"He doesn't know where he is, goddamnit! Aren't you listening to me?" McCoy growled as he paced the floor in his office. Spock sat in a chair in front of him, and though he looked outwardly calm, there was a crease in his brow and tension in his shoulders. "The last thing he remembers is leaving to go to Iowa, which was right before Pike picked him up and he went to Starfleet! He doesn't remember us at all." He finished quietly, stealing a glance over to Jim's biobed. The man in question was asleep again; unaware of the stress he was giving his friends right now.
"What do you propose we do, doctor?" Spock asked, his fists clenching.
McCoy shook his head. "Well, our only hope is that this could be temporary. I think the best thing to do would be to talk to him, tell him about Enterprise, get the bridge crew down here to see him, and –" he broke off, swallowing roughly before collapsing in his desk chair, his hands over his eyes. "I just – I can't do this without him, Spock."
Spock looked over at Jim, the worry in his face increasing as well. "I feel the same," he replied.
The whole reason McCoy had gone into the black in the first place was to follow his idiot of a best friend and make sure he didn't… well, to make sure nothing like this happened. And look how that had turned out. Not only had he not done his job, but if Jim never got his memory back, what would happen to their friendship? He had worked so hard and for so long to get Jim Kirk to trust him. With Jim's mind back to a pre-Starfleet state, all of that would be lost.
They had to get his memory back.
An hour later Jim was awake again, and McCoy walked in to see him trying to sit up and get out of bed.
"Oh no you don't!" McCoy shouted, grabbing the shoulder of his captain and pushing him back on the bed. "You're not goin' anywhere until we've got everything sorted. You might feel okay now, but that's just all the drugs and your damned stubbornness."
Jim turned to him, annoyance flickering in his eyes. "Then will you tell me what the hell's going on? Was I drugged or something? Why am I on a ship a thousand klicks from the nearest planet?"
McCoy shook his head. "It's a bit complicated, Jim."
"Bullshit it's complicated. Give me the truth."
"The truth's not something you're gonna warm up to easily. What did you say was the last thing you remember?"
"Spending the night on Risa. I caught a shuttle to get back to Earth, but I don't remember ever getting there."
McCoy nodded. So nothing new had come back yet. "Okay. I'm gonna show you some pictures, and you tell me what they are."
"Seriously?" Jim said incredulously.
McCoy ignored him and held up a picture. "What's this?"
Jim stared at him. "We're really doing this?"
"Damn straight! Now give me an answer!"
"A house."
Another picture.
"Dog."
Another.
"Wow that one looks like you!"
It was a picture of an old man with a walking stick. At least he hadn't lost his sense of humor.
McCoy put the cards away. "Alright, enough of that. Here, follow my finger with your eyes." Jim just scowled down at the covers. "Listen, man, if you don't do it I'll be forced to put you through even more tests." Reluctantly, Jim looked up and followed his finger.
"Am I good?" Jim growled when McCoy finished. "I'm not really a big fan of hospitals. I'd like to get out of here as soon as possible." His eyes flashed up at McCoy and then to the door, and his fingers twitched on the bed.
McCoy sighed as looked down at his friend. For the past few minutes, as he tested his friend, it was almost as if nothing was wrong. Jim and McCoy talked that way all the time. It was Jim's true discomfort that bothered McCoy the most. He could tell that Jim wanted out badly. He didn't know this place – didn't know his history with it, and didn't know that he was truly safe here. Not that he had ever really liked Sickbay, but he had never quite had that cornered look in his eye before.
McCoy pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. "Look, Jim, there's something I haven't told you."
"Yeah, I figured." Jim looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "Do we know each other or something? You keep calling me Jim."
McCoy's heart twisted a little in his chest. "Yeah, we know each other."
Jim's face faltered. "How well?"
He bit the inside of his cheek. "I met you six years ago on the shuttle from Riverside to San Francisco. You're my best friend. My brother."
The cornered look was back in full force. "What are you talking about?"
"You did go to Iowa, but you didn't stay there for long. Christopher Pike recruited you out of a bar. You spent the next three years at Starfleet Academy, and the years after that as the Captain of this ship, the USS Enterprise."
Jim had gone very pale. "You're shitting me. Please tell me you're fucking with me."
McCoy rubbed a hand through his hair, weary. "I'm not fucking with you."
Faster than McCoy could stop, Jim leapt out of his bed and grabbed the nearest PADD. He opened it and was met with the date.
Leonard watched as Jim gripped the table, his knuckles turning white, his back heaving with gasps. He walked up to the younger man slowly and put a hand on his shoulder. "Jim, calm down. We'll figure this out."
"Get the fuck off me!" Jim flinched away from his touch. McCoy's heart tugged. Jim hadn't flinched like that in a long time. But he was stressed out right now, and confused. In Jim's head, he didn't know who McCoy was, and as much as it hurt him to do it, he needed to give the kid some space. He wasn't helping things by being so touchy. His hand clenched into a fist at his side.
Jim stared at the date on the PADD for a minute before turning to him and looking him in the eye, his face pale. "What the fuck," he breathed, his voice breaking. "What the fuck. This can't be real. This kinda shit doesn't happen in real life. No … No."
Leonard just looked at him sadly.
Jim's hand went up and grasped his hair, and he shuddered as he took a deep breath. "Okay. Nope, this is a hoax. I remember everything before waking up here. My whole life. If I had some kind of traumatic brain injury, it wouldn't happen like that would it? Something must have happened – something must have happened on the shuttle back to Earth. Right?" He looked at McCoy desperately, but the doctor just shook his head.
"I'm not trying to mess with you, Jim. What I said is all true."
Jim took another deep breath. "Well, good. Cause I'd have told you you're a fucking shitty comedian."
McCoy smiled in spite of himself, but his smile fell again as Jim groaned and reached for his head.
"I know you're confused, but standing isn't gonna help you any," he remarked as he pushed Jim gently back to the biobed. "You need rest if your brain's gonna recover from this."
Jim laid down, nodding absently, then turned back to him. "I thought that sleeping was bad for head injuries."
"On the contrary," he responded. He continued when Jim still looked suspicious, "I told you I'm not pulling one over on you. Now who's the doctor here?"
Scowling, but resigned, Jim pulled the covers up and over him. His eyes started to twitch around again though, as he remembered he didn't know anything about where he was.
"You might not believe me, but you're safe here," McCoy said, trying to get him to relax. He sighed. "Do you want a sedative to help you sleep?"
"No!" Jim responded, a little too quickly. "I mean, no. I'm fine. And anyways, I'm allergic to everything."
"You'll find that I'm pretty well versed in your allergies."
Jim's eyes narrowed a little, then he nodded. "Right. Six years." His gaze turned off into the middle distance. "Fuck. I can't believe this. How could I forget six years of my life? You sure you're not shitting me?"
"I'm sure."
Contemplating this, he said, "Huh. I didn't know I could keep a guy around me for that long." He gave a huff of a laugh, but McCoy's chest just compressed at the words. "You must be either stubborn, or stupid."
Leonard quirked a brow. "A little bit of both, I'd say. Now get to sleep. You need it."
"Aye, aye, captain," Jim finished as he waved him off with a mock salute.
Uh, hey everybody! I know that at this point none of you were expecting to see this update, if you even remembered what this story was. At any rate, I'm doing my best to write this thing. And this may seem impossible considering my track record, but I'll be updating a few times in the next week.
Please let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions about little scenes to add, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!