~*~*~

They ran his fingerprints through the system later and soon enough he was whisked away to Starfleet Medical. The next two weeks passed in a blur for Jim. He passed each day with a little more coherency and active consciousness. He remembered being ill, throwing up and the massive headaches. But most of all, he began to remember flashes of what had happened to him.

The pain settled in on him, and he retched constantly; he could not keep his food down. The pink plastic kidney bowl was his constant companion. What was worse were the seizures. He cried through the pain, disassociation, and vertigo. Warm hands in rubber gloves with soft voices stroked his forehead in comfort as they injected anti-seizure medication and made sure he didn't bite his tongue through the worst ones.

He regained enough coherence to be discharged from the hospital. He sat outside the medical building in a borrowed set of scrubs and hospital loafers, clutching the white bag of medicine to his chest. He had nowhere to go. His emergency contacts hadn't come through. His mother was on a field mission in space; she wasn't home. He checked his messages before leaving. Bones' messages went from angry to disappointed and finally to pleading for him to pick up the phone. He could deal with an angry Bones, but a disappointed one he had no defenses against.

The rest was hate mail, so he deleted all of it.

There were no messages from Spock.

~*~*~

He had about a week of shore leave left. The Enterprise had a short period of time to make repairs before they had to get back out into deep space. They had cracked a warp engine, and Scotty had jerry-rigged it to keep it stable until they were able to get to the closest starbase or Earth if they could manage it. They hadn't been far from Earth and decided to dock there and make nice with the admiralty. Part of that was attending diplomatic parties and schmoozing, buttering up famous scientists and getting new recruits.

Jim put Scotty on a feasible timetable to achieve his desired modifications on the Enterprise's engine room while they were there. He wondered how far the man had gotten.

People started to recognize him outside Starfleet Medical and take photographs. Dammit. He hoped the person he called would show up soon.

A black Starfleet-issued hover car pulled up and the door opened. Admiral Pike was sitting there waiting for him.

"Hi, Chris," Jim said in a low voice as he got into the hover car.

Pike was taken aback at the young man getting into the car. So unlike the exuberant youth he had known just a short while ago.

"Oh, Jim," Pike murmured and then was flashing back to the memory of a younger Jim, much like this one, so very thin and broken. He was quiet then too.

Jim knew how to deal with this condition. He had lost a great amount of weight in the hospital, and had a constant feeling of fatigue. Weariness set into his bones as a deep ache, one he knew was probably a psychological reaction to his broken mind. Spock had shown him how to center himself. What was once a little rough around the edges now lay shatteredas broken glass. Spock wouldn't want this; he had been irreparably broken. "Damaged goods" was a phrase he often used.

"You'll stay with me until you have to go back," Pike said softly.

"Okay," Jim nodded looking out the window, clutching the door handle like a lifeline.

~*~*~

Aboard the Enterprise, the bridge crew wasn't disobedient, but they regarded him with a cold shoulder and questioning things when they could. Overall, Jim's patience was growing thin, but then, he felt the deep guilt he could not explain. They believed the worst of him.

So he kept silent as much as he could. His trials of trying to get Spock to speak to him had failed miserably and came with the extra whiplash of Uhura's sharp tongue. Even Bones wouldn't look at him without disappointment. He thought their friendship was stronger than that. He thought they realized his loyalty. They didn't have faith in his integrity, or his person. Hadn't he proved otherwise? Didn't they know him? He wasn't this shallow.

~*~*~

There were few he found were sympathetic with him. One was Spock's older counterpart, also known as Ambassador Selek, who looked at him sadly as he explained what limited amount he knew.

"What was his name?" Selek asked.

Jim's brows scrunched together, indistinct flashes passed before his eyes. "I…I don't know."

He closed his eyes tightly, and tried to concentrate on the other's face. The closer he got to the memories, the more his body felt weak. He felt the memory fading once again.

He opened his eyes to his ceiling. What?

"Jim!" came the voice from the console. "Jim!"

He pulled himself off the floor using the chair and the desk, getting resettled. "Hey, old

man," he returned as he looked at the worried visage of his friend.

"Jim, what happened?"

He rubbed his mouth, tasting copper. "Seizure, I think."

"You must send me your medical files. Psychic trauma is nothing to disregard. I will have a Vulcan healer examine them," Selek instructed. "I believe there is more the situation than it seems. It may have been a premeditated attack."

"I hope you're right," Jim felt tears prick his eyes. "It's all the hope I've got. Spock left me, my friends left me. I don't think I'm going to survive this."

"I will help you figure this out, Jim. Do not give up just yet."

~*~*~*~*~*~

The best treatment that Jim got over the next few months was indifference. Besides communications with Selek, few people spoke to him kindly when he was off-duty. Scotty was amongst them. Scotty had confessed during a night of drinking, "Aye, I remember exile. Wha's worse is you have to do it amongst those who condemned you. I dunna know what's worse though; with those who know and punish ye every day or bein' alone with yer thoughts."

That about summed it up.

~*~

Jim didn't try to think about what happened, he couldn't get more than the few brief hints that he had seen over and over. If he concentrated harder he ended up with vicious migraines or seizures, sometimes both.

They had a year left of the mission and he and Bones were barelyback on speaking terms. He was surprised when his primary care went to M'Benga, who did not hold a grudge against him, but was very concerned for his captain's health. It was stable, but overall it was poor. He had been worse before, not like he didn't deserve it either. Despite treatment and medication Jim was still woefully thin; Jim forgot to eat or he just didn't feel hungry. He had regressed back into the remembered days of famine.

M'Benga tried supervising his meals at least a few times a week if there was nothing else going on. "You must eat. Your body needs food to survive."

Jim had looked up at him and gave him an inscrutable stare. "Lies," he whispered vehemently and cleared his tray, going off on his own.

~*~*~

There was a blinking light on his console when he returned to his quarters at the end of shift. A message. Selek's face popped up as he played the message.

"We got him, Jim. We got him."

And he cried.

~*~*~

The Enterprise was called back to Earth nearly three months before the end of their mission. Jim's hands shook as he stared at the court summons. He would be called upon to testify against a known member of a terrorist organization that was quite anti-Federation. He could finally be healed as well.

Starfleet Intelligence had been alerted to the terrorist wing earlier, but a certain call from an Ambassador had put them on a hot trail. They had caught the man, Mehal Ohrst, part of the Separatist movement in the planets that were not yet part of the Federation or the Empires. Jim stared at the mug shot of the nearly crimson-hued man with dark black hair and eyes. Quite attractive. The man's MO was meeting diplomats and those in position of power, or in his case, hero status, and infiltrating their minds. Out of the seven known people three had survived the attacks. Jim and Admiral Rodgers lived through the psychic trauma, the other had not been so lucky and was currently undergoing treatment in Starfleet's sanitarium.