2Title: The Elder and the Young (11/12)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Spock!Prime
Summary: Final part of a trilogy; follows The Boy and the Sea Dragon and The Man and the Memory. Jim’s soul is caged, McCoy is dying without a cure, and Spock has hijacked the Enterprise in an attempt to save them both.
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
Part Eleven
The hour is late but the haggard man is desperate. He doesn’t go so far as to use his medical override to enter his friend’s quarters but his thumb presses insistently on the buzzer of the comm unit.
After several seconds, no more than a minute, the door slides open to reveal a sharp-eyed Vulcan in a regulation pants and a thermal undershirt.
Words burst forth. “You have to help me!” There is no mistaking the man’s fear.
“Leonard?” Spock steps aside to allow him entrance.
He sounds crazy. He is crazy, almost. “I’m sorry, Spock. I’m sorry but I don’t think I can go t-to anyone else.”
“Please explain,” the Vulcan asks him.
“It’s not gone,” he says in a trembling, weary voice. Sliding a hand into his hair, the man tugs on it.
Spock asks him to sit down.
“The being was destroyed,” his friend reminds him gently.
McCoy laughs, short and bitter. “We got rid of the body, Spock—the body. But tell me, can a spirit be vaporized?”
The Vulcan has no answer to that question.
“Exactly,” Leonard says with heaviness.
“You have encountered it recently then,” surmises the First Officer. “Where?”
He states, with a frightening clarity, “It’s in my head, Spock. It’s in my fucking head!”
A week ago…
“You’d think we could celebrate.”
“Hey, I’m all for a party,” responds Kirk as he chews.
Leonard says nothing of the man’s plateful of food; after all, as far as they can tell Jim hasn’t seen a meal in a very long time. Kirk insists that it’s important to savor the finer cuisine like hamburgers and cake. Leonard still pushes vegetables and fruits under Jim’s nose when an opportunity arises.
“Right. And how will we explain that to Command? ‘Hi, fellas, we’re just thrilled to be alive.'”
Jim’s look says we could try.
McCoy glances around the mess hall, looking for Spock—either version. No Vulcans are present. He leans forward. “Jim. Spock will be court-martial-ed on sight if we go back.”
“I won’t let that happen,” the Captain says firmly.
“He pretty much stole the ship against orders.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Jim insists before shoving another forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
McCoy gives up. He’ll just have to trust that Jim can convince the Admiralty that Spock was acting in the best interest of the crew.
“Okay, Bones, I need you to stop thinking so much. Relax.”
He frowns and crosses his arms. “Kid, I haven’t been this relaxed in months.”
“Then why do you keep looking over your shoulder?” his friend wants to know. Jim sets aside his meal, then, to pin McCoy with his full attention.
Shrugging, McCoy considers how best to explain. “I suppose… I’m uneasy. It’s like someone is close by, but I can’t see them or hear them—but the presence is there.” It reminds him too much of the creature, who was never subtle in its stalking of Doctor Leonard McCoy. “Jim… Is it possible—?”
He doesn’t need to finish that sentence.
Kirk’s shoulders rise and fall in a sigh. “Anything’s possible, Bones.” The man reaches across the table to squeeze Leonard’s forearm. “I’ll have Spock and a team of his scientists run scans over the ship for anything out of the ordinary. In the meantime, you know that you can come to me if you need to.”
Leonard nods in gratitude. When the Captain gathers his tray and tells the doctor that he is returning to the Bridge, McCoy watches him leave—and that unsettling feeling of someone next to him intensifies. He tosses away his own meal and heads back to Sickbay to occupy his mind with work.
Crossing paths with Sulu reminds him that Spock isn’t the only person aboard this ship dedicated to a cause—and with a career to lose if Command wants to point fingers. Sulu remarks with a grin as he passes by, “How was my acting, Doctor?”
“Perfection itself,” replies Leonard. That’s why, when Jim said that the best way to beat an enemy in a game was to change the rules in their favor, to lure it rather than be lured, McCoy had remembered the pilot’s performance on Yonada and recommended him for the role of imposter.
Sulu absently rubs at his arm where Nyota had left a lovely reminder that she thinks playing the damsel in distress is degrading to her gender. Leonard had smacked Sulu with a dermal regenerator when the man had said jokingly, “Maybe I should keep my battle scars; it’s not every day someone can kidnap Uhura without getting kicked in the balls for the attempt.”
Yeah, Jim may be a great Captain, but he is an insane strategist. Or perhaps those two things go together. The doctor isn’t quite sure.
Regardless, they certainly confused the sea dragon and prompted an attack. McCoy simply wishes that the First Officer need not have taken the brunt of it; though Spock insisted he would fare better than any other crewman. At the last minute, before Leonard proceeded to his quarters to meet Spock for the opening scene of the play, McCoy had hidden a weapon for himself in the Ready Room. Sadly, to carry a phaser in his belt would have tipped off his Captain to an unauthorized addition to the plan—not to mention alerted the enemy of deviousness running amok; however, Leonard felt strongly that Selek should not be responsible for taking a life, not this serene Vulcan who abandoned solitude on the New Vulcan to save McCoy’s xenopolycythemic ass.
A disease that will soon be treatable.
Jim is correct that the Chief Medical Officer needs to have a clean—and irrefutable—bill of health before contact is made with Starfleet Command. Leonard couldn’t agree more, because undoubtedly a majority of the Admiralty will be looking for any minute way to nail them with delinquent charges, to toss the too-young Kirk out of the flagship. In doing so, their happy family aboard the Enterprise will fall apart.
So soon enough, the proper treatment for xenopolycythemia begins. Yet lingering in the back of Leonard McCoy’s mind is a worry—a quiet fear—that his cure still might be the death of him.
When Spock returns from fetching Leonard some water, McCoy downs the entire glass, then pulls out a flask from his pocket and refills it with whiskey. Spock says nothing as the doctor drinks that too.
“I must know all that you remember, Leonard.”
“It’s not like I can forget,” he replies roughly. Then, with an aborted gesture of his hand, he apologizes. “You would think that I wouldn’t be this damn scared after all that I’ve been through, Spock, but I—I’m not like you. I don’t know how to defend myself here.” He points at his temple. “I don’t know anything about s-shields or—fuck. Can’t you help me?”
“I will do what is within my power to help you, Doctor. You must relate the details,” insists the Vulcan, “so that I am amply informed to fight this presence in your mind.”
“I was having weird dreams,” McCoy begins. “—and it felt as though someone was watching, beside me, all the time. Even when I was alone. I told Jim that part.”
“The dreams, then,” the Vulcan gently prompts.
“Well, it’s more like a lack of dreaming. I thought my mind was just taking a break, to cope with—” Leonard swallows whatever words he had intended to say. Instead, he continues, “Never mind that. I’d fall asleep and there would be nothing. I don’t always remember a dream when I wake up, but I will know that I had one. This is… different. It’s like being taken somewhere empty and just existing there until your body wakes up. I don’t know. I tried to ignore it.”
He drops his head into one of his hands. “Of course it would turn out to be that son of a bitch. You just can’t kill fucking Evil.” He lifts his head, then, to stare at Spock. “It said I’m the one who let it in.”
He falls asleep despite that he drank copious amounts of caffeine in order prevent himself from giving into the sweet call of his bed. With his head dropping back against his desk chair, Leonard McCoy succumbs to a much more danger voice—one that faintly encourages him to sleep. Calls him McCoy.
It’s the unending dark again.
Leonard feels the weight of it pressing down. This time, however, the void is not empty. That strange feeling of being watched turns into a certainty in this place. Leonard slowly seeks the source, calling Hello? Hello?
Do you not remember? answers someone too softly.
Leonard strains to catch the words.
I don’t know—should I?
Then the thing in the dark abandons floating somewhere far behind him and moves within range. McCoy’s mind recognizes it instantly.
Shit. You’re dead!
What is dead, McCoy? the creature counters. What is alive? You took my body. That is not all I was. It moves in closer. That is not all that you are, human.
You can’t hurt me, he says. Then, with force, Wake up, idiot. This is a nightmare. WAKE UP!
Do not leave so soon, it tells him. I am… pleased by your presence. I need it.
You don’t need me—you never fucking needed me. You wanted me! There’s a difference!
I have you, it clarifies.
You can’t. You aren’t real—here.
This is my sanctuary, my birthplace. This is the Abyss—where I come after death to be reborn again into the world.
Good for you. Enjoy your afterlife, you sick fuck. I’m leaving.
McCoy, it cries sharply. I give you a choice now—let me in willingly and you shall come to no harm. Defy my will and I must destroy you.
He wants to wake up. He wants wake up right now. Let it in? What does that mean?
There is tug on him and McCoy reels back, fear spiking and—
The man startles awake, eyes wide and heart pounding. A crazy nightmare, he thinks. We killed it. I killed it.
The presence sitting in the back of his mind begs to differ. It says simply, I am here.
Leonard stumbles into his bathroom to splash water on his face. It doesn’t help, not at all, and he ends up on his knees emptying his stomach’s contents into the toilet. Finally unable to continue throwing up—there’s nothing left but bile—he leans shakily against the wall, a knee drawn to his chest.
You really are… in me, aren’t you?
Yes, it agrees. Our connection is strong, McCoy.
I don’t understand how that’s possible. I don’t understand why you haunt me even after you’re dead. That last part he does not say, barely thinks lest the thing in his head pick up on his despair.
We are connected, it insists. You let me in before.
What is it talking about? He didn’t—he never—let it screw with his mind for kicks. It’s lying.
When? he demands.
A sharp pain explodes in the side of his head and, with it, a memory: Leonard, pressed against the door of a small examination room; an ensign—no, the creature behind another face—touching him, crooning, “Here is a gift, then, if you will.”
A gift—and a hook that sinks deep into his mind and secures the two together.
You remove my body, it tells the human called Leonard McCoy, but you cannot remove me. I shall return.
Spock’s face, including his eyes, are blank. Leonard swallows, knowing how grandly he has screwed up. He can’t think of anything to say but “I’m so damn sorry, Spock.”
The muted pounding of a fist against Spock’s door interrupts their conversation. Spock rises and releases the lock. Somewhere deep inside himself, Leonard knows that he shouldn’t be surprised to find Jim stomping through the door. Or even surprised that Jim apparently picked up Old Spock on his way over.
McCoy doesn’t bother to chastise his friend for calling his captain.
Jim stares at McCoy, jaw working. When the man refuses to sit down, unlike Selek who graciously accepts a seat at the table, Leonard prepares to endure a lecture from his superior officer. Instead, Jim Kirk reaches out and plants a hand on the doctor’s shoulder.
“Bones?”
He slumps in relief. “I’m a fool twice-over, Jimmy.”
“Do you remember that speech you gave me in Sickbay?”
He chuckles. “Which time? I’ve lectured you plenty in the med bay.” Some of those times, Jim wasn’t even awake or aware of his ranting.
Jim’s vivid blue eyes catch his. “I’ll shorthand it. It’s not your fault.”
Oh.
Leonard nods his understanding.
Does that alleviate the terrible truth that there is a monster waiting to share his brain?
Not in the least.
Jim settles for pacing the length of the room as McCoy explains that he unknowingly provided a loophole for the creature to continue its torment. No one says much for a short period of time thereafter.
The Vulcans share a look that Leonard almost misses. Selek is the first to break the silence. “Spock and I seek your permission to engage in a meld of our minds, Leonard. Will you allow us to help?”
His smile is small and bitter. “I figured there wouldn’t be any other way to fight it. I promise not to make a fuss.” Leonard looks around. “Maybe if we can sit on the floor like last time?”
Jim stands awkwardly while the three settle into the same positions—McCoy and Spock facing one another, Selek centered on their right side, close enough to touch both.
“Jim,” Spock says to the human. “If you will join us.”
Kirk drops into a cross-legged position opposite of Selek. “I, uh, I don’t think there’s enough Vulcans hands to include me.”
Selek and Spock both raise their eyebrows.
Leonard chuckles for the first time since he scrambled out of his bathroom and run headlong to Spock’s quarters with a foreign amusement battering at the inside of his brain. “That’s a shame, Jim-boy. If two Vulcans and a creepy-ass dragon are going to be throwing punches in my head, I’m sure you’d fit right in.”
Kirk pokes his shoulder. “Well, I’m not leaving.”
No, he wouldn’t expect Jim Kirk to do that.
“Good. Then you can prop me up.”
Jim takes his joke literally, scooting behind the doctor to act as support. Leonard decides that to complain would be foolish. He may actually need Jim to hold onto him if he loses his mind.
“I’m ready.”
Spock nods once, extending his arms and placing cool fingertips against McCoy’s face. He vaguely wonders how Old Spock plans to join them, and Spock must pluck out that surface thought. The Vulcan answers calmly, “He will merge with my mind.”
Leonard purposefully digs an elbow into Jim’s stomach as the man starts to make a lewd comment about threesomes. “Please tell me,” McCoy says to Selek, “that your Jim was more of a gentlemen that this brat.”
Selek’s eyes grow distant for a moment, and Leonard regrets his question. Then the elder Vulcan remarks, “My Captain retained the exuberance of youth—though this facet of his personality was more… evident when he became inebriated.”
“Sometimes I think Jim is in a permanent state of drunkenness.”
Kirk argues, “Excuse me? Who was drunk when we met?”
“Who partied like a frat boy without a lick of sense during mid-terms?”
“Who—”
Selek interrupts smoothly, “We should proceed.”
Poor Spock, his arms are probably gettin’ tired, sympathizes Leonard. “Proceed, then.”
The room falls away. He is suddenly drifting, feels something—someone—catch him and reel him back in. When McCoy opens his eyes, it’s to find Spock at his side and surroundings that definitely aren’t part of a starship.
His mind.
They stand on what looks like a platform. Ahead of them, far away, brights colors dance and intermingle and radiate like an Aurora Borealis. No discernible structure is attached to their surroundings, as if they float freely in space. That space has a vastness to it which shocks Leonard, yet gives him a feeling of being warm and alive.
“You are unwelcome here,” Spock announces, tossing a challenge into that vastness.
“Am I not?”
Leonard turns around, to the voice, stares into his own face. The eyes regarding him are much darker than his own.
Then the Doctor McCoy lookalike says, “We meet again, Spock.”
The Vulcan steps in front of McCoy, shifting so that he shields Leonard. “Your presence is unwanted. You will withdraw your link to the doctor’s mind.”
That head tilts, strange eyes fixed on the human. “Leave? No. I am adrift and McCoy is responsible. He must surrender to me.”
Let the creature use his body and mind as a host? Leonard would rather die.
As if the man had said those words, Spock stiffens. He touches the center of the Vulcan’s back, surprised that even here, in a metaphysical state, his friend feels solid and real. What can I do to help? is his single concentration. The thought sails away as if on a current of air.
The other McCoy slides away from them, face blank but eyes alive. “I will not go.”
“You do not have the power to stay,” counters Spock.
Though the other makes no move or sound, McCoy recognizes the disembodied hiss as belonging to the creature.
Spock stalks forward and the creature retreats.
“You alone cannot win,” it tells him.
The Vulcan answers, “I am not alone.” Then, in a subtly different voice, still Spock’s (only deep with age), that mouth says, “We are one.”
Leonard catches a glimpse of Spock’s face, sees the shift of it like another exists below and recalls the last time that this happened. Selek has joined them, and Leonard would bet that the elder Vulcan’s meld with Spock is more fluid and intrinsic than a meld with another being. After all, they are both Spock, with alike minds, one old and one young.
“You cannot win,” repeats the enemy.
A wall forms behind it.
Spock (the Spocks?) says nothing, merely raises a hand and pins the creature to that wall. Leonard skirts around the Vulcan, fixated on the way the monster trembles, this usually smug thing that has terrorized and damaged several lives for the past couple of months.
It is afraid.
Leonard can’t remember it ever being afraid before, not even as he leveled a phaser at its chest and it realized he would shoot.
That means Spock is right—it’s weak.
He almost sags at that realization. So by frightening him before, it had taken a chance that he would be too distraught, too terrified, to resist. But Leonard has friends who will care for him when he cannot care for himself; friends who will stand by him when he thinks he stands alone.
Spock turns his head to McCoy as the not-McCoy’s head lolls to the side. “We must destroy the anchor points of the link.”
He stares. “Do we know where they are?”
The Vulcan steps back from the creature, who no-longer supported by Vulcan strength (or chained by it) slumps, then melts into the floor and disappears.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t bother to ask how Spock, either or both of them, extracted that information.
Spock strides forward into the bright lights, Leonard on his heels and wondering if they are going to fall when they step off of the platform. Instead, the pair finds themselves in a long door-less corridor formed out of colorful mist.
When the Vulcan speaks to Leonard, it is clearly Selek in control. “By order of the Captain, you examined the unknown entity after the initial return to the Enterprise from the planet.”
“Yes” he confirms, despite that the Vulcan makes a statement rather than asks a question.
“Please remember that moment, Leonard.”
He closes his eyes and recalls It tried to bite me. A hand presses upon his shoulder a few seconds later. Leonard opens his eyes to find that a door has appeared further down the corridor. They walk to it, entering into the memory.
Leonard blinks, suddenly finding himself in his medical bay. In one hand, he holds a tricorder; his other arm has been captured by long, cold fingers. The creature (black eyes, scales and all) blinks up at him, silent. Then it seems to sense another presence, for it looks to Spock standing by the door and two words filter into the memory.
Do not.
Spock calmly walks forward, reaches down to where it has a locked grip on McCoy and snaps its wrist. With a horrible shriek, the thing screams defiance and loss before it disperses like it never existed. Leonard sways like he is light-headed.
“Come, Leonard,” calls the Vulcan. “We must move on.”
In the corridor again, he is asked to think a place called the Abyss. Leonard immediately shakes his head. “I never want to go there again, Spock!”
“This is your mind, Leonard,” Selek reminds him. “There is no Abyss here, fear not. This creature—it held an image of Jim—”
Understanding dawns. Not-Kirk’s words come back to him: “You may not leave until I am finished.“
Another door appears on the opposite side of the corridor, and behind that door…
Now in his quarters, Leonard startles to see a body form out of a shadow.
It belongs to Jim.
It also belongs to a monster.
McCoy recalls what is supposed to happen in this memory (where it leads) and flattens himself against the wall. “Stay back!” he warns.
“Our union is inevitable,” says Kirk. The creature looks over its shoulder at Spock but the Vulcan remains motionless and silent, hands clasped behind his back.
McCoy watches it shift, knows what comes next. “Spock!” he calls. “Do whatever is you’re going to damn well do! Spock!“
Jim is next to him in an instant, latching onto him. Out of instinct, he tries to punch the bastard like last time but is caught too tightly, spun around—
A sickening crack echoes in the room and that foreign weight drops away. Leonard turns, stumbling on his feet (dizzy again) to find the body of Jim Kirk on the floor, neck at an unnatural angle. Then not-Kirk fades.
Spock meets his wide eyes. “There is one anchor left.”
He nods mutely and they leave that now-empty memory behind. Once in the long corridor, Leonard speaks before his companion can. “The last anchor was set when I asked it to restore my memories, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t bother to think or remember; McCoy simply pushes his will outwards and strides to a door that pops into existence. Without waiting for Spock to lead, he steps through the doorway, spies the familiar-faced ensign lounging on the examination table in the small room.
He swallows hard. “I ignored the fact that most of my memory was restored—except for this one moment. I should have questioned it, Spock. I wish I had.”
The voice that answers certainly belongs to his Spock and no other. “I find it necessary to remind you of your earlier advice: ‘Self-recrimination is simply pointless.'”
“Okay, when this is over, I’ll have to sit both you and Jim down for a little chat—because you ain’t supposed to repeat the doctor’s words of wisdom to the doctor.“
“Indeed,” Spock replies in a way that means your statement is silly and I will do as I please.
“You are foolish beings,” the ensign interrupts.
“It’s you who are a damn fool,” bites out the doctor. “Spock, I’ll take care of this anchor.”
There is a second of silence before a combination of two voices reply, woven into one, “As you wish.”
The ensign—the monster with the face of an ensign—seems amused at McCoy. Of course it would be. Leonard walks backwards to the door, knowing that Spock will move out of his way, not interfere because he asked. The creature follows, unable to do otherwise. They are, both of them, puppets to memory.
I’m no one’s puppet, Leonard tells himself fiercely. Especially not in my own damn mind! The room rattles with the force of his willpower.
That hand lifts, reaches out to set the final anchor—now the last thread of the link—and McCoy drops his head back against the door.
“I don’t think so.”
Out of his pocket, he pulls a fully loaded hypospray—one which had been on his person at the time in which this scene originally took place. He had carried it as protection while searching the ship for the creature and later forgotten that it was in his pocket. Even after discovering that the creature waiting for him instead, he had not used it (not in that real-time), because he wanted his memories back too badly.
The creature’s lips curl in a snarl, because it knows it cannot run, not bound by the memory as it is.
McCoy says, “Fuck you,” and stabs the hypospray into its neck, depressing the entirety of its content in one lethal dose.
It jerks away. “McCoy!” it cries, a final word. Then the sea dragon from Hell is gone.
And Leonard’s mind bursts into the flames. The memory shatters, the corridor along with it. Around him, the bright colors flee and he is falling down a bottomless pit, the fire with him.
He panics.
Do not resist! yells someone far away. Hands grab him, catch him in freefall, then entrap him. In his terror, he almost thinks it has come back (never leaves him alone) and is trying to steal his soul again. In another place, McCoy fights the arms pulling him into an embrace.
Leonard, we are here. Do not resist.
Fire, he tries to say. I’m burnin’!
Leonard, be calm.
Hurts—it hurts!
Bones? Bones!
A new voice now, a third voice. So familiar. So…
Jimmy?
Oh Bones, you’ll be okay, you’re okay—
Someone is rocking him, running fingers through his hair, murmuring. Leonard shudders under the comfort, finally works around the pain and fire in his head to realize that he has a body and he hears real, honest-to-God voices.
McCoy opens an eye, peeks at a Jim who is pale and turns his face into Kirk’s chest. “It fuckin’ hurts,” he mutters into a shirt.
Kirk pets his hair some more. “Spock and, um, Spock should it’d get better. Right, Spock? He’ll be okay?” McCoy hears the desperation in that question.
“Affirmative. Leonard, you must allow us to sedate you.”
If he’s sedated, he’ll be oblivious to this roaring pain. “Yeah, good, right now, ‘k?“
Leonard doesn’t have the presence of mind (or barely any un-scorched shred of mind at all) to appreciate the irony at the hiss of the hypospray against his skin; he only feels a settling detachment and muscles growing lax.
It’s soon safe to float away.
A cheek is pressed to the top of his head. “You’re alright, Bones.”
“It’s gone?” are the slurred words, his mouth not cooperating.
Someone says, “Yes. The link is severed. Your mind is free, my friend.”
About. Damn. Time.
The command of “Sleep” he obeys easily and with little protest.
I’m thinking there has to be an epilogue… yeah?
Related Posts:
- The Elder and the Young (12/12) – from February 24, 2011
- The Elder and the Young (10/11) – from February 21, 2011
- The Elder and the Young (9/11) – from February 11, 2011
- The Elder and the Young (8/?) – from February 7, 2011
- The Elder and the Young (7/?) – from February 1, 2011
McCoy needs a vacation after this. He’s suffered the most out of everyone. Thank god that thing is finally gone.
Poor Bones! He’s really been put through the ringer throughout this. I loved that Jim could draw him back, ground him so that he could be taken care of after all that.