"Don't." Jim's voice is strong, and in an instant McCoy is overwhelmed with the all-to-familiar rush of safety and victory after a battle that Jim has always drawn around him like a cloak. The Klingon comes up short in the face of Jim's determination, and Jim asks "how many more", keeping his phaser unerringly trained on the Klingon warrior despite Saavik already having him covered.
"Just him, sir," Scotty replies, and it hits Bones that this might work.
"Bones," Jim orders, "help Spock."
Bones moves immediately, glancing between Jim and the Klingon a couple times even as he covers the ground between him and his patient. Spock wavers in the second between Jim releasing him and Bones inserting himself under the man's arm to hold him up.
Spock's breaths are shaky but strong against his neck even as the doors close between him and the others. Whatever happens to the ship; whatever happens to the others is closed to him now, and in some ways McCoy is glad. He doesn't want to know how close the planet is to exploding and taking them all with it.
Now that he has a patient, now that he has something to do he can concern himself with this one thing, this one thing he can control in the face of the encompassing disaster. McCoy doesn't know where the medbay is on this deathtrap, but he knows he won't find it by standing around here.
Spock moans into his shoulder, twitching slightly, and McCoy worries. Is he still aging while they're in orbit? Will the shock of warp speeds kill him? For the first time, McCoy is overwhelmed by the realization that he could get Spock back - they could save him, he could live and be everything he was… or he could die again. And this time… McCoy might be the only one with him.
Bones imagines Spock dying in his arms, alone in the guts of a Klingon bird of prey, and shudders, forcing the image out of his mind. He needs to find the medbay before he drives himself crazy - he can't do anything until he gets there.
The ship jerks into warp and McCoy stumbles, bracing himself against a wall and cradling Spock against his chest to protect him from being slammed against the metal fixtures. The repressed weight of worrying about whether they would even escape the planet's destruction lifts from his shoulders, and despite himself, this victory gives him a small flame of hope.
They're all alive. They have a ship. They've escaped. Spock is even alive, after a fashion. All they have to do is keep going from here.
Spock jerks in his arms then, gasps, and manages to yank himself clean out of McCoy's grasp with his inhuman strength. His eyes stare wide and blank into nothing and Bones is already moving to catch him when he collapses limp and boneless to the ground.
The connection with Genesis must be properly severed, now - McCoy isn't sure what he thought would happen. Now that Genesis is no longer animating him… he runs his scanner over the Vulcan again. No more rapid aging… but he isn't conscious anymore, either. He breathes; his pulse is even perfectly normal for him… but whatever mindless animation he had before is gone now.
McCoy lowers Spock to the ground, then sits back on his heels and considers. Lugging Spock's now-dead weight will be harder than the shuffling he could manage before, so he should probably leave him here for now while he finds the medbay. No use in taking more time than he needs to, and Spock doesn't seem to be in critical danger for now.
Decision made, McCoy trots through the halls, checking room after room until he finds what bears only the slightest resemblance to a civilized sickbay. After scanning the room for potential dangers (always make sure the environment is safe before transporting a patient), Bones rushes back to find Spock exactly as he was left. The Vulcan hasn't so much as twitched, and Bones almost misses the screaming.
Grunting, Bones lugs Spock into a fireman's carry, staggering under the Vulcan's weight. He's too old for this. Thankfully the sickbay isn't far, and he deposits Spock onto the nearest available bed in relief. Now that he's here he can get far better scans than he could in the hallway or on the planet. If only he can work out how to use these blasted Klingon contraptions…
The investigation doesn't turn up much that he hadn't known, or already guessed. Physically, Spock is fine, and could probably stay alive until his lifespan runs out. He's approximately the same age as he was when he… died… and his mind is a hollow vacuum.
Reaching out with a trembling hand, McCoy presses his hand against Spock's temple and closes his eyes. When Spock is unconscious and his shields are down, there ought to be a tingling sensation as his mind latently reaches out to those around him. There is nothing there, if anything McCoy almost feels as though his own… essence is being drained from his own body into that nothingness.
A vacuum indeed.
He wonders if replacing Spock's katra will feel like this. He hopes not. He wonders if Spock will wind up with any of McCoy in his head when all is said and done. He plays with the idea of going through life as only part of a man, with part of his essence trapped between Spock's pointed ears.
He can hardly bring himself to feel repulsed by the prospect, too enthralled with the prospect of Spock being alive to worry about what might happen to him. Anyway, perhaps this will help Spock lighten up and connect more to humanity. Be more bearable than his usual insufferable self.
McCoy sits with Spock for a long time. They don't have any visitors - everyone else is too busy at their stations. Bones is sure that Jim would be at Spock's side in a moment, but he's also sure the man doesn't dare drift from the Captain's chair for a single second. McCoy understands. He couldn't imagine visiting the bridge right now.
Everything they have… is a miracle. It's a miracle they made it this far. And it feels like… if they mess up, or look away for even a single moment… that might be the moment it all goes wrong. Like this perfection is preserved in glass, and even the slightest deviation will shatter them to pieces.
There is nothing to do, however, so McCoy just sits and stares at Spock, tight-lipped as he watches the steady rise and fall of the man's chest. The lights are dimmed in medbay, draping the world in shadow. The bird of prey is wounded from her fight with the Enterprise, and all available power must go to reaching Vulcan as soon as possible. The strange shadows put Leonard on edge. Everything is cloaked in a veil of thin unreality, and his newfound hope wars in his chest with the certainty that it will all go wrong.
When he felt like this on the Enterprise he would find Spock and ensnare the man in an argument, using their verbal spars to unleash his pent-up anxieties and frustrations. But Spock lies dormant now, not even twitching in his stupor. McCoy can feel him though… in his head, behind his shoulder, a buzzing, half-real presence that drives him out of his mind with its intangibility. Even the feeling of Spock slips through his fingers if he tries to hold onto it, and it forms a sharp contrast with the too-real too-still figure in front of him.
It feels like Spock is taunting him with his impassivity.
Without Spock to counter him, without a way to… focus his emotions… the anger he tries to conjure fizzles up and dies, lacking the kindling to feed the flame. Cold fear is all he can feel now, as the certainty crashes over him that this wasn't supposed to happen. Suppose it's been too long. Or that Spock's body being alive now prevents them from saving his spirit. Suppose… suppose they have to kill Spock's body, to save his soul. Suppose they ask Leonard to do it. The doctor to euthanize his patient.
Bones is scared and hyped out of his mind with adrenaline and the memory of Spock behind glass, Spock cold in the morgue, Spock screaming on the planet and always that half-real half-there ghost that haunts his steps and he has no way to release it!
Bones is desperate now, desperate in a way he swore he'd never let himself be, but he's tearing apart at the seams and he needs something to do, someone please give him something to do!
"Spock!" He hates the way his voice sounds, a mere whisper but so scared and pleading that the shame of it almost draws him into silence. But he can't be silent. He could never be silent and he begs Spock to- "talk to me!" Humiliation burns in his sub-conscious - if Spock could only see him now, demanding answers from a man with no brain activity, begging shamelessly for help from a man who is little better than a corpse…
Don't think that way Leonard. Don't… don't go there. Be angry. You can handle anger.
"You stuck this thing in my head, remember?" Bones growls… tries to growl. It's too breathless to be convincing, but the facade of anger is a comforting one, no matter how flimsy it is. He can't disturb the silent sanctity of the room with anything louder than a whisper, for fear of breaking whatever ethereal aura has fallen over the room. If he speaks the magic will be broken, and Spock will be… gone. Unreachable. Sequestered away from him by an invisible pane of glass. "Remember?"
That word is stuck in his head and he doesn't know why… remember what? It feels important somehow; important in a way he doesn't have a name for, but he doesn't have a name for so many things recently. The world doesn't make sense anymore. The world isn't… logical. He needs to understand… so many things.
McCoy stalls, eyes raking every inch of Spock's face for the slightest hint of a response. "...Now tell me what to do with it." The words are an anguished plea, openly desperate, openly broken in a way he's never allowed himself to be, but his brother's soul is in his head and it's driving him insane even as he juggles the grief of Spock's death with the hope that the corpse he interred into the morgue might one day be all that Spock was again.
Man was never meant to know the things McCoy has had to bear, these past few weeks.
Leonard's intent gaze never wavers from Spock's face, and he is so sure, sure for a moment that Spock will respond that he cannot understand, for a brief moment, why no answer is forthcoming, a stab of betrayal slicing through his chest. Doesn't Spock want to help him? How could he just leave Leonard alone?
"Help me!"
It's the pleading demand he's never allowed himself to make with Spock, and somewhere deep in his mind he's always known that if he were ever this wrecked, if he ever came to Spock with his heart bared that the Vulcan wouldn't be able to turn him away, that he would do everything in his power to help Leonard become whole again.
It's a subconscious belief that McCoy has never taken the time to consciously examine; to question, and when Spock only lies there, a perfect Vulcan carved in stone, McCoy feels his heart drop like never before. It's a shattering realization; the sting of betrayal, the ache of hopelessness and a throbbing knife to his heart that Spock has nothing to offer, that McCoy is alone in this room with this form on the bed and that Spock's fate rests in his hands… despite the fact that he has no idea what to do. And no one, now, to help him do it.
That the best he can do may just be to put Spock's soul to rest, and the shining future he had only just begun to hope for… the future where Spock is alive and everything is as it should be, may be nothing more than a fools dream, the desperate conjurings of a heartsick idiot. He is staggered by this realization as if it were a punch in the gut, a paradigm shift that rocks him to his core.
At least the first time… there was no hope. Spock was dead. He was dead as soon as he stepped in that chamber and opened up the warp core. It was only a matter of waiting. But now Leonard has hope… and that foolish hope is more than he can bear. He is breaking under the weight of his own hope.
Leonard collapses backward, gaze finally flickering away from Spock, crumpling into himself as a future where Spock is… gone crashes over him again, a future where he has to… let… go…
It's true, what they say, that you don't know what you have till it's gone. In some ways, Bones was only able to open up to what Spock meant to him when the hobgoblin wasn't there anymore… and now he's being betrayed, flayed open by his own honesty. His eyes burn and water, but he will not cry today.
Spock has a lot of nerve, doing this to him. If the elf can't even deal with his own emotions, what gives him the right to do this to others?
The wry amusement brings crystal clarity in a way he's been fighting to experience ever since Spock collapsed that final time in the warp core, and he turns to inspect Spock once again. His ethereal moment is gone now… Spock will not respond to him, and his voice is low, but contemplative.
He raises his eyebrows, wry, almost, with this specter of Spock. "I'm going to tell you something that I…" Leonard shakes his head at his himself before glancing up at the ceiling, bracing himself for his own words. "…never thought I'd hear myself say." And what would you say, Spock, if you heard me talking to you like this? What would I say if someone really heard me? What would I think of myself, if a younger Leonard could hear me now? You weren't supposed to do this to me, Spock. See what you've done?
Leonard feels himself nod as he comes to terms with the truth of his own words, clear and undeniable as they hang in the heavy air. "-But it seems I've… missed you." How the mighty have fallen. Was it only a few years ago, Leonard, that you were promising yourself that you'd never care about the pointy-eared hobgoblin in your sickbay? That he was nothing more to you than a necessary annoyance? How many fights have you had over the years - how hard have you fought to keep up that facade of annoyance and anger to cover up your fear and compassion?
Of course, the hobgoblin would never have understood good, old-fashioned human compassion. No. It wasn't in his vocabulary. Or so you thought. How long did you spend fighting him, Leonard, only for him to become so near to your heart? What could you have done with that time if you hadn't both been such hard headed fools?
What would you do if you could earn some of that time back… if there was a tomorrow for you, and a tomorrow after that?
"... And I don't know if I could… stand to lose you again." The horror sets in, even as he says those words and knows the truth of them. As the vague and nebulous concept of a future without Spock settles into the harsh definition of sleepless nights haunting sick-bay, of waiting for a witty rejoinder that never comes, of avoiding the bridge so he will not see the science station; of his hundreds of textbooks on Vulcan anatomy that he cannot stand to see.
It was a horror to deal with once. But now, with his walls broken, clinging to hope for a future he's never even been told is possible… he doesn't know if he could survive it again.