[NVC Day 18] -- [Silence Amidst the Chaos] -- [Kirk/Bones]

[kirktastic]

The parts that came first, those were no problem. He had told the story before, complete and whole, during the single interview he had granted after the Narada incident. A hunk of that, a little more than half, had gone to purchasing the house on Risa. It would have been a better place to be, and Jim tried to keep the calm and peace of it in his

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[dctr_mccoy]

Bones had left the courthouse, like he told Jim he would.

Then later, he came back.

Back through the rear entrance, still in his civilian clothing so no one would bother him. He'd hoped the testimony would be done around lunchtime. A vain hope, he knew, but one he clung to.

Two hours turned into three, then four, then more. Bones sat on a bench at the end of a hallway, staring at the floor. He hasn't in the room with Jim, but he was reliving it all himself - the day Vulcan was destroyed and their lives changed, when he thought he'd lost Jim to Delta Vega, and worse. Then the kidnapping, the dream of him, finding him, working on his broken body. Things about that time that Jim himself would never know, how stupid Bones was, how ruined he was by Jim's absence.

Footsteps in the hall broke his concentration, and he looked up, seeing a familiar form heading toward him.

[kirktastic]

It was both a surprise... and not a surprise... to see Bones there.

Bones sat alone in the empty hall except for the Vulcan guards, hands wringing together between his knees in concentrated worry. How long had Bones been sitting there?

Yet... it was just sort of a coldness. No. No. Numbness. He wasn't feeling anything at all. "Bones."

[dctr_mccoy]

He looked up and sighed. Jim looked about as bad as he expected. Fuck. He stood slow, eyes level at Jim's. There wasn't a way they could be closer, not even here, alone in the hallway. He couldn't hold Jim like he wanted to.

But they could get the hell out of there, and get home. "C'mon," he nodded his head in the direction of the rear entrance to the building. No way they were dealing with reporters right now.

[kirktastic]

Jim followed, a guidance where he had been short circuited by the sight of Bones. His mind had been focused on getting back to the hotel room as he'd promised, needing that something to focus on. Now, instead, it was focused on Bones.

The walk back was more of a blur than anything. There was no defined edges, just memories he was trying to place back behind the locked doors of his mind where they had been hours ago. His hand throbbed with every step, though the memory of warm fingers slid between his own kept some of the worst of the pain at bay. Spock had been watching, or feeling, or whatever the bond did. Even though Jim hadn't said a word to him properly in days and days, Spock had reached out and helped him.

When they got back to the room, he had just enough focus left to sit down on the edge of the bed before his hands started to shake.