Title: Things that Never Happened I: Blue
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
oOo oOo oOo
Interlude: Trying to Weather the Fall
The nights get cool underground and Len wakes up shivering. The fire has gone out. He crawls to his knees and tries to remake it. It's been a long time since he's fumbled over this procedure, but the night has stolen all the heat in his body, since he went to sleep wet and without the stiff layer of grimy clothes which retained heat so well. Dirt is an excellent insulator.
His fingers are icy, barely obeying even the simplest commands. They fumble with the steel knife and flint. The spark doesn't come and he frowns, attempting to strike the flint harder. Nothing happens. He continues to work, the strikes ringing with hollow insistence in the darkness.
A hand covers his and Len looks up at Spock. The Vulcan meets his eyes and one of his brows kicks up. Then, he takes the flint and strikes it. Even Spock gets no results. Len watches the Vulcan narrow his focus until his gaze alone can light the fire. Of course, it doesn't. Pleasant little myths and colloquialisms are nothing more than wastes of breath underground. Only Spock can coax them out of Len.
Len remembers a time when Spock hated his strange turns of phrase. But when Len stopped talking like that, Spock started insisting on it. Spock's very focused on the sorts of little things that keep Len human. Keep him a facsimile of the man he used to be. Len supposes he should be grateful. After all, without Spock, he'd be a body in some ditch. He'd have died drunk, mourning the loss of a life he hadn't even really known that he loved. There would be no more earth, no more future for Leonard McCoy. He would just be a body in a mass grave, and that would be the end of it. Nothing more.
There are times when Len hates Spock for keeping him alive and capable of feeling.
They sit and watch Spock work. Len rubs his fingers and flexes them, encouraging the blood flow. Finally, Len takes the flint from the Vulcan. Spock looks up at him and comes close to frowning. He hates it when he's unable to do something properly. Len strikes the flint and, after a minute, finally gets results. The fire restarts and they feed it. The shack warms.
They lay back down, but don't sleep. Len says, "Guess we knew the day would come, didn't we?"
Spock stares at the ceiling.
"I almost had myself believing that if you knew someone ranked, someone like Ny, you wouldn't get the Kamikaze jobs unless you volunteered."
Spock stares at the ceiling.
"I know that the resistance is important. Hell, it's more important than anything. If we want a future for this galaxy, if we want to see the stars and other races again, we have to overthrow the Pacifists." Len closes his eyes and then opens them again, realizing that the shuttering effect doesn't close out anything. He watches the shadows writhe and dance on the tarp above their heads. "It's different when it's your life on the line, though."
Spock shifts, and for a moment it seems he'll look at Len. He doesn't. He stares at the ceiling.
"I don't want to die," Len says, pondering the words and the effort it takes to say them. He feels like a coward, but he needs to tell someone. Spock won't tell his secret, not even if he could talk. "I don't want you to die." That's harder to say, because it comes close to other admissions. They're things Len can't even put into words. Doesn't think that words like that have been invented. All he knows is that something squeezes at his chest when Spock looks at him a certain way, and it feels like his intestines are going to fall out when the Vulcan gets close enough.
And he has never felt more at home than when he sees blue in Spock's mind. It's a pain-filled, horrific home, but there's a sense of peace there. After all, once the misery has been dealt with, there's nothing but Spock and blue. He'd kill for both, he'd die for either.
Dying for the rebellion, though, is a harder thing. It's much more abstracted and he can't really wrap his mind around the obligation. The quest for freedom catches him up sometimes, and he really understands all the necessity which drives his leaders, but other times, when they're on the surface and they're running low on food, and all he really wants is some clean water, well, then it's harder to devote himself to an ideal. He wants something concrete.
Flash. Len closes his eyes, knowing that Spock heard his train of thought. The Vulcan doesn't intrude often, only when he feels it's necessary. Spock thinks that what he's got to say is important. Len listens.
Spock tells him to personalize the fight, to think of the rebellion not as something so vague that it's impossible to identify, but to give it traits, give it meaning. He wouldn't be fighting and dying for freedom or liberation, but for Vulcan, for Earth, or, if he wanted to contract the focus even further, for blue. Len could die for blue.
Letting the thought fade and cool in both their minds, Len lets his gaze run over Spock. The new injuries should be treated, he thinks. Spock's gone too long without a quick inspection and patch-job. He never has time for these once-overs up top. Even if they did, the camouflaging grime they're both usually caked in covers a multitude of gashes and gouges. It's a wonder they aren't infected more than a few times a week. Spock usually attributes it to Vulcan healing. Len attributes it to a near-constant consumption of antibiotics.
He restocked those last month. They were low-grade, but he should have enough to make due for at least another four weeks if they monitor how many they take. With the new mission, they'll probably die before the stock runs out.
Len decides it's time to check Spock over for anything needing immediate attention, particularly the cut he picked up from the bigots in the street. It had been at least enough to make him bleed. It should be bandaged. He wonders if Spock will argue or resist. After all, why should he be treated when death seems so imminent?
He should because Len can't stand seeing him in pain. Len reaches out and runs a hand against Spock's newly damaged flesh. The Vulcan watches, but doesn't attempt to stop the perusal. Apparently, he got the message.
Without dirt, Spock's skin can no longer hide the small burns and lacerations which trace his skin in emerald lace-work, overlaying older wounds and scars. One is never fully healed in the rebellion.
Len gets up, goes to his clothes, and rummages through the leather pouches hanging from his belt. He's careful not to disturb or bruise the supply of herbs as he looks. They're too expensive and too hard to find for rough treatment.
At last, he pulls out his dwindling stock of rubbing alcohol. He rummages a bit more, and then produces a thin length of undyed cotton cloth, kept as clean as anything can be. This, too, is dwindling. Everything seems to be running short.
He brings both the alcohol and the cloth back to Spock and uses the knife to cut off a bit of the cloth, wetting it with alcohol and dabbing at the cuts. Spock gives no sign of reaction, and Len continues his work.
Most of the grazes have scabbed over, and he doesn't bother much with them. He focuses on the major injuries, the ones that could go gangrenous if not treated. He turns the forearm over in his hands to get a better look, brushing at it with the disinfecting alcohol. The blade went deep. It even split some muscle in places. It needs stitches.
He tells Spock as much and the Vulcan nods. They both attempt calm and both fail in one way or another. Len's voice shakes with sympathy, while Spock's eyes grow hunted.
There's no other way to heal the wound, so it's back to the pouches to get the needle, thread, and the roll of leather. When Len comes back, he puts the needle in the fire until it's red-hot and sterilized. He then sets it aside on a rock to cool.
He hates this. He hates having to work under these conditions, with no anesthesia. He hands Spock the leather roll without a word and the Vulcan makes no sign of protest. He's been through this before. He knows what's involved. He puts the leather roll between his jaws and bites down lightly to secure a good grip. The roll already has his teeth imprinted upon it and he fits to it as naturally as if it were made for him. For all effects and purposes, it has been.
Watching Spock's face, Len rubs the area down with his cloth again, sterilizing with greater care and pressure. He wants to be sure that the stitching isn't going to close in some sort of infection which might crawl up Spock's arm. Len can't even picture the bone-saw in his hand if the body on the table were Spock's.
Thinking of Hikaru, he sterilizes the wound with a great deal of attention and effort. Spock doesn't complain, though his skin flinches. When things are clean, Len threads the needle, and Spock watches it with eyes that waver between fear and determination. Not even a Vulcan can repress all reaction to a procedure of such a visceral nature.
The first stitch is always the worst for both of them. Spock's eyes close, and his body tenses against the pain of a blunt piece of metal being forced through layers of tissue. Len hates it, too. He hates the resistance of the flesh and the way Spock bites down hard on the leather. He's a doctor and hates causing pain, especially in Spock, who suffers enough as is.
The rest of the stitches are easier because they both know what to expect. The shock of newness wears off a bit more with each progressive stab. When he ties off the last stitch, Len starts breathing again and Spock removes the leather roll from his mouth, teeth marks dug even deeper than before.
After wrapping a layer of cloth around the stitching as a feeble guard against airborne bacteria, Len wipes the cloth over Spock's stitches on his forehead. Not much help there. The cut's probably infected.
Len gathers his supplies and puts them away in the correct pouches. Then he comes back and sits. Spock is cradling his arm in his lap, trying not to look vulnerable. He almost succeeds.
Len reaches out and touches the arm. Not the wound, but the arm. It's an apology, as much of one as he can give and as much of one as Spock can accept. Then, going one further, Len touches Spock's shoulder with his other hand. Spock's uninjured hand raises, hesitates in the air, and then comes in for a soft landing on the side of Len's neck, fingers curling around the back to brush the hairs at his nape. The sensation is a shock after so much pain. Len shivers.
They sit like this, neither saying a thing. It's an occurrence outside their routine, and there are no words for it yet. Not that Spock would use any, even if they existed. They just sit and stare and try to come up with a reason for what they're doing.
At last, Spock releases Len's neck and motions slightly, the gentle flash in Len's mind filling in what the gesture does not. Len hesitates, worries, and then decides. He crawls around the fire to Spock's rug and the two lay down, almost but not quite touching.
They close their eyes and go back to sleep.