[Sickbay] -- [Open to All!]

[kirktastic]

The room he had been put into was dimly lit and stifling. The dim lighting was highly preferred to the brilliant white of sickbay proper, but it felt like it was closing in on him. Thanks to Spock, or so he was fairly sure he had told his request to, the drugs keeping his brain from functioning had been taken away or at least decreased severely

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[just_uhura]

Nyota hated sickbay. Despite that fact that so many of her friends worked there, she avoided it as best she could. Being left as the senior officer on the Bridge simply gave her an excuse to stay away, to assure herself that she was doing her job, doing what he would have wanted. Protect his ship and his crew.

Still, as she hovered in the doorway, looking over at Kirk, she couldn't help but feel a wave of undeniable guilt that it had taken her this long to work up the courage to visit. Her mind ran through all kinds of things to say. How was she supposed to react? Should she fall into their easy routine of banter and provocation, what they knew? Or should she treat him exactly how he looked; broken and bruised, and utterly exhausted

[kirktastic]

Kirk tilted his head, blinking very slowly at Uhura. It took a long moment before realizing just who it was, and he tried to offer a smile despite how angry he felt. He reached over and picked up the padd, staring down at it before writing,

Sorry, beautiful.

The scabbing was ugly, black, words. He didn't know the extent of it, but after Jim left, he had stared at the mark on the back of his left hand for a long time.

[just_uhura]

For a moment her gaze slid down, following the curling script, the ugly black of those marks that she had the illogical urge to kiss away. But she stayed where she was, eyes flicking back up to read what he had scribbled on the PADD.

"I'm too exhausted to stay mad at you," she assured him with a bright smile, just a little forced. She glanced around, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth as she tried to figure out what to say next. "I'm sorry," she settled for, "that I didn't come earlier. I wanted-- I needed to make sure everyone got back. Do my job. And then I thought you'd need to rest."

[kirktastic]

Kirk watched her silently for several long moments, then shook his head just slightly.

You don't have to BS anything for me. He wrote calmly, despite his shaking handwriting. He could feel it, almost, like a taste to her voice. It was... confusing.

The neurological levels above his head rose slightly.

[just_uhura]

Her immediate reaction was to shake her head, offer him a smile in assurance, even though she knew it was useless. When had the men in her life began to see straight through her with such ease? It was frightening, and she had the urge to back up like a cornered deer.

"I'm not bullshitting anything." she retorted, glancing up at the readings with a frown. Should they be doing that? She wasn't entirely sure. "When have I ever made things easy for you?"

[kirktastic]

She never had. Always so difficult, with only a vague sense of friendship that he could tell between them. She was his crew, and that had to be enough. He would flirt, a little, and had even more before she was...

Maybe he was maturing. Maybe. Maybe.

Never have. He said simply, adding nothing else for now.

[just_uhura]

Being difficult was what she knew with Kirk. This fight, his careless smiles and her careful barbs - it was a safe ground for Nyota. She had no doubt in his abilities as a Captain, even if he did, and followed her orders with a personal detachment and as little question as she could manage. And she had liked him all those years ago in the bar, when he was throwing back her insults with a depreciating laugh. Hell, that hadn't even changed. She still liked him against her better judgement.

But she still couldn't understand why she couldn't tell him that.

"Alright," she finally conceded, unable to stare into the painful blue of his eyes any longer. Instead she looked down at her boots, tapping the heels of them together like a nervous child. Fuck you, she thought to herself. Fuck me for not being able to lie to you. "I didn't want to come... here. I hate it in here." Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she managed to look back up at him with a defiant stare, just as always, as if daring him to question her again. "And most of all

[kirktastic]

Uhura was a woman Kirk had a difficult time with. Usually he... well, flirted, got what he wanted, and left the next day. He had, that day in the bar too. Now, she was crew. She was Spock's girl. Things were different.

She was beautiful, intelligent, and a match for him. Perfect woman.

But crew, taken. He was better then breaking up relationships.

He rubbed the back of his palm briefly against his face to scratch an itch, wincing as scabs pulled, and wrote again,

Don't have to stay long. I'm glad you came down. Needed someone who would set me straight. She was a fucking proud woman, and like hell he was going to fuck with that. Probably the thing he liked most about her.

Followed by her legs.

...What? He was still James Kirk.

[just_uhura]

At first it had simply been the fact she wasn't going to be that girl. Nyota Uhura would not be the woman who lost all sense of self to throw herself at the bad boy with the dazzling smile. A small part of her took some kind of sick satisfaction from turning him down, from imagining that she held the cards and refused to show him, instead of the reversal it was with every other person.

Now she was just plain scared of him. Her mind processed everything not in images, but with words. She even dreamed in sentences sometimes. She hoarded them, every language she knew. But she could say without a doubt there was no words in the countless languages she knew that would describe why James T. Kirk, the dumb hick from Iowa turned golden boy, scared her.

So she didn't say that. Instead she said, "I'm fine now," and drew up a seat to his side. Now she allowed herself to look at his injuries, tilting her head this way and that with softer eyes as she read. When she was done, she sat back, licking her dry lips. "Is there anything you need?"

[kirktastic]

The movement of her head and eyes told him a good deal. He shook his head to her question and hesitated, stylus about the padd.

Then wrote out, Other then your company for a little bit? ...Tell me the truth, how bad is it?

He rubbed the dark scab on the back of his left hand. Vulcan, in Romulan, curling back towards his wrist.

[just_uhura]

"Bad." There was no point in lying to him, Nyota knew (or hoped so) him enough to realize that he would appreciate honesty rather than an easy lie. He was sadistic in that way, and she admired him all the more for it. "What they've done..." She wasn't sure how she wanted to finish that sentence. Hurt you? Violated a sacred language? All seemed appropriate.

Reaching out without a thought, she took his hand carefully and held it between her own. "Stop it," she chastised, eyes following those marks too. Once more she wished that she didn't know how to read what had been carved into his skin, and she bit down hard on her lip to force back the tears.

"It'll heal." Her voice sounded pathetically small even to her own ears, and she wasn't sure who she was supposed to be convincing. "It fades. It all fades."

[kirktastic]

Bad. He could feel the scabs under his fingertips when he had touched his face earlier, but could not figure out their exact shape. He knew what they meant, the entire stories burned into his skin. He thought about the elegant tribal-like markings on Nero and Ayel's faces, and sighed slowly.

He moved his arm, gently forcing his hand that was between hers so that he could cup her cheek. He didn't want her to cry, and could see it, so he tried to be reassuring in his own way when he couldn't use his words.

He wasn't worth her tears, nothing in existence was. Nothing, nothing should make her cry.

Tattoos wouldn't fade. Nero had made sure of that.

[just_uhura]

There was nothing elegant about the way Nero had ripped apart a script that usually held such grace, and thrown the words back onto Kirk's skin in a twisted version of events from his point of view. Her jaw was firm as she tried to summon whatever strength she had to not cry. This was not what she did, break down crying at a bedside. Why give anyone the satisfaction of that?

Her hands dropped down to his bed, fingers clutching the sheets as her eyes fell shut. "I won't," she breathed, turning into the touch on her cheek, her nose edging against the palm of his hand. He was always, always fighting, a wildfire that burned so bright it made her afraid. She was afraid if she slowed, if she stopped fighting, stopped running, he'd burn her. As much as she teased him for being simple and easy to read, he was a contradiction that she didn't know.

Her shoulders dropped, her guard lowered for a moment and she pressed her lips to the warm skin of his palm, her hands returning from the bed to circle ever so lightly around his wrist.

[kirktastic]

He wished that he could talk like Spock, could tell her words instead of silence. His throat twisted and refused to utter a word hadtoremainsilent. He would have told her that it was okay, because it was.

So instead, Kirk watched her face, using his thumb and a supreme concentration of effort to run the pad of his thumb under her eye like he was rubbing away tears. Silent, sweet permission to her.

It wasn't a satisfaction in seeing her break down, but there was a certain knowledge that at least someone would not only tell him the truth, but express it as well. Neither of them fully knew how to deal with the other, but they could find their way.

He had kept his promise - that he wouldn't stop fighting, ever, until Bones had him. Now, it was a lull filled with drugs to keep it suspended and pregnant for as long as his body could handle it, then the battle would begin again.

[just_uhura]

Still for a moment, Nyota only paid attention to the soothing in and out of their breaths, not quite in sync (almost, but not there yet, just like them) but a clear reminder to her sharp ears that they were both alive. Her thumb slid over to rest against his pulse, another reminder that he was here and she could breathe.

Where words filled her day, now there was only silence, broken by the background noise she had been trained to forget, to push aside. She opened her eyes, swallowing back whatever she couldn't say as she met his gaze. This would be where she said something, anything, just so it wasn't so quiet.

But for the first time since she had met James (to call him Jim seemed unfair, as she wasn't sure she was his friend, yet Kirk didn't fit anymore) Nyota just wanted to be still. Just for now. She just gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head as if to explain that she couldn't cry, not now or ever, even as she lost that battle with herself

[kirktastic]

The sight, the feel, of tears made Kirk want to reach out and draw her close, let her lean against him and work out her frustrations into his shoulder. It wouldn't be the first time a girl had done just that, letting him rub her back to calm her down. He wanted to reach out and brush the tears away.

But he couldn't. She was Spock's girl, and that was who alone had the permission to do so, to possibly harm her pride like that. So Kirk let his hand fall, letting her cry with a certain sense of privacy as he wrote.

I told them to stop giving me sedatives, and they're wearing off quickly. Don't know what's going to happen, but thank you for coming and giving it to me straight. One thing I can always count on from you.

His lips lifted into a small smirk, trying to give her something new to focus on as he tilted the padd in her direction.