I'm Dead, Jim

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek, but the fic is mine. MWAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh, and I don't own "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" either, but it's a great song.

Rated: T for sadness

Can be interpreted as slash or non-slash, whatever you want.

We were running. That was all I could remember, running for our lives from something terrible. Something we'd created.

It was dark and raining; the ground was slick and more than once I'd fallen turning a corner, and he'd helped me up and we'd started running again. I was the faster runner, it was true, but in these conditions it was his ability to be steady that kept us moving.

The streets were forbidding and the flickering lights cast eerie shadows in the raindrops as the city crumbled around us.

I could hear it behind us, the metal clanking of its gears and switches as it followed.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had hopeful music playing. An old song. A happy one.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high…

A stitch was growing in my side. I slipped in the rain again, feeling my hand scrape against the pavement.

I felt his hands beneath my arms, pulling me upward again.

There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby…

"Come on," he said, in his familiar Southern accent, "We gotta go."

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue…

Not here. Here it was dark.

And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true…

This was no dream. This was a nightmare.

Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me…

Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops

Is where you'll find me…

This trouble wasn't melting. Not yet. A steel beam crashed down from nearby, crushing a fire hydrant, which spurted a geyser a good fifty feet in the air. We had to get out of here.

Somewhere over the rainbow…

He suddenly stopped, his eyes growing wide. He shoved me hard out of the way, and I felt myself crash to the ground, my head cracking against the cement.

Faintly, I heard another creak of metal, then a horrible crunch and a strangled cry of pain.

The loud footsteps were growing behind us. We had to keep moving. I got to my knees, about to help him up—he'd probably saved my life again, and…

No…

He had saved my life again.

At the expense of his.

"No," I gasped, crawling towards him, horror filling me up like fluid in a pneumonia patient's lungs.

He was sitting on the ground, his back to the wall of a building next to us, pinned there like a butterfly by a metal pole through the chest.

"No!" I said again, my eyes wide.

He was clutching at the pole in surprise, one hand holding it in a death grip, the other on the ground, supporting him.

"No," I repeated.

Bluebirds fly…

He was flying away. He couldn't fly away. He was my best friend. He couldn't.

But he was.

He looked up at me with blank eyes—those scared, puppy-dog brown eyes, once so full of expression. His mouth gaped open in shock, as if he couldn't believe what was happening.

"I—" he managed to choke out.

A line of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth.

"I'm dead, Jim," he told me, blinking.

Then he went limp.

"No!" I gasped, "No! No!"

The creature's thunderous mechanical footsteps were growing nearer and nearer now, but I couldn't leave. My legs refused to move.

"Jim!" shouted a voice behind me in panic.

I didn't respond. I couldn't. I couldn't leave him.

"Jim, come on, we have to go!" the voice screamed, desperately.

I felt hands grasping my upper arms, dragging me away from him. Away from his body.

No. I didn't want to leave him. I wanted to stay, to protect him, to give him a proper burial—no!

I started to struggle with my captors, but it was no use. We turned the corner, the metal creature's awful footsteps ceasing as it stood before him.

Please don't, I thought, please…

Somewhere over the rainbow…

Why, oh why can't I?

FIN