A/N: Based on a Pinterest prompt: You have and close call in which your life flashes before your eyes, but the visuals and memories are from someone else's life.
I watch as the next to last crewman dematerializes and feel my eyes widen as his anguished scream echoes between the hills of the valley we're standing in. I quickly flip open my communicator and find Mr. Scott at the other end.
"Mr. Scott, did crewman Jenson make it aboard?" His silence is enough to answer my question, but I require verbal confirmation. "Mr. Scott?"
"No, Sir, he didn't and I won't be able to beam anyone else aboard until this gets fixed."
"We have hostiles in pursuit."
"Aye and we've got a storm up here the likes of which I've never seen before. You're safer there than here—it's a miracle we got Chekov and the other Ensign aboard."
My hand drops to my side and I snap the communicator shut. I look at Lieutenant Uhura and she looks back at me. She looks worried, but she also looks like she's trying desperately not to look worried. She blinks and I notice that water has started to collect in the corners of her eyes. She must be upset about the crewman we just lost. I am too, but I don't that luxury.
"We need to get to higher ground. We'll be easy targets if we stay in the valley."
"Yes, Sir."
We climb out of the valley to the hill top. It's wooded and I decide that this is to our advantage. I lead her into the forest. We'll wait it out undercover, until the storm above us passes and we can beam aboard our vessel.
She must be nervous because she doesn't try to fill the silence the way she usually does. I see her hand flex and move slightly in the direction of her phaser when she hears a twig snap under my foot. She remains silent, digging the toe of her boot into the moist ground after she sits on a nearby rock.
I have to be prepared for the possibility that the Captain will have to pull the ship out of orbit and away from the storm, which would leave us here longer than we anticipated.
Her uncharacteristic silence is almost unsettling but it gives me time to formulate a bevy of alternatives should our situation change.
"How long do you think we'll have to stay down here?" She asks on a whisper.
"I don't have enough data on which to base an estimate."
She nods and leans forward so that her head drops into her hands which are resting on her knees.
The quiet stretches on for a while, interrupted only by the caw of a passing bird, which alarms her each time.
I hear another twig snap and immediately look at her feet only to find her looking at mine. We look up at the same time and she looks panicked. I make a gesture that tells her to stay silent and turn my head to look over my shoulder. I don't see anything, but I can hear footsteps getting closer and quicker. I look back to her and nod in the direction we should move. Further into the thick of the trees, as far from the clearing as we can manage.
As soon as we start in that direction, and arrow strikes the trunk of the tree behind where she'd just been.
Our only option is to run and so we do. I feel her hand clasp around mine and we escape into the direction I indicated earlier. I don't concern myself with the contact or even with my shields. Self-preservation is paramount and any breech of social protocol can be atoned for later.
The soil under us turns to gravel and there's a steep drop off. I asses escape routes as quickly as I can but we don't have all that much time. We lock eyes again and nod simultaneously.
I close my eyes when I jump and keep them shut as we fall. Her hand has tightens on mine, or maybe my hand has tightens on hers. It's of no consequence.
As I fall, even with my eyes closed, I can see. I surmise that this is my own life flashing in front of me. I would have written this phenomenon off as human myth, but I see myself, young, before my kaswan. I slide into the learning pod and crash my fist into another boy's face. I want his teeth to fall into his throat. The same throat that he used to call my mother a whore. Then I see myself a somewhat older in front of the council. I'm about to accept my invitation to the VSA, but I refuse. I am not disadvantaged because of my human mother. Perhaps they will understand that better now that I've thrown their invitation back in their faces. Sarek doesn't back me but that's nothing new. Then I'm in an academy instructor's uniform, gray and stiff, perfectly pressed as it ought to be. My face is blank, but I'm exerting considerable effort to keep it that way. I catch sight of a student, front and center and she makes my breath shorten and heartbeat quicken in a way that she should not.
Sometime later we're together, the student and I, at a café. It's as far from the academy as we can manage. We're holding hands across the table. My thumb moves over the back of her hand and she kisses my knuckles. Eventually she kisses me on the lips and I feel her tongue on mine. Then, she's beneath me, her fingernails biting into the skin of my back as I nestle my face in the hollow of her neck and clutch the sheets beside her.
Then Vulcan is on fire, toppling in on its self—imploding—and I watch my mother fall to her death, just outside my reach. I stand in shock, fully materialized on the transporter PADD, staring at the empty space directly in front of me. The student—no longer my student—corners me, touches me, kisses me and asks me what I need. But my need is too great to be articulated. I want to say anything and everything except what I actually say. But I see it in her eyes. She understands. She understands more than what's happening now, she understands all of it—everything.
I land—hard. I hear her body land with a thud, followed by a low groan and sharp breath. We scramble to our feet and I lead her to stand parallel with the rock wall behind us. There's a good possibility that they won't see us from here when they look over the cliff's edge. But I am a Vulcan and I can't leave our survival to chance.
I take the Lieutenant along, crouching ducking at every sound until we reach a cave. I hear a water source, which could be a help, as long as there isn't another native tribe that calls this cave home. I don't notice any drawings, paintings or paraphernalia so I decide that it should be safe while we regroup.
She sits heavily and I watch her. She rolls her shoulders and I try to figure out whose life flashed in front of me. I'm certain it wasn't a hallucination. It was my life and yet I didn't recognize it, not even the Enterprise looked as it should. She didn't look as she should, but it was her.
"Nyota," I say, more to test the sound than anything else. It's foreign to my ear and yet it feels like my mouth has said it so many times that even I couldn't count them. She turns and looks at me, shocked, like I walked in on her in a state of undress. This is her name, but she's never told me that.
I quickly look at an insect crawling across the ground near my foot, not that it matters. I'm willing to look anywhere to avoid her gaze at the moment. I glance at her without moving my head and see that she has turned away again. Her head is tilted to the side. She's probably questioning that she heard me correctly, but I have no intention of speaking on it.
I have no way of explaining it to her. I can't explain it myself.