Title: Asclepius Revisited
Author: Still Waters
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.
Summary: 76 McCoy episodes. 76 McCoy-centric reflections, codas, and missing scenes.
Notes: Well, it's been quite awhile since I worked on this collection! After watching "Shore Leave" again, I found myself focusing on the nonverbal responses in Kirk and Spock's faces when McCoy is killed by the knight. I decided to scrap my initial idea for this episode and focus on analyzing that emotion instead, using Yeoman Barrows as a POV. I hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading. I truly appreciate your support.
13.
The planet caretaker's influence was vast - for the duration of her shore leave, Yeoman Barrows had nothing but pleasant dreams.
It was when she returned to the Enterprise that the nightmares began, vivid details lost in shock's cocoon coming to viscerally sharp light.
It took all the strength she had to be able to look at Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, or even Dr. McCoy, without completely breaking down.
Because every time she closed her eyes, every time she saw them, she saw it all.
She saw the Captain looking up from Dr. McCoy's body at her hushed "he's dead", the words making it suddenly, inescapably real. Saw him look out at the distance to some point beyond Mr. Spock's left – perhaps to the horizon he chased, perhaps to the place McCoy should have been, looking for guidance when stripped of the man he'd go to for it. His face was empty shock muting blossoming grief, overshadowed by a world-shattering nausea that pinched his face as it turned his stomach – this can't be happening, not here, not Bones. Questions of command and personal loss ran with startling clarity under the sickened surface: What do we do now? What do I do now?
She saw Mr. Spock look up from across McCoy's body, shadowed eyes drawn directly to the Captain's. There was no Vulcan in that face – only human disbelief and shocked grief behind eyes bright with a fine sheen of unshed tears as he looked to his Captain, his friend: How could this happen? What do we do now?
The Captain's head moved toward Mr. Spock, the sluggishness of grief slowing the instinctive response to the unspoken questions, the silent need. The sick feeling never left his face. I don't know.
She saw where Mr. Spock had shifted, kneeling in somber guard at McCoy's head, the Captain a constant at McCoy's side. It reminded her in some ways of the doctor's old-fashioned CPR lessons to crewmembers for cases where modern technology wasn't available. Their patient may have been beyond saving, yet there was Mr. Spock at the head to give breaths, Captain Kirk at the side of the chest to do compressions. The logical Vulcan at the physician's scientific, medical mind; the emotional, human Captain at McCoy's compassionate heart.
She recalled how, when Mr. Sulu called for the Captain to inspect the fallen black knight, Mr. Spock stayed behind without a word, respectfully standing guard over McCoy's body. When the Captain then called for Mr. Spock's analysis, Mr. Sulu immediately changed places with Mr. Spock, maintaining the position. Ensuring McCoy would be brought home.
They were granted a happy ending this time. Everyone survived. There were no coffins, no words of remembrance. No empty stations and mess hall tables. No new faces struggling for acceptance in the void left behind.
But when she closed her eyes, when she saw the Captain and Mr. Spock alone on the Bridge, all she could see was their faces in the breath after McCoy's last. And it was all she could do not to sink to her knees with the weight of memory and sob a confession she prayed would never truly come to pass.
"It's my fault."