The Undeparted, by Leslie Fish
Dec. 25th, 2024 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeFor context, I didn't write this. This is a textual transcription of a 1983 Kirk/Spock/McCoy fanfiction by Leslie Fish, which I found in the Star Trek fanzine It Takes Time on Impulse, Vol. II, which I found in a dusty box just now in the Sci-Fi library. I transcribed it for posterity, making a couple minor corrections of typos. It dates to after Spock’s death in Wrath of Khan, before the release of Search for Spock.
THE UNDEPARTED
copyright by L. [Leslie] Fish
/// take care, take care how you lift this body, for it was once loved. ///
Pressure of hands, motion, passing lights and murmuring voices, all so far, far away--far and meaningless.
"Sickbay, fast!"
"What the hell happened to him? Spock went down, and he just--"
"Shut your fool mouth, Ensign. Spock was his best friend for more years than you've been alive. Godalmighty, don't you know how he'd feel about it?"
"Uh, yessir."
"Doctor, wake up! Doctor?"
"Uhhh... Spock--"
"Spock's dead, Doctor. The Captain's collapsed. What happened to you?"
"Spock... I don't know, I... Hangover from that nerve-pinch. I can't... Get Dr. Chapel."
"Yessir. Where should we put the Captain? There's no room in sickbay."
"I know! I know! They're stacked up like cordwood in the corridors--Hm, take him to his cabin. I'll be along in a minute... soon as this damn... dizziness wears off..."
/// old friend, reach for me. in this dark dimension there is nothing but presences. i feel you there, across the nameless distance, as surely as ever i could feel you across the space of a darkened bed. ///
More confusion of sound, pressure, irrelevant light and shadow, finally blessed silence.
/// i know you're there. ///
Deep darkness stretching, a sense of presence stretching endlessly, a living current suspended in the void. No motion now: a waiting, the presence maintained, held between two points of contact. One could ride that circuit endlessly, yet there was an end for the seeking. Thought equalled motion here; searching down the length of that vast skein of presence there came a growing momentum, an irresistible current that uncoiled with a sudden whipcrack--
/// i am the end! ///
Kirk woke, gasping in shock, wildly disoriented. His hands gripped blindly at the bedclothes, digging for the mattress underneath, for anything solid. His eyes rolled, unfocused.
"Jim? Jim!" A familiar voice. McCoy's...
A blurred figure moved nearby. Kirk focused on it with his none-too-available strength, and the whirling of his vision slowly settled. "Bones?"
"Yeah. Me. You've been out for a couple of hours, you're in your own cabin, and the ship is safe." McCoy's voice was firm, but his now-visible eyes looked ten years older. "Do you remember the rest?"
"The rest...?" Kirk pulled himself upright, to his elbows at least, and forced his sluggish memory to work... (Danger to the ship... a battle... Khan! The Genesis Device--Spock.) "Oh. Yes." There was no grief yet, only total bewilderment. He rubbed a clumsy hand across his face, feeling it tremble. His body and mind felt strange, as if an invisible hand had reached inside his skin and stirred everything to utter confusion.
"Jim, his body's in sickbay. We couldn't even get to it until Scott got the chamber decontaminated. He's--" McCoy choked, stopped and sat down heavily beside Kirk. "Ah, Jim, it hurts."
Kirk nodded once, and stretched out a fuzzy-feeling hand to give McCoy's shoulder a vague pat.
--- presence ---
He snatched back his hand as if it were burned, and stared at it in astonishment.
"What the hell?" McCoy yelped.
Kirk continued to stare at his hand. The sense of confusion had altered profoundly, tightened somehow, drawn into something near coherence. "Something's... wrong," he tried to explain.
"Goddam right, there is!" McCoy's voice cracked. "Spock's dead--and that's wrong! That's--" He shook his head hard. "Jim, I think I'm in shock. I think we both are."
(That too, but more than that...) Kirk hitched clumsily over to one side, making room on the bed. He slapped at the empty space. "Here. Lie down."
McCoy didn't argue. He stretched out beside Kirt, pausing only to kick his boots off. "Physician, heal thyself," he muttered, rolling to his back.
"Captain, command thyself," Kirk responded.
They lay side by side for several minutes, looking up at the ceiling, saying nothing, not touching. Eventually, Kirk thought to roll over, reach for the small console on the headboard and program a music tape. The sound of Holst's The Planets crept through the quiet room.
McCoy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I just can't believe it," he said. "We've cheated death so many times, and Spock was so much a part--of us..."
"Yes." (More than I've ever said. Contact--When V'Ger first probed into our space I felt it, Spock felt it, and we felt each other--across all the space from Earth to Vulcan. I knew what it meant, if not then, not too long afterward...) "There was a bond between us.
"God, yes. It seemed that even death couldn't break it. Now that it's... happened, I guess we just can't accept it. Not yet, not all the way through. Like... when a limb is cut off, for a long while afterwards you feel as if it's still there, even though it isn't. 'Ghost limbs' they call it. Ghost..."
"The bond isn't broken," Kirk said, making himself think, understand.
McCoy glanced to him briefly, then looked away, frowning. "I keep getting the feeling that something happened, he told me something he wanted, just before he knocked me out with the damn nerve-pinch, I think... and damned if I can remember what it was. I don't know if that's real, or just a phantom of guilt."
Kirk turned to study him. "Exactly what happened?"
"I was tending the wounded out in the corridor. Spock came up, said we had to get the warp-drive started. I told him he couldn't go into the goddam chamber because of the radiation, made the mistake of turning my back on him... and then there was that goddam familiar pain in my shoulder..." McCoy shrugged, then winced as the shoulder in question twinged in leftover pain.
Tears leaped at his eyes. He didn't bother to stop them. "That's all I remember, until I woke up on the floor, guessed what'd happened, looked... I called you down there... to watch him die." McCoy caught his breath on a sob. "I guess I fainted then. They damn-ear stumbled over me, carrying you out of Engineering."
"I collapsed," Kirk murmured. "When he died, I felt it... in my own body, every nerve, something pulling away..." His eyes narrowed. "Bones, think. What did he tell you?"
"I can't remember!" McCoy squeezed his eyes shut, feeling hot tears run, burning down his face. "Remember... remember..."
Kirk frowned thoughtfully at the repetition. (There. Almost got it. One missing piece, and the puzzle will fall into place. Repeat the experiment.) "Bones..." He stretched out his arm, cautiously, holding his breath, and carefully slid it under McCoy's shoulders.
--- presence---
Quietly, McCoy began crying in earnest.
(Not clear. Not enough. Skin should be bare: contact nerve to nerve. ---)
Kirk rolled purposefully toward McCoy, wrapped his free arm around him, and pressed his forehead to McCoy's temple.
--presence SPOCK presence---
"Ohjesusfuckingchrist!!" McCoy gasped.
(He's here he's here two ends of the circuit he's here migod we're holding him between us!!!)
"Remember! He said remember! He said--"
(Two poles of the circuit McCoy with that touch and me with...)
"Jim!!" McCoy almost screamed, pulling away in near-panic. "What is it? What the holy fuck is happening?!?!"
Kirk pinned him with one arm, pulled himself up, panting, and stared into McCoy's eyes, shaking with triumph. "He's not gone, Bones! I don't know how, but he's not gone! I know I know, his empty body is lying in sickbay right now, and I don't know hwo the hell he pulled it off, but by all that's holy, Spock's not gone!!!"
"No... no..." McCoy sobbed, his head thrashing back and forth on the pillow, "We're both crazy with grief... this isn't happening..."
"Bones, listen: there was a bond between us, and it's not broken! It's been there for years. I could always feel Spock in my mind, feel anything that really touched him. After V'Ger, I knew. I'm not sure how it happened--maybe all those mind-melds, maybe because we were lovers--"
"Jim..."
"Somehow it grew, and it's stronger than death-- Omigod. 'Love is stronger than death is...' It's still there, Bones. I can still feel him--and so can you, dammit! So can you!"
"Can't... can't believe..." McCoy whimpered, pain staring naked in his streaming eyes.
"You can feel it because he did something, mind-meld or something, while you were passed out from the nerve-pinch. When he... died, I collapsed--and so did you! We're linked to him, Bones. To him and each other, through him. Somehow we're holding him, keeping him... his mind, soul, whatever--we're keeping him--alive, between us. Two poles of a circuit. It's stronger when we touch: nerve induction, or something, I dont' know--but he's there, Bones. Between us."
"...Haunted..." McCoy whispered. He looked it. "What are we going to do? He told me to remember something, and I can't remember what it is he told me to remember--This is crazy! We're both crazy. We're--"
"We're going to find out." Kirk’s eyes glowed green with fierce decision. "When we touch, we... make it easier for him to communicate, tell us, somehow, what he wants..." Still holding McCoy, Kirk began pulling off his uniform.
McCoy didn't understand until Kirk finished stripped and began yanking open the catches of the doctor's shirt. "Oh, jesus," McCoy whispered, wide-eyed, not resisting. "Jim, I never... I don't know if I can... Ah, god, I admit I sometimes envied you two, your loving... me so alone... but I never actually wanted to..."
"Shhhh." Kirk tossed away the pile of rumpled clothing, then bent down and solemnly kissed McCoy ont he cheek. We need to, Bones. Even if it doesn't work, even if we're both dreaming it up to comfort ourselves... we need it."
"Yes." McCoy shut his eyes, feeling the eerie sense of presence seep back through his nerves, no shock this time but gentle and expected. "Yes, he's really there and we'll reach him. At worst... Oh, hell. I hurt, you hurt: maybe if we sleep or just cuddle or whatever the hell, it'll hurt less. Do it..."
Resolute, he turned and rolled against Kirk, matching their bared bodies inch for inch, feeling contact blaze between them.
--- PRESENCE ---
(Finis)
THE UNDEPARTED
copyright by L. [Leslie] Fish
/// take care, take care how you lift this body, for it was once loved. ///
Pressure of hands, motion, passing lights and murmuring voices, all so far, far away--far and meaningless.
"Sickbay, fast!"
"What the hell happened to him? Spock went down, and he just--"
"Shut your fool mouth, Ensign. Spock was his best friend for more years than you've been alive. Godalmighty, don't you know how he'd feel about it?"
"Uh, yessir."
"Doctor, wake up! Doctor?"
"Uhhh... Spock--"
"Spock's dead, Doctor. The Captain's collapsed. What happened to you?"
"Spock... I don't know, I... Hangover from that nerve-pinch. I can't... Get Dr. Chapel."
"Yessir. Where should we put the Captain? There's no room in sickbay."
"I know! I know! They're stacked up like cordwood in the corridors--Hm, take him to his cabin. I'll be along in a minute... soon as this damn... dizziness wears off..."
/// old friend, reach for me. in this dark dimension there is nothing but presences. i feel you there, across the nameless distance, as surely as ever i could feel you across the space of a darkened bed. ///
More confusion of sound, pressure, irrelevant light and shadow, finally blessed silence.
/// i know you're there. ///
Deep darkness stretching, a sense of presence stretching endlessly, a living current suspended in the void. No motion now: a waiting, the presence maintained, held between two points of contact. One could ride that circuit endlessly, yet there was an end for the seeking. Thought equalled motion here; searching down the length of that vast skein of presence there came a growing momentum, an irresistible current that uncoiled with a sudden whipcrack--
/// i am the end! ///
Kirk woke, gasping in shock, wildly disoriented. His hands gripped blindly at the bedclothes, digging for the mattress underneath, for anything solid. His eyes rolled, unfocused.
"Jim? Jim!" A familiar voice. McCoy's...
A blurred figure moved nearby. Kirk focused on it with his none-too-available strength, and the whirling of his vision slowly settled. "Bones?"
"Yeah. Me. You've been out for a couple of hours, you're in your own cabin, and the ship is safe." McCoy's voice was firm, but his now-visible eyes looked ten years older. "Do you remember the rest?"
"The rest...?" Kirk pulled himself upright, to his elbows at least, and forced his sluggish memory to work... (Danger to the ship... a battle... Khan! The Genesis Device--Spock.) "Oh. Yes." There was no grief yet, only total bewilderment. He rubbed a clumsy hand across his face, feeling it tremble. His body and mind felt strange, as if an invisible hand had reached inside his skin and stirred everything to utter confusion.
"Jim, his body's in sickbay. We couldn't even get to it until Scott got the chamber decontaminated. He's--" McCoy choked, stopped and sat down heavily beside Kirk. "Ah, Jim, it hurts."
Kirk nodded once, and stretched out a fuzzy-feeling hand to give McCoy's shoulder a vague pat.
--- presence ---
He snatched back his hand as if it were burned, and stared at it in astonishment.
"What the hell?" McCoy yelped.
Kirk continued to stare at his hand. The sense of confusion had altered profoundly, tightened somehow, drawn into something near coherence. "Something's... wrong," he tried to explain.
"Goddam right, there is!" McCoy's voice cracked. "Spock's dead--and that's wrong! That's--" He shook his head hard. "Jim, I think I'm in shock. I think we both are."
(That too, but more than that...) Kirk hitched clumsily over to one side, making room on the bed. He slapped at the empty space. "Here. Lie down."
McCoy didn't argue. He stretched out beside Kirt, pausing only to kick his boots off. "Physician, heal thyself," he muttered, rolling to his back.
"Captain, command thyself," Kirk responded.
They lay side by side for several minutes, looking up at the ceiling, saying nothing, not touching. Eventually, Kirk thought to roll over, reach for the small console on the headboard and program a music tape. The sound of Holst's The Planets crept through the quiet room.
McCoy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I just can't believe it," he said. "We've cheated death so many times, and Spock was so much a part--of us..."
"Yes." (More than I've ever said. Contact--When V'Ger first probed into our space I felt it, Spock felt it, and we felt each other--across all the space from Earth to Vulcan. I knew what it meant, if not then, not too long afterward...) "There was a bond between us.
"God, yes. It seemed that even death couldn't break it. Now that it's... happened, I guess we just can't accept it. Not yet, not all the way through. Like... when a limb is cut off, for a long while afterwards you feel as if it's still there, even though it isn't. 'Ghost limbs' they call it. Ghost..."
"The bond isn't broken," Kirk said, making himself think, understand.
McCoy glanced to him briefly, then looked away, frowning. "I keep getting the feeling that something happened, he told me something he wanted, just before he knocked me out with the damn nerve-pinch, I think... and damned if I can remember what it was. I don't know if that's real, or just a phantom of guilt."
Kirk turned to study him. "Exactly what happened?"
"I was tending the wounded out in the corridor. Spock came up, said we had to get the warp-drive started. I told him he couldn't go into the goddam chamber because of the radiation, made the mistake of turning my back on him... and then there was that goddam familiar pain in my shoulder..." McCoy shrugged, then winced as the shoulder in question twinged in leftover pain.
Tears leaped at his eyes. He didn't bother to stop them. "That's all I remember, until I woke up on the floor, guessed what'd happened, looked... I called you down there... to watch him die." McCoy caught his breath on a sob. "I guess I fainted then. They damn-ear stumbled over me, carrying you out of Engineering."
"I collapsed," Kirk murmured. "When he died, I felt it... in my own body, every nerve, something pulling away..." His eyes narrowed. "Bones, think. What did he tell you?"
"I can't remember!" McCoy squeezed his eyes shut, feeling hot tears run, burning down his face. "Remember... remember..."
Kirk frowned thoughtfully at the repetition. (There. Almost got it. One missing piece, and the puzzle will fall into place. Repeat the experiment.) "Bones..." He stretched out his arm, cautiously, holding his breath, and carefully slid it under McCoy's shoulders.
--- presence---
Quietly, McCoy began crying in earnest.
(Not clear. Not enough. Skin should be bare: contact nerve to nerve. ---)
Kirk rolled purposefully toward McCoy, wrapped his free arm around him, and pressed his forehead to McCoy's temple.
--presence SPOCK presence---
"Ohjesusfuckingchrist!!" McCoy gasped.
(He's here he's here two ends of the circuit he's here migod we're holding him between us!!!)
"Remember! He said remember! He said--"
(Two poles of the circuit McCoy with that touch and me with...)
"Jim!!" McCoy almost screamed, pulling away in near-panic. "What is it? What the holy fuck is happening?!?!"
Kirk pinned him with one arm, pulled himself up, panting, and stared into McCoy's eyes, shaking with triumph. "He's not gone, Bones! I don't know how, but he's not gone! I know I know, his empty body is lying in sickbay right now, and I don't know hwo the hell he pulled it off, but by all that's holy, Spock's not gone!!!"
"No... no..." McCoy sobbed, his head thrashing back and forth on the pillow, "We're both crazy with grief... this isn't happening..."
"Bones, listen: there was a bond between us, and it's not broken! It's been there for years. I could always feel Spock in my mind, feel anything that really touched him. After V'Ger, I knew. I'm not sure how it happened--maybe all those mind-melds, maybe because we were lovers--"
"Jim..."
"Somehow it grew, and it's stronger than death-- Omigod. 'Love is stronger than death is...' It's still there, Bones. I can still feel him--and so can you, dammit! So can you!"
"Can't... can't believe..." McCoy whimpered, pain staring naked in his streaming eyes.
"You can feel it because he did something, mind-meld or something, while you were passed out from the nerve-pinch. When he... died, I collapsed--and so did you! We're linked to him, Bones. To him and each other, through him. Somehow we're holding him, keeping him... his mind, soul, whatever--we're keeping him--alive, between us. Two poles of a circuit. It's stronger when we touch: nerve induction, or something, I dont' know--but he's there, Bones. Between us."
"...Haunted..." McCoy whispered. He looked it. "What are we going to do? He told me to remember something, and I can't remember what it is he told me to remember--This is crazy! We're both crazy. We're--"
"We're going to find out." Kirk’s eyes glowed green with fierce decision. "When we touch, we... make it easier for him to communicate, tell us, somehow, what he wants..." Still holding McCoy, Kirk began pulling off his uniform.
McCoy didn't understand until Kirk finished stripped and began yanking open the catches of the doctor's shirt. "Oh, jesus," McCoy whispered, wide-eyed, not resisting. "Jim, I never... I don't know if I can... Ah, god, I admit I sometimes envied you two, your loving... me so alone... but I never actually wanted to..."
"Shhhh." Kirk tossed away the pile of rumpled clothing, then bent down and solemnly kissed McCoy ont he cheek. We need to, Bones. Even if it doesn't work, even if we're both dreaming it up to comfort ourselves... we need it."
"Yes." McCoy shut his eyes, feeling the eerie sense of presence seep back through his nerves, no shock this time but gentle and expected. "Yes, he's really there and we'll reach him. At worst... Oh, hell. I hurt, you hurt: maybe if we sleep or just cuddle or whatever the hell, it'll hurt less. Do it..."
Resolute, he turned and rolled against Kirk, matching their bared bodies inch for inch, feeling contact blaze between them.
--- PRESENCE ---
(Finis)
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Date: 2024-12-26 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-26 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-26 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-27 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-27 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-27 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-27 12:10 pm (UTC)Typo: in the second sentence you call Kirk Kurt.
Also "there was a bondy between us"
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Date: 2024-12-27 04:07 pm (UTC)Thanks for the catches, corrections made.