taxonomites | xiii [ location: uss enterprise ] / [ accidental visual ].

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xiii [ location: uss enterprise ] / [ accidental visual ].

He woke with his head pillowed on arms folded on his desk, blinking into the early morning light filtering in through the windows in his ready room. Kirk wasn't sure how he got there, as he didn't recall sitting down at any point...nor did he remember pulling out a PADD on the Kelvin. He sat upright and picked it up, regarding it with open confusion, too focused on it and the picture of the man he was the spitting image of to notice the tablet feeding this visual to the rest of Taxon.

"How did--"

A sudden rush of memories and information that filled in the gap that was the previous week made him wince. Dropping the PADD back onto the desk, he pressed his hand to his eyes and left it there. So, it seemed he'd been glitched again, only into his twelve-year-old self and not a girl. Thank God, though he wasn't sure which one was more embarrassing. At least he remembered this time and now knew that his younger self had pulled the information up on the PADD out of curiosity about his father.

"I am getting really tired of this."

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Kirk?

[she'd seen the visual, but didn't want to respond the same way. this wasn't a conversation they could have over the tablets.]

[ his hand fell away from his eyes when he heard the lieutenant's voice, looking to the door first, before noticing the tablet. oh. of course it was on. ]

Uhura?

Yes. Kirk, I...

[her voice broke, and there was the sound of her breath hitching before she continued.]

We need to talk. Somewhere private.

[ he didn't like the sound of that, her words or the way her voice broke like that. kirk didn't necessarily know uhura well, but in the three (nearly four) years that he'd been around her, she'd always radiated with this essence that made him regard her as one of the strongest women he knew. it was unsettling to hear that she was upset.

but, shouldn't she be talking to spock about whatever was bothering her? ...unless spock was gone. god dammit, just what had he missed while he was running around reliving his youth? ]

Okay. We can speak here on the ship or I can meet you somewhere. Whatever's best for you.

The ship works if there's no one else there right now.

[she would end up talking to spock about this, too, most likely. but her news would affect kirk more, so she'd decided to speak to him first.]

[ he suspected bones might be in sickbay, but one of the perks of being captain was being able to lock rooms without the threat of those locks being overridden. they could talk on the bridge or in here without the risk of someone overhearing the topic at hand. he'd just make sure to shove this infernal piece of technology into a corner of whatever room they weren't occupying to keep it from turning of it's own accord. honestly, these tablets were more trouble than they were help half the time. ]

I don't think anyone else is on board at the moment, but I'll seal off the bridge when you get here.

Okay. I should be there soon.

[she'd started heading to the parts of the enterprise as soon as she'd seen his transmission go out.]

"I'll be on the bridge."

Turning his tablet off, he opted for dropping the thing in one of the drawers of his desk. Whatever Uhura wanted to talk about, whether it was about Spock leaving (his younger self hadn't paid attention to his crew during the past week, so he honestly had no way of knowing whether or not that suspicion was true and hoped it wasn't) or something else, it was obviously serious and the last thing she sounded like she needed was the entire population of Taxon overhearing what she had to say.

Exiting his ready room, he took a seat at the conn to run through a few of the more recent scans of the city while he waited for her to arrive.

Edited 2009-11-24 08:58 (UTC)

Uhura got to the bridge of the Enterprise shortly after and tapped in her access code, stepping onto the bridge once the doors slid open.

She made sure the door was securely shut behind her (not that she doubted that Kirk would be doing the same thing, but she wanted to be sure of it) and stepped towards the conn, hands behind her back.

"I'm here."

Kirk looked over his shoulder to acknowledge her, but turned right back to the console. "Computer, seal off all access the bridge. Authorization Kirk 4-7 Alpha Tango." The computer beeped in compliance, responding, Bridge sealed.

Satisfied, the captain then stood and went over to the communication's officer. "Hey...what's going on?"

"It's, um...it's Gaila," Uhura began. "She hadn't been in the Sanctuary for the past few days, so I went looking around the city for her, and..."

She couldn't hold it back anymore. She pressed a hand to her mouth and exhaled in a sob.

"Kirk, she's gone."

He'd been wrong. It wasn't Spock who was gone. It was Gaila. He didn't even think to include her in his list of possibly missing persons whose absence would upset Uhura, but he should have. But, he supposed he'd blinded himself with the contentment he felt over Gaila simply being here and alive, that he refused to even consider her being sent away a possibility.

For a moment, all he could do was stare at the too-white wall behind her. Kirk didn't do these things well and didn't like dealing with them at all, least of all in front of people and Uhura, nonetheless, who was unfamiliar with his typical reactions to things like this: anger -- which he promptly displayed as his face contorted into something resembling a sneer and balled a fist at his side, letting loose, first, a string of Klingon curses where he promised to personally gut those in charge, among other very unpleasant things.

"This..." He couldn't finish that, too infuriated with the supposed aliens responsible for this for toying with Gaila like that, for taking her away from her death, only to send her back. How dare they.

She found herself needing to find somewhere to sit down, and once she found a chair she sank into it, pressing her face into her hands and sobbing. It took her a long while before she could look up at him.

"I can't...I just remember when she first got here, what she told me she remembered," she managed to say. "And they just...they sent her back there. I know it, and it's just..."

Kirk had been so wrapped up in his own fury that he'd failed to notice just how upset Uhura was. He looked over at her in sitting in that chair, feeling like he should do something to comfort her, but feeling like it wasn't his place. He and Uhura weren't close and he wasn't Spock, yet they shared a common thread where Gaila was concerned and they were both hurt by her death. Both happy to see her again when she showed up in Taxon and now, both angry and upset over her being taken away after just a short time here.

He too remembered what Gaila had said about how things had been before she'd arrived. If she was sent back, he knew that it was to the crippled Farragut, where she'd become just another name on a casualty list.

"Uhura..." Sighing, he went over to her and knelt at her side, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "I wish there was something I could do to fix it, but I can't. I can't get us out of here. I've attempted some pretty stupid things to try and do that, too. I don't..." He looked down. "I don't know how to fix this."

She nodded, wiping underneath her eyes and sniffling, trying to quell her tears.

"I know you've been trying. This isn't...it's not your fault," she said, her voice still a little broken. "I just don't understand. I don't understand why they'd bring her here just to pull her away and send her back to that. I don't...there's nothing okay about it."

Henry looked up from his work, surprised to see Kirk - and an adult Kirk - on his screen. "Hey buddy. Exhausted already?"

He knew that voice, but that voice shouldn't be coming from the bridge of ship, nevermind the ready room. Unless... Kirk peeked through his fingers to see the tablet laying on the desk, recording away. Of course. Dropping his hand from his face, he picked up the tablet instead.

"I wouldn't say it's so much exhaustion as junk food overload once my younger self figured out that the hatches really would give him--me anything I wanted."

"There's a rash of that going around," he tried to not chuckle and ended up coughing, covering his hand with his mouth. "That sort of thing will get you every time. You mostly recovered?"

That cough-guised-chuckle was caught, but he acknowledged it only with a lifted brow and a look that said he wasn't amused by it. He was getting tired of these aliens or whoever was in charge of Taxon messing with him, but he supposed he could've been glitched into much, much worse and at least he remembered it this time -- not that he cared to remember the time he spent as a girl.

"I'm pretty sure I'm thoroughly the right age again, so...yes. I'm recovered. Did I miss anything while I was busy being a kid again?"

Edited 2009-11-25 12:56 (UTC)

If Kirk had been a girl this time, it would have likely been that Henry wouldn't have been able to hold in his laugh. Lucky for both of them, in the end.

"Depends what you mean by missed," for all that Taxon had its glitches, not a lot seemed to happen. "Things keep chugging along. People mostly seem normal."

"Good, it wasn't one of the mass-glitches, then." Those were always a pain. Spurting out nothing but the truth, being joined at the hip with a total stranger... Those never ended well. But, really, did any glitch end well?

"It could have been worse?": Henry was thinking along hte same lines. "We all could have ended up kids."

Kirk laughed. "Would've been like The Tribe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tribe_(TV_series)) gone horribly, horribly wrong."

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about it," Henry had to wince, "do you really want to give this place ideas?"

Now that, he could agree with. No sense in giving these aliens in charge any new ideas when they already seemingly had plans for them. Plans that were either carefully orchestrated with purpose or randomly drawn from a hat of pre-proposed glitches. Whatever the case, they were just another (and rather large) item on the list of reasons to hate this place.

"Think they'd get ideas about sending us home if we talked about that nonstop?"

"There's a dream," he actually sounded wistful for a moment. Even with the Sanctuary here it wasn't home. He had work to do there, people he missed. Family and friends both. "How about we start trying? Might drive everyone else crazy."

"That sounds like a plan." And considering he'd tried just about everything else, supernatural methods aside being that he was a more science-oriented being, why not? "We should hold weekly discussions. Maybe the aliens'll get a clue or two or twelve."

"My place or yours?" He let himself chuckle that time, there was no point in hiding it. "Somehow I only see it backfiring."

Buffy is just wry. Very pleased to see him back to normal too, obviously-- delighted, in fact. But still wry. "So am I, and it's not even happening to me."

Poor Kirk, he looked so tired. Frowning with equal parts sympathy and concern, she asked, "How're you feeling?"

Edited 2009-11-24 19:56 (UTC)

Uhura and Henry had already done the job of alerting him to the tablet being on, so Kirk was more fidgety about it being Buffy who responded and not over the tablet turning on of it's own accord. He feels embarrassed, recalling all that he'd said to her and how shy he'd been. The way he talked about his dad... He must've been annoying.

"Regretting all that junk food I ate," he finally answered. His younger self had taken full advantage of the fact that the hatches would give him anything. "And wishing I could wipe all that from everyone's memories, yours included."

Edited 2009-11-25 09:29 (UTC)

Well, it would either put him at ease or make him feel more awkward, then, that she was about to gush over the virtues of his smaller self.

"Are you kidding? No memory wiping for me. I mean, it was... a little weird, admittedly, you being all tiny-- but you were so sweet. There was no bad there. It was nice."

"I used to be the good one," he mused. "Did what I was told, didn't question anything, was always polite... Remember how I told you about that car I drove into a canyon? I spent the first few days of that glitch half-convinced this place was some sort of punishment for doing that."

"Were you alone for that whole time?" she asked worriedly, frowning. She hated the thought that he'd been by himself, scared, thinking he was being punished for that length of time.

"I would've come to check up on you sooner, but I didn't want to be--" she strove for a way to put it that was more elegant than 'that excessively annoying and clingy girlfriend', came up with nothing, and eventually settled for: "--didn't want to crowd you."

"No, Bones was with me." He didn't clarify by saying that Bones had been de-aged, too, for he wasn't sure if people knew and was well aware of how the doctor could be when people went around blabbing about things he'd rather be kept a private matter. He'd have to locate the man later and see if he was still seventeen or had been restored to his usual self like he had.

Kirk smiled at her. She was too good to him sometime. "Buffy, you're never crowding me."

"Oh, good-- good." That made her feel a little better, at least. She relaxed, looking much relieved.

Of course she would argue that there was no such thing as 'too good', but in any case, she returned the smile. It was sort of surprised, sheepish and affectionate, rolled into one. "Oh, well. I'm glad. Because I wouldn't want to, y'know, do that." Wow, that was not even approaching eloquent. Oh well. To try and cover up the fact that he'd just made her a little tongue-tied (surely she was too old for that now?) she added, on a tangent.

"So, you should probably just eat green things with many healthy vitamins for the next ever, huh?"

Edited 2009-11-25 13:22 (UTC)

His definition of 'too good' probably varied a bit from hers, given his colorful history with women and failed attempts at relationships when he did make the effort in the past. Of course, none of those girls had quite caught his attention in the way that Buffy had, nor had those relationships lasted as long as this one had, which would be a month here soon -- longer, if one counted the time they spent dancing around one another.

Kirk laughed. "Probably. God knows I overindulged in the hatches. Should probably cut back on the blood wine splurging while I'm at it."

Well, Buffy was perhaps a bit hyper-aware of her own definition, considering the epic fashion in which she screwed up with Riley, her last real relationship, in the traditional sense of the word-- she certainly didn't want to make the same mistakes again, and take Kirk for granted or make him feel like he didn't matter to her. Still, almost a month and she hadn't messed things up yet, that was certainly encouraging-- and she was happy.

The mention of blood wine made her wrinkle her nose with distaste. "I still maintain my position of ewww on that, by the way."

"Hey, don't dis it until you've tried it," he teased. "And I'm sure the blood part's just the name and not an ingredient."

"I'm not trying your gross wine," she stated flatly, clearly unconvinced, though with a slightly amused quirk of her lips.

Edited 2009-11-27 01:10 (UTC)

"It's not gross," he protested. "It's just got a gross name. Leave it to the Klingons to take the appeal away from booze with one little word. Of course, for them that probably is appeal."

"But why give it a gross name, unless it's gross?" she asked, perfectly logically, she thought. "And what's a Klingon, anyway?"

"You and me both."

McCoy had awoken in Sickbay that morning and, for once during his stay in Taxon, his tablet did not flicker to life and broadcast his realization that he had been hit again by a glitch and especially by one that had messed around in his age and turned him into that awkward teenager at the Ole Miss. Inundated with memories of what occurred that past week, he growled in a mixture of frustration and irritation before he looked at the tablet and saw Jim had come to the realization.

Edited 2009-11-26 18:13 (UTC)

Kirk had sat back down at his desk after speaking with Uhura, Henry, and Buffy. After the news Uhura had delivered to him, he needed some time alone to cool off and calm down before he went about talking to anyone else -- Bones, of course, was an exception to that rule, especially since the man was more familiar with the way he reacted to upsetting news than anyone else outside of the brother he hadn't spoken to since his promotion ceremony.

"Good, you're back. I was going to come check on you."

"What, no gag about me having a mid life crisis?" He questioned his best friend in a sullen voice, although his voice softened mid-way. The conversation they had during their glitch had probably fringed upon long buried issues and there was an awkward pause before he asked: "You all right, Jim?"

"I'm fine. Probably riddled with cavities from all the sugar I indulged in, but fine."

Embarrassed as well, but he was pretty sure bones already got that part. He was pretty sure he was never going to live down wanting his mother. He and Winona Kirk had their issues and while he understood a lot better now that he was in Starfleet just why the woman had been gone for such long periods of time, it was still hard to get over the pain it had caused him as a child; especially those miserable, lonely Christmases with Frank.

McCoy did understand a lot more than what was said out loud, even through the visual feed of the tablet, and instead offered:

"I can probably fix that."

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