Fic: Tectonic Shift (3/7) (PG-13, Star Trek XI)
Title: Tectonic Shift (3/7)
Pairing(s): Kirk and Uhura friendship, some Uhura/Spock, implied prime!verse Kirk/Spock (Pre-K/S/U, if you squint.)
Rating: PG-13, for naughty words.
Disclaimer: Belongs to Paramount, I believe. Not to me. If it were mine, I couldn't abuse it like this, and therefore I'm glad it isn't.
Warnings: Naughty words, TOS canon used in twisty ways for the Reboot!verse, manipulation of a certain not quite canon Enterprise fact, and a lot of talking.
Notes: Notes in Part 1. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone.
Summary: Kirk and Uhura finally hash out their differences. Too bad it takes a natural disaster to get them to do it.
Three
"You're not talking, Kirk."
Jim opened his eyes to see Uhura leaning in the doorway, one slender leg that he was definitely not looking at crossed casually over the other. She had the map out and was studying it again, head bent, her whole form silhouetted by the auxiliary lighting in the corridor. The words ‘Spock' and ‘luckiest bastard in Starfleet' crossed his mind again briefly.
"Why do I have to do all the talking?"
"Because you're the one with a concussion, and I'm trying to keep you from falling asleep."
"I wasn't falling asleep." It wasn't a lie. He was merely resting his eyes and letting his consciousness drift towards that dark, quiet place. He'd gone woozy after they walked for twenty minutes or so, and Uhura had insisted he rest for a little while as soon as they came to a place she deemed acceptable to stop. That happened to be the artisan district, and it turned out the ancient Elagabalan upholsters really knew how to pad a couch or divan or whatever the hell it was he was sprawled on.
"Talk to me, Kirk," Uhura said with enough steel in her voice to make him wonder why she was wearing red and not gold.
Jim sighed. "Fine. I have a question for you."
She didn't even hesitate. "No."
"Come on. It's not about sex, I promise. Turning over a new leaf, here, remember?"
Uhura sighed in exasperation. "Okay, fine. Go ahead. But I reserve the right not to answer."
"Of course." He paused, trying to think of the best way to ask, and finally, settled on, "So, if you don't like me, why did you request the Enterprise?"
She jerked her eyes up from the map. "If you're wondering if it's because that's where Spock was assigned--"
He wasn't, actually, but she was certainly quick to jump to that conclusion. Now he had to ask. "Was it?"
"No. My career has always come first." She returned her attention to the map, but he was pretty sure she wasn't actually looking at it anymore. "Besides, when I requested to stay onboard, I thought he was going to the Vulcan colony."
"Then why?"
She folded up the map and slipped it back inside of her sleeve where she had been keeping it. "We should get going. I think we only have another half mile to go."
Oh, avoidance behavior, now. Interesting. "You're not going to answer my question, are you?"
She stepped out into the passage and looked off into the distance as if she could see anything in all that darkness. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to stay still much longer."
"Actually, we're probably doing more damage than good with all the walking. Concussions are usually treated with rest." He shifted around in an attempt to find a position that reduced the throbbing in his head. No dice there, but at least the rest of his body was more comfortable. "I should rest a little more, and you should at least tell me why you don't want to answer my question."
Uhura whipped her head around and glared him. "For God's sake, Kirk, can we just walk?" Her voice was so loud that Jim flinched, and even Uhura looked a little startled by her outburst as the echo bounced down the passageway and deeper into the mountain. She took a deep breath then said in a more reasonable tone, "Please?"
"Yeah. Okay." Damn, he'd pushed too far again. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," she said, drifting back into the room. "Need some help?" She was going hot and cold on him again; he wished she'd pick one emotion and stick with it.
"I don't think so." Jim sat forward, his body already protesting the movement. He took a deep breath, braced himself for the inevitable pain, hauled himself up --
-- and nearly toppled over in a bright wash of pain and vertigo. One minute, he was sure the stone floor was coming up at him, then suddenly Uhura was there, arm around his waist, talking to him, telling him it was all right, to just give it a minute and for god's sake don't pass out. He leaned against her, letting her support him, one arm over her shoulder, his forehead against her temple, breathing in her mingled scent of dust, sweat, and that vanilla perfume.
"I'm okay," he said when he could talk again. He may not have brain damage, but it was one hell of a concussion. "Really, I'm okay."
"Kirk, I was wrong. We shouldn't do any more walking."
"No." He drew himself up and put more of his weight on his own two feet. His head was still swimming, but he could keep moving, even though he knew he wasn't up to walking on his own yet. He could. He had to. "You said we were close. Let's get there, and then I'll rest."
"I really don't think-"
"Do I need to make it an order?"
"Fine," she said sharply, adjusted her grip on his waist, and pulled him forward. "I'm warning you, though. If you die, and McCoy kills me for letting that happen, I will pursue you through the afterlife like the gadfly after Io."
"Your anger will be of mythic proportions," he said as she maneuvered him back into the corridor and got them moving again. "Got it."
"There will be epic poems and everything."
"I'll keep that in mind. But I don't think it will come to that. Walking seems to help clear my head."
"If you say so."
She sounded skeptical, but the vertigo really was clearing out, and the headache was receding back into the dull throb it had been before he stood. Unfortunately, this was only a short grace period before the affects of the concussion made themselves known again. He was deteriorating so quickly that at this point, he was moving purely on willpower, and eventually, even that wasn't going to be enough to keep him going. Uhura certainly wouldn't be able to carry him, and their only chance of getting out of this alive - amendment: Jim's only chance of getting out of this alive - was the exit up ahead. Here was hoping their luck maintained and the earthquake hadn't blocked the exit with a cave in or something like that.
"So, do you know who Hoshi Sato is?"
Uhura's voice startled him out of his thoughts. Jim glanced at her. Her eyes were on the ground in front of them, the corners of her mouth turned down slightly, her brows furrowed. She was thinking hard on something, probably this Hoshi Sato, and he wondered why she had brought her up.
"No. The name seems familiar, but I can't place it."
"Hoshi Sato was the first communications officer on the Enterprise NX-01." The passage was widening, the ceiling was rising, and their voices were beginning to echo around them, giving him a sense of increasing space ahead. "The communications building at the Academy is named after her."
"Ah, yeah. Okay. What about her?"
"She taught me Romulan."
The statement seemed to be the beginning of something more, he had no idea what, but he could feel it, lingering there between them, unspoken but eager to be said.
"She was our neighbor when I was ten." Uhura smiled sadly; Jim could tell by that smile alone that Hoshi Sato had been important to her. "She was well into her hundreds by then. My mother was away on a dig that year, and my father worked long hours, so she often watched me after school. She was amazing. Absolutely amazing. She would tell me stories about serving on the Enterprise and exploring the galaxy and meeting Vulcans and Klingons, and I could listen to her for hours. By the time she died, there was nothing else I wanted to do more than become a xenolinguist and join Starfleet."
Uhura fell silent again, and though Jim knew she wasn't finished yet, he resisted his desire to urge her on. He was getting an answer to his question, deeper and more interesting than expected, and now would probably be an excellent time to keep his mouth shut.
"As soon as I heard that they were rebuilding the Enterprise," she said at last, just when Jim was starting to think she really wasn't going to finish, "I knew that was where I was going to serve and nothing was going to stop me. I didn't let Spock put me on the Farragut, and I was certainly not going to let some Iowa farm boy who couldn't keep his eyes to himself keep me from requesting the Enterprise as my permanent assignment."
Fascinating, as Spock would say. He had just learned a lot of very interesting information about Uhura in a very short time. He could think of half a dozen questions to ask off the top of his head, but his instincts were telling him not to push right now, and his instincts rarely steered him wrong. So he sighed forlornly instead, as if she had just broken his heart. "And here I thought you requested the Enterprise because you were madly in love with me."
He could practically hear her roll her eyes at him. "Dream on, Kirk. Although…"
Oh, this sounded interesting. "Yes?"
"It's not horrible, serving under you. You're not a half bad Captain when you're using your powers for good instead of evil."
Jim tried to keep the grin off his face. Wonders really would never cease. Nyota Uhura was actually complimenting him in a back handed sort of way, but in the interests of all the bridge mending they were doing, he wasn't going to gloat about it. "Oh, stop. Your faint praise is overwhelming me."
"Someone has to keep that ego in check." Her voice was deadpan, but when Jim glanced her way, he saw a teasing little smile curling her lips.
"Trust me, between you, Bones, and Spock, I'm lucky I still have one." They had come to a wide stairway leading upwards, the steps carved into the bedrock of the cave itself. "Let me guess. Up?"
Uhura nodded and readjusted her grip on his waist again. "Up."
The flight was short, thankfully, but by the time they managed to get to the top, Jim was panting.
Uhura was looking at him in concern. "We need to stop."
"No, we're too close." Now he was tugging her forward. If he let her stop him, he didn't think he would move again. "Come on. You can answer another question while we walk."
"What is this, twenty questions?"
"You're the one who wants me to talk."
She huffed impatiently. "Fine. Go ahead."
Jim hesitated a moment. His question might be a bridge burning kind of question, but hell, it wasn't like she absolutely had to answer. "What did you mean when you said that you didn't let Spock put you on the Farragut?"
Dead silence, except for the staccato rap of their footsteps on the stone floor. He hadn't really expected an answer, but of all the things she had said about requesting the Enterprise, that little nugget about Spock had been the one to catch his attention.
"None of my business, huh?"
"Well, no, it isn't, but I'll answer it anyway. When we answered the distress call from Vulcan, I wasn't originally assigned to the Enterprise. Spock assigned me to the Farragut because he was, and I quote, ‘trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism.'"
Jim nodded. "Because of your relationship. I can see why he would be concerned."
"Oh, I know. Believe me, that was something that was always on our minds, and it was a point of contention more than once. But I had several glowing recommendations from my professors for the assignment, and every choice I made at the Academy was meant to get me on the Enterprise, and he assigned me to the Farragut because he was worried we'd be discovered? I hadn't worked that hard just to lose my dream to his squeamishness, so I marched over to him right there in the hanger and made him change it."
She paused, shook her head. "I did apologize for it later. He was trying not to let our private relationship affect our professional relationship, and those assignments were only temporary, made by the commanders in an emergency situation. We both could have been in a great deal of trouble, but I had tunnel vision about being assigned to the Enterprise and I wanted to take any and every opportunity to prove myself and get a permanent assignment.
"No, I would have exactly done the same thing in your position. Don't feel like you were in the wrong. He knew that the Enterprise was your goal and he was the one who made his decision based on your relationship instead of your qualifications." And that was actually pretty hilarious, Spock trying to hide the quasi-unethical relationship with his teaching assistant, but Jim had a better sense of self-preservation than to mention his amusement to Uhura, especially since she was so torn about it. "And between the two of us, your way of getting onto the Enterprise wasn't anywhere near as career damaging or as unprofessional as mine." Jim hesitated, then added, "Besides, you know that if you hadn't-"
"Yeah," she said, cutting him off. "I've thought about it. And I can't keep from wondering who went in my place instead."
Survivor's guilt. Between the lost starships and Vulcan, there wasn't a person who had been on the Enterprise who didn't feel some measure of guilt for surviving it when so many others hadn't.
"Uhura?"
"What?"
"I'm glad you didn't let Spock put you on the Farragut."
She didn't reply, just frowned and nodded her head.
They walked the rest of the way in solemn silence, their shadows stalking along the walls beside them.
Part One, in which there is a natural disaster.
Part Two, in which there is hashing out.
Pairing(s): Kirk and Uhura friendship, some Uhura/Spock, implied prime!verse Kirk/Spock (Pre-K/S/U, if you squint.)
Rating: PG-13, for naughty words.
Disclaimer: Belongs to Paramount, I believe. Not to me. If it were mine, I couldn't abuse it like this, and therefore I'm glad it isn't.
Warnings: Naughty words, TOS canon used in twisty ways for the Reboot!verse, manipulation of a certain not quite canon Enterprise fact, and a lot of talking.
Notes: Notes in Part 1. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone.
Summary: Kirk and Uhura finally hash out their differences. Too bad it takes a natural disaster to get them to do it.
Three
"You're not talking, Kirk."
Jim opened his eyes to see Uhura leaning in the doorway, one slender leg that he was definitely not looking at crossed casually over the other. She had the map out and was studying it again, head bent, her whole form silhouetted by the auxiliary lighting in the corridor. The words ‘Spock' and ‘luckiest bastard in Starfleet' crossed his mind again briefly.
"Why do I have to do all the talking?"
"Because you're the one with a concussion, and I'm trying to keep you from falling asleep."
"I wasn't falling asleep." It wasn't a lie. He was merely resting his eyes and letting his consciousness drift towards that dark, quiet place. He'd gone woozy after they walked for twenty minutes or so, and Uhura had insisted he rest for a little while as soon as they came to a place she deemed acceptable to stop. That happened to be the artisan district, and it turned out the ancient Elagabalan upholsters really knew how to pad a couch or divan or whatever the hell it was he was sprawled on.
"Talk to me, Kirk," Uhura said with enough steel in her voice to make him wonder why she was wearing red and not gold.
Jim sighed. "Fine. I have a question for you."
She didn't even hesitate. "No."
"Come on. It's not about sex, I promise. Turning over a new leaf, here, remember?"
Uhura sighed in exasperation. "Okay, fine. Go ahead. But I reserve the right not to answer."
"Of course." He paused, trying to think of the best way to ask, and finally, settled on, "So, if you don't like me, why did you request the Enterprise?"
She jerked her eyes up from the map. "If you're wondering if it's because that's where Spock was assigned--"
He wasn't, actually, but she was certainly quick to jump to that conclusion. Now he had to ask. "Was it?"
"No. My career has always come first." She returned her attention to the map, but he was pretty sure she wasn't actually looking at it anymore. "Besides, when I requested to stay onboard, I thought he was going to the Vulcan colony."
"Then why?"
She folded up the map and slipped it back inside of her sleeve where she had been keeping it. "We should get going. I think we only have another half mile to go."
Oh, avoidance behavior, now. Interesting. "You're not going to answer my question, are you?"
She stepped out into the passage and looked off into the distance as if she could see anything in all that darkness. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to stay still much longer."
"Actually, we're probably doing more damage than good with all the walking. Concussions are usually treated with rest." He shifted around in an attempt to find a position that reduced the throbbing in his head. No dice there, but at least the rest of his body was more comfortable. "I should rest a little more, and you should at least tell me why you don't want to answer my question."
Uhura whipped her head around and glared him. "For God's sake, Kirk, can we just walk?" Her voice was so loud that Jim flinched, and even Uhura looked a little startled by her outburst as the echo bounced down the passageway and deeper into the mountain. She took a deep breath then said in a more reasonable tone, "Please?"
"Yeah. Okay." Damn, he'd pushed too far again. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," she said, drifting back into the room. "Need some help?" She was going hot and cold on him again; he wished she'd pick one emotion and stick with it.
"I don't think so." Jim sat forward, his body already protesting the movement. He took a deep breath, braced himself for the inevitable pain, hauled himself up --
-- and nearly toppled over in a bright wash of pain and vertigo. One minute, he was sure the stone floor was coming up at him, then suddenly Uhura was there, arm around his waist, talking to him, telling him it was all right, to just give it a minute and for god's sake don't pass out. He leaned against her, letting her support him, one arm over her shoulder, his forehead against her temple, breathing in her mingled scent of dust, sweat, and that vanilla perfume.
"I'm okay," he said when he could talk again. He may not have brain damage, but it was one hell of a concussion. "Really, I'm okay."
"Kirk, I was wrong. We shouldn't do any more walking."
"No." He drew himself up and put more of his weight on his own two feet. His head was still swimming, but he could keep moving, even though he knew he wasn't up to walking on his own yet. He could. He had to. "You said we were close. Let's get there, and then I'll rest."
"I really don't think-"
"Do I need to make it an order?"
"Fine," she said sharply, adjusted her grip on his waist, and pulled him forward. "I'm warning you, though. If you die, and McCoy kills me for letting that happen, I will pursue you through the afterlife like the gadfly after Io."
"Your anger will be of mythic proportions," he said as she maneuvered him back into the corridor and got them moving again. "Got it."
"There will be epic poems and everything."
"I'll keep that in mind. But I don't think it will come to that. Walking seems to help clear my head."
"If you say so."
She sounded skeptical, but the vertigo really was clearing out, and the headache was receding back into the dull throb it had been before he stood. Unfortunately, this was only a short grace period before the affects of the concussion made themselves known again. He was deteriorating so quickly that at this point, he was moving purely on willpower, and eventually, even that wasn't going to be enough to keep him going. Uhura certainly wouldn't be able to carry him, and their only chance of getting out of this alive - amendment: Jim's only chance of getting out of this alive - was the exit up ahead. Here was hoping their luck maintained and the earthquake hadn't blocked the exit with a cave in or something like that.
"So, do you know who Hoshi Sato is?"
Uhura's voice startled him out of his thoughts. Jim glanced at her. Her eyes were on the ground in front of them, the corners of her mouth turned down slightly, her brows furrowed. She was thinking hard on something, probably this Hoshi Sato, and he wondered why she had brought her up.
"No. The name seems familiar, but I can't place it."
"Hoshi Sato was the first communications officer on the Enterprise NX-01." The passage was widening, the ceiling was rising, and their voices were beginning to echo around them, giving him a sense of increasing space ahead. "The communications building at the Academy is named after her."
"Ah, yeah. Okay. What about her?"
"She taught me Romulan."
The statement seemed to be the beginning of something more, he had no idea what, but he could feel it, lingering there between them, unspoken but eager to be said.
"She was our neighbor when I was ten." Uhura smiled sadly; Jim could tell by that smile alone that Hoshi Sato had been important to her. "She was well into her hundreds by then. My mother was away on a dig that year, and my father worked long hours, so she often watched me after school. She was amazing. Absolutely amazing. She would tell me stories about serving on the Enterprise and exploring the galaxy and meeting Vulcans and Klingons, and I could listen to her for hours. By the time she died, there was nothing else I wanted to do more than become a xenolinguist and join Starfleet."
Uhura fell silent again, and though Jim knew she wasn't finished yet, he resisted his desire to urge her on. He was getting an answer to his question, deeper and more interesting than expected, and now would probably be an excellent time to keep his mouth shut.
"As soon as I heard that they were rebuilding the Enterprise," she said at last, just when Jim was starting to think she really wasn't going to finish, "I knew that was where I was going to serve and nothing was going to stop me. I didn't let Spock put me on the Farragut, and I was certainly not going to let some Iowa farm boy who couldn't keep his eyes to himself keep me from requesting the Enterprise as my permanent assignment."
Fascinating, as Spock would say. He had just learned a lot of very interesting information about Uhura in a very short time. He could think of half a dozen questions to ask off the top of his head, but his instincts were telling him not to push right now, and his instincts rarely steered him wrong. So he sighed forlornly instead, as if she had just broken his heart. "And here I thought you requested the Enterprise because you were madly in love with me."
He could practically hear her roll her eyes at him. "Dream on, Kirk. Although…"
Oh, this sounded interesting. "Yes?"
"It's not horrible, serving under you. You're not a half bad Captain when you're using your powers for good instead of evil."
Jim tried to keep the grin off his face. Wonders really would never cease. Nyota Uhura was actually complimenting him in a back handed sort of way, but in the interests of all the bridge mending they were doing, he wasn't going to gloat about it. "Oh, stop. Your faint praise is overwhelming me."
"Someone has to keep that ego in check." Her voice was deadpan, but when Jim glanced her way, he saw a teasing little smile curling her lips.
"Trust me, between you, Bones, and Spock, I'm lucky I still have one." They had come to a wide stairway leading upwards, the steps carved into the bedrock of the cave itself. "Let me guess. Up?"
Uhura nodded and readjusted her grip on his waist again. "Up."
The flight was short, thankfully, but by the time they managed to get to the top, Jim was panting.
Uhura was looking at him in concern. "We need to stop."
"No, we're too close." Now he was tugging her forward. If he let her stop him, he didn't think he would move again. "Come on. You can answer another question while we walk."
"What is this, twenty questions?"
"You're the one who wants me to talk."
She huffed impatiently. "Fine. Go ahead."
Jim hesitated a moment. His question might be a bridge burning kind of question, but hell, it wasn't like she absolutely had to answer. "What did you mean when you said that you didn't let Spock put you on the Farragut?"
Dead silence, except for the staccato rap of their footsteps on the stone floor. He hadn't really expected an answer, but of all the things she had said about requesting the Enterprise, that little nugget about Spock had been the one to catch his attention.
"None of my business, huh?"
"Well, no, it isn't, but I'll answer it anyway. When we answered the distress call from Vulcan, I wasn't originally assigned to the Enterprise. Spock assigned me to the Farragut because he was, and I quote, ‘trying to avoid the appearance of favoritism.'"
Jim nodded. "Because of your relationship. I can see why he would be concerned."
"Oh, I know. Believe me, that was something that was always on our minds, and it was a point of contention more than once. But I had several glowing recommendations from my professors for the assignment, and every choice I made at the Academy was meant to get me on the Enterprise, and he assigned me to the Farragut because he was worried we'd be discovered? I hadn't worked that hard just to lose my dream to his squeamishness, so I marched over to him right there in the hanger and made him change it."
She paused, shook her head. "I did apologize for it later. He was trying not to let our private relationship affect our professional relationship, and those assignments were only temporary, made by the commanders in an emergency situation. We both could have been in a great deal of trouble, but I had tunnel vision about being assigned to the Enterprise and I wanted to take any and every opportunity to prove myself and get a permanent assignment.
"No, I would have exactly done the same thing in your position. Don't feel like you were in the wrong. He knew that the Enterprise was your goal and he was the one who made his decision based on your relationship instead of your qualifications." And that was actually pretty hilarious, Spock trying to hide the quasi-unethical relationship with his teaching assistant, but Jim had a better sense of self-preservation than to mention his amusement to Uhura, especially since she was so torn about it. "And between the two of us, your way of getting onto the Enterprise wasn't anywhere near as career damaging or as unprofessional as mine." Jim hesitated, then added, "Besides, you know that if you hadn't-"
"Yeah," she said, cutting him off. "I've thought about it. And I can't keep from wondering who went in my place instead."
Survivor's guilt. Between the lost starships and Vulcan, there wasn't a person who had been on the Enterprise who didn't feel some measure of guilt for surviving it when so many others hadn't.
"Uhura?"
"What?"
"I'm glad you didn't let Spock put you on the Farragut."
She didn't reply, just frowned and nodded her head.
They walked the rest of the way in solemn silence, their shadows stalking along the walls beside them.
Part One, in which there is a natural disaster.
Part Two, in which there is hashing out.