Chapter Text
Len’s feet pounded on the carpeted hall of the third floor. He rounded the corner, and up ahead in the warmly lit hallway was the blackened doorway of room 301. Len came to a halt, his arms flung wide to brace himself on the doorframe. He stood there for only a moment. In the dark ahead of him he could make out the outline of storage crates and, with the light from the hall illuminating his back, he spied a figure at the room’s centre.
Len forced himself to take a step into the room. It was like plunging into murky water, the inside of the room was chilled and heavy. “Jim?” Len whispered.
The figure, if indeed it was Jim, stood rigid, his head stuck and his eyes affixed on something that Len could not see. Something in the deep shadows of the boxes. In the dim light the skin on the back of his neck looked flushed, purpled, almost mottled.
Len took another step towards Jim, then another. He came up beside him and rested one hand on his shoulder. Ahead of them, behind the piled boxes and just out of the ring of light from the door, there was a flash of movement. Something blue, Len thought. His own gaze stuck on that point, his eyes scanning it in the dark even as he moved around to stand in front of Jim.
And then came the hard part. Jim was still unresponsive, and Len would have to turn to face him, which meant facing away from the boxes and whatever they might be hiding.
Taking a calming breath, Len turned away. Immediately the wash of fear nearly bowled him over. He could feel the fear in the back of his knees, in the pit of his stomach, in a slight, nauseous prickle at the back of his throat.
The light from the hall backlit Jim, catching the edges of his auburn hair and illuminating it like a soft halo. It would have been angelic in any other setting, but now its soft look framed a pair of bulging fearful eyes. Reflected in them was all the terror Len himself was feeling.
Worst of all, as the light from the hall lit his face, it became clear that the purple mottle of his skin wasn’t created by the poor lighting. Jim’s veins were swollen, his eyes popping, his skin purpling. Symptoms of an easily diagnosed issue: Jim wasn’t breathing. Stuck there, frozen in place with fear, he was slowly asphyxiating.
A dual fear, the fear of the thing at his back and the fear of losing Jim here and now, both leapt to life within Len’s chest. Closing the distance between himself and Jim he cupped the afflicted face with both hands, shaking gently, then roughly, pleading with him to snap out of it.
Behind him, over the sound of his own ragged pleading, there was a scraping footstep. An otherworldly shoe dragging over the floor. Len’s spine lit up with tingling, pinching fear. His hands still on Jim, he half turned to see her, the culprit, slinking out from behind the boxes. Her pale blue skin was now marbled with ripples of purple to rival Jim’s own. Len could see, for the first time, the mark of fingers that stained her throat.
“Jim,” Len pleaded. “We have to go .” This time the shake was accompanied by a slap. Len would have given anything for his hypo in that moment, but here he was with nothing to do but snap Jim out of this the old fashioned way.
The slap did the trick. Jim suddenly burst into motion, doubling over with the effort of sucking in desperate breaths. He sputtered, clinging to Len for support as he struggled to breathe at a more measured pace.
Len glanced back. She was advancing on them, her mouth gaping now. Her eyes were hollow pits in the field of her face. The blue was sickly pale in this light. She was so close that Len could have reached out and touched her now.
The physical manifestation of fear that had been roaming over his spine suddenly coalesced, rushing up to his brain in a full body pulse that nearly sent him to his knees. But Jim was depending on him, and Len had to get them both out for Jim’s sake. Maneuvering Jim so that one of his arms fell over Len’s shoulders, Len turned them towards the door. “We have to move fast,” he gasped, already dragging them both back towards the light of the hallway.
With a burst of energy, Len carried them out the door. Out of the oppressive atmosphere of the storage room, Jim seemed to gain some strength. He had enough breath to manage a word, leaning into Len to whisper: “Is she…?”
“Still behind us?” Len turned to check. They were still hobbling down the hall. Len refused to stall until they were clear of her.
Behind them, she floated at a steady pace. Her face was more gruesome now than it had been. As she joined them in the light the rot that had settled into her apparition became clear. Corpse jaundice had mingled with the discolour of strangulation. She was hideous now, turned into a monster by the brutality of death.
“She’s still there,” Len said. He gritted his teeth against the strain of half carrying Jim. “The lift,” he panted. “We have to get to the lift.”
The hair on his neck lifted under an icy wind. She was closing the gap, her cold breath travelling over his bare skin. It smelled of dead things, rot and detritus.
Len pushed himself harder. They had rounded the corner and were moving along the north corridor. Jim was still struggling to breath, each intake a painful affair and each expulsion difficult because his starved lungs didn’t want to let go of any of their hastily gathered air.
They rounded another corner. Len could see his own quarters now. They would not be safe there. “Come on,” he grunted, shifting more of Jim’s weight into his own arms. “The lift--”
Jim’s foot hit the edge of the carpet, the same spot that Len had tripped on so many times. Len cried out as he lost his grip. Jim went tumbling to the floor and lay there, dazed.
Lay there helpless, tossed down like a ragdoll.
Len had stumbled another few paces as Jim’s weight left his arms. Now he wheeled back, taking in the sight with horror.
Jim on the ground, and she only a foot behind.
With a wild cry, Len threw himself back the way he had come. Somewhere behind him, he heard the lift ding. It served merely as a reminder of where he needed to be. Where he needed to move Jim to.
As Len grabbed Jim under the arms and hauled him backwards, a hand closed around Jim’s foot. Len struggled backwards, Jim hanging between the two opposing forces. He could do nothing to help himself, still numb with the shock of the fall, still struggling to breathe.
“Let him go!” Len shouted. “Leave him alone!” The command came out like a plea, tumbling from his lips as a desperate request. His blue eyes, welling with tears of anger, fear and frustration, met two dark holes that showed no hint of mercy.
Her grip was strong. Too strong. Len could feel himself slipping, and dug his heels into the carpet in one final stand. There was a sharp tug from her end, and then Len’s fingers slipped completely, his hands emptied. Len stumbled back into the wall and Jim, pulled violently by the ankle, slammed back down towards the carpet.
But he never hit it. There was a blur as something pushed past Len in the hallway and caught Jim as he fell, giving a final decisive pull on his shoulders that dragged him away from the wraith and onto his own feet. A hand found Len’s arm, hauling him back towards the lift as this newcomer supported both him and Jim towards safety.
“Spock,” Len said, his voice hoarse. “The lift--”
The doors stood open as they rounded the corner to it. Spock pushed Jim inside, then Len. Then he stepped inside himself.
“Lobby,” Len said.
“Lobby,” the computer confirmed. The lift doors began to slide shut on their pneumatic hinges.
“For God’s sake, hurry!” Len rasped. He could see out the closing door to the mirror that faced the lift. Reflected in it was a figure that rounded the corner towards them. She was after them, and if she reached the lift before the doors closed they’d be finished.
With a final clang, the doors shut and the lift started. The relief was immediate, the tingle from Len’s neck pushed up and out the top of his head in a rush of euphoria. He was safe. Jim was safe. Spock was safe.
Safe, but not out of trouble. Jim was still fighting for air. Len knelt beside him. “He needs medical attention,” he told Spock, his voice scraping roughly in his throat. “My bag– I left it downstairs.”
“We’ll have it in a moment,” Spock said. He was remarkably calm given what he had just witnessed, though of course he would be. That collected Vulcan exterior betrayed no hint of the fear he must have felt, finding them there in the hall with that thing standing over them.
The lift stopped, the doors opened to the lobby. Disheveled, and still supporting Jim between them, they stepped out into the casual hubbub. Len’s bag was where he had left it, on the check in desk. Spock grabbed it and the three of them ducked into an empty conference room to get away from any prying questions. “Nobody else will see her if they go upstairs,” Len said. “And nobody will believe what happened if we tell them.”
After several minutes, a hypo, and some oxygen treatment, Jim was breathing alright. He leaned weakly against the wall still, frightened eyes darting around the room as if he feared they were not alone. “That was her?” he asked in a very small, raspy voice.
“Yup,” Len said.
“I’m so sorry,” Jim’s voice broke a little on the words. “I should have listened to you.”
“You should always listen to me,” Len said lightly, trying to take the sting out of the words. “I’m your doctor. I’m looking out for you.”
Jim lapsed back into silence. It was Spock who spoke next. “I too must apologise, doctor. It never occurred to me that you might actually be seeing a ghost. It seemed illogical. That was, however, an undeniably otherworldly apparition. I wish I had been carrying my tricorder--”
“What, so you could stop and scan her in the middle of carrying Jim to safety?” Len scoffed. “Don’t apologise, either of you. How could you have known?”
“Because you told us,” Jim said. “And you had been seeing her the whole time. You’ve been facing that alone. She was awful, Len. I’m so sorry we didn’t listen.”
She had been awful. In the well lit conference room with the fear draining slowly from him, Len could process it far better. She had been rotting with each step, deteriorating as she followed them back down the hall to the lift. It had been frightful to face that on top of everything else he had just experienced.
“Jim, let me look at you,” Len said somewhat abruptly. “I need to be sure that you’re alright.”
Jim did not protest as Len’s hands turned his head first one way then the other. He had already run a diagnostic with his tricorder and had fixed Jim’s breathing problem but if he needed to check again, just for the comfort of certainty, then Jim was not going to stop him.
“She was going to kill you,” Len said quietly. It was the first time this had been vocalized by any of them.
“I know,” Jim said, his voice small and serious.
“It does not align with what you have told us about the ghost,” Spock pointed out. “She has not been violent towards you before. Why now?”
“She wasn’t violent towards me ,” Len agreed. “Look, I’ll be damned if I can explain her. I don’t know why she decided to show herself to me, I don’t know why she hasn’t attacked me, and I sure as hell can’t explain why she tried to kill Jim.”
“Who is she?” Jim asked quietly. “Who was she,” he corrected. “Do you know?”
Len told them what he could. He told them what Layla had explained to him. Everything he knew about the woman herself, and about what Michael Ferrier had done to her. As he spoke, Spock and Jim listened intently. Spock looked as stoic as ever, though his eyebrow shot up when Len explained the backstory of the ghost. Jim responded in kind, grasping tightly at Len’s sleeve as he described Ferrier’s crime.
“My uniform,” Jim said urgently. “She knew I was a captain, that’s why her response to me was a little different.”
Len thought about it for a moment. It made sense, in as much as any of this made any sense to him. “An eye for an eye,” Len said. He shuddered, picturing the ghost mistaking Jim for her killer. They had the same swagger, if Ferrier’s portrait was anything to go off of. But Jim – Jim was gentle, kind, attentive, and Len was pretty sure he had seen him cry once after stepping on an ant. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he could have murdered a woman in cold blood, and the idea that he could be confused for the kind of man who could turned Len’s stomach.
“That doesn’t explain why she has been following me,” he complained. His fingers tangled in Jim’s, a tangible reminder that Jim was still there, that he hadn’t been taken from them.
Spock’s eyebrow was still nearly in his hairline as he tried to puzzle the whole illogical mess out. “If I were to speculate, Leonard, I would suggest that she could… smell Jim on you, as it were.”
“She could what ?” Jim and Len demanded, nearly in one voice as they turned their full attention on Spock.
“What the devil do you mean by that remark?” Len demanded.
“She showed herself consistently to you, and you alone,” Spock stated. “You share a similarity with her. Like her, you have taken a starship captain as a lover. Perhaps she sensed a kindred spirit?”
Len didn’t like that idea at all, but there was some merit to it. There had only been a handful of stories about the Otatha ghost, and there was no way to verify who those stories had come from and who had attracted her attention. But Len’s relationship with Jim did make him a plausible candidate for her haunting ministrations.
“I hope you’re not comparing my relationship with Bones to what Ferrier had with this poor woman, whomever she is– was .” Jim squeezed Len’s fingers tighter, as if to reassure him that he did not see their relationship that way at all.
“Not at all,” Spock soothed. “I only meant that perhaps she could tell that Leonard would understand her situation.”
“Or maybe she knew you were a doctor,” Jim suggested. “That you were a healer, someone who could help her – or try to.”
“I don’t see how I’ve helped her in the slightest,” Len grumbled, “and she certainly hasn’t helped me. We’re a bad pair, the two of us.”
Len and Jim were on the floor, sitting tightly huddled while Spock paced a little, never moving far from either of them. He knelt down beside them now, taking Jim’s hand in his own. Len supposed even a Vulcan might need a little reassurance after the day they had all shared.
“We should sleep on the ship tonight,” Spock announced.
“Scared, are you?” Len said. It would have come out mocking if it weren’t for the truth behind the words. He was scared too. They all were, and they had every right to be.
“It would be impossible to face circumstances like these and feel no fear,” Spock said calmly. He offered a hand to Len as well, two fingers extended, palm up. It was both a peace offering and a show of support and love. “We’ll sleep safely on the Enterprise . We can revisit this in the morning.”
Len’s fingers met Spock’s. “Alright.”
They beamed back to the ship. Len’s boots hit the ground, and he had to screw his eyes shut against the dizzy feeling of the transporter. He always felt so horrible after transport, but that feeling seemed worse – seemed magnified now. He swayed a little, and Spock’s hand landed on his arm.
“Leonard?” he asked quietly, steering him down from the platform to join Jim, who had already wobbled off in the direction of the hall.
“I’m fine, Spock,” he smiled at him, tired and a little tight. “I’m just a little rattled.”
They were all rattled, and there was no further conversation on the matter that evening. Spock brought some light food down to their room and they picked away at it together, eventually washing up in silence and collapsing into the bed. Jim took the centre, and Spock and Len both curled in towards him. They slept like that, huddled in the warmth and familiarity of their ship.
Len should have felt safe, with his partners beside him and the comfortable humming and beeping of the Enterprise surrounding them. Instead, he drifted in and out of sleep. There was something nagging at the back of his mind. Something that he couldn’t quite shake.
Jim’s comment about the ghost replayed over and over again: “Maybe she knew you were a doctor — someone who could help her”.
But he hadn’t helped her. He had turned tail and ran, ran for himself and for Jim. She was horrifying and dangerous, and he could not have stood by and allowed her to hurt either of them. But the question of what she had wanted weighed heavily upon him, only surpassed by the question of why she had approached him in particular.
Did his duty of care extend to those already deceased?
Rolling over again to seek the solace of his cool pillow, Len shut his eyes against the world and mulled that question over again in his mind. It was the last thought in his head before he finally fell asleep.