Chapter 3
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Even with a skeleton crew, the bridge hums with action. Most of the Enterprise junior officers are on their first week of leave on Starbase Yorktown on a scheduled three-week layover for resupplies and repairs, but Nyota volunteered to stay aboard the first week and operate the comm station.
She doesn't mind, really. Spock is here, too, and the captain, and Dr. McCoy wanders through the bridge threatening to pry them loose and force-march them into a transporter.
"You don't need to worry about me," the captain says, laughing. "At 0400 tomorrow I'm walking off this ship with my duffel in my hand. Spock's the one who doesn't know how to relax. Pick on him for a change."
Nyota feels Spock rise to the bait. Seated at the science console, he keeps his gaze on his monitors, but his shoulders are hunched and his breathing is more measured than usual. Before he can answer, Nyota says, "I notice that you are still aboard, Dr. McCoy. What's that old saying? Physician, heal thyself?"
McCoy harrumphs loudly. "You're too damn smart for your own good, Lieutenant." Then apparently unwilling to let go of his tease, he raises his voice slightly and says over her, "She's too smart for you, Spock!"
"That was never in question, Doctor."
From his captain's chair, Kirk says, "Touche, Spock. Go away, Bones, and let us work."
Before she turns back to her screen, Nyota glances over at Spock but he's preoccupied with the data streaming across his secondary monitor. No matter. They will have time to talk later. She presses her fingers to her uniform and feels the pendant hidden under the cloth.
Turning back to her own monitor, she sees that a message queue has formed. Most are department updates requiring nothing more than a routing channel, but two are from New Vulcan for Spock, both tagged private and urgent. Her heart hammers in her ears.
These aren't the first messages he's received this week from New Vulcan. Sarek is back on Earth by now, so they aren't from him. If Spock knows anyone else on the colony world, he's never mentioned it to her.
"Commander? For you." Her left hand on the audio receiver in her ear, she reaches with her right to a toggle on the comm board. Without a word, Spock taps his screen and begins reading.
Watching him is a temptation, but Nyota feels she is invading his privacy. If she needs to know the contents, he'll tell her when he's ready.
The rest of the shift passes slowly, but at last the replacements arrive and Spock and Nyota leave the bridge together. They make it all the way down the corridor to the aft turbolift before she tilts her head up at him and says, "Well?"
A human might pretend ignorance, but Spock doesn't know how. "You wish to know about the missives from the colony," he says.
"I do. Unless you don't want to tell me." She glances up at his face and is surprised to see his brows knit. He doesn't want to tell her.
The arrival of the lift stops her from asking more, but as soon as it deposits them at their deck and they are alone in the corridor outside their quarters, she says, "Are you…afraid…to tell me?"
Spock stops walking and turns to her, his arms tucked behind his back. His Starfleet pose, she calls it. Professional, military, formal—and unreachable. It catches her off guard.
"You know you can tell me anything," she says. His brows are still knit, his eyes hooded and haunted in a way she hasn't seen since…well, since the loss of his mother.
"Very well," Spock says, lowering his voice as a crew member passes by. "I have been asked to accept a position on the High Council. It would require residence on New Vulcan."
"I don't understand—"
"The High Council is tasked with governing the colony—"
"I know what the Vulcan High Council does!" Her voice is sharper than she intends, a measure of her irritation at Spock's deliberate misdirection. "What does this mean for you? For your career?" And then she adds, "For us?"
To his credit, Spock doesn't look away but continues to meet her gaze. "I am uncertain," he says at last.
"You aren't going to accept it." A question disguised as a statement. She waits for him to agree.
"As I indicated, I am uncertain."
Nyota's knees are suddenly wobbly. Not a metaphor, but a physical reaction that makes her reach out to brace herself against the wall. Spock darts out a hand and steadies her.
They make their way slowly to their quarters, the silence stretching between them. That he would consider walking away from all he's worked for in Starfleet is almost unimaginable, though perhaps it shouldn't be. In the immediate aftermath of the genocide he'd told her he was leaving Starfleet to help establish the colony, but that resolve had lasted less than a day. Selek had counseled him against leaving, Spock told her later. You can be in two places at once.
Is the loss of Selek behind this new push to get him to join the High Council?
Throughout the rest of the evening they are cross-legged and knee to knee on the floor in the sitting room, their foreheads touching from time to time, quietly talking. No, he doesn't want to leave Starfleet. Yes, he will if duty demands it. The Council's work is critical for the survival of the colony, and if he can be an integral part of it, he will set aside his personal wishes for the greater good.
When she was a small child, Nyota imagined herself in various careers—dancer, teacher, doctor—but once she settled in at Starfleet Academy, she never wavered in her determination to be an explorer. Now she tries to imagine herself planet-bound on a struggling colony, building a home, perhaps raising a family. Hadn't Spock's mother done just that?
Nyota runs her fingers absently over the fabric covering the necklace.
If Spock is willing to leave Starfleet, is she?
"I would not ask that of you," he says softly.
Her sleep is fitful and she's tired during her last shift before their leave begins the next day. Finally she and Spock are free to head to the walkway connecting the Enterprise to Starbase Yorktown. Their luggage has been sent ahead on security pallets and will be picked up in the central hub—standard procedure for disembarking crew. From there they will head to the private rooms available for rental on the rim of the starbase.
They walk in silence as the entryway to the starbase looms ahead. Spock's comm chimes once as they approach the security guard and he stops and steps to the side to let people pass him. With a hurried apology, Nyota scurries out of the way of a crewman pushing a wheeled carriage.
"I will be there, Counselor," Spock says into his comm. He flips it shut and returns it to his pocket. He starts to move forward and Nyota plants herself in his path.
"You've made a decision?"
"Nyota—"
"This affects me, too. Don't I have any say-so here?"
To an untrained eye, Spock appears unmoved—but Nyota is not an untrained eye. His very real distress is visible to her in the cant of his head, the timbre of his voice. As angry as she is—as disappointed as she is that he's making this choice—part of her understands it. Spock can no more stand by and let his people suffer than she could.
"I see," she says when he doesn't answer. "And if I offer to come with you? To leave Starfleet and find work on New Vulcan?"
Pure bravado—fueled by fear and anger and adrenaline. She holds her breath, not certain what she wants him to say.
Spock's expression is anguished. "Part of my duties would require—"
And in a flash she realizes what he is saying—that the Council is frantically beating back the very real possibility that they will not survive, that the early deaths and falling birthrate spell the end of Vulcans as a people.
"They want you to marry a Vulcan and have Vulcan children," she says. The lights in the walkway are overly bright and her eyes water.
"It may be…necessary," Spock says. Nyota blinks.
"I see." A beat, and then she murmurs, "I understand."
She doesn't, not really, and she knows as she says it, as she feels something shifting inside her like an anchor coming loose, that she will never understand it, even as she moves forward.
Lifting her chin and swallowing to clear her voice, she tugs at the chain of the necklace under her collar.
"I think you should have this back." She gauges Spock's reaction—hurt, sorrow—and she has a moment of being glad that this isn't easy for him, either. "After all, it belonged to your mother."
She half expects Spock to call her out on the technicality, but he's clearly wounded by her words.
"It is not in the Vulcan custom to receive again that which was given as a gift." His diction is clipped and formal and fraught—and with that, Nyota is ashamed of deliberately inflicting more pain. She stills her hand from removing the necklace and clutches the pendant instead.
She leans forward just as he dips down to meet her, her lips brushing his cheek with a kiss.
She'll cry later, after some of the shock and numbness wear off. And then she'll call her mother and weep some more, and maybe if she can muster the courage, she'll wander out among the crowds of people from all over the frontier worlds and look for a friendly face at a bar for a drink and conversation. Or she'll sit all night looking out the vast windows at the darkness of space and imagine herself out there with her namesakes, the stars, part of a ship and a crew and a mission bigger than herself.
But before then she has to walk away. She wills her feet to move, one in front of the other as she steps away from Spock, the distance between them growing moment by moment, his eyes on her—she is certain—as she disappears into the crowd.
Epilogue
It's not stalking if you just happen to be walking behind someone, and it's not eavesdropping if they talk loud enough for you to hear.
Leonard McCoy didn't intend to overhear the conversation between Spock and Lt. Uhura in the walkway but even in this diverse group of travelers, they are a hard couple to miss.
Something's been brewing between them for weeks, something more than the ordinary contrariness of every Vulcan he knows.
He can't make out most of the words, but the tone is clear. This isn't working out.
He's no stranger to that aggrieved tone—has delivered it as well as been on the receiving end. Most of the time it was the nail in the coffin of a relationship that was long dead and needed to be laid to rest. His own marriage, for instance, Jocelyn unhappy for years before they finally called it quits.
He isn't so sure about Spock and Uhura, though. There's something there, even now, even as they look at each other with tearful longing, that suggests they will find their way back together. They have before—like an old-fashioned yoyo on a string, approaching and retreating, or like dancers who can't quite agree on the tempo.
Give them some time apart to reconsider what it means to be together.
Lieutenant Uhura kisses Spock on the cheek and walks away. Pivoting around, Spock watches her retreat into the crowd.
"Go after her, you idiot," McCoy mutters under his breath.
He ambles up and waits for Spock to notice him standing there.
"You guys break up? What did you do?"
He grins to signal that he's teasing, expecting Spock to argue that he's mistaken, that they are not, in fact, breaking up.
When Spock whirls around, McCoy is taken aback by his pallor and the obvious look of misery. He starts to apologize but Spock says, "A typically reductive inquiry, doctor."
And there it is, the proverbial gauntlet thrown down, Spock's voice as sharp-edged as a scalpel. Bastard.
"You know, Spock, when an Earth girl says it's me, not you, it's definitely you." To add injury to insult, he slaps Spock's arm as he pushes past.
Let him chew on that for awhile. Whatever heartache he's feeling, he deserves to stew in it.
Besides, this is just a bump in the road. He has to admit it; the kids are clearly made for each other.
Notes: And that's it...my cobbling together all the hints from interviews, trailers, and the clip of the necklace. I predict that the scene where Uhura offers to give back the necklace comes early in the film and by the end of the movie, and time apart, Bones' assessment that they will find each other again is right. It will be fun to see the REAL story when the movie opens. In the meantime while we wait, I had fun writing this...and I hope you had fun reading it. Let me know!
UPDATE: Since I've now seen the movie, I've made two very small tweaks because they were jarring enough to take someone out of the story...I've changed the number of days the Enterprise has been on their mission to the right one...966...and made the stone in the necklace from Vulcan. That fact turns out to be an important plot point in the movie.
