Title: What's In a Name
Characters: Kirk, Uhura, various
Rating: T for occasional movie-level violence and language
Word Count: 4800 (this chapter)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for all AOS movies, various spoilers for TOS universe elements, no knowledge of which is necessary to understand the story. Specifics footnoted or explained at the end of each chapter.
This chapter, spoilers for Beyond if you for some reason haven't seen it yet. Do, it's by far the best of the 3 in my opinion.
Summary: Five times Nyota Uhura called Jim Kirk something other than Captain, and one time he was glad to return the favor
A/N: This WIP has been meandering around on my hard drive for quite some time, bits and pieces being added to it here and there, and at the encouragement of some very good writing friends in the LJ/Dreamwidth community I finally have enough of it finished to start posting.
Getting ready to go out of town for a few days and wanted to get this up before I went. Much love to all you amazing people who take your valuable time to comment; they make my day. Thank you!
"You are a dead man as soon as they find you. You know that, right."
Not exactly the greeting he was expecting, but after the day he's had he could literally walk into the business end of a phaser right now and not even care. "I've pissed off so many people over the last five years alone, that could apply to the inhabitants of pretty much any star system in the galaxy, Lieutenant." He leans wearily against the wall, head pounding. "Are you going to make me stand in the hall until I guess correctly?"
"For God's sake, come in before you fall over." She retreats into the apartment, and he more stumbles than walks in behind, letting the door slide shut after him.
"Mind if I sit down?"
"Do you need to lie down?" The question apparently's a serious one, judging from her expression, and he must look even worse than he feels if she's legit that concerned.
"I'm fine. It's just been a…really long day." He collapses onto the small couch, wincing at the jolt to his aching head and the arm he fell on earlier. The box he sets on the side table, safely out of range from further damage. "Spock not here?"
"No, he…needed to get some work done, he's borrowing the computer facilities at the 'Base branch of Starfleet Academy."
He closes his eyes briefly. That's a very nice way of saying the Admiralty had finally gotten around to telling Spock that they required him to start the First Officer's official report on what they're so politically correctly calling The Yorktown Incident, which would require running simulations to determine if Jim's command decisions merit a court martial.
"You know he's not going to find anything, Captain."
"Unless there's something to find."
"There isn't." He forces his eyes back open and wearily blinks up at her. She shrugs. "I was there. You're not the only one whose brain likes to keep them up at night with might-have-beens. It was planned too well, Jim. Nothing could have stopped it."
He nods mechanically, forcing the thought to the back of his mind for now. Or forever, whichever works; denial's been basically the only thing that's gotten him through this hellish week. Or has it been eight days? Nine? He honestly has no idea anymore, which probably should concern him more than it does.
Anyway.
"Here," he says wearily, not caring about the abruptness of the subject change, and holds the small box out in her general direction.
She takes it gingerly, because she's not an idiot; if she knows where he's been, she knows what could be inside.
"It's not much," he says quietly. "There just wasn't much left. I'm sorry."
"Why the hell are you apologizing." She sniffs suspiciously, and sits in the chair beside the couch to open the thing. "Other than for doing this without taking any of us. Leonard is seriously pissed, and Spock isn't much happier."
"There are third-party salvage crews employed by the 'Fleet for a reason. No one needs to see that."
The lid comes off with an unusual viciousness. "But they required you to go."
"Only my access codes could retrieve the black-box recordings, Lieutenant." He sighs, weary beyond belief. "Believe me, I wouldn't have gone otherwise. I could have done without seeing just how many of our supposed escape shuttles never even made it out of their docking stations in the shuttle bays, much less out of the bays themselves. God." He runs his hands over his face, shaking his head helplessly. "I can't…"
"Stop doing this."
"There's not even anything left of the command Bridge. When I flipped the saucer it just…disintegrated the central dome. I had to retrieve the recordings from secondary Engineering." He leans back against the couch, pinching away angry tears. "None of them even tried to get out, Nyota. They stayed at their posts, trying to keep life support going and ejecting malfunctioning escape pods until the end."
A soft, choked sound, and he shakes his head, blinking his vision clear. "Sorry. Didn't mean to dump that on you. Anyway. Deck Five was pretty unstable, they don't think they're even going to bother sending a crew through Decks One through Eight, given they're right under the smashed dome. But they let me run through the senior officers' cabins really quick, at least until stuff started shifting and they made me pull out."
Uhura gives him a faint smile as she pulls a dusty pair of earrings out of the box. He shrugs. "They look handmade, I figured they were valuable. At least to you."
"They were a gift from my grandmother, Kirk. So yes." She blinks suspiciously. "I can't believe you found them."
He manages a smirk. "You don't want to know where."
A half-hearted kick in the shin. "Gross. What's this?"
He glances over, still sprawled on the couch, and then sits up, leaning forward to point at the remaining items in the box. "There really wasn't much salvageable of anything, but I found those…I dunno, I think they're pieces of something. Pottery, maybe? But that's Vulcan writing on one of them, so I figured they came from Spock's cabin. And given that there's probably not much left of the planet in the first place, across the galaxy, I thought any part of it might still be valuable, even…"
She nods, lifting the piece of broken clay and examining it. "I think it's part of a fire-pot. Meditation aid," she explains, when he looks clueless at her. "The pieces are pretty big, all things considered, so it might at least be salvageable as a decoration if nothing else."
"Oh, good. I looked everywhere, but who knows if I found all the pieces. I have no problem pulling the race and endangered species cards with the brass and making them send someone back after the rest if I missed some, too."
She laughs briefly, though it sounds more like a sob than anything else. "You're impossible."
"I prefer to think of it as specialized diplomatic skills." The grin dies before it reaches his eyes, because he just doesn't have the strength to pretend anymore, not today. "Anyway, I wasn't sure if it was tacky or not to, like, give them back to him like that? Or if it'd just be better to leave it be."
She nods. "I'll look into it."
"Great, thanks." Relieved, he sighs silently, and leans back against the couch again. "I'm sorry I couldn't find anything else."
"Apologize one more time, Captain…"
He half-smiles, genuinely this time, and closes his eyes for a second in weariness. He hears her get up, fiddle with something near the kitchenette; likely putting the box in a safe place. It's all that's left of three years' worth of memories, the only fragments of the only place he's ever felt home, the only people he's ever considered family.
That family's as fragmented as Spock's fire-pot, now, and it hurts as much nine days later as it did in the first few unbelievable seconds. Ten days? He doesn't even really know.
"I'm guessing you were a self-sacrificing duhik-bosh and spent all your time looking for this stuff, didn't bother trying to salvage anything of your own." The words float over the back of the couch to him from across the room.
He smiles briefly, eyes still closed. "I salvaged one hundred seventeen crewmen, Lieutenant. That's going to have to be enough." Less than one-third of the crew complement.
It isn't enough. And it never will be.
The numbers, the faces, still scroll across the inside of his eyelids as vividly as they did when he forced himself to read the death toll the first time.
It took him almost twenty minutes.
"Focus on the living, Jim," Bones keeps saying, and while it's basic psychobabble he's found it really is the only thing that's keeping him sane. Keeping him from drowning right now.
Maybe literally, keeping him alive right now. They do say that guilt can kill a man, and it's going to take a lot more than nine days to convince himself that it's undeserved. Part and parcel of the captaincy, he took the command psychology courses, he could probably quote the textbooks. He's not stupid, he knows he couldn't – wouldn't – have made any other decisions. Knows that maybe any other starship commander would have failed to save Yorktown, failed to even make it off of Altamid with the survivors he did.
That doesn't stop some small, horrible, cowardly part of him from reminding him: maybe everything would be a whole lot easier right now for everyone, if he'd just followed in his father's footsteps and gone down with his beautiful ship.
He clears his throat, scrubs a hand hastily over his eyes. "So, you and Spock?" he calls brightly over the back of the couch.
A vague snort. "What about us."
"You do know he was mooning over you the entire time we were trying to make battle strategies against Krall on Altamid, right."
This time, an outright laugh. "That, I highly doubt, Captain."
"Okay, I'm embellishing a little. But you know what I mean."
He hears a quiet noise of assent.
"He insisted on coming along when I'd ordered him to remain behind, and the reason he gave me for doing it was you. Totally logical."
"You should write a gossip column, Kirk."
"I should! It'd be popular among the crew." He smiles, eyes still closed. "Anyway. It's none of my business, I'll shut up now. Just thought you should know."
"You're right, it is none of your business."
"Sorry. I just…don't want to lose either one of you. Not after this." He hears too late, that the words aren't anywhere near as flippant as he'd meant them to be.
"Jim. Give us a little credit as Starfleet officers. And as adults of our respective species. We're not two kids straight out of the Academy that will be setting your Bridge on fire if we quit seeing each other. We were friends and friends with benefits before we got serious, and we can be the same thing again if we need to."
That's interesting new information. For a few blessed seconds, the idea that an uptight race like the Vulcans actually do friends-with-benefits drives away the cloud that's been threatening to choke him all day, just with the sheer novelty of the idea.
(He suspects Spock is probably to his people just the Vulcan equivalent of a hippie or something, but the idea's a novel one.)
"Hey. Look at me." He opens his eyes, startled, because he never heard her come back, and that means his reflexes are dangerously dulled. She's crouched in front of the couch, eyes serious, and waits until he's alert to speak. "That ship's not leaving dry-dock without us both on it. Okay?"
He nods, tight-throated, and too tired to be anything but grateful at the reassurance. "Okay."
"And if for some reason, it leaves without you on it? It's going to leave without at least six more members of its senior command crew. So stop stressing."
He lifts his head at that, staring at her. She's not picking up mind-reading from Spock, surely?
She just smiles, and stands back up, graceful as a ballerina. Pats his shoulder like he's a toddler in timeout as she moves back toward the kitchenette. "Stay. I'm making tea, you want some?"
"Is it that weird Vulcan tea that tastes like rocks? I'm good. Thanks though."
He'd had green tea with Bones during his therapy session early this morning (it's good for you, Jim!), and mental note: probably not the best idea to schedule therapy an hour before leaving with the salvage crews.
The shattered mess which had once been Sickbay Deck flashes into his mind, and his stomach lurches. The 'Bay itself had been nearly empty when the crews went through; to be expected, as the attack happened too quickly for anyone to be brought in and all technicians and nursing staff would have evacuated immediately.
Medical is supposed to evac by shuttle in case of a controlled evacuation, because they're usually carrying wounded; wounded know to make their way to an escape shuttle rather than a pod for that reason.
Out of the ten escape shuttle bays, only three ever even opened, and one of those opened prematurely due to a malfunction, depressurizing with crewmen exposed inside, completely unprotected as they were loading shuttles. A third of his Medical crew, gone just like that while trying to save lives.
Two bays, out of ten. And of the ten shuttles in each bay? Two, maybe three got off the ground and out in time.
He'd seen the rest of the shuttles. And the rest of the bays. It was sheer chance, one stupid regulation in the Starfleet books, that had prevented his Chief Medical Officer from being in one of those bays instead of on C Deck minutes before it blew out.
He turns his head away from the direction of the kitchenette. Maybe Uhura will think he just inhaled too much dust at the wreck earlier…
He startles, fight-or-flight instinct clenching hot and nauseous in his stomach, as something's in his personal space, someone's hand on his forehead.
"Shhhh. Go back to sleep, Jim."
Bones.
Okay then. The calm of recognition lulls him back into that hazy world half-between dreamland and wakefulness, soft and star-bright.
The faint beep of a medical scanner makes him shift uneasily. It reminds him of something he's supposed to be doing. Responsibilities, people, he's supposed to be taking care of.
"Everything's fine. Go back to sleep."
Bones doesn't get it, though, he's sworn an oath to protect his people, he has to do something. He's just having a hard time remembering what, for some reason. Why's it such a struggle?
"Jesus, Jim, I can't give you a sedative on top of that fever reducer, just take it easy. Hey! Little help here?"
If he could just get his eyes open, he'd probably figure this out, but they seem heavier than a warp engine, and he gives up with a pathetic little noise of helpless frustration.
"Aw, Jim…c'mon, settle down now."
"Okay, Spock's hovercab's stuck in traffic at Junction 405, he'll be another ten minutes at least. What's wrong?"
"Can you believe I got the hypo in him without waking him up and then somehow set off his proximity alarms just feelin' his forehead? Now I can't get him to settle down, dammit. He keeps mumbling something about the ship."
"Of course he is. I should have called you earlier. Something was just…off, about him. Even before he fell asleep."
"It's not your fault. And it's low-grade, nothing serious. If he'd just actually eat something or sleep more than two hours at a time, his body wouldn't have to go into shutdown mode. You should've seen him during finals week at the Academy, it got scary. And that was without a shuttleload of trauma he's refusin' to deal with."
"I think we all have a long way to go in that area, Leonard."
"Not sayin' we don't. But he's a totally different animal, and we both know it."
"Agreed."
He fades out at that point, ears ringing, and wishes he could stop hearing his pulse in his head because, weird. And he still hasn't figured out what he was supposed to be doing, wasn't he supposed to be taking care of something aboard the ship?
Now he's just a little freaked, because if he can't remember, then that means he's not fit for commanding her, and he's putting the entire crew in danger, a vicious cycle that ends with someone dead. If he doesn't somehow make it out of this strange miasma of confusion and chaos, he doesn't know what will happen.
"…don't know, Lieutenant, he isn't really responding to me. Not sure if he's even hearing me." From far away, a sliding door. "What the –"
"There is no way your hovercab made it here in less than four minutes."
"Obviously."
"For Gods' sake, Spock, he's not dying. Though I'd'a liked to have seen you jogging in that ridiculous robe."
"If you are quite finished insulting my culture's choice of leisure wear, Doctor?"
He shifts uneasily, sensing or at least imagining too many people in his personal space, and tries again to focus, because at least Spock will know what's going on. Spock always knows what's going on. Thank every god in the universe. He'd never be able to be captain without him.
"While that is patently untrue, it is correct that you require my presence for an official status report before going off-duty, sir."
Yeah, that's true. He hates handing over his chair, but if he ever had to do it, Spock's one person he'd never hesitate to give it to.
"The time is 1730 hours, Federation Standard Time. All decks have reported in, Captain. Damage reports have been correlated and repairs are being effected according to the procedures outlined in the Starfleet Emergency Procedures. The ship is out of danger and is proceeding on course at the maximum possible speed toward the nearest starbase. I will have a further report available at the start of your next duty shift."
Oh.
Well, that sounds okay then. And if that is really the time, then he's off-duty. Why was he so worried?
"I do not know, sir. Perhaps some additional rest is in order, while there is opportunity prior to reaching the starbase where your supervision will be required."
Yeah, that's probably a smart idea.
Spock's good at those.
And sleep sounds really nice, actually…
"We should have thought of that, Leonard."
"I can't believe that actually worked."
"Simple logic, Doctor. Every time the captain has woken up in Sickbay, his first question inevitably is regarding the safety of the Enterprise. It stands to reason therefore, especially given recent events, that any confusion in his mind is likely resulting from perceived danger to the ship, from some unknown combination of recent or non-recent events. I would have thought this conclusion to be obvious, at least to you, Doctor."
"You know he's not the only one I'm psychoanalyzing right now! 'Scuse me if I blanked on starship captain lullabies!"
"As there was no thematic musical element involved, I hardly think –"
"Did I ask you what you thought?"
"Perhaps you should, Doctor, if you are incapable of –"
"All right, that's it – both of you, out. Go for another run, go back to Medical HQ, go play in traffic, I don't freaking care, but don't come back until you've got it out of your system and you've picked up enough alcohol I don't have to remember the last three hours. I said out."
Yeah, sleep sounds really good.
Really quiet.
Sunshine, expertly simulated even to the warmth emanating through solar glass, is what wakes him up the next morning. He blinks slowly for a few minutes, trying to figure out where he is, because he totally does not remember sleeping on his couch, and why the hell would he sleep on the couch and not his bed.
He looks around briefly.
Okay, not his apartment, ergo not his couch.
That's even worse.
He struggles to one elbow with a groan, rubbing his eyes with his free hand, and then blinks as a couple of blankets slide off to puddle on the floor in a pile of cozy non-Starfleet-issued fleece made of brightly-colored hues and one very psychedelic floral that very definitely is not his. What in the galaxy.
At least he still has his clothes on?
He doesn't feel like he has a hangover, he just feels totally wiped out. A little exhausted, a little sick, a lot hungry. And a lot just like he could go back to bed for a year. Or three.
"Oh, God," he moans, slumping back onto the pillow (where the heck did he get a freaking pillow?), arms over his face.
A laugh from the direction of the kitchen makes him sit back upright at a pace that almost rolls his eyes permanently back into his head.
"Morning." Uhura grins at him from over a coffee mug, then tips it toward the counter. "Help yourself."
He stares for like a full minute in total blank brain-rebootingness, because it's like 0600 hours and this is way too domestic and he's never, ever, ever, ever seen Spock in freaking pajamas and house slippers watching the morning holonews on his padd, okay, and it's so freaking weird he just cannot deal.
"You look like you're about to have a seizure. Get some coffee or go be sick somewhere other than our couch."
"Uh." He runs a hand through his hair, and realizes it was doing a truly impressive feat of gravity defiance. "Like…what exactly, am I doing here, anyway?"
"You apparently took it upon yourself to decide that making a trip back to the wreckage of the Enterprise on Altamid, alone, was a wise command decision. I am quite interested to learn how, exactly, you arrived at this spectacularly erroneous conclusion," Spock says, without looking up from his screen.
Uhura sniggers into her mug, then sets it down, reaching for a piece of toast. Her hair's in a sloppy bun this morning and she's in civilian workout clothes, it's like he's stumbled into some bizarre harmless mirror universe. "You then came back here and crashed, basically. I came back in from making tea and you were out cold on the couch, snoring fit to wake the neighbors. And apparently running a fever, as I found out a few hours later when you scared the crap out of me yelling for a phaser so you could shoot something that wasn't there."
He finally stumbles over to the sideboard and pours a cup of coffee, praying it's not weird Vulcan coffee but the real thing; he has the feeling he's going to need it. "You're joking."
"Oh, no. No, I am very serious. That was when I called McCoy. You finally broke through the worst of it around ship's midnight, but yeah. Your body's telling you to sleep and eat, genius."
"…yeah. Message received." He slumps into one of the free chairs at the table and exhales shakily. "God, I'm sorry, Nyota. I had no intention of dumping that mess on you yesterday, much less making a nuisance of myself last night…I don't know what's wrong with me." He shakes his head, drags both hands slowly down his face.
"Perhaps we could begin with the fact that your willingness to ask for assistance in shouldering the burden of command seems to have gone down with the Enterprise, Captain."
"Spock!"
Uhura's exclamation covers the sound of his cup crashing on the table, thankfully only rocking back and forth for a moment with the smallest of spills.
He reaches out after a frozen second to steady it with a much less sure hand. "Your tact could use a lot of work, Commander," he says quietly, deadly.
"Tact is a human construct, employed when the recipient is not capable of handling the blunt truth. You are, however painful that truth may be." The padd clicks off, background noise fading away into only the faint sounds of outside air-traffic and the hum of machinery in the walls. "Unless that too has changed in recent days."
"Go to hell."
"Jim!"
"I didn't start it."
"I don't care! Both of you just, stop. Ghay'cha', as if we didn't have enough to deal with – this crew doesn't need the two of you doing this! I do not need the two of you doing this!"
Aw, crap.
He never has been able to watch a girl cry. Call him old-fashioned that way, or maybe it's just buried mommy issues, but he legit can't stand it.
Pull yourself together, Jim. He needs to not forget, he's not the only one who is having a hard time dealing, and he's not the only one who lost someone out there.
Spock looks 100% and wholly terrified, like he's never in his life had to deal with the waterworks of a human female, and Jim wonders briefly if Amanda just was a heck of a lot stronger than anyone really ever gave her credit for, or if she only hid her emotions really well due to the cultural difference. Not for the first time, he so wishes he could have met that incredible woman.
He clears his throat. "I, uh. I'm sorry." Spock half-turns to him, panic still clearly written all over his face, and only starts to relax when he sees the words are genuine enough. "Look, I just…I didn't want anyone else to have to deal with it. We've all been through enough."
"Understood. However, it is a principle of physics that the addition of shared pressure points lessens the impact of a force. The rule applies."
He half-smiles at the nerdiness of the simile; the guy can't just come out and say you're not alone in this, you know. But this isn't the time for humor, because if he doesn't keep talking then he'll probably never start again, and there's too much on the line for that.
"Also understood. It won't happen again, you have my word. I…" He pinches the bridge of his nose with a shaking hand. "I need help, Spock."
"I am aware." Not an accusation, just a gentle statement of fact.
"And I am out of here." Uhura snatches the last piece of toast as she stands, yawning. Then grabs her keycard and communicator off the counter. "My gods, its like pulling teeth with you two sometimes. Now talk. I'm going for a run, and there had better still be coffee when I get back, or someone is buying me lunch."
They both stare after her in startled silence.
As the door closes, Jim turns back around. "Wasn't she…she was totally playing us, wasn't she?"
"I believe so."
"Dude, if you don't marry her before this next five-year mission's over? You're a freaking idiot."
"I…believe so."
I forgot the language notes, as one reviewer kindly pointed out - sorry!
duhik-bosh - very colloquial Vulcan, literal meaning of which is "one who is full of foolishness" ie a kind way of saying idiot
Ghay'cha' - mild Klingon invective