Stardust on my Sleeve
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The first thing Leonard noticed was a gentle tap on his right cheek.
His mind was still a confused blur, and for a time he drifted in and out of consciousness, with the rhythmic tapping the only thing grounding him back in reality. As the rest of his senses gradually focused, he heard creaking metal accompanied by the distant sound of howling wind, and the occasional deep rumble of a thunderclap. He felt dull, throbbing pain everywhere, but mostly concentrated in his head and his gut. Acrid smoke made his nostrils twitch and he caught the scent of something else he was quite familiar with as a surgeon.
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Tap.
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Tap.
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He cracked open his eyes and couldn't figure out which way was up or down. It was dark and the only thing he could make out was crumpled metal and frayed wires. Somehow, Leonard's hips were angled higher than his torso, and now he could feel the pull of gravity in the form of the shuttle's safety harness digging into his shoulders. The tapping on his face was liquid and warm, dripping from somewhere above, and he was too weak to understand this inverted barrage of sensation. His head swam and for a moment, he fought back a wave of nausea that made him break out in a cold sweat. White spots danced in his field of vision and he felt himself sliding back towards unconsciousness.
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Tap.
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Tap.
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Tap.
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Leonard jerked awake. It was significantly colder now, and he shivered as he regained true awareness this time, the memories flooding back. The freak blizzard, the lightning strike to the nacelle of their shuttlecraft, Jim telling McCoy, Baquero and Horovitz to strap themselves in as they plummeted, and the captain courageously doing everything in his power to maintain control. Everything Leonard had always feared had come to life in one agonizing chain of events. At a certain point Jim had glanced back at him, his vibrant blue eyes full of determination, fear, and contrition, as if to personally apologize for the whole situation, even as he was simultaneously using that brilliant mind and his keen command instinct to plot a strategy to save them. All the things unsaid between them, everything Leonard had been putting off since their first awkward meeting on a more stable shuttlecraft, had come to his lips and died there, because it was the worst possible moment to mention any of that. They were all going to die, and there wasn't time to say everything he should have said or done what he should have done ages ago while they were still in the Academy, like kiss that goddamn cocky, teasing pout right off of Jim's impossibly handsome face. He'd never wanted to ruin their friendship, the deep bond they'd slowly cemented over time, and in their last moments together, that affection blazed like a furnace and outshone his unrequited lust. All he'd done to encapsulate this overwhelming myriad of feelings was desperately shout Jim's name and reach for him, and looking back it seemed appropriate. Jim had always been just slightly out of reach.
After that, his memory disintegrated into thunder, pain, and agonized screams. Maybe his own; he wasn't certain.
The steady tapping on his face drew him out of his reverie. Slowly, Leonard brought up the hand that had been dangling behind him in empty space to his head, his sore muscles protesting the movement, and his fingers touched a slick, sticky mess that dribbled from his cheek to his temple and congealed in his hair. A solitary drop splashed on the back of his hand. When he brought his hand in front of his eyes, he couldn't seem to get them to focus in the dim light. His fingers were red with blood.
The sight of it immediately made him hyperaware and he panicked at the thought that he hadn't heard from either Jim, Horovitz, or Baquero at all. Any of them might be bleeding out somewhere right above him as he sat there in a fucking daze. Leonard needed to get moving. He looked around and tried to figure out how he was situated. He couldn't see the cockpit from his vantage point because of the collapsed bulkhead in front of him. It appeared that in the crash, the shuttle had crumpled upwards, curving back in on itself, and his seat was nearly upside-down. His bottom half disappeared into the twisted debris above but he could still see the release button for his harness. He tried wiggling his feet to make sure they weren't trapped, paralyzed or crushed. No injuries there. Good. Next, he attempted to shimmy his legs out from under the wreckage, and choked out a strangled cry.
Stabbing pain radiated from his lower abdomen. He had unzipped the jacket of his insulated survival suit as soon as they had gotten back inside the comfortable heat of the shuttle, right before they had taken off, and it was hanging open, leaving his black thermal undershirt exposed. His left arm was positioned upwards, tight against his side, his hand curled around a piece of cold, jagged metal that jutted from the crushed bulkhead into the line of skin between the hem of his shirt and his belt, just to the right of his inguinal crease. Blood from the wound had soaked into his shirt and was seeping down the underside of a tangle of wires, collecting on the corner of a piece of debris that hung over his face. As he watched, the beads of blood pooled together, slowly becoming a full, trembling drop that tenuously clung to the edge until gravity won out, then abruptly fell to his cheek.
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Tap.
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Leonard flinched and breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. If he wasn't pinned in place, he might have a chance at survival, at least long enough to help his fellow crewmen. He felt for his medkit at his side. It was still held there by its shoulder strap, thank God. Very carefully, he un-clenched his hand from the site of his injury and reached over his torso to help turn the pack at an angle to keep his medical equipment from falling out. The movement tugged on his abdominal muscles and Leonard hissed. He pulled his hypospray out of the kit and dug for the vials stored at the bottom. It took a few attempts to find the right one and he was panting and dripping with sweat by the time he had it loaded. Pressing the hypospray into the flesh by the wound, he injected himself with a localized anaesthetic and waited. It was a tricky spot. Too high a dosage and he wouldn't be able to feel his legs, rendering himself useless, too low and he'd be in too much pain to find Jim and the others. He purposefully went light on the dose just to be safe. Once he felt it take hold, he secured the hypo in its case and craned his head back, trying to see what was behind him. The other seats were at an angle, mostly intact, and he didn't see anything too dangerous. If he unbuckled the harness, he might be able to use gravity to his advantage and simply slide down off of whatever had impaled him. It wasn't the optimal solution to his predicament, but he didn't exactly have a choice.
Gritting his teeth, Leonard counted down, then pressed the clasp that released the safety harness. No longer restrained, his body sagged downwards. There was slight resistance and he felt a twinge deep in his gut, then excruciating pain. He hollered at the top of his lungs, sounding remarkably like his 8 year old daughter, then he was free, and he tried to cling to the chair, scrabbling for purchase on the pleather material, but he ultimately didn't have the strength. He went tumbling backwards, reflexively tucking his head under his arms. Ricocheting off of another chair and slamming into the floor, he slid down the inclined aisle, ending up at the back of the shuttle. He laid there in a trembling ball of misery, bruised and scraped and a general mess, his unkempt, blood-soaked hair plastered against his eyes.
There was little time to worry about new injuries. He clamped a hand over the jagged puncture wound, which was bleeding freely now. Fumbling around for his medkit, he finally found it wedged underneath him, pulled out a tube of sterilization gel and rubbed it inside the slippery, exposed flesh as best he could, grimacing. He could feel how deep the trauma went, and knew that field dressings and even the emergency tissue regenerator in the shuttlecraft's first aid kit wouldn't be appropriate for this kind of injury, if the kit had even survived. He probably had internal injuries that needed surgery he was unable to perform on himself. The best he could do was close up the wound to stop the hemorrhaging and try to go find the others.
Leonard pinched the edges of the ragged skin together with shaking fingers, a harsh, guttural groan wrung out of him as he nano-sutured it with a laser. When the wound was sealed, he did his best to wipe away the blood with his shirt and injected a dose of some strong antibiotics at the site to hold off infection. He then applied an adhesive pad. After he was finished he laid back, panting, and struggled to stay conscious, riding out the light-headed spell until it faded away. He had lost a lot of blood and gave himself a hypo of a marrow booster that would speed up his body's production of hemoglobin. Eventually, Leonard slowly sat up by degrees, and for the first time got a good look at the wreckage around him.
"Jim?!" he called out, his voice hoarse from all the full throated screaming he'd done. "Lieutenant Baquero?! Lieutenant Horovitz?!"
No answer. Just the rush of wind outside the hull. The temperature had dropped significantly inside the shuttle as conditions from outside leaked in - Leonard could see his breath puffing out in the icy air- and he was glad they had dressed in rugged survival suits before coming down to the planet. He hoped that along with the first aid kit, the rest of their survival gear was intact. Zipping up his jacket against the chill, he unclipped his communicator from his belt and flipped it open.
"McCoy to Kirk. Do you copy?"
Jim didn't answer, and the static coming out of the comm sounded odd, humming in discordant frequencies. It was the ions, Leonard remembered. That was why they couldn't beam down and had to take a shuttle in the first place. The exact physics kind of went over his head, but some planets had too many ions in their atmosphere and it messed with transmissions and electronics. Especially during storms.
"Lt Baquero?" He waited. "Lt Horovitz. ...Anyone?!" When there still wasn't any answer, he tried comming the ship. "McCoy to Enterprise. Enterprise, come in."
He fiddled with the channels, the frequency knob, the bandwidth, repeating his transmission, and got nothing but that eerie static. It dawned on him that maybe he should try it outside, away from the wreck. The only way out was up, and he would have to climb over the seats to get to the hatch on the side of the shuttle. On the way he could search for the other survivors… if there were any.
Leonard began scaling the shuttle, trying to ignore the searing pain in his gut, then froze when he saw a claw-like hand dangling in the aisle. Scrambling up the incline, pulling himself hand over hand using the passenger seats as leverage, he rounded on the chair. It was Lt Baquero. He saw the way her head was bent at the wrong angle and recognized rigor mortis before he even touched the body, but he double-checked her pulse just to be sure. She was still strapped into her seat but had snapped her neck, the poor soul. He gently closed her staring, unseeing eyes, which had sparkled with excitement over her geological finds just a few hours before. It was then that Leonard looked up and noticed that the shuttlecraft was not entirely intact. A gust of wind blew flurries in through an enormous hole rent in the front of the shuttlecraft, the port side crushed inwards all the way down to where he'd been sitting. He gaped at the scene, unable to comprehend how it could've happened. The forward section was totally gone. Which probably meant Jim was gone, too, since he had been in the pilot's seat. Trying to bury the thought, Leonard continued his vertical sweep of the shuttle. There wasn't any sign of the remaining crew. His innards in agony, he hopped sideways from seat to seat, pulled the manual emergency lever and kicked the shuttle's side door open into the swirling snow outside.
"HOROVITZ! JIM!" He was shouting at the top of his lungs, but his voice couldn't carry over the sound of the wind. They were on the side of a damn mountain or something, the shuttle rammed into solid rock. It was difficult to see through the haze of the storm. Icy wind was whipping Leonard's hair around and sucking air from his lungs, and he felt like he couldn't breathe. He took out his comm and tried to contact the Enterprise again, turning up the volume and pressing the device against his ear to hear it over the roar of the wind. Nothing was working, and he could barely hear himself think, let alone hear anything come out of the communicator. Then, he spotted a trail of warped, shredded metal leading to the front of the shuttle just a few yards away. Limping over as fast as he could, he ducked inside. It was relatively undamaged; however, he quickly turned away, horrified, when he saw the gore all over one side of the shattered main viewscreen and control panels.
"-Jesus!" Leonard choked out, squeezing his eyes shut, bile rising in his throat. Hot tears burned behind his eyelids. Blinking the haze away, he put an arm over his nose and mouth, and forced himself to shuffle forward, a few steps at a time. The remains of the body, dressed in its familiar azure blue survival suit with command yellow stripes at the shoulders, were tossed like a rag doll down on the floor, its face caved in, now completely unrecognizable. Leonard reached out a boot to nudge one broad shoulder over so he wouldn't have to look at it. It rolled gracelessly onto its front, revealing a full head of salt and pepper hair on the back of its skull. It was an awful way for Lt Horovitz to pass- he must not have had time to secure his harness- and Leonard truly grieved for the man, but he was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief, and immediately felt guilty that he was so grateful the pulpy horror wasn't Jim. Now he allowed himself a tiny sliver of hope. He whirled around to face the pilot's seat and almost sobbed at the sight of Starfleet's golden boy bent limply over the navigation console, one harness strap broken and one holding him like a sling. Jim was whole and unblemished, save for a nasty gash on the side of his forehead that was pressed against the control panel. Leonard pulled his medical tricorder off of his belt and did a full-body scan. Waving the tricorder's resonant wand over Jim's spine, he concentrated on pinpointing any back or neck injuries that might make it necessary to immobilize him. Jim had some whiplash, but aside from his head, surprisingly, he was in pretty good shape. Leonard gently grasped Jim's shoulders and and settled him against the back of the chair.
"Jim." He lightly patted Jim's cheek. Bright red blood ran in rivulets down Jim's pasty face, following the curve of the bruised orbital around his eye. "Come on, Jim, wake up." When he got no response, Leonard impatiently shook his shoulders. "Jimmy," he pleaded. Jim's head lolled forward. Strong gusts of wind blew into the open maw of the shuttle, burying the floor in drifts of snow and ice little by little. The cockpit wasn't the best place to find shelter from the elements, and Leonard could barely feel his face or his fingertips any more. They would have to go back to the rear half of the shuttle soon before they both got frostbite. Leonard did triage quickly, cleaning the cut, sealing it, and injecting Jim with an anti-inflammatory. Judging by the tricorder readings and the swollen lump on his forehead, Jim had a pretty severe concussion, and Leonard would have to find the emergency tissue regenerator. He thought he heard Jim moan, but the captain still wasn't responsive when Leonard cupped his face in his hands. "James Tiberius Kirk! Dammit, man!" he shouted, and decided to risk moving him. They couldn't wait any longer.
Popping Jim's harness open, he hooked his elbows underneath Jim's armpits and dragged him out of the chair. Jim was heavier than he'd assumed. Somehow the man always came across as leaner and less densely muscled than he actually was. It must be all that protein he was always shoving in his face. Maybe, if they survived this, he would make Jim go on a green, leafy diet, Leonard thought with a wry smirk.
Huffing with exertion, Leonard dragged Jim over the wreckage of the cockpit back out into the freezing maelstrom. He tried to lift Jim completely into his arms but he felt his injury flare and quickly abandoned the idea, continuing to drag him backwards over ever-deepening snowdrifts. Once they got to the other half of the shuttle, navigating the interior with Jim in his grasp got a little more tricky. Leonard cautiously inched his way down, but before they could get to the bottom he lost his balance, twisted to shield Jim from further injury, and felt something inside his gut wrench. They ended up sliding down the rest of the way, landing in a tangled heap at the back of the shuttlecraft. Leonard was aching, somehow frozen but hot at the same time, the powdery ice crystals clinging to his skin and hair melting and mingling with his own sweat, and he had to rest for a moment in order to catch his breath. His head was pressed uncomfortably into the back of Jim's shoulder blade, limbs akimbo, Jim's elbow digging into his ribs. Easing out from underneath Jim's bulk just enough to breathe, he looped one arm around Jim's chest, taking care not to jostle his head. Leonard pressed his cheek to Jim's shoulder, wheezing. Jim made an annoyed sound, the, "Just five more minutes" whine, as if Leonard had just tried to drag him out of bed for one of their more boring lectures at the Academy. Grunting with effort, Leonard attempted to sit up, but failed. The skewed angle of the shuttle made his muscles have to work harder, and the pain was intense. After a few more aborted tries, he finally caught hold of a jump seat and hauled his torso upright. Leonard cradled Jim in his arms and cupped his cheek, watching him intently. Jim's eyelashes fluttered.
"Oh, so now you wake up," Leonard said breathlessly, rolling his eyes. However, Jim didn't fully wake. He simply mumbled something incoherent, clutched at Leonard's jacket, and went limp again.
Gasping, his vision blurry, Leonard forced his shaky legs to stand, and willed his arms to pull Jim over to a less cluttered spot and prop him up in a better position. It was difficult considering they were on an incline at the rear juncture of the shuttle floor and the loading doors. Only a small section of the shuttle was level due to the way the impact had warped the bottom of the craft, so he would just have to deal with it. Once Jim was situated, Leonard got on his hands and knees and searched the floor for the emergency supply hatch. Finally spotting the handle, he grasped it and gave it a quarter turn until it clicked and sprung open with a hiss. Thankfully, the supplies inside were undamaged from the crash. Digging through various outdoor survival equipment, he found the first-aid kit. He opened it up and took out its portable tissue regenerator, his frozen digits fumbling with the settings. He positioned the segmented, trapezoidal device on Jim's head and waited to feel the suction field seal itself in place and for the initial cell bombardment cycle to start. An unnaturally bright, blueish spectrum of healing light shone out from under its edges.
When Leonard was confident the regenerator was doing its job, he went back to rooting through the emergency supply hatch and found the emergency beacon. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate, and he had to fiddle with the black, galvanized metal tripod for quite some time until he remembered how to set it up. He probably hadn't actually done any emergency drills since his Academy field training, and it felt like he was shaking his head every few minutes just to keep himself alert. It probably wouldn't hurt to try his communicator one more time for the hell of it, while he still could.
"McCoy to Enterprise."
Static.
"This is Dr. McCoy. Do you read, Enterprise?" Then, "Spock, for the luvva God, pick up!"
For once, what he wouldn't give to hear that pointy-eared hobgoblin's uber-condescending voice telling him that he was being highly illogical.
Abandoning the useless attempt to contact the ship, he pulled a sleeping bag out of the compartment. He eased Jim's legs inside the quilted material and tugged the rest of it up and over his prone form, wedging an arm under Jim and holding his back up off the floor. Jim sighed softly. The color seemed to be coming back to his face. As Leonard finished arranging Jim, his strength finally gave out. He crumpled to the floor, shaking, clutching at his wound. Everything was spinning and the anaesthetic was wearing off, the pain in his abdomen growing more acute with every passing minute, like a blade twisting inside him. He suddenly panicked. He didn't want to die this way, with Jim still unconscious, with no one else around to help him, and no way to contact the ship. Leonard couldn't even relay a final message to his daughter Joanna because he didn't have a simple Padd and a stylus. God, Jo… he hadn't spent nearly enough time with her since he'd enlisted, and he needed to see her again so badly. He just had to hold on… Just a little bit longer… He whimpered feebly, reaching out to Jim with blood stained fingers, and despite using everything in his power to stay awake, he sank into unconsciousness.