Title: My Captain
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy & others
Rating: K+
Word Count: (this part) 4330
Warnings/Spoilers: Angst, schmoop, literary references, the usual TOS campiness that we all know and love, etc. Episodic spoilers (this part) footnoted at the end of the chapter. Kirk's booklove is taken straight from canon; specifics are mine.
Summary: Five reasons why the crew of the Enterprise would follow James T. Kirk to Hell and back, and one reason why he would do the same. Originally the first part of this started as a ficlet for my fever/delirium spot on my hc_bingo card, and it morphed into this thing, which then morphed into a six-shot. Updates will be slow, but each chapter will be self-contained. Title inspired obviously by O Captain, My Captain.

VI.

Innocuously enough, it began with Alice in Wonderland.

Peter Kirk had, understandably, had difficulty sleeping the first three nights following the final disintegration of the Denevan parasites, and while the captain was not permitting himself the time yet to grieve personally, he was in control of himself enough to gently guide his nephew through the process of release. McCoy could scarcely fault the man for keeping himself rigidly together, if he could aid the child in dealing with the bone-deep pain that accompanied the loss of both parents and many friends.

The Enterprise's midnight had long since come and gone this particular Stardate, and her captain still roamed the halls, sleepless and haunted by ghosts of what had never been said between siblings separated by career choice and too many lightyears, and what never could be said, now. His steps moved unconsciously to Sickbay; most nights of this sort were spent in the company of one of the two men who currently were sound asleep in the ward – Spock feverishly dozing on his observation bed (the parasite's death had not negated the presence of the now-decaying tissue in his nervous system, resulting in a slight fever and measured discomfort), and McCoy finally having collapsed on his own office couch.

Peter Kirk was still awake two beds over from Spock's, however, and James Kirk was not so selfish as to retreat instead of seating himself beside the child with as sadly compassionate a smile as he could muster.

"Can't sleep?" he whispered, not a question but rather an observation, and received a silent, sad shake of tousled head. "Well, I've brought you something," he added after a slightly awkward pause, and carefully handed the child an old-fashioned, leather-bound book.

The smell of leather and ink and the rustle of crisp paper caused Peter's eyes to widen, and the child sat up in the bed, reverently running a finger along the smooth binding.

"Your father gave that to me when I turned five years old," Kirk murmured softly, remembering well the first birthday he'd had after learning to read at a ridiculously early age, and how amused his family had been with his childhood fascination with old books and antique bookstores. His throat threatened to close in choked agony at the memory of that happier time, but he resolutely continued, forcing the words past the painful blockage. "I'm lucky it's still in such good shape, I guess."

Blue eyes shone brilliantly in the dimly-lit ward, silent but seeing far more than any child so young should.

"Here," the captain whispered, and pulled the chair closer with a nearly-silent creak. "Let me read you some of it? That's it – just lie back and close your eyes, kiddo…good. Now then, let me see…"

And he read for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty – thirty, and beyond; first to distract the child, and then later to distract himself, immersed in memory and not realizing that his nephew had long since fallen asleep, safely in the arms of childhood's fantasy.

He trailed off at a small, contented child-sigh that drifted over the Sickbay-issue blanket, and hastily shut the volume before the tears that threatened to spill over could possibly ruin and blotch the precious pages. Peter was long since asleep, and he probably should try again to do so himself; hopefully this time it would be without childhood nightmares resurfacing in the wake of his brother's death.

He was halfway to the door, scrubbing angrily at one stubborn tear that traced softly down his face, when he realized with the sudden shock of instinct that Spock was wide awake, and lay silently watching him from the next bed. Unspoken sympathy shone softly in the dark eyes as they followed his progress across the room.

He halted, frozen for a moment in a combination of embarrassment and utter helplessness, not knowing whether to speak or retreat or neither or both.

Finally the calm voice that could soothe him even in the most violent of situations broke the silence. "Lewis Carroll," Spock spoke quietly, gesturing toward the volume tucked lovingly under the captain's arm. "A favorite of my mother's," he further clarified, offering a rare glimpse of his half-human childhood; a precious gift that the captain had rarely seen before, and hesitant comfort without saying so in words. "She insisted upon reading to me from various Terran classics each night when I was not of sufficient age to begin my public schooling."

He could not help but smile down at the leather-bound tome, imagining a very inquisitive toddler-Vulcan attempting to wrest sense from Jabberwocky's illogicality, and his embarrassment fled with the shadows around his heart, for tonight at least.

"I remember the story well," Spock added after a pause, his voice falling gently amid the muted sounds of the monitors overhead, "and it was…reassuring, to hear part of it again tonight."

Such an immense admission was a sacrifice of Vulcan ideology, and he recognized the offering for what it was – an indication that all beings had weaknesses, and that it was no shame to admit to them in front of those closest to them. It was a precisely logical, so very Spockian way of comforting, and the warmth of it wrapped around him as surely as if he'd been hugged tightly in the darkness of the dimly-lit ward.

Blinking suspiciously, he glanced up at the bio-monitor. Spock's fever was hovering at a low level; uncomfortable, but not dangerous – most likely the Vulcan was more bored than in pain, and distraction would be welcome.

For both of them.

He hesitantly placed Alice in Wonderland on the blanket, and then reached to move the chair over to his First's bedside.

"Where did I leave off?"

McCoy was unsurprised to see the captain slipping quietly through the doors of Sickbay that evening after the disastrous away-mission-gone-wrong, but he was surprised to see an old hardbound book tucked carelessly under the golden sleeve.

His eyebrows crawled up at the sight of the title, and a faint flush rose into the captain's neck and face. "Jim, since when do you read ancient Western romances in your free time?" he asked, hiding the devilish grin that threatened to show from behind his hand – what blackmail potential that was!

"I don't," Kirk retorted indignantly, though with less enthusiasm than a real defense warranted. McCoy's grin widened, spilling over at last. "…not very often, anyway," the captain muttered gracelessly after a moment's awkward silence.

The physician couldn't help but laugh at the embarrassed look on the captain's face, though it really was no surprise that the man had a soft spot a mile wide for books of any kind. What he didn't quite understand, was why Jim had toted a dog-eared Riders of the Purple Sage with him to Sickbay tonight.

The captain offered no explanation, and he knew better than to ask questions; he only pointed out which recovery cubicle Ensign Tormolen, one of their newest transfers from Starbase Thirteen, was in when asked and watching as Kirk made his way back there.

That didn't stop McCoy from switching on the audio feed from the cubicle to eavesdrop for a few minutes on the conversation; he needed to be certain the captain wasn't going to excite the patient, or that Jim would be inflicting even more guilt upon himself than he had already over circumstances no one could have controlled.

"Captain!" The surprised exclamation filtered through the monitor, the ensign's voice weak from blood loss but alert enough to be shocked at the unheard-of appearance of her commanding officer in her recovery room.

"Ensign." A brief, slightly bitter chuckle. "Please don't even try to sit up; we both know Dr. McCoy would have a fit and he'd kick me out before I had a chance to do anything else to you."

The young woman laughed softly, though the physician could sense the nervousness and uncertainty in her voice when she spoke. "Am I to be debriefed now then, Captain?"

"Definitely not, Ensign," was the reply, a diamond-hard edge in the tone. "You are to remain here until you are fully recovered, and no one is going to bother you about reports and briefings until then. Captain's orders."

"…Aye, sir." The woman was obviously confused, McCoy could tell, but he was getting no abnormal readings from her biobed and so he permitted the conversation to take its course; it was not disturbing yet. "Is anything wrong, sir?"

"Ensign…" a short sigh, and then, "I'm really here to thank you, you know."

A startled pause. "Just doing my job, sir."

Anger tinged the captain's voice, though it was only audible to McCoy from long association with Jim Kirk's protectiveness toward his crew. "I am aware that the primary concern of landing party Security teams is the safety of the captain, Ensign."

"Sir?"

"Just the same…" Kirk swallowed, and continued, "…I'm very glad you didn't die in performance of your duty on your very first landing party aboard this ship, Tormolen. You did save my life down there in that mess, and…thank you."

The stress indicator of the injured woman's monitor slid down instantly, and the doctor relaxed at last, knowing the talk had been good for both his patient and his captain.

The short screech of a chair being moved filtered through the comm-unit.

"Captain?"

"Do you mind if I stay for a little while, Ensign?"

"Certainly not, sir," the woman replied quietly.

"Good." The pain was fading from Kirk's voice now, as he took on that particular blend of humor and dramatic flair that characterized his command style in a way unique to him and his ship. "Your roommate, Lieutenant O'Dell, informs me that you are fond of Zane Grey novels?"

An embarrassed cough. "Um…yes, sir."

Kirk's voice showed his smile more clearly than a visual would have. "Would it surprise you, Ensign, to know that I have a few of them myself?"

A long, startled pause. "…Aye, sir." The Ensign was obviously smiling as well now. "You do?"

"I do," Kirk declared smugly. A rustling of paper, and the creaking of chair. "I thought you might like to read this one, Ensign. I have Bridge duty in twenty minutes, but until then…"

McCoy reached out and shut off the audio feed, knowing he had listened long enough to a private conversation, and smiled to himself as he returned to his paperwork.

And it had escalated from there. No one really knew how it became private knowledge or why said knowledge fascinated the crew so much, but two years into the five-year mission the entire crew knew that when a crewman was sick or injured, at some point the captain would show up in Sickbay with an old book, either paper or digital, and would read aloud to them for the odd half-hour.

Security members no longer dreaded the long days spent in Sickbay under McCoy's eagle eye and irascible temper, for during those days they became the favored few who received more than one visit from their captain, always with something new to read or discuss together. The nursing staff looked forward to the captain's scheduled or impromptu visits, which they fondly dubbed Kirk's Reading Hour, and gathered shyly around the doors of whatever room he was in to listen.

No one knew how Kirk had located a leather-bound, gilt-edged copy of Anna Karenina soon after the outbreak of Rigellian fever aboard (1), but the whole Sickbay watched with affection as the captain donned a protective EV suit to enter Chekov's quarantined room to read to him for an hour each evening.

Nurse Chapel could have wept with sheer relief when, three days into the excruciatingly painful process of the Fabrini cure for xenopolycythemia (2), the captain patiently read Gone with the Wind aloud (despite cranky and quite vocal protests about being 'a doctor, not a child') in its near-entirety one long night. That was the first time in four days McCoy actually slept more than three hours at a stretch, and the nursing staff watched with blurry vision as the captain finally crashed shortly after his friend, too exhausted to get up from his chair.

One of Spock's Experimental Science lieutenants, a tiny little fireball of brains and brilliance, nearly died of delight when, incapacitated from a virus due to a broken petrie dish in Science Lab Eleven, she received a rare paper copy of two treatises regarding relativistic physics as it pertains to warp travel, written by distinguished Vulcan physicists just after First Contact.

Scotty, under observation for coolant gas inhalation one day after a mild skirmish with a renegade Klingon, drew the line after a well-meaning but atrocious captainal attempt at mimicking Robert Burns's accent in a Scottish poetry anthology, but the rueful laughter the two men shared did more good for both of them than the words themselves would have.

McCoy grinned for days at Sulu's dumbfounded expression when the captain presented him with three antique Japanese comic books from Earth's late twenty-first century and Burton's Guide to Plants in the Alpha Quadrant (3), after the young man was laid up with a broken ankle and mild hypothermia after an away mission on an ice planet.

Just after the incident with NOMAD (4), the entire Sickbay covered their ears and tried not to laugh as loudly as Uhura was, when Kirk read her the entirety of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, complete with accents, different voices, and his best god-awful caterwauling (McCoy's words; while James Kirk was a magnificent orator, he could not carry a tune to save his life) the lyrics to each song. The whole ward was giggling, or trying to hide the fact, by the time the captain left in a small huff, but the doctor had never seen such rapid improvement in a mentally-damaged patient's spirits as he did then.

Then came the disaster that was Argos III.

A simple, uncomplicated survey mission of an uncharted planet; perfect atmosphere and temperature, entire lack of harmful animal life and entire lack of sentient life whatsoever, idyllic meadows, mountains, and seas reminiscent of old Earth's best topographical beauty-spots. It was a paradise, and not a deceptive one as they had encountered before; for a peaceful week landing parties took samples, explored, and vacationed to their hearts' content – and enjoyed every moment of it.

Then McCoy's staff discovered a strain of plant life on the far south side of the planet that contained properties comparable to those used in the makings of the galaxy's most dangerous illegal drugs; hallucinogens, addictive elements, neurotoxins.

The plants bore enormous blossoms of black or deep purple and yellow, looking similar to earth's sunflowers but not as large, growing four or five to a stalk in meadows as wide as a shuttle bay. Had one of Spock's overly-suspicious protégés not given the place a precursory scan before they began exploring they never would have known the danger the plants could cause – similar to the effects large fields of poppies would have upon humanoid physiology, only magnified a hundred times in these more deadly blooms.

Even at a safe distance from the blossoms, Lieutenant Drambel from Xenobotany collapsed, her existing sensitivity to hallucinogens amplified by the effects, and they instantly began a landing party recall, warning existing parties of the dangerous plants and planning precautionary measures.

No one remembered until fifteen minutes later, when McCoy and Spock both beamed down, together and without any sort of bickering or protest, that the captain had wandered off by himself earlier that morning – at Spock's encouragement, the landing party recalled, for Kirk had been under incredible stress lately and the area looked similar to Earth's Iowa.

Kirk had put up a token resistance and then, smiling at an indolent insect that fluttered by on colorful wings, had strolled off after it with the intent of relaxing for a few hours.

And he was the only one, at this point in time, that had not responded to the emergency medical recall.

Spock ordered search parties to look in the pseudo-sunflower fields first, remembering from a past visit to Earth's Midwest that there were many such fields and thinking, correctly as it turned out, that they would attract the captain's attention.

They found him, almost an hour later, ten meters into one of the meadows.

By the time McCoy got him to Sickbay, the captain's brainwave signatures were off the charts in erratic fluctuations; he was delirious at worst, unresponsive at best, blood pressure and respiration swinging wildly from too low to far too high, body temperature skyrocketing from the effects of his battle to fight off the airborne toxins attacking his nervous systems.

For twelve hours the battle for survival raged across Sickbay; James Kirk was fighting for his life, and so was the entirety of the Enterprise medical staff – but progress was minimal, the treatment only partially effective, for they had never encountered such a powerful airborne neurotoxin combination before.

Spock had pulled every available Science and Medical officer from non-essential duty and distributed them throughout the fourteen science labs aboard (5), in an effort to discover some treatment that might aid the captain in his struggle to survive the havoc being wreaked upon his nervous and respiratory systems, but to no avail. For the first time, they all needed a miracle – but the man who usually seemed to work them was dying in Sickbay, and attempts by any other ended in failure.

Twelve hours after being discovered semi-conscious on the planet below, the captain's overtaxed systems shut down and he relapsed into a coma, from which McCoy could not give anyone odds as to when or if he would ever awaken.

Starfleet was not unsympathetic to their situation when informed a week later and, given that their current mission and the next two were simple charting and mapping missions, the Admiralty gave them a further month to observe Captain Kirk's condition before making shifts in the chain of command (Spock's flat refusal to accept a field promotion earned him a series of stern looks but also a bit of sympathy from those who knew Kirk personally).

After two more weeks had crawled by on broken wings, the captain's condition had not improved even the slightest; McCoy could detect no brain activity other than autonomic responses, and there had been no indication that the toxins to which he was exposed had not done permanent damage.

By that time, Spock was haunting the halls and thoroughly freaking out any crew member who happened upon him during the small hours of ship's night. Scott had buried himself in the guts of his Lady and refused to come out, only eating when kind-hearted Uhura brought him a tray from Officers' Mess and practically force-fed its contents to him. The alpha shift crew barely spoke during business hours, trying their best to function at peak capacity so that they would not receive the frustrated attention of their Acting Captain, and the entirety of the crew complement went about their jobs with an almost funereal air; it was as if the ship herself mourned the loss of her most vibrant member.

After another week of no change and working around the clock to produce exactly complete failure, McCoy finally drank himself into a crying stupor and crashed, all alone, in the captain's quarters. Spock found him there the next morning, after a methodical computer-aided search for their missing CMO.

There were no words of recrimination or censure for his lapse in professional control, no admonitions that his time should be spent in his office, attempting the impossible and curing their captain – they had moved beyond the need for such pointless venting shortly after the Tholian incident (6).

Instead, "Come, Doctor," Spock spoke gently, and helped the human to his feet, steadying him when sick and shaky legs barely supported his wavering balance.

"I hate myself," the physician groaned after they had entered the lift, resting his head against the cool wall.

"You have no cause to do so," was the quiet response, though it was not devoid of the same self-recrimination. Guilt was illogical, and yet to deny its existence was equally illogical; how did one deal with such a no-win situation?

"Spock, what're we going to do? We only have nine more days before they stick another braid on your sleeve and send us to the nearest Starbase to hand Jim over to a medical facility!"

Vulcans do not flinch, and yet this one did despite the fact that they were entering Sickbay and several nurses could see. "We have those nine days, Doctor. You must hold to that, for there is little left for us to do but hope."

They paused for a moment at the door of the Captain's private room, a habit now after four weeks of the same routine every morning.

McCoy blinked. "What's she doing?" he asked blearily, trying to clear his hazy vision enough to see.

Spock's eyebrows furrowed together in a slanted black line. "Nurse Chapel appears to be reading to the Captain." A thoughtful timbre suddenly tinged his voice.

Chapel had heard them, and looked up quickly, a slight blush darkening her cheeks. "Doctor, are you all right?" she asked, rising from the chair and making her way to the door.

"I'll need a detox shot and some black coffee, my own fault," McCoy grunted, but his eyes were on the book in the nurse's hand. "You really readin' him James and the Giant Peach?" he asked, blue eyes regaining a slight twinkle for the first time in several days.

"It's one of his childhood favorites," she explained simply, and walked over to a cabinet to retrieve the doctor's detox injection. "Along with Peter Pan and Treasure Island."

McCoy's eyes bugged. "And you know that, how…?"

"I contacted his mother," was the dry reply just before the hypospray met his neck.

The physician shook his head to rid himself of neck kinks, and then opened his eyes, thoughtful. "You know we haven't tried much of those more archaic methods of coma therapy," he murmured slowly. "I mean we've all been talking to him, reading different logic and cognitive puzzles and so on aloud to him, trying to get his mind to jumpstart itself…"

"And we have not simply been there, as we would in normal life, speaking as to a friend instead of a coma victim," Spock interjected quietly, surprising everyone within earshot with the entirely emotion-based observation.

Blue eyes met brown, determination suddenly sparking in their depths. "Well we're gonna fix that. Nurse, get me a officers' duty rotation schematic, and make me a copy of that book list."

Chapel smiled. "Right away, Doctor."

The first day, little happened. McCoy, Chapel, and Spock took turns at regular intervals reading aloud (Chapel was hard-pressed to not giggle and ruin the effect as the Vulcan attempted – and magnificently failed – to put 'feeling' into reading a child's fantasy story about a boy who never grew up) to the captain, but with no noticeable results.

The next day, McCoy's rotation list took effect, and he was not pressed for volunteers to come and sit with the captain, either reading or just talking of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and anything else that popped into their heads. Again, there was no visible change in the captain's status, but they persevered throughout that third day and into the fourth.

And that fourth night, they were finally rewarded.

Scotty and an eager Engineering crew had gotten together to read the captain's childhood favorite, Treasure Island, in dramatized format – each doing a different voice, and Scott himself as the narrator. It was horribly corny, in McCoy's opinion, but absolutely hilarious, and the Sickbay rang that night with a dozen enthusiastic voices refraining about a dead man's chest and bottles of rum.

Near the end of the story, as he watched from the doorway, his heart suddenly stopped for a second.

Scott, who had been facing him, halted the proceedings immediately, worry creasing his features. "Doctor, what is it?"

He felt for the nearest empty chair and dropped into it before his legs could deposit him on the floor, and pointed breathlessly at the monitors over Kirk's bed.

"He heard that, Scotty," he breathed, gesturing at the pulse indicator – now a fraction higher than it had been for three and a half weeks. "Jim heard you."

The room went dead silent as the engineering crew stared at him, and then broke one by one into a chorus of wide grins and watery smiles.

The CMO grinned back, hope flaring in his heart for the first time. "His heart rate's spiked before once or twice – usually when Spock touches him, go figure that – but it's never gone up and stayed like that before. He can hear you, fellas, I'm sure of it now. Keep it up."

McCoy never did figure out how the most boring voice aboard (honestly, Vulcan inflection was an oxymoron in itself), reading the most boring literature aboard (the Vulcan Science Academy's latest periodical on spatial anomalies), could be the catalyst that finally brought the captain back.

But then again, he thought in relief-infused amusement as Jim's weak "I liked Peter Pan better, Spock" reverberated around the ward and the Vulcan's lips twitched suspiciously in answer, I shouldn't have been surprised…

Footnotes:
(1) Requiem for Methusaleh
(2) For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
(3) Sulu's love for botany is seen in The Man Trap but never explored after that.
(4) The Changeling
(5) According to Kirk in Operation Annihilate, that is how many Science Labs the TOS Enterprise had
(6) The Tholian Web

All else is my own creative license.