Hello! Thanks for stopping in. This is just a little post-Narada drabble I've been wanting to write. There are about two more chapters to follow this one, which I hopefully will be adding soon. This is my first ST:2009 fic I've written, so please be nice! Please drop a review if you have a moment; tell me what you think! Love it, hate it, think it's bizarre as eff, I don't care! Feedback is feedback, and I appreciate it every time.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything the Star Trek franchise. I also do not own the song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd. It just reminded me so much of Jim I had to do something with it. :D

Enjoy!

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Leonard McCoy thought he knew what it meant to be tired.

He thought he knew, with good reason.

Twelve years of prep school. Four years of premed undergraduate. Med school for what seemed like a century. And while some of his most precious memories came from the latter two, and he would never regret or repent that time, he never really wanted to know what it felt like to only have coffee in your stomach– for nearly six straight days. College especially– he barely remembered his final semester because he was so goddamned sleep -deprived.

But now, as he finally sat down at what was now his desk, scrubs off for the first time in what felt like days, an exhaustion as he had never known tsunamied into him. The ship's artificial gravity seemed to increase, dragging him down into the floor of the sickbay. He was bone-crackingly tired.

This had been, hands-down, the worst day of Leonard's life. Worse than the day he watched the light go out of his father's eyes. Worse than the day the court settled and Jocelyn got custody of his little girl. No, the last twenty-four hours had brought him to levels of desperation and despair he hadn't even realized he was capable of feeling. Leonard McCoy was a doctor. He knew death. But the destruction Nero had wrought on the Enterprise, on the rest of the Fleet, even on Leonard's own goddamned planet– it was staggering. Hollowing.

And now, as the last of the patients were resting stable on their biobeds, the adrenaline that had been keeping Leonard on his feet since this whole mess began was finally wearing off, taking his bones with it.

Bones…He grinned faintly, on the verge of delirium. Didn't I tell Jim all I had left was my bones? That's when he got that damn nickname in his head. Leonard secretly enjoyed it, though. Being given a nickname meant someone was paying attention to you. In Jim's case, it meant he cared.

A cool, hard surface on his forehead. Leonard realized, distantly surprised, that his face was now resting on the desk, arms looped around the crown of his head. He decided me didn't really care. His burned-out mind began to wander towards the emptiness of sleep.

"Dr. McCoy." Someone was shaking his shoulder. "Dr. McCoy, wake up."

Go away, he thought. Who the hell dared keep him from sleep? Leonard heatlessly wished a case of Andorian shingles on the owner of the hand that was trying to draw him back into an ugly reality. He shrugged the hand off and snuggled deeper into the crook of his elbow. Unless someone was dying, he would not be moved.

"Leonard, please." It was a woman's voice, speaking quietly. "Spock's here."

That snapped him up. Anger flared in his stomach, and Leonard raised his head, scowling.

Christine Chapel, face pale and dark circles under her eyes, was standing next to him. "Sorry, Leonard. But he says he needs you for something."

"The hell does he want?" growled Leonard, rubbing his eyes. He still wasn't feeling particularly friendly toward Spock. Yeah, the pointy-eared bastard had helped save Earth, kept the ship under control and had the balls to beam down to a planet about to go through a black hole in order to save the Vulcan High Council. That was all well and good. But he'd also beat the shit out of Jim– after marooning him on a god-forsaken ball of ice. Of course, Jim had been asking for it on both occasions, and it wasn't like Leonard hadn't wanted to punch the little asshole in the face before.

But Leonard still couldn't scrub his mind free of the image of Jim held down, choking and gasping as Spock cut off his air, and the coldness in his eyes as he did it. Someone earnestly trying to crush the larynx of his best friend was not something Leonard could quickly forgive.

Best friend… and if he was honest, only friend.

Leonard bit his tongue to keep from cursing. Spock was the last, the absolute last person he wanted to see right now.

Christine looked beyond drained, but her eyes were sympathetic. "He wouldn't say, just that he needed to speak with you personally. And after you do, I don't want to see you back here in sickbay for at least two shifts."

Leonard bridled foggily. "What?"

Christine's jaw was set. "You get to your quarters, Dr. McCoy, and you stay there. Twelve hours rest, minimum. You're a liability as a doctor without it, and you need to maintain your own health. Get some sleep."

Leonard raised an eyebrow, frowning. There was too much to do yet. Reports to be written, patients to be monitored. Not to mention figuring out what the hell those Romulan bastards had put in Pike. He couldn't afford to go off watch yet. "Last I checked, Nurse Chapel," he said skeptically, "I outrank you. You can't order me out."

"And last I checked, Dr. McCoy," Chapel replied, not missing a beat, "Head Nurse reserves the ability to order the Chief Medical Officer off duty should they feel said CMO could be endangering their patients or themselves." She gestured to him. "Look at yourself, Leonard."

He started to protest, but stopped when he glanced at his hands. They were shaking violently.

Past his hands, resting on the desk, was a PADD. The identification tag on the back read M. Puri.

Leonard felt like he's been kicked in the stomach as it finally sank in.

CMO. Head Nurse. Less than a Terran day before, he and Christine had been Cadets McCoy and Chapel, Second Class. Now they were responsible for the lives of everyone on board one of the last Starfleet ships in space.

He closed his shaking hands and stood. "Okay," he said, trying to not sound too defeated. "Twelve hours."

Christine smiled, half sad, half distantly amused. "Get out of here, Leonard." She returned to sickbay.

Leonard stood and didn't bother swallowing his groan. Every part of his body throbbed with tiredness. And now he had to deal with a certain green-blooded hobgoblin.

Spock was standing in the main entrance of sickbay with his hands behind his back. His eyes were hooded, more shadowy than they usually were, and there was a slight dip to his shoulders Leonard had never seen before. He bottled his surprise; even Spock looked tired, and Spock never looked anything, except vaguely superior. But his greeting and stance were as formal as ever.

"Dr. McCoy," he said, in his tone, as it typically was, vexingly polite. "Thank you for seeing me. You and your staff have had one of the heaviest burdens to carry during this crisis, and I am sure you are tired."

You have no idea, Leonard thought darkly. "Yes, I am, Mr. Spock," he said out loud, "so I would appreciate it if we could get this over with. What do you want?" He didn't have the energy to be respectful.

Spock betrayed no emotion. "Of course, Doctor. I will make this as brief as possible. Do you know the whereabouts of Captain Kirk?"

Leonard frowned. Surprise, followed by apprehension tinged with dread, started to curdle in his stomach. He wanted to scream "You lost him!?" in Spock's calm face.

Instead he growled. Leave it to Jim. "Kirk was supposed to report to sickbay two hours ago, when his shift officially ended. He was still being debriefed went I went to the bridge to drag the infant down here when he didn't show up." Damn Admiralty wouldn't even let the kid get treatment for his injuries before grilling him.

The ghost of a frown twisted Spock's features. "The debriefing concluded approximately ten minutes ago. Captain Kirk was ordered by the Admiralty to report to sickbay, followed by twelve hours time off duty. Due to the state of the ship and the casualties we have suffered, they deemed twelve hours the maximum affordable time before he would again be needed on the bridge."

Leonard resisted the urge to scream. Twelve hours? No. Jim had suffered an allergic reaction, done a goddamned HALO jump onto a fiery drill, and been used as a punching bag by an enraged Vulcan– not to mention whatever other injuries he might have suffered on Delta Vega or when infiltrating the Romulans. Twelve hours was nothing after that kind of ordeal. Without even having looked him over, Leonard knew the kid would be needing four times that.

"The blatant bullshit in that order aside," Leonard ground out, "the answer is no. I don't know where Jim is." And if I did, I'd smack him for not taking care of himself. "Can't you locate him using the ship's computer?"

"As the Captain was not officially assigned to the Enterprise back on Earth," Spock said, "his information was not entered into the ship's database. He name will not come up on any search."

Leonard silently thanked himself for having the foresight to enter all of Jim's medical information onto his personal PADD as a locked file when Jim asked Leonard to be his physician. Even thought he almost knew the kid's allergies by heart at this point.

As for Jim's earlier records…well, he knew those too, and that information wasn't in Starfleet's database anyway. It wasn't in any database as far as Leonard knew. Jim had hacked that history into oblivion years ago.

Leonard scrubbed his hand over his face. "If he's not in the computer, how did you even know he didn't report to sickbay when he was supposed to?"

Spock's eyes had sharpened infinitesimally. He looked almost–shrewd. No, not shrewd. Knowing. Perceptive. "Judging by the way Captain Kirk has handled the events of the last twenty-four hours, he does not seem to be the kind of man who slows and comes to an eventual stop once a crisis has passed. I wished to confirm that the captain made it to sickbay safely, though I suspected otherwise. It seems my hunch, as the term goes, was correct."

Leonard raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "You, Mr. Spock? You acted on a hunch?" He didn't point out what surprised him more: that Spock was concerned enough about Jim to make sure he got to Medical. Less surprising was that he'd been able to deduce Jim's tendency to burn out until he was sure the job was completely done.

Spock seemed to ignore Leonard's jab. "I asked Nurse Chapel upon my entry if the captain had reported as ordered."

"And when you found out he hadn't, you figured I would know where he went." Leonard grinned ruefully. "Spock, there are two things you need to know about Jim Kirk. One, he is an absolute child when it comes to taking care of himself. The kid would run a mile before paying attention to the fact that his leg is broken. And two, if Jim does not want to be found, you will not find him. You could tear this tin can apart and it wouldn't make any difference."

Spock actually looked concerned now. The tightening of his eyes and lips, a slight set to his jaw. "The captain has sustained injuries that require treatment. It is imperative that we find him. Doctor, you are his friend. I would daresay you know him best, judging by the time you have spent together. Please think. Where would he go?"

Leonard ran his hands through his hair. He'd had a lid on his own worry all afternoon, trying not to think about how badly Jim might be hurt. He'd been so busy he'd been able to distract himself from fretting over one of the two people in the universe about whom he truly cared. And now here Spock was, telling him that person was missing.

"He could be anywhere!" Leonard snarled, trying and failing to keep his voice down. "Sometimes the kid just disappears. It's how he is." He racked his brain, trying to get inside Jim's head without result.

Who was he kidding? Yeah, he knew Jim, better than just about anyone else. He knew the kid's habits, preferences, even his story.

But Jim was also the smartest, most unpredictable person Leonard knew. Jim was a genius. His mind moved at the speed of light. It was as bright and sharp and impenetrable as diamond.

Leonard paused.

A memory surfaced– an old one, from almost two full years before. Images, feelings. A late night. Blood on the doorknob. A name whispered fearfully through the dark.

"Stay here," Leonard ordered Spock. He ran back to his office and retrieved his bag, checking quickly to make sure it carried some of the few medicines to which Jim wasn't allergic. The feel of the familiar genuine leather handles, coupled with the bag's comforting weight, grounded him. He took a deep breath, clear now in what he had to do. He returned to the entrance to sickbay, where Spock stood waiting.

"I think I know where he is," Leonard said. "And if I'm right, I'll need your help. Let's go."