Chapter Text
Spock spends an extra twenty minutes meditating this evening. Keeping track of the time is rather beside the point- at least, there are mentors on Vulcan who would say so- but for now, he is light years from any of them. Still, this is a poor reason to ignore their instruction, so he watches a candle flicker through his eyelashes, and then closes his eyes again.
Moments pass, but he does not count them. He falls into the same familiar state, allowing it to wash over him without judgement or comment.
A mind presses, briefly, against his own. It is familiar, and fleeting, pressing against that part of his mind which was once touched by T’Pring. His hand twitches, as he resists the urge to reach out.
He frowns, and feels for the presence.
*
Sometimes at night, Nyota imagines she can hear the satellites flying overhead. She’d heard a recording of Sputnik, once, and she swears she can hear it when she falls asleep.
Boop. Boop. Boop.
When they were younger- back when they shared a bedroom- Mosi was determined to disprove this.
“See?” He points to the map, and the corresponding blip in the sky outside the planetarium. “Setaliti appear during the day, too. Can’t you hear them all the time?”
Nyota looks to baba for confirmation, eyes wide, and he gives a rumbling laugh.
“If Mosiya says it’s right, he must be right.”
Nyota sticks her tongue out. Mosi can’t be right all the time. He’s only the oldest by twenty-seven minutes. Still, when they move to the new house, and it comes to choosing the largest bedroom, Mosi gets that, too.
When they are fifteen, Mosi spends the weekends at the observatory in Mombasa, and assures Nyota that satellites don’t sound like Sputnik anymore. “It sounds like a thousand voices, overlapping. All the languages of The Federation, shouting over each other. Space sounds like chaos.”
Sometimes, Nyota goes with him, and listens to the subspace chatter. To her, it sounds like a song.
Babu always jokes that, if she was born first, she would have been named Mosiya. Sometimes, she wonders if she was misnamed- if Mosiya was her birthright, and ‘Nyota’ belongs to the boy obsessed with the stars. She likes the stars just fine, but Mosiya has turned even that into a competition.
Still, no matter what he says, Nyota can’t shake the feeling that there is something calling to her from space, and Mosi- for all his star-charts and telescopes- can’t disprove it. Still, she can never explain it. She begins to accept that maybe she never will.
Until the day she wakes up crying.
*
Vulcan’s don’t dream.
That doesn’t mean they can’t . Processing the day’s sensory information is a task generally dealt with by meditation, and Spock has always been told that dreams are a symptom that one’s meditation is lacking.
The last time Spock had a dream, he was eight years old, and visiting Earth for the first time. His mother had told him it wasn’t a problem.
“ You’re a child, Spock. You should be allowed to dream.”
But Sarek was, predictably, unhappy.
He didn’t tell them what the dream was about, and, in truth, he can hardly remember. But, tonight, he has the dream again.
*
Nyota runs through a station, the surroundings unfamiliar. Everything is tinged by a bright, harsh light, and she resists the urge to cover her eyes. She’s standing on a train, surrounded by people, but only one face stands out to her. When she smiles, he doesn’t smile back. She says something, and he blinks, uncomprehendingly.
The train doors open, and he starts moving.
“ Wait!”
People jostle her from all sides, and he glances back at her, still moving. The more she pushes, the harder the crowd pushes back. His face gets marginally closer.
She tugs the ribbon from her hair, and thrusts her arm out. “Take it! Find me!” She yells, in Swahili. Then, on a beat, she switches to Federation Standard. “Estontece! Trovu min! Memoru!”
The man’s eyes widen, and he reaches an arm out, as-
Nyota jolts awake, filled with a strange sense of loss. She lies still, and stares at the ceiling as her heartbeat slows. Then, she dabs at her eyes.
She hasn’t worn a ribbon in her hair since she was a child.
With a sigh, she rolls onto her side. She can’t quite remember the dream she was having, but whatever it was, it fades fast. She recalls glimpses of a Starfleet uniform, and rubs her forehead as if to ward away a headache. Clearly, she’s been going too hard on the college applications again.
Footsteps run down the corridor outside, and her door is wrenched open.
Amina appears in the doorway. She’s five years younger than Nyota, and short for her age. “Nyota-”
“Hey!” Nyota pulls the covers up to her chin, and glowers at her. “Don’t just barge in!”
She rolls her eyes. “Mama said to wake you up, in case you were late again.”
“I’m never late,” she huffs.
Amina puts her hands on her hips. “Well, yesterday-”
“Go bother Mosiya!” She hurls a pillow at her. With a squeak, Amina closes the door, and it bounces off with a dull thud.
At breakfast, Nyota feels everyone’s eyes on her, but they glance away every time she looks up. She frowns, and tries to trick someone into making eye contact, but Babu keeps his eyes cast carefully downwards as he packs his lunch.
Hmm. Nyota glances down. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about her outfit- if anything, her school uniform is slightly less creased than normal. She found it on her desk this morning, perfectly folded, instead of its usual perch draped over a chair. She brushes a few crumbs off her straight, red skirt. The uniform top is bright white, the standard fare for seniors. ‘A Wannabe Starfleet Look’, as Mosi calls it. Speaking of...
She looks up sharply, and catches Mosi staring at her from the seat opposite.
“What?” She snaps.
“What?” He leans back a little, and uses a dull knife to scoop out chunks of avocado, shovelling them directly into his mouth. He’s wearing the comparatively bland uniform of the observatory- a dull beige, bordering on khaki. Even with the advent of replicators, many institutions are guided by rigid tradition, though Mosi makes it work.
Nyota eyes him. “You’re not behaving like a complete zombie, for once.”
“No,” Mosi points at her with the goop-covered knife. “That makes two of us.”
“What?” She snorts. “I’m no zombie.”
“Well, not today.”
She looks up. “Huh?”
“Don’t lean back in your chair,” Babu calls. Mosi lands on the floor with a thud, and accidentally skewers the avocado. Mama jumps, and looks up from her PADD long enough to tut at him.
Nyota turns to her accusingly. “So that’s why you sent Amina to wake me up?”
Mama glances back down.“You overslept yesterday.”
“But, we’re not worried,” Babu says, in his negotiation voice. “We know senior year is stressful.”
“Yes,” Mama gives him a look. “Still, you let us know if things get on top of you. If you make yourself sick, it’ll interfere with your studies.”
“It was one day, mama,” Mosi rolls his eyes. “Welcome to the club,” he says, in an undertone.
“It’s different for you. You already have your internship.” Mama folds her arms. Nyota’s got her eyes set on University of Kenya.”
“Oh, please, she’s going to get in. She’s been speaking American since we were five.”
“Perhaps, but that’s no different to any other graduate of the international schools. Even her backup choices have strict acceptance protocols...”
Nyota tunes the conversation out, and folds her hands on her lap. She wonders if she should tell them she has little interest in what they’re talking about, but she has more pressing problems- the last day she remembers is Sunday.
She checks her PADD surreptitiously beneath the table. The date reads: Tuesday the 12th of November 2250.
She exhales.
She closes the PADD just in time to hear Amina talk. “But, Mama, I thought she wanted to go to San Francisk- ow!”
Nyota silences her sister with a well-administered kick.
“What’s in San Francisco?” Mama asks.
“Nothing,” Nyota says, under her breath.
Nyota wants nothing more than to return to school and forget about it, but, when she gets there, it’s more of the same. She steps off one of the transporter pads outside the building, and someone greets her. It’s Badru, a dark-skinned boy in her year, though he looks too baby-faced to be a senior.
“Hey there, stranger,” he says, with a strange grin. He doesn’t barrel towards her like he normally does- nor does he attempt to hug her- he approaches slowly, arms swinging at his sides.
“Not you, too,” she says, with a grimace. She grabs at his hands, and he holds them above his head, just out of reach. “Badru, give me your hand!”
“I’m afraid I can’t, Ms Uhura,” he says, with a mock salute. “Yesterday, you gave me quite a stern talking-to.” As they pass under the trees, his face is dappled by patches of sunlight, and the shadows of leaves. “Or don’t you remember?”
She forces a laugh. “Of course I remember. I was just kidding,” she says, and reaches for his hand again, but he shuffles away.
“You didn’t seem like you were kidding,” he says.
“Well, I was.”
“Nuh-uh,” he says. “If you’ve picked up some Vulcan ideas from class, I’m going to respect that.”
Nyota stares. “Right,” she says. Hand-holding is considered intimate to Vulcans. It still is, in some human cultures- though Badru and her have been holding hands without issue since they were children.
The loss makes her feel strangely empty, especially because she gets the sense that Badru isn’t just joking around. She gets the impression that she’s wounded his feelings, too, and wonders if she should apologise- but it’s difficult to do when she doesn’t remember what she said.
She slides her hands into her pockets, and smiles at him. “Just so you know, I don’t think it has the same effect for humans, unless one of us has developed telepathic tendencies.”
Badru shrugs, and gives her a shy smile. “Have you?”
“Of course not!”
They continue bickering as they move through a side-entrance, into the pleasantly air-conditioned building. The walls here are painted various pastel shades of pink, cream and yellow, and adorned with potted plants. Here, the corridor splits in two, and the two of them stand dangerously close to a printed sign which reads “Actual Venusian Fly Trap- Do Not Touch!” The plant is bright red, and gleams wickedly in the light. She suspects one of the other seniors put it there as a joke, but she doesn’t doubt the accuracy of the statement.
“Badru,” she warns, as she steers him out of the way. He barely gives the sign a second glance as they say their goodbyes, and Nyota goes to her first language lesson of the day, as Badru heads to first-period chemistry.
“You do remember the way today, right?” He calls back.
“Ha-ha.” Nyota slings her rucksack over one shoulder, and keeps moving.
Nyota doesn’t notice any more weirdness until lesson two, a lesson taught almost entirely in American. The class size is significantly larger than it was last year- in part because of the intake of several freshmen students who seem too young to be here.
“The word ‘twilight’ comes from ‘twolight’,” says Ms Kunde. “Synonyms: Dusk- a time where it’s neither day nor night. When the borders between worlds blur, and anything seems possible. One might even encounter something… Otherworldly.”
“Another, older term for it is ‘dusk light’, and some people call it ‘magic hour.’”
“What about ‘golden hour?’” Pavel asks, at the back of the class. “It’s something my grandmother says.”
“Well, Golden Hour is a term which mainly photographers use. It’s the last hour of sunlight before sunset, when the quality for photos is enhanced by the natural light.”
“ Ah, of course!” Pavel says, in Russian. “She does take a lot of photos.” Some of their classmates snicker, and he begins to scrawl furiously on his PADD. Uhura glances at her own PADD. There’s something unusual about yesterday’s entry- for one thing, it’s not her handwriting. She sees something scrawled in Vulkhansu at the bottom of the page. The penmanship is delicate- the well-practised strokes of someone who’s been writing it all their life, and she’s transfixed for a moment, trying to work out who it could be. Her gaze flits to Amaziah, who sits one desk along from her and is by far the most well-practised at Vulkhansu calligraphy in the class- but as she compares the two scripts, the handwriting doesn’t match. She frowns. It doesn’t make any sense- Amaziah has no reason to write in her PADD anyway, and it’s not as if anyone could remember her password- for ease of access, it’s fingerprint-locked. Which means the only person who could open her PADD… Is her.
As she ponders, Pavel continues asking follow-up questions, which is typical for Pavel. The boy joined their school specifically for their language-learning opportunities, because apparently, learning astrophysics in Russian wasn’t complicated enough for him.
“- Perhaps Nyota can explain,” says professor Kunde.
Faintly frustrated, she looks up sharply, to see all eyes on her.
“Uh…” she stands up, and Kunde gives her a strange smile.
“I see you remember your own name today.”
“I- what?!”
The class laughs, and she does her best to answer the question, moving towards Pavel as she does so. He had a growth spurt recently, so he’s not quite as short as he once was, but he’s still the youngest in the class by far. At fourteen, he’s set to graduate early, and Nyota pictures how strange it will be to attend Starfleet Academy at the same time as someone so baby-faced.
“What was all that about?” She says in an undertone, as she joins him at his desk.
“Um,” he pulls a chair out for her, and fidgets with his hands. “Yesterday, you seemed distracted. You didn’t respond to your name, and you didn’t remember where your locker was.”
“Oh.” She smiles. “Yeah. I… Remember that,” she says, falteringly. “Don’t know what I was thinking.” She laughs, unconvincingly.
“Are you sure?” He tilts his head. “Maybe you should talk to the school nurse-”
“… Let’s just work on your American,” she grits.
“English,” he says, with a mischievous smile.
She rolls her eyes, and nudges him towards the PADD. “No wonder you’re failing.”
*
Spock sits bolt upright, as his pulse races. His head is pounding, and there’s a definite emptiness in his side, where his heart should be.
He places a hand over his ribcage, then lifts it higher. For reasons he can’t comprehend, his heart is in his chest. The left of his chest, to be specific. His mind flits through a thousand possibilities, all quickly dismissed as he feels for his ears, with a dawning realisation.
It’s not just his heart which is out-of-place- he suspects that all his atoms may be. Cautiously, he raises a hand to his ears, which are curiously rounded.
Transporter accidents such as these are admittedly rare, but it is the most tangible possibility. Still, the last thing he remembers is not stepping into a transporter, but falling asleep in his own bed, at Starfleet Academy.
Hesitantly, he feels for his pulse with one hand, as the other lands squarely on his chest.
“Ny!” A voice calls from the corridor outside. There’s a chime, but the door is cast aside before he can answer, and a girl steps in. She’s about eye-level with him, and she stares, mouth agape.
She has dark skin, and appears to be about ten years old, maybe younger. Her ears are rounded, too, which confirms he’s still somewhere on Earth. He opens his mouth to ask where, exactly, he is, when she points at him, eyes wide, and asks him a question in Swahili.
He stands, but doesn’t quite tower over her in the way he expected to. He frowns.
“Excuse me-” he says in American automatically, and then remembers he’s not in San Francisco anymore. It’s also clear that the house isn’t equipped with a universal translator- or, at the very least, it has been switched off. He looks at the girl again. Though he’s nowhere near fluent, he remembers enough Swahili from his xenolinguistics lessons that he should be able to get by.
The girl rolls her eyes. “Practising American again?” She says, in Standard this time.
“ Ah,” Spock switches to Standard. “I’m still… Tired. What did you say before?”
The girl mutters something, followed by “You’re going to be late,” as she closes the door.
Spock sits there in a stunned silence, and takes in his surroundings. The walls of the bedroom are painted a dark blue, and there is an array of luminescent stars on the ceiling. It all looks strangely familiar, and he has the astonishing impression that he’s been here before. It’s almost like something from a dream. With a jolt, he strides to the mirror.
The human he’s inhabiting- a young woman- resembles her sister in many aspects, though she’s perhaps a decade older. Her hair has been braided, and is piled on top of her head in a small coil. He reaches for it, but, on balance, decides not to disturb the carefully arranged hairstyle.
He concentrates, to see if there’s any trace of her consciousness under his own, but he can’t sense anything. Frowning, he tries to reach for his bonds- Michael and T’Pring are on Earth, and he should be able to confirm from instinct how far he’s travelled from San Francisco- but the bonds, usually-suppressed, refuse to even answer him now.
He feels vaguely unsettled, but pushes those feelings aside, instead looking for the next step.
A uniform has been laid out on the chair, carefully pressed, and he dresses in it without question. It looks startlingly similar to the Starfleet one, a plain white short-sleeved top paired with a red skirt.
‘ You’re going to be late.’
He heeds the warning from his host’s sister, and exits the room.
The corridor is painted a faint shade of orange, which matches the bright wood panelling on the walls. He follows the sound of voices downstairs, and finds his host’s family gathered in a spacious kitchen: three of them are gathered round a table, while a man stands off to the side.
He hovers in the doorway. He knows it would be logical to inform them of his predicament, but some instinct holds him back. In silence, he goes to join them at the table, and keeps his head down, hoping to avoid conversation. Unfortunately, his host’s younger sister doesn’t seem to want him to go unnoticed.
“ Ah, you’re here!” She turns to her family. “Nyota was touching her boobies again!” She declares in Swahili.
Again?
It takes him a moment to work out what she said, and he pauses long enough to direct a glare at her. “I was feeling my heart.”
“That’s what you said the other day, too- that you were ‘feeling your pulse’. But, Mosi said that’s not how you take a pulse-!”
“- Do you often enter my room without knocking?”
“Only when you oversleep,” Nyota’s mother says, with a pointed look.
Spock opens his mouth, but thinks better of it. In many ways, this family dynamic feels familiar, and he purses his lips, pondering all the reasons he left his home planet.
As he watches Nyota’s mother talking, he thinks of his own mother and how she often fusses over him. Then, experimentally, he concentrates on the familial bond. It’s always hard to sense Vulcan from such a great distance, but today, it’s outright impossible. For the most part, his own telepathic abilities have almost entirely vanished.
Nyota’s mother turns to him, and he stares blankly at her, until he realises she’s addressing him.
“Take the transporter today,” she suggests.
At the mention of the transporter, he sits up.
“That… Is a good idea,” he says, somewhat stiffly. Across the table, Nyota’s brother laughs, though not unkindly. Still, to blend in, Spock pretends to stifle a yawn, though he feels an undeniable exhaustion which isn’t just part of the act.
Minutes later, Nyota’s brother stands.
“Shall we go?” He says, quietly. He gives Spock a knowing look, and Spock raises an eyebrow. Still, he follows him into the next room, where there’s a smaller table, and a transporter pad set into the side of the room. Spock is surprised to see it- there is a personal transporter in his parent’s house in Vulcan, though that’s only because Sarek is an ambassador. Usually, Federation citizens make do without them.
“I’ll run the controls for you again,” the boy says, in American. Spock’s gaze snaps to him, and he gives him a wink.
… Again?
It appears they share some secret between them. Spock only wishes he knew what it was.
He steps up to the transporter pad hesitantly. He can only hope that this will undo whatever strange transposition has taken place. He inhales, and nods to Nyota’s brother, who flashes him a grin as he works the controls.
As he stands there, Spock notices what looks like a delta emblem set into the floor, though it looks as if the symbol has since been very deliberately scratched out. Before he can enquire about it, there’s a familiar, shimmering sound, as his surroundings change around him.
Feeling unusually disoriented, he looks around. He materialises inside an outdoor transporter booth, which is shielded from the elements by a layer of glass. Blinking in the light, he takes a step forwards, and the doors slide open with a hiss.
He stumbles down the ramp.
“Nyota?” A hand grabs his arm, and he braces himself for the intrusion of the strangers’ thoughts- a burst of telepathy which never comes. He turns.
“Are you okay?” A boy says. “You look a little spaced out.”
The boy is called Badru, he realises, though he’s not sure how he knows it.
“I’m fine,” Spock says, the sound of his voice once again unfamilar to him. He declines Badru’s proffered arm, and steps off the transporter pad.
As he steps onto hard ground, it all clicks into place. He remembers making this exact trip two days ago. As he walks, the colourful corridors of the high school begin to look increasingly familiar. Over the course of the day, he either learns or recalls new information: Nyota is about three years younger than him. She lives in a town called Bakuli, and attends Nairobi West International high-school, which is a frustrating maze of corridors.
Nyota lives with her family- her sister Amina, twin brother Mosiya and their parents- who, so far, respond only as ‘mama’ and ‘babu’, as they both refuse to acknowledge the stilted ‘mother’ or ‘father’ which fall from his lips in Standard. He goes to bed exhausted, without even attempting meditation. The whole day feels like the culmination of one very overwhelming fever dream.
When he wakes up the next day in his own bed, back in San Francisco, he almost believes that’s all it was.
Until he looks at his PADD.
