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To say Leonard McCoy and Jim Kirk become instant friends would be an outright lie. Truth be told, John doesn’t see the Kirk kid again for six months. Jim is very much like John in one respect: they are both loners, and only by the sheerest of coincidences does the most irascible doctor-cadet in Starfleet catch Kirk trying to pilfer medical supplies during a graveyard shift at the on-site campus hospital.
It is nearing three o’clock in the morning. Most of the cadets who spent their after-school hours partying are either passed out God-knows-where or are safely tucked into a biobed in Starfleet Medical after having their stomachs pumped, fingers reattached, or whatever medical crisis usually arises from stupidity. The doctor isn’t enjoying the quiet lull in the Emergency Room; he is visibly bored, and it is John who wonders if he isn’t getting shafted, because what eternal life is meant to be so damn dull?
He does not bother to pretend to study like the other interns working his shift. For one, he is not an intern but the presiding medical authority on call and, more importantly, because the majority of his course material is decidedly not new. The doctor skims another patient chart before tossing it back onto a tray and pacing the width of a corridor. A nurse smiles as she purposefully brushes past him, a blatant invitation in the swivel of her hips.
Normally John would be interested but Leonard is a gentleman and turning out to be a blue-balled one at that. He remembers too clearly the pity in his ex-wife’s eyes, and these women here—at the Academy—see Leonard like Joce did, as a man who needs a companion. It’s a bone in his throat every time he thinks about a hurried fuck in a janitor’s closet or screwing some stranger in a back alley. The young woman is quick to realize that Doctor McCoy won’t be accepting her offer and she rolls her eyes as if to say your loss.
He turns away with a grimace and renewed urge to find someone to yell at. That is how McCoy—namely John—is walking by a locked medical supply room, hears the clink of glass then a muted curse. Of course, were he a normal man he might have missed the sounds altogether. But John is not normal (nor has been for roughly two hundred years) and pauses to listen.
Senses sharpen. His ears pick out a brush of cloth, the light scrape of a shoe. The real clincher is the smell of blood—fresh, like from an open wound. Granted, this is a hospital and beneath the open scent of antiseptic is the ever-present hint of blood, human sweat, and something nearly indefinable that John labels as death. Perhaps these scents are not recognizable on an overt level but John can pick them out like jewels in the air. In general, he associates this particular blend of smells with the sick, injured, and dying.
John swipes his card through the security lock by the door, steps inside a room the size of a small armory. The Closet (nicknamed by some of the staff, though it is entirely too large to be less than a storage room) is split evenly by ten rows of shelving units, not dissimilar to the layout of old Earth libraries before information was digitized. The back wall glows faintly in the dark from built-in coolers which store perishable supplies.
John knows instantly that he is not alone. He relaxes his upper body and folds his arms, leaning against the door like the room isn’t dark and full of potential weapons.
“This is the only exit,” he says casually, if a bit gruffly, “unless you plan to take up permanent residence.”
No one answers but someone is there, on his right. John hears the man breathing.
He drawls, Southern accent prevalent, “I figure if you’re in here when there’s a full staff on hand to treat whatever injury you have that either you’re a fool, a thief, or both.” John waits a beat. “I don’t really care which it is, but I will give you a choice. Either let me look you over, or I call security and everybody can watch while I patch you up. Second choice ends with a bonus trip to jail.”
There is a ragged male laugh and a mutter of “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He commands the lights on. “Trust me, I am not the joking type.”
The man who moves into view looks familiar and within a span of several seconds John places his face. Kid from the shuttle.
“Jim Kirk,” he says without inflection.
The young man hesitates at the sound of his name and squints at John. It’s probably hard for Jim to see the details, like McCoy’s face, because one of his eyes is swollen shut and the other probably has blood in it. He seems to give up, shrugs and cracks a grin. “Had a, uh, run-in with a door,” he jokes at the doctor.
“Yeah. A door with fists.” John holds out his hand. “Hand it over.”
The kid doesn’t play dumb. He fumbles in his jacket pocket with a sigh and pulls out two small glass bottles, then a roll of gauze. McCoy notes the medication before setting the supplies on the nearest shelf.
“Well, you may not be a complete idiot but that doesn’t make you any less of a fool. C’mon, I’ll take you to an exam room.”
“No, man, that’s…”
He snaps, “Exam room or jail.”
The kid is clearly grinding his teeth as he follows the doctor from the supply room. Leonard McCoy instructs Kirk to sit his ass down on the table once they are away from the curious looks of any nurses on duty. In the brightly lit, sterile room the damage is easy to see on Kirk’s face—and it’s superficial.
“Upper or lower torso?”
“Just m’ribs” is the reply.
John is as efficient as a doctor as he is as a solider. In record time, he resets three of Jim’s ribs, only pausing beforehand to ask if the man wants any pain medication.
Jim grunts “Allergies” and the doctor accepts the implied choice at face-value. Kirk passes out halfway through the procedure. It is always easier to work with an unconscious patient, so by the time the cadet is coherent again, John has regenerated the breaks as best he can and wrapped Jim’s ribs for good measure.
He is sterilizing the cuts on Jim’s face when the man lolls his head from the side, peeks open those blue eyes and mumbles, “I know you. Guy with nothing but his bones.”
“You may remember me,” the doctor says flatly, “but you don’t know me, cadet.”
Whether Jim’s groan is confirmation or denial, John has little clue and less inclination to care. He gives the young man a minute to re-orient himself and strides over to the small sink to scrub his hands. When John turns around, Jim is sitting up, pale but alert. He stares at Kirk for a long minute. “Whoever you pissed off, kid, is someone you ought to avoid in the future.”
“Tell me about it.” Kirk slides off the table, already adjusting his torn shirt over his bandages. The young man runs a quick hand through his hair and licks his lips in a gesture of uncertainty. “So, ah, what do I—”
John keeps his eyes locked on Jim’s as he approaches. Then he opens a fist and sets down a bottle of pills, an oral variety of one of the glass bottles the cadet attempted to steal, next to Jim’s hand. “Nothing,” John tells him. “Next time follow procedure.”
Jim slips the medication into his pocket without looking at it. “Okay.”
He won’t lose sleep over whether or not Jim Kirk keeps his promise.
It does intrigue him, however, when Jim pauses by the door to say “Thanks.” The kid smiles lopsidedly, wincing as the motion shifts bruised muscles. “See you, Bones.” Then Kirk is gone.
John snorts and decides that if the kid shows up again, the visit is likely to be anything but boring.
San Francisco is a hive of activity, particularly during the Christmas holiday.
“Bones! Wait!”
John shortens his stride, listening to the sound of running footsteps. The person so anxious to catch up to him is the kid. Somehow he is less surprised than he should be.
“Kirk.”
“Jim,” insists the young man as he matches the doctor’s pace. They are nearing the invisible border between campus and city. “I hear you’re on break.”
“Mm. Stalking me again?” he asks, cutting his eyes at the other person.
Jim looks straight ahead but his mouth is curved in a smile. “More like preventing you from earning the title of the Academy’s Most Reclusive.”
“Are you inviting yourself along, then?”
Jim stops walking. He asks, openly curious, “Would you invite me?”
“No.”
“Then, yeah, I guess I’m inviting myself,” replies Kirk. “Any place in particular you want to eat?”
John says it doesn’t matter. They end up at a local mom-and-pop diner with a burger, fries, and a beer each. John suspects Jim is a binge-eater the way the kid shovels the food into his mouth. He remarks after a quick swallow of beer, “Didn’t your mama ever tell you that eating too fast causes indigestion?”
Kirk shrugs. He says, “I eat when I remember to,” like remembering to eat is not something Jim does often. John hears a story there but he doesn’t pursue it.
“What about you?” the man opposite of John wants to know.
He lifts an eyebrow. “I’m not a mind-reader, Jim. What about me?” Not that there is much truth John can share.
Jim thankfully chews his mouthful of fries before speaking again. “You don’t talk much.”
“And you,” the man makes a point to say, “talk about everything except Jim Kirk. I don’t know what you’re expectin’ but I don’t trade sob stories. This is my goddamn lunch hour, not therapy.”
“Whoa, okay.” Jim presents his hands, palms out, in surrender. “I can go, man. No big deal.” The kid pushes his plate away and half-rises before John stops him.
“You owe me another beer,” he says as he places his empty bottle on the corner of the table for the waitress to pick up.
Jim re-seats himself, looking suddenly much older than a twenty-three year old should. John thinks shit, what’s the matter with me? and wonders when he became enough of a bastard to tear into a person for trying to be nice. His mother would have given him her patented I’m disappointed in you look. Curling his hand into a fist in his lap, John realizes he hasn’t thought of his mother in decades.
“Bones?”
That ridiculous name. At first when Kirk began to call him Bones, John would hold his breath for a moment, hearing Sarge’s voice snap another nickname entirely. The skin on his upper arm would tingle where a tattoo used to be, once a proud declaration of who Grimm was and where he belonged. But despite that the identifying mark is gone from John’s body, Reaper can never truly be erased.
“What?” The short response comes out more rough than he intended. “Sorry, my mind was… elsewhere.”
Jim nods like he hears what John doesn’t want to say beneath the words. “I won’t ask,” offers the kid and switches the subject with ease. “Gaila and a few of us are heading out to Shorty’s tonight. Come with us.”
He has heard of this nightclub in downtown San Francisco. It is a regular hang-out for Academy cadets looking to get trashed, laid, or both. “Depends,” answers McCoy since that is who Jim is really asking. “How many times have you left there of your own volition and not courtesy of some overgrown thug?”
Jim grins. “I don’t look for trouble, Bones, it finds me.”
“Of course,” mutters McCoy.
Jim is most likely going to get his face punched in by midnight and McCoy… McCoy will be there to shape it back into some semblance of order. It might be John, though, who surreptitiously snaps a few wrists to keep Kirk’s cloud of chaos firmly on the side of stupid and out of deadly.
Jim, at Shorty’s not long before he hits on the only female keeping company with a seven-foot neanderthal boyfriend, leans into John at the bar, throws an arm around his shoulders and slurs drunkenly, “I like you, Bones.”
“And why is that?” asks John, downing a shot of whiskey and signaling the bartender for another shot.
“Cuz, uh…” Jim scrunches up his face in thought; McCoy has delivered newborns with prettier expressions. “‘Cuz you ‘n me, we’re, like, the sssame. You’re exactly who you are ‘n you don’t, don’t give a flyin’ fuck what they think.” Jim gestures at the crowd when he says they. John dumps Kirk onto the stool beside him before Jim face-plants on the dirty floor. Jim tips his head back and swallows at the ceiling before going on to say, “I don’t care either. I don’t.”
John holds up his new shot of whiskey and watches the club’s flashing neon lights reflect off the amber liquid. You have no idea, no fucking idea, who I am, he thinks but says instead, “I’m a doctor and an asshole. That’s all I need to be today.”
Jim makes a noise that might be agreement or a precursor to vomiting. “Today,” parrots Kirk mindlessly. “God, Bones, don’t drinkthebluespecial,” Jim warns him in a nearly incoherent jumble of words, “—shit, s’nasty stuff… ugh, my stomach—“
Jim pukes on the bar counter, creating a wide berth between the pair and the rest of the customers waiting on drinks. John came prepared because he had a feeling Jim would drink himself into a stupor (the kid is young and his track record shows a lack of good judgment; John checked out of habit), so the doctor stabs the man in the neck with a cocktail that will sober him up in three minutes flat, then shoves a bar towel into Jim’s face to muffle any protest of pain.
A quarter of an hour and one bathroom trip later, Jim is clear-eyed and smelling only faintly of bile and sweat. John settles himself at a table, ignoring Gaila who thinks that a man admiring her chest is a man to be pursued, and watches with eyes slit against the smoky room as Kirk tries to charm a perky brunette. He sees the outcome of this little adventure long before Jim does.
The real mystery, John decides, is why he finds himself involved. Then the boyfriend makes an appearance and Jim is flattened into an awkward sprawl across a table. People begin to yell (and cheer) and John has no more time for contemplating said-involvement as he wades into the fray to catch a badly aimed fist and act the part of one mightily pissed off friend called Leonard McCoy, aka Bones.
John has spent two years in a stew of hormonal cadets and uptight instructors without going crazy.
“Christ, kid, why do you keep botherin’ me?” drawls John, an arm flung over his eyes. Three bottles of hard liquor later and he still isn’t drunk. But it is easy to pretend he isn’t sober.
“How’d you know it was me, Bones?” blurts out the hither-to quiet Jim.
“’Cause you stomp like a miniature elephant,” he gripes, not bothering to uncover his eyes.
There is a beat of silence then an incredulous “Did you just call me fat?”
“I’m saying everything sounds loud to me. But yeah, you could do without your morning donuts, Jim.”
Jim ignores John’s last comment. “Shit sounds loud because you’re drunk again.”
“Am not,” he slurs.
John tenses when the couch dips slightly but it’s just Jim bracing himself to pull a uniform jacket from under John’s legs.
“Normally, I would wonder why you don’t follow your own sage advice, Bones.”
Magpie, thinks John, chatters as well as collects bright objects. He chuckles.
“What’s your usual bullshit? ‘Quit drinkin’ yourself to death, Jim, there ain’t no technology that’ll regrow a liver at that pace.’ Fucking bullshit, man.” Then Jim laughs. “Your hair—God, hold on and let me find my—“
“Hell no,” says John, sitting up to glare at Kirk. “I swear, I will twist your skeleton sideways if you take a picture of me.”
Jim stops rummaging through his backpack to frown at John. “Sometimes you say the weirdest shit, Bones.”
John sighs and scrubs at a hand over his face and then his hair, trying to flatten it. New downside, he notes wryly. Super powers don’t account for personal hygiene.
“Why are you here?” he calls to the crazy fool who has disappeared into John’s tiny kitchenette, no doubt about to set something on fire.
Jim drags his head from the refrigerator to answer. “Where else would I be?”
John rolls his eyes. “Picking up a cadet with a venereal disease? Trying to patch a hole in your head?” He narrows his eyes. “You didn’t get into another fight, did you?” He curses as he leverages himself off the couch and kicks aside a pile of laundry, wondering where his medikit is. “Fuck.”
Jim hands him a glass of water. “If I was bleeding, I’d say something.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” But I’d smell the blood. John drains the glass and drops back to a sitting position.
Jim smirks and shrugs, settling on the couch. They sit together, saying nothing. John thinks he ought to rewire the security lock on his door, if Jim is able to hack it so easily. He is not certain when he stopped minding that Jim lets himself in.
“You want to talk about it?” Jim asks.
John frowns. “What?”
Jim looks away. “Whatever it is you’re trying to drown in bourbon.”
John lifts an eyebrow.
“Fine,” Jim responds to his silence.
John scratches behind his ear, sighing. “Had a sister once. You’re more annoying than she ever was.”
Jim turns back to stare at him with interest. John wonders when the last time he spoke of anything personal to someone was. By Jim’s expression, never.
“You have a sister, Bones?”
“Did,” he replies flatly.
“Oh.” Jim’s gaze drops to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” He remarks lightly afterward, to ease the harshness, “Everybody loses someone, someday.”
Jim’s voice is almost as bitter as John’s. “I know.”
“I’d toast to that, except I’m out of booze.”
Jim seems to think this is a cue. He stands up, hands in his jacket pockets. “Then we’ll find some.”
He opens his mouth, ready to make an excuse, but John finds himself agreeing. “Okay.”
Jim waits patiently while John wipes his face and determines if he needs to change clothes for decency’s sake. At the door, Kirk stops him with “Wait” and offers John a comb. John’s fingers close around it, and he thinks of his sister, not for the first time today.
What better way to celebrate the anniversary of her death, he decides as he tackles his hair and follows Jim to the stairwell, than to go out and live.
“Starfleet Academy is still reeling from the loss of almost two-thirds of its student population in the aftermath of what people are now calling the Narada Incident…”
Two hundred years of evolution and the press are little better than the bastards John remembers from his early youth. None of these people have a fucking clue that the word “incident” cannot begin to cover the trauma they have lived through, or the profound grief the Vulcans, what little of them are left, are processing. It could have been Earth so easily, would have been, and yet people are going back to their lives.
Leonard spends the next several days diligently wading through patient cases of surviving ensigns from the damaged lower decks of the Enterprise. He keeps tabs on Captain Pike’s recovery, prescribes sedatives by the dozen for those cadets who can barely cope, and fits as best he can into the tiny wrecked world of Starfleet Academy. When he isn’t at the hospital, Starfleet Command is breathing down his neck, making him wait hours for an interview in which he is bombarded with a thousand questions at the same time—why did you do this?—when did Cadet Kirk do that?—how?—who?—where?, some things he cannot possibly answer. Then they send him on his way, back to the hospital, only to call him in for another round. This is the cycle he endures; all the while John is wondering when Leonard McCoy is going to crack, honest-to-God crack into pieces.
People say “Get some rest, Doctor” or “Leonard, you look like shit. Go home and go to bed.” But sleep isn’t the problem, not for John; it is his mind that he fights hour after hour. Sometimes he wonders if he is suffering PTSD like everybody else—except on a catastrophic scale. He doesn’t know though, has no case study for comparison because John is the only human alive who has lived through more horrors than a man should.
John carefully positions a skin graft on a burn victim’s arm and—Jesus—he’s no longer in the operating room but kneeling in dirt, and the air smells like cooked flesh, reeks of horror—
“Careful, now,” Doctor McCoy tells his patient as he gingerly wraps a bandage around the new tissue.
—he drops the arm of a dead woman; bodies disintegrate at the lightest touch—somebody is crying, maybe an aide worker, repeating Oh God, Oh God because the missile hit the city, obliterating it, before anyone realized it was coming—
“Doctor.”
Time to check on his next patient—victim—a man whose leg was crushed under a bulwark. He reaches for a medical chart—
—and John wakes up every morning, the sky always gray with ash, to continue the search for survivors but finding mostly dead—there aren’t enough bodies to account for the 6 million missing because ground zero is nothing but miles of emptiness and bare traces of rubble—
“Doctor. Doctor McCoy!“
—the nuclear blast wiped out centuries of civilization in less than three seconds—
He draws in a deep breath, turning. “What?”
A nurse, a woman he met on the Enterprise named Christine Chapel, with a weary smile removes the chart from his grip. “Someone’s asking for you up front.”
John stares at her, numbers still pounding in his head. While he had volunteered for the relief effort in that one city, the bombs had kept dropping and by the time the warring factions stopped the killing over 37 million people were dead. It was the worst war on Earth, World War III. Now billions are no more than space dust and there isn’t even a planet to salvage.
He manages, “Okay, I’ll be there in a second” before finding the nearest bathroom, feeling thoroughly sick but unable to be sick. John composes himself, steps into the present again, and looks for the person seeking him.
It is Jim, leaning against a wall out of the way of hustling doctors and nurses. His head is down but John thinks the kid looks like he might sink to the floor in next moment. “Jim.”
Kirk lifts his head, smiles briefly. “Hey, Bones. I hope I’m not…” The young man flinches and shifts uneasily. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, kid,” he tries to soothe. “Let’s step outside. I could use the fresh air.”
Jim follows him through a staff-only rest area and onto a private balcony. Another person, a med-student by the look of him, is curled up in a lounge chair, asleep. John heads for the opposite end of the balcony.
They stand there, staring at the street below.
“I can’t believe we made it,” Jim says too quietly.
Leonard tells his friend, “Thanks to you, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
Jim slumps against the railing like he can no longer bear the weight on his shoulders. “We should be thanking you, Bones,” he says and that startles John. “If I hadn’t been on the Enterprise…”
“We’d all be dead. But I doubt Command sees it quite like you and I do.” His words are all sarcasm but no regret.
“I don’t care!” Jim’s hands twist on the metal rail, and John thinks that whoever Jim is picturing would be smart to steer clear of Jim Kirk. “I don’t—fuck, Bones, I can’t tell if I’m going to be out on my ass or wearing Command stripes. They won’t leave me alone, and they won’t tell me anything.”
“Does it matter?” he asks carelessly, and Jim turns those vivid blue eyes on him.
“Yeah,” Kirk tells him, “it does.”
“Why?”
“I want a ship. I want a ship so I can fucking phaser-blast every asshole crusader out of this galaxy. Nero killed nine billion Vulcans,” and there it is, the anger that is burning Jim from the inside out.
John takes Jim by the shoulders. “Do you know who you sound like, Jim? You sound like Nero.”
He lets Jim’s fist connect with his jaw because the kid needs to hurt someone and John can take it. He stumbles back against the railing but does not cry out. The pain of the blow is gone in an instant, like it never existed.
“Bones,” Jim is saying, a hitch in his voice, “Bones.”
He raises a hand to stall an apology. “Listen to me, Jim. Nero wanted someone to blame and he wanted someone to hurt, so he ended up hurting everybody. I don’t want you to become that person. You can’t change what he did; but what you can do—and already have done, in a way—is protect us from further harm without causing Nero’s kind of damage. We need that, Jim—we need you to be that person.”
The kid is on his knees but listening. John sinks down beside him and tilts Jim’s face up to his, ignoring the tears catching on his thumb or the trembling muscles under his fingers.
“I don’t think I can do it,” Jim confesses. “Bones, I can’t—every time I remember and all I feel is hate—”
Jim needs a promise, and John can give it to him. “Then I will stop you,” he says softly, “before you cross that line.”
The young man sags against him. “Thank you.”
John drops his cheek onto the crown of Jim’s head and closes his eyes. They sit like that, huddled together, until John catches the sound of someone calling “Doctor McCoy?” in the lounge area. Then he eases away from Kirk, saying nothing, and they part ways.
In a grand assembly, Jim is awarded the captaincy of Starfleet’s flagship, USS Enterprise. When Jim approaches Leonard about the position of Chief Medical Officer, they both know his answer—and whether or not Jim believes in Leonard McCoy, John Grimm is fully capable of keeping that promise.
They leave Earth behind for the vastness of space, and John is almost relieved. He feels change ahead, craves it, because behind him is only the pain of his memories. If John doesn’t find peace soon, he thinks it may be Jim who has to kill him.
Living on the Enterprise is better and worse than John anticipated. In the first month, Jim is the only person John encounters off-duty who doesn’t make an excuse to run from CMO Leonard McCoy immediately. Kirk assures the doctor, “Bones, you scare the shit out of people. Once they get to know you like I do—” Jim’s eyes are twinkling with amusement but John doesn’t see what’s so funny. “—the crew will stop expecting to be hypo-ed on sight and dragged to the med bay for tests.”
“People carry disease, Jim,” McCoy replies indignantly. “It’s my job to give this crew a clean bill of health before we dock at the next starbase.” Then, when Jim shrugs and turns his back, the Senior Medical Officer pulls a hypospray from his pocket and pumps Jim full of vitamin supplements before the Captain knows what’s happening.
“Hey!” complains Kirk loudly enough to stop nearby ensigns in their tracks.
John pockets the empty hypospray again. He brushes past the scowling man, quirking his mouth and saying dryly, “The crew should be afraid of me.” He turns to Kirk and adds, “But for the sake of building passable work relationships with these people, I’ll get one of my nurses to spread the rumor that I only hypo the Captain on sight.”
“Fuck, Bones, you’re cruel.”
He tilts his head in an imitation of the First Officer. “You just figured that out? You need to pay better attention, Captain.”
Jim’s response is an obscene hand gesture as he stalks away. John figures they both need to learn how to behave like decorous Starfleet officers.
Which brings him to the worse part of living in space on a tin can. (Leonard nicknames the starship as a “tin can” because irascibility—if played right—gives McCoy characterization people can accept and a way to keep people distant, if he chooses to do so. John is proud of McCoy’s quirks.)
Spock. The First Officer’s priority list seems to rank Discussing proper behavior with uncouth officers I plan to irritate in the top ten. When Doctor McCoy joked as much (in a snide way, which John admits might not have been the best idea), the Vulcan took the doctor’s words as personal evidence of Leonard McCoy’s imperative cry for help. Spock suggested a step-program for officers in need of “behavioral rehabilitation”—like McCoy had come straight from a penal colony or somewhere equally unsavory.
John ultimately kicked the First Officer out of his office, telling Spock to come back when he had removed that “monumental stick outta his green-blooded ass!” They haven’t been on good terms since.
It occurs to John much later that his strongly worded missive to Starfleet Command and Medical—Jim called it a “McCoy-right fucking now-demand”—for a doctor on staff who knows how to piece a Vulcan back together might be a sign of remorse; but he never says a word otherwise to Spock about Dr. Geoff M’Benga’s arrival. The Vulcan keeps his silence, too, and they are reduced to wordlessly greeting each other with too-sharp nods in passing.
Jim is under the impression that his two senior officers will eventually resolve their issues. McCoy’s response to this pronouncement is “Hope on, Captain, but don’t hold your breath.”
Kirk merely grins like he knows something no one else does, and John is smart enough not to take the bait.
In spite of his doubts, John settles into the role of Leonard McCoy, Chief Surgeon and Medical Officer with ease—and, as Jim predicts, most crewmen warm to him. Except Spock, but John thinks he is doing quite all right without the hobgoblin.
“Ah Hell, have you seen that extra set of scalpels?” Leonard McCoy opens three drawers, brows drawn, before one of the medical personnel spies the doctor rummaging through a supply cabinet. He frowns at a petite woman as she pulls him gently but firmly to the side.
“Doctor McCoy, I believe that the Captain was looking for you.” Her meaning is quite clear: quit making a mess.
“This is my Sickbay,” he argues.
“Of course it is,” the nurse says agreeably. “You can comm Captain Kirk from your office. I’ll make sure that no one disturbs you.”
There isn’t much else to say to that, and John finds himself wondering when he went from CMO of the USS Enterprise to whipped-surgeon in his own medical bay. He suspects, as he closes the door to his office, that his head nurse is at fault. Because Christine Chapel isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with Doctor McCoy in a yelling match (and boy can she shout, he remembers, smirking), the rest of the staff don’t find him as scary as they should. John is forced to get his kicks by threatening oblivious ensigns outside of Medical and watching them run.
Days like this, he feels his age.
“Sickbay to Bridge. Uhura, put Jim on, will you?”
“Yes, Doctor McCoy.” He listens to Uhura’s “Captain” and, damn, but no one can put as much attitude and I still think you’re a farm boy into that one word like Nyota can. Their leader needs the reminder that while he may be the highest authority aboard he is still Jim Kirk, friend and resident idiot.
“Bones!” a cheerful familiar voice pipes over the comm unit.
He sighs as loudly as possible. “What do you need, kid?”
“Captain, Bones—Captain.”
Oh yeah, Jim definitely could use a few knocks to his expanding ego. Six months into the Enterprise‘s five-year mission and Kirk is already complacent about his captaincy.
“Jim, I don’t have time to chat.” Which is a lie but he’s not allowed to rifle through his own sickbay to pass the time. “Either spit it out, or I can arrange a medical visit for you. We have the new inoculation shots for the Argosian pox,” he adds menacingly.
“Okay, okay. Sorry.” Jim’s voice lowers to a hushed quality but that does nothing to lessen the sound of his excitement. “1900, Rec Room 3, Deck 5. Spock and I’ll be dueling it out over a chess board.”
John straightens from his slouch. “How did you get him to agree?”
Jim has been trying to socialize with the Vulcan for the better part of three months, but Spock has evaded each attempt thus far. The doctor was beginning to suspect that Spock was enjoying the idea of making Jim sweat over their non-existent friendship. Jim obviously hates having a First Officer who doesn’t like him.
He grumps before Jim can reply, “The hobgoblin probably just wants another opportunity to kick your ass—without winding up under court marital.”
“He’s already kicked my ass,” says the Captain good-naturedly.
Isn’t that the truth?
Jim may have purposefully provoked Spock into a violent display of “emotional compromise” but it could have easily gotten the kid killed. John remembers too poignantly standing there, feeling the shock and hesitancy of the people around him; he felt hesitancy, too, because he could pull Spock off of Kirk but in doing so would reveal his un-humanlike strength to a dozen or more witnesses. Such a quick and easy way to end Leonard McCoy’s budding career.
“Congratulations then, Captain. Avoid taunting Mr. Spock this time. I still haven’t figured out the extent of damage a Vulcan nerve-pinch can cause to a human.”
“Spock says it’s a temporary and painless solution to an immediate problem.”
“Yeah and God forbid if our resident Vulcan might be wrong. I’m the doctor, Jim, so my know-how counts more than his. McCoy out.”
John doesn’t stop by the rec room that night because he tells himself that solitude is the healthier choice. Truth be told, he is rather proud of Jim for making a dent in the Vulcan’s shell of isolation. If the Captain and First Officer learn to respect one another on a personal level, the crew of the Enterprise will be strengthened because of it. Yet John also admits to jealousy over Kirk and Spock’s potential friendship, which will be built from genuine acceptance on both sides. Leonard McCoy/John Grimm/whatever-he-has-become-now simply cannot afford the luxury of a true friendship; it requires honesty and trust, and while John can accept both, he cannot return them in equal measure.
John lies in his single-sized bed, arms crossed behind his head, and ponders exactly when Leonard McCoy began to supersede John Grimm. He is disturbed to realize that he wants McCoy to be more than a reflection of a medical blue uniformed man, with a sour smile and a talent for medicine, in the eyes of his colleagues. He wants to look in the mirror and see Leonard, too.
During its eighth month since launching from Earth, the Enterprise passes through a sect of the Alpha quadrant that normally sees little trafficking activity.
John is not busy in a medical capacity but half-hidden by a massive tower of PADDs in his office when the red alert is engaged. He goes perfectly still for a moment, listening, but there is no sense of panic in the air. Forcing down the ingrained need to find a weapon, he waits, distracted by the sound of the klaxons, until Christine gives his open doorway a token tap.
“Doctor,” she says, her hands already reaching to sort through the precarious stack of reports on the corner of his desk. “Mr. Spock called. The ship’s sensors picked up a signal from a vessel about an hour ago and we are within visual range now.”
“What does he want me to do? Interpret smoke signals?” John asks in irritation, tossing a report he is certain he will snap in two in another minute into a drawer.
Chapel rolls her eyes at him. “Leonard, there are signs of life onboard.”
“No! A space ship manned by living creatures?” he drawls. “You must be pulling my leg, Chris.”
She looks at him with no small amount of exasperation. “Pull your leg? Are you certain you were born in this century?”
He says, “Oh, I definitely wasn’t, trust me on that,” as he rises. “What is it that caught your attention, Chapel?”
They walk side by side to another section of the medical bay and though his stride is not hurried, John can’t shake his tension.
“The bioscanners show several heart rates, with a mean of roughly ten beats per minutes.”
Now that is unusual. “Humanoid?” he muses, looking at the data spikes on the monitor. “But no respiration.” John taps a finger against his mouth in thought. Then he reaches over to the side and pushes a button. “McCoy to Captain Kirk.”
“Kirk here. Is the vessel occupied?”
“Decidedly so, Jim, but the information we are gettin’ indicates they may be in some sort of distress or… stasis. Readings are faint yet our equipment is functional. Scotty inspected and approved it just last week.”
“It’s an old model ship, Bones. Spock thinks it dates before the turn of the 21st century. Looks like DY-500 to me.”
McCoy hears Spock’s unmistakable intonation in the background: “Much older. The DY-100 class to be exact.”
“I want to take a look at it, Jim.”
“Sure, Bones. Kirk out.”
He arrives on the Bridge in time to hear Spock declare that the name of the DY-100 vessel is the SS Botany Bay. John sucks in a sharp breath.
Jim looks at him. “Bones? Does that name mean something to you?”
“Not in a personal way, Captain,” he answers flatly. “It’s just… a name from history—” Glancing at Spock, he clarifies, “—Earth history during the 18th century. Botany Bay was a British penal colony on the coast of Australia. Of course the name stuck even after the colony was discontinued.” He is certain of his facts because he lived in Sydney once, working as an extra hand on various fishing boats that skimmed through the Botany Bay. That was a quiet time in his life, when he desperately needed peace, right after his sister had died.
Even in space, John thinks, he cannot escape reminders of his past.
Captain Kirk drums his fingers on the captain’s chair, staring at the SS Botany Bay on the Bridge screen.
“Well, Jim?” the CMO prompts. “Are we going over there?”
Jim turns very blue eyes on him, amused. “Are you volunteering, Bones?”
“I didn’t expect I would have a choice.”
Kirk laughs. “Right. Mr. Spock, you have the conn,” remarks the Captain as he steps down from his seat with obvious exuberance. “Tell Scotty to meet us at the transporter.” McCoy and Kirk are the door of the turbolift when Jim tosses out, “And find somebody who knows about the 20th century!”
If at all possible, Scotty is more bouncy than Kirk. The Scotsman is already in the Transporter Room, and John suspects the engineer may have been camped there, ready to insinuate himself into the beaming party if necessary. “A real piece of work I bet she is!” crows the Chief Engineer. “Ye cannae imagine, Capt’n, what a discovery this is! Pre-warp engineerin’, when our ancestors first took to the stars…”
John opens his mouth but Jim cuts in, “Let him be, Bones.”
“Fine,” grunts McCoy, “but if he gives himself a brain aneurysm from pure joy, you’re writin’ the report about it.”
They have just stepped onto the platform when a woman with dark hair and large eyes rushes in, crying, “Wait!” She looks breathless and excited as she takes her place next to McCoy. Then the woman leans toward him to whisper “Isn’t this wonderful?”
John groans.
Spock’s revenge for remaining on the ship, of course, would be to send the next best replacement to annoy Leonard McCoy: another enthusiast. As if there aren’t enough already.
She blushes when Kirk grins at her, asking, “Welcome to the party…?”
“Mira Romaine, Sir. I, uh, I’m not a historian but Mr. Spock attended my classification exhibit on Earth ships, back at the Academy. He said it was fascinating.” She shuts up suddenly like she has said more than she intended to.
“A lass after me own heart,” grins Mr. Scott.
“You’ll do,” the Captain tells her with a twinkle in his eyes. Kirk nods to the techs behind the transporter with “Beam us to the ship, gentlemen.” Scotty makes a noise of sheer delight, and Lt. Romaine shivers, actually shivers in blatant anticipation.
John’s mutter is full of Leonard’s sarcasm. “Great. Just great.” Then his molecules are dispersed.
“Wow,” Mira remarks, eyes wide.
Engineer Scott, currently prying off a panel inside the SS Botany Bay with apparent glee, agrees. “Aye, lass. This’ll be a day ye never forget!”
She passes by John in a sort of daze, talking. “My roommate Marla would have loved this. She was the historian, 20th century, practically in love with Earth’s old emperors and despots, like Caesar and Peter the Great. S-she was so smart, if a little obsessed—” The woman falters, tugging at her bottom lip. “Never mind. Okay! Where to begin?” Whatever pep talk the lieutenant gives herself seems to work.
Scotty’s advice is muffled by wires and metal as he is shoulders-deep in circuitry. Jim, however, calls them further into the ship with “Here!”
Scotty stays behind but McCoy and Romaine seek out Jim. In an adjacent area, like a long hallway, they encounter stacked rows of horizontal cells, windows clouded by age. John kneels on the floor and touches the glass, which is cold and not glass at all but thick plastic. He can make out the distinct shape of a body inside the cell. “Jim, I think we found the crew.” His medical tricorder confirms his statement.
Jim frowns as he surveys the area. Lieutenant Romaine turns to them from further down the aisle, hands skimming over the walls. “It’s a sleeper ship, Captain,” she says. “Before Zefram Cochrane invented the warp drive, Earth’s ships could only achieve interplanetary travel—and even then, the journey was lengthy for a human so the passengers were cryogenically frozen.”
The doctor lifts an eyebrow. “Sleeper ships were never that popular. Cryogenic freezing is a lot like death, and most people weren’t willing to take the chance of never waking up.” Besides, Earth was more focused on the planets in their own solar system into the mid 21st century—and as with Mars and its Ark, had other, if secret, means of transportation.
The woman blinks at him. “You know something about ships then, Doctor McCoy?”
He shrugs, cursing silently. “Read about ’em in school, is all. The medical use of cryogenics was worth studying.”
Jim interrupts. “I want to know if these people are still alive. According to you, Bones, they are.”
“A heart still beatin’ doesn’t necessarily mean the other organs can function like they should. Jim, a human in fit condition can only be kept in stasis for so long. If this ship is from the 1990s like Spock thinks, I… don’t know. Two and a half centuries—that’s far beyond the timeframe of any study conducted on the subject.”
“So waking them might be possible; worst case none of them survive.” Jim shakes his head, says seriously, “If‘s and maybe‘s don’t matter at this point. It’s not our decision to make. We’re locked onto the SS Botany Bay by tractor beam. The Enterprise will escort it to Starbase 12.”
John couldn’t agree more. “Jim, we should—”
The ship groans without warning and overhead air ducts hiss in a spray of steam. John almost drops his tricorder, thinking he needs his gun and he needs it now, but he catches himself and lets his muscles twitch without acting on his impulses.
Scotty’s voice echoes, slightly panicked, “Och, it wasn’t me, Capt’n! The ship, she’s following her protocol!”
“Sir!” calls Lt. Romaine, “This one is lighting up!”
Jim and McCoy both join her, watching as the window of a cell clears enough to reveal a clothed male figure. The doctor adjusts his tricorder, reading out, “Heart rate increasing steadily, Jim. Whatever the ship is doing, it has triggered the chamber to reverse stasis. Respiration rising to 21%, heart rate now 29 beats per minute.”
“This is not the best scenario,” Jim mutters to no one in particular.
“He must be the leader or the captain,” says Mira. “He would be the last to sleep, the first to rise.”
Scotty squeezes himself between Jim and Leonard. “I’ve always enjoyed a mite of poetry,” he beams at the lieutenant. She blushes in response.
John remarks dryly, “I hate to break up this courting session, but if this man is going to remain alive, we have to get him out of there soon. His vitals are dipping again.”
“The machinery’s too old,” inputs Mr. Scott. “I noticed some of the other cells are dead a’ready. Let me see what I can do…” He pulls out a tool from his belt and mumbles lowly as he works.
“Heart rate slowing back to 18 beats per minute. Jim, we’re gonna lose him!”
“Scotty!” the Captain snaps.
“Capt’n, it’s sealed tight. If we had some leverage…”
John frowns at his tricorder. The man’s heart rate is holding at 14 beats per minute, strangely enough, like he is fighting to survive.
Jim tries to break through the window, but John pulls him back from a second futile attempt. “It’s thick polythane; you’d need heat to melt it.”
Kirk’s “Shit!” is heartfelt; John sympathizes.
“Scotty,” the doctor barks, “I think I saw a piece of metal bar lying back at the front. It could be useful in budging this. Jim, you aren’t doing any good here. Go help him look.”
For once, the kid doesn’t argue or wonder why Leonard McCoy is issuing orders. John looks at Mira, who is staring into the cell. Neither of them can see the man’s features well but his hair is dark. “Lieutenant, I need a favor.”
Romaine instantly straightens. “Of course, Doctor McCoy.”
He hands her the tricorder. “You know the basics of this device?”
She nods. “Yes, Sir.”
“Scan other cold cells for activity, starting at the end down there. Tell me how many aren’t showing vitals.”
Mira hesitates, glancing at the dimly lit chamber.
“Don’t think about him,” John says softly. “We can’t do anything to help him right now.”
The officer hurries away.
“Goddamn it!” John breathes and then draws back a fist and slams it into the side of the casing. The metal yields enough that he can dig his fingers under the outer rim of the window. The plastic and metal crumple under his strength until he can feel the latching mechanism on the inside. A quick twist, and it snaps. The pane falls open just as Jim and Scotty round the corner, empty-handed. Lucky for John, the long metal slab that the body rests on slides out, covering the damaged end of the window.
John stares down at the face of the man, sees the sharp-angled cheekbones and Roman nose, and recognizes him immediately. How could he not, after thoroughly researching the only examples of super-humans in history, similar to him but disappointingly not, to learn that they are long dead.
Except… they aren’t dead, and that’s worse than he imagined.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
He doesn’t bother calling for Mira.
Jim leans over McCoy’s shoulder as the doctor presses his fingers into the cold skin of the man’s neck, counting heartbeats.
Captain Kirk is demanding, “Bones, how did you—”
“Jim,” he hisses, “I need to get this man to Sickbay. Now.”
I need to toss him out an airlock before he wakes up.
Fuck, he can’t because Jim is there, and Leonard is a doctor not a murderer.
Kirk’s sharp eyes linger on him for a second before Jim pulls out his comm unit and requests immediate transportation for Doctor McCoy and his patient.
John will decide later how he is going to explain their little miracle. When he forms on the transporter pad, his patient prone beside him, the techs hovering nearby inform him, “A medical team is on the way, Doctor McCoy.”
He nods, past the point of paying attention to anything other than the man under his hand, who coughs. Eyelids lift, revealing dark, dark eyes. The man blinks once, seems to sense McCoy’s presence and that dark gaze wavers, seeking him.
John leans in and says, “Don’t move.”
The man’s mouth works, almost soundless, but John hears the forced words: “How long?”
He answers grimly, “Not long enough, Khan.”
But Khan Noonien Singh’s eyes close again, and John doesn’t know if the man heard him. When McCoy’s team arrives, he stands aside while they hustle Khan away, already certain that he has made a terrible mistake.
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Related Posts:
- Of Sacraments and War – Posting Date – from April 29, 2011
- Of Sacraments and War – Epilogue – from April 28, 2011
- Of Sacraments and War – Chapter Five – from April 27, 2011
- Reaper vs Khan Countdown – from April 29, 2011
- PODFIC HAS ARRIVED! – from March 15, 2014
