Chapter Four: Birds of a Feather
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The image on the vidscreen is fuzzy—a disappointment but not a surprise. Uhura had warned him that as long as the Enterprise is in such close proximity to Procis 241, getting a clear signal to and from Earth is dicey at best.
But Leonard McCoy isn't someone who gives up when things are dicey. He fiddles with the controls until his daughter's face swims into view.
"Joanna!" he says, unnecessarily loud. His daughter—dark-eyed and pale like her mother—gives a perfunctory wave. "Hi Dad," she says, her attention occupied with something off-screen. At one time her obvious indifference to him would have hurt. After the divorce he expected her to be angry for awhile. What still catches him off-guard is the lingering unspoken resentment masked as nonchalance whenever he contacts her.
"You busy?"
He sees her shake her head and she gives an audible sigh. "Not really," she says. "What do you want?"
"Just to talk. To see how you are."
What he doesn't tell her—what is closer to the truth—is that so many of the crew have reported seeing children that he's been half-expecting to see her in his dreams or visions or in some weird time continuum. That he hasn't seen her is disturbing.
"I'm fine." She looks up then with the same disapproving stare she must have learned from her mother. "You forgot my birthday. Again."
For a moment McCoy is flustered. He remembers sending a recorded message and ordering a flower delivery in plenty of time. Unless, of course, this damn star is playing tricks with his memory—or with time, one of the strange anomalies where time is non-linear or disconnected. Could he be experiencing something similar?
But no. He looks more closely at Joanna's face and sees something there—a hard expression in her eyes, her lips pressed in defiance.
Of course she got the recorded message, received the flowers. Her birthday isn't the reason for her anger; she blames him for leaving.
Now it's his turn to sigh. "I'm sorry, sweetheart." Trying to defend himself, saying anything else, will make her angrier than she already is.
"I need to go now," Joanna says.
Before he can protest—before he can even say goodbye—the screen goes dark.
McCoy leans back and sits in silence. In a cabinet over his dresser he keeps a bottle of bourbon, and he toys with the idea of getting up and pouring a drink. He imagines the oily feel of it in his mouth—the burned caramel notes going up his nose and burning his throat, the deep satisfied weight of it warming his core.
But he also imagines the way it will heighten his sorrow and paint his sadness with a sharper shadow.
With an effort, he stands up and leaves his cabin, heading to the officers' mess on C deck. It's between shifts, and with any luck, he can drink a cup of coffee alone.
Or not. Uhura is already there, a half-eaten salad apparently abandoned in front of her. When she sees him, she waves him over.
"Eating alone?" he says, setting his cup down with care. "Where's your lesser half?"
Uhura rolls her eyes at his jab at Spock.
"Sorry," McCoy says, grinning. "Force of habit."
Instead of returning his smile, Uhura frowns and stabs a piece of lettuce with her fork.
"Wait a minute," McCoy says, "you two okay?"
Uhura shrugs and puts down her fork, giving up any pretense of eating. "I don't know. I thought we were, but now I'm not sure. I mean, everybody has rough patches, right? Every relationship?"
"Don't look at me," McCoy says, picking up his cup and taking a noisy sip. "Rough patches are all I know."
"You're joking," Uhura says, a tinge of asperity in her voice.
McCoy puts down his cup and says, "Okay, jokes aside, yeah, all relationships have ups and downs. You're just in a down place right now. It'll get better."
"How do you know that? What if it doesn't? What if it's always this…hard?"
"I'm not sure what you—"
"It wasn't always hard, was it? With your wife?"
He takes another sip of coffee, and then one more before he answers. He's known Uhura since they were at the Academy together, learning each other's strengths and wobbles through epic poker games and long conversations over drinks at the student union. She's never been cowed by anything. Her academic prowess was the envy of her classmates, her friendships with other cadets easy and genuine. He's watched her battle her way back from a serious injury playing Parises Squares and accept with uncommon grace a field promotion during the Vulcan genocide.
And he has since marveled at her ability to navigate a relationship with someone as baffling and privately soulful as Spock.
"I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask," he says. "Oh, you could ask my ex. She'd give you an earful. Or ask my daughter. Maybe she'll say more than a dozen words to you. She won't say much to me, but she makes sure to let me know what a disappointment I am."
"You're still joking."
McCoy sets his cup on the table and laces his fingers together.
"It was always hard," he says slowly, his tone as serious as he can make it. "It was hard because I was in medical school and had so little time for anything else, and because we had different ideas about the future, and having a child made things even harder. But we didn't break up because it was hard. We broke up because it stopped being worth it."
He sets his cup on the table and folds his hands together. "That's my two cents, for what it's worth. Now—are you going to tell me what this is all about?"
Uhura takes a breath and nods. "I thought I knew what I wanted," she says, "but now I'm not sure."
She pushes the salad plate to the side and folds her napkin, clearly stalling. McCoy gives a loud harrumph.
"That's it?"
Uhura meets his gaze again and says, "Remember what Spock said that day we found him unconscious? About our…children?"
"Sure I remember. He saw your daughter, either in the real future, or in some delusional state caused by the star. That's what we're trying to figure out, right? What this star is doing to us."
"It's just," Uhura says, pausing, "that either way, we have children together."
"What do you mean, either way?"
"Either what Spock saw is the future the way it will happen, or he saw what he wants to happen."
"And you don't want children."
Uhura lowers her eyes. "I don't know," she says so softly that he has to strain to hear.
"So don't have them until you want them," McCoy says. "Problem solved."
"But if they are in my future, it doesn't matter what I want."
Suddenly McCoy is very tired. Thinking about time loops raises all sorts of philosophical conundrums he's happy to leave to other people to solve. If the future has somehow already happened, then worrying about it makes no sense. He starts to say so but Uhura continues.
"Really, what worries me more is that Spock wants these children. He's thought about their names. What will happen if I don't want them? I mean, never want them? What then?"
Her expression is so earnest, so troubled, that McCoy hesitates before answering. Joanna's birth was without a doubt the happiest moment of his life—deeply life-affirming, joyful, mystical.
But if he's honest, it was also the beginning of the end of his relationship with Jocelyn—whatever it had been before. Need and desire and hopes and dreams—all were thrown into sharp relief and reconsidered and tested by the strain of raising a child. Sleeplessness and physical exhaustion and the never-ending obligation to a helpless human being, weighed against the marvel of watching his daughter grow and change. So hard, so very hard, but still worth it as long as he and Jocelyn set aside their swelling unhappiness with each other.
"I don't know what will happen," McCoy says. "But here's what I think. Whatever it is that you and Spock have—whatever pulled you two together and keeps you in each other's orbit—I can see it. Maybe you can't at the moment because you're tired or too close, but I can see it. And if you don't want children—if you never want children—well, that might be hard for him, but it won't mean you aren't worth it."
Pushing her chair back and standing up, Nyota says, "Thank you."
And just like that, she's gone.
XX
In some ways, Leonard McCoy knows her better than anyone on the ship. Better than the captain, who's been in the uncomfortable position of overhearing more than one private moment between her and Spock.
And in some ways more than Spock himself, whose presence can feel—when they are in unity—as close as her next heartbeat. His vulnerability with her—his willingness to trust her to understand what no one else can—makes her sometimes too careful with what she says, or hesitant about sharing her own pain.
With McCoy she has none of that restraint. He has seen her in abject grief and unadulterated joy. He is more forthright with her than she likes but always needs. Her trust in him depends on her belief that he pulls no punches, needs no accolades, acts on the best impulses.
She's told McCoy far more than she's articulated aloud to Spock about her ambivalence about children—though she has no doubt that Spock is aware of her feelings. Even now, as she walks back to her quarters, she feels guilty about sharing so much personal information with McCoy, as if she has somehow betrayed Spock. A silly notion, but she can't help it.
McCoy was willing to listen to her concerns without judgment. Spock would want to parse the meaning of her words, sort through the points of her objections as if she were presenting notes for a debate. Right now she isn't ready for that.
She's already consumed with the paradox of possibly knowing the future. If her daughter and son are waiting for her in the future, then she has, in essence, no free will. No ability to say no to children, no way to swerve from fate or destiny or the inevitability of a looping time continuum.
Something about that predetermined fate rankles her and makes her restless. Even if she is a puppet of fate, she doesn't want to feel like one.
Or if the star isn't throwing them through time and is instead revealing Spock's deepest desires instead, that ties her hands, too—and in some ways, more insidiously. Now if she objects, she is deliberately disappointing him. Yet shouldn't her wishes matter just as much? Isn't compromise the most important element of a relationship?
By the time she opens the door to her cabin, she's irritable again. Briefly she considers sending a note to Spock to suggest he sleep in his own quarters tonight.
"Lights," she calls out, and across the room she sees a lithe young woman stand up as the room is illuminated.
"Who are you?" she asks, but as she does, she already knows.
The young woman gives a trilling laugh.
"I don't have to be anyone if you don't want me to," she says.
"What do you mean?"
"We thought this would be the easiest way to communicate," the young woman says, "but now I see you find me problematic."
"Are you my daughter or not?"
"I can be."
"Will you be? In the future? Is this a vision of what will be?"
The young woman is exactly as Spock has described her—thin, athletic, tall, dark, a blend of Vulcan and human features.
"That's up to you."
"Then this isn't a time continuum. A loop. You aren't from the future. You are from my….imagination."
"I am a child of the star. And I am also yours."
Nyota pulls her communicator from her pocket. With the flick of her thumb, she could summon security or alert Spock. And say what? That she is having a hallucination? She takes a step toward the young woman.
"What is your name," she says. The young woman laughs again, her white teeth like bright pearls against her luminous dark skin.
"You and Father named me long before I was born," she said. "You know who I am."
"Khio'ri."
"Child of a star."
Nyota has a sudden urge to touch this young woman, to make sure that she is a corporeal being. She lifts her hand, half expecting Khio'ri to back away, but to her surprise, the young woman rushes forward and takes her hand. Her fingers are warm, almost unnaturally so, and Nyota closes her hand around them.
"If you aren't from the future, and you aren't an illusion, you can't be my daughter. Tell me who you are. Why are you here?"
"It's so hard to tell you," Khio'ri says. "I don't know the right words."
She squeezes Nyota's hand tighter. "It's important that I give you this message, but I don't know how. Please help me. You are the only one who can understand."
"But I—"
"Please, Mother. Help me."
Khio'ri's eyes are the same color of dark tea as Spock's, her eyebrows more delicate but definitely Vulcan. But her mouth is Nyota's—and the tip of her nose turns up with the same curve that Nyota recognizes on her own face. More than that, Khio'ri's expression is a copy of Nyota's—imploring, insistent, determined.
"You said you are a child of a star. My name means star in Swahili. Are you my child?"
"This is a wonderful body," Khio'ri says, pulling her hand back and holding out her arms like a ballerina. "I hope to rejoin it one day."
"What do you mean? Do you have to leave this body? Why can't you stay?"
"I am the child of a star," she says. "I must go back to my mother. And you must go back to your children as well. All of you. While you are here, we are lost."
Nyota feels a growing sense of alarm as Khio'ri speaks. Alarm and frustration—as the young woman's words become more strident.
"Please, Mother, let me go home."
"Why do you call me Mother? How am I keeping you from going home?"
"This is so hard," Khio'ri says, her lashes suddenly wet with tears. "I do not wish you to leave, but your presence here is causing me pain. And the others are suffering. If it was only me, I would continue, despite the hardship. But I can't do this to the others. They want to go home, and they can't while you are here. It isn't worth it to them to lose everything, as much as they might want to stay. Do you understand yet?"
The growing sense of alarm is like a weight on Nyota's shoulders, neck, head. The bed looms up and she feels Khio'ri's hand leading her to lie down.
"You are the best communicator on this ship," the young woman says in her ear. "Please, Mother, hear me. Tell your captain to let us go. I'll see you one day, I promise."
"I don't understand," Nyota says, but even as she does her eyes are closing. She feels the bed sheet pulled up around her arms and she sinks into the softness of the mattress.
"Remember," Khio'ri says, her voice beginning to fade, "you have to let us go. Please, Mother. Please do this for me."
And all at once the pieces fall into place. Nyota sits bolt upright in the bed in the empty room, her hand pressing the communicator call button.
"Spock here."
"I know what's going on," Nyota says, a note of wonder in her voice. "And I know what we have to do now."
Author's Note: One more chapter to go! I know it's hard to keep up with such tardy updates, but I hope you are enjoying this story nevertheless!