A/N: This was written for the prompt "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone," for Team Jones (Kirk/McCoy) in the Ship Wars. Beta'd by zephtastic and abigail89.

Based on the TOS episode "The Tholian Web"

Left Behind

Jim walks the silent, deserted corridors of the Defiant alone.

It was his decision to stay behind, and there's a certain comfort and satisfaction in that. He made the others beam back first—what other choice did he have?—even as he knew that he was probably signing his own death warrant.

---------------

"I know I'm going to die alone," he told Bones once in a drunken confession. "I've always known."

"Yeah, that's likely," Bones retorted, rolling his eyes. "If I know you, you'll drag me down with you. I can think of about six times you've already come close, not including that time you wanted me to go surfing with you in Waimea."

"It was totally a great idea, Bones. You killed it with all your worrying."

Bones laughed. "Kid, you're an Iowa boy, born and bred. You'd never even seen a wave in your life until recently."

"I'm serious, Bones," he insisted. "You won't be there when I go. Nobody will. I just know it."

Bones sighed. "Jim, nobody knows how they're going to die. You've taken a childhood fear of abandonment and made it into some kind of fatalistic predestination crap. If that comforts you, fine. But that doesn't mean it's going to come true."

But Jim knows it will.

---------------

Thinking of his father's last moments, he feels a rush of impotence and bitter envy in the comparison. Unlike Jim, who's been roaming the ship aimlessly for hours, George Kirk probably didn't have a moment to spare for anxious self-recriminations. He got his wife and child to safety, evacuated the crew, and pointed the ship on a collision course. Jim has heard the recording of his father's last, loving words to his wife.

Jim has left a recording for Bones, and for Spock, too, for that matter, but he didn't say what he should have said. Heartfelt words, yes, asking them to cooperate and appreciate each other's strengths, but not what Bones needed to hear from him as his last words.

Coward.

He feels a sudden wash of dizziness and tries to steady himself, but there's nothing to grasp onto. The walls of the Defiant seem to be dissolving. There's something wrong with his vision; everything is distorted, unfocused. Is this what dying feels like? He closes his eyes, trying to control the panic that threatens to overwhelm him.

The nauseating sensation of spinning out of control fades gradually, and he cautiously opens his eyes.

For a moment, the setting is so familiar and normal, he's sure that he has died. He recognizes where he is instantly: crew quarters on the Enterprise. Maybe he's a ghost, he thinks in horror, doomed to haunt the Enterprise forever as a passive, frustrated observer, still trapped in that damn spacesuit.

With a start, he realizes that he's not alone. Uhura is just coming out of the adjoining bathroom when she looks straight at him. Her mouth opens in a wordless O and she freezes.

He feels absurdly relieved. He can't be a ghost if she can see him.

"Kirk!" she blurts out. "Captain! You're alive!"

He doesn't like the implications of that. Do they all think he's dead? Have they given up on him? He tries to speak, but his movements are overly sluggish, like he's swimming through some viscous, heavy liquid. He reaches out to her, but it must look as if he's just waving his arms vaguely.

Uhura frowns as if he's being intentionally uncooperative. "Kirk, you need to get back here. Now."

She must really think he's a dimwit. Of course he needs to get back to his ship. But before he can think of a way to signal that to her in slow motion, his vision starts to shimmer and he's back on the Defiant again.

Shit. But at least he's not dead.

As if he needed more proof, he realizes that he needs to piss badly. It's been hours since he put on the suit, and he had two cups of coffee in the early part of alpha shift… But he doesn't want to urinate, because if by some miracle he does get rescued, Scotty will kill him for ruining the suit and Bones will scold him for being an idiot and not using the bathroom before suiting up.

The thought makes him smile.

-----------------

He flickers onto the Enterprise twice more, once in Engineering and then again on the Bridge. That time he sees McCoy, just for a few seconds, but it's enough.

"Jim!" Bones whispers. His eyes say Don't leave me, and Jim's muscles clench in helpless frustration.

He should have told him, he knows. Now it's too late.

-------------------

The air in the suit is becoming stale. He can feel his heart rate speeding up and he sucks air in faster, but it doesn't help much. His chest tightens and his head is pounding. The edges of his vision are blurring, and this time, he knows it's not the odd disintegrating area of space that's causing his symptoms. He's suffocating.

He knows he's dying, and alone. He's been right all along.

He decides that he can at least choose his dying thought and the last image that will be imprinted on his oxygen-starved brain. All he can think of is the look Bones gave him on the Bridge, of disbelief and desperation and longing.

His extremities begin to tingle as he loses feeling. His last sensation is that of falling.

-------------------

Vaguely, he feels that someone is holding his shoulders and talking to him, although the words don't register yet. The suit's headgear is gone, and he's inhaling great gulps of air.

"Easy, Jim," someone is saying to him. "Relax. You're going to be fine. Breathe in."

He opens his eyes.

Bones is there, looking harried and wild-eyed. "Dammit, Jim, you cut it awfully close. But you're here now. You're safe."

"Couldn't go yet," Jim gasps, wheezing. "Forgot to tell you…something important."

Reaching up weakly, he pulls Bones's head down and kisses him.