Title: Memory Land

Rating: PG-13 to be safe.

Summary: The Enterprise has vanished and they don't have the first blue's clue as to why. Stranded on a planet where the past and the future met in dreams, it's pretty lucky they're together. Because Jim Kirk is starting to loose it, and without his friends to hold him together, probably would have by now.

Disclaimers: Star Trek is not mine, unfortunately.

Notes: Hoping I'm keeping McCoy in character throughout this mess; short stories with him are easier then longer works like this, as this is the first time I've tried. Same with Spock and Jim. Let me know how I'm doin' guys! Of course, I'd appreciate general reviews, too. ^_^ I want this story to be as emotional as some of those old episodes could be. I want interest in the starting chapters and emotion in the later ones. Tell me if I've gotten what I want. Ya'll are awesome, kiddies.

It was not an unusual day at first, but it would turn into one hell- one hell- of a week.

Our job was pretty simple; we were supposed to check in on a newly formed colony. Make sure there were no unexpected dangers; everyone was playing nice, routine medical checks for everyone on my part, to ensure no one was going to start dropping dead and there were no medical oddities. (Like perpetual happiness, which I have come to be very wary of, thank you very much.)

Just generally make sure things were running smoothly. The colony had been settled for a year now, so if anything was going to go wrong, I guess they figured a year was enough time to let it go wrong without getting out of control.

That's wrong, by the way. The number of times we have walked into a situation that was not supposed to be as out of control as it would up being is getting downright out of hand.

But we, apparently, do not learn. Ever.

And so, like cows to slaughter, we beamed onto the planet unsuspectingly. Spock, Jim and I were all that came down at first; we didn't assume we would be on the planet more then a couple hours, or that we needed more then the three of us. Routine mission, routine stop, there shouldn't have been a problem.

But there was, and what a problem. I found myself glad we hadn't dragged anyone else into the nightmarish hell we-

But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let me start where I should- at the very beginning, before things started going to hell in a hand basket….

"Well, it's….quaint."

"Quaint?" Jim looks at me, lopsided smirk on his face and eyes sparkling. "It that a nice way of saying 'backwater?'"

"Jim, we're standing on a planet so far from earth I can't even dream of being home. Nothing out here could be described as 'backwater'."

He snorts, starting to walk purposely towards the cluster of homes and shops we can just see in the distance. "I beg to differ." He mutters, and I smirk.

"Why, Jim, you snob."

He chuckles softly, glances to his left. "And what do you think, Mr. Spock?"

Spock slants him a glance, doesn't change expression. Of course he doesn't change expression. Sometimes I think he paints his face on in the mornings.

"For only having been here a year, Captain, it is actually doing quite well."

Jim sighs and faces front again; I snicker. "That," I say, "is what you get trying to get a Vulcan on your side."

Spock is the master of pretending to ignore us. He fiddles with his tricorder, dark eyes locked on what he's doing, pretending he can't hear us.

He can, and in his own way, he's teasing back. Pain in the ass half-breed likes bickering at me just as much as I like bickering at him, he just won't ever admit it. There is an easy, comfortable silence for the rest of the walk, Spock involved in what he's doing, Jim and I lost in thought. It's nice, hearing Jim laugh and joke; he doesn't get to do it nearly often enough. Jim is a brash, impulsive person who tends to prefer action over words, but he is, at the same time, incredibly empathetic. He is even, I've noticed, downright poetic. The stress of his responsibility, the constant danger, the deaths, the high, roller-coaster emotions occasionally gets him- there's no better way to put it- strung out, and Jim is the kind of person who will wear through until he snaps. That's not to say he can't handle his position- I can't think of a person who's better suited for it. But he is still just a person. I think he forgets that, sometimes.

So I am always glad when he is able to laugh and tease and I was hoping, hoping, this really would be an easy day, full of happy, healthy people and laughter.

I should know better by now.

It's Spock that notices it, first. He stops mid-step and nearly falters, but he's too damned graceful to do that for real. It turns into a back step that brings him directly behind me. His head tips, like a dog, listening.

"Spock?..." Jim quarries softly, half-turning. His face is relaxed, but I know him well enough to read the way his shoulders tense, gathering with tension, energy, like something waiting to explode. He's stepped from friend to Captain, and gone straight into protective mode.

"Captain, I-"

And then we hear it, too.

Screaming.

Female screaming.

Sometimes, Spock, Jim and I are at each other's throats like savage dogs. Clashing personalities, clashing mentalities, perfectly molded to each other but so utterly unalike. And sometimes, in an emergency, I'm stunned by how perfectly in sync we react. We spin and are running at the same time, almost in step with each other. Through the colony where people scatter like bugs, and I wonder why no one else is moving towards the noise. Possibly, they know exactly why she's screaming, and-

-a hand clamps around my upper arm.

Momentum carries me for a second, and I use it to swing around and wrench my arm free of the hold. I'm not the solider Jim is, but I'm not helpless, either. Far from it; just because I prefer to heal people rather then break them doesn't mean a thing.

"No! Please!"

Jim has stopped now, too, and Spock; other men have come out from surrounding buildings, circling us, and we all just kind of pause, unsure which way to jump. The uncertainty makes those Jim even twitchier; he doesn't like mysteries, he's said it himself. (Personally, I think this is half a lie; he seems to have as much fun figuring them out as Spock, who loves mysteries, does. And Spock will never admit to having fun, stubborn space elf-he is, but he very clearly enjoys pushing himself. The harder a situation, the more he sinks his teeth in.) He's stiff and uncomfortable and he will be until he gets the answers he's about to start demanding. Jim is many things; a diplomat is not always one.

The man that had grabbed me is backing away, hands raised. "Please." He says again quietly, lowering them when he realizes we're not going to pounce. He's a disturbingly tall man, easily topping six foot by more then a few inches, built stocky and thick. If he'd really wanted to stop me, he could have done it without trying. He could have snapped my damn arm without trying, really. His hair is a shaggy mane around his shoulders, clean and amazingly black; it's his eyes that get me, though.

The men and women who came to this place one year ago were human. Completely human in every way, not a single alien gene among them.

Yet this man's eyes have no pupil and are liquid silver. We've seen similar, once- I hardly remember it but I know Jim will. Mitchell. Gary Mitchell. His eyes had gone like this before he'd…. died. But his eyes had flashed with a range of reflected color; these are pure silver.

Still, I can feel Jim trembling as he moves up beside me. You can't see it, there's no sign of it on his face, but I can feel it. That was just one of many incidents Jim blames himself for; one of many deaths the man wears like a jacket. I swear, I think he likes tormenting himself over it- part of that be-damned martyr complex.

The scream tears through the air again, a woman screaming frantically, as if being ripped apart, slaughtered. It races down my spine, sending a chill through me I will not show. Already a part of me is there, racing there, while she's still alive.

"-She's being slaughtered out there." Tight, fierce anger, locked behind his teeth, Jim speaks my thoughts. Jim turns to run again, and again this man dives forward, this time for him. He shoves past me, knocking me back into Spock.

"No, you can't!" He yells. "Please, she must do this alone!"

"She sounds like she's being murdered!" Jim growls, batting his touch away.

"Not murdered." The man is pale and sweating, I notice. I step forward, coming up behind him and reaching for his elbow. He jerks away from me, staggers. You can tell when someone is panicked. You learn to tell. But my own gut is twisting with fear at the thought of an illness making it's way through this colony, causing this behavior. "It's ritual- she can't-"

Oh, Lord, we've staggered into another one of these. And if my understanding of my companions is correct-

"What sort of ritual involves the torture of a woman?"

And there's Jim, right on cue. Not that I'm arguing with it.

"She must do this. She will not die, I promise you." He staggers again and this time I grab his arm, hard, spin him around to face me. He struggles against my hold but I force him still.

I hear the rest, don't see it. I'm too busy forcing my new friend down onto a rock in a sit. "Be still." I snarl, even as I let Jim's voice filter through the back of my mind. I learned a long time ago how to focus on two or more things at once; how to devote full attention to both.

"She sounds like she's dying!" Jim snarls, and another man, presumably one of the others that approached, answers him.

"She is facing what she is, nothing more." He says, his voice low and husky. "It will not kill her, perhaps only drive her mad."

"Oh, is that all?" I mutter. I'm forced to smack the man's hands down a forth time, and feel my back stiffening and a headache blooming between my eyes. You'd think I was killing him, the way he keeps fighting me, and I have very little patience for people who fight me in this.

"Knock it off or I'll get Spock to hold you down." I growl at him. There is absolutely nothing strange that I can find in or on the man's body, nothing but those damn eerie eyes. And even they don't seem to have anything abnormal about them, not that I can here, like this.

The screaming has stopped. I sit up- nothing else I can do, there's nothing to do, so far as my readings tell me. I stand, take quick stock of what I let my brain fuzz out moments ago.

"-something that happens to everyone new to the planet." One of the men is saying, the one that promised us the woman was not being killed. He's big, too, just like his companion, built the same way. "It's not deadly, it's just that some can't handle it-"

"Perhaps," Spock speaks up at last, "you should begin from the beginning, sir."

I slant my gaze to him. Rarely am I ever grateful to have Spock with us on these little sojourns, but every so often it's nice to have a voice of reason I know Jim will listen to. Sure enough, Spock's presence, his calm, unruffled voice seems to gently ease the tension out of Jim's shoulders, like a dog relaxing at the voice of a trusted partner. Strange to see that, when it's Jim that's the captain; but he does it with both of us. He's confident without us. He's more confident with us.

"That is a-very good idea." The man I was examining speaks up. "Asher, would you go find Sparrow? See if she's…..make sure-"

A slightly smaller model- it makes me take an involuntary breath of relief to see that they don't all look the exact same. This one is pale, with strawberry red hair and expressive eyes that are that same all over gray. I can't understand it, but I have the feeling I'm going to weather I want to or not.

"Of course," The little redhead whispers, slipping out of the crowd.

The man I had been studying stands, holding up his hand to Jim. "That woman is my wife." He says gently, slowly. "If it wanted to kill her, do you think I'd just stand here and listen to that?"

"I don't know what you would do." Jim replies slowly, but the aggression is gone from his voice.

"She is my wife."

Jim snorts, the sound muted but there. "That does not always mean a thing."

As I said, many things, not always a diplomat. I stick an elbow in his ribs as he moves past me, feeling the growl in the back of my throat. Do you always have to lift everyone's hackles you meet, Jim?

We are gathered in the middle of the group- the more I look around, the more I'm relived to note that aside from the strange eyes, they have a wide variety of appearance. It makes me slightly less edgy, but there's still something incredibly not right here. They seemed more afraid we'd interfere rather then afraid of whatever was causing that poor girl to shriek like that.

My spine ripples at the memory of it. Such agony in those cries, like a dying animal.

I suddenly believe that she hadn't been killed.

I believe something much worse happened.