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“You knew this was going to happen.”
Bones had felt that something was off with Jim for quite some time now. At first he wrote it off as Jim coming to terms with their relationship and Bones getting to know Jim even better than he already did before they fell in love.
Their first kiss had surprised him with how tender and slow it had been. Then there was the way Jim looked at him in unguarded moments, with trepidation and sadness that made him uneasy wondering if Jim was unhappy with their relationship. But the way Jim’s eyes were always on him when he looked up across a crowded room was easily mistaken for love and the desperation Jim showed at night could be passion but now he understands that it had been something else.
The way Jim had reluctantly, but confidently directed their missions without any enthusiasm suddenly made sense. Jim had known what was going to happen today. He had been dreading it, probably counted the days, but made no effort to try and stop it.
“You knew this was going to happen,” Bones repeated.
Jim just looked at him, emotions kept so tightly Bones couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling.
“Yes,” Jims said without infliction.
“How could you know? Why didn’t you prevent it?” Bones couldn’t even find it in himself to be accusing. He was still so confused by the whole thing.
After todays away mission Jim had ordered extra medical exams for the whole away team and they had found a strange organism in Bones’ blood. They didn’t know what it was yet, but Bones had already guessed what it would do to him if they didn’t find a cure.
“This is usually the best way.” It wasn’t really an answer and it didn’t make sense. So, Bones waited for more.
Jim looked away.
“I’ve lost count, I’ve stopped counting. Nothing really changes. I gave up.” Jim’s admittance sent shivers down Bones spine. “I’ve lived this life before, I’ve seen this happen before, I’ve given up.”
“What happened to the whole ‘there is no such thing as a no-win scenario’?” Bones asked.
“It seems I was wrong.”
There was silence.
“Jim, you’re scaring me,” Bones finally said.
At this, Jim turned back to him with a forced smile. It wasn’t reassuring at all. “Sorry. Everything will probably be fine, we can…“
Bones had never heard anything as insincere before and Jim couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“Jim.” Bones voice was grave, demanding an explanation. Jim sighed, a heavy and tired sound, so sad that it made Bones ache in sympathy even though he didn’t know why. It was enough to make Bones forget about the alien organism in his blood, invading his cells, killing him, even as they spoke.
“Okay, I’ll explain. Just please believe me, I’m telling the truth.” Jim’s look was a strange mixture of hope and sadness. “Just, please, trust me and wait with the questions, you can ask all the questions you want after.”
Bones nodded a confirmation. He wasn’t sure if he was agreeing to the not interrupting part or the trust, but it was enough for Jim.
Jim’s eyes became unfocused, but he flinched away when Bones reached out to rest a comforting hand on his arm. Bones wasn’t sure why he felt the need to give comfort, when he was the one with the strange little organism in his body. But something in Jim’s body language spoke of sadness greater than Bones thought Jim was capable of and a hopelessness that was scarier than his diagnosis.
“The first time we fell in love it was slow and sweet,” Jim started, “I almost missed it for all the things that kept happening to the crew. You know how we have always spent a lot of time together.” Jim glanced up at Bones steady gaze before continuing.
“We were in the rec room, rewinding after along shift, when it hit me all of a sudden. I loved you. I loved you more than I had ever loved anyone before. “ Jim smiled to himself at this. “I still do.”
“After I had realized this, it all went rather quickly. You must have realized about the same time. Our usual touches became lingering, a drunken hug that lasted far too long, our eyes meeting too often to be normal. Some days your smile was the only thing that kept me going, I kept coming up with excuses to come to visit you during the shifts. Finally I just grabbed you and kissed you.”
Bones chuckled at this, but Jim seemed to be too lost in his story to notice.
“It was nice, we were so good together. Then after a few months you, me, Chekov, Xeria and Spendin went down to Nibiru for a standard away mission, just like this time. For once, you were the unlucky one, cutting yourself on a rock after jumping into the ocean allowing this thing into your blood, just like today.
“But the first time it took several weeks before I noticed something was wrong. You would slur a word here, stumble a little there, but you didn’t admit to something being wrong until several weeks later when you couldn’t perform surgery because your hands were shaking so bad.”
Bones found it harder to breathe as Jim explained to him what would happen, he already suspected as much, but having it spelled out was different.
“You would stumble, soon you were unable to talk, and you were constantly shaking. The connections between your brain and your body were failing. You have already guessed all the details, haven’t you? You already know what will happen if we don’t find the cure, don’t you?” Jim hesitated a little, glancing up at Bones again before continuing. “It is painful to watch, you know, because you are still there, I can always see it, your eyes are still clear, desperate, but all you. Finally your internal organs were starting to fail. Your heart was having a hard time, your lungs struggling for air. We knew there was nothing to do. All the experts had tried and failed to find a cure, or even just a way to prolong your life and give us more time.
“I would sleep with you in the biobed. Chapel came up with a program so that the bed could separate our readings, to silence their alarms as I pressed as close as I could to mix our heartbeats and breaths. I was trying to keep you alive by sheer force of will.
“I still want to do that sometimes,” Jim added with a self-deprecating smirk.
“On Christmas Eve, I was in bed with you, as usual, but having to wait for each breath, until there was no more…” Bones could tell that it took control for Jim to keep going, and Bones really understood – it was not pleasant to hear someone describe your own slow and painful death. His heart was beating wildly. But now Jim met his eyes steadily. “I refused to leave you and I think that the others thought that it couldn’t hurt to just let me have a little longer with you. I kept thinking that I didn’t want to live without you. I didn’t want to wake up the next morning and go on in a world where you no longer existed.” Jim paused to take a deep breath. “And I didn’t.”
“I woke up in my own bed and when I ran out to find out who had moved me, almost crazy with grief and anger at someone for taking you away from me, I ran straight into you. You looked completely dumbstruck at my frantic questions, my kisses. It took a while but I finally figured out that I had woken a year earlier.”
“At first I thought that I had gotten another chance, I just had to make sure you survived. I didn’t manage to convince either you or Spock that I was telling the truth, but it didn’t really matter. It should be easy to keep you alive this time. I figured that all I had to do was just keeping you away from that away mission. But you still managed to die. You were shot on another away mission, and the second you died I woke up in my bed again just like last time, my body still shaking from the adrenaline. I tried that four times without any success.”
“Then I started to try to find a cure. The organism is a little bit different every time, just like you, so the same cure doesn’t always work. But by now I have so much memorized about it and the cure that there is little else to learn. I just have to convince you and Spock that I’m telling the truth. You died seventeen more times before we succeeded. I was so happy when we finally did. I was delirious.”
“Then on Christmas day I woke up alone in my bed, not wrapped around you as I had fallen asleep.” There was no infliction in Jim’s voice now, the emotions kept closed in so tight. “I asked the computer for the stardate and wasn’t even surprised as it confirmed it was Christmas Day the same fucking year as always.”
After a short pause, Jim looked up. “You know, Bones, you are really amazing.” He rubbed his eyes as if trying to come back to this reality. “You are slightly different each year, but also very much the same. I’m never really sure how you will react to me telling you this, but you usually react one of a few ways.”
Bones really didn’t know how to react. It was a lot to take in. He fumbled over what to think, or even say.
“I’ll give you a list of things that will happen in the next days as proof.” Jim said as an afterthought.
“So you know how to cure this?” He said finally, relief flooding him.
Jim flinched, looking guilty. “No, I never now if it will work.” Finally Jim reached for Bones. He pulled them together and held tight. “You only survive every now and then, maybe once every ten years.” His words came out in a stuttered breath.
Bones tensed against him. Jim’s clinging hug gave neither of them any comfort.
“You think it should get easier, shouldn’t it?” Jim whispered.
“How could it get easier? I only have one life,” Bones protested.
“Oh, I know,” Jim agreed, “but I have watched you die so many times.” They held on to each other, as they will do so many times in the coming months.
They started working on the cure. Jim spent days writing down everything he had memorized. Bones and Spock read through the data faster than Jim managed to write it down, and by the time Jim is done, the medical and science departments were already working on the cure.
It was only a matter of time, until Bones overheard an argument between Spock and Jim. Spock was trying to convince Jim to allow him to investigate Jim’s time loop, he thought there must be a way to break it.
“Spock, I have let you do this for over fifty years! You couldn’t find anything. I don’t know more now than I did the very first years. It is a waste of time!”
Jim’s voice was strained as he tried to explain to Spock why there is no point in spending time on his situation but that they need to focus their efforts on finding the cure for Bones. He tells him that he has tried everything. He has left the Enterprise. He has made sure that him and Bones never started a relationship. He has tried to investigate it and research possible explanations and solutions with Spock. They have asked for and gotten help from the best there is in the Federation. They have tried hundreds of different things and none of them made a difference.
“Please, Spock, we can save Bones.”
Spock looked past Jim at Bones still standing by the door. He said nothing for a long moment, watching the two of them. Finally he nodded. “That would be logical, we will save Doctor McCoy,” he said leaving Jim staring out the window.
After a while Bones stepped up behind Jim so that his chest was pressed against Jims back. Despite Spock’s belief in Jim’s story, Bones still doubted it sometimes. It wasn’t just that didn’t believe Jim, but because it almost seemed better that Jim would be insane and imagining things than for this to be his reality.
When Jim finally spoke his voice was rough and low.
“I really did try everything, you know.”
“I killed myself.” Behind him, Bones was frozen in shock. “After maybe 40 years or so, when I woke up I just reached for my phaser. It didn’t work, of course, didn’t make it stop, but I tried a few times anyway. I just didn’t know what to do any more.”
Jim turned around to face Bones, who still was at a loss for words.
“It was the thought of you walking in to find me like that that finally made me stop.” Jim’s eyes were filling with tears and Bones folded Jim back into his arms.
“Oh, Jim, no, no, no, you can’t do that,” Bones said, crushing Jim into his chest.
“You can’t do that Jim, no.”
Jim pushed away to look up at Bones, tears running. “I only killed you once,” Jim said. “The other times I refused.”
Jim was looking to Bones for forgiveness, but Bones has backed away from Jim shaking his head in denial.
The next morning, Bones woke with a pounding headache and no memory of getting to his bed. Jim was asleep beside him, a hand on Bones’ shoulder. Through some silent agreement, they never talk about what Jim told him.
Instead Jim told Bones stories about their lives in other years. At first Bones felt strange hearing about what they have done before, stories about him that he wasn’t present for, but it became a part of their ritual. In an unspoken agreement it became part of making the most out of the time they have. Jim would surprise him with small gestures that finally convinced Bones that he had known him for much longer than the six years Bones had known Jim.
Jim faked surprise about what was thrown at them, the different missions and oddities, but Bones knew better. At night Jim would tell him how many times these things had happened before and how bored he was by repeating everything again and again, even with the small variations that were always there.
Jim reassured Bones that he never could get bored with him. Instead he tried to find all the differences between Bones and other year’s Bones. Flattered as Bones felt over the attention, he knew it bordered on obsession, leaving him to wonder what this life had done to Jim. As Jim let down his guard Bones could see more of the difference between this Jim and the Jim he knew before Christmas.
This Jim was so tired, so lost, so defeated. He kept trying, but only because there were no alternatives, and for his crew, always for his crew, that by now was the only family he had any real memories of.
Then there were the nights, when curled tightly together, Jim would tell him that he just wanted to live the next year, no more repeats or time loops. He wanted to grow old and die. Jim even imagined he could get over Bones, if he wasn’t stuck. His body didn’t get older, but his mind, his soul, was hundreds of years old. Jim was never able to mourn properly. He was always trying to win Bones over, always fighting to change things.
Bones found it hard to sleep on those nights. Instead he laid awake worrying about Jim. He worried about what would happen the day Jim snapped. He wondered for how long Jim will be able to keep seeing the value of the lives of the people around him when he never sees them grow, change, or die. He wondered about all the different possibilities and realities that his imagination kept spinning in his head, always with the hope of this time being different.
Then all too soon it was Christmas Eve. Bones was still not sure that he will survive. His breathing was heavy and his body felt like lead, shaking without his control, but talking had become easier again and he thought that if he survived the night he might just make it. But he dreaded the morning.
Jim had been saying goodbye for the past couple of days. He rarely left Bones’ side, the touches lingering. The questions about what he liked and thought increased in frequency. At first, Bones thought it was endearing, but he wasn’t sure what to think when he realized that Jim was studying to better woo the next Bones.
He didn’t know if he was like Jim, able to fall in love with another version of Jim. And Jim couldn’t give him any answers as to what happened to this reality’s Jim or what will happen if Jim nothing changes this time either.
Jim tried to reassure Bones that he, any version of him, would always love Bones. Bones wasn’t so sure of that.
Instead, he hoped against hope that Jim was delusional, wrong, or that something has changed this time so that this Jim will stay with him. That this broken, defeated, tired man will get to experience the next year and that it will get better.
Jim held no such hope, he tried to be positive for Bones sake. However, they both knew it was a lie and it became one more thing they wouldn’t talk about. If these were their last moments together they would make them count.
Eventually, they finally fall asleep with Jim grasping Bones hands as if he could hold on tight enough to stay.
Bones woke up on Christmas morning and Jim was still there. He was at the side of Bones’ biobed, still asleep, still holding his hand. Bones tried to keep still, afraid of waking Jim, but he couldn’t really control his body.
Jim felt Bones stirring and he opened his eyes. As he stood, Bones noticed that it was like a weight was lifted from Jim’s shoulders. He stood a little straighter and his smile was a little wider.
“Still with us?” Jim asked with a smile. His voice had lost the monotone edge that he used to hide behind. “How are you feeling, Bones?”
The question prompted Bones to remember why he was in a biobed. He felt much better, but mostly because Jim was still here, happy to be waking up with Bones.
With a smile Bones managed to croak out, “You still with us?”
A look of confusion came over Jim’s face. Bones felt his stomach drop as he realized his mistake. The confusion on Jim’s face was replaced by concern as Bones closed his eyes. He took an unsteady breath, withdrawing his hand from Jim’s.
Bones was sure that his Jim was waking up, alone, on Christmas day, a year ago.