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monstrousregiment) wrote2011-05-01 07:20 pm
Measure of Men (5/6)
Author: monstrousreg
Beta: tkeylasunset
Universe/Series: Reboot
Rating: all ages
Relationship Status: established
Word Count: 2799
Genre: friendship, outside pov
Tropes: friendship, outside pov, loyalty, disciplinary hearings
Warnings: none
Summary: Four years into the DS5 mission, Starfleet Command calls for an investigation regarding the nature of the relationship between Commander Spock and Captain Kirk. These are the interviews of the command core and their insights on said relationship. It seems Kirk's apparent delight in making Command's life impossible is contagious.
Notes: I think Uhur'as reaction might take you a little by surprise, as it did me, but it felt right and I thought I would go ahead and go with what I felt fit with the vibe of the rest of these characters. These last 4 years have apparently been rough for everyone o.O
Nyota Uhura’s hair is loose, falling in a cascade of molten chocolate across her shoulders and chest.
For an expert in communications and xenolinguistics, Uhura is remarkably clipped in her answers.
“Commander Spock and I terminated our relationship within the first six months of the deep space mission.”
“May I inquire as to the reason for this separation?”
“You may not.”
Archer gives her a stunned look.
“Lieutenant, watch yourself.”
“Admiral, my previous relationship with Commander Spock is not currently under discussion. Our reasons for terminating it were our own.”
Chase tilts her head, willing to let the subject drop for the moment. “Lieutenant Uhura, as a communications expert, what could you tell us regarding Captain Kirk’s overall behavior?”
Uhura’s head tips only an inch, so that her long glossy hair sways.
“It’s difficult to take on such an endeavor without more specific parameters. Kirk is a complex, multifaceted man. What exactly would you like me to expand on, Admiral?”
“How would you describe his take on missions when he first took his captaincy, as opposed to now, Lt.?”
Uhura considers this for a moment, looking down to the floor so that her heavy lashes fall over her eyes.
“When Captain Kirk first took on his captaincy, he was willing to take on risks few other men would have dared. He was careless of his own personal safety, often reckless, and an individualistic, self-sufficient man. He insisted on being the lead of all away missions, and on having an active part in the comings and goings aboard the ship and off it.”
“He didn’t trust his fellow officers?”
Uhura’s eyes flick away, then return. “There are different kinds of trust. When it came to them being able to adequately perform their duties, yes, Kirk trusted them fully. But he often said he wouldn’t send someone to do something he could do himself, and he would not ask anyone to do something he would not do himself. He’s a hands-on kind of man. Hyperactive, hiper-vigilant, overprotective, dominant.”
“That has since changed.”
“Yes.”
“What precipitated the change?”
“A multitude of things. He’s learned a great deal along the way and what he learned has changed him. As it did all of us. Also, Commander Spock convinced the Captain that his lead was not necessary on every away mission.”
An interesting thing that had resulted from that argument, one of the two times Uhura had ever heard Spock raise his voice in anger, had been that Kirk sometimes allowed Spock to beam down alone, whereas Kirk never left the Enterprise without either Spock’s or Sulu’s company. This constituted, as far as Scotty and Uhura were concerned, Spock’s win. That took the count to Spock: 212 – Jim: 189.
“You made a distinction between kinds of trust,” Cirona said, frowning. “What precisely did you mean?”
Uhura looks away to the windows for a long time, seemingly gathering her thoughts. When she finally speaks, her voice is even, calm, and cold as frost.
“There are two ways I can answer that question. One, I can do it from an objective point of view as a communications expert, expanding on the concepts of personal and professional trust. Two, I can stop pretending we don’t all know Jim Kirk is the last survivor of Tarsus IV, and that I don’t have firsthand knowledge of the kind of damage that experience left on his psychological profile.”
It seems, Nyota… it seems to me, in a rather illogical, unfathomable way, that life itself has been greatly unkind to Jim. I feel an anger that I cannot explain, and I do not know who to direct it towards. I have no face for this enemy I hate, that I have only just discovered. I do not mean Kodos, though I feel an unmistakable loathing for him. It is—something else. A sense of restlessness, as though I have witnessed proof that a great injustice has been committed, and I can do nothing to right the wrong that has been done upon the victim.
You feel like the Universe turned its back on Jim. That’s what this is. A pause. I felt like this, you know? When we lost Vulcan.
“There was a reason we removed that information from his file,” Chase says gently. “We didn’t do it to hurt him, or to protect anything but him and his anonymity.”
“Had that information been on his file for his CMO to access, what happened a year and a half ago could have been prevented. Not only was valuable information denied to pertinent individuals who should have had it, but the gross negligence indulged by Starfleet Security that allowed for Kodos to escape his prison endangered an innocent man and nearly cost him his life. Protocols demand that when an inmate escapes custody, any and all persons of interest in the case that resulted in the inmate’s imprisonment be immediately alerted, but since Kirk’s identity had been protected, we never even knew Kodos was after him until Captain Kirk was in Sickbay and Doctor McCoy was struggling to keep him alive.”
Uhura tilts her head, eyes narrowed.
“But I guess Starfleet Command has better things to deal with rather than something as petty as the escape from a high-security prison colony of a deranged mass-murderer with a personal vendetta against a high-profile Starfleet Captain. Such as this hearing we are present in right now.”
The Admirals are stunned into silence. Komack goes from blank shock to thunderous anger in half a second, and he opens his mouth, but Uhura straightens even further, and speaks right over him.
“Professionally, Kirk trusts everyone in the Enterprise because he’s read each and every one of our files. He knows the names of every man and woman aboard that ship, and he’s made sure we are all competent enough to be trusted with our responsibilities. Personally, he trusts very few people in the world, and that trust took a lot of time to build. I am proud to say I am one such individual. I am not afraid to say the way in which Starfleet Command has occasionally handled situations involving Kirk have been poor at best, offending at worst.”
“Lieutenant Uhura, you will watch yourself, or you will be reprimanded and suspended.”
Uhura looks at Admiral Archer stonily, not even flinching at the threat. She knows the Enterprise will never leave dock without her, and she knows what Kirk is capable of doing to protect his people.
“One more thing that I find offending,” she continues, “is the fact that I was called first into these audiences when protocol demands the CMO be the first to be consulted in matters of personal interaction between commanding officers. It could be argued that this was because I am an expert in all kinds of communications, but I doubt this to be the case. I believe the reason I was called first is that I had a previous relationship with Commander Spock.”
There is something else seething under the calm exterior of Uhura’s open dislike, and the Admirals shift in their sits. Beneath the eloquent words and frosty tone, a word lurks: sexism. It would not be a far stretch from the point she is now in for Uhura to question that Starfleet believes her to be interesting only because, as a woman, she dated a man that they are now interested in.
Uhura is a Kenyan goddess, a woman of staggering intelligence and admirable character, with a fierce independence that allows her to define herself as she sees fit. She sticks to no parameter anyone has ever defined for her, choosing instead to make her own parameters and live up to her own expectations.
That’s why I think you guys are so close, you know? You guys get each other. He’s not a Vulcan, or a human, or a half-vulcan-half-human hybrid, he’s not a scientist or an officer, whatever… he’s… he’s a Spock. Y’know? And you’re an Uhura. And… you’re a race unto yourselves. Sometimes it’s cool, and sometimes it’s harsh. I get it. But you have each other, at least.
And you’re a Kirk, she’d replied, amused, and I think you’re in love with Spock because if there were more Kirks and more Spocks, your races would be natural enemies. On the other hand, now that I think about it, I don’t believe the galaxy can handle more than one Kirk, so scratch that.
If you think about it, Kirk had said with a strange tone of voice, the galaxy already couldn’t handle more than one Kirk.
That memory still chills her to the core. Uneasy and upset, the first thing she’d done after leaving the rec room that night had been finding McCoy, and getting Chekov out of bed, and hunting Sulu down from the gym, and prying Scotty from his beloved nacelles, and dragging Spock out of meditation. The core command of the Enterprise had spent the night in an impromptu demonstration of how glad they were there was at least one Kirk in the galaxy, and it was this one and not the parent.
Uhura, who had never seen Kirk sleep before, had spent a long time looking at him then, curled on his side on the bed like a child, back to the wall, breathing deep and even. In an impulsive, affectionate urge, she’d reached over and smoothed his crazy hair down. The reaction had been explosive, immediate, and deeply disturbing.
Hyper-vigilant sleeper, Sulu had said quietly that afternoon as they were alone in the turbolift. Hyper alert, overprotective, prone to violence. He forgets to eat more times than he remembers. Spock’s reminding him all the damn time, Nyota. He used to be sexually promiscuous. He ran away from home at sixteen. He has issues letting people get emotionally close. You know what this all sounds like to me, Nyota? Abuse. I think Jim was an abused child. And I know what you’re thinking—but no. There was a reason he went to Tarsus in the first place. I think he was trying to get away from something at home. You know what I feel like? I feel like murdering a lot of people right now.
Hikaru had been all gentleness and smiles when he’d showed up on the bridge the next day, none of that repressed violence showing through. And if the Enterprise had lost gym equipment sometime in the night, it having been savagely attacked by something with sharp edge and a lot of feeling, Spock had never pointed it out to Kirk.
“Permission to speak freely?”
“This wasn’t speaking freely!?” Komack sputters.
Uhura flicks her eyes at him, “That was me being honest and forthcoming about my personal views regarding the situation we are now in. I thought what you wanted was to hear my observations regarding the conduct of my commanding officers. I haven’t been over that yet.”
The undisguised hostility is taking everyone by surprise, as is the cold burning of well-controlled fury in Uhura’s eyes. The Admirals expected reluctant cooperation with this process; they did not expect a direct, unapologetic attack on themselves and Starfleet Command. Uhura, who had never been anything but composed and polite, is suddenly an uncontrollable, untamed mass of incensed contempt.
They wonder, not for the first time, if they were completely insane in allowing Kirk to take on the Enterprise. He’s taken this fine, calm, exemplary officer and turned her into a person that knows her most dangerous weapon is not a phaser, but her mind. And she is not afraid to use it.
Uhura seeks restlessly for something that will help her calm down, taking deep breaths, and she finds a memory that will serve.
“You ask me to be an officer of Starfleet and behave like one, and I will. I have nothing whatsoever to say that would compromise Captain Kirk or Commander Spock’s positions. They have been unfailingly loyal and kind to one another and to everyone on the Enterprise, and they have never engaged in reprehensible behavior.
“As a person, though, and as a woman, I will say that I am very, very angry at Starfleet Command. I resent several things, and all of them center around the treatment Kirk has received from you. You never trusted him, not really. I don’t know why you gave him the Enterprise, and I’m glad you did, but since then you have shown him nothing but—
“Lieutenant Uhura—“
“—contempt and distrust and condescension!” Uhura’s clear voice thunders. “You’ve treated him like a child all along! He’s proven himself hundreds of times, but it’s never enough for you. As a person, as a human, my answer to your accusations against Kirk and Spock are insulting and deeply offensive.
“His father died in space the day he was born, his mother was never there for him, his step-father used to beat him bloody, he went to Tarsus, he saved the Earth—and you have the gall to judge him on a purely personal matter that is none of your business? And that’s not even bringing Spock into the equation—Spock, a half-Vulcan who was raised on a planet who saw him as inferior, who made a meteoric career for two years in the science track and became one of the most intelligent people to ever graduate from this Academy, who saw his mother die and his planet cave in on itself and disappear?”
She breathes heavy now, eyes alight with fury, fists curled. She looks at them, evaluates them and finds them deficient.
“Who,” she grits out, “gives you the right to pass judgment on these two people? And so what if they’re together? And so what if they’re in love with each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together, doing what makes them happy and doing it brilliantly? Personally, I think they’ve earned that right. They deserve happiness. And if they find it in each other, then so be it!”
She gives them one last, long look, trembling from head to toe, living and magnificent in her anger.
She remembers a day on a far-away planet, lounging under the sun in a private little beach. Sulu and Chekov were in the water, McCoy slept stretched out in the shade, Scotty was reading from a PADD, on his stomach on the sand. Uhura had been applying sunscreen to her arms and, glancing up, saw that Kirk had fallen asleep, curled on his side as he often did, his forehead touching the side of Spock’s thigh as the Vulcan meditated lightly.
You may touch him, Spock had said gently, and she’d snapped her eyes up.
I’ll wake him up. He doesn’t get nearly enough sleep.
He will not wake, if I am close. He is safe with me, and his sleep is deep. I know you feel the need to reassure him, and Jim is a tactile creature. Your affection would not be unwelcome, Nyota.
A long moment of silence, as Uhura hesitated, getting to her knees.
He likes it when people touch his hair. You have seen Leonard do it often.
I tried once, and he woke up.
Spock had reached down, gently carding his long fingers through Jim’s golden hair, soothingly, with exquisite gentleness.
Jim welcomes the reassurance of touch, Spock had said quietly, because it was never freely given to him. Your previous experience is unfortunate, Nyota, but you may trust me in this. Jim craves affection in ways that sometimes concern me, because they speak of deep-seated traumas. The touch of strangers alarms him, but the touch of friends comforts him. You are a friend; you are my sister.
Spock had looked up then, brown eyes soft and sad.
I believe the only thing Jim has ever really wanted is love, Nyota. And it fills me with pain that he has learned to do without. You need not refrain from showing him that you care, Nyota—if anything, I would urge you to make it known often.
Heartbroken, Nyota had held back tears as she held onto one of Spock’s hand, and with the other one discovered that if you stroked his hair right, you could make Jim smile, giggle, and sigh.
Now, at Starfleet Academy, in an audience room, standing fierce like a lioness in the face of six white-faced Admirals, Nyota Uhura gifts them with one last stab.
“Don’t you think you have all failed him enough?”
Then she turns, and leaves without another word.
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Lovely characterizations, as always. I am actually a little sad to see this end.
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seriously, that's pretty much my only word for this chapter.... just awesome and also AMAZING AND WONDERFUL AND DID I SAY AWESOME? cause i meant to say awesome at some point
.... especially loved the little sulu bit thrown in
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