(Because I need to post on something else) Fic: Bathroom Tiles

[indiana_j]

Title:  Bathroom Tiles
Fandom:  Star Trek: Reboot
Characters: Pretty much everyone for at least a bit or two - McCoy mostly
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,961
Summary:  McCoy must come to grips with the results of a dangerous mission
Disclaimer:  If I owned them, I would be sooo rich.
A/N:  Thanks so much to jbmcdragon who did a fantastic beta for me (and to alestar , who didn't immediately throw things at me despite her busy schedule when she accepted it ;) ).  Disturbing images regarding injuries (or I think so anyway), so there's a reason the R is there.  Plus there is character death.

McCoy's eyes slipped shut for a moment, blocking out the light from the bar in a vain attempt to regain his balance.

"Goddamn it, Jim, you're supposed to be the designated flier," Bones finally snarled, gripping Kirk by the back of his shirt and giving him a good shake.  He used to shake his wife's dog like that when it was bad, too.  And he knew that, just like that, the mental image of Captain Kirk pissing all over his good boots was going to stay in his head for the rest of the night

Bones gave Kirk another shake just out of pure vengeance.

"Nooooo!" Kirk replied, not even bothering an attempt to loosen the death grip on his shirt.  Instead, he picked up the limp hand of the man next to him and forced it to wave hello at the doctor.  "Sulu is!”

McCoy stared down at the unconscious helmsman with growing horror; his eyes skittered over, unseeing, the empty space next to Sulu.  "I hate my life," he sighed, watching Kirk's head bounce off the top of the bar when he finally let go.

A giggle from the floor, Kirk's resting spot after McCoy had released him, was the only response.

If a man could resignedly sit on a bar stool and order a beer with dignity, it was McCoy.  He blithely ignored his friend and superior officer as thanks to Bones, he wobbled back to his feet, unerringly locating the drink he'd almost dropped.

"You're supposed to be looking out for them," McCoy groused.  A quick look around the overflowing bar ensured that the rest of the crew were safe, if in various stages of vanishing sobriety.  With, of course, the glaring exception of Spock, who sat with a not entirely sober in her own right Uhura.

"I am looking out for them."

The response was raw and surprisingly sober for someone who'd drank nearly a half of a bottle of scotch by himself.  McCoy's head whipped around so he could meet Kirk's eyes; the baby blues were looking surprisingly haunted over the rim of the glass as he drank deeply, the amber liquid vanishing in seconds.

"Jim..."

"I'm reminding them, Bones, that they're alive," Kirk rasped and McCoy imagined the temporary damage came from the burn of the drink. His own throat tightened not in sympathy but from memory that tugged at the back of his mind.

~~

Whatever they'd poured down his throat had burned it raw, making it hard to breathe let alone speak.  He'd tried though, oh god, he'd tried.

Uhura had found him by following the half-screams down one of the prisoner shafts.  Despite her state (half ripped uniform covered in someone else's blood attested to what had almost befallen her), she'd grimly killed his torturers to save his life.

Half-dead, barely on his feet once freed, he'd nonetheless hugged her to his side as she led him from the room.  She'd looked up at him, a translating warrior princess, and had allowed the touch. More, perhaps, for his own comfort than for hers.

One step forward, no matter how painful.

~~

The cold glass shoved into his hand snapped McCoy back to the present. He tossed down the water almost desperately, very nearly choking before he'd finished.  His throat had healed and Uhura no longer had that half-desperate look in her eyes.

It was fine.

Everything was fine.

When he opened his eyes, Kirk was no longer there, the glass of scotch resting in a growing puddle of condensation.  McCoy frowned as he finished off the water - where the hell had the captain gotten off to?  And so quickly for such a drunk man?

The bathroom, Bones decided, handing the empty glass back to the bartender with a quick nod of thanks.  When he was drinking, Jim had the bladder of a small girl and was forced to make frequent trips.

He headed that way, pausing to rest his hand on Sulu's shoulder.  Sulu slept on, head pillowed on his arms, and it was the first time Bones had seen him in weeks with the tension so utterly drained out of his body.

Standing still, McCoy watched the rise and fall of Sulu's back almost as if afraid to look away. Bones did a silent ten count before gently squeezing the shoulder under his hand as he moved towards the bathroom.

And Sulu was still breathing.  A great step in the right direction.

~~

With some effort they'd drained most of the water from the chamber. McCoy landed, hard, on his knees next to Sulu's still form, the water still came up high enough to lap against his ankles.

Still, water logged, not breathing.  Almost dead.

McCoy was still spitting up blood and chunks of his throat from his earlier torture. He compressed while Uhura became his breath for him.  Thirty beats on the chest and then she was forcing air (and blood mixed with water) into Sulu's mouth.

Repeat.  Don't give up.  Never give up.

When Sulu finally responded and retched all over Uhura's legs, she could only laugh and sob in relief. McCoy sagged boneless in the freezing water, resting his hand lightly on the rise and fall of Sulu's shuddering chest.

~~

With a groan, McCoy joined Kirk – sitting on the floor of the bathroom as if it were a room made to be lounging - shivering from tiles so cold they should have been frosted over.

"They are alive, Jim," he finally said.  His voice echoed quietly back at him, distorted by pipes and limited space.

"Not all of them," Kirk responded, and Bones jerked as if pinched, the motion half sliding him away from Jim.

He shook his head and dropped it in his hands, refusing to meet Jim's eyes.  Refusing to think about the missing spot next to Sulu at the bar...

"We tried!"  Part sob, part defense.

The hand on the back of his hand was cool like the tiles and firm, lending strength and almost an absolution.

A forgiveness that McCoy didn't want.

"Yeah, I know, Leonard, I know."

~~

Sulu, Uhura and McCoy were holding each other up through sheer stubborn will with a side of piss and vinegar.  When they discovered the rest of the team, it became obvious that they weren't the only ones who were on their feet through some kind of miracle.

Scotty was paler than normal, with hands that didn't quite seem right anymore, obviously broken at least once.  They'd done something to Spock's left ear that made it hard for Bones to even look at that side of his face.  And Kirk somehow stood on his own but barely, a hand staunching the flow of blood from his side.

They looked like hell.

And they were missing one of their own.

"Where the fuck is my navigator?" Kirk spat blood and, almost as one, the entire team straightened to look back the way they came.

"That kid is going to owe me a drink for this." McCoy groaned and looked around to see if anyone else was going to argue against the shoddy rescue mission.

In the end, the only argument was for who had to stand guard and who could go after Chekov.  After all, they were all going home that day.

~~

"You tried, Bones.  God, you all tried so hard.  Made me damned proud, you know.  I don't think I ever told you guys that enough..."

But in the end, it hadn't been enough.  Sulu - too weak to go with them, still half-dead even if he'd managed to stay on his feet – had stared with disbelief as McCoy and Spock carried the body in between them. Someone was staggering in front as the shock spread among them like wild fire.

Not fair.  Too survive the trap, the torture, only to lose him...

"Leonard."  Someone spoke quietly into his ear, a head resting against the side of his own.  "Leonard, please, open your eyes."

When he finally opened his eyes, the hand against his cheek was the wrong color, the voice the wrong timber, the gender all wrong.  Uhura, despite whatever discomfort still remained from her attack, had curled up against his side in the bathroom.

His eyes met and locked with the concerned, if cool, ones above him and he finally managed to croak out, "Captain?"

Spock nodded and crouched carefully in front of him. McCoy suddenly realized that the bathroom was no longer quite so empty. Scotty, the recently awake Sulu, and the still so haunted looking Chekov all were fighting for space in the men's bathroom behind Spock.

"Captain Spock," he said, again, as if he needed to taste it in his mouth.  To get reacquainted with it.

And just like that, reality snapped back in place for Leonard McCoy.

The body that they had carried between them had not been that of the younger Chekov, but of Captain Kirk, dead after he'd taken a hit for Pavel, gone before he'd even hit the floor.   He'd given his life to ensure that their youngest, their brightest, would live to see his potential played out.

The gathering in the bar in Iowa hadn't been a reaffirmation for the living but a wake, of sorts, of one of their own.  The funeral had been a week ago and they all, fresh from the medical bay, had attended.

Grief threatened to well up and choke him. McCoy pressed his hands against his eyes and forced it down.  "I thought ..."  A man of science and the body did not utter the word 'ghost'.  But was hallucinating that much better?

"We all deal with grief in our own way, Dr. McCoy," Spock said.  "It could even be said that your own ... break with reality, for however short, was your way of working through the necessary stages so you could, finally, accept the reality of the situation."

There was a momentary silence before Scotty chuckled suddenly.  "In other words, sir, you went a little barking mad there for a while."  The laugh was strained but there and real.

"Thank you for clarifying, Scotty," McCoy responded dryly, feeling no shame in wiping away the moisture from his eyes.

"Could you imagine what the Captain -"  Chekov hesitated but continued at Spock's slight nod.  "What the Captain would say to all of this?"

Uhura pressed a kiss to McCoy's cheek before she withdrew and sighed.  "He'd first comment on the fact that I was in the men's room in the first place and then he'd make some sort of lewd comment."

"Oh, sort of like that time..."

And in the men's bathroom of a shoddy looking bar, the wake continued as the people who had turned into a bizarre sort of family swapped stories, tales and drinks.

Kirk would have been delighted; McCoy mentally saluted the ghost of his best friend and one of the best damned captains the Federation had ever seen.

~~

None of them were completely healed when they showed up for the funeral, but they loaned each other the strength to make it.  God help anyone who had thought they should have stayed in bed to recover.  Bandages peeked out from under the stark formal Federation uniforms; some limped while others could barely stand.

But they stood, stiff backed with pride and grief, as Admiral Pike made his way through his speech.  They were pressed so closely together that it was hard, sometimes, to see where one uniform ended and the next one began.

They breathed and cried as one.

And when Admiral Pike solemnly handed a folded Federation flag to a quiet, but tear stained, Winona Kirk, they saluted as one.

"Goddamn it, Jim," McCoy breathed, and his eyes slipped shut in a vain attempt to regain his balance.