Disclaimer: I wished really hard, but I still don't own a single thing within this text.
Star Trek belongs to Gene Roddenberry. Nutrek belongs to JJ Abrams.
I am just a simple fangirl who owns nothing.
Chapter 2: Leonard
Jim lies still as Bones runs the dermal regenerator along the flesh of his chest and shoulders, which are raw, and criss-crossed with fresh pink scar tissue.
There's probably more scar tissue there than whole flesh now.
Jim doesn't tense under the touch but he flinches occasionally, and lowers his eyes when Bones looks at him, or speaks to him. So Bones doesn't do either, because if his friend needs time, he'll give him time.
Jim doesn't say anything for a week, then, finally, as Bones is injecting a hypospray into his much-abused neck, he croaks out "James T. Kirk, Captain of the starship Enterprise, SC937-0176 CEC.".
Bones starts at the sudden noise, so divergent from the bubble of silence that he has grown used to.
"Jim? Jim, can you hear me?"
" James Tiberius Kirk, Captain of the starship Enterprise, SC937-0176 CEC.", the kid sighs.
Bones feels a shiver creep up his spine at the familiar name, rank, and serial number response to questioning, used by prisoners of war worlds over, an archaic military tradition that somehow stuck.
He tries to get through to Jim for over an hour, speaking gently and quietly, but still all he gets is that one slurred string of information, void of intonation or emotion; which almost reminds him of the green blooded hobgoblin he has to refer to as captain. Spock has visited Jim daily since his return in a bleeding, shaking, unconscious heap on the transport platform. Bones had never thought the two were that close, had thought Spock'd stop after the first few days, but even now he'd spend an hour or so each day, just sitting beside Jim.
Bones almost wishes he were here now, with that calm, unobtrusive, authoritative presence, which might serve better than his own fractious emotion.
Bones wishes for a lot of things lately, like better medical equipment, and supplies, and maybe a psych team on hand, because he's not sure he can fix this, but dammit he'll try.
Bones knows Jim has been tortured, because he's seen scars like this before; scars from wounds that are not designed to be fatal, but to be unbearably painful.
Jim has more than he's ever seen on one person at one time; his skeletomuscular system is severely damaged in many places, and Bones wonders exactly how many bones Jim has left that haven't been broken; as for his integumentary system, superficially, he is burnt, abraded and scarred more than should be possible in such a short amount of time.
Bones runs through his mental shopping list of Jim's injuries; tarsus of right foot damaged in six places, including smashed talus and navicular bones; eight fractured ribs, four bruised; fractured right clavicle; fractured jawbone; bruised liver, bruised kidneys, right sided pulmonary contusion, continuous with severe, ongoing beatings; left patella severely dislocated; small slashes on the webbing between fingers and toes; lesions on the arches of both feet continuous with stab wounds from a large sharp object, compromising tendon and ligament function; eight out of ten fingernails torn out; foreign bodies embedded in the abdomen and brain.
Bones realised early on that the wounds inflicted on the patient were designed to hobble him, restrict his breathing and speaking, make every waking moment an excruciating hell.
Bones finds it helps not to think of Jim as his friend, but as his patient. And it's easier to do that than it might be, because Jim doesn't seem to recognise him at all.
He has used the dermal regenerator, he thinks, on every inch of Jim's exposed flesh. When Jim returned, he had to perform a series of procedures such as complicated microsurgery on small blood vessels, intrusive re-aligning of misplaced ligaments, bones and tendons, exploratory surgeries, eventually removing the foreign bodies, two small electronic devices; one from the parietal lobe, the other from his stomach. He's not sure what they were for, but they didn't look particularly friendly. He sent one down to the science lab, and had intended to open the other one up and take a look, but he's had so much to worry about with Jim, especially those first few days. He wasn't sure if Jim would even make it through the first night.
A dermal regenerator could only go so far, and he still has a lot of healing to do. It will be a long, hard road to recovery. And dammit, Jim is
going to recover.
A/N this is shorter, which is, I know, not awesome; but there was nowhere else to leave it without it becoming a mid-story novella of emotional sub-text and monologue…sorry
Thank you to my reviewers stargazerdown, Creative Spark, whitefox8431, Aneeta Potter, Sparkiebunny, Danaa, Ladycrow67, cat4444, and my fabulous beta SpirkTrekker42; as always, you guys are just-just-*emotional hugs*