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It’s cold. So cold and wet and numbing that Leonard McCoy can’t help the shivers running up and down his body. He hates this, hates the way the goon - terrorist, really, but he’s trying desperately hard not to think about that - holds him, hates the way he’s silently grateful for it because he’s pretty sure he’d fall flat on his face without the hands roughly grasping his shoulders.
He spares a cautious glance at Phil, who’s the only one of the four of them with two guards holding him upright. He looks more alert than he’d previously been when they’d first been dragged from their prison. His mouth is screwed up in obvious displeasure, and Leonard knows he’s got pure poison itching to come out of his mouth.
He’s fine. Phil will be fine. They’ll be fine. Leonard repeats the mantra over and over again in his head as Chris and his sperm donor go at it, hurling snark and insults at each other like that’s all they know how to do.
“You ain’t no son of mine Pike,” Carlton Pritch-Howard says, spitting at Chris’s feet. Rage flickers across his face, and Leonard’s stomach rolls with an unease he usually only gets when Jim is about to do something very, very, stupid. “You lost your chance to reclaim that positon when I found out that you went and falsely claimed this Spacer bastard as your own flesh and blood.” Pritch-Howard takes a rifle from one of his goons and rams the butt of the weapon into Jim’s groin.
Jim crumples to the deck, his mouth open in a silent scream of pain.
Leonard gasps, straining futilely against the man holding his shoulders to keep him in place, but it’s Chris who shrugs out of his captor’s grip and dives for Jim before the man can fully collapse. He holds Jim with one arm around his chest. The other arm wraps around Jim’s other shoulder, the hand attached pressing the back of Jim’s head forward so that the young man’s face is pressed into his shoulder.
Leonard locks eyes with Phil across the assembled group and stops struggling. All eyes but theirs are on Pritch-Howard and the other two prisoners, giving Phil just enough time to mouth: “Not now.”
It could mean any number of things to anyone else, but to Leonard, it means only one thing. He bites back the acid-laced words sitting on the tip of his tongue and does his best to not give his captor any reason to add him to the scene in front of him.
“Aww would you look at that. Daddy’s gone all mother bear,” Carlton teases none-too-kindly. The cold smirk on his face sends a chill not caused by the frigid air down Leonard’s spine. He tucks one of his gloves back into the pocket of his jacket and says, “How about we treat them to a family bonding activity, hey boys?”
All around them, the small group of men barely attempt to muffle their snickering. It reminds Leonard too painfully of the bullies he used to have to face back in high school, and he almost, almost, resumes struggling.
But then he remembers: not now.
The struggles in him die even as Pritch-Howard crouches down, leaning his upper body forward so that his mouth is almost directly in Chris’s ear. Chris, for his part, doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch. He just holds Jim calmly and steadily despite the look of worry warring across his face.
“Fancy doing some fishing, Pike?”
At one point, on a painfully tense evening way back before they’d ended up aboard a ship somewhere in the Arctic (probably the Arctic, but Leonard may be overthinking the cold and the small icebergs in the water), Phil had pulled him aside and said, “No matter what. No matter what those two idiots may do, we have to take care of ourselves first.”
He’d wanted to protest, wanted to argue and rail and say, “How could you say that?” But he knew, he understood why.
They’ve trussed Jim and Chris up against each other, chest to chest, and stood them on the edge of the stern.
Leonard knows what’s going to happen. He can see it in his mind’s eye. He saw them loop one last bit of rope around the two men’s ankles and tie it off securely, leaving a long, loose end on the deck.
He’s glad the boat isn’t moving. He doesn’t want to think about what could happen if that rope got tangled in the propeller.
Someone ties the loose end to a railing.
Chris and Jim go overboard without a sound.
“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence,” he’d said once, strapping himself into an uncomfortable shuttle chair next to a kid who’d looked like he’d been trampled by a horse.
It’s funny, now, how much he’d feared space.
Chris and Jim flop onto the deck, still tied to each other. Phil is in no shape to be struggling the way he is, but he manages to free himself of both of his guards. Leonard, in much better health, manages to get to the two half-drowned idiots first.
His first instinct is to look Jim over the best he can while he yanks and pulls at the knots in the rope. They come apart after a few hasty tugs, and the two prisoners separate, flopping onto the deck with little grace.
He runs his hands over Jim’s body, carefully cataloging every scrape and rope burn on his exposed skin. Other than looking like he’s been plunged into an ice bath, Jim looks fine. Wide-eyed, terrified, and shivering, but fine.
“Chris! Chris!” Both of their attentions snap to the other man. Phil is there, barely upright but frantically running his hands over a thrashing, empty-eyed Christopher Pike, and Leonard moves. “Chris, stay with me, buddy! Chris!” He looks up at Leonard with the most fearful look Leonard’s ever seen on his face. “He’s not breathing. He’s -”
Leonard’s medical training takes over, and he takes Chris’s freezing wrist into his hand without a second thought. He searches for a moment, looking for a pulse that just isn’t there -
“He’s going into cardiac arrest, damnit!” Leonard growls. Phil isn’t strong enough to perform CPR, so Leonard pushes himself up on top of Chris and shoves his hands into the man’s chest over and over in a steady rhythm.
“Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence,” he’d said once aboard a shuttlecraft headed for Starfleet Academy.
He knows better now. Earth can be just as dangerous; Earth can be just as cruel.
Humanity might be more dangerous than anything space can throw at them.
“They need something - a change of clothes, medical supplies. They’re going to die!” Leonard argues with Pritch-Howard. He’s standing over Chris, Phil, and Jim having placed himself between the three of them and the leader of Terra Prime. “If you don’t at least give them that, they’ll be dead of hypothermia before you can do whatever it is you want to do to them.”
He shouldn’t be inviting this upon himself.
“We have to take care of ourselves, first.”
Pritch-Howard seems to mull this over for a second, his men shifting uneasily around him. Leonard can hear Phil in the background calling for Chris to wake up. He hears Jim’s heavy breathing, feels him shivering even without touching him.
“Fine,” Pritch-Howard finally says, a cold glint in his eye, “but it’s going to cost you.”
Leonard shouldn’t, can’t, agree to this. Not with Phillip Boyce’s words rattling around in his mind. He takes a breath.
“Whatever it takes.”
“Those two are nothin’ but trouble,” Phil had said once, sitting in a chair in the kitchen of their Starfleet-issued apartment. He’d gestured at the two blond idiots draped over each other on the couch with his whiskey glass.
Leonard had chuckled dryly, grinning fondly into his own glass. “Then it’s a good thing they have the two of us to put ‘em back together when they inevitably fall apart.”
They’d raised their glasses in a silent toast and drank the rest of their whiskey in companionable silence.
The clothes the terrorists toss Phil are dingy, but they’re dry, and that’s all Leonard needs to know. Jim can change on his own, even if it’s with more than a little shaky gestures, so Leonard and Phil get to work pulling Chris’s freezing wet clothes off of him and putting the new ones on as carefully as possible.
Some goons wheel in a couple of biobeds that have clearly seen better days - and yeah, those are definitely restraints hooked to the sides of them (he doesn’t want to think about the whys) - and Phil and Leonard carefully maneuver Jim and Chris into their own respective biobeds.
Once the two patients are settled, Leonard turns to look at Pritch-Howard who’s standing in the doorway leering at them.
At him, really.
“I’m a generous man,” Pritch-Howard drawls, stepping into the room, “so I’ll let the two of you choose.”
“Choose what?” Phil says, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Bile creeps up Leonard’s esophagus as the other man’s mouth quirks up in a terrifyingly dark, twisted grin. “You’re both doctors, so I need only one of you here to make sure these two Spacers live ‘til the main event.” He spreads his hands out in a “what can you do?” type of gesture and smiles. “So choose. Who gets to stay? Who gets to go?”
There’s a moment of silence before Leonard is stepping forward, his feet moving his body to stand in front of Pritch-Howard. “I’ll go.”
Phil doesn’t protest.
“We have to take care of ourselves, first.” Phil had said.
He didn’t have to say the next part. Leonard already understood.
(If you don’t take care of yourself, then there won’t be anyone left to pick the pieces up when everyone around you falls apart.)
He’s marched a few doors down and shoved into a small room with a metal chair, a table, and a small red box on top of the table. He pulls off his shirt when prompted, and someone shoves him into the chair, tying his hands behind him with coarse rope so that his arms are stretched awkwardly around its metal back. He’s actually rather proud of himself when he lands a solid kick on the goon who attempts to tie down his ankles.
He said he’d go. He’d never said he would make it easy.
The punch to the jaw is almost worth it.
“You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that, Spacer,” the goon says with a sharp grin. He looks at Pritch-Howard. “Can I get first crack at him?”
Pritch-Howard shrugs, and the goon reaches over to the box. He pulls a small metal rod from the side of the box and flips a small switch. The box hums to life.
Leonard is so busy staring at the box and the rod with morbid curiosity - the thing looks practically ancient, and he can’t quite figure out what it’s supposed to do - that he doesn’t see the bucket of water until he’s being drenched in an icy-cold bath. He coughs and gags on sea brine, his breaths coming out in short, stuttered gasps.
Then the pain hits. Every nerve fires to life as he twitches and screams in pain. His limbs lock, his vision whites out, and after a few seconds the pain abates as quickly as it had come.
He knows what the box does, now.
“Bones, I’m scared,” Jim had whispered once in the silence of their room. They’d just been moved again, and everyone else was already asleep in their own beds. “I’m scared.”
Leonard had combed his fingers through Jim’s hair and whispered, “I am too.”
I’m scared for you.
He’s a twitching, shuddering mess when they finally finish with him, throwing a bag over his head and freeing his arms and legs from their restraints.
He should run. Should try to fight back, should try to get to Jim and Phil and Chris but -
Every nerve is on fire, and he can’t move under his own power anymore. Nothing will respond. So, they drag him along to wherever it is they’re going, his arms being held by two goons on either side of him, his feet dragging along the floor, and his head a fuzzy, tingly mess.
They enter… somewhere, and Leonard can hear voices jeering and shouting obscenities into the air. Someone lets out an agonized moan ahead of him - Phil, it sounds like (Phil hasn’t escaped their captors’ hospitality after all, Leonard notes sadly) - and Leonard can’t help but feel a twinge of relief at the fact that he’s not alone.
He’s twitching, nerves on fire, half-starved and scared out of his mind, but he’s not alone. It’s that thought that finally takes him into unconsciousness.
“Well, at least I won’t die alone,” Leonard will say on Altamid years from now with an injured Spock at his back.
Spock will vanish, the enemy is going to close in, and Leonard will soon be surrounded by Jim (his stupid, self-sacrificing idiot of a Jim), Scotty, Chekov, Spock, and an alien girl named Jaylah. The point stands, though.
Space may be nothing but danger and disease wrapped in darkness and silence, but so long as he isn’t alone, he’s not as afraid.
Waking up isn’t a fast thing. He’s dimly aware of someone softly threading fingers through his hair and whispering soothing words into his ears, which is nice and all but everything hurts.
He whimpers when he tries to move something, anything, but he’s on fire, drowning in harsh flames that spread across his skin like wildfire, crackling and burning and spreading and -
“It’s okay, kiddo, just go back to sleep.”
He lets the voice and the fingers lull him back into unconsciousness.
“I know it hurts, but you need to eat,” the voice says softly. Soft hands encourage Leonard into a seated position. Someone tips disgusting mush down his throat, and Leonard wants to cough it back up because ew but -
Something tells him that’s a bad idea and nothing better is coming, so he swallows it down.
“Bones, I’m scared,” Jim once whispered. “I’m scared.”
Now, as he sits in this cold, dingy cell with Phil curled up next to him as much as his shattered femur will allow, finally awake and somewhat properly aware, he finds that his answer of “I am too” was a goddamn foolish lie.
His hands are twitching uncontrollably, he still can’t move anything properly - and hadn’t that been a terrible thing, once he’d seen a shivering Jim drugged to the gills muttering about everything and nothing, and he couldn’t even crawl across the room to get to his side - and every breath still feels like fire.
He can see the throbbing, red wound on Pike’s forehead. He can see the way Phil’s leg is bent at an odd angle. He can feel his irregular heartbeat and see the burns on his chest even without Phil mumbling “induced cardiomyopathy”.
He can see Jim, curled into Chris’s side, eyes glassy and breathing shallow.
Leonard is afraid. Truly afraid.
Years from now, before Altamid, but still in the far future, Pike will be gone.
Years from now, before Altamid, Phil will be standing there at the space-dock telling him to “get that son-of-a-bitch”.
Years from now, before Altamid, Phil will hug him and say, “Make sure you don’t lose him to this.”
Years from now, before Altamid, Jim will say, “I’m scared, Bones.” He will put a hand to the glass, reaching for touch that he’ll never get because there’s too much radiation and not enough time, and Leonard will realize that even back then he wasn’t truly afraid. Not as much as he will be in this moment.
But that moment is a long time coming, and Leonard McCoy doesn’t know the future.
He just knows the now, the bright red, blue, and gold streaming into their cold cell and shouting words of rescue and comfort and telling him that it’s all going to be okay.
He wakes in a biobed, a real, honest-to-god biobed in what looks to be a Starfleet hospital, and the first thing he does is ask a bewildered nurse for Jim.
He rails and fights, and even though he’s a doctor - or maybe because he’s a doctor - he’s put into a wheelchair and taken to the room next door where James T. Kirk lies beneath a mountain of blankets. He’s small, too small, pale, and clammy but he’s alive.
They all are.
Years from now, after Nero, before Altamid, Jim will say, “I’m scared, Bones.”
He will die, his hand pressed against thick glass, his body practically boiling, and Leonard will say, “I am, too. Please don’t leave me alone.”
Spock will scream in anguish, Scotty will help him move Jim when everything is finally decontaminated, and Leonard will remember, “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”
And he will feel utterly, damningly, alone.
Jim wakes on day three. By this point, Leonard can actually control his extremities, so they let him go see his partner without the wheelchair this time.
He takes Jim’s hand into his own and smiles as the idiot’s eyes flutter open.
“Hi, ‘ones,” he says sleepily.
Leonard pulls the hand to his lips and kisses it softly. “Hello, Jim.”
And he isn’t afraid.
Years from now, from biobeds and terrorists and drugs and nerves on fire, Leonard will remember having said, “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.”
A tribble will come back to life just as he thinks of ending it all, ending it so that he won’t be alone because what’s left for him, of him, with Jim gone?
A tribble will come back to life and Leonard will remember, “We have to take care of ourselves, first.”
He will remember, “Then it’s a good thing they have the two of us to put ‘em back together when they inevitably fall apart.”
He’ll shove Jim into a cryotube and tell the bridge to “get that son-of-a-bitch back on board right now”.
Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence, but it is also miracles and hope wrapped in the brightness of stars and life.
Jim will awaken in a biobed after Nero and before Altamid, and Leonard will say, “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, you were barely dead.”
And all will be well.
But Leonard doesn’t know the future, and these moments will not come for a long while.
For now, Leonard will cling firmly to Jim’s hand and revel in the feeling of not being alone. As long as he isn’t alone, he isn’t afraid.