Fic:: Engagements [Star Trek (2009)]
Just a quick one, while I procrastinate on purimgifts and revision.
Fic:: Engagements
by Raven
PG-13, Star Trek, gen. McCoy, Spock, Uhura and Sarek. McCoy is singing in the shower, these days; Spock has a last appointment to keep.
The flowers were wilting in the boxes. McCoy had never thought he was the kind of man to have windowboxes, and he still didn't; but he wandered around the apartment pushing up the screens, pouring water on them with an old-fashioned watering-can. Some of them seemed like they were perking up, but it was maybe just the breeze. It was a short-term rental, anyway. Probably best if the flowers didn't die before the real owner came back.
He lingered by the window when the plants were tended. The wind off the water was soft on his face; it made him think of the great curve of the bay, getting bigger and bigger below a descending shuttlecraft. There was no city that looked quite like San Francisco, particularly from the air. They still didn't build tall.
The computer bleeped. "Incoming transmission."
"Yeah, go on." McCoy looked over the box at the street below, watched the sunset reflected over and over in the glass in the windows opposite.
"Doctor McCoy," said the audio, and McCoy set the can down and went over to the viewscreen. It was Spock's voice. After a moment he appeared, and there was something different about him, something McCoy couldn't put his finger on for a moment - then he looked carefully at the collar and got it. Spock in civilian clothes, a quiet wonder for this quiet evening. He sat back in the chair.
"Doctor McCoy," Spock said again, and he looked distracted for a moment by something behind him, looked back at McCoy. "Are you occupied this evening?"
"Occupied?" McCoy said, stupidly.
"Do you have any engagements?"
"Engagements. No." McCoy was feeling strange, himself; a little unearthly, a little hypnotised by flowers in windowboxes, unexpected questions, a distracted Spock, a summer sky.
"That is…" - again, the distraction; what was it, out of sight? - "good. That is good. I wish you to know, that it is not a summons. It is not" - pause, while he said something to someone offscreen - "mandatory." Another pause. "I am being called away. My apologies."
"Spock," McCoy began, but he was gone and McCoy hadn't really expected otherwise. A mystery, then. He sat still a moment, spun in his chair, looked out again at the window. The light was bleeding away now, faster and faster; the computer was already turning on the dimmest of the electric lights. Engagements. He hadn't any engagements. The day had been busy enough; he'd spent it at Starfleet Medical, supposedly attending a conference on cross-species disease transmission, but he hadn't made it to that many of the panels, he hadn’t been presenting. It didn't bother him, really. They were all doing it; Uhura was teaching, part-time, at the Academy, Chekov was taking advanced flight courses - his time as a cadet having been cut tragically short, McCoy recalled wryly - but they had it in common, that feeling of being driftwood, carried along by time and space.
Jim had to be different, of course. McCoy grinned to himself at the thought. The new, refurbished Enterprise was setting out for a fresh five-year mission in the new year, and the rest of her crew were taking the time out on Earth, but he was spending all his time in orbit, pretty much, pestering the engineers in drydock, making suggestions about this, that and the other, impossible to prise away from his precious ship.
The computer bleeped again. Someone at the door, this time. Blinking confusedly, McCoy went to open it and found no one, but a card left on the mat. It was made of rag paper, with real ink - when was the last time he'd been sent something so pointedly, formally archaic? - with a message written in a heavy, careful hand. Doctor Leonard McCoy, it read. We would be honoured to have your presence at our meal this evening. An incomprehensible signature in another script. Then, printed below, almost as an afterthought: Sarek, Vulcan ambassador to the United Federation of Planets.
Not mandatory, Spock had said. McCoy stood there, holding the card, thinking about it. Then he went to shave.
*
"We dine simply this evening," Sarek said, and so it seemed; an aide had brought through a starter, plomeek soup and unleavened bread, food McCoy had seen Spock choose on the Enterprise a thousand times. "I hope you are not disappointed."
"Not at all," McCoy said quickly, smiling a little. The room, somewhere in Sarek's private residence within the embassy, was decorated in the classic Vulcan style, with bright artworks on white walls, and the company was small: himself, Spock, Sarek and Uhura. Almost - and the thought fit oddly in his mind - as thought it were just for family.
Sarek was pouring wine, an Earth vintage, and passing glasses around the table. "Allow me to be the first to offer you congratulations," he said, setting down the bottle.
"Congratulations?" McCoy said. "On what?"
"On your daughter's engagement," Sarek said, and almost smiled.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Uhura demanded, grinning.
At her expression, McCoy laughed. "But I hadn't - I was going to wait till you were all together - oh, damn you, Spock, how did you know?"
"You impugn my son, Doctor," Sarek said, still with that hint of a smile. "Forgive me; T'Lara's mother is a cousin of mine. I wish them joy, and only wish they could have been here this evening, also."
McCoy laughed again and took a sip of the wine. "Thank you, sir. So do I, but they're out on fieldwork. Not that I haven't seen a lot of them, these past few months, I shouldn't be complaining. But I will anyway."
Sarek raised his eyebrows. "Believe me, Doctor, I understand what it is to have a child far away from me."
Spock looked a little uncomfortable, but McCoy was smiling, warmed by more than wine; he'd been into space, and Joanna had grown up. She was beautiful, now, and sometimes she spoke too fast for him to understand. She'd been working with the Vulcans on colony infrastructure, growing flowers in deserts. She'd slammed into his apartment one summer evening to say she was marrying T'Lara, daughter of the House of Surak, and if he didn't like it well fuck him anyway.
He hadn't known what to do, so he'd sent them flowers, ones of a type he knew were also grown by Vulcans, and lately he'd started singing in the shower. He was grinning now, stupidly, and he knew it, and Spock and Uhura were looking amused, but he supposed he'd just best get used to it.
"Speaking of people who aren't here," he said at length, "I take it you haven't been able to contact Jim, either?"
Spock nodded. "That is correct, Doctor. I understand he is working on the Enterprise at present. Otherwise I would have asked him to attend this evening."
"Something about safety protocols," McCoy said. "I think that means they get him to do the craziest thing he can think of, and they watch to see if the ship blows up."
Uhura laughed. "I would disagree and say I'm sure that's not what they're doing, but we all know that would be a lie."
Sarek raised an eyebrow. McCoy wondered if the ambassadorial dinners he attended were usually like this, and was saved from the thought by the arrival of the main course. It was brightly coloured, full of fresh vegetables, with the odd Earth-based garnish - McCoy remembered Sarek's unaccountable fondness for tofu - and he approved of it. At least on the professional level. A family meal, he thought again. The last one he'd had was when they told Joanna about the divorce.
While they were eating, talking of inconsequential, cheerful things, Sarek rose and moved to the wall. He touched something and one of the artworks disappeared with no sound - a hologram, McCoy realised. Beneath it was an array of machinery he didn't recognise. "Do not be concerned," Sarek said, seeing him look. "Do not allow me to interfere with your conversation."
Uhura looked momentarily uneasy, but went on. "So, I was teaching the basic class this afternoon - you know, the absolute basic class? Not even communications or linguistics, just how to say hello, don't shoot me in a number of galactic languages in case the universal translator goes out."
"I did it," McCoy said, reminiscently. "I told the only Andorian in the class I wanted to bear her children." A pause. "Theirs is a very tonal language." Another pause. "And she did have very attractive antennae."
Spock raised one eyebrow. "I recall a certain difficulty with a particular dialect spoken on Tellar."
"You, Spock?" McCoy raised an eyebrow back at him. "You, a difficulty with something? I'm shocked."
Spock ignored him. "Tellarite language is heavily based on…"
"Gestures, yes," Uhura said, and her hands moved in fluid loops. "Don't tell me, you waved right instead of left and said something about your partner's personal hygiene."
"Something of that order." Spock gave McCoy his best mildly amused look.
"So, anyway, I thought we'd start with an easy icebreaking exercise." She looked at them both. "Tell me the opening of the Federation Charter."
"We, the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…" McCoy recited, above a counterpoint of Spock's considerably better enunciation.
She sighed. "Then I asked them to say it without their translators on and translate it into their neighbour's language the old-fashioned way.
"And?"
"Two punch-ups, several accusations of political slander - did you know the Bolian translation calls it the metaphorical intestinal disease of war? - and I'm pretty sure a couple of Betazoid girls were ignoring it all and having telepathic sex in the corner."
McCoy laughed, and Spock leaned back in his chair and said, evenly as still water, "They came to the Academy for an education."
"Excuse me," Sarek said, softly, and they turned to look at him. "I am afraid that this is the time I must interrupt."
Uhura drew in a sharp breath; every trace of emotion smoothed out of Spock's face. McCoy was suddenly feeling cold.
Sarek touched a panel. Suddenly, a hologram appeared, a beautiful three-dimensional image of interstellar space overlaying the surfaces of the room; McCoy echoed the sharp breath as the stars glowed across Uhura's face. Sarek drew his hands together, and the image followed his movements, bringing them closer and closer to an individual star, glowing yellow, its solar system rolling into sight. McCoy could see two planets clearly, a desert world as the innermost and another that was blue with surface ice. They revolved silently, solemnly through the air. No one spoke.
"It is a representation," Sarek said after a few moments. "It uses data from the satellite net, and is not perhaps accurate enough for scientific purposes, but I thought it was preferable to mere data on a viewscreen."
"I don't understand," McCoy said, and then he recognised the world, red as rust, rotating around a yellow star, and he understood.
Uhura looked more serious then he had ever seen her, and more old. "Vulcan," she said.
Spock had been still. Placing a hand on Uhura's, he said, "It is not yet time."
There is no sound in a vacuum. They waited, feeling the passage of time as a slow-moving, palpable weight, and it happened without foreshadow or warning. McCoy watched it as though in the absolute silence of space, the red world beginning to flicker, to falter, to collapse into nothing, to boil down into shockwaves that crashed through the system, that fluttered the edges of the sun. It took mere minutes. The stars still shone all around; there were still plates on the table, and in the room the sound of breathing.
"Until this moment, my son, you had always been a child of two worlds."
Sarek's voice had come as close to emotional as he would hear it in a lifetime, McCoy knew; and thought, with a great, weary exhaustion, that in no more lifetimes would Vulcan ever be seen from Earth.
At length, he said, slowly, not trusting his voice, "Was this why you asked..."
"The Romulan political situation," Sarek said, sounding tired but ordinary. "It would not be aided by planetwide commemoration. And we are a silent people, a private people. Our grief is our own. But you are our own, Doctor. You were there, too."
"Your friendship honours me," McCoy said, and meant it.
After that there wasn't anything to say; after that, he couldn't very well thank them for a lovely evening. But he was silent with their silence, and in silent concordance he and Uhura cleared away the plates, the glasses, stepping quietly through the sphere of stars.
*
Outside, the night air was fresh with rain. Spock and Uhura were heading towards home, and McCoy would have to walk through the city to his little rental apartment, with the windowboxes. He would write to Joanna before bed, he had decided. But there was something else, first.
"Spock. Why didn't you ask Jim?"
"He was on a mission," Spock said, evenly, and through the blurring drizzle McCoy saw Uhura roll her eyes. "I did not wish to take him away from it for a matter of trivial importance."
"A matter of - Spock, you know this wasn't a matter of trivial importance! You know he'd have come back planetside in a moment, if you'd only told him. Didn't you want him to be there?"
"It was not the time." Spock looked at him steadily. "He is happy, preparing his ship. Your daughter and her intended, they are happy. I am" - he looked at Uhura, the street lights reflecting strangely in the dark of his eyes - "happy. This is not the time to take him away from joy."
"But you could take me?" McCoy demanded.
It was a real smile, luminous in the dim light. "I told you it was not a summons."
"Sixteen years," Uhura said suddenly. "The last of Vulcan's light has been moving through space for sixteen years. "
"We have had our time," Spock said. He was standing straight, still, and not for the first time McCoy saw echoes of Uhura in him, something of her strength. They had had their time, too; to grow into a greater sum than two. The rain was a gentle benediction.
A time to mourn, McCoy thought, and a time to dance, kicking through the puddles towards home.
finis
Fic:: Engagements
by Raven
PG-13, Star Trek, gen. McCoy, Spock, Uhura and Sarek. McCoy is singing in the shower, these days; Spock has a last appointment to keep.
The flowers were wilting in the boxes. McCoy had never thought he was the kind of man to have windowboxes, and he still didn't; but he wandered around the apartment pushing up the screens, pouring water on them with an old-fashioned watering-can. Some of them seemed like they were perking up, but it was maybe just the breeze. It was a short-term rental, anyway. Probably best if the flowers didn't die before the real owner came back.
He lingered by the window when the plants were tended. The wind off the water was soft on his face; it made him think of the great curve of the bay, getting bigger and bigger below a descending shuttlecraft. There was no city that looked quite like San Francisco, particularly from the air. They still didn't build tall.
The computer bleeped. "Incoming transmission."
"Yeah, go on." McCoy looked over the box at the street below, watched the sunset reflected over and over in the glass in the windows opposite.
"Doctor McCoy," said the audio, and McCoy set the can down and went over to the viewscreen. It was Spock's voice. After a moment he appeared, and there was something different about him, something McCoy couldn't put his finger on for a moment - then he looked carefully at the collar and got it. Spock in civilian clothes, a quiet wonder for this quiet evening. He sat back in the chair.
"Doctor McCoy," Spock said again, and he looked distracted for a moment by something behind him, looked back at McCoy. "Are you occupied this evening?"
"Occupied?" McCoy said, stupidly.
"Do you have any engagements?"
"Engagements. No." McCoy was feeling strange, himself; a little unearthly, a little hypnotised by flowers in windowboxes, unexpected questions, a distracted Spock, a summer sky.
"That is…" - again, the distraction; what was it, out of sight? - "good. That is good. I wish you to know, that it is not a summons. It is not" - pause, while he said something to someone offscreen - "mandatory." Another pause. "I am being called away. My apologies."
"Spock," McCoy began, but he was gone and McCoy hadn't really expected otherwise. A mystery, then. He sat still a moment, spun in his chair, looked out again at the window. The light was bleeding away now, faster and faster; the computer was already turning on the dimmest of the electric lights. Engagements. He hadn't any engagements. The day had been busy enough; he'd spent it at Starfleet Medical, supposedly attending a conference on cross-species disease transmission, but he hadn't made it to that many of the panels, he hadn’t been presenting. It didn't bother him, really. They were all doing it; Uhura was teaching, part-time, at the Academy, Chekov was taking advanced flight courses - his time as a cadet having been cut tragically short, McCoy recalled wryly - but they had it in common, that feeling of being driftwood, carried along by time and space.
Jim had to be different, of course. McCoy grinned to himself at the thought. The new, refurbished Enterprise was setting out for a fresh five-year mission in the new year, and the rest of her crew were taking the time out on Earth, but he was spending all his time in orbit, pretty much, pestering the engineers in drydock, making suggestions about this, that and the other, impossible to prise away from his precious ship.
The computer bleeped again. Someone at the door, this time. Blinking confusedly, McCoy went to open it and found no one, but a card left on the mat. It was made of rag paper, with real ink - when was the last time he'd been sent something so pointedly, formally archaic? - with a message written in a heavy, careful hand. Doctor Leonard McCoy, it read. We would be honoured to have your presence at our meal this evening. An incomprehensible signature in another script. Then, printed below, almost as an afterthought: Sarek, Vulcan ambassador to the United Federation of Planets.
Not mandatory, Spock had said. McCoy stood there, holding the card, thinking about it. Then he went to shave.
*
"We dine simply this evening," Sarek said, and so it seemed; an aide had brought through a starter, plomeek soup and unleavened bread, food McCoy had seen Spock choose on the Enterprise a thousand times. "I hope you are not disappointed."
"Not at all," McCoy said quickly, smiling a little. The room, somewhere in Sarek's private residence within the embassy, was decorated in the classic Vulcan style, with bright artworks on white walls, and the company was small: himself, Spock, Sarek and Uhura. Almost - and the thought fit oddly in his mind - as thought it were just for family.
Sarek was pouring wine, an Earth vintage, and passing glasses around the table. "Allow me to be the first to offer you congratulations," he said, setting down the bottle.
"Congratulations?" McCoy said. "On what?"
"On your daughter's engagement," Sarek said, and almost smiled.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Uhura demanded, grinning.
At her expression, McCoy laughed. "But I hadn't - I was going to wait till you were all together - oh, damn you, Spock, how did you know?"
"You impugn my son, Doctor," Sarek said, still with that hint of a smile. "Forgive me; T'Lara's mother is a cousin of mine. I wish them joy, and only wish they could have been here this evening, also."
McCoy laughed again and took a sip of the wine. "Thank you, sir. So do I, but they're out on fieldwork. Not that I haven't seen a lot of them, these past few months, I shouldn't be complaining. But I will anyway."
Sarek raised his eyebrows. "Believe me, Doctor, I understand what it is to have a child far away from me."
Spock looked a little uncomfortable, but McCoy was smiling, warmed by more than wine; he'd been into space, and Joanna had grown up. She was beautiful, now, and sometimes she spoke too fast for him to understand. She'd been working with the Vulcans on colony infrastructure, growing flowers in deserts. She'd slammed into his apartment one summer evening to say she was marrying T'Lara, daughter of the House of Surak, and if he didn't like it well fuck him anyway.
He hadn't known what to do, so he'd sent them flowers, ones of a type he knew were also grown by Vulcans, and lately he'd started singing in the shower. He was grinning now, stupidly, and he knew it, and Spock and Uhura were looking amused, but he supposed he'd just best get used to it.
"Speaking of people who aren't here," he said at length, "I take it you haven't been able to contact Jim, either?"
Spock nodded. "That is correct, Doctor. I understand he is working on the Enterprise at present. Otherwise I would have asked him to attend this evening."
"Something about safety protocols," McCoy said. "I think that means they get him to do the craziest thing he can think of, and they watch to see if the ship blows up."
Uhura laughed. "I would disagree and say I'm sure that's not what they're doing, but we all know that would be a lie."
Sarek raised an eyebrow. McCoy wondered if the ambassadorial dinners he attended were usually like this, and was saved from the thought by the arrival of the main course. It was brightly coloured, full of fresh vegetables, with the odd Earth-based garnish - McCoy remembered Sarek's unaccountable fondness for tofu - and he approved of it. At least on the professional level. A family meal, he thought again. The last one he'd had was when they told Joanna about the divorce.
While they were eating, talking of inconsequential, cheerful things, Sarek rose and moved to the wall. He touched something and one of the artworks disappeared with no sound - a hologram, McCoy realised. Beneath it was an array of machinery he didn't recognise. "Do not be concerned," Sarek said, seeing him look. "Do not allow me to interfere with your conversation."
Uhura looked momentarily uneasy, but went on. "So, I was teaching the basic class this afternoon - you know, the absolute basic class? Not even communications or linguistics, just how to say hello, don't shoot me in a number of galactic languages in case the universal translator goes out."
"I did it," McCoy said, reminiscently. "I told the only Andorian in the class I wanted to bear her children." A pause. "Theirs is a very tonal language." Another pause. "And she did have very attractive antennae."
Spock raised one eyebrow. "I recall a certain difficulty with a particular dialect spoken on Tellar."
"You, Spock?" McCoy raised an eyebrow back at him. "You, a difficulty with something? I'm shocked."
Spock ignored him. "Tellarite language is heavily based on…"
"Gestures, yes," Uhura said, and her hands moved in fluid loops. "Don't tell me, you waved right instead of left and said something about your partner's personal hygiene."
"Something of that order." Spock gave McCoy his best mildly amused look.
"So, anyway, I thought we'd start with an easy icebreaking exercise." She looked at them both. "Tell me the opening of the Federation Charter."
"We, the lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…" McCoy recited, above a counterpoint of Spock's considerably better enunciation.
She sighed. "Then I asked them to say it without their translators on and translate it into their neighbour's language the old-fashioned way.
"And?"
"Two punch-ups, several accusations of political slander - did you know the Bolian translation calls it the metaphorical intestinal disease of war? - and I'm pretty sure a couple of Betazoid girls were ignoring it all and having telepathic sex in the corner."
McCoy laughed, and Spock leaned back in his chair and said, evenly as still water, "They came to the Academy for an education."
"Excuse me," Sarek said, softly, and they turned to look at him. "I am afraid that this is the time I must interrupt."
Uhura drew in a sharp breath; every trace of emotion smoothed out of Spock's face. McCoy was suddenly feeling cold.
Sarek touched a panel. Suddenly, a hologram appeared, a beautiful three-dimensional image of interstellar space overlaying the surfaces of the room; McCoy echoed the sharp breath as the stars glowed across Uhura's face. Sarek drew his hands together, and the image followed his movements, bringing them closer and closer to an individual star, glowing yellow, its solar system rolling into sight. McCoy could see two planets clearly, a desert world as the innermost and another that was blue with surface ice. They revolved silently, solemnly through the air. No one spoke.
"It is a representation," Sarek said after a few moments. "It uses data from the satellite net, and is not perhaps accurate enough for scientific purposes, but I thought it was preferable to mere data on a viewscreen."
"I don't understand," McCoy said, and then he recognised the world, red as rust, rotating around a yellow star, and he understood.
Uhura looked more serious then he had ever seen her, and more old. "Vulcan," she said.
Spock had been still. Placing a hand on Uhura's, he said, "It is not yet time."
There is no sound in a vacuum. They waited, feeling the passage of time as a slow-moving, palpable weight, and it happened without foreshadow or warning. McCoy watched it as though in the absolute silence of space, the red world beginning to flicker, to falter, to collapse into nothing, to boil down into shockwaves that crashed through the system, that fluttered the edges of the sun. It took mere minutes. The stars still shone all around; there were still plates on the table, and in the room the sound of breathing.
"Until this moment, my son, you had always been a child of two worlds."
Sarek's voice had come as close to emotional as he would hear it in a lifetime, McCoy knew; and thought, with a great, weary exhaustion, that in no more lifetimes would Vulcan ever be seen from Earth.
At length, he said, slowly, not trusting his voice, "Was this why you asked..."
"The Romulan political situation," Sarek said, sounding tired but ordinary. "It would not be aided by planetwide commemoration. And we are a silent people, a private people. Our grief is our own. But you are our own, Doctor. You were there, too."
"Your friendship honours me," McCoy said, and meant it.
After that there wasn't anything to say; after that, he couldn't very well thank them for a lovely evening. But he was silent with their silence, and in silent concordance he and Uhura cleared away the plates, the glasses, stepping quietly through the sphere of stars.
*
Outside, the night air was fresh with rain. Spock and Uhura were heading towards home, and McCoy would have to walk through the city to his little rental apartment, with the windowboxes. He would write to Joanna before bed, he had decided. But there was something else, first.
"Spock. Why didn't you ask Jim?"
"He was on a mission," Spock said, evenly, and through the blurring drizzle McCoy saw Uhura roll her eyes. "I did not wish to take him away from it for a matter of trivial importance."
"A matter of - Spock, you know this wasn't a matter of trivial importance! You know he'd have come back planetside in a moment, if you'd only told him. Didn't you want him to be there?"
"It was not the time." Spock looked at him steadily. "He is happy, preparing his ship. Your daughter and her intended, they are happy. I am" - he looked at Uhura, the street lights reflecting strangely in the dark of his eyes - "happy. This is not the time to take him away from joy."
"But you could take me?" McCoy demanded.
It was a real smile, luminous in the dim light. "I told you it was not a summons."
"Sixteen years," Uhura said suddenly. "The last of Vulcan's light has been moving through space for sixteen years. "
"We have had our time," Spock said. He was standing straight, still, and not for the first time McCoy saw echoes of Uhura in him, something of her strength. They had had their time, too; to grow into a greater sum than two. The rain was a gentle benediction.
A time to mourn, McCoy thought, and a time to dance, kicking through the puddles towards home.
finis