Summary: When Spock's katra was removed from McCoy, part of the doctor's soul was taken with it. With their lives at stake, Kirk decides to risk his own in another Vulcan ceremony.
Disclaimer: I own the words, Gene Roddenberry owns everything and everyone behind them.
Rating: PG
Note: This story was written after I visited El Capitan at Yosemite National Park where they filmed the rock-climbing and camping scenes in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Go there if you want to make a Star Trek pilgrimage!

Your Soul to My Soul
By: PenPatronus

"Admiral? Mister Spock has a Southern accent."

There was no music in Uhura's voice. Jim Kirk found her curled up in the bird-of-prey's command chair, looking small and frail in it, a plate of untouched Vulcan food in her lap. With a motherly smile, she handed him a communicator, and Kirk found a bizarre modulation of Spock's voice in it.

"They can't hear us," Uhura said. "Scotty rigged it to only receive messages from an open communicator we hid in Doctor McCoy's pocket. We know you're anxious about the facilitation sessions, sir."

Kirk smiled his gratitude. "I don't know about Vulcan mythology, Commander, but in Terran stories Jesus Christ didn't have a Georgian drawl after he was resurrected." To Kirk, his words seemed muffled by sand.

"That's why I woke you, sir."

"You didn't."

Kirk had retreated to his cramped quarters after T'Lar refused to let him be with McCoy and Spock during their most recent mind-meld session. The strain the melds were having on the doctor were obvious to anyone who knew him, and doubly so to Kirk. So, sitting in the cramped darkness, his own breaths too heavy for him and the Klingon stench triggering the memory of David's dead body, Kirk's thoughts dwelled on Fate.

Unlike most mortals, Jim Kirk was born not only as one of Fate's few favorites, but also with a magic to defy Her if he didn't agree with Her path for him, or for the ones he loved. As a boy he had gotten on his knees and proposed to Her good graces in empty Iowa fields. He had made deals with Her on the Golden Gate Bridge. When Fate offered an opportunity, Kirk took it. When Fate showed him a beautiful woman, Kirk pursued her.

Fate was a fickle goddess, but Kirk was stubborn. He dueled Her from the bridge of a starship. He laughed at her from alien mountaintops. When Fate took his dearest friend, Kirk got him back.

But She had gotten Her revenge through Edith Keeler, through David, through the Enterprise. And now with one of Her graceful twists, Kirk was being punished through McCoy. According to T'Lar the fal-tor-pan had been successful, though not without side effects. During the facilitation sessions she determined that part of McCoy's psyche had gone into Spock, and part of Spock remained in McCoy. Their adventure was not over yet, not that it ever was.

Kirk's eyes sharpened to red alert when he heard McCoy's haunted voice over the communicator. "Spock's soul is out of here, Sarek, but something is missing from here." There was a soft thump as if McCoy had pointed at his own chest.

"We should reassemble, T'Lar, for this to have any hope."

T'Lar's wooden windchime of a voice seemed to echo in the Klingon bridge. "Agreed, Sarek. But we will rely on logic, not hope." She hesitated, then seemed to stick her nose right into McCoy's pocket. "James Kirk, you will join us now."

Uhura's eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. She began to apologize but Kirk chuckled and tossed her the communicator. "Not even Scotty's a match for Vulcan omnipotence. Uhura? Wake the rest of the crew."

"Aye, sir."

Vulcan's brass dawn ricocheted across steeples of red rock as Jim Kirk ascended the steps of Mount Seleya. A dimple in the stone wall revealed the chamber, dark and quiet. When Sarek drew aside the curtain Kirk gasped and hurried to a granite table where he placed trembling palms on cold, gray cheeks.

"Oh, Bones…"

"Jim," McCoy croaked, "that green-blooded witchdoctor took part of my soul with Spock's katra."

"What?"

T'Lar's impassivity infuriated Kirk. His fingers almost itched for a phaser. The bright red in her robe and thin lips resembled human blood in the torchlight of the cave. But no light or darkness could influence the dignity she held as fierce as a Starfleet admiral's. "The transfer of the katra was successful, Kirk," said T'Lar, "however further mind-melds have revealed that not only is Spock's psychological energy in McCoy, but some of the doctor's soul has possessed him as well."

"Get a priest," McCoy grumbled. "I'm a doctor, not an exorcist."

"Where is Spock?" The Vulcan had avoided Kirk for the entire three-month exile. Kirk had no idea he had become as ill as McCoy.

Sarek stepped into the small circle. "Preparing for the ceremony with meditation."

McCoy exhaled a delirious snort. "I plan to prepare for the ceremony with alcohol."

Kirk found that he couldn't laugh. "Ceremony?"

"I will withdraw the souls of Spock and McCoy and insert them into Sarek's mind. From there I will attempt to sort through and separate their souls, and return them in whole to the proper physical body."

"Sarek's head will be a Petri dish." McCoy winked at Kirk, then suddenly erupted into coughs.

"Bones!" Kirk sat on the table and kept McCoy from tumbling off. McCoy opened his mouth and blood burst out instead of words, showering Kirk's leather jacket with specks of red. "What's wrong with him?" he demanded of T'Lar.

A brief flicker of sorrow was not in T'Lar or Sarek's eyes, but almost visible within the look that passed between them. Sarek softened his voice, loosened it. "Kirk, Spock and McCoy are dying."

A feeling not unlike immature Romulan ale slithered down Kirk's spinal cord and if he wasn't sitting down, his knees would not have supported him. "Why?"

Sarek and McCoy looked at T'Lar. "I have discovered that the human soul is not contained in the mind like the katra. It is similar to liquid blood, flowing through the entire body. When Spock's soul was within McCoy, the doctor's liquid energy mixed into the katra, and melted some of it off from the whole. Part of McCoy is in Spock, part of Spock in McCoy. Their souls are poisoning one another."

"But Spock's katra was driving Bones mad before, not killing him."

"Jim," McCoy whispered from his back, "the shell of the Vulcan body can function without a soul, but humans can't. What the soul's physical purpose is, I don't know. I just know that with pieces of mine gone, my body is failing." McCoy coughed again, and more blood appeared on his lips.

"And you want to take his soul completely out? How long will he survive that, T'Lar?"

"Unknown. Perhaps a day, perhaps several. He has survived nearly three of your standard months without the whole. We are taking logical risks."

"There isn't a damn thing logical about my friends dying!"

T'Lar pursed her lips slightly, and it was the biggest gesture of emotion Kirk had ever seen in her. Kirk didn't care that his comments chased her and Sarek out of the chamber, and he didn't say goodbye when they left.

"This is all pretty ironic, eh Jim?"

"What, Bones…"

"If you'd been in engineering that day, Spock would've put his katra into you. But," McCoy chuckled, "unfortunately for all of us, I was there. Everything Spock is was in me, and now I'm in him, complete with all of my blasted human passions and now, Jim, my soul is killing him! His mind is in such a delicate balance. I argued with him, Jim, but I never wanted to hurt him. What if T'Lar can't fix this?" He laughed again but it was a cold, metallic sound. Can you imagine the chaos on Vulcan if my soul mixed with all of the katras? He can't die, Jim. I told Spock I couldn't stand to lose him again and I mean it. Especially not when it's my doing."

More coughing.

"Jim? Do you think there's a Heaven for humans and Vulcans?"

"We'll make one, Bones. Let's get you to bed."

"Yeah…have Scotty beam me, Jim."

One side of Kirk's face smiled while the other half frowned. "Bones, you want to be transported?"

"It's logical. I'm too tired to climb down this goddamned mountain."

Jim didn't find it very damn funny that McCoy was using the word "logical" with a straight face again. He began to tell him so, but McCoy was already unconscious.

\\\\

When the transporter beam disintegrated, Kirk found himself not in the putrid bowels of the Klingon bird-of-prey but in a small Vulcan bedroom. Its walls were beige and covered in paintings, its windows were wide open and McCoy slept soundlessly in a firm bed. Kirk crouched into a defensive position when the door swung open, then immediately relaxed and smiled apologetically at Amanda Grayson. Kirk bowed his thanks for the plate of food she placed on a triangular bedside table. Amanda placed the gentlest of kisses on McCoy's brow before silently gliding out of her son's bedroom. Kirk retreated to the window to stare at Amanda's beautiful garden. The rainbows of natural color stood out like a nebula in space, like Amanda on Vulcan.

After some time of Kirk's musings and McCoy's labored breaths, the door to the bedroom opened so slowly that Kirk thought it was a breeze. But then an armful of pillows preceded Spock. Kirk stared at his friend as if he didn't recognize him. He hadn't been alone with Spock since before he died. Spock stared back for only a moment before lowering his eyes to the wooden floor and clearing his throat. Kirk was thankful he sounded like himself again. "My mother thought these might make the doctor more comfortable." From the look on the Vulcan's face Kirk concluded that Spock couldn't imagine why.

Kirk found that while he had spend months desperate to talk to Spock, suddenly all he could find in his mouth was a thank you. McCoy's breaths didn't shift in rhythm when Kirk gently arranged the pillows. He nearly jumped when Spock spoke again, he'd expected Spock to leave as suddenly as he came.

"Perhaps we should speak outside, Admiral, I do not with to disturb the doctor."

Spock stood in the shadow of the doorframe, his hands up inside the sleeves of his thick white robe.

"The transporter didn't wake him so I doubt anything will."

Spock ventured over to the window. The direct sunlight through the flower petals in the garden gave his skin a blush of pink and orange. The brown mountains sticking their noses up on the horizon contrasted drastically with Amanda's bright colors.

Kirk broke several moments of intense silence. "Spock—"

"Is the doctor well?"

Kirk couldn't see Spock's face from over his shoulder and he wished that the window was shut so that he could at least see his reflection. "I hope he will be."

Spock nodded his head slightly. "This will be considerably more dangerous than the fal-tor-pan. At least that supposedly occurred in myth. This is a new attempt."

Kirk shrugged. "I'm sure T'Lar and Sarek will be able to handle it."

"I have just spoken with my father. He will not be participating."

"Why—"

Spock pivoted and for the first time since his resurrection he looked Kirk in the eye. "Admiral, after reviewing what memories I have so far been able to organize and analyze, I have concluded that it is within the parameters of our relationship for me to…confide in you."

"Shoot. I mean, yes, Spock. Tell me."

"My memories have been retrieved through my katra but because my mind has yet to be fully disciplined I have been struggling to suppress the emotions, particularly towards individuals, that have come with the memories."

"I don't think I can help you with suppressing your feelings, Spock."

"I wish to understand them, Admiral. Then to control them. Vulcans cannot help me understand them. My father cannot. I believe you can."

"Maybe Amanda—"

"Not just any human, Admiral. My strongest memories and feelings involve…I believe I have shared to most important experiences pertaining to who I am with you."

"You want to mind-meld with me?"

"No. The mental concentration and physical effort required for a mind-meld would destroy my mind. It is not yet disciplined enough."

"When McCoy's soul is out of you you'll feel better."

Spock gathered his robes and silently went to the side of his bed and stared expressionless at McCoy. A shiver wracked Kirk's body when he realized that Spock looked like he was standing over a coffin with McCoy dead in it. Spock hesitated for a moment to gather his thoughts again before continuing. "Admiral, T'Lar claims that the human soul is not unlike a katra. It consists of the individual's passions, his personality, what is best and true and good in him. Packed in it is what he has learned, what he cares about, essentially who he is…" Spock's voice dropped to the limit of human hearing. "From what I know of Leonard McCoy, he gave me his katra everyday he has known me. His soul is inserted into everyone he meets through his words, his actions and convictions. He has always been in me, and now I am in him, and my soul is killing him. After the re-fusion I found that the most…distressing aspect of my resurrection is that others know me better than I know myself. But what is most distressing is that the doctor may not survive because of me."

"I just had this same conversation with Bones about you, Spock." Kirk looked at the ceiling and wished he could see the stars. They always helped stimulate his thoughts, give him ideas. "You don't know how much I wish there was something I could do."

"Jim, is it also within the parameters of our relationship for me to request something of you?"

"Anything, Spock."

\\\\

Kirk transported onto the dais peak of Mount Seleya with McCoy propped up against his shoulder. His crew, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, stared at him from the bottom of the last flight of steps with matching expressions of concern. Saavik stood with them, and concern darkened her eyes as well. Spock was already lying on the granite table with Sarek and T'Lar beside him, her lips pursed in either concentration or impatience. The hexagonal gong vibrated with song, filling Vulcan with its announcement.

"McCoy, son of David…"

"Here we go again," McCoy grumbled against Kirk. "This is going to kill me this time, Jim, I mean it. I've always said Spock will be the death of me."

"…their souls into the body of Kirk, son of—"

Kirk flinched. He had hoped that McCoy would be unconscious before he found out what was going on.

"Sarek is doing this, not Jim!"

Sarek stepped away from his son. "Spock has requested it for your sake, McCoy. We theorize that no further damage will come to you if we used a human mind rather than a Vulcan's." Kirk grinned. Amanda had taught Sarek how to lie after all. She'd probably coached him on exactly what to say.

"Logical? Dammit, I'll give you logic! Do this with a Vulcan whose mind is already prepared! Avoid another, what did you call it? Liquid human soul so Spock's katra doesn't melt! For Surak's sake are you listening to me you green-blooded—" Blood suddenly gurgled up from his chest. McCoy coughed, choked and teetered and Kirk had to move quickly to keep him from tumbling down the stone stairs.

"Bones!" Kirk forced McCoy to look at him, then he loosened his grip and softened his voice. "Please just lay down. I've already decided to do this."

"Dammit, Jim, please don't do this."

"I have to, Bones. I couldn't stand to lose either of you."

Kirk pushed McCoy down onto the stone table before lying down on a third table between Spock and McCoy. But before that, he bent nonchalantly by Spock's left ear and whispered, "Only do it if you have to." Spock nodded with his eyes: closed them for a full three seconds, opened them and held back from blinking at Kirk for a full three seconds.

McCoy was still muttering "out of their minds" when T'Lar pressed her fingers to his face. As if he'd been stunned by a phaser, McCoy went instantly limp. Lightning flashed across the cloudless afternoon sky.

T'Lar's fingers reached for Kirk next. Jim twisted his head and made eye contact with Spock smiled at him with his eyes. A gentle but firm pressure landed on Kirk's face and from the epicenters of T'Lar's fingers rippled pins and needles doing some pagan tap-dance into Jim's nerves. When Jim's eyes closed, Vulcan's sun was just as brass red and bright, and T'Lar's wooden voice rippled the red of light.

"Your mind to his mind," T'Lar simultaneously whispered and screamed. "Your heart to his heart…your soul to his soul…"

A tender creek of lukewarm water leisurely flowed into Kirk's mind. Where is splashed against his own consciousness it felt like a smile. Kirk dipped his proverbial fingertips into the water and let it splash against his cheeks, he tasted it and relished in his friend's pure, core self in the gentle liquid soul. McCoy's soul rippled through Jim. Waves of the doctor's personality, his emotions and memories, everything that made him Leonard McCoy was condensed into each tiny drop of water, and every drop of water combined formed the whole soul. Kirk tried to sort through each drop as they passed through. He felt drops of McCoy's love, his passion and empathy, his morality, sincerity, protectiveness his sarcasm and humor and intelligence, his desire to help and heal were felt with such an intensity that Kirk couldn't tell if the moisture was from McCoy's soul or his own tears.

The water filled him, seemed to burst out of his ears and eyes and the tips of his hair. For a moment Kirk felt like he would drown in the water, but he found that he could breathe, that he could breathe in McCoy's soul easier than he'd every breathed air. Kirk felt he knew McCoy better than he knew himself.

But then there was a bladed edge to some of the raindrops. Some of the drops of water froze, others boiled, others severed and divided. From some invisible sky, smooth, sculptured pieces of rock crashed down into the water. In the stones Kirk felt Spock: logic, precision, calmness, discipline, trust, loyalty and the subtle but tamed emotions Kirk always knew were there. One tiny stone was so weighed down by emotions that it sunk through McCoy's soul to the bottom of Kirk's mind. Kirk brushed his consciousness against the stone and he felt slapped by neglected emotions: love, anger, confusion, guilt. McCoy's soul tried to seep into the stones and release what was in them, but the stones resisted. The stones tried to contain the water, but the water resisted.

A storm ignited like the explosive reaction of combining matter and anti-matter. The rocks caused waves, and the waves pushed the rocks violently against Kirk's mind. Usually the mediator when his friends bickered, Kirk retreated from the battle. From the sidelines of his mind he watched a bloody battlefield emerge as both souls fought to exist, to influence, to be Truth. Kirk sensed that neither soul wanted to clash with the other, but in their nature, it was impossible to avoid.

The waves churned, and the stones pounded Kirk into unconsciousness.

\\\\

Jim Kirk awoke with a beehive- from-hell of a headache.

He saw T'Lar's gnarled fingers floating up away from him like the claws of a wounded raven and he felt like there were deep, bleeding holes where her fingertips had been. Vulcan's sun was exactly where it had been before he closed his eyes and if it weren't for the ache in his back and the growl in his stomach, Kirk might have assumed no time had passed. The ion storm of stone and water in his head had run out of energy but still weighed him down as if Harry Mudd was sitting on his head.

A faceless silhouette with pointed ears blocked out the sun. "Admiral."

"Spock, are you all right?"

"I am well. T'Lar has successfully extracted all foreign energies from my body. The doctor's soul is entirely in you now."

Kirk sat up on the stone table and evened his eyes with Spock's. "How's Bones?"

Spock blinked. His gaze shifted past Kirk who followed it over his own shoulder and for a vicious moment, Jim was certain that McCoy was dead. He lay on the table to Kirk's right like a corpse, his inhales and exhales suspiciously spaced out and barely visible. His skin was tinted blue and red blood was on his lips and neck. McCoy's body was shutting down.

Kirk pushed Spock aside and raged at T'Lar, who didn't turn and face him when he raged, "Put McCoy's soul back in him now! He'll die!"

The posture of T'Lar's turned back deflated momentarily but her voice revealed no reaction. "His soul remains mixed with the pieces of Spock's original katra in your mind, Kirk. I have tried for an entire sun to separate their souls without success. We must remove the mixed energies before they mix with your soul, destroying you as well. Our power can do nothing for McCoy now."

Jim buried his face in his palms. Fate had gone too far this time. In so short a time he had lost Spock, David, the Enterprise, and now he would lose McCoy. It was too much. Even for a supposedly invincible Jim Kirk, it was just too much.

"I will try."

Kirk spread his fingers like peacock feathers and stared at Spock from between them.

"No, Spock," T'Lar countered. "Your mind has not yet fully recovered from the fal-tor-pan. You would not survive a mind-meld, especially under these mighty circumstances."

"I care not."

Sarek's serene voice came from behind Kirk and grew closer with each word. "Spock, all three of you would die. If T'Lar removes the souls now, at least you and Kirk would survive."

Spock looked past Kirk, who knew he was looking at McCoy. "I have learned that at times, father, the needs of the one outweigh—"

"No." Sarek cut him off. Kirk found himself wracking his memory (and Spock's, and McCoy's) for any instance when the Vulcan had ever illustrated impatience by interrupting someone's sentence and he concluded that it had happened only when Sarek's level of emotion had unexpectedly risen.

"No, Spock. This is not logical."

Spock's eyes flashed back to Sarek before landing on Kirk. "I know."

Spock pounced. Before anyone could stop him, his fingertips were on both sides of Kirk's face.

Jim instinctively surrendered his soul to Spock, and was cataleptic before his head hit the table.

\\\\

"Jim."

Kirk decided that he couldn't be dead. His Heaven would be the Enterprise. Heaven would smell like Edith Keeler's hair. In Heaven, Jim would be hearing David's voice.

"Jim?"

No light penetrated his eyelids, so he was indoors. But he wasn't in the bird-of-prey. The smell would've woken him up real quick. But he was smelling something. There was a massive garden nearby that smelled like the hanging pots of flowers his mother would string from their front porch in Iowa. He was on a narrow bed and pillows were under his head and a gentle voice of love and concern was in his ear.

"Bones?"

"Who else? Unless Spock still sounds like me."

A vision of a humor-shaped drop of water appeared in Jim Kirk's mind, but to his relief, it was only a vision. Kirk felt his spirit soar out the window, through Amanda's garden, over the Vulcan mountains to spread its wings with joy in the open universe.

Something beeped in the direction of McCoy's voice. "Easy, Jim! Don't get too excited yet. Just relax for a minute and adjust." Something brushed past the tip of Jim's nose, making a whirring sound as it went, and Kirk realized McCoy was scanning him.

For once, Kirk took the doctor's advice.

He relaxed his body as if preparing for sleep. He concentrated on the smell of the flowers to dock him in reality as he nosedived into himself. He scanned his mind as thoroughly as McCoy was scanning his body, and he found—

"You're still inside me. How long before I go crazy?"

"I assure you the procedure was successful and complete, Admiral," said Spock from the direction of the flowers. Jim opened his eyes and found himself on the bed in Spock's room with half of his vision filled with a remarkably young-looking Leonard McCoy. McCoy grinned like Jim hadn't seen him do in ages. He looked so healthy, so vibrant, and he'd seemed so pessimistic and uncharacteristic since Spock had died. Then the other half of his sight was filled with Spock, who looked no different except for a distinct speck of light within his brown eyes.

"What happened?"

McCoy glanced at Spock before he answered. "What happened is Spock's out of his Vulcan mind, as usual. Instead of leaving our two souls to destroy ourselves in your head, he decided that it wouldn't make things worse to add your soul to the mix. And, as it turns out, the only force in this universe that could possibly cure the deadly combination of our souls, is yours. Instead of separating them, Spock mixed all three of our souls, divided that combination, and put a third into each of us."

"According to T'Lar, we are more than t'hy'la, Admiral, we are…I am unable to recall the translation."

Kirk sat up in the bed and leaned his aching back against the wooden headboard. "Soulmates." It came out on its own. Kirk wasn't sure if it came from him or from the uber-soul inside him so he waited for McCoy's snort, and watched for Spock to cock an eyebrow or two.

"Soulmates." Spock pursed his lips and brought his fingers to a tight steeple as he considered the word. "Perhaps a parallel could be derived from our association as shipmates: we lived on the same ship, now we live in the same soul." McCoy sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at Spock with a smile growing on the corner of his mouth. Spock's stoic shoulders did a very impressive imitation of a shrug. "Accurate."

Spock looked at Kirk and McCoy with question in his eyes and when neither of them reacted to his conclusion, his expression shifted. That fraction of deflation across the deep creases of his face would go unnoticed by every soul in the universe except for Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy. It was as if Spock suddenly concluded that it was dangerous to be in the same room with them. Spock threaded his fingers behind his back and retreated to the door in two strides.

"Oh no you don't!" McCoy wagged a forefinger at Spock as if he were a child sneaking away from the dinner table before asking to be excused. "You didn't talk to us for three months and if you leave this room you'll just crawl into some cave with a computer and completely isolate yourself from us all over again!"

"I must return to my meditations, Doctor, now that there is more data to analyze." Spock turned to leave but before Kirk could speak up and turned back around and aimed his upswept eyebrow at McCoy like a proton torpedo. "You will now insult me, threaten me, and undoubtedly be outraged that I did not choose a more human word to describe your soul, correct?"

McCoy's jaw dropped faster than the scanner that fell from his hand and landed on Kirk's stomach. "Spock! Your memory is back!"

"Not entirely, Admiral."

"Spock, people who share the same soul should probably be on a first name basis…but you do remember us?"

McCoy's face brightened despite his best efforts to hide his hopes.

Spock stared at the clean tan tiles of the bedroom floor, his eyebrow back down to complete his slight frown. "Like a katra, human souls contain memories as well. I "remember" what you remember, including our common experiences as well as ones unique to you. Therefore I conclude that…" Spock hesitated, and Kirk had known the Vulcan long enough to tell when he was about to switch from reporting to sharing.

"I do remember you, Jim." Spock's eyes flickered to McCoy, who nodded to the unspoken statement. "And because I remember—because I know you, I now know myself."

The sound of Spock's footsteps lasted only a moment longer than the sight of him, leaving Kirk wondering if he would ever even see his friend again. Soon the crew of the late Enterprise, of the new Bounty, would have to leave, and Kirk wondered if, now that Spock had what he needed from Jim, if he would resume his new life on Vulcan, instead of with his friends. Perhaps Fate had allowed Spock to live, only to still take him from Kirk in any other way. But, Jim decided, from now on they could be on opposite sides of the universe, and simultaneously inside each other.

"You know what, Jim?" McCoy's grin was contagious. Golden Georgia sunlight shone right through his teeth and warmed Kirk. "I like him better since he died."