It's Super!Epic Theme Week!

Title: Leave No Soul Behind
Fandom: Star Trek XI, TOS references
Pairing: Kirk/Spock, Kirk/OFC, McCoy/OFC
Categories: AU, action, drama, romance
Length: Super!Epic (258,951)
Warnings: Graphic violence

Thanks to simarillion for letting me rec in one of her usual fandoms.

Author on LJ: triwislinthis
Author Website: whochick, whochick at The K/S Archive

Author's Summary: If you're Starfleet, you spend your whole life wishing you never see an EPAS uniform right up until the moment they become your only hope. Whether you're dying a slow, cold death in space, or a long painful one on some godforsaken planet, they're going to come for you. So count your last breaths, son, and hold on tight. They leave no soul behind.

Review:
It's amazing the energy and good pacing this has throughout when it clocks in at over 250K words. Neither the action packed plot nor the strong emotional connections (and it's great to find both done beautifully in one story) spend time in a rut. Half way through a conflict in the war with Nero, you'll find the seeds of a relationship hurdle, and it all keeps growing and rolling forward to the end.

After the destruction of Vulcan, Kirk's disillusioned by poor decisions from his superiors. He leaves Starfleet and joins EPAS (the Emergency Personnel Ambulance Service) doing search and rescue with Spock as his commanding officer. This gives whochick a chance to write suspenseful missions from a non-military perspective, but with Nero still a threat. EPAS takes on everything from planet evacuations to clamping a bleeder's artery while the ship goes down in flames.

With lives on the line, levelheaded Spock is fiercely admired by his crew, and though Kirk's cynical about devotion to commanders, it doesn't take long to figure out that it's not just hype; Spock has everyone's back in a crisis. It's good to see Spock as a successful leader, and he also understands when Kirk's intuitive leaps are something he needs to trust. Professional admiration between them leads to a personal relationship that's sometimes rocky but is always deeply felt and... downright hot.

Try the opening scene with Spock in the middle of an ocean rescue, and you may well be hooked too. Leave No Soul Behind is a rollercoaster read. There was only one aspect that wasn't dead-on for me, and even that isn't something that would be an issue for all readers. (I would've preferred dialog tags that were mainly the more invisible "says" rather than "muses," "exclaims," "responds," etc., but I was drawn in so fully that I stopped being distracted by it, and whochick often skips tags altogether where possible.)

This story was started in 2010, but I only just read it about a year ago, so if you're like me and are finding it complete, you're in for a treat!

Leave No Soul Behind (AO3)
On the K/S Archive, On LJ