Here we go people, more fun stuff. Hope you enjoy, please do review!
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The fingers of the not-Amanda's right hand that were clamped around Spock's mouth extended, digging into the softness of his cheek, four spots of blood gushing sluggishly from the puncture wounds in the flesh. Jim watched with eyes that spit hatred, but also glittered with fear. Her teeth peeked out of too-thin lips, a slow smile dragging its way across them, red liquid trickling slowly from her face as the smile stretched the skin out of proportion. Jim watched in quiet despair and desperation as with each red drop of liquid onto Spock's hair, the boy's eyes went wider, and he felt his heart clench.
"Let him go."
"'Let him go'? Oh, Kirk, I'm not all that sure that I want to."
"Do it. You'll only be given one chance."
"One chance before what, what can you possibly do?"
Jim's eyes narrowed, his face locked in an expression of hatred, but he didn't do anything. He couldn't do anything. Should he make a move, Spock's face would easily be ripped from his skull, and that thing knew it. The one who wore Amanda's face was even drumming her fingers on Spock's shoulder lightly, a slight smile on her face.
"What do you want from him?" he finally asked in desperation.
Amanda's face pulled into an even wider sneer, the red blood long having trickled into her mouth, staining her teeth. "Nothing."
"Then why-"
"Kirk, there's no reason to ruin the surprise. Not yet. I might as well make it simple and state that I'm not going to tell you who I am, or what my goal is. But, I will tell you what I'm going to do to your crew when I kill this little shit and take over his body. I'm going to take him, and I'm going to sabotage your ship from the inside out. I'm going to kill them one by one, and use the genius that is contained in this body and mind to make it all look like accidents. I'm going to tear them all apart from the inside out. I'm going to choke the life out of the Doctor, and Captain, do you know what the best part is? I'm going to make you watch."
The laughter that bubbled forth from that mouth was horrible in the fact that that mouth was more accustomed to laughter that was cheerful, laughter that was pure. It rose and fell in a cackling wave, and Jim was reminded of every evil villain he had ever seen in any movie he had watched. But what the movies never showed was exactly how much that laughter boiled in your blood, how much it made your scalp prickle and your hands twitch. The way Spock's ears perked and his eyes clenched showed that better than anything could have. But Jim didn't do anything other than glare, silently wishing that that thing would burst into flames.
That thought was like someone had jumpstarted his brain. He glared harder, imagining for her dress to catch fire, but Amanda only let out one of those laughs. "Is that really the best you can do? Your little tricks won't work on me, Kirk. Not when I'm the one in control. However… I can do it to you."
Everything was still for a moment, and then a pain lit up deep in his gut, and he doubled over, a short grunt of pain leaving his mouth. It felt like something was eating him from the inside out, tearing him apart. He wrapped his hands around his abdomen in desperation, letting out a hiss of pain. He couldn't see, he couldn't think, his hands tightened and he curled into the fetal position on the ground, hot tears of pain beginning to slide down his face. He refused to scream.
A flash of pain made him curl up tighter, a gasp choking out between his teeth. He couldn't breathe. He knew he was going to start hyperventilating, he knew he was going to die, and he couldn't help but feel like he had failed. Some help he was.
He was barely aware of a shriek of pain that wasn't his own outside of his own pain. That shriek turned into loud vile cursing, and just like that the pain was gone. Next minute he was being pulled to his feet, and he stumbled desperately, trying to force himself upright, trying to help the one pulling him along by moving.
He could still feel the echo of that agony tearing him apart.
They rushed through the door, and found themselves in another memory, Amanda once again screaming at them, but Jim noticed that her hand had blood gushing out of it. Each memory they ran through was filled with a laughing Amanda or Jim or Scotty or Sulu or Chekov and in each and every memory one of them tore into Spock, and one by one his memories were blackened. He threw one final door open, and they were once again in blackness, another barrier towering in front of them. Jim desperately forced himself to breathe, unable to believe that he was still alive. That they had escaped. He sat down, placing his head between his knees and breathing heavily, trying to gain control.
The sound of vomiting made him look up so fast he had whiplash. Spock was on his hands and knees, retching horribly into the blackness around them. Jim focused on the color and the smell and his eyes widened. That blood from her hand…
"You bit her…"
Spock spat futilely one last time before looking up. His mouth was stained red, blood trickling out before he wiped his mouth quickly, looking absolutely disgusted with both himself, and the flavor. Jim blinked, and just stared at him, both highly flattered that he had done something that went against everything a Vulcan stood for, and absolutely horrified. Green blood had trickled down from his right cheek, mixing slightly with the red, smearing across his cheek to dribble down his chin. One of the nastiest uses of Christmas colors ever.
"Spock…" he said softly and moved a little closer, trying to find something he could do. Spock flinched slightly, looking ashamed, and Jim blinked, trying to find out what could have caused that.
"It was…hurting you, Jim. It could have killed you."
Jim realized then that he felt like he had to defend himself, and reached out, blinking slightly before looking at his hand. A moment later the feeling of a warm wet cloth filled his hand and he grinned at it, before beginning to gently dab at the bloody wounds on the boy's face and wipe the blood from the small Vulcan's mouth.
"It's okay. That was…that was very brave of you," Jim said softly. "Thank you." He smiled then. "You seem to have a habit for saving my life even when you're really small."
Spock looked up at him, and his eyes held something unidentifiable in them, and then they widened. Jim stared at him in confusion, and then Spock made a brief aborted motion. He almost seemed to want to reach up to his collar, but stopped, instead he gave a short spasm, and gagged. Jim realized with the dawning of panic that he wasn't breathing. Instead he almost seemed to be choking on something.
….
McCoy and Chapel hurried over to the two, eyes focused on the readings before they had even reached them, McCoy ordering what he needed from the other nurses. They moved as an efficient team, trying to calm heart rate, respiration, adrenaline levels. While it had never been overly successful, there was enough of a drop to make it worth it. They didn't know what would happen if they didn't.
But then the doors whooshed open, and one of the nurses looked up, letting out a gasp as what she was seeing caught up with her brain. McCoy didn't look up, he was a trained doctor, nothing save extreme bodily harm or dismemberment would split him from his patients, not unless someone else came up with something worse. But when Chapel took the instruments from him, automatically hypoing Jim with the proper drug (which he was not allergic to) McCoy knew that something else had come up.
He looked up, and locked eyes on the other biobed where a sight met his eyes that almost made his heart stop.
Scotty lay there, his red uniform ripped and scorched, blood and burns staining his face and running down his torso. He was unconscious, but that didn't hide the pain on his face. It also failed to hide the heavy bags under his eyes, and the way that face was lined with stress.
"Shit."
There was a flurry of movement, nurses broke away to grab the equipment that he would need, another was running preliminary scans over him, and yet another was talking to a shell-shocked red-shirted engineer. Judging from the blood stains that covered him, with no hint of a wound on him, he had been the one who carried Scotty to the sickbay. McCoy was admittedly a bit peeved that he had carried him due to the fact that he didn't know about any internal injuries that could have been compromised. But there was no help for it. It would have taken too long to send someone to let them know. He damned the communications system being knocked out for the eightieth time before McCoy moved forward quickly, listening to their readings.
Internal bleeding and bruising, multiple fractures, a mild concussion, second and third degree burns, all of which had been compromised and aggravated with the move to sickbay. McCoy wanted to rant and rave, he wanted to shout at the man for moving him. He did none of that. Instead he set to compartmentalizing that aspect of him away, leaving him with nothing more or less than what he needed in order to save Scotty.
The Lieutenant Commander coughed, blood splattering his chest, and a nurse moved into position to clear his airway. As time wore on and they fought harder to save him, more and more people moved away from Spock and Kirk, their thoughts on someone that they could affect. That they could save.
They were deep in saving Scotty when Spock's biobed went off louder and stronger than before. Chapel broke off from the rest, walking over to see what could be the problem, and her eyes focused on the fact that he was choking. She realized with a kind of suppressed horror that he was choking on his own vomit.
She hurriedly moved over to him, desperately moving Jim's hand enough to begin to clear his airway. Bile trickled out, and she tilted him more into a recovery position. Letting it come out, letting him breathe again. As soon as she was certain that he was no longer vomiting or in danger of choking she went to move back to Scotty, but then noticed something else. That vomit had mixed with his own green blood, running down his face.
Her eyes reflected nothing more than the strictest form of confusion. But then McCoy shouted for something else and she rushed over to help.
When Scotty was finally out of the danger zone and was resting quietly, McCoy's shirt stained with about as much red as Scotty was himself they fell back, setting up alarms for when he woke. Chapel took that time to move McCoy over to look Spock over. He took a look at the source of that blood, the both of them cleaning the bedding as he thought.
He sat down to stare deeply at that face, looking at the wounds and trying to figure out what the hell they could be. They were deep, digging into his cheek as though something had stabbed into it.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and then widened, focusing on Jim's hand and in particular his fingers. He turned his eyes to the wounds, and blinked before letting out a soft curse.
"What is it, Doctor?" Chapel was still in professional mode, and McCoy ignored her for a moment, taking his own hand and holding it near where those holes were, not touching, but hovering over it. He gave another curse.
"What is it?" Her voice was rather tart, unwilling to be ignored.
"Do you see this? It's like someone gripped his face and tried to tear it off," he finally said softly. Chapel's eyes focused on it as well, and her mouth dropped slightly. "These things that are happening to them…it's obvious that it's a reaction to something that happens in their minds. This…this has to be something that happened in there. But…Jim, Jim would never do this. There… Dammit, this sounds crazy as hell, but there has to be someone else in there."
"But how could that be possible?"
"I don't know, dammit. I don't know who, I don't know what, I don't know how, but I know that it's there, and I know that it's unfriendly. I also know that both Jim and Spock are stuck with it," he finally snarled out, his accent thickening in his anger.
Chapel sat back, her eyes flickering over Jim and Spock's faces, searching for any sign of what was going on in there. Hoping to be able to see that they were winning, that they were beating back whatever the hell it was. She saw nothing.
…..
Scotty woke up to see two ringed hazel eyes staring down at him, the wrinkles in that face prominent with worry and stress, what looked like five days worth of stubble on his face. "Glad to see you're finally among the livin', you idiot."
Scotty let out a cough, and tried to sit up. "How long I been out, Doctor?"
"Lay your ass back down, you ain't goin' anywhere for a bit."
Scotty glared up at McCoy when he was pushed back, but McCoy's glare was even more prominent. In fact it was something Scotty had to admit was almost terrifying.
"Look, McCoy, I have ta'…"
"You don't have to do nothin'. The only thing you have to do is recover."
"But Doctor, the warp drive…the ship… If I don' do anythin'…"
"What, you mean like blow yourself up?" McCoy asked with a raised eyebrow.
Scotty stared up at him with wide eyes, "I didna'…"
"Scotty, you've run yourself ragged. How long as it been since you've gotten any sleep? How long has it been since you last ate?"
The Scotsman didn't make eye contact, instead looking at anything other than the doctor.
"Luckily for us both I don't need to ask. Your stomach was empty, Scotty. You've been runnin' yourself on empty for two days at the least; you've been goin' even longer without any proper sleep. It's no wonder you blundered that so badly. You scared your Engineers I hope you know. Absolutely terrified them. One minute you were making some adjustments to the warp drive, next minute you were being blown across the room. You're just lucky you trained 'em so well that they were able to stop it from deterioratin' further."
Scotty wasn't looking at him, his eyes focused on his toes, the blue unfocused.
"I know you're worried about the Captain, I know you're worried about the Commander and you want to help them, but killin' yourself ain't worth it, Scotty. You need to sleep, you need to eat."
"Like ye've been doin'?" Scotty said softly, looking up at him finally at that.
McCoy paused, and then gave a slight smile. "Touché. We're a great pair of fools, Scotty."
Scot nodded, a snickering smile on his mouth as well, and then turned his head. His eyes locked on Jim and Spock next to him, and his fingers tightened in his bedding. "Any change?"
"Aside from the fact that there's something in Spock's mind preyin' on 'em both… Nothin'. They're still completely out of it."
"Do ye think they'll be okay?"
McCoy was silent for a moment, staring at the two of them and let out a sigh. "They're the best Command duo in the 'Fleet. They're the equivalent of family to each other. If anyone can survive whatever shit is going on, it's them. Jim. Spock. They can, they will. I suppose the only thing we can do for now is have faith."
"Faith's all well and good, Doc; but I wan' somethin' a little more tangible."
McCoy laughed, and grinned at him. "Don't we all. Seriously though, I'm not tellin' you to stop workin'. Just so long as yer properly healed," he growled, and Scotty gave him a grin.
"Only if ye promise to get yourself a decent meal and a good night's sleep," Scotty answered.
McCoy glared at him. "Now who's supposed to be the Doctor here, me or you?"
"Well, it ain't my fault ya can't take care of yourself proper," Scotty said with a grin.
The two of them grumbled back and forth for a while, until McCoy realized what he was doing. He hadn't felt more relaxed since the Hobgoblin had been sitting with him in Jim's quarters, the two of them bantering back and forth and working to make the Captain laugh. He paused for a moment, and then gave Scotty a quiet smile. "Thanks."
"No problem Doc', but do take a shower. Ya stink somethin' awful."
McCoy cuffed him and laughed, but went off to do just that, after making sure Chapel stayed to make sure Scotty didn't try and run off.
He felt like he could finally relax.
