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It starts when you learn about the other universes.
You know about multiverse theory, of course, but mostly as a thought experiment. Everyone likes to entertain the thought of it when they're drunk or bored or wishing for something different than they've got. You remember asking Bones about it once when your brain had been leaking out of your ears from hours worth of studying quantum physics. Hey, Bones. Do you think there are other universes?
Sure hope so, Bones had grumbled, flicking his gaze up from a xenobiology textbook. Means that somewhere out there, there's a version of you that's not distracting me.
It's only ever been a hypothetical. Until someone who is clearly Spock, but not the Spock you can hardly say you know, is standing in front of you. Until you're confronted with the bone-deep knowledge he knows someone who is you, but not you.
Know is too feeble a word, as it turns out.
Your minds meld and you break away, gasping. Flashes of a life you haven't lived assail you. Your stomach twists as you try to process glimpses of people you know and people you don't yet, their faces different but some things so unutterably, somehow, the same.
You ask one of the only questions you can think to.
Where you came from, did I know my father?
You expect the answer to be no. Never. You've read and seen so many stories that have told you the score. Some things are constants. Fixed points in time. You were meant to grow up fatherless, unmoored, angry. Something had to happen to make you the person you are.
Except it never had to happen at all.
Yes, you're told. You often spoke of him as being your inspiration for joining Starfleet. He proudly lived to see you become Captain of the Enterprise.
Those words shatter everything.
+
You drink.
(You almost get murdered in the interim of your entire universe being upended and the drinking. That happens. It's a minor detail in the grand scheme of things, a simple explanation for why your throat is bruised and hurting like hell but you drink deep from whatever bullshit swill you find stashed away on the Enterprise anyway.)
You drink until your fingers are prised off of the bottle. Until Bones of all people is frowning down at the bottle and then you with concern in every frown line. Bones, who you know damn well goes dry for three months or so every now and then, trying to get well ahead of a worst instinct. It's rich that he's the one to stop you.
"Talk," he orders.
"'bout what."
Bones gestures first to the bruises on your throat and then the bottle in his hand. "Take your damn pick, unless they're one in the same, but I swear to Christ, Jim, pick something or I'm putting you on a psych hold 'til we make it back to Earth."
Maybe it's for the best you're drunk. You don't know how you'd explain this part otherwise.
"There's more than one me."
You tell Bones everything. You talk until your aching throat is raw and until Bones himself has taken a few drinks from the bottle, heedless of whatever sanitary concerns he'd normally voice about sharing one.
"Shit," Bones says finally.
"Yeah," you say finally.
Bones gives you back the bottle.
"There's something else," you say, when the burn of yet more alcohol has settled in your belly and made you want to say it. "I asked him, and he said—he said I knew my father."
"Hell." It's quiet, even stunned. "Jim, I'm… sorry. I'm sorry. … Not even sure what to say to that."
You raise the bottle as if to make your point—now do you see why?
"I always figured… maybe it had to happen the way it did. That I wouldn't be here if it's happened any other way. If I wasn't trying to live up to some… some ghost." You swallow the bitter taste in your mouth. "Turns out that's a sack of shit. Could've had a real family, and—and all this." You gesture around at the interior of the ship.
"You do have a real family, Jim." The words are bruised. Wounded. Hearing the ache in Bones' words, regret eats slightly into the alcoholic haze. He and Joanna and Bones' gram don't deserve to be discounted like you just have. If you remember this in the morning, you'll apologize.
But for now, you fight.
"You know what I mean. Sam staying. My mom. My dad. Not—not fucking Frank. I could've had… could've had a childhood. Not—"
Your eyes are burning. You have to stop. Bones reaches out again to take the bottle away. Your fingers, drunken, cede it more easily this time.
You don't pull away when Bones laces his fingers in yours, even though you'd give anything to be alone right now.
"In my experience, Jim, doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference, wishin' for something other than what you got."
"Didn't think so either. 'til I learned there was something else. And I'm the sorry bastard who got stuck with this."
If Bones is hurt by that—you realize too late he might be—he never says. He just reaches an arm around you and pulls you in. The talking's done for now. He wants you to sleep, or cry, or do whatever you need to that isn't staring down the bottom of a bottle. You try to oblige him.
You wonder later if the other you needed Bones to hold his worthless ass together, or if that, too, is just fucking you.
+
You think you've parsed everything you saw, for a while. You do think old Spock felt guilty about the whole thing. Maybe if you'd had more time, it wouldn't have had to come to the mind meld, to the knowledge you now have at your core that you aren't the only you.
You still don't know what to do with that.
You're officially installed as captain. Sometimes, you meet people and you have to steel yourself against the overwhelming sensation of having met them before. Sometimes, when you question if you should even be doing any of this, you think of old Spock's words.
No, Jim. That is not my destiny.
Is all of this supposed to be yours?
+
Bones keeps an eye on you. He's none too subtle about it. He eyes you for a while like you're going to shake apart in his hands. You think you apologized for the things you said that night. You hope you did.
Sometimes, now, you think you know things you shouldn't. Only sometimes. You don't know Spock, or any of your other proposed crew members, well enough to ask if the little bits of their lives you saw mean anything, so you're content to let those things remain as conjecture. After all, your own life here is radically different than your other one. Maybe the same is true for the others.
Except you wake one night from a dream, a flickering glance back at one of those impressions you'd gotten off Spock, with your skin itching with the desire to ask. To know. Because you're not sure about what you saw. Maybe you didn't interpret it correctly. You're sure that must be it. Mostly sure.
So you ask when you're having dinner at his apartment one night.
"How did your dad die?"
Bones flicks his gaze up and off the food. "I told you," he says slowly. "He got sick."
You shouldn't ask. You know you shouldn't. It's invasive and you shouldn't know this—whatever this is—anyway but you do and you need to get it out and Bones is the only person you have.
You let out a breath and set down your fork. "But that's not all," you say. "Is it."
Bones doesn't say anything for a long damn time. He sets his own fork down. You watch him squeeze at the hardwood of the table until his knuckles go white.
Until he rises and says quietly, "Go fuck yourself, Jim," and leaves the kitchen to go into his bedroom, and command the door to lock behind him.
+
It takes days for you to talk again. Your stomach feels hollowed out the whole time. You field concerned texts from Christine about how he seems off, did something happen? and you're not stopping by to have lunch with him this week? at all?
You debate just going to his place and dropping the whole thing. Telling him you shouldn't have asked. You even think about going to this world's Spock for a favor. If old Spock did this, surely young Spock can undo it. Take away this bullshit you're not supposed to know. It's not like it's made your life better.
But it's Bones who tells you to come by late one night. Bones who extends the olive branch. You can't figure out whether or not that makes you the asshole. Should you have made the first move to apologize? Would that have been forcing it, or the right thing to do? Unfortunately, it doesn't matter now.
"He was in pain," is the first thing Bones says, when you've both been sitting in silence so long you weren't sure which of you would be the first to break it. "He asked me to. I wish I hadn't. The cure… somebody else found it, a few weeks later. Weeks. … Guess you already know that, huh."
"I wish I didn't." God, do you. "Bones… fuck. I'm fucking sorry. I just thought—I thought it would be me, with the worst luck. I thought maybe I was fucked over in that other life, too. I wasn't. But you were. If—if we could trade—"
"Jim, you don't get it. I already got what you never had. I knew my pa. Regardless of how it ended up—I got time with mine. You didn't. Not a bit. Eats me up practically every day. … Not saying it's not a bitch of a situation. I'll go to my grave wishin' I'd put him off, bought some time. But I got something. There's that."
You shift closer on the couch, until you're almost pressed together like you'd been that night with the bottle. Bones understands what you want, and pulls you in. He's the only person you'll take it from. The only person whose touch means stay close and not fine, but only for the night or only until you disappoint me somehow.
You close your eyes when Bones' hand settles in your hair. You don't think you've ever allowed this from him when you've been awake before, though sometimes you've drifted into consciousness after restless sleep and thought you've felt it.
"Gonna think about what I said?" He keeps his voice low, but you still feel it reverberate through his chest. "Grass being greener, and all that. Know you're still gonna think about what he said, but—"
"But I shouldn't." You do know that, deep down. "I did want to ask… he said… he said something about destiny. … Do you believe in any of that?"
A long breath out. "Not sure what to tell you other than I try not to." A shrug, made difficult by the arm around you. "I hold lives in my hands every day. Soon enough, you will too. If you start second-guessing every decision—thinking something was always gonna happen one way, or that maybe it didn't have to—you'd never move an inch. Not saying I don't get lost in it sometimes. Meant what I said, about my pa. But I try to focus on what's in front of me. Sound fair?"
It's good advice. You open your eyes.
He's looking down at you. You're looking up at him. You tip your face up, in a question, and he doesn't move an inch. His eyes flick to your lips, and you feel the breath he lets out.
When you kiss him, you feel it at the core of you, the knot of tension you've been carrying for weeks beginning to slowly unravel. When you kiss him, it's the first time in at least a month you've felt firmly rooted in this reality, and no other.
"Jim." Hands on your chest, pushing you away, but not far. There's wanting in that touch. Like Bones feels all of it too, and doesn't want to let go, only—
Only the gaze that had been holding yours before is looking down at the couch cushions. "I'm gonna ask, even though I don't think I want to know." A beat. "This because of what you saw that day? Is this—" A shaky breath in, then out. "Real?"
"Bones, hey—hey." You reach out, lock your hands around the back of his neck. You press your forehead to his and close your eyes. "Yes. This is—what you said. Me, focusing on what's in front of me.
"It's not about what I saw. Not directly. This—" you loose one hand from his neck so you can trail a finger down his chest "—is what I want. Me. Not—the other me.
"I did—think about it all this time. That for there to be me, there always has to be my mom, my dad. And all the people who made them. And the people who made them. And—back, and back, until—whenever. Maybe I am always supposed to be a starship captain. Maybe I can't change any of that. But maybe—if the same people always have to meet to make me—I was always supposed to meet you. Have you in my life in some way. And I think—I want this—" you gesture between you, close, your lips only inches apart "—to be the way. In this life. This life is all I care about now. Does that make sense?"
He's silent for long enough you're afraid, suddenly. Afraid until he draws closer and locks his arms around your waist and whispers, yeah, it does, Jim, and he pulls you back on in.