The purpose is to experience fear. Fear in the face of certain death.

[hischair]

When: 17th onward!
Rating: Gross sickly stuff.
Characters: Jim & you!
Summary: Catch-all log for Jim's friends! After the 16th when he felt ill, Jim's Augmented blood has started to fight back like it did during the two weeks he was out cold after dying in a decontamination chamber. His organs will be starting to slowly fail, blood (both his own and Khan's) will be coming up, and he's generally confined to his bedroom in his and Bones' apartment. As time goes on, his condition will be deteriorating until his essence rite is performed. Please put the date of your visit in the subject header! Forward/Back-dating and Prose/Action are all fine, as are video/audio/text which can be directed here for all personal calls while Jim is sick.
Log: 

[ He finds himself thinking of Christopher, more than anything. Of the last time he saw him, specifically, in the Hall of the Missing. Of not being able to let go of him for so long and crying like a son lost in the thickest of woods, longing to find his way home only to briefly find it and have to turn back into the darkness once more. Chris had held him, kissed his hair like a father, soothed Jim in a way he had never had to before, but then again neither of them had died and been torn apart in such violent ways until the Augment came into their lives. Even in death, he's still been there when Jim needed him.

He stares out of the window in his room, propped up against pillows as coughs rumble in the pit of his chest, looking at the City below where the horizon meets a fake, beautiful sky. If he lets the migraines take over for long enough his senses go haywire and a drowsy kind of tactile memory swims under his fingers and into his nose, of an admiral's uniform scented with aftershave that soothes his anxieties almost as effectively as the real thing.

"It's going to be okay, son."

He wishes he could find a bar to drown his sorrows in. Chris always, always found him when he was at his lowest point in backwater dives.

And then on occasion, during his more painful moments where there's no one around to hear his muffled crying into a pillow or witness the sheets crumpling in his fists, his thoughts drift to the decontamination chamber. Jim wakes himself up several times after passing out with Spock's name on bloodied lips and hopes to God he hasn't started doing anything as embarrassing as crying out in his sleep to betray his fright; he has the use of his lungs still, unlike his final moments where he hadn't been able to tell his friend a wealth of things that suddenly seemed so important. Look after the crew, you're the captain now. I'll miss you. I don't want to go, stay with me. It's shameful, but a couple of times he calls for Bones just to have his company, terrified under a firmly schooled expression that he'll die in the here and now, well and truly alone.

If he had been given diagrammatics on his condition in the form of a vessel's specifics, he would have written it off by now. It's as if the effects of his descent into the warp core are being clawed out of his body in slow motion by the deepening fever-tide, leaving Jim to hate every minute of having survived. Which is counter-productive, he knows, because he very much wants to live. ]

Comments

[directives]

"The Phage. A virus their people were afflicted with over two thousand years ago. It caused their bodies to rapidly deteriorate, and somewhere along the line, they lost sight of themselves and turned on other cultures, stealing their healthy organs, skin, and bones to affix to themselves in order to prolong the inevitable."

She'd take being compared to Captain Pike as a huge compliment, if he ever voiced as much.

[hischair]

"You didn't barter a lung or a kidney for their help, I'd hope. They don't sound like the kind of people with low price-tags on their assistance."

They sound, in all honesty, like people Jim would have a hard time sympathizing with. To put it mildly.

[directives]

Oh, she does. She really does. It is extremely difficult to have sympathy for a race that is, sorry to say, past the point of saving. They've gone from a society in need of saving to a space-fairing menace, pirates at best who live only for themselves and have little regard for people whose lives they're destroying in the name of salvaging their own.

"No. There was one Vidiian, a physician our doctor had befriended, who was willing to provide assistance."

For Denara Pel, there is respect and understanding, but for the rest of the Vidiians... they can rot in hell for all she cares.

[hischair]

"Bully for them, at least one of their entire race owned enough braincells of their own not to tear them out of other people." He pauses and tilts his head, all traces of the flirtation and buoyancy he employs as personal deflectors gone. "I'm glad you got better, and in one piece too."

[directives]

"There are many who would disagree with you," but some of Kathryn melts back in through the holes in Captain Janeway's mask. It's enough for her to smile a little at that sentiment.

[hischair]

Jim snorts.

"Yeah? Once you're through with them, refer them to me. If there's anything left by then."

[directives]

"That's a big if, Jim. I'm not one to leave behind scraps."

Says the woman who has the Borg Collective sitting at the top of her enemies list. They just might consider her more of a threat than Picard at this point. She's not entirely sure how she feels about that, for she never intended to become the Federation's leading expert on the Borg, but somehow that became one of her lots in life.

[hischair]

His slaughter is underlaid with coughing, turning aside on the pillow to get it all out.

"Yeah? I knew there was a reason I liked you."