taxonomites | 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 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."

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

[location: enterprise bridge]

[location: enterprise bridge]

[location: enterprise bridge]

[location: enterprise bridge]

[location: enterprise bridge]

[location: enterprise bridge]