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“Jim! Jim, can you hear me?”
Frantic voices blurred into one as Jim’s eyes fluttered open and closed. He couldn’t focus on anything, but he could make out vague blue shapes moving around him. He officers. But why?
He was so tired, all he wanted to do was sleep. Although he could make out a faint distant voice telling him to stay awake, he decided he just needed two minutes. Then he would get up.
When he closed his eyes, there was nothing. No time, no pain, no feeling at all. Just peace.
Too bad his life was about to flash before his eyes.
“Spock, can’t you do something!” McCoy yelled. “I’m trying to stem the bleeding, but if he loses consciousness, there’s a massive chance he won’t gain it back!”
“What would you have me do, Doctor?” Spock snapped. He quickly regained his composure, but the sight of Jim’s deep red blood seeping onto the biobed was actually making him feel something unpleasant. Something which, if he were human, he would have described as fear.
“Can’t you jump into his mind and make him wake up again?” the doctor suggested. It was a half-baked one at best, because even if Spock did manage to make contact with Jim’s mind, there was no guarantee that could bring him back to consciousness. For all they knew, it could just lead to Jim getting trapped in his own mind forever.
But it was worth a try.
Placing his fingertips on the Captain’s rapidly-cooling skin, Spock narrowed his focus to starting a meld. Usually, he would have felt tendrils of the other party’s thoughts almost instantly, but Jim’s consciousness must have been buried quite deep. So Spock increased his focus and dove into his friend’s mind with as much care as he could.
Jim’s recent memories were hazy. Spock could see many of the captain spending late nights in his quarters, reading or catching up on work. And then some of the two of them together, and some with Doctor McCoy and other crew members. Standard things. There was a memory that Jim’s mind had almost fully blacked out. Spock presumed this was the moment he got injured on the away mission they just beamed back from. He didn’t dare touch it.
Jim wasn’t here. He was somewhere further back.
Spock’s consciousness waded through Jim’s memories, going back a year, and then two, and then four. He paused for a moment during Jim’s academy days. If anyone asked him why, he would have said scientific curiosity, but the truth was more distressing than he wanted to admit. Spock wanted to have known Jim back then. Sure, he had seen pictures, but a very illogical part of him wished they could have met back then. Because Spock had needed a friend back then.
But to linger was to invade Jim’s privacy more than he already had. So he kept going. Back through the end of Jim’s teenage years, where he was recovering from Tarsus IV, and then into the darkest part of his friend’s mind — Tarsus itself.
Spock could feel Jim’s presence here somewhere, lingering, hiding, terrified.
“Jim,” he reached out with his thoughts. “It is Spock. I am here for you. Where are you?”
But his voice echoed in the darkness.
Slowly, the memory began to light up. Little snippets of the horrors Jim had seen as a mere fifteen year old.
Rotting corpses, starving children, emaciated adults begging him for food. And Jim? He had been somewhere in the middle. Starving, thin, lanky, eyes as hollow as his cheeks. Spock knew it had taken him years to come to terms with what happened on that planet, but to know Jim’s consciousness was here somewhere, trapped reliving this over and over again was unacceptable.
“Jim?” he tried again. “You are safe. This is not reality. Come to me. I will keep you safe.”
This time, a single strand of Jim’s thoughts drifted over to him.
“You can’t be Spock… Spock was never here on Tarsus…”
Spock replied almost fiercely. “This is not Tarsus. You are not alone. You are hurt Jim, but Doctor McCoy will heal your body. However, you must allow your mind to return to the surface. Will you join me?”
The offer Spock extended was essentially the mind meld equivalent of holding your hand out so someone can take it. And Jim, however tentatively, inched toward him. He slipped out of hiding, the shape of his consciousness meeting Spock’s.
“You are safe, Jim.”
“Thank you, Spock.”
Gently, Spock began to guide Jim back through the years, through his memories, back to the present. Sometimes Jim would linger somewhere, like at a memory of a sunset dinner he shared with Ruth on Earth, or a particularly enjoyable book he read. Spock let him pause for a moment, watching him marvel at the kinds of things his mind could store for him. But then he always turned back to Spock, always reached out with his thoughts, and when he was ready to go, they would move on.
Some time later, Jim’s eyes fluttered open, slowly focusing on the people around him. Above him, dark hair and dark eyes peered back down.
“It is good to have you back, Jim.”
“Thank you, Mr Spock,” he smiled weakly.
“Yeah yeah, and no one thanks the actual doctor,” mumbled McCoy nearby, facing his shelf with a relieved smile.