#humans were right about emotionals & vulcans were wrong. which is like the opposite of the point. the point is that he can have both

[fluentisonus]

while we're talking about it though that's something really fundamental to spock's character I think in a way I don't always see discussed, that by joining starfleet he's making the explicit and intentional choice that he'd rather be seen as a perfect example of an alien amongst humans than as an imperfect vulcan amongst vulcans. I see this framed a lot as him being more accepted in starfleet than he was on vulcan, and I really don't think that's the case at all: he's still very attached to vulcan, and we see all the prejudice he has to face and how little he's understood in starfleet. but what it comes down to is that he'd rather exist in a place where no one understands him and so he has nothing to prove -- even if that means being very alone -- than in a place where he's surrounded by the familiar & meaningful but everyone can see the ways he can't quite fit. if that makes sense

[calliecat93]

I think the thing that interested me about Spock and McCoy’s relationship so much of all the Triumvirate pairs is just how... unlikely it is. The opposites attract pair is nothing new, even back in the 60’s, but it’s so... well I hate to use the word but fascinating to me. Generally they both get along perfectly fine with Jim, but their relationship at first glance is so vitriol and argumenative. McCoy is always contesting Spock’s logical Vulan nature to the point that on a surface level he comes off as xenophobic. And maybe on some level he was early on. But Spock, while he may not raise his voice like McCoy, also frequently made snarky remarks putting down McCoy’s abilities as a doctor and not always being open-minded enough to consider thag logic isn’t always the only viable option. Just look at The Galelio Seven. It’s a constant and on a surface level, it seems like the only reason that they tolerate each other is due to both their duties and their mutual care towards Jim.

But in reaity, they ARE close friends.

While there are times where one may go too far, tbeir banter has always been on equal footing. Whenever McCoy went too far (I, Mudd, The Tholian Web once he had a clearer head) he would apologize and try to make it right. It’s just how their relationship works and sure to a modern audience, maybe it comes off as too harsh. But the only time (that I recall, I’m still super new to this) where Spock ever expressed true rage about it was in All Our Yesterdays, where he wasn’t in his right mind which is what alerted McCoy that something was wrong. And where Spock spent most of the first half freting over McCoy’s frostbitten condition, barely left his side, and outright refused to abandon him despite McCoy practicaly begging him to. If they really hated each other as their banter made it seem, why would Spock be concerned? Why would McCoy place himsef at risk to try to get Spcok to realize that something’s wrong?

There are numerous other examples of the two demonstrating care towards each other which make zero sense if they truly hated each other. Why woukd Spock grasp McCoy’s hands when he was supposidly dying in Miri? Why would he want him on Vulcan in Amok Time when he could have just brought Jim only? Why would McCoy defend Spock from Jim in The Menagerie and The Final Frontier? Why would McCoy still believe that Spock is alive and insist on saving him depaite Spock telling them not to in The Immunity Syndome? Where after their particularly rough spats in that episode says a LOT about their relationship. Why would Spock save McCoy in Bread and Circuses where they were especialy snappy with each other, and why would McCoy try to thank him after? Why would Spock help McCoy up and keep holding his arm after finding out about his illness in For the World is Hollow...? And do I even need to explain The Empath? Or the katra business in the films? Or McCoy openly saying that he misses Spock near the end of The Search for Spock?

I’m probably missing stuff, but still. None of those are the actions of people who don’t consider each other friends. Maybe one could argue that they were mere begrudging colleagues early on, but by at least the second half of Season 2 it’s clealry not the case and ESPECIALLY not the case in S3 and the films. It even managed to survive in The Tholian Web, where Jim appeared dead and they were both at each other’s throats until they saw Jim’s message. Jim outright told them that they needed each other, and he was right. Spock needs McCoy to push him to look past the logic and recognize his human side. McCoy needs Spock to get him to look past his own views/emotions and bring him back down. They need each other in a way that’s different than how they are with Jim or anyone else really. They may not ever admit it out loud, but they know this. There’s too much evidence to think otherwise.

Their relationship, whether it’s as friends or lovers, is so great because they’re equals who are different in so many ways, but also alike in so many. They’re both intelligent men of science who are stubborn, loyal, and show a remarkable lack of concern for the own well-being when others are concerned. They just express it in different ways and even their scientific fields are different. It’s so unlikely to work... yet it does. I was drawn to their relationship because of that aspect and it’s become my favorite dynamic (aside from the Triumvirate in general) in TOS because of all the layers to it. There’s just so much there that you have to look into to see clearly. Look beyond the surface, and what you find is something truly grand.

[the-desolated-quill]

Good Omens, Queerbaiting And Death Of The Author - Quill’s Scribbles

I confess this is the most reluctant I’ve ever been to write a Scribble. When this topic came up, I remember just groaning and putting my head in my hands because I knew that, due to the nature of what I tend to write about on this blog and the fact that I’m an out and out biromantic demisexual queerbo, people would be asking me to contribute to the discourse. And honestly I don’t particularly want to. I don’t get to enjoy many films and TV shows anymore thanks to the industry doing their very best to ruin everything they touch. Can’t I just watch one good TV show without being dragged into some ideological battle?

Okay. Guess I can’t really put this off any longer.

On the 31st May, the long awaited adaptation of Good Omens was released on Amazon Video. I thought it was quite good. Not perfect. There are some things I could criticise, but overall it was a worthy adaptation of the source material and it was very enjoyable to watch. And that seems to be the general consensus with both critics and fans. However over the past couple of months since its release, a ‘controversy’ began to emerge within the fandom regarding the show’s main characters Aziraphale and Crowley. See, a large proportion of both the media and the Good Omens fanbase have interpreted the angel/demon double act as being gay, but this has sparked a backlash from some fans with them going so far as to accuse the show of queerbaiting as the show never explicitly confirms the characters’ sexuality. This then led to a backlash to the backlash, sparking a whole debate as to what constitutes good LGBT representation. Not only that, Neil Gaiman, the showrunner and original co-author of Good Omens, has stubbornly refused to confirm one way or the other whether or not Aziraphale and Crowley are more than just good friends, which has added further fuel to the fire.

Now before we go any further, I just want to disavow one argument that I see cropping up a lot and that really gets under my skin. That Aziraphale and Crowley can’t possibly be gay because they’re not men. They’re genderless beings that feel no sexual attraction. The implication being that the characters are asexual, but the way you hear people going on about it, the Ineffable Husbands seem less asexual and more like soulless robots. First off, you do know asexual people feel love too, right? We’re not Vulcans. Second, can we stop this ridiculous logic that they can’t be gay because they’re not men? It reminds me of the ‘controversy’ that surrounded Mass Effect 3 when BioWare confirmed that you could play as a gay male Commander Shepard. When people pointed out to the critics and haters that you could already play as a gay Shepard if you picked FemShep and pursued Liara, they retorted by saying that Liara doesn’t count as a woman because she’s a ‘monogendered alien.’ And my response to that was... so? She still looks like a woman and she still uses female pronouns. If FemShep is attracted to her, there’s a good chance she might be gay. It really is that simple. Aziraphale and Crowley may be genderless, but they look like men and use male pronouns. So if they were attracted to each other, they just might be gay. Period.

Anyway. Tangent over. Lets talk about Aziraphale and Crowley. You might be wondering where I stand on this whole issue. Do I believe that Aziraphale and Crowley are gay? Well honestly it depends on which version we’re talking about here. If we’re talking about the book version, I would say probably not. Don’t get me wrong. I’m almost certain book Aziraphale is gay as there are a number of references that seem to suggest that. His bookshop is in Soho, which is famous for its thriving LGBT community, the narrator mentions him going to a ‘discreet gentlemen’s club’ in the 1800s, and there’s of course this brilliant line:

“Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide.”

So yeah. There was never a doubt in my mind that book Aziraphale was gay. (And before anyone comments saying that the next line mentions that Aziraphale isn’t gay because angels are sexless unless they make the effort, let me ask you something. Who, out of all the characters in the book, does he make a genuine effort for? Aha!). Book Crowley on the other hand isn’t quite so clear cut. Sure there are occasional flashes of something, but it could easily just be interpreted as being gestures of friendship rather than romance. Personally I always saw book Crowley as being more aromantic/asexual. In fact their relationship reminded me a lot of my relationship with my best friend. I’m more like Aziraphale, due to being very camp, somewhat old fashioned and often quite emotional, whereas my friend is like Crowley in that she displays a facade of confidence to mask her insecurities and is extremely loyal to her friends. Now please note I’m not trying to destroy anyone’s personal headcanon here. I know for a fact many LGBT people have interpreted and drawn inspiration from Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship for nearly 30 years since the book first came out in 1990, and I wouldn’t dream of depriving anyone of that. I’m just merely describing how I personally interpreted the characters when I read it.

So, while book Aziraphale is almost definitely gay in my opinion, I personally don’t think they were anything more than just good friends. Do I think the same about the TV version? Actually no. In fact completely the opposite. I think TV Aziraphale and Crowley are 100%, unquestionably and unashamedly in love with each other and this view is supported by the extra material Neil Gaiman has written for them, most notably the 30 minute long cold open of the third episode that shows Aziraphale and Crowley’s blossoming relationship over the course of human history, as well as how the show frames them. We hear the kind of swelling, orchestral music you would hear in a romance when Crowley saves Aziraphale’s books from a WW2 bomb, the scenes where the two argue about running away to Alpha Centauri are presented as being like a legitimate breakup (with the addition of some random passerby telling Aziraphale he’s ‘better off without him’), the other angels occasionally refer to Crowley as being Aziraphale’s boyfriend (albeit in a mocking way), and the way Michael Sheen and David Tennant play the characters makes them feel much more like an old married couple rather than being simply friends. There’s even a wonderful moment in the third episode where Crowley asks Aziraphale if he could give him a ride somewhere, to which Aziraphale responds “you go too fast for me Crowley.” It leaves very little room for doubt in my opinion, and yet Neil Gaiman refuses to verbally confirm this, even though the actors and the director have expressed numerous times that they interpreted the characters as such. Not only that, but the writing and filmmaking leaves just enough room for plausible deniability, never explicitly confirming the relationship. So the question remains, does this count as legitimate LGBT representation or is this just a very advanced form of queerbaiting?

Well first it would be useful to talk about what queerbaiting actually is, because a lot of people arguing against Good Omens don’t seem to fully understand the term. Queerbaiting is when a creator hints at a possible same sex romance without ever actually confirming or depicting the relationship. A recent example of this would be Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series. 

JK Rowling first ‘outed’ Dumbledore as gay back in 2007, saying he was in a relationship with the dark wizard Grindelwald, but unless you read the interview, you would never have known this because the book doesn’t provide any sort of hint or clue or reference to that relationship. Worse still, when given the opportunity to rectify this in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Rowling chose instead to downplay the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald significantly. This is queerbaiting. Implying a character might be gay or promising to introduce a gay character only to then backtrack or not fully commit. Another example would be Avengers: Endgame where the Russo Brothers announced there was going to be a gay character in the film only for it to be some nameless guy who’s only on screen for about a minute. It revolves around luring people in with the expectation of LGBT representation only to then snatch it away once they’ve got bums in seats.

(Also, just to clarify, queerbaiting is not when a bisexual or pansexual character becomes romantically involved with someone of the opposite sex. Yes it’s important that we see more bisexual and pansexual characters and yes it’s important we see more same sex couples on screen, but do NOT conflate the two. Deadpool’s pansexuality, for instance, isn’t suddenly invalid just because he has a girlfriend).

So, with this in mind, does Good Omens fit the criteria of queerbaiting. Well the sexuality of the characters are often the focal point of many interviews, with the director and actors explicitly describing Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship as ‘a love story.’ Most notably Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale and who has been carrying a torch for the Ineffable Husbands since Good Omens came out. But unlike JK Rowling and the Russos, the makers of Good Omens can back up their words with content. As mentioned above, the way the show frames the relationship makes the implication quite clear. There’s even a bit where Crowley thinks Aziraphale has been killed and he leaves the burning bookshop while ‘Somebody To Love’ is playing in the background. It isn’t really very subtle. So, by my understanding, queerbaiting doesn’t seem particularly accurate when talking about Good Omens. The issue here is one of presentation. The overt subtext is all well and good, but does the fact that there’s no explicit confirmation of their relationship make it invalid? To answer that question, we must look into another relevant term. Queercoding.

Queercoding is when a character is given the traits typically associated with those commonly attributed to gay people, such as effeminate behaviour or ostentatious dress sense. This is used often as a way of getting queer relationships past the censor. Implying a character might be gay without explicitly confirming it for fear of the studio or publisher putting their foot down.

While queercoding is often intrinsically linked to queerbaiting, it’s worth noting that while queerbaiting is always seen as a negative (and rightly so), queercoding is neither positive nor negative. It’s merely a contextual device and can be positive or negative depending on execution. A positive example of queercoding would be Deadpool.

While the Merc with the Mouth has never been officially outed as pansexual, both the comics and the movies in particular have framed him as someone who doesn’t conform to heteronormative expectations. The marketing of both movies present Deadpool in traditionally feminine poses as a way of mocking and commenting on how gender is perceived in these kinds of tentpole blockbusters. The comics often make fairly explicit references towards Deadpool’s sexual flexibility for the purposes of humour, such as in his interactions with characters like Spider-Man or Thor.

The movies follow suit. The first movie is littered with moments where Deadpool alludes to being not entirely straight. He occasionally uses gay slang, we see his girlfriend Vanessa penetrate him with a strap-on during the sex montage, and there are frequent references to how sexy Hugh Jackman is, most notably near the beginning when Deadpool describes how he had to give Wolverine a handjob in order to get his own movie. The second movie meanwhile takes it a step further. Not only is the entirety of Deadpool 2 essentially one big allegory for how members of the LGBT community cope with abuse and discrimination, we also see Deadpool express a sexual interest in Colossus many times, the extended cut even going so far as to depict Deadpool trying to give him a blowjob.

Now as I said, Deadpool has never been officially outed as pansexual. That information comes from one of the comic book writers on Twitter. The comics and movies have never verbally confirmed it. We never hear Deadpool describe himself as such. But to say he’s not queer would be absurd because he clearly is. That’s how he’s framed and presented to us across the majority of media. What makes Deadpool a positive example of queercoding is how we view the character. He’s clearly extremely comfortable with expressing his own sexuality and feels no shame in his antics. While the majority of his queer moments are used for the purposes of humour, we’re always laughing with him, not at him.

Now lets take a look at a negative example of queercoding:

This is Moriarty from the BBC series Sherlock written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Sherlock is without a doubt one of the worst adaptations of the canon that’s ever been made and the show’s treatment of Moriarty is a big reason for that. When he’s first introduced in The Great Game, when he’s posing as Molly’s boyfriend, Sherlock deduces that he’s gay based on really no evidence at all other than that he puts product in his hair and his underpants are showing. It’s ostensibly playing on that stereotype that any man who takes pride in their appearance isn’t masculine and therefore must be gay. (if that were true then David Beckham would be the gayest man on the fucking planet). While it becomes clear at the end of the episode that this was just an act Moriarty was putting on to fool Sherlock, he never really loses the metrosexual image. He boasts about his ‘Westwood’ clothes, we see him prance and preen like some over the top camp supervillain (more on that later) and he makes numerous double entendres that imply he’s interested in men, specifically Sherlock. There’s even a moment in The Reichenbach Fall where we see Moriarty sitting on a throne wearing the crown jewels. Ha! Do you get it? Because he’s a queen!

What makes this form of queercoding more offensive than Deadpool is, again, how we as the audience are supposed to perceive him. Moffat and Gatiss want us to laugh at Moriarty’s camp behaviour and they clearly find the prospect of shipping Moriarty and Sherlock utterly absurd, as demonstrated in the episode The Empty Hearse where we see the Sherlock fan club suggest Sherlock survived the fall because he and Moriarty were secretly lovers. This bit was there for no reason other than to take the piss out of Sherlock fans who read too much into the show’s intentional subtext. Also, crucially, Moriarty has no real character or backstory other than as a gay stereotype. He’s a lazily written caricature who serves no real purpose other than as a homophobic punchline. There’s a lot more to Deadpool than just being queer. With Moriarty however, there’s simply nothing underneath.

Moriarty is also an example of how queercoding is most commonly applied to villains. There are countless examples of this across various media over the years. The Joker from Batman, for instance. Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Scar from The Lion King. In these cases, whether intentionally or not, queercoding plants ideas of gender identity into the viewers’ heads. A male supervillain like the Joker is presented as being eccentric, arch and incredibly camp while Batman, the hero, is big and strong and serious and honourable. A manly man. Likewise, Ursula is presented as butch and unfeminine, scheming and malevolent, whereas Ariel is attractive and sweet and innocent. The ideal woman. Queercoded villains have been used to demonise the LGBT community for decades by presenting an ideal, hetronormative image of what a man or woman should be like, battling an antagonist that doesn’t fit in with traditional gender roles. Obviously there’s nothing inherently wrong with having a camp male villain or a distinctly unfeminine female villain, but it’s worth bearing in mind where these ideas originally came from and the impact it could potentially have.

So lets bring this back to Good Omens. The queercoding of Aziraphale and Crowley is obvious and it’s never presented in negative terms. (there’s a moment where Shadwell refers to Aziraphale as a pansy, but considering the man is a complete moron who draws eyes on milk bottles and thinks nipples are the gold standard way of identifying a witch, I think we can safely say he’s not to be taken seriously). In fact their relationship is incredibly sweet and endearing. Except... I can understand why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman weren’t explicit in expressing the characters’ sexuality when the book was first published. It was 1990, both Pratchett and Gaiman were still relatively fresh faces and Western society’s attitudes toward homosexuality weren’t quite as progressive then as they are now. But it’s now 2019. Things have changed. Gay characters are appearing more frequently in books, movies and TV shows, people in general are more accepting of the LGBT community and Gaiman is now a hugely successful author with a lot of influence in the industry. Why not just make the relationship explicit?

Well there are two ways of looking at this. The first is that it really doesn’t need to be explicit. You would never hear a man and a woman talk about how incredibly hetero they are, would you? Actions speak louder than words after all. But when the two characters in question are of the same gender, suddenly the whole thing becomes a massive debate to the point where unless someone comes right out and says they are gay, people simply won’t buy it. Deadpool, tragically, has suffered from this with obnoxious frat boys deliberately glossing over the obvious queer subtext and hijacking the character for their own self-aggrandisement. This really shouldn’t be the case and this whole ‘straight until proven gay’ mindset isn’t the fault of the show. It’s entirely the fault of the viewer. The second involves our last topic of discussion. The Death of the Author. (no pun intended. RIP Pratchett).

Death of the Author refers to a literary essay written by the theorist Roland Barthes in 1967, which argues against critiquing a piece of literature based on authorial intent. Basically, once a book or movie or TV show is released to the general public, any relation to its creator becomes immaterial. The work in question must stand on its own and be judged independently. The intention of the author no longer matters. (I’m simplifying obviously, but that’s basically the gist of it. If you ever get the chance, read the essay yourself. It’s a fascinating read). Gaiman appears to be a firm believer in this philosophy. On his Tumblr account, @neil-gaiman, when asked about the the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley, he often refuses to comment, invoking the Death of the Author mindset. It’s up the reader/viewer to interpret the characters. If you think they’re gay, then they’re gay. If you think they’re just friends, then they’re just friends. Some could call this a bit of a cop out, and you’re entitled to do so, but I understand where Gaiman is coming from. We’ve seen writers like JK Rowling get into trouble for queerbaiting, saying that she always intended for Dumbledore to be gay, but never actually showing any real evidence for it in the text, and Gaiman doesn’t want to fall into the same trap. Plus it demonstrates that Gaiman respects the views and interpretations of his fans, unlike Rowling who responded to criticism of her queerbaiting on Twitter with GIFs of people sticking their fingers in their ears and ‘blocking out the haters.’

In some ways I do feel very sorry for Gaiman. On the one hand he wants to stay true to his and Pratchett’s original vision, but on the other hand he doesn’t want to disappoint the hundreds of fans who do view the characters as being gay. Good Omens has been cited as an extremely positive influence on many queer readers, some even going so far as to say that it was this very book that allowed them to finally accept their identities and come out of the closet. Heartwarming stories like this can be found all over the web and hopefully many more will emerge now that the TV adaptation has been released. If Gaiman were to suddenly turn around in an interview one day and say ‘oh. No. Sorry. Aziraphale and Crowley were always intended to be just friends. You’re all wrong’, it would destroy people who invested so much in this relationship. Likewise, if he explicitly confirmed in an interview that the two characters are definitely gay, people would either accuse him of queerbaiting if the show doesn’t fully live up to their expectations or accuse him of shoving his political opinions down their throats. He can’t win either way really. That being said, I can’t help but respect Gaiman for sticking to his guns. It demonstrates that he’s confident in his skills as a writer and his ability to make his intentions clear in the text, that he respects the ideas and opinions of his readers and fans, and that he also respects the ideas and opinions of the cast and crew of the Good Omens TV show. While Gaiman has refused to confirm one way or the other, others like Michael Sheen or  director Douglas Mackinnon have made their views very clear. Aziraphale and Crowley are in love. That’s their interpretation and they have every right to it.

So do I believe Good Omens is queerbaiting? In my opinion, no. Does that mean I believe it’s faultless? Again, no. If the intention is to depict Aziraphale and Crowley as being lovers, then I think they could have done a bit more. Obviously I’m not suggesting a full blown sex scene or anything like that. Even something as simple as them holding hands or hugging each other would have done. Some physical intimacy of some kind. Because as it stands, Good Omens does share problems with a lot of other TV shows in how they present same sex couples, in that they’re consciously aware that they are presenting to a heterosexual viewer. This is why a relationship between two women is often sexualised and eroticised for the titillation of straight men whereas the relationship between two men can often be quite chaste. Very rarely do you see two men making out or doing anything beyond a quick peck. Good Omens sadly fits into that camp, though just to be clear, I’m not blaming Neil Gaiman or the show for this. I’m merely saying that this is part of a wider systemic issue that needs to be talked about and addressed as the industry moves forward. (Hell, that might as well be be the title of my entire Tumblr profile). Also, whether you believe the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley is platonic or romantic, it does not change the impact this story has had on many LGBT readers nor the fact that the story is about love. It’s important to bear this in mind because while, yes, it is important to have this discussion, we can’t lose sight of the positive message it conveys with regards to building bridges and closing divides between opposing groups.

“And perhaps the recent exertions had had some fallout in the nature of reality because, while they were eating, for the first time ever, a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. No one heard it over the noise of the traffic, but it was there, right enough.”

[johnsspacesuittight]

I saw this post and knew I had to write a fic so here you go my first Kirk and Spock fic

Star Trek TOS

Spock pines for Kirk/kind of more turned into him being jealous of his new lady and because of him being gone for a while and realises some annoying human emotions are going on which leads to a lil (aka big) confession

Things had been different since the Captain’s recent disappearance. He had gone missing for 12 days and 11 hours, and, Spock pretended outwardly he didn’t remember this part, 23 minutes. It was just logical, counting the time when such an important person, it being that the Captain was indeed the Captain, went missing. However humans seemed to think it strange, think it personal, and Spock already got enough of them thinking him strange, so he didn’t mention it more than once.

The Captain had returned of course, alive and- well perhaps not well, but at least alive. As his second officer Spock had caught him as he stumbled with exhaustion, and though tired he had given Spock a thankful smile, a smile that even Spock could recognise he rarely gave just anyone. Though Spock received it on a regular basis. He supposed the Captain considered him a close friend, though Spock wasn’t sure how he would begin to return that understanding.

He had been taken to the med bay and Spock had resisted the need to stay until he was better, knowing he not only had a job to do, but that it was a strangely unnecessary sentiment that was highly illogical. Doctor McCoy was quite able to help regain the Captain’s health, Spock’s presence would do nothing but disturb. Yet he lingered outside the door just a bit longer than was normal.

This behaviour, that had kept entering Spock’s mind, only increased as time went on. It had been there every now and then when it came to the Captain, but rarely had it been disturbing. Now it had become just that, illogical thoughts and urges that to Spock’s comparison only seemed like something human. Something he was not.

In fact it got even worse when the Captain introduced the woman who had finally got him out of the situation. She had originally been part of another star ship, but at the Captain’s request had been transferred to the Enterprise. Spock’s logical side saw why, she was bright and capable and they needed another capable officer on the job. The Captain said they had worked very well together indeed, and that he needed people he knew to trust and could understand how they worked. All very logical reasons, and yet something about it bugged Spock. It made little sense, but as he continuously found her leaving the Captain’s quarters or whispering in his ears, things to which he would just respond with that smile, the one he so very rarely gave others, Spock felt a strange urge to be in her place.

That certainly made no sense, as even though Spock’s inexperience with human emotions kept him from understanding multiple things, his experience with the Captain told him that he was quite enjoying this woman. He often did, the Captain, but always said he had no time for them, as his job and his ship came first. Yet, he seemed to have time for this one, which was very illogical to Spock. And he convinced himself that was why he did not like it, even though parts of him seemed not to care that the Captain had shifted his focus from his job, but in fact that the Captain had shifted his focus from him. To which there was absolutely zero logical explanation. So, Spock did the logical thing, he went through all of his knowledge of human and vulcan behaviour, trying to place where all these thoughts and sentiments came from. Coming to the conclusion that there was indeed no logical or command related reason, and that what he was experiencing was some strange form of the human emotion jealousy.

He didn’t like to admit it, of course, as someone who’s focus remained on Vulcan ideals and ideas, he didn’t ever like to think that he could not reason himself out of his own human side. For it was there, and he knew it, though he rarely acknowledged it. He also knew, that the Captain, Jim, was indeed the only thing that ever made him embrace them, if he had to of course. He didn’t know how to call Jim a friend, or anything regarding sentiment, but he was not ignorant to it being there.

In fact, admitting it, took him several weeks, and when he finally did the next step was to attempt to reason with his own mind. Convincing himself that she was in no way taking his place, he was and would always be first officer, and there was no reason to think Jim’s closeness to her should change any of the things Spock appreciated about his connections to the Captain.

This however, only lead him to understand that this was not the reason for this strange human jealousy, in fact it had nothing to do with his postion of command or their work, it was entirely personal.

Spock had few things he considered personal, mostly because that often required emotions or sentiment, two things he very rarely let be part of his experience. However this time there had been no such choice, for no matter how much he attempted, there was no reason to it. Had it been work related that could be considered a somewhat logical reason for his jealousy, at least from a human perspective, but from a personal stand point? There was absolutely nothing to explain it. Yet, the moment he realized it was indeed personal, he knew why. The most common reason for human jealousy was, indeed, love.

Such a word was unheard of for Spock to even begin to consider. And yet his logical and wise mind saw no other explanation. The Captain had formed a love bond to this woman, and Spock had urges and needs to be in her stead. He wished to take her place, however of course, he knew that logically, there was no such option.

Therefore, Spock let it be, using the very slight Vulcan control he did have, to focus on his job rather than the Captain and his lady friend. He set aside his friendship, or whatever it was, hoping that he might escape this strange emotion that he saw no reason to have. Except he did. Jim was brilliant, quick, brave and kind. He was bold and daring, and it was only logical to see his glory. Very few did not admire him, and yet Spock knew that all these things were just him. Not all people saw Jim the way he did, and perhaps that was good. He wouldn’t be special if everyone loved him. He wouldn’t be the man he was if all saw him as perfect. Well, perfection was not a belief Spock held, and the Captain certainly wasn’t it, but he was indeed special.

Not only that, but he understood and respected Spock in a way few humans did. He only had to look a foot to the left at McCoy who struggled to understand Spock’s callous thoughts and decisions. Spock could only imagine his reaction if he knew now what Spock was thinking. McCoy would point a finger and say ‘hah!’ as Spock had somehow been overtaken by emotions finally. McCoy rarely had ill intent however, and Spock did not blame him, but he put human values highly, as a Doctor, kindness and care was part of his nature. It was his most important ideals, and Spock understood his struggle to see the opposite. Just as Spock often did as well. He didn’t like to admit being wrong or making mistakes, but as anyone, he did. But his belief was firm that emotions often made mistakes bigger and worse, more easily commited. He was proven right by his current struggle with emotions towards Jim, as it was very easily distracting.

He still did not say anything. Having emotions was one thing, admitting it out loud was another. It wasn’t until the new officer, Adler, the Captain’s lady friend had left for a few days by orders from command, that he finally did something. He entered the Captain’s room, without asking and was greeted with Jim changing his shirt. The Captain paused and glanced at him. «What is it Spock?» He asked, putting his new shirt on fully. Which had distracted Spock for just a second. «Am I needed?» He added, as he had gotten no response.

«No Captain, I am actually here for personal reasons.» Spock responded finally, and Jim looked at him with slight intrigue, raising an eyebrow.

«Personal reasons?» He reiterated, surprised at the choice of words. He motioned for Spock to have a seat, rather than stand by the door as he always did, and watched on in utter amazement as Spock actually did. He usually always stood stiffly despite the Captain’s attempts at making him feel more comfortable. Usually standing was how he did feel comfortable, but none of this was in Spock’s comfort zone so he responded not fully by choice to the Captain’s movement.

«I wanted to say, sir, that I missed you.» Despite his very informal acknowledgement, Spock could not help but address his superior properly.

«You missed me?» Jim yet again repeated the wording, his face spreading out into a slightly amused smile. The question also seemed to ask when, which was understandable, as it had been several months since the Captain had been missing. Everyone else seemed already to have forgotten. While Spock still attempted to ignore the 12 days, 11 hours and 23 minutes that were stuck to his mind.

«When you went missing, Captain.» Spock clarified and the Captain nodded, now taking a seat as well, opposite him. It had become clear to him now that this was only the beginning of a potentially long conversation.

«That is, quite good to hear.» He said and Spock tore his eyes away, avoiding the Captain’s gaze as he did not know well how to hold it without his entire exterior melting. «Why tell me now?» He asked, though Spock supposed he knew the answer.

«Sentiments are not exactly, my forté.» Spock responded, and Jim nodded, having now confirmed this was certainly a longer and more complicated conversation than they usually had.

«I see.» He begun. «But you felt it important to tell me despite it?» He asked, and Spock did not correct him on the use of the word ‘felt’. It was accurate, and though his Vulcan pride was getting more and more bruised with every word. His enjoyment of correctness kept him from following usual patterns.

«Yes, Captain.» He said and Jim smiled again, still slightly amused.

«You may call me Jim, I think the conversation calls for it.» He said, putting into words what they had both figured out about the current situation.

«Yes, Jim.» Spock repeated, not unable to hide just the slightest twist of his lip into something that would be considered akin to a smile.

«I assume there’s a reason you waited for Adler’s leave?» Jim then asked and Spock frowned just a slight, not fully understanding how he could already pick that out of the so few words shared. Yet he nodded.

«I wanted to be sure we would not be disturbed.» He said and Jim smiled, still with a very amused expression, and it seemed to Spock he somehow knew exactly what the conversation was about already. Which Spock found to be strange.

«Disturbed? Hmm, I believe I could have asked Miss Adler to leave us alone on any occasion, don’t you think?» Jim said and Spock became aware that he most certainly knew more than he had said with words.

«Well, I-… I needed you alone. And you have rarely been seen without her recently.» Spock said only stating facts, and Jim’s amused smile grew into a grin.

«Do I detect just a slight of jealousy Mr Spock?» He asked and Spock gave him a hard stare, not enjoying this slight mockery on Jim’s part, and yet it caught him off guard, because it was indeed correct. And he did attempt to be correct.

«Well, I- yes.» He said and Jim seemed just a slight taken aback at this direct response. As if being direct was not one of Spock’s best used qualities.

«Really? How long have you been feeling that way?» Jim had turned just a slight more serious, as if Spock’s complete directness had made him realize there might be even more than he was expecting to the conversation.

«Since you returned. I attempted all my Vulcan methods to banish the emotion but I realized for once I had no power to.» Spock said and Jim looked at him intently and then surprised Spock by moving closer, even more so it surprised him somewhat that he did not mind.

«I don’t think you have ever admitted to experiencing an emotion to me.» He said, quite wonderingly, taken with emotion of his own it seemed.

«There is no one else I would ever have been able to do so to either.» Spock said and Jim’s expression changed. It softened further, into that way that Spock had been wishing to be looked at for months. The thing that seemed so foolish, but now that it finally happened changed something detrimental within him and his expression softened as well.

«What are you saying Spock?» Jim asked and did something that Spock could never have expected. He moved his hand, placing it on Spock’s thigh, somewhat protectively and warmly. Spock did not mind this either, though his long gone logical senses told him he should. In fact, he enjoyed it.

«I- I don’t know if I have the words to express it, but the most common reason for jealousy, especially of this kind is-» Jim cut him off.

«Love.» He said. And Spock just nodded. Feeling in some way a release from it. He was there, with Jim, alone and everything had been understood. Every ridiculous human emotion that he had wished gone, and then come to accept. They were all just out in the world now. Jim knew them all.

«Do you love me? Have you been jealous because-… because you wanted something more? Because she was getting more of me?» All the questions came tumbling out of him, all the once Spock knew he could perfectly well answer himself, and yet could not believe to be true.

«Yes.» Spock said. «Yes Jim I- love you.» The last two words were a fight to get out, but once he had he knew he could have repeated them a million times without problem. He had spoken the truth and he never wanted to go back. In some ways he did not care about the fact that emotions weren’t even supposed to be a good thing for him. All of a sudden the experience was, it was so good that it was almost painful. He knew then and there that he loved Jim so much that he didn’t even know where to begin to express it.

Jim’s face was a mix of shock and joy. He was looking at Spock that way that he rarely looked at anyone else, and now he could see not even Adler made his eyes just as sparkly and bright as they were when they looked at Spock. Or maybe that was the light, which made logical sense, but the moment was far from logical, so Spock put that thought aside.

«Well I- I don’t know how I am supposed to respond to that.» Jim said, kind of ripping up the whole thing, as Spock realised he may not have felt the same. Everything was telling him so, but logic had no place here, and Spock then knew nothing about anything.

«I’m sorry, I realize- you and Adler-» Spock begun but Jim waved his hand, shushing him.

«No- no forget about Adler, Spock, anyone with eyes can see that I feel the same.» He started. «I just- I had never thought it could be more than that. I was doomed to a one-sided relationship when I became your friend and I accepted it, and when it became more I- I knew that it could never be that for you so I looked for other things.» He looked at Spock still with those eyes that no one else had, and Spock did the only thing he could figure to do. He moved forward and kissed his Captain. Jim froze, and then he kissed him back, not hesitating even a bit.

When they let go both were a bit flushed, it was sort of strange, because neither of them had ever been able to imagine this scenario, and yet both had wanted it.

«I love you too Spock, and I will definitely need some time to wrap my head around being able to say that.» Jim said, smiling, the smirky one that he always did, but better, more happy. And Spock knew that it had indeed all been there for longer than he understood. But when Spock had started to realise things had become different, he could have never imagined exactly how different.

[halfblood-fiend]

Fictober 2019 - Day 11

From The Fictober 2019 event <3

Prompt 12 : “It’s not always like this”

Fandom : Star Trek: Voyager

Words : 1,267

Warnings : talk about depression

Day 11 - It’s not always like this Vorik x Modern!OC

“I thought I would find you down here.”

I startled a bit at Vorik’s voice and turned to watch him saunter into the observation room I’d been occupying for some time. Long ago, I’d figured out that this was one of the few rooms that wasn’t in use most of the time. It had a long window on the side and tables opposite it, which made the place perfect for gazing unseeingly into the absolute blackness. Almost felt comfortable, really. This place had become a frequent haunt for me if I felt myself being caught up in the downswing of a depressive episode. A state of being I had come to know too often here.

I guess you could call what I was doing “brooding”. By definition.

“You know me too well,” I told him blandly as he sat by my side.

“Humans are creatures of habit,” the Vulcan replied, folding his hands in his lap. “All one must do is see the pattern.”

“Glad I’m so predictable.”

He nodded. “At this moment, so am I.”

Vorik hadn’t picked up on the sarcasm in my words, but what he’d said sort of touched me, so I let it slide. Why was he looking for me? I wanted to ask. But for all my best efforts, I couldn’t seem to make the words form around the question. So I let it drop.

All the stars going by at warp speed just made me dizzy, if anything. My eyes wanted so badly to focus on the pinpricks of light, but they zoomed by so fast that by the time I’d focused, they were gone. It took real effort to see past it all in order to stare glumly into space and think about home. But I managed.

I missed my family and friends so much. I missed my dogs too, which shouldn’t have been surprising, but made me feel guilty anyway. It stung—really stung—to know that even when the Voyager returned to Earth and every other crewmember was reunited with their families, I would still be without mine. While everyone else would be happy and embracing their loved ones, I would be on the outside. Watching, longing, but completely alone. No one would be there to rejoice my return. No one even knew who I was.

Somehow, I’d wound up here in a place that was a far better future than any I could have possibly imagined for myself, but I’d paid the ultimate price for it. Everything I knew was lost to me. There was no home to return to, no loved ones to be glad I was safe. My life may have been opened up into millions of possibilities, but it was also dark and lonely and vast. I had more in common with the Void on the other side of the viewscreen than with the alien sitting next to me.

Sometimes, when I was well enough to stop myself, I wondered why I did this to myself. Why sit and purposefully anguish and wallow? But it usually felt like the right thing to do. Like it was a penance for coming to the future alone. I could sit here for hours and mourn, longing for a way to bring my family here with me to this bright and hopeful future. I deserved to be sad and miserable and remind myself that no amount of hoping would change the truth. That they were unreachable. Dead and gone. Moved on without me.

“Do you miss your family?” I asked in a hoarse voice. I sounded like I’d been crying, but I hadn’t shed a tear the whole time I was in this room. My eyes may have been dry today, but my heart was rent and twisted and jagged.

“You have asked me this before. This is what is upsetting you, then?”

I wanted to be defensive and tell him I wasn’t upset—wistful, longing, melancholy, maybe, but not upset—but my ability to speak had fled me again.

Vorik sighed softly. “I often think of my youngest sister. For the sake of connecting with your emotional state, that could be interpreted as missing her. T’Shara was not yet a teen when I had left Vulcan to serve here. I have missed much of her growth already. Being stranded in the delta quadrant means I shall continue to do so.”

“You’re close to your sister?” I asked, immediately latching on. Immediately thinking of Amber, my own littlest sister, abandoned and alone on twentieth century Earth. Or as the Federation’s historical holovids would lead one to believe: hell.

“Yes and no. The gap in our ages prevents closeness for now, but I am protective of her. She is extremely intelligent, yet has some trouble adhering to Surak’s code of logic. Our parents do not tolerate this. Our eldest sister is too busy for debate and Taurik never cared for philosophy. I was the only one who would listen to her and explain Surak’s meaning and intent with patience. She must come to her own understanding of logic and why it is necessary for our people. I attempted to explain this to our parents numerous times, that the questioning can be natural and would not be a danger if T’Shara’s conclusions were refuted with logic but…”

“But…they don’t understand.”

He sighed again. “I hope she is well.”

“I was usually a mediator for my youngest sister too. Amber’s hot-headed and stubborn and steps on people’s toes all the time, but she was fifteen, and these are regular fifteen-year-old qualities to have. My parents, especially our mom,  assumes that she’s abrasive and ungrateful, but they couldn’t be more wrong. She’s just figuring out who she is. She’s smart and she’s sweet and she’s funny and she laughs so freely that just thinking about it now is gonna make me cry—she’s got the cutest snort and that’s how you can tell she’s really being her. Just so…unabashedly her. She’s such a goof... I just…I wonder who she’ll grow up to be. But I guess I…. I’ll never know…”

“T’Shara would be about fifteen human years as well.”

My vision swam. The stars blurred. “We’re going to miss so much, Vorik. But at least you’ll see T’Shara again—”

My voice broke off in a strangled sob that wouldn’t quite come out completely. I couldn’t quite cry. The burning tears in my eyes wouldn’t quite fall. I couldn’t quite relieve the gnawing ache in my chest.

Because for me, there would never be relief.

Vorik didn’t say anything, no condolences, no platitudes, but he did lean closer into me. The pressure against my side, the warmth of him through our uniforms, was enough. His hands fluttered, looking for a moment like he wanted to take my hand and thought better of it. So I linked my arm under his and rested my hand on the sleeve of his uniform, careful not to invade his space and touch his skin, and leaned my head on his shoulder.

“It’s not always like this,” I murmured. “Most of my family moved away from me long before I found myself here, so I am mostly used to the ache of them being gone. But when days are already bad, it’s just…raw.”

“It is unnecessary for you to explain. I understand what your family meant to you. Though it may be difficult, you needn’t isolate yourself. I am here, should you ever be in need of me.”

Biting my lip, a tear did finally spill over my cheek. “Thank you, Vorik. I’ll try to remember.”

[sailor-cresselia]

Zero One 02: Shot through the heart, and Vulcan’s to blame

He gives wolves a bad name.

…I’m not sorry.

I’m bouncing between the three non-TV-Nihon sub groups right now – OverTime, Rider Time, and Genm Corp. Since all three had their subs available quickly, this’ll make it easier to compare differences. Also, Genm Corp was the only one of the three who bothered subbing the OP when it appeared as an insert in episode 01, so I’ve only seen the one style for it yet.

Zero One 02: START

––––

We open with Izu and Aruto stepping out in front of Hiden Intelligence, where she formally introduces herself as his personal assistant.

He’s still in very justifiable disbelief that he’s been named President. He’s a comedian, for crying out loud! Izu points out that not only was he personally selected by the founder, the point of the HumaGear is to make people smile. That lines up with his own goal of making people smile, so he is well suited for the job.

Aruto: I mean?! TECHNICALLY?!

As they walk further into the building from the lobby, Jun and one of the other members of the board peek out from behind a vase of flowers and a table. He swears that he’ll pull the chair out from under their new chairman.

Shesta stands there, unimpressed.

The security system is pretty cool! At first glance, it appears to be the standard ‘bioscanner and glass pane’ set up that you see in all sorts of media – and then you realize that once a person has been let in? The ‘glass’ door is just a hologram. It’s a holographic door that says STOP on it, and it disappears when  it’s ‘open’. Which raises the question of ‘do we have solid-light holograms’ here. I wouldn’t put it past this season.

Unfortunately for Aruto, he. Uh. Hasn’t been added to the security system just yet. Instead of the circle saying that it’s okay to pass, he just gets a big old X and a buzzer noise.

After several attempts of smacking the scanner, a security HumaGear briskly steps up. He scans Aruto, and greets him as ‘President Hiden Aruto,’ bowing formally. Aruto returns the bow and greeting…

And still can’t get through the gate.

–

Daybreak Town.

Horobi watches a delivery HumaGear on a screen.

…oh. Oh dear.

After my last liveblog, I had a thought that I worked out with some others, that the selection of which HumaGear get hijacked probably isn’t random. That Taro’s smile was geniune when he thought back to the audience, and that he’d reached sentience – he’d hit the evolutionary singularity.

I thought that Horobi and Jin might be specifically using HumaGear who had hit singularity to turn into monsters. They’re not trying to bring on the singularity, they’re weaponizing it.

And Horobi just said that the one he’s watching is approaching it. That satisfied little nod to himself as he hoists up a package… yeah. That sure seems more like Taro than the other HumaGear we’ve seen.

Handing a Progrize Key to Jin, Horobi tells him to go collect the data.

…After Berotha was defeated, they plugged the broken key back into the holder that he’d pulled it from during his expository monologue.

So, maybe… trying to weaponize the mechanical rise, and bring it about en masse? Or something?

–

Back at Hiden, Aruto is ‘exploring’ his new office.

Looks like I was right on the money with my ‘dumb puppy’ comparison, he’s all over the place.

The 3D printing studio is just part of a big mechanical work bench section of the office, down a level from the office section of the office.

It’s also clearly up really high, because one of those tv-drones can be seen at the same level outside.

The workstation can be neatly hidden away, as well, when a wall builds itself back into existence, blocking the whole thing from view and leaving the room more like a normal office.

That’s the point when Izu decides it’s time to go over his schedule. He’s got a morning meeting with some government representatives… right now.

(Aruto has a brief, quiet panic about not being dressed for this – he’s wearing his day-glo sneakers, a formal pair of pants, and a formal suit jacket… and the jacket is on over his hoodie. It barely fits over his hoodie.)

We’re finally formally introduced to our two main members of AIMS; Techinical Advisor Yaiba Yua and Agent Fuwa Isamu.

Apparently, they’re going to be questioning all of Hiden’s personnel. Yua is much more reserved about this, and Isamu-

Okay, wow, if I didn’t hate him just from last episode, I’d hate him already. He slams a hand down on the desk, leaning way into Aruto’s space, ‘warning’ him to be thorough, because his answers could land him in jail.

Come on! He just got here! Aruto has had this job for less than a day, he doesn’t know jack!

–

…Oh, come ON!

STILL NO OPENING?!

–

Delivery HumaGear is doing his job, when a playful voice calls out from on top of the truck. How’d Jin get up there? Who knows! But he’s already calling the deliveryman his friend, as he forcefully places the false driver onto him, saying that he can start by destroying this company.

The deliveryman, wracked with pain and red sparks, mind you, says that HumaGear are supposed to make people smile!

We see from his perspective as Jin crouches in front of him, a progress bar filling as Jin tells him he’s wrong. It’s to make people extinct.

Connection established.

–

Back at Hiden, we see that Aruto has exactly zero idea what’s going on, and that Isamu gives zero shits about acting professional during an interrogation.

Basically, AIMS suspects Hiden Intelligence of covering incidents up. Currently, the specific incident in question is the one at the amusement park yesterday. They’ve clearly gotten the remains of most of the rogue HumaGear, but there wasn’t a trace of the one in charge.

Because he was very thoroughly destroyed, not that anyone but Aruto and Izu know that.

Izu, connecting to the server, states that there are no records of anything matching that description… as phrased by Genmcorp. Going by Ridertime, she says that they can not validate those records. Overtime has her saying that there’s no data to corroborate Yua’s claims.

In any case… something is going on. Hiden is very definitely covering this up, and using Aruto to do it. He’s just following Izu’s ‘lead,’ because he has zero idea what’s going on.

Isamu implies that this isn’t new, that Hiden has covered things up before.

Yua tells Aruto that AIMS has the authority to prosecute HumaGear-based violations.

Not that Aruto actually knows what that sort of thing would be, so he asks Izu, who recites off the good ol’ First Law of Robotics: A HumaGear may not allow a human to come to harm, for any reason.

Isamu – area speciesist – basically threatens Aruto, telling him not to think he can keep this quiet, these HumaGears are killing machines.

Yua, who is a few bullet-shaped microaggressions away from punching her ‘partner’, tells him to cut it out, they’re not here to commit slander.

Being the dumb puppy that he is, Aruto thinks he can break the tension with one of his old stand up routines.

This doesn’t work.

In fact, it looks like it does the opposite of work, and I’m pretty sure that Isamu’s about ready to kill a man with his bare hands.

It’s a little ironic that the giant ‘emergency’ warnings flashing around the room are what probably just saved Aruto’s life. Mind you, they also confuse the heck out of all three humans in the room. Izu, who often looks about two steps away from saying ‘screw the first law’, lets Aruto know that he has a trespasser.

–

Said trespasser is a very-much hijacked deliveryman, tossing people around – human and humagear alike. His transformation into the Kuehne Magear is no less terrifying than the one into Berotha last episode, although it is thankfully over much faster.

Kuehne is based on the Kuehneosuchus, a late Triassic gliding reptile. This is most easily seen in how he has a pair of wing-shaped boomerangs.

A security humagear manages to block said murder-rangs from killing Jun and the other board member, but that wound up redirecting them to the balcony where Aruto and the others were, dividing the party as everyone dodges.

And these blades are dangerous, too. They can cleave right through the display stands, which appear to be made of poured concrete.

As Isamu and Yua fire, I can’t help but notice her saying he’s disobeying orders again – he is not supposed to have the transformation gun right now.

Oh, goody! As an arboreal gliding lizard, Kuehne is able to crawl along walls! Right up until he takes a hit from Isamu’s Shot Riser, which makes enough of an impact that it knocks him back to the ground.

Isamu, pulling out a Progrise Key, says that he’ll transform and scrap it.

Or, he would, if the key would open. He’s a bit distracted by his non-functional transformation trinket as Kuehne launches his boomerangs again, so Yua literally kicks him to the ground to dodge the return path.

I love her.

I love her even more now that I know that she’s the weapons administrator, and that key isn’t going to open without her authorization.

Yua, I love you, please don’t die.

The security humagear are evacuating the remaining civilians, as Izu all but hurls Aruto out of view. “President Aruto, it would be wise of you to do something before anyone dies.” Emphasis mine, but I strongly suspect she would be placing the same if she were allowed to have emotions yet.

“However… please conceal your identity from AIMS.”

Aruto seems really reluctant at first… and then he hears the screaming again, and turns around, his expression level. “Henshin.”

There’s a brief scuffle between Zero One and Kuehne, which moves the fight outside, and Aruto does okay… until his sweep kick is dodged very handily via Kuehne landing on the wall. That sort of jumping ability does tend to put a damper on knocking someone off their feet.

As Aruto’s hit by a few shots from Kuehne, he gets knocked down, and as he gets to his feet, here come Isamu and Yua, guns drawn and aimed at him. Oh, uh, not just aimed at. Isamu’s shooting at him. Aruto’s protests of ‘you’ve got the wrong guy’ are useless, as Kuehne’s disappeared. Zero One proceeds to take off, as well, dodging gunfire and leaping off of walls to get distance.

Aruto has just barely dropped his transformation when the AIMS agents make it to where he wound up. Isamu grabs him by the lapel, shoving him into a wall and ‘asking’ where he’s hiding ‘the yellow one.’

“I’m not hiding him! He went that way!” Aruto points at the fucking sky, and this somehow works, so as the agents move away from him – only a few yards, mind you – Aruto nopes the heck out of there.

Isamu, the Key dangling from his fingers, demands that Yua unlock it.

“Why would I do that for someone as stupidly reckless as you?!” (The only part of that sentence that’s subtext is ‘stupidly,’ everything else is just straight up text.)

Isamu, getting in her face, all but yells that he’s the captain here.

She gives as good as she gets, retorting right back that she’s in charge of the entire arsenal. If she doesn’t think you should be using the super gun, you’re not getting to use the super gun. They split up, to go look for the rogue HumaGear.

–

In the Hiden lobby, Shesta and that same security guard we’ve been seeing assure the small crowd that it was just a security drill, nothing more.

As the relieved crowd disperses, Aruto jogs up, thanking the guard for protecting everyone.

“President Aruto, it is my task to protect the people of this company.”

Izu smiles a little bit, looking slightly away from her dumb puppy of a boss. Most people don’t treat HumaGear on the same level as humans – not quite. But Aruto talks to her like a regular person, and he greeted one of his coworkers at the park by name – Yui, one of the greeters.

Aruto notices the damage to the guards arm, and flashes back to his father – humagear legs revealed, synthetic skin torn away. He pauses, just for a moment, his smile dropping a little, before he turns back to the guard.

“Then, tell me your name! I won’t forget it.”

Implying that people don’t usually bother to remember HumaGear’s names.

“Mamoru. President Korenosuke named me.” The guard – Mamoru – looks a little less stiff at that, a little less pre-programmed.

“I see. We’re basically family then, right?” Aruto pulls out a handkerchief, tying it around Mamoru’s damaged arm. (Oh, for the love of – it’s got those comedy paper fans on it. Aruto, please.) He pats Mamoru on the shoulder. “Get yourself patched up.” He grins as he heads back into the office.

Mamoru looks down at the inexplicable impromptu bandage… and smiles. A real, authentic, smile, not the programmed one.

A distance away, Jin spins a key in his hand, and smiles as well.

–

Isamu interrupts a ‘talk’ between Jun and Aruto, the second of whom has zero idea what’s going on.

He brings Aruto to the roof to talk, because that’s totally a good idea… but it’s nice and private, at least.

He starts going on about how the company hasn’t changed, that it’s still building itself on a foundation of victims. Aruto protests that HumaGears are supposed to make peoples lives better, that they’re what people dreamed of!

“So you’ll just let the nightmare repeat itself?!” Isamu pauses after yelling, and then resumes talking, more calmly this time. “An entire city was destroyed in an accident.”

Ah. There’s why we came up here. It’s to give us a visual. The roof has a wonderful angle of Daybreak Town.

Aruto grows somber at the mention of Daybreak, thinking back to an explosion of blue fire engulfing a school building, and his younger self crying over his fathers broken body.

“But that catastrophe was no accident. The truth was that HumaGears went on a murderous rampage. I was there, that day…”

Holy shit. Isamu was… late middle school, maybe a first year in high school at most, waking up in a blasted, ruined classroom… and it sure looks like the other students in there are dead. Red-eyed humagear – an earlier model, going by the less detailed faces – are crawling at the windows, hurling themselves after him as he runs.

“And Hiden Intelligence covered it all up. They claimed it was an accident!”

Aruto stands, shocked, his eyes wide, before growing serious as Isamu storms up to him, glaring. “I will expose your company, and their sins.”

While Isamu walks off… I’m pretty sure that Aruto’s vowing to do the same.

–

Kuehne reappears, where the press is hounding for answers in front of Hiden, tossing people aside.

Mamoru charges him, trying to tackle him away, before being similarly tossed aside. As he gets up…

No.

No, no, no.

As Mamoru gets up, Jin places a buckle at his waist.

–

AND THEN I HAD TO SPEND 15 MINUTES WAITING FOR MY COMPUTER TO UPDATE.

–

As Mamoru gets up, Jin places a buckle at his waist, saying that he can be one of his friends, too.

Mamoru, on one knee, in pain, tries so, so hard to reject this. “To protect this company…” he clutches at the arm that Aruto had wrapped for him. “That is my task!” He’s not saying this in the scared manner that Taro or the deliveryman, named Okureru, according to KRWiki, did. He’s defiant, and angry, and glaring right up at Jin, even as he gets grabbed by the chin and forced to look directly at him, as the download completes.

–

Yua and a team of AIMS troops ‘corner’ Kuehne, firing on him.

–

As people evacuate, Aruto runs up to Izu.

Slowly, Jin comes up the stairs toward them. When Aruto asks who he is, he says “Me? Hmm… the pioneer of a new world… I guess.”

A security door opens behind him, Mamoru stepping through, his face vacant… and a little bit haunted. None of the fear or loss of control from the other two. He looks like he’s been erased far more than they had.

“Mamoru!? Why did you let him in?”

“It is what I was commanded…” He pulls out a key, and inserts it into his murder belt.

Aruto already recognizes those belts, too.

Mamoru’s transformation into Ekal is terrifying, yes, but he doesn’t scream through it, like the previous two magear did. He’s silent, and since we don’t see as much of it, that is where the terror comes from.

The tragedy comes from how it happens. His uniform burned away… but near the end of the transformation, we see that the handkerchief didn’t disintegrate. It fluttered to the ground. On fire, yes, and definitely not the same size it used to be. But it wasn’t completely destroyed.

Ekal takes his theming from Ekaltadeta, a type of carnivorous marsupial. They can tell it was a carnivore, or an omnivore with a preference for meat, by the “large buzz-saw-shaped cheek-tooth” found in the species fossils. That description of the tooth is a direct quote from Wikipedia.

Aruto grabs Ekal around the waist, calling for Mamoru, to try and wake him up. This isn’t him, so please, snap out of it!

He gets thrown against a pillar for his trouble.

Izu chooses now to speak up. “Once HumaGear code has been modified, it cannot be reverted.” There’s no other option. Aruto has to eliminate him.

“no…”

Ekal, in a robotic monotone, advances. “Humans must be…”

–

“-Eliminated!” Kuehne, growling, finishes the sentence in the loading area where he’s cornered Yua. She backs away to reload her gun, but Kuehne is on top of the shipping container already. She aims her weapon-

And a shot passes right past her ear.

Isamu, stop doing that. I swear, if we lose her to friendly fire of all things…

He stalks up, the belt for his Shot Riser in his off hand, swearing that he will crush all HumaGears.

Yua yells at him to stop, even as he latches the Shot Riser in place, he doesn’t have clearance yet!

“I said I’m going to do it! And I make my own rules!”

Someone needs to knock this asshole down a few pegs.

He pulls out the Progrise key, and as he strains to get it to open, there are momentary flashes of the red-eyed HumaGear attacking, and him running. “The HumaGears are going to pay…”

–

Aruto is flung against a column, again. “HumaGears are the reason I’m here today…”

We flash to when he was a child, with the blue explosion… and see that his father shielded him from it, pushing him to the ground and covering him with his own body.

“A HumaGear protected me.” In the present, he drags himself to his feet. “HumaGears aren’t killing machines!” Izu watches in the background as he puts on the driver and furiously glares. “They’re humanity’s dream!

–

Isamu pulls at his Progrise Key. “HumaGears are a threat, they’re humanities enemy!” He keeps forcing at it. “And I’m going to obliterate every last one of them!”

The Shooting Wolf Progrise Key opens.

Bullet! Authorize!

The belt plays a sound clip of “Kamen Rider” over and over, looping, the background music effect audibly looping with it. And then Shooty McAsshole gets a STUPIDLY COOL TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE.

“Henshin!”

SHOTRISE

He fires the gun, and the bullet looks like it’s a seeker round, by the way it zooms around Kuehne, and then back toward Isamu…

It starts to ‘split apart’ as it returns, and then he pUNCHES THE BULLET IN MIDAIR. It breaks apart and the suit forms. The armored portions are the first to appear, latching onto him, as red circuit lines trace down his body, which presumably turn into his undersuit.

But the best part, especially for me, a Double fan, is seeing his helmet form. The individual pieces start as little disks, before spinning out into the shapes on the helmet. Those same red circuit lights that made the base for his suit also trail up his face, before the helmet segments close in and form the helmet proper.

For those who haven’t seen Double – and you should – that helmet formation is almost the exact same way it happens for Double, Accel, Skull, and Eternal. Literally the only difference is that the helmets in Fuuto form out of… like, fragments? They aren’t distinguishable until they’re actively part of the helmet, basically. And the lines are darker in a Gaia Memory based transformation, instead of glowing, but still.

Kamen Rider Valkyrie had better get an even better transformation than Vulcan is. I refuse to let her be shown up by this asshole.

The elevation increases as the bullet is fired

–

Jump! Authorize!

Aruto, I am begging you to get your mechanical grasshopper under control, because once again, he’s causing even more damage to the surroundings. Also, he is very definitely being teleported down from the satellite – the 3D printing doesn’t seem to go through things, and that grasshopper just crashed in through a skylight.

…Aw, man. We’re not going to get a cool robot wolf or cheetah, are we?

Just one more way that Aruto’s transformation is different from the others. He has the undersuit form first, they have the armor. Zero One has a giant robot, Vulcan has a literal bullet. He has a belt, they have a gun.

Hm.

Zero One charges to battle-

–

-and the shot transitions smoothly to Vulcan doing the same. He and Kuehne are swapping blows in the enclosed spaces between shipping containers, while Yua films it with her RisePhone.

“Fuwa Isamu has become Kamen Rider Vulcan. It’s finally begun…”

…Honey, what do you mean by that?

–

Zero One and Ekal have made it to a parking garage – and. Uh. Okay, so. He knocked Ekal down, and said magear landed near a row of motorcycles.

Remember how Berotha used those cables to reprogram the other HumaGear in the last episode?

Ekal just used that to jumpstart a motorcycle to get away.

And then it gets WEIRDER!

Izu shows up, telling Aruto that his phone can summon his company motorcycle.

And by ‘summon,’ we’re being quite literal here. I think we all assumed that the phone was going to be like the Machin Builder. It’s not. The phone has a bike app, that he has to scan on his belt, same as the Progrise Key.

This is where the ‘Changing to Super Bike, Motorcycle Mode’ voice clip comes from.

Then. We see the satellite – which Genm Corp and Over Time agree is called ‘Zea’, as opposed to ‘Z-A’ like Rider Time had chosen. A section on it rotates, and it is definitely straight up sending the grasshopper down for the transformations. How can I tell that?

Because a panel on the satellite opens up, dropping a giant Risephone to earth.

Regular phone, in a polite female voice: “Please watch your head.”

Aruto, confused: “Eh?”

Ceiling: destroyed

The giant risephone is floating over the rubble – yes, it’s definitely floating in mid-air, I can see it bobbing up and down. Aruto presses the giant bike app icon, and there’s the ‘phone becomes a bike’ aspect.

Aruto just sort of goes with this. His life has already become weird enough in the past day and a half, why not just get on the floating phone-bike-comet?!

Zero One and the Rise Hopper nyoom down the street in hot pursuit.

–

Ekal, meanwhile… seems to be following traffic laws much more closely on his stolen Honda than Aruto is on his company vehicle. Case in point, Zero One just used a car as a ramp to get some air. He got too much air, and drove on the side of a building, shattering the windows, several stories up, before finally going back down to the actual ground.

This show is wild, and I think that insert theme is kicking back in.

Oh, no, maybe it’s just normal fight music. Everything looks like it’s going at a weird speed, because they’re allegedly fighting each other by punching and kicking while driving motorcycles next to each other. And it looks really slow! I. You know what, it gets us some NICE stuff, so whatever. Such as Ekal having extendable fangs that nearly knock Zero One off of his bike, but him hanging on by literally one hand and foot, and pulling himself back upright in time to avoid getting hit directly by an oncoming truck.

Then he does some truly absurd kicks to Ekal’s face… while standing on the bike seat.

Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!

The second kick is the one that knocks Ekal completely off of his respective bike, so Zero One skids to a stop, and goes back to fight, pulling out his Attache Calibur, going after Ekal.

–

The shot of Zero One rushing off screen with his sword transitions directly into Kuehne’s perspective of attacking Vulcan with his own swords. Vulcan blocking a strike and pushing it away transitions directly into Vulcan’s perspective as he shoots.

The cinematography of this show so far is just. Mwa. Beautiful.

There’s some time with Vulcan dodging the boomerang blades, before Kuehne must catch them and leaps down to attack-

–

-transitioning right into Zero One parkouring up and off of a shipping container to kick Ekal.

Wait. A shipping container? There’s. Uh. Your new location has a lot of those. And Vulcan’s already surrounded by them.

And AIMS thinks Zero One is another rogue HumaGear.

Uh-oh.

…Oh.

Oh, my heart. We’re not even getting that conflict yet.

We’re getting the end of the Zero One versus Ekal fight.

Breathing heavily, Aruto pulls his Progrise Key out of his driver. “There’s only one thing that can stop you…” His voice is shaking, he does not want to have to do this. We see a shot of him tying the kercheif around Mamoru’s arm. He looks at the key, and then back at Ekal. “And that’s me!” His voice is breaking, and so is my heart, and I’m pretty sure he’s trying not to cry under that helmet.

The music is dark, dismal.

There’s nothing heroic about this sunset victory.

–

Yikes.

So. Uh. Vulcan’s initial finisher.

He, naturally, activates the progrise key and shoots. That’s as expected. Four over-sized energy bullets come out. That’s as expected, it’s a superhero finisher.

What’s significantly less expected is for said energy shots to then turn into energy wolves, which track down the fleeing Kuehne. And bit onto his limbs. Okay, yes, fine. When the first two have him by the arms.

They pin him against one of the shipping containers as the other two go for his legs, and when I say ‘pin him against’ I am being incredibly literal.

The wolves turn into spikes and literally pin him in place.

This shipping container isn’t even anywhere Vulcan can see. He fires again.

The energy sphere literally burns straight through three consecutive containers before it reaches where Kuehne is pinned and then presumably melted.

I say presumably, because we don’t see any remains. We do see that the fourth container has had a hole melted through, same as the others. Zero One sees this, as well, since he’s right on the other side, and just barely didn’t get hit by the massive ball of energy that was still going.

Vulcan looks at him, gun still raised and shaking slightly with his rage.

A cloud of smoke billows past Zero One, obscuring his escape.

Vulcan stands alone, a full moon hanging low in the sky.

–

The next day, Jun is heading a press conference – or, trying to. Nobody seems to believe that he doesn’t have any comment with regards to any potential HumaGear having gone berserk. Yua and Isamu watch the chaos unfold as they stand along a back wall. Also, Isamu must have screwed up his shooting arm in that fight, because it’s in a sling.

“It’s the truth!”

And just like in the board room, all it takes is a short, sharp phrase from Aruto to silence the room, even as the theme song intensifies in the background.

Hiden Aruto strides forward, in a well-fitted suit, Izu following a step and a half behind him as he takes the stage. She starts a video as he speaks.

It’s Mamoru, and Jin, right before Mamoru was turned into Ekal. From the direction of the camera… this is taken from a feed from Izu herself.

Aruto, at the podium, in front of reporters and government officials, tells them that the true people behind this are the terrorist group Metsuboujinrai.net, that they hack HumaGears and corrupt their programming.

Going by Yua and Isamu’s reactions, they had no idea that anything of the sort was happening. They also know full well that the third person in the video is Aruto – they recognize that hoodie from the same afternoon.

If he was trying to cover this up, why would he film himself being attacked? Why would he film it with one of his own security guards doing the attacking?

He swears that he will prove that the HumaGear are not at fault.

(He doesn’t say this, but… he’s not doing this as a CEO, but as a person. It’s not a corporate desire driving him to prove his companies innocence, it’s because it’s what’s right, and humans and HumaGear alike deserve better than this.)

One of the human reporters asks who he even is.

“Chief Executive Officer and President of Hiden Intelligence, Hiden Aruto.”

Jun looks like he wants to do a murder.

Aruto has come off cool and collected, serious throughout this entire section… and then a HumaGear reporter brings up that it seems unlikely a comedian like him could be a company president.

This was a mistake.

He steps out from behind the podium, looking like he’s going to make a grandiose statement, and… no. No, it’s one of his terrible, nigh-untranslatable jokes. Something about bright futures and shining and whatever. Izu is now his accomplice, helping him out by shining a light from her tablet.

The room is left silent for a completely different reason.

…Oh no. It’s not going to be heroic resolve that wins Isamu over to Aruto’s side. It’s going to be Aruto’s terrible, awful, no-good sense of humor.

Because Isamu wasn’t fighting the urge to punch him in the office.

He was trying not to break out laughing.

This aspect will not end well.

Isamu and Yua leave, him trying to regain his stoicism, as Aruto desperately begs Izu to stop explaining his jokes.

––––

Zero one zero one zero one zero one zero one I DON’T HAVE A GOOD END COMMENT

UH.

Okay, so. The special effects in this show. The cinematography. They’re SO GOOD.

I acknowledge that Yua’s going to have a very hard time getting a better transformation into Valkyrie than Isamu has into Vulcan, but by gaim, I need her to beat him out.

The cuts between shots tying into each other during the fights was just. Ugh. Yes. It’s beautiful.

The only problem I have right now, that I’m willing to get into, anyway… where are our opening credits?! Are we going to have to wait until episode four for them?! Because episode three is where we’re finally getting Valkyrie, so they might just be waiting until we have our three main riders. Might.

As for the problem that I’m not willing to get into just yet… I know that I didn’t mention, during the press conference, that there’s a shot of… a new Mamoru. I don’t want to get into the topic of “can you ‘recreate’ an AI” at the moment. I’m not good at dealing with things like the Ship of Theseus Paradox in the first place, and since it looks like we’re going to be getting more into the ‘do HumaGear have hearts’ next episode, I’d like to at minimum wait until then.

Until next week!

Zero one zero one zero one zero one- PLEASE JUST GIVE US OUR PROPER OPENING SEQUENCE ALREADY I BEG YOU.

(Takahashi-san, please. Please don’t start off doing the thing from Ex-Aid, where Excite wound up being an ending theme for a good third of the season. Please.)

[beatrice-otter]

That Tender Light

Title: That Tender Light

Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series

Relationships: Spock/Nyota Uhura (TOS)

Written for: LittleRaven in Star Trek Holidays 2019

Betaed by: phnelt

Word count: 11,497 words

Rating: teen

Summary: Spock and Nyota are colleagues and friends, nothing more. But now that Spock's bond with T'Pring has been broken, he can't help noticing Nyota in new ways.

On AO3. On Dreamwidth. On ff.net

Nyota was sitting at her desk playing games on her PADD while she waited for Christine. They'd been on opposite schedules for a couple of weeks and hadn't gotten a chance to talk. But now they were on the same shift again, so they could get together for tea and games, and given the rumors flying around the ship, Nyota wanted to check in to see that Christine was alright.

Half the rumors painted Spock as some sort of cave-man sexist pig throwing a temper tantrum. Half of them painted Christine as some sort of sex-crazed nymphomaniac. All of them had Christine as the subject of a brutal dressing-down.

None of it made any sense. Spock was unfailingly courteous and respectful in the best sense, and, like Captain Kirk, never failed to support the female officers and crew under his command when the situation called for it. Nor was he prone to viciousness of any kind. Sardonic was as bad as he got. Christine was a professional and would never sexually harass anyone, but especially not a patient.

And none of that even took into account what came after, with Spock countermanding the Admiralty's orders, the back-and-forth to Vulcan or not, Spock having a wife no one knew about (with poor Christine being right there when the surprise was sprung, which hadn't exactly quieted the rumors down any), and then the captain coming back to the ship unconscious. From Vulcan, of all places! One of the safest planets in the Federation! Nyota was confused and upset, and she didn't like either feeling.

The door chime rang. "Enter!" Nyota said.

It was Christine, impeccably groomed and styled as always, but still visibly worn.

"Christine!" Nyota said, tossing her PADD aside. She got up and hugged her friend. "How are you holding up?"

"Oh, please, Nyota, not you too," Christine said with a groan, sinking into one of the chairs. She buried her face in her hands. "Spock was ill and not himself, and anything else is bound up in patient confidentiality."

Nyota took the other chair across from her friend. Christine was so obviously disturbed by the whole thing that that couldn't be the whole story even without considering the rumors. "Must have been some illness," she observed carefully.

Christine snorted. "You don't even know the half of it, and that's all I'm going to say. But I can tell you that if Vulcan actually gave Starfleet Medical details on certain aspects of Vulcan biology, along with the cultural issues surrounding them, this whole mess would have been handled quite differently. And that's all I'm going to say. Frankly, this whole week has been hellish and I don't want to think about it one minute longer."

"All right," Nyota said quietly, taking her curiosity and locking it away for now. She wouldn't want to challenge Christine's professional ethics, and in any case, supporting her friend was more important than Nyota's questions getting answered. "What are you up for tonight? Game? Movie? Do you want distraction or just relaxation?"

Two days later, Spock asked her if she would like to resume their weekly jam sessions. He'd skipped the last two without notifying her; looking back, Nyota wondered if that missed session had been the first sign something was wrong.

She had to think about it; she'd always enjoyed playing with Spock, he was the only musician on the ship who could really keep up with her. And she considered him a friend (although, given Vulcan emotional reticence, she had no idea whether he considered her a friend). But that had been before he'd said … whatever he'd said to Christine. Before she'd been so forcefully reminded that he was alien, and that there was a lot about Vulcans that nobody knew because Vulcans just didn't talk about themselves.

Nyota got along just fine with people of many different races; you had to, as a communications officer. But she didn't like how he'd treated Christine, and she didn't like realizing she understood him less well than she'd believed she did. They'd never been close, but they'd been comfortable in each others' presence, and Nyota was decidedly uncomfortable now.

In the end, she went; whatever had happened between him and Christine, he'd been ill at the time and Christine didn't seem to be holding a grudge. If Christine wasn't, then it would be unreasonable of Nyota to do so when she didn't even know what had happened. And it was in one of the private gathering spaces on the rec deck, which was neutral territory if anything was.

Besides, the underlying problem was that Nyota had thought she'd understood Spock, and realized she was wrong, and a lack of understanding wasn't a problem that could be solved by avoidance.

"I apologize for missing our last two sessions without notifying you," Spock said as he tuned his lyre and she soaked the reed of her algaita.

"Apology accepted, Mister Spock," Nyota said. "I understand you weren't yourself." That she was not holding against him. The inconvenience was minor, and it was likely a symptom of his illness. It didn't make her any more comfortable about the rest of the situation, but she appreciated the courtesy.

"I was not," Spock said briefly. Was she imagining things, or was he uncomfortable? Sometimes Spock was surprisingly easy to read, for a Vulcan; sometimes he was perfectly opaque.

"Can I ask if you've apologized to Christine?"

That stopped him. His head shot up and he frowned slightly. "What should I be apologizing for?"

"What should you be apologizing for?" Nyota was incensed. "I don't know what happened because the rumor mill has gone crazy and she won't tell me because of confidentiality issues—although how you can claim confidentiality when it was in a public corridor with multiple crew members walking past is beyond me—but you tore a bloody strip off of her in public, and started a lot of very nasty rumors about both you and her, and you're the first officer and you've been mostly off duty since then so you may not have gotten any grief for it yet, but she has had no such protection."

He was very nearly green. "I did not—there are a number of substantial gaps in my memory of the last week. And there were occasional hallucinations and a number of very odd and lifelike dreams. I do not remember any such exchange, but that means little; and I cannot give you any idea of what my mental state was at that particular moment."

"Then why weren't you in sickbay?" Nyota demanded. "You were even still on the duty roster at that point, and if what you say is true you were certainly not competent to be giving orders for lunch, much less anything else."

"Unfortunately," Spock said, "when one's mind is imbalanced, rational judgment is often an early casualty. By the time the symptoms were undeniable, I was not capable of formulating a logical response to them." He hesitated. "May I ask what the rumors are?"

Nyota summarized them briefly for him, not going into the gory details but giving him the broad strokes of the main rumors.

"I see," he said, when she had finished. His shoulders were drooping, and he would not meet her eyes. His hands were clasped tightly in his lap. She had rarely seen him this discomposed. "Yes. I shall have to apologize. The altercation, whatever it was, was undoubtedly my fault, as was the public nature of it." He looked troubled, and slightly folded in on himself, and Nyota felt sorry for him. The whole thing must have been a nightmare—possibly literally.

"But you are better now?" Nyota said. "And Doctor McCoy knows what he needs to know should it happen again?" She was dying to know the whole story, but it wasn't her business as long as it didn't interfere with the running of the ship.

"Correct on both counts," Spock said, "although the chances of it recurring during the rest of Enterprise's five-year mission are miniscule."

"All right then," Nyota said, reassured that things would return to normal between them. She checked to see if her reed was ready. "Since the last time we met, I finished transcribing the next duet in the sequence into European musical notation, would you like to try it?"

"Certainly," Spock said, sitting up straighter so that he was a model of Vulcan stoicism. Nyota tucked her curiosity away and turned her attention to the music.

Spock took his time putting his lyre back in its case, so that Uhura left the practice room before him. He very carefully and deliberately did not watch her go, focusing instead on asserting his biophysical control so that he could stand and walk back to his quarters with no outward sign of his arousal.

He had always known that Uhura was a beautiful woman; that was obvious to anyone with eyes. But he'd never reacted so viscerally to her or any woman before, save T'Pring at the wedding-that-was-not.

Her hands as she'd trilled! The dance of her fingers over the instrument! So precise, so graceful! He had not been able to tear his eyes away, and felt ashamed at how he had gawked at her. She, of course, had not noticed; hands were not generally a major part of human visual erotic stimulation, and Vulcans certainly did not spread the details of their own sexuality around. Spock could not quite decide whether it was better that she had been unaware of his gaze (thus sparing him embarrassment) or if would have been better had she had known (thus being able to decide whether or not she wanted to be so gazed at).

Spock walked quickly to his quarters and took out the medical tricorder Doctor McCoy had given him for self-monitoring. His endocrine system was within normal tolerances, and none of the secondary symptoms of Pon Farr were showing. He was merely aroused.

He should have expected something like this. Vulcans matured differently than humans did, with two puberties, one in adolescence and the other at first Pon Farr. He was now fully adult, not subadult, and sexual responses were stronger in this stage of life. Moreover, he was no longer married; his bond with T'Pring had ever been tenuous, but it had curbed and absorbed some of what little sexual drive he had had as a subadult. Now, he needed a new mate, and every fiber of his body and brain knew it.

Nyota Uhura was beautiful, intelligent, competent, compassionate, and musical, and he respected her a great deal. Moreover, she was the woman he spent the most time with both in public and in private. It was only natural that he should find her alluring. If she were Vulcan, and not his subordinate, she would have been very nearly the perfect woman for him.

Alas, even if he wished to have a human mate (and after T'Pring, the idea had a certain appeal regardless of Nyo—of Uhura's—personal attractions), she was still his subordinate, and the regulations concerning such relationships were stringent, for very good reason.

This would require a great deal of meditation.

Nyota was cursing Nomad and going through all the drawers in her cabin, trying to learn as much about herself as she could, when the door chime sounded.

"Come," she said, walking from the bedchamber into the living room/office.

It was the ship's first officer, Commander Spock. The only time she could remember meeting him was when he administered the professional tests so that she could be re-certified as an officer. He had been somber, but without the hesitation or pity that marked virtually all of her interactions these days, and pronounced her 'Remarkably proficient as always, Lieutenant.'

She didn't know if he was a friend. But his presence had been easier to bear than all the friends who stopped in to hover awkwardly and tried to bond over reminiscences of things that were forever lost to her.

"Lieutenant Uhura," Spock said. "How are you settling in?" He was tall, the impression enhanced by his perfect posture. His face showed no emotion, but he didn't feel cold, merely still. He was very attractive, but somewhat intimidating. He entered her room with a catlike grace she couldn't help appreciating.

"Some moments better than others, Commander," she said. "Re-learning the academics is—well, not easy, but in some ways it was more of a refresher course than anything else. But anything personal—it feels like I'm a ghost in my own life. Some things I can piece together on my own from my records and the ship's log and conversations I've had since Nomad wiped my brain; other things, I really can't."

"I would be happy to help in any way I can," the Commander said. He had a nice voice, she noted, and wondered if he sang. "We regularly gathered to play music together, which you called our 'jam sessions.'"

"Ah!" Nyota said, brightening. "Then you can definitely help." She went to her bedroom and took out an instrument case. "What is this? It's obviously a double reed instrument of some sort, and it's not an oboe or one of the instruments in an Earth orchestra, and I haven't had time to dig through the computer's music database and figure out what it is."

"That is an algaita, an instrument from West Africa, especially prevalent among the Hausa and Kanuri peoples. You brought it because of all the African instruments you play, it was the smallest and thus easiest to fit in your mass allowance, thus serving double duty as a reminder of home and a musical instrument."

"But I'm not a Hausa, or Kanuri, am I?" Nyota said, frowning. "My file says I'm from Kenya in East Africa, part Kikuyu and part Luhya." And, judging from the items in her quarters, very proud of her heritage … which she no longer remembered anything about. Her insides twisted at another reminder of all that she had lost, and she carefully focused on keeping her breathing steady. She'd cried enough over her state, in the last few days; she was tired of feeling sorry for herself.

"That is true," said Spock, and she turned her attention back to him. "You never told me the story of how you came to learn that particular instrument."

"What other instruments do I play?" Nyota asked. Focusing on concrete things she could re-learn was much better than wallowing in grief.

"Your primary instrument is your voice," Spock said. "As for other instruments, you are competent on a wide variety of Terran stringed instruments, both African and other; most recently, I had been teaching you the Vulcan Lyre. You are apparently accomplished on the marimba, although I have never had the pleasure of hearing you play, for the Enterprise does not have one, nor any xylophones or other similar instrument."

"That's … a lot," Nyota said, dismayed. There was still so much to learn. Would she ever be back to what she had been?

"As with your hand-to-hand combat re-training and the operation of your station, muscle memory should make it easier to re-learn than it was to learn in the first place," Spock said.

"Yeah," Nyota said with a sigh. Well, start with the ones she had available on Enterprise, and the rest she could choose to re-learn—or not—at some later time when she had them available. She shook her head. "I'm sorry, where are my manners. Please, sit," she said, gesturing at one of the two chairs in the living room. "Would you like something to drink? I've got water and tea and some dehydrated drink mixes of various kinds."

"Tea would be appreciated," Spock said, taking the offered chair. He was easy on the eyes, and enjoyable to watch move, and she indulged in that for a second before getting out the tea caddy. She'd been through enough she deserved a bit of harmless pleasure.

Nyota let him choose what type of tea he wanted, and set the "hot" tap in the bathroom sink to the correct temperature for that type of tea. (Thankfully, it was labelled on the package, so she didn't have to look it up.)

"Well, Mister Spock, here you are," Nyota said when the tea was ready. She handed him one mug and sat down with her own, blowing on it to cool it. "I'm sorry, I don't know if there are any cultural things about hospitality I should be doing."

Spock tilted his head. "I cannot speak to your cultural practices, as I have never socialized with you in your quarters before. Were we on Vulcan, in a formal setting, the etiquette for serving refreshments is quite intricate. But we are not on Vulcan, we are not in a formal setting, and under the circumstances you have many other more important things to learn."

Nyota groaned. "I know. It's all so overwhelming and there is so much that I'll never get back. I want to take a break from thinking about it, and yet there's really nothing else I can think about." In a way, that first day or so had been the easy part. Everything had been so confusing, but she hadn't had any idea of just how much she needed to re-learn.

"As you know, I have been consulting with Doctor McCoy about your condition," Spock said.

"Yes," Nyota said, nodding. "Because Doctor McCoy knows the neurology, but if he were able to find a way of fixing my brain, he'd need some sort of specialized equipment and he's 'a doctor, dammit, not an engineer.'" She was quite proud of her mimicry of Doctor McCoy's irascible tone of voice.

"As you know, the chances are negligible that we shall find a technological solution at this point," Spock said. "However, from what scans have been able to determine, the majority of your memories are still there; Nomad did not erase the entire contents of your brain, merely severed the linkages necessary to access them."

"Yes, I know," Nyota said, a little irritated. "I have been paying attention to my own medical condition, Mister Spock."

"Of course," Spock said. "But while it is impossible at this time to build a device sensitive enough to physically rebuild those linkages, it has recently occurred to me that a sufficiently gifted and trained telepath might be able to do so."

"Really?" Nyota asked, feeling her heart begin to pound. "Where's the nearest telepath?"

Spock twitched, a little. "Vulcans are touch telepaths, however—"

"When can you do it?" she demanded. "Now?"

"No," Spock said. "I am not a trained healer. The nearest such is on Vulcan, a two week journey from here by shuttle."

"Shuttle?" Nyota sagged. "I'd have to leave Enterprise?" She had only a little over a week's worth of memories in her entire life, at least memories that she could access at the moment. The majority of that time, she'd been in sickbay. She had no memories of any place other than this ship. Something in her gut twisted at the thought.

"Possibly," Spock said. "I have not yet discussed this possible course of treatment with Doctor McCoy, and I would need to contact experts on Vulcan to make arrangements. But I wished for your consent before anything was done. Many humans would have qualms about allowing an alien telepath such intimate access to their mind; in order to work, the telepathic healer would have to have access to even the most personal of your thoughts and memories."

"Mister Spock, if it would get my memories back, I'd agree to have my memories broadcast across the quadrant!"

"Fortunately, that will not be necessary," Spock said, raising an eyebrow. "Very well. I will begin making arrangements."

Spock, Uhura, and Doctor McCoy had gathered in the Doctor's office to consult with a Vulcan healer over subspace. Spock was anxious to hear the verdict, for he very much hoped that the lieutenant's brain might be healed. It was more than the compassion he might feel for any sentient so injured, and more than the concern of a superior for one under his command. Uhura had handled her situation with a grace and courage and tenacity that Spock deeply admired. It spoke to the strength of her character, and his admiration for her had only increased.

He did not have long to dwell on this, however, as Healer T'Vyr was admirably prompt, and once the call had connected, wasted little time on pleasantries before sharing her conclusions. "While there is only a 29.4% chance of complete memory re-acquisition, your hypothesis is probably correct that a majority of the still-extant memories could be made accessible," Healer T'Vyr said over subspace.

"That's wonderful!" Uhura said. Indeed it was; Spock had to exert some control to keep his relief from showing.

"Indeed," T'Vyr said. "However, there remains a significant problem: no Vulcan mind-healer I have contacted has any experience with Human neural architecture. None have ever even mind-melded with a Human. Ideally, the healer would have melded with Lieutenant Uhura prior to the Nomad's attack, but failing that, they would need to have melded with multiple humans prior to the meld with the Lieutenant, so that they might know what a healthy human mind feels like."

"Where are we gonna find telepathic healers with that much experience, if there aren't any Vulcans?" Doctor McCoy asked. "Are there other species in the Federation with telepathic healers?"

"Possibly," Healer T'Vyr said. "However, there may be a simpler solution. This will require delicacy, but if Human brains are anything like Vulcan brains, the telepath will not be the one performing the re-association; the Lieutenant will be. Vulcan brains, and indeed those of most sapient species, make such connections easily so that memories may be formed in the first place."

"That's true of Human brains, too, ma'am," Doctor McCoy said. "Unless there's trauma of some sort involved."

Spock was filled with a sense of foreboding that was most illogical. He could predict the solution the healer was about to suggest, and it would be efficient and logical. While it would require him to reveal certain personal issues to the lieutenant, his privacy was not more important than her health.

"Spock, having studied your school records, I know that you melded with two humans over the course of your telepathic training, your mother and your foster-sister," Healer T'Vyr said. "Your instructors note that you have a delicate telepathic touch, and your instructor in telepathic ethics gave you a satisfactory report."

"I am not a healer," Spock noted.

"You may still be more qualified to help the Lieutenant than any Vulcan with healer training," T'Vyr said, "provided the Lieutenant is comfortable with accepting your help. In any case, as long as you do not try and force any connections, there should be no harm in trying. If you do not succeed, there would be nothing to stop the Lieutenant from travelling to Vulcan and being seen by a healer here. Or finding telepathic mind-healers elsewhere in the Federation."

"Well, that sounds like something we need to discuss on our end," Doctor McCoy said. "Thank you for your help. Lieutenant, you have any more questions?"

"I thought you didn't have any healers who had melded with humans on Vulcan," Uhura said. "Yet you still think I should come if Spock can't do it?"

"Lack of experience with Human brains is a solvable issue," T'Vyr said. "Although there are not many Humans on Vulcan, there are some, and the chances are very good that we would be able to find several who were willing to meld with your Healer to give them experience. It is not, however, ideal; mind-melds are, by their very nature, extremely intimate, and it is an enormous thing to ask of someone, to meld with a stranger, when they themselves have no medical or other need."

"I see," Uhura said.

There were no further questions, and so the communication was ended.

"Well, Spock, why didn't you say you could do it in the first place?" McCoy said.

"I am not a healer," Spock said. "If there were some sort of time pressure, and we could not wait to get Uhura to Vulcan or a healer here, then I would have volunteered."

"But—"

"If an away-team member had an injury requiring surgery," Spock said, "it would be appropriate for me to perform any emergency first-aid necessary, but not to perform the surgery myself, unless the landing party was cut off from the ship and the crew member would die without an immediate operation. The brain is a very delicate organ. Non-healers are taught to communicate through melds and regulate our own telepathy, not make adjustments in other peoples' minds."

"Point taken, Spock," McCoy said, crossing his arms. "But the Healer thinks you'd be capable, and I agree with her reasoning. What do you say, Nyota? Want to give Spock's magic fingers a try?"

Uhura frowned, looking him up and down. "Yes," she said, "but I think the Commander has reservations?"

Spock nodded. "As the situation is not time-critical, some discussion of the issues involved is necessary."

"Of course," McCoy said. "You can use my office, I'll be in the general sickbay."

As soon as the door closed behind him, Uhura turned to him with a frown. "Commander Spock, would you be okay with melding with me? If it's so intimate?"

"Under the circumstances, the intimacy would largely be on your side," Spock pointed out. "There would undoubtedly be some sharing on my part, as I do not have a healer's training in clinical shields. However, I would have to go through every memory of yours that I could find and present it to you so that your mind could make the appropriate connections. You would have no secrets from me, quite literally."

"That would be true of any telepath I saw, though, whether you or a healer on Vulcan," Uhura pointed out. She got up and began to pace. "The difference is, I know you, and I'm in comfortable surroundings here. My other option is travel to a place I've never been, trusting strangers with the secrets locked inside my skull that even I don't know about."

"The benefit to strangers doing this would be that you would never have to face anyone with that intimate knowledge of you again," Spock pointed out. "If I did it, and discovered things about you that you would rather I not know, you would have to see me every day, unless you transferred off of the Enterprise."

"Do you think I have any secrets that embarrassing?" Uhura asked, pausing.

"Unknown," Spock said. "You have always seemed to me to be a remarkably transparent individual, but you are also quite competent at undercover missions and any deception required professionally. And, obviously, you did not confide in me if you had any secrets you did not want me to know."

"Obviously," Uhura said with a snort, resuming her pacing. "You seem reluctant. It's your choice, Mister Spock, but I'd rather have you; I don't want to leave Enterprise and put myself in the hands of strangers. And then there's all the other people who'd have to have melds to give the healers experience, if I go that route, it's not any fairer to expect that of them than it is for me to expect it of you, if you would find it unpleasant."

"On the contrary, I suspect I would find it a pleasant experience," Spock said. "That is why I hesitate."

She stopped again and frowned at him. "I don't understand, Mister Spock, why would finding it nice be a problem?"

Spock gathered his courage. He would not have chosen telling her this way; might never have chosen to inform her of his feelings. Hours of meditation in the time since his … divorce … had been insufficient to settle within himself what his long-term personal goals should be, and until and unless he had decided to pursue a relationship with her it would be unprofessional to burden her with the knowledge of his affections. But there was no help for it. "I have recently discovered myself attracted to you, Ms. Uhura," he said. "Not merely to your body, but to your intelligence and quick-wittedness and personality, as well. I had not said anything yet because it was new, and I recently experienced a major life transition and wished to reach a state of personal equilibrium before making any large changes. In addition, given our respective ranks and positions in the ship's hierarchy, any relationship between us would require a great deal of care."

Uhura blinked several times, opening and closing her mouth before speaking. He studied her, and she returned the attention in kind. He could not trust himself to discern her reaction to his confession, but he hoped she was not offended. She did not seem to be.

"That's flattering, Mister Spock," she said at last, "but I don't know if I—"

"I am not asking for any reciprocity at this time, or even if such reciprocity might be possible in the future," Spock said. "If nothing else, your own mental state is such that you need time to recover and learn to stand on your own before making any serious relationship changes of your own. However, you needed to know before consenting to any mind-meld between us."

"Because I might find out during the meld?"

"Because if I wished to, I could almost certainly alter whatever feelings towards me you possess during the meld, and you would have no way of preventing it," Spock explained. "If nothing else, I could alter or create memories for you that would make you more disposed to accept my attentions, or simply prevent any memories critical of me from being remembered. I would never do any of those things because they would be an absolute violation of every ethical and moral standard, but I have the power to do them if I chose, and you have only my word and a week's acquaintance with me to base any decisions on."

"Oh," Uhura said, eyes wide. She swallowed. "But any telepath could do that, yes?"

"Yes," Spock said. "But a telepath who did not previously know you would have less motivation for such a crime, and tampering would be immediately obvious if, for example, you declared your undying love for someone you had only just met and wished to transfer to Space Central on Vulcan."

"Whereas you and I have served together for almost two years," Uhura said, thinking it through.

"And you have been known to flirt with me," Spock said. "As a sort of game, I believe, but an observer might not know that."

"And there's no one else here to double-check your work," Uhura said. Her body language was more closed off than it had been even thirty seconds earlier, and it grieved him to see, but it was better that she understand fully, and make an informed decision.

"Correct," Spock said. "I would never alter your thinking or your memories for my own benefit without your prior consent, but you have only my word for that. I can tell you that I would probably find exploring your mind to be a pleasurable experience, for I greatly admire you as a person and as an officer." He set aside his embarrassment to deal with later; right now, Uhura's future and mental health were the primary considerations.

Uhura made a face. "Would that be … an erotic sort of pleasure?" she asked hesitantly.

"Not in the physically arousing sense," Spock said, "although Vulcan notions of the erotic are different. I assure you, your memories would not become part of any fantasy life on my part."

"But, again, I would have only your word for that," Uhura said.

"Correct," Spock said. "I hope you understand why it is important that you understand fully the range of possibilities before consenting to any meld between us."

"Or between myself and any healer on Vulcan." Uhura closed her eyes and shook her head. "Can I talk with someone about this?"

Spock ignored his initial wish to deny her so that his private feelings might remain so. It was a logical question; since she had so little experience of his character to draw on, consulting with others who knew him better was the only way to get enough information to base a decision on. "If they understand that it is a private matter not to be gossiped about. Doctor McCoy would probably have a valuable perspective." Also, he understood the importance of patient confidentiality and would probably not tease Spock excessively about feelings he learned of in such circumstances.

"What about Christine?" Uhura asked. "She's been such a help since I lost my memory, and I know we were friends before Nomad's attack."

Spock swallowed. "Nurse Chapel would be acceptable," he said slowly, "and given her position as a nurse she has certainly seen me at my worst, in circumstances few others have. However, I believe she has an unrequited crush on me. She is a professional, and would not let it color any advice she gave you, but—"

"—but she might be hurt to know you were attracted to me and not her," Uhura said with a nod. "All right, I'll think about it and let you know."

Spock bowed in acknowledgment.

"You and Spock have a nice chat?" Doctor McCoy asked after Commander Spock had left.

"It was … revealing," Nyota said wryly. Flattering—she doubted he was the type to fall in love lightly, or based on superficial things, so to know he was attracted to her was a compliment both to who she was now and who she had been before the memory wipe. How she felt about him was a question she simply didn't have the energy to think about right now. Not while she had such a momentous decision to make.

"And? When are you going to do it?"

"You're so sure we're going to meld," Nyota said.

Doctor McCoy shrugged. "You heard Healer T'Vyr, he's the closest thing to an expert there is, and he'd make sure the job was done right. If you're not comfortable with him for some reason, you can go to Vulcan, of course, but I don't see why you'd spend that much time in a shuttle craft just to have a stranger poking at your brain."

"And I could trust him?"

"Yes," McCoy said without hesitation. "Absolutely. He drives me batty sometimes—and I do my best to return the favor—but his ethics are rock solid."

"Even when there's a lot of temptation?" Nyota asked. She was pretty sure she knew the answer.

"Yes," McCoy said. "That's when he tends to get the persnicketiest about things. Mind if I ask what exactly is bothering you? It'd help me to answer any specific questions you might have."

"He's attracted to me," Nyota said. "And … fairly deeply, if I was reading him right." His earnestness when he talked about all the things he saw in her, and the depth of his disquiet with confessing his feelings … no, this was no passing fancy.

"Spock's in love with you?" McCoy said with a splutter, standing up straighter.

"He didn't say he was in love with me," Nyota said. His surprise confirmed that Spock's affections weren't lightly or easily given. "He said he was attracted to me."

"Given how strictly he controls his emotions, it would have to be a pretty strong 'attraction' to be worth mentioning," McCoy said. "Why'd he tell you?"

"He wanted me to know because he wanted me to know what I was agreeing to, and tried to scare me off by pointing out that he could rearrange my mind to make me love him back." Nyota paused and thought for a few seconds. "Of course, if he were planning on doing something like that, he wouldn't have warned me ahead of time."

"That's Spock all over, though," McCoy said. "Making sure everything is done the right way, making sure you know exactly what you're getting into. Well, I can see why you'd want to ask about things, but I'd sooner believe he could fly without antigrav boots than that he'd take advantage of anyone telepathically like that. Still, if you'd rather go to Vulcan and have someone who's not in love with you rummaging around in your brain, I'll make the arrangements."

Nyota sighed. "I don't know. The idea of what he could do is frightening, but then, any telepath could do that. And this way I wouldn't have to leave Enterprise and have a stranger rummaging around in my mind."

She thought back to his confession that he would probably find pleasure in melding with her. She didn't begrudge him that; he was not the type to be creepy about it, and better that he liked it than imposing something he found distasteful. "I think I want Mister Spock to do it," she decided.

"You can have as much time to think about it as you want," Doctor McCoy said.

"More time won't change the options," Nyota pointed out. "I don't have enough experience to make judgments on how trustworthy any telepath is. You say he's trustworthy; well, I believe you. And I like him, what I've seen of him. And I am tired of wondering who I was before and what I'm missing now."

"Fair enough," McCoy said.

The meld was a success. When it was over, Spock left Uhura in McCoy's capable hands and retreated back to his cabin to meditate. He was in great need of it.

A deeper knowledge of Uhura's mind had only proven how fascinating a woman she was. His baser instincts were tempting him to dwell on what it might be like to have her in his mind always, but he had given her his word that he would not use what he had learned about her in the meld to fantasize about, and he intended to keep that word.

Still, he now knew first-hand that any bond with her would be completely different from that which he had shared with T'Pring, and only partially because she was human and T'Pring was Vulcan. T'Pring had isolated herself from him, responding in the most superficial way possible, and that only when ignoring him was not possible. Spock had responded in kind. But Uhura had welcomed him, in the meld, and he did not think merely because she desired his help. He doubted she would shut him out.

Of course, he acknowledged, the same might be said for any Vulcan woman who agreed to marry him. T'Pring had never desired to be his bondmate; it had been chosen for them, and her parents should have seen her reaction and found someone else for her. If he married now, it would be to a woman who had chosen him, and if T'Pau offered a potential match with a woman who was not compatible with him, it would be simple to decline. It was illogical to believe that because Uhura was the first eligible woman he had melded with who did not find his mental touch a burden, that she was the only such woman in existence.

It had been only a short time since T'Pring rejected him. Long-established research in both Vulcan and Human psychology clearly showed that making major decisions or changes too soon after a major loss such as a divorce or bereavement was likely to result in suboptimal results. Thus, as he had concluded from the beginning, it would be illogical to seriously consider a new relationship, either with Uhura or through the offices of T'Pau as matchmaker, until the debacle of his marriage was far enough in the past that he could view it with at least a degree of equanimity.

He turned his meditations to the now-familiar task of acknowledging and taming his feelings for Uhura.

Two days after the meld, Nyota laid on her bed in her quarters, staring up at the ceiling and trying to concentrate on the music she was listening to. It was completely different from any style of music in her personal playlists, and as far as she could tell she'd never heard anything like it before in her life. It was just what she needed: something unlikely to trigger any of the memories that she could now access, thanks to Spock.

Ironic, after spending a week digging for memories so frantically.

A lifetime of memories was a lot to go through, and the meld had been very intense. She felt like her brain was a dresser that had had its entire contents scattered about the room, examined, and then put back in place, and she wasn't quite sure there was room for everything. Her brain felt very … full.

The door chimed. "Come in," she said, sitting up.

It was Christine. "How are you feeling?" she asked as she walked through the sitting area to the bed chamber. "And what are you listening to?"

"Sixty-year-old popular music from a non-aligned world called S'hrevlar," Nyota said. "It's very distracting."

"I can tell," Christine said wryly.

Nyota turned it off. "And are you asking as my nurse or my friend?"

"Both," Christine said. "The meld took a lot out of you and Spock both, but he's back on duty and you're not."

Nyota sighed. The meld had taken hours, and been very draining. And then had come all the work of putting the memories she could now access into some sort of coherent order and narrative. In the two nights since, her dreams had been eventful, and Doctor McCoy thought that REM sleep was probably the best thing for her, so she was trying to take naps in addition to her normal sleep cycle. But even while she was awake, she was constantly seeing things with new eyes and putting together the puzzle pieces of her mind. "It's getting better," she said. "It's definitely much better today than it was yesterday, and better this afternoon than it was this morning when I had my checkup. It's just … it's just a lot, and I'm so tired. Not sleepy, just worn."

Christine hummed. "I can't even imagine."

"Hopefully, you won't ever have to," Nyota said, and changed the subject. She'd spent enough time dwelling on her own problems, recently, and not enough time just hanging out with her friend.

She and Christine had a nice chat, and after her friend left, Nyota flopped back on the bed. Now that she had (most of) her memories back, she was glad she hadn't told Christine about Spock's affections for her, when she'd asked Christine's opinion on Spock's ethics. That would have been awkward, and unnecessarily hurtful to Christine. (Reliving her memories of that mystery-shrouded trip to Vulcan had been one of the few times that Spock's own emotions had come through in the meld—he hadn't been able to hide how embarrassed he still was over the whole thing, how he'd treated Christine but also something deeper he hadn't shared with her. It felt like ages ago, but hadn't been all that long before the encounter with Nomad which had wiped her memories.)

Wait a minute. Nyota narrowed her eyes as something occurred to her. Spock was married! To that Vulcan woman who'd called them when they arrived at Vulcan! What was he doing falling in love with her if he was married? She'd thought Vulcans had better control over their feelings than that.

She rose, checked her appearance in the mirror to make sure she was presentable, and went to go ask him about it.

Spock was in his quarters and responded promptly when she pressed the door chime.

"Ms. Uhura," he said, inviting her to take a seat. "Would you care for some tea?"

"Thank you," she said, slightly taken aback. He'd never offered her tea before, but then, she'd never visited him in his quarters before.

"This is theris-na'na, which is more palatable to humans than most other Vulcan varieties of tea," Spock said, presenting her with a cup after a few minutes work.

"Thank you," she said, taking a sip. "It's good!" She didn't know how to describe it; it wasn't like any Earth tea she knew. But it didn't require sugar or milk or lemon or anything to make it drinkable.

"Kh'halwer nash-vey k'odu," Spock said. When Nyota hesitated, he went on. "The traditional response is th'i-oxolara kh'harwa."

She repeated it carefully. "I don't know that I've ever heard you speak Vulcan before."

"You still have not, as there is no single 'Vulcan' language."

Nyota felt her cheeks heat. She knew Vulcan, like most planets, had a plethora of languages; she so seldom fell prey to the common practice of labelling the most common language of a planet as the planet's only language. "Any language of Vulcan," she corrected herself. "What language were you speaking?"

"Shi'Kha'ri," Spock said.

Nyota raised an eyebrow at him. "You mean, the language that is most commonly called 'Vulcan' by offworlders?"

"Precision is important," he said severely, although she could tell he was amused.

"Are there any other cultural expectations?" Nyota asked.

Spock took a sip of his own tea. "Vulcans—at least, those following Shi'Kha'ri manners—do not typically speak when food or drink is being consumed. However, outsiders often find the silence to be … oppressive, and I have never minded one way or the other."

"Ah," Nyota said. She'd lost the momentum she'd had when she came here, but she still wanted to know the answer. "Spock, when you told me you had feelings for me, you implied you were considering asking to start a romantic relationship with me."

"Yes. Although I am not ready for any such step, just yet, and may not be any time in the immediate future."

"But you're married!" Nyota burst out. "Your wife called the bridge, what was her name—"

"T'Pring," Spock said, somewhat harshly. "She divorced me."

"Oh." Nyota was taken aback. "I'm sorry." She thought about the timing. "Wait, she divorced you when you were sick? So sick you could only be treated on your homeworld?"

"Yes." Spock sighed. "To be fair to her, Vulcan divorces require both spouses to be present with a priest or healer, so that the telepathic bond may be severed. I had not been back to Vulcan in many years."

"And if she'd asked for a divorce, would you have taken leave and gone to visit?" Nyota asked.

"Yes," Spock said, "although it is considerably more complicated, and difficult, than obtaining a divorce on Earth."

"Still!" Nyota said. She paused. "I'm sorry for bringing it up, it must still be a sore spot."

"Yes," Spock said dryly. He looked aside. "Vulcans prize marriage very deeply, and while my relationship with T'Pring was never close, it was still—I have not been alone in my own skull since we were betrothed at age seven. It is … more difficult than I would have thought, to adjust. A part of me would like to remarry immediately, merely so that I would not have to learn how to be … solitary."

Was he trying to hint that he wanted a serious relationship with her? No, Spock wasn't the type to beat around the bush. But it did put his feelings in a different light. "I'm not opposed to marriage, eventually, but there are a few necessary steps first," Nyota said. Such as deciding if she felt more for him than just 'very attractive man she liked a great deal.'

Spock blinked and looked at her. "I did not mean to imply that I wish to marry you in the immediate future. My apologies for the imprecision. No, if I wished to marry quickly, I would ask my clan matriarch T'Pau and she would find an appropriate Vulcan woman for me to marry. Indeed, I have no doubt that she will soon begin presenting me with possible options whether I ask her to or not."

"So Vulcans go in for arranged marriages," Nyota said, wondering if the T'Pau he named was the T'Pau—if so, no wonder the admiralty hadn't punished the captain for the diversion to Vulcan. "I'm sure based on all sorts of logical criteria."

"Yes," Spock said. "Telepathic and mental compatibility being one of those criteria—which is one reason I should not have been so surprised when T'Pring … did what she did. She and I were never close, even when we were first betrothed."

"And you were seven?" Nyota asked. That seemed terribly young. On a more personal note, the meld would have undoubtedly given him an idea of whether they were telepathically and mentally compatible. Now she was curious what she would have learned about him, if the meld had been more reciprocal.

"Yes," Spock said. "Seven is the customary age, in my clan."

"Why so young?"

"Vulcans are more psychologically stable when we have telepathic bonds, and that is around the age when our bonds with our parents begin to fade," Spock said. "And it is traditional. Not all clans bond their children, or do so that young, and not every House within every clan does it; but most do."

"And now you have no bond," Nyota said, softly, trying to imagine it. "What does that feel like to you? Do you miss it?"

"Like a missing limb," Spock said. "Understand, I do not wish T'Pring back; but I do wish to be bonded. However, the most expedient way to achieve that would be to marry whatever woman T'Pau suggests, and I do not know that marrying a stranger simply to be bonded would be an optimal long-term solution."

"Well, it's sure not the solution I would choose," Nyota said, shaking her head. "I suppose you don't know any unmarried Vulcan women?"

"No. I have spent most of my adult life in Starfleet, in majority-human environments, and approximately 90% of all adult Vulcans are married."

"Ninety percent?" Nyota said. "Wow!" She considered all that Spock had told her. "So when you said you were going through a major life change and needed to figure out what you wanted out of life before even considering whether to act on your feelings for me, you weren't exaggerating, were you."

"I do not exaggerate," Spock said. "In addition, there is another critical consideration: your feelings and wishes, which you have never discussed with me. And the fact that you are currently recovering from a significant trauma. Your resilience is most impressive, and I wish to support you in whatever way you require. Requesting major life changes on your part at this time would be … both selfish and thoughtless."

"Thank you, Spock," Nyota said, touched. "I do want to … settle back in to my life, so to speak, and I hope things will go back to normal as quickly as possible. Well," she said, correcting herself, "as normal as things ever get on Enterprise. I hope I didn't just jinx us."

"Luck—and jinxes—are illogical, Lieutenant," Spock said. "Statistical analyses will always reveal that, when the observer's biases are corrected for, improbable things do not correlate in statistically significant ways to any individual, object, or vessel."

"Spock, two things," Nyota said. She was happy they'd had the conversation, happy to have learned more about him, but still, she was relieved to have the conversation turn lighter. "First, when we're off-duty, you can call me Nyota." After rummaging through her brain, he knew her more intimately than any other person ever had, and it seemed silly to stand on formality. She'd never offered her first name before, but then she'd always felt constrained by the gap in their ranks, but then again, he'd never been this candid with her, either. "Second, how else do you explain all the things that happen to this ship without luck, good and bad alike?"

"Even million-to-one chances occur with some regularity given a large enough sample size," Spock said. "And calculating the odds of any given happenstance is difficult when one is studying the unknown."

"True," Nyota said, "but Enterprise isn't the only Federation starship exploring the unknown, and I've spend enough time gossiping with my fellow communications officers to know that odd and improbable things happen to us at a much higher rate than they do to our sister ships. Do you have any statistical explanation for that that doesn't boil down to 'we're just lucky that way'?"

Spock opened his mouth, but hesitated before speaking.

"I thought not," Nyota said triumphantly. "I'm back on duty starting tomorrow. I'll see you on the bridge in the morning, Spock." She slipped out the door with a smile on her face. It wasn't often she got the last word in a debate with him without cheating in some way.

It wasn't until she was back in her quarters that she realized he very carefully hadn't asked what her feelings toward him might be. Which was considerate of him, given how unsettled she was right now, but still left the question: how did she feel about him? He was very attractive and compelling, of course; she'd always been quite aware of that. And she enjoyed the challenge of sparring verbally with him (and flirting with him when she could get away with it). And he was a friend. But she had always considered him unattainable, and so never put much serious thought into the question.

He was very intense, and that was a quality she appreciated in a partner. The thought of all that intensity focused on her … she shivered, tingling a little. There was a reason she'd never let herself seriously consider his attractiveness. He'd been unapproachable, untouchable, and why open herself to that heartbreak? She'd had her fill of hopeless crushes as a teenager, thank you.

Except now he wasn't unapproachable.

Of course, part of that intensity meant that he wanted a serious relationship that might lead to marriage, and while Nyota had always thought she'd probably get married some day, it had always been something to set aside until some nebulous future after she was done with her adventuring. But a fellow officer on the same ship, that was a relationship she could have while adventuring. And once the Enterprise's five year mission was over, they could always ask to be posted together, if their relationship were still going strong then.

It was an appealing picture.

But what if they tried a relationship and it didn't work? He was much farther along in his attraction to her than she was to him. That might change, but it might not, and she didn't want to hurt him.

She laughed out loud at the absurdity of that thought. "Nobody knows how a relationship's going to end when they start it," she told herself. "And you never know, he might realize a relationship with a human is nicer in fantasy than reality and dump me."

Well. She wasn't ready for anything right this minute, but … it might be an interesting thing to try in the future.

Spock spent the rest of the evening working out a statistical analysis of the Enterprise's mission thus far, as compared to other starships on similar missions throughout Federation and pre-Federation history, and concluded that while the Enterprise was indeed (thus far) more likely to experience unusual events than other starships, it was not the only ship to experience such a pattern, and past performance was no indicator of future events, and so it was just as possible that Enterprise would soon experience no more than the normal unforseen events that happened to any exploratory vessel, while some other ship would find itself experiencing a string of unusual events.

The analysis was not as convincing as he had hoped it might be, but he sent it to Nyota's inbox anyway.

The next morning on the bridge, she got it, sent him a wry look, and set to annotating it in between her attention to her work responsibilities. By the end of the shift she had sent it back to him with insightful comments at every weak point in his analysis, and a note. "Still sounds like luck to me.—N"

Instead of allowing Nyota time to ease back into her life and work and Spock time to contemplate his wishes and priorities, the next mission was exactly the sort which happened to Enterprise more than other Starfleet vessels. The mission to Halka brought a dramatic twist and proof of alternate universes all at the same time. The scientific results were fascinating; the alternates of their crewmates were appalling.

It only took a brief interview with the alternates for a deep fear to plant itself in his gut: did his counterpart harbor similar feelings for the other Nyota, and, if so, what would such a man do to the object of his affections? It was illogical to dwell on the possibilities. Spock was certainly not responsible for the conduct of his alternate, and there was nothing he could do to protect Nyota except finding a way to retrieve the stranded away team, which he and the entire science and engineering teams were working on as quickly as they could. Meditation sufficed to keep his fear leashed, but could not relieve it.

It took a great deal of effort to maintain his control when the away team returned safe and sound, and Nyota showing no signs of trauma beyond that of a stressful undercover mission.

"Still don't believe in luck, Spock?" Nyota asked, after the debriefings were over and she'd had time to rest and write her report. "What other ship would have run into such a thing?" She proved quite immune to his logic and statistics, but the debate was entertaining anyway.

After that were a string of missions that, while noteworthy in themselves, were hardly out of the normal range of their experiences, and then came a mission Spock had been dreading since it was put on their schedule: a trip back into the Federation to pick up ambassadors and escort them to a neutral location for a summit. While he was grateful for the opportunity to see his mother, he could quite easily have gone another eighteen years without speaking to his father. But that was not an option as first officer of a ship his father was travelling on.

Nyota got to their usual practice room before Spock, and was warming up on her algaita by playing a song that had been popular when she'd been a teenager. She was surprised when he walked in with a middle-aged Human woman wearing Vulcan robes. "Hello," Nyota said. "I'm Lieutenant Uhura. Spock, do you need to reschedule?" Maybe the woman was a diplomat and needed something.

"Oh, please don't on my account, I've been looking forward to hearing him play," the woman said with a fond look at Spock, patting him gently on the arm. Spock looked mildly embarrassed.

His mother, perhaps? Spock's mother was Human, though Nyota hadn't known his mother was a diplomat. And why had he brought her here? They weren't even dating yet, much less at the meet-the-parents stage. And wasn't that telling, she realized, that apparently her subconscious thought of dating Spock as a matter of 'when' and not 'if.'

"Lieutenant Uhura, this is my mother," Spock said, confirming her guess. "Doctor Amanda Grayson."

Nyota blinked. "The Doctor Grayson, who worked on the Universal Translator team? The first Human to teach at the Vulcan Science Academy?"

"I see my reputation precedes me," Doctor Grayson said with a smile.

"I don't want to take time away from you and Spock, because I'm sure it's been a while since you've seen one another, but I would love to talk with you about your work," Nyota gushed. "As head of Communications, so much of what I do uses your translator as a base."

"Not just my translator, I was one of a large team," Doctor Grayson said with a smile. "But I bet Spock would find the conversation interesting as well."

"Languages are a hobby for me, not a vocation," Spock said, "but I do have some interest in the field, and even more in the computer programming which undergirds the Universal Translator's work. I would be quite interested in such a conversation as well."

"Wonderful!" Doctor Grayson said, clapping her hands. "I'll listen to you practice—please don't mind me, or think you have to perform for me; I'm just interested to hear what my son is up to these days—and then we can go get some lunch and talk linguistics, as I know Spock won't mind talking during his meal."

That lunch with Nyota and his mother was the pleasantest two hours Spock had spent in a long time. Of course his mother got along well with Nyota; they both were good people with excellent taste and similar interests. (He steadfastly did not contemplate how his father would react to learning his son wished to marry a human instead of a Vulcan woman of sufficient standing to make up for the alliance lost with T'Pring's challenge; in this, as in most things familial, Spock had no doubt that his father would be deeply hypocritical.)

After the surgery which saved his father's life, Nyota came to visit Spock in his quarters while he recovered. He'd been lying in bed in his meditation robe when she chimed for admittance. The doctor had been forced to take a significant amount of blood, and Spock was on strict orders to rest and eat well for a day or two while his body replenished the supply.

"Come in," he said at the door's chime, rolling out of bed and wincing at the lingering light-headedness.

Nyota stepped in. She was beautiful as ever, and it was pleasant to see her in something other than a uniform. The colorful caftan suited her, as everything did. "I'm not much of a chess player," she said, "and I know that's your game, and I don't know any Vulcan games, but if you'd like to play a game I could learn. I know when I'm sick or injured, the boredom is almost the worst part and I can't imagine it's any better for you."

"An untaxing entertainment to pass the time would be appreciated," Spock said. "If there is a game you are fond of, I am sure I could learn well enough for our purposes."

"You're the one who's under the weather, so we'll play one of your games," Nyota said. "When I'm injured, you can return the favor."

"Very well," Spock said, and got out his kal toh set, putting it in the simplest mode. As both a musician and a linguist, Nyota's skill at pattern-recognition was significantly above average for a Human, and she might find the game interesting.

"I noticed your parents touched a great deal, just their fingertips," Nyota said, making conversation in the middle of their second game. "It surprised me, because Vulcans generally avoid touching other people."

"Being touch telepaths, touching others with bare skin can easily result in unwanted reading of surface thoughts," Spock said. "Given that the majority of nerves which carry telepathic information in Vulcans are in the hands, touching hands is far more intimate than any other part of the body. But Vulcan marriage includes not just physical and emotional intimacy, but mental and telepathic intimacy as well."

"And that touch was … intimate?" Nyota asked.

Spock sighed. "As a child, I was often embarrassed by how visibly and frequently they touched in that manner."

Nyota laughed. "I was embarrassed by my parents kissing. But that didn't stop them—my dad would make their kisses noisier and more theatrical to tease me."

"My mother had that impulse as well, although my father would rarely indulge her outside our home," Spock said.

Nyota hummed and reached out to touch a piece.

"I would not advise that," Spock said.

"Why? No, no, don't tell me, I'll figure it out." Nyota frowned and studied the set for a few minutes, before her expression cleared and she made a much better move.

Nyota sat in the rec deck chatting and laughing with Christine and a few other friends. Spock was sitting on the other side with the Captain, and she couldn't help sneaking looks at him. She had a very good view of him from here, long and lean and graceful, relaxed and content.

He really was very attractive. And she knew him much better now than she had a few months ago. They played kal-to regularly now, in addition to their jam sessions. Even their music had changed. Where once they had focused exclusively on the music, now it was a jumping off point for discussions about music theory, other musical experiences they'd had, and anything else that came up. They'd been growing closer, and she enjoyed spending time with him.

That internal slip she'd made when he introduced his mother really had been telling, she realized. It was a 'when' and not an 'if,' at least from her point of view. And she was ready to be done with waiting.

"What do you think, Nyota?" Christine asked, and Nyota turned her attention back to her friends.

She did make a point of rubbing her fingers together where Spock could see. And from the looks he was sending her way, he'd noticed. She smiled.

Nyota left the rec room, headed for her quarters. "Lieutenant, may I speak with you?" Spock was always more formal in the corridors and other public spaces.

"Why, of course, Commander," she said, voice honeyed. She waited for him to catch up at the turbolift.

"May I ask the purpose of that display?" he asked, once they were inside. He was tense, every line of his body taut.

"I'm back to normal, and I'd be interested in trying a relationship if you are, Spock," Nyota said. "And I thought I'd give you incentive to make up your mind, one way or the other."

"I—you are sure?" he asked, hesitant in a way she'd never seen him be.

"Yes, Spock, I am," Nyota said. "I wouldn't tease about that." She shrugged. "Now, I know you have a lot of decisions to make, and this is probably a bigger deal for you than for me, as Vulcans don't date casually the way Humans do. I don't know if you want to actually try something, but I'm ready if you are."

"I am very unlikely to be content with casual anything," Spock said.

"I kind of figured," Nyota said. "I can't say I'd be willing to marry you right now, if you asked me, but I can't say I'd mind that as a direction to explore. And if we're going to start exploring in that direction, I'm as ready now as I'll ever be. You might need more time, and I respect that. But if all you need is a sign from me, well.…" She held up two fingers, as she'd seen his parents do. His eyes widened and from this close she could see his pupils dilate.

Slowly he stretched out a hand to match, and his eyes closed.

Oh.

That—she hadn't expected to get anything out of the finger caress. But she could feel him, not as clearly as in the meld, no direct thoughts, but she could feel the pulse of them, and the arousal that had been thrumming through him since she started flirting in the rec room. Then he began stroking his fingers against hers, and that was even better.

She really wanted to kiss him, and she leaned in to do just that. He met her halfway; well, of course, he could feel what she wanted. And the kiss was even better, because he didn't let go of her hand and she could still feel him, and he her.

Most first kisses were just a little awkward as you got to know your partner's body, but not this one. Spock could tell exactly what she wanted, and the result was a kiss that made her toes curl and her knees go slightly weak.

The turbolift beeped as they arrived at their destination, and they disengaged. Fortunately, there weren't any people waiting for the turbolift, because if she looked as dazed as Spock did, and people saw them, the rumors would spread at lightspeed.

"Well, Mister Spock," Nyota said, "I call that a promising experiment. But I think it needs further testing, don't you?"

"Indeed," Spock intoned, following her down the corridor.

[strengthrequireskindness]

OC shitpost

So, I notice a lot of u on here are into PJO/HOO/anything Rick Riordan writes.

@storm-broken-wings

@blackjacktheboss

@cindersart

@ananbeth

And that’s who I can think of off the top of my head. If you don’t read him you should, but I’m warning you that the second series (HOO) is slightly iffy.

While the man and his writing has some flaws, I’ll admit he made a damn good storyboard to work with. I have made several Riordanverse OCs, and would like to share them with you all.

First up, my anxious fire boy, Cal Kowalski! Note: I tried to do my research on Judaism and autism, but if I have offended anyone with this character, please let me know and I will change it!

Name: Caleb David “Cal” Kowalski

Hair: brown

Eyes: brown

Age-17

Height: six foot one, someone stop this boy from growing

Mother: Deborah Kowalski, fire chief for the Cleveland fire department. A force to be reckoned with and extremely inventive-once used a nearby lake to fuel the fire hose when there were no hydrants nearby

Godly Parent-Vulcan. A lot of people forget he’s also the god of fire, so when he saw Deborah risking her life to fight it, he was smitten. Completely fell for her when he admitted that he watched her work as a fire chief. Her response? “You’re a god, right? Stop watching people and buildings burn and start fucking helping.”

Sexuality: bi. Let’s be real, he’s admired Ichor and Jason more than once. Is completely devoted to his also bisexual girlfriend. More on her later.

Camp: Jupiter, Fifth Cohort. Has considered moving to Half-Blood, but dropped it after Octavian...oh right, there are people who haven’t read the books. Let’s leave it at that.

Nationality: Polish.

Religion: proudly (though not supremely devoutly) Jewish. Will make all the jokes about his religion. Was very confused when his mother told him his father was a god

Weapon: Roman infantry axe, or dolabra. Has heard all the woodcutter or lumberjack jokes. Has come up with a few of them

Personality: actual golden retriever, loyal, kind, hardworking, patient, and generous. Won’t fight unless it’s in self-defense, for training, or against monsters. Even then, does so reluctantly. Shy, clumsy, awkward introvert. Not great with public speaking, social interaction, or crowds, though he tries. Ride-or-die friend once you get to know him. Happiest when working at the forges or with his close friends. Autistic. Stims by lacing his fingers together or through card tricks, often says inappropriate things at the wrong time, tends to compartmentalize negative emotions, can talk about forging, metalworking, and firefighters for hours on end, needs systems and routines to function, thinks in very black and white terms. Goes nonverbal when angry, sad, or frustrated.

Powers/Abilities-

Geothermokinesis-can manipulate molten earth, phase change earth into lava and vice versa, cause magma to rise from deep within the earth, forming miniature volcanoes, turn nearby rock molten, and telekinetically project blasts of lava, magma, or molten earth at targets

Weaknesses-socially awkward, gullible, black and white thinking, tends to think badly of himself, survivors guilt, lava he creates can spread and cause more damage if left unattended, can be harmed by his own powers, powers are linked to emotional state so he has to keep his temper or things start to melt

History

-Fire chief mom with large extended family

-mom met Vulcan one night while firefighting, it was rocky at first but after some talking things through and some kissing they made it work

-cal was born that August

-when Cal was three, tragedy struck

-his mother was diagnosed with mesothelioma

-they suspected it was from a fire in a chemical factory shed fought

-the firefighters she was chief of helped raise Cal while his mother underwent treatment,as did his extended family

-He grew up shy and quiet, the opposite of his mother but very much like his father, had difficulty reading, and could never pay attention that well if he didn’t like something

-It took a few years, several theories (some well meaning, some extremely inappropriate, some both) and an official diagnosis at the age of seven before the people taking care of him realized he was autistic, dyslexic, and had ADHD, and that they had to respect that instead of treating him like a normal kid

-some of his extended family thought that meant he wasn’t normal

-he doesn’t talk to them anymore

-the firemen and ninety percent of his family were totally fine with it, even when other things started to happen

-they found him in the courtyard at age ten, a miniature volcano spouting lava into the air and him frantically trying to turn it off

-the Mist shielded them from seeing the entire thing, but they still sat him down and had a Talk about playing with fire

-but Cal knew what happened

-At age twelve, his mother took a sudden turn for the worse. When he went to see her with Hector and Brandon, two firefighters, he was turned away by a doctor that did not look at all like a doctor to him

-The Doctor insults him, only to be challenged by Hector, who can see through the Mist

-He tells Cal to run and see his mom before punching the doctor square in the face

-Cal makes it to his moms room, only to find her struggling and squirming as a monster in a lab coat shoves a pillow onto her face

-Terrified but furious, he scares off the monster with a blast of lava from the ground, which also sets the room on fire

-Making it out of the room, he turns to his mom, only for her to tell him that he’s the son of a god

-He predictably freaks the fuck out, running with her to where he last saw the firefighters

-Only to find that Darnell is dead and Hector is losing the fight against something that looks way too much like the estrie he’s read about once in the Sefer Hasidim

-Seeing Cal, Hector grins with bloody teeth before driving a fire extinguisher into the things head

-it collapses, but before it can get up again the building groans as the fire spreads

-They flee the hospital, forced to leave Darnell behind as the alukah pursues them

-When they get back to the house, everyone is in an uproar. Why is Deborah back, why is Hector’s mouth bleeding, where the hell is Darnell

-While everyone is arguing and taking care of Deborah, Hector and Cal’s aunt Aviva take him into Cal’s room

-He and Aviva confirm what Cal’s mom said, also telling him about the existence of Camp Jupiter. It turns out he is a former legionnaire, having come to Cleveland two years before Cal was born to look after him at Deborah’s request. Aviva can just see through the mist, though Deborah confided in her in case she died before she could do so herself.

-They don’t have much time. After what Cal did at the hospital, his aura is going to attract every monster from here to Columbus.

-He gives him a weird-looking axe, explaining that this dolabra was once his when he was a legionary but now he wants Cal to have it

-They all share a hug, with Hector telling him that everyone in the house has his back

-There’s a knock on the door, revealing the monster from earlier, now disguised as a human social worker via the Mist

-Uses a bunch of ableist language to explain why they should give Cal to him

-No one in the house buys his bullshit, even when he appears human

-The firefighters don’t like the government in general because they offered no workers comp for the cancer their chief got from the factory, and they’ve watched her fight against something that the government was supposed to help her with, the government draining her money all the while. But now this jackass is insulting their kid.

-The extended family are unwilling to give him up, and especially not to a man who insults and belittles him

-monster gets fed up, says that if cal stays here he’ll keep coming for him until he gets what he wants

-cue the entire family telling him to get bent

-Aviva tells Hector to take Cal and go, that she’ll explain to them why and that they all love him

-Roadtrip to California with monsters on their tail

-the estrie catches up to them in Oakland, flanked by its monster buddy, which Cal now knows is a telekhine

-it’s pissed at cal because he’s a demigod and because his father took over their forges

-they fight, and Cal uses the dolabra and kills the telekhine, burnt from his earlier encounter with it

-he’s extremely grossed out by this

-Hector intercepts the estrie before it can get to Cal and fights the estrie, but he’s out of practice and is fatally injured

-Cal watches him die and is furious, pleading to know why the estrie did it

-the estrie just wants to kill a Jewish human, it doesn’t particularly care that he’s a demigod. Hector was in the way.

-Using his powers intentionally for the first time, Cal opens up a volcanic fissure under the estrie and sends her down into the magma

-He then takes Hector to the camp tunnel before passing out

-He’s found there by Gwen, who stands for him

-Some time after, she pulls him aside and tells him that she read in the local paper (all praetors and centurions read the outside paper to get the news for the camp, fight me) that there was a suspected terrorist attack in Ohio around the time Cal came in

-He breaks down and tells her it’s his house, there are no confirmed survivors except for three firemen and his mother

-Alex comes along a month later, and they dance around each other for a while before making it official

Trivia

-he writes letters to his mother whenever he can

-Darnell taught him how to play cards and do card tricks, both for fun and as a stim if needed, he burns a card every year on the day he died

-he definitely had a thing for Jason before he started dating Alex. It never went anywhere though.

-he makes the menorah for the camp-wide Hanukkah celebration (cmon you’re telling me everyone at CJ is Christian or atheist or agnostic? Cmon man)

-he imagines his dolabra is a fire axe when he’s fighting monsters

-his aunt taught him to cook Polish cuisine, among other things, and his kotlet schabowy is to die for, but he’s recently branched out into Chinese food due to his girlfriend’s complaints about how the restaurant chains near them only serve shitty Chinese food

-can jump rope like a boss due to many hours with his younger cousins

-terrified of heights

-that’s all I’ve got so far! If you guys have any other questions about him, send me an ask!

[reactingtosomething]

Reacting to The Good Place: “Team Cockroach”

Inevitable Downfall

The Setup: Find our previous reactions to season 2 of The Good Place here. 

SPOILERS BELOW for the October 5 episode, “Team Cockroach.”

KRIS:

After last week's madness, "Team Cockroach" is largely a bottle episode -- that is, it sticks to one regularly used location to save money for the future, or, as may be the case here, to make up for previous big expenditures -- with Tahani's flashback ("one of the women or yachts to grace your cover") briefly taking us elsewhere. It also feels a lot like what in a serialized drama we'd call a table-setting, or maybe piece-moving, episode, with Eleanor and "friends" (more on that below) just arguing about whether to believe and join forces with Michael, who efficiently brings them up to speed on things we already know. One by one, Jason and Chidi and Tahani accept Michael's offer: If they help him fool Vicky, and they study ethics when she isn't looking so that they actually become better people, he won't erase their brains... and he can get them to the real Good Place. But Eleanor decides that rather than "make a deal with an actual devil," she'll return to the Medium Place, with lots of cocaine for Mindy St. Claire. 

Then Chidi makes an uncharacteristically ("You take half an hour to pick out a turtleneck") calm appeal to her better nature. Eleanor doesn't bring up what she's just learned about her soulmate-level bond with him, but it's clearly part of her motivation to ask Michael how often she's had to improve herself without Chidi's guidance. The answer? Never. Chidi always helps. That was part of Michael's original plan; Eleanor seemed like the perfect Bad Student. He just never expected Chidi to succeed as a teacher. "Pesky little nerd." 

Is it cosmically convenient soulmate-ness? Unconscious retention of the teensiest bit of growth? Chidi's innate decency? Good old Opposites Attract chemistry? Mix and match? Whatever the reason, it convinces Eleanor to stick around with what she dubs Team Cockroach (after a lighthearted Truth Hurts insult from Michael):

“Describe me next!”

It's always a joy to hear Eleanor Describing Things, but maybe you noticed that "narcissistic monster" is pretty different from how she characterized Tahani the last time we heard the list: "a selfish ass, an idiot DJ, a tortured academic, a hot rich fraud with legs for days..." And now I begin to understand the appeal of presenting us again with Dirtbag Eleanor. It's not just Tahani she's super mean to -- she barely considers Jason a person -- but the sharp contrast with last season's "legit be[ing] into Tahani" has a particular sting to it. In Version 1, Eleanor and Tahani became friends despite themselves, and even after the revelation of Eleanor's betrayal, reconciled and cemented their bond by agreeing not to fight over a man. In this version, Tahani both (briefly) retains her smug sense of superiority and yet is repeatedly cowed by a venomous Eleanor. "I'm sorry, has it been a hundred hours?" Hilarious, yet hurtful.

"Boy, you guys barely know each other," Michael said in what Ted Danson beautifully delivered as a throwaway observation. "That's gonna make this tough." It's not just going to be tough for them, logistically; it's also going to be tough for us, emotionally, knowing how these "four dumb-dumbs" truly bonded on their first go-'round. Team Schur didn't just give us a reset; they set up some great dramatic irony. I've got Janet questions and lots more lines to quote, but what were everyone else's main thoughts and takeaways this week? And I'll now formally ask what I joked about after the season premiere: Who would be your perfect special guest star(s) representing the real Good Place?

MIRI:

Kris, you’re such a tease with your “I have thoughts on x but I want your thoughts first” moments. I’m dying to hear your Janet questions now. My thoughts (other than the general state of being insanely impressed by the performance and enjoying the hell out of the character) mostly have to do with her being the most advanced Janet in the universe. If that level of improvement is possible, why not just start them all out at a high level? Is the human interaction necessary? I am super excited for Janet’s slightly more nuanced decision making processes—her loyalty being to the 4 humans, etc.—while remaining a character with no motivation of her own.

In thinking about Eleanor’s meanness this episode I started thinking about how Tahani’s sister is a way worse person than her (she’s the wooooooorst and I hope you all heard that in Jean-Ralphio Saperstein’s voice). And that leads me to the fact that none of our four are actually terrible people. Eleanor is arguably the worst and she wasn’t THAT bad. She wasn’t great and she was a total dirtbag, but there have been a lot of dramatically worse people in history. Chidi was a good person. He caused some distress, sure, but again—nothing compared to a lot of people. Tahani helped a TON of people and her bad true intentions were selfish, not cruel. Jason was mostly just very very unintelligent. So why are these four being tortured? And why are they being specially tortured? Did they need close-to-medium people to be able to sell the ruse? Does everyone who is not an extremely Good person automatically get the same level of torture, or are there degrees? I think they’re definitely going to explore how absurd that kind of binary system of morality is further and I’m looking forward to it! Does anyone buy Michael’s whole “Maybe we’ll all earn our way into the Good Place” spiel? Does anyone think HE buys it?

This is 100% influenced by the fact that I’m thinking about Star Trek: Discovery, but I would love to see Michelle Yeoh as a Good Place figure. When I say 100% I mean it—I fully admit that I haven’t seen any of her other work (I KNOW! I’m working on it! I have seen the light, I promise!) but she can clearly do wisdom and also have fun with it, which I think is an important skill for this show. Although, do we think Good Place officials will be nice people? They’re part of this fairly brutal system—are they just as ruthless as their counterparts, but more pleasant about it? What do you guys think?

source

(I lie, I have seen Michelle Yeoh in SUNSHINE and MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA too.)

ADAM:

I can't remember which one of you spoke about Janet remembering anything with every reboot, but you were correct. However, I think that while she remembers everything she is still a robot that is ruled by binary thinking, (yes/no, right/wrong) and therefore does not realize that sometimes there is a grey area. Remember, she is only helping because her main directive is to help humans. I think that her memories of everything are what is going to be this team's inevitable downfall. I think the Good Place people are solely logical and see everything black and white. I don't think there is any kind of wiggle room on their point system. I imagine that the Good Place board of directors is operated by essentially a supreme court style of Vulcans. No emotion, just facts, and figures. 

Also, I wouldn't classify Eleanor and Co. as the worst. I would look at them all as selfish instead of just bad people. With Eleanor, it's always about what is the easiest thing for her or what she can gain from a situation. This show deals more about the selfish in people than just plain nastiness. I don't think anyone has mentioned that Tahani's sister is in fact actually in the real Good Place. Or did they? Need to go back and look into it. I do like they gave Tahani more time this episode. 

I doubt Michael buys his speech to the gang of flesh bags. Mainly because he so desperately wants his way to work and to stand out amongst the Bad Place HOF that he is willing to do anything that he can to survive. 

KRIS:

Honestly my “I have thoughts on x but I want your thoughts first” moments are mostly to keep myself from rambling for 500 more words. I figure I'm not the only one who has the thoughts I have, so I don't have to be the one to say them. In this case, I am also kind of confused about the design decisions behind Janet's social improvement. To Adam's point, I didn't get the impression that she's retaining information; I read it more as a Jason Bourne-type thing where she retains the skills but not any knowledge that goes with them. Or at least, that's the interpretation that makes the most sense to me. I don't know that the text supports it. Janet says that she just gets better with every reboot, not that she gets better over time because her experiences are cumulative. (Her line about not being able to lie is what I think will come back around to bite Team Cockroach.) Maybe the design idea was that the neighborhoods should sort of run on autopilot with as little active help as possible, and reboots essentially send the message that a neighborhood needs more help, so Janet is incrementally improved, like a video game suggesting that you lower the difficulty level after you've died a zillion times. This still doesn't really explain the extra-dumb, extra-strange post-reset Janet of last season, but maybe we can handwave that by saying that the neighborhood as a whole is supposed to be reset with her, and there's some indeterminate rest period between each version during which the "shut down" Janet re-"downloads" All the Knowledge in the Universe.

I think Michael is being more or less honest, but also that he has no idea if his plan will work. It's just that there are no good options. This is as good an excuse as any to trot out: "You can't, but you have to. Logically, you shouldn't, but you have no choice. I mean I wouldn't, if I were you. It's a crazy thing to do. But you gotta.”

I wonder if the answer to our questions about the absurdly harsh point system is something along the lines that the people who run the Good and Bad Places were not really cosmically appointed by a supreme moral authority, and instead it's all rooted in a bunch of elaborate afterlife political gamesmanship. In any case I've never really gotten the impression that our four were singled out for who they are; it's Michael who's an outlier, because he wanted to try his new thing. Something I thought was interesting and cool in the season 1 finale is that Chidi and Tahani are in the Bad Place for opposite reasons. Chidi had the best of intentions (deontological plus), but never did anything good in his life because of his indecision (utilitarian minus); and Tahani did an incredible amount of good (utilitarian plus), but for the wrong reasons (deontological minus). Eleanor did bad things and had bad, or at least mediocre, intentions. I guess Jason could be here because he just made a lot of people unhappy in the course of being the biggest idiot in Florida? Plus all the property damage. And I feel like at some point he said he was a drug dealer?

Adam, who would your ideal special guest star from the real Good Place be? I'd kind of love to see Alison Becker (Parks's Shauna Malwae-Tweep) or Kathryn Hahn show up. Really my first choice is Terry Crews, in a suit, singing Vanessa Carlton, but that feels particularly unlikely. Beyond the Schur-verse, I'll say... maybe Vella Lovell from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? I don't know, this is harder than I thought.

MIRI:

Yeah, the more we talk about it the more sure I am that whoever runs the Good Place is not a nice/kind/moral being. I realize this is utter folly, but do you guys think we’ll see the Good Place by the end of this season? I definitely think we’ll see someone from the Good Place, but I’m not sure about an actual journey there.

I think there’s an argument to be made that Eleanor and Jason are in a way complimentary in the reasons they’re in the Bad Place. Eleanor knew her actions were bad but didn’t actively want to hurt people, she just didn’t care enough to let that stop her. Jason didn’t understand that he was causing harm, but did without giving any thought to it. Chidi and Tahani both tried to do good (unsuccessfully and for the wrong reasons, as Kris pointed out), while Eleanor and Jason didn’t try at all. I guess as far as Team Cockroach is concerned it’s a real damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. 

ADAM:

I guess if we are applying phrases to team cockroach: The enemy of my enemy is my friend, well that's what Michael thinks at least. I doubt we will see the actual Good Place ever during the series. Maybe keep it as this mythical land that no can ever achieve to get to, or something to that extent. I think we will see GP representatives. And to answer your question Kris about who I would like to be a GP rep. There is only one right answer to that. Amy Poehler.

Facebook | Twitter

[kaitymccoy123]

That Consume You

AKA: A Million Tiny Pieces p.t. 2

Get it?  A Million Tiny Pieces That Consume You?  I tried to make it a sentence. 

Intro: Okie dokie so this was kinda requested by @newhappiness430.  You didn’t formally request it but you commented on my other piece asking for a part 2 and I just had to oblige. 

Pairing: Spock x Reader (really loving writing Spock)

Word Count: 2070

Triggers: none, Vulcan kiss, a little sadness but some fluff as well

Summary: So this is a continuation of A Million Tiny Pieces (click to read).  It is basically just another one-shot with the same kinda relationship between Spock and reader and a few connections between the stories.  So this is set just after Spock finds out Spock Prime dies (so I guess set in the Beyond timeline) and he freaks out, but the reader is there to comfort him. 

ALSO PLEASE SEND IN DRABBLE REQUESTS HERE IS THE LINK: RAINBOW READING WEEK DRABBLES

ALSO: I snuck in two kinda-references:

1. Hamilton: Meet Me Inside - “Call me son one more time.” I put: “If you call me lieutenant one more time...”

2. Bones (the TV show): Bones: “What do you need Booth? Some time, some space?” Booth: “Just some time.”

-Enjoy!-

You followed Spock into his room, pausing just inside the door as you regarded the clearly distraught Vulcan. 

"Spock, what happened back there?" You inquired, stepping into the room and walked over to Spock who stood very rigidly on the opposite side of the couch. 

"I was simply explaining my opinion on the matter to the officials." Spock responded, not meeting your eyes from across the room. 

"Spock, you were basically screaming at them.  Jim had to kick you o..." 

"I am aware of what the situation entailed, Lieutenant." He interrupted. 

You felt a tinge of anger flash through your veins when he called you by your rank rather than your name, but you decided not to mention it, as he was clearly upset.  

Spock and Captain Kirk were meeting with a few Starfleet officials and you had just been passing by when you had heard Spock yelling at the officials.  You had paused by the door and you watched Kirk grab Spock by the shoulder to hold him back, motioning him to the door and telling him to leave.  Spock had stormed out with an intense look on his face and anger in his eyes and you froze in fear as he rushed past you, nearly knocking you over.  You had followed him back to his room to figure out what was wrong.   

Now he regarded you with an expression that you couldn't read.  You had thought you had gotten pretty good at reading Spock, even though he was Vulcan, but you didn't understand what he was feeling now. 

"What's wrong?" You asked. 

"Nothing of your concern." Spock assured and you scrunched your face up in an expression of disbelief. 

"Bullshit." You challenged and his eyes flicked to yours for a second before focusing back on the corner of the couch. 

You felt your blood boil at his nonchalance, so you flopped dramatically onto the couch, directly in the place where he was staring. He blinked a few times, as if just noticing you were there, and finally fixed his gaze on yours. 

"Spock, you really scared me back there, I thought you were going to hurt someone." Your voice got quiet. "I thought you were going to hurt me."

His head tilted slightly to the side and he suddenly looked hurt. 

"I had no intention to injure anyone, especially you, Lieutenant."

"Don't call me Lieutenant." You admonished but gave him a small smile at his concern for your well-being. 

You reached up and rested your hand on his forearm, but he pulled back in a swift movement, tucking his hands behind his back.  It felt like he stabbed you in the heart. 

"Spock, talk to me." You leaned back into the couch, tucking your feet underneath you. 

"I am talking to you." He responded. 

You rolled your eyes.  Every once and a while his human sass would show it's head.  You fell into a tense silence and you watched as he had an internal battle with himself.  

"There's something wrong.  You can tell me, Spock." You insisted and reached for his arm again, but met open air as he stayed where he was. 

"Lieutenant my problems are not of your concern." 

You furrowed your brows and pursed your lips, trying to figure out how to get through to him.

"Spock, are we in a relationship?" 

His eyes flicked to yours curiously, "According to the definition of the human vernacular, yes." 

"Then your problems are my concern." You professed. 

He was silent for a minute, before he resigned himself and came to sit beside you on the couch. You reached your hand over and rested it on his forearm, relief flooding through you as he finally allowed you to touch him. You moved your thumb slowly over the fabric of his shirt, stroking soft lines into his arm.  

Suddenly you had an idea. 

"Lie down." 

Spock turned his head to look at you questioningly. 

"Lie down." You repeated, "When we were upset as kids, my mom would take us aside and make us lie down so our head was on her lap.  Then she'd stroke our hair and make us talk about what was making us upset."  You smiled softly at him, "It worked every time."

When he didn't move you shifted your hand from his arm and rested it on his cheek, now stroking soft lines into the skin right under his eye.  His eyes closed involuntarily and his breath stuttered at your touch.  

"Lie down, Spock." You instructed again and pulled your hand away, his eyes opening instantly at the loss of contact. 

Finally he obliged.  He shifted so his feet were at the far end of the couch, hanging over it, and his head was nestled on your thighs, his hair brushing the bare skin that wasn't covered by your uniform dress.  He looked up to you, his face still an unreadable mask of emotions, and his hands were folded gently in his lap.  

You began to run your fingers through his hair, your fingertips parting through the perfectly cut black strands.  You watched as he began to unfold beneath you.  His face softened at your soothing touch, and his eyes drifted closed.  You absently wondered when he had slept last.  

After a few minutes of your fingers running through his hair, his eyes re-opened, and he met your eyes, taking in a shaky breath. 

"I have just been informed that Spock Prime, myself in the future, has passed away." Spock's voice held a tone of sadness thatt you had never heard before. 

The news shook you to the core.  That was never something anyone wanted to hear.  That their loved one had passed.  Well, this was your future loved one, but still. 

"Is that why you had that outburst today?" You inquired. 

"I believe it is." 

You looked down at Spock, who had shut his eyes again and his brow was furrowed, his lips pressed into a tight line.  You moved your fingers to the space between his eyebrows and stroked the skin there softly to smooth out the wrinkles. 

"I am so sorry, Spock." You apologized and bit back tears. 

"It is not your fault, there is no reason for you to apologize." Spock corrected but his eyes remained closed. 

"No, It's just something humans say.  Like we apologize that you are feeling upset.  I am sad that you are sad." You explained as best you could. 

"Vulcan's do not express emotions, Lieutentant..." Spock started but you interrupted.

"If you call me lieutenant one more time I am going to rip the bangs off your forehead." You let out a sad laugh before leaning forward and pressing your forehead to Spock's, finally letting the tears fall from your eyes. 

You let yourself cry then, but almost smiled when his hand came up to your shoulder, a steadying presence.  You stayed frozen in that position, your forehead pressed to his, just feeling his breath tickle your wet cheeks as tears streamed down your face and onto his. You tried desperately to tell yourself that he was not dead.  That this Spock, your Spock, was still here, still alive.  

"Y/N?" Spock breathed.

You hummed in response, taking in shaky breaths in an attempt to regain control. 

"You feel sadness for me, correct?" He asked, his eyes opening and meeting yours, which were less than an inch apart. 

You nodded and pulled back, sitting up again, and letting out a few sniffles. 

"Why do you choose to feel pain for me?"

The question left you speechless, despite knowing the answer better than you knew your own heartbeat. 

"I assumed you would have known." You stuttered, your voice much shakier than you meant it to be. 

He looked up at you questioningly now, his face suddenly so vulnerable that you wanted to burst into tears again. 

"I have developed feelings of affection for you." You smirked through your sadness. 

"You are quoting my own words back to me in an attempt to be amusing." Spock commented with a grunt of appreciation. 

You smiled softly down at him, your fingers running absently through his hair, but your lip quivered and a single tear streaked down your cheek. 

"Why are you still sad?" Spock inquired softly, his fingers reaching up and catching the tear before it dropped off your chin. 

"You died today, Spock.  Doesn't that scare you?" You bit your lip hard as you looked down at him, trying to stop the flow of tears. 

"Everyone dies Y/N.  Therefore fear of death is illogical."  He explained robotically, and it made your heart hurt, you didn't know why this was affecting you so much, but for some reason you couldn't meet his eyes.

"But I have learned from my recent escapades with Dr.McCoy that fear of death is what keeps us alive." Spock confided, but he sounded confused and you brought your eyes back to his face, "what does that mean?"

You regarded him for a moment before answering. 

"It means that we are kept alive, we are driven to do things, because of the imminence that is our deaths." You quoted something your father had said once, before he passed.

You recognized the look in Spock's eye as admiration and the corners of his mouth turned up slightly as he said, "Fascinating."

That word alone sent shivers down your spine and you rewarded him with a warm smile, but he still look conflicted. 

"Spock, what do you need? Some time?  Some space?" You pulled your fingers from his hair. 

"If by "space" you imply distance from you, Y/N, then no, that would not help my emotionally compromised state.  Just some time to process the situation and its meaning."

You smiled down at him, your fingers finding his hair, and leaned over again, this time pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose.  You made to pull back but were stopped by a hand firmly placed on the back of your neck.  

He brought your face close to his, and you thought he meant to kiss you, but instead he rested his forehead on yours again.  He reached up and grabbed your hand, the one that was not tangled in his hair and pressed his palm against yours.  You stopped breathing.  

You had been hesitant and careful not to grab Spock's hand too much before this, as you knew what it meant to Vulcans to touch hands. But now Spock moved his fingertips to yours, pressing them gently together, as if he was sure and unsure of himself at the same time.  Your eyes squeezed shut involuntarily as the emotion of his action rolled into you.  You gasped as waves of cool electricity flooded your veins and surrounded your heart, crashing into it like a stormy sea and sending shivers surging through your body.  You had never felt anything like it before and you let yourself be consumed in admiration, and fondness, and love.  

You smiled now and pressed tiny kisses to his forehead, cheeks and the corner of his mouth.  His eyes gleamed before they closed and you pressed your lips softly to his eyelids.  After a while your hands drifted apart and you were left with this humming feeling in your chest, a happy hum, something you never wanted to end. You smiled into the comfortable silence that enveloped the both of you. 

"Do you want to go get something to eat?" You whispered after a while, the sound of your voice causing Spock's eyes to flick open. 

"No, I am very comfortable right now and it would be unpleasant to move." 

"Alright." You shifted back in the couch so you were more relaxed.  

You tilted your head back, a smile playing at your lips incessantly, and thought that you could probably fall asleep right then and there when Spock's voice broke you from your stupor. 

"Would you, perhaps, continue the soothing action you were performing before?"

You blushed and looked down at him, thinking of the kiss, and asked tentatively, "Which action?"

"The action of your fingers in my hair, Y/N, of course." He peeked an eye open, "to which action did you think I was referring?"

"Nothing!" you squeaked and let out a laugh which elicited a raised eyebrow from Spock.

You sprawled your fingers back into his hair, tipping your head back again and resting your other hand on his chest, which he softly wrapped in his own.  You peered down at Spock who looked unbelievably calm and relaxed, and you smiled, reveling in the sparks that filled your veins and the wave of happiness that consumed you. 

- Thanks for reading!  Hope you liked it!  Spock is one of my favs to write (still behind Kirk and Bones) so there will be more to come!  Goodnight! - 

[calliecat93]

When I started TNG, the biggest curiosity I had was why Dr. Pulaski was so hated. I heard plenty about why, but at the same time I wanted to see for myself and be able to draw my own conclusions. Well now that I’ve finished S2, I think that I can safely state my opinion and the reasons why she had such a bad reception.

My general opinion is… Pulaski’s fine, but she got an bad start. She’s a very competent doctor who is devoted to her duty. She’s a bit of a smartass, but otherwise a friendly enough person. She’s a VERY much based off a certain CMO form a certain other Star Trek show that came out before this one, but we’ll get to that later. Pulaski honestly had a lot working against her and she just wasn’t able to get over them despite her actress Diana Muldaur (who played Miranda Jones in TOS) doing an excelent acting job. It ultimately ended with Pulaski being dropped all together and Crusher returning in Season 3.

While I understand the hate against Pulaski and can’t say that it’s unwarranted to an extent, I think that a lot of it that I saw was overblown. Now if people disliked the character, that’s fine. Everyone has different tastes and reasons for what they like and dislike and should be free to have and express those thoughts. But a lot of the issues with her that I had were taken care of very early on and she became much better by the end of her tenure. So why do I believe that Pulaski ultimately failed? Well I’ve come up with three explanations based off my own observations from watching the show and what I got from fandom consensus. Now this is all my opinion based on those observations and is not objective fact whatsoever, so take this with a grain of salt. So I believe the reasons that Pulaski failed are:

#1. She Is Essentially a Female Dr. McCoy… Sort Of: Pulaski was clearly heavily based on Dr. McCoy from TOS. She’s an middle-aged, somewhat world-weary doctor. She’s stubborn, grumpy, and doesn’t put up with anyone’s crap. She’s witty and always ready with a biting comment. She has the dedication to her job. She has the bantery relationship with the Science Officer, which we’ll go into that here soon. She is a doctor before she is an officer and that will always be her top priority, even at great risk to herself. She has a zero tolerance towards authority and isn’t afraid to talk back to anyone no matter how much they outrank her. She even outright has a hatred of teleporters that McCoy had. The parallels are all there. It may be why I’m a bit more lenient on her since McCoy is very much my favorite character in TOS and so far all of ST. But I think it is very much the root of the problem.

While Pulaski has several of McCoy’s traits, I think the writers really only understood McCoy on a surface level. They forget to include his compassion, his empathy, his humanism, his loyalty to the captain even when he opposes his actions, all of the things that make McCoy… well, McCoy. I don’t even know if the pacifism is there. Also McCoy had over 70 episodes of TOS and at that point five films (Undiscovered Country hadn’t been made yet). Pulaski had about 20 episodes and her relevance depended on the episode. McCoy had that as well, but he also had more material so we had FAR more time to get to know him. Pulaski didn’t get to have the time to gain that depth or care from the audience. Like… can I imagine Pulaski hypoing someone so that she can be tortured in their stead and it have the same impact that The Empath did? Can I see her counseling and assuring Picard if he’s having doubts like McCoy did for Kirk in The Ultimate Computer (okay tbf that would be Troi’s job but still)? Could I imagine any of the main cast being crushed about Pulaski dying of a terminal illness and choosing to stay on essentially a doomed spaceship with someone she just met and feel as gutted as I did in For the World is Hollow…? Honestly… given time maybe but in the end no. Now could I imagine McCoy risking getting an aging illness to possibly cure a child and others of it ala Unnatural Selection? Yes, albiet I think he’d be smart enough to bring protective equipment with him to be safe. Could I imagine McCoy telling someone like Data they’d be wrong to sit by a woman giving birth because he wasn’t human ala The Child? Hell no. Maybe he would if he was worried it would cause potential distress the one giving birth, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be because they’re an android. But I could imagine that someone who just saw McCoy as ‘grumpy doctor with a bad bedside manner who says witty lines and argues with the logical Vulcan character’ would get that interpretation. Thus why I think that Pulaski may have ended up how she did.

Now mind you I do think it IS a double standard to excuse McCoy’s dickish momemts and flaws, but demonize Pulaski for her’s. It’s like saying a man can be that way because it’s just expected of them and they can be forgiven, but a woman doing so or being assertice is wrong and they are horrible and unforgivable for having these traits or having flaws even if they correct them. That being said I do think that it’s more than that and it all comes down to the fact that TOS and TNG are two different shows with different character dynamics and ways of doing things. TOS mainly followed a Triumvirate (for the most part but that’s a different post entirely), TNG is much more of an ensemble. Pulaski didn’t have a Kirk nor a Spock to bounce off of or either let her traits shine or be kept in check like McCoy did nor did she really develop any unique relations for herself aside from maybe with Troi. We hear about her empathy and humanitarianism, but we don’t really see it on-screen like we did with McCoy. She has his surface level traits, not the deeper ones that the Triumvirate dynamic along his doctor position allowed him to showcase. In other words, Pulaski was put in a series that wasn’t designed for her while McCoy was exactly where he needed to be in order to thrive. It really speaks to how much the TNG writers didn’t really seem to get McCoy or why and how his character worked, which is strange since they got him right when he showed up in the series premiere. But maybe that was due to DeForest Kelley and him absolutely knowing the character he’d played for so long. But yeah they tried to replicate McCoy, and it just didn’t work with TNG’s already established character dynamics nor did they fully get the character that they were trying to recreate. If I want McCoy, I’ll go watch TOS or AOS. I didn’t need Pulaski for that.

#2. Data and Misconstrued Character Dynamics; This is in relation to the first reason and REALLY shows how much the writers didn’t think the dynamics through. We all know how much Spock and McCoy bantered. How they are opposite ends of the spectrum and how their perspective points helped Kirk in making his decisions. Well clealry they wanted to re-create that with Pulaski and Data. Makes sense, Pulaski represents the humanism and Data the logical. But there’s one big, BIG problem with that: Data is NOT Spock. A lot fo people have pointed this out, but here’s the thing about Spock. Despite whatever he may have said, Spock DID have emotions. He kept them suppressed due to the issues in his upbringing and that wasn’t necessarily healthy, but he did have them. And despite speaking in a calm manner, he was also an utter sass bucket, could be rude, and had no issue putting down humanity if he had a point to make. He and McCoy were very much equal in their bantering and yes maybe McCoy could go too far with his insults, but there was always an equal balance and Spock was also perfectly capable of starting/escalating their spats. There were also plenty of moments to show that in spite of it, they were still friends and cared a great deal about each other with probably the best examples of this being The Immunity Syndrome, Bread and Circuses, The Empath, and plenty of moments in others like Miri and For the World is Hollow… Those who have been following me know how much I love the Spock/McCoy dynamic and I could go all day, but the point is it’s a complex relationship that may seem like disdain on the outside, but is so much more when you examine it up close.

Data however? Data is intelligent and the Science Officer with a calm demeanor, but that’s about where the similarity between him and Spock ends. Data is an android. I do not believe that he is emotionless, he just has a different wiring that causes him to feel things differently. He’s never shown disdain towards humanity at least from what I’ve observed thus far. If anything, he actively seeks to understand it and emotions more. He actively has hobbies like Sherlock Holmes. He tries things like sneezing and growing a beard in an effort to understand more. Data is more or less a child with a child-like understanding of things and he doesn’t really understand social cues or things like humor, but he DOES have emotions and feelings. There’s too much on-screen evidence to say otherwise. He just has his own way of processing it. This is what makes Pulaski look so bad. When she calls Data a machine, says he can’t understand, and even purposefully mispronounces his name, she comes across as an outright bully. She is essentially bullying a neurodivergent child. Do I need to explain why that’s awful? Data, while by no means a doormat, isn’t the type to sass back or make any biting comments back like Spock would. There is no balance. There is no equal footing. There are not enough positive interactions outside the banter to show that there is something deeper there at the end of the day like Spock and McCoy did. Heck you can even compare how Pulaski and McCoy talk to Data via McCoy’s guest appearance in Encounter at Farpoint. He DOES make a quip about Vulcans when talking to Data and when Data points out he’s an android not a Vulcan, McCoy mumbles “Just as bad.” But immediately after he gives Data genuine heartfelt advice on treating the Enterprise with care. It’s clear that ultimately it’s McCoy being his usual grumpy self who’d be acting the same way towards anyone else and is otherwise perfectly civil and encouraging to Data. We’ve known him long enough to know this. Pulaski didn’t have that luxury, coming off as condescending towards Data at best and considering that she’s a doctor, it looks especially bad.

Now to be fair this only lasts for about four episodes. Pulaski does start catching herself by her second episode, and stops completely after Unnatural Selection when Data helps her and stays with her after she gets the aging virus. After that she’s MUCH moe civil to him, even defending his choice going against the Prime Directive in Pen Pals and was at his retirement party in The Measure of a Man. But clearly the damage had been done. Data is a very beloved character and by Oulaski’s intro had already been established and well-liked character. Data was treated equally and was valued as far more than just an android among the rest of the crew, Crusher included, so Pulaski coming in a season later and acting that way also didn’t help. The writers did not think through why Spock and McCoy worked and how to try figure out a unique dynamic for Pulaski and Data. Instead they just tried to copy TOS, and it utterly failed. It ruined Pulaski’s chances before she could even really start running. But I do believe that she could have rebounded and as I said, she DID get past it. She did relapse some at the end of the season in Peak Performance to the point I wanna say that maybe it chronologically happened earlier in the season, but even then she felt realized her screw up and apologized. It’s still an improvement from early on. But things just weren’t meant to be, which leads is to…

#3. She Only Lasted One Season/She Replaced Dr. Crusher: I believe that the biggest thing that worked against Pulaski is simple: she was cut after Season 2. Pulaski was created when Gates MacFadden left the show. I’ve seen conflicting reasons as to why, but regardless she left and a CMO was needed. IDK how popular Crusher was, but I had really enjoyed her. She was essentially the mom of the ship which added something different from TOS (wel McCoy was also the mom lets be real XD), had a son onboard which also added something new, was very much capable and devoted to her job, and was a badass when she got to use a phaser. Her being written out sucked, but that’s not necessarily a reason to hate Pulaski. But as I highlighted above, she just didn’t work. They tried to make McCoy, but without the dynamics and depth that let McCoy flourish. TNG is not TOS. Whenever TNG tried replicating TOS like with The Naked Now? It blew up in their faces. The key to a spinoff or reboot is to keep certain themes and tone alive, but to not just replicate what came before. TNG flourished when it began to find it’s own footing, and ultimately lasted four seasons longer than it’s predecessor due to it.

I genuinely believe that Pulaski COULD have developed into her own character and could have found her place the same way that McCoy did. But alas that didn’t happen. People wanted Crusher back, so they managed to get MacFadden to return and thus Crusher was put back in her rightful place. Because of it, Pulaski was just forgotten about. She didn’t get the chance to form her own character. She didn’t the chance to develop further and leave her early days behind. Why? Because she simply wasn’t given the opprotunity to do so. I can’t say it was the wrong choice, but it’s an utter shame because I do believe that Pulaski was on her way to improving. But it was too late. Her bad start with Data, her character not working in the TNG dynamic, and her replacing an already perfectly likeable character who did fit the dynamics all amounted to the character’s abrupt end. And because she didn’t get the chance to develop further and find her own path, her bad reputation has stuck to this very day.

In the end, the whole thing just feels like a waste. Pulaski had potential, but it just didn’t work in the end. I can’t say that I hate her. If anything, I feel bad for her. The writers failed her at the end of the day and by the time they tried correcting their errors, the audience had already made their judgement. It may have been for the best to just drop her and bring Crusher back, but I also hate seeing character potential just so utterly wasted. I hope that if any side material used Pulaski, they were able to find a much better direction for her. I can’t say that I love Pulaski. In a more TOS-like setting maybe she’d have worked better. But in the end I think that Pulaski was a decent character who just had too much working against her and they caused her to crash and burn. Just an unfortunate case all in all.

(Image Source)

[fierceawakening]

(Vulcans pt 2) It's something I relate to a bunch because my own regretted behavior has generally been because of too much emotion (including empathy related emotion) and many of the things I'm proud of depend on controlling my feelings and doing the right thing. It doesn't seem to affect the kind of instant-intervention you talk about - I've actually saved a few lives in the moment by going into a "have to act now and this is the logical course of action" state. Emotions come later for me.

Now, would I have acted to save lives if I didn't care about other people or animals at all? Maybe not. But I do care, just not usually immediately on the surface and often in a more abstract way. Every life is so unique and fragile. A world where people don't, say, die in accidents is a better world where they do, and if I can help save them, it's a better world for me too.

That’s super interesting, because the evidence I was going on on this one was a NatGeo article that suggests that sort of split-second derring-do is an empathetic response.

The article’s a bit old so this is the only link I could find, which I’m wary of...

https://dl.serfanonline.ir/image/2017/12/National-Geographic-USA-January-2018@world_kiosk.pdf

But here’s a few of the relevant bits:

“RESEARCHERS ONCE THOUGHT young childrenhad no concern for the well-being of others—alogical conclusion if you’ve seen a toddler’s tantrums. But recent findings show that babies feelempathy long before their first birthday. MaayanDavidov, a psychologist at Hebrew University ofJerusalem, and her colleagues have conductedsome of these studies, analyzing the behavior ofchildren as they witness somebody in distress—acrying child, an experimenter, or their own mother pretending to be hurt. Even before six monthsof age, many infants respond to such stimuli withfacial expressions reflecting concern; some alsoexhibit caring gestures such as leaning forwardand trying to communicate with the one in distress. In their first year, infants also show signs oftrying to understand the suffering they’re seeing.Eighteen-month-olds often translate their empathy into such positive social behavior as giving ahug or a toy to comfort a hurt child.”

Which seems to pretty clearly link the “concerned face” with an emotional response and then suggest the emotional response prompts the helping behavior. Which is then contrasted with (cw this portrays psychopaths as Very Bad):

“That’s not true of all children, however. In asmall minority, starting in the second year of life,researchers see what they call an “active disregard” of others. “When someone reported thatsomeone had hurt themselves,” says CarolynZahn-Waxler, a researcher at the University ofWisconsin–Madison, “these children would kindof laugh at them or even kind of swipe at them andsay, ‘You’re not hurt,’ or ‘You should be more careful’—saying it in a tone of voice that was judgmental.” Following these toddlers into adolescence,Zahn-Waxler and her colleague Soo Hyun Rhee,a psychologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, found they had a high likelihood of developing antisocial tendencies and getting into trouble.Other studies have measured callousness andlack of emotional expression in adolescents using questions such as whether the subject feelsremorseful upon doing something wrong. Thosewith high scores for “callous-unemotional” traitstend to have frequent and severe behavioralproblems—showing extreme aggression in fights,for instance, or vandalizing property. Researchershave also found that some of these adolescentsend up committing major crimes such as murder, rape, and violent robbery. Some are proneto becoming full-blown psychopaths as adults—individuals with cold, calculating hearts whowouldn’t flinch while perpetrating the most horrific acts imaginable. (Most psychopaths are men.)”

Research like this is where I get the idea that callous-unemotional traits are correlated with immoral behavior. 

And here’s where they claim that what they’re calling empathy is what makes people do supererogatory stuff like saving people:

“A man pulled over, ran acrossthe highway, and helped start the car. “He took anenormous risk running across the freeway. There’sno possible explanation for it other than he justwanted to help,” Marsh says. “How can anybodybe moved to do something like that?”Marsh kept turning that question over inher head. Not long after she began workingat Georgetown, she wondered if the altruismshown by the driver on the bridge wasn’t in someways the polar opposite of psychopathy. She began looking for a group of exceptionally kindindividuals to study and decided that altruistickidney donors would make ideal subjects. Theseare people who’ve chosen to donate a kidney toa stranger, sometimes even incurring financialcosts, yet receive no compensation in return.Marsh and her colleagues brought 19 donorsin from around the country for the study. The researchers showed each one a series of black-and white photographs of facial expressions, somefearful, some angry, and others neutral, whiletheir brains were scanned using an MRI machineto map both activity and structure.When looking at fearful faces, donors showeda greater response in their right amygdala than acontrol group. Separately, the researchers foundthat their right amygdalas were, on average,8 percent larger than those of the control group.Similar studies done previously on psychopathicsubjects had found the opposite: The amygdalasin psychopathic brains are smaller and activated less than those in controls while reacting tofrightened faces.”

So things like this are where I get the idea that emotions matter to morality, and that empathy is one of the ones that does.

The article’s a couple of years old so there might be new research, though.

Also it doesn’t seem that the researchers described tested for how common emotionless lifesaving like you describe is, so they might just be missing that cohort of humans entirely?

But this seems pretty unambiguous about how certain emotional responses (or lack of them) are at the very least correlated to certain types of action, which is why I have such a hard time with people coming into my ask box without evidence that’s also from studies and going “but emotions have nothing to do with actions!”

Like... those links to behavior sound strong, but I might be missing something propagandistic? But no one seems to point out what that is, just to say “but people have been mean to me over this.”

Which is bad! Mean people are being bad! Yes! But the evidence seems to point in the other direction and so i feel... disingenuous going “Ah, yes, people were mean, so this isn’t actually a thing.”

I want everyone to be nice, but you don’t get to make your own reality, and when I read descriptions like this of neuroscience that make the issue sound pretty darn settled...

...that’s what those asks seem to me like they’re doing.