thinkin’ about Bones being soft with some Vulcan kids in the aftermath of the 2009 movie, and Spock catching sight of it and being “oh ” because this is a side of McCoy he’s never seen before <33
McCoy and Amanda accidentally meeting each other again at a Logic-Anon meeting for family members who have been impacted by their loved ones’ over-reliance on logic
Do you think it sometimes keeps Bones awake at night to know that he held in his hands a device that turned out to be capable of thought-based healing, which could bring someone back from fatal injuries unfixable by modern medicine, and they just gave it back to the Vians and left? That the knowledge of such perfect, instant healing makes his most advanced techniques seem no better than the cutting and sewing of people like garments?
Do you think he goes to Spock one night, asking if Spock can remember *anything* about that device with those mathematically perfect brainwaves of his, positing that if Spock was able to adjust the device to work for their thought patterns, perhaps he could puzzle out the construction of the device itself? So that Bones could simply think a healing thought, and will a body whole?
That Spock has to admit that, though he was able to modify the device, despite his best efforts he has no real idea how it worked in the first place. That, though regret is illogical, wonder at the possibilities of the universe is not…
…but that, privately, he cannot discern whether it is wonder or regret that keeps him up at night?
Do you think they share a cup of tea in quiet contemplation before Bones says that he wishes they could go back to Sigma Draconis VI so he could wear the Teacher just one more time; no matter what it would do to his brain, without the threat of medical urgency with Spock’s impending death this time, perhaps he could at least write down the knowledge before the end?
And, maybe, Spock pauses, and thinks about both of these times where Bones hadn’t hesitated even a second to save Spock’s life at the expense of his own –
– and says to him, impossibly gently, “But, then, who will think the healing thoughts, Doctor?”
And they finish their tea, go their separate ways, and sleep through the night.
McCoy stands in front of the imposing stone circle filled with mist, staring blankly at history unfolding in hyperspeed on an endless loop in front of him, with the stolen shuttle perched unsteadily about 150 meters away. He’d never really learned how to land smoothly, not even after 30-some years in the ‘Fleet.
Starfleet. Such as it is, now.
He has to take this final action soon. Jim’s probably already looking for him, and he’s a much better pilot. Jim is probably frantic.
Jim has no idea why he left, why he’d sought for months and finally found the location of the pretentiously-named Guardian of Forever after Jim had shared a story from the late Ambassador Spock’s mind meld, with a faraway look of what if in his eye.
What if we could change the past?
Despite Jim’s hypothetical thought of a better future, he doesn’t know why McCoy is here. He can’t. It can’t be Jim’s responsibility to make this choice.
To erase himself for the good of the universe.
It can’t be Jim’s choice — even though McCoy knows, he knows what choice Jim would make, he always has — but he won’t put him through a final emotional burden for the sake of one mistake.
McCoy’smistake.
McCoy presses a hand to his temple. He’s sweating, and his head is pounding in tandem with his heart.
The first time, he’d just stared, overcome with the sudden reality of his choice and the procession of history the Guardian had shown him. All the pain…
The second time, he’d actually used the tricorder and recorded the final minute of the sequence; the past 25 years were a blip in an eon, but they were an impressive one.
The third time, he has to jump. The Guardian has assured him that the eddies of time will swirl him to where he needs to be, or something.
He thought transporters were bad.
He has to go back to what he thought would be the worst moment of a life already studded with trauma, and convince his younger self — and Spock, and Uhura — not to try to change it. This time, to let Jim go.
It’s going to be difficult. Spock might be easier to convince, with the clear and logically-sequenced news holos and the Guardian’s rendition of recent history he now has packed. But he knows his younger self — he was his younger self — and he’s never forgotten that moment of sheer, all-encompassing pain as the body bag unzipped, and the crazed, unshakeable tenacity it produced within him to find a solution. In any way possible.
He’d tossed his most foundational oath into the recycler with a used hypospray and gotten to work; hadn’t even spared a thought to what developing a cure for death would mean, a crack in an even larger, universal foundation. He hadn’t thought about the quiet quest of various governments to obtain his formula after a leak of confidential information years after Khan, and the wars that might result. He hadn’t thought about it because the reward was so immediate and essential. The reward was Jim.
He has to give up the past thirty years of Jim by his side, the new experiences they’ve shared. Jim’s smile. The man he’d become. The crew that became a family. The lives they saved, before the lives they lost. As much as possible in the midst of circumstances, they’d been happy.
It seems a small price to pay for becoming the destroyer of worlds. What’s one person in the face of a universe in flames?
Two people, he thinks. The destruction of their shared life aside, he knows his younger self isn’t going to make it through this.
Two people. Thirty years of memories. Thirty years for trillions of beings, changed.
Does he have the right to do this?
Did he have the right to cheat death in the first place, simply because he couldn’t stand to lose the person who was everything to him?
He has to correct his mistake.
Jim’s life. A mistake.
It seems a small price. It seems impossible.
Will things be better?
For others, McCoy thinks. They have to be.
McCoy takes a deep breath, and steps through the portal.
Much like Jim deliberately doing something stupid in order to provoke Bones into a tirade, I deserve that.
@fireinmywoods does it make it any better that I have a vague idea of how to fix it? I can clean that up and post it if people are interested.
