Fic: Tectonic Shift (4/7) (PG-13, Star Trek XI)
Title: Tectonic Shift (4/7)
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.
Four
"I was afraid of this."
Jim glared at his communications officer. Nothing good ever came out of someone saying I was afraid of this. "Of what?"
Uhura untangled herself from him and fussed with the map. "See that squiggle?" She held it open for him to see. "I couldn't decipher this symbol or the word they give for it."
Jim blinked at the map, trying to make sense of what Uhura was pointing at, but he couldn't distinguish one squiggle from another. He couldn't decide if it was concussion that made the map look like nothing more than twisting lines overlaid with meaningless symbols and Elagabalan words, or if it was just that incomprehensible. If it was the latter, and she could read that mess, he was putting Uhura on navigation as soon as they got back to the ship.
"Let me guess, you do now?"
She nodded. "Blocked exit, more or less."
They both looked up at the solid concrete wall that should have been an exit to the outside world.
Jim swallowed back a string of colorful curses. "How far is the next exit?"
"About another two miles, but you're not going that far." Her head was bent over the map again. "We're going to find you a place to rest, and I'll go ahead to the exit."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're kind of bossy?"
"Well if it's a problem, by all means, feel free to bring me up on charges of insubordination when we get out of here." She studied the map for a minute longer then stuffed it back up her sleeve. "The meeting hall is just beyond the next bend. If there's nothing there, there's another residential district after that."
Jim wanted nothing to do with more walking, but Uhura's plan was sound, no matter how much it stung his pride. He would have come up with the same plan if their places were reversed, so he stubbornly trudged onwards on his own, though Uhura stayed right next to him, trying to pretend she wasn't hovering. Around the bend they went, past another pair of restrooms, up three wide steps, and the sound of their footsteps was suddenly being thrown off into the far distance. There was a sense of openness in front of him, as if he was standing in front of the view screen on the bridge with the whole of space unfurled before him, and somewhere further ahead, he could hear the trickle of some distant water source mingling with the echo of their footsteps.
They were approaching a doorway ahead, tall and wide, the edges carved with coiling lines and swirling designs. As they stepped through, the auxiliary lighting flickered on, not just on the path before them, but from high above, shining down on them in what was a near flood of light compared to the lighting they had become accustomed to.
Both he and Uhura stopped, mouths agape at the sight before them.
The cavern was huge, positively enormous, rising several hundred feet above them in a dome, lined with hanging stalactites that glimmered with huge ribbons of cavilite ore. A forest of stalagmites grew upwards from the floor, twice as tall as a man and reaching towards the cavern ceiling like crooked fingers, sometimes merging with a stalactite to form a slender, twisting column. A shallow amphitheater had been carved into the bedrock with a raised dais in the center, and above it all hung an enormous stalactite with a finely honed point, elaborately carved with looping squiggles and overlapping coils and twining lines in some sort of pattern that he couldn't quite make out.
"Wow." Jim gazed at the cavern around them, at the thick gleaming veins of cavilite ore running through the rock, at the strange misshapen columns that stretched between the floor and the dome of the cave, at the sharp point of the massive stalactite suspended over the amphitheater.
Uhura nodded, her face turned upwards. "It's beautiful."
They both drifted forward to the edge of the crater, where velvet ropes politely blocked access to the amphitheater.
"Seat of government or religion?" Jim asked, figuring Uhura had read that brochure thoroughly.
"Both." Jim was right; she didn't even bother to pull it out. "Their council of elders were considered to be ordained by the gods and served the city according to their divine will."
"I take it that there was some significance to building it under a giant stalactite?"
"They call it the Dagger of Cobol. The ancient Elagabalans believed that if you stood beneath the dagger and lied to the assembled, the dagger would strike you dead on the spot." She turned to Jim. "There's nowhere to rest here. Let's see what else there is."
Jim let her lead again as they followed the path described by the track lighting, circling amphitheater and passing through the forest of stalactites and stalagmites and delicate hybrid columns, all carved with the same designs as the Dagger. They crossed a narrow bridge over a small, crystal clear stream, the origin of the trickling sounds he had heard, and often stepped over piles of shattered rock, smaller stalactites that must have crashed to the floor during the earthquake. No, this was no place to stop and rest. Bones would have an aneurism if he had to dig an elaborately carved stalactite out of his chest.
On the far side, they met another flight of stairs that went up and up and up with an air of unholy menace. Just the thought of having to climb it in his condition made him feel like he was going to topple headlong into a dark pit.
"You didn't mention steps," he said, and he would deny with his last dying breath that it had come out as a whine.
"Sorry." Uhura was eyeing him with concern again. "Can you do it?"
Jim scoffed and put on a brave face, even though he was seriously considering the risk of catching falling stalactites with his body rather than climbing these insidious stairs. "Of course."
Uhura let out a sigh of long suffering and gestured him onwards. Jim managed about five steps before he started to feel as if his feet had turned to stone, and every step up was a nightmare of vertigo and disorientation worse than the one before it. His ears popped three times with the change of elevation, intensifying the ringing that had just about died away, and the irrational idea that he was going to topple backwards at any second wouldn't leave him alone. At some point, Uhura's arm ended up around his waist again and by the time they mounted the last stair, she was practically carrying him.
"Come here," she said, leading him away from the stairs while he panted in a most uncaptain-like way. "Rest here a minute. I'll go ahead and see if there's a place for you to rest."
She left him leaning against the wall and trotted along the passage, disappearing around the bend. Jim turned his face away from the dark abyss of the stairwell, and inhaled long and deep to catch his breath, once again fighting the urge to lie down and never get up. He was nearly ready to find a nice bit of hard rock floor to curl up on when Uhura reappeared, the echo of her footfalls announcing her approach.
"Okay, I found something."
Another short walk , and Jim was crawling into an actual bed. Well, it was more of a pallet, but it was raised off the floor and it was comfortable and still. Uhura hissed at him about putting his dirty boots on a traditional Elagabalan bed covering, and he wanted to point out that he was filthy and that taking off his boots wasn't going to get it any less dirty. But he was in pain and he was tired and he just didn't have it in him to be amused that Uhura was already voluntarily unzipping his boots, let alone argue with her about it.
"I'm going to go up to the next exit," she said, tossing one boot then the other on the floor. "I'll set my chronometer to alert me in an hour, so I can come back and wake you up."
"No, don't worry about me." His voice was slurring, and now that he was still again, he felt like that dark, quiet place was drowning him, snatching him down like an undertow in a violent ocean. Even the pounding of his headache seemed to be coming from far away, a distant annoyance that could be ignored if he could just get some sleep. "You just get to the exit and contact the ship."
"Like I said, write me up for insubordination if you've got a problem with it."
"You're bad at following orders," he mumbled, his eyes drifting closed without his permission
"I am not." He heard the soft rustle of her clothes, the click of her heels as she moved towards the door. "I just refuse to indulge your reckless behavior like Spock and McCoy. I'll be back."
The last thing he heard before he finally let that dark, quiet place take him was the sound of Uhura's footsteps retreating into the distance.
***
Jim was being shaken.
He slapped away the offending hand and turned his face away from the light, mumbling something that he intended to be ‘go away.'
"Oh, good," said the owner of the hand with a great deal of relief. "You're still alive."
Weird. Whoever it was sounded just like Uhura.
Jim pried his eyes open, squinting against the light. It was Uhura looming over him, which was odd because she was in his room, and he had been informed often enough that under no circumstances, ever, even if he was the last male in the galaxy, would she be stepping into his quarters.
He stared at her in confusion. "What are you doing in my quarters?"
She eyed him with concern. "Captain, we aren't in your quarters. We're on Elagabalus VI. In the museum. Remember?"
Elagabalus VI. In the museum. Right.
"Sorry." He ran a hand over his face. "Did you find the exit?"
Uhura sat next to him on the bed, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankle. "Yes, but I couldn't get in contact with the Enterprise or the shuttle. And--"
A hesitation, so there was some bad news here. "And what?"
"I could see the city from where I was. It doesn't look good."
"Bad earthquake?"
"That's an understatement. Half the city is leveled, and there are fires everywhere."
Jim tried not to think about the probability of Bones, Sulu, and Ensign Unpronounceable Name trapped under rubble while fires raged through the city. "Do you think we can get down there?"
"I don't think you could get to the exit. It's all stairs and a steep incline, plus most of the renovations are going on up there. I had to climb over a few scaffolds just to get through. Not to mention the damage from the earthquake." Uhura bent to the side and fiddled with something on the floor. "It was also overcast, so I thought I might go up again in a few hours and see if it has cleared by then. If not, then I thought about trying for the last exit."
If there was a better plan, Jim was in no condition to think of it. "Okay. That's as good a plan as any."
"Thirsty?"
Jim swallowed against a cotton dry mouth and nodded.
Uhura helped him sit up and let him fight his way through the pain and vertigo before she pressed a plastic up into his hand, tall and narrow and filled with delicious, sweet water. He tried a few experimental sips just to make sure he wasn't going to vomit all over her, which he didn't, then had to force himself not to down the rest like a shot.
When he was done, Uhura plucked the empty cup from his hand with brisk efficiency, and Jim slumped back on the bed, noticing for the first time that there was a lot more light in the room. It seemed to be coming from a fat cylinder standing on its base next to the bed, and it took his brain longer than it should have to supply the word for it. "That's a flashlight."
Uhura seemed amusemed. "Yes."
"Where did you get it?"
"They set up some kind of lounge for the renovators in one of the rooms further up. There wasn't much there that was useful for us, but I did find the flashlight and a stack of disposable cups."
"Disposable cups and flashlights. Thank god for Hodgkin's Law, huh?" Jim rubbed his eyes again and fantasized about going back to sleep. "What time is it?"
"About 2100 hours." Uhura unclipped the communicator from her belt and flicked it open. "Well, closer to 2200, actually."
"We've been in here now, what, almost three hours?"
She closed the communicator with a flick of her wrist. "About that."
"So it took us close to two hours to walk two miles."
"More like two and a half miles, but yes."
"You look exhausted."
Uhura smirked. "But I still look better than you."
"Always." Jim curled onto his side. "Set the chronometer for another hour and get some sleep."
"Yes, sir," she said with only the barest hint of sarcasm, then surprised the hell out Jim when she grabbed the flashlight off the floor, circled to the other side of the bed, and started removing her boots.
She seemed to be getting in bed with him. That was… unexpected.
"You know, I'm not the last male in the galaxy, right?" Jim asked just to make sure.
"I know." Uhura settled on her side with her back to him, set her communicator next to her head, and thumbed off the flashlight. They were plunged into darkness, deep and impenetrable. "But I'm not going to spend the night running from one residence to the other to wake you up every hour."
"Fair enough," Jim yawned and let his eyes slide close, satisfied that she hadn't hit her head as well. "Carry on."
He was very nearly asleep again when Uhura said, "Kirk?"
Jim grunted in response, annoyed to be tugged away from that dark, quiet place.
"If you go around telling people we slept together, they won't be able to find the body."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"I'm serious."
"Understood."
"And for god's sake," he heard her say just as he was slipping over the precipice into sleep. "Don't die in the night. I don't want to get stuck filling out all that paperwork."
It was nice to know she cared.
Previous Parts:
Part One, in which there is a natural disaster.
Part Two, in which there is hashing out.
Part Three, in which Kirk starts asking questions.
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.
Four
"I was afraid of this."
Jim glared at his communications officer. Nothing good ever came out of someone saying I was afraid of this. "Of what?"
Uhura untangled herself from him and fussed with the map. "See that squiggle?" She held it open for him to see. "I couldn't decipher this symbol or the word they give for it."
Jim blinked at the map, trying to make sense of what Uhura was pointing at, but he couldn't distinguish one squiggle from another. He couldn't decide if it was concussion that made the map look like nothing more than twisting lines overlaid with meaningless symbols and Elagabalan words, or if it was just that incomprehensible. If it was the latter, and she could read that mess, he was putting Uhura on navigation as soon as they got back to the ship.
"Let me guess, you do now?"
She nodded. "Blocked exit, more or less."
They both looked up at the solid concrete wall that should have been an exit to the outside world.
Jim swallowed back a string of colorful curses. "How far is the next exit?"
"About another two miles, but you're not going that far." Her head was bent over the map again. "We're going to find you a place to rest, and I'll go ahead to the exit."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're kind of bossy?"
"Well if it's a problem, by all means, feel free to bring me up on charges of insubordination when we get out of here." She studied the map for a minute longer then stuffed it back up her sleeve. "The meeting hall is just beyond the next bend. If there's nothing there, there's another residential district after that."
Jim wanted nothing to do with more walking, but Uhura's plan was sound, no matter how much it stung his pride. He would have come up with the same plan if their places were reversed, so he stubbornly trudged onwards on his own, though Uhura stayed right next to him, trying to pretend she wasn't hovering. Around the bend they went, past another pair of restrooms, up three wide steps, and the sound of their footsteps was suddenly being thrown off into the far distance. There was a sense of openness in front of him, as if he was standing in front of the view screen on the bridge with the whole of space unfurled before him, and somewhere further ahead, he could hear the trickle of some distant water source mingling with the echo of their footsteps.
They were approaching a doorway ahead, tall and wide, the edges carved with coiling lines and swirling designs. As they stepped through, the auxiliary lighting flickered on, not just on the path before them, but from high above, shining down on them in what was a near flood of light compared to the lighting they had become accustomed to.
Both he and Uhura stopped, mouths agape at the sight before them.
The cavern was huge, positively enormous, rising several hundred feet above them in a dome, lined with hanging stalactites that glimmered with huge ribbons of cavilite ore. A forest of stalagmites grew upwards from the floor, twice as tall as a man and reaching towards the cavern ceiling like crooked fingers, sometimes merging with a stalactite to form a slender, twisting column. A shallow amphitheater had been carved into the bedrock with a raised dais in the center, and above it all hung an enormous stalactite with a finely honed point, elaborately carved with looping squiggles and overlapping coils and twining lines in some sort of pattern that he couldn't quite make out.
"Wow." Jim gazed at the cavern around them, at the thick gleaming veins of cavilite ore running through the rock, at the strange misshapen columns that stretched between the floor and the dome of the cave, at the sharp point of the massive stalactite suspended over the amphitheater.
Uhura nodded, her face turned upwards. "It's beautiful."
They both drifted forward to the edge of the crater, where velvet ropes politely blocked access to the amphitheater.
"Seat of government or religion?" Jim asked, figuring Uhura had read that brochure thoroughly.
"Both." Jim was right; she didn't even bother to pull it out. "Their council of elders were considered to be ordained by the gods and served the city according to their divine will."
"I take it that there was some significance to building it under a giant stalactite?"
"They call it the Dagger of Cobol. The ancient Elagabalans believed that if you stood beneath the dagger and lied to the assembled, the dagger would strike you dead on the spot." She turned to Jim. "There's nowhere to rest here. Let's see what else there is."
Jim let her lead again as they followed the path described by the track lighting, circling amphitheater and passing through the forest of stalactites and stalagmites and delicate hybrid columns, all carved with the same designs as the Dagger. They crossed a narrow bridge over a small, crystal clear stream, the origin of the trickling sounds he had heard, and often stepped over piles of shattered rock, smaller stalactites that must have crashed to the floor during the earthquake. No, this was no place to stop and rest. Bones would have an aneurism if he had to dig an elaborately carved stalactite out of his chest.
On the far side, they met another flight of stairs that went up and up and up with an air of unholy menace. Just the thought of having to climb it in his condition made him feel like he was going to topple headlong into a dark pit.
"You didn't mention steps," he said, and he would deny with his last dying breath that it had come out as a whine.
"Sorry." Uhura was eyeing him with concern again. "Can you do it?"
Jim scoffed and put on a brave face, even though he was seriously considering the risk of catching falling stalactites with his body rather than climbing these insidious stairs. "Of course."
Uhura let out a sigh of long suffering and gestured him onwards. Jim managed about five steps before he started to feel as if his feet had turned to stone, and every step up was a nightmare of vertigo and disorientation worse than the one before it. His ears popped three times with the change of elevation, intensifying the ringing that had just about died away, and the irrational idea that he was going to topple backwards at any second wouldn't leave him alone. At some point, Uhura's arm ended up around his waist again and by the time they mounted the last stair, she was practically carrying him.
"Come here," she said, leading him away from the stairs while he panted in a most uncaptain-like way. "Rest here a minute. I'll go ahead and see if there's a place for you to rest."
She left him leaning against the wall and trotted along the passage, disappearing around the bend. Jim turned his face away from the dark abyss of the stairwell, and inhaled long and deep to catch his breath, once again fighting the urge to lie down and never get up. He was nearly ready to find a nice bit of hard rock floor to curl up on when Uhura reappeared, the echo of her footfalls announcing her approach.
"Okay, I found something."
Another short walk , and Jim was crawling into an actual bed. Well, it was more of a pallet, but it was raised off the floor and it was comfortable and still. Uhura hissed at him about putting his dirty boots on a traditional Elagabalan bed covering, and he wanted to point out that he was filthy and that taking off his boots wasn't going to get it any less dirty. But he was in pain and he was tired and he just didn't have it in him to be amused that Uhura was already voluntarily unzipping his boots, let alone argue with her about it.
"I'm going to go up to the next exit," she said, tossing one boot then the other on the floor. "I'll set my chronometer to alert me in an hour, so I can come back and wake you up."
"No, don't worry about me." His voice was slurring, and now that he was still again, he felt like that dark, quiet place was drowning him, snatching him down like an undertow in a violent ocean. Even the pounding of his headache seemed to be coming from far away, a distant annoyance that could be ignored if he could just get some sleep. "You just get to the exit and contact the ship."
"Like I said, write me up for insubordination if you've got a problem with it."
"You're bad at following orders," he mumbled, his eyes drifting closed without his permission
"I am not." He heard the soft rustle of her clothes, the click of her heels as she moved towards the door. "I just refuse to indulge your reckless behavior like Spock and McCoy. I'll be back."
The last thing he heard before he finally let that dark, quiet place take him was the sound of Uhura's footsteps retreating into the distance.
***
Jim was being shaken.
He slapped away the offending hand and turned his face away from the light, mumbling something that he intended to be ‘go away.'
"Oh, good," said the owner of the hand with a great deal of relief. "You're still alive."
Weird. Whoever it was sounded just like Uhura.
Jim pried his eyes open, squinting against the light. It was Uhura looming over him, which was odd because she was in his room, and he had been informed often enough that under no circumstances, ever, even if he was the last male in the galaxy, would she be stepping into his quarters.
He stared at her in confusion. "What are you doing in my quarters?"
She eyed him with concern. "Captain, we aren't in your quarters. We're on Elagabalus VI. In the museum. Remember?"
Elagabalus VI. In the museum. Right.
"Sorry." He ran a hand over his face. "Did you find the exit?"
Uhura sat next to him on the bed, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankle. "Yes, but I couldn't get in contact with the Enterprise or the shuttle. And--"
A hesitation, so there was some bad news here. "And what?"
"I could see the city from where I was. It doesn't look good."
"Bad earthquake?"
"That's an understatement. Half the city is leveled, and there are fires everywhere."
Jim tried not to think about the probability of Bones, Sulu, and Ensign Unpronounceable Name trapped under rubble while fires raged through the city. "Do you think we can get down there?"
"I don't think you could get to the exit. It's all stairs and a steep incline, plus most of the renovations are going on up there. I had to climb over a few scaffolds just to get through. Not to mention the damage from the earthquake." Uhura bent to the side and fiddled with something on the floor. "It was also overcast, so I thought I might go up again in a few hours and see if it has cleared by then. If not, then I thought about trying for the last exit."
If there was a better plan, Jim was in no condition to think of it. "Okay. That's as good a plan as any."
"Thirsty?"
Jim swallowed against a cotton dry mouth and nodded.
Uhura helped him sit up and let him fight his way through the pain and vertigo before she pressed a plastic up into his hand, tall and narrow and filled with delicious, sweet water. He tried a few experimental sips just to make sure he wasn't going to vomit all over her, which he didn't, then had to force himself not to down the rest like a shot.
When he was done, Uhura plucked the empty cup from his hand with brisk efficiency, and Jim slumped back on the bed, noticing for the first time that there was a lot more light in the room. It seemed to be coming from a fat cylinder standing on its base next to the bed, and it took his brain longer than it should have to supply the word for it. "That's a flashlight."
Uhura seemed amusemed. "Yes."
"Where did you get it?"
"They set up some kind of lounge for the renovators in one of the rooms further up. There wasn't much there that was useful for us, but I did find the flashlight and a stack of disposable cups."
"Disposable cups and flashlights. Thank god for Hodgkin's Law, huh?" Jim rubbed his eyes again and fantasized about going back to sleep. "What time is it?"
"About 2100 hours." Uhura unclipped the communicator from her belt and flicked it open. "Well, closer to 2200, actually."
"We've been in here now, what, almost three hours?"
She closed the communicator with a flick of her wrist. "About that."
"So it took us close to two hours to walk two miles."
"More like two and a half miles, but yes."
"You look exhausted."
Uhura smirked. "But I still look better than you."
"Always." Jim curled onto his side. "Set the chronometer for another hour and get some sleep."
"Yes, sir," she said with only the barest hint of sarcasm, then surprised the hell out Jim when she grabbed the flashlight off the floor, circled to the other side of the bed, and started removing her boots.
She seemed to be getting in bed with him. That was… unexpected.
"You know, I'm not the last male in the galaxy, right?" Jim asked just to make sure.
"I know." Uhura settled on her side with her back to him, set her communicator next to her head, and thumbed off the flashlight. They were plunged into darkness, deep and impenetrable. "But I'm not going to spend the night running from one residence to the other to wake you up every hour."
"Fair enough," Jim yawned and let his eyes slide close, satisfied that she hadn't hit her head as well. "Carry on."
He was very nearly asleep again when Uhura said, "Kirk?"
Jim grunted in response, annoyed to be tugged away from that dark, quiet place.
"If you go around telling people we slept together, they won't be able to find the body."
"I'll keep that in mind."
"I'm serious."
"Understood."
"And for god's sake," he heard her say just as he was slipping over the precipice into sleep. "Don't die in the night. I don't want to get stuck filling out all that paperwork."
It was nice to know she cared.
Previous Parts:
Part One, in which there is a natural disaster.
Part Two, in which there is hashing out.
Part Three, in which Kirk starts asking questions.