Falter [Star Trek TOS Fanfiction - McCoy POV - one-shot]

It's been a while since I wrote much of anything just for fun. This may not make much sense to you if you're not familiar with the original Star Trek series characters. Let me know what you think? Comments may encourage me to resurrect this blog!

Title: Falter

Fandom: Star Trek Original Series (TOS) but could work for Reboot/2009
Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Angst (at least that is my intention...)
Characters: McCoy
Word count: ~435
Rating: K+/PG for medically related icky stuff
Summary: McCoy suffers a crisis of faith. 

Dark eyes met mine; my heart splintered.

It was over.

The voices that chanted my internal mantra – those nudging voices that assured me this day would never come; those insistent voices whispering how the tables would never get turned against him and that unbreakable faith that he had, knowing we would always win, no matter the odds; those pressing voices demanding that the strength of his belief meant I could do nothing but believe it, too – those voices fell silent. Instead, one quiet, crushing voice mocked me. It was my fault for not believing enough. My lack of faith in him, in them, in us – had let that impossible scenario become reality.

Unguarded eyes boring into me belied the man’s apparent calm. In answer to his unspoken plea, the fragment of myself that remained the consummate professional, despite my despair, nodded toward the exam area, and because I didn’t trust my full voice not to break, I whispered the words with a hope I did not feel. “Let’s take a look.”

With exquisite care, the silent figure laid the impossibly broken body on the biobed. The immediate assessment of the readout panel showed the heartbeat to be implausibly slow, but there.  Respiration, blood pressure, everything – depressed but there.

With so much damage, bodies bleed out fast. Death should have been almost immediate, and yet…

And yet…

Readings showed the man was alive. Negligibly, improbably, but, still…alive.

Puzzled, I looked from my patient to the man who had delivered him. Though he’d moved to make room for my ministrations, he had never completely broken contact. One hand remained, fingers spread, on the face of his unconscious companion. Realization hit me.

A mind-meld. He must have acted instantly, with the instinct that made these two a formidable team. He’d slowed the heart of his friend to reduce the volume of blood the heart would have otherwise pumped out of the wounds onto the ground. He would have had to then back off on the meld briefly to order the direct-to-medbay beam-up.

I had known of his people’s ability to control body functions with their mind, but as far as I knew, it had never been extended to another person.

Leave it to this pair to go where no one had gone before.

My internal mantra resumed, once again aiding me in relegating no-win scenarios to the plane of non-existence. Strengthened in my belief, I looked up, a mere acolyte, meeting the eyes of the chief apostle of our common faith. 

Together, we can do this.

Revived, I gave Spock a determined smile and together, we began the familiar ritual of saving Jim.