From this part on, things are going to start getting darker. Not deepest depths of hell dark, but still pretty dark.
McCoy sprinted through the corridors, knocking down several midshipmen as he ran. He had only the one hypo in his hand, having known instinctively what the emergency was as soon as he got the call from Captain Pike.
Goddamnit, Jim Kirk was an idiot.
And Leonard McCoy was going to hell.
He thumbed open the door to Pike's quarters with the foreknowledge of someone who had done so on frequent occasions. Pike's; Jim's: he knew them both.
The door slid open and he charged in, dropping to his knees beside Pike who had both arms wrapped around Kirk's chest as the kid seized violently.
"I thought you gave him the damn shot!" McCoy yelled at his captain as he forced Jim's head to one side and exposed the underside of his neck, tendons taught and straining against his skin.
"Why would I give it to him?" Pike snapped back, breaking off from the encouraging words he had been whispering to Jim in order to glare at McCoy. "That's your damn job."
McCoy didn't show that the hit had found a target, pressing the edge of his hypo against Jim's neck and delivering the drugs directly into his bloodstream. Almost instantly, the violent seizures began to taper off. "Computer said they'd been administered. Since I didn't do it and you're the only other person with access…" McCoy trailed off, checking Jim's vitals and frowning at what he saw. "You think he tampered with the system?" He asked, lowering the tricorder and pressing the back of his hand to Jim's forehead. "Why would you do that?"
"Knowing Jim?" Pike asked, loosening the hold of one arm so he could ease the sleeve of his discarded over shirt out from between Jim's teeth. Last time the kid had seized he'd almost bitten his tongue off and McCoy was pleased to see Pike had actually retained some damn sense. "Probably to see if he could."
"Goddamnit." McCoy muttered.
The seizure died into muscle spasms, then eventually stopped entirely as Jim lost consciousness. "Help me get him into bed." Pike ordered, taking Jim under the armpits and waiting for McCoy to grab his legs.
The two of them maneuvered him through the shared bathroom into the First Officer's quarters. McCoy let Pike take most of Jim's weight so he could pull back the sheets on the bed and they could manhandle him into a more comfortable position. Once settled against the pillows, Jim seemed to relax and curled over on his side. He wouldn't wake for a good few hours if experience had any say and McCoy had already resigned himself to hovering by the kid's bedside like the old mother hen Jim accused him of being.
He couldn't help but reach out and brush strands of the kid's damp hair back off his forehead. "This is goddamn inhumane." He said, more to himself than Pike.
That didn't stop the captain responding. "What choice do we have?" Pike stood in the shadows of the doorway, his arms crossed and his expression blank. McCoy hoped the bastard couldn't sleep at night. He sure as hell couldn't.
"This is not what I signed up for." McCoy growled, his chest aching as Jim leaned into the warmth of McCoy's hand.
"You're a grown man, McCoy." Pike said coolly. "You know as well as I do that things aren't black and white."
"This," McCoy hissed, pointing down at Jim, "is entirely black and white. We need him, but we don't trust him, so we keep him on a goddamn leash."
"And what's the alternative?" Pike said wearily. They had had this conversation so, so many times, but McCoy was the one who had to look Jim in the eye when he injected the kid with poison three times a week. "We let him leave? The enemies he has, he'd be dead within a week. You knew exactly what you were doing when we started this."
God help him, he did. He was CMO, a doctor: he didn't have the excuse of just following orders. Jim Kirk had cut a bloody path from the middle of the Klingon Empire right up to the Federation's doorstep and he'd left chaos in his wake. The thought of utilizing those skills, of having Kirk be a weapon for good instead of a mercenary for the highest bidder… well McCoy had his own reasons for discarding his oath, and he'd justified them right up until he'd followed Pike into that damned shuttle and realized just how far off the reservation he'd gone.
By then it was too late to turn back. They'd been looking for Kirk for months and when they finally found him the orders had been clear: they were to use him, or discard him.
So they had, and McCoy had to learn to live with the fact that he'd created the chains that essentially kept a man in slavery. He might have been able to do it if Jim hadn't been…Jim. McCoy wasn't sure if the kid had Stockholm Syndrome or was just a really good actor. He wasn't sure if they were going to get him killed, or if he'd be the one killing them.
He wasn't sure what was worse.
"How's he ever going to earn our trust if we don't give him the chance?" McCoy said for what felt like the hundredth time. "How are we supposed to earn his?"
"This isn't about trust, McCoy." Pike said sadly. "It's about winning."
"No matter the cost?" McCoy asked bitterly. Jim's chest rose and fell peacefully. He'd be fine in a day or so and would stay that way so long as he continued to walk into medical with a smile on his face and an outstretched arm for McCoy to inject.
Pike sighed and moved away from the door. "Like I said: it's not that black and white. Stay with him for now. I'll be in to relieve you in a couple of hours." He closed the door behind him without further comment.
"Yes sir." McCoy said bitterly, alone now with his guilt and Jim's soft breathing.
Jim woke after three hours. It wasn't a gradual thing: simply one minute he was breathing deeply, and the next his eyes were open, alert and cautious. He caught glimpse of McCoy and his face twisted into a smile. "Hey Bones."
"Hey yourself, kid," McCoy answered gruffly. Jim yawned and stretched, muscles clearly stiff after their earlier ordeal. "You wanna tell me why you did that?"
Jim looked at him with the same innocent eyes McCoy had first seen, before he'd been able to match the pale, bloody young man they had found in the shuttle with the man's whose name inspired fear across the galaxy. "Did what?" He asked. It was times like this McCoy was sure that Jim was that good a liar, and that one day he'd make his way from the bridge down to engineering, butchering everyone in his path.
"Don't bullshit me, kid." McCoy scowled. "I know you tampered with my files. Made me think you'd had your shot when you clearly didn't. Why would you do that? You know what happens. You have to take your shot every forty-eight hours."
Jim looked down at his hands, his shoulders hunched. Goddamn, McCoy wished he knew what was real: the sweet, friendly kid, or the bloodthirsty maniac.
"I just," Jim said softly, his voice matching the quiet darkness of his room. "I just wanted to know how long I could push it." He looked up and met McCoy's gaze earnestly. "In case something like Cheron happens again." McCoy couldn't stop the shudder than ran through him. Cheron had been an unprecedented clusterfuck. Jim and his entire security team had been taken and interrogated by rogue Klingon agents. It had taken Pike and Spock four days to find them and though Jim had done an impressive job at orchestrating an escape, four days was too long for him to be without his shot. He'd been practically comatose by the time he'd been brought to McCoy and they'd almost lost him, not because of the considerable damage inflicted by his captors, but by their own noose they kept around Jim's neck. "You said it yourself: it was impossible to tell whether the drugs just reached their natural half-life or deterioration was sped up by the way they smacked me around a bit."
"I told you then, kid. I'm not letting shit like that happen to you again." McCoy said stubbornly.
Jim shot him a look that made it clear just how naive he thought McCoy was being. "You can't make that promise, Bones. I had to know."
"And you couldn't have maybe, I don't know… done it in a way that didn't nearly kill you?" McCoy sighed.
"Guess it worked faster than I thought it would." Jim shrugged, then turned a blinding grin on McCoy. "Why, Bones? Did I scare you?"
"You constantly scare me, you damn brat." McCoy huffed. "Next time you want to experiment with your own damn health, tell me alright? At least that way I can fix you back up again when it blows up in your face."
"You're just saying that because you'd miss me." Jim beamed at him. "Admit it, you big softie."
"The doctor isn't the only person who'd miss you, Number One." Pike said. McCoy hadn't heard him enter the room and cursed stealthy bastards and their sneaky habits. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine." Jim said firmly. "No damage, right Doc?"
"This time," McCoy agreed reluctantly, "but don't think that lets you off the hook, you reckless idiot."
"Indeed." McCoy shuddered at the utter frostiness of Pike's tone. Jim's posture was still as relaxed as it had been before Pike had arrived, but McCoy had seen him burst into action in a split second and the kid was always ready for it. "Doctor, if you'll excuse us, Number One and I have some things to talk about."
"I don't think-"
"Leave, McCoy: that's an order." Pike growled.
McCoy could have stayed, stood his ground and done what? Proved how defiant he was? That Jim could trust him to have his back?
McCoy's cowardice was already established. Nothing he did now would change that.
"Yes sir."
McCoy couldn't look Jim in the eye this time, and left without a further word.
He didn't see Jim until the kid came bounding into sickbay two days later, sleeve already rolled up and a brilliant smile in place as he flirted with each and everyone of McCoy's nurses. "Bones!" Jim greeted, full of a warm enthusiasm than made McCoy feel sick.
McCoy loaded Jim's shot, clutching the hypo harder than normal in an attempt to stop his hand from shaking.
"You okay, Jim?" McCoy asked quietly, taking Jim's wrist in his hand and turning his arm so he could press the hypo in place. "Pike didn't…"
"Pike didn't what, Bones? Have me keelhauled?" Jim's blue eyes were bright and wide and playful and McCoy wanted to shake him until he saw something real. "I swear you have the world's most overly dramatic imagination."
"No, I just," flustered, he rubbed his thumb over the spot on Jim's arm where the hypo had delivered its load. The skin was blemish free and innocuous. He looked up and met Jim's gaze, hoping that some of what he was feeling was clear to see. Guilt, maybe, or sorrow. "You know you can come to me, right kid?" He said in quiet earnest, well aware of the hypocrisy of his words.
Jim grabbed his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "Bones, I don't know what you're thinking but it isn't like that. Pike isn't like that. He's as soft as you are under all that badass captain shit."
McCoy wanted desperately to believe that, he did. He liked Pike, goddamnit.
"If you say so, Jim." He said reluctantly. "If you say so."
Jim stood and rolled his sleeve down. "Well I do." He said brightly. "And you're getting maudlin in your old age. Come on, we're about to enter Cardassian Space. You gonna come make sure I don't start a war or sit there being a grumpy old sawbones?"
McCoy grabbed the olive branch and clung to it desperately. "Enough with the old, you insolent brat."
"You're ancient, Bones. Practically decrepit." Jim sniggered, pulling on McCoy's arm until they were out of sickbay and meandering their way to the bridge.
"I'm thirty four." McCoy said dryly. Nearly ten years older than the kid bouncing down the hall at his side.
"See," Jim smirked. "Old."
"Yeah, so what's that make Pike?" McCoy snorted.
Jim's smile sharpened. "Pike? He's got one foot in the grave already."