Chapter Text
The Enterprise’s scans showed that the planet was home to no sentient life and no dangerous wildlife.
The scans neglected to inform the crew that the extensive plant life was for the most part, incredibly carnivorous and very hungry.
Jim and Bones escape being eaten alive alongside the rest of the landing party purely because Bones panics, trips backwards into a deep hole and accidently drags a startled Jim with him.
Bones doesn’t find Jim until he finally manages to stumble across an exit to the extensive cave system they apparently tumbled down into. Jim is sitting unconcernedly on the floor in the middle of the opening, pale red sunlight bathing him and reflecting in ripples off of the pool of blood surrounding him.
“Oh my god! What did you do?!” Bones shouts at him, eyes blazing and his hands automatically reaching up to clutch desperately in his hair.
“I cut my arm off,” Jim shrugs nonchalantly.
“You- you cut your own arm off!” Bones yells horrified, forcing his own arms in to action and desperately grabbing for the field medical kit strapped to his utility belt.
“No-one saw Bones. I had to get free of the rock and out of the cave somehow!”
“Goddammit Jim! You cut your arm off!”
“It’ll grow back!”
“I hate you so much,” Bones growls sharply, compacting the jagged stump of Jim’s elbow with MediGauze, trying futilely to stem the waterfall of blood. “Will you sit still dammit kid! You’re gonna bleed to death unless you let me finish this!”
“Oh just let me bleed out; it’ll be quicker,” Jim replies faintly, swatting weakly at the Doctor’s blood stained hands.
“The bridge crew is monitoring your life signs you moron! How am I supposed to explain your signal fatally terminating!?” Pushing Jim over to lie back on the hair-like purple grass, Bones continues to ignore Jim’s protestations and shoves the windlass into the tourniquet he just strapped around his bicep.
“Bones…” Jim groans breathily, his words stuttering with pain. “Just say- transponder error. Signal cut out. Shortage. Blew up. Poof. Anything. Doesn’t matter. Oh and- and- Bones. Bones promise that- promise me you won’t tell Pike.”
“Oh you can bet your ass I’m grassing you up, you imbecilic infant.” Bones snaps back, “Now clench your jaw; this is gonna hurt like a bitch.”
Bones takes a deep breath and slowly cranks the windlass a turn and a half.
Jim screams in agony through gritted teeth.
And then blacks out because his heart has stopped.
McCoy looks down on the still body of his deceased best friend and sighs deeply.
“You utter bastard!” Bones chuckles darkly, “We told you, Pike and I! No dying we said! And yet you just had to didn’t you! Again!”
Bones kicks Jim’s lifeless shin playfully and flops down into the grass next to him.
“Utter. Bastard!”
“Aww fucking hell,” Jim whimpers as oxygen suddenly pours back into his lungs. “Oh god the nerves in my arm. Oh holy fuck that burns!”
“Oh stop being dramatic. It’s your own fault for hacking it off with a rock!”
“Oh god, please kill me again until its done.” Jim moans, rolling over to stare pleadingly at his best friend. “oh god please, it hurts so bad! It’s like, at least an eleven! Oh god oh god!”
“Goddamn drama queen,” Bones mutters with a roll of his eyes. “And stop saying oh god, or I’ll shove a thesaurus PADD down your throat until you choke on it.”
Then he palms a hypo full of concentrated shellfish extract and stabs it against Jim’s neck before Jim can continue to whine and moan.
The USS Enterprise, Designation NCC-1701, has a standard crew capacity of 832, as well as two dozen empty guest and ambassadorial suites. When you then include the available bed space in the Medbay and the crash cots in engineering, it is possible to accommodate 892 humanoid individuals on board at any one time. More if crew members agree to double up or sleep in shifts.
Out of that possible 892 available berths, 817 are currently in use. Of those 817, precisely 2 know the truth of Jim Kirk’s unique circumstances. One of those is Jim Kirk himself.
Why, McCoy finds himself silently asking yet again as he watches Jim dash off like the reckless madman he is yet again, does the other one have to be him?
They’re currently “enjoying” their fourth mission since the Enterprise launched with one James T. Kirk as its Captain.
Thankfully only the first had resulted in any fatalities, and even more thankfully, only four people were aware that one of those fatalities had been Jim himself. Jim’s arm had finished re-growing (to Bones’ sickened fascination) in just under three and a quarter hours after its initial amputation, and Bones had managed to get them beamed back on board only 30 minutes after that.
This fourth mission though, looked like it was gearing up to claim some more casualties.
They were only supposed to be doing basic milk-run missions. Given the youth and perceived inexperience of the new crew of the Enterprise, the Admiralty of Starfleet were extremely loathe to entrust the ship with anything even resembling a worthwhile assignment. Bones was perfectly happy pottering about doing the easiest tasks the Admiralty could dream up, but Jim and the rest of the command crew were all starting to chafe at the bit.
Consequently, in a fit of frustration, Jim had forcibly organised a direct HoloVid call with the senior flag officers and then effectively thrown a hissy fit. Given that Spock unexplainably sided with Jim during the ensuing argument, the result was somehow being assigned this mission.
This mission that was decidedly not a milk-run.
It’s a class M planet, with semi-technologically advanced inhabitants. Assuming they were roughly following Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development, they probably started their industrial revolution about 80 years ago. There were sprawling cities beginning to cover the planet’s surface, churning out mass produced textiles, great metal beams, and a disgusting amount of thick black smog.
The planet’s natives themselves were unusual humanoid mammal-avian hybrids. They were nearly entirely covered in feathers of all colours, had beaks of all shapes and sizes, and according to Spock’s Tricorder scans, an exceedingly low bone density. Two legs, four arms and at least one pair of huge wings. Whether or not they had evolved to fly… Jim was adamant they would be able to. Spock was decidedly of the opposite opinion.
As for the mission? Well…
At its heart it was a simple “Observe and Record” assignment. Simple, excepting the part where they had to get into the government headquarters of every nation on the planet and plant microscopic monitoring devices without being seen or detected. Simple, except that there were seven distinct nations on the planet so they were going to have to do it seven times. Simple, if one ignored the part were six of those seven were currently embroiled in an incredibly violent world war.
It was utter carnage and Bones was excessively grateful that the bird-brains were yet to work out filament lightbulbs, let alone anything nuclear or warp driven.
So here they were, Jim, Spock, Bones, Sulu and two redshirted security officers. Down on a planet trying to tear its self apart using canons, powder pistols and basic steamboats.
And to really put the cherry on the top? They’d just been seen by one of the bird-people while crawling around one of the nation leader’s offices.
The bird-person had squawked in alarm, sprinted out on to the nearest balcony and jumped. Down twelve stories. Jim had gone charging after it despite everyone else’s protests and disappeared down a stairwell, Sulu thankfully close behind him.
“Well, I think that settles that debate,” Bones drawls to Spock as they watch the bird person glide gently down to the driveway below.
“Indeed Doctor. I find that the Captain’s conclusion concerning the species’ use of their wings to be inexplicably accurate. I confess, I am unsure at this moment in time how it is that their physiology obeys the laws of physics and aerodynamics in such a manner to allow them flight. It is a most perturbing quandary.”
Bones chuckles and claps the Vulcan hard on the shoulder. Spock looks at him with the Vulcan equivalent of bewilderment.
“I wouldn’t admit defeat quite yet Spock,” he continues chuckling, “that wasn’t flying, just falling with style!”
“I concede you may be right Doctor.”
“I knew that reference was gonna go right over your Vulcan head. Oh well, come on; we better go find our mentally deficient commanding officer.”
“I surmise that is intended to be a human jest and not a medical pronouncement.”
“Oh no Spock, Jim is definitely five cards short of a full deck. Totally batshit insane and prone to frequent bouts of contagious craziness.
“…Doctor?”
“I’m telling you Spock. For example, he cut his own arm off last month. It’s still stuck under a boulder in a cave.”
“…Doctor!?”
“Well, he got better.”
“I’m not sure it’s the Captain’s mental health that should be called into question in this instance.”
“Just remember one day, that I totally told you so.”
Jim does not catch the bird-person.
He does trip down the stairs and break his neck.
Sulu lands on top of him apparently, and then promptly freaks the fuck out.
To be fair to the Helmsman, Bones had also had a not inconsequential anxiety attack the first time he had watched Jim set his own head back on straight with a loud crack. Of course, that time Jim had nicked his spinal cord with one of the broken sections of C-vertebrae in the process and ended up with quadriplegia for two days. The whole thing had horrified him so much, Bones had dumped his totally paralysed best friend with Chris Pike for the night and gone and drunk half a bar’s worth of alcohol, hoping to permanently purge the sickening images and sounds from his brain.
So really, Sulu’s deathly paleness and occasional confused noises are quite a mild reaction in comparison.
“It’s okay Hikaru,” Jim tells the Pilot with an almost-innocent smile, “I’m totally fine see!”
Sulu reaches out and pokes Jim in the neck with his left index finger.
“Nuh uh!” he says violently shaking his head.
Spock stands in the corner silently, one eyebrow raised, pretending not to be confused because that would be considered un-Vulcanly. Bones thanks whatever deities might happen to be listening for ensuring that Jim had finished resurrecting before the rest of them had gotten into the stairwell.
“He can’t die.” Sulu says disbelievingly later that night. Bones had dragged him down to Medbay and treated him for shock once they’d escaped the bird-people’s war-torn planet. And then afterwards, he’d dragged him into the CMO’s office to treat him for Jim-Exposure.
“Well he can,” Bones corrects with a sigh, pouring out another two fingers of his good scotch, “he just doesn’t stay dead.”
Sulu stares a hole into the wall behind Bones’ head for several long minutes, and then leans forward to swipe the entire scotch bottle. Bones doesn’t stop him from drinking straight from the neck.
“You’re immortal Cap’ain!” Sulu drunkenly slurs when Jim finally shows up to help Bones drag the Helmsman to bed. “Tha’s soooo weird. You died and then got undeaded. An’ no-one knows!”
“Woah, how much did you give him!?” Jim asks Bones, struggling with Sulu’s near dead-weight.
“He’s still conscious, so clearly not enough,” Bones tells him with a raised eyebrow. “He had to deal with your dumb ass after all.”
“I’m not that bad Bonesy!”
“Want a bet kid?”
Jim wisely, does not take the bet.
“Nibiru huh?”
“It’s a primitive Class M planet in the centre of the Alpha Quadrant.” Pike tells them from the Vid on the main Bridge view screen. “Looks to be a pretty simple assignment son. You don’t even have to send a landing party down. Just park yourselves in orbit and do some long-range scans.”
“Pushing us back into milk-runs then,” Jim comments dryly, clearly unimpressed.
“Someone’s got to do it Kirk, and Admiral Marcus was correct when he pointed out that you guys are both closest and have the best equipment for the job.”
“But we’re a constellation class ship! And we literally just proved that we can handle more complicated assignments!”
“And yet I don’t give a damn,” Pike deadpans back. Bones chuckles dryly from behind the Captain’s chair, causing Jim to turn and glare up at him quickly.
“Get to it Captain,” Pike continues. “And if there’s even a whiff of complaining in your report afterwards, I will personally see to it that someone visits you and beats your ass into next week. Brat. Pike out.”
The view screen blinks off before Jim can snap back a witty retort, and Uhura calls out the communication disconnect confirmation.
Jim sits and stares incredulously at the clear aluminium.
“Did he just call me a brat on an official logged Comm?” he asks the room at large.
“Well he’s not wrong,” Uhura tells him with a grin.
Nibiru, Bones discovers to his immense displeasure, is not a stable, quiet, unevolved backwater planet after all.
It’s a very unstable, volcanically active, unevolved backwater planet.
“Captain, the planet’s primary volcano is about to begin a major Plinian eruption. If allowed to continue building, the eruption is likely to wipe out nearly all life on the planet, including the primitive sentients.”
“How likely Spock?” Jim asks sharply, swivelling to face his first officer.
“It is 89.76% likely to cause the mass extinction of 97.342% of all extant genera Captain.”
“Well shit.” Jim summarises rather eloquently.
“Captain, for the fourth time, all long-range communications are down!”
“Well… Keep trying Uhura!”
“What does it look like I’m doing Captain!” The communications officer snaps back, already back to manipulating dials. “But unless you magic away the planet’s crazy magnetic field, nothing is going to work!”
“Oh god Bones, what do I do?” Jim whispers desperately to the Doctor.
Bones looks his Captain and best friend straight in the eye.
“I suggest you find a way to hack this no-win scenario and laugh in the face of death kid.”
“Captain, I should be the one to enter the volcano’s crater. Of all the Enterprise’s current crew members, I have the physiology most suited to withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures.”
“No Spock, it’s got to be me. I’m the Captain and this is my insane plan, so I’ll be the one to take the risks and shoulder the responsibility.”
“On the contrary Captain. You merely requested that we suggest ideas which would conceivably prevent this disaster. The bridge crew then formulated this, as you phrased it, insane plan together from those ideas. I therefore conclude that logically, we should all share responsibility for any risks taken.”
“Bones!” Jim turns to him suddenly, “tell Spock no!”
“Spock no,” Bones says disinterestedly, not looking up from his PADD and still only half listening.
“See, now you’re medically excluded from abseiling into an active volcano. You can go with Bones down to the village and move the natives out of the danger zone instead.”
“What!” Bones suddenly cries, cutting off Spock’s next line of protestations, PADD instantly forgotten. “Like hell am I goin’ down onto the surface of that ticking time bomb! What if it explodes!? Do you know what lava does to the flesh of humanoids!? Have you ever seen a charred body left in the aftermath of a pyroclastic flow!? Volcanoes are violence and-”
“Yeah we get it Bones,” Jim cuts him off with a grin, “Volcano bad. Now go pack for the away team. Scotty! Just the man I needed to see! How to do feel about turning our spaceship into a sea ship?”
Bones always thought Jim was uniquely and seriously off his rocker, but Spock it seems, can be just as bad.
“I suggest we take the scroll Doctor.”
“Err, what?”
“The scroll which they are worshiping Doctor. I believe if we were to remove it, they would be compelled to give chase in order to reclaim it and thus remove themselves from the zone of immediate danger.”
“Weren’t you literally just harping on about the prime directive!? That crackpot plan definitely involves being seen by- Oh good, he’s already run off. Dammit Spock! Wait for me! Spock!”
Through the Comm wedged in his ear, Bones hears Uhura and Sulu desperately yelling at Jim that they have to crank him up back up immediately.
And then he hears Sulu and Uhura cursing at Jim when the latter unclips his harness and tells them to take the shuttle back to the Enterprise.
And then he notices that the direction Spock is running in is not towards the beach.
“You goddamn green blooded Hobgoblin! You’re crazy! Oh no no no no no!”
Bones shamelessly screams as he follows Spock’s insane dive off the edge of the cliff.
“We cannot beam the Captain back on board without a direct line of sight.”
“Guys! Just go! The super ice cube is primed and gonna blow any minute!” Jim’s crackled voice comes over the deteriorating Comm link. “Just ditch me and follow the prime directive! I’m just one guy versus the future development of a whole species!”
“Captain, I am 87.63% certain that if our current roles were reversed, you would be strongly advocating for breaking the rules and retrieving me regardless.”
“Spock. Scotty just said that the Enterprise would have to fly above the ash cloud to get to me. Every native down there would see the ship! That’s not just rule breaking, that’s crushing the rules into a thousand-“
The Comm crackles and dies.
“Goddammit Spock!” Bones shouts at the Vulcan XO, “if we leave him down there, he’ll be rendered as inert as the volcano!”
“I am aware Doctor.”
“Jim would never abandon you to that! Fuck the rules Spock!”
All Bones can think of is Jim permanently trapped in a giant crystalline matrix, stuck in an endless cycle of suffocating and resurrecting. He couldn’t let that happen. He just couldn’t.
Jim lands in a soot blackened heap on the transporter pad.
“Welcome aboard the Enterprise Captain Kirk.”
“Spock! You broke the rules! You broke the rules! Willingly! You!”
“It was… suggested that your rescue was the only acceptable course of action to follow.”
Bones snorts at Spock’s tactful phrasing and steps up to where Jim is still lounging on the floor.
“If what I said to you was just a suggestion Spock, then Earth’s pigs really will fly.”
“You threatened him with evisceration didn’t you,” Jim mock whispers, allowing Bones to pull him to his feet. “Thanks Bones. For- well, you know.”
Bones simply raises an eyebrow and starts dragging him towards the Medbay.
“In reference to your earlier comment Doctor.”
“Yes Spock?”
“You are aware I hope, that standard Terran pigs and other members of the Genus Sus can indeed fly?”
“Spock I’m pretty sure I gave the brain-addling pain drugs to Jim, not you.”
“But doctor, in the modern age of spaceflight and mechanical aviation, you must consider that logically all one would have to do would be place the animal in question inside a suitable transport shuttle?”
“Spock. Get out of my Medbay right now.”
Bones’ PADD crackles to life with a series of piercing beeps.
Groaning, he rolls over in bed and palms the offending device. When he notices the name displayed under the incoming ‘Vid notification, he seriously contemplates throwing it aside and ignoring it in favour of going back to sleep.
“What kid?” he grumbles lowly at the screen instead after accepting the call, squinting at the painful brightness of the backlight. “It’s before 10am on our first day of Earth shore leave; this had better be important!”
“I know Bones, but I got a Comm from Pike!”
“So? He Comms you all the damn time. Common zombie affliction remember?”
“No! I mean an official Comm! For both Spock and I! He asked for a formal meeting! You have to know what it’ll be about right?”
Bones has a sinking feeling he really does know.
“If he hands you a five-year mission briefing, I will personally go over there and slice his fingers off and force feed them to him so he can never sign off on such ridiculousness ever again. I refuse to go into deep space for that length of time!”
“You have no sense of adventure Bones! Alright look, I gotta find my dress uniform and meet up with Spock now, but I’ll keep you posted!”
By noon, Bones still hasn’t heard back from Jim and is starting to worry.
It’s really not like Jim to keep quiet when he’s excited.
Which probably means he’s not excited.
Which is, well, worrying.
1258. The doorbell to his apartment buzzes.
“Oh thank god,” he drawls and shuffles over to the door to let Jim in.
“Where the hell you been kid? I was beginning to wonder if you’d drowned in the bay or somethi- You’re not Jim.”
“It’s okay, it’s an easy mistake to make,” Pike deadpans at him. “both tall, good looking, Captainly types with a tendency to open our mouths and say the wrong thing.”
“Ahh, you wonna come in Admiral? I have coffee brewing. And pants.” He hastily adds after glancing down, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m gonna go put pants on and pretend to be a competent adult.”
Pike steps in through the door with a chuckle and Bones turns tail and scampers away into his bedroom post haste.
“I think I really fucked up McCoy.”
“I think you probably have Jim’s tendency to over exaggerate the scale of your fuck ups.”
“Oh I’m pretty sure both my ability to both fuck up and to exaggerate the fuck up predates Mr. Kirk’s existence.”
“It’s still a habit you have in common, regardless of its origin. So come on then, what did you do this time?”
Pike glances away and takes a long swallow from the mug he’d been handed upon entering the small kitchen.
“Nibiru.”
“What about it?” Bones asks, suddenly going cold.
“After reading your reports, the senior admiralty took the decision to demote Jim and reassign Spock.”
“…Shit.”
“Yeah,” Pike sighs, pinching his brow with his free hand, “and they made me deliver the news to the two of them.”
“So now the dumbass is blaming you as if you were the one who took his ship away, when really you were just the messenger.”
Pike chuckles darkly.
“Actually I lost my temper and yelled at him. Told him he was immature and didn’t deserve the chair. And I may have unintentionally implied that he should be sent back to the academy.”
Bones stops mid swallow and stares at the other man.
“When I said, “I really fucked up”, I meant it,” Pike sighs again, and turns to lean his forehead on the door of one of the top cupboards. “I’m such an asshole. I wasn’t even mad at Jim. He technically did nothing wrong.”
“So what the hell were you thinking you idiot!?” Bones exclaims.
“I wasn’t thinking!” Pike shouts, swivelling back around and beginning to pace. “I’m a short-tempered bastard with an anxiety disorder and I didn’t think before opening my mouth! They were 100% right to break the Prime Directive and stop that volcano as far as I’m concerned, but certain flag officers -one’s who’ve never sat in the chair for a single day in their entire life- well they think that Jim’s being an unstable influence on Spock and tempting him into reckless behaviour patterns. Combine that with the fact that their official mission reports don’t quite match up-”
“What? Yes they do!” Bones interrupts. “Erm. Not that I read either of them that is,” he adds hastily, coughing sheepishly. “Official documents and all. The Enterprise and its crew are all regulation abiding, competent individuals sir.”
“Sure McCoy.” Pike snorts, “we both know Kirk can’t spell for shit, and yet that report was nearly grammatically perfect. But ignoring your illicit proof-reading for now, the fact remains that Jim and Spock’s reports don’t entirely agree. Specifically, in Jim’s, Jim claims to be solely responsible for both deciding to halt the volcano and to reveal the Enterprise to the locals. But in Spock’s, Spock is the one making the decisions and therefore the one to blame for any mishaps.”
“And the rest of us putting that the whole senior command team should share the responsibility probably didn’t help.” Bones groans. “That’s what Jim and Spock’s reports originally said too; they must have altered theirs just before submitting them.”
“No it really didn’t help, no Doctor.”
“Great. Self-sacrificing idiots, the both of them.”
“So anyway, the overwhelming belief is that either you’re all covering up something more serious and therefore lying on official reports; apparently evidenced by your collective inability to keep your story straight. Which is total bullshit. Or, just Spock or just Jim is the one lying and trying to cover up a mistake in order to save their own hides. Either way, apparently neither of them can be trusted. Thus demotion and reassignment. And I was so angry because of that pathetically short-sighted and unfair decision, that when Jim justifiably protested it, I snidely asked him if he actually was lying in his report.”
“Christ almighty Pike! No wonder he shouted back at you!”
“And then there was a lot of angry, thoughtless shouting all round. And now he’s stormed off to goodness knows where, and I can’t find him to apologise. I was really hoping he had come here to you to sulk.”
“Sir. We need to find him now. Before he does something stupid.”
“No shit McCoy; there’s a reason I’m bitching at you instead of to my own damn friends. Grab your coat and boots and come on.”
Two hours of fruitless searching later, and Pike suggests they split up to cover more ground.
Bones heads towards the bay and the waterfront park areas; Pike decides to head back towards Campus and all the bars concentrated nearby.
//Got him. The back barroom in Gordo’s Place. Far end of Highland Avenue. Still sober. For now.//
Bones reads Pike’s Comm twice more, before rushing back towards the park gates and the road. Hopefully, he’d manage to hail an aircab on the first try.
//Called to an emergency session. Jim with me. I’ll bring him to yours after.//
Bones sighs in frustration, closes this second Comm, and tells the cab driver his apartment block address instead.
“Bones.”
“Jesus wept Jim, what the hell happened!? Apparently there was a huge explosion in London and now another one here on Campus! The Holonet is going crazy! And you look like shit! Are those flames I can see behind you!?”
Jim shifts his PADD so that all Bones can see through the ‘Vid call is Jim’s battered face and a blank white wall.
“I’m not supposed to- Bones it’s all confidential. But- But it’s gonna be all over the Holonet anyway within an hour. Just don’t- You didn’t hear this from me okay?”
“Jim…”
“There was a terrorist attack on the Daystrom room in the HQ building.” He exhales shakily, “And all of the senior command officers and XO’s currently on or close by earth were in the room. All of them Bones.”
“Oh fucking hell,” Bones cusses violently, shoving his fist against his mouth in shock.
“Bones.” Jim continues, obviously holding back tears, “Pike… he…they gave him the Enterprise back, so he was here too. And. Everyone saw. He took a high-powered phasor blast square to the chest. Spock tried to save him but- I’m amazed he didn’t die instantly. But. Spock got to him just after. Fuck, Spock was melded with him when he went under. You know when he- And everyone was screaming and dying around us. And I threw a fire hose at the bastard’s ship. The terrorist I mean. It went down but- Oh god Bones, everyone saw Pike die. He can’t safely come back from that! What are we gonna-“
“Kirk son, come on, come with me.” A second rusty voice cuts across the Comm call and the ‘Vid Cam shakes.
“Archer?” Bones hears distantly across the connection.
“James, come on now. We have perhaps 5 minutes max before someone notices that the hole in Mr Pike’s chest is starting to close over. We have to move him now.”
“But- we can’t just drag him off in front of everyone! That room is swarming with people. They’ll-”
The blurry ‘Vid image shakes and rattles once more before cutting out completely. Bones stares wide-eyed at the screen, and then launches himself off the couch.
Then he grabs his boots and his medical bag and bolts out the door.