Title: Haunt My Mind
Author: miss_m_cricket on Livejournal
Fandom: Star Trek Reboot! / Doom Crossover.
Verse: Guardian!Verse
Rating: R for now
Pairing: will be Reaper!McCoy/James T. Kirk
Disclaimer: Own neither Doom, nor Star Trek.
Prompt: inell's prompt which spawned this monster in my head

Once again thank you to mysterysquid for his amazing beta'ing and listening skillz.

Summary: Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. But for John, nothing really seemed to matter anymore...

AN: This is just a little filler chapter. Just counting the time down until Leonard meets Jim.

Haunt My Mind

"Late at night, things I thought I put behind me, haunt my mind"
- Within Temptation

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. But for John, nothing really seemed to matter anymore.

Samuel wasn't Edward, John knew that, and he tried not to hold the young man accountable to the standards set by his father, and the love that he had had for him. However, he did know he was harder on the boy than he perhaps should have been, and that that perhaps was the reason that he and Samuel were never close.

Be that as it may, John stayed nearby, keeping an eye on Edward's son, protecting him if needs be, and watching the lives evolve around him.

Those years slipped past him like a haze, a grieving haze of darkness that threatened to swallow him whole. Until the day that Tiberius fell out of the great oak tree.

He could hear the soft snuffling of a child crying and the sound carried him back to a snowy alleyway in a rundown city, yanking him out of his grief and back into the sun drenched present.

There underneath the large tree crouched a boy, young and gangling and with thick fair hair and a large pair of blue eyes that were wet with tears. His nose ran, and his mouth wobbled, but John's gaze immediately caught the resemblance, and his heart tightened.

Then he saw the bone piercing the skin of the boys arm.

"Hey there kiddo..." he said, voice soft. He had known that Samuel had a son, but had never seen him. But he knew his name, "You're Tiberius aren't you? There now, don't you cry. My name's John, John Grimm."

And that brought a bright smile to the kids face.

"You're the Angel?" he asked, voice young and piping with a small lisp. "Daddy told me about you! You knew I was hurt!"

It sent John's head spinning. Sam had told his kid about him? Why?

"Sure, kid." He said distractedly, gently moving forward and lifting the child up. "You hold on tight to me with your good arm and I'll get you to the Hospital."

"We gonna fly?" Tiberius asked with all the solemness of youth.

John grumbled softly and started off across the field, picking up pace until it truly did feel like they were flying.

After that John was around the Kirks much more, spending time with Tiberius and even reconnecting with Samuel to a smaller extent. It made him realise what a fool he had been, and what a life he had missed out on watching, because Samuel was a good man, one his father would have been proud of.

Tiberius soon became the bright centre to John's world, and it kicked him completely out of his black funk and up into the land of the living once more. It was Tiberius that pushed him into medical school under a new name, Leonard McCoy. Tiberius had picked the name, and John hadn't had the heart to refuse it.

Serious blue eyes peered at him through glasses.

"Leonard be serious."

"How can I be serious when you call me by that name? For god's sake Tiberius I'm old but not that old."

"Leonard sounds distinguished."

"It sounds like I have a giant stick up my ass."

"How many times do we have to have this conversation?"

"Clearly at least one more..."

"You've been using it for ten years."

"I was humouring you; I didn't expect you to start calling me 'Leonard' all the time!"

"Could you possibly live with Len?"

Silence for a brief moment.

"Yeah." Len said gruffly, "I suppose I could live with that..."

Kirks were bright, Len knew that. But Tiberius pushed that to a whole new level of genius and bookish dedication.

Len watched over him through first High School, then College, then Grad school and then watched with disbelief as he became one of Earth's most revered Diplomats. It made his head spin.

Bourbon helped. Bourbon helped a lot.

George Leonard Kirk was born in a well lit, expensive hospital. The one where Len worked, and who had, unsurprisingly pulled a few strings at to get the best midwife for Tiberius's lovely wife Sheena.

Naturally, with hospitals being the way they are, it ended up being Len who delivered the baby, easing the squalling boy out and bathing him, before returning him to his glowing parents. But it was in those first moments, when he held the little one, the first person ever to, Leonard knew.

George Kirk was special.

With Tiberius being so busy, and Sheena following in his shadow, it fell to Len to raise the young George.

It was Leonard who changed his diapers, Leonard who rocked him to sleep and it was Leonard who had taught him to walk.

Although it was hard, working at the Hospital and also taking care of the young boy, Leo found that he was happy for perhaps the first time in a long time. He was living a normal life, as an almost father, providing and contributing to society.

Life was good.

"Goddammit! What the hell happened?" Leonard exploded one evening as he walked through the front door of his small townhouse. George stood there, shuffling a little, head lowered as blood dripped out of his nose onto the hardwood floor.

"I fell down."

"Yes I can see that," Leo dumped his bag on the kitchen stool and walked over to his young charge, tilting his chin up and examining the bloody nose and black eye, "Mind telling me who helped you fall?"

He got a stubborn jut of chin for a reply.

Sighing he retrieved his supplies and set to work on healing the boy's face, not asking any more questions. George would tell him when he was ready.

However his zen like state of non pressure was sorely tested as George came home in various states of damage for the next two weeks.

Finally he snapped.

"Right that does it." He said one afternoon, smacking his book shut and causing the boy to jump nervously. "Up!"

George looked confused, "Len...?"

"Get your ass up boyo."

He obeyed and followed his almost-father out into the yard, where they faced off.

"You keep getting your ass whooped in fights." Len said, lifting his hand as George protested, "Shuttup, I know what fighting looks like; I'm a Doctor after all."

"I fell!"

"Yes you did, and someone kicked that scrawny ass of yours bad enough to make you fall. I'm going to change that, since I'm fucking tired of patching you up every night."

"What do you know? You're just a Doctor after all."

"Cut the sass, Captain Sassypants. I'm not the one who comes home battered."

George muttered mutinously but didn't say anything else, as Len waited for him to subside into silence.

"Alright then. Attack me."

"What? No..."

"For god's sake boyo stop your arguing. I know what I'm doing!"

For the next few weeks Leonard trained George in all manner of self defence. Punching, throws, avoiding attacks...Leonard taught him the basics of it all, and the beatings lessened and then stopped as the bullies realised that George knew how to defend himself.

When they had ceased completely Leonard was surprised when George kept pushing for more lessons, more moves, more training. He hoped that the boy wasn't using it to get revenge but he doubted he was. He figured that the boy just liked fighting, liked knowing that his body knew how to defend itself. Liked being fit and strong.

Leonard could understand it very well. After all he had once been a soldier.

With Edward, and then Samuel and then Tiberius, Leonard had never really needed to worry about the boys and any lady friends they had. Edward had been too serious about the truth of John Grimm's life and had only had a few casual encounters before marrying Lorraine. He hadn't payed much attention to Samuel, but he knew that Susan had been one of the first if not 'the' first. And Tiberius well, he had just been too wrapped up in his books to notice women before Sheena dragged him out.

Unfortunately George didn't seem to have taken after his ancestors.

The first time Leonard came home to find George necking with some blonde on the couch he had almost choked. And after the embarrassed girl had gone home he had given his young charge The Talk, which made them both cringe internally and externally.

Leonard's fumbling, 'Insert tab A into slot B' analogy had made both of them look at the ceiling in embarrassment.

After that Leonard tried to look the other way as George Kirk led a bevy of beauties through his house over the next five years.

Leonard didn't attend the funeral of Samuel Jonathan Kirk, even though George did, escorted by his parents.

He couldn't bring himself to go.

But afterwards, when everyone else had left to go to the wake, to talk of Samuel's life and eat consolation biscuits with brie cheese, Leonard entered the graveyard to leave a bunch of flowers on first Edward's, then Lorraine's, then Susan's and finally Samuel's graves.

"I'm sorry." He murmured to Samuel, the words he had never been able to bring himself to say when the man was alive. "I'm sorry I was such a shitty guardian to you."

"He didn't think you were." George's soft voice spoke from behind him, and the warm hand of the young man rested on his shoulder. "I visited him a couple of times, and he told me stories about you that would be unbelievable if it were anyone else. He loved you."

"That makes it even worse," Leonard muttered, "I abandoned him after Edward. Effectively."

"But he told Father and he told me about the Kirk guardian angel." George gave him a hug about the shoulders, "He knew that if he needed you, you would have been there. Like you were when Father fell out of the Oak tree."

"Your grandfather clearly talked too much," Leonard grumbled, touched despite himself.

"C'mon Len." George pulled back and started heading back towards the car, "We can mock the wake to cheer ourselves up."

"You have no respect!" Leonard retorted, getting to his feet and following the young man across the graveyard, "You've been living with me too long."

George just grinned.