Title: Day Glow Eyes Fandom: Star Trek XI Rating: PG for language <strike>Pairing</strike> Characters: Kirk, McCoy Summary/Prompt:

<a href="http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink/8893.html? view=26896829#t26896829">How is anyone in the Star Trek universe sure that a transporter actually transports...?</a> Content Advisory: Cursing, ontological speculation, illogic. All Thanks To: <lj user="lomedet">, who deserves better from me. <i>Disclaimer:</i> None of these characters or their settings belong to me. Title from "City of Blinding Lights" by U2. Author's Note: Long, in first comment. <lj-cut text="&#39;There&#39;s just something unnatural about taking a living body apart into its constituent particles!&#39;"> "...I'm just saying, I don't <i>care</i> about the goddamn statistics, there's just something unnatural about taking a living body apart into its constituent particles!" Striding down the corridor beside Leonard, Jim just smiles serenely, as if Leonard's ranting and needs to be quietly fucking humored or something. Since he's clearly not getting through to the brain tucked somewhere behind those pretty blue eyes, Leonard grips Jim's shoulder, trying harder (and a little louder) to explain. "I mean, those molecules we're made of, they're important! Chirality, it's important! Isomers are important! How's that damn machine even know whether it's put each one of them back

together the right way? To say nothing of putting them all back in their proper arrangements, what if your DNA got unspooled and your muscle fibers unbundled?" "I'll keep that in mind, Bones," Jim says as the Transporter Room door opens, turning with an easy swagger from under Leonard's hand, towards some wide-eyed blank-wristed kid at the control panel. "Coordinates all set, Ensign?" Leonard barely hears the child chirp, "Yes, Captain!" as he stares at the transporter pad. Beneath all his scientifically-worded complaints, Leonard's always had a deeper, less physically-based fear of the transporter, ever since as a boy he read a story which posed the question of whether or not transporters actually <i>transport</i>, or if they destroy and duplicate, of whether or not the person who arrives at the end of the trip is an exact copy of one disintegrated at the start. He stares at the cool lighted circles and thinks of Jim flickering out of existence, and no thought of an exact unknowing double returned to him can smooth out the churn in his guts. "Six hours, Bones. Tops." Jim squeezes his shoulder, fingers following the curve of muscle as he pulls away, and skips up the steps with his normal gravity-defying energy. "Stay safe," Leonard mutters as he nods, as he so often does, but this time Jim blinks and fixes him with a puzzled blue stare, as if he said something completely unheard of. "What?" Jim's smile is simple, the tilt of his head uncomplicated and sincere, but rapid thoughts flicker through his eyes. "Look at me," he says, and, "Energize."

With the back of his mind seething with ridiculous grim thoughts, watching Jim vanish is the last thing Leonard wants to do, but Jim holds his gaze with such faith that he lifts his chin and watches the lights whirl, whisking Jim from sight. He watches until the transporter pad is entirely empty and the little wave of airdisplacement washes across his face. Then it's his turn to blink, because he can still feel Jim's presence, just like his favorite stack of trouble's still standing beside him laughing at his ranting. It's like... a small blunt splinter or a dormant seed nestled into Leonard's mind, self-contained and palpable, a little warm firm spot of Jim. He turns, nodding vaguely at the transporter-baby's goodbye, and tries to spend the next six hours in something other than a daze. He does physicals and paperwork and checkups and inventory, finds a quiet moment to scan his own head and finds it completely unchanged, but behind his eyes, more palpable than anything he sees or touches, rests that unbroken awareness of Jim. Five hours and forty-eight minutes later, Leonard saves his place on the third screen of Form 480X-Z, mutters a disbelieving "No fucking way," and heads straight from his office back to the Transporter Room, guided by some intangible tug as if he could make the trip blindfolded. When he walks in there's at least someone post-pubertal at the controls, a solid-looking woman with touches of iron gray at her temples, but no one on the pad. Rolling his eyes at himself, he turns to ask her when the Captain's expected back, and finds her concentrating on her screen, hands arched and fingertips skittering. The expected whine, the slight whoosh of air, and that <i>spot</i>

in the back of Leonard's head flares as if to emphasize its constancy as Jim fades into view wrapped in streaks of light, already laughing. "Hey, Bones, did you miss me?" Same voice, same smile, same eyebrows, same eyes. The exact same Jim, with that little chunk of awareness radiating certainty like light into the distrustful recesses of Leonard's brain. "Is that what all that quiet was?" The transporter tech snorts. Jim bounces down the steps, waving to the tech with a breezy, "Thanks, Lieutenant!" and smacks Leonard's shoulder with gleeful violence. "Bet it was like I was never gone." Leonard wonders if Jim knows about this warm little thing in his brain that held steady while Jim transported, that told Leonard he's no duplicate of a dead man. Then he looks into Jim's warm eyes, and it's illogical enough to give a Vulcan fits, but he somehow knows Jim gave him this. "I could tell by the lack of trouble in my life," Leonard replies, not bothering to snarl, and lets Jim grin for both of them.