Work Text:
“Seems pretty quiet up here, Lieutenant Mitchell.” From his captain’s chair, Chris taps for a systems check that Una could have told him is unnecessary. “If you still want to head out to that party you mentioned, I think Number One and I can hold down the fort.”
Next to Una, it’s as if there’s a spring in Jenna’s navigator’s seat and Jenna is up and headed toward the turbolift — “Thank you, Captain, Commander. Happy New Year to you both.” — and Jenna turns and faces front, her smile wide as the doors close to woosh her off to celebrate.
Ten minutes until the new year.
And, from the way Chris has been dismissing officers one by one until it’s just the two of them, he doesn’t want to spend it with a crowd.
“Understaffing the bridge on New Year’s Eve?” Una sets communication and security readings to display on the navigator’s station. It will be easy for her to keep monitoring science and engineering from the pilot’s station … plus the secret file she made expecting this exact scenario as the new year drew closer.
Chris eases into the navigator’s seat next to her, his chuckle thoughtful, almost rueful. “I figured the kids may as well have their fun.”
Long-range sensors suggest a small ion storm forming along their present course. Una sends the data to navigation. “We have fun on New Year’s Eve.”
There was the year they were in a shuttle en route from Starbase Twelve to the Antares, the last leg of her transfer from the Martin Luther King Jr., her exhaustion from the journey ameliorated by Chris’ infectious excitement that they were going to serve on the same ship.
There was the year they were stranded on that moon, geomagnetic storms in the atmosphere interfering with transport … and causing the most beautiful, rainbow-hued auroral ovals that had them both gazing upward, silent, reverent, as if witnessing something holy.
There was the year the Aryabhatta went to red alert an hour before midnight, scattering Chris’ party guests and sending her and Chris to a triple shift on the bridge, then door to door in crew quarters to distribute leftover party food which, in their sleep-deprived delirium, seemed like a good idea.
More than two decades of New Year’s Eves together. Every one of them, in some way, fun.
“It’s fun counting up.” Chris sends course corrections from his station. They detected it early, so the ion storm will be easy to avoid. “Not as much fun counting down. Six years to go.”
The temperature on the bridge hasn’t changed, but Una’s spine prickles with cold. This is what she had anticipated for tonight — a melancholy Chris mindful of what he thinks is his fate — and her fingers are clumsy with chill as she changes course, Enterprise moving above them, below them, all around them, but the motion is almost imperceptible.
Like the everyday passage of time.
He doesn’t know about her plans. No one does. But Una won’t let Chris suffer the way he thinks is inevitable. There are other ways to save cadets, and there are protections and cures for radiation exposure that may not be Starfleet approved but are common for Illyrians. Besides, time has been too good to them — staying together on ship after ship, a consistency of togetherness over decades — to allow time to twist and turn on them in the future.
Christopher Pike isn’t the sole arbiter of his fate.
Or, as he might put it, Chris isn’t the only one in the saddle — tonight or any other night.
“Maybe …” Una forces warmth into her voice, her hands, her spine that needs to relax because Chris picks up on her moods just like she picks up on his and while he’s entitled to his fears and worries, he’s about to have a much better New Year’s Eve than he expects. “Or maybe the universe is full of surprises, and you’ll actually have fun tonight.”
His jaw shifts as his neck flexes, tension, disbelief.
He’ll learn soon enough.
Una transfers communication and security readings away from Chris’ station to hers.
His chair scrapes as he scrambles to his feet, concerned, fear pushing out sadness as he stands, his attention on her takeover of ship’s systems. “Una what are you —”
The hard surface of the button that activates her secret file lowers under Una’s fingertip and the viewscreen splits into a smaller view of the starscape so she can keep tabs on that aspect of the ship’s status, and a much larger view of a galloping Appaloosa, the horse’s muscles rippling under a shiny coat, mane caught in the breeze of the animal’s own power.
“Chris, would you mind telling me about this horse?”
His eyes dart from the viewscreen to the big-eyed, faux innocence she’s plastered on her face, then back to the viewscreen, then back to her face. And his shoulders relax because he’s so close to good-natured defeat that he is, indeed, going to have fun this New Year’s Eve. “Una, this isn’t going to —”
“How about this one?” A press of a button and there’s a dark Yakutian moving through knee-high snow, whiteness all around as the horse preserves. “In addition to videos showcasing an array of horse breeds, our program for tonight also features horse-themed songs, so you let me know when you’re ready for Gilbert and Sullivan’s If You Go In — I’ll sing all three parts unless you want a crack at one of them — or Loesser’s Fugue for Tinhorns — which I’ll definitely need your help with during with the vocal overlaps — as well as a variety of other selections. I figure we’ve got more than enough here to welcome in the new year and keep having fun until a few minutes before alpha shift shows up.”
Chris’ weight almost imperceptibly shifts from one foot to the other, calculations of mood and expectations and how often she actually lets him pontificate about horses all factors as he ponders … and quickly resolves any remaining indecision, almost leaping toward the viewscreen in his rush to get started.
“Now the Yakutian can be confused with the Mongolian horse and Przewalski's horse breeds, but you’ll notice this particular Yakutian is only about thirteen hands high, which is typical for this smaller horse form.” Chris’ grin becomes so broad that it almost seems to stretch all the way up his arm as he gestures toward the horse on the viewscreen. “As far as riding one of these, in my experience …”
And his glee, of course, transmits to Una, her chest rising with joy, belly warming with satisfaction. They’re going to have a fun New Year’s Eve and, like the starscape side of the viewscreen, there’s the promise of more, as far as the eye can see.