re-trained.

John strolls into the medical bay, a place he rarely visited back in his own universe. This Reaper has left hints and tell-tale signs that he actually enjoys playing the role of a doctor. Leonard McCoy is a name, a bit of intelligence for lesser races to dismiss. Sure, John knows the ins-and-outs of this century’s medical training; he always studies his identites well, knows how to be anything from a engineer to a musician to a fucking brillant space doctor. The ISS Enterprise had no real need of a Leonard McCoy—at least, not in the capacity of a healer. Torture, perhaps, or biological warfare—things that are a night’s entertainment to a man who will live forever.

John leaves the doctoring to the subordinates. The nurses are smart enough to handle most cases when they want to patch someone up, if the bribes are good enough.

Nurse Chapel. Now there’s one tough woman. Even in this universe, she is defiant. Grimm walks over to a biobed where she is bound and sits down beside her. The woman is awake and aware; she struggles as if he is going to touch her. John’s not in the mood for rape.

“Hello, Chris,” he says, brushing a stray blonde hair out of her face. She flinches and he tsks. “I’ll tell you what, darlin’. If you promise to be a good girl and keep those needles away from me, I’ll let you go.” John leans over her, just close enough to whisper. “And in case you’ve forgotten… if you do attempt to kill me again, you won’t succeed. I’m not much for stayin’ dead.” He sits up and says as he casually twists a metal buckle until it snaps, “I left one or two ensigns partially intact. If you can find them in time, they’ll survive.” He grins and stands up. “I’d know. I’m a doctor.”

Reaper exits Sickbay and takes the turbolift down to the deck that holds the brig. When he exits the lift, the air smells of trouble. He makes a sharp right, already primed for a fight. To his surprise, however, the next corridor is empty.

Now on edge, the man (mutant-monster) crouches to inhale the scent of prey. What he finds instead is much more tantalizing.

John slowly straightens and calls out, “You just couldn’t enjoy my gift, could you?”

A voice—his voice—answers. “I wouldn’t call that Hell a gift. You can have it.”

“It’s a hell we were made for. You can be what you are, never have to worry about being hunted. You are the hunter.”

His mirror counterpart, the one which belongs to this universe, steps from the shadows. “I am not the kind of killer that you are,” says the other John. “I don’t belong there.”

Grimm steps forward, his body stance issuing a challenge. The movement is reciprocated. “You’re a freak here,” he corrects. “A walking science experiment that everybody wants to get their hands on, pull apart and piece back together.”

The sarcastic reply “I doubt that’s any different in an Empire” makes John snort and wish for a large, heavy weapon of the old days. His hands start itching for bones to crunch. The blood-thirst rises, just like always—almost orgasmic. John revels in the sensation.

“I am the Empire.” It’s the truth. There are figureheads—an Emperor that Kirk wants to replace without realizing John Grimm is the man running the show even as the ISS Enterprise gallivants around the galaxy conquering weak races.

“I don’t care. And I won’t say this again. Go back.”

Grimm grins, cracks his neck and then rolls his shoulders. “No thanks. I’m on vacation.”

The good Reaper, this Leonard H. McCoy (man of Georgia and father), takes a stance that Grimm himself mirrors. John watches in fascination as McCoy’s pupils are blown wide, changing, and feels his own change in response. He imagines that he can hear the hum of adrenaline funneling through his veins.

Then McCoy rumbles “Vacation’s over” and comes in fast. A hard blow—so satisfyingly hard that half of his face must have shattered—sends John careening down the hall.

This is what Reaper has been waiting for: a fight with someone as fast, intelligent, and literally unable to die as himself.

Long years of plotting finally pay off. The battle begins.

-Fini

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