Disclaimer can be found on author's personal page.
Title: Nothing like You and I
Summary: You held my hand so very tightly. Jim has to make a family call.
A/N: This has nothing to do with the Brown-Eyed Girl universe. I've been reading a few "Jim gets abducted and McCoy saves him" fics, which translated into this. I'm sorry if it seems a little sporadic; I wrote it prompt/drabble style a.k.a. in a fit of inspiration.
Warning: it's a little melancholy. Oh, and – title and summary lyrics taken from the song by the Perishers.
It shouldn't have gone like this. Not ever. Not with Bones getting in the way of the angry natives and getting torn to pieces. Not with the CMO, a patient in his own med bay, laying on a biobed, unresponsive and stitched together. Jim's conscience can't bear it, and neither can his heart. This is his doctor, his crewmate, his confidante – his best friend. If Bones doesn't pull through… who the hell will?
He finds the records easily, knows how to circumnavigate the system and get the computer to sing to him what he wants to know. She lives in Massachusetts, studying biology, pre-nursing, of course. She's all grown up now, and living estranged from her mother. The Bitch, Jim's brain helpfully supplies, sounding a lot like…Bones. When they dock in San Francisco, he gets Bones settled in Star Fleet's best hospital and books a shuttle to Cambridge.
She's taller than he remembers. Then again, he only ever saw vids of her – the ones Bones managed to rescue before all of his things were thrown out onto the earth.
The resemblance between her and Bones is fucking uncanny. The same hair color, the same eyes, the same freckles across the nose – she even shares his scowl.
"May I help you?" she asks, ever polite even as she's waiting to slam the door in his face.
"Joanna," Jim breathes, and her brows knit themselves into recognition.
"Captain Kirk," she says factually, like she's always known, and his voice confirmed it for her.
Like a computer, Jim's brain quips.
"May I come in?" he asks, and she agrees, graciously stepping back so that he can move past her into the tiny apartment. It's really just one medium-sized room that serves as separate living areas – bedroom, kitchen, living room. Jim assumes one of the two doors is a closet, and the other is a bathroom. Jo plasters herself against the wall by the decently large window and studies him with guarded eyes.
There are bits and pieces of Bones in Jo; Jim sees that plainly. The immaculate living space, the way consonants roll off her tongue like they're nothing – the way she arches an eyebrow at him until he worries it'll disappear into her hairline. All pieces of Bones, little ones, caught up inside this girl, this young woman.
Suddenly, Jim wants to cry.
"So, you escaped Georgia," he starts, sinking into the armchair Jo offers. She shrugs and nods, pain flowing under her skin like an illness. There's a story there, Jim's sure of it. He just can't sum up the words to ask, and he knows Jo appreciates his silence. She watches the traffic flow by, and he watches her chew her lip. The more he watches her, the more his heart breaks for Bones. To lose his little girl, right when she needed her daddy the most; to not know what happened, to wonder about her future – Jim can't bear it, for Bones' sake.
Jo looks at him, and those eyes are entirely McCoy. "Where's my daddy?" she drawls, softly, like she can't believe she's asking the question. "Does he even know you're here?"
Jim doesn't get ashamed often, but when he does, it hits him like a solar flare. "No," he replies, choosing honesty over nicety, "he doesn't. Frankly, he asked me not to come."
"Is that so?" Jo bites out. Jim can see the fury building behind her eyes; another Bones trait. She's building up steam, just enough to get her going, but once she's there, she's gone. Jim would know; he's been on the opposite end of that bullet train often enough.
"Not like that." Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, Jim surveys Joanna over clasped hands. "He doesn't want to worry you. Doesn't quite know how to tell you everything your mom left out."
Jo snorts. "I know enough. I'd believe whatever he'd have to say." Jim's first words catch up with her and she pushes away from the wall. Her eyebrows knit together in worry.
Bones.
"What's the matter with him?" she asks, and Jim's heart twists. This is the part he had been dreading, ignoring the gnawing, aching guilt in his gut while he made small talk with this woman.
"Jo," he begins, and his voice breaks. He doesn't hear it so much as see it in her eyes, breaks like her heart is breaking right back.
He doesn't even have to tell her; some part of her already knows.
It's a long shuttle ride back to California, and an even longer ride to the hospital. Jim doesn't quite know how that's possible; all he knows is that showing Jo McCoy to the room where her father lies, beaten, is the longest trip of them all. Jim hovers in the doorway, for moral support, but he really, he just watches.
He watches as Jo slips into the chair next to her father's bed. Bones' body is prone, surrounded by beeping machines and that hospital smell that always gives Jim the willies.
Jo doesn't cry, not yet. Instead, she takes Bones' hand gently in hers, years of pain and misunderstandings and manipulation melting away as their skin makes contact. She studies his face, smoothes dark hair back from a smooth brow.
"Daddy," she says softly, but sure, like she knows he'll answer her no matter what. "Daddy, look at me," she says, a little stronger this time.
Jim wants to reach out to her, to tell her that Bones is on the mend (and that statement alone just sounds wrong, coming from Jim's mouth) and needs his rest (again, weird), but then he sees dark eyes flutter open and focus on Jo's face.
Bones can only croak, his mouth and throat are so dry from lack of water and excess of painkillers and sleep, but the message gets across through the tears in his eyes and the way his thumb strokes across the back of Jo's hand.