Disclaimer: The Star Trek characters are not mine, just borrowed for this story.
Warnings: language and violence.
Reviews are always welcome and appreciated

Sequel to The Doppelgänger Initiative

The Darkest Clouds of My Soul Are on the Horizon

Jim's just come from hell, met the devil himself, and found out they share the same face.

He'll examine the damage to his soul later, when everyone has had a moment to catch their breath and reassure themselves that the person staring back at them in the mirror is nothing more than a reflection. As disturbing as Jim's encounter was, it pales in comparison to McCoy's, who had to exist in that perversion for almost two weeks. The tarnished and worn silver lining is they brought McCoy home and not just a body, but it was a very near thing.

Jim's not known for his patience. He built his youth on impulsiveness and pleasures of the flesh, often racing into places where angels fear to tread. He's not known for patience, but he can be patient, if he absolutely has to. For the last seventy-two hours, he's sat by McCoy's biobed in Yorktown medical, shirking his captain-y duties, adding new kinks to his back and sometimes pacing the room like a caged circus lion. He's absolutely prepared to bite the ring master's head off if he doesn't get some answers soon or even better, and by far his preferred choice, have McCoy open his eyes and give Jim shit about something. Anything. It really doesn't matter as long as that southern, grumpy charm manages to beat the devil too. He's pretty sure there's a gold fiddle or something, involved in it for McCoy for doing so.

If Jim had his head in the game properly, he's pretty sure he would have laid into Spock earlier about running interference between his emotionally distraught captain and the gory medical details as they come in. Right now he's a little grateful; it's hard enough to look at the aftermath without knowing the fine details of everything those sick sons of bitches did to McCoy in that universe. His imagination does have plenty of time to fill in the blanks.

There's no security showing up to drag Kirk away to the brig or a court martial or even questioning by the admiralty, so whatever Spock is telling them, must be holding the wolves at bay. Even if they do come for him, Jim'll fight them tooth and nail to stay where he is. He'd taken his eyes off Leonard and look where that got the doctor. He won't make that mistake again so soon. At least not until McCoy opens his eyes and Jim can assure him the nightmare is over and Leonard's cantankerousness is free to run amuck on the Enterprise once again. Or it will be, once Jim gets her back on her feet again too. This is why he can't have nice things; he hasn't been very mindful of their frailty lately.

At hour eighty-one, McCoy blinks once, than twice. Jim sits up straighter in anticipation and his heart waits to break out in song at the first 'damn it Jim' to cut through the oppressive and stale silence. Jim'll bet some serious credits that those are the words that slip past McCoy's lips when his alarm goes off in the morning and Leonard's still straddling the barrier between awake and sleep.

Hope dies a horrible withering death as Jim watches McCoy's slack face go from trauma and drug induced slumber to relief briefly before taking a hard right and go careening straight to fear; ungodly and unbridled fear. McCoy makes a few feeble attempts to push Jim's hand away before he starts screaming. It's slurred and mostly intelligible ramblings absconded by the drugs lying heavy in his system but what Jim can make out, makes his gut tighten.

He tries to hold McCoy down, to stop him from scrambling out of bed and hurting himself further but his attempts to hold and calm his friend only seem to exacerbate the situation.

"Easy, Bones. It's alright," shouts Jim to be heard. It's a fine balance between trying to smash through McCoy's fear and being calm and gentle so as not to send the doctor scurrying in terror.

"Screw you. Ya ain't him,' says Lenard like his mouth is full of marbles and putting more effort into his useless uncoordinated struggles. Desperation and fear are rolling off of him. He has to get away, no matter what it takes. Any injuries it takes to do it can be fixed later as long as he can get away from this nightmare.

"Bones! You're home. We brought you ho... Ow!" cries Jim as McCoy sinks his teeth into the flesh of Jim's hand. He pulls his arm back to see the bite mark well up with blood just as the doctors and nurses rush in to sedate the patient. It's a storm of flailing limbs and highly trained medical professionals like one of those cartoon dust clouds that threatens to sweep up everyone in its path. Jim presses down on his hand to try and stop the bleeding. "Shit."

Having someone that looks like your best friend cut into you is bad enough, he can do without the pretense of Kirk pretending to be Jim. "Knew it... you... you bast...ards," slurs McCoy as he has little option but to surrender to the drugs.

"I promise, I got you home, Bones," pleads Jim, standing there helplessly as McCoy's eyes flutter shut. He's never seen the doctor reduced to something so animalistic and it just serves to amplify and define his failure. A tiny voice whispers that Leonard is shattered and there might be too many pieces for Jim to put back together.

"Let me look at your hand, Captain," says Nurse Chapel, gently but firmly pulling Jim off to the side. Jim, not having the energy to fight, is quick to acquiesce to her efforts. It's like pulling along a ghost, the ease is almost scary considering how hard the doctor has to fight to get Jim to submit to medical care in the middle of a crisis. She mops up enough of the blood to get an actual look at the wound. "It's not that bad."

Jim would like to argue that it is. This wound runs much deeper than the layers of flesh and muscle that McCoy managed to pierce, but then again, neither of them wants to talk about their friend and colleague being reduced to the actions of a rabid dog. There's a joke in there somewhere about contracting colorful southern metaphors or chronic irritability but Jim can't bring himself to make it, just like he can't bear to take his eyes off the scene unfolding a couple of biobeds over.

"It's the medication; he's not lucid yet," offers Christine, to explain away her boss's behaviour but her underlying worry is undercutting her half hearted reassurances.

The ward has been filled with half felt positivity since most of the staff has been swapped out with the Enterprises' medical personnel, all eager to rally around one of their own. Jim's proud of them, but as the days go on and facts and theories spread about what has befallen their CMO, moral is getting low. He doesn't know what to say to raise their spirits when they can all look at a chart and decipher its code to know that Jim really knows nothing about what the future holds for a boss they all revere. It's a people problem he has, and ironically it's Leonard he'd go to for council on how to handle it.

"Good as new," says Chapel, running the dermal regenerator over his hand one last time.

"Thanks," says Jim, flexing his hand. If only fixing the doctor was this easy. He reaches out and places a reassuring hand on her shoulder before she can turn away. "He's gonna get through this," because Jim won't give Leonard the option not to.

Christine smiles and nods before walking away, but it doesn't reach her eyes and pity is far too quick to reclaim her features like Jim's a child being fed false optimism because no one has the stomach to sit him down and explain death is coming.

The need to punch something simmers in him, threatening to boil over at any moment and burn anyone in arms length. He has a long history of learning he can't really solve anything with his fists but by god, it sure feels good to try. A good fight would probably take the edge off, inflicting pain that he actually knows how to deal with. Anything other than this limbo they've all resigned themselves to. He's given Leonard far few too many commendations; it's been four days and already Jim can't handle it; a quarter of Leonard's job is waiting to determine the winner of a fight he can't wage on his patient's behalf.

A yeoman brings Jim three meals a day in which Jim manages to choke down two. He should get Scotty to do a systems check on the Yorktown food replicators because it mostly tastes like ash and failure. It means staging a hunger strike to rouse his sleeping friend isn't out of the question; Jim loves playing dirty like that. He hasn't taken shaving Leonard's eyebrows off the list yet either, just to teach Leonard what happens when he leaves Jim without adult supervision for extended periods of time. If Leonard won't wake up for himself he can at least do it for Jim, who isn't afraid to be that selfish about it right now. It's probably a good thing all the reports Jim doesn't have are on PADDs and not paper because he'd be making Henry Ford proud with a one man paper airplane assembly line right now. Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

Just the thought of the devil saps all the wind from his sails and he goes back to playing how still can you sit before the universe swallows you whole. When he falls asleep hunched over Leonard's bed, what he finds isn't better but his own personal hell with McCoy as judge and executioner but he can handle the bad dreams because it's the least of what he deserves right now.

M'Benga's up the amount of sedative McCoy receives so they can avoid another scene like earlier, at least until McCoy's a bit stronger. He's assured Jim that Leonard is healing physically and the damage from the rock shard is looking good but he's incredibly mum about the injuries sustained before Jim found McCoy. Jim toys briefly with the thought of pulling rank and medical proxy over Leonard to pull out every sordid detail the doctor knows but his traitorous lips refuse to form the question. He's never been afraid of anything before but is loath to admit he might be afraid of the answers here.

Jim doesn't take his eyes of the man in the bed, even when instinct tells him he's no longer alone in the room. "You're not who I was expecting." He figured it would be Spock to risk his ire with a well planned and logical argument to persuade Jim to go to his quarters and get something resembling real sleep. He's not sure if sending Uhura is more calculated or not on Spock's part but the fact that it's Uhura doesn't surprise him. She and McCoy formed a friendship back at the academy despite being on different tracks and running in different social circles. He supposes their friendship was built on some sort of anti-Kirk alliance by the two to slowly cause him mental torture at the academy.

"I convinced Spock a more emotional touch might be needed. He decided to defer to my judgement on the matter, but I imagine he'll be storming the castle should I fail," says Uhura from her spot by the door.

"I'm not leaving, so save your breath."

"You are," insists Uhura stepping closer to her captain.

"I'm not!"

"Yes, you are Captain," she snaps leaving no room for disagreement. "You're exhausted and no good to Leonard if you put yourself n the biobed next to him. That won't help him or change what happened. You have a whole crew that needs you and you can't help any of us if you don't take care of yourself." It's a low blow, but desperate times call for extreme measures.

Jim glares hard at Uhura.

"Now here are your options; get up and have lunch with me, checking in with Scotty and then take a nap in a real bed while Spock sits with Leonard or I have a doctor with a hypo waiting to knock you out and a Vulcan itching to nerve pinch you into oblivion, either one if it means you get a solid ten hours."

If it was anyone else, Jim would put up a fight but Uhura is crafty at the best of times and he's too tired to try and outplay each one of her moves. Spock steps into the room and Jim knows he doesn't have enough wiggle room to get out of this. The best he can hope for is to satisfy them so they'll leave him alone again. He lets out a long sigh. "Okay. But if McCoy so much as twitches, you comm. me right away. I mean it."

Uhura wraps her arms around Jim and guides him out of McCoy's hospital room as Spock takes a seat and resumes vigil over the doctor. "A twitch Spock, no matter how small," calls out Jim from the hallway.