Chapter Text
Those blue eyes turn towards him again, and blink slowly, lids dragging down over his expression as the kid takes a shallow breath. McCoy drops his hand down onto Jim’s cadet reds and the kid draws a shaky breath. He figures Jim Kirk is as good as a Sentinel since he tends to have to calm the kid down as often as not. He’s good practice for a Guide.
“You okay, Jim?”
“Yeah. Yeah, Bones.” The pale pink tongue darts out and wets chapped lips. “Just wondering why we are all here. Ya know, entire class? In a courtroom.”
“Hell if I know, Kid.” Bones grumbles, the hand on his arm anchoring. Jim focuses on Bones’ heart beat, letting his lids lower by fractions, everything tuning in : the sound of his pulse, the drag of air in and out of his lungs, the steady thrum of his heart. The Guide is calm, which helps Jim maintain his own heart rate.
Jim squashed his flinch when the doors flew open and a panel of Admirals swarmed in. He rose with the rest of his class and then took his seat again. The sigh was soundless as Bones’ hand returned to his lower arm, a comforting weight.
“This session has been called to resolve a troubling matter. James T. Kirk, step forward. Cadet Kirk, evidence has been submitted to this council, suggesting that you violated the ethical code of conduct pursuant to Regulation One-Seven point three of the Starfleet Code.”
Jim rose, tugged his uniform straight, noticing again how the material caught at his fingertips and seemed to chafe. He forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, until he ended up at the podium. He blinked up at the Admirals. He couldn’t hear Bones’ heart anymore. Faded into the background with too many other humans around.
“Is there anything you care to say before we begin, sir?”
Jim puts his hands on the podium to ground himself, even if it feels like sandpaper under the tips of his fingers, and forces a breath in through his mouth, knowing if he draws in one through his nose, he’ll puke.
“Yes, I believe I have the right to face my accuser directly. “ He forces himself to punch a bit of cocky bravado into his voice. He hears somebody rise behind him. Another cadet then, he expects. He does not turn, hearing instead focusing on each step the person makes.
Heavy on his feet, male -- he assumes -- by the longer step pattern. Even in ‘Fleet boots a woman won’t walk that heavy. His hearing goes hyper for a moment as a heartbeat, so so fast… too fast… thunders into his awareness. His pupils blow wide for a second and he dips his head.
Fingers bite into the wood, grain tearing into his flesh. He looks down, expecting blood to be seeping across the wood -- it hurts so much -- and that too fast drumbeat vibrates into his head.
Barnett’s voice slices through the beat as a black uniform settles in on his left side. He turns his head. Instructor then.“--pock. He's one of our most distinguished graduates. He's programmed the Kobayashi Maru exam for the last four years.”
Jim gulps in a breath, that beat still pounding in his head… coming from the Vulcan next to him. He drags his fingers along the wood, trying to throw another sense hyper, to drown out the heartbeat, to shut down his hearing. His knees try to buckle as he fights himself and his senses without giving anything away. His head comes up as Barnett pauses.
“Commander?” That one word cracks against his hearing and he shoves back the flinch. He hasn’t flinched since he was thirteen and came online in the middle of Hell itself.
“Cadet Kirk” Jim fights down his pupillary response, pulling a hand off the podium and balling a fist, nails slicing brightly into his palm, grounding himself with pain. That voice nearly sends him to his knees. Undertones of a growl, his heart tries to climb… he forces it back down the way T'Kaya taught him to. He turns his head to face his accuser.
“You somehow managed to install and activate a subroutine to the programming code, thereby changing the conditions of the test.”
Yeah, he thinks, I did. And I also changed one fucking alarm so that Sentinels don’t blitz the fuck out when that one tone smacks at over-sharp hearing. It breaks into ranges that dogs hate… oh yeah, he asked something…. Uh… “Your point being?”
Barnett’s voice drags his suddenly dimmed hearing around, “In academic vernacular, you cheated.”
His gorge tries to rise as he takes an involuntary breath through his nose as his nails slice through his skin and the pain registers twice what it should be. Too many scents in the room nearly blitz him. “Let me ask you something, I think we all know the answer to. The test itself is a cheat, isn't it? You programmed it to be unwinnable.”
“Your argument precludes the possibility of a no-win scenario.”
Jim goes cold, thinking again of T'Kaya, and what she always told him. Her words snarl out of his mouth, her voice echoes down the years, through him. “I don't believe in no-win scenarios.”
The commander arches a brow, pulse still registering to Jim, even though his sense of touch is now digging across his flesh. He wants to rip his uniform off as though ants are crawling across his flesh. “Then, not only did you violate the rules, you also failed to understand the principle lesson.”
Focus, Jimmy. Come on, come on… FOCUS, “Please, enlighten me.”
“You of all people should know, Cadet Kirk. A Captain cannot cheat death.”
Those words barely register. Demented laughter is swallowed back and chewed on along with a scream out outrage. He sees T'Kaya’s face and hears her voice breathe in his ear and calms before he allows himself to sneer, “I of all people?”
“Your father, Lieutenant George Kirk, assumed command of his vessel before being killed in action, did he not?”
Jim blinks. He didn’t even consider that. His senses are too out of whack right now. He can barely focus, so he goes for the low shot. “I don't think you like the fact that I beat your test?”
“Furthermore, you have failed to divine the purpose of the test.” He hears the heart rate on the Vulcan climb slightly. He keeps from narrowing his eyes, realizing he can gauge him. Blood is slippery in his palm, and he can smell his own blood, thick and salty.
“Enlighten me again.” Jim spits out, trying to force himself to focus just on the scent of his own iron based blood. He hates the smell, it turns his stomach, puts the memory of sick sweet rotten plants into his brain, causing him to swallow back sickness, which others will think is rage.
“The purpose is to experience fear. Fear in the face of certain death. To accept that fear, and maintain control of oneself and one's crew. This is a quality expected in every Starfleet captain”
Jim bit savagely on his tongue to keep from yelling. He’d already passed that fucking test at age thirteen as T'Kaya lay dying in his arms, the Guide’s last instructions to keep Control and get the kids to higher ground as he listened to her heartbeat slow and stutter and she choked on her own blood. He swallowed the bitter laugh and squeezed his cut palm tighter, using the pain and dripping blood to force control.
His attention snapped to the aide that bustled through the frozen tabalu and shoved a PADD into the Adimiral’s hand.
“We've received a distress call from Vulcan. With our primary fleet engaged in the Laurentian system, I hereby order all cadets to report to Hangar One immediately. Dismissed.”
Jim’s attention snapped to the Vulcan. The man’s heart rate just skyrocketed, and the indrawn breath is audible to him. He forces himself to remain still as Bones comes to his side and shivers as the man puts a hand on his sleeve. The fact that the Vulcan walks away from him without so much as a backward glance rips at something inside of him. It yawns wide like a pit of nothingness, an echo from the day T'Kaya died. Jim just followed as Bones drags him, muttering something about wondering who the pointy-eared bastard is.
***
When his name isn’t called Jim registers it as more of another dull ache, the re-awakened pit still gaping inside of him, and shakes his head. He is functioning on autopilot. He goes where Bones drags him, yet lurches back when Bones drags a hypospray up.
“No. No!”
“Jim… it’s the only way to get you on Enterprise. As your primary care physician I can get you onboard.”
“Not that, Bones. I can’t tell what it will do to me. Not right now, anyways.” He swallows hard and lets his eyes skim along. He recognizes a drug name and reaches for an ampule. He slaps it into place and slows his breathing. He raises the hypospray and knows Bones has caught sight of it right before he injects himself with a steady hand.
“Jim? Don’t!” The drug rushes into his bloodstream and he gasps. The ‘spray clatters to the floor. His pupils constrict instantly. His heart rate soars, and sweat starts to pool along his sides. Nausea roars up his throat. And Jim allows himself to stagger.
“Damn it, Jim! That was Prometonizine! It’s a cocktail designed to sedate a raging fucking Unbonded Sentinel!!” Bones lunges for the antidote. Jim lurches out of his way and then vomits. He forgot how much that scrambled his senses. Fuck.
“Know.” He managed to slur even as he slapped the hypospray out of McCoy’s hand and pinned him back against the racks of medications.
“Jim!!!” McCoy is anguished. That is only ever given to Sentinels. Anybody else it is a genetic death sentence. Jim pressed his face against his best friend’s neck and breathed in the scent of the Guide pinned between himself and the medications. He knew he won’t blitz out now, not with that swimming in his veins. But he needs contact or he will pass out instead.
“Bones! Bones! Fuck it all! McCoy!” Jim bellows the last and Bones jerks.
“Good. I’m online, Bones. M’not raging though. Woozy. Sweaty. Sorry. Don’t stop touch, please? Passout instead if… mmm. Smell niiice.”
“God damn it Jim. You’re a Sentinel. An online, unbonded fucking Sentinel?”
“Yep. Don worry though. You’re not… not… mine.”
Bones runs his tricorder over Jim and frowns as he lifts a hand. Jim manages a protesting noise and lists wildly to the left. McCoy snags his wrist and Jim slumps back towards him. Bones grunts as Jim thuds into him, head lolling on his neck.
“You aren’t my Sentinel is what you are saying. Even though I’m a Guide. Why the fuck did I never see it?”
“Control. Conceal. Hide. Safer… for evey… body. Kept safe.” Jim closes his eyes for a moment as Bones wraps an arm around Jim, pushing up the Cadet Red jacket and burrowing a finger under the waistband of the other man’s trousers, initiating skin on skin contact. He's hauled onboard a shuttle and plonked next to McCoy, who never takes his fingers off him, keeping him awake and aware through touch.
Jim is too close to passing out, he blinks too slowly, reactions just a fraction too much off. Enterprise is still glorious though and he smiles at Bones, happy about the ship being so pretty and Bones’ skin being nice and warm… even as it grates slightly against his own flesh.
Medical Bay is noisy. Nails bite into his left palm to keep himself under control. He feels his stomach flip flop and knows he’s just gone green when Bones clutches the back of his neck and forces his head down. He chucks into a bedpan and is grateful to rinse out his mouth. Then Bones let’s go of him and blackness rushes up too fast to meet him.