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anghraine · 12 days ago

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Further thoughts on this tangent:

(#i also don't generally incorporate the films into my tos fic but i'm tempted by the captain uhura-dr. kirk au version of tmp sometimes #a beleaguered admiral uhura dealing with decker's fuckery and everyone hyperscrutinizing her motives for trying to save the planet #while kirk zooms back to his previous troi-like position at her left hand and privately is like THANK GOD YOU'RE BACK we might not all DIE)

I had to go do things, but thought a lot about the TMP!AU(?) of my Captain Uhura+psychologist!Kirk brotp AU (it's AUs all the way down!).

So. After the five-year mission, there are some weird, unnecessary delays around confirming Uhura as CO of the Enterprise's next mission. Both Captain Uhura and Dr. Kirk suspect the culprit is some kind of backroom politics at Starfleet, though they don't know the details. Well before Uhura is offered promotion way up the chain of command for both tactical and PR reasons, the future of the Enterprise and its current crew is way more "up in the air" than would be usual or expected.

At this point, much of the crew have already scattered to the winds on their extended mandatory leave. Kirk, however, has an apartment in San Francisco that would be a stretch to call home in its own right, but he and Spock have lived there since the Enterprise returned to Earth a couple of months earlier, and that makes it home enough by Kirk's standards. So they're both nearby and in Uhura's orbit during all this, and she meets up with one or both fairly regularly, most often Kirk, who is always up for a gossipy lunch. Their dynamic is very much Overachieving Sorority Girl BFF Solidarity, though in a way where, when Uhura points out that she's not currently his CO but remains his friend, so it wouldn't be inappropriate for him to call her Nyota, it doesn't come across as warm and whimsical (as intended) but just slightly off. And Kirk's like, well, in that case it wouldn't be inappropriate for you to call me Jim. And they look at each other across the table and just kind of radiate "ugh no" and never talk about it again.

(They are always, always captain/admiral and doctor.)

Kirk as well as Uhura is genuinely pissed about Starfleet yanking her around. Worse, he assumes the slight oddities he's noticed in Spock's behavior derive from the same source: shared frustration with how she's being treated (they're both loyal friends to her, even if Kirk is a bit closer) and annoyance with the uncertainty around Spock's own professional future in all this, given his position on the Enterprise and repeated rejections of other, more prestigious posts in favor of remaining Uhura's first officer (his respect for Uhura was not his sole motive, but still).

Kirk mostly sticks to his now long-established role as Uhura's confidant/counselor/friend when he speaks with Uhura herself, then goes home and vents to Spock. There's so much up in the air professionally for everyone that it doesn't even enter his head that something else might be going on with him.

But I imagine Spock is reasonably honest with him once he makes his decision. He tells him outright that he believes himself too emotionally compromised and disconnected from his culture and values to continue in Starfleet, and that he intends to seek kolinahr. The general upheaval around the crew's future at this time leads him to conclude, logically, that this is the optimal time for him to leave San Francisco for Gol.

On one level, Kirk is very deeply shocked and upset and can only assume he's made some terrible mistake in their relationship (though Spock insists otherwise). But he doesn't throw a screaming fit or break down crying or something like that, in part because he's suddenly very aware that a big emotional display will not help, and in part because he firmly believes that Spock may need to figure his shit out once and for all, but doesn't really have it in him to cut Kirk off forever. He'll come back home before he ever achieves kolinahr and Kirk just needs to be patient with him, the same way he just needed to be patient with Spock's hang-ups during the mission and by the end of it they were crazy in love and married.

Spock offers to free him from their bond to go pursue another partner, and Kirk's like ... nonono it's fine you can shield it like you're doing now if that's what you need, I don't want to go back to the San Francisco dating scene anyway haha.

Internally, though, he's feeling something much more like [internal screaming] + "okay, you don't respect my profession enough to find someone who could actually help you through all this baggage in a healthy way, so sure, go back to your lifelong pursuit of the approval of people vastly inferior to you who were determined to never approve of you before you were even born, and angst your way into deciding you can and must be more Vulcan than the Vulcans. Yet again. I'm sure that will work out great for you. But you will tear the eternal bond of our souls from my dead cold body."

And while Kirk is facing down the Vulcan approximation of legal separation, Uhura finally gets the answer to her own mystery. Starfleet does want to remove her from command—not because of some unknown failure of her captaincy, but because she was so wildly successful, and her particular gifts could serve Starfleet at a much higher level while also benefiting them in other ways. She's offered promotion: not just to fleet captain, but admiral. At 37.

I feel like this isn't quite as dire an option for her as for Kirk himself. Planetside life isn't so antithetical to her basic nature, and accepting the promotion is less of an extreme response to ... whatever went wrong than a calculated professional decision. But I think it's still not super great for her, either; I stand by my opinion that they're just not that different as people. Uhura makes the considered decision to accept the promotion and further her ambitions much faster than she'd anticipated, and she's confident that she'll find a different kind of fulfillment and purpose as part of the brass in a role where she's making these big-picture decisions for Starfleet and the Federation. Outwardly, she's wildly successful. But three or four years into this, she feels deeply restless and dissatisfied and isolated.

I like the idea of this as a parallel to Kirk's initial exasperated but unshaken assurance with regard to Spock's kolinahr, which is partly about his trust in their relationship and his protective resentment of how Spock has been treated and how much it's fucked with his head, but also partly condescending (especially the bits he doesn't say out loud). But it's been years now, far longer than he originally expected, and he's heard basically nothing from Spock himself in that time, though he has his sources and knows Spock hasn't yet achieved kolinahr but has apparently made progress towards it.

At heart, Kirk still believes Spock won't be able to go through with it, but it's a more strained, fragile belief these days. He has to actively put in effort to keep himself from slipping into constantly doubting his own convictions as well, and definitely has spent some long hours contemplating the void like am I crazy to keep thinking—? I feel like I'm going insane as the general frustration and misery of being separated from his husband for four years while stubbornly regarding himself as still married escalates. So he's very much going through it, if not quite to the degree of TMP Kirk (because he was never the captain and didn't get steamrollered by backroom politics into a desk job before turning 40). He stays on the Enterprise, though he definitely retreated from the elevated Troi-on-the-bridge dynamic he had with Uhura; Decker is fine but no Uhura, and Kirk finds himself deliberately burying himself in his original responsibility of running the social sciences division and keeping a close clinical eye on the crew. He and Uhura correspond now and then, but it's not the same when he's on the Enterprise and she's not, so they're both unhappily advancing their careers and burning themselves out at the same time.

Then, of course, the Enterprise returns for the major re-fits that are going in in TMP. They meet up, both notice that not all is well with the other one, but don't know the details and aren't sure if it's the sort of thing they should bring up (I think it's clear enough to both that Uhura is frustrated professionally and Kirk in his marriage, in ways that definitely affect Uhura's personal life and Kirk's professional one).

When the V'ger crisis drops, re-fits are ongoing etc—the whole TMP thing. Uhura was the one to recommend Decker for the captaincy, but the stakes of the crisis lead her to conclude both that "Decker is suited for all kinds of other missions but weird risky shit is not his strength, and the whole population of the planet is at risk" and "FINALLY opportunity is knocking again." Uhura taking over from Decker goes pretty similarly, though I think she's less brusque (though no less steely) about it, and she has to deal with general doubt and suspicion about her true motives in addition to the unfamiliarity from the re-fits, etc.

Despite her graciousness, the strain and isolation is a ... lot, not helped by Decker's petty tantrums from TMP. Kirk's opinion of his former captain is very similar to Uhura's, and internally he is pretty much "how dare!!!" about everyone, even McCoy, basically ganging up on her despite her obviously being the best choice tactically to keep Earth's population from being obliterated.

(Not to be "everything is about Tarsus IV all the time," but I suspect that part of the reason the stakes of the crisis are so much more real for Kirk and something he can grasp quickly and readily is that, well, it's vastly more people this time, but large-scale planetary slaughter is something that has been very, very real for him. And Uhura was an absolute champ during their version of "The Conscience of the King" and discovered pretty much his entire history, so she knows, too. Yeah, he'd be annoyed in Decker's position as well, but them's the breaks; Kirk fully believes that Uhura is vastly more qualified intellectually and temperamentally to save Earth's population and that is far more important than Decker's career, sorrynotsorry. He and Uhura don't talk explicitly about any of the massacres he's lived through, but I think they definitely end up having some hushed conversations about how modern life doesn't seem to prepare most people to develop the fortitude to truly grasp and respond appropriately to something like this.)

So he takes the liberty of seeking her out to assure her that someone has her back and if she needs any information he can ethically divulge, he's happy to help out (and if she needs to decompress with their old gossip lunches, he has MANY OPINIONS to share, lol). Uhura is like ... professional evaluations of the bridge crew and what they're psychologically equipped to deal with first, gossip second, though when they have the time she'd really like to know why the bald lieutenant responded to Uhura's "hello" with unrequested information about her oath of celibacy...

Kirk bursts out laughing and assures her that Lieutenant Ilia does that with everyone before shifting to the quick professional rundowns. I think they only have time for gossip after Spock arrives and fixes the technical systems, at which point Kirk is very much more strained, while Uhura is rather less so, since surprisingly Spock is also clearly in her corner in his now ice-cold way.

Kirk does tell her, much less lightly, that Ilia does the same thing with everyone; it's not anything Uhura did but a Deltan cultural practice. He hardly knew where to look when she did it with him, but then, interestingly, only some people seem to feel the effects of ~Deltan allure~. He doesn't at all, though perhaps it's simply because he's already bonded—

I think he breaks off pretty sharply and Uhura, regretfully, tells him that she can understand how difficult it is, and knows how much he values his privacy, but she does need to know how far she can trust Spock at this point. And she also needs to know if she can depend upon Kirk's professional judgment when it comes to Spock.

You can always depend on me, Admiral, he says, and rubs his temples. And you can depend on him. His manner isn't—it's not suspicious, not the way everyone seems to think. I already knew about it; he's just trying to prove himself more Vulcan than the Vulcans right now.

He can't bring himself to say it's fine but she gets the picture and nods.

Thank you, she says. As Kirk rises to leave, she adds, It feels wrong to say "doctor, heal thyself"—but Dr. Kirk?

Yes, ma'am?

Take some painkillers. I need everyone at their best.

#tmp is a terrible time for both but a great time for the Power of Friendship (and bitching about everyone else)#anghraine babbles #fic talk #fic talk: captain uhura and dr. kirk #star peace #c: i half believed it myself #c: who do i have to be #long post #brotp: you're the only one who can do it #c: i object to intellect without discipline #otp: closer than anyone in the universe #willard decker critical #i truly don't think tmp happens in the main captain uhura story line but i'm deeply invested in the admiral uhura-dr. kirk flavor of brotp #despite the basic au of it. especially as a 'mostly kirk was right in tmp and decker was an ill-qualified petty asshole' truther #just imagining admiral uhura discreetly ordering decker to go see dr. kirk while they're en route to the space vagina #your emotions are understandable of course but they seem to be distracting you from your responsibilities. i think it'd be helpful #kirk (whose position on decker has gone from 'he's fine' to murder sirens in the last five hours) when decker sullenly shows up: um?

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