Forget Me Not (8/10)

Date:

9

Title: Forget Me Not (8/10)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: When Jim spends time with his First Officer and CMO, he seems sad. Neither Spock nor McCoy can figure out why.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
Or read at AO3


The insomnia has worsened in the last week. I didn’t think that was possible—because how can being unable to sleep become worse?—but now I am too restless to be satisfied by walking the ship. More than once I will start the slow trek toward the observation deck only to realize, dazedly, I’ve missed a turn somewhere along the way. My body is traitor to my sleep-deprived mind, carrying me to the places I don’t want to go. I have found the door to Bones’s room, or retraced my steps to Spock’s living quarters, or trailed down to Sickbay, maybe a science lab, and when I finally come back to myself, hours have passed unheeded. I have stood at the threshold of a place I cannot enter like a ghost, a thing separate from the world around it, lost to my own distraction.

I could be counting the endless constellations of stars. Instead, every night, I am torturing an already tortured mind.

Why? Why must I do this to myself? Is it because I have gotten what I wanted?

Is it because, finally, I have lost the two people I loved more than life itself?

Personal Log, James T. Kirk

~~~

“Don’t get near that!” snaps the Chief Surgeon and Medical Officer of the starship Enterprise.

Captain James Kirk turns to look over his shoulder and narrow his eyes in the doctor’s direction, though he does retract his hand from touching the thick skin of a purple, cactus-like plant. “Relax, Bones.”

Relax. Relax? Leonard eyes the eggplant-colored leafy vines climbing high into the canopy which seem to dominate this section of the forest. How could he possibly relax when he has the sneaking suspicion those vines are watching him?

Somebody’s up to something, and Leonard does not like it. Why else would their latest away mission involve traipsing through a thick jungle-like planet that is oddly bereft of a cacophony of jungle sounds, except the occasional—and unsettling—rustle of leaves?

But not everyone in the landing party feels the way he does. Spock sweeps past, his attention buried in the readings of a scientific instrument in his hand. He says a word that makes a vein in Leonard’s forehead throb.

Leonard shouts to the Vulcan’s back, “‘Fascinating’ usually gets us eaten!”

A hand drops to his shoulder and squeezes the tense muscle there. “You need to stop worrying,” Jim tells him, sounding exasperated.

Leonard catches himself in the unthinking act of leaning toward Jim. Suppressing a wince, he straightens and shrugs off the hand on his shoulder with a carefully cultivated apathy. Leonard sees the flash of hurt in Kirk’s eyes before it is masked and he has to stifle the apology that springs to his lips.

Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. The doctor snarls, “I’ll stop worrying, Captain, once I’m back on the ship in one piece! Why do you even need me down here? I’m a doctor, not a boy scout trooper!”

Damn it. He hates this. What’s worse is that Leonard feels he is growing used to the aggressive behavior he has to employ in order to cover up his near-slips. At this rate, he’s going to be such a sour old man, it’ll be a wonder Jim doesn’t run away at the sight of him!

Why did he ever agree to this plan to pretend indifference to somebody he loves?

“Bones…”

Leonard is surprised to find Jim’s look is tolerant of his belligerence.

“I promise we will return to the ship, no harm done. Now, have you located that life-sign yet?”

At least he doesn’t have to act unlike himself while doing his job. “No, sir.” Leonard shakes his tricorder a little in frustration. “I think it was an instrumental blip, J—Captain,” he corrects in time.

“Spock picked it up, too. I doubt both devices are faulty.”

A cold feeling crawls along Leonard’s spine. He shivers as though a cloud is passing across the sun in the sky. “Look, we’ve been mucking about in this rainforest for a couple of hours, to no avail. If something’s out there, it’s damn good at hiding. I recommend we take a break, decide if we’re pursuing the right course of action.”

Just as Leonard finishes speaking Spock swoops by again, this time heading in the opposite direction, another “Fascinating” left in his wake. A lieutenant from Science is on his heels, looking as excited on the outside as Spock probably is on the inside.

Leonard flexes his fingers around his tricorder, thinking what a nice projectile it would make at that too-intelligent head. “If I do something untoward to him, it was stress that made me do it.”

“Play nice.” But Jim’s mouth is twitching as he turns away.

Leonard realizes belatedly (distracted as he is by the elated hobgoblin and the wannabe-hobgoblin sidekick disappearing into a patch of brightly colored flora at the other side of the clearing) Jim is going back to the creepy plant. “Hey,” he says, hurrying after Kirk, “you shouldn’t touch anything until Spock has had a chance to look it over. Or better yet, bring Sulu down here! He has a degree in botany!”

“Bones,” Jim’s voice floats back to him, amused, “I told you to relax. I saw a strange mark on it I just want to—”

Jim never gets to finish that sentence because the innocuous-looking purple cactus plant unfolds two great big fronds and snaps at his head in a way most cactuses aren’t supposed to do. In the next second, Jim’s arm is embedded in the middle of the plant.

Not embedded, Leonard comprehends too slowly. Inside its mouth. He throws himself forward in horror with a cry of “Jim!” Leonard’s hands are close enough to pluck at the back of Jim’s gold shirt just before he is unexpectedly flying through the air.

When the nauseating dizziness subsides so that his brain isn’t about to leak out of his ears, Leonard opens his eyes and sees Jim from a higher vantage point, still struggling fiercely against the plant trying to suck the rest of his body into its great maw.

Phaser! he thinks as hard as he can, and suddenly Jim has his phaser in his hand, like he’d heard McCoy. But the blast of the phaser goes wild when it’s knocked out of Jim’s grasp and far out of reach by something with thorny spines and leaves.

It occurs to Leonard then what’s wrong with the appalling scene of his captain being mauled by an oversized, hungry plant: everything is upside-down. Leonard looks up the length of his body to find a purple vine wrapped around one of his ankles. “Let go of me!” he demands and kicks at it angrily.

The vine is sentient, it seems; clearly it knows its meal wants to escape. The more Leonard struggles, the more the vine twines around him, until his legs are pinned together so tightly it feels like his bones are going to snap. He goes limp in hope the vine will ease up on its vicious hold (he doesn’t want two broken legs; how is he supposed to save Jim if he can’t walk!) but the vine won’t be deterred. It keeps cocooning him.

“Spock!” he croaks once, then goes with yelling at the top of his lungs. “SPOCK!”

Despite the dark spots dancing in front of his eyes, one of the blue blurs that break into the clearing and sprint across the ground has to be Spock. Leonard sets about waving his arms frantically in Jim’s direction. “Get Jim!” he cries as a blur pauses beneath him. “Jim! Hurry!”

The vine catches one of his flailing arms. Leonard curses it roundly and claws at the vine’s grip with his free hand. In seconds, the fighting becomes a moot point; the vine captures both his arms and is already covering him up to his chest. He’s nothing but a giant piece of purple hanging fruit.

By the time somebody plucks me, I’ll be dead, Leonard thinks, strangely not panicked.

The vine slithers around his neck, and the breath goes out of Leonard in a whoosh just before his head is engulfed. For a second, there is a blinding pain in his left side—a rib cracking in half, it feels like. Mercifully the sound of his scream is muffled by his cocoon.

It’s all darkness, a sickly sweet smell and bile in his throat. At some point, a second rib breaks. Time could be passing in seconds or hours. Then at long last his cage rattles, the darkness shudders, suddenly caving or exploding into light; Leonard is too near to passing out to tell. But the good news is he can breathe again, surfacing to air like he’s been underwater. Then that wonderful air is rushing past him, away from him.

Leonard would open his eyes but he knows he is falling, falling from so high up it’ll probably be his neck which breaks next.

Jim is a last fleeting thought. Did Spock at least save Jim?

He lands with a jarring oomph into a substance that isn’t the ground, unless the ground is more malleable than it was when they first beamed planetside and is willing to collapse in order to break his fall. Leonard blinks his eyes open once the world has stopped sloshing back and forth so sickeningly; he automatically swallows, grimacing at a metallic taste that can only be blood.

Someone shifts him, rolls him so he is face-up on the ground.

A pale Spock is looking down at him, mouth shaping words with urgency.

Leonard draws his brows together, not understanding, and coughs. “J-Jim?”

Spock’s head snaps to the side, features pinched. The Vulcan is gone in the next instant, phaser in hand, leaving Leonard alone.

Leonard lies there on his back in the grass of the clearing and coughs again, feeling weak. Oxygen-starved brain, the training in him identifies with detachment. The wheezing would be a symptom of a punctured lung.

His mind blacks out momentarily, then comes roaring back with the clarity of the situation. He’s on the ground right now because Spock chose to save him first. That means Jim, Jim could be…

Leonard rolls onto his side with a moan of pain and decides he’s going to crawl if he has in order to find out what’s going on. If Jim is plant food, he’s never going to forgive himself. He’s going to take his guilt to his grave. And then Spock might take his guilt to the grave because both Jim and Leonard will be dead—or the poor Vulcan might be damaged in some irreparable way for the rest of his life.

Nobody’s gonna die, Leonard decides stubbornly. He stumbles to his feet, not certain how far he can make it before he passes out from too little oxygen, and begins to limp toward the crowd of figures in his tunnel vision. It’s kind of funny how one of those figures detaches from the group and hurries toward him down the long gray tunnel, a tunnel which can’t seem to stay stable no matter how much Leonard blinks.

Impossibly long arms stretch out, making Leonard feel like he might vomit, and catch him as vertigo strikes hard and his legs give out. The next thing Leonard knows is his nose is pressed into someone’s chest.

“Spock?”

“Leonard, I asked you not to move.”

“Is Jim—?”

“Unharmed. Lt. Kyle extricated his arm from the plant.”

Spock’s not gonna lie about Jim. No, he couldn’t. Regardless… “Take me over there,” Leonard demands, which due to his scratchy vocal cords sounds pathetically weak as a command.

“Negative.”

Leonard plants his hands on Spock’s arms and pushes back, finding a spark of anger to buoy his burst of strength. “Now, Commander!”

“No,” the Vulcan says, looking at him with something awful in his eyes—what a human would label as resignation. “I have made certain my commanding officer is uninjured. That is all which should be done at this time.”

It takes Leonard a long moment to realize what Spock is saying. He makes a strangled sound when he figures it out, almost a keening, and Spock closes in on him, muffling the sound with his mouth.

Hush, k’diwa, Spock comforts him, mind to mind, or they will know.

But Leonard has no control over his grief, not in the face of the heartbreaking truth. That is why he is grateful his brain chooses that moment to shut down.

“Chapel says he will be feeling back to his old self in a few hours.”

“He was injured.” Blood stains cannot be easily removed, and even less easily forgotten. The thought of it almost evokes a physical response from Spock.

“Yes… but the worst of it has healed on its own.”

“I see,” Spock replies softly, with meaning, before he pauses. “Thank you for that information, Captain.”

He says nothing else. When Jim tries to place a comforting hand on his arm, he purposefully moves away, folding his hands behind his back and crossing the length of the outer ward of Sickbay toward its exit. He would prefer to continue to wait until visitation can be granted, but undoubtedly Jim will remain here for a chance to see Leonard himself. Therefore he cannot stay.

“Spock!”

Spock stops and turns around, obeying the unspoken request. Kirk absently touches his forearm, which is bare to the elbow—the sleeve torn away by the encounter with the voracious plant—but perfectly free of damage. Lt. Kyle had remarked with great surprise to Spock about that, saying, “I shot it with my phaser as you ordered, sir, and the thing just wilted. I was afraid for the Captain’s arm but there wasn’t a scratch on it!”

Jim draws in a breath. “I feel I should apologize. I know Bones didn’t want to be part of the landing party but I needed—” His mouth closes momentarily, lips pressing thin. “I’m sorry.”

“As Captain, it is your prerogative to choose the members of the team. Explanation for your decision is not required.”

Jim looks stung by his reply, though Spock carefully kept his tone neutral and without a hint of accusation. In truth, Spock could not place blame upon Kirk for the events of today; the true responsible party is not among them—nor has made themselves known in the last two weeks as Spock hoped they would.

The human faces away with an abrupt nod. “All right, Commander, I understand you. Dismissed.”

Jim’s behavior, Spock muses as he leaves Sickbay, has become more erratic and unfortunately less predictable since they decided to give the illusion of doing as he wished. Logically, Jim should now be content; instead the man goes out of his way to give the appearance there is no exception to their circumstances. He is in turn both friendly and distant, reasonable and manic, slipping farther over the edge of an abyss, and Spock cannot determine why.

Some paths are inevitable; some destinies, unforgiving. Is this what has always been in store for them?

Toward gamma shift, Leonard threatened his way out of Sickbay (which did no good), called Spock to rescue him (Vulcans, no matter how much they love you apparently, love regulations more) and then had to resort to sneaking out (why should anyone be mad about that when the diagnostic scans said he was perfectly fine!) under the guise of a petty officer with an unintelligible brogue and a pronounced limp.

Successful jail break behind him, Leonard slips into Spock’s darkened living quarters, not saying a word. He doesn’t need to. Maybe this is something they have done in the past. Another memory snatched from them, the man thinks bitterly.

The Vulcan, having turned in mild curiosity at Leonard’s entrance, returns his attention to his computer console and begins the process of shutting it down and switching off the active data padds on his desk. Then, wordlessly, his work left behind, Spock methodically changes into the thermal sleepwear designed for those species with lower body temperatures than Terrans. Leonard pauses by a panel built into an unadorned wall to alter the atmospheric controls of the room to the equivalent of a warm Terran spring evening. Then he sheds his clothes down to his underwear and takes his time unearthing a blanket from a storage cabinet.

Once the Vulcan is settled on the bed in his customary position for rest (upon his back, hands folded across his stomach, eyes closed), Leonard eases down next to him on his side, curling his limbs slightly so he isn’t in danger of slipping off the edge of the unfortunately small bed, and draws the blanket over them both. In the middle of the night, he will probably lose his half of it to Spock but that’s a small price to pay for Spock’s welcome.

With a nearly inaudible sigh, Leonard lays his forehead against the curve of his companion’s shoulder and closing his eyes. One hand tucks itself under a pillow and the other hand, not shy in the least, comes to rest on top of Spock’s interlocked fingers. Tonight McCoy is wearing his grandmother’s ring on his smallest finger because he had needed the feel of a ring on his left hand; but he couldn’t bring himself to put on the gold band that belonged there.

Despite how his body is relaxing one muscle at a time under the warmth of the blanket, Leonard doesn’t expect he will fall asleep easily in the next few hours. Emotions are churning him up, turning his thoughts every which way like a stormy sea. He can’t grasp a hold of all of that he feels, but after a long exposure to this particular stew of emotions, he recognizes unhappiness, disappointment, and regret.

Would it always be like today, with the testing of their resolve to remain apart from Jim? Would they always be forced to choose?

Spock should have gone after Jim. In his heart, Leonard knows that. It’s just this damn plan is getting in the way of how they normally operate (save the Captain!), of how things should be when Kirk is at the very brink of something disastrous. Leonard’s resolve crumbles into panic at the thought of Jim actually dying, just because they’re foolish enough to—

Cease.

The command comes unbidden, and Leonard’s unpleasant circle of thoughts stops in surprise.

Spock is there, situated at the edge of his mind in a way that defies words. Though they are not as fully connected as they could be, Leonard senses the calm touch the Vulcan is applying in turn to parts of his mind. Leonard briefly tightens his fingers over Spock’s folded hands to show his gratitude.

Within several minutes, sleep is pulling him down in a slow spiral toward a desirable blankness.

Spock’s mind stirs from the depths of a restful meditation, his inner senses affected by an awareness of a building turbulence. Though the turbulence does not originate from him, the connection of his mind to another allows him to feel the beginnings of it.

The body next to his, one of its arms wrapped around his waist, is stiff with tension. He listens for twenty point two seconds to Leonard’s deep breathing as it hitches and falters with increasing frequency.

The solution is a simple technique, much like the mental ministrations his father Sarek used to perform for Spock when he was a child suffering too vivid dreams. The bond offers no resistance as Spock reaches through it to soothe the razor-edged thoughts which have returned to plague Leonard in his sleep. Soon those unwelcome thoughts are inert, harmless, and begin to drift into shapeless meaning. Spock lingers a moment to satisfy himself that Leonard’s dreams are sufficiently protected from the remainder of the rest cycle, and then retreats to the sanctuary of his own mind.

The arm across his belly twitches, relaxes and presses down, once again heavy with sleep now that the threat of a nightmare has passed. Spock initiates his usual ritual to prepare his mind again for meditation; but before he can shape a calmness into his thought patterns he discovers a lingering agitation in his mind is unaccounted for.

Something subtle. Something not-Leonard, which had also roused Spock without his being aware of it. Spock traces it to its origins and is surprised.

Jim is nearby.

The effort required to restrain the body from giving away signs of wakefulness is not insignificant. After mastering his response, Spock focuses on his hearing, picking out sounds which are softer than McCoy’s regular, deep breaths. These breaths are suppressed, meant to be unheard.

Knowing Jim is so close to him allows Spock to sense him better. How long, Spock muses, has he been inside this room? Why has he come? Not to alert them to his presence, that much is evident.

Jim? Spock projects, disturbed, seeking acknowledgement of his presence. Leonard shifts and sighs the name a moment later in his sleep.

His dreaming bond-mate’s voice serves as a sharp reminder to Spock of who must be protected, and why. With a trace of regret, he forms a single thought and sends it out to seek the uninvited visitor to his quarters.

You cannot be here.

For a long moment, the Vulcan wonders if the weakened bond between Jim and himself prevents the human from being attuned to him. But then clothes rustle, someone other than Spock and Leonard breathes in sharply, just once, and gradually the sense of Kirk’s presence fades from the room as unobtrusively as it had coalesced. Spock is barely cognizant of the sound of the man’s exit, of the opening and closing of the bathroom door.

He does not meditate after his captain is gone, contemplating instead how the air surrounding them has become so still, it is as though Jim had never been in this room with them at all.

~~~

He makes it to his desk before the nausea overwhelms him completely. Hands braced on the desktop, arms trembling, Jim swallows repeatedly until the burning at the back of his throat subsides. He gasps for air because breathing is difficult.

You cannot be here.

The man squeezes his eyes shut.

You cannot—

Laughter bursts out of him, loud and jarring in the silence of his private quarters. Jim laughs, and he laughs, sides aching painfully until he realizes he isn’t laughing at all but sobbing without the tears.

Stop it, Jim, he berates himself. Stop it! You can do better, you are strong, this isn’t you! You don’t break…

He forces himself to take deep breaths until the sound of his torment subsides. Shaky, feeling raw, Jim slips sideways, barely catching his body in time to guide it so he lands in his chair instead of on the floor. His arm is heavy, listless, as he lifts a hand to engage the computer. The screen he is long-used to seeing appears immediately, program at the ready.

Jim types in a command. The computer beeps at him, saying in its feminine computerized voice, Recorder on. Ready.

“…Personal log, James T. Kirk… Captain of the USS Enterprise.” Words are not easy to gather, particularly those that make sense. “Stardate—I don’t know the stardate.” He raises a hand, stops and drops it back to the desk. “Does it matter? No. Stardates don’t matter anymore. Today I—”

He chokes on that sentence, hunching over his desk as if in pain and fisting a hand in his short hair.

You cannot be here.

Eventually, after more practice at deep breathing, Jim is able to loosen his hold on himself and sit up, wiping at dry eyes.

“Computer, stop recording. Erase entry.”

Erasing, erasing… Entry is erased.

Painstakingly, he types the command again.

Recorder on. Ready.

“Personal log, James T… Kirk, Captain of the… USS Enterprise. Stardate: unknown.” Jim closes his eyes, talking into the recorder, talking to himself—and others. “It’s over. You did the one thing I didn’t believe could be done. Though you forced my…”

A hand seeks the edge of the collar of his tunic, where there is only a meeting of fabric and skin; no chain, and no metal warm of the rings that represented a special promise he had once made.

“Though you forced them to let me go in memory, I didn’t think—I never imagined there would come the day the willingness to separate from me would be genuinely theirs. All this time… I was wrong. I did have hope. I did, despite everything.

Fist pressed against his mouth, he bears down on the agony in his voice ruthlessly, telling himself to regain control. The recording runs on for several seconds of silence until Jim is ready to speak again in a voice that doesn’t break.

“The most awful part—did you see how they looked? At peace. Bones besides Spock. He used to put his hand over mine, you know, like that, so even in sleep a part of us knew we had each other in safe keeping. Spock never… never really enjoyed the holding part but he allowed it when I didn’t have Bones, or Bones didn’t have me.”

His indrawn breath is quick and unsteady.

“My god, what have I done?”

No one is here to answer. But then, Jim thinks, no one has been with him for a long time. He leans back in his chair and looks straight ahead.

“Spock is right, of course. I can’t be here. I had imagined leaving before but the matter is more than that now, I think. On this ship, I am the clear and present danger to the crew. Today, Bones would have died if not for Spock. Today, his life was on the line. And for what? More of your petty games? You said they could have each other if they so chose, but you don’t want to give them that, do you? Well, no more. Do you hear me? No. More!”

He ends the recording, taking a moment to calm his mind as Spock once taught him and to unclench his fists. Jim stands then, wanting to give this last order as a man facing his fate on his feet. He has that, at least—the honor of not cowing.

“Computer, record in the ship’s log, stardate and time. Message to be sent to all members of Starfleet Command and senior officers aboard the Enterprise. Begin message: This is James Tiberius Kirk. I hereby declare myself unfit for duty as Captain of the Enterprise and resign my commission from Starfleet, effective immediately. First Officer Spock is now Acting Captain, until such time as the Council rules on the position. End message.”

Message ended. Processing. Message sent.

Jim stares at his computer for a long minute before turning away. He goes to a shelf built into the small entertainment unit that holds a few ancient paperbound books and one or two personal effects. There is a box made of wood, carved by his own hands when he was a young man dreaming of entering the Academy. The latch is flimsy but no one pries into this box. If they do, they would not understand most of its contents: the little trifles, half-written messages, a pebble from the first alien world he visited. Things which mean something only to him.

It is all he needs. The rest can be replaced…

Well, not the people he loves, not the friends he once had. But memories will have to serve him in their stead. How ironic, the man thinks, empty and bitter, that memories will become his only faithful companion in the years ahead.

Jim turns, prepared to leave his quarters and not look back, to cement the end of his captaincy, his career, and this life he loved by a simple shuttle ride to the nearest starbase, to find he is not alone.

The box slips from his fingers and shatters into pieces on the floor.

“Captain Kirk,” a small white creature with nondescript features says, “it is most unfortunate we have come to this… again. You may not leave the ship.”

Jim doesn’t think, cannot think, simply dives for the creature with a bitten-off cry. It reappears in another part of the room. He charges after it, wild and careless in his pursuit, throwing any object in his path aside, heedless of where it goes. The crash of something against the far wall is a distant sound. He cares not.

“Captain Kirk,” the creature repeats, sounding perfectly reasonable in the face of Kirk’s rage, “to the leave the ship cannot be allowed.”

Jim cannot maintain a high level of energy indefinitely. From lack of sleep, lack of eating during the last few days, and just a plain lack of sanity, he stumbles, falling to his knees, and there he pants in an attempt to regain his breath, hoping to gather more energy to attack.

“Y-You… I’ll kill you,” he tells it.

“Captain Kirk—”

“Don’t call me that!” Jim bellows. “I’m not Captain anymore! Didn’t you hear me!”

The creature’s tone is implacable. “Captain Kirk, you will remain commander of this vessel. You will be Captain, always. You may not leave the ship.”

“I—” Something occurs to Jim, then. “You can’t stop me. You’re not even there, are you? My mind is this far gone. Like before.”

The creature tilts its head in study of him.

Jim climbs to his feet and sways unsteadily towards the nearest door. “I can leave. I know it, I—”

The door slides open before he lays a hand on it.

“Captain!”

Spock is there, catching him under the arms as his knees buckle. Behind Spock is a whey-faced McCoy, eyes wide, his uniform pants on but his shirt wrinkled and inside-out. Jim closes his eyes when Leonard’s hand reaches across Spock’s shoulder and touches the side of his face.

Then Spock stiffens all of sudden and pivots, promptly dumping Jim into Leonard’s arms. Spock’s tall frame blocks the view into the room.

The alien bastard must still be standing in the middle of the wreckage that is Jim’s room. Jim can imagine it is just looking at them, blinking slowly.

Unless it’s not real. He sags in Bones’s arms.

Beyond Spock, a regretful tone of voice fills the room, belonging to that small creature Jim thought he conjured. “It is most unfortunate, indeed,” the voice says. “For now you all must begin again.”

k’diwa – beloved

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About KLMeri

Owner of SpaceTrio. Co-mod of McSpirk Holiday Fest. Fanfiction author of stories about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

9 Comments

  1. hora_tio

    I don’t know what to say..it is all so awful..Jim’s pain and loneliness is palpable. I can’t quite grasp the reason for all of this-it feels as though it is right in front of me- but I can’t see it. Is this some cruel alien ritual or is it “The Wizard of Oz” and Jim is Dorothy..I don’t know why this movie and its symbolism keeps coming to mind but it does. Perhaps it is the correlation between Spock and Bones and the scarecrow and tin man. The something I can’t grasp..right in front of me..perhaps it is that Jim tells the creature that it isn’t really there, its all in his mind and this gives the creature pause for thought.

    • writer_klmeri

      To me Jim is Dorothy because he doesn’t feel the Enterprise is his home anymore (“you can’t be here”). The white creature (wicked witch) is driving him mad with worry about his loved ones (Toto), he feels he is putting them in danger and preventing them from doing their jobs safely (she falls in the pig pen) (Bones gets eatten by a purple plant) and feels he must leave to protect his loved ones. (she runs away)(he attempts to run away). Jim’s fierce anger and destruction of his quarters is the equivalent of the twister in Kansas. The thing that Dorothy needed to be reminded of is that she does have a home and people who love her..Jim’s lesson is right in front of me, but I can’t see it…and I’m guessing he can’t either. The journey to Oz reveals the wizard is not able to help Dorothy..(Jim) ..the answer was within her all along.(again Jim). PS..one could suppose that Jim is a combination of all the characters..he has brains, heart, bravery, and a home…he just needs to be reminded..as did Dorothy. That… is a really AMAZING analogy. My hat goes off to you!

  2. romanse1

    OMG, you are EVIL! Ya hear, me, positively, DIVINELY evil!!! WOW! I circled around this fic for awhile before I tore myself away from my Sherlock Fandom reading to come in for a landing. Not only did I spend my morning with my butt glued to my chair instead of working out like I was supposed to, I got my heart torn out, stomped on and shredded! All Hail the Angst goddess Supreme!!!! BTW, you get major kudos for crafting what is for me, a very original plot idea. Maybe there is another fic with something similar, but if there is, I’ve never come across it.

    • writer_klmeri

      Thank you! *grins* I must be evil; otherwise no one appreciates the occasions when I am good. LOL! I’m glad this has an original feel to it. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it either. That must explain why it’s so hard to figure out the ending!

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