Story [Star Trek] "According to the Fixed Law of Gravity"| Fic-Gift for WarmNyota_SweetAyesha, Short Story

Title: “According to the Fixed Law of Gravity”
Fandom: Star Trek: AOS
Author: Mira_Jade

Genre: General (Drama, Family, Romance, Action)
Rating: PG
Time Frame: Star Trek: 2009, Academy era
Characters: Amanda Grayson/Sarek, Spock/Nyota Uhura, Christopher Pike, OCs

Summary: When the Romulan Empire asked the Federation for a parley over rights to the mining planet Pretium, located on the border of the Neutral Zone, Amanda Grayson was not half so interested in the diplomatic proceedings as she was the chance to catch up with her son, who has long been away at Starfleet. Of course, the trip would eventually prove to be a most illuminating one in every way, no matter how much Spock would rather she didn’t see.


Notes: This is for @WarmNyota_SweetAyesha, whose request was for an episode of the TOS to be done in the reboot ‘verse. I of course had to go with my favourite, Journey to Babel – only, this is set much earlier in canon, so the piece will only mirror the episode in broad strokes. But Amanda deserved to have these moments, so I am going to write them into the narrative, just you watch me.

This piece is looking to come in around five or six parts. And, of course, on top of the drama and adventure, there will be a thread of romance and a dollop of mush to wrap this fic up. Because we can all thank Ny for bringing her warmth and positive energy to the boards!

Thanks for the wonderful prompt, my friend! I hope you enjoy!


Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, but for the words.

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“According to the Fixed Law of Gravity”
by Mira_Jade​

I.

The shuttle bay of the USS Yorktown was filled to the brim with onlookers gathered from both from the ship’s crew and the Federation’s diplomatic representatives who’d already assembled to attend the meet at Pretium. Near the back of the crowd, squeezed in between a pair of Andorian attachés and her fellow SLI interns, her back to a stack of crates that had been haphazardly pushed out of the way, Cadet Nyota Uhura knew how lucky she was to even be in the room. It was an honor to attend the conference to come in any capacity, and she was determined to prove her worth to her superiors to validate the faith they'd put in her. This opportunity was the culmination of everything she’d worked so hard to achieve thus far in her career, and she was trying to hide her wide eyes and eagerness to serve lest her enthusiasm give her lack of experience away. When she first signed up and was accepted to shadow the Federation linguist Emilia Suárez for the summer, she hadn’t even dreamed that her internship would see her this deep in the quadrant, so close to the edge of the Neutral zone and facing a very real possibility of live engagement. But now, here she was, and she was ready for anything.

Of course, the gathering of the Federation’s best and brightest here aboard the Yorktown was to ensure that just the opposite happened – and so far it seemed as if the Romulans who had engaged the talks were just as eager to resolve the matter as quickly and peacefully as they were. But, of course, many of the Federation's altercations with the Empire had started with such seemingly innocuous motives over the years, and the event was being treated with every perceivable caution imaginable. That was why the Yorktown was being used for transport in place of a diplomatic vessel to begin with, and the starships Earhart, Amaterasu, and Lafayette were closely flanking them for support as needed. They did not expect a fight, they would prefer to avoid an open conflict if at all possible, but they were ready for one if it came.

Nyota lightly bounced on the balls of her feet, trying to better see the newly arrived shuttle over the shoulders of the dozens who were gathered. Aboard the ship were the diplomats from Vulcan, the last of their convoy slated for arrival. No matter that it was silly of her – Human, illogical – she smoothed down the front of her scarlet cadet's uniform yet again with a nervous gesture. The palms of her hands were sweating, and her nerves were making her restless, no matter that she was much too far away to catch the eye of either the ambassador or his wife once they disembarked. She was only an intern and a cadet, here to watch and learn by the side of her mentor; the odds were that they would travel in vastly different circles for the majority of the trip. Her worrying over her appearance was as fruitless as it was unnecessary. She had no rational explanation for her doing so, and she was annoyed by her lack of composure.

Still . . .

As unobtrusively as she could, she peered over to where Captain Pike was standing at the forefront of the crowd to greet the shuttle, standing next to the Andorian ambassador and the Human representative from Earth. Since being assigned command of the Enterprise, Christopher Pike only took special missions for Starfleet aboard his old berth, and this situation certainly counted as a critical one, requiring the best of the best to see it through. The crew aboard the Yorktown was a combination of seasoned veterans called in for special service and newly minted officers who were in training for postings aboard the Enterprise in one form or another – as was evident by their captain’s choice of first officer, standing just to his right and slightly behind him in a position of deference and respect.

Maybe, just maybe, Nyota allowed her gaze to linger for longer than was strictly proper, but there was no one there to call her on, or even notice, her lapse in social norms, swallowed in the back of the crowd as she was. Instead, she allowed herself a moment of indulgence, taking in Spock’s familiar profile from the slant of his brows to the thin, neutral line of his mouth. He was standing as straight and tall as ever, but even with the crowd separating them she thought that she could see where his eyes were just slightly more narrowed than was his usual resting expression. His hands were clasped behind his back in an easy pose, but he tapped the first finger of his right hand against his opposite thumb in as Human a gesture of nervousness as any she'd ever seen him exhibit. It was not, she thought, the trial run of his command that prompted his discomfort, but rather -

- she took a deep breath in, and let it out slow, feeling where a heavy feeling of mingled anticipation and wary trepidation seemed to linger just beyond her conscious awareness of her own mind. It was a faint sense – a shadow of intuition that was separate enough from her own self that she could tell it as foreign, and yet so natural to her being that her psyche simply accepted the presence of another within her thoughts as a necessary component of her existence and adapted to function accordingly. Her heightened awareness of Spock's presence was a relatively new phenomena, at that; it’d only just started back at the Academy, at the end of the semester back in June. At first, she thought that she'd simply let her guard down around a touch telepath. She was comfortable around Spock, and she could think of a dozen instances where a temporary psychic bond may have flared into being from some thoughtlessly casual contact or another. But, if that was the case, why hadn't distance and time dimmed her extra awareness? That was what she had first assumed would happen, but so far . . . nothing. The feelings had neither intensified or wholly left her, and she knew that she was coming to a point where she was going to have an uncomfortable talk with Spock about what she was experiencing - which was exactly what she had wanted to avoid in the first place. Thinking that this was something that would naturally go away on its own, she hadn’t risked speaking to Spock about the matter to begin with and neither had he mentioned anything out of the ordinary on his end. Not that they'd managed to talk more than a few times in passing since the academic year ended, of course. She was busy with her internship, and he with his duties for Starfleet; they hadn’t been able to find much time for each other in between. Nyota pursed her lips for that thought and amended: it shouldn’t have been necessary for them to find time for each other. They had no ties on each other beyond the professional; even academically he was no longer her instructor, he hadn’t been since her sophomore year. She had no rational way to explain why it was that she felt what she felt; she only know that she did have these . . . feelings, and they didn't seem to be going anywhere.

Because . . . she missed him, she could be honest enough with herself to admit. Even with everything else going on in her life, with her academic career soaring and her hard work and years of effort paying off to earn the attention of Senior Translator Suárez herself, she still thought about him. A part of her, she acknowledged with a ghosting sense of knowing, had apparently decided that he was something she needed as much as she did the promise of the stars and her ambition to reach them. It was a . . . disquieting realization, even deep within the privacy of her thoughts. Disquieting and potentially overwhelming and terrifying, yes, and yet, somehow, not completely unwelcome.

Still, no matter the tangled mess of her feelings, she firmly swept those thoughts away for later – for much later, preferably until after she was already well into her deployment aboard the Enterprise and maybe not even then – and instead furrowed her brow to wonder what it was that had Spock so out of sorts. Greeting his family should have been something to look forward to. The head of the delegation from Vulcan was Sarek himself, Nyota knew, and his wife was traveling with him as she so often did. They were his parents – that was common knowledge even beyond Starfleet for the tabloid gossip that so loved to report on what the pioneer of inter-species relationships Amanda Grayson was up to in her personal life. Kashore was always scintillated by those trash columns, and she loved to share what she considered to be the juiciest tidbits, though the comings and goings of the Betazoid royal houses were usually her guilty cup of tea. Fondly, Nyota rolled her eyes for thinking of her sister, even as she felt a dull pang throb in her side. This was the first summer that she hadn’t returned home to visit her family in Nairobi in favor of continuing her studies abroad, and she missed them. Knowing that she was standing on the deck of a starship in the deepest parts of the quadrant, so far from Earth, was another surreal thought, one that she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around in whole. The galaxy was suddenly unimaginably large around her, and she felt tiny in comparison.

So, she clasped her hands loosely in front of her so as to avoid jostling into the people around her and frowned to watch Spock as he stared straight ahead, standing like a stone in the midst of a strong river current. He looked, she thought, all too much like a prisoner standing morose and accepting before the gallows and awaiting the passing of his sentence – not that she’d usually use the word morose to describe Spock, of course. It wasn't a description that fit. She bit her lip, feeling her worry flare past the bounds of her control and -

- fast on the heels of that last thought, she watched as Spock turned and looked out over the crowd. He didn't have to search the faces of the dozens gathered, instead, it was like he was drawn to her like a magnet finding its mate. His gaze did not flitter about before locking with hers, and she felt that constant glimmer of knowing flare out in a bloom of warmth against her consciousness. His expression did not change in the slightest, but she thought that something about the hard line of his mouth relaxed for seeing her. Just barely, he tilted his head in greeting.

She knew that her smile was slightly too wide as she lifted her hand in a wave, acknowledging that she had seen him and welcoming his notice. Like colleagues who haven’t seen each other in a few months, she sternly told herself. Colleagues, you hear? He held her gaze for just a moment longer before turning away again – looking back to where the boarding ramp to the shuttle had finally extended and a pair of Vulcan aides were walking down. For a moment, she still watched him, even over the arrival of the diplomatic entourage, before she shook her head at her foolishness, annoyed. Focus, Uhura, she berated herself, it’s an honor that you're even here. Don’t ruin the opportunity you have to prove yourself; you can’t afford to be distracted – by anything. Then, thoroughly self-chastised by her higher reason, she turned her attention back to the arrival of the delegation.

There were only four aides total, she thought to identify them by the matching nondescript cast of their heavy, slate grey robes. There was another who she thought was the junior ambassador, T’Epul, a woman with a severe expression typical of the Vulcan people and a detailed embroidered crest stretching from the neck of her sepia colored gown to sweep the floor as she walked. Then there was Sarek, walking side by side down the ramp with Lady Amanda.

Unconsciously, Nyota stood up a little straighter. The couple cut a striking figure together that the holozines couldn't quite do justice away from the source. Sarek’s look and garb was tall and dark and imposing by turns, while there was a breeziness to Amanda from her petite figure to the fluttering of her almost sheer veil and the gentle smile she wore in greeting as Captain Pike stepped forward to welcome them both. Words were traded, words that she couldn't hear from so far back in the crowd, but she could see as Pike lifted his hand in the traditional ta’al, and the gesture was returned by both the ambassador and his wife.

Amanda was the first to turn and greet Spock after the pleasantries with Pike were concluded. Nyota thought to feel a flush of affection brush against her consciousness, for all that Spock’s outward expression did not change in the slightest. He was genuinely happy to greet his mother, so much so that Nyota fought a bittersweet smile, thinking of her own family then. Yet, for Sarek . . .

Father and son only nodded at each other once, briefly, in acknowledgment, and then that was that. Nyota could feel as that shadowed spot in her mind cooled, leeched of all warmth, like a deep forest pool icing over so that it didn't ripple. The straight line of Spock’s mouth hardened, just as, surreptitiously, Amanda darted a glance between both of the men in her family. She looked, Nyota thought, exasperated for only a fraction of a second before she tilted her head up and wound her arm through her son’s, clearly ready to move on. The party then turned to enter the main ways of the ship, and the crowd began to dissipate through the various exits. Amanda did not look back up at Sarek again, who instead chose to walk between Captain Pike and his junior ambassador as if nothing was amiss. The entire interaction took little more than the passing of a second, but the further reaching implications of what she had seen - of what she had felt - had Nyota tilting her head, her thoughts racing.

Just what, exactly, was that? she wondered as she filed out with the rest of the onlookers. As best she could, she tried to wrack her mind for the very little Spock had told her about his family and life on Vulcan. Usually, she was the one who spoke more than Spock did about personal subjects, during those long sessions after class when their conversations inevitably turned away from the intricacies of language to the more idle chit-chat of friends - at least, as she would define it. Yet, for all that he hadn't said much, he had also never alluded to any friction, not quite, at least. Yet, maybe what he did not say was not a part of the intense way she knew that Spock valued his privacy as she had first assumed. Maybe, it was something else? Was there something more going on?

Not that, she reminded herself sternly, it's any of your business. Don't be a Pandora - you're not opening this box, mark me? You already have more than enough to focus on here, so focus.

Yet, no matter how she tried to hold onto her resolve as she turned down the corridor opposite of the way Spock was going, a heavy feeling still settled in her heart for the coldness she had so briefly glimpsed. No matter how she tried, it was a feeling that she couldn’t quickly chase away.



~MJ