A/N: This is not a happy little fic, because for assorted reasons I am not in a happy little mindspace right this second. I will probably regret posting it, and you can feel free to chalk it up to catharsis if you like—but I figure that darkfic drabbles have as much right to life as fluffy ones.
Based very loosely on several fairy tales with similar names.
Song for Seven Swans
One
He's never able to pronounce the name of the planet or the witch who taunts him, swinging the crystal languidly, like a pendulum. Time ticking down—not nearly fast enough.
"It's keyed to you," she says, in her sweet high voice. "Your heartbeat. Your voice. If you remove it, they die. If you speak," she smiles her sweet dark smile, every word an excruciating caress, "they die. One of your years apiece seems appropriate, don't you think? And if you succeed," she extends her arms expansively, crystal tinkling, a benediction in the key of cruelty, "then you will all be free."
Her sweet, mocking eyes tell him how likely she finds that possibility.
He's seen too much to doubt her. And no matter how far from the planet he flees, he sees his lost ones every time he closes his eyes. Encased in crystal, cold and pale and graceful. Humanoid swans preserved in clear amber. He hates himself more than he hates the witch, for leaving them.
He tries to believe there was no other option.
Oddly enough, the first year is the easiest, because he's still absorbed by the logistics of it all. He's living off carefully laundered savings as he flits from system to system under a dozen aliases, because he's fucking AWOL and how the hell had that happened, but it's not nearly as important as concealing what really happened on that distant, sweetly cold world. Goddamned Starfleet will never understand, and he can't risk it.
Won't risk them. He's a big enough risk, without help.
He still hears the witch, sometimes, when the silence grows too loud.
"I chose you because you're the least likely to keep your mouth shut, Leonard McCoy."
Two
The second year, inevitably, Starfleet catches up with him. He doesn't have Jim's panache or Spock's finesse or Hikaru's nerve or Pavel's sheer fucking brilliance. The witch made sure she chose the least of them to defend the best of them, so of course it was inevitable.
Something inside him gives, then; and once he starts lashing out he can't stop, because the only other option is screaming and that isn't an option. So he fights like something small and scared and rabid, and they lock him up in the nuthouse for it, but at least he keeps the crystal away from them.
He spends most of that year in solitary confinement, and he doesn't really mind, except he knows that it's only making the slide to real insanity that much steeper.
Three
He's never quite sure why they let him out, but he finds himself at loose ends and that's almost worse than crazy. So he drifts and he drinks and he finally figures out what Jim was getting out of all of those bar fights, because blood and adrenaline are the closest he's felt to alive since the witch put that cold weight around his neck and froze his heart.
He does some jail time and once again acquaints himself with solitary confinement, which he likes better than the infirmary because that brings back too many fucking painful happy memories. And they still don't get the goddamn crystal, so he writes it off as a win.
Four
Eventually, he has one close call too many. Humans are creatures of habit and reflex, and he can never remember what set him off, a gasp or a moan or a sigh that tightened his vocal cords and brought him too fucking close to the forbidden edge, but suddenly he just can't shoulder the razor wire tension of risk anymore when a local anesthetic and a laser scalpel could eliminate the issue permanently.
When it's done, he curls into a ball and sobs with the hysteria that he's never been able to let slip the leash before, and it's blessedly, horribly silent and he doesn't remember stopping.
Five
He doesn't remember much for a long time, actually.
Six
He's not sure you can call him functional, exactly, but they cut him loose again because he's mostly responsive and doesn't seem inclined to finish offing himself. As though that was ever the point, or even an option. His life is precious to him—but only for the seven other lives it sustains.
So he drifts again, but he's out of money and energy and hope and resigned to the silence, even as he finally learns to fill it, a little. He wonders how many people would have been shocked to learn that Dr. Leonard H. McCoy was also a concert-caliber pianist. Of course, these days he's just poor crazy Lee and he's way out of practice, but he has the hands for it and he isn't doing anything else with them anymore. The notes that he plays go mostly unheard, absorbed by the thick smoke of semi-legal dives and the despair of crumbling inner-city churches, but it's enough to scrape by on, mostly.
More than rhyme, but less than reason.
Seven
They're upon him before he even realizes that he's forgotten to keep track of the days in the long, quiet blur. They descend on his bleak rented room like they're migrating home, unhesitating, unerring. It's vibrant and messy and anything but silent, and they're so gloriously fucking alive that he can finally wish he was dead.
But then Pavel and Hikaru are tugging off his clothing while Spock restrains his hands, so goddamn warm. Scotty and Gaila burn twin lines down his bared back, and Nyota's lips sear his scarred throat. Jim's mouth captures his own, again and again, interspersed with fierce whispers that force their heat into him like a slow, shuddering tide. "Love you," Jim says. "Always."
Always, he mouths in response. Silent.