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ninety6tears[See Master Post]
She was pushing a long stick of gum into her mouth, sitting up so straight at the little round table outside next to the courtyard when he came; he had his hands grasped pertly behind his back, but the other features were comparatively tired, full of holes in the composure even as his face was set with a calm determination. He stalled for a second as if waiting for her to say the first word and then sat down.
Not soon volunteering to speak to him, her face was set in the direction of the next table with a crooked playfulness crowing out under her frazzled unkempt bangs. "What are you lookin' at? Huh, sugar?"
The elderly woman at the table next to her looked back to her crossword, and she smirked.
(Uhura was in the back of the car, head rested back much like Scotty’s in the driver’s seat as they waited outside a family’s home at the domestic sprawl on the opposite end of the little town from their house. Scotty had a sleepless color around his eyes; hers were vaguely worrisome and directed far outside the window. This was, with no regard for all the fabric, less than 300 kilometers away, which was the closest Spock had been to any four of the lost crewmembers since their departure from the Enterprise.
Dimensionally, the distance was the same as ever.)
She sat up a little to weave her fingers over each other on the table. “Alright, Captain, I guess I have to bite. What little fuss with little old me brings you planetside?”
“I have been attending several errands on Terra; you are hardly as pressing a spectacle,” Spock assured her.
She knew it was partly a lie.
He finally explained, "I came here to offer you a promise of passage back to your home dimension in the instance that the project is a success, but I only offer it on the condition that I feel you are ready to function, morally and socially, in this or any society. This is moderately pressing as I currently doubt that I can, in fact, offer you that opportunity in good conscience."
The look he received was a long, detached observation and confirmation of something in him, until she decided to stand up. “Oh my fucking lord. We might as well go for a walk.”
“I would really rather not,” he said back in a sigh, but she was already taking off for the courtyard, and with a stiff humility he pursued her down the decoratively paved walkway.
(When Doctor McCoy came out of the house, he quickly came down the rocky driveway, opened the passenger door and opted for dumping his medical case down in the front, an action which made Scotty jump. He got into the back seat, immediately asking Nyota, "Anything?"
"No." She shook her head. "I'm wondering if he even has his comm on him."
"So—" McCoy spoke with the agitation of resuming a previously rushed topic. "Does anybody know why he'd be upset today? I know he's shitty with milestones..."
"Oh, that's right." Scotty remembered, "He pulled a hell of a disappearing act on his mom's birthday..."
"But what's today?" After asking, it only took a close look at Nyota for Leonard to realize what it probably was.)
As he got up to pace alongside her, she didn’t turn her glance on him, just started talking again. “What influence do you even have? I may be shoved up in here all day but I can still pick up a news report every once in a while. I guess maybe you haven't been paying attention? But you've become a little bit of a joke. You went from a good year of being the sharpest XO in Starfleet to a captain that’s falling right off the rails. Yeah, can I get some ice water?"
Spock's narrow eyes moved briefly to follow the Bajoran volunteer who went off to oblige her as if patiently accustomed to the rudeness. "I am mentally sound.”
"Yeah, okay. What the hell makes you think I'd want to go back there, anyway? You put your mission on another hold and come all the way back to the neighborhood, just to offer me a ride. I bet you thought you might be able to enlist my help too, if I said yes."
("Just go drive back around the west end again," McCoy suggested, and Scotty complied as the doctor reached to briefly squeeze Uhura's hand.
She looked over to give a kind of reassuring sad smile, having been staring out the window for another long spell.)
"We require all the aid we can possibly enlist," he granted. "But our progress has reached a certain plateau that requires what Chekov continuously calls 'a century’s epiphany' to make our next development.”
“Which is a really fancy way of saying you have no idea what you are doing.” Her tone shifted to one of basic scientific interest for a moment. “What are you even looking at?”
“Currently Chekov is theorizing a type of dimensional explosive, utilizing a theoretical compound we have yet to perfect.”
“…Even if you somehow figure it out, how do you plan on making that a safe trip?...Shit,” she muttered when he didn’t have an answer. “You’re all completely insane.”
(Jim had woken with a start in the middle of the night, and she was regretting then believing that he'd want her to pretend not to notice. She'd lain motionless and fallen back asleep trying to gauge if she should say anything, at that point realizing what day it was with a looming sting; when she'd woken up again later, he'd been nowhere to be found. He wasn't supposed to work today.
She'd thought about what happened in Pemba all morning. She didn't know why.)
Her arms were waved out for balance at her sides as she stepped up to creep childishly on the brick border of one of the botanical trees.
(She didn't know why every time he ignored the comm calls she remembered, didn't know why she thought about it now, as if it was sharper than the mourning over the other man. The pains only seemed to escalate each other, the Why Here and Where Is Jim, where is he, why did he. She thought of nightmares, thought of the haunting sound of the beach outside the window ringing through her veins when after one release the disfigured had become so pronounced, at least for her. That mouth both frantic and reverent kissing the insides of her knees and then brushing its way up her thighs, so strangely knowing an action for one that also nearly meant "Stop me," and when she hadn't making her body snap in gasping like a fish out of water. This had happened.)
"Miss Uhura," he said, suddenly impatient and tangential. "I would like you to know that if you are withholding any possible attempt at rehabilitating and improving yourself simply to make a point..."
She tripped on the side of one brick; as she tumbled down clumsy off the side, his hand snatched her arm to soften the landing, but then quickly withdrew as if burned, his expression slightly dazed. As if she was suppressing laughter, her eyebrow rose before she slowly prompted, "Yes, Mr. Spock?"
Spock shook his head, a shadow that was lethal and raw climbing into his eyes. "You need not continue with such concerns, as it no longer makes any difference to me."
"Aww, you think I'm just being too petulant to admit that I wanna help you...Cause all anybody wants is to go home."
"No," he quipped, not even caring to explain himself.
"Vulcans," she scoffed, shaking her head as she sat down on the brick and tapped her feet idly on the pavement. "Such a great idea in theory, but give them something to bleed about and they turn into fucking simpletons."
"Goodbye, Uhura."
He was already walking away when she let out a sigh, watched him go for another couple seconds before she boredly blurted out, "I know where Montgomery Scott is."
Spock was paused for the moment as the assistant with the glass of water came by him, cheerlessly handing it to Uhura who handled it atop her knee, waiting for the Vulcan to inevitably turn and come striding back.
When he did he simply asked, "You believe that Mr. Scott could help us?..."
"No, look. Fuck no." She laughed now, incredulously. "Here's what I think: I think that you are going to spend, the rest of your miserable life, frying your brain up trying to wrap it around this conundrum until you end up crawling up your own ass thinking, 'Maybe the solution's in there!' But, I think that you think Scott can help you, and that's all that matters to me, because I want you to get me relocated to Doctor Stadley's institution."
Spock blinked. "...And why?"
With a sing-song matter-of-factness, she replied, "Maybe I don't like the weather here."
"You know that given your uncooperative behavior that is strewn all over your records, it would be very foolish of me to assume that you have innocent motives for wanting to be relocated anywhere."
"As if you're really looking at the records anyway," she spat.
"You will not accuse me of being unjust with your situation. You and your former colleagues were offered a gracious level of amnesty on the basis that you remained cooperative. Murdering a member of my crew in the process of a violent escape plan was not particularly cooperative."
She looked at him, considering. "But I don't think you actually care about what I'm capable of nearly as much as you care about getting them back."
"What I want," he slowly replied, "is not relevant."
"The hell it isn't. And when did you ever attempt to really evaluate me, Spock?" She stood up then, taking a couple steps up to him, one of which he expired with a step back. "You want an educated opinion on Nyota Uhura, the ISS edition? On why I am more than content to sit around with these losers with half my intelligence instead of get busted out of here so I can go frolic with the good-natureds? Or, go back to my own dimension so I can see my pathetic mother again. That's all I'm going to be able to do, considering your friends have probably made things a little complicated. That is if they're somehow even alive."
He suddenly gave her a more blazing look: Get to the point.
"My mother spent years sending messages to the Empire's headquarters trying to get in touch with me so that they could laugh at the idea that I would want to just skip back home and so that I could laugh at the notion that I would be able to. You have no idea how much of a punchline it is for you to expect me to eat this opportunity out of your hands, and even work for it. What I want, Captain Spock, is to bask in the sunlight and download books by dead people and live my little derelict life without anybody expecting me to talk to another soul because I'm just that crazy bitch who reads too much Ovid. The only problem is it rains too fucking much here."
"Where is Montgomery Scott?"
Her lips were pressed together before she finally said, "He's been in Prague recently."
"This is all you know."
"I got this postcard—Tell me you know what a postcard is, hardly anybody sends them anymore. Lovely bridge over a river on one side, no message on the other side of course, but I know it was from him. He'd do that. Send me a blank card of something just to gloat about being able to go wherever he wants."
Spock went somewhere else in his head, ignoring her until she spoke again.
"A bit of a thought before you go...I wasn't the one who murdered a member of your crew. And I think you have a pretty good idea who it was." Her eyes slanted up to him. "By the way, I definitely don't know where he is."
"You believe that he is alive?"
"Don't you?"
"I believe he caused the explosion." Spock nodded. "I have no doubt under that assumption that he would have made sure he survived it."
("What about them?" Leonard darkly muttered when the car idled along next to a shop where a couple League members were loitering. Coming out of the shop was Tom.
Uhura hadn't and wouldn't ask about Scotty's status with Jill, who after her threatening outburst had slipped unceremoniously out of their lives, but she did ask, "Do you think she told him?"
"I know she did," Scotty said, following the glances of the others out across the little street to the deliberating group of Romulans. "I don't think she'd tell anyone else, but he's got to know..."
And it seemed evident in the way the League leader had certainly taken note of the car and noticed them all looking out at him, and responded by looking at them not quite with disdain but with a far more wary than friendly look.)
Spock took leave of Uhura, who strayed farther into the courtyard by herself. At the front, he spoke to the head supervisor who asked him, "Any input this time?"
Spock paused in his steps, coldly considering. He looked behind him to where her figure was indifferent to the wind blowing aggressively at her haphazard ponytail, looked back at the supervisor and said, "Keep her where she is."
(Their conversing about whether they should go anywhere else was interrupted by the small shock of a knocking at the driver's window. They looked out to see Tom looking somewhere over their hood out at the horizon, nonchalantly awaiting the lowering of the car window and then leaning his hands in when the glass was down. "Is there a problem?" he asked.
Scotty stammered a bit. Uhura finally leaned in to ask, "Have you seen Jim around? He's been gone all day."
Tom backed up just a step to lower his glance at all of them, considering. His expression finally settled into some slight compassion. "Do you want me to—?"
"We don't need you to go looking, exactly." Leonard sighed. "But could you just let us know if you see him?"
Another wary hesitation, but he nodded. "Yeah. I'll tell my guys to keep an eye out...Is everything okay?"
There was something about the way he asked that made it suddenly more vividly likely that Jill had told him everything. Like he had to know why they would be really worried. But nobody was going to mention Jill here.
"I'm sure he'll show up back home later," Nyota said with a rather forced shrug.)
A block away from the institution, Spock sat down on a bench after getting a drink of water. For an undefinable reason, he pensively sat there for a minute, as if nursing some inner reeling.
(Tom was already walking away; after a moment he turned back once with some tangled and distracted look, but then he second-guessed and stepped away from the car for good.
Nyota was trying Jim's comm one last time as Scotty pulled them off. She tensed in a guarded way along with McCoy, neither of them exerting quite enough to hope. After it was clear he wasn't going to respond, she flipped the comm unit shut and placed it into her bag, looking back out the window with her fingers tapping idle and anxious at her mouth.)
Spock was just standing up again when his travel comm unit made a chirp, providing no identification of the communication's source. He answered.
"Yes?"
A voice said, "Happy birthday, Spock."
His body hardly jolted with stiff shock, his eyes widened only fractionally, but at the park just across the square there was a hubbub of birds laughing skyward and he looked about, as if he felt watched. Spock spoke icily.
"You have thirty seconds to convince me not to end this transmission."
>Gimme Shelter
2 WEEKS AGO.
She was pushing a long stick of gum into her mouth, sitting up so straight at the little round table outside next to the courtyard when he came; he had his hands grasped pertly behind his back, but the other features were comparatively tired, full of holes in the composure even as his face was set with a calm determination. He stalled for a second as if waiting for her to say the first word and then sat down.
Not soon volunteering to speak to him, her face was set in the direction of the next table with a crooked playfulness crowing out under her frazzled unkempt bangs. "What are you lookin' at? Huh, sugar?"
The elderly woman at the table next to her looked back to her crossword, and she smirked.
(Uhura was in the back of the car, head rested back much like Scotty’s in the driver’s seat as they waited outside a family’s home at the domestic sprawl on the opposite end of the little town from their house. Scotty had a sleepless color around his eyes; hers were vaguely worrisome and directed far outside the window. This was, with no regard for all the fabric, less than 300 kilometers away, which was the closest Spock had been to any four of the lost crewmembers since their departure from the Enterprise.
Dimensionally, the distance was the same as ever.)
She sat up a little to weave her fingers over each other on the table. “Alright, Captain, I guess I have to bite. What little fuss with little old me brings you planetside?”
“I have been attending several errands on Terra; you are hardly as pressing a spectacle,” Spock assured her.
She knew it was partly a lie.
He finally explained, "I came here to offer you a promise of passage back to your home dimension in the instance that the project is a success, but I only offer it on the condition that I feel you are ready to function, morally and socially, in this or any society. This is moderately pressing as I currently doubt that I can, in fact, offer you that opportunity in good conscience."
The look he received was a long, detached observation and confirmation of something in him, until she decided to stand up. “Oh my fucking lord. We might as well go for a walk.”
“I would really rather not,” he said back in a sigh, but she was already taking off for the courtyard, and with a stiff humility he pursued her down the decoratively paved walkway.
(When Doctor McCoy came out of the house, he quickly came down the rocky driveway, opened the passenger door and opted for dumping his medical case down in the front, an action which made Scotty jump. He got into the back seat, immediately asking Nyota, "Anything?"
"No." She shook her head. "I'm wondering if he even has his comm on him."
"So—" McCoy spoke with the agitation of resuming a previously rushed topic. "Does anybody know why he'd be upset today? I know he's shitty with milestones..."
"Oh, that's right." Scotty remembered, "He pulled a hell of a disappearing act on his mom's birthday..."
"But what's today?" After asking, it only took a close look at Nyota for Leonard to realize what it probably was.)
As he got up to pace alongside her, she didn’t turn her glance on him, just started talking again. “What influence do you even have? I may be shoved up in here all day but I can still pick up a news report every once in a while. I guess maybe you haven't been paying attention? But you've become a little bit of a joke. You went from a good year of being the sharpest XO in Starfleet to a captain that’s falling right off the rails. Yeah, can I get some ice water?"
Spock's narrow eyes moved briefly to follow the Bajoran volunteer who went off to oblige her as if patiently accustomed to the rudeness. "I am mentally sound.”
"Yeah, okay. What the hell makes you think I'd want to go back there, anyway? You put your mission on another hold and come all the way back to the neighborhood, just to offer me a ride. I bet you thought you might be able to enlist my help too, if I said yes."
("Just go drive back around the west end again," McCoy suggested, and Scotty complied as the doctor reached to briefly squeeze Uhura's hand.
She looked over to give a kind of reassuring sad smile, having been staring out the window for another long spell.)
"We require all the aid we can possibly enlist," he granted. "But our progress has reached a certain plateau that requires what Chekov continuously calls 'a century’s epiphany' to make our next development.”
“Which is a really fancy way of saying you have no idea what you are doing.” Her tone shifted to one of basic scientific interest for a moment. “What are you even looking at?”
“Currently Chekov is theorizing a type of dimensional explosive, utilizing a theoretical compound we have yet to perfect.”
“…Even if you somehow figure it out, how do you plan on making that a safe trip?...Shit,” she muttered when he didn’t have an answer. “You’re all completely insane.”
(Jim had woken with a start in the middle of the night, and she was regretting then believing that he'd want her to pretend not to notice. She'd lain motionless and fallen back asleep trying to gauge if she should say anything, at that point realizing what day it was with a looming sting; when she'd woken up again later, he'd been nowhere to be found. He wasn't supposed to work today.
She'd thought about what happened in Pemba all morning. She didn't know why.)
Her arms were waved out for balance at her sides as she stepped up to creep childishly on the brick border of one of the botanical trees.
(She didn't know why every time he ignored the comm calls she remembered, didn't know why she thought about it now, as if it was sharper than the mourning over the other man. The pains only seemed to escalate each other, the Why Here and Where Is Jim, where is he, why did he. She thought of nightmares, thought of the haunting sound of the beach outside the window ringing through her veins when after one release the disfigured had become so pronounced, at least for her. That mouth both frantic and reverent kissing the insides of her knees and then brushing its way up her thighs, so strangely knowing an action for one that also nearly meant "Stop me," and when she hadn't making her body snap in gasping like a fish out of water. This had happened.)
"Miss Uhura," he said, suddenly impatient and tangential. "I would like you to know that if you are withholding any possible attempt at rehabilitating and improving yourself simply to make a point..."
She tripped on the side of one brick; as she tumbled down clumsy off the side, his hand snatched her arm to soften the landing, but then quickly withdrew as if burned, his expression slightly dazed. As if she was suppressing laughter, her eyebrow rose before she slowly prompted, "Yes, Mr. Spock?"
Spock shook his head, a shadow that was lethal and raw climbing into his eyes. "You need not continue with such concerns, as it no longer makes any difference to me."
"Aww, you think I'm just being too petulant to admit that I wanna help you...Cause all anybody wants is to go home."
"No," he quipped, not even caring to explain himself.
"Vulcans," she scoffed, shaking her head as she sat down on the brick and tapped her feet idly on the pavement. "Such a great idea in theory, but give them something to bleed about and they turn into fucking simpletons."
"Goodbye, Uhura."
He was already walking away when she let out a sigh, watched him go for another couple seconds before she boredly blurted out, "I know where Montgomery Scott is."
Spock was paused for the moment as the assistant with the glass of water came by him, cheerlessly handing it to Uhura who handled it atop her knee, waiting for the Vulcan to inevitably turn and come striding back.
When he did he simply asked, "You believe that Mr. Scott could help us?..."
"No, look. Fuck no." She laughed now, incredulously. "Here's what I think: I think that you are going to spend, the rest of your miserable life, frying your brain up trying to wrap it around this conundrum until you end up crawling up your own ass thinking, 'Maybe the solution's in there!' But, I think that you think Scott can help you, and that's all that matters to me, because I want you to get me relocated to Doctor Stadley's institution."
Spock blinked. "...And why?"
With a sing-song matter-of-factness, she replied, "Maybe I don't like the weather here."
"You know that given your uncooperative behavior that is strewn all over your records, it would be very foolish of me to assume that you have innocent motives for wanting to be relocated anywhere."
"As if you're really looking at the records anyway," she spat.
"You will not accuse me of being unjust with your situation. You and your former colleagues were offered a gracious level of amnesty on the basis that you remained cooperative. Murdering a member of my crew in the process of a violent escape plan was not particularly cooperative."
She looked at him, considering. "But I don't think you actually care about what I'm capable of nearly as much as you care about getting them back."
"What I want," he slowly replied, "is not relevant."
"The hell it isn't. And when did you ever attempt to really evaluate me, Spock?" She stood up then, taking a couple steps up to him, one of which he expired with a step back. "You want an educated opinion on Nyota Uhura, the ISS edition? On why I am more than content to sit around with these losers with half my intelligence instead of get busted out of here so I can go frolic with the good-natureds? Or, go back to my own dimension so I can see my pathetic mother again. That's all I'm going to be able to do, considering your friends have probably made things a little complicated. That is if they're somehow even alive."
He suddenly gave her a more blazing look: Get to the point.
"My mother spent years sending messages to the Empire's headquarters trying to get in touch with me so that they could laugh at the idea that I would want to just skip back home and so that I could laugh at the notion that I would be able to. You have no idea how much of a punchline it is for you to expect me to eat this opportunity out of your hands, and even work for it. What I want, Captain Spock, is to bask in the sunlight and download books by dead people and live my little derelict life without anybody expecting me to talk to another soul because I'm just that crazy bitch who reads too much Ovid. The only problem is it rains too fucking much here."
"Where is Montgomery Scott?"
Her lips were pressed together before she finally said, "He's been in Prague recently."
"This is all you know."
"I got this postcard—Tell me you know what a postcard is, hardly anybody sends them anymore. Lovely bridge over a river on one side, no message on the other side of course, but I know it was from him. He'd do that. Send me a blank card of something just to gloat about being able to go wherever he wants."
Spock went somewhere else in his head, ignoring her until she spoke again.
"A bit of a thought before you go...I wasn't the one who murdered a member of your crew. And I think you have a pretty good idea who it was." Her eyes slanted up to him. "By the way, I definitely don't know where he is."
"You believe that he is alive?"
"Don't you?"
"I believe he caused the explosion." Spock nodded. "I have no doubt under that assumption that he would have made sure he survived it."
("What about them?" Leonard darkly muttered when the car idled along next to a shop where a couple League members were loitering. Coming out of the shop was Tom.
Uhura hadn't and wouldn't ask about Scotty's status with Jill, who after her threatening outburst had slipped unceremoniously out of their lives, but she did ask, "Do you think she told him?"
"I know she did," Scotty said, following the glances of the others out across the little street to the deliberating group of Romulans. "I don't think she'd tell anyone else, but he's got to know..."
And it seemed evident in the way the League leader had certainly taken note of the car and noticed them all looking out at him, and responded by looking at them not quite with disdain but with a far more wary than friendly look.)
Spock took leave of Uhura, who strayed farther into the courtyard by herself. At the front, he spoke to the head supervisor who asked him, "Any input this time?"
Spock paused in his steps, coldly considering. He looked behind him to where her figure was indifferent to the wind blowing aggressively at her haphazard ponytail, looked back at the supervisor and said, "Keep her where she is."
(Their conversing about whether they should go anywhere else was interrupted by the small shock of a knocking at the driver's window. They looked out to see Tom looking somewhere over their hood out at the horizon, nonchalantly awaiting the lowering of the car window and then leaning his hands in when the glass was down. "Is there a problem?" he asked.
Scotty stammered a bit. Uhura finally leaned in to ask, "Have you seen Jim around? He's been gone all day."
Tom backed up just a step to lower his glance at all of them, considering. His expression finally settled into some slight compassion. "Do you want me to—?"
"We don't need you to go looking, exactly." Leonard sighed. "But could you just let us know if you see him?"
Another wary hesitation, but he nodded. "Yeah. I'll tell my guys to keep an eye out...Is everything okay?"
There was something about the way he asked that made it suddenly more vividly likely that Jill had told him everything. Like he had to know why they would be really worried. But nobody was going to mention Jill here.
"I'm sure he'll show up back home later," Nyota said with a rather forced shrug.)
A block away from the institution, Spock sat down on a bench after getting a drink of water. For an undefinable reason, he pensively sat there for a minute, as if nursing some inner reeling.
(Tom was already walking away; after a moment he turned back once with some tangled and distracted look, but then he second-guessed and stepped away from the car for good.
Nyota was trying Jim's comm one last time as Scotty pulled them off. She tensed in a guarded way along with McCoy, neither of them exerting quite enough to hope. After it was clear he wasn't going to respond, she flipped the comm unit shut and placed it into her bag, looking back out the window with her fingers tapping idle and anxious at her mouth.)
Spock was just standing up again when his travel comm unit made a chirp, providing no identification of the communication's source. He answered.
"Yes?"
A voice said, "Happy birthday, Spock."
His body hardly jolted with stiff shock, his eyes widened only fractionally, but at the park just across the square there was a hubbub of birds laughing skyward and he looked about, as if he felt watched. Spock spoke icily.
"You have thirty seconds to convince me not to end this transmission."
>Gimme Shelter
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Date: 2010-11-04 09:54 pm (UTC)