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He doesn’t have enough sense just yet to hope for anything specific. He only knows that the voices are a comfort.
He doesn’t have enough grounding in anything static, anything sound save for the pain, but even that’s distant, removed from his own cells and suffered in someone else’s, and honestly? That’s a goddamned comfort too, just the same.
But the sounds are ever-present: clicking and beeping and whooshing, always interspersed with words he understands but can’t contextualize, aimed at some unknown entity: maybe himself, maybe the cosmos, maybe no one at all. He can’t figure out if they come from without, or if they’re the products of his own drifting, ailing, dying mind, because if there’s anything Jim knows, it’s that he’s dying. That was his choice. He didn’t have time to make his peace with it, really, but he’s settled in it. He knows it was right.
No regrets.
Well.
Some regrets, maybe.
Still: at the end, he’d been terrified, but not lonely. Thank god.
And even now, wherever he is, whatever this is, he’s got the voices. He’s still not alone.
Small mercies, he figures.
He’ll take them.
_________________________________________
“I shoulda fought harder, Captain.”
Captain. Jim knows a captain. Jim is a captain.
“When I resigned, I never expected—”
The voice breaks off, choked, and he hears breathing, heavy, distraught, and he realizes.
The voice is crying.
“I should never have let ye take ‘em aboard in the first place,” and yes, Scotty. Scotty who had told him no, no, and no, and who Jim had shut down time and again, because sometimes Jim’s an idiot.
Scotty, who had pulled through anyway. Scotty, who had stood there watching him, horrified, but never faltering, as he thrashed out his last moments, as he writhed before it was all too late, and he was all too weak, before Spock came and he drifted, drifted with a few blissful moments of clarity, that inbred gift of consciousness, that surge at the finish. Scotty. Loyal.
His friend Montgomery Scott.
“It shoulda taken more’ena punch from you to knock me out cold,” Scotty says finally, after a pause, and his voice is watery still, but there’s something else in it now, and it makes Jim feel warm: laughter. Strained, and false, and too stilted: a thin attempt at a normality that can never be again, but oh, Jim latches onto it, feels it surge in his blood like poison, like the radiation as it had seeped in deep but better. Bright instead of dark.
“S’pathetic, is what it is.”
That Scotty. Always laughing.
“I dinnae ken they’d have quite pulled out the stops for me like this, though,” Scotty comments, fond and funny and far too sad, and Jim latches onto that, too, because the hurt’s coming back, and the beeping surges just a bit, and he’s dying.
Isn’t he?
“I’ll be going, now,” Scotty tells him, and Jim wants to ask questions, doesn’t want to be left just yet, but he can’t speak, of course he can’t; “let you get your rest.”
Rest, Jim thinks.
That’d be good.
_________________________________________
He hears rustling: close, but not too close. Down, maybe. And over.
There’s shifting.
“I’ve never said it,” and this time, the voice is higher, a woman’s; “protocol and whatnot but,” she breathes in, shakily, and Jim realizes, suddenly, that her head is pillowed on the bed he’s laid out upon, her forehead’s near his hip, and he wants to reach out, he wants to, can’t. “You’re smarter than you look, so maybe you already know.”
And Jim remembers this voice in so many ways, but the first that comes to mind is from under an Orion’s bed: irritated, almost hateful.
It’s anything but those things, now, and the change has never seemed so stark before, so drastic.
But it is.
“You’re like a brother to me, Kirk,” Nyota tells him, and he identifies the press of a hand to his own as she confesses, breathy and slow, and it feels nice.
The touch, and the sentiment. They both feel nice.
“Jim—” she starts, but she cuts off abruptly, and he’d never realized how nice her voice was when she wasn’t angry, when she wasn’t irritated, judging him. He thinks back to a bar and talented tongues and how far they’ve come, and he’d smile if he could.
Maybe he does smile. He can’t know for sure.
There are muffled sounds that may be voices, are probably voices; they sound familiar in the way that rain does, that lack of differentiation that could be threatening but isn’t, because it’s known at some level that can’t be named.
“No,” Nyota says, louder not—not to him, he knows; somehow, he knows as he makes out the brush of her lips, gentle and chaste against his temple for half a second, maybe less. “Just leaving.”
He hopes she comes back. Later.
_________________________________________
“I told you once,” and Jim knows that tone should be sharper, more clipped. It’s too subdued, too languid, the vowels and consonants slipping into one another; the human side is shining, and Jim wishes he could see it, maybe reach out a hand and squeeze a shoulder: offer solidarity, support; “that a captain was expected to experience fear in the face of certain death, and to maintain control.”
Fuck, that was so long ago. To think of Spock then, to think of himself then—
“I was perhaps,” Spock pauses for a moment, and the hesitance is something new, still, to hear in that voice; “young. I was perhaps naive, then.”
Jim would gape, seriously. Jim would let his jaw hang low at that, if he could, because he’s pretty sure he’ll never hear such a concession from the Vulcan’s mouth again in his life.
Ever.
“I had experienced that fear and shunned it, reined it accordingly. This I have told you,” and Jim feels his throat tighten, because those words in that shuttle, as Jim’s own world was collapsing: those words had cut him somewhere raw and tender, somewhere that still knows how to sting.
“Watching you, though,” Spock says, voice tight, and when it wavers, when Spock wavers, it’s almost too much. “Jim, I had no control,” and Jim remembers, half thought it a hallucination before, really, the tears and the choked words and the friendship there, the brotherhood.
He’s glad it wasn’t a dream, really, even though it hurts.
“I would have destroyed him,” Spock says, voice low: a confession, and it screams for absolution, and Jim knows there are too many pieces to fit together just now, too many gaps to make sense, but it’s okay, it’s all okay.
“A captain cannot cheat death, Jim, and to that idea I hold.” Spock tells him, soft. “But you, James Tiberius Kirk,” and Jim can’t make out what he feels, exactly, when Spock draws in a deep, shuddering, steadying breath: he doesn’t know what it is, exactly, just that it’s real fucking strong. “You inspire your friends to force death’s hand, make it withdraw its claim.”
Jim lets that settle for a spell, lets that sink in, and maybe, just maybe—
Maybe he’s not dying. Not anymore.
Doubtful. But maybe.
“You have been my friend, Jim,” Spock speaks with conviction, and that’s it. That’s it. “And you always shall be.”
Jim feels his lungs empty with a certain satisfaction, and maybe it’s a sigh, or maybe it’s the universe, all the universes, all the timelines and the rights and wrongs: maybe it’s alignment, maybe things are moving toward the good.
“I hope that, moving forward,” Spock adds, “I may be worthy of the same post in return.”
Yeah, Jim thinks. Definitely toward the good.
_________________________________________
“Fucking drama queen,” comes the muttering, the slow molasses of drawling syllables sifting through. “Of course your vitals are more stable than they’ve been in months when you’ve been resurrected from the grave,” and Jim feels a familiar sensation in his chest because he knows that voice, he knows it because that’s his north star, that’s the color of his blood, that’s the way his bones shiver only because they know warmth will come back, someday.
Oh, that voice.
“Jim,” and now, that voice deepens, fills with a weight that’s cumbersome, that’s drenched, and that’s the pump of his heart, that’s the exhale he holds too long; he’d known, he thinks, deep down how true, how necessary that voice was, that voice and all it held, all that came with it—he thinks he always knew, but now, it’s so fucking clear.
It almost scares him, and he thinks maybe he’s dying again, yet it’s different. A hand reaches out and curls around his own, and yes. Very different.
At least he’s not alone.
“Come on, Jim,” Bones pleads, cajoles. “It’s time to stop this, it’s hurting now,” Bones tells him plainly, and that wrenches all the more.
“It’s hurting like it did when I unzipped that bag and saw you in it,” and god, god, Jim’s chest sears with that, because Bones’ voice is wrecked, and Bones’ head is on Jim’s chest and this is not his Bones; this is his Bones, stripped down and flayed alive, because of Jim, of course it’s because of Jim, and goddamnit.
Goddamnit.
“You can’t leave me,” Bones whispers, and yes, Jim thinks again, this is dying, it has to be, but no, no: because he only wants to reach out and yet he’s frozen, locked away, useless and that isn’t dying, that the hell that follows after.
“You can’t leave this,” Bones whispers, and Jim flinches, the whole of him seizes when he feels Bones’ fingers tighten around his own, when he feels wetness, tears soak through to the skin near his collarbone. “We never, I didn’t...”
He trails off, and Jim feels himself rising, surfacing for the first time in too long, feels so close to a breakthrough he can’t name or define, and it kills him, it fucking kills him when he falls short, when he brushes against the barrier and still can’t tear it down.
“We’ll do it better,” Bones promises, and Jim wants to say yes. “Do it right,” and yes, yes, that too, because they’ve been dancing around something since they met, they’ve been something more since the very start, and Jim had been a coward long before he noticed what was happening, and if he can break this, if he can stand this, if he survives then there will be no more bullshitting the inevitable.
“I’ll take you back home,” Bones strokes his skin, soft and hesitant, a quick brush before pulling back, like he can’t, like he’s not allowed, but oh, he is, he is and Jim will scream it to the fucking stars if he’s given the chance to try; “show you...”
Jim tries to grit his teeth, tries to fucking move, puts everything he has behind the need and it’s close, he knows it, it’s close—
“Come back,” Bones breathes out, and it’s a sob, so broken, and it breaks Jim in kind, it makes him weep and ache and he stumbles, he falls, and he can’t do anything, he can’t move, he can’t speak, he can’t breathe, he can only listen: “Come back and I’ll show you everything, I’ll give you everything.”
Jim’s heart fills with lead as the bottom drops out.
“Just come back.”
_________________________________________
There’s a hand on his forehead. Rough skin. The voice, when it comes this time, is soft. Affectionate. Jim wants to cry when he hears it, wants to move to where it lives because everything hurts again, and if this is death—finally—it actually fucking sucks.
“No, son,” the voice tells him, and it’s made of comfort, made to soothe him and bring him back to his center.
“You can’t stay here,” it tells him, and he stops trying to chase it, trying to follow the voice to where it breathes. “They’re waiting for you,” it tells him, as often it has, often it did; “you’ve got work to do.”
Yes. He does, yes.
“Your father would have been proud of you,” the voices tells him, and that’s nice, that’s nice to hear. “Always,” it adds, “with or without this, he’d have been proud.”
Jim’s wondered, it’s true. Hearing it aloud is a tiny balm, but everything else still hurts, and he just wants to stay here, he doesn’t want to try, even as his pulse races, even as he aches to go where there are promises, where he’ll be shown things and given things and his world will feel full and he can smile at his brother, and embrace his sister, and tell his friend that he’s sorry and give his heart to the only person he’d be willing to lose it to because with him, with him there’d be no loss.
Everything save that heart wants to stay. Everything save his soul wants to stop.
But then the world breaks open, because the voice speaks again.
“I’ve always been proud of you.”
It’s everything Jim never knew he needed, and when he feels his own tears slide from his eyes, that’s when it comes together.
That’s when it all makes sense without any sense.
“You’re a good man, Jim Kirk,” Christopher Pike tells him, honest and heartfelt and god, Jim lost his father before he’d barely breathed, but he hadn’t been left to live without knowing that love for himself, because the universe gave him a man who believed in him, who called him a son not because it worked, because it was convenient, no; because he meant it.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” Chris adds, and Jim can hear the smirk, “an arrogant sonuvabitch,” Jim chokes out a laugh, and the shock is, he can hear it; “and the best kind of man I could ever hope to know.”
Jim feels a building in his gut, in his ribs, in his lungs: he doesn’t know what it is, but he’s on the brink, a precipice, when Chris speaks again.
“Don’t forget that.”
He won’t, fuck, he won’t.
“Go on,” Chris urges softly, his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Your family needs you. Take care of them.”
He will, he will, he will give and he will protect and he will live, goddamnit, he will.
Jim gasps.
The world is bright.
_________________________________________
The Georgia sun is hot even before it rises, Jim finds. Bones doesn’t wear a shirt if he can avoid it, never buttons the ones he does shrug on now and again, so Jim can’t complain.
Bones sleeps like the dead, Jim’s known that for ages: sprawled at odd angles, chest heaving deep, but gentle: Jim loves watching him sleep, watching him breathe.
They haven’t said it yet, but Jim’s okay with taking leaps, trusting his gut.
“I love you, Leonard McCoy,” he whispers, kissing Bones’ lips gently and smiling, soaring as Bones’ lips turn up as he sleeps, because Jim knows it’s no coincidence. He knows the truth of things like this.
Just because your eyes are closed, it doesn’t mean you’re not listening.