Work Text:
One day, when drunk, she tight-rope-walked an invisible line along the hallway, her arms spread straight out from her sides and counted steps. It's one hundred steps from the elevator to his door, which seemed to go quicker when she was dancing and now feels agonisingly slow as she drags herself one step and then another along a corridor that seems impossibly long and one light is going out, strobing off and on and off and on again. Blood wet under her shirt and down the side of her face. She swoons and catches her weight with her shoulder against a gently curving wall. Joints scream. Her head pounds.
Fuck. Fuck.
Often, when drunk, Chekov talks about the time that he watched her and Sulu falling, watched their vitals leap and dance on the monitor in front of him. Like ballet, he says. Like fighting. From somewhere, Jamie can hear this long, low tone, flat-line. Her chest aches as though someone's slamming a fist into it, ramming their knuckles hard against her solar plexus. Her knees buckle and she's got no choice but to sink down to the floor. She wipes her face and the back of her hand comes away red. Somewhere, she can hear Bones shouting. Hear is the wrong word. She's aware of it in the same way that she's aware of the beating of her own heart.
For a moment, she presses her face to the floor and closes her eyes. It's cool against fevered, bloody skin.
If she looks at this too closely then she'll see the whole truth of it: the sickbay, a table, more blood than should be possible. A hole in her belly the size of a fist, the raw edges still smoking and her uniform melting and Bones' hands hovering like a faith healer's. Blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.
But the thing about Jamie Kirk that perhaps the Universe hasn't quite understood yet is that she has no use for no-win scenarios and that the man in that sickbay, he's her oldest and dearest friend, her most loved, and she might not give a fuck what happens to her but she will not put him through this, not when, a while ago now, Jamie Kirk decided that she was going to be worthy of the Enterprise and everybody on her. In a corridor that both does and does not exist, bloody and still bleeding, Jamie drags herself up onto her hands and knees and she starts to crawl.
In the Sickbay on the Enterprise, maybe Bones leans forward and watches her eyelids flicker in REM sleep.
Listen: none of this can really be happening.
Still. There is a door and she crawls towards it.
And you, Kirk. You're not supposed to be here, anyway.
She tries to laugh but all that she manages is a rattle deep in her chest. She turns her head and spits blood foam. It's a hundred steps from the elevator to his door, to her door, now. Captain's quarters. A safe place. She just has to get there. And it's such slow going.
A hundred steps. A thousand miles.
The first time she reaches for the handle, her bloody fingers slip. She wipes her hand on the front of her shirt and tries again.
Oh, God. Oh, please.
The door slips open. A breath of wind sweet and soft with sage.
Maybe she sleeps.
Maybe she forgets to be anywhere for a while.
*
She could die here.
She draws in a long, shuddering breath and presses her fingers against the wound to try and stop some of the bleeding. The pain is singular and forces clarity back into the world.
And he finds here there, like that, lying there, holding herself together with both hands.
Eyes closed, she knows he's there before he touches her. His hands are broad and warm, pouring off heat. He gathers her in against his chest, bends to kiss her forehead and she feels comfortable, and she feels safe, and all of the pain is gone, and all of the worry. In the sick-bay, she's sleeping, in his arms she's dying, and everything is...if not alright, then, for a time, everything is quiet.