Star Trek XI: Orpheus
Title: Orpheus
Pairing: McCoy/Jocelyn, Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. :(
Warnings: Minor character death, themes of mourning/loss. Messing with age-canon (Jim & Bones are about the same age here).
Summary: Death comes knocking, Leonard can't let go. Luckily, neither can Jim.
The moon is round and bright as a coin, and shadows dance where the lawn tumbles into marsh. Footsteps rustle the tall grass. Crickets chirp and bullfrogs burp their greeting as the grasses part, and two pairs of eyes and two sets of teeth shine in the dark.
The children scramble over the maze of roots twined round the old oak tree, under smooth pale branches twisted like frozen smoke. “You first,” whispers the girl, and she holds the rope swing still while little Lenny McCoy wriggles into the seat. He kicks out his legs and laughs at the star-spackled sky, and the girl leans in close to whisper in his ear.
“Circle round the branch once, and I’ll grant you a wish.” Her breath is magnolia sweet, and her eyes are pale stones. “Swing high as you can, scrape the sky with your toes - and when you spin round the other side, I will be waiting.”
Little Lenny McCoy swings until the coin-bright moon rattles in the sky and the branches groan - he swings until his head swims and his legs shake, but never high enough. When the sky turns purple-orange and the sun bites the sky, he smells mud and marsh grass, and there are two little footprints where a girl used to be.
*
Jocelyn Darnell’s funeral is a simple affair. Her parents lay her to earth in a plain oak casket, a sprig of basil in her pale hands.
Leonard is no stranger to death. He has seen his fair share of ashen lips and death-quiet faces on his father’s dissection table. Yet the sight of Jocelyn shakes him to his core, and he cannot bring himself to touch her hair or brush her cheek before the hinges creak shut over that familiar, loved face.
She is buried with his ring in her hand and, Leonard is sure, the whole of his heart as well.
*
The months pass, and grass overgrows the patch of dirt that covers Jocelyn’s body. When spring comes, Leonard visits Miz Kirk’s garden with an empty wheelbarrow and returns with it spilling over with star-faced asphodel, white bursts of buck bean, sleepy blue violets and sun-yellow zinnias.
Regret, repose, faithfulness and remembrance, he recites to Jim as they kneel in the dirt by her headstone, planting the rich loam. Jim only nods silently, his eyes fixed on his hands as he smoothes bulb after bulb into the dark earth.
*
His father says the dreams will dim, but they only grow more vivid.
Cheek turned to his pillow, Leonard sinks into a darkness shaped by her voice, her hands, the smell of sunlight and marsh that always lingered beneath the aroma of baked bread and flour on her skin. In his dreams, she turns a white smile to him and says, I’m waiting. Jocelyn’s fingers seem to wither as she stoops to pick four blossoms: asphodel, buck bean, violet, zinnia. Then the vision of her melts away, like water into the earth.
When morning breaks after nights such as these, Doctor McCoy will find his son’s boots and cloak missing from the door, and Jim Kirk will find his friend asleep amidst the flowers, crushed petals in his hair and his head to the earth.
*
“She’s dead, Bones,” Jim says, the third time he finds him there. His blue eyes are sharp with worry, and his calloused hands hot on Leonard’s face. “You have to let her go.”
Leonard is still sleep-dazed, blinded by the sun and Jim’s fierce presence and the full-body ache where he’s crushed against the ground. Jim’s hands feel bruisingly real in a way that shocks him. He swallows against the swell of feeling, his hand gripping Jim’s wrist - he wants to tell Jim that he can feel her, that she’s waiting, that if he can just stretch that small bit farther he will reach her. But the words die in his throat - as if bringing the cobwebs to sunlight will turn them to dust.
Jim’s hand weighs solid on his arm, and his worried eyes are anchors. When he finally pulls back, Leonard is nearly surprised he doesn’t float away.
*
“Come back to your apprenticeship, Leonard,” his father says gently. The worn black toes of his boots pause at the edge of Leonard’s vision, and his shadow stretches out between them. “You could stay out front, if you like. Mind the apothecary.”
Leonard thumbs through the book in his lap, watching the yellowed pages rustle through his fingers. Imagines his father’s words as smoke, drifting ineffectually into the air overhead. He is already dressed to walk to the old swing by the marsh.
The boots hesitate, step toward him. Floorboards creak and settle. “She wouldn’t want you to sacrifice your calling for her sake, son.”
The words are a slap. Bile rises in Leonard’s throat, and he can’t stop the flood of images that follows on its heels - the cloying smell of crushed herbs and sickness, air dark and humid behind closed shutters. The feverish sheen of her skin, the hoarse rattle of her breathing, blood spreading through the fibers of her crumpled handkerchief. The sweat-beaded upper lip over the shaky curve of her smile, the slackening of her mouth as her brown eyes dimmed.
Leonard presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, rocks forward as if that could ease the pressure building in his throat. Red sparks float through the darkness of his vision, and he aches. Leave, he wants to say, she’s waiting for me.
The boots creak forward one step more, hover in silence - pained breathing over his head.
He can only breathe out when, with a low sigh, his father turns and is gone.
*
The next time Leonard wakes out of doors, his eyes open to the work-worn knees of Jim’s breeches.
“Eat this,” Jim says, no room for argument in his voice. Leonard takes the offered loaf and chews slowly, his back pressed to the grave marker. Jim watches every movement, palms to his thighs. He frowns when Leonard leaves half the loaf crumbled in his lap.
“Winona made me promise you’d eat. Even she’s noticed you turning into a walking scarecrow.”
The mention of Miz Kirk, casual though it is, brings Leonard pause. From the graves on the hill they can see the Kirk garden where Jim’s mother kneels in the earth, a slip of gray amidst the flowers. Leonard’s chest tightens at the familiar sight of her bowed head and pale hands listlessly plucking at blossoms. If he were closer, he knows he would catch the silver flash of a dead man’s ring hanging from her neck.
This time, when he meets Jim’s eyes, he recognizes the sliver of fear reflected in the blue.
Leonard looks to the crust in his hands. His stomach feels leaden, but he raises the loaf to his lips and takes another bite.
Jim’s shoulders loosen on a sigh, and they finish the morning meal in silence.
*
In the weeks that follow, the thought of Jim’s hopeful eyes stirs his heavy limbs from bed at sunrise. But it is still the thought of Jocelyn that carries him to sleep at night.
*
The next time, Leonard wakes under the hard light of the stars. He is greeted by bare white toes and silver-threaded cuffs. A chill air breathes from Jocelyn’s grave and creeps beneath his cloak.
Leonard looks up to find a man with eyes of slate and a hard-set mouth. The air smells of metal and each individual hair raises on his arms.
“She is waiting,” the man says, in a voice Leonard feels deep in his chest. “Why have you not come?”
When Leonard awakens for the second time, the sun pierces his eyes, dirt smears his cheek, and Jocelyn’s ring digs into the meat of his clenched palm.
*
“She’s alive,” Leonard says fiercely. His skin feels hot and his pulse quick as it has not in months. He presses the ring into Jim’s hand. “Look.”
Jim’s face turns white, and he slowly sets down his uncle’s awl. “Where did you find this, Bones?” His eyes flick to Leonard’s fingers, looking for splinters, signs of dirt under the nails.
Leonard grabs Jim’s shoulders, can barely restrain himself from shaking his desperation into his friend. “I didn’t take it, Jim. I swear it. Listen to me - I woke up, and it was in my hand.”
“Bones, that’s impossible.” Jim’s eyes are guarded, his voice gentle and firm as if speaking to a spooked mare. “You know your betrothal ring was buried with Jocelyn.”
“What more proof do you need?” Leonard nearly shouts. The expression on Jim’s face rapidly slides from concern to a sharper worry, but Leonard can’t control his voice or the hammering of his heart. “I felt all along that she wasn’t gone, I felt it, but now I know. I have to go find her, Jim. She needs me.”
Jim is silent. He takes one of Leonard’s hands in his, presses the ring back into his palm. The cool metal weighs heavy on his skin, and seems to pulse with the beat of his heart.
“Bones,” Jim says quietly. “I know it hurts that you couldn’t save her, but you have to let her go.”
The knot of anger in Leonard’s chest surges. He blindly pushes Jim away and has to will himself not to lash out, the ring biting into his fist. “I’m going to bring her back,” he snarls.
Jim watches him go with stricken eyes, and in his flush of fury Leonard tells himself that he’s glad.
*
Before he leaves his home that night, he fixes Jocelyn’s ring to a chain and slips it around his neck. Mosquitoes hum lazily through the moonlit dark, the only other sound Leonard can hear around the racing of his pulse. He takes a steadying breath, squeezes the railing beneath his fingers, and lets his feet guide him down the steps.
On the hill, a dark figure stands by Jocelyn’s grave: Jim. Leonard pauses midway up the path, the strength of his relief nearly stealing his breath. When he comes closer, Jim smiles cautiously.
“Hi, Bones.”
Leonard nods. “Jim.”
Jim hands him a cloth-wrapped loaf. “I’m going with you,” he says.
Leonard’s throat tightens. Jim’s steady eyes dare him to say no, and it’s so familiar and welcome a sight that Leonard almost can’t respond. Instead, he looks up the hill and draws a sharp breath, eyes caught by the trail of white magnolia blossoms that mark a winding path into the snarl of black wood. A chill passes over Leonard at the sight, and he takes a step forward before he realizes what he’s doing. Jim takes a pointed step alongside.
Leonard’s frown deepens, his annoyance building. “Jim, please. Go home.” He pauses, really looks at Jim, warm and vital and fierce even in the cold light of the stars. Leonard’s chest aches, and before he can stop the words, they spill from his lips - “I can’t lose you, too.”
Jim startles, almost invisibly, his lips parting. Then he smiles, his pale face cut with shadows. “You won’t,” he says simply.
Leonard stiffens. “Jim…”
But Jim has already turned to set up the hill. “Coming, Bones?” he calls, voice clear in the spellbound hush of the night.
Leonard takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and follows.
*
The swing is cut with a silver light that slowly shifts into the form of a man as they walk closer. He is as white and distant as Leonard remembers, face stern in the moonlight. Jim takes in a sharp breath, his eyes wide and wary.
“You came,” he says, in a voice like wind in the grass. His gray eyes turn to fix on Jim, and Leonard fights the urge to step in front of him, to shield him from that frost-rimed gaze.
Jim’s chin lifts challengingly, a sight that pangs Leonard with pride even as his heart hammers. He waits on bated breath for judgment from this strange, fey man, unclenching his fingers to grip Jim’s protectively.
The man gives them one long, cold, searching look. He smiles in a slow, creeping way that pulls his lips back over a long line of teeth, and rises to his feet with a great creaking of limbs, seeming to unfold to unnatural heights.
“You have come for your bride,” he says, turning away from Jim, and the summer air breathes chill. Silently, the trees seem to shift closer, blocking out the night. They tunnel into darkness at the fey man’s back, silvered branches choked together in an arch overhead.
“The path is open to you,” he says, and Leonard wishes he could loosen his tongue, mock the man’s skill for stating the plainly obvious, but by the time his throat unsticks the man is gone.
Jim is still beside him, his grip nearly bruising in its strength.
“Who was that?” he demands, bright eyes turning to fix on Leonard.
“The man who will lead me to Jocelyn,” he replies, gently untwining his fingers from Jim’s.
He knows what a fool he must look, knows the choice words he would have for Jim if his friend took it in his head to chase a night ghast to the ends of the earth. But Jocelyn is waiting, and he can not let her down again.
“You should go,” Leonard says gruffly, eyes fixed to the ground as he steps away. “You look like a fool, standing there catching flies with your mouth.”
With that, Leonard takes in a breath, places one foot before the other, quells the prickling of his skin as he steps from moonlight into shadow.
Jim, though, is only two steps behind.
*
The path is like none other Leonard has walked in this forest. The fallen leaves hardly stir beneath their feet, and not a whisper of life rustles the leaves overhead. Jim’s shoulder brushes his as they walk, and Leonard is suddenly, shockingly glad for the animal warmth of him through the layers of their cloaks.
He can not tell how long they have walked through the strange twilight, when softened lights appear ahead. They shift against the black arms of the trees, and cast long, grasping shadows that twist at their feet. Leonard takes pride that his step does not falter.
As they draw near, the sounds of music and revelry drift to their ears, as if from a great distance. Faint laughter sounds through the night as the lights grow clearer, until Leonard and Jim find themselves in a clearing that holds a waking dream.
“Bones,” Jim breathes, “this is-”
But for once, his friend’s silvered tongue seems to fail him, and they can only stare amazed at the dancers of light and shade that whirl past like the wind.
A hand cold as ice clamps around his wrist, and before Leonard can protest or even catch his breath, he finds himself weightless and spinning, a leaf in the current. The woman who holds his hand is a flurry of white-gold hair and laughing, misty eyes. But she is not Jocelyn.
The green of Jim’s cloak flashes past his eyes, and Leonard startles in the shade’s grasp. “Jim,” he calls over the rising tide of music, the sweet swell of horns suddenly ringing in his ears, “Jim!”
He cries out until he’s bellowing, but Leonard can no longer hear his own voice over the roar of song. The shade’s cold hands are firm even as Leonard twists in her grasp, and her steps do not falter.
Leonard has sense enough, though, to wrest free when Jim’s cloak flashes past once more. His hand fists into wool and clings, even as he feels his arm nearly wrested from its socket. His groan of pain echoes in his own ears, until he finds it echoing in the sudden silence of the copse.
He is panting, bedraggled, fist gripped like a claw in the fabric of Jim’s cloak. Leonard sees a reflection of his own wildness in Jim’s eyes as they stare, sweat-damp and dizzy in the hush.
“You will not stay?”
The dancers stand about them, motionless as pillars, faces gray as stone.
Leonard shakes his head. He does not trust himself to draw breath enough to speak.
Jim’s hand finds his own, a fine tremor running through their palms when they meet. The shades part for them in silence as they leave.
*
They sit a while on the side of the path, recovering their breath in the chill night air. Jim unwraps a slice of bread from his pack and passes it to Leonard, sitting close enough that their knees touch. He looks oddly calm, if pale, smiling faintly as he watches Leonard pick at his bread.
“I suppose you were right, then,” he says, popping a crust into his own mouth, “about the spirits.”
The words shake him from his haze, and Leonard turns to stare at Jim disbelievingly. “You didn’t… you were ready to follow me on a wild goose chase through the forest for nothing?”
Jim shrugs, casts him a sidelong grin. “Nice night for a walk.”
Leonard looks to the skies as though praying for patience, but feels a small smile betray him. Even through the eerie quiet, the lingering touch of cold in his hands, the still uncertain thrum of his pulse - Jim’s irreverence is a familiar comfort, an anchor in the death-still strangeness of the wood.
Soon, though, the thought of Jocelyn draws him to his feet. He brushes crumbs from his knees, and when he turns Jim is already at his side, shrugging on his pack.
They walk, and walk, and Leonard’s feet feel the contours of the hard earth through the worn soles of his boots. But still the tunnel of trees yawns before them like a hungry mouth with no end in sight. They walk into a deeper darkness, a heavier flavor of night. When threads of gold light at last prick at the path ahead, the faltering veins do little to separate shadows from the black.
The next clearing lays thick and languorous with rich smells of wine, warm pastries, honey-gilded hams, sugared confections. Fluted glasses and scalloped plates reflect liquid flashes of gold atop the long stone table, places laid for many.
Sharing a look, they slowly walk the length of the table. They pass dishes piled with silver-scaled fish, ripe golden fruits, roasted pheasant, chocolate-rouched truffles, potatoes bursting from their fire-warmed skins. Leonard does not realize his hand has come to rest upon his belly until it grumbles beneath his fingers.
“Jim,” he says softly, the scent of strawberries juicy on his tongue as his wide eyes sweep the table.
“I have more bread in my bag,” Jim says gently, fingers curving about Leonard’s wrist to tug him along.
Leonard knows, with deep clarity, that taking the food of the dead would be unwise. There is something overripe about the heavy-laden feast, a clear and obvious temptation to turn from his path. And yet - and yet -
Jim, too, has stilled at his side. His fingers slacken from Leonard’s wrist, and somehow it is that loosened brush of thumb and forefinger against his palm which draws McCoy from the watering of his mouth.
“Don’t!” he says with a sharpness that startles them both, his hand coming up to grip bruises into Jim’s arm. Jim draws a thin gasp and stiffens beneath his hold, takes a jerky step back. Then another, and another, until they are walking from the clearing, breaths rattling in their chilled lungs.
Leonard looks over his shoulder before the trees swallow them whole. The golden lights have dimmed to a murky ash, and the food crumbled into soft mountains of powder upon dulled metal plates. Jim squeezes his hand, and they disappear into the wood.
*
They eat yet another slice of bread in silence.
*
The darkness settles, until Jim’s profile dims to planes of shadow against the deeper black of the trees. Leonard can only trust the ground before them to remain flat and firm, and the uncertainty of the dark raises gooseflesh on his arms and has him startling at shadows. He feels the weight of watchful eyes - real or imagined - as their footsteps break the silence of the night.
They are upon the third hollow before Leonard fully knows it, branches rising to choke the sky overhead. Shadows move, boneless and swaying, through the darkness before them. Jim’s hand finds his wrist, tightening until Leonard can feel his bones creak. Leonard is glad for the way it stills his tremors. He cannot turn back any more than he can move forward, into the unknown mass that slithers with the rustle of dead leaves at their feet.
And then -
The touch is warm, yielding, curving against his chest. Leonard startles back with a shout at the same time that Jim lashes out, the muffled thud of impact strangely soft and close. There is no groan of pain, no curse of anger, but a rattling sigh, whisper-quiet.
“Please,” says a woman’s voice, low in his ear. “Take us, instead.”
The warm, sliding touch returns, tracing the small of his back. Leonard can hear the ragged edge of Jim’s breathing, and knows the hands have found him, too.
“Please,” says another voice, another touch, now at his shoulders. Leonard doesn’t realize his eyes have shut until a hand brushes over them, and when he startles back with a gasp, he finds them adjusted to the dimness.
The hollow is peopled by dark-eyed shades, shockingly warm as they press close. Soft fingers brush at his hair, trace his shaking palms, worry the hem of his shirt. All the air leaves Leonard’s throat in a rush as their hands skim electric over the skin of his waist, their curves heavy and full against his arm and back. Warm breaths, then lips graze the corner of his mouth, searing a wet, scraping bite on his skin.
This is nothing at all like warm, quick kisses stolen behind the stables on bright summer days. It is nothing like low-lashed, shy glances from girls who smelled of clean linens and sunlight.
This is a new animal, unfurling strange and dark in the unsteady beat of his heart. Leonard can barely take in air, his throat thick with unfamiliar feeling. He does not know what to do with his hands but to grip Jim’s tighter - Jim, whose hand is slicked with sweat, the nervous shift of his fingers doing little to help the flush spreading down Leonard’s chest.
Jim lets out a ragged, stunned sound that shocks through the mind-dulling warmth of the hands smoothing his breeches. Heat sears straight through him at the sound, chest to groin, so sharp as to be painful. Leonard startles with a gasp. Jim flinches at the movement, his grip crushing.
“Bones,” he says unsteadily, voice rising over the tangle of pleading notes that wash the heavy air. Then with a breath, a shiver - “Jocelyn.”
For a terrible moment, the name drops into the landscape of Leonard’s mind without an echo. He only feels Jim’s pulse warm and quick beneath his fingers, sees the shocked part of his mouth. But when the jolt of recognition hits him, it shocks the breath from his lungs.
“Jocelyn,” he repeats, lips numb.
The hands tugging his collar still.
“Jocelyn.”
How could he - if not for Jim, he would - and her, waiting. He had been poised to gamble her life for the promise of soft hands, warm lips, strange women smelling of flowers and grave dirt.
The sickness comes quickly, rising in his throat. He pulls away from the press of bodies, breaths coming thin and fast, and finds himself on his knees. Jim’s voice is rough in his ears, but the memory is louder - the terrible stillness of her face, the eyes that stared at a middle distance he could not see. The terrible, nonsense thought as the wooden pegs knocked into place that she could not breathe in that box, she would not -
A starburst of pain blocks his vision. His hand jerks to cover his stinging cheek, mouth open as Jim’s face snaps into view. Leonard reaches out unthinkingly, hands closing over the arms bruising his shoulders.
“Bones, Bones, Bones,” Jim is chanting, eyes huge in the darkness, as if speaking his name will bind them together. The sight is painful in a way that has Leonard’s gaze sliding away. He carefully folds the thought of Jocelyn into his heart, and lets his eyes focus over Jim’s shoulder. The path ahead is dark and still, no sign of shadows stirring the air.
Leonard draws a deep breath and rises to his feet. Jim follows, knees snapping in his haste.
“Are you all right?” he asks quietly.
“I will be, soon,” Leonard says.
They walk forward into the night.
*
The wood is lighter, now. Leonard wonders if they have wandered their way into morning. They pick through crawling roots and tangled branches, the path narrowing on either side.
He can feel Jim’s worry, his eyes flickering beneath his lashes, watching Leonard as if he will shatter at the smallest touch. But he stays thankfully quiet, trailing Leonard’s steps like a watchful shadow.
There is not much breath to spare, anyway, as the path climbs ever steeper. Jim and Leonard pull themselves upwards on roots thick as serpents, leaves and branches scratching their cheeks as the trees crowd in close. Sweat films Leonard’s brow, dampens the legs of his breeches, but he does not tire. Jocelyn, he thinks, and holds her name like a tonic against weariness, the ache in his feet.
The next time he looks up, he finds himself stopped by the sheer face of a cliff. The thick choke of trees hem them in on each side, but light sifts through in cool patches, casting the rock into chilly relief.
Three doors are carved into the body of stone - simple, rough and overhung by flowering vines. Asphodel and zinnia choke the wall, a tangle of roots and creepers heavy with drooping petals. At the base of each door rests a small wooden chest.
Leonard opens the first. Inside, he finds a white dance slipper nested in soft black cloth, small glass beads gleaming in twining whorls over toe and heel. It is cold and light as frost to the touch.
In the next chest rests a silver apple. Its single leaf is beaded in dew, its skin clean and unmarked.
In the third, Leonard finds a woman’s stocking, filmy and thin as gossamer. When he lifts it from its case, the fabric carries echoes of warm skin and the musk of perfume.
He draws a deep breath and looks at each chest in turn - slipper, apple, and stocking.
He thinks of brief touches to his brow, Jocelyn’s smile, her quick kisses, firm and sweet. There is none of her lightness in the musky silk of the stocking, nothing of her quicksilver touch in the clinging slide of fabric. He thinks of dark-eyed women and grasping hands, and gently closes the lid to the third chest.
He lifts the silver apple from its box. It weighs heavy and cool in his palm. He thinks of the feast in the woods, the glut of food overspilling the creaking length of the table. He thinks of the overripe fruit bursting in their skins, one last flush of hectic lushness before rot. He remembers soft mounds of ash, dishes heaped in dust, and returns the apple to its chest.
The shoe remains, catching the thin light of the moon. When he lifts it in his palm, he hardly feels its weight - only pinpricks of frost where glass beads touch his skin. With his other hand, he slips the ring from his neck and carefully places it in the chest, closes the lid.
“That’s your choice, then?”
The silver man stands above him, shadows cutting out the cruel line of his mouth. Jim is behind Leonard in an instant, his hand fierce where it grips his shoulder. Leonard hardly feels it, though, at the sight of the doors slipping like tricks of the light into smooth blankness. The rock face is seamless, tall, and silent.
Leonard does not understand, at first. He waits for sparks, for the earth to shake, for Jocelyn to step through the stone with a smile and arms open in forgiveness. But the rock remains quiet. When he looks down, even the chests have disappeared. His hand is empty.
“No,” Jim breathes.
Leonard cannot find words. His throat is numb.
“The dancers dance forever,” says the man, softly. His long legs fold until he is seated before Leonard, his ice-white gaze inescapable. “But they never truly touch.”
His long, pale fingers curl in upon themselves in a bony fist, and fold open to reveal the silver apple, gleaming heavy in his white palm. His voice scrapes over Leonard’s skin, rubbing him raw with each cold, precise word.
“If you loved her truly, she would be as necessary to your mortal life as food.”
The man twists the last word like a knife, and Leonard gasps with the pain of it. His throat unlocks, and his anger spills out, hot and sharp, touching every part of him.
“Who are you to judge how I loved Jocelyn?”
The man’s face twists under the hard slice of his smile, and his cold eyes do not blink.
“One who could be persuaded to change his judgment.”
The burning focus of his gaze slides like a touch from Leonard’s face, locks over his shoulder. Jim’s fingers tighten on his arm - and when Leonard finally understands, his heart freezes. His mouth opens but his throat closes, and he can only stare at the spirit in shock.
“No need to look so surprised. You must have brought him for a reason, Leonard,” the man says, his voice smooth and cold. His eyes fix on Jim’s face and his tongue makes a quick, flickering pass over the white rows of his teeth. “I am willing to exchange - a life for a life.”
The velvety hunger in the spirit’s voice is somehow more horrible than his scorn. Leonard shivers, but his throat will not unlock. He can still feel Jocelyn in the crack of the night air, and like a natural reflex his lips want to say yes, yes, anything, bring her back.
But.
Jim’s grip eases from his shoulder. The warmth of him fades from Leonard’s back as he steps away, and Leonard’s breath shortens at the loss. He grasps for Jim’s retreating form, but Kirk is standing before the spirit, face cool and grave.
“Prove to me that you can bring her back.”
The man arches an eyebrow, and for a long moment he stands as motionless as the rock at his back. Then - faintly, at first - the smell of sunlight and magnolias sweetens the air. A door appears in the sheer face of the rock, and Jocelyn’s name grates into its surface in deep, funereal strokes.
“This is all I can give you.”
Jim bares his teeth. “Bring her back, or I will not deal with you.”
“Your friend failed the final test. She cannot live again unless another dies.”
“You said yourself you could bend the rules!”
The man folds his spider-long arms and seals his mouth in a long, hard line. Jim stares back, his breaths rasping loud in the silence, hands clenched at his sides. Watching him, Leonard feels numb with confusion, hand going cold where it presses to the smooth rock of the tomb.
With a shaking breath, Jim’s face stills and settles into a familiar smirk. He stands tall, eyes blue with intent - and before Leonard can speak his pale face grows ashen, purple hollows cutting dark beneath his cheeks. Jim breathes through thin lips and shudders, slumping to lean heavily against the stone.
“Jim.” Leonard barely registers moving, but he is at Jim’s side, frantic hands covering his jaw, forehead, neck, as if he can hold the pieces of him together even as he slips away. Jim’s heartbeat stutters beneath his fingers and Leonard hears himself shouting, can hardly think a word save no.
“Stop,” he stammers, “God, I’ll - anything, just stop, just, don’t -”
Jim’s movements slow beneath his hands, eyes flickering behind the shells of blue-veined lids.
“STOP!” Terror has him gripping Jim too tightly but he can’t let go -
“And what of Jocelyn?” the spirit says, voice casual, his eyes still fixed on Jim’s dimming face.
“I - ” Leonard’s throat sticks, but as Jim draws a rattling breath the words tumble in a frantic stream.
“She’s dead. She - I know that I have - just leave Jim, leave him, you can’t - it’s not his time - ”
The spirit raises a long, pale hand, a dark look twisting his stony face into something terrible. “Humans,” he hisses, voice rasping high and angry. For a moment, he towers impossibly tall over them - taller than the trees, than the rock, scraping the very moon itself. Then he is gone, and Leonard’s arms are full of a choking, red-faced Jim struggling to breathe, leaves and dirt matting his rumpled yellow hair.
Familiar hands grip Leonard’s arms with bruising strength, and Leonard finds he can’t let go - has to test the steady beat of a pulse, feel the warmth of Jim’s skin, feel the breath filling his lungs.
He holds Jim close, and it is a long while before they look up to find themselves in sunlight, the world loud and alive about them, sitting beside the empty swing.
*
Jim drops his offering of flowers to Jocelyn’s grave, and after a pause, Leonard leaves his as well.
Jocelyn’s gravestone has lost the hard shine of new-cut stone, fading to a darker gray. Flowers and green grasses twine about the rock, nesting it in the earth, and the sight of creeping age cuts in a way that Leonard knows will never leave him. He misses Jocelyn still, but the ache is familiar, now - as fond as it is sad.
“You must have thought me a fool,” he says quietly - to Jim at his side and the silent gravestone both.
Jim reaches for his hand, the warm press of his calluses familiar and reassuring. “I understood,” he says.
They stand in silence for a long moment, the murmur of wind and birdsong threading through the underbrush, the open air, the graves of Kirks and Darnells and McCoys alike. In the sunlight, Jim’s hands are firm and sure as they move from Leonard’s wrists to his shoulders to his cheeks, turning and guiding him into a warm, light-soaked kiss.
“Welcome back, Bones,” Jim whispers into his cheekbone, and as Leonard draws him in closer he lets himself smile.
Pairing: McCoy/Jocelyn, Kirk/McCoy
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. :(
Warnings: Minor character death, themes of mourning/loss. Messing with age-canon (Jim & Bones are about the same age here).
Summary: Death comes knocking, Leonard can't let go. Luckily, neither can Jim.
The moon is round and bright as a coin, and shadows dance where the lawn tumbles into marsh. Footsteps rustle the tall grass. Crickets chirp and bullfrogs burp their greeting as the grasses part, and two pairs of eyes and two sets of teeth shine in the dark.
The children scramble over the maze of roots twined round the old oak tree, under smooth pale branches twisted like frozen smoke. “You first,” whispers the girl, and she holds the rope swing still while little Lenny McCoy wriggles into the seat. He kicks out his legs and laughs at the star-spackled sky, and the girl leans in close to whisper in his ear.
“Circle round the branch once, and I’ll grant you a wish.” Her breath is magnolia sweet, and her eyes are pale stones. “Swing high as you can, scrape the sky with your toes - and when you spin round the other side, I will be waiting.”
Little Lenny McCoy swings until the coin-bright moon rattles in the sky and the branches groan - he swings until his head swims and his legs shake, but never high enough. When the sky turns purple-orange and the sun bites the sky, he smells mud and marsh grass, and there are two little footprints where a girl used to be.
*
Jocelyn Darnell’s funeral is a simple affair. Her parents lay her to earth in a plain oak casket, a sprig of basil in her pale hands.
Leonard is no stranger to death. He has seen his fair share of ashen lips and death-quiet faces on his father’s dissection table. Yet the sight of Jocelyn shakes him to his core, and he cannot bring himself to touch her hair or brush her cheek before the hinges creak shut over that familiar, loved face.
She is buried with his ring in her hand and, Leonard is sure, the whole of his heart as well.
*
The months pass, and grass overgrows the patch of dirt that covers Jocelyn’s body. When spring comes, Leonard visits Miz Kirk’s garden with an empty wheelbarrow and returns with it spilling over with star-faced asphodel, white bursts of buck bean, sleepy blue violets and sun-yellow zinnias.
Regret, repose, faithfulness and remembrance, he recites to Jim as they kneel in the dirt by her headstone, planting the rich loam. Jim only nods silently, his eyes fixed on his hands as he smoothes bulb after bulb into the dark earth.
*
His father says the dreams will dim, but they only grow more vivid.
Cheek turned to his pillow, Leonard sinks into a darkness shaped by her voice, her hands, the smell of sunlight and marsh that always lingered beneath the aroma of baked bread and flour on her skin. In his dreams, she turns a white smile to him and says, I’m waiting. Jocelyn’s fingers seem to wither as she stoops to pick four blossoms: asphodel, buck bean, violet, zinnia. Then the vision of her melts away, like water into the earth.
When morning breaks after nights such as these, Doctor McCoy will find his son’s boots and cloak missing from the door, and Jim Kirk will find his friend asleep amidst the flowers, crushed petals in his hair and his head to the earth.
*
“She’s dead, Bones,” Jim says, the third time he finds him there. His blue eyes are sharp with worry, and his calloused hands hot on Leonard’s face. “You have to let her go.”
Leonard is still sleep-dazed, blinded by the sun and Jim’s fierce presence and the full-body ache where he’s crushed against the ground. Jim’s hands feel bruisingly real in a way that shocks him. He swallows against the swell of feeling, his hand gripping Jim’s wrist - he wants to tell Jim that he can feel her, that she’s waiting, that if he can just stretch that small bit farther he will reach her. But the words die in his throat - as if bringing the cobwebs to sunlight will turn them to dust.
Jim’s hand weighs solid on his arm, and his worried eyes are anchors. When he finally pulls back, Leonard is nearly surprised he doesn’t float away.
*
“Come back to your apprenticeship, Leonard,” his father says gently. The worn black toes of his boots pause at the edge of Leonard’s vision, and his shadow stretches out between them. “You could stay out front, if you like. Mind the apothecary.”
Leonard thumbs through the book in his lap, watching the yellowed pages rustle through his fingers. Imagines his father’s words as smoke, drifting ineffectually into the air overhead. He is already dressed to walk to the old swing by the marsh.
The boots hesitate, step toward him. Floorboards creak and settle. “She wouldn’t want you to sacrifice your calling for her sake, son.”
The words are a slap. Bile rises in Leonard’s throat, and he can’t stop the flood of images that follows on its heels - the cloying smell of crushed herbs and sickness, air dark and humid behind closed shutters. The feverish sheen of her skin, the hoarse rattle of her breathing, blood spreading through the fibers of her crumpled handkerchief. The sweat-beaded upper lip over the shaky curve of her smile, the slackening of her mouth as her brown eyes dimmed.
Leonard presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, rocks forward as if that could ease the pressure building in his throat. Red sparks float through the darkness of his vision, and he aches. Leave, he wants to say, she’s waiting for me.
The boots creak forward one step more, hover in silence - pained breathing over his head.
He can only breathe out when, with a low sigh, his father turns and is gone.
*
The next time Leonard wakes out of doors, his eyes open to the work-worn knees of Jim’s breeches.
“Eat this,” Jim says, no room for argument in his voice. Leonard takes the offered loaf and chews slowly, his back pressed to the grave marker. Jim watches every movement, palms to his thighs. He frowns when Leonard leaves half the loaf crumbled in his lap.
“Winona made me promise you’d eat. Even she’s noticed you turning into a walking scarecrow.”
The mention of Miz Kirk, casual though it is, brings Leonard pause. From the graves on the hill they can see the Kirk garden where Jim’s mother kneels in the earth, a slip of gray amidst the flowers. Leonard’s chest tightens at the familiar sight of her bowed head and pale hands listlessly plucking at blossoms. If he were closer, he knows he would catch the silver flash of a dead man’s ring hanging from her neck.
This time, when he meets Jim’s eyes, he recognizes the sliver of fear reflected in the blue.
Leonard looks to the crust in his hands. His stomach feels leaden, but he raises the loaf to his lips and takes another bite.
Jim’s shoulders loosen on a sigh, and they finish the morning meal in silence.
*
In the weeks that follow, the thought of Jim’s hopeful eyes stirs his heavy limbs from bed at sunrise. But it is still the thought of Jocelyn that carries him to sleep at night.
*
The next time, Leonard wakes under the hard light of the stars. He is greeted by bare white toes and silver-threaded cuffs. A chill air breathes from Jocelyn’s grave and creeps beneath his cloak.
Leonard looks up to find a man with eyes of slate and a hard-set mouth. The air smells of metal and each individual hair raises on his arms.
“She is waiting,” the man says, in a voice Leonard feels deep in his chest. “Why have you not come?”
When Leonard awakens for the second time, the sun pierces his eyes, dirt smears his cheek, and Jocelyn’s ring digs into the meat of his clenched palm.
*
“She’s alive,” Leonard says fiercely. His skin feels hot and his pulse quick as it has not in months. He presses the ring into Jim’s hand. “Look.”
Jim’s face turns white, and he slowly sets down his uncle’s awl. “Where did you find this, Bones?” His eyes flick to Leonard’s fingers, looking for splinters, signs of dirt under the nails.
Leonard grabs Jim’s shoulders, can barely restrain himself from shaking his desperation into his friend. “I didn’t take it, Jim. I swear it. Listen to me - I woke up, and it was in my hand.”
“Bones, that’s impossible.” Jim’s eyes are guarded, his voice gentle and firm as if speaking to a spooked mare. “You know your betrothal ring was buried with Jocelyn.”
“What more proof do you need?” Leonard nearly shouts. The expression on Jim’s face rapidly slides from concern to a sharper worry, but Leonard can’t control his voice or the hammering of his heart. “I felt all along that she wasn’t gone, I felt it, but now I know. I have to go find her, Jim. She needs me.”
Jim is silent. He takes one of Leonard’s hands in his, presses the ring back into his palm. The cool metal weighs heavy on his skin, and seems to pulse with the beat of his heart.
“Bones,” Jim says quietly. “I know it hurts that you couldn’t save her, but you have to let her go.”
The knot of anger in Leonard’s chest surges. He blindly pushes Jim away and has to will himself not to lash out, the ring biting into his fist. “I’m going to bring her back,” he snarls.
Jim watches him go with stricken eyes, and in his flush of fury Leonard tells himself that he’s glad.
*
Before he leaves his home that night, he fixes Jocelyn’s ring to a chain and slips it around his neck. Mosquitoes hum lazily through the moonlit dark, the only other sound Leonard can hear around the racing of his pulse. He takes a steadying breath, squeezes the railing beneath his fingers, and lets his feet guide him down the steps.
On the hill, a dark figure stands by Jocelyn’s grave: Jim. Leonard pauses midway up the path, the strength of his relief nearly stealing his breath. When he comes closer, Jim smiles cautiously.
“Hi, Bones.”
Leonard nods. “Jim.”
Jim hands him a cloth-wrapped loaf. “I’m going with you,” he says.
Leonard’s throat tightens. Jim’s steady eyes dare him to say no, and it’s so familiar and welcome a sight that Leonard almost can’t respond. Instead, he looks up the hill and draws a sharp breath, eyes caught by the trail of white magnolia blossoms that mark a winding path into the snarl of black wood. A chill passes over Leonard at the sight, and he takes a step forward before he realizes what he’s doing. Jim takes a pointed step alongside.
Leonard’s frown deepens, his annoyance building. “Jim, please. Go home.” He pauses, really looks at Jim, warm and vital and fierce even in the cold light of the stars. Leonard’s chest aches, and before he can stop the words, they spill from his lips - “I can’t lose you, too.”
Jim startles, almost invisibly, his lips parting. Then he smiles, his pale face cut with shadows. “You won’t,” he says simply.
Leonard stiffens. “Jim…”
But Jim has already turned to set up the hill. “Coming, Bones?” he calls, voice clear in the spellbound hush of the night.
Leonard takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and follows.
*
The swing is cut with a silver light that slowly shifts into the form of a man as they walk closer. He is as white and distant as Leonard remembers, face stern in the moonlight. Jim takes in a sharp breath, his eyes wide and wary.
“You came,” he says, in a voice like wind in the grass. His gray eyes turn to fix on Jim, and Leonard fights the urge to step in front of him, to shield him from that frost-rimed gaze.
Jim’s chin lifts challengingly, a sight that pangs Leonard with pride even as his heart hammers. He waits on bated breath for judgment from this strange, fey man, unclenching his fingers to grip Jim’s protectively.
The man gives them one long, cold, searching look. He smiles in a slow, creeping way that pulls his lips back over a long line of teeth, and rises to his feet with a great creaking of limbs, seeming to unfold to unnatural heights.
“You have come for your bride,” he says, turning away from Jim, and the summer air breathes chill. Silently, the trees seem to shift closer, blocking out the night. They tunnel into darkness at the fey man’s back, silvered branches choked together in an arch overhead.
“The path is open to you,” he says, and Leonard wishes he could loosen his tongue, mock the man’s skill for stating the plainly obvious, but by the time his throat unsticks the man is gone.
Jim is still beside him, his grip nearly bruising in its strength.
“Who was that?” he demands, bright eyes turning to fix on Leonard.
“The man who will lead me to Jocelyn,” he replies, gently untwining his fingers from Jim’s.
He knows what a fool he must look, knows the choice words he would have for Jim if his friend took it in his head to chase a night ghast to the ends of the earth. But Jocelyn is waiting, and he can not let her down again.
“You should go,” Leonard says gruffly, eyes fixed to the ground as he steps away. “You look like a fool, standing there catching flies with your mouth.”
With that, Leonard takes in a breath, places one foot before the other, quells the prickling of his skin as he steps from moonlight into shadow.
Jim, though, is only two steps behind.
*
The path is like none other Leonard has walked in this forest. The fallen leaves hardly stir beneath their feet, and not a whisper of life rustles the leaves overhead. Jim’s shoulder brushes his as they walk, and Leonard is suddenly, shockingly glad for the animal warmth of him through the layers of their cloaks.
He can not tell how long they have walked through the strange twilight, when softened lights appear ahead. They shift against the black arms of the trees, and cast long, grasping shadows that twist at their feet. Leonard takes pride that his step does not falter.
As they draw near, the sounds of music and revelry drift to their ears, as if from a great distance. Faint laughter sounds through the night as the lights grow clearer, until Leonard and Jim find themselves in a clearing that holds a waking dream.
“Bones,” Jim breathes, “this is-”
But for once, his friend’s silvered tongue seems to fail him, and they can only stare amazed at the dancers of light and shade that whirl past like the wind.
A hand cold as ice clamps around his wrist, and before Leonard can protest or even catch his breath, he finds himself weightless and spinning, a leaf in the current. The woman who holds his hand is a flurry of white-gold hair and laughing, misty eyes. But she is not Jocelyn.
The green of Jim’s cloak flashes past his eyes, and Leonard startles in the shade’s grasp. “Jim,” he calls over the rising tide of music, the sweet swell of horns suddenly ringing in his ears, “Jim!”
He cries out until he’s bellowing, but Leonard can no longer hear his own voice over the roar of song. The shade’s cold hands are firm even as Leonard twists in her grasp, and her steps do not falter.
Leonard has sense enough, though, to wrest free when Jim’s cloak flashes past once more. His hand fists into wool and clings, even as he feels his arm nearly wrested from its socket. His groan of pain echoes in his own ears, until he finds it echoing in the sudden silence of the copse.
He is panting, bedraggled, fist gripped like a claw in the fabric of Jim’s cloak. Leonard sees a reflection of his own wildness in Jim’s eyes as they stare, sweat-damp and dizzy in the hush.
“You will not stay?”
The dancers stand about them, motionless as pillars, faces gray as stone.
Leonard shakes his head. He does not trust himself to draw breath enough to speak.
Jim’s hand finds his own, a fine tremor running through their palms when they meet. The shades part for them in silence as they leave.
*
They sit a while on the side of the path, recovering their breath in the chill night air. Jim unwraps a slice of bread from his pack and passes it to Leonard, sitting close enough that their knees touch. He looks oddly calm, if pale, smiling faintly as he watches Leonard pick at his bread.
“I suppose you were right, then,” he says, popping a crust into his own mouth, “about the spirits.”
The words shake him from his haze, and Leonard turns to stare at Jim disbelievingly. “You didn’t… you were ready to follow me on a wild goose chase through the forest for nothing?”
Jim shrugs, casts him a sidelong grin. “Nice night for a walk.”
Leonard looks to the skies as though praying for patience, but feels a small smile betray him. Even through the eerie quiet, the lingering touch of cold in his hands, the still uncertain thrum of his pulse - Jim’s irreverence is a familiar comfort, an anchor in the death-still strangeness of the wood.
Soon, though, the thought of Jocelyn draws him to his feet. He brushes crumbs from his knees, and when he turns Jim is already at his side, shrugging on his pack.
They walk, and walk, and Leonard’s feet feel the contours of the hard earth through the worn soles of his boots. But still the tunnel of trees yawns before them like a hungry mouth with no end in sight. They walk into a deeper darkness, a heavier flavor of night. When threads of gold light at last prick at the path ahead, the faltering veins do little to separate shadows from the black.
The next clearing lays thick and languorous with rich smells of wine, warm pastries, honey-gilded hams, sugared confections. Fluted glasses and scalloped plates reflect liquid flashes of gold atop the long stone table, places laid for many.
Sharing a look, they slowly walk the length of the table. They pass dishes piled with silver-scaled fish, ripe golden fruits, roasted pheasant, chocolate-rouched truffles, potatoes bursting from their fire-warmed skins. Leonard does not realize his hand has come to rest upon his belly until it grumbles beneath his fingers.
“Jim,” he says softly, the scent of strawberries juicy on his tongue as his wide eyes sweep the table.
“I have more bread in my bag,” Jim says gently, fingers curving about Leonard’s wrist to tug him along.
Leonard knows, with deep clarity, that taking the food of the dead would be unwise. There is something overripe about the heavy-laden feast, a clear and obvious temptation to turn from his path. And yet - and yet -
Jim, too, has stilled at his side. His fingers slacken from Leonard’s wrist, and somehow it is that loosened brush of thumb and forefinger against his palm which draws McCoy from the watering of his mouth.
“Don’t!” he says with a sharpness that startles them both, his hand coming up to grip bruises into Jim’s arm. Jim draws a thin gasp and stiffens beneath his hold, takes a jerky step back. Then another, and another, until they are walking from the clearing, breaths rattling in their chilled lungs.
Leonard looks over his shoulder before the trees swallow them whole. The golden lights have dimmed to a murky ash, and the food crumbled into soft mountains of powder upon dulled metal plates. Jim squeezes his hand, and they disappear into the wood.
*
They eat yet another slice of bread in silence.
*
The darkness settles, until Jim’s profile dims to planes of shadow against the deeper black of the trees. Leonard can only trust the ground before them to remain flat and firm, and the uncertainty of the dark raises gooseflesh on his arms and has him startling at shadows. He feels the weight of watchful eyes - real or imagined - as their footsteps break the silence of the night.
They are upon the third hollow before Leonard fully knows it, branches rising to choke the sky overhead. Shadows move, boneless and swaying, through the darkness before them. Jim’s hand finds his wrist, tightening until Leonard can feel his bones creak. Leonard is glad for the way it stills his tremors. He cannot turn back any more than he can move forward, into the unknown mass that slithers with the rustle of dead leaves at their feet.
And then -
The touch is warm, yielding, curving against his chest. Leonard startles back with a shout at the same time that Jim lashes out, the muffled thud of impact strangely soft and close. There is no groan of pain, no curse of anger, but a rattling sigh, whisper-quiet.
“Please,” says a woman’s voice, low in his ear. “Take us, instead.”
The warm, sliding touch returns, tracing the small of his back. Leonard can hear the ragged edge of Jim’s breathing, and knows the hands have found him, too.
“Please,” says another voice, another touch, now at his shoulders. Leonard doesn’t realize his eyes have shut until a hand brushes over them, and when he startles back with a gasp, he finds them adjusted to the dimness.
The hollow is peopled by dark-eyed shades, shockingly warm as they press close. Soft fingers brush at his hair, trace his shaking palms, worry the hem of his shirt. All the air leaves Leonard’s throat in a rush as their hands skim electric over the skin of his waist, their curves heavy and full against his arm and back. Warm breaths, then lips graze the corner of his mouth, searing a wet, scraping bite on his skin.
This is nothing at all like warm, quick kisses stolen behind the stables on bright summer days. It is nothing like low-lashed, shy glances from girls who smelled of clean linens and sunlight.
This is a new animal, unfurling strange and dark in the unsteady beat of his heart. Leonard can barely take in air, his throat thick with unfamiliar feeling. He does not know what to do with his hands but to grip Jim’s tighter - Jim, whose hand is slicked with sweat, the nervous shift of his fingers doing little to help the flush spreading down Leonard’s chest.
Jim lets out a ragged, stunned sound that shocks through the mind-dulling warmth of the hands smoothing his breeches. Heat sears straight through him at the sound, chest to groin, so sharp as to be painful. Leonard startles with a gasp. Jim flinches at the movement, his grip crushing.
“Bones,” he says unsteadily, voice rising over the tangle of pleading notes that wash the heavy air. Then with a breath, a shiver - “Jocelyn.”
For a terrible moment, the name drops into the landscape of Leonard’s mind without an echo. He only feels Jim’s pulse warm and quick beneath his fingers, sees the shocked part of his mouth. But when the jolt of recognition hits him, it shocks the breath from his lungs.
“Jocelyn,” he repeats, lips numb.
The hands tugging his collar still.
“Jocelyn.”
How could he - if not for Jim, he would - and her, waiting. He had been poised to gamble her life for the promise of soft hands, warm lips, strange women smelling of flowers and grave dirt.
The sickness comes quickly, rising in his throat. He pulls away from the press of bodies, breaths coming thin and fast, and finds himself on his knees. Jim’s voice is rough in his ears, but the memory is louder - the terrible stillness of her face, the eyes that stared at a middle distance he could not see. The terrible, nonsense thought as the wooden pegs knocked into place that she could not breathe in that box, she would not -
A starburst of pain blocks his vision. His hand jerks to cover his stinging cheek, mouth open as Jim’s face snaps into view. Leonard reaches out unthinkingly, hands closing over the arms bruising his shoulders.
“Bones, Bones, Bones,” Jim is chanting, eyes huge in the darkness, as if speaking his name will bind them together. The sight is painful in a way that has Leonard’s gaze sliding away. He carefully folds the thought of Jocelyn into his heart, and lets his eyes focus over Jim’s shoulder. The path ahead is dark and still, no sign of shadows stirring the air.
Leonard draws a deep breath and rises to his feet. Jim follows, knees snapping in his haste.
“Are you all right?” he asks quietly.
“I will be, soon,” Leonard says.
They walk forward into the night.
*
The wood is lighter, now. Leonard wonders if they have wandered their way into morning. They pick through crawling roots and tangled branches, the path narrowing on either side.
He can feel Jim’s worry, his eyes flickering beneath his lashes, watching Leonard as if he will shatter at the smallest touch. But he stays thankfully quiet, trailing Leonard’s steps like a watchful shadow.
There is not much breath to spare, anyway, as the path climbs ever steeper. Jim and Leonard pull themselves upwards on roots thick as serpents, leaves and branches scratching their cheeks as the trees crowd in close. Sweat films Leonard’s brow, dampens the legs of his breeches, but he does not tire. Jocelyn, he thinks, and holds her name like a tonic against weariness, the ache in his feet.
The next time he looks up, he finds himself stopped by the sheer face of a cliff. The thick choke of trees hem them in on each side, but light sifts through in cool patches, casting the rock into chilly relief.
Three doors are carved into the body of stone - simple, rough and overhung by flowering vines. Asphodel and zinnia choke the wall, a tangle of roots and creepers heavy with drooping petals. At the base of each door rests a small wooden chest.
Leonard opens the first. Inside, he finds a white dance slipper nested in soft black cloth, small glass beads gleaming in twining whorls over toe and heel. It is cold and light as frost to the touch.
In the next chest rests a silver apple. Its single leaf is beaded in dew, its skin clean and unmarked.
In the third, Leonard finds a woman’s stocking, filmy and thin as gossamer. When he lifts it from its case, the fabric carries echoes of warm skin and the musk of perfume.
He draws a deep breath and looks at each chest in turn - slipper, apple, and stocking.
He thinks of brief touches to his brow, Jocelyn’s smile, her quick kisses, firm and sweet. There is none of her lightness in the musky silk of the stocking, nothing of her quicksilver touch in the clinging slide of fabric. He thinks of dark-eyed women and grasping hands, and gently closes the lid to the third chest.
He lifts the silver apple from its box. It weighs heavy and cool in his palm. He thinks of the feast in the woods, the glut of food overspilling the creaking length of the table. He thinks of the overripe fruit bursting in their skins, one last flush of hectic lushness before rot. He remembers soft mounds of ash, dishes heaped in dust, and returns the apple to its chest.
The shoe remains, catching the thin light of the moon. When he lifts it in his palm, he hardly feels its weight - only pinpricks of frost where glass beads touch his skin. With his other hand, he slips the ring from his neck and carefully places it in the chest, closes the lid.
“That’s your choice, then?”
The silver man stands above him, shadows cutting out the cruel line of his mouth. Jim is behind Leonard in an instant, his hand fierce where it grips his shoulder. Leonard hardly feels it, though, at the sight of the doors slipping like tricks of the light into smooth blankness. The rock face is seamless, tall, and silent.
Leonard does not understand, at first. He waits for sparks, for the earth to shake, for Jocelyn to step through the stone with a smile and arms open in forgiveness. But the rock remains quiet. When he looks down, even the chests have disappeared. His hand is empty.
“No,” Jim breathes.
Leonard cannot find words. His throat is numb.
“The dancers dance forever,” says the man, softly. His long legs fold until he is seated before Leonard, his ice-white gaze inescapable. “But they never truly touch.”
His long, pale fingers curl in upon themselves in a bony fist, and fold open to reveal the silver apple, gleaming heavy in his white palm. His voice scrapes over Leonard’s skin, rubbing him raw with each cold, precise word.
“If you loved her truly, she would be as necessary to your mortal life as food.”
The man twists the last word like a knife, and Leonard gasps with the pain of it. His throat unlocks, and his anger spills out, hot and sharp, touching every part of him.
“Who are you to judge how I loved Jocelyn?”
The man’s face twists under the hard slice of his smile, and his cold eyes do not blink.
“One who could be persuaded to change his judgment.”
The burning focus of his gaze slides like a touch from Leonard’s face, locks over his shoulder. Jim’s fingers tighten on his arm - and when Leonard finally understands, his heart freezes. His mouth opens but his throat closes, and he can only stare at the spirit in shock.
“No need to look so surprised. You must have brought him for a reason, Leonard,” the man says, his voice smooth and cold. His eyes fix on Jim’s face and his tongue makes a quick, flickering pass over the white rows of his teeth. “I am willing to exchange - a life for a life.”
The velvety hunger in the spirit’s voice is somehow more horrible than his scorn. Leonard shivers, but his throat will not unlock. He can still feel Jocelyn in the crack of the night air, and like a natural reflex his lips want to say yes, yes, anything, bring her back.
But.
Jim’s grip eases from his shoulder. The warmth of him fades from Leonard’s back as he steps away, and Leonard’s breath shortens at the loss. He grasps for Jim’s retreating form, but Kirk is standing before the spirit, face cool and grave.
“Prove to me that you can bring her back.”
The man arches an eyebrow, and for a long moment he stands as motionless as the rock at his back. Then - faintly, at first - the smell of sunlight and magnolias sweetens the air. A door appears in the sheer face of the rock, and Jocelyn’s name grates into its surface in deep, funereal strokes.
“This is all I can give you.”
Jim bares his teeth. “Bring her back, or I will not deal with you.”
“Your friend failed the final test. She cannot live again unless another dies.”
“You said yourself you could bend the rules!”
The man folds his spider-long arms and seals his mouth in a long, hard line. Jim stares back, his breaths rasping loud in the silence, hands clenched at his sides. Watching him, Leonard feels numb with confusion, hand going cold where it presses to the smooth rock of the tomb.
With a shaking breath, Jim’s face stills and settles into a familiar smirk. He stands tall, eyes blue with intent - and before Leonard can speak his pale face grows ashen, purple hollows cutting dark beneath his cheeks. Jim breathes through thin lips and shudders, slumping to lean heavily against the stone.
“Jim.” Leonard barely registers moving, but he is at Jim’s side, frantic hands covering his jaw, forehead, neck, as if he can hold the pieces of him together even as he slips away. Jim’s heartbeat stutters beneath his fingers and Leonard hears himself shouting, can hardly think a word save no.
“Stop,” he stammers, “God, I’ll - anything, just stop, just, don’t -”
Jim’s movements slow beneath his hands, eyes flickering behind the shells of blue-veined lids.
“STOP!” Terror has him gripping Jim too tightly but he can’t let go -
“And what of Jocelyn?” the spirit says, voice casual, his eyes still fixed on Jim’s dimming face.
“I - ” Leonard’s throat sticks, but as Jim draws a rattling breath the words tumble in a frantic stream.
“She’s dead. She - I know that I have - just leave Jim, leave him, you can’t - it’s not his time - ”
The spirit raises a long, pale hand, a dark look twisting his stony face into something terrible. “Humans,” he hisses, voice rasping high and angry. For a moment, he towers impossibly tall over them - taller than the trees, than the rock, scraping the very moon itself. Then he is gone, and Leonard’s arms are full of a choking, red-faced Jim struggling to breathe, leaves and dirt matting his rumpled yellow hair.
Familiar hands grip Leonard’s arms with bruising strength, and Leonard finds he can’t let go - has to test the steady beat of a pulse, feel the warmth of Jim’s skin, feel the breath filling his lungs.
He holds Jim close, and it is a long while before they look up to find themselves in sunlight, the world loud and alive about them, sitting beside the empty swing.
*
Jim drops his offering of flowers to Jocelyn’s grave, and after a pause, Leonard leaves his as well.
Jocelyn’s gravestone has lost the hard shine of new-cut stone, fading to a darker gray. Flowers and green grasses twine about the rock, nesting it in the earth, and the sight of creeping age cuts in a way that Leonard knows will never leave him. He misses Jocelyn still, but the ache is familiar, now - as fond as it is sad.
“You must have thought me a fool,” he says quietly - to Jim at his side and the silent gravestone both.
Jim reaches for his hand, the warm press of his calluses familiar and reassuring. “I understood,” he says.
They stand in silence for a long moment, the murmur of wind and birdsong threading through the underbrush, the open air, the graves of Kirks and Darnells and McCoys alike. In the sunlight, Jim’s hands are firm and sure as they move from Leonard’s wrists to his shoulders to his cheeks, turning and guiding him into a warm, light-soaked kiss.
“Welcome back, Bones,” Jim whispers into his cheekbone, and as Leonard draws him in closer he lets himself smile.