Title: Twist and Take
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy, implied Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: Making a mistake is easy, but fixing that mistake can alter the course of an entire timeline.
A/N: Happy Halloween, everyone! No spooks in this one, but it might qualify as disturbing all the same.

They don’t recognize him. He is glad of that. Time hasn’t been kind to him, especially not in the last few years. Or rather—thirty years from now.

It would be hard to explain if they knew of his true identity. I’m a time-traveler, he might say. Or the real McCoy, then just laugh in everyone’s faces and keep going with his mission, regardless.

At the time, he hadn’t known the consequences of his actions. He had wanted to save the man he loved and did, unable to stand the horrible thought of living without that person. But he then lived that horror and more because of his decision, though he still cannot bring himself to regret what it gained him. That’s the crux of it, really. If he has to save Jim Kirk all over again, he will. He’ll stand aside as his younger self scrambles to analyze blood from a genetically enhanced human—no, a mad man, as that still stands true even now—and accomplish what apparently several scientists in secret hadn’t been able to do with access to Khan. He will make the tyrant Khan Noonien Singh’s blood revive the dead.

And in those harrowing hours, he won’t think of things like the ship’s computer logs or discarded lab results or even his own half-crazed mutterings to himself as he worked feverishly on a deadline already long past, Jim’s frozen body calling to him to make it breathe again.

It would take nearly two decades before either he or Jim catch the whisper of the phrase super human again. It would take Spock’s help and connections to unearth a deeply buried, horrific secret: Starfleet brass having sold its own intel from the fateful day they brought Khan down and Kirk back to life to a shady private organization with less-than-altruistic intentions.

By the time Leonard McCoy realizes who is the correct person to blame for setting into motion such a devastating series of events, Jim will be dead once again (this time for good) and Spock mysteriously vanished in the aftermath. Try as Leonard might, Spock remained elusive despite the numerous searches; and knowing Spock as he does, Leonard is certain that could not have been by Spock’s choice, even with Jim irrevocably out of their reach.

Left alone, McCoy finally figures out where it all went wrong. He played God, and from that moment—though it took years upon years—started a ripple effect no one could possibly contain. The collateral damage would be extensive, costing lives and crumbling the very foundation of Starfleet’s institution, and the damage to Leonard personally might as well have been fatal.

There is only one way to fix it all. Leonard has never been much of a believer in fate but certainly, he has seen what can happen when one meddles in the fates of men. Many adventures he lived through as a crewman of the Enterprise taught him that. For most of those adventures, his survival happened only because of Jim and Spock.

His last adventure will be to return the favor. The Guardian of Forever must sense that, because unlike before it doesn’t warn him about returning. It really says not much at all except to welcome him like an expected guest and open the portal to the past.

Leonard goes back in time with a heavy heart and the same determination he thinks Jim and Spock once had when they came to rescue him. It had been an unspoken promise that the three of them would never return to the Guardian to risk it all again. Playing with the timeline was so dangerous, so unpredictable. Old Spock had, at least, shared that sentiment with a young Jim Kirk. A single interloper could change everything.

Leonard fully intends to be that catalyst.

There are some things he won’t try to stop, for even he isn’t so brazen to alter destiny itself. It’s just the one sequence of events that matters most: Jim dies, and Leonard revives him.

So Jim cannot die.

The confusion is so great in the wake of Khan’s destruction, Leonard slips onboard the Enterprise dressed as an engineer. Not his forte, to be sure, but he counts on Scotty’s resignation in part as a smokescreen. Chekov is young enough not to question some doctored paperwork bearing an authentic-looking Command seal that says McCoy—or rather, Lt. Cmdr. Seven (an homage that will further confuse anyone who encounters the real Gary Seven, if this crew should again)—is assigned to babysit the torpedoes. Chekov clearly thinks calling him ‘Seven’ is weird.

Yet Leonard isn’t a half-bad engineer, thanks to befriending Mr. Scott out of a need to at times have the company of someone not always overly impressed with Jim. He can make do with helping out in a pinch, and so he does, particularly when the ship comes head-to-head with the commandeered Vengeance.

He has brought stimulants to make it through the worst of the battle and also a special concoction that will make him ‘super human’ when he truly needs to be. It’s in no way related to that genetic mess that drives the galaxy into chaos in the future, but Leonard hasn’t been named a legend in the medical sciences baselessly. He just needs this particular medicine to keep his old bones together. The radiation will still be fatal but it can be kept at bay long enough so that he can get the job done.

The moment is near, he determines, when a flurry of medical staff barrel into Engineering to empty the remainder of ‘his’ torpedoes, and Leonard doesn’t stop them, despite that some of them watch him suspiciously like they think he might cause trouble. He is, after all, an interloper on the Enterprise and, through their eyes, possibly in league with that traitor Admiral. But Leonard can only watch them work to remove Khan’s people, occasionally making an odd comment that in truth prevents anyone from accidentally upsetting the fragile state of the cryotubes.

Unlike in his lifetime, removed from the activity, he can briefly bask in feeling proud of Spock for imploying such a devious ploy. Khan really never did see that trick coming.

Then the armed torpedoes are transferred, Kirk and the hostages are recovered, and Khan is merciless in his attack. Leonard expertly dresses a fellow lieutenant’s wound between blasts rocking the ship. Engineering is shattered by the time the core takes a hit so hard it is misaligned and unable to prevent the ship’s plummet.

It’s almost surreal to see a young Jim Kirk racing into Engineering, an equally younger Montgomery Scott hot on Kirk’s heels. McCoy has a good view of Jim’s face when a horrified Scotty says, “The ship’s dead, sir.”

Jim has never lacked faith in the Enterprise. That will always hold true in any universe.

So Leonard knows well that the pain pinching the corners of Jim’s mouth isn’t because of Scotty’s words. At that moment, Leonard can see Jim’s quick mind coming to a solution. The pain is for the sacrifice to come, Jim accepting he must die in order for his crew to live and only regretting that he cannot save them the pain of knowing he died gladly. He once spoke of those thoughts to Leonard, when they had circled around to that awful moment in their past in order to heal from it, about five years after acknowledging their relationship for what it truly was, a partnership for as long as they both would live.

Scotty is a genius in his own right. The man figures out soon enough what Jim is up to as soon as Jim unseals the door leading to the chamber with the warp core. Leonard shakes his head slightly as Jim clocks Scotty into unconsciousness and gently props the man up, activating the seatbelt to ensure his friend’s safety.

Then Jim is singularly focused on accessing the warp core. He doesn’t see Leonard coming until no doubt the hair rising on the back of the man’s neck alerts Jim to his presence. Leonard is still nimble enough to land the hypospray in the captain’s neck by the time Jim has twisted around to grab two handfuls of Leonard’s red tunic.

The sedative is fast-acting, Jim’s knees buckling in seconds. Kirk drags McCoy down to the floor with him.

Leonard can see the horror in Jim’s face, having been thwarted by this final unexpected twist of fate that could damn his crew to burning up in the atmosphere.

Jim struggles with the effort to speak, accusing, “What… have you… done?”

Leonard just smiles at him, cups the side of his face, and assures him, “It’s all right.”

Kirk continues fighting to stay awake even as his eyes start to unfocus.

“Make sure you stop Khan,” Leonard says, then pauses. “And live a long life, kid. I’m counting on that.”

Jim’s glazed blue eyes only pin him a moment longer. In that split second before Kirk passes out, there seems to be the faintest spark of recognition in the slight parting of Jim’s mouth.

Leonard tucks an unconscious Kirk away from the door to the core. Then he injects himself with the booster his body will need for a nasty battle against a flood of radiation and resolutely slides inside the chamber.

From there, it’s a more daunting and terrible experience than he imagined it would be. To think that Jim had suffered even a tenth of this wracking pain and slow suffocation, and yet still impossibly made the desperate climb up the huge engine, knowing every second counted; Leonard has always admired the willpower of James Kirk, but in these awful few minutes of following in his footsteps, Leonard curses Jim for being so damn resilient and hardheaded. Leonard, in his foolishness, has chosen to do no less than the impossible too, and so he does.

In the end, he understands just how human they both are. After Leonard has forced the core into alignment with the last of his strength, his body gives out and he goes tumbling down to the bottom of the platform. There is only a breath or two left in him, not enough to crawl back to the sealed door as Jim managed to do in another life. Well, he’s come close enough, in Leonard’s opinion. What matters is the core is thrumming and online again.

He’s done what he needed to do this time: dying in Jim’s stead while ensuring Jim still has his McCoy to grow old with. Leonard’s not unaware that Jim would have never asked this of him, and that Jim—and Spock—would both be furious.

Again, no matter. It’s over. Jim is alive, and the McCoy of this splintering timeline will not think to turn Khan’s blood into a radical reviving agent. No one will misuse his breakthrough, causing thousands to die at the hands of genetically enhanced usurpers who want to rend apart the peaceful power structure of their Federation. Being stupid enough to provide the key to their war because of a moment of desperation should only ever happen in one of his lifetimes.

Let this McCoy and Kirk be as happy as we were, he thinks, ignoring how his own flesh cracks apart and his bones turn to liquid fire. Let our Spock have his happiness too.

In the moment before darkness descends Leonard imagines his head in Spock’s lap and Jim’s hand in his, surrounded by the comforting memory of their affection. Oh, how he misses them.

Soon, men in protective suits will enter the chamber to retrieve his body. Somebody will discover that the strange red-shirted officer recorded a message into the computer banks, asking for his ashes to be scattered in space and not to bother calling him a hero. They won’t ever really know who he was because his special booster shot, as a parting gift, will also unravel his DNA string sufficiently to prevent his genetic code matching McCoy’s in the database.

Better to die a man of mystery.

“Somebody once told me,” are his final words in the brief recording, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. But I’m not the selfless hero you might suppose I am. I’m just a man fixing a mistake so good men can live another day. Farewell, Enterprise.”

Farewell, Jim. Farewell, Spock.

Leonard will see them on the other side, wherever that might be. He always does.

-Fini

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