Hey peoples! I'm back. This time Uhura took up residence in my brain and hammered this out.
Once again, no beta. Please be kind and point out any mistakes I may have missed. Reviewing is deeply appreciated and makes me want to write more.
Standard Disclaimer applies; if I owned Kirk and Company, there would have been a great deal more slash involved.
Uhura never wanted anything to do with Kirk.
She's content and thriving on the challenges of being a Cadet at the Academy.
She's focused on her goals, focused with the kind of brilliance that makes her the top cadet in Communications.
Focused in a way that gets her weekly 'meetings' with Commander Spock.
That's all she wants from life right now. She's satisfied and content with where her life is, where her life is going, and the pace that her life is going.
She never wanted anything to do with Kirk.
Since the moment he showed up on the shuttle, blood stained and still grinning, Uhura had written him off as too pretty for his own good, with more balls then brains.
The kind of idiot that got kicked out of the Academy within the first semester.
All and all, not a boy worth paying any kind of attention to.
Time moves on and it turns out that Kirk isn't prettier then he is smart.
He's smarter then he is pretty, which is saying something. Because Uhura might not have turned into a melted puddle of libido driven ooze at his blue-eyed smirk, but she knows beauty when it nearly falls face first into her cleavage.
Kirk seems to be the complete opposite to her personality, goals and attitude.
He's wildly unfocused, and seems to be making a game out of the demerit system.
He doesn't seem to have any goals beyond wreaking havoc, doing it with a devil-may-care smile that belies the fact that he's blowing through the upper-level Command courses like they're nothing.
He's wild, uncontrollable, incorrigible and apparently it gets him into the beds of three fourths of the cadets. Male, Female or otherwise.
He doesn't seem to want anything from life, rather he seems to demand everything from life.
He's everywhere and in everything, his attention when it's caught is too focused and too cutting.
And yet... Communications isn't just about languages. Communication isn't about appearances either.
Nyota Uhura is the most talented communications-focus cadet that Starfleet has seen in a long, long time.
So she knows better then to stick to judgments made on what anyone says or looks like.
Sometimes she watches him from across the courtyard, he demands her attention from a distance like he can't hope to up close.
He seems so bright, golden and carefree, from a distance.
And yet...
Every time Uhura sees Kirk, she sees something odd. To her Kirk-watching is possibly a hobby, but no where near as creepy as that sounds. He's every where it seems, on and off campus. Every time she has to deal with his blatant flirting and overdone leers, she sees something intriguing. She's watched him in loud crowds of people and in quiet moments, she's watched him stand alone and walking with his doctor friend.
Something about him just draws her attention.
There is something just a little bit off in the very subtlest motions of his body language.
The way he moves like a predator. The way he's always watching the room like he's waiting for a fight.
It's in the smallest lines by his eyes that look like pain, the minute hesitation before he touches anyone.
There is something there in the rare moments when the glitter of his eyes and the shine of his grin fade off, and Kirk is left looking fragile and somehow broken.
She's not quite sure what to label it, or if it even has a label or a reason.
It feels to Uhura like Kirk's lost something.
It feels like he's looking for something or someone that he doesn't even know exists, and he doesn't even realize that he's looking for something.
It feels like he's only half of what he could be.
So, Uhura tolerates Kirk's come-ons and leers and bad pick-up lines, mostly because she wants to know what that subtle oddness is, wants to know what he's looking for, wants to know what he'll be like when he's finally whole.
Partially because like mold or fungus, Jim Kirk grows on you.
Three years and then some later. (Spock would know the time exactly, but Uhura doesn't.)
So, in her mind, it takes three years and the death of a planet, before she realizes she's been had.
That somewhere along the line, she missed some vital clue to understanding Kirk.
Because...
Jim Kirk is not a broken lost little boy, hidden behind prankster genius.
He's not a whirlwind of arrogance and hormones.
He's not a idiot savant hell bent on quadrant wide havoc.
Jim Kirk is all of that and some how more.
He's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in riddles and slathered liberally with 'annoying'.
Nyota Uhura has never wanted anything to do with James Tiberius Kirk.
And yet...
There doesn't seem to be anyone else she wants to call 'Captain'.
He still has all of those quirks that caught and held her attention. He still looks lost and fragile occasionally.
She still doesn't know what or who he's lost, still doesn't know if he's ever going to find it or them.
But she's certain that at some point in the next five years she'll figure it out.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
She's not holding her breath.