A/N: So I spent my summer mourning dead pets—rest in peace, Bear and Cassie—trying to deal with my awful aunt, avoiding panic attacks, starting (shockingly effective) psychiatric medication, realizing that I have no money for college, (thus) negotiating with financial aid, getting crawled on by scorpions oh god, and reading seventy-six books for my thesis. Least relaxing summer ever and I didn't even have a job. And so, in this momentary lull at the beginning of the year, I give unto you readers this chapter.

There seem to be fears that this won't finish due to the length between update times. I've been working on this for, oh god, over two years now, and I have no plans to not finish this. Actually, I have the last chapter already written. However, I am doing approximately fourteen shit-tons of academic writing this year thanks to my honors program, along with applying for grad school, so, you know, this will update again… some time.

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Enterprise High

being a high school AU of ST: XI

with many hijinks

and much angst

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Chapter Forty-Five: The Conscience of the King

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Uhura didn't go to sleep that night.

By the time the dawn came, she had torn the house apart and was laying half-on the couch with a twenty year old atlas, a plastic toy cactus, the two hard drives she hadn't yet accessed, and a glass of rum resting comfortably on her chest. Her eyes were unfocused and she was drooling a little.

When she had plugged the tiny green datachip into the monitor, a message box had appeared. The text, in Swahili, read, Nyota, please locate and insert the other two datachips. —Itidal. "What?" Uhura had yelled at the screen. "Fuck! Come on!" She'd hit her hand on the desk and probably broken a finger. Her knuckle still hurt a little.

Uhura spent the rest of the night frantically searching their house for clues. She figured that the other two hard drives had the same two-password system. She'd tried all the passwords she could think of, but there was a time delay—after entering three wrong passwords, she was locked out of the system for five minutes; after ten wrong passwords, she was locked out for an hour.

The atlas had been one of her mother's favorite possessions, but there were no notations in its margins. The plastic toy cactus—also disappointingly unmarked—had gathered dust on their mantel for years; Uhura vaguely remembered her father saying that her mother had won it, as a child, at a fair. The rum was because, well, she felt like some rum. She sipped it dispassionately. Where on Earth else could her mother have left clues?

She heard soft noises from the direction of her father's bedroom and tossed back the rest of the rum hastily, then hid the glass behind the sofa. By the time Chane came out of his room in pajama bottoms, Uhura had the atlas spread over the table and was acting like the entry on Greater Cairo was utterly fascinating. Chane peered at her over the kitchen counter. "Nyota? You're up early."

"Yeah, set my alarm wrong," said Uhura casually. "Good morning." Chane needed to leave or look away before she could go; she hadn't had time to put the hard drives in her pocket and it would be impossible to do so without him seeing. "What time is it? I should take a shower."

"Six fifteen," said Chane, turning on the coffee maker. "Want a cup?"

"Oh, please," said Uhura. She vacillated for a moment. "Any plans for the day?" she asked finally, closing the atlas.

"Bank, breakfast, class," said Chane, turning his back to her to get coffee cups out of the upper cabinets. "The usual." Uhura hurriedly stuffed the hard drives into her pocket. Luckily they were the size of her palm, and the thickness. She stood up and put the cactus back on the mantel. Chane was pouring cream into the cups as she walked through the kitchen.

"I'm going to shower," said Uhura, kissing Chane on the cheek. "Leave mine in the machine, yeah?"

"I will," said Chane, smiling.

x

Spock had come home soon after Kirk's speech to the hoverclub and worked on homework all through dinner. Now, he was about to go to bed. It was very cold in his room. He put his forehead against the wall and closed his eyes. His eyelids felt heavy, from the bottom up. He could feel a thick line of ache in his forehead, creeping downwards, into his eyes, and out and around his skull.

Tension had been building inside of him all day. He felt sick. It was a special kind of sick. His stomach hurt and his throat hurt, and the line of ache in his forehead didn't spread, but it deepened, like a knife pushing farther into flesh. There was a flash of fire around him and a disappearing hand. He felt the floor give again, saw her fall, saw the blazing, saw the deep void in the brightness of the flame.

He only let it hurt him sometimes. There were so many hurts that he had to take them one at a time. The flames singed him, the leaving hand tore at his heart and went away with a bit of it, a bit of it he'd never get back. Then the flames left. Sometimes he pushed the memories away with his very hands. Sometimes he looked away from them, like he was ashamed. And he was ashamed.

There was his brother, there he wasn't; that hurt was almost over. It was a big scar on his back, not raw anymore, but of course it ached. He thought back to when his body was wrong, too, and he touched his chest to make sure, and smiled when he found flat muscles, closed his eyes at the feel of coarse hairs. That was a thing that only hurt because of the Vulcans.

But the Vulcans were another hurt too. He was a part of them; he always would be. They had given him so much. And he loved what they had given him, most of the time. He had become so much of what they wanted. But when he had left them—and he had, really, left them—they had hated it, hated him. They didn't understand. They had just ruined him, torn off bits of him and tried to keep him. But he had grown back, hadn't he. He was healed now, and strong. That hurt was a scar too, but a smaller one, more intricate, and closer to the surface. This scar was on his face.

And Nero. His final regret. Nero nagged at him the least, but horrified him the most. Everything else was ended. The consequences went on, of course, but Nero, of everything and everyone else, was still there, physically, standing sometimes in his line of sight. At first Spock had not felt anything, but the poison had started to spread. It was something to be hated. He didn't know what. Being hated was… it was like standing in a field of flowers and watching someone kill a dog. It was like being shown the entrails and excrement of your life. There was just enough truth mixed in with the hatred that all of the hatred seemed real. Read the screaming bold text between the lines and it looks like it's your fault. With Nero, the void wasn't veiled by fire. The void was right there. The hatred was acid in his stomach and in his eyes, all over his hands and eating, eating away. It hurt so much and so differently. All of the other times he had been a victim. But he was quietly uncertain now. What had he done? What was he responsible for? And the uncertainty burrowed into his brain and made a nest. The eggs hatched; the monsters grew. They breathed fire around his skull and scratched his eyes out. He pulled his forehead away from the wall.

He stood there and then staggered to the bed. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know if he should look away or if he should just deal with it or if he should talk to somebody or what. If he looked away, he was a coward—but he didn't mind being a coward—but what if Nero came back? What if Nero stood in his line of sight again? He'd been arrested, but Spock knew he'd be back. What would he do when he saw Nero standing there, no weapons, just the great black beam of his hatred, the invisible power that was stronger than anything Spock had yet encountered. He couldn't just look away. So he had to deal with it.

But he couldn't deal with it. He simply could not. He realized he'd been not thinking about Nero. Because whenever he tried to deal with it, his body wouldn't let him. It'd rebel, get sick, make excuses, and finally run away. And what good did it do to deal with it? He couldn't go find Nero, and even if he did, he couldn't talk sense into him—nor would Spock want to talk sense into Nero. Nero had killed his mother: he could not be forgiven. Words would do nothing. And actions—those, he could not take. What would he do? Kill Nero? Unthinkable. Spock had never been built for revenge. Play mind games with him? Well, how, for one, and why, also? That would be becoming him; that was one thing Spock did not want.

The only conclusion he could come to was that it was a terrible thing to be hated, and that he wanted desperately to avoid it in the future. Another thing he knew was that he would get over all of this. Time had already healed so many of his wounds. It was the truest cliché he knew, Spock realized. Time was the great doctor of the world, the best antibiotic and nepenthe there was. And the final thing he saw was a face. He turned on his side and checked his PADD for emails and found three from Kirk, all useless bits of chat saying things like "do you think we have time for coffee tomorrow after school i may not be able to work on the hover without consuming at least three pints" and "i swear to god the mold on the bathtub is sentient now i think it was laughing at my loofah earlier" and "have you ever noticed how dangerous on-demand is when you have a lot of homework to do?" Spock smiled again and curled up in the dark. The rich moon shone through the slit in the curtain, and the shadows, for once, were soft and sweet. There was, he felt, love like a shield around him, and it gave him a weapon of strength. He fell into a haze like warm arms and was asleep soon after, the void disappointed and the moonlight strong.

x

The shower simultaneously tired out and invigorated Uhura. For a while, she was afraid that the finger of rum she'd consumed was going to be a problem, yet the steam steadied her, and washing her face helped her feel alive. She was clean and new. But like she always felt when she hadn't had enough sleep, it was as if the world was brighter and flatter than usual. Sound was fast, but her eyes were slow. And her hands were cold. She rubbed them in her towel.

Chane was reading a book and drinking coffee when she emerged, dressed, from her room. She drank her coffee as she packed her bag for school. She stood next to the kitchen island for a second, holding her coffee midair and staring off into the distance. Then she put her things down, went back in to her room, put the tiny green chip in a box and put the box in her pocket, along with the two hard drives.

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At lunch, with the hoverclub (plus Gaila) gathered around, Uhura spread the chip and hard drives out over the table and told them the story.

Chekov noticed how her hands trembled as she touched the chip. He was sitting diagonal from her, and he saw how large her eyes were. Sound was not as distinct. When Uhura finished the story, everyone but Chekov had ideas—they could search her house, they could look at other books and photos, they could help, what was she doing after school? Uhura replied to everyone coherently, but her mouth did not move as much as it normally did. Chekov thought that was a strange reaction to have, but what reactions weren't odd?

It took a long time for the bell to ring. Uhura's hands were shaking hard by the time it did. Chekov let her hurry out of the caf, then followed her. She was standing in a dark corner next to some trophy cases, her arms around herself.

"I am so sorry," said Chekov, wishing he could hug her. "I haf lost my mother also." He did not know what else to say.

"It's not them," said Uhura. "I mean—I didn't know I would react like this. It's weird hearing everybody talk about her." She wiped her eyes. "It's not just a mystery."

"They do not understand," said Chekov.

"No, it's—I mean, it's definitely not their fault. They weren't flippant." She was right. The hoverclub had been perfectly serious about finding the other chips. But there had been something in their tone that was more curious than sympathetic.

"I can talk to them for you," Chekov offered.

"Oh, I'll do that," said Uhura. "Don't worry." She felt steely again, all of a sudden. She did need their help and impartiality. Obviously, the bulk of the clues would lie in things only Uhura could know—why else would Itidal have addressed the message to her? But Uhura needed some original, outside of the box thinking to get those clues together. She did need them and their curiosity. As long as she had Chekov's sympathy, she'd be fine.

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Fine has varying definitions. Uhura genuinely was for the rest of the day. The hoverclub had made plans to come over to her house after their meeting, which went well. As they were trudging to their cars, Spock came jogging over to her.

"Pavel mentioned…" he said, and trailed off uncharacteristically. There was real pain in his eyes.

"Oh," said Uhura. "Yeah. Listen, it's okay. I was going to talk to everyone about it when we got to my house."

"I am sorry," said Spock. "Nyota, I am very sorry."

There was a strong flicker of something warm in her. She put her hands on his shoulders. He was so hot—his skin was fiery. "Spock," she said. Her hand, of its own accord, went around the nape of his neck. "It's okay. Don't worry about. I'm fine, and I understand."

He touched his forehead to hers, lightly. Then he backed away, nodded once, and went to his car.

Across the lot, Kirk looked away.

x

"I was four," said Uhura.

They'd had the doors open for an hour. The office smelled like the rest of the house now. She was leaning her left hand on the desk and holding one of the hard drives in her right hand.

"I'm not going to say much," she went on, keeping her eyes on the hard drive. "I simply want you all to know that yes, parts of this are a game, parts of this are an adventure, parts of this are a mystery. There have been puzzles and guns and fast cars. But." She looked at them, one at a time. "I don't know how many people have died because of Nero, and because of what he believes in. My mother, Spock's mother, Jim's father—and that's just within our families. There are more. Like I said, I don't know how many more."

Uhura put the hard drive down and held her hands at the small of her back.

"We need to keep the death toll down. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to find out all of what's going on and deal with Nero. We need to be serious. We need to be safe. We need to understand that this isn't a game."

She looked at each of them again. "Okay," she said. "Let's get started."

x

Chane wasn't getting home until late that night, so they went through Uhura's house with a fine-toothed comb.

Uhura sat in the living room, writing down places for people to look, while everyone else searched the house. Of course, they kept coming to her with questions—the point of Itidal's exercise had been to code something only Uhura would know. "What if you were to move?" Spock asked at one point. "How could Itidal assume that you would not?" Uhura explained that the house had been in their family for nearly a century and the likelihood of their moving was small, especially considering her father's tenure, but she sent them to look in the attic and other places that would need to be cleaned out in case of a move after that.

Chapel and Chekov went for pizza at seven, much to Sulu's delight. Uhura discovered she was starving and ate half a Hawaiian. "We should probably stop soon," she said, pouring herself some Dr. Pepper. "I should work on homework, you know."

"We all should," sighed Sulu. "The teachers are really gearing up for AP testing."

Chekov made a face. "I do not even haf time to catch up on my shows."

"Speaking of, has anyone seen the latest Doctor Who?" said Gaila.

"Yes!" said everyone, and the conversation devolved into an intense discussion of the Twenty-Ninth Doctor's relationship with her newest companion.

It was pleasant being distracted. Uhura let her gaze wander, watching Sulu and Chekov press their forearms together, moving in synchrony without realizing they were. Kirk and Spock were nearly the same, but their movements were less automatic; they were almost copying each other, creating a funny repeating pattern of hand gestures and facial movements. Uhura had read about couples mimicking each other physically, and it amused her to see the theory at work in real life.

The other things she noticed were abstract. The light playing across Chapel's face, illuminating her lashes; the way the bones stuck out in Gaila's wrist.

When everyone was leaving, she asked Gaila and Chapel to stay for a little while.

x

It was late, but they didn't feel like going home. Kirk and Spock went back to the rented garage and unpacked.

The hoverclub had spent a few hours moving crates and boxes into the new space, and the work area was shockingly disorganized. Scotty, who was probably the messiest person Kirk knew, had partially unpacked a third of the boxes and scattered the contents all over the room. He'd been searching for a spanner or something, but that had turned into a quest for dilithum crystals. "I hate dilithium crystals," muttered Kirk, pushing a toolbox out of the way of his feet.

"Excuse me?" called Spock from across the room. He had already imposed order on a smallish area of chaos. Kirk was still trying to figure out where to start.

"I hate dilithium crystals," Kirk repeated, turning around to move a stack of paper. "They always cause problems. They're hard to find and they're impossible to recharge and—OOMPH—"

Kirk tripped hugely over a pile of cords and smacked wrists-first into the ground. The papers went everywhere, rather gracefully.

Kirk had been falling with increasing frequency for the past year, probably because he had a billion things on his mind other than balancing (important as that was). But falling is not something you get used to. He lay on the floor for a second, trying to figure out how much his hands hurt and if he could actually bend his right knee and how he had caught himself rather than shattering his nose on the concrete. There was the noise of panicked movement as Spock wove hurriedly through the boxes, finally dropping to his knees next to Kirk.

"Are you harmed?" Spock demanded, checking Kirk's pulse and touching Kirk's skull. "Is anything broken? Are you concussed? What is today's date?"

"Calm down," Kirk implored of the floor. "I'm fine. I just, you know, my bones are dying a little. Ow."

"Is anything broken," Spock repeated, so dire it wasn't even a question.

"No, and back off," snapped Kirk.

Spock went all silent and offended and Kirk tried really hard not to roll his eyes. His palms had that dull, impacted feeling that they got whenever they saved you from certain disfiguration, and his knee was definitely pissed at him.

"Sorry, just, didn't I break my thumb like a fucking week ago?" Kirk sighed. He turned over and lay on his back on the floor, Spock still looming half-nervously, half-irritably at the corner of his vision. "I am not this clumsy. I'm not."

"There were many obstacles," Spock tried, apparently not angry anymore.

"Yeah, but you know," said Kirk. He sat up and rolled his wrists around, trying to get the weird feeling out of his hands. "I think my arms are shorter."

"That is illogical," said Spock. "An impact such as this—"

"Spock," laughed Kirk. "I'm fine. Stop being worried."

Sometimes it seemed like Spock knew so little about emotion that his face was a canvas for it. Kirk had spent a lot of time thinking about Vulcans and emotions and he had come to the conclusion that there was a big difference between knowing your emotions and not knowing them. He suspected that Spock's method of expressing himself was simply not to, which meant that he'd accidentally do it quite a lot anyway. After all, if someone has nothing to say and is in a bad mood, it doesn't mean that nobody notices when they don't talk—it means that everybody notices when they don't talk. What's said is as important and as obvious as what's unsaid. And the way Spock didn't say things was something Kirk was getting really good at discerning.

They looked at each other, and Kirk thought, getting lost in Spock's face. He could feel his fingers running underneath Spock's upswept brows. He sort of knew what Spock's skin felt like from casual touches, so the imaginary feeling under his fingertips was a composite texture, like his own skin and like the skin of all of the other people he'd touched, but with that extra foreign spark; it was strange how everyone's skin felt different. Like they were all from different planets. Like every human was their own little world.

It was a stupid, Austen-esque thing, jam-packed with cliché, but Spock really did drive him crazy and Spock really did turn him on in horrendously equal proportions. Kirk loved him and he hated him and he was more exasperated by him than anything. And Spock had these eyes that were like magnets or something, maybe like a lake or a soft flame: they were undeniable and enrapturing.

Spock blinked those eyes, a closed expression flickering across his face, and moved back slightly, an awkward motion that jerked Kirk back to life. Kirk raised his eyebrows at Spock in a sort of "Well, what now?" way, and Spock shook himself and stood up.

"If you are uninjured, let us continue organizing," said Spock. He proffered his hand to Kirk to help him up.

They went quickly back to their separate areas and worked. The conversation wasn't stilted, really, but Kirk thought things took longer to say.

For the first time, Kirk really considered what it would be like to date Spock. As he unpacked, he imagined asking Spock out. Would he just say something? He tried to imagine going up to Spock and proposing a date. Technically, he had already asked Spock on a date. But that was a little different than asking him to date. Actually that was really different. That was like the difference between fucking someone and making love to them.

He imagined walking with Spock in school, having dinner with him, kissing him. He imagined smiles just for him.

Kirk looked at over at Spock, who was in profile, and actually opened his mouth. Would you like to go out with me? It was in his head, moving down his brain stem and into his throat. It was at the back of his tongue, at the tip. Then he swallowed it down and turned back to his work in the silence.

"Do you have plans for spring break?" Spock asked abruptly.

Kirk stared at him. "I don't think so," he said slowly, trying to remember if his mother had mentioned anything about a possible vacation. "Do you?"

"My father is travelling to Risa for a conference, and offered to let me bring a… friend," said Spock. "We would be on Risa for seven days."

"Oh, my God," said Kirk, dropping a hammer. "Risa? Are you kidding me?"

"If you are offended—"

"Nonononono," Kirk exclaimed. "No, that sounds amazing! I would love to go! Spock, thank you so much. This is awesome!"

Spock looked pleased. "I am glad that you would like to accompany me."

"This is gonna be awesome," Kirk said, mainly to himself. "Risa! I am pretty sure they've outlawed clothes there! Have you heard about the Risans? And the sex rituals? Spock, seriously. This is awesome."

"You have already said that," Spock pointed out.

"Totally bears repeating," said Kirk. "What's the conference your dad's going for?"

"The Intergalactic Humanitarian Organization's annual conference," said Spock. "Risa was a… rather controversial choice."

"But a damn good one," laughed Kirk. He paused, suddenly worried. "Do I—should I pay anything? Because—"

"Oh, no," said Spock quickly. "The travel funds have already been released and there is quite enough money for all of us. You will not have to pay anything."

"Good," said Kirk, trying not to look relieved.

"I will email you the itinerary," said Spock. "You and I should be free to explore Risa on our own. Father will be in conference all day. But we are invited to the banquets at night."

"Spock, this sounds great," said Kirk. "But I have a really important question: how many nightclubs can we go to? Are you into clubbing? Also, strip clubs. And bars. How do you feel about those?"

Kirk spent the rest of their time at the garage quizzing Spock about his leisure habits and trying to convince him that, since the Intergalactic Leisure Protection Act, strip clubs had seriously cleaned up their operations. It was dark by the time they left, and Kirk had convinced Spock to visit three nightclubs, two bars, and maybe a strip club, although Spock was still holding out for visiting the Risan National Library instead. Spring break, which was in less than a month, already looked quite promising.

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I do have a bit of free time at the beginning of the semester, and, uh, hint hint, I am statistically more likely to write when I get reviews. Oh man this next chapter is gonna be fun