onreport
On Report
She stood outside his office door, nervously checking the uniform
she had already checked and rechecked back in her cabin. Her
hands felt warm and sticky and she tried to dry them on her skirt,
only to find herself trying to brush the imaginary sweat stains off
with her hands.
"Oh, this is ridiculous," she thought, her sense of humour finally
coming to her aid, and she pressed the entry chime quickly before
she lost her nerve.
She jumped as it swept open immediately, and disliked herself for
doing so. She had come here for a reprimand; it was time for her to
take it like ... like an officer and a lady. She smiled slightly to
herself and let the amusement carry her into the room.
He was sitting at his desk, writing one of the old-fashioned,
hold-in-the-hand, hard copy letters he wrote, once a week, regular
as clockwork to his brother. One of the oddest parts of her duties
as a Communications Officer had been finding ways and means
of getting the letters to the isolated colony where Sam Kirk lived.
Her record was twenty-two jumps from freighter to ferry to liner
to private yacht to freighter and so on and on to Deneva. Heaven
only knew how long it took each letter to arrive, heaven only knew
what order they arrived in, Uhura knew how large a bite it took out
of the Captain's salary every month. She wondered if she would
ever know him well enough to ask why he didn't just send
mailgrams like everyone else.
He looked up and smiled absently. "Take a seat, Lieutenant," he
said. "I won't be a minute, just let me finish this."
She sat down and watched as he wrote a couple more sentences in
his surprisingly neat hand and signed the letter with a flourish.
Then he opened the desk drawer, put the letter in and took out a
datablock. Her stomach lurched as she recognised it -- it was the
report she had filed yesterday, her report on their visit to the
Mirror Universe.
"I can't accept this," he said, and for a moment she almost
protested. She had formally stated her acceptance of the expected
reprimand in her report, what more did he want? Then she realised
she was in no position to argue. She dropped her head to look at
her hands and said nothing.
"Before we go any further, I think you should know, I've put
everybody who went on that little trip in for a commendation,
including you."
That brought her head up. "You can't!" She was genuinely shocked
by the suggestion.
He laughed, not unkindly and sat back in his chair. The overhead
light picked up the gold in his hair and she felt once again the
kick of attraction deep in her belly, sharp and warm and
unwelcome. "That's not the usual reaction to that particular piece
of news," he said gently. "Mind telling me why not?"
She looked down at her hands again, watching as they formed into
fists, the knuckles white, and then relaxed. "I was so afraid. I told
you. I was afraid."
"Did it stop you doing your duty?"
"No... but it could have." The last phrase rushed and too loud.
"But it didn't."
She was getting angry now. Why couldn't he see it? How much
more plainly did she have to say it? "Don't you understand, sir? I
nearly fouled up the entire mission just because I was scared."
She started to drop her eyes again and forced herself to look him
in the eye. "I was scared I was going to mess it up." Her voice
dropped to a whisper. "We'd all be stuck in that terrible place and
it would all be my fault. Because I was afraid."
She jumped as he jerked upright and leaned forward, his
expression suddenly intent. "There we have it," he said, and
she realised that this was what he had been waiting for, this was
where he had been leading the conversation. "Don't you see? You
weren't afraid of what might happen, Lieutenant. You were afraid
of being afraid."
It made a sort of sense. She tried to think it out but she was
beginning to feel trapped. Her shame was such a familiar thing,
she had used it for so long to make sense of her actions, that she
found she was unwilling to let it go. "Does it matter what I was
afraid of?" she said. "I was afraid and I didn't even have the
professionalism to keep it to myself." She felt herself start to
redden. "I blurted it out in front of you all like a frightened child."
He waved the protest away. "That's nothing. You were just doing
what Doctor McCoy does when he grumbles about the transporter
or Mr Scott when he tells me I'm going to blow up the ship; you
named your fear and you went past it." He smiled, obviously willing
her to accept what he was saying. "It's a coping mechanism, that's
all. We all have them."
"And as for the fear... I'm not going to spin you the old line about
courage being acting despite your fear -- although like all cliches
there's more than a grain of truth in it. The truth is Uhura, out here
we're all afraid and we all have to find our own way of dealing with
it."
"Including you?"
She watched him pick up the tinge of resentment, of accusation,
in the question and turn it aside with a laugh. "Hell yes. Don't go
believing all that rubbish Starfleet PR puts out, I get just as scared
as the rest of you, more so probably because I've got 430 of you to
be scared about. I've just taught myself to postpone the reaction
until later, when it can't do any harm."
He paused, considering her for a moment, apparently assessing her
for something, trustworthiness perhaps or maturity, because
eventually he said, "Did you do the Directed Dreaming course at
the Academy?"
"No sir, it was elective for non-command officers."
"I still do the exercises every night." He shrugged, his lips
compressing in an oddly expressive grimace, part rueful
acknowledgement of his own frailties, part denial of their cost. "If
I don't, the nightmares are... difficult to ignore."
He shook himself and looked her straight in the eye. "Everybody
manages their fear in their own way, Lieutenant. Yours isn't the
most dignified coping mechanism I've ever come across but
that's all it is. If you wanted to, you could probably change it
fairly easily. There are a number of techniques you can learn, and
you wouldn't even have to go dirtside to do it. You'll certainly
have to do something about it if you ever want your own
command."
She stared at him, shocked and exhilarated. "Do you really think
I could?"
He shrugged again, spreading his hands in an already familiar
gesture. "I'm not going to tell you what's right for you. It isn't for
everybody. If everyone who could have their own command, did,
this ship would be light Commander Scott and Mr Spock for a
start. But I will tell you this - you're not one of those aboard
this ship who couldn't."
He let her think about that for a few seconds and then pushed her
report back over the desk to her. "So take this away and re-write
it and bring it back tomorrow -- on a datablock -- Command still
wants this kept quiet and off the logs."
She picked it up and waited while he put his letter in an envelope
and wrote the address. She felt that she ought to say something
but did not know what. Then, as he sealed the envelope, Yeoman
Rand came in with supper on a tray and the end of shift reports,
and the moment was lost.
"Thank you Lieutenant. That'll be all." He was already deep in the
report, lips pursed as he read through the repair schedule,
pausing to make the occasional note, impatient for the work to
be done. He had already forgotten she was there.
She made for the door and paused, wanting to express her thanks,
make some acknowledgement of what she had just been given.
As the door swept open she turned. "Good night, Captain."
He looked up, almost startled.
"Sweet dreams," she said.
The End
