Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jim comes to him in a body bag. He had gotten the word when it was discovered what had happened, but bones had gone numb ever since.

Just another causality he has to add to the list.

He thought the torpedo situation was going to be the closest to the worst case scenario that he could get. Because he was trapped in a very unfortunate position. He was not particularly excited about getting blown up but knew he would probably survive and didn’t really care if he didn’t. That’s kind of the mentality you end up with when your old as shit and have probably been passively depressed your whole entire life.
So even if he did survive having his atoms blown to bits- (he hadn’t tested that particular death method, even though there had been a few close calls) -Issue was he wouldn’t be able to explain anything to anyone about why he didn’t stay dead leading to the likely hood of him having to restart a new identity all over again and it was already to messy a situation that got even messier because bright young Dr Marcus refused to leave and that freaked him out even more so because he didn’t want her to risk herself unnecessarily but there was no time to argue with anyone enough to get someone to just fucking listen for once and everyone was yelling through the coms- it was a stressful experience ok?!

But khan decided to prove everyone right about his character and then admiral Marcus decided to ruin everyone’s day even further which lead to Khan basically feeling like he has to one up Marcus AGAIN on rights to the title for asshole of the year.

It’s safe to say the past few hours are only serving to prove his point about having the worst luck imaginable.

Except now that luck has landed what is probably the closest thing to a best friend he had ever had now on a table. Dead. Dead because he was a self sacrificing idiot and went and got himself irradiated.

Fuck his life.

He thought that was it. Sat there and let the emotions and turmoil flow through him because there was nothing else to do. Sat there and stared at Jim’s face so he could etch it into his memory, put that mental image right next to all the others in his life that he had lost and made it a personal mission to never forget.

How much longer can he handle doing this? The same thing over and over again? How long before old fears come true?

When he first met khan, all he saw was a dusty mirror. Wavy and old like the weird ones you see at a circus that makes things just slightly off. A mirror showing him that there was Someone who was like him and might even be able to understand half the shit he had been through. Someone able to understand the complexity of his existence. For a small moment, that chasm in his chest of incomprehensible loneliness wasn’t as suffocating. Because it meant that he wasn’t alone after all. That he didn’t have to stay alone like he thought he would have to. Someone who can’t die easy. 
And there were more still asleep just like him to.

Except khan was insane. Insane and very angry.
And once bones got over the excitement of finding him, he finally saw reality and recognized that look hiding in the others eyes (eyes demanding violence just like sarge’s once did) and at that moment he knew they could never be more different.

And now khans actions have resulted in the death of someone he begrudgingly came to care about.

He let himself get distracted by khan and his fancy blood and in turn Jim had died.

He looks over at the tribble that he had let his curiosity win out on. All he wanted was to compare the effects of khans blood to what his own can do. The fascination had swept him away.

He looks at the tribble and thinks back at the excitement he had at the time. He sits and Watches the floofball breath as he thinks about how every time someone decides to mess around with genetics it usually ends up being a terrible idea…

Wait a second.

The tribble is breathing.

By all accounts it should be dead. As dead as Jim is on the table across the room.

His mind is a flurry of thoughts of how he can fix everything that he doesn’t stop to think about what it is he’s doing. Doesn’t stop to consider the consequences. Only thinks about how this doesn’t have to be the end, because he’s not ready to start over again. Not ready to feel even lonelier and lost.

He yells at everyone that he needs khan. That no matter everyone’s desire for revenge, he needs the man alive. That there is a chance.

He’s swiping everything off a table in the lab and starts working on synthesizing something- anything at all. To have a starting point.

Because what he’s going to do hasn’t really been done before. Not like this. He’s starting from scratch and he’s running out of time. The longer Jim stays dead, the longer his body decomposes, the longer his brain goes without oxygen and starts to degrade. Starts to fall apart. And everything that makes James Kirk, Jim will be gone. His brain right now is like the memory bank on a computer slowly being corrupted.
He’s yelling at his nurses to get Jim’s body onto a cryo chamber- any chance at all to buy him time. To preserve what they can in a time capsule long enough for bones to do something he told himself he would never do. But right now that thought got pushed aside.

He may not be an expert in genetics, but he’s had more than enough practice. His dad ingrained the bare-bones into his mind as a child, the constant childish game of quizzing each other on who was better at their parents work with Sam in harmless sibling competition, he had even researched everything he could possibly get his hands on that related to the subject after he was cursed with C-24 to be able to understand what was happening to him even though he hated every second of it, and he studied it extensively when he was in school to be a doctor because aliens were a thing and you had to know all you could to help all you could. So he may not be an expert on isolated genetics but he’s had the unique opportunity’s in the past to have the perfect understanding of what exactly to do in this situation… ok maybe he is an expert in some departments, but it’s not like anyone else knows that.

He barely spares any hesitation to using some of his own blood to help fill in the gaps that khans leaves. To focused and to desperate to get this crazy idea of his to work.

And it does. By some miracle it worked. And it worked well. Worked just how he intended it to. Jim was alive and he didn’t have khans psychotic thoughts or go all monster like C-24 has a tendency to do to people physiologically.

Everything was good and bones could breath again. That is until it hits him what exactly it was that he had done.

Back on olduvi, right around the time everything had started going to shit, they discovered the truth about what the research facility was exactly doing. And John, in that moment, knew that anytime someone tried to play god, nature tended to bite you in the ass. He decided then and there to be against messing with someone’s DNA. Then Sam had to go and give him C-24 because she was a sentimental fool who didn’t want him die (just like now with him and Jim)

Just after that, they had found an apartment and John had a lot of time to think. And he doubled down on that rule he was making about messing with someone’s genome. It just never ended well. It was best to keep with the natural order of things. And that wasn’t even considering the ethics of some particular topics.
Not that he ever spared ethics any consideration outside his own personal opinions and beliefs.

But now here he was, with the unmistakable unreversable result of him braking that very rule.

He messed around with life in a way he promised he never would. He never wanted to risk anyone having to live like him. To have to feel the way he constantly does about his lack of mortality.
And he potentially just did that to someone he cares about. Because loathed as he is to admit it, he let himself care with reckless abandon. He cares about everyone on the enterprise in a way he refused to acknowledge for a long time. He cares for Jim and respects him no matter how much he claims that he doesn’t. After their parents death Sam and John took different paths, but when it comes down to things like this, they really are one in the same

He misses her.

Even though Jim is alive and well on his way to being ok, bones still can’t help for hating himself for bringing Jim back.

He knows what it’s like to die and come back. Granted his experiences and Jim’s are extremely different, the fact is it still happened when it shouldn’t have.
He never should have forced Jim to have to go through that.

Jim will have to live with the trauma of dying forever now, and based on how Jim is with that kind of stuff, he’s going to blow it off.
Bones knows because he does the exact same thing. Difference is Jim blows it off but bones internalizes it. Because they have to.

Bones is in the unique position to understand and give jim someone who shares the experience. He’s able to give Jim something he never had the luxury to have. He can give Jim someone he could talk to about it. But dammit he’s a mentally damaged immortal doctor not a shrink. And no one, not even Jim (even if it would help) will ever know the truth about bones secrets. He can’t just go up to Jim and go “Oh hey by the way, I have died plenty of times. Do not recommend dying more then once by the way” He can’t say it. Even if he wanted to he can’t do it. Jim doesn’t know he’s not just Leonard McCoy, cranky old doctor from Georgia. He’s more than that. Jim doesn’t know about the curse running through his veins like acid waiting to eat him alive. He doesn’t know that his so-called best friend carries the same kind of abomination that Khan does—only older, messier, harder to explain.

The only thing that he is happy about for this whole mess other then the fact that Jim is alive (even if he lowkey regrets it now) is that the synthetic mutations and alterations injected into his body haven’t seem to have any permanent effects. Jim remains unapologetically human and the foreign shit put in his body is temporary and will fade in time. Soon enough any evidence of bones meddling will disappear. C-24 brakes down so fast and khans weirdness isn’t nearly as potent as his. And once bones destroys the rest of khans blood and they seal him away, the temptation humanity will inevitably have on searching for immortality will be gone. Because bones will have disposed of anything useful that anyone could potentially get their hands on. Because like hell is he going to let anyone find out the secret he destroyed his sanity and any decent relationship over.

But the fact remains he still committed the act. Someone is bound to find out something fishy happened and he had something to do with it and go asking questions he’d rather avoid. And bones is not ready for that.

It doesn’t make him feel any better about anything to hide everything away.

But he’s good at dealing with shit he doesn’t want to deal with or think about. He has years of practice.

He tried to let Jim being awake and making jokes and so… alive be enough. But it’s not. That doesn’t stop him from simply leaning back and letting Jim laugh through his own pain. Lets him brush it off. Lets him pretend like death was just another near miss instead of the jagged scar it really is. All while he sits there and lets his own agony fester.
And when Jim finally falls asleep in sickbay while he recovers, the monitors steady while his body is still trying to knit itself back into wholeness, Bones sits there in the dark and watches. He watches and hates himself.

Hates himself every time Jim jokes that bones does care enough to bring him back like it’s some funny joke that Leonard McCoy isn’t as heartless as he sometimes seems. He takes all the awful feelings he gets from the words and shoves it into a locked Box to be sealed forever.

It’s easier than having to look Jim in the eyes and telling he lied.

John will never be good enough. Only good enough to not turn into a horrific nightmarish monster.
Even after all these years, he still struggles to understand it all. Come to terms more like.
This whole thing just proves to him that he’s selfish and undeserving.

He watch’s Jim sleep and keeps an eye on his vitals, old paranoia about waiting for C-24s truth to take hold at any moment. That it was all just a fluke. Bones should be relieved. He should feel nothing but gratitude. That’s what anyone else would feel if they’d just pulled off a miracle. That his historically bad luck actually let up for once.

Instead, he feels sick.

Sick and selfish.
He doesn’t do anything about it. Because John Grimm, the anomaly, stays buried and ignored in his head. 
Jim Kirk doesn’t need to know what it really costs to crawl out of the grave. What it’s cost him.

He doesn’t need to know how much bones hates himself for being weak enough to bring him back from where he should have stayed.

Bones is destined to forever be alone. And he’s lucky Jim isn’t cursed to the same existence.

but for right now Jim is alive and his secret is safe. And he tries to let that be enough for even a moment. Because he doesn’t have a choice otherwise.