A/N: Here's a nice little Thanksgiving treat early since I'll be away for the holiday! I'm thrilled that everyone loved 'Ellie' so much...I almost like her more than Jim and Bones...almost. I imagine this is the chapter you've all been waiting for and I hope you all enjoy it! Only 3 more chapters left after this!

###

"How was his appointment?" Ellie watched her son as he reheated leftovers from dinner.

"PT kicked his ass; I made him take a pain pill."

"I saw him passed out on the couch," she set down the bags of groceries she was carrying. "Anything else?"

"He had some more dermal and liver regen," McCoy sat down with his bowl at the counter.

McCoy knew his mother was studying him; it was unnerving the way she always knew everything. It's like she had been there to see Jim's disappointment when he remained seated at the clinic's waiting room when Jim's name was called. It took everything in him to quell the urge to go into the exam room with him and take control of the appointment, but after the incident on the Enterprise he had decided to give up being Jim's doctor for the time being. It was draining him physically and emotionally. He wasn't giving everything up completely, but he was going to take a backseat in Jim's continuing treatment. Before they had left for Georgia he had sent the clinic Jim's medical records and reviewed everything they did during the check up, but he hadn't laid a single hand on him. It was what they both needed.

"That's all?" Ellie's eyebrow arched suspiciously.

McCoy eyed his mother and continued to pick at his lunch.

"There's no shame in doing what you need to do to take care of yourself."

"How do you know everything?"

"I play Bridge with the receptionist and she sent me a comm."

"I knew she was staring while I was waiting for Jim. She needs to mind her own business."

"Well, if the tension between the two of you wasn't thick enough to cut with a knife maybe people would mind their own business. Besides what do you expect from on old Southern lady?"

"It's that bad?" he was absentmindedly stirring in circles.

"I may be old, but I'm not blind. I know he feels guilty for being the one you saved and I know you feel guilty for doing it."

"Should I have let him die, momma?" there was a flash of the innocent boy that used to run around the house screaming.

"What do you think, Leonard?" Ellie had stopped unpacking the groceries.

"He is my best friend, what did he expect me to do? That bastard didn't even have the decency to say good-bye. I didn't find out until they brought the body bag."

"He will come around. This isn't easy for him either."

McCoy continued to pick at his lunch until he finally gave up and pushed the bowl away from him without a bite taken.

"You know, the tree house is still out there. Why don't you go sit outside for a little while? Jim will probably sleep for a few more hours. I'll call Jocelyn and tell her to bring Joanna tomorrow instead."

"Joanna will be upset for missing some Uncle Jim time."

"I guess you two will have to make it up to her then."

The pangs of guilt he felt for bailing on his daughter were quickly pushed down, and he grabbed a bottle of bourbon he knew his mother had hidden in the cabinets on his way out of the house. He turned around to see her watching him from the window.

The tree house was at the back of the yard in a giant oak with drooping limbs that reached over a small creek. It wasn't fancy or anything nice, it was just a platform nestled in the branches but it had provided countless hours of adventures when he was a child. The ladder nailed into the tree looked a little worse for wear but it supported his weight easily enough as he climbed to the platform. He felt comfortable enough to sit on the edge with his legs hanging over after a few test jumps on the boards.

He'd never been more grateful to inhale the sweet Georgian air after everything he'd been through over the past few months. His life had been barreling forward at full speed ever since he got his orders to ship out after the attack at Starfleet HQ. It was soothing just to stare off into the field behind their property and watch the breeze run through the trees. The gentle current of the creek babbled softly enough to provide the much-needed stillness in his mind.

###

The shock of a cool hand on his forehead pulled him back to awareness. He relaxed into the pillow after seeing that he was on the sofa at McCoy's childhood home. The one nightmare free night was amazing, but it had yet to be achieved again.

"Jim?" Ellie was standing over him.

" 'm okay," his voice was thick with sleep.

"Nightmare?"

The lack of an answer was an answer in of itself.

"You were thrashing. I didn't want you to fall off the sofa and hurt yourself."

He noticed that the sun was going down, "What time is it?"

"Just after seven. Do you feel like eating?"

"Not right now," his stomach was still twisted from the nightmares.

Ellie's lips pursed, but she didn't push. His sore muscles protested the movement to sit up and Ellie ended up having to help him upright.

"Where's Bones?"

"He's out back. I was just about to take him some sandwiches; do you want to take them to him?"

None of the McCoys seemed to be particularly good at subtlety. It was clear that Ellie wanted the two of them to talk things out. Now was as good of a time as any. He couldn't take the tension between the two of them anymore.

"Yes ma'am."

"Great. You take a few minutes to wake up and I'll get everything ready."

After making a quick trip to the bathroom, Ellie sent him out with a bag packed full of food and blankets. This whole set up seemed ridiculous, but if this is what it took to repair things then it had to be. He shouldn't have been so selfish and nearly pushed his best friend to the edge. Despite having a fervent aversion to doctors, it had hurt when McCoy stepped down from being his doctor. The man had been there with him through everything.

The big oak tree was illuminated picturesquely with the sun not having set yet. It was summer so there was another solid hour and a half of sunlight left. He couldn't make out McCoy until he was right up on the tree; the drooping branches had hid the man from sight. McCoy was sitting with his back turned to the yard staring out into the distance. Jim mused that many awesome adventures were had at this tree.

"Permission to come aboard?" Jim heaved the bag higher up on his shoulder.

The boards of the platform creaked as the occupant jumped in surprise. There were the sounds of a scramble before the doctor's head peered over the edge.

"Shit, Jim. Give a guy a heart attack."

"Your mom sent food."

"Jim, you should be inside resting."

Jim couldn't help but roll his eyes, "Can I come up or not?"

"I'll come down to you, I don't want you falling and breaking something."

"Bones," he ground out while grabbing onto the first rung of the ladder. "I'm not going to break."

It was a slow climb up with his weakened muscles, but he made it. He unceremoniously dumped the bag Ellie packed and heaved himself onto the platform. McCoy must've been hungry since he was digging for the food seconds after the bag hit the boards.

"How long have you been out here?" Jim maneuvered to sit over the edge with McCoy.

"Uh, a while," McCoy said with a mouthful of a pimento cheese sandwich.

McCoy had already downed two sandwiches before Jim even made a move to grab the thermos of soup Ellie had packed for him. Ellie had packed enough food to last them a long time; she'd even packed several thermoses of tea for him and coffee for her son. He played with the cap while McCoy worked through sandwich number three.

"Hungry, Bones?" he couldn't remember seeing the good doctor eat that fast before.

He got a raised eyebrow and a questioning look at his own food as a reply. The McCoy stare was guaranteed to make someone feel guilty so he sipped at his own dinner. Truthfully he was hungry, it just never sat well afterwards and that turned him off to the idea of eating.

"It'll get better, Jim," McCoy had found one of his thermoses of coffee.

"I know. 'These things take time'," he rolled his eyes while reciting McCoy's mantra while he had been in the hospital.

"Jim—"

"Bones, I understand. I really do."

The pair hit an awkward silence as they finished their picnic dinner. Jim managed to eat half of the soup while McCoy devoured a slice of leftover cobbler.

"Are you cold?" McCoy broke the silence after eyeing the blankets at the bottom of the bag.

"I'm fine, Bones," he was cold but he wasn't going to say anything.

"I don't want you to catch pneumonia. You're shit immune system won't help you."

"Dammit, Bones. Stop it, just stop it," Jim snapped. "I'm not made of glass, I'm not going to break."

That was the spark needed to ignite everything.

"In case you didn't know, you did break. Jim, you died. As in, in a fucking body bag died. They only brought you to me so I could do your fucking autopsy," McCoy all but screamed in Jim's face.

"You think I don't know?" anger flashed across blue eyes.

"Jim—"

"No! We both need to let this out. Bones, I know I died. I was there. I remember everything. I felt everything."

"What do you mean?" McCoy was stunned.

"I mean, that I remember dying. I remember what it was like to have my organs fail one by one and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I remember the pain and the fear. I had never been more scared in my entire life, and then it all went away. It was fucking scary. One minute you're there and the next its blank."

"Why didn't you call me?" hazel eyes were glistening with moisture.

"To watch me die? What could you have done?"

McCoy was silent.

"That's right, nothing. I wasn't going to do that to you. I wasn't going to make you watch me die."

"Jim, I never got to say goodbye. No one told me until you showed up in sickbay in that damn body bag. I hadn't been that heartbroken since Joanna was taken from me."

"I was trying to spare you that."

The drawl in McCoy's voice was becoming more pronounced as the conversation grew more intense. "Well, you sure as hell made it worse. Jim, I may not have been able to do anything, but I deserved to have been there. I thought we were friends."

"That's why I couldn't do it to you," Jim pleaded. "No one deserves to watch their friends die while they're powerless to do anything about it."

"But you had no problems with Spock being there…"

"Yes I called Spock instead of you. I needed to make sure that the ship was okay. I will be sure to make it a point to inform you the next time I'm dying so you can watch me piss and shit myself as I lose control of my muscles," Jim mocked.

This only angered McCoy more, "Don't you dare say that. You have no appreciation for your life and those in it. One day I'm not going to be able to fix it and you really will be dead."

"I knew what I was getting myself into."

"Are you sure? You seemed to have given no thought to hopping across the galaxy to chase Pike's killer and then throwing yourself into a warp core."

Jim was doing his best to control his anger, "Is this what it's really about then?"

"No, Jim, it's not. It's about you throwing yourself at death without a thought to anyone else in your life. Can you even imagine what would've happened to the crew if you didn't come back?"

Jim was silent, he had given this some thought and every iteration ended up with them surviving. Even then he couldn't save everyone.

"They would've survived, Bones. They did survive. I did what I did so that you and everyone else could live."

"At your own expense?"

"You're here aren't you, or would you've rather been incinerated in the atmosphere? Even with everything I still couldn't save everyone. It wasn't enough," he dropped his head to stare at the creek underneath them.

"Don't you start this guilt trip shit too. You made your point quite clearly on the ship the other day and I'm not going to listen to it a second time."

"Bones—"

"No. I'm nipping this shit in the bud now. I'm tired of it. Yes, I know you feel guilty for all those people. No, it wasn't your fault. No, I'm not sorry for saving your sorry ass. Yes, I saved you because you are my friend. Yes, I wish I could've saved more, but I couldn't. I did the best I could, and I'm sorry it wasn't enough for everyone else. Jim, I didn't even know if I could save you. I had never felt so helpless before until I sealed you in that damn cryotube. I knew that you had done more with smaller chances."

Jim was left speechless at the doctor's tirade. This was what he had kept inside him all along. His deep sense of resentment was responsible for letting the guilt fester inside his friend. That had been worse than dying on him.

"You froze me?"

"Yeah, Jim, I froze you. It was the only thing I could think of to stop your tissues from decaying. It freaked me the fuck out every time I saw your face under all the ice."

"I'm sorry…"

"Jim, I sat with you day in and day out, holding your hand so that you wouldn't be alone. I broke every ethical standard I took an oath to uphold when I transfused that plasma into you. I cut into you to keep you alive longer. Do you know what it even felt like to see your heart not beating? To see your brain not functioning? To see your organs tearing under my fingers? I knew I couldn't save everyone else, but I knew everything would be okay if I could save you. I had to save you. And then after everything, you wished you were dead. I went through all of that for nothing."

McCoy wasn't even trying to contain the tears running down his face; it was making moisture well up in his own eyes. He had no right to be mad his friend from pulling a stunt from his own bag of tricks. The rules of life and death were firm, but McCoy had simply ignored them and brought him back. He hadn't even been grateful to be alive.

No one else was given another chance. Make it count.

Jim finally spoke after several moments of silence. "I wish we could have saved them, Bones, but I finally understand. Out of all of those people, I was the only one who had a friend crazy and smart enough to bring me back. I'm sorry I didn't realize it sooner and I'm not going to waste what you gave me. You deserved better after everything you did."

"Jim, I know you're upset about all of those lives lost. I know you feel guilty; I really understand it. Every time I lose a patient I feel it, like there was always something more I could've done but I know I have to let it go to keep going or the guilt will eat me alive. It's okay to feel this way, but it's not okay to let it consume you. At the end of the day you have to know that you did the best you could."

Jim finally learned the lesson he was meant to during the Kobayashi Maru; it was a lesson McCoy had already learned. There would be unwinnable situations and getting hung up on that wouldn't allow him to move forward. It wasn't about winning; it was about being able to continue in the face of failure. The entire weight of his guilt and resentment melted away off his shoulders.

"Bones," he took his best friend's hand, "I'm glad you saved me."

"You little shit," McCoy pulled him into a fierce hug. "I'll always be here for you, as will the rest of the crew."

"I was so selfish. I'm sorry for everything," his head fit perfectly into McCoy's neck.

"Me too, Jim."

A chilly breeze swept through the trees causing Jim to shiver. McCoy broke the embrace and pulled the blankets over the two of them. They noticed that the stars had come out so they laid down on the boards to gaze at them. The Enterprise was somewhere up there waiting for her Captain and her next adventure.

"You'll be back up there soon enough, Jim."

"I know," he gave the hand in his a firm squeeze.