Author: Lunabee34
Title: Mend
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot
Characters: Kirk/McCoy
Rating: R


Leonard's wrists are red and sticky and his hands tremble as he works. Modern medicine is a far cry from primitive Earth's hacksaw and rolls of catgut. He can seal a superficial wound with one sweep of a dermabraid; he can dissolve necrotic tissue with light filtered through crystals from Gamma 19. But some of a physician's tasks must still be accomplished the old fashioned way, with the hands. And so Leonard pieces together the bodies of his shipmates, of the men and women he's served with for less than an hour, and he cannot pause to grieve because there are so many dying and the cuffs of his uniform are stained with their blood. Between patients he finds himself staring through sickbay's viewport at the burning hole Vulcan has left in the black. "Who can stitch that sky back together?" he thinks and slices deep into Ensign Lorr's chest.

@@@

Sometimes Leonard doesn't think he breathed for days, just coasted along on that sharp gasp he took when the Enterprise dropped out of warp. Everything after seems like it happened underwater--the muffled sounds of weapons impact and the lights in sickbay dimming as the shields reduced.

Only two moments retain any clarity for Leonard--watching that life pod arc down onto the ice and Jim sitting in that goddamn chair like he was born for it. Leonard's fingers ached to probe the tender line of Jim's jaw, feel out the surety of his ribs, listen to the inexorable beat of his heart, but Leonard refrained. That man in the big seat was the captain, is the captain, and Leonard realizes he's been there all along--in the bed between them, underneath and all around and so bone deep in Jim that Leonard feels like a fool for only just noticing.

@@@

"How recently have you been vaccinated for Orion flu?" Leonard asks.

BeeMak cocks his head. His eyestalks twirl as he calculates the time.

Leonard can still feel the acrid mess of Cadet Kelley's bowels on his forearms even though he's washed until his skin is raw. "Dammit, man," he thinks. "Get it together. You're a doctor. This ain't your first warp out of drydock." Except it is. This is Leonard's first run in a universe where an entire race imploded before his eyes and most of the people he joined the Fleet with are mingling their atoms with stardust.

Star Fleet has already begun reclamation of their bodies--an arm, a torso, a shield array undamaged in the blast. Leonard thinks of that crew, only a thin layer of polymers between them and the vastness of space, the horror of an officer's boot framed by nebulae, and he is nauseated.

"Nurse Chapel," he says. "Please complete Mr. BeeMak's physical."

Leonard is proud that he doesn't vomit until the door to his quarters hisses shut behind him. He is violently sick, puking until his body has nothing left to give. Then Leonard cleans the floor until his quarters are again regulation immaculate and brushes his teeth and he sits in the bathroom with his knees drawn to his chest and thinks of nothing at all, as much as he's able, until Jim overrides the lock on his door with his command code and eases down next to him on the cold tile.

"Do you think he felt it?" Jim says, his eyes closed, the bruises on his cheeks even bluer in the harsh florescence. "When they died."

Leonard frowns. He feels like he's watching an Old Earth vid, one where the voices don't sync up with the action. "Who?" he says and watches Jim swallow before he speaks.

"Spock."

And there's another horror Leonard hasn't considered, the screams of six billion dying people eternally echoing in that pointy-eared bastard's skull. "Thanks for that," he says, thunking his head back against the wall. It makes a satisfying sound in the quiet. "I was having such a good day."

"They're making me captain," Jim says and he still isn't looking at Leonard. "It won't be official for awhile, but Pike told me. The Enterprise is mine."

Leonard doesn't know what to say so he says nothing at all.

"She's mine because most of Star Fleet is dead." Jim scrubs his hand over his face. "We're a generation behind on personnel now and it'll take at least an Earth-year for the first of the replacement ships to be constructed and all the brass that's left is too damn important to waste on a five year mission into the unknown." Jim opens his eyes then and stares Leonard full in the face and he looks so much like the little boy Leonard knows he still is that Leonard's heart aches. "I'm the captain of the Enterprise," Jim says, and then his eyes brim over with tears and he sobs out one ragged cry that echoes in the tiny room.

Leonard cannot suture together the fabric of the universe. He cannot make a people whole again. He cannot restore to any of them what they have lost. But this? This Leonard knows how to do.

He cups Jim's face gently in those same hands that have handled so much death. He thumbs away hot tears and he presses his mouth to Jim's until Jim opens up for him, until he is clutching Leonard's uniform with both fists and panting into his mouth. When they are both naked, Leonard is cold in all the places that Jim doesn't touch.

"You," Jim gasps, and his hands leave bruises on Leonard's hips. "Don't," Jim says, and pulls Leonard closer, thrusts one hand between them and jerks Leonard off--rough and fast and just this side of painful. "Don't ever," he says and Leonard comes in a hot arc on Jim's belly.

Later, when Jim is asleep, his cold feet tucked between Leonard's calves, Leonard thinks of that damn captain's chair and what it means and all the places in them both that are sure to come unraveled.


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