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Scotty had spent the last days in a constant state of resignation that he wouldn’t survive the next hour. He was pleasantly surprised that he kept doing it anyway. As pleasantly as could be, anyhow, with the dying screams of the crew of the Sundiver in his ears. Imagined screams. In space no one can hear you scream. Who the hell had said that? And now he was standing on Enterprise, of all the damn places, with an armful of junk and Professor Pelia glaring at him in frustration (understandably) and fondness (confusingly). He didn’t know if he could buy himself or anyone else another hour of not being devoured by the Gorn, but a few minutes, maybe. He would just keep few-minutesing his way through this and see where it got him. With any luck, there was a shower at the end of this hour or day or week. Maybe even real water, as hot as he could stand. Maybe it would pour into his brain and shut up the screaming no one else could hear.
The ship was screaming at him, and hadn’t stopped since the moment her nacelles had been torn away. Scotty, I need warp! Kirk had shouted. Scotty had barely been able to hear him over the keening in his mind. Not warp. But maybe, maybe he could reroute the useless warp power to the impulse drive. His hands and face were nicked and bleeding and burned as he did it barehanded and by straight instinct and adrenaline, but it didn’t matter because the ship was screaming at him. (Ships didn’t scream. It was the crew, the crew, oh god the crew.) They were coming apart, all of them together. Metal twisting and bones disarticulating, plasma and blood and air exploding out from where it should be. He was vaguely comforted by the grim solace that if the crew was screaming in space, it wouldn’t be for long. And that when he followed them any moment now, at least he wouldn’t be able to hear them, or himself.
Scotty slid to the floor outside the medbay, not sure if he’d be getting up again. Scotty's own rattling, coolant-damaged breathing wasn’t enough to drown out the screaming. He tilted his head back against the cool bulkhead, which made him shiver in contrast to the sweat wetting his hair and pooling in his collar. Sweat, he insisted, and swiped at his eyes. It didn’t matter how you died in space, or how much you raged against it. Cruel space would silence you before you were ready. Which, he reasoned, was why the cries of the dead latched so firmly onto the living. He’d just never imagined he’d have to carry his nephew’s groans alongside the other ghosts. The light flickered on the other side of eyelids he hadn’t realized he’d closed, and when he opened them, Spock was looking down at him.
“I grieve with thee,” Spock said gently, and somehow Scotty was back on his feet.
(And when Spock died later today, he’d do Scotty the mercy of doing it almost soundlessly.)