#fastwrite

Jim’s fingers dig into Leo’s arm, but Spock’s stoicism has (thankfully) taken over his face (their face, but it was his first).

"Bones." One word, but they have never needed more. Leo can hear, under the word, all the pleading and fear. "You don’t have to do this."

("Don’t take that risk.")

Leo looks back. Spock doesn’t resist, nor does he speak. Leo can feel Spock’s guilt. It wasn’t your fault.

Jim’s eyes dart frantically over Leo’s face. “They don’t know that this will work. You could die.”

Leo opens his mouth. He wants to point out there will always be a risk that he could die. Spock stops him. Jim is emotionally compromised. This will not ease his fear. In fact, it will likely increase his anger. Leo closes his mouth, as they both can see the fear metabolizing into anger already, turning Jim’s wide eyes stormy.

"You know what, fine. If you want to risk your life in this idiotic ritual that we don’t know will even work, you just do that. But don’t expect me to be here to watch you die."

The pleading is there, hidden in a tremor between you and die. Leo notices, but Spock almost misses it. What does it mean?

("Don’t die, too.") Leo translates for him.

Oh. Leo feels another wave of guilt. He sighs. “We’ll find you when it’s over.”

"Don’t." Jim’s voice is a warning and a finality rolled in one. He turns heel and walks away, and both Spock’s and Leo’s heart reach after him. Spock recoils.

"Don’t start that now. I’m doing this for you." Leo murmurs. (There’s a flash back, to dancing blue eyes and the equivalent of a Vulcan smile. Leo feels Spock’s heart warm, tinged with surprise that he held such a memory in him. Leo himself only feels numbness. His jealousy had dried up long ago.)

Jim loves you as well. Spock whispers, and Leo feels he is not yet beyond jealousy.

"It’s not the same."

It is.

"Keep that to yourself, Spock." I don’t need another false hope.

Spock seems to understand, and is silent.

"Doctor?"

"We’re ready."

She’s young. Abnormally so. Spock adds. “Thanks.”

"Doctor?" The Vulcan woman tilts her head in confusion.

"I was talking to- well, not you, miss. Don’t worry. It’s a nervous habit." An unfortunate one at that.

I didn’t ask you, Spock. He follows the elaborately dresses woman.

She is nervous. Spock, Leo warns. His stomach is twisting in knots. I apologize, Doctor. I often cannot help my observations. I know.

"Fal-tor-pan is a dangerous ritual, for both the bearer and the soul…" She doesn’t finish the sentence. How illogical. She’s a girl, Spock, let her be. That may mean death for us both, Doctor.

Leo looks at the girl. Her hands shake, but her spine is straight, and her gaze level. “I trust you.”

She blinks. “Lie down, Doctor McCoy.”

~

Extracting a soul is precise work, Leo learns through the bond with this girl (and she is a girl, to her own people and his, making her young indeed). When Spock died, he had not been thinking clearly. He had made quite a mess of inserting his soul into Leo’s.

Still, this girl, T’lar, after he grandmother, was a sure touch. She claims, through the bond, she is borrowing Leo’s surgical skill. Spock had chosen wisely.

Spock claims to know this. Leo knows better.

Because Leo can feel it now, how Spock had fought death, fought hard so that a pair of deep blue eyes would smile again. To wipe away the fear that should never cloud that radiant face.

Jim…

Leo fought, too. He fought so many times, to bring those blue eyes back from death. Jim seemed to be drawn to it, honestly. The way he looked as he was dying (a look Leo had seen far too often) was like a boy in love: longing.

And maybe Leo had been so concerned with keeping Jim’s eyes off death, he forgot that another pair of eyes also watched death like a boy in love.

I did not intend to die, Doctor. I had just found a reason to live.

There is a flashback to a windy cave. It had been hurricane season, which in that godforsaken desert meant sandstorms. The sky and air a muddy, bloody color with fine disk-like granules that left tiny razor cuts in the dermis. Static electricity made the air taste like ozone and feel alive. Jim had burst out laughing five minutes in as Spock’s hair stood perfectly on end like a pin cushion and Leo’s became a mess of cowlicks.

Jim wasn’t laughing ten minutes later when a sand creature drops from the sky and Spock pushes both him and Leo into a crevasse. Jim is clawing at Leo’s chest to get free, to help Spock, who is clearly losing this battle, but Leo saw the determination in Spock’s eyes, and the knew from his glance at the tricorder readings on the things electrical signals that Jim’s human nervous wouldn’t stand a chance. Spock’s wouldn’t hold much better, but if it were a choice between Spock and all three…? So he bites the bullet and holds Jim down, and knew when Jim started sobbing in desperation that he would never be forgiven.

Together like that they listen to Spock die.

When the sandstorm peters out and all there is left to hear is Spock’s labored breathing, both scramble out of their cover. It takes Leo five seconds to determine the electrical burns are far too much, he can’t do anything.

Jim must’ve read that off his face. Leo wishes he could say hatred was Jim’s next emotion, but all he saw was raw, infinite anguish, his entire expression twisting in grief. Jim cries like a child, and it breaks Leo’s heart.

He doesn’t realize they’re both griping Spock’s hands until he’s shocked, and they go limp.

[Spock joins in here. The shock was his katra. Spock was fighting, fighting to protect his brother, his lover, his friend. Fighting so the clouds will clear and the sun will shine. But he could not win this fight. He was going to die. Curiously, unlike his previous near-deaths, he did not want to go. Just as curiously, he felt it was no longer an option.

There is one option.

He can store his katra in a vessel. But it was dangerous, and a sacrifice of a loved one, something most would prefer death to.

But Jim cries like a child, and that breaks Spock’s heart.

Already he feels his katra pulling from his body. He can slip into death, or he can slip into one of the hands holding his… Which? Jim? Leonard would never…

But a warm soul draws him. One of love, and of heartbreak (Jim cries like a child, and that breaks their heart). The soul calls to him. Fight, Spock. Come back. For Jim. And so Spock’s katra listens, he fights, and slips next to the warm soul, which envelopes him like the Vulcan sun and lulls his tired katra into rest.]

That is it. That is the moment of coalescence. You are now separate.

~

Leo feels a shock, and Spock is gone.

And strangely this body built for one felt too large for only his soul. The two men blink and rise as one, their eyes searching each other out. Leo can no longer feel what Spock feels.

And yet when Spock’s eyes fill with guilt, Leo feels it as well, muted, distant like a radio connection over miles, but there.

Spock blinks. Confusion.

"I felt that." Leo says.

"Yes." Spock answers.

T’lar is unconscious. Moving her seemed polite enough, but they couldn’t stay, they had to find Jim. Leo kisses her forehead and mutters thanks, something Spock calls Illogical and unnecessary, but is grateful for.

Leo would stay longer, he explains, but there was a growing sense of urgency.

Jim.

He was probably halfway across the galaxy by now. Maybe on his way to Earth to burn every bridge between him and Starfleet and the memory of Spock and Leo.

We have to find him.

(There is the memory of a flash of agony as Jim walks away, a tiny falter in his step, and the shaking line of his shoulders. Repressed sobs. Spock had almost missed them, but Leo had read it loud and clear. And it broke their hearts.)

~

Jim does not go back to Earth.

Jim throws himself into the black.

This is far worse than either of them anticipated. He doesn’t want to know anyone. He doesn’t want to risk death taking yet another.

But he is not dead himself.

We must find him. Spock thinks, curled into Leo’s chest.

I know. Leo thinks back.

Neither of them acknowledge the bond. Neither of them think about how Spock’s katra had, in soul, pressed against Leo’s chest like they were now. Neither acknowledged what was growing between them. This was the same way Leo didn’t aknowledge they were hurtling through space in a thin metal box with a nuclear reactor a few feet away, or that his father’s voice still haunted his dreams. It was the same way Spock did not acknowledge he left home and could never return because it did not exist, or that his mother’s warm hand on his shoulder was not real and could never be real again.

They did not acknowledge. They merely slept, and worried.

Jim.

~

When they find him, he is drunk.

Inebriated, Spock thinks as Leo thinks, Wasted.

He can’t say who connects the the slang to that of a dead man, but Spock glares at him, and Leo takes the term back with an apologetic nod.

Spock walks across the room, but Leo stops. He won’t be forgiven. Especially since the electrical burns have not yet fully healed, and the twitch in Spock’s walk and in his left shoulder (nerve damage, literally fried nerves) were immediately obvious.

Spock looks back, his step jerking away. He and Leo had yet to be more than a yard from each other in weeks. Leo shakes his head. It’s not me he want’s to see.

He would not be so anguished if he had lost just one of us. Leo shakes his head. Spock sends him an angry look. You are being childish! He did not love just me!

"Spock?" It’s a low whisper, disbelieving, tangible in a way Leo and Spock’s communications have ceased to be. The words fell heavy through the air.

They both break eye contact, and their mental argument, to look over. Jim’s eyes are wide, panic-stricken.

"Yes, Jim?" Spock asks quietly. Their Captain relaxes slightly, but spots Bones. When he does, his mouth curves into a bitter smile.

"Bones? So you’re haunting me, too, now? I guess you’ve finally died, then. Took you long enough."

Worry floods the bond, more so from Leo than Spock. “Jim, I’m not dead.”

"Yes you are," Oh lord, he’s maudlin drunk. This is bad. “You left me.”

"No, we didn’t." Spock says, trying to correct him. It’s not going to work.

"You don’t count when you’re ghosts. I mean, I see ghosts all the time."

Spock looks alarmed. Doctor, what do we do? Leo takes a step forward, reaching out, but Jim scoots back, waving a finger.

"Ah ah ah. No touching anymore. You’re ghosts. I know how this works. You touch, and I get my hopes up, but it’s never real touching."

Spock, that’s it. He thinks he can’t feel us. We’ve got to prove we’re physical. Spock nods in his peripherals, which isn’t lost on Jim.

"Oh, what, are the dead telekinetic, too? That must be a drag, having to listen to everyone’s thoughts. Especially for you, Bones, you hated mind-reading."

"It’s unnatural," Leo supplies, stepping closer. Spock does the same. Jim shoots Leo a look, one part anger and two parts grief.

"You sound alive. But you always did." How do you sound dead? Leo ponders, and gets a mental kick from Spock. they close in on the blonde.

"Hey no fair, I thought you two were against tag teaming-" He stops when Spock’s hand closes around Jim’s wrist. His eyes blow wide. Leo steps back. "You’re alive."

"Yes."

Jim’s eyes lock on Leo, trying to retreat. “Bones?”

One word, but they’ve never needed anything more.

("Are you alive, too?")

He wouldn’t believe Leo without being touched. So Leo sighs, and reaches out to place one warm palm on Jim’s shoulder. Jim’s eyes close, and all the anger and grief drain away. He almost appears to collapse in on himself.

Relief. Spock reports. And anger. But mostly relief.

He spoke too soon, because when Jim’s eyes open, they’re blue fire and angrier than a cobra with it’s tail trodden on.

“You left me.”

"To protect you."

"No, don’t give me that, it’s always been to protect me. I don’t care. You. Left. Me.”

"We know."

"We?! What the hell is this?" His eyebrows shoot up in realization and his neutral mask flies up. "You’ve bonded."

Jealousy, Spock tells Leo, with a hint of see I told you.