Jim's turn, but far different from the other fics about the warp core scene, I promise.
Dying is easy.
It's the oddest thought to have, as he's trying to crawl his way back to the door, and feeling a strange burning pain that is almost to the point of freezing despite being so hot- it's an entirely new level of pain, that he's never before experienced.
It's so bad, that he almost wants to stop moving, lay down, and just let the darkness he knows is coming take him. Almost, but no where near enough.
But it would be so easy to die right now.
Dying is easy, he thinks as he takes another burningchoking breath, because it's so final. Once you die, that's it. You've finished and you don't have to deal with the consequences, like worried and grieving loved ones, how long you'll take to fully recover, worries that you won't fully recover, nightmares and just frustrating day to day life.
He used to flirt with death, he knows, dancing near the edge, doing everything in his power to get as close as he could, before pulling away.
He's mellowed somewhat, but . . . He's never had the same reaction to death and danger that everyone else does. The Kobayashi Maru never frightened him. He knew full well it was a similation, didn't even come close to real life, blasters firing as soldiers followed orders to kill innocent people knowing in just a moment, the blast would find him if he didn't get away, and all of life's real emotions.
There was no unwinnable situation, even if the solution was the death of someone or something.
Maybe he had gotten so used to cheating, he had forgotten that some times, you could win by following the rules, despite the consequences.
He's almost at the clear door, can see his chief engineer standing there, almost as if begging him to keep moving.
He feels incredibly guilty, because no matter how anyone looked at it, he had screwed up, put the only thing that ever felt like family, his crew, into danger. Too much danger. He had been blind, reckless. He had hurt the ones he cared about. He hadn't been there for Pike when he died, he had alienated his chief engineer, even though Scotty had come back there were . . . too many straws, Spock and Bones had tried to warn him (and absently, he made the mental note that next time the two agreed, he would listen, despite knowing that there wouldn't be a next time), he'd probably put too much stress on Uhura, Chekov and Sulu . . . And he'd put all of them in harm's way.
His chest feels strange, and it's not the pain, but fear and regret that are choking him as he finally reaches the other door, and rests against it for a moment before closing the hatch leading directly to the core.
He's scared of dying, he realizes in a strange sense of deja vu, scared because he doesn't want to die, he wants to live, stay with his crew, no, his family, and live with them again.
But it's too late, because as he speaks with Spock, he feels a strange numbness spreading through, so he tries to hold on, because he doesn't want to die alone, unable to touch someone, anyone . . . But time is up, and his body quits, surrendering to burningfreezingnumbness that takes him, and everything goes dark.
And yet a part of him stills clings to the thoughts and memories, and the strange stray thought that even if he couldn't live, he'd stay . . .
Because he finally found something worth staying for.
Yeah, not so much Jim and Spock than Jim and crew- I'm getting a little tired of the Jim and Spock chamber scenes. I've got a second one planned for Jim, but before that, Scotty, and a couple special guests.
I avoided the Spock and Kirk cliche, because I already did that in Spock's chapter. This chapter focused on Jim's feelings for the crew as a whole, because he was saving the crew, not just Spock.