Chapter Text
Love is a fire,
but whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn your house down,
no one can tell.
-Joan Crawford
*****
There are days when Leonard seriously regrets ever even considering a career in space. Perhaps not as many as he might claim, because that decision is also what led him to Jim, but definitely some. Today, for instance, which started out spectacularly awful and has since degenerated into a practical demonstration of Murphy’s Law.
Over the course of 48 hours, Leonard has been forced to watch his soulmate struggle with his grief and rage from the outside, helpless to do anything but protest futilely as Jim shut him out. He has had to stand by while Jim ventured into Klingon territory with minimal backup and only the barest scraps of a plan, had to feel the subsequent surges of fear and adrenaline and horror through their bond without any context or reassurance, knowing that any second could see the end of his world. He’s nearly had his arm torn off by a torpedo that was seconds away from blowing him out of existence. He’s had dozens of crewmembers brought to his sickbay too far gone for him to save. He’s had to sit and watch with no one but Spock for comfort while Jim launched himself at an enemy starship backed up only by a morally questionable superhuman and a well-meaning but hardly combat-effective former-ish Chief Engineer.
It was enough to fray anyone’s nerves to all hell. But then Leonard had been scrambling to get 72 cryotubes out of live torpedoes without blowing anyone or anything up, and that was a pretty sufficient distraction. By the time he finished and got back to medbay with six dozen frozen geriatrics, he’d been able to feel Jim back on the ship.
And now, finally, Jim is in his sickbay, with him and as safe as any of them can be on a starship that’s had more than a few holes blown in it. He allows himself a moment to just breathe, to let his eyes convince him that his soulmate is still in one piece as he watches Jim hand off an injured Carol Marcus and return at last to Leonard’s side.
But good old Murphy’s Law kicks in again.
Just as Leonard is explaining that no, Spock is not actually a murdering sociopath and that Khan’s crew is fine, the power cuts out. In the sudden darkness, Leonard feels a hand clapped to his shoulder and the quick press of lips to his cheek. And then Jim is gone again, no doubt racing off to try to save the ship. Leonard wants to rush after him like he has on more than one occasion, to make him stay still long enough to be taken care of, dammit, but he knows he can’t, not yet. His sickbay is in chaos, and he has a responsibility to the dozens of patients in it who need him. He rushes around with the rest of his staff, getting everyone strapped down and as stabilized as possible, only sitting and activating his own safety straps when he nearly falls to the ceiling as it becomes the floor.
The ship tumbles around like a toy in an old-fashioned washing machine, and Leonard’s stomach roils. The sensation comes with a creeping feeling of unease, which he does his best to ignore. He’s never responded well to turbulence, and he’s been airsick before, under less extreme circumstances than these. And if his instincts are screaming at him that something is wrong, well, of course something is wrong. The Enterprise is powerless and plummeting, and so many of the crew under Leonard’s care are dead, well beyond his help. Many more are in need of his attention, and he is only one person, one useless person for as long as he has to stay strapped to his damn chair.
So desperate is he to continue helping, to be useful in a situation in which he feels so out of control, that he doesn’t question it when the ship stabilizes, merely shrugs out of his seatbelts and dives back into the fray. He throws himself into his work, slipping into that zone of calm that allows him to shut out everything else and focus on his patients. He triages and calls out orders and wields a hypo with unparalleled efficiency.
He goes to check on Carol Marcus, with whom he has been on first name basis since their misadventure with the torpedo. The regen unit on her broken leg is working nicely, despite being rather hastily applied, so there should be no reason for the horrified gasp that escapes her. Leonard is jerked out of his detached headspace as she grabs him by the wrist.
“Leonard,” she whispers, wide eyes fixed on his arm.
He must have pushed up his sleeves at some point, because the skin of his forearm is bared. He and Carol stare together at the soulmark there. Normally an inky black, the color is leeching from the words, turning them grey as they watch.
Leonard doesn’t say a word, doesn’t let himself feel anything. He just closes his eyes, unwilling to let himself believe what they are telling him, and reaches for Jim. It’s harder than it should be to follow the bond that is part of him, as if Jim is deliberately closing it off. But Leonard persists.
The sudden onslaught of pain and fear that slams into him threatens to bring him to his knees. He is distantly aware of Carol calling out to him, but he barely notices. He is sprinting from the medbay before he can even think, following the internal compass that always points to his soulmate. He hurtles into engineering, skidding to a halt behind Scotty and Uhura, who turn to look at him, their faces twisting in horrified pity.
He ignores them, looking past them to see Spock crouching in front of a glass panel that is separating him from-
“Jim.” It feels like a shout and comes out as a breathless gasp, but Jim hears him anyway.
He turns those beautiful blue eyes on Leonard, and they’re full of fear and sadness and pain and regret, but he musters up a weak smile anyway. Their bond flares, and Leonard is filled with the unbridled strength of the warmth and love and gratitude that Jim feels for him. He recognizes it as the farewell that it is.
“No,” he chokes.
He lunges forward, desperate. The door controls are right there, and if he can just get to Jim-
But then arms are wrapping around his chest in an iron grip, holding him back despite his furious struggles. A voice that should be familiar is saying something to him, but it means nothing. Because Jim goes still, and all of those warm feelings are viciously ripped away, tearing a hole in Leonard that goes on and on forever.
This, this is what he has always been afraid of, since the day Jim said those first words to him on the shuttle, since the moment he well and truly realized he was in love with his best friend. Because he gave his heart and soul to Jim, and now Jim has taken them with him somewhere Leonard can’t follow, and he doesn’t think he can survive the pain of it. Even in his darkest nightmares he could never imagine something like this. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t hold himself together in the wake of the end of the world.
Numbness and denial are common in those faced with unimaginable loss, but Leonard doesn’t get that luxury. Agony has him in a vicious grip, clawing at his heart, his lungs, everything he needs to live. They don’t matter anymore, not when the one thing he truly can’t live without is already gone.
He is distantly aware of someone screaming, of voices that he can’t place talking to him, trying to soothe him, but he is well past caring. His sun has imploded and he’s spinning out of orbit, lost and cold and desolate. He can feel himself unravelling, coming utterly, irreparably undone. But then there is a pinch at his shoulder, and he is swallowed by merciful darkness.
*****
There is no moment of peaceful ignorance, of the sweet forgetfulness that usually graces the transition from sleep to consciousness. Leonard doesn’t get to pretend, even for a second, that Jim is still alive, because the awareness that Jim is gone permeates every level of his consciousness, down to the tattered remains of what used to be his soul. The knowledge aches with a ferocity he hadn’t known possible, a pain so all-consuming he can’t even think past it for a long minute.
But then memories of the rest of the situation filter back in, and he opens his eyes, not because he wants to, but because it seems the only thing to do. He’s in one of his own biobeds, in one of the few private rooms that sickbay has to offer. The chronometer on his monitor tells him that less than twenty minutes have passed since the world ended.
He casts a disinterested glance over his readings. Funny. The machines seem to think that he still has a functional heart.
“I’m so sorry, Doctor.” The Scottish brogue, thicker than usual with grief, brings Leonard’s attention to the other occupant of the room. Scotty is leaning against the wall, his arms hanging limp at his sides. His posture is defeated but his gaze is sharp and wary as he watches McCoy.
“You here to make sure I don’t off myself?” Leonard asks dully.
Scotty’s wince confirms the guess. It shouldn’t surprise him, really. He’s had the soulmates of patients that he couldn’t save placed on suicide watch before. He can’t help but wonder now if he was really doing the right thing by them. He’s pretty sure he’s already dead, in all the ways that matter. He sure as hell doesn’t feel alive anymore.
How can the lack of something hurt this much?
“Don’t worry, Scotty,” he says, voice rasping from a raw throat. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His head spins, and he squeezes his eyes shut. But he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel balanced again. “I’ve got too much to do before I can even think about that.”
Because the Enterprise may be battered and broken, but as long as there is a single soul left on board, Leonard will not leave them without a CMO, especially not in a time of such crisis. This was Jim’s ship, this crew Jim’s family, and Leonard will take care of them for him. But the crew will not stay on the ship forever, and once they’re gone…well.
But first Leonard must take care of Jim.
“Where is he?”
“Doctor…” The look Scotty gives him is full of heartbroken understanding, but it’s tempered by reluctance.
“I may not…I may not be able to save him-” Leonard’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat. He doesn’t have time for another breakdown yet, because he knows that when it comes, it will come with devastating, overwhelming force and he won’t be of any good to anybody. “But I can still take care of him. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone else do it.”
Scotty seems to understand his resolve. Leonard remembers, suddenly, the first physical he conducted on the Chief Engineer. He remembers finding the faded soulmark on Scotty’s shoulder, remembers feeling his breath catch and his gut twist in sympathy. Now that sympathy has turned to empathy, and this is a terrible thing to have in common but Leonard is oddly relieved to be with someone who understands. He pauses on his way out the door.
“How did you survive it?” he asks quietly.
Scotty doesn’t have to ask what he means. He sighs.
“I didn’t think I would,” he admits. “Some days I still cannae believe I did. But every time I wanted to just not take my next breath, I’d think about what she’d say. How sad it would make her, how angry. And I couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing her like that. So I took the next breath. And the one after that, and the one after that. And here we are.”
“Here we are.”
Leonard forces his feet to start moving again, to carry him into the main section of sickbay. The grief is palpable in the somber silence, visible in each drawn face. Most eyes are focused on the body bag on one of the examination tables, but some look at Leonard as he draws closer. He can see their pity, but he doesn’t want it, doesn’t want to need it. So he ignores them all, walking forward on numb legs until he is beside the examination table, beside the body bag.
He reaches out with trembling hands – steadiest hands on the ship, he thinks bitterly. Christ, it would have been kinder if that torpedo had just killed him – and grasps the flap of the bag. But he can’t make himself open it. To open it, to see its contents, is to irrefutably prove that this is all real.
But he already knows this is real. He has already watched Jim die, already felt his soul torn asunder, and this surely can be no worse. So he tugs aside the fabric, and the breath is driven from his lungs. Jim still looks so perfect - somehow Leonard wasn’t expecting that. Someone has closed his eyes, and it hides their lifeless emptiness, makes it seem like Jim could just be sleeping. But he is still in death the way he never was in life, and it’s so wrong. Everything in Leonard is crying out, reaching for a bond that is no longer there and never will be again.
And he hates Jim in this moment, hates him as fiercely as he loves him. Hates him because he loves him, hates him for destroying him so thoroughly. And he hates himself, for falling so deeply in love, for allowing his soul to become so entangled with another that its loss could feel like this.
He looks down at his arm, and the wrongness hits him again like a punch. He can barely make out the words he’s known by heart since he was six years old. Of course, that may have as much to do with the fact that he’s still shaking as it does the faded grey color.
A small hand lands hesitantly on his shoulder.
“Leonard?”
He can’t do this.
He shrugs away from Carol’s touch and stumbles on shaky legs to the nearest chair. He can’t…he can’t…Christ, he can’t autopsy Jim, can’t cut apart the body he knows and loves every inch of. He can’t write up a formal report, a cold and clinical description of the extinguishing of his sun. He can’t go to a funeral and watch some windbag admiral who didn’t even know Jim go on about his sacrifice and how he would be remembered as a hero to the Federation.
He can’t face an entire lifetime without Jim.
“Maybe that’s why I can’t get behind the idea of soulmates,” Jim had said to him once. “Because if we’re all just waiting around to meet our other half, what does that make us, if we can’t find them, or lose them? Can’t we just be our own people? Or are we just doomed to spend the rest of our lives feeling broken and empty? What’s the point if your soulmate leaves you just like everyone else?”
“I wish I knew, kid,” Leonard had replied. He’d been thinking about the pain of his disastrous marriage. How inconsequential that pain feels now, how ridiculous. “The whole thing seems like a cruel joke to me.”
And it still does. Because only the cruelest of entities could do this, could make the other half of Leonard’s soul a man whose life was always destined to burn bright and short. Because he knows now, the answer to Jim’s question. He will always be broken, empty. He may figure out how to keep surviving or he may not, but either way, his life is over.
The cooing purr that cuts through the heavy silence is so thoroughly out of place that it takes a minute to register in Leonard’s brain. Then he looks up, confused, at the source of the sound. And just like that, one undead tribble is his salvation.
Leonard has given Spock a lot of crap about not being in touch with his emotions, but this whole mess makes a hypocrite of him. Because the moment he realizes there is a chance, he shuts his emotions down with brutal severity and buries them deep. He can’t let them touch him now, not if he wants to have a chance in hell of doing what he thinks he can.
His team knows better than to question him as he starts barking orders. They simply jump into motion, and Leonard would feel grateful if he were letting himself feel anything. But he starts to regret their efficiency once Jim is sealed safely in his cryotube – and Leonard has to carefully avoid looking at his blank, frozen face if he wants to keep it together – and he has nothing left to do but wait and hope that Spock will come through. He tries to keep himself busy with his other patients, but they all give him some version of the same worried, pitying look, and it strains his desperate control.
Mercifully though, it’s not long before Sulu’s voice comes over the comms to tell him that Spock and Uhura are beaming aboard with a certain superhuman in tow. Moments later, Spock strides into the sickbay with Khan’s motionless form slung over his shoulder and murder in his eyes. Leonard’s stomach drops.
“I need him alive!” he barks. “If you killed him, Spock-”
“He is alive, Doctor,” Spock interrupts, and though his voice is calm enough, Leonard has never seen him look so out of sorts. “You believe that he can save the captain?”
The Vulcan would probably say that hope is an illogical emotion, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s visible in his eyes. It is a product of caring for Jim, and whatever other differences of opinion may divide them, Leonard is grateful to have him as an ally in this.
“I believe that we can save him,” he says, because he has to believe it. It’s the only thing keeping him on his feet. “Strap him to that biobed; I need to collect some blood.”
He’d set up a biobed with the strongest restraints available the moment Khan had first been brought on board, but he never imagined he would be using it for something like this. And although he’s gathered the equipment necessary to take as many samples as he could ever need, and prepared as much as he can, he still feels like one massive knot of tension. Everything is riding on his success in this. Everything.
But as Spock backs away from the biobed and Leonard approaches Khan, he realizes there’s one thing he’s forgotten about. He’s dealing with two patients here, not one.
Leonard had been so wrapped up in the pain of losing Jim that he’d forgotten about the person responsible for it all. And then, once he realized that there was a chance to save him, Khan had simply become a means to the cure. But now…
Khan’s fair skin is mottled with bruises, his piercing eyes closed in vulnerable unconsciousness. Like this he might as well be any of the thousands of patients Leonard has treated over the years, and his…his personhood is impossible to ignore any longer. And now Leonard is confronted with the fact that he hates him.
It’s an uncomfortable realization, because Leonard is not wired for hatred. People are people, and most people get on his nerves but he still cares for them, cares about them, because god help him, that’s his nature. Even after Khan had caused all those deaths on Earth, had killed Admiral Pike and shot at Jim, Leonard had treated him like any other patient, albeit a dangerous one.
But then Khan did the truly unforgivable. He took Jim. He’s the reason Leonard’s blood is pumping through an absent heart, the reason for the unfathomable, unbearable emptiness at his core. He stole color and vitality and reason, and apparently he stole some of the goodness in Leonard too.
Saving Jim will mean violating his oaths and going against all standards of ethics. It will mean betraying himself, the physician that is an integral part of who he is. It will mean defying the very laws of life and death, laws that Leonard has spent his entire career struggling to uphold. It will mean becoming someone he doesn’t recognize.
Is he really willing to go that far?
“Doctor?” Spock murmurs.
Leonard glances behind him at the cryotube that contains what’s left of the center of his universe. And he knows. It was never a question.
So he summons up his anger and hatred, dons it like armor. He pushes up his sleeves, both to keep his hands clear and to give him another reminder. Eyes on his faded soulmark, he grits out an order to Spock.
“Go beam down to Starfleet Medical and get us a lab set up for blood analysis and processing.”
“Doctor, you should not be alone with-”
“I can handle this, Spock.” He knows it’s true, because he needs it to be true. But what he can’t handle is having someone he respects, someone who’s too damn perceptive for his own good, witnessing him like this. “I need you working down there, not babysitting up here. Jim needs you.”
That does it.
“I will have security personnel stand by,” Spock says, but he finally leaves.
Leonard takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. When he opens them again, he studies Khan with a critical gaze, and it’s easier than he expected to see a test subject instead of a patient. He grabs a pair of shears and goes to work, cutting away at the thick jacket that covers the augment’s arms. Khan begins to stir within moments. Those cold eyes open and fix on Leonard, who suppresses a shudder. Even wounded and restrained, the man emanates casual lethality.
Whatever Khan finds in his inspection makes him raise an eyebrow.
“My, my; you have changed, haven’t you, Dr. McCoy?” he asks in that creepy silken voice of his. “There used to be compassion in your eyes. I can only imagine what must have happened to you to eliminate it so quickly.”
His gaze flicks downward, and his lips twist into a sardonic smile. Leonard fights the urge to put a hand over his soulmark, to hide it from the man responsible for its current state. He ignores him instead, continuing to force his shears through layers of leather and standard-issue black fabric so that he can access Khan’s veins.
“Or perhaps I don’t have to imagine,” Khan continues. “That mark was black the last time I saw it. You people and your soulmates. Out of all human weaknesses, I believe that one is the greatest.”
“Figures you don’t have one,” Leonard snarls, provoked despite his intention to stay silent. “You’d have to have a soul for that.”
“And what use would I have for a soul, Doctor?” Khan’s smile sharpens as he stares at Leonard. “Tell me, are you grateful for yours right now? Are you feeling strong?”
“I will sedate you,” Leonard warns, ignoring the questions that they both know the answer to.
“No, you won’t. If you’d wanted to, you would have done so already. No, you need to face me, because you think that you will gain some measure of satisfaction by it. But I suspect that you will be gravely disappointed. You will get no trace of remorse from me, and as your captain can attest, there is little satisfaction to be found in trying to hurt me.”
Leonard clenches his hands at the mention of Jim, but doesn’t give Khan the satisfaction of a further reaction.
“So tell me, who was it?” Khan presses. “The charming Dr. Marcus? I did not injure her fatally, but given the state of this ship, I suppose simply returning her to it could have been a death sentence. Ah, no, I see her over…there…”
The sudden change in tone draws Leonard out of his focus. He turns to follow Khan’s gaze, and sees Carol checking on Jim’s cryotube. Behind her are visible the other seventy-one ancient units, each containing their own frozen occupant. He looks back at Khan, who is staring at his crew with the first traces of genuine emotion that Leonard has ever seen from him.
“We aren’t murderers,” Leonard informs him bitterly. “You’re here right now because James Kirk wasn’t a murderer. He gave his life to protect his family, and yours. Think about that while you and your crew are sleeping for the next three hundred years.”
Khan looks at him again, studies him. It’s like being x-rayed, but Leonard couldn’t care less what conclusions this man comes to. He just returns his focus to his work, baring Khan’s left arm. He pauses again, staring down at the swollen purple-black mess that is his shoulder and bicep.
“It would seem that I underestimated your Mister Spock’s ability to break bone,” Khan says, following Leonard’s gaze.
Leonard’s own bruised arm throbs as he looks down at the injury. He bites the inside of his cheek, willing himself to move on, to get the samples he needs and have done with it. Khan will be fine. He’s a goddamn superhuman; a broken arm isn’t going to slow him down much. He doesn’t need Leonard, not like Jim does, not like so many of the crew.
But he can’t do it, not even fueled by the hatred he’s clinging to. He’s already going to be breaking his oaths, violating Khan by taking his blood and tissues without his consent; he can’t ignore an injury like this while he’s doing it.
Growling under his breath, he goes to grab a scanner from his instrument cart and waves it over Khan’s arm. He raises an eyebrow. Spock managed to not only dislocate the shoulder, but to snap the humerus cleanly in two. It’d normally be the kind of injury Leonard would operate on, but he can see that the bone and ligaments are already starting to heal. All he really needs to do is set everything properly so that it doesn’t heal in this twisted mess.
He inserts a cartridge into his hypospray and jabs it into Khan’s shoulder, proximal to the swelling. He’s about as gentle as he usually is when doing this to Jim, but Khan doesn’t so much as flinch. He simply eyes his shoulder in mild surprise.
“That was a local anesthetic,” he remarks.
“I’m aware,” Leonard snaps. “I’m not usually in the habit of injecting patients with mystery drugs.”
He waits a moment for the anesthetic to take effect, then grips Khan’s shoulder and thrusts it back into place with a muted pop. He tugs an imaging screen from the wall and suspends it over Khan’s arm so that he can see the break in the humerus.
“It was the captain, wasn’t it?” Leonard can’t help tensing, just a little, at Khan’s words, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the screen, figuring out where he needs to press to align the ends of the bone. “Yes, I can see that now. It was there in the way he looked at you. I should have seen it sooner. Soulmates do make excellent weaknesses to exploit. But then, I suppose he already had enough weaknesses.”
It’s a good thing medical instruments are built to withstand alien doctors, because Leonard probably would have broken something by now otherwise, with the furious tension gripping every muscle in his body.
“I would not have been a weakness,” he growls, meeting Khan’s gaze fiercely. “I promise you that.”
Khan quirks an eyebrow.
“I am inclined to believe you, Doctor,” he murmurs after a moment. He glances at the equipment that surrounds them. “After all, you appear to be about to take on Death itself for him, and you may actually have a chance of winning.”
“I’ll take on whatever I have to,” Leonard says, more to himself than to Khan.
He sets the broken arm and checks on the shoulder, then slaps a plasti-splint over the whole job to keep everything immobilized until it heals on its own. When he looks up from his task, Khan is still watching him, gaze more piercing than ever. He scowls at the augment and goes to grab what he needs for extracting blood.
“I give you my consent.”
Leonard freezes, blinks. He turns to scowl suspiciously at his patient.
“Excuse me?”
Khan’s lip curls back into that mocking smirk.
“Surely you that is not a foreign phrase to you, Doctor? I was under the impression that ethics require you to hear some version of it before any treatment.”
“The hell do you care about ethics?” Leonard demands.
“Nothing at all. But despite what you may wish me to believe at the moment, they matter a great deal to you. So you may continue to abide by them. I give you my consent to take any samples you require.”
Leonard hates the surge of relief, of gratitude that rushes through him, but it’s there anyway. But that doesn’t mean he’s in any way ready to trust it. Khan has already shown himself to be a master of manipulation, and there’s no reason to think that he’s not working yet another angle.
“You can’t honestly expect me to believe that you’re doing this just to make me feel better.”
“My, my, have you always been so cynical?” Khan meets Leonard’s answering glare with another smirk, but it fades quickly into something that actually resembles sincerity. “I have a request to make of you in return, Doctor, and I am quite aware of the fact that I have no way of seeing it through. I must therefore depend on your sense of honor and decency, which will be safer if that sense remains intact for as long as possible.”
Leonard is tempted to go for a sedative, just so that he doesn’t have to fear that every word out of Khan’s mouth is a trap. But curiosity stays his hand.
“What do you want?” he asks, wary.
Khan’s gaze fixes on a point over Leonard’s shoulder.
“I want to be kept with my crew,” he says, and Leonard is surprised but thinks that maybe he shouldn’t be. “I have failed to free them, but if we must be incarcerated, I would have it be together.”
Leonard knows that he’s only seeing the sincerity and emotion in Khan’s eyes because he’s being allowed to, but that doesn’t make it less genuine. Everything that Khan has done has been in an attempt to care for his family, and Leonard can hardly condemn the sentiment, even now that its execution has cost him so much.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he hears himself promise. He probably won’t have much say in the matter, but there are still steps he can take. It costs him little and allows him to spare his conscience at least a bit of the damage he’s about to wreak on it.
Khan nods, apparently satisfied. He settles back on his biobed and flexes his arm, bringing his veins closer to the surface. And Leonard goes to work.
“You understand, of course, that you will still be violating the laws of god and man if you succeed?” Khan asks after a few minutes. He sounds bored, but there is a gleam of predatory curiosity in his eyes, as if Leonard is a mildly interesting puzzle to be picked at.
“What I understand is that failure isn’t an option,” is all Leonard will say.
He finishes collecting what he needs and unhooks everything from Khan. He gathers the vials of blood and samples in his arms and looks down at the augment for a moment. There’s a great deal he wants to say, but none of it will help either of them, so he just checks to make sure that Khan is properly restrained, and then turns on his heel to head for the transporter.
“The blood alone will not be sufficient.”
Leonard stops in his tracks, suspicious. Khan seems to take his silence as an invitation to continue.
“It will bring him back, but not heal him or keep him alive.”
Leonard turns back to look at his patient. He can detect no trace of deception in Khan’s features, but then again, that probably doesn’t mean anything. Khan raises an eyebrow in a silent challenge. Leonard just waits.
“However, you have in those vials all you need to restore him properly,” Khan goes on. “It will take some ingenuity, but if you are as gifted a physician as I suspect, you will be up to the task.”
It’s the compliment that really gets to him. Every step of the way, Khan has been acting in his own interests. It would be a mistake to assume that he is incapable of caring, but the problem is that he only cares about his own crew. And Leonard certainly doesn’t fall into that category, nor does Jim.
“Why?” he demands, not bothering to clarify.
“Why not? You have returned my crew to me, Doctor. I am capable of gratitude. Besides,” Khan’s mouth twists, and Leonard can’t tell if it is a smile or a sneer. “James Kirk was a fool, but he was an honorable one.”
“You care about honor?”
“Not particularly. And perhaps that is why my people and I are so ill suited to this society of yours. We will wake again, Doctor, possibly long after you are dust in the ground, possibly sooner, but we will wake. And when we do, it will be easier for us if power has been left in the hands of the honorable.”
He doesn’t say it like a threat, merely a promise, a statement of the inevitable. Leonard shivers, and pointedly ignores the predatory smile that touches Khan’s lips. He straightens his spine and fixes Khan with a steady look.
“Well, when that day comes, you may finally learn that ‘honorable’ doesn’t mean ‘weak.’”
He turns to leave again, and this time Khan doesn’t try to stop him.
*****
Leonard beams down to the surface with his samples and Jim’s cryotube to find Spock waiting for him, silent and ready, his face an emotionless mask once more. After a long moment spent watching each other, assessing, they exchange small nods of understanding. And then they get to work.
In the days that follow, Leonard’s focus is fierce and absolute. He stares at screens full of data until his eyes blur, runs test after test on Khan’s blood and tissues, studies every reading he’s ever taken on Jim. He isolates and combines and analyzes, explores long-abandoned avenues of science. He immerses himself so deeply in his work that it leaves no room for anything else, living in fear of the quiet moments when a test is running or a computer is crunching through data and his thoughts have time to catch up with him. And God help the people who interrupt him, who break his concentration and disrupt his desperate control. Their numbers dwindle quickly as word spreads about Dr. McCoy’s wrath, normally a prospect to be feared, now a force of sheer terror.
The only help Leonard will actually accept is from Spock. As first officer and highest ranking survivor of the Enterprise, he has an alarming number of other responsibilities to attend to, but he manages to find spare hours to spend in the lab. He works in near silence, respecting Leonard’s space and only speaking when he has something to offer about Jim’s case. And unlike the rest of the would-be visitors to the lab, he knows better than to suggest that Leonard take a break for food or sleep.
How is he supposed to he eat when his stomach is constantly churning with anxiety? How can he sleep when it would bring him nothing but nightmares, when he knows that his soulmate may never wake up? How can he take a moment for himself when a turn of his head shows him the cryotube in the corner of the lab, reminds him that Jim needs him?
So Leonard injects himself with vitamins and stimulants, whatever it takes to keep him functioning. When his vision blurs, he grinds his palms into his eyes until they clear again. When his tests fail, he closes his eyes and clenches his fists so tightly his nails cut into his skin, holds himself perfectly still until the urge to smash everything around him and scream himself hoarse passes, and then returns to his work and starts over. When the razor-sharp emptiness in his chest threatens to swallow him, he grabs the tribble that started all of this and listens to it coo, reminding him that there is a way, dammit.
And three days later, he’s isolated a serum that should work. He and Spock have subjected it to every test they can think of in the lab, but only one thing will determine for sure whether or not it works. So Leonard moves the cryotube from the lab into one of Starfleet Medical’s treatment rooms, and with the help of Carol, M’Benga, and Spock, he removes Jim from it to put him on artificial life support and prep him for the procedure.
Despite everything that he’s done and been through in the last few days, it’s the coldness of Jim’s skin that is nearly too much for Leonard. Because he’s been forcing himself to think of Jim as his patient, as someone who just needs the right treatment to be fine. And Leonard is an excellent doctor; he knows how to provide the right treatment. But Jim is dead, utterly and undeniably. He doesn’t need treatment; he needs an act of God. And Leonard is all too aware of his own human fallibility.
His hands shake as he hooks Jim up to the tubes that will pump him full of the serum and healthy cells to replace his irradiated ones. His colleagues do him the mercy of pretending not to notice. And once everything is as set up as it’s going to get, Geoffrey touches a bracing hand to Leonard’s shoulder before guiding Carol from the room.
All that’s left is to push the button that will inject the serum and start the transfusion. But Leonard hesitates.
“Doctor?” asks Spock, the only other person in the room.
“You know what they tell you about resuscitation in medical school, Spock?” Leonard replies quietly. He’s staring at Jim’s face, the first time he’s allowed himself to do so since opening that body bag.
“Having never been to medical school, I cannot say that I do.”
“They tell you not to worry, that the one thing you really know is that you can’t make it worse. You either bring the patient back or you don’t, but either way they were already dead.”
“Logical.”
“Not this time,” Leonard whispers. “This time I could make things a lot worse.”
Brain damage, debilitating weakness, a lifetime of pain…these are all things that he could be condemning Jim to if he gets him back. He looks up at the Vulcan.
“Who am I doing this for, Spock? Him or me?”
Spock is silent for a long moment. His deadly serious eyes tell Leonard just how carefully he is considering the question.
“You know that my elder self is usually quite reluctant to divulge information about the universe from which he comes,” he says eventually. “But from what I have ascertained through my interactions with him, I am confident in saying that his Captain Kirk lived a life that benefitted billions, whose influence would be felt throughout the entire Federation for generations. Much may have changed between that universe and this one, but I believe that would remain a constant.
“Your reasons for wanting him back may be selfish. Mine may even be as well. However, we are not the only ones who would benefit from our success. And although no one truly knows but him, I believe that Jim would be willing to assume the risk. And-” Spock pauses for a moment, gaze settling on Jim before flicking back up to Leonard. “I do not believe that there is anything he would not do or risk to return to you, Doctor.”
Leonard’s throat closes and his eyes burn. He knows Spock is right. And no matter how scared he is, he knows he has to do this, knows that there are no other options he can live with. So he presses an unsteady finger into the button. And he waits.
*****
Four hours after administering the serum, Leonard feels his grip on whatever is left of his sanity becoming tenuous. He’s spent every moment of those four hours alternating between staring at Jim and staring at his monitors, with nothing to distract him from all of the what-ifs and worst case scenarios. And although the machines are pumping the serum and the transfusion of healthy cells through Jim’s body, he is showing no signs of independent function. His heart has not tried to beat on its own. He has not taken a single independent breath. His brainwaves have not spiked.
And the words on Leonard’s arm are still a dull, faded grey.
“It’s not working,” he says tonelessly to Spock, who has been a silent yet oddly comforting presence on the other side of Jim’s biobed.
“We do not yet know that, Doctor. We were not expecting an immediate response.”
Expecting, no, but Leonard would be lying if he said he hadn’t been hoping for it. He concedes the point though, and he and Spock resume their vigil.
The passing time is not kind to him. It’s time to think, time to worry, time to remember. It’s time to picture Jim’s smile, the sparkle in his eyes when he looked at Leonard. It’s time to remember the warmth of Jim’s touch, the balm of his laughter. It’s time to appreciate just how much he has lost, how much he will forever be missing if this doesn’t work.
After twelve more hours of this have gone by, even Spock seems close to admitting defeat. But strangely enough, the more skeptical the Vulcan gets, the more Leonard’s determination grows. Because as the possibility of failure becomes more and more real, he comes to fully comprehend just how utterly intolerable it would be. How unsurvivable.
“You require rest, Doctor,” Spock tells him, hours later still.
Leonard glares up at him, feeling betrayed.
“I thought you knew better than to expect that of me,” he snaps.
“I said nothing when resting would have taken your time away from working on the serum. But now that there is nothing more that you can do for Jim, I must recommend that you turn your attentions toward yourself.”
“Well, I must recommend that you shove that recommendation up your pasty white ass,” Leonard growls, and part of him knows that he’s being unfair, that he’s taking out his tension and terror on Spock, but the part of him that’s tense and terrified is unfortunately in control.
Spock lets out a nearly imperceptible sigh.
“Doctor, you have already pushed your body far beyond its reasonable limits. There is nothing more to be gained by continuing to do so. I am certain that the Captain would not want-”
“I don’t give a damn what Jim would want!” Leonard snarls, louder than he had intended, as more of his fragile control splinters and anger that he hadn’t even realized he’d been suppressing boils to the surface. “Not about this. I don’t care one goddamn bit that it would upset him to see me like this. He fucking died, Spock! He died, and if he didn’t care what that would do to me, then why the hell should I care what me taking a few too many stims would do to him?”
He doesn’t give Spock the chance to answer. He’s on a roll now, caught up by the tide of emotions that he’d been trying so hard to deny.
“He broke me, Spock, and if he wants me put back together then he can damn well wake up and do it himself! Until then, I’m going to be here, and there’s not a thing you or anyone else can do to convince me to do otherwise. You already helped take away my chance to save him before he died, and if you try to take me away from him now, try to make me rest with a hypo or another one of those infernal nerve pinches, I swear to god, Spock, I will never forgive you. Do you understand me?”
The silence that falls in the wake of this explosion is thick and heavy. The two men stare at one another, and if Leonard didn’t know any better, he would say the Vulcan looks stricken. But Spock pulls himself together quickly, his face settling into lines of what could pass as calm.
“I had not realized that you harbor resentment towards me for my actions on the day of Jim’s death,” he says quietly.
Leonard hadn’t either, really. Perhaps because he knows, on an intellectual level, that even if Spock had called him the moment he realized Jim’s condition, the outcome would have been the same. But he’s not just operating on an intellectual level.
“I should’ve been there,” he says now, his voice quieter but not much calmer. “I had a right to be there, if not as a doctor then as a soulmate. But no one, not you, not Scotty, not Uhura, did me that decency. I could’ve had time, could have said goodbye at least, could have been there for Jim the way I promised-”
Leonard’s voice fails him and he clenches his jaw. His eyes burn and he looks away from Spock, his gaze settling on the nearest monitor instead. It still shows no signs of change.
“I am sorry for your pain, Doctor,” Spock says after a moment, soft and serious. “And I accept your anger. We all did what we felt we had to that day, and for me that was honoring my Captain and friend’s request to shield you from his death for as long as possible. But I understood as I did so that you were likely to be hurt by Jim’s decision, and by my compliance with it.”
It’s not an apology, but Leonard doesn’t need it to be. It’s not really Spock he’s angry with, and he doesn’t have the energy to keep up the discussion.
“You did right by him, Spock,” he sighs, slumping back in his chair and rubbing a rough hand over his face.
It’s a peace offering, the closest he can give to the absolution that Spock did not ask for. It’s enough, for now, and the two of them lapse into an understanding silence as the time keeps ticking relentlessly by.
*****
Eventually though, Spock has to leave to take care of his other duties. Leonard doesn’t begrudge him the responsibilities, knowing that it’s already been hard on the Vulcan to take as much time as he has to help with this unsanctioned and highly questionable project.
Although he would never admit it, Spock’s presence had been comforting to Leonard. Once he’s gone, the silence feels emptier somehow, harder to ignore. His doubts and fears cry louder in his head, all the what-ifs jostling for his attention, each worse than the last. The pain that has been his constant companion tightens its hold, digging sharp daggers into his lungs and stealing his breath.
Sitting with Jim like this, when he looks so perfect but isn’t there, is worse somehow than seeing him frozen in that damn tube. Like this, he looks like he could open his eyes any minute, and every minute he doesn’t is a fresh blow. The place where Leonard’s bond with Jim used to be is a raw, gaping wound that he can’t help poking at, reaching for what is no longer there and finding nothing but cold agony.
Each painful second that drags by seems longer than the last, but eventually Leonard loses track of them. He just keeps his gaze fixed on Jim and the monitors, only looking away long enough to administer another round of stimulants. He knows he’s well past the reasonable limit, but he can’t stop, can’t afford to lose focus until he knows that Jim is going to be all right.
And if Jim isn’t going to be all right, then maybe an overdose is the best thing that could happen.
Eventually Uhura shows up, one of the only people Leonard hasn’t managed to scare off. But she doesn’t come alone.
Leonard stares blankly at the tribble she’s holding to her chest. He recognizes it as the one that was the focus of so much of his attention and hope during his search for the serum, but he doesn’t understand why it’s here now, instead of in the lab where he left it.
“I know you’ve gotten as much data as you can from it already,” Nyota says, tucking the tribble into Leonard’s arms. “But it can still be a comfort.”
Leonard feels like he should probably protest being given the living equivalent of a teddy bear to make him feel better, but Nyota’s gaze is so earnest and sincere, and that cooing noise the tribble makes really is comforting. But he can’t help feeling bitter as he looks down at the warm ball of fur.
“Six hours,” he says, poking a finger into the creature’s side. Well, maybe its side. It’s hard to tell, on a tribble. “It took six hours after injection for this thing to come back to life. And that was just unmodified blood.”
“Len, Jim’s body is a thousand times more complex than that tribble’s,” Nyota protests, sitting in the chair that Spock vacated. “It’s going to take a little longer to work.”
“You think it’ll work, then?” Leonard asks, hearing the edge of desperation in his tone.
Nyota is quiet for a moment. She looks down at Jim, her eyes liquid.
“You want to know the first time I realized how much I’d misjudged him?” she asks. “As a person, I mean, not just his intelligence.”
Leonard has no idea where this is going, but he raises an eyebrow, knowing his friend will understand the silent invitation to continue. She does.
“It was the summer after our first year at the Academy, when I got woken up in the middle of the night by a comm from him, half a galaxy away.” Nyota offers Leonard a wry grimace. “I swear when I saw his name pop up on my screen, I seriously thought he’d just found some new and exciting way of messing with me. But then I answered the call, and his face…I’d never seen anyone look so scared. And it was because of you.”
Leonard understands what she’s talking about, and he shudders. On the night in question, he’d been lying more than half dead on a bathroom floor, his body wracked with a deadly alien virus. He only survived because Jim noticed that his soulmark had started to fade, and put two and two together in time to send Nyota to check on him.
He still remembers waking up in the hospital three days later. Nyota had been there, and as soon as she saw that he was lucid, she held out a glass of water and a communicator.
Someone really needs to hear from you, she’d told him solemnly. Leonard had been surprised when he realized that someone was Jim, because he and Uhura had never had the smoothest of relationships.
“When I told him you were going to make it…” Nyota shakes her head. “Before that day, I’d only thought of him as a self-centered, egotistical jackass, and I could never understand why you seemed to like him so much. But I guess you just saw through all of his crap a lot faster than I did.”
Nyota looks down at Jim, a small smile warming her expression.
“He called me every hour before you woke up,” she tells Leonard. “Just to make sure you were still getting better. It was incredibly annoying, but I answered every single call because I had finally realized that he cared about you as much as you cared about him, more than I thought he was capable of caring. And he hasn’t stopped surprising me since.”
Leonard swallows hard, squeezing the tribble still tucked in his arms.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, his voice raspy. He knows what that’s like.
He glances down at Jim, but has to look quickly away again to avoid getting swallowed by the tide of despair that rises in his chest. He shakes his head, refocusing on his friend.
“That’s what did it, huh?” he says, forcing into his tone lightness that he does not feel. “You didn’t exactly warm up to him after that.”
“That’s because he didn’t get any less annoying after that.” The fondness in Uhura’s tone belies her words. “Until you two finally got yourselves together, and Kirk got the Enterprise. He changed after that. Shed a lot of the BS.”
Leonard knows she’s right. Jim did a lot of growing after getting his ship. Maybe not as much as Pike would have liked, but Leonard couldn’t have been prouder. Until that growth had driven Jim into a warp core on a mission of self-sacrifice.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he says, fixing his gaze on Jim’s unchanging monitors.
Nyota sighs.
“You asked me if I think this will work? Well, what I think is that I’ve finally learned never to underestimate Jim Kirk. And I’ve always known not to underestimate you. I think you gave him his best chance, and I think he’ll fight with everything he has to get back to you.”
Leonard has to swallow hard again. He gives his friend a grateful look, and the closest he can manage to a smile. She smiles back, and reaches over the bed to squeeze his arm.
The tribble still clutched in Leonard’s grip coos, and her gaze drops to it, her smile lightening a bit. She runs her fingers through its soft fur for a moment before leaning back in her seat.
“You should name it,” she urges, nodding at the creature.
Leonard glances down, studying the warm, surprisingly heavy ball of fur in his arms. He’s been unconsciously clinging to it like a lifeline, and in some ways it is. It’s a reminder of his last, desperate hope, of the fact that this ridiculous, dark endeavor might just work. Its trilling hum is like a balm on his wrecked nerves. But while it’s soothing now, Leonard knows that if this doesn’t work, if Jim stays dead while this stupid tribble gets to live, he will despise the entire damn species for the rest of his life, however long that might be. But he supposes that it can’t hurt to name it now.
“Laz,” he decides, after a moment of consideration.
“As in Lazarus?”
Leonard shrugs at his friend.
“Well, it fits,” he says. “It’s also suitably androgynous, because I can’t figure out if these damn things are male or female, or a little bit of both.”
“Laz it is then,” Uhura says.
She settles back in her chair, but doesn’t say anything else. She seems to understand that there’s nothing more she can say to help him, but her presence alone is a comfort, even though Leonard can’t look at her too long for fear of losing control. He just keeps his eyes fixed on Jim’s monitors, fingers stroking absently through Laz’s soft fur.
After several minutes of silence broken only by the soft hiss of Jim’s ventilator and the tribble’s occasional cooing, a lilting, melodic hum fills the air. Leonard has to blink furiously as Nyota begins to sing, her quiet, beautiful voice chasing away some of the grim despair that has settled in the room, if only for a time.
*****
The arrival of the forty-eight hour mark does not go unnoticed by either of them. It’s completely arbitrary, Leonard knows, but somehow he’s wound up expecting something anyway. Because surely after two days of treatment, there has to be some response. Surely this agonizing limbo cannot last forever.
The air in the room shifts as they both sharpen their watch, hold their breath as they wait. But there is not so much as a blip on a single monitor. There is no miraculous surge of color in Jim’s cheeks, no sigh of independent breath. He simply lies there, pale and still and wrong as ever.
Nyota’s eyes begin to shine much too bright, and she stands abruptly and strides toward the door, whispering a vague apology to Leonard and brushing a hand against his shoulder. And Leonard himself…well, he feels himself slip that much further towards the brink of that yawning expanse of emptiness in his mangled soul. He knows without a doubt that if he falls in, he won’t be coming out.
Silently, he gets up from his chair and leans over Jim, unshed tears burning in the backs of his eyes. He grabs his soulmate’s hand and grips it hard. It’s not cold anymore.
“Come on, you bastard,” he growls thickly. “You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to make me fall in love with you, to promise that we’ll always be there for each other, and then bail. Especially not after not saying goodbye, you complete ass. Remember when I said you owe me one, for getting you on the Enterprise? Well, I’m collecting. That, and any other favor or debt you’ve ever owed me. I’m calling them all in. You owe it to me to fight, Jim. Come back to me. That’s all I’m asking. Just come back.”
Nothing.
Leonard stumbles back from the bed, his breath starting to come in shaky gasps. The weight of everything he has been so desperately holding back threatens to crush him, the last shreds of his hope no longer enough to keep it at bay in the face of Jim’s unchanging state. One of those unshed tears finally escapes, burning a trail down his cheek. It feels like an admission of defeat, and he rubs it away with a growl. But he is shaking, on the verge of falling apart, and he knows he is close to losing the battle with himself.
He gasps as something stings on the back of his hand. He frowns down at it, and then stares uncomprehendingly.
Bones.
The single word is printed on the back of his right hand in handwriting that he would recognize anywhere. A loopy, careless scrawl. The most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
A dull roaring fills his ears, and his vision tunnels until all he can see is the new soulmark, standing out boldly against his wan skin. His eyes water, but he is afraid to blink, afraid that the mark will disappear while he’s not looking, like an illusion glimpsed from the corner of the eye. Like the desperate hallucination of a broken man.
Not daring to let himself hope, Leonard reaches tentatively within himself, searching for the presence that has been an integral part of him for so long, that has been so agonizingly absent. And he feels it, just as the monitors begin to chime with reports of restored brain function and spontaneous respiration, feels the warmth of Jim’s soul lighting up the bond that has been lying cold and empty in Leonard’s chest for the past five days. He clings to it with all the strength he possesses, and it fills him and fills him, threatening to overwhelm him.
Jim is alive. Jim is alive. Jim is alive.
For all of the effort that Leonard has put into this, he realizes that part of him never believed it would work. A part of him, of his soul, had died along with Jim, and it had been slowly but surely taking the rest of him with it. And now its return is surprisingly painful, like circulation returning to a limb that has been without oxygen for days.
But he welcomes the pain, because he knows what it means.
He reaches out a trembling hand and places his palm on Jim’s chest, over his heart. And god there it is, that feeling, the warm surge of a soulmark welcoming the person it belongs to.
The roaring grows louder in Leonard’s ears as his soul is stitched back together piece by tattered piece. His knees buckle and his vision fails him, but the darkness that engulfs him is no longer cold and threatening. Leonard has nothing to fear from darkness anymore.