"As If" -A Star Trek fanfiction
“As If”
Fandom: Star Trek IX
Rating: PG (mild language)
Genre and Tropes: AU, Academy fic, genderswap, friendship
Characters: Uhura-centric story. Uhura, Gaila, and always-a-girl!Kirk friendship (budding Spock/Uhura, and a tad of Kirk/Gaila femmeslash)
Discription: When Nyota Uhura is falsely accused of academic dishonesty, her most unlikely ally comes in the form of a girl also falsely accused of many things. First in the genderswap!Kirk verse. Inspired by an unfilled prompt on the kink-meme about Uhura being befriended by Gaila and always-a-girlKirk in an hour of need.
()()()
“I think,” Gaila told Nyota Uhura one afternoon. “That if you just got to know her a little better, you and Jamie Kirk could be friends.”
The grass pressed warm and thick through their skirts as they lounged on the Star Fleet Academy lawn. Gaila basked stretched on her back, propped up on her elbows, barefoot in the soft white sun. Ringed by textbook stacks, Nyota snorted without raising her eyes from her Deltan notes.
“As if.”
Friends may have been hard to come by these days, but Nyota was not that desperate for friendship. She would have been content to wrinkle her books' thick spines, sequestered in her dormroom Friday nights, deaf to the laughter which seaped through the walls like tides from a foreign sea. Nyota used to be a firm believer of “party hard, but study harder.” Once, she had fallen into the balance between being that girl whose elbow always brushed a friend's and being in the top 2% of her class easily as breathing. Now...not so much...
The beauty and flux of the Vulcan language did not believe the lies spread about her. Her xenolinguistics homework never stabbed her in the back.
Even this afternoon soaking up sunlight with Gaila marked her new outcast status. Before the “Incident,” her relationship with Gaila had been composed of borrowing earrings, occasional essay edits, fragmented conversations snatched while tossing on uniforms. It was more of a lukewarm alliance than a friendship, really, based on having little more in common than sharing sleeping quarters. Now, however, starved of other company, Nyota allotted privately she could get used to this. Gaila was one of those irrestibly happy people for whom just being alive was enough. Nothing really bothered her. She just loved to love and live.
And she did not talk about Nyota behind her back...
I do not care what they say about me a fire burned within her soul. Her name lingered on the skirts of her hearing range. Her name sharpened through the whispering sea. The faces flickered towards her through the crowd, splintering eyes on her skin.
She didn't care what anyone said. That, in itself, was exhilarating.
()()()
“Oh for the love of God, why does Commander Spock have to be the one talking to Pike?” Uhura had murmured nervously under her breath, stealing a sideways glance at the two officers, practically ahuddle together in a corner during lunch hour. “He's the one professor in this entire Academy who gave me a 89% average last semeseter. 89%. I never get below 97% on anything. I have him again this semeseter for a much more difficult class.”
“Nyota,” Giotto had pipped up earnestly from across the mess table. “A 89% in Professor Spock's Intro to Xenolinguistics class is like a 130% in a normal class. That Vulcan has a poker up his ass the size of his own ego.”
Giotto had a bit of a crush on her. Nyota could tell. But as it was totally unrequited, she felt that pretending she did not notice would be the most classy response.
“Now, I did not say that. He's a Vulcan. It would be unfair to superimpose upon him our own expectations of social interaction or 'humility.' That's culturally insensitive. It just worries me to see him talking to the man who holds my future in the palm of his hand. Commander Spock is Pike's science officer, he really respects his opinion...”
“You sure know a lot about him for someone who claims to be ticked off at him about that essay on comparative morphology,” supplied Ruth slyly, with a ghost of devilish wink. Nyota did not rise to the bait as she strode jauntily along her way, sleek ponytail bouncing behind her with each pert, quick little step.
“Of course I do. I thoroughly researched all my professors before taking their classes, especially ones with connections to Pike, since he's the one who picks out the interns for the Enterprise. Oppurtunities don't just fall into your hands, Ruth. You have to seek them out and seize them, make them happen,” Nyota answered briskly, jaw gritted determindedly. Her glowed eyes bright and defiant fixed on a brighter-yet future.
“If anybody has a chance of getting that internship, it's you” her friend Alisha assured her. “You're, like, the smartest, most focused girl I know.”
“I have a lot of competition from very worthy cadets,” Nyota admitted. “But I think I can handle it. I'm going to get assigned to the Enterprise...no matter what it takes.”
()()()
“ “No matter what it takes?” Were those Cadet Uhura's exact words?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she specify in detail any intent to preoffer sexual behavior to Captain Pike in order to receive the internship?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank you, Sgt. Giotto. This academic hearing for sexual misconduct and academic dishonesty shall begin recess. We commence at 18:00 hours.”
()()()
Nyota never knew who set her up.
She only knew no one she knew stood beside her.
“Dirty slut.”
“Whore.”
“I knew that Barbie was using her pretty face to get those kind of grades...not to mention those pretty tits...”
“Hey, Cadet Uhura...I'll give you a full rating if you perform 100% like you did on Captain Pike...if you know what I mean.”
She was put on academic probation. The Enterprise internship, for which she had exhausted her mind and worked her fingers to the bone, was forever beyond her reach. Captain Pike, her mentor, was now facing charges for sexual misconduct, as well. He would get off clear...as he should, Nyota reminded herself. He had done nothing wrong...he had been nothing but professional towards her...yet everyone agreed it was pity Pike had this on his record. Yes, it was a pity Pike had this little mark on his record...
I The worst part wasn't even that everyone she once considered a friend dropped her without hestiation, testifying against her at her hearing, eager to wash away association with her forever.
It was that when the jacket eyes saw her, all they saw was what anyone could see. After years of relentless study, her beautiful and intricate mind she chose to hon was reduced to a face she was born with.
“It's terrible,” Gaila had cooed comfortingly. “That they see preoffering sexual behaviors as a bad thing. Why not? On Orion, it's a perfectly legitimate way of advancing.”
Somehow, her words made Nyota feel worse rather than better.
The evening of her academic hearing, Nyota arrived back at her dormroom to find Gaila out. As much as she appreciated the Orion girl for being the only one who still respected her, she was relieved to sink into lonely quiet, to ease her whirling thoughts. Nyota paused in the act of undressing before the mirror, distracted by her reflection, stripped down to her cottony underwear. The long-limbed, slender, hard-hipped body cast back at her familiar. She studied the delicate flex of her ribcage, her beautiful dark brown skin.
Am all I am to be is what any one can see? Does anyone know me at all?
Her gaze lifted to her own face. Keen, wide, liquid black eyes were set above hard proud cheekbones. Her mother's cheekbones. My mother was a warrior woman. I come from a line of queens. An inherited pride galavinzed her veins.The same pride had blazed inside her at the age of 13, the first time she had raced a gazelle. Elegant and long-legged as the fleet-footed creature itself, she sprinted neck-and-neck alongside it, cleaving through the tawny plain. Even when she had stuttered to a halt, with pierced and windless lungs, Nyota knew right then and there that she was born to chase horizons. Alone against the world, she stood still and watched the molton sky fade gray, watched the rising of the stars whose tongues she longed to speak.
I am Nyota Upenda Uhura, she thought quietly to herself. I know who I am, and no one can tell me not to love my skin. They can never take me away from me.
The door swished open and shut.
“Well, Cadet Uhura as I live and breathe. Now that is a sight I could get used to seeing.”
“Kirk!”
Nyota snatched the bathrobe hanging on her closet door, clutching it to her chest before she whirled around. A familiar curvy, broad-shoulder blonde strode unapologetically into the room. A dirty-blonde ponytail unraveled around a heart-shaped, frecked face full of bright things; sun-kissed skin, an unusually bright Chesire cat-grin, and the jet black eyes which were the only physical sign of her Betazoid heritage.
“I didn't come for the peep show,” Kirk smirked smarmly at Nyota. “Gaila borrowed my favorite pair of underwear for her date last night. Now she's on a different date, with a different guy, different underwear. I want mine back.”
“Get it and leave,” Nyota hissed, uncharacterstically livid. Kirk ruffled her collected cool like no one else she knew, sparking irriation like a knee-jerk reaction. Deliberately slow, dragging out every movement, Kirk rumaged through Gaila's clothes, finally extracting a thick lacy black thong that put all sorts of horrible images in Nyota's mind.
“Out!”
“...are you sure you don't want to borrow my underwear as well? I normally don't lend it out to people whose first names I don't know, though, so....”
“OUT!”
With a final melodramatic flourish, Kirk practically pranced out, grungy hair failing in a tawny flag behind her. Nyota frowned. It wasn't the sex taunt...Kirk had made those even before Nyota was framed...it was just...no...
Could it be?
…..Kirk?
()()()
Jamie Kirk was more ambitious than people realized. Nyota understood that. It was infuriating, really. Nyota strove always to cultivate an aura of absolute professionalism, yet Kirk could sauter up to professors, crackoff-color jokes in class, and receive the same results as Nyota by virtue of that infectious grin.
Really, Nyota ruminated bitterly, she should be the one framed for sleeping her way to the top, not me. Hell, for all anyone knew, Kirk probably was sleeping her way to the top.
She eyed Kirk from afar during her solitary lunch hour. Nyota sat alone,red-clad bodies streamed around her like bloodcells, clustering in handfulls about the other tables in the mess. Though she knew, now, that their friendship had been rooted more in the fact they had meet as green cadets orientation week than any true compatibility, any true loyalty, her heart stung in her throat to see her former friends laughing together.
Would Kirk have set her up?
Kirk had relished fraying Nyota's nerves since the night they had met, the night a blonde girl in a leather jacket had slurred up to Nyota in an Iowa bar, vodka-laced breath hot in her face. At first Nyota had been intrigued...she had never met a Betazoid before, even a ¼ one, and was fascinated by how their language purposefully left ambiguities to be filled by telepathy. However, it had been a mistake to indulge this one's attention. Within a minute, Kirk had grown bored of talking morphology and was begging for a lesbian makeout session that wasn't any kind of classy. Several months later at school, she was still badgering Nyota for her first name. The inside joke had been funny the first 500 times, but now was merely irritating. But actually framing Nyota for bribery and sexual misconduct? Did Kirk want that intership that badly?
Kirk was deep in intense conversation with Commander Spock. She talked fast, gestulating dramatically, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. Commander Spock stood tree-straight and still,hands folded neatly in the small of his back. Yet he leaned forward slightly, understatedly glued to her every word. Something Kirk said lifted both brows.
For reasons she did not know, Nyota's stomach meshed in rolling chunks.
Spock watched Kirk as she saturated away, and though his face was set in his usual unfathomable stone, those deep Vulcan eyes crinkled with a soft warm bordering affection.
()()()
Nyota's least favorite thing about Vulcans may have been that they did not understand the reduced mental capities of other species, leading to certain unrealistic expectations of perfection. Her favorite thing about them, however, was their appreciation of blunt honesty.
“May I talk to you?” Nyota edged into Commander Spock's office. He raised his face from his paper. A curious eyebrow arched as he regarded her with a cool, detached calm.
“I believe that you already are.”
Nyota stared fearlessly into that impassive face, steeling her wriggling nerves. I will not allow him to intimidate me. I will absolutely not.
“I mean about a matter in particular.”
“I surmised as much,” he unhunched from over his desk to sit straight in his chair, staring up at Nyota with dark, bright, inquisitive eyes. Nyota launched into the meat of the matter without hestiation, knowing he, alone, would appreciate her forwardness.
“It is about...” a hot knot tightened her throat “... I am facing a misconduct trial. Sir.”
“I have heard.” Spock entonned emotionlessly.
“Yes, well...I am trying to figure out who set me up...you don't have to believe I was set up, sir, but I was. Just hear me out. I think...Jamie Kirk might have been the one who framed me.”
Both eyebrows shot up into his bangs, the most emotion she had ever seen touch his face. Jumbling her words her rush to be speak before she lost her nerve, she spilled her thoughts a bit more quickly than she had rehearsed that morning before the mirror.
“I know it's a long shot, sir, but Kirk and I aren't exactly friends, and I know that there are only a certain amount of Cadets allowed to serve on the Enterprise and...”
Spock cut her off before she could finish, on his feet in a single, cat-smooth rise. Though his monotone did not waver by a fraction, his voice sparked a chill that iced the air on instant.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Cadet Uhura. I do believe that you are innocent. There is a 97.876 chance that you have been framed. However, there is absolutely no chance that Cadet Kirk is the one who framed you.”
“None?” Nyota asked skeptically, mildly surprised Spock had not calculated the odds down to the 4th decimal point.
“None.” He repeated adamently.
“Forgive me, Commander...isn't that just your opinion? Do you have evidence that it is not Cadet Kirk?” Nyota knew the logic angle was the best way to wriggle under his infamously thick skin. Visibly irked, he shot back at her.
“Do you have any proof it is? Allow me to clarify. Objects have a definite character which does not waver. If one were to drop a hammer, the hammer would fall to the ground. Bodies of planets in motion are drawn in gravitional pull, falling into a pattern...”
“What does this have to do with...”
“Human beings,” he continued as though he had not heard her. “also develop a pattern of character. Cadet Kirk would never act with vegeance, pettiness, or malice. It is simply not in her nature.”
To hear Spock's voice soar with Kirk's praises cut Nyota in a way she could not describe. Yet through this hazy disquiet, this burning sick without a name, a shrewd corner of her mind fussed tight. Spock was the most objective person she knew...if he spoke of Kirk so highly...maybe, maybe there was something Nyota was missing...
“Thank you for your time, Commander.”
Nyota felt drained with a strange, sick-nerved feeling which skirted defintion. She did not know exactly what she had wanted coming to Spock's office, but she knew it wasn't this, whatever this was. Before passing from the room, she paused, glancing over her shoulder.
“Commander...you said you believed me? You believe I am innocent?”
He blinked.
“Why, of course,” he responded matter-of-factly, his face open in a disarming innocence she had not expected of him.
“Why?”
“There is no logical motive whatsoever for a Cadet as intelligent and motivated as yourself to resort to any means to achieve your ambitions other than your diligent work and exemplary proformance,” he reasoned simply, in a tone that implied he believed this fact to be the most obvious in the universe.
The smile which ripped from her soul threatened to split her face. She might have been mistaken, but for a moment, she thought she saw some of her own brightness reflected in his twinkling eye.
“Dismissed, Cadet Uhura.”
She remained aglow long after she left his office, smiling to herself as her footsteps echoed through the empty hall.
()()()
“But Professor Norman...”
“My decision on who is partnering with who is final Cadet Uhura. I suggest you and Cadet Kirk work out whatever catfight or girly issues you have going on?”
“Girly issues, sir?” Nyota gaped, outraged. “If a male student approached you with a disagreement with his assignment partner, would you accuse him of 'catfighting' with his partner?” She resentfully tacked on her usual “Sir.”
“Playing the wounded little discriminated girl for pity gets you no points with me, Cadet. Dismissed.”
Before she stalked furious from the room, Nyota caught Norman's eyes flick quick over her body.
()()()
“I give up,” Nyota massaged her twitching eyelids, pressure points thick as storm cells budding in her skull. “There is no way to complete this before tomorrow.”
“I don't believe in no win scenarios,” Kirk grinned, her usual rougish charm leaking through her weariness. Nyota had to admit; whatever Kirk spiked her coffee with, Nyota wanted some.
“How much cafeine have you had?” She asked her partner.
“None, I don't drink cafeine.”
“Thank God.”
Kirk's hair frizzed thick as lion's mane, standing on end like a children cartoon mad scientist's. Helter-skelter she scribbled across the paper lines, her scrawl closer to a Jackson Pollack painting than words. Ink smudged her fingernips and the tip of her freckled nose, flicking from her chewed-up ballpoint pen. The veins burst in her yellowing eye-whites. Yet though frayed in exhaustion, she was utterly bent upon finishing the homework, her fierce intellectualism mirroring Nyota's own.
Watching her possessed by her work, Nyota began to understand why Spock liked Kirk so much...Well, at least I'm losing to him to someone smart.
Wait...did she really just think that?
“It's number 7 that I'm stuck on,” Kirk scrunched up her face in concentration. “There's just no way I can figure out whether the conditions supervene upon the standards of justification, or entail the standards of justifcation.”
“How can standards of justifcation be entailed inside that context? The moment the metaphysical is mentioned, the standards shift in order to fit the next, higher-standards context...”
A quick hand darted out to touch Nyota's arm. Kirk's Betazoid black eyes gleamed.
“That's it. It can't. It doesn't supervene or entail...it structures it!”
Nyota's mind was utterly blown. That idea would have never occurred to her...it rocked her brain into a completley different universe. In grudging admiration, she beheld the wild thing before her in a newer, purer light.
“You know, Kirk,” a smile tugged at Nyota's lips in spite of herself. “You keep this up, and I might stop thinking of you as a dumb country girl who jumps everything that can fill an orifice."
Kirk's dark eyes bore into Nyota's face. Something sincere and hard sliced right to the root of her soul.
“You know, having sex doesn't automatically decrease your IQ, by the way.”
Cold shame rippled beneath Nyota's skin. She opened her mouth to respond, but the slight hunch in Kirk's shoulders, the defensive way she bent over her paper, walled her from all conversation.
()()()
Perhaps it was this lingering guilt that enticed Nyota to have a celebratory drink with Kirk when their team received the highest marks in the entire class. Perhaps it was Kirk's minxish smile, so piercing, so innocenlty naughty (“Come on, just make sure Gaila and I get home okay). Perhaps it was that ache of not having gone out for weeks.
Hindsight being 20-20, it was not one of Nyota's wiser decisions.
“Bartender!” Kirk howled, raising her 6th drained shot over her head. “Another one.”
“...I think that you've had enough,” Nyota tried to reason with her. She was the only sober member in a trio composd of a wasted Gaila and an even more drunk Kirk. In her younger days, Nyota had indulged in her fair share of parties, but had never been completely slammed, always stopping while still sober enough to say her name in 27 languages. Kirk, however, was raging through the bar like a bat out of hell. Gaila (positively aquiver that Kirk had persuaded Uhura to join them) giggled at her drunken friend, nestled in the crook of an round-shoulder cadet's arm.
Something glistened in Kirk's watery eyes, something Nyota found instinctively familiar, though she knew not from where.
“I think classy hour is over,” Kirk slurred, dragging herself towards Gaila. She seized the Orion girl's thick green wrist and yanked her into her arms. One hand crept behind the base of her skull, the other snaked gently down her waist, resting confidantly on Gaila's left lovehandle. Gaila giggled. For a moment their noses bobbed back and forth untouching, reminding Nyota of a pair of jackets circling, sizing another up.
Then, with such gentle tenderness it stuck Nyota still, Kirk kissed Gaila's pliant lips.
The bar scene blurred in flourescent smears as Nyota watched, transfixed, as the kiss between them deepened. Though Nyota was straight as arrow, there was something so pure and naked and almost wistful about the way Kirk kissed Gaila she could only stare, awestruck at the beauty.
Then, a thousand heavy fists began to rap a tattoo on the bar. Grutteral voices rose in a chant which pounded Nyota's eardrums and sickened her stomach.
“MAKE. OUT. MAKE. OUT. MAKE. OUT. MAKE. OUT.”
Disgusted, Nyota took charge of the moment. In two confidant strides she crossed the room, jerking Kirk's elbow roughly.
“We're going home.”
“I'm still hungry.”
“You've had waaaaay too much to drink.”
“...wanna join in?”
“YES!” roared the crowd.
Nyota held her head high regally, superbly unflustered by the crowd. They were not even worth the effort it would take for her to role her eyes at them. Already her mind drifted to the linguistics homework she could complete...if she pulled an all nighter....
That's when Kirk vomited alcohol-laced bile all over Nyota's chest.
“Sorry,” she hiccupped.
“That's okay,” Nyota said quietly as Gaila helped Kirk shakily into a seat.
Nothing, Nyota reflected, could make her sting more behind her ears, as she found herself down on her hadns and knees with a cool sponge mopping up the vomit. This was definitely the worst the night could get. Dingy yellow acid trickled, despite her efforts, unto a pair of dark boots which stood before her. Hair fraggled, breasts leaking out of her top, makeup sweating and smearing on her face likening her to a demented scarecrow, Nyota raised her head to see who it was unto whose boots she had just dripped vomit.
It was Spock.
“Cadet Uhura,” he nodded, entirely unperturbed, as though they two had unexpectedly met in the library.
“Commander!”
After an involuntary flinch, Nyota quickly composed her face into a calm which would have shamed a Vulcan. Keenly aware of the bra strap slipping off her shoulder, she rose as gracefully to her feet as the situation would allow, eyeing Spock proudly at his level, face devoid of shame.
“Commander Spock. Good evening.” She answered at her utmost professional.
Kirk retched.
Soundlessly Spock glided toward the shuddering blonde. Long-fingered white hands gently cupped her shoulders.
“Jamie.” His muttered voice, soften than Nyota had ever heard, was still audible to her sensitve ears. His face was hidden from her.
“Spock?” Jamie blubbered. “H-how did you get here?”
“You messaged me.”
“Right.”
“Cadet Uhura,” Spock's gaze snapped to her suddenly. “If I were to escort you, Miss Kirk, and Miss Gaila to campus, shall you ensure that they return to their dormitories safely?”
Nyota nodded.
“I am trusting you,” his voice heavied “with something very...necessary...to me.”
“Hey!” one of the drunken men brayed from the corner. “Who the hell is that girl?”
“I'm Jamie goddam Kirk, bitch!”
“I believe that you have expressed yourself with enough gusto and colorful euphonisms tonight, Jamie,” Spock entonned coolly.
Without explication, he lifted Kirk up by her elbows, nearly cradling her in his arms, as he escorted her from the bar, Nyota helping a stumbling Gaila close upon his heels.
()()()
“I'm going to let her stay with me for the night. She's too wasted to get back to her dorm, and I don't know where she lives.”
“I thank you, Cadet Uhura, for behaving responsibly in this inconveniant situation.”
“No problem.”
Serving as living crutch for Gaila while Commander Spock carried a half-conscious Kirk like a bride across a threshold was definitely not a situation Nyota believed she would be in. Spock, however, walked straight-backed with his usual dignity and Nyota tried to mirror his calm. Once inside the dorm, Spock draped Kirk tenderly unto Nyota's bed while Nyota helped Gaila into her own. For some reason, there was something unsettling about Spock standing in Nyota's quarters, something sordid, revealing. His eyes skimmed lightly over the pictures of her family, the purple fuzzy zebra-stripped comforter, the elegant ebony African art, and fixated upon her bookshelf.
“You do not re-sell your textbooks,” Spock commented with an approving nod. “Most logical.”
“I might need them later.” Nyota also grew emotionally attached to books in whose margins she scribbled, but she thought Spock might not be the best person to tell that. He leaned in slightly, eyes zipping quick across the threadbare spines.
“There is much linguistic theory here...yet also poetry.”
“Yes,” Nyota found her shoulders pushing back and her head rising high, locking quickly into her defensive mode. “I love poetry.”
“I see Shakesphere's sonnets...”
“Poetry provides a fascinating insight not only into culture, but into forms of rhetoric and tropes such as metonymy, metaphor, syncedoche, and other ways of contemplating abstract...”
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love's not love when it's alteration finds, or bends with the mover to remover,” Spock rattled off, matter-of-factly as if conjugating Vulcan verbs, smoothly as breathing.
“Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark, that looks upon tempests and is never shaken, it is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.” Nyota finished by heart, poetry rising pure in her soul.
They stopped speaking and merely watched eachother in fascination. Nyota was grateful; listening to her former xenolinguistics teacher talk of “rosy lips” and “cheeks” while standing two feet from her bed would have been the height of awkward.
“I did not have you pegged for a Shakesphere lover,” Nyota admitted. Spock allowed a small, noncommental head tilt.
“Indeed. It is often my experience that judgements are hastily constructed about the beings which we encounter, which said beings rarely fulfill in their entirity.”
Those dark eyes took on a focus entirely Nyota's.
“You do...of course...realize you are exempt from all negative judgement?”
Gaila snored loudly in the corner. Nyota managed a brief nod. Suddenly, acutely, painfully aware of the silence between them, almost terrified and thrilled of where that silence could lead, Nyota showed Spock to her door.
“Thank you for your help, Commander Spock.”
“I believe the human idiom apt for the situation is...'the pleasure was mine.'”
Then he was gone.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds...
()()()
“I know you hate me.”
“It's okay. I'm ¼ Betazoid, remember? I mean, my powers are a lot weaker then a full blood and I I try not to do it, you know, read people because most humans think its rude. But I know you hate me.”
“I don't hate you, Kirk.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Maybe a little.”
It was hard to hate Kirk now, though, when Nyota had rarely seen anyone so pathetic. The whites of her eyes were fierce pink around her midnight irises, her make-up half-melted off her face.
“Sorry.” Kirk slurred.
“For me not liking you? Kirk, you have to be you are...I just don't have to like it.”
“I know that,” Kirk rolled her eyes as best she could. “I mean for knowing about it. That you don't like me. I dunno, humans are kinda private about their emotions. I try not to interfere...”
“It's okay. You can't help it. It's part of your physiology.”
“And Betazoid culture. Reading people.”
“Like those random orgies you and Gaila threw in my dorm at the start of last semester?” Nyota's jaw gritted at the memory as she, showered and in her sleep pants and baggy shirt, curled on the foot of her bed.
Kirk sniggered.
“Hey...intercultural relations. Orion and Betazoid cultures overlap in some places...'course it's not the same for Gaila without the telepathy...but I thought you'd be all about that. Hell, you and Spock seem to be doing some interplantary relations of your own.”
Nyota's glands pipped red hot, but before she could respond, Kirk fixed her with a glance suddenly unexpectedly shrewd.
“...or do the only cultures who get tolerance are the ones who are more prudish than yours?”
Nyota blinked. She had not considered that.
“Okay, maybe, I haven't been as culturally sensitive as I thought I was,” she admitted, though it choked her pride to say so aloud. “But don't put this all on me, Kirk. You haven't always respected me, either. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I have my own ideas about my body, my personal property, and my time that doesn't involve whatever you and Gaila have in mind? Okay, I should be more respectful to you and Gaila. But you know...it really should go both ways.”
Nyota edged forward, laying down at Kirk's side.
“I'm not as sexually liberated as you. But that doesn't mean I don't own my own skin.”
Kirk blinked deeply, shifting her cheek on Nyota's pillow. There was a sadness in her smile Nyota had never seen.
“It sucks when you have a reputation as a slut and that's all anyone notices.”
Nyota nodded.
“I know you didn't offer to sleep with Pike.”
“Yeah, I know you know.” Nyota paused, unsure if she should be asking the next question, but knowing also the words would gnaw at her thoroughout the night...
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why are you constantly trying to makeout with Gaila? You just don't strike me as the kind of girl who would do that to get attention. I used to think that, but just getting to know you this little makes me realize you're too confidant for that.”
With unexpectedly swiftness, Kirk rolled over, showing Nyota her bare shoulder-blades. Nyota blinked. An unconsidered possiblity solidfied in her mind...
“Kirk?”
The other girl burrowed under the blanket. Nyota's voice gentled.
“...Jamie?”
No response, but the shoulder blades loosened.
“Jamie, are you a lesbian?”
Silence.
“It's okay if you are, I don't care. It's just the way you were born, Jamie, you can't help it if you like girls.”
More silence.
“I like girls and boys,” came the eventual, muffled reply. Nyota nodded sympathically.
“Okay, bisexual then. That's cool too.” Then it hit Nyota like inspiration.
“You like Gaila.”
A klaedscope of fragmented memories fell together like modern art...the make-out sessions...the look in Kirk's eyes that night at the bar...that desperate, longing, mingled with jealousy...
“You're not just making out with her to turn on guys. You say that, but deep down inside...you like her.”
Kirk nodded. She finally rolled around, mascara streaking charcoal down her face as she forced a bitter smile at Nyota.
“Well. Now you know.”
“ I though you were in love with Spock.”
For the life of her, Nyota could not have known where it came from, why it popped from her mouth unbidden. She could have kicked herself for her insensitivity. Jamie, however, laughed waterly.
“Everybody thinks that, but no. He's my friend.” She softened in a closed-lipped smile. “My best friend, along with Bones. A much better friend than I deserve most of the time...but...everybody thinks we're in love. And I don't know, maybe we are. Maybe the love of your life can be a platonic love.”
She hiccupped a bit. Nyota's hand found itself on her shoulder, squeezing emphatically.
“Thank you,” Jamie wheezed. “What I was saying is that me and Spock...it's beautiful, you know. We're so close and we just get eachother. I'd die for him...but I don't want to bump uglies with him. We just don't want to jump eachother's bones. And nobody else really understands it or gets that we're just best friends, but I don't care, because I love him, and I know he loves me. Deep down. That's all that matters.I don't care what people say about us anyway. I don't care about that.”
It was several minutes before she spoke again, and when she did, it came out the most exhausted of whispers.
“It does make me wonder, though, if I'm too fucked up to love anyone properly. Me not being able to love Spock as more than a brother, a platonic soulmate. I mean with him it wouldn't work anyway because I'm not his type. We have totally different views about what a relationship should be like. We've talked about this before and we're both happy with our friendship the way it is. But I wonder why I couldn't love him...that way...if I'm truly so scarred...”
Jamie's mouth clamped shut suddenly, as if she had revealed too much. Nyota inch-wormed closer, leaning in to whisper in Jamie's ear, close enough to count every freckle on the other girl's cheek.
“The only love you really need,” she whispered. “Is the love you feel for yourself. Love yourself, and you will accept the love you think you deserve.”
“Who am I, Nyota?” Jamie whispered. She had known Uhura's name all along.
“You're Jamie goddam Kirk.”
Jamie's delighted shock at the language made the uncharacterstic language worth it.
“You know swear words!” She squealed. “You can actually swear!”
“In all three Romulan dialects,” Nyota found herself grinning ear to ear.
The two girls slept in Nyota's bed that night, curled up snuggly as cats. Nyota woke to find Jamie's head still lolling on her shoulder. She smiled to herself as she floated back to sleep.
()()()
Nyota tried to force down the disappointment when Jamie Kirk's freckled face did not poke out from the crowd.
She scanned twice, just to check. In the week leading up to Nyota's hearing, she had found herself nearly constantly in Jamie and Gaila's company. Sometimes they did homework for Norman's class, sometimes watched holograms in Nyota and Gaila's dorms, but always Nyota found herself laughing harder than she had in weeks. One night, Jamie had messaged her and asked, “Hey, wanna hang out?” It was the first time they had passed the time both liberated of their homework and without Gaila. Nyota had agreed, apprehensive, half-expecting another bar incident.
The two women walked barefoot along the beach, kicking up powdery sand in clouds, salt air gusting through their long hair. In silence, they watched the crimson sun dip below irony waters, unspeaking. Right before the dusk winked out Jamie flashed her the softest of smiles. Yeah, I get you. And I think we're going to be okay.
It was the day of Nyota's hearing. And she hadn't seen Jamie since.
Gaila waited at Nyota's side, clutching the human's hand so hard her knuckles popped. Nyota was greatful for the warmth.
“You'll be fine,” Gaila whispered gently in her ear. Nyota's brain echoed on reflex “Fine” is an unacceptable answer, Cadet Uhura, for it has variable meanings...
She had scanned the crowd for Spock, too. Also missing.
“What is the most nervous you've ever been in your entire life?” Nyota whispered back to Gaila. The two women's temples touched as she leaned closer.
“The night I fled.” She said automatically. Nyota stared at her uncompreheningly, for several seconds.
Then it hit her.
“Fled...Gaila...” she leaned closer. “...you used to be a slave?”
Nyota was agast. She had merely assumed all these months that Gaila had been freeborn. She had had no idea. Gaila, however, nodded quickly. Though her tone when she spoke was devoid of all self pity, she began with a deep, hollow sigh far too old for her lungs.
“Yes. But I escaped when I was 12. I remember the most scared I had ever been in my entire life was when the ship smuggling us out got stopped by the authorities. I remember my mother and sisters and I were all huddled together under the deck. I remember the sound of the bootsteps overheard, and I was shaking, and my mother had her hand in my youngest sister's mouth to keep her from crying out. It was pitch black down there, and all you could see was what the pin-pricks of light from the removed bolts highlighted. And I remember this one bolt fell on my mother's face. I looked at her. She looked at me. And even though I was too young to know why then, the fear in my stomach slowly distengrated and fell away because she was so beautiful and strong and fierce in that moment. And that's when I realized...that they didn't own us. That they never owned us. I watched my mom hold her four daughters, knowing any moment we could all be captured, any moment we could all be dead, and stand her ground without trembling because she knew it was worth risking to make a better life for us.” She paused.
“I think it's impossible to look upon that and not be changed.”
“And?” Nyota's own whisper was barely audible.
“I've never let anyone make me feel that scared again.”
“The defendant will rise and approach the board.”
She did.
Nyota Uhura rose and walked down the stairs with her head held high. The deep solumn mass of smartly-dressed cadets were so still as to swallow all sound but her heartbeat. But not even the swirl in her stomach touched the iron in her face.
At 13, she had raced a thing untamed. Though she lost the race she had not ceased to run, paddling dust behind her as she shot horizon-bound.
“To the charges leveled against you for sexual misconduct, cheating, and bribery of a superior officer, how do you plead.”
“Not guilty, Admiral,” Nyota declared, defiant.
“Damn straight not guilty,” boomed a most familiar voice, sparking a dry rustling gasp from the crowd.
“An illogical and imprecise idiom, however, adapt in meaning.” corrected another, also familiar voice. Lightning jolted up her spine.
Jamie Kirk and Commander Spock strode into the hall in perfect time, moving as if chained at the hip. Jamie flashed Nyota a knowing, almost giddy grin as she passed. Uncomforted, Nyota frowned as the two cleaved through the crowd to stand directly before Admiral Barrow.
“Commander Spock, what is the meaning of this?” Barrow's thick voice quivered with disapproval. His eyes darted straight to the Vulcan, passing through the short, rather cute blonde girl as though she was not present.
“We're here to stop all of you incredibly brilliant bureacractic geniuses from making a horrible mistake,” Jamie answered, flashing her trademark smirk. “You see, Commander Spock and I have been doing some research together. We both thought it was...strange that a Cadet with not as much as curfew violation on her record would resort to pimping herself out for grades.”
Jamie Kirk paced as she spoke, once more emphasizing her words with her hands, rotating to let her gaze bounce lightly off all corners of the audience. All of the room drew to her when she spoke as if enchanted by siren song. And suddenly an unforgettable fire, which flickered in her brief on occasion, roared in Jamie Kirk with the force of a revolution. When she talked with authority, she held the universe in the palm of her short-nailed hand. When her voice barked out commands, she was infinite.
“Oh my God,” Nyota realized. “That woman's going to be a captain someday.”
“So, Commander Spock and I accessed the computar terminals...”
“You mean you hacked.”
“I am permitted unmonitored access to all areas of the computar banks. Sir.” Spock answered calmly. Unless her eyes deceived her (and God knows they had seen strange things of late), his slanted brows wriggled in something akin to amusement at the purpling fury in Barrow's face.
“Hacked, accessed...you say to-may-toes, I say to-mah-toes,” Jamie brushed it off lightly. “The point is, we were able to work together to analyze the digital composition of the sexy photos that turned up on Pike's computer. Unfortunately, we were not able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they were photoshoped. But we did find the address of the PADD which sent them, along with the messages offering sex for oppurtunities.”
Nyota's pounding heart leapt up into her throat. Almost afraid to hope, she chipped her nails upon the podium she clutched.
“It was impossible to decrypt the address,” Admiral Komack said flatly. “Don't you realize that was the first thing which we tried to do?”
“You, sir” Spock said simply “Did not try for several weeks. And you, sir, did not study computers from a Vulcan.”
Kirk and Spock had been working for weeks...Nyota had had no idea...
What a minute, she and Kirk had only started hanging out a single week ago...
“And who, might I ask, is the alleged sender?”
Like any practiced actress, Jamie paused for dramatic effect. Glancing sideways both ways, she gaged that her audience quivered, worshipping her every word, before speaking.
“The sender is...” she trailed melodramatically
For the love of God, Jamie, spit it out...
“...Wesley Giotto.”
Nyota barely kept her jaw from dropping, but it was a near thing. Jamie caught Giotto's eye in the crowd so Nyota didn't have to.
“Hello, Cupcake!” She waved.
“Why?”
The word ripped from Nyota unbidden. She was past hurt. She was past fury. She stared blankly into the flat-featured face of one who once was her friend, beyond all longing for meaning. She wanted only answers.
For an awkward second, the crowd's mutters consumed the silence. His beedy eyes edged nervously in his sockets, unable to roll towards her.
“Look at me!” She commanded fiercely. Her command triggered his outburst
“ I was never good enough for you, I was never going to be good enough for you, and I just...I just wanted to humble you a little...” his voice warbled down to a whimper. Devoid of all pity, she regarded him, disgusted.
“You tried to ruin my career because I wouldn't go out with you???”
“Pay no heed to this pathetic speciman of a human being,” Spock was suddenly inches from her, closer to her than he had ever stood before, so close she could feel his body heat smoulder. “He has been brought to justice and shall be dully punished.”
But Giotto wasn't finished.
“She...she...she thought she was too good for me!”
“Well, Nyota does tend to be right about everything, but don't tell her that,” Jamie quipped brightly, falling in on Nyota's other side. “She can be a bit slow at...reading people, though.”
Trying hard (and failing miserably) not to appear completely self satisfied, Jamie smiled at Spock over Nyota's shoulder.
“Good teamwork!” She decided assurdedly as Giotto, in a latch ditch effort, threw a punch at the security guard cornering him. Jamie curled her small hand into a fist and held it up expectantly. To Nyota's delighted shock, Spock slowly...almost exasperatedly...but with barely veiled amusement...mirrored the gesture and brieftly bumped his fist against hers.
The two friends held another's gaze for a soft, subtle moment. For the first time, Nyota watched them together without sick churnning, but a warm which curled all through her body.
“Definately a good call, not going out with that one,” Jamie told Nyota seriously as Giotto was literally lifted off his feet, squiriming like a worm ahook, to be dragged from the room by security. “That one was creepy serial killer written all over him. You need someone...” she eyed Spock furtively “...better.”
“Thank you,” Nyota said quietly, staring deep into both of their faces. “...all of you,” Gaila had come up to her shoulder. “I...I don't even know what to say to thank you all...”
“Say you'll let me through you a celebration party!” Gaila squeed enthusiastically.
Nyota's apprehension must have leaked unto her face, because Gaila supplied quickly.
“Not an Orion party, we will all be clothed, silly. Just a little gathering together of friends.”
Friends. Not people who forged bonds with her to be seen basking in her spotlight, to look hip upon her arm; companions and confidants of her own liking and choosing.
“Yeah,” she breathed out. Tears had not touched her eyes since she was six. She did not break her perfect record, but her tearducts felt suddenly heavy, and it was a close call. “I would like that...very much.”
()()()
“There is something I don't understand,” Nyota remarked to Jamie later.
“Only one thing? In this entire universe in which we live?” Jamie quipped back, eyebrows waggling mischeviously. Nyota groaned, rolling her eyes.
“Now I see why you're best friends with Spock. One thing in particular.”
“I surmised as much.”
“Spock said you both had been trying to clear my name for weeks. But we only started hanging out about a week ago.”
A guilty, almost mischevious sort of expression shown on Jamie's face, as if she was unsure how much to revel.
“Spock...suspected you were innocent from the moment you were accused. He said he remembered you from that class you had with him and said he didn't think you would ever do anything like that.”
“He remembered me from a class of 345 students?” Nyota was surprised. Jamie shrugged, her voice almost too nonchalant as she continued.
“Well...he does have an eidantic memory. Anyway, he was pretty into figuring out who did it, but I didn't really start helping him until about a week ago. Actually...” and here the real guilt was replaced by fake one, as Jamie struggled very hard to appear sorry when unable to still a twitching, eager smile. “...I kinda...read a few people. Not too many! By last night, Spock had narrowed down the suspect list to about 100, and we needed more time, so I followed people around last night and this morning until I figured out who it was. Once I was able to read from Giotto all the malice and the demasculiated kinda shame from him, Spock focused on him and was able to prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was him. So that's how we did it.”
Jamie stopped, abrim with satisfaction. Sipping her juice, Nyota could only shake her head in grudging, exasperated admiration.
“Oh, I am sure that is all types of illegal I don't even want to know about.” She paused, softening slightly. “But thank you.”
The four friends had gone out to one of those classy, restauranty kinda bars where they made the women wear dresses to get in. Jamie, of course, had refused and donned a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, but no one had given her a hard time. In a row they lined up against the bar, Jamie sipping a martini, Spock deep in conversation with Gaila (of all people) on intercultural ethics, and Nyota perched between her female friends, drinking in the scene with a quiet sense of belonging.
Spock's eyes caught hers over Gaila's head. For a moment, they merely held the gaze. A silent, apprasing sort of understanding lingered between them. “Thank you,” Nyota mouthed silently. He nodded curtly. Though she diverted her eyes to the pit of her cup, Nyota felt his trace her skin long after she looked away.
Her lower lip tugged gently.
The moment was not lost on Jamie. Grinning shrewdly as her black eyes darted between Spock and Nyota, she leaned in to whisper into her new friend's ear.
“...see something you like?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“You do realize if you start crushing on him I'm going to have to give you the you-break-my-best-friend's-heart-I-break-your-face speech right?”
“Me? Crushing?” Nyota did not even try to straighten the smile now showcasing her teeth. “Please, Jamie.”
“As if.”
Author notes:
1. I made girl!Kirk part Betazoid because a) shameless plot device b) I got the idea from a series of K/S stories by Keira Marcos...on the K/S rec list in my journal.
2.The characters are all freshman at Star Fleet Academy, so they are about 19 or 20 years old. Spock might be a little older.
3. Spock's speech to Uhura about Kirk is taken from the episode “Court Martial.” I couldn't find the exact quote, and I didn't feel like re-watching that rather boring episode, so I paraphrased.
4. “We accept the love we think we deserve” is from Perks of Being A Wallflower. I cannot take credit for that utterly beautiful quote.
Fandom: Star Trek IX
Rating: PG (mild language)
Genre and Tropes: AU, Academy fic, genderswap, friendship
Characters: Uhura-centric story. Uhura, Gaila, and always-a-girl!Kirk friendship (budding Spock/Uhura, and a tad of Kirk/Gaila femmeslash)
Discription: When Nyota Uhura is falsely accused of academic dishonesty, her most unlikely ally comes in the form of a girl also falsely accused of many things. First in the genderswap!Kirk verse. Inspired by an unfilled prompt on the kink-meme about Uhura being befriended by Gaila and always-a-girlKirk in an hour of need.
()()()
“I think,” Gaila told Nyota Uhura one afternoon. “That if you just got to know her a little better, you and Jamie Kirk could be friends.”
The grass pressed warm and thick through their skirts as they lounged on the Star Fleet Academy lawn. Gaila basked stretched on her back, propped up on her elbows, barefoot in the soft white sun. Ringed by textbook stacks, Nyota snorted without raising her eyes from her Deltan notes.
“As if.”
Friends may have been hard to come by these days, but Nyota was not that desperate for friendship. She would have been content to wrinkle her books' thick spines, sequestered in her dormroom Friday nights, deaf to the laughter which seaped through the walls like tides from a foreign sea. Nyota used to be a firm believer of “party hard, but study harder.” Once, she had fallen into the balance between being that girl whose elbow always brushed a friend's and being in the top 2% of her class easily as breathing. Now...not so much...
The beauty and flux of the Vulcan language did not believe the lies spread about her. Her xenolinguistics homework never stabbed her in the back.
Even this afternoon soaking up sunlight with Gaila marked her new outcast status. Before the “Incident,” her relationship with Gaila had been composed of borrowing earrings, occasional essay edits, fragmented conversations snatched while tossing on uniforms. It was more of a lukewarm alliance than a friendship, really, based on having little more in common than sharing sleeping quarters. Now, however, starved of other company, Nyota allotted privately she could get used to this. Gaila was one of those irrestibly happy people for whom just being alive was enough. Nothing really bothered her. She just loved to love and live.
And she did not talk about Nyota behind her back...
I do not care what they say about me a fire burned within her soul. Her name lingered on the skirts of her hearing range. Her name sharpened through the whispering sea. The faces flickered towards her through the crowd, splintering eyes on her skin.
She didn't care what anyone said. That, in itself, was exhilarating.
()()()
“Oh for the love of God, why does Commander Spock have to be the one talking to Pike?” Uhura had murmured nervously under her breath, stealing a sideways glance at the two officers, practically ahuddle together in a corner during lunch hour. “He's the one professor in this entire Academy who gave me a 89% average last semeseter. 89%. I never get below 97% on anything. I have him again this semeseter for a much more difficult class.”
“Nyota,” Giotto had pipped up earnestly from across the mess table. “A 89% in Professor Spock's Intro to Xenolinguistics class is like a 130% in a normal class. That Vulcan has a poker up his ass the size of his own ego.”
Giotto had a bit of a crush on her. Nyota could tell. But as it was totally unrequited, she felt that pretending she did not notice would be the most classy response.
“Now, I did not say that. He's a Vulcan. It would be unfair to superimpose upon him our own expectations of social interaction or 'humility.' That's culturally insensitive. It just worries me to see him talking to the man who holds my future in the palm of his hand. Commander Spock is Pike's science officer, he really respects his opinion...”
“You sure know a lot about him for someone who claims to be ticked off at him about that essay on comparative morphology,” supplied Ruth slyly, with a ghost of devilish wink. Nyota did not rise to the bait as she strode jauntily along her way, sleek ponytail bouncing behind her with each pert, quick little step.
“Of course I do. I thoroughly researched all my professors before taking their classes, especially ones with connections to Pike, since he's the one who picks out the interns for the Enterprise. Oppurtunities don't just fall into your hands, Ruth. You have to seek them out and seize them, make them happen,” Nyota answered briskly, jaw gritted determindedly. Her glowed eyes bright and defiant fixed on a brighter-yet future.
“If anybody has a chance of getting that internship, it's you” her friend Alisha assured her. “You're, like, the smartest, most focused girl I know.”
“I have a lot of competition from very worthy cadets,” Nyota admitted. “But I think I can handle it. I'm going to get assigned to the Enterprise...no matter what it takes.”
()()()
“ “No matter what it takes?” Were those Cadet Uhura's exact words?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she specify in detail any intent to preoffer sexual behavior to Captain Pike in order to receive the internship?”
“No, sir.”
“Thank you, Sgt. Giotto. This academic hearing for sexual misconduct and academic dishonesty shall begin recess. We commence at 18:00 hours.”
()()()
Nyota never knew who set her up.
She only knew no one she knew stood beside her.
“Dirty slut.”
“Whore.”
“I knew that Barbie was using her pretty face to get those kind of grades...not to mention those pretty tits...”
“Hey, Cadet Uhura...I'll give you a full rating if you perform 100% like you did on Captain Pike...if you know what I mean.”
She was put on academic probation. The Enterprise internship, for which she had exhausted her mind and worked her fingers to the bone, was forever beyond her reach. Captain Pike, her mentor, was now facing charges for sexual misconduct, as well. He would get off clear...as he should, Nyota reminded herself. He had done nothing wrong...he had been nothing but professional towards her...yet everyone agreed it was pity Pike had this on his record. Yes, it was a pity Pike had this little mark on his record...
I The worst part wasn't even that everyone she once considered a friend dropped her without hestiation, testifying against her at her hearing, eager to wash away association with her forever.
It was that when the jacket eyes saw her, all they saw was what anyone could see. After years of relentless study, her beautiful and intricate mind she chose to hon was reduced to a face she was born with.
“It's terrible,” Gaila had cooed comfortingly. “That they see preoffering sexual behaviors as a bad thing. Why not? On Orion, it's a perfectly legitimate way of advancing.”
Somehow, her words made Nyota feel worse rather than better.
The evening of her academic hearing, Nyota arrived back at her dormroom to find Gaila out. As much as she appreciated the Orion girl for being the only one who still respected her, she was relieved to sink into lonely quiet, to ease her whirling thoughts. Nyota paused in the act of undressing before the mirror, distracted by her reflection, stripped down to her cottony underwear. The long-limbed, slender, hard-hipped body cast back at her familiar. She studied the delicate flex of her ribcage, her beautiful dark brown skin.
Am all I am to be is what any one can see? Does anyone know me at all?
Her gaze lifted to her own face. Keen, wide, liquid black eyes were set above hard proud cheekbones. Her mother's cheekbones. My mother was a warrior woman. I come from a line of queens. An inherited pride galavinzed her veins.The same pride had blazed inside her at the age of 13, the first time she had raced a gazelle. Elegant and long-legged as the fleet-footed creature itself, she sprinted neck-and-neck alongside it, cleaving through the tawny plain. Even when she had stuttered to a halt, with pierced and windless lungs, Nyota knew right then and there that she was born to chase horizons. Alone against the world, she stood still and watched the molton sky fade gray, watched the rising of the stars whose tongues she longed to speak.
I am Nyota Upenda Uhura, she thought quietly to herself. I know who I am, and no one can tell me not to love my skin. They can never take me away from me.
The door swished open and shut.
“Well, Cadet Uhura as I live and breathe. Now that is a sight I could get used to seeing.”
“Kirk!”
Nyota snatched the bathrobe hanging on her closet door, clutching it to her chest before she whirled around. A familiar curvy, broad-shoulder blonde strode unapologetically into the room. A dirty-blonde ponytail unraveled around a heart-shaped, frecked face full of bright things; sun-kissed skin, an unusually bright Chesire cat-grin, and the jet black eyes which were the only physical sign of her Betazoid heritage.
“I didn't come for the peep show,” Kirk smirked smarmly at Nyota. “Gaila borrowed my favorite pair of underwear for her date last night. Now she's on a different date, with a different guy, different underwear. I want mine back.”
“Get it and leave,” Nyota hissed, uncharacterstically livid. Kirk ruffled her collected cool like no one else she knew, sparking irriation like a knee-jerk reaction. Deliberately slow, dragging out every movement, Kirk rumaged through Gaila's clothes, finally extracting a thick lacy black thong that put all sorts of horrible images in Nyota's mind.
“Out!”
“...are you sure you don't want to borrow my underwear as well? I normally don't lend it out to people whose first names I don't know, though, so....”
“OUT!”
With a final melodramatic flourish, Kirk practically pranced out, grungy hair failing in a tawny flag behind her. Nyota frowned. It wasn't the sex taunt...Kirk had made those even before Nyota was framed...it was just...no...
Could it be?
…..Kirk?
()()()
Jamie Kirk was more ambitious than people realized. Nyota understood that. It was infuriating, really. Nyota strove always to cultivate an aura of absolute professionalism, yet Kirk could sauter up to professors, crackoff-color jokes in class, and receive the same results as Nyota by virtue of that infectious grin.
Really, Nyota ruminated bitterly, she should be the one framed for sleeping her way to the top, not me. Hell, for all anyone knew, Kirk probably was sleeping her way to the top.
She eyed Kirk from afar during her solitary lunch hour. Nyota sat alone,red-clad bodies streamed around her like bloodcells, clustering in handfulls about the other tables in the mess. Though she knew, now, that their friendship had been rooted more in the fact they had meet as green cadets orientation week than any true compatibility, any true loyalty, her heart stung in her throat to see her former friends laughing together.
Would Kirk have set her up?
Kirk had relished fraying Nyota's nerves since the night they had met, the night a blonde girl in a leather jacket had slurred up to Nyota in an Iowa bar, vodka-laced breath hot in her face. At first Nyota had been intrigued...she had never met a Betazoid before, even a ¼ one, and was fascinated by how their language purposefully left ambiguities to be filled by telepathy. However, it had been a mistake to indulge this one's attention. Within a minute, Kirk had grown bored of talking morphology and was begging for a lesbian makeout session that wasn't any kind of classy. Several months later at school, she was still badgering Nyota for her first name. The inside joke had been funny the first 500 times, but now was merely irritating. But actually framing Nyota for bribery and sexual misconduct? Did Kirk want that intership that badly?
Kirk was deep in intense conversation with Commander Spock. She talked fast, gestulating dramatically, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. Commander Spock stood tree-straight and still,hands folded neatly in the small of his back. Yet he leaned forward slightly, understatedly glued to her every word. Something Kirk said lifted both brows.
For reasons she did not know, Nyota's stomach meshed in rolling chunks.
Spock watched Kirk as she saturated away, and though his face was set in his usual unfathomable stone, those deep Vulcan eyes crinkled with a soft warm bordering affection.
()()()
Nyota's least favorite thing about Vulcans may have been that they did not understand the reduced mental capities of other species, leading to certain unrealistic expectations of perfection. Her favorite thing about them, however, was their appreciation of blunt honesty.
“May I talk to you?” Nyota edged into Commander Spock's office. He raised his face from his paper. A curious eyebrow arched as he regarded her with a cool, detached calm.
“I believe that you already are.”
Nyota stared fearlessly into that impassive face, steeling her wriggling nerves. I will not allow him to intimidate me. I will absolutely not.
“I mean about a matter in particular.”
“I surmised as much,” he unhunched from over his desk to sit straight in his chair, staring up at Nyota with dark, bright, inquisitive eyes. Nyota launched into the meat of the matter without hestiation, knowing he, alone, would appreciate her forwardness.
“It is about...” a hot knot tightened her throat “... I am facing a misconduct trial. Sir.”
“I have heard.” Spock entonned emotionlessly.
“Yes, well...I am trying to figure out who set me up...you don't have to believe I was set up, sir, but I was. Just hear me out. I think...Jamie Kirk might have been the one who framed me.”
Both eyebrows shot up into his bangs, the most emotion she had ever seen touch his face. Jumbling her words her rush to be speak before she lost her nerve, she spilled her thoughts a bit more quickly than she had rehearsed that morning before the mirror.
“I know it's a long shot, sir, but Kirk and I aren't exactly friends, and I know that there are only a certain amount of Cadets allowed to serve on the Enterprise and...”
Spock cut her off before she could finish, on his feet in a single, cat-smooth rise. Though his monotone did not waver by a fraction, his voice sparked a chill that iced the air on instant.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Cadet Uhura. I do believe that you are innocent. There is a 97.876 chance that you have been framed. However, there is absolutely no chance that Cadet Kirk is the one who framed you.”
“None?” Nyota asked skeptically, mildly surprised Spock had not calculated the odds down to the 4th decimal point.
“None.” He repeated adamently.
“Forgive me, Commander...isn't that just your opinion? Do you have evidence that it is not Cadet Kirk?” Nyota knew the logic angle was the best way to wriggle under his infamously thick skin. Visibly irked, he shot back at her.
“Do you have any proof it is? Allow me to clarify. Objects have a definite character which does not waver. If one were to drop a hammer, the hammer would fall to the ground. Bodies of planets in motion are drawn in gravitional pull, falling into a pattern...”
“What does this have to do with...”
“Human beings,” he continued as though he had not heard her. “also develop a pattern of character. Cadet Kirk would never act with vegeance, pettiness, or malice. It is simply not in her nature.”
To hear Spock's voice soar with Kirk's praises cut Nyota in a way she could not describe. Yet through this hazy disquiet, this burning sick without a name, a shrewd corner of her mind fussed tight. Spock was the most objective person she knew...if he spoke of Kirk so highly...maybe, maybe there was something Nyota was missing...
“Thank you for your time, Commander.”
Nyota felt drained with a strange, sick-nerved feeling which skirted defintion. She did not know exactly what she had wanted coming to Spock's office, but she knew it wasn't this, whatever this was. Before passing from the room, she paused, glancing over her shoulder.
“Commander...you said you believed me? You believe I am innocent?”
He blinked.
“Why, of course,” he responded matter-of-factly, his face open in a disarming innocence she had not expected of him.
“Why?”
“There is no logical motive whatsoever for a Cadet as intelligent and motivated as yourself to resort to any means to achieve your ambitions other than your diligent work and exemplary proformance,” he reasoned simply, in a tone that implied he believed this fact to be the most obvious in the universe.
The smile which ripped from her soul threatened to split her face. She might have been mistaken, but for a moment, she thought she saw some of her own brightness reflected in his twinkling eye.
“Dismissed, Cadet Uhura.”
She remained aglow long after she left his office, smiling to herself as her footsteps echoed through the empty hall.
()()()
“But Professor Norman...”
“My decision on who is partnering with who is final Cadet Uhura. I suggest you and Cadet Kirk work out whatever catfight or girly issues you have going on?”
“Girly issues, sir?” Nyota gaped, outraged. “If a male student approached you with a disagreement with his assignment partner, would you accuse him of 'catfighting' with his partner?” She resentfully tacked on her usual “Sir.”
“Playing the wounded little discriminated girl for pity gets you no points with me, Cadet. Dismissed.”
Before she stalked furious from the room, Nyota caught Norman's eyes flick quick over her body.
()()()
“I give up,” Nyota massaged her twitching eyelids, pressure points thick as storm cells budding in her skull. “There is no way to complete this before tomorrow.”
“I don't believe in no win scenarios,” Kirk grinned, her usual rougish charm leaking through her weariness. Nyota had to admit; whatever Kirk spiked her coffee with, Nyota wanted some.
“How much cafeine have you had?” She asked her partner.
“None, I don't drink cafeine.”
“Thank God.”
Kirk's hair frizzed thick as lion's mane, standing on end like a children cartoon mad scientist's. Helter-skelter she scribbled across the paper lines, her scrawl closer to a Jackson Pollack painting than words. Ink smudged her fingernips and the tip of her freckled nose, flicking from her chewed-up ballpoint pen. The veins burst in her yellowing eye-whites. Yet though frayed in exhaustion, she was utterly bent upon finishing the homework, her fierce intellectualism mirroring Nyota's own.
Watching her possessed by her work, Nyota began to understand why Spock liked Kirk so much...Well, at least I'm losing to him to someone smart.
Wait...did she really just think that?
“It's number 7 that I'm stuck on,” Kirk scrunched up her face in concentration. “There's just no way I can figure out whether the conditions supervene upon the standards of justification, or entail the standards of justifcation.”
“How can standards of justifcation be entailed inside that context? The moment the metaphysical is mentioned, the standards shift in order to fit the next, higher-standards context...”
A quick hand darted out to touch Nyota's arm. Kirk's Betazoid black eyes gleamed.
“That's it. It can't. It doesn't supervene or entail...it structures it!”
Nyota's mind was utterly blown. That idea would have never occurred to her...it rocked her brain into a completley different universe. In grudging admiration, she beheld the wild thing before her in a newer, purer light.
“You know, Kirk,” a smile tugged at Nyota's lips in spite of herself. “You keep this up, and I might stop thinking of you as a dumb country girl who jumps everything that can fill an orifice."
Kirk's dark eyes bore into Nyota's face. Something sincere and hard sliced right to the root of her soul.
“You know, having sex doesn't automatically decrease your IQ, by the way.”
Cold shame rippled beneath Nyota's skin. She opened her mouth to respond, but the slight hunch in Kirk's shoulders, the defensive way she bent over her paper, walled her from all conversation.
()()()
Perhaps it was this lingering guilt that enticed Nyota to have a celebratory drink with Kirk when their team received the highest marks in the entire class. Perhaps it was Kirk's minxish smile, so piercing, so innocenlty naughty (“Come on, just make sure Gaila and I get home okay). Perhaps it was that ache of not having gone out for weeks.
Hindsight being 20-20, it was not one of Nyota's wiser decisions.
“Bartender!” Kirk howled, raising her 6th drained shot over her head. “Another one.”
“...I think that you've had enough,” Nyota tried to reason with her. She was the only sober member in a trio composd of a wasted Gaila and an even more drunk Kirk. In her younger days, Nyota had indulged in her fair share of parties, but had never been completely slammed, always stopping while still sober enough to say her name in 27 languages. Kirk, however, was raging through the bar like a bat out of hell. Gaila (positively aquiver that Kirk had persuaded Uhura to join them) giggled at her drunken friend, nestled in the crook of an round-shoulder cadet's arm.
Something glistened in Kirk's watery eyes, something Nyota found instinctively familiar, though she knew not from where.
“I think classy hour is over,” Kirk slurred, dragging herself towards Gaila. She seized the Orion girl's thick green wrist and yanked her into her arms. One hand crept behind the base of her skull, the other snaked gently down her waist, resting confidantly on Gaila's left lovehandle. Gaila giggled. For a moment their noses bobbed back and forth untouching, reminding Nyota of a pair of jackets circling, sizing another up.
Then, with such gentle tenderness it stuck Nyota still, Kirk kissed Gaila's pliant lips.
The bar scene blurred in flourescent smears as Nyota watched, transfixed, as the kiss between them deepened. Though Nyota was straight as arrow, there was something so pure and naked and almost wistful about the way Kirk kissed Gaila she could only stare, awestruck at the beauty.
Then, a thousand heavy fists began to rap a tattoo on the bar. Grutteral voices rose in a chant which pounded Nyota's eardrums and sickened her stomach.
“MAKE. OUT. MAKE. OUT. MAKE. OUT. MAKE. OUT.”
Disgusted, Nyota took charge of the moment. In two confidant strides she crossed the room, jerking Kirk's elbow roughly.
“We're going home.”
“I'm still hungry.”
“You've had waaaaay too much to drink.”
“...wanna join in?”
“YES!” roared the crowd.
Nyota held her head high regally, superbly unflustered by the crowd. They were not even worth the effort it would take for her to role her eyes at them. Already her mind drifted to the linguistics homework she could complete...if she pulled an all nighter....
That's when Kirk vomited alcohol-laced bile all over Nyota's chest.
“Sorry,” she hiccupped.
“That's okay,” Nyota said quietly as Gaila helped Kirk shakily into a seat.
Nothing, Nyota reflected, could make her sting more behind her ears, as she found herself down on her hadns and knees with a cool sponge mopping up the vomit. This was definitely the worst the night could get. Dingy yellow acid trickled, despite her efforts, unto a pair of dark boots which stood before her. Hair fraggled, breasts leaking out of her top, makeup sweating and smearing on her face likening her to a demented scarecrow, Nyota raised her head to see who it was unto whose boots she had just dripped vomit.
It was Spock.
“Cadet Uhura,” he nodded, entirely unperturbed, as though they two had unexpectedly met in the library.
“Commander!”
After an involuntary flinch, Nyota quickly composed her face into a calm which would have shamed a Vulcan. Keenly aware of the bra strap slipping off her shoulder, she rose as gracefully to her feet as the situation would allow, eyeing Spock proudly at his level, face devoid of shame.
“Commander Spock. Good evening.” She answered at her utmost professional.
Kirk retched.
Soundlessly Spock glided toward the shuddering blonde. Long-fingered white hands gently cupped her shoulders.
“Jamie.” His muttered voice, soften than Nyota had ever heard, was still audible to her sensitve ears. His face was hidden from her.
“Spock?” Jamie blubbered. “H-how did you get here?”
“You messaged me.”
“Right.”
“Cadet Uhura,” Spock's gaze snapped to her suddenly. “If I were to escort you, Miss Kirk, and Miss Gaila to campus, shall you ensure that they return to their dormitories safely?”
Nyota nodded.
“I am trusting you,” his voice heavied “with something very...necessary...to me.”
“Hey!” one of the drunken men brayed from the corner. “Who the hell is that girl?”
“I'm Jamie goddam Kirk, bitch!”
“I believe that you have expressed yourself with enough gusto and colorful euphonisms tonight, Jamie,” Spock entonned coolly.
Without explication, he lifted Kirk up by her elbows, nearly cradling her in his arms, as he escorted her from the bar, Nyota helping a stumbling Gaila close upon his heels.
()()()
“I'm going to let her stay with me for the night. She's too wasted to get back to her dorm, and I don't know where she lives.”
“I thank you, Cadet Uhura, for behaving responsibly in this inconveniant situation.”
“No problem.”
Serving as living crutch for Gaila while Commander Spock carried a half-conscious Kirk like a bride across a threshold was definitely not a situation Nyota believed she would be in. Spock, however, walked straight-backed with his usual dignity and Nyota tried to mirror his calm. Once inside the dorm, Spock draped Kirk tenderly unto Nyota's bed while Nyota helped Gaila into her own. For some reason, there was something unsettling about Spock standing in Nyota's quarters, something sordid, revealing. His eyes skimmed lightly over the pictures of her family, the purple fuzzy zebra-stripped comforter, the elegant ebony African art, and fixated upon her bookshelf.
“You do not re-sell your textbooks,” Spock commented with an approving nod. “Most logical.”
“I might need them later.” Nyota also grew emotionally attached to books in whose margins she scribbled, but she thought Spock might not be the best person to tell that. He leaned in slightly, eyes zipping quick across the threadbare spines.
“There is much linguistic theory here...yet also poetry.”
“Yes,” Nyota found her shoulders pushing back and her head rising high, locking quickly into her defensive mode. “I love poetry.”
“I see Shakesphere's sonnets...”
“Poetry provides a fascinating insight not only into culture, but into forms of rhetoric and tropes such as metonymy, metaphor, syncedoche, and other ways of contemplating abstract...”
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love's not love when it's alteration finds, or bends with the mover to remover,” Spock rattled off, matter-of-factly as if conjugating Vulcan verbs, smoothly as breathing.
“Oh no, it is an ever-fixed mark, that looks upon tempests and is never shaken, it is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.” Nyota finished by heart, poetry rising pure in her soul.
They stopped speaking and merely watched eachother in fascination. Nyota was grateful; listening to her former xenolinguistics teacher talk of “rosy lips” and “cheeks” while standing two feet from her bed would have been the height of awkward.
“I did not have you pegged for a Shakesphere lover,” Nyota admitted. Spock allowed a small, noncommental head tilt.
“Indeed. It is often my experience that judgements are hastily constructed about the beings which we encounter, which said beings rarely fulfill in their entirity.”
Those dark eyes took on a focus entirely Nyota's.
“You do...of course...realize you are exempt from all negative judgement?”
Gaila snored loudly in the corner. Nyota managed a brief nod. Suddenly, acutely, painfully aware of the silence between them, almost terrified and thrilled of where that silence could lead, Nyota showed Spock to her door.
“Thank you for your help, Commander Spock.”
“I believe the human idiom apt for the situation is...'the pleasure was mine.'”
Then he was gone.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds...
()()()
“I know you hate me.”
“It's okay. I'm ¼ Betazoid, remember? I mean, my powers are a lot weaker then a full blood and I I try not to do it, you know, read people because most humans think its rude. But I know you hate me.”
“I don't hate you, Kirk.”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Maybe a little.”
It was hard to hate Kirk now, though, when Nyota had rarely seen anyone so pathetic. The whites of her eyes were fierce pink around her midnight irises, her make-up half-melted off her face.
“Sorry.” Kirk slurred.
“For me not liking you? Kirk, you have to be you are...I just don't have to like it.”
“I know that,” Kirk rolled her eyes as best she could. “I mean for knowing about it. That you don't like me. I dunno, humans are kinda private about their emotions. I try not to interfere...”
“It's okay. You can't help it. It's part of your physiology.”
“And Betazoid culture. Reading people.”
“Like those random orgies you and Gaila threw in my dorm at the start of last semester?” Nyota's jaw gritted at the memory as she, showered and in her sleep pants and baggy shirt, curled on the foot of her bed.
Kirk sniggered.
“Hey...intercultural relations. Orion and Betazoid cultures overlap in some places...'course it's not the same for Gaila without the telepathy...but I thought you'd be all about that. Hell, you and Spock seem to be doing some interplantary relations of your own.”
Nyota's glands pipped red hot, but before she could respond, Kirk fixed her with a glance suddenly unexpectedly shrewd.
“...or do the only cultures who get tolerance are the ones who are more prudish than yours?”
Nyota blinked. She had not considered that.
“Okay, maybe, I haven't been as culturally sensitive as I thought I was,” she admitted, though it choked her pride to say so aloud. “But don't put this all on me, Kirk. You haven't always respected me, either. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I have my own ideas about my body, my personal property, and my time that doesn't involve whatever you and Gaila have in mind? Okay, I should be more respectful to you and Gaila. But you know...it really should go both ways.”
Nyota edged forward, laying down at Kirk's side.
“I'm not as sexually liberated as you. But that doesn't mean I don't own my own skin.”
Kirk blinked deeply, shifting her cheek on Nyota's pillow. There was a sadness in her smile Nyota had never seen.
“It sucks when you have a reputation as a slut and that's all anyone notices.”
Nyota nodded.
“I know you didn't offer to sleep with Pike.”
“Yeah, I know you know.” Nyota paused, unsure if she should be asking the next question, but knowing also the words would gnaw at her thoroughout the night...
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why are you constantly trying to makeout with Gaila? You just don't strike me as the kind of girl who would do that to get attention. I used to think that, but just getting to know you this little makes me realize you're too confidant for that.”
With unexpectedly swiftness, Kirk rolled over, showing Nyota her bare shoulder-blades. Nyota blinked. An unconsidered possiblity solidfied in her mind...
“Kirk?”
The other girl burrowed under the blanket. Nyota's voice gentled.
“...Jamie?”
No response, but the shoulder blades loosened.
“Jamie, are you a lesbian?”
Silence.
“It's okay if you are, I don't care. It's just the way you were born, Jamie, you can't help it if you like girls.”
More silence.
“I like girls and boys,” came the eventual, muffled reply. Nyota nodded sympathically.
“Okay, bisexual then. That's cool too.” Then it hit Nyota like inspiration.
“You like Gaila.”
A klaedscope of fragmented memories fell together like modern art...the make-out sessions...the look in Kirk's eyes that night at the bar...that desperate, longing, mingled with jealousy...
“You're not just making out with her to turn on guys. You say that, but deep down inside...you like her.”
Kirk nodded. She finally rolled around, mascara streaking charcoal down her face as she forced a bitter smile at Nyota.
“Well. Now you know.”
“ I though you were in love with Spock.”
For the life of her, Nyota could not have known where it came from, why it popped from her mouth unbidden. She could have kicked herself for her insensitivity. Jamie, however, laughed waterly.
“Everybody thinks that, but no. He's my friend.” She softened in a closed-lipped smile. “My best friend, along with Bones. A much better friend than I deserve most of the time...but...everybody thinks we're in love. And I don't know, maybe we are. Maybe the love of your life can be a platonic love.”
She hiccupped a bit. Nyota's hand found itself on her shoulder, squeezing emphatically.
“Thank you,” Jamie wheezed. “What I was saying is that me and Spock...it's beautiful, you know. We're so close and we just get eachother. I'd die for him...but I don't want to bump uglies with him. We just don't want to jump eachother's bones. And nobody else really understands it or gets that we're just best friends, but I don't care, because I love him, and I know he loves me. Deep down. That's all that matters.I don't care what people say about us anyway. I don't care about that.”
It was several minutes before she spoke again, and when she did, it came out the most exhausted of whispers.
“It does make me wonder, though, if I'm too fucked up to love anyone properly. Me not being able to love Spock as more than a brother, a platonic soulmate. I mean with him it wouldn't work anyway because I'm not his type. We have totally different views about what a relationship should be like. We've talked about this before and we're both happy with our friendship the way it is. But I wonder why I couldn't love him...that way...if I'm truly so scarred...”
Jamie's mouth clamped shut suddenly, as if she had revealed too much. Nyota inch-wormed closer, leaning in to whisper in Jamie's ear, close enough to count every freckle on the other girl's cheek.
“The only love you really need,” she whispered. “Is the love you feel for yourself. Love yourself, and you will accept the love you think you deserve.”
“Who am I, Nyota?” Jamie whispered. She had known Uhura's name all along.
“You're Jamie goddam Kirk.”
Jamie's delighted shock at the language made the uncharacterstic language worth it.
“You know swear words!” She squealed. “You can actually swear!”
“In all three Romulan dialects,” Nyota found herself grinning ear to ear.
The two girls slept in Nyota's bed that night, curled up snuggly as cats. Nyota woke to find Jamie's head still lolling on her shoulder. She smiled to herself as she floated back to sleep.
()()()
Nyota tried to force down the disappointment when Jamie Kirk's freckled face did not poke out from the crowd.
She scanned twice, just to check. In the week leading up to Nyota's hearing, she had found herself nearly constantly in Jamie and Gaila's company. Sometimes they did homework for Norman's class, sometimes watched holograms in Nyota and Gaila's dorms, but always Nyota found herself laughing harder than she had in weeks. One night, Jamie had messaged her and asked, “Hey, wanna hang out?” It was the first time they had passed the time both liberated of their homework and without Gaila. Nyota had agreed, apprehensive, half-expecting another bar incident.
The two women walked barefoot along the beach, kicking up powdery sand in clouds, salt air gusting through their long hair. In silence, they watched the crimson sun dip below irony waters, unspeaking. Right before the dusk winked out Jamie flashed her the softest of smiles. Yeah, I get you. And I think we're going to be okay.
It was the day of Nyota's hearing. And she hadn't seen Jamie since.
Gaila waited at Nyota's side, clutching the human's hand so hard her knuckles popped. Nyota was greatful for the warmth.
“You'll be fine,” Gaila whispered gently in her ear. Nyota's brain echoed on reflex “Fine” is an unacceptable answer, Cadet Uhura, for it has variable meanings...
She had scanned the crowd for Spock, too. Also missing.
“What is the most nervous you've ever been in your entire life?” Nyota whispered back to Gaila. The two women's temples touched as she leaned closer.
“The night I fled.” She said automatically. Nyota stared at her uncompreheningly, for several seconds.
Then it hit her.
“Fled...Gaila...” she leaned closer. “...you used to be a slave?”
Nyota was agast. She had merely assumed all these months that Gaila had been freeborn. She had had no idea. Gaila, however, nodded quickly. Though her tone when she spoke was devoid of all self pity, she began with a deep, hollow sigh far too old for her lungs.
“Yes. But I escaped when I was 12. I remember the most scared I had ever been in my entire life was when the ship smuggling us out got stopped by the authorities. I remember my mother and sisters and I were all huddled together under the deck. I remember the sound of the bootsteps overheard, and I was shaking, and my mother had her hand in my youngest sister's mouth to keep her from crying out. It was pitch black down there, and all you could see was what the pin-pricks of light from the removed bolts highlighted. And I remember this one bolt fell on my mother's face. I looked at her. She looked at me. And even though I was too young to know why then, the fear in my stomach slowly distengrated and fell away because she was so beautiful and strong and fierce in that moment. And that's when I realized...that they didn't own us. That they never owned us. I watched my mom hold her four daughters, knowing any moment we could all be captured, any moment we could all be dead, and stand her ground without trembling because she knew it was worth risking to make a better life for us.” She paused.
“I think it's impossible to look upon that and not be changed.”
“And?” Nyota's own whisper was barely audible.
“I've never let anyone make me feel that scared again.”
“The defendant will rise and approach the board.”
She did.
Nyota Uhura rose and walked down the stairs with her head held high. The deep solumn mass of smartly-dressed cadets were so still as to swallow all sound but her heartbeat. But not even the swirl in her stomach touched the iron in her face.
At 13, she had raced a thing untamed. Though she lost the race she had not ceased to run, paddling dust behind her as she shot horizon-bound.
“To the charges leveled against you for sexual misconduct, cheating, and bribery of a superior officer, how do you plead.”
“Not guilty, Admiral,” Nyota declared, defiant.
“Damn straight not guilty,” boomed a most familiar voice, sparking a dry rustling gasp from the crowd.
“An illogical and imprecise idiom, however, adapt in meaning.” corrected another, also familiar voice. Lightning jolted up her spine.
Jamie Kirk and Commander Spock strode into the hall in perfect time, moving as if chained at the hip. Jamie flashed Nyota a knowing, almost giddy grin as she passed. Uncomforted, Nyota frowned as the two cleaved through the crowd to stand directly before Admiral Barrow.
“Commander Spock, what is the meaning of this?” Barrow's thick voice quivered with disapproval. His eyes darted straight to the Vulcan, passing through the short, rather cute blonde girl as though she was not present.
“We're here to stop all of you incredibly brilliant bureacractic geniuses from making a horrible mistake,” Jamie answered, flashing her trademark smirk. “You see, Commander Spock and I have been doing some research together. We both thought it was...strange that a Cadet with not as much as curfew violation on her record would resort to pimping herself out for grades.”
Jamie Kirk paced as she spoke, once more emphasizing her words with her hands, rotating to let her gaze bounce lightly off all corners of the audience. All of the room drew to her when she spoke as if enchanted by siren song. And suddenly an unforgettable fire, which flickered in her brief on occasion, roared in Jamie Kirk with the force of a revolution. When she talked with authority, she held the universe in the palm of her short-nailed hand. When her voice barked out commands, she was infinite.
“Oh my God,” Nyota realized. “That woman's going to be a captain someday.”
“So, Commander Spock and I accessed the computar terminals...”
“You mean you hacked.”
“I am permitted unmonitored access to all areas of the computar banks. Sir.” Spock answered calmly. Unless her eyes deceived her (and God knows they had seen strange things of late), his slanted brows wriggled in something akin to amusement at the purpling fury in Barrow's face.
“Hacked, accessed...you say to-may-toes, I say to-mah-toes,” Jamie brushed it off lightly. “The point is, we were able to work together to analyze the digital composition of the sexy photos that turned up on Pike's computer. Unfortunately, we were not able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they were photoshoped. But we did find the address of the PADD which sent them, along with the messages offering sex for oppurtunities.”
Nyota's pounding heart leapt up into her throat. Almost afraid to hope, she chipped her nails upon the podium she clutched.
“It was impossible to decrypt the address,” Admiral Komack said flatly. “Don't you realize that was the first thing which we tried to do?”
“You, sir” Spock said simply “Did not try for several weeks. And you, sir, did not study computers from a Vulcan.”
Kirk and Spock had been working for weeks...Nyota had had no idea...
What a minute, she and Kirk had only started hanging out a single week ago...
“And who, might I ask, is the alleged sender?”
Like any practiced actress, Jamie paused for dramatic effect. Glancing sideways both ways, she gaged that her audience quivered, worshipping her every word, before speaking.
“The sender is...” she trailed melodramatically
For the love of God, Jamie, spit it out...
“...Wesley Giotto.”
Nyota barely kept her jaw from dropping, but it was a near thing. Jamie caught Giotto's eye in the crowd so Nyota didn't have to.
“Hello, Cupcake!” She waved.
“Why?”
The word ripped from Nyota unbidden. She was past hurt. She was past fury. She stared blankly into the flat-featured face of one who once was her friend, beyond all longing for meaning. She wanted only answers.
For an awkward second, the crowd's mutters consumed the silence. His beedy eyes edged nervously in his sockets, unable to roll towards her.
“Look at me!” She commanded fiercely. Her command triggered his outburst
“ I was never good enough for you, I was never going to be good enough for you, and I just...I just wanted to humble you a little...” his voice warbled down to a whimper. Devoid of all pity, she regarded him, disgusted.
“You tried to ruin my career because I wouldn't go out with you???”
“Pay no heed to this pathetic speciman of a human being,” Spock was suddenly inches from her, closer to her than he had ever stood before, so close she could feel his body heat smoulder. “He has been brought to justice and shall be dully punished.”
But Giotto wasn't finished.
“She...she...she thought she was too good for me!”
“Well, Nyota does tend to be right about everything, but don't tell her that,” Jamie quipped brightly, falling in on Nyota's other side. “She can be a bit slow at...reading people, though.”
Trying hard (and failing miserably) not to appear completely self satisfied, Jamie smiled at Spock over Nyota's shoulder.
“Good teamwork!” She decided assurdedly as Giotto, in a latch ditch effort, threw a punch at the security guard cornering him. Jamie curled her small hand into a fist and held it up expectantly. To Nyota's delighted shock, Spock slowly...almost exasperatedly...but with barely veiled amusement...mirrored the gesture and brieftly bumped his fist against hers.
The two friends held another's gaze for a soft, subtle moment. For the first time, Nyota watched them together without sick churnning, but a warm which curled all through her body.
“Definately a good call, not going out with that one,” Jamie told Nyota seriously as Giotto was literally lifted off his feet, squiriming like a worm ahook, to be dragged from the room by security. “That one was creepy serial killer written all over him. You need someone...” she eyed Spock furtively “...better.”
“Thank you,” Nyota said quietly, staring deep into both of their faces. “...all of you,” Gaila had come up to her shoulder. “I...I don't even know what to say to thank you all...”
“Say you'll let me through you a celebration party!” Gaila squeed enthusiastically.
Nyota's apprehension must have leaked unto her face, because Gaila supplied quickly.
“Not an Orion party, we will all be clothed, silly. Just a little gathering together of friends.”
Friends. Not people who forged bonds with her to be seen basking in her spotlight, to look hip upon her arm; companions and confidants of her own liking and choosing.
“Yeah,” she breathed out. Tears had not touched her eyes since she was six. She did not break her perfect record, but her tearducts felt suddenly heavy, and it was a close call. “I would like that...very much.”
()()()
“There is something I don't understand,” Nyota remarked to Jamie later.
“Only one thing? In this entire universe in which we live?” Jamie quipped back, eyebrows waggling mischeviously. Nyota groaned, rolling her eyes.
“Now I see why you're best friends with Spock. One thing in particular.”
“I surmised as much.”
“Spock said you both had been trying to clear my name for weeks. But we only started hanging out about a week ago.”
A guilty, almost mischevious sort of expression shown on Jamie's face, as if she was unsure how much to revel.
“Spock...suspected you were innocent from the moment you were accused. He said he remembered you from that class you had with him and said he didn't think you would ever do anything like that.”
“He remembered me from a class of 345 students?” Nyota was surprised. Jamie shrugged, her voice almost too nonchalant as she continued.
“Well...he does have an eidantic memory. Anyway, he was pretty into figuring out who did it, but I didn't really start helping him until about a week ago. Actually...” and here the real guilt was replaced by fake one, as Jamie struggled very hard to appear sorry when unable to still a twitching, eager smile. “...I kinda...read a few people. Not too many! By last night, Spock had narrowed down the suspect list to about 100, and we needed more time, so I followed people around last night and this morning until I figured out who it was. Once I was able to read from Giotto all the malice and the demasculiated kinda shame from him, Spock focused on him and was able to prove without a shadow of a doubt that it was him. So that's how we did it.”
Jamie stopped, abrim with satisfaction. Sipping her juice, Nyota could only shake her head in grudging, exasperated admiration.
“Oh, I am sure that is all types of illegal I don't even want to know about.” She paused, softening slightly. “But thank you.”
The four friends had gone out to one of those classy, restauranty kinda bars where they made the women wear dresses to get in. Jamie, of course, had refused and donned a pair of khakis and a polo shirt, but no one had given her a hard time. In a row they lined up against the bar, Jamie sipping a martini, Spock deep in conversation with Gaila (of all people) on intercultural ethics, and Nyota perched between her female friends, drinking in the scene with a quiet sense of belonging.
Spock's eyes caught hers over Gaila's head. For a moment, they merely held the gaze. A silent, apprasing sort of understanding lingered between them. “Thank you,” Nyota mouthed silently. He nodded curtly. Though she diverted her eyes to the pit of her cup, Nyota felt his trace her skin long after she looked away.
Her lower lip tugged gently.
The moment was not lost on Jamie. Grinning shrewdly as her black eyes darted between Spock and Nyota, she leaned in to whisper into her new friend's ear.
“...see something you like?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“You do realize if you start crushing on him I'm going to have to give you the you-break-my-best-friend's-heart-I-break-your-face speech right?”
“Me? Crushing?” Nyota did not even try to straighten the smile now showcasing her teeth. “Please, Jamie.”
“As if.”
Author notes:
1. I made girl!Kirk part Betazoid because a) shameless plot device b) I got the idea from a series of K/S stories by Keira Marcos...on the K/S rec list in my journal.
2.The characters are all freshman at Star Fleet Academy, so they are about 19 or 20 years old. Spock might be a little older.
3. Spock's speech to Uhura about Kirk is taken from the episode “Court Martial.” I couldn't find the exact quote, and I didn't feel like re-watching that rather boring episode, so I paraphrased.
4. “We accept the love we think we deserve” is from Perks of Being A Wallflower. I cannot take credit for that utterly beautiful quote.