Title: Some Say the World
Characters: Nyota Uhura, mentions practically all the bridge crew and Gaila
Pairings: Uhura/Gaila, Uhura/Spock-ish
Rating: K+ for extremely vage sexuality, along with mentions of violence and character death
Summary: "Some say the world will end in fire,/Some say in ice." Nyota Uhura during and after the battle with the Narada.
Warning: Angstangstangst. Second person perspective and stream of consciousness. Character death. Also, I haven't actually watched Star Trek XI recently, so intentional and unintentional minor alterations of the canon. Unbetaed.
Notes: Title from Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice." Gaila's statement is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 (the ancient Terran poet). Gaila quoting Shakespeare was inspired by a fic written by the wonderful cable69.
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Zoe Saldana. All characters property of the ST franchise. No money is being made here.
Some Say the World
Coming out of warp at Vulcan, you arrive into utter devastation. Surely, you think, this must be what hell looks like. As Sulu – a guy you remember only briefly from the xenobotany course you took on a whim (come on Nyota, it'll be fun… please do it with me she had said), with the lopsided smile and call me Hikaru (you can't call him that, you know now, not in the middle of all this, aren't sure whether you will make it far enough, mentally or physically, to ever call him that again) – steers the ship through the debris, the horror you see mirrored in everyone's faces creeps over you and clenches tight and cold and heavy in your stomach as you nearly brush up against a cracked and scorched piece of hull, the empty shell of a ship just like yours, now empty and devoid of life (bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang, she would have said, or something like that – how she came to be so fascinated with an ancient Terran poet, you have never known, will never know).
Your mind and stomach are roiling, worse than when you had the fever at age five and were in the hospital for almost two weeks on the precipice between consciousness and blackness, and you are sure for just a moment that you can hear them screaming, all those hundreds upon thousands of voices, for just one agonizing moment before returning to the still, deadly silence of space. A brief, almost overwhelming wave of dizziness washes over you, and you stumble slightly and clutch at the side of your chair.
The first explosion startles you – you did not notice the looming ship as it crept onto the viewscreen – and for the early, agonizing minutes, while Sulu and the Russian kid return fire to the best of their abilities, you are sure you are going to die. Your eyes slide closed and your mind slips shut, your body taking over, responding to Captain Pike's commands, listening for subspace messages; you never thought you would die in fire (in your view, the world would always end in ice), but some strange part of you – beyond worrying, beyond fear now – is almost relieved, relaxed, wondering if you will see her again (irrational, your logical brain interjects, there is nothing after death – but looking up at the stars had always made you dream of one).
It is Romulans, just like Kirk had said (you had dismissed the thought at first – ravings of a mad delinquent – while all the while smiling inside at being promoted to a member of the bridge crew). The firing stops suddenly, and the Enterprise is hailed. You open a channel, and watch while Pike confronts the other captain. The Romulan is demanding he come over by shuttle, and over the protestations of yourself and the whole crew it isn't safe, there's no way you can consider that, you can't trust him at all, Pike agrees. The words die on your lips as he sweeps off the Bridge, Spock, Sulu and Kirk (why him, you do not know) in tow.
As soon as you have a spare moment, you slip away. You wander silent and lost down neverending, unchanging, twisting hallways until you stumble blindly into your room (at least you think it is yours, for it responds to your half-incomprehensible voice commands and opens the door; were rooms even assigned, you wonder, in the rush to leave and do?) and collapse bonelessly onto one of the bunks. Pike is gone now, Commander Spock must be called Captain, and Sulu, Chief Engineer Olson (a man you never knew – will never know, you realize) and new-minted First Officer Kirk have dropped down to the drill. It is the changes, you think, but your body rejects the lie, the chaos and stress of battle that is upsetting me. You clench your fists in the neatly made sheets, and grit your teeth, trying to ward off the memories (of green skin in the sun, of the light giggle of a laugh you had so hated in the first months of rooming together, of her hands playing with your hair and dancing down the skin of your back, of whispered secrets shared together in the dark) that rise unbidden in your mind. "No," you say hoarsely, just once, then repeat it like a mantra: no no no no no no no until you cannot hear yourself any longer.
You hear voices on the shipwide comm, and you start suddenly, the potential gravity of your disappearance striking you like a blow. You take deep breaths, calm yourself the best you can, wipe away the tears you hadn't realized you were crying, and straighten your uniform skirt (she had always said it was impractical, and wasn't it silly an enlightened society like the Federation still made the female officers wear clothes like this?) before slipping back into the hallway. You barely make it back into the main hallway before a shout, move, move! makes you turn and just avoid being knocked over by Chekov (yes, that is the kid's name, you remember now) as he barrels down the hallway yelling a confusing mixture of heavily accented English and Russian just too fast for you to grasp. You follow him and arrive in the transporter room just in time to see Kirk and Sulu rolling off the pad in a position that would be compromising under any other circumstances (she would have made a joke about it – really, she could be almost as bad as Kirk) and Spock stepping up to take their place.
You hear it – Chekov's murmur, I lost her – at the same time you see it, Spock standing with the Vulcan Elders on the transporter pad, eyes lost and vacant, hand still reaching. You follow him as he staggers off, slip into the turbolift with him, trying to give him some comfort. You kiss him as he stands there, still with lingering shock, the instructor you had convinced yourself you had a crush on back at the Academy (you loved him, you tell yourself, never her). He makes barely any response, and you are not sure whether you should feel disappointed or relieved.
He kisses you again later, on the transporter pad, in the middle of the chaos that followed Kirk's banishment, return and assumption of the captaincy, just before beaming onto the Narada to an uncertain future. You close your eyes and can just almost convince yourself that this is what you really want, wanted all along.
You aren't alone again until the Enterprise is free of the black hole and hobbling back home. You slip into your room (it is your room this time, not just the first opening door) and sit in silence. You are calmer than before, settled sitting on the bed and gazing vacantly out the small window (a blessing or a curse, you aren't sure). She is still in your mind, perhaps she will always be. You cannot force her out, or rephrase her, translate her into something else, though you try – Vulcan, Russian, Orion, Swahili, Klingon, English, every language but Romulan. You want someone to tell, to talk to, to understand, but there is no one (McCoy is a doctor, not a counselor, whether or not it is in his job description; your family is out of the question, was out of the question before it could even exist to be asked), not even Spock, so trusting, you know, but not, never, with this.
You slip under the sheets still dressed – hoping against hope for a dreamless sleep – and sense the real and imagined memories (green skin and the explosions, screaming) waiting at the corner of your mind for you to close your eyes.