Work Text:
The aerie would serve. Twenty minutes of dizzy, dangerous climbing, swinging, and hitching each other up the branches brought them to the deep cup of the great nest, solidly founded in a wide crotch of limbs that could have swaddled a shuttlecraft. The nest was in disrepair, long deserted and falling away in a gnarl of loose sticks at the one side, but between the deeply divided trunk it was a safe haven. McCoy groaned as he reached an aching arm down to help Spock hoist himself into the cup, then shoved the Vulcan past him, away from the edge, and fell back against the rough trunk himself, gulping for air. The nest had a bitter smell, slightly foul, and McCoy switched to breathing through his nostrils as quickly as his lungs could recover to avoid the sour taste heavy in the air. His head slammed with pain.
Spock stirred beside him and also managed to sit up, twining his shaking arms around the broad limb behind him, against which he then sagged.
"We made it," McCoy wheezed unnecessarily, more an exclamation of astonishment than a statement. Overhead, through the heavy thorned branches and slender, filmy leaves, the orange moon loomed, close and ominous. McCoy looked at it with hate. The Kismet IV's moon was a killer. Who'd have thought it?
"Spock, Spock, hey, is it better up here?" he asked, then slid across the smooth, reed-laced flooring, whisking the fluffs of dirty down from his path. Spock still clung to the branch, and in the pale orange glow that filtered through, his face had no color at all. McCoy touched him and the Vulcan flinched as though burned: his arm had been slashed open on the climb up by one of the vicious thorns. McCoy was surprised that he would react, but did not comment on it. Instead, he dug into his medikit and came up with the spray-dressing, giving the gash a once-over. The Vulcan was still shivering, though. And the moon loomed.
"Ugh, if I could just think, dammit," McCoy growled, and lifted the tricorder into the light to check its readings. "It's stronger. But we're off the ground, the effect should be lessened."
Spock shifted around and captured his gaze: wounded eyes, eyes that could be wild, eyes that tried to say things the lips would never dare.
"Would it help if I sedated you?" McCoy asked cautiously, suddenly appreciating how close the Vulcan must be to snapping.
"The… pain… is… endurable," Spock forced. His lips were stiff, his tongue curled and dry. But to ease for a moment, that was dangerous.
McCoy nodded and slumped back against the side of the nest, and at least tried to think. There must be something he could do—it was horrible to watch Spock's Vulcan-ness destroying him, that unique and splendid gift of telepathy becoming his Achilles heel. But the moon, the moon was still low on the horizon, it was going to be a long night, and the ship wouldn't arrive until late the next day, not even at Warp 8.
He checked the tricorder again, and the magnetic flux was up again by almost four points. Bad news. Whatever it was in the soil here that reacted so fiercely with the lunar presence, it was affecting even him—and he had no telepathy at all! Looking over the lip of the nest, he could see the eerie ground¬ static playing along the base of the tree like St. Elmo's Fire, a green-glowing current.
Spock's trembling could be felt, transmitted like Morse code along the reeds and sticks that braced the nest. When the effect had begun—when the moon had risen—they'd been on the plain by the downed shuttle, and Spock had ignored it. But that had been hours ago, and it had him by the throat now. McCoy knew that if he himself was having trouble keeping his thoughts straight, it had to be exponentially worse for the telepath, whose neurotransmission-waves were higher in amplitude and much more vulnerable to "static." No wonder they'd located no sentient life on this world—anything brighter than a Dodo would have become a raving lunatic its first night out.
McCoy could not endure watching, feeling, the shivering: the pain of it demanded assistance. He crept across the creaking sticks again, posting himself at Spock's side, but not touching him. Spock was an athlete cast in bronze, a frozen wrestler squeezing the breath from his opponent—the trunk of the tree. Was it Spock who trembled, or was it the tree as he suffocated it? Spock did not seem to move, the tree certainly did not move, yet the nest shuddered. McCoy rubbed his eyes, which were threatening to leave his skull. The pain was blurring everything. He considered sedating himself, but that would be wrong: Spock needed him, he had to hang on as best he could, bite the bullet. He rested his temple in the crook of his arm and clung to the side of the nest, daring to close his eyes at least.
It seemed he'd slept only a moment, but the moon was much higher, and something was wrong: Spock. The First Officer was ill. Was that it? His breathing was deep and pained, crowded with pain, but not whimpers, not sobs. Breaths with little cries, choked off sounds. McCoy forced himself to full awakedness and fumbled for the tricorder. The glow from the moon was stabbing. The ground in every direction was alive with green fire, the river Styx, with Charon overhead to greet them in his bark.
'I'm getting silly,' McCoy told himself, and squinted at the readings. The flux was off the scale, he'd have to recalibrate. He didn't bother, turning instead to Spock to see what he might be able to do.
"Don't touch me!" Spock howled.
McCoy shrank back. It had been a cry, a plea, and a warning. McCoy grimaced, grinding his palms to his forehead. He felt unreasonably dizzy. He had to help Spock, though, there must be something he could do…
Spock snatched the hand at his arm away and shoved it from him with all his strength. With a bewildered shriek, McCoy skidded over the lip of the nest, sticks and fluff flying. He clawed without thinking at the thorny bough at the edge, completely disoriented, clinging by instinct alone. His grip was tearing away with the bark. Time stopped.
Then a bone-snapping grip was on his forearm, and he was looking down on himself as though it were in daylight, and he looked foolish dangling there with bits of bark in his hair and his feet splayed out, and he had a ridiculous, befuddled look on his face. And he pulled himself up, back into the security of the nest.
Spock let go of him, and he fell back into his own brain with a wrenching pain. It made him vomit, and he hung over the edge again until he could breathe. His head was an empty barrel being played with a sledgehammer as though it were a tympani. His knees were quivering. His shoulder screamed. But he had one thought clearly: Spock's contact had effected an instant and powerful mindmeld. No wonder he didn't want to be touched! Whatever control he'd had before, it was gone now.
The doctor sat up slowly. The nest was creaking now from both their shivering.
"Doctor," the voice breathed, almost soundlessly.
"Yuh, I'm okay," McCoy managed.
The moon glared.
"You… might help," Spock shuddered.
McCoy sat straighter, massaging his temples. "How?"
A semblance of the old Spock reclaimed the taut face; the formality.
"Meld with me."
McCoy struggled to think.
"'S dangerous?"
"Yes." Forced.
"I can't think."
"Nor I."
McCoy glanced at the sky.
"Moon's near zenith—you might make it anyway."
"No."
"I'm scared, Spock."
"Together, combined, we are stronger."
That sounded like some of the old Spock.
"You sure?"
Spock dropped his head into his hands.
"Bones… Hold me," he moaned, pain weighting his voice. "Now, or not ever."
The Enterprise located them late the next afternoon. They were peacefully sleeping in the most curious position: curled in each other's arms in a nest in a great sentinel tree, a long hike from the shelter of the damaged shuttlecraft.
Art by Signe Landon