She Was There (3/3) PG-13
Title: She Was There (1/?)
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Nyota Uhura, James Kirk (Spock, McCoy)
Disclaimer: Characters and canon belong to Paramount, Roddenberry, Abrams and many others, but not me. All rights reserved. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is made by the author.
Summary: She felt his hand grope for hers as they awaited the conclusion of the tribunal. Twisting her hand, she pressed her palm to his, threading their fingers together as the verdict of a life sentence at a maximum security penal settlement was read
She was there - curled up beside him throughout the remainder of the night, listening when he needed to talk and falling into a fitful sleep when he was quiet. She slipped away in the early morning hours, returning to her quarters to assemble her notes into a concise and coherent report. Showering and changing into a duty uniform, she contacted the captain, bullying an agreement from him to meet her in the officer’s mess for breakfast.
She was there later that morning, hovering nearby when he summoned McCoy and Spock to his quarters. Folding her arms tightly around her middle, she stood in a corner and watched the two men react. Spock’s hands clenched into fists at his sides and his dark eyes - usually the most overtly expressive and human part of him - went flat and black with tightly controlled rage.
In contrast, the doctor’s habitual scowl fell away as a spasm of anguish crossed his craggy features. Closing the distance between them, he curved one hand over the back of the captain’s neck and lowering his head, murmured quiet reassurance to his friend.
She was there - waiting with Spock and McCoy in the hall outside the captain’s quarters as he contacted Starfleet. Prowling about in a tight circle, her anxiety was evident in each quick and precise step taken. Spock stood quietly - a graven statue near the entrance to the captain’s quarters - and McCoy’s face bore its familiar glower as he stared daggers at the door as if offended by the barrier it created between him and his friend.
Relief outweighed nerves as she was finally summoned to speak to the assembled brass. Taking a position behind the captain’s shoulder, she was a bolstering presence. Lending her voice and expertise, she explained in detail the data she had compiled and the conclusions she had reached in support of the captain’s own findings.
And she was there - again with Spock and McCoy - forming a wall of support behind the captain as he entered Kodos’ quarters flanked on either side by his security chief and another member of his team. She listened as the captain explained the charges being leveled against the former governor, noted the resigned look on the older man’s face as he extended an arm to McCoy so that blood could be drawn to complete a DNA profile while Kirk ordered him restricted to quarters until such time as they reached the nearest star base from where he would be transported back to Earth to face a tribunal.
Uhura watched, first with curiosity, as Kodos’ daughter pled with the captain, tears swimming in her stunned blue eyes as she tried to explain that surely he was mistaken; that he had the wrong man. Her father was not a monster, not a man capable of the crimes they described. Curiosity changed to disgust as Lenore shifted from damsel-in-distress to seductress, breasts pressed against the captain’s arm, fingers trailing over his gold shirt, beseeching him in breathy-voiced entreaty.
When the captain stepped back, awkwardly brushing off the young woman’s unwelcome advances, Uhura felt disgust give way to simmering anger as Kirk’s head snapped back from the force of Lenore’s open palm cracking across his cheek and the seductress disappeared into a wild-eyed hellion. Spitting with rage, she hurled biting invectives at the captain. Leaping forward, hands curled into talons, she raked her nails across his face. Ducking and twisting, she eluded security and lurched toward the captain again only to find her path blocked.
Eyes flashing, Uhura wrapped a hand around the younger woman’s wrist in an iron grip.
“Don’t.” The warning was issued with low-voiced fury.
“Lenore, please.”
Face crumpling at the sound of her father’s quiet entreaty, Lenore tore free from Uhura and hurled herself into his arms. Weeping hysterically, she begged him to explain that they were mistaken, pleaded with him not to allow them to take him from her. Spinning away, she collapsed on the floor and everyone watched in horror as she threw her arms around the captain’s boots, her pleas growing increasingly manic and frenzied.
Kirk tore his shell-shocked gaze away from the sobbing woman at his feet and turned desperate eyes towards the others. McCoy dug a hypo from his kit and stepped forward. Administering the drug with gentle hands, he waited a moment for the sedative to take effect, and then nodded to security.
“Take her to sickbay,” he instructed and Uhura watched now with compassion as the quietly sobbing girl was led unresisting from the room.
A movement beside her caught her eye and she saw the captain wipe a shaking hand over his face. Squaring his shoulders with deliberation, he left the room without a backward glance, flanked by Spock and the doctor. Following them, she looked over her shoulder. Ruthlessly quelling the rising sense of pity, she called up a mental image of a sick and emaciated young Jim Kirk to block out the sight of the stoop-shouldered old man weeping quietly into his hands.
*******
She was there at the tribunal as an expert witness, again explaining in laymen’s terms the methods she had used to compare the voiceprints - the science as well as her own experience and innate talent.
“Lieutenant, please tell the court the conclusion you reached.”
“All data and information leads to only one possible conclusion. The man posing as Anton Karidian for the last fourteen years is, without a doubt, the former Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.”
“And you have no doubts?”
She glanced across the room. Kodos sat at the defense table alone, with only his legal representative for company. There was no family, no friends seated nearby. The Karidian players had disbanded, his fellow actors abandoning him when they realized who they had been keeping company with all those years. His only living relative had suffered a psychotic break and was being treated at a hospital where she muttered and laughed, incessantly plotting in manic detail the deaths of the survivors of the Tarsus massacre who could identify her father.
“Lieutenant?” the prosecutor prodded, and Uhura shook off any thoughts of Lenore suffering in her madness and focused on the father instead.
“No, sir. I am one hundred percent certain of my conclusions.” Confidence rang in her tone and the proud tilt of her head.
She remained at the witness stand while the defense counsel picked and probed at her testimony, trying without success, to find a hole or a flaw in the evidence she presented. When at last she was excused, she stepped down and returned to her seat with the captain and McCoy who had also been called as witnesses for the prosecution.
She watched with pride as the captain withstood grueling hours of testimony, never once flinching under the onslaught of memories evoked as he was prompted to recall the traumatic events which had taken place so many years prior and to describe for the judge, panel members and everyone else in the courtroom what life on the colony had been like before, during and after the massacre and how it was that he had been able to connect the acclaimed thespian with the man who had allegedly masterminded the deaths of thousands.
She felt his hand grope for hers as they awaited the conclusion of the tribunal. Twisting her hand, she pressed her palm to his, threading their fingers together and as the verdict of a life sentence at a maximum security penal settlement was read, she felt the shudder of relief that quaked through his rigid frame.
************
A week later, Uhura stood with Kirk rolling her eyes as he ran a finger around the tight collar of the dress grays he wore and complained about the lack of comfort offered by the stiff uniform.
“Stop fussing,” she ordered as she looked him over with a critical eye. “It makes you look distinguished. Like a real captain instead of a kid pretending to be one.”
He bared his teeth at her little dig and played along with her efforts to lighten the tension. Waggling his thick brows, he shot her a smirking smile.
“Yeah, but the gold shirt really makes my eyes pop, doncha’ think?”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh and gave him a gentle swat on the back of the head.
“You’re going to do great,” she assured him, seeing past the cocky exterior to the nerves jumping beneath the surface. “This isn’t your first interview,” she reminded him.
“I know. But it’s the first one…” He broke off with a little grunt of frustration. “I thought I had buried that part of my life until he showed up onboard.” He stared at a distant point over her head.
“This is going to define who I am in people’s minds for the rest of my life,” he sighed.
She let out a soft laugh and shook her head.
“There’s so much more to you than this one thing.” And with a pointed glance, she reached out to straighten the various ribbons and medals fastened over the left breast of his uniform thinking that there were already so many more there than should be decorating the chest of a man of his young age.
Resting her fingertips against the commendation he had received for his actions during their encounter with the Narada, she stretched up onto her toes and brushed her lips across the corner of his in a friendly good luck kiss.
“Get through this,” she told him, “and when you’re done you can change back into your civvies and I’ll take you out to dinner. I know a great burger and a beer place that you’ll love.”
Friendship - and the glimmer of perhaps something more - shone in her eyes, provoking the first genuine smile she had seen from him in over a month.
Their intense study of one another was broken by the sound of the producer calling his name and beckoning him to the set.
“You’ll wait here?”
“I’ll be right here,” she confirmed.
Standing in the wings, she positioned herself behind the shoulder of the host, directly in his line of sight.
One more ordeal for him to get through but he wouldn’t do it alone.
End
Notes:
I’m certainly not the first to think it would be interesting to play with the episode Conscience of a King in the JJ-verse. I wanted to keep some of the core facts but also tweak some others, the most important to me being how would things change with reboot-Kirk, i.e., a younger Kirk faced with this situation? Would he be more inclined to bring his crew into his confidence than TOS-Kirk? That was the root of the idea and this is what came of it.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Nyota Uhura, James Kirk (Spock, McCoy)
Disclaimer: Characters and canon belong to Paramount, Roddenberry, Abrams and many others, but not me. All rights reserved. No copyright infringement intended. No profit is made by the author.
Summary: She felt his hand grope for hers as they awaited the conclusion of the tribunal. Twisting her hand, she pressed her palm to his, threading their fingers together as the verdict of a life sentence at a maximum security penal settlement was read
She was there - curled up beside him throughout the remainder of the night, listening when he needed to talk and falling into a fitful sleep when he was quiet. She slipped away in the early morning hours, returning to her quarters to assemble her notes into a concise and coherent report. Showering and changing into a duty uniform, she contacted the captain, bullying an agreement from him to meet her in the officer’s mess for breakfast.
She was there later that morning, hovering nearby when he summoned McCoy and Spock to his quarters. Folding her arms tightly around her middle, she stood in a corner and watched the two men react. Spock’s hands clenched into fists at his sides and his dark eyes - usually the most overtly expressive and human part of him - went flat and black with tightly controlled rage.
In contrast, the doctor’s habitual scowl fell away as a spasm of anguish crossed his craggy features. Closing the distance between them, he curved one hand over the back of the captain’s neck and lowering his head, murmured quiet reassurance to his friend.
She was there - waiting with Spock and McCoy in the hall outside the captain’s quarters as he contacted Starfleet. Prowling about in a tight circle, her anxiety was evident in each quick and precise step taken. Spock stood quietly - a graven statue near the entrance to the captain’s quarters - and McCoy’s face bore its familiar glower as he stared daggers at the door as if offended by the barrier it created between him and his friend.
Relief outweighed nerves as she was finally summoned to speak to the assembled brass. Taking a position behind the captain’s shoulder, she was a bolstering presence. Lending her voice and expertise, she explained in detail the data she had compiled and the conclusions she had reached in support of the captain’s own findings.
And she was there - again with Spock and McCoy - forming a wall of support behind the captain as he entered Kodos’ quarters flanked on either side by his security chief and another member of his team. She listened as the captain explained the charges being leveled against the former governor, noted the resigned look on the older man’s face as he extended an arm to McCoy so that blood could be drawn to complete a DNA profile while Kirk ordered him restricted to quarters until such time as they reached the nearest star base from where he would be transported back to Earth to face a tribunal.
Uhura watched, first with curiosity, as Kodos’ daughter pled with the captain, tears swimming in her stunned blue eyes as she tried to explain that surely he was mistaken; that he had the wrong man. Her father was not a monster, not a man capable of the crimes they described. Curiosity changed to disgust as Lenore shifted from damsel-in-distress to seductress, breasts pressed against the captain’s arm, fingers trailing over his gold shirt, beseeching him in breathy-voiced entreaty.
When the captain stepped back, awkwardly brushing off the young woman’s unwelcome advances, Uhura felt disgust give way to simmering anger as Kirk’s head snapped back from the force of Lenore’s open palm cracking across his cheek and the seductress disappeared into a wild-eyed hellion. Spitting with rage, she hurled biting invectives at the captain. Leaping forward, hands curled into talons, she raked her nails across his face. Ducking and twisting, she eluded security and lurched toward the captain again only to find her path blocked.
Eyes flashing, Uhura wrapped a hand around the younger woman’s wrist in an iron grip.
“Don’t.” The warning was issued with low-voiced fury.
“Lenore, please.”
Face crumpling at the sound of her father’s quiet entreaty, Lenore tore free from Uhura and hurled herself into his arms. Weeping hysterically, she begged him to explain that they were mistaken, pleaded with him not to allow them to take him from her. Spinning away, she collapsed on the floor and everyone watched in horror as she threw her arms around the captain’s boots, her pleas growing increasingly manic and frenzied.
Kirk tore his shell-shocked gaze away from the sobbing woman at his feet and turned desperate eyes towards the others. McCoy dug a hypo from his kit and stepped forward. Administering the drug with gentle hands, he waited a moment for the sedative to take effect, and then nodded to security.
“Take her to sickbay,” he instructed and Uhura watched now with compassion as the quietly sobbing girl was led unresisting from the room.
A movement beside her caught her eye and she saw the captain wipe a shaking hand over his face. Squaring his shoulders with deliberation, he left the room without a backward glance, flanked by Spock and the doctor. Following them, she looked over her shoulder. Ruthlessly quelling the rising sense of pity, she called up a mental image of a sick and emaciated young Jim Kirk to block out the sight of the stoop-shouldered old man weeping quietly into his hands.
*******
She was there at the tribunal as an expert witness, again explaining in laymen’s terms the methods she had used to compare the voiceprints - the science as well as her own experience and innate talent.
“Lieutenant, please tell the court the conclusion you reached.”
“All data and information leads to only one possible conclusion. The man posing as Anton Karidian for the last fourteen years is, without a doubt, the former Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.”
“And you have no doubts?”
She glanced across the room. Kodos sat at the defense table alone, with only his legal representative for company. There was no family, no friends seated nearby. The Karidian players had disbanded, his fellow actors abandoning him when they realized who they had been keeping company with all those years. His only living relative had suffered a psychotic break and was being treated at a hospital where she muttered and laughed, incessantly plotting in manic detail the deaths of the survivors of the Tarsus massacre who could identify her father.
“Lieutenant?” the prosecutor prodded, and Uhura shook off any thoughts of Lenore suffering in her madness and focused on the father instead.
“No, sir. I am one hundred percent certain of my conclusions.” Confidence rang in her tone and the proud tilt of her head.
She remained at the witness stand while the defense counsel picked and probed at her testimony, trying without success, to find a hole or a flaw in the evidence she presented. When at last she was excused, she stepped down and returned to her seat with the captain and McCoy who had also been called as witnesses for the prosecution.
She watched with pride as the captain withstood grueling hours of testimony, never once flinching under the onslaught of memories evoked as he was prompted to recall the traumatic events which had taken place so many years prior and to describe for the judge, panel members and everyone else in the courtroom what life on the colony had been like before, during and after the massacre and how it was that he had been able to connect the acclaimed thespian with the man who had allegedly masterminded the deaths of thousands.
She felt his hand grope for hers as they awaited the conclusion of the tribunal. Twisting her hand, she pressed her palm to his, threading their fingers together and as the verdict of a life sentence at a maximum security penal settlement was read, she felt the shudder of relief that quaked through his rigid frame.
************
A week later, Uhura stood with Kirk rolling her eyes as he ran a finger around the tight collar of the dress grays he wore and complained about the lack of comfort offered by the stiff uniform.
“Stop fussing,” she ordered as she looked him over with a critical eye. “It makes you look distinguished. Like a real captain instead of a kid pretending to be one.”
He bared his teeth at her little dig and played along with her efforts to lighten the tension. Waggling his thick brows, he shot her a smirking smile.
“Yeah, but the gold shirt really makes my eyes pop, doncha’ think?”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh and gave him a gentle swat on the back of the head.
“You’re going to do great,” she assured him, seeing past the cocky exterior to the nerves jumping beneath the surface. “This isn’t your first interview,” she reminded him.
“I know. But it’s the first one…” He broke off with a little grunt of frustration. “I thought I had buried that part of my life until he showed up onboard.” He stared at a distant point over her head.
“This is going to define who I am in people’s minds for the rest of my life,” he sighed.
She let out a soft laugh and shook her head.
“There’s so much more to you than this one thing.” And with a pointed glance, she reached out to straighten the various ribbons and medals fastened over the left breast of his uniform thinking that there were already so many more there than should be decorating the chest of a man of his young age.
Resting her fingertips against the commendation he had received for his actions during their encounter with the Narada, she stretched up onto her toes and brushed her lips across the corner of his in a friendly good luck kiss.
“Get through this,” she told him, “and when you’re done you can change back into your civvies and I’ll take you out to dinner. I know a great burger and a beer place that you’ll love.”
Friendship - and the glimmer of perhaps something more - shone in her eyes, provoking the first genuine smile she had seen from him in over a month.
Their intense study of one another was broken by the sound of the producer calling his name and beckoning him to the set.
“You’ll wait here?”
“I’ll be right here,” she confirmed.
Standing in the wings, she positioned herself behind the shoulder of the host, directly in his line of sight.
One more ordeal for him to get through but he wouldn’t do it alone.
End
Notes:
I’m certainly not the first to think it would be interesting to play with the episode Conscience of a King in the JJ-verse. I wanted to keep some of the core facts but also tweak some others, the most important to me being how would things change with reboot-Kirk, i.e., a younger Kirk faced with this situation? Would he be more inclined to bring his crew into his confidence than TOS-Kirk? That was the root of the idea and this is what came of it.