two new Trek ficlets

[timepiececlock]

Drabble requests for Star Trek are still open! In the mean time, here's the responses so far.



((You'll have to provide the accent, I can't type that out well at all. Also, I'm not sure of their ranks at the end of the movie.))



Une Année sans Lumières (Homesickness)


She settles into the chair across from the ensign, and smiles as she reaches for the pepper.

"Oh. 'Ello, Lieutenant Uh--Uhura," Chekhov mumbles over his vegetables. He smiles at her in return, and nods. Then he follows the nod with a hand wave to welcome her to the table, and more nodding. It's almost as if he wants to condense every type of possible greeting into a single instance; in case he accidentally misses one, the others should compensate. Uhura finds him adorable.

She leans forward over her own Cardassian vegetables and not-quite-bean soup, and whispers in a dramatic stage hush: "You may call me Nyota, when it's just you and me." The young man boggles a little, then nods more.

"Yes, thank you. Nyota. It is a very nice name."

"Well," she grins as she leans back, "Don't tell the captain. It's one of the few ways I can still torment him now that he's our commanding officer."

"Yes, that makes sense." The boy's eyes skitter to the side. "I understand."

Part of Lieutenant Uhura's xenolinguistic training includes the study of body language and nonverbal communication. Understanding and intuiting unspoken signals is important--even essential--to translation. She tries for her friendliest voice.

"Pavel, right? What's on your mind, with that pensive look?"

Ensign Chekhov's mouth twists to the right, and he drags his fork twice across his plate. Uhura can't fathom that he's across from her, in the mess hall of a starship, at his age.

"The Captain," he begins, then hesitates. His eyes meet her wide and compassionate ones, and he continues with more strength, "The Captain is a good leader. Yet, he bothers you. I had a cousin that did this, too."

"Oh, you are kind." She touche his hand across the table. He blushes and pulls away while she's in the middle of saying, "But you don't need to worry. The captain and I have an understanding, now."

"No, that is not it," Chekhov says. His flustering is obvious, and he rubs his hand where she touched him. "I know that, I see that."

Uhura tilts her head, in a way that she doesn't even realize she has picked up from one particular man in her life. "Oh? What is it, then?"

He clears his throat, and with his fork still erratically grazing the dinner plate, says: "I miss him. I miss them all. Even the ones I do not like very much."

"That," Nyota tells him in perfect Russian, "I understand very well, my friend."





And Prosper


"Do you know who I am?"

Uhura's breath came slow and shallow as her eyes traced the shape of the man before her. His shoulders were straight but his face wore the lines of a thousand battles, and more lives than she would ever see.

"Yes, I know you." The response was almost inaudible, traveling between them with such delicacy that anyone else might have missed it entirely.

The man, the stranger who wasn't strange at all, smiled at the emotions thundering across Uhura's face and asked, "May I sit?"

He took the liberty without waiting to hear her answer, one of a hundred details that made him so different from the man she knew. "This atrium is lovely; it is not poor place to spend some of my last minutes on Earth."

Being told of an impossibility and accepting it at face value was one thing, but being confronted the next day with the task of literally facing that impossibility was another challenge entirely, and Uhura found herself for once incapable of finding words to express her reaction. He was here, on a homely little bench beside her, admiring the architecture of the Academy with his arms tucked into his sleeves and his head tilted just so.

Her Spock--and again Uhura's thoughts stumbled, because the possessive adjective was not something she'd ever given to him before, even in her mind--her Spock had never looked so Vulcan as this man did. Nor had he ever smiled as widely and gently as he did now.

"Nyota Uhura, utterly silent? I have fallen into an alternate reality, it seems."

Ah, there he was; there was her Spock. The comment was delivered with perfect dry politeness, as calm as a breeze over water, but she could hear the goading underneath. She shut her hanging mouth, straightened her posture, and crossed her legs.

"You've fallen very far, Spock. Forgive my manners, it's just that to see you this way is...odd. I feel..."

Uhura's voiced trailed, and she met his eyes. She loved those eyes, but she didn't know this face, or the soul behind it. She said her next words in Spock's native tongue, so that no matter what the woman he'd known had done or been, Spock would know, without illusion, who she was. What she was to him here, in this life.

Relying on bravery to get her through, she reached up to graze his cheek with the back of her fingers. "I feel as though I'm the time traveler, and I've moved a hundred years just to sit beside you."

With his gaze black and steady, he raised one wrinkled hand to wrap around her soft, youthful one, tugging it gently from his cheek. There was no change in expression on his face, no surprise, and Uhura wondered if her Spock had already told him. Or if he'd heard in passing on the Enterprise, or if--perhaps--they'd walked the same path in his time line as well.

"Our worlds are very different, Uhura. The changes are as deep in my younger self as any I have observed, and I see those changes reflected in you." Her palms felt unusually sensitive beneath his, and his voice curled around her as he said, "Despite its brevity, this has been one of the most fascinating conversations of my long life. Thank you...Nyota."

Uhura allowed herself a trembling smile as she accepted the meaning of his own words to her, and squeezed his hand as he stood. The Vulcan robes pulled at his narrow frame, making him appear older and smaller within their folds. His hand was still in hers, strong despite its age, so he did not give her the gesture for his parting words.

"Live long," he said.

She smiled, feeling a wetness in her eyes.

Comments

[padmekenobi27.livejournal.com]

Powerful moment, right there! Beautifully written, and I can imagine how Nyota's feels, almost as if she is the one who has moved forward in time. Very nice job. :)

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Lovely comment, thank you. I wanted to express that line about time travel yet make it fit into the context of the scene. I kind of adore movies about time travel, and how it's all based on your perspective.