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taxonomites2009-11-24 02:16 am
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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."
"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."
[voice]
[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.]
[voice]
Uhura?
[voice]
[her voice broke, and there was the sound of her breath hitching before she continued.]
We need to talk. Somewhere private.
[voice]
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.
[voice]
[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.]
[voice]
I don't think anyone else is on board at the moment, but I'll seal off the bridge when you get here.
[voice]
[she'd started heading to the parts of the enterprise as soon as she'd seen his transmission go out.]
[voice] → [location: enterprise 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.
[location: enterprise bridge]
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."
[location: enterprise bridge]
Satisfied, the captain then stood and went over to the communication's officer. "Hey...what's going on?"
[location: enterprise bridge]
She couldn't hold it back anymore. She pressed a hand to her mouth and exhaled in a sob.
"Kirk, she's gone."
[location: enterprise bridge]
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.
[location: enterprise bridge]
"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..."
[location: enterprise bridge]
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."
[location: enterprise bridge]
"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."
[visual]
[visual]
"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."
[visual]
[visual]
"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?"
[visual]
"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."
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
"Think they'd get ideas about sending us home if we talked about that nonstop?"
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
Poor Kirk, he looked so tired. Frowning with equal parts sympathy and concern, she asked, "How're you feeling?"
[visual]
"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."
[visual]
"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."
[visual]
[visual]
"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."
[visual]
Kirk smiled at her. She was too good to him sometime. "Buffy, you're never crowding me."
[visual]
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?"
[visual]
Kirk laughed. "Probably. God knows I overindulged in the hatches. Should probably cut back on the blood wine splurging while I'm at it."
[visual]
The mention of blood wine made her wrinkle her nose with distaste. "I still maintain my position of ewww on that, by the way."
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
[visual]
[ visual ]
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.
[ visual ]
"Good, you're back. I was going to come check on you."
[ visual ]
[ visual ]
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.
[ visual ]
"I can probably fix that."