Chapter Text
Bones’ mind is whirring at top speed.
Far too many people know that Jim crawled into the warp core chamber. And that doing so is guaranteed to be a one-way trip.
Nearly the entire crew believe that their Captain is dead. Hells, half of them saw him dead as they carried him quickly up to and through Medbay and into the nearest isolation chamber.
Bones desperately needs a way to explain that Jim’s very much alive still that doesn’t involve the words “immortal” or “resurrected.”
Wait…
Is that- Is that Tribble breathing!?
“McCoy, I’m acting Captain. I really need to get back to the Bridge.” Sulu suddenly says from by the door, Scotty still resting unconscious by his feet.
“Go Sulu,” Jim groans back with a wave before Bones can answer himself, “We’ll handle Scotty.”
“I think you mean I’ll handle Scotty kid.” Bones injects wryly, nodding at the Helmsman as he steps back out into the bustle of the main Medbay. “You are going back to the land of the pulseless.”
“What!? Why!?”
“I’ll explain later. Now lie back down and try to look irradiated to death.”
“Bones-!” Jim starts to protest, only to cut off at the hiss of the hypo Bones just stabbed against his neck.
His eyes roll up into his head, and Bones’ catches him, lowering him carefully back against the biobed.
He stands over the Tribble, eyes flicking between it and the monitors beeping overhead.
“Someone get me a Cryotube now!” he yells, silently praying for his crackpot plan to work.
Carol hears him call and immediately darts over to where he’s stood.
“Doctor, what on Earth are you-?”
“This Tribble was dead Marcus. And then I shot it up with Khan’s blood.”
Carol’s eyes widen, catching the implication of that statement immediately.
“Kirk…” she breathes.
“Get this guy out of the cryotube! Keep him in an induced coma!”
Carol shoots him a confused look as he hurriedly starts the defrost sequence.
“We’re gonna put Kirk inside,” he continues, frantically inventing excuses. “It’s our only chance to preserve his brain function.”
Carol turns to face him with a whip of her head.
“How much of Khan’s blood if left?” she asks him.
His grimace in return is almost a snarl.
“None.” He growls, spinning desperately around and reaching for the nearest Comm.
“Enterprise to Spock! Spock!”
Static.
Dammit!
Two nurses come rushing back into the main bay, the now empty cryotube wheeling between them.
Bones abandons the Comm and sprints back towards the isolation suite.
“Doc…? Was’ goin’ on?” Scotty asks woozily, dragging himself to sit leaning against the nearest bulkhead.
Bones pauses in his mad dash, swivelling to pin the engineer with a glare.
“Dang it, I don’t have time to deal with you being conscious!” he groans. “Stay in this room and keep quiet. Or I’ll hypo you into submission.”
“Doc!?”
“Submission via hypo.” He pointedly tells the engineer, and then starts shoving Jim’s biobed towards the door.
As soon as Carol starts jamming in the protocols to begin the cryogenic sequence, Bones turns and grabs the Comm again.
“McCoy to Bridge. I can’t reach Spock. I need. Khan. Alive.” He enunciates clearly. “You get that son of a bitch back on board right now!” He pauses. And then, “I think he can save Kirk.”
Spock stumbles into the Medbay behind half a dozen red-shirted security personal. Between them, they’re carrying a bruised, battered and unconscious Khan.
Bones stabs an extractor-hypo against his wrist before they’ve even finished strapping him to a bed.
And then, vial of blood in hand, he sticks the strongest sedative they have in stock into the bastard’s neck. Twice.
He sets the synthesiser equipment to run, and then with a deep sigh, forces his mind away from Jim.
Nothing more he can do for him until they’re docked and able to offload patients.
But the other patients in Medbay? Those he can help.
And at some point he should probably handle the engineer still stuck in the back isolation room.
Dammit, he shouldn’t have let Sulu leave.
“Scotty sit down.”
“Unbelievable!” the Scotsman exclaims, ignoring Bones and continuing to pace hyperactively.
“Scotty!”
“Have you any idea of the kind ‘o repairs we could do in flight Doc! Ack, I can’t go risking the lives o’ the crew McCoy. But our Captain? ‘E can go crawlin’ all over our wee lassie!”
“Mr Scott!”
“But jus’ think of the upgrades we can do to the ‘ole Proximal Spatial Negator! And the-”
“Good God man! You seriously think I’ll let you use Jim as a human repair bot?!”
Scotty stops and runs his hand through his hair self-consciously, sheepish smile accompanying his ducked head.
“Erm. So err… How long ‘til he.. you know, stops bein’ dead an all that again Doc?”
“Well I have to get him out of Cryo again first. And then I’ll play it by ear, depending on how many Admirals can’t keep their snouts outta Jimmy’s business.”
“…Unbelievable!” Scotty exclaims again.
“Bridge to Medbay.” Sulu’s voice comes over the Comm.
“McCoy here. What’s going on up there Lieutenant?”
“We’re docked and ready for you to start transferring patients. But doctor, you’ve got three Admirals heading your way, and they’re gonna have questions.”
“…Shit.”
“James T. Kirk, if you do one thing in your measly short but repeatable life, you will remain dead in that cryotube, ya hear me? Don’t you damn well wake up when you’re supposed to be on ice!”
Jim remains still and lifeless in the tube, ignoring Bones’ muttered words entirely.
“I swear to God kid, if you get me in hot freaking water by not staying dead, I will stab in you the face. Repeatedly. With your own rusted and broken engineer’s set square.”
Barnett, Nogura and Komack stride into his Medbay one after another, halting in a line at the foot of Jim’s cryotube.
Bones strides over from the desk covered in his synthesising equipment, and snaps out a smart salute.
“McCoy,” Nogura begins sharply. “Report.”
Over the next ten minutes, he concisely weaves out some of the best bullshit he’s ever heard. And thanks to Jim, he’s heard a lot of bullshit in recent years. So that’s saying something.
“You really think this could work?” Nogura asks him, peering down at the fractional distiller steaming away on his desk.
“Honestly sir, I ain’t got a clue. Humans and Tribbles ain’t exactly got comparable physiologies. But we won’t know if we don’t try. Kirk can hardly get more dead after all.”
Nogura holds his gaze steadily for several long seconds. Then he turns and glances briefly at Komack, who nods slightly.
“Pack everything up McCoy, and get your Captain ready for transport. There’s a secure room waiting for you in Starfleet Medical in San Fran. You’ll have access to whatever and whoever you ask for, no justifications needed. I want regular updates, and an agreement that everything that happens from this moment forward is confidential at the highest level. You tell anyone how this plays out before I give you permission to, and you’ll wish the only consequence was your head on a block.”
Bones swallows hard, and then nods sharply.
“Yes sir…”
“What do you mean he’s missing?” he hisses at the Admiral later that night, all propriety temporarily forgotten.
“I mean exactly that Doctor.” Nogura almost growls back unimpressed. “Doctor Boyce has been MIA since the night of the Daystrom attack.”
“Oh, let me guess,” Bones drawls sarcastically, “Admirals Pike and Archer vanished at the same time, and you ain’t got a clue about that either.”
Nogura looks shell-shocked for less than a second, before his face smooths out into practiced calm. Bones isn’t fooled in the slightest.
“That information is confidential Doctor.”
“Uh huh,” Bones drawls again. “and I bet pointing out that Pike is supposed to be KIA not MIA will only be met with a “no comment” too, won’t it.”
“No comment.”
Bones rolls his eyes when the Admiral allows himself a small smirk.
“Well if I can’t have Boyce, I want L’Ving’Ting.” Bones continues, still blatantly ignoring their relative ranks. “He’s the next best virologist in the ‘Fleet. Get him here asap.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Oh and McCoy? If you try and speak to Komack like that, he’ll have your head on a pike. And I’ll let him mount it in the main atrium.”
“Duly noted sir. ” Bones snarks back with a raised eyebrow and his own smirk.
Bones spends the next three days cursing himself for a fool; if he’d have known that he would actually have to get this damn serum to actually work, he would have come up with literally any other way of hiding Jim’s uniqueness.
Goddammit, the Admiralty are actually expecting him to create a miracle here!
On the fourth day, he runs the simulation programme again, pauses, and then goes charging down the hospital corridor, hollering at the top of his voice.
“Nogura! Nogura, get back here now! Dammit man now!”
“Are you sure McCoy?”
“I’ll say it again Admiral. He can hardly get more dead.”
On the fourth day, they extract Jim from the Cryotube and pump his blood full of Khan-Superserum.
On the fourth day, Jim’s hand twitches.
As soon Barnett and Nogura have left again, Bones pours clear shellfish concentrate into one of Jim’s IV bags and grabs the encrypted PADD Scotty had snuck into him.
“You want us to what McCoy!?”
“I want you to break into either the chemistry or physics store and abscond with as much irradiated material as you can get away with.”
“…why?”
“‘Cause Jim here is healing the radiation poisoning with his natural freakishness way, way faster than I can account for, even with the cover of this super serum.”
“So you want to re-dose him to avoid suspicion?”
“Yes! So hop to!”
“Oh man, if we get caught, you are gonna owe Scotty and I big time.”
“Simple solution Sulu. Don’t get caught!”
Bones hangs up on him before the Helmsman can retort.
“Doctor McCoy. I would like to enquire after the current status of the health of our Captain.”
Bones jumps what feels like six foot in shock.
“Jesus Spock! How’d you get in here!?”
Spock not-frowns.
“I simply entered the building through the front doors, ascended to this floor using the left-most atrium turbolift, and walked at a brisk and steady pace along the corridor until I reached the door labelled Kirk, Doctor. When I received no response following my knocking, I used my standard Starfleet ID chip on the door scanner and the door opened. Thus you see me presently.”
“What!? This room is supposed to be in total lockdown!”
Spock not-frowns again.
“I was not informed of this Doctor. Forgive me, I shall correct my error in breaking protocol by leaving.”
“Woah woah, hold up Spock! You’re here now, might as well get your questions answered. Not your fault there was nothing keeping you out.”
“...If you insist Doctor.”
“Doctor, you are aware that as a Vulcan, many of my senses are more sensitive than those of a standard Terran human.”
“Yes Spock?”
“I must ask then, why it is that the substance you just added to the Captain’s saline IV bag smelt strongly of concentrated Dendrobranchiata, otherwise known as common Earth prawn? It is my understanding that the Captain would have a strong anaphylactic reaction to such a substance, and I can think of no medical advantage such a state would provide.”
Bones screams internally.
And starts desperately trying to make up more bullshit.
Oh you know what?
Fuck it.
“The Captain is immortal.”
“An immortal pain in my ass yeah.”
“I… I must return to my quarters…”
Less than two hours later, Spock returns with Uhura in tow.
Or, more accurately, Uhura barges in with a clearly reluctant Spock being dragged along behind her.
“Spock,” he sighs, pinching his brow, “which part of don’t tell anyone went over your pointy-eared head!?”
“During my time here on Earth Doctor, I have learnt that it is not wise to withhold important information from one’s significant other. Particularly when one’s significant other is a fierce and intelligent young woman with a definitive sense of independence.”
Bones looks over his shoulder to where Uhura is peering intently down at Jim. She meets his eyes with a fierce glare and pointedly brushes Jim’s fringe away from his eyes with a gentle caress of her hand. Bones gulps and looks back at Spock.
Spock raises his right eyebrow.
“Mr Spock,” Bones gulps again, “I must conclude that you are a smart man.”
A week after his conversation with Nogura in the Medbay of the Enterprise, Bones allows the last of the irradiation to clear out of Jim’s cells and unhooks most of the wires and tubes keeping him “alive”.
Twelve hours later, Jim’s eyelids flicker and then open.
“Oh stop being so melodramatic, you were barely dead.”
Jim rolls his head to squint at him, shuffling on the bed.
“I’m never only just barely dead,” he croaks back.
“If only that were true! Then maybe I wouldn’t have had to keep poisoning you for the last week.”
“Poisoning?”
“You were supposed to be heavily irradiated, I had to keep up appearances somehow. You heal slower when you’re dead, so I kept you lifeless with the usual tricks and shot you up with radioactive radium and strontium as often as I dared. I just blamed your constant flatlining on the transfusions.”
“What? Transfusions?”
“Yeah. Infused you with a serum I synthesised from Khan’s superblood. Which does actually work by the way. It’s how we’re explaining your miraculous return to the land of the living.”
“Khan?”
“Your blood is now full of his blood. Tell me, are you feeling homicidal? Power mad? Despotic?”
“No more than usual. How’d you catch him?”
“I didn’t.”
Spock steps into Jim’s line of vision, and Jim blanches as he suddenly realises that the Vulcan just heard their entire conversation.
“Spock. I- Just- Thanks. For saving my life.”
“Apparently Captain, your life has a frequent habit of saving itself. Your thanks are unecess-”
“Spock!” Jim cuts across him, “Seriously, thanks. If you hadn’t caught Khan, I wouldn’t have a cover for my condition. And then who knows what the Admiralty would have done to me.”
“What about me too huh?” Bones smirks from the other side of the biobed. “Where’s my thanks? I’ve saved your scrawny ass more times than I care to recall. And Uhura! She’s the one who stopped Spock from beating Khan’s face into the back of his skull!”
Jim just rolls his eyes fondly and flips Bones his middle finger.
“So what about Pike and Archer?” he asks when Bones only huffs a smile at him.
Bones sighs and closes his eyes for a second.
“Yeah about that… No one knows still.”
“…fuck.”
As has become his daily habit, Nogura comes by the hospital room just after 1800.
Bones had prewarned Jim that the Admiral was likely to appear in the evening, and accordingly, they ran through their stories to ensure they matched up and were watertight.
Turns out, they needn’t have bothered.
“Captain Kirk, it’s good to see you conscious.” The Japanese Admiral begins amiably enough.
“Thank-you Sir. It’s good to be conscious.” Jim smiles back.
“Well now you’re awake, I have a proposition for you.”
“Proposition sir?”
“Yes Kirk. You tell me where you would hide two immortal Admirals if you were a power mad, tyrannical Starfleet Commander-in-Chief, and in exchange, I’ll accidently delete all the security footage showing your helmsman and chief engineer breaking into the biohazard storage facility.”
Bones nearly drops the tray of hypos he’s holding.
“Well boys? Do we have a deal?” Nogura asks after several long seconds of silence.
“Sir...” Jim begins hesitantly. “I’m not sure I know what you mean by-”
“Cut the crap Kirk. I know you have chronic Spontaneous Lazarus Syndrome.”
Jim looks across at Bones, his face a mixture of panic and shock.
Bones looks back at him, equally as wide eyed.
“Wait.” Bones suddenly, “It has a name!?”
Jim does not in fact have any clue where Marcus may or may not have stashed his two mentors. He does however, know how to access certain files that Archer had secreted away.
Once Nogura had fetched him a couple of high-spec PADDs and handed over a number of security passcodes, Jim merrily set about hacking into Section 33’s database and archives.
“Stockholm. Östermalm district. There’s a set of old ‘Fleet buildings there that are on the awaiting-renovation list. Only they’ve been on the list for 15 years and had no change of status. There’s also a record of a transporter trip over there on the night of the attack, only the individual who supposedly made the journey doesn’t actually seem to exist.”
Nogura nods after he’s checked over Jim’s findings for himself.
“Cross check it with 33’s files to be sure, but I think you’re right. McCoy pack up a full emergency kit; looks like the three of us are going on a top-secret field trip.”
Stockholm, in the opinion of McCoy’s good southern gentlemen self, is colder than the blasted pits of deepest, darkest frozen hell.
Jim happily skips about in his shirt sleeves like the inhuman Iowa-native he is.
With Nogura’s Acting Commander-in-Chief status, they encounter no trouble in entering the ostensibly abandoned facility. Within seconds of walking in the main doors, a woman claiming to be the division director is fawning all over them and enthusing over the fantastic research they’ve been working on.
They’re less than a minute into the offered tour when Bones realises that the reason Section 33 was keeping this place off the grid, is because most of the biological experiments they’re conducting in the various rooms and laboratories, are beyond illegal.
Illegal, and sickeningly immoral.
“Is that a brain!?” Jim almost screeches when they poke their heads into one room as they’re escorted round.
“Yes of course!” The director gushes, “Vulcan no less! We’re currently doing a trail run of a sentient-AI interface computer. Some of the connections are slightly unstable at present, but I have faith my people will solve the melting issue soon. You should hear the screaming it emits when things do go wrong though! By gods, leaves your ears ringing for hours!”
Nogura looks at the woman disgustedly.
“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Jim mutters, before vanishing back down the corridor they just came up.
Bones has to swallow his own nausea back.
Not long after that, Nogura loses his patience with the woman and demands that they are shown what they came for.
The woman swallows and nods nervously, obviously trying to hide her anxiety with an overly sunny smile.
The backrooms in the basement could more accurately be called dungeon cells.
Bones can’t help but notice that Jim is really freaking out, and reaches out and clasps his hand in his.
Archer is… Not alive when they find the trio of men huddled in one of the dark, damp, metal and concrete cages.
Boyce is laid across Pike’s lap, his breathing damp and rattling. Pike has what Bones’ recognises as infected grade three burns across most of his face and uncovered chest.
Archer doesn’t have much of a chest left.
Pike’s eyes flicker open and a trickle of blackened blood drips out of the corner of his mouth.
Nogura flips his phasor out of his hip holster and downs the director before anyone can blink.
Physically, Pike and Archer are fine within a few days. Boyce, not being “blessed” with the inability to stay dead, takes several weeks to recover from the chronic pneumonia, but modern medicine sorts him out eventually.
Mentally… Mentally they’re all a wreck.
Pike is particularly unstable.
Thanks to the treatment he received at the hands of Nero, he was already struggling with an anxiety disorder, and though he didn’t like to admit it, did have a PTSD diagnosis in his medical record. Being used as a lab rat repeatedly for a full week in the worst possible way really hadn’t done him any favours.
“How did you do it?” the man in question stammers as he staggers into the small room in Starfleet Medical that Jim is technically still confined to.
“How did I do what?” Bones asks him, shooting to his feet to go to the shaking man. But Pike ignores him entirely and wobbles over to the bed where Jim is sprawled out with -of all things- a paperback book.
“Kirk,” Pike practically sobs to Bones’ growing horror, “How did you do it?”
Jim calmly puts his book down, and slowly sits up, one hand rising to settle on the Admiral’s shoulder. Carefully, he pulls the emotional wreck of a man down to sit beside him.
“I didn’t Chris,” he tells him quietly, “not to start with. I ignored it and I went drinking, and I invented a pain scale of 1 to soul-destroying and I got into fights and tried to forget Kodos by repeatedly hurting myself. But it doesn’t work. Adding more anguish was never going to work.”
“So- So how-”
“It’s actually pretty simple Admiral,” Jim smiles gently. “You find someone brilliant and kind and caring and protective and you get them to dare you to do better. And then you stop just surviving; you let your whole life revive.”
“Jimmy.” Bones says into the near silence. Only the distant whir of city traffic and the soft, regular breathing from an exhausted and asleep Admiral Pike fill the room.
“Jimmy.” He says again, as they sit side by side on the edge of the bed, an exhausted and asleep Pike curled up behind them, and watch the stars rise above the city they have grown to call home.
“Jim.” He runs his hand over Jim’s knee. Jim catches it in his own hand.
“Ji-”
Jim cuts him off with a soft press of lips.
Bones smiles as the hot air of their breath mingles.
“Jim. You were my revival too you know.”