Nyota hurtled through the Enterprise corridors, completely focused on getting to the Medbay. Her heart pounded in her ears in sharp counterpoint to the staccato rhythm of her flying feet. In her path crewmen flattened themselves against the bulkheads, some calling after her in concern as she careened by. In the back of her mind she was aware of their alarmed faces, but consumed by her panic she was unable to stop and reassure them, or even slow down.

Her mad dash carried her to the Medbay doors which parted just as she was about to crash into them. With a familiar whoosh they slid open, depositing her in the midst of more pandemonium than she'd seen since Khan. Blood stained the gleaming floor, pools and patches of red and green decorating the usually pristine Medbay in a gruesome mockery of merry hues. Nurses ran back and forth through the puddles, leaving sticky footprints in their wake as they slipped across the floor. Uhura halted abruptly, overcome by the barely controlled chaos.

The sight was nauseating and Uhura keened softly, the mournful cry of despair breaking from her throat without her consent. The blood-splattered room swirled around her and she staggered, almost falling through the Medbay doors before catching herself and leaning against a bulkhead, trembling.

Alarms blared, voices shouted, and suddenly, McCoy's southern accent rose above it all.

"I've got a pulse! Nurse, move him to the surgical bay!"

Something fluttered in the back of Nyota's mind, tiny and fragile, muted and agonized. She gasped at the feel of it, clawing for more of the fleeting sensation, some part of her recognizing it as important, as vital. It scrambled away from her presence, hiding, but still there. Without knowing quite how she did so, she clung to the fledgling spark, drawing it closer even as it weakly tried to wrench itself from her mind. The effort was overwhelming, and it sent her gracelessly to her knees.

"Lieutenant? Lieutenant!" The shouts rang around her ears as she was guided to her feet and settled into a chair, the familiar whirring of a tricorder sounding nearby. She didn't respond, too absorbed in clutching at the flicker of thought that wasn't hers.

"Nyota!" Her name this time, accompanied by a sharp shake, was enough to startle her back into awareness, though she stubbornly refused to release the panicked essence struggling in the back of her mind.

"Spock?" she asked, raising damp eyes to the haggard ones of McCoy, tears welling in them all over again.

"He's alive, for now," the doctor replied softly. "Almost lost him again in surgery, but something stabilized him, so M'Benga's getting him settled for observation." McCoy rubbed the back of his neck, slowly becoming aware of his painfully tense muscles. "I don't know what happened; almost as soon as I got his heart goin' again it started to fail. Jim calls me a miracle worker, but I didn't do anything; there wasn't anything that I could do. It just suddenly picked a rhythm and maintained it. It's not getting any stronger, but at least it's not cuttin' out either. Never seen anything like it." His voice trailed off in obvious exhaustion.

"I think that was me," she said shakily. "I could feel him in my mind, dying...and I kind of...I just refused to let him go."

"Vulcan mind-voodoo," McCoy grumbled, his habitual gruff attitude failing to hide his amazement. "Thank God for it. Didn't know you were bonded to him, Uhura," he said.

"Neither did I."

"Well, you keep hanging onto him, you hear?" She nodded sadly, suddenly realizing how still it was in the Medbay. The floor was clean again, no traces left of the shocking amounts of blood she'd seen upon arrival.

"How long have I been here?" she asked. "How's the Captain?"

"I'm not exactly sure when you arrived, but one of my nurses told me that she saw you collapse shortly after I took Spock into surgery. After finding your vitals fine, she diagnosed shock and deposited you on this here biobed with a blanket around you for comfort. You haven't spoken to anyone in a couple hours but are otherwise fine so the nurses simply have you under observation. As for Jim…" McCoy took a deep breath, letting it out on a shaky sigh. "He's a little better off than Spock. Kinda."

"What happened? Can I see him?" McCoy nodded, helping her off the biobed and keeping one hand cupped around her elbow.

"He's pretty banged up, I have to warn you. I had to put a force-plate in his head, so the top part of his skull's under a field projector; don't be alarmed by it. Physically, he's stable."

Uhura cast a sideways glance at the doctor as they approached the captain's bed and McCoy pulled the curtains aside so they could step through.

"But…"

"He took a nasty whack on the head, Nyota. He nearly bled out before I got him up here, but I managed to get that sorted in time, and we're re-growing part of his skull now. Barring infection or his idiotic immune system pitching a fit, he'll live."

"What aren't you telling me?" she asked in a thick voice as she gazed down at her Captain, tears forming at the sight of his body limp under the blankets, the top of his head hidden by a small metal arch that hummed softly. His skin was frighteningly pale, and the monitors of the biobed recorded his heart as just barely beating. A transfuser was chugging away to the side, replenishing his lost blood supply, and a respiratory aid was secured over his mouth.

McCoy hung his head and scrubbed both hands over his face, his palms obscuring the words as he spoke them.

"Jim sustained severe neuro-trauma," he said heavily. "His brain scans indicate that while his autonomous systems are functioning, his cognitive functions are virtually non-existent."

Uhura trembled, sitting down abruptly into the chair by Kirk's bed.

"Oh my God…" she whispered. "He's brain-dead?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"Oh my God," she whispered again, dropping her head into her hands. "Leonard…what happened down there, on the planet?" She lifted her head, looking at him with sad, desperate eyes. "How did this happen? And why would Spock do this? What logical reason could he have to…to…to kill himself?!"

McCoy glanced sadly over at Kirk and then held up a finger to Nyota. "Let me grab another chair," he said, slipping away for a moment.

"Nyota," he began softly once he'd returned and taken a seat, "Spock…T'Pring, his 'wife', decided she didn't want him, so she challenged him and chose Jim as her champion." Uhura's eyes flicked up to his face, scowling with confusion and a touch of anger, as it was slightly obvious where the story was going. "No one told us it was a to-the-death thing—" Uhura gasped (she hadn't been expecting that part) "—until it was too late for him to take it back, and he wouldn't have anyway because with the condition Spock's been in, I really don't think he could've taken the other guy T'Pring would have chosen if he'd turned her down. I guess figured he'd knock Spock out and refuse to kill him, and we'd all be good—"

"—But Spock won." McCoy wasn't surprised she'd figured it out.

"Yeah. When Spock hit him, I thought for sure he was dead; he bled out so quickly from that damn head wound he barely had a pulse! Luckily he did have one and I was able to hide it from the Vulcans."

"So they all thought the Captain was dead."

"Yeah, and Spock snapped right out of it at that point — he was really messed up by T'Pring rejecting him, Uhura, it had to have been some Vulcan telepathic-bio-chemical thing — and I shouted at him for a minute, beamed Jim back up here, and rushed him right into surgery. I'd barely gotten him stabilized before I got your call on the com."

"So Spock wrapped up whatever he had to with T'Pring down there, beamed up, went to his quarters, and, thinking he'd committed murder…"

"…decided to kill himself, yes." McCoy finished for Uhura. She'd composed herself quite successfully throughout the course of the re-telling, but her face was still lined with worry and stained with tears.

"But Vulcans haven't practiced executions in…centuries! Their punishment for crimes is imprisonment and a-a kind of-of gentle-healing, a mental thing!"

"And they generally use their mind to stop their hearts if they chose execution as well," McCoy added. "Nyota, for one, I don't think Spock is capable of stopping his own heart, being half-Vulcan, though I'm not entirely sure, and I would think that Spock probably figured on us not blaming him for his actions — surely the Vulcans didn't — and so he didn't figure he'd get any sort of punishment for what he did unless he did it himself."

Uhura thought about that for a moment, nodding slowly to herself, then frowning again as something caught her eye.

"M'Benga wants you," she said, gesturing to the other doctor who was standing by the curtain, peering in patiently. McCoy gestured him in.

"You can sit with him now, if you want," the Vulcan specialist said quietly. "He's not responsive, but it can't hurt, having you there."

"Actually, apparently Uhura here has a hook-up to the hobgoblin's mind, maybe she can snap him out of it." M'Benga turned wide-eyes to her.

"You're bonded?"

"Apparently. It's news to me, but I can feel him, in a way…"

The specialist nodded. "That could help. Make sure you touch him, when you talk to him. Push at that space in your mind, try to wake him up - maybe try telling him Kirk's alive, see if that helps."

"I'll do my best," she said, standing. M'Benga led her away, leaving McCoy sitting by Kirk, staring at his captain and friend.

"Is that even true? Are you even really alive in there, Jim?" McCoy sniffled once, scrubbing a fist over his eyes before banging it down onto the biobed next to the Captain. "Damnit, Jim, if anyone can survive anything then it's you who can survive this. Wake the fuck up, okay?" His voice broke and he sagged forward, the top of his head resting against Jim's hip.

"I can't survive five years in the black without you."

Outside the curtain, unknown to McCoy, M'Benga hung his head and Uhura pressed a hand over her mouth as she silently cried.

Thank you for putting up with how long this took to get posted. I actually got injured/almost killed by a car, and then my keyboard died and I had to order a new one, so I got a bit caught up over here.

On the other side, long chapter to make up for it...and hopefully it's a particularly good one.