There is no excuse for my scary-long absence from writing, but I ask all of you who are still reading to accept my apology for it. I do want to say, though, that I will never, never actually abandon a story. I might ignore it for a few months, or write a crap ending because writer's block crushes me, but I will never leave it without an ending at all.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who continued to support me through my MIA – you know who you are, you left reviews.
(General disclaimer can be inserted here)
Waking
Alternate Universe
It's a miracle from whatever deity or deities might be out there, a fortuitous quirk of fate, Karma's reward for some good deed he forgot he did. It's a small thing, this quirk, this gift, and can be expressed in three words:
Bones is there.
Jim knows that the only reason he inhabits the body he's in now, the body that belongs to some other Jim Kirk, is that the other Jim Kirk's consciousness is gone. Jim knows the other Jim Kirk was comatose, brain-dead. Jim knows that's a serious medical problem. Jim knows that, in his universe, his Bones would be by his side, however responsive or numb or twitching or comatose his side happened to be, no matter what if he had a "serious medical problem".
Jim knows that Bones' near immediate (and he would swear that it was so immediate, it was almost like the man had transported himself) arrival at his side means that whatever universe he is in, the other Jim Kirk and the other Len McCoy are as good of friends as he and his own McCoy were.
Jim knows this is a good thing.
His certainty in that fact diminishes a bit when the other man, younger than he remembers his Bones ever being, and looking almost as wearied despite that, simply gapes instead of expressing any deep and profound joy he might feel.
(Not that Jim had ever really seen Bones express any sort of deep and profound joy towards him in his own universe – the closest he got was gentle, amused sarcasm instead of caustic, annoyed sarcasm – and maybe Jim was hoping for too much but it had been a damn long time since he had seen his best friend, any version of his best friend.)
Standing there, with his mouth open and eyes wide, the doctor looks like a fish, specifically an old-fashioned Terran goldfish, and Jim is about to tell him that (and so what if it's more important that he tell the doctor that he's actually a time-traveling, dimension-hopping, body-snatching version of the Jim Kirk he knows?) when he's interrupted.
Who are you? What the hell have you done to me?
"What?" Jim doesn't see where the voice comes from.
McCoy recovers himself then, snaps his mouth shut and his eyes back into their eyelids. "Jim…" and his voice is noticeably his, and obviously comes from him, but lacks the spirit Jim knows from his own universe's Bones, "Kid, what the hell happened to your eyes?"