“ 𝑆 𝑝 𝑜 𝑐 𝑘 — ”

𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝑊𝐴𝑅𝑃 𝐵𝐴𝐶𝐾 𝑇𝑂 𝐸𝐴𝑅𝑇𝐻 𝑊𝐴𝑆 𝐴 𝑆𝑂𝐿𝐸𝑀𝑁 𝐴𝐹𝐹𝐴𝐼𝑅 — the destruction of Vulcan at the forefront of the crew’s thoughts, but the last thing on anyone’s tongue beyond quiet conversations in tucked away places. A very present focus of duty thrummed through the energy of the crew; holding a collectivee and silent pact not to look at the gaping catastrophe that is the destruction of an planet and all of it’s population, because to look at it head on is to get lost inside the horror in absolute. So mood and mandate of the days;

𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞.

There was something grounding in the stability of the work and adhering to the expectation of code and duty. It was unique in its ability to round down the edges of sharper emotions and allow a person to ground back into themselves at least to functional standards; and none had grounded so pervasively into their duties and responsibilities [ 𝑖𝑛 𝑁𝑦𝑜𝑡𝑎’𝑠 𝑎𝑑𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑖𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ] so much so as Commander Spock. She couldn’t curb the impulse to snatch a look at the duty rosters, noting the extra shifts he picked up, how often they aligned back to back.

𝑩𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 - 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦．

𝑶𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅.

And Nyota would - like a restless but weary phantom - wander the ship; cruelly aware of his absence. The shape it took and the injury it summoned in her, because it was not his physical absence she mourned so much as she mourned the man who assigned her to the ship of her demand. It would not falter the variegated reverence she held him in nor shake the roots of where her heart has bedded into the cool, soft ground of his own.

The evident and insurmountable loss notwithstanding - Uhura would grieve a smaller, but an insidiously more personal loss. She would home his grief between her muscle, bones and sinew - blooming with jagged petals and poisonous pollen. There she would erect a cage in herself; a cage for which she might trap the part of Hell crying havoc inside the other living half of her soul

But even still — she does not brush along the edges of his boundaries.

Her grandmother once explained the nature of love to her, applying to any love a person could feel toward another, and she explained it as like holding a handful of sand; “ — 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒂 𝒇𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒂 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒊𝒇𝒕 𝒓𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒔𝒑, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒂𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒍𝒂𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒔𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒚. 𝑪𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒏 𝒑𝒂𝒍𝒎. ”

She thought of how he wasn’t like water-worn sand. She imagined him as sunburned, red sand, soft to the touch and still hot in her palm from a desert now belonging to the ether of ruin where it would never know the scorch of its sun again; a rare and mysterious thing, beautiful in his sorrow - the sorrow that only lost things know .

𝑺𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒍𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒍𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒑𝒐𝒄𝒌,

— 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑆𝑝𝑜𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒．

So Nyota gave every effort to think of him in all the ways she determined, with earnest and honest intention, Amanda might hope someone would consider for her son; in the way his first and greatest champion would insist upon.

But discerning the exact nature of a mother’s heart to her child?

Almost an impossible thing to know.

A conversation Uhura would exchange years of her own life to have. Short of the chance to exchange her whole life for Amanda’s — to give back to him the one who loved him before she and all else. Return her to the empty place in his grieving soul still harboring the codes of love she sewed into him at the womb. Nyota would carve from her chest her own still-beating heart should it see Spock reunited to the one who first championed, not her expectations of his future, but his freedom to choose that future for himself.

𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑜𝑚 & 𝐶ℎ𝑜𝑖𝑐𝑒 — the core of their attachment had to be the compass to navigate the winding and rapidly changing waters of her companion. It must be.

Intrinsically Uhura knew he needed to run his mind, drag his heart for filth and then rake his soul over the remnants of his rage and grief. This she knew and felt she knew it for certain. What she knew with even greater certainty was all there was for her to do was anticipate the potentiality where he might run so far his feet drag him, tired and worn in equal measure and not unlike his broken-heart, to where she patiently waited; firmly maintaining the unflinchingly rigid principle that Spock’s vulnerability was not something she was owed, but a need he might convey or an unveiling of the rawest portions of himself.

𝑨 𝑾𝑶𝑼𝑵𝑫 𝑯𝑬 𝑪𝑯𝑶𝑶𝑺𝑬𝑺 𝑻𝑶 𝑬𝑿𝑷𝑶𝑺𝑬.

It was so deeply a part of her, right down to her molecules, to get ahead of a bad situation, to reach out to problem solve, fix a thing with either real time solutions or the soft and gentle comfort from companionship. The trial of conditioning herself to hold the lines she sets does force Uhura to step outside of who she is to force a specific kind of wherewithal so she can better master things like putting in to request her shifts operate opposite to their First Officer; not allowing the emotional tether she has to him to eschew in a decline in her performance as communications officer. Though there was a simple pleasure in sharing that space with him on the bridge, working apart from each other, consumed in their at-hand-tasks, but somewhere still aware of the other’s closeness; an intimacy curated by them without having ever meant to. But currently that was lost to the impulse of compassion that silently screamed his name to the innate beat of each passing moment. A scream so loud, rising from the abyssal deep of her heart, perching at the back of her throat where impotent rage toward a cruel and indifferent universe could be kept. Driving her to a full scale distraction, if not to some small measure of madness.

However here in her quarters, her shift over some hours ago - Nyota waits. She isn’t entirely certain what she’s waiting for, but she waits with the temperature in her cabin far warmer than normal. She stares abjectly through the port windows, folded tightly on the floor beside her bed, while she waits for the rooibos tea to finish boiling in the kettle - the same tea she’s made at the end of her shifts since the warp home.

Tonight would suggest she may have someone to share it with at long last.

The chime is quick and concise, she notes the time edging almost to half past twelve in the morning. Slim few would find themselves at her door this late. There’s a leap in her stomach, not of nerves or thrill, but a fleeting anxiety that she won’t be enough. That his time here should be waste or somehow made to find his mind in a far more ill place. She didn’t believe she could suffer being of such a disservice when he has asked her for so very little.

How could she be? How could anyone?

Be that as it may, whether she is enough or not, she will be everything to him that she always been - someone who loves him so thoroughly and wholly, as nothing more or less than who he is and what he choose to become.

The door opens and there he stands, his uniform as neat as the hair on his head - he’d even shaved. Adhering to rule and order just as firmly, and probably moreso, as the rest of the crew.

“ 𝑆 𝑝 𝑜 𝑐 𝑘 — ”

— his name unfurls from her mouth, whisper-quiet, afraid if she spoke it any louder it would betray how deep the ache she held on his behalf had ran.

Uhura was never ignorant to how Spock was a man written to the letter in and by nuances. So clear to her were the arms that hung loosely at his sides, the slight dip of his shoulders, the worn look in his eyes that were absent of a certain kind of vibrancy she’d grown so accustomed to seeing looking back at her.

It hardly mattered. He could have come with demons clawing at his back and still her hands would have reached out to his - forging that intimate connection between them; that place where words could not go and where skin spoke to a higher complexity of feeling.

The door closed with a soft ~sfft.

“ Come be with me — tell me what you need ,” the words come patient and paced knowing now the deed was done. Everyone did every admirable thing they could with the reward of getting to turn back and warp home. More than the air she needed to breathe did she want him to indicate anything. Anything at all.

Nyota’s hands pulled away from Spock’s to clasp around either side of his face, his face that looked so young and in the stretch of days she can see the age settled into his eyes. His mother’s eyes. The edges of her thumbs run smooth lines against his cheek bones as a glassy sheen forms over her eyes.

His eyes are so much like his mother’s and she couldn’t understand why it was only now she noticed it so vividly.

Gingerly rising on her feet, mouth meeting his where she left the ghost of a kiss over the bow of his lips; alternately hoping his acute Vulcan sense of hearing did not register the soft sob that died in her throat at the touch of their mouths. Still suspended on the ends of her toes, Nyota brings their foreheads to lay gentle against the other;

“ – or say nothing and allow me to sit and be with you ,” lean hands slide away from his face, lowering onto the soles of her feet at the same pace, hands smoothing down his uniform beneath them, while never allowing her eyes to wander from his. She wanted his permission to lay fingertips against the open wound he brought to her doorway, standing with the flesh and bone pried away from where his heart lay.

Nyota's hand stopped at his upper abdomen where she wanted to feel a familiar rhythm — his scorched sand heart beat against her open palm.

@fasciinating

There was a piece of him, something distant and buzzing, something that Spock had not realized existed until he no longer held it, this crimson light cradled at the back of his skull.

At quarter past midnight, Spock is finally returning to his quarters. His limbs are heavy, weighed down by the rapid, unending hummingbird that is his heart. It drummed in the deep, rattled against his ribs. And with nowhere to go, it is pouring out of his mouth with a breath, dragging with it his chest.

Perhaps, it is how he has arrived at Nyota’s cabin without his knowledge.

                                  He spoke things he does not remember, murmuring to the ears of the ship, “Computer, locate Lieutenant Uhura. ”

It chimes. It answers.

He asks again further and further inside the Enterprise, “ Computer, location. ”

Now, the vacuum has come to occupy him at long last; duty and adrenaline and vengeance had masked the stunning ache of it — his command is gone, his home world is gone, his mother is gone — that piece of him is gone, tangled or lost in his mind with flashing white lights and winking red matter.

“ Computer, location. ”

<< Lieutenant Uhura is located on deck eight, officer’s deck >>

Standing at the door, his hands are weightless and exhausted at his sides. If he is seen here, he finds he no longer cares, pushing the button for entry.

@haiiling