DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters
are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc and Viacom. The story contents are
the creation and property of Djinn and are copyright (c) 2004 by Djinn. This
story is Rated PG-13.
Physician, Heal Thyself
by Djinn
You try not to notice her as
she moves around sickbay. You try to
pretend you've never seen her naked, never felt her move beneath-above-around
you.
You try but it's a losing
battle.
She is everywhere. She is nowhere--nowhere that you can go
now. She's with one of your best
friends. Not the one you always feared
would take her away. The
other one, the safe one. She's
with Jim, and you can't for the life of you figure out how that happened.
But it doesn't matter how it
happened, she's with him and she disappears into his quarters at night, shows
up at breakfast with him, and you know she hasn't been back to her
quarters. You know because you spent the
night watching for her; her quarters are right across from yours, after all.
She never comes back anymore,
and you've finally stopped looking for her.
You wish that not looking for
her means that you've given up, but you suspect that you've just become tired
of standing at your door listening for her return. You suspect that you'll never really give up hoping
that she'll come to you again.
You wish you could hate
him. Or her. But you can't. They're too happy, both of them opening up to
each other, both of them blossoming as they learn to love each other. She smiles now, really smiles with an open
expression that reaches her eyes. She is
beautiful when she smiles.
She only smiles for him. You still can't coax that expression out of
her.
She never loved you. You know that now. Know it in that bone deep way that only being
slapped in the face daily with the two of them can bring. She loves him. She never loved you.
Never.
But you love her. Still.
You hope to god not forever. You
hope that someday you'll wake up and be over her and be able to move on.
You've seen Spock watching
her, as if he too is trying to figure out how she came to be with his captain,
his best friend, the man he just might be in love with.
You laugh when you think of
how ballsy she was, asking Spock in front of you all what he felt for Jim. Jim didn't think it was so funny. For a moment, you thought he was going to
erupt, boiling over from some stress you still don't quite understand. Something happened between them when Spock
was dead and you were going mad from having his soul inside you. They shared something dark and something good
and maybe it's all the same thing.
You're not sure she really
got an answer from Spock. All he did was
surrender the field to her, but he yielded no great truths. He still may be there, waiting, hoping,
wanting.
You know how that feels. You wonder if Christine still loves Spock now
that she has Jim and she's finally happy.
Does the obsession go away once you've found someone new to love,
someone good to love? Someone
healthy to love.
You hope to god so. For your own sake.
You need to move on. You need to say goodbye to the possibility
that only exists in your mind and move on.
You tell yourself this every
day.
And every
night.
And it's still the same. She is all you see. All you want.
All you'll never, ever have.
She looks over at you. Her smile is the old one, not the one that she
gives Jim. It barely leaves her lips,
comes nowhere close to her eyes.
Her eyes sparkle for Jim.
"Everything okay?"
she asks and you nod, trying to make the gesture easy, casual.
Sane.
You don't feel sane. Then again, you don't feel dangerous,
just off balance, a-kilter, out of sorts, tetchy--you fall back on your great-grandma's
word. It means testy, which you
certainly are. But she used it when she
wanted to say something was wrong, not right.
Everything is wrong, not right.
Not being with Christine is wrong.
Not right.
Not right for you.
Not wrong for her.
Christine studies you for a
moment, then turns back to her work.
She couldn't care less how
you are. She is happy.
She is happy. Those are hard words to say. So foreign. You were used to the idea that Christine was
never happy, would never be happy. So
what you did with her, even if it left her darker than when you started, was
all right. She wouldn't ever be happy
anyway, so what was the harm?
But now you see you were
wrong. She can be happy. Just not with you.
You hurt her. You drag her down. You make her world black and lonely and worse
than it was when you found her.
Jim heals her. Jim fills her.
You don't want to think of
Jim filling her.
You don't want to think of
Jim doing anything to her.
All you can think of is Jim
doing everything to her.
Does she call his name out when
she comes? She finally stopped calling
Spock's name out when she was with you. Finally stopped tearing your heart out. It happened sometime after the first
mission. You never knew why. But you think you know now. You saw that look she shared with Spock. She shared a lot more with Spock, but you
don't know when and she never told you about it.
Jim saw it too. The thought makes you irrationally
happy. Jim must wonder too. Who does she really love?
You wonder if she told Jim
about it. If Jim knows
whether she and Spock were lovers.
If Jim knows how much she used to love Spock.
It was something you were
never allowed to forget, even if, at the end, you began to suspect that the
only one Christine loved was Christine.
And then you saw her with
Jim.
You see her everyday with
Jim.
And no matter how good it
feels to say that she can only love herself, it isn't true. She loves him. She loves him. She loves him.
The words are like a scalpel
through your gut. They tear away
something that is vital. They tear her
away from you.
Only you never really had
her. Never. Really. Had. Her.
You hate those words.
Jim said them to you. A few weeks after she
showed up on board. He warned you
she was coming. He didn't just spring
her on you. And you were the good friend,
the magnanimous southern gentleman who knows when you've been beaten. Who knows how to give up gracefully.
You would have stayed that
way. Behaved yourself and tried not to
show either of them how much it hurt you to see them together. But he made the mistake of coming to your
quarters one evening. To
check on you. Bad luck for him
that you were drinking. Had been drinking all night.
It wasn't something you did
very often. You knew it would be too
easy to let it become a habit. But that
night you indulged so you wouldn't have to remember how it felt to see them
dancing at a crew party.
God, they danced so
close. It should be illegal to dance
that close.
You fled. Fled at a walk, stiff, uncomfortable, but
determined to hide the pain. Determined
to let them be, let them be happy.
You didn't think they even
noticed. But then Jim showed up. At your door.
"Bones? I know this is
hard."
"You don't know what
hard is, Jimbo," you
said. He hated that name.
And you knew it.
His face tightened. He was biting back harsh words. You could tell. You decided you wanted to hear them. Wanted to get it out.
"She was mine,
Jim." A lie, but one guaranteed to
strike where it would hurt most.
At his
honor. At his ability to stay out of a friend's
business, away from a friend's woman.
Jim looked at you, his heart
in his eyes, in the way his mouth turned down, in the soft sigh.
"You didn't have to take
her," you said, striking again, hard, like the snakes back home that
strike over and over in the same place, filling you with poison.
"Bones," your best
friend said. "You never really had
her."
"Get out," you
said. You weren't sure if you were
saying it to him or to the truth. It
didn't matter, they both hurt.
He left you. A mumbled, "I'm sorry," that was
heartfelt but wouldn't stop him from going back to her, from taking her.
Over and
over and over.
Christine told you once that
you were as obsessed with her as she was with Spock. That it wasn't healthy. You know she is right. You wonder when your new lover will come
around. Who will rescue you from this
terrible pit of blackness you inhabit?
You wonder when you will fall
in love and be able to smile with your eyes again.
You haven't had a drink since
that night. Have reverted
back to the stalwart and noble friend, who will give up his lady to her true
love.
And Jim doesn't tiptoe around
you anymore. But he did. For days, he
did.
You nearly lost them
both. And you don't want that. Even if might be healthier in the long run.
You should transfer off the
ship. Go home. You can retire, go anywhere you want. Live out your life far away from them both.
But you can't bring yourself
to fill out the transfer request that you've brought up on your terminal nearly
every week. You'll stay. And you'll pretend that everything is all
right.
It's a lie, but they want to
believe it. They will believe it. Because it's easier for them to close their
eyes to the truth and it's easier for you to pretend that there is no truth.
You've seen Spock watching
you. You don't know how a Vulcan could
begin to figure out what you feel. But then
you remember how you've seen him look at Jim.
Maybe Spock knows all too well.
Maybe when Spock looks at you, he is just looking in the mirror.
You wonder if he hurts
too. If he and Jim had it out, or would
that be he and Christine? You can't figure it out and it makes your
head hurt to try.
"Len?" She is back,
standing almost too close. You can smell
her perfume and another scent. You realize
it is the smell of Jim's quarters, Jim's arms, Jim's
love. She smells of Jim and you want to
throw her in the shower and scrub her till she screams.
Then you want to love her
until she tells you that she wants you back.
You know you could love her
till eternity folds up shop and she still wouldn't want you back.
You give her your
attention. "What?"
"I'm sorry." She is looking at you with such sorrow.
You wish that her sorrow
could move you more than it does. You
wish that you didn't take pleasure in her pain.
You hate it that since you can't have her love, you'll take anything she
will give you. Good or bad.
"I know you
are." You hold her eyes, try to tell her without words that you love her, that
she can come back.
She turns away but not before
you see a flicker of irritation in hers.
She will not reach out many
more times. You are about to lose her.
"It's just so
hard," you blurt out.
She turns around. "How can I make it better?"
Leave him, you want to
say. Come back to me.
But you never really had her.
"You can't, darlin'. Only time
can." It is the mature answer and
you see that she does not trust it. You
try again. "I have to get over
you. I've loved you a long time. It's going to take a while to get rid of
this."
Get rid of this. Like your love is trash someone should
dispose of.
Maybe it is.
She reaches out to you,
thinks better of the idea and drops her hand.
"You're important to me. As a friend."
She does not often say things like this.
You should be grateful for
the sentiment. Be satisfied with
it. You should take what you can get and
not want what you'll never have.
You should do a lot of
things.
It's not enough.
But it's all you're ever going
to get. She turns away.
You see Jim come in, looking
for her. Her expression
changes. Her face is light. Pure, radiant, light. And you'll never see her look that way for
you. You can almost hate them both.
But you love them. And you already hate yourself more.
FIN