Fic: Dancing With The Grimm Reaper
Title: Dancing With The Grimm Reaper
Author: miss_m_cricket
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot! / Doom Crossover.
Rating: R for implied Adult themes and gore
Pairing: Reaper!McCoy/James T. Kirk
Disclaimer: Own neither Doom, nor Star Trek.
Summary: Between a gun and a long fall, the opportunities for distraction were few.. ...
A/N: This little fic kinda turned out to be much bigger than I thought it would be...A different way for Reaper and Jim.
Dancing With The Grimm Reaper
Leonard McCoy tried not to focus on the point of the rifle pressed against the small of his back, but it was kind of hard not to. If you didn’t focus on the cold ridge of metal nudging against your lower back, you tended to focus on other things, and the main other thing that he had to focus on was the edge of the cliff, crumbling under his toes, and the dizzying fall that stretched below him.
Between a gun and a long fall, the opportunities for distraction were few.
So he tried to focus his mind on how he had gotten here in the first place, hoping that it would illuminate some method of escape. He doubted it would, but it was better than feeling the wind rushing up into his face, better than feeling the tips of his feet jutting out into thin air above a drop that would easily shatter the weak bones of the human body.
This was supposed to be a quiet mission, peaceful, which should have perhaps been his first clue that it would go so horribly pear shaped. There was no such thing as a peaceful mission with James T Kirk as the captain of the USS Enterprise.
The landing party had beamed down; a party which had included Jim, Spock, a few science officers, a number of security officers and of course McCoy himself. At first things had been fine, with one of the young science officer Lieutenants discovering an interesting plant that had intriguing anti-inflammatory properties. Samples had been collected and sent back up to the ship with the science officers, but Jim had wanted to explore a bit more, so Spock, the security officers and himself had stayed with him, wandering through the rugged terrain.
Naturally disaster struck.
The natives of the planet attacked as they came around the corner in one of the giant ravines. Bullets rained down on them, and McCoy had acted without thinking, instinct and training propelling him forward to shove Jim behind an outcropping, into a small fissure. Spock joined them a moment later, green blood seeping from a wound in his arm, but there had been no time to bind it. McCoy had shoved at the Vulcan hissing for him to look after Jim, not watching to see if the First Officer really would follow the Captain into the fissure and towards comparative safety.
He himself had run forward, ducking as bullets sang around him, grabbing a phaser as he bolted past the prone form of an unfortunate security officer. He made it to a small outcropping, and ducked down as the chattering whizzed past him, snicking fragments of rock and filling the air with dust and sharp stone fragments that stung his face for brief moments.
A pause in firing and in that moment he was up and returning fire, the phaser more effective than their cruder projectile weaponry. But he was trapped, they knew he couldn’t escape and he knew it too. He was a cornered man, trapped, just waiting for the bullet that would kill him. But he wasn’t trying to save his own life, and that was something the natives wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know that he was buying time, buying time for Jim and Spock to get away, far away, high enough so the Transporter would be able to lock onto their signals once more.
That’s what he was thinking of when a large rock crashed down against his skull, knocking him unconscious.
Now he was here, and they were waiting. This was a summary execution, and he was the bait to lure back the ‘intruders’ so that the Kazzik, the natives, could wipe them out and rest easy. They had known that Spock and Jim had escaped and now hoped to use him as bait. And it would work; if Jim knew about it then it would work. Jim wouldn’t leave him here, no matter the risk.
Idiot kid.
He let his thoughts linger on Jim for a long moment. Jim, the best friend he had ever had. Jim, who he loved more than anything else in existence. Jim, who was like the wildflowers on the plains of the gorgeous deserts of Earth. So briefly there, so colourful, so vibrant and so devastatingly perfect. Gone just as quickly, dying out as the heat claimed them. Jim, who in the end would leave him as everyone else had done. Jim, who would be gone while he lingered on, merely a shadow of a being, without the light to illuminate him once more.
Jim who could never know who and what he was.
He heard a shout from a native behind him; saw a brown hand stretch out pointing at the flickers of gold and blue as Jim and Spock slunk towards the towering cliff. Bones looked down, saw the small gold shape look up, and saw him freeze as he saw Bones in such a precarious position.
The gun nudged at his lower back, “You have served your purpose offworlder.” A heavily accented voice growled near his ear and then white hot heat lanced through him.
~*~
Jim felt his heart stop.
High above him was an arching cliff, stretching up so tall that he had to crane his neck to see the very top. And there at the top was Bones, his Bones, his aviaphobic Bones, poised at the very brink, looking down towards them. He could see the gun at his best friend’s back, ready to blast him if he made any move, and he felt the breath stick in his lungs.
He had never actually considered losing Bones, not seriously. It had seemed impossible. Bones was the constant, always there, always bitching and moaning about something. Jim had never considered the possibility that he wouldn’t reach Bones in time, he always got there in time; it was like a tradition. But this time he could feel something twist in his chest, his heart, and he knew that this time would be different. This time he couldn’t get to Bones in time.
“Bones!” he screamed as a crack echoed around the ravine. Bones twisted, blood spraying out over the dizzying fall, before his body crumpled too, toppling almost slowly from its high place towards the shattering rocks below.
Jim couldn’t hear the gunfire chattering around him as he ran, couldn’t hear Spock calling for him to stop, to think. All he could hear was the blood pounding through his ears, rushing like a tidal wave of grief. His eyes never left the limp blue clad figure as it hit the ground with a soft sickening crunch.
That he heard.
In a moment he had reached Bones side, hands grabbing at the limp body, pulling him up and back under the lip of the cliff, out of the range of projectiles. He looked at Bones face and almost broke down right there. Smashed facial bones, crumpled unrecognisably. And there was wetness where his hand rested on Bones chest, blood from the wound that had sent him falling.
A large warm hand rested on his shoulder briefly and he looked up quickly into Spock’s calm face. To someone who didn’t know the Vulcan well he would look totally unaffected, but to Jim, who had taken up the study of Spock with all diligence, could see the tightness around the dark eyes, the embers of anger and grief burning there.
“Captain.” The Vulcan said voice even despite the grief, “We must go.”
“We can’t just leave him here, Spock...”
“I am afraid we must. Doctor McCoy would not want us...you harmed because you stayed.”
“Green blooded hobgoblin, you could at least act like it is a hard decision.”
Both Jim and Spock looked down in surprise to see hazel green eyes looking back at them with pain, and amusement gleaming in them. Before their astonished gazes they saw Bones face rearrange itself back into a perfectly healed state. In a matter of seconds the man was completely back to full health.
“Bones...” Jim breathed, shock and joy welling up in his chest. “Bones...”
“Doctor McCoy...” Spock interrupted, dark eyebrow arching, in that way of his which said only too clearly that he was intrigued.
“Later.” Bones said, sitting up with a soft grunt. “Let’s get the hell out of here first.”
~*~
They made it.
Just.
Bullets whizzed over their heads, bullets lanced hot lines across their flesh as they got too close, bullets sang around them as Bones shoved Jim up the final stretch of rocks.
“Kirk to Enterprise!” Jim yelled into his comm., “Scotty, beam us up now!”
Bones made it up the rise, seeing the purple sky and sun above him, before everything dissolved.
He was in the transporter room in a few moments, stumbling slightly as Jim grabbed one arm and Spock the other. They marched him out, protesting, past a surprised Scotty, an anxious Uhura and a shocked Nurse Chapel, who saw the blood all over them and stepped forward.
“No.” Jim said, “We aren’t seriously injured Nurse and we will be in the Med-bay soon, but first Bones, Spock and I need to have a little chat.” The Nurse stepped back and nodded, letting them leave.
They went to Jim’s quarters where Bones was pushed into a chair and the other two stood over him. Bones looked up at them both, a display of contrasts standing before him. Spock, tall and serene, hands clasped behind his back, face impassive. And Jim, almost vibrating with suppressed energy, arms folded, emotions racing across his expressive eyes.
“Bones,” Jim started, “What the hell happened down there? I mean don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled you are alive.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I just...I can’t understand it. We saw you. You were mangled, dying, almost dead. How...? How are you alive now? Unhurt?”
The dark haired man sighed, rubbing his face, realising that he really shouldn’t have hoped to keep his secret forever. It had been illogical, and very human of him, something Spock wouldn’t understand. But Jim...? Jim he hoped would accept it.
“There is a disk.” Said Bones, looking up at his best friend and the Vulcan he had learned to lovingly hate. “In the safe at the side there. Jim, you know the code.”
A few moments later the Captain had retrieved the disk, slotting it into the monitor on the desk and he and Spock leant over it, watching as McCoy leaned back.
A clear female voice spoke the words appearing on the black screen.
”In the year 2026 Archaeologists working in the Nevada desert discovered a portal to an Ancient city on Mars. They called this portal the Ark. Twenty years later, we still had no idea why the Ark was built, or what happened to the Civilisation that built it.”
Video feed started, showing old footage of an older man, looking into the camera and panting out his message as crashing sounds came from behind him.
“This is Doctor Carmack, classified research Olduvai, 986627. We have a Level 5 breach, implement quarantine procedures immediately. I repeat this is Doctor Carmack, classified research Olduvai, 986627. We have a Level 5 breach, implement quarantine procedures now.”
Footage was shown; photographs of seven men appeared slowly one by one as the female voice over returned.
”UAC, the company which owned the Olduvai research facility sent up an elite team of Marines to deal with the Quarantine threat. Out of those eight men, the eighty six permanent research staff of Olduvai and the one hundred and fifty people working in the Nevada UAC base, only two survived to return to the surface.”
More footage, this time of a lift opening and a man walking out into bright lights and guns pointing at him. The man stood tall, despite his beaten and bloody appearance and despite the woman he carried in his arms. Jim gasped, because the man was undeniably Bones, down to the scowl shown to the camera as he walked by.
“Samantha Grimm, a researcher working at the Olduvai dig site, and John Grimm, one of the eight Marines assigned to the Quarantine threat. They discovered that UAC had been conducting genetic research on Olduvai, development of a twenty fourth chromosome, one that would make someone super strong, super fit, super intelligent and heal almost instantly. The catch was that not everyone would react positively to the chromosome. Some people would be made superhuman. Others into cannibalistic mutations of themselves, so warped as to be unrecognisable. To save herself and her brother Samantha injected John with the C-24. It saved him, but it also made him invaluable to UAC; the only evidence remaining of their experiment.”
The video showed the young blonde woman being kept in a comfortable suite of rooms, but guarded at all times. A prisoner. Then it cut to the man, showing reams of footage of the various tests performed on him. Jim felt his heart clench as he watched the man who looked so like Bones, scream silently in agony in a plexi-glass case.
”John managed to help his sister escape UAC, but was captured before he too could follow. All we know for sure after that is that four hours later the UAC headquarters was destroyed, everyone killed, and the organisation toppled from power. To this day no one knows what happened to John Grimm. Few knew of his presence there and those who did assumed he died with the rest of the people in the building.”
More images of the burning UAC building, the body count, the funeral services held. Then it cut to the face of the blonde woman, much older now but with the same hazel green eyes that Bones himself had.
“I do not believe John died in the UAC collapse. He has not chosen to reveal himself to me, but I believe I would know if he had gone. This video is for him, for those who will seek him. So that those who know him will know who he is, what he became. I only wish I could see who he will become.”
~*~
There had been questions, the inevitable questions that he knew he would have to answer. Jim’s questions were ones about Sam, about the other Marines, about the whole Olduvai ordeal, Spock’s however were the logic driven ones, asking about the C-24 and his enhanced abilities, about UAC. He answered them all tiredly, sharing everything for the first time in over two hundred years.
“Did you ever see her again?”
“Sam? I saw her. But she never saw me.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want her to see what I’d become.”
~*~
Spock and Jim made no formal declarations about the past of Doctor Leonard McCoy, but the Bridge crew was privately informed. It changed little about how they approached him, or saw how he performed his tasks, and for that he was grateful. It didn’t mean however that the subject was forgotten. Spock and Jim both made time to see him privately to discuss his past and his abilities.
His discussions with Spock tended to focus on Earth’s history; he had lived through a patchy period that few had recorded and Spock found the whole thing ‘fascinating’. He found explaining human nature to the half Vulcan frustrating, but also strangely therapeutic. Spock didn’t judge, not like humans did, and he found the history of John Grimm interesting rather that painful.
Jim however asked all the questions that hurt the most, the questions he couldn’t answer. Jim brought back his fear, the pain; the sheer terror of thinking you had lost the one person in the world who loved you. Jim drew all of the dark poisonous memories from his body, something which while painful, left him feeling more human than he had in centuries.
But one question reverberated through the enhanced man seated on his bed, the question Jim had asked that he could not answer. The question he could not forget.
“So who are you then?”
Who was he?
Was he Sam’s John? The brother, younger than her by ten minutes. The protector, the warrior, the man who had let her down by joining RRTS. The man who had defied his CO to protect his sister. The man she had known well enough to give C-24.
No...He realised soon enough, patching up a young ensign bleeding out on his operating table. John Grimm, brother of Samantha, had died when the UAC building exploded. That man was gone.
Was he then Leonard McCoy? The name he had taken to become a Doctor. The man who had promised to abide by the healers creed, ‘first do no harm’. The man who had been bitter as a lemon and joined Starfleet to escape everything Earth reminded him of. Was he McCoy?
Not really, he thought, throwing Spock over his hip as they fought on the wrestling mats. Leonard McCoy had been a shield, a cover to protect the man underneath. He was still a healer now, but he wasn’t McCoy.
But then who was he?
~*~
He stood over the man sprawled on the ground on a far off planet, some six months later. They were in a big building in the remnants of a scientific lab complex. He held his phaser in his hand, pointed down at the torso beneath one of his feet. Jim lay nearby, wounded and helpless and this man had to die because otherwise he would alert everyone to their hiding spot. He had to kill him.
”We don’t have orders to kill innocent people!”
Everything he was seemed to churn inside him, fighting to make themselves heard.
”You’re my brother, I know you...”
“First, do no harm...”
“We are all killers Reaper; it’s what they pay us for...”
“Bones, buckle up...”
One voice rose above the others, blotting out everything in his mind as his hand shook. His fingers thumbed a switch on his weapon and then he fired sending a bolt of energy down into the man beneath him.
“Bones...”
In a second he was by Jim’s side, hand stroking out over the golden hair, picking him up and cradling him to his chest. “I’m here Jim.”
“You killed him...”
Bones shook his head.
“No...My phaser was set to stun.”
“But he could...”
“Shhh.”
Jim looked up into Bones face and saw that something had shifted, something had changed. This wasn’t the same Bones of a couple of days ago, or even the same Bones of this morning. This Bones looked calmer, more at peace, and this Bones had a glint to his eye that made something deep in Jim’s chest hum with pleasure.
He was lifted as Bones carried him carefully through the rubble and wreckage. He could hear his friend muttering to himself about finding somewhere safe to hide away and soon enough found himself in a small room, in which was a small trundle bed. There he was laid down as Bones set about barricading the door.
“We’ll be safe here.”
Bones was by his side once more, concern showing in the hazel eyes as his hands ran over the younger man’s body gently.
“Good god man!”
Jim swam out of the darkness to find Bones crouching over him, face white and hands stained with bright red blood. He frowned slightly, was Bones hurt? But that couldn’t be right...Bones was immortal...
“Jim! Don’t you dare die on me you hear?”
What? He wasn’t going to die, wasn’t even thinking about dying. But he was cold, and he could feel sleep tugging at him insistently. Maybe he would feel better after a short nap...
“No!”
He was jerked back to consciousness as Bones lifted him slightly, cradling him in his arms. He was being held on Bones’s lap, Bones’s lips on his hair, Bones’s tears on his face, Bones clinging to him and rocking him and whispering soft endearments of love and possession and pleasedontleaveme.
He felt pain, sharp pain as teeth broke the skin on his throat, something warm growing deep inside him as the conscious world slipped away. As the light faded away he could hear Bones’s voice, a whispering mantra against his ear.
“I know you Jim. You’re my best friend, you’re my Captain, and you’re the goddamn love of my life. I know you.”
~*~
Jim woke up to a soft rumble of noise. It took him a few moments to realise that the rumbling was actually Bones, who held him cradled gently in his arms on his lap. Looking up he could see the line of Bones chin, see the tightness there, the lips pressed together.
“Bones...” he rasped. The dark head looked down at him, eyes dark with something unknown, something frightening. “Bones...what happened?”
“I’ll tell you what goddamn happened you little idiot.” Bones hissed, mouth curling in a soft angry snarl, “You got yourself injured and then you tried to die on me. Here! Here where I couldn’t do anything to save you.”
Jim frowned slightly, he had missed a step here he was sure of that, because Bones words were not making any sense to him.
“Then how am I still alive?”
Bones eyes looked down at him, dark and tortured. Suddenly Jim understood, and with understanding he realised his body was completely healed, completely perfect. He hadn’t noticed because he had so enjoyed being cradled in Bones’s arms, but now he felt it, and with it a rush of something deep within him.
“I thought the C-24 was destroyed in the lab on Olduvai.”
“It was.”
“Explain this to me Bones...” it was an order, a command.
“I told you that the monsters were able to infect everyone with the negative reaction to the chromosome. How they did it was by injecting it into their victim’s neck, through a bite, like...like a gruesome monstrous vampire.”
Jim remembered the bite on his throat and lifted his hand to his neck. Nothing there but he felt the memory of Bones lips kissing him there afterwards.
“You didn’t tell me you could infect people.”
“I didn’t know, Jim. It was instinct, pure and simple. I was losing you, losing someone I couldn’t bear to lose. Somehow I just knew what to do.”
Jim stared up at Bones, but knew deep in his core that this was the truth. And knew that if it had been the other way around, he would have done the same thing.
“When I was losing consciousness...I heard you Bones. I heard you say you loved me.”
“I do.”
“Say it again...please.”
Bones eyes gleamed, green warming with amber light as he stared down with intensity into Jim’s face. “Jim Kirk, I love you.”
Silence for an electrifying moment.
“I love you too.”
And Bones was crushing Jim’s mouth to his in a searing kiss, built up from centuries of loneliness and years of holding himself back from the man he loved. And Jim kissed him back, arms winding tightly into Bones hair, trying to mesh their bodies together in a desperate display of want and utter and complete need.
It wasn’t a nice kiss; it was too hard, too rough, and too passionate. Teeth bumped and fingers scrabbled, but to Jim and Bones it was perfect.
~*~
Many hours later the Starfleet officers managed to find their hiding place.
Spock entered the room, security officers following him, and paused at the scene before him.
Bones sat tucked up against the wall on the trundle bed, his head leaning back against the wall, hazel green eyes watching the Vulcan lazily. In his arms, cradled across his lap was a sleeping Jim Kirk, fingers curled into the blue material of the Doctor’s shirt.
“Doctor.” Spock greeted softly, eyes on Jim.
“Spock.”
Bones stood and walked forward, still holding Jim comfortably in his arms, the golden head tucking naturally under his chin. Standing before the Vulcan he gave the other officer a small half smirk.
“I trust you are well.”
“We will be.”
Jim had asked him once, ‘Who are you then?’
He knew the answer now.
As Spock turned away and he followed him out of the darkness of their hideaway, out of the building and out into the sunshine, he pressed his lips to Jim’s hair.
“I am Reaper Jim. But I am also, and always will be your Bones.”
And he felt Jim’s lips curl up into a smile against his skin.
Author: miss_m_cricket
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot! / Doom Crossover.
Rating: R for implied Adult themes and gore
Pairing: Reaper!McCoy/James T. Kirk
Disclaimer: Own neither Doom, nor Star Trek.
Summary: Between a gun and a long fall, the opportunities for distraction were few.. ...
A/N: This little fic kinda turned out to be much bigger than I thought it would be...A different way for Reaper and Jim.
Dancing With The Grimm Reaper
Leonard McCoy tried not to focus on the point of the rifle pressed against the small of his back, but it was kind of hard not to. If you didn’t focus on the cold ridge of metal nudging against your lower back, you tended to focus on other things, and the main other thing that he had to focus on was the edge of the cliff, crumbling under his toes, and the dizzying fall that stretched below him.
Between a gun and a long fall, the opportunities for distraction were few.
So he tried to focus his mind on how he had gotten here in the first place, hoping that it would illuminate some method of escape. He doubted it would, but it was better than feeling the wind rushing up into his face, better than feeling the tips of his feet jutting out into thin air above a drop that would easily shatter the weak bones of the human body.
This was supposed to be a quiet mission, peaceful, which should have perhaps been his first clue that it would go so horribly pear shaped. There was no such thing as a peaceful mission with James T Kirk as the captain of the USS Enterprise.
The landing party had beamed down; a party which had included Jim, Spock, a few science officers, a number of security officers and of course McCoy himself. At first things had been fine, with one of the young science officer Lieutenants discovering an interesting plant that had intriguing anti-inflammatory properties. Samples had been collected and sent back up to the ship with the science officers, but Jim had wanted to explore a bit more, so Spock, the security officers and himself had stayed with him, wandering through the rugged terrain.
Naturally disaster struck.
The natives of the planet attacked as they came around the corner in one of the giant ravines. Bullets rained down on them, and McCoy had acted without thinking, instinct and training propelling him forward to shove Jim behind an outcropping, into a small fissure. Spock joined them a moment later, green blood seeping from a wound in his arm, but there had been no time to bind it. McCoy had shoved at the Vulcan hissing for him to look after Jim, not watching to see if the First Officer really would follow the Captain into the fissure and towards comparative safety.
He himself had run forward, ducking as bullets sang around him, grabbing a phaser as he bolted past the prone form of an unfortunate security officer. He made it to a small outcropping, and ducked down as the chattering whizzed past him, snicking fragments of rock and filling the air with dust and sharp stone fragments that stung his face for brief moments.
A pause in firing and in that moment he was up and returning fire, the phaser more effective than their cruder projectile weaponry. But he was trapped, they knew he couldn’t escape and he knew it too. He was a cornered man, trapped, just waiting for the bullet that would kill him. But he wasn’t trying to save his own life, and that was something the natives wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know that he was buying time, buying time for Jim and Spock to get away, far away, high enough so the Transporter would be able to lock onto their signals once more.
That’s what he was thinking of when a large rock crashed down against his skull, knocking him unconscious.
Now he was here, and they were waiting. This was a summary execution, and he was the bait to lure back the ‘intruders’ so that the Kazzik, the natives, could wipe them out and rest easy. They had known that Spock and Jim had escaped and now hoped to use him as bait. And it would work; if Jim knew about it then it would work. Jim wouldn’t leave him here, no matter the risk.
Idiot kid.
He let his thoughts linger on Jim for a long moment. Jim, the best friend he had ever had. Jim, who he loved more than anything else in existence. Jim, who was like the wildflowers on the plains of the gorgeous deserts of Earth. So briefly there, so colourful, so vibrant and so devastatingly perfect. Gone just as quickly, dying out as the heat claimed them. Jim, who in the end would leave him as everyone else had done. Jim, who would be gone while he lingered on, merely a shadow of a being, without the light to illuminate him once more.
Jim who could never know who and what he was.
He heard a shout from a native behind him; saw a brown hand stretch out pointing at the flickers of gold and blue as Jim and Spock slunk towards the towering cliff. Bones looked down, saw the small gold shape look up, and saw him freeze as he saw Bones in such a precarious position.
The gun nudged at his lower back, “You have served your purpose offworlder.” A heavily accented voice growled near his ear and then white hot heat lanced through him.
~*~
Jim felt his heart stop.
High above him was an arching cliff, stretching up so tall that he had to crane his neck to see the very top. And there at the top was Bones, his Bones, his aviaphobic Bones, poised at the very brink, looking down towards them. He could see the gun at his best friend’s back, ready to blast him if he made any move, and he felt the breath stick in his lungs.
He had never actually considered losing Bones, not seriously. It had seemed impossible. Bones was the constant, always there, always bitching and moaning about something. Jim had never considered the possibility that he wouldn’t reach Bones in time, he always got there in time; it was like a tradition. But this time he could feel something twist in his chest, his heart, and he knew that this time would be different. This time he couldn’t get to Bones in time.
“Bones!” he screamed as a crack echoed around the ravine. Bones twisted, blood spraying out over the dizzying fall, before his body crumpled too, toppling almost slowly from its high place towards the shattering rocks below.
Jim couldn’t hear the gunfire chattering around him as he ran, couldn’t hear Spock calling for him to stop, to think. All he could hear was the blood pounding through his ears, rushing like a tidal wave of grief. His eyes never left the limp blue clad figure as it hit the ground with a soft sickening crunch.
That he heard.
In a moment he had reached Bones side, hands grabbing at the limp body, pulling him up and back under the lip of the cliff, out of the range of projectiles. He looked at Bones face and almost broke down right there. Smashed facial bones, crumpled unrecognisably. And there was wetness where his hand rested on Bones chest, blood from the wound that had sent him falling.
A large warm hand rested on his shoulder briefly and he looked up quickly into Spock’s calm face. To someone who didn’t know the Vulcan well he would look totally unaffected, but to Jim, who had taken up the study of Spock with all diligence, could see the tightness around the dark eyes, the embers of anger and grief burning there.
“Captain.” The Vulcan said voice even despite the grief, “We must go.”
“We can’t just leave him here, Spock...”
“I am afraid we must. Doctor McCoy would not want us...you harmed because you stayed.”
“Green blooded hobgoblin, you could at least act like it is a hard decision.”
Both Jim and Spock looked down in surprise to see hazel green eyes looking back at them with pain, and amusement gleaming in them. Before their astonished gazes they saw Bones face rearrange itself back into a perfectly healed state. In a matter of seconds the man was completely back to full health.
“Bones...” Jim breathed, shock and joy welling up in his chest. “Bones...”
“Doctor McCoy...” Spock interrupted, dark eyebrow arching, in that way of his which said only too clearly that he was intrigued.
“Later.” Bones said, sitting up with a soft grunt. “Let’s get the hell out of here first.”
~*~
They made it.
Just.
Bullets whizzed over their heads, bullets lanced hot lines across their flesh as they got too close, bullets sang around them as Bones shoved Jim up the final stretch of rocks.
“Kirk to Enterprise!” Jim yelled into his comm., “Scotty, beam us up now!”
Bones made it up the rise, seeing the purple sky and sun above him, before everything dissolved.
He was in the transporter room in a few moments, stumbling slightly as Jim grabbed one arm and Spock the other. They marched him out, protesting, past a surprised Scotty, an anxious Uhura and a shocked Nurse Chapel, who saw the blood all over them and stepped forward.
“No.” Jim said, “We aren’t seriously injured Nurse and we will be in the Med-bay soon, but first Bones, Spock and I need to have a little chat.” The Nurse stepped back and nodded, letting them leave.
They went to Jim’s quarters where Bones was pushed into a chair and the other two stood over him. Bones looked up at them both, a display of contrasts standing before him. Spock, tall and serene, hands clasped behind his back, face impassive. And Jim, almost vibrating with suppressed energy, arms folded, emotions racing across his expressive eyes.
“Bones,” Jim started, “What the hell happened down there? I mean don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled you are alive.”
“That’s good to know.”
“I just...I can’t understand it. We saw you. You were mangled, dying, almost dead. How...? How are you alive now? Unhurt?”
The dark haired man sighed, rubbing his face, realising that he really shouldn’t have hoped to keep his secret forever. It had been illogical, and very human of him, something Spock wouldn’t understand. But Jim...? Jim he hoped would accept it.
“There is a disk.” Said Bones, looking up at his best friend and the Vulcan he had learned to lovingly hate. “In the safe at the side there. Jim, you know the code.”
A few moments later the Captain had retrieved the disk, slotting it into the monitor on the desk and he and Spock leant over it, watching as McCoy leaned back.
A clear female voice spoke the words appearing on the black screen.
”In the year 2026 Archaeologists working in the Nevada desert discovered a portal to an Ancient city on Mars. They called this portal the Ark. Twenty years later, we still had no idea why the Ark was built, or what happened to the Civilisation that built it.”
Video feed started, showing old footage of an older man, looking into the camera and panting out his message as crashing sounds came from behind him.
“This is Doctor Carmack, classified research Olduvai, 986627. We have a Level 5 breach, implement quarantine procedures immediately. I repeat this is Doctor Carmack, classified research Olduvai, 986627. We have a Level 5 breach, implement quarantine procedures now.”
Footage was shown; photographs of seven men appeared slowly one by one as the female voice over returned.
”UAC, the company which owned the Olduvai research facility sent up an elite team of Marines to deal with the Quarantine threat. Out of those eight men, the eighty six permanent research staff of Olduvai and the one hundred and fifty people working in the Nevada UAC base, only two survived to return to the surface.”
More footage, this time of a lift opening and a man walking out into bright lights and guns pointing at him. The man stood tall, despite his beaten and bloody appearance and despite the woman he carried in his arms. Jim gasped, because the man was undeniably Bones, down to the scowl shown to the camera as he walked by.
“Samantha Grimm, a researcher working at the Olduvai dig site, and John Grimm, one of the eight Marines assigned to the Quarantine threat. They discovered that UAC had been conducting genetic research on Olduvai, development of a twenty fourth chromosome, one that would make someone super strong, super fit, super intelligent and heal almost instantly. The catch was that not everyone would react positively to the chromosome. Some people would be made superhuman. Others into cannibalistic mutations of themselves, so warped as to be unrecognisable. To save herself and her brother Samantha injected John with the C-24. It saved him, but it also made him invaluable to UAC; the only evidence remaining of their experiment.”
The video showed the young blonde woman being kept in a comfortable suite of rooms, but guarded at all times. A prisoner. Then it cut to the man, showing reams of footage of the various tests performed on him. Jim felt his heart clench as he watched the man who looked so like Bones, scream silently in agony in a plexi-glass case.
”John managed to help his sister escape UAC, but was captured before he too could follow. All we know for sure after that is that four hours later the UAC headquarters was destroyed, everyone killed, and the organisation toppled from power. To this day no one knows what happened to John Grimm. Few knew of his presence there and those who did assumed he died with the rest of the people in the building.”
More images of the burning UAC building, the body count, the funeral services held. Then it cut to the face of the blonde woman, much older now but with the same hazel green eyes that Bones himself had.
“I do not believe John died in the UAC collapse. He has not chosen to reveal himself to me, but I believe I would know if he had gone. This video is for him, for those who will seek him. So that those who know him will know who he is, what he became. I only wish I could see who he will become.”
~*~
There had been questions, the inevitable questions that he knew he would have to answer. Jim’s questions were ones about Sam, about the other Marines, about the whole Olduvai ordeal, Spock’s however were the logic driven ones, asking about the C-24 and his enhanced abilities, about UAC. He answered them all tiredly, sharing everything for the first time in over two hundred years.
“Did you ever see her again?”
“Sam? I saw her. But she never saw me.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want her to see what I’d become.”
~*~
Spock and Jim made no formal declarations about the past of Doctor Leonard McCoy, but the Bridge crew was privately informed. It changed little about how they approached him, or saw how he performed his tasks, and for that he was grateful. It didn’t mean however that the subject was forgotten. Spock and Jim both made time to see him privately to discuss his past and his abilities.
His discussions with Spock tended to focus on Earth’s history; he had lived through a patchy period that few had recorded and Spock found the whole thing ‘fascinating’. He found explaining human nature to the half Vulcan frustrating, but also strangely therapeutic. Spock didn’t judge, not like humans did, and he found the history of John Grimm interesting rather that painful.
Jim however asked all the questions that hurt the most, the questions he couldn’t answer. Jim brought back his fear, the pain; the sheer terror of thinking you had lost the one person in the world who loved you. Jim drew all of the dark poisonous memories from his body, something which while painful, left him feeling more human than he had in centuries.
But one question reverberated through the enhanced man seated on his bed, the question Jim had asked that he could not answer. The question he could not forget.
“So who are you then?”
Who was he?
Was he Sam’s John? The brother, younger than her by ten minutes. The protector, the warrior, the man who had let her down by joining RRTS. The man who had defied his CO to protect his sister. The man she had known well enough to give C-24.
No...He realised soon enough, patching up a young ensign bleeding out on his operating table. John Grimm, brother of Samantha, had died when the UAC building exploded. That man was gone.
Was he then Leonard McCoy? The name he had taken to become a Doctor. The man who had promised to abide by the healers creed, ‘first do no harm’. The man who had been bitter as a lemon and joined Starfleet to escape everything Earth reminded him of. Was he McCoy?
Not really, he thought, throwing Spock over his hip as they fought on the wrestling mats. Leonard McCoy had been a shield, a cover to protect the man underneath. He was still a healer now, but he wasn’t McCoy.
But then who was he?
~*~
He stood over the man sprawled on the ground on a far off planet, some six months later. They were in a big building in the remnants of a scientific lab complex. He held his phaser in his hand, pointed down at the torso beneath one of his feet. Jim lay nearby, wounded and helpless and this man had to die because otherwise he would alert everyone to their hiding spot. He had to kill him.
”We don’t have orders to kill innocent people!”
Everything he was seemed to churn inside him, fighting to make themselves heard.
”You’re my brother, I know you...”
“First, do no harm...”
“We are all killers Reaper; it’s what they pay us for...”
“Bones, buckle up...”
One voice rose above the others, blotting out everything in his mind as his hand shook. His fingers thumbed a switch on his weapon and then he fired sending a bolt of energy down into the man beneath him.
“Bones...”
In a second he was by Jim’s side, hand stroking out over the golden hair, picking him up and cradling him to his chest. “I’m here Jim.”
“You killed him...”
Bones shook his head.
“No...My phaser was set to stun.”
“But he could...”
“Shhh.”
Jim looked up into Bones face and saw that something had shifted, something had changed. This wasn’t the same Bones of a couple of days ago, or even the same Bones of this morning. This Bones looked calmer, more at peace, and this Bones had a glint to his eye that made something deep in Jim’s chest hum with pleasure.
He was lifted as Bones carried him carefully through the rubble and wreckage. He could hear his friend muttering to himself about finding somewhere safe to hide away and soon enough found himself in a small room, in which was a small trundle bed. There he was laid down as Bones set about barricading the door.
“We’ll be safe here.”
Bones was by his side once more, concern showing in the hazel eyes as his hands ran over the younger man’s body gently.
“Good god man!”
Jim swam out of the darkness to find Bones crouching over him, face white and hands stained with bright red blood. He frowned slightly, was Bones hurt? But that couldn’t be right...Bones was immortal...
“Jim! Don’t you dare die on me you hear?”
What? He wasn’t going to die, wasn’t even thinking about dying. But he was cold, and he could feel sleep tugging at him insistently. Maybe he would feel better after a short nap...
“No!”
He was jerked back to consciousness as Bones lifted him slightly, cradling him in his arms. He was being held on Bones’s lap, Bones’s lips on his hair, Bones’s tears on his face, Bones clinging to him and rocking him and whispering soft endearments of love and possession and pleasedontleaveme.
He felt pain, sharp pain as teeth broke the skin on his throat, something warm growing deep inside him as the conscious world slipped away. As the light faded away he could hear Bones’s voice, a whispering mantra against his ear.
“I know you Jim. You’re my best friend, you’re my Captain, and you’re the goddamn love of my life. I know you.”
~*~
Jim woke up to a soft rumble of noise. It took him a few moments to realise that the rumbling was actually Bones, who held him cradled gently in his arms on his lap. Looking up he could see the line of Bones chin, see the tightness there, the lips pressed together.
“Bones...” he rasped. The dark head looked down at him, eyes dark with something unknown, something frightening. “Bones...what happened?”
“I’ll tell you what goddamn happened you little idiot.” Bones hissed, mouth curling in a soft angry snarl, “You got yourself injured and then you tried to die on me. Here! Here where I couldn’t do anything to save you.”
Jim frowned slightly, he had missed a step here he was sure of that, because Bones words were not making any sense to him.
“Then how am I still alive?”
Bones eyes looked down at him, dark and tortured. Suddenly Jim understood, and with understanding he realised his body was completely healed, completely perfect. He hadn’t noticed because he had so enjoyed being cradled in Bones’s arms, but now he felt it, and with it a rush of something deep within him.
“I thought the C-24 was destroyed in the lab on Olduvai.”
“It was.”
“Explain this to me Bones...” it was an order, a command.
“I told you that the monsters were able to infect everyone with the negative reaction to the chromosome. How they did it was by injecting it into their victim’s neck, through a bite, like...like a gruesome monstrous vampire.”
Jim remembered the bite on his throat and lifted his hand to his neck. Nothing there but he felt the memory of Bones lips kissing him there afterwards.
“You didn’t tell me you could infect people.”
“I didn’t know, Jim. It was instinct, pure and simple. I was losing you, losing someone I couldn’t bear to lose. Somehow I just knew what to do.”
Jim stared up at Bones, but knew deep in his core that this was the truth. And knew that if it had been the other way around, he would have done the same thing.
“When I was losing consciousness...I heard you Bones. I heard you say you loved me.”
“I do.”
“Say it again...please.”
Bones eyes gleamed, green warming with amber light as he stared down with intensity into Jim’s face. “Jim Kirk, I love you.”
Silence for an electrifying moment.
“I love you too.”
And Bones was crushing Jim’s mouth to his in a searing kiss, built up from centuries of loneliness and years of holding himself back from the man he loved. And Jim kissed him back, arms winding tightly into Bones hair, trying to mesh their bodies together in a desperate display of want and utter and complete need.
It wasn’t a nice kiss; it was too hard, too rough, and too passionate. Teeth bumped and fingers scrabbled, but to Jim and Bones it was perfect.
~*~
Many hours later the Starfleet officers managed to find their hiding place.
Spock entered the room, security officers following him, and paused at the scene before him.
Bones sat tucked up against the wall on the trundle bed, his head leaning back against the wall, hazel green eyes watching the Vulcan lazily. In his arms, cradled across his lap was a sleeping Jim Kirk, fingers curled into the blue material of the Doctor’s shirt.
“Doctor.” Spock greeted softly, eyes on Jim.
“Spock.”
Bones stood and walked forward, still holding Jim comfortably in his arms, the golden head tucking naturally under his chin. Standing before the Vulcan he gave the other officer a small half smirk.
“I trust you are well.”
“We will be.”
Jim had asked him once, ‘Who are you then?’
He knew the answer now.
As Spock turned away and he followed him out of the darkness of their hideaway, out of the building and out into the sunshine, he pressed his lips to Jim’s hair.
“I am Reaper Jim. But I am also, and always will be your Bones.”
And he felt Jim’s lips curl up into a smile against his skin.