Spirk - Yours

Chapter 17

He awoke in sickbay.

Kirk looked around him in confusion. The biobeds were all neatly made, the machines were beeping calmly and steadily in the background. The room was empty and everything seemed normal.

The memories returned all at once. Without sense or order, flashes of images and sounds and feelings thundered into his mind in an unwelcome cavalcade that was nearly physical in its intensity.

Kirk gasped and shot upright in bed, the machines flaring wildly to life. He felt as though his heart rate had leaped to approximately warp 4.

There was a noise somewhere in another room, then McCoy appeared before him.

"Jim, thank god!" the Doctor exclaimed.

Kirk's eyes moved frantically around the room, his breaths becoming more and more panicked as waves of pain and confusion assaulted him.

"Whoa, Jim, it's alright, you're fine," Bones hurried to reassure him.

The Doctor's words did nothing to alleviate his condition. Kirk squeezed his eyes shut, feeling as though he was being stabbed over and over again. Agonizing, thought-destroying pain wracked his mind and body, the likes of which he had never experienced before. He could not move. He could not breathe. All he could do was exist as the shattering pain ate its way through him.

An undetermined amount of time passed. Little by little, the pain began to lose its debilitating effects. Finally, Kirk opened his eyes. His mind was throbbing and his body ached and shuddered from the abuse it had just endured.

"Jim? Jim, tell me, how do you feel?" McCoy asked worriedly from his side.

Kirk turned and saw the Doctor before him, dangling a tricorder over his forehead. Kirk struggled for a moment, then finally managed to sit up.

"Better." He grimaced at the effort of speaking.
"What happened, Bones?"

"Well, according to my scans, there's nothing physically wrong with you. However, certain areas of your brain are under an enormous amount of pain and stress. You had a panic attack when you woke up the first time so I had to knock you out for a while," McCoy told him gently.

Kirk was hardly listening.

"What about—about the ship? And Asmodeus? And..." his voice faltered, breaking. "And Spock?" he forced out, chest flooding with icy fear.

"The ship is fine; Scotty already has repairs underway. That Asmodeus character seems to have disappeared," McCoy grunted. "It's likely that Spock got rid of him for good," he added gently, a noticeable tightness in his voice and a depth of emotion reflected in his eyes.

McCoy paused for a moment, then—with difficulty—he continued. "Spock suffered major blood loss from the stab wound in his chest. He... he didn't make it. We found you in engineering next to him; you were suffering from severe mental trauma and your body was going into shock."

Kirk couldn't hear anything past the roaring in his ears.

"Jim, I don't know how they do things on Vulcan, but I do know they have some pretty strange customs regarding... intimate relationships," Bones pressed on. His voice softened. "Since I'm your doctor and I care about you, I have to ask. What happened to you, Jim? Is there some kind of Vulcan ritual I don't know about? The brain is a delicate thing and I can't treat you unless I know what's wrong."

Kirk shoved his hands into his temples, trying to clear the lingering migraine as he attempted to bring his thoughts to order.

"We... We were bonded," Kirk finally forced out, squeezing his eyes shut and taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Spock... explained it to me, once. I don't.... I don't know all the details but he said it was like... the joining of two souls," Kirk managed to tell him.