All Things Revealed

"And so, Nyota, we commend you for all of your hard work in helping to reestablish the Vulcan colonists, and we would like to present you with a pin to commemorate your time here. Thank you, and as our native Vulcans would say, live long and prosper."

Mr. Maddock pins the medal to the front of Uhura's dress and kisses her boisterously on both cheeks as the company erupts in a cacophony of applause. Uhura blushes and bows her head under the weight of their praise, and then lifts her eyes to meet her friends and colleagues once more as Mr. Maddock takes his seat beside her. She folds her hands neatly in front of her, envisioning first what she will say to such wonderful people.

"I will have it known that I gave up a dream to be here before all of you tonight. A little over two years ago when Nero unleashed his wrath against the Vulcan home world the Enterprise, newly commissioned, was called to arms. I served aboard her for a short time, much too short to fulfill my heart's desire. "

"When I made a conscious decision to take my leave of the Enterprise and perform my duties as a communications officer here I thought at first that I had made a mistake. The land was dry and bare, and the people were a sad lot ravaged by a grief and shock that could not be expressed. I did not think it possible to create a new life in this place, to bring together a mourning people and give them a new world."

"In hindsight, I should have had more faith, not only in the Vulcan people, but also in myself. Though born from unanticipated and unfortunate circumstances, my time here has been the experience of a lifetime. Nowhere else in the universe could my studies of language flourish as much as they have here. I have learned so much from all of you, not only about language, but also about kindness, generosity, friendship, and love. All these emotions I never expected to find amongst a people known for being devoid of them."

"So, thank you for all the help and encouragement you have given me. Thank you for teaching me and helping me to grow. I hope I will be able to take all the gifts you have given me back to our home, Earth, and use them in benefit of our own people. Until we meet again, each and every one of you, live long and prosper."

There is a round of applause smattered with Vulcan salutes and cries of "peace and long life". Farther down the table, Aria wipes her eyes on her napkin while Velik, beside her, claps as stoically as usual. As the applause dies down and people begin standing up to continue the party, Uhura nods at her friends discreetly from across the table. It is time for them to go.

She slips through the crowd almost unnoticed, stopping only a few times to receive congratulatory remarks and many handshakes. She nods her head and smiles to each person in turn and finally manages to extricate herself from a particularly talkative colleague in order to slip through the back door unnoticed. Velik and Aria are already waiting for her, and they walk quickly down the empty and darkened corridor in silence. Uhura and Aria both breathe an audible sigh of relief upon reaching the outside of the embassy building unnoticed, while Velik merely gazes upward pensively at one of the two moons hanging in the sky, completely unconcerned with their escape. Aria rounds on Uhura, who has taken off her heels and is busy loosing all the pins from her hair so that it falls about her shoulders in a wave.

"What a knockout of a speech!" she cries dramatically, pretending to wipe at imaginary tears once more. "I only hope I can say something that good when I have to get up and give one myself."

"No doubt you, my dear, will faint away with nerves and have to be revived by some beautiful Vulcan prince," Uhura says slyly.

Aria whacks her in the arm with her own shoes but laughs anyway.

"You're probably right," she says, sighing, "At any rate, I'll be sure to make a fool of myself."

Hearing the hint of sadness in her friend's voice, Uhura comes up beside Aria and puts an arm around her shoulder. Velik, who has remained silent for the entire conversation, decides to take the quiet moment to speak up.

"Unfortunately, Aria, if she should faint, will have to find some other means to revive herself as there are no Vulcan princes."

Silence follows this statement, and then Aria and Uhura burst into laughter, doubling up as they continue walking toward the darkened car park. Uhura grasps at a stitch building her side, and breathes deeply, as Aria wipes real tears from her eyes.

"I think Aria was hoping you would be willing to revive her yourself, Velik," Uhura suggests, and quickly skips away and out of her friend's reach.

"Nyota!"

Pulling Velik by the hand toward her parked hover car, Uhura waves a hand at Aria who cannot seem to wipe the shocked expression off of her face.

"Hey! Wait a minute!"

Uhura jumps into the driver's seat and blows a kiss to her friend.

"We'll meet you at your flat in a few minutes, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever," Aria responds grumpily, and turns on her heel, walking in the direction of her own hover car.

Shutting the car door, Uhura shrugs at Velik who is eyeing her in an almost wary way.

"Don't worry about her," she says, seeing Velik's look, "She'll be over it by the time we make it to her flat. It was all a joke anyway."

Velik blinks once, turns off the radio that has come on automatically, and looks out the window.

"I have never understood the reasoning behind Human pranks and jokes, Nyota," he says.

Nyota pats him gently on the arm as the hover car rises into the air a few feet. "I have failed you in that respect, Velik. I am truly sorry."

The young tousle haired Vulcan raises an eyebrow, and Uhura chuckles to herself as they fly off into the night in the direction of Aria's apartment complex. Minutes later, they arrive to find that somehow Aria has managed to beat them home. She opens the door, having changed back into her Vulcan tunic pyjamas, holding several empty wine glasses in one hand and balancing a wine bottle in the other.

"You look comfortable," Uhura states, stepping inside the dimly lit room, Velik following along behind her, "Any chance you've got some more of those tunics."

"You know I do," Aria says, grinning broadly, and setting the glasses and bottle onto the nearest side table. She comes back minutes later, a blue tunic with an oval scoop neck in hand, quite the opposite of her own.

Uhura slips into the bathroom to change, folding her dress neatly by the door and setting her shoes on top. The tunic barely comes halfway down her thigh, but it is comfortable and much more cool than her dress in such a hot atmosphere. When she exits the bathroom minutes later, Aria has already poured drinks for the two of them and is routing around in the kitchen for something nonalcoholic that Velik will be willing to drink.

Uhura runs through the music available on Aria's wall display and chooses a mix of pop and rock songs popular on Earth. Aria comes back in carrying a glass of some kind of yellow-orange liquid that looks remotely like orange juice but can't really be. She hands it to Velik, who nods at her gratefully and takes a sip. Meanwhile, Uhura downs her first glass of wine, and sets the glass to the side, vowing not to drink anymore so that she can stay awake.

She hops up from the love seat with renewed energy and pulls Aria up from the opposite couch. They spend the next half hour dancing around the room, head banging, laughing, and trying to get Velik to join them. He remains as stoic as ever and sits on the couch with his eyes closed as though the loud music gives him a headache.

Two hours later, after Aria has managed to polish off over three-fourths of the wine bottle by herself, she lies curled up on the couch next to Velik who is also slumped over in sleep. Uhura exits the bathroom and seeing her sleeping friends, makes her way out to the balcony. The blanket of night surrounding her is thick and silent, punctuated by the nighttime sounds of native insects much like the cicadas of Earth. Both of Vulcan II's moons are high in the sky, their wane light reflected in the few lights visible throughout the growing city.

Uhura has never realised just how different Vulcan is from her home world. At home she will not be able to see the stars in the heavens like she can in this place, and for some reason this saddens her more than anything else about leaving. In the distance, upon a hill, ShiKahr rises up, sillouhetted against the horizon. Uhura stares at it for a few minutes, thinking of Sarek all alone there. The door behind her suddenly slides open, and she turns to find Velik standing in the doorway.

"I did not mean to disturb you, Nyota," he immediately apologises, but Uhura brushes the apology away with her hand.

"It's all right. I thought you were asleep."

"No, I was merely meditating."

Uhura nods and looks back out toward the skyline of Vulcan. Velik remains next to her, forever her silent and watchful companion. His breathing is another constant in the deep silence, and it comforts her as she matches each inhalation and exhalation of breath with her own.

"Velik, can I ask you something?"

"Anything, Nyota."

"Why are you friends with me? I mean, why are you friends with any Human? So many of your people are disgusted by our ways and our emotional habits."

His dark eyes meet hers, and within them she can see understanding and acceptance. His voice is like velvet when he speaks, "My people owe much to the Terran people who came to our aid in our time of need. I believe it is of my own interest to learn from and become acquainted with those of your species who offer insight into your nature. I only wish to understand your people better, and thus find it in my heart to love them as I love my own."

Uhura shakes her head, "You speak of love, Velik. I didn't even think you capable of admitting such an emotion."

"We control our emotion, Nyota, but we are not devoid of them. Some of my people would be ashamed of feeling any type of friendship toward a Human, but they are prejudiced and severely blind-sighted by this. I can not live in such a way when I work so closely with yourself and others of your kind."

"Velik, you have taught me much about Vulcans. I very much appreciate the friendship you have bestowed upon me," Uhura says, placing her hand on his arm gently before taking it away, not wishing to make him uncomfortable. She can feel him swell with pride next to her, though he does not show it. He looks down on her, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

"The very same to you, Nyota."

Uhura smiles back at him warmly, despite the fact that something at the back of her mind is clawing its way to the surface, longing to be free of her. The smile slips from her face suddenly, and she sits down hard in one of the patio chairs gracing the balcony. Seeing her distress, Velik sits down next to her, his eyebrows drawn together in a universal look of concern.

"You are troubled by something?" he asks. She can only nod in response; unsure of how to ask him something she should have inquired about a long time ago.

"Do you know anything about the repopulation programme here?" she asks cautiously, keeping her focus ahead of her.

"Yes, I am aware of it's existence and what is expected of each Vulcan in regards to it," Velik says, and she, with her trained ear, can hear a hint of wariness in his voice as though he is afraid he will give away too much information to this foreigner in his world. "Is this the subject that is causing you discomfort? I would have you speak your mind if that should ease your distress."

"I just don't understand why the population even needs monitoring," she says, frustration laced in the edges of her voice, "I mean, I realise that the population is at the lowest it has been since the time of Surak, but I feel like there's more to it, as though there's some purpose being kept from not only me, but the embassy. I've asked Sarek the very same, but he refuses to give an answer. I was hoping you would be able to . . ."

Velik remains silent, his face turned away from Uhura's so that she cannot see his eyes or his expression. She has no way of knowing whether she has offended him in some way by asking such a question. She remembers suddenly the term Sarek had used when they had discussed Spock and his part in the plan. Not wanting to offend one of her few Vulcan friends, Uhura teeters on the precipice of finally understanding and being kept in the dark.

Without a second thought for the consequences she asks, "Does Vulcan biology have anything to do with it?"

Velik stiffens beside her and stands up quickly as though he has been burned. Uhura watches him, surprised by his sudden movement, as he rests his arms against the balcony railing, his back turned to her.

"Velik?"

"I do not know where you first learned that term," he says gruffly, his voice carried back to her on the light wind, "but I admit to being most reluctant in discussing it with you. You shall find that most Vulcans are unwilling to discuss that particular subject with other worlders."

"Please, tell me," Uhura says, her eyes boring into Velik's back as though that will reveal the answer to her, "You know of the relationship I had with Spock. This plan is why we can't be together. At least, that's what Spock said, and he didn't elaborate. If something is being kept a secret, I would like to know. I believe I have that right."

Velik gives an audible sigh; one of the few Uhura has ever heard him utter. "What do you know of biology?" he asks blandly, his voice completely monotone.

"Sex?" she offers quietly, shrugging even though he can't see it.

Velik gives no outward appearance of discomfort or distaste in her choice of vocabulary but instead plows on.

"Yes, that is it, after a fashion," he continues, "More specifically it refers to the Vulcan time of mating, the pon farr. During this time the Vulcan male fulfills one objective: taking a mate, usually the one he has been bonded to. It is a particularly dangerous time for Vulcans as they are often unable to control their own strength and actions."

Uhura stares, unblinking at Velik's back throughout his speech. When he pauses she takes the heavy silence to ask a question, "What happens if a Vulcan does not have a mate?"

"He usually dies."

Uhura grimaces at the finality in Velik's voice as he turns back toward her. He notices her facial expression and raises an eyebrow.

"That is one of the purposes of the programme, to bond all suitable Vulcans so that when the pon farr sets upon them, they will not be left alone. No one can be spared during this time."

Uhura shakes her head in disbelief and motions for Velik to sit next to her once more. He does so hesitantly as though the newfound knowledge he has given her has created an invisible boundary between them.

"I'm still not sure I completely understand, but I must thank you for telling me. It gives me much comfort to know that it is not just because I am Human that I cannot be with Spock."

Velik allows her to hold his hand in her own for a moment, before he sets her hand gently in her lap and tucks his own into the folds of his tunic.

"There will be someone for you yet, Nyota, do not lose heart."

Uhura smiles, ducking her head so that he cannot see the tears welling in her eyes, and imagines Spock's face before her own, always out of reach.

"And that coming from a Vulcan," she says with a dry laugh that can hardly conceal with sob welling in her throat. "Thank you, Velik. I'm going to miss you dearly."

"And I you."

Authoress' Note: Phew, that was a long chappie! I had great fun writing that one, and I really, really hope you will enjoy this moment between Velik and Uhura. I'm glad no one has died after hearing that this will not be a K/S fic. All of you took that quite well. :P To those of you who don't like reading about Uhura, don't you worry; Spock is going to take up most of the next chapter.