Uhura's calm and quiet during their flight in the shuttle concerned the captain. Under different circumstances he'd have needled her about her Vulcan-like response to a missing lover. As it was he just patted her hand and sent an encouraging "We'll find him," her way.
The calm might have been the greatest performance of her life.
Five hours post-departure from the Enterprise, Uhura entered a small hotel in a remote province on a remote part of Aldebaran. Their sensors indicated that Spock's Enterprise shuttle had landed here and in another remote village 2.5 hours away. Without a visual of the shuttle they'd have to search both villages on foot. To save time, Kirk suggested they split up. Handing her his personal credit card to keep their search private, they agreed to a contact schedule and Kirk took off for the other village.
Weird restarted at the front desk. Her request for a single room turned into a complementary suite for a "hero of the Nero encounter". The hotel staff couldn't get her to her suite fast enough, stowing her luggage in the larger of the two bedrooms. The suite wouldn't be considered plush in San Francisco but she appreciated its cleanliness, the complimentary refreshment bar and the tray of fruits and veggies she found waiting after she showered.
She cried in the shower. Their active sex life and her continued pleasure in his company often obscured the fact that being bonded was hard work every damn day. Loving Spock didn't smooth over all the rough spots they experienced, particularly after the loss of his planet and his mother.
Amanda Grayson meant to explain to Nyota how the Vulcan bond worked for humans; the destruction of Vulcan precluded the Grayson women's circle. Had the gathering occurred Uhura would have understood fully what Spock's choice on her 18th birthday had done to them both. Amanda would have explained that bonding would be different for Nyota (as it had been for Amanda) because she was human, that some aspects would be immediately stronger while others would require more time - and maybe Pon Farr - to settle and cement in place.
Amanda would have explained that just as no Healer was required to create a Human-Vulcan bond, Vulcan elders concluded that such a bond could be easily severed without a Healer. Vulcan scholars - who had only Sarek's rebellious bond choice to observe - believed no bond to a human could be as deep, as expansive or as permanent as a Vulcan-Vulcan bond because humans were psi-mutes. Amanda herself had been advised that any competent Healer could snap her bond to Sarek without consequence when Sarek logically came to his senses. For this reason, Amanda was "counseled" by the Vulcan elders to avoid a Terran marriage lest she complicate the inevitability of a Vulcan divorce.
Uhura had not met in Seattle with Amanda Grayson; Amanda Grayson's experience and wisdom were consumed into the singularity with planet Vulcan. Uhura received a bequest of communiques from Spock's mother, meant to provide basic explanations to be explored in detail at the Grayson's women's circle, a generational initiation for young fiancées and wives. Uhura had reasoned disparate portions of this wisdom out. What Uhura believed instinctively was that adding another binding commitment - a Terran marriage - would complicate their lives if it turned out that they were star-crossed lovers in the worst sense of that phrase. Spock bristled at her resistance to a Terran marriage, resistance that made more and more sense the longer it took to locate and retrieve her MIA Vulcan. Terran marriage would tether her to a complicated Vulcan by every pledge that mattered to her. Uhura chided herself for her unbidden thoughts - for the first time since they met in Africa at a Starfleet recruiting event, Nyota seriously considered that having a bond mate and a Starfleet career were incompatible.
Right now she knew she should be leading up the anthropological analysis of the Talosian system; whatever was out there had recently left a shipload of Betazed telepaths and empaths psi-mute. Some were recovering their psionics; the jury was still out on whether the other minds would heal. The Federation had already classified Captain Pike's reports on Talos IV; the Enterprise had the best talent to assess the danger mind-altering space could inflict on Federation citizens, ships and their crews.
But the only Federation citizen presently on her mind remained missing in action and gone from her telepathic awareness despite their bond. Her decision to maintain her shielding lest Spock sense her and run away again left her truly alone for the first time since his lab accident during her first year at the Academy. Anxiety bowed her forehead to the shower wall, where her hands held her up and pushed her into the Vulcan-hot water cascading down her hair and body.
Spock, baby - where are you? she sent mentally to no one.