#death!bones

[thewinningscenario]

@toby you know what sounds like a great idea?

[thewinningscenario]

I've learned to watch everything die.

“Yeah,” he reminisces from his own bunk. He turns his head and he can just make out Bones’s outline in the low light, the flash of light reflecting off an eye. “Me too. Not quite like you, though.”

[thewinningscenario]

continued from here

In San Francisco, Jim drags him to a bar, to a booth, an outrageously priced bottle of liquor and two glasses between them. He’s really not in the mood to talk after the tedium of registering for classes and room assignments, but he figures this is necessary.

“You have questions,” he says wearily, “Go ahead and shoot.”

Jim puts up one finger, signalling the man to wait. He unscrews the bottle of whiskey on the other man’s (?) tab, pours them both a generous portion into frosted glasses. He pushes the first towards the figure across from him (‘Leonard McCoy,’ apparently) and takes the second, clinking them together gently.

“To long life,” he cheers, a strange, twisted smirk on his face when he takes the first long drought. It’s smoother than he expected, but the burn catches his throat after it’s already in his stomach, and he shifts uncomfortably before sinking into the booth’s plush seats.

“I haven’t figured out where to start yet. I mean, aside from: how?”

[imadoctornotablog]

In response for @thewinningscenario X

He’s a concept more than anything. Less of a force than the result of sentient observation of the inevitable physical state of living things. The tangible construct of and abstract idea of the solid constant defining each life.

Truth is, he doesn’t know what he is, he just is. How does he see? Hear? Touch? How does he think? He shouldn’t have a personality, he’s not like them. Yet, he has a memory, and he has an earliest memory: he is tired. Life clashes at him burning in his darkness, causing him to be aware, to be defined. At first he thought he was at war, fighting everyday for unconscious nothing, uniformity, peace.

That fades. He tires. He stops fighting. Life still exists, fluctuating and spreading like a wildfire. He takes to walking with it, as close to the other as he can get without tipping the balance toward himself.

The first time he makes eye contact with a living being, he understands: They all carry a little of him with them.

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This story starts when life starts. It starts again when he learns to love life. It starts again when something tears through his chest, when the soothing cycle of life and death rip and curl at the edges. There’s new life, unexplained life, unfamiliar life-

He’s there when the Narada rips a hole open in the Kelvin, leaking life to the darkness of space, when a Jeffries tub explodes from the rush of pressurized air from another bay, engulfing a couple running to deliver a message, in Medical when someone stumbles in too late...

In Medical, there’s a woman in pain. He pauses (sort of, but he still doesn’t miss taking the hand of a young engineer as the walkway buckles under his feet and throws him down, down, down), because sometimes when they’re at that threshold, they can see him. But her eyes are glazed in panic alongside the pain. She knows what he finds out when he looks at her abdomen.

The child is early, in space. He wasn’t meant to come until they reached the Class M weeks away, where he could be born in the safety of an atmosphere. On a whim, he reaches out and touches her stomach, feeling the life within bump back.

No, this child was likely to be his. But not now. He stands, George Kirk’s orders to evacuate ringing in his ears, because he felt called to the Narada.

Romulans wear death as a mark on their bodies. Their nerves scream mourning at him, of a form of him he’ll never meet. He takes the hand of Captain Robau, assuring him there was nothing more he could’ve done, and at the very least, he bought his ship time.

In space, a shuttle is hit, half it’s occupants incinerate, the others freeze.

Winona pushes, her son is uncharacteristically quiet. Not yet.

While he sits next to Winona, waiting to welcome her son, he walks on the Bridge of the Kelvin and sits next the George. He watches. He listens. Before George goes, his hand grips the Captains chair, over the hand of another, and something in George crumbles away into him. In the shuttle, he pulls away from Winona’s son.

Jim cries, long and loud and healthier than he should be. He wraps an arm around George’s shoulder, whispering he’ll live, and making no more promises than that.

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(Something in Winona crumbles away into him as well, when George gets cut off, and he has to place his hands under hers to continue supporting Jim.)

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When Jim is two years old, his bright blue eyes lock onto his, and he toddles over immediately. He realizes his position has Jim heading full force to a red ant’s nest. Sam is upstairs in his room with headphones on. Winona is rinsing dishes. Frank is under a car.

He does what he shouldn’t. He picks Jim up and sets him down inside, and closes the door.

His hands burn where so much life had touched him.

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He’s changing. He’s been able to feel it for centuries before now. Time is slowing down. Or, he is slowing down. He feels solid, condensed, and things he’s never noticed before (the chilled air before dawn, the warmth of the summer sun, the smell and texture of turned earth) he’s recognizing. He’s experiencing. Life. He’s experiencing life.

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“Sam says you’re imaginary,” six year old Jim says as they walk alone through the woods. “Why can’t he see you?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Why don’t you talk? If you were really imaginary, I’d be able to make you talk.”

He’s never answered in more than gestures and looks.

“Can you show yourself to Sam?”

He shakes his head.

“You’re less clear this time. Why?”

He’s been wondering that himself. Jim’s been able to see him his entire childhood. He suspects the older Jim gets, the more life removes the sight of death from his reality. Life is hard enough without death. He still doesn’t answer.

“Are you going to go away?” Jim asks quietly. He pauses at that, and pats the top of Jim’s head. He couldn’t if he tried, he was always present.

Though he may miss the days when Jim could see him.

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He lied. He wouldn’t miss them at all if this is what it took.

“Did I bring it with me?” Jim asks. He’s been fighting sleep since they pulled him from the surface of Tarsus, and these are the first words in any language he’s heard the boy speak in months. He strokes his hair again, the boy’s head nodding slightly closer. “Is it because you followed me?”

Jim won’t remember this. He opens his mouth, tests a throat he’s never possessed before. “No, Jim. I was already there.”

“You talked.” Jim says, falling back into sleep at the wonder of it.

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His vision crosses, and settles, leaving him disoriented and confused. He can only see one line of sight clearly (but he’s there at the bedside of a 165 year old woman, shaking her hand, and on the roadside where he helps a man up from his mangled body, and out in space, and on another planet, and-).

He stands. He’s suddenly aware he has a body. He looks down, and sees his hands. They flex. He feels it.

Yes. You’re alive. I get it. Let’s get on with it. An irate voice says, and he remembers. He remembers the man who fought him for so long, who broke when he couldn’t win where it mattered, who stared him in the face and accepted his offer-

I remember too, and it isn’t anymore comfortable for me. Don’t you have a phone call to make?

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Captain Pike seems intrigued by the offer. They work out a schedule, agree to meet in Riverside on a set date so he can discuss the terms of a potential future commission. It’s enough.

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He isn’t sure if Jim will recognize him. He holds off the meeting until the last possible second. The flight officer makes sure all eyes are on him, but when Jim’s don’t falter he knows. Of course Jim recognizes him.

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In San Francisco, Jim drags him to a bar, to a booth, an outrageously priced bottle of liquor and two glasses between them. He’s really not in the mood to talk after the tedium of registering for classes and room assignments, but he figures this is necessary.

“You have questions,” he says wearily, “Go ahead and shoot.”

[cupofbrownsugar]

saw this idea going around of serial killer!jim killing to see death!bones again and again, so thought i’d take a quick shot at it before bed Jim raised the newly lit cigarette to his lips, breathing deeply in the scent of tar and metallic tang, and drew a long exhale in a content sigh. His fingers were still shivering from the high, from the exhilaration that came with a fresh kill, still slick with cooling blood.

The smoke would usually calm him, return the precise steadiness back to his hands, dull the electricity in his joints, but he remained wired, giddy, as he waited for him to appear. The blue of his eyes were lit with excitement, and he tried to keep himself from giggling with joy as the cloaked figure stepped quietly from the shadows, and he felt himself grin wide before he took another long drag.

“Hey Bones,” smoke curled lovingly around the words as Jim breathed, tongue flicking over his lips to taste the poison there, “Long time no see.”

The other figure stood in place stoically before sighing, like a death rattle, pulling back its hood and rumbling in an unimpressed drawl, “Not long enough, kid.”

Jim’s crooked grin just grew wider, fingers twitching to touch as he stayed still, knocking ash from his cigarette, and Death sighed, “That’s gonna be the death of you.”

Jim’s eyes gleamed and he tilted his head, “Maybe,” he inhaled again, “there’s a chance,” exhaled again, “but you know what isn’t a chance? Him, and his death. Since I killed him, just now.”

There was a wash of pride and excitement and affection as he watched the cloaked man look at the body next to Jim, deep hazel eyes filled with remorse, sympathy.

“And I’ll do it again, you know,” Jim’s voice was as sharp as his smile, “And again. And again. And again,” his fingers twitched again, “If you don’t do anything about it.”

The figure looked tired, bemused, but spoke with his practiced resolve, “I’ve already told you, I don’t take life, that’s not what I do.”

“Then I will,” there was a growl mixed with Jim’s glee, hands suddenly missing the warm feel of the knife instead of the too light cigarette, “and I don’t think I”ll tire before you.”

The figure stood still, silent as would be expected, as he held Jim’s gaze, eyes bright like venom as he took another drag. He stood still, and he held, until he crumbled, just slightly, shoulders dropping as he stepped forward. He leaned down and reached out to where Jim was sitting, cradling the blonds’ face in one hand.

“Alright, James,” his voice was like gravel though his touch was gentle, “though I think you’ll be the death of me.”

The edge finally melted from Jim’s smile, blue eyes soft as he eagerly pressed into the other’s cold touch, murmuring warmly, “Only if you’re mine first.”

Jim shut his eyes as the figure leaned down further, reveling in the sweetest poison as he welcomed the kiss of death. His heart beat slowed and his blood gently cooled, and he released his last breath in a sigh, content, as he died.

Jim then stood and took the hand of Death in his own, hands finally still and calm as they walked into their eternity.