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Atthis stopped Nyota with a hand on her arm as they passed in the hall. “I was in to see your husband earlier,” she said. “He’s having a bad day again. I brought him some soup but he wasn’t hungry, so I left it cooling for you.”
“Thank you,” Nyota said, touching her fingers to her chin in gratitude. “I don’t know what we’d do without all of you looking out for us.”
Atthis smiled sadly and said, “It’s all we can do.”
The lights were off in their tiny apartment when Nyota unlocked the door. Atthis’s warning and now the quiet darkness in the room made her uneasy. She knew rationally that it would be no different than the last few days; she knew where and when she was and she knew her purpose here, but still, when she rounded the dividing wall between the kitchen and the bedroom, she found herself expecting a different face than the one she saw in bed. But the room was illuminated enough by the sun behind the curtains for reality to reassert itself quickly, and she shooed the memories away.
“That time already?” Captain Kirk croaked. He was awake, at least, but he didn’t make any move to sit up, which worried her further. This was a far cry from his stubbornness earlier, when she’d had to all but fight him into bed. “Find anything?”
“No, nothing,” she said softly. “And no contact with the Enterprise, either. Atthis said you didn’t eat lunch today.” She wondered how often he was skipping meals when neither she nor a friendly neighbor was there to notice.
He shook his head against the pillow. “You’ll have to keep trying. I’ll help again when I can.”
“You just focus on resting,” she said. She was getting better at leaving off the sirs. “I was thinking it might be time to try rewiring some of the equipment at work. I can rig it so it’s easy to dismantle, and I wouldn’t think anyone here could put it back together.”
Kirk was quiet for a long while. “Not yet,” he said finally. “Wait a little longer. Maybe something will change.”
Nyota suspected that if nothing had changed so far, nothing would, at least not soon enough for their purposes. The loss of communications had been a problem before he got sick, and now it was quickly becoming an emergency. Even if he had years before the disease was likely to become deadly, it was a chance she didn’t want to take.
Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Kirk extracted one arm from his blankets and touched her wrist gently; he let it fall after just a moment and said, “You’ll find a way.”
“I’ll see about dinner,” she said abruptly, and turned away before Kirk could become her nyanya in that bed, wheezing, unable to breathe.
She turned on the light in the kitchen, and it hit her with a fresh dose of the here and now. Things were bad enough without her mind playing tricks on her; she shook her head and resolved to focus on what was right in front of her. There was soup in the cooler, as Atthis had promised, and enough that shopping could be pushed out a couple of days. Thank goodness for kind neighbors. Nyota poured some out into a pot and began heating it up, wondering as she did so how much longer they would be stuck there. Captain Kirk getting sick had thrown a wrench into an already difficult situation; she now had to split her attention between finding their castaway, contacting the Enterprise, doing her job - she was the only one bringing in money now, so it was imperative that she keep it - and taking care of her captain. She was doing her best to keep up a brave face, but the situation was beginning to wear on her. It wasn’t enough to be stranded undercover with no exit strategy, no, now she was faced with daily reminders of a slow, lingering death.
Captain Kirk shuffled out of the bedroom while she was ladling the soup into bowls and slumped down into one of the chairs at their tiny kitchen table. He looked awful, pale and exhausted and like he was moments from collapsing onto the table.
“You should have stayed in bed,” she said, even as she put one of the bowls in front of him. “I can bring you food just as easily there.”
“I’ve been in bed all day,” he said. His voice was still hoarse; hopefully the soup would help. “I need to move around.”
Nyota decided to be optimistic and interpret his willingness to get up and eat as signs that he was feeling even just a little better. “Well,” she said, sitting down in the other chair, “I hope the meal is worth it, husband dear.”
He laughed quietly. Picking up a spoon, he began to eat - very slowly, but at least he was getting some food in him. Nyota tried to focus on her own meal. It was flavorful, full of meat and vegetables - something she figured the Captain would approve of.
Under normal circumstances he might have, but he put his spoon down after only a few bites. “I don’t know how much I can stomach right now,” he said, and his voice was a little stronger than it had been. “It’s good soup. Worthwhile.” He smiled at her and, remembering her earlier comment, she smiled back.
“You can thank Atthis the next time you see her. You should try to eat a little more, though. It’ll help.”
“Better to eat less than to throw up and waste any.”
Nyota frowned. “Are you that nauseous?”
“Not nauseous - just not hungry.”
“Then you should eat more,” she said firmly. “To keep up your strength. Just a few more bites, and we can see how you’re feeling then.”
He looked unamused, but he didn’t protest, and she got him to eat a few more bites, and then a few more, and soon enough half the bowl was gone. He insisted that he truly couldn’t eat any more and she let him get away with it this time; what little energy he’d had was visibly flagging again, and when he stood up he wobbled.
“You’re good at this,” he commented, as Nyota began to put the soup away and clean the bowls.
“Keeping house?” she asked lightly.
“Taking care of sick, stubborn bastards.”
Nyota’s eyes were wet and she couldn’t bring herself to speak, but scrubbed the bowl she was working on a little more vigorously. She wouldn’t use those words exactly to characterize her nyanya, but she honestly couldn’t say it wouldn’t be a fair description. She remembered days like this, when it had been all she could do to get her nyanya to drink a bit of broth or juice. Some days even that had been too much to ask for.
“Uhura?”
She shook her head and didn’t look at him. “You’re certainly stubborn, sir.”
There was a pause, during which she wondered if he was going to press the issue. She knew that this was something she could bring to him without fearing judgment, but if he asked, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to open her mouth.
But all he said was, “You’ll be all right if I turn in? I don’t know how much longer I’ll be on my feet.”
“Of course,” she said, and figured she could trust herself enough to turn halfway and make a shooing motion at him. He still looked exhausted, but she had the feeling he was watching her a little more closely than usual, which embarrassed her. “Go sleep. You need it.”
He left without any further commentary, and she couldn’t help but feel relieved when he was gone. She slumped against the counter for a moment, her eyes closed, trying to regain her focus. There were things to do.
After cleaning up, she sat back at the table with their communicators and the few tools she’d managed to scrounge up. The rhythm of electrical work helped to soothe the grief clawing at her throat. It was delicate enough that she had to focus all of her attention on it, and familiar enough that it was like an old friend, easy to fall back into camaraderie with. It didn’t make everything go away - her feelings about the situation were too big and complicated for that - but it made it all manageable, so she didn’t feel out of control anymore. She thought of her nyanya often, but it had been a long time since those memories had been quite so intense.
But eventually her eyes started to cross and her fingers became clumsy, and she didn’t feel any closer to solving the problem. It would help if she had more than a few hours a day to work on them; with the way things were now, it could be a good long while before she made any significant progress.
The sun had set and it was getting to be time to sleep. Surely the Captain was asleep by now, so all she had to do was not disturb him - she went about her evening routine as quietly as she could, longing all the while for the Enterprise and her own quarters and the comfort they offered at the end of a long day. Their ship was home, and she wasn’t ready to leave it yet.
When she crept back into the bedroom, all lights in the apartment off and the front door locked, she was surprised to find Captain Kirk awake, his eyes open and barely visible in the darkness. She sat down on her side of the bed, prepared to say goodnight and leave the rest until tomorrow, but he spoke before she had the chance.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
“Have you?” Nyota asked, nonplussed. Maybe he was dreaming while awake; she wasn’t sure if that was normal with this illness or not. “Do you need something to help you sleep?”
“I understand this is…not ideal. After Platonius.”
Nyota was taken aback; she genuinely hadn’t thought about Platonius once since they’d been stranded, and it took her a moment to realize what he meant. It was true that they hadn’t discussed what happened in any detail, but the awkwardness of the situation had passed for her after the first week - maybe she shouldn’t have assumed the same would be true of him. “This hardly bears any resemblance to Platonius,” she said. “The clothes are much more comfortable, for one.”
He wasn’t in the mood for jokes, or else she just wasn’t very funny. Or, possibly, he hadn’t fully processed what she’d said. “You seemed upset earlier, when I touched you and after dinner.”
“That’s not it at all.” Habit made her hesitate on the edge of explaining, but there was no reason to hold back anymore. If he was noticing her moods, he should know what was causing them. “I helped take care of my nyanya - my grandmother - when she was sick,” Nyota said. “She was sick for a long time before she died, and I hated to see her suffer. This reminds me of her, that’s all. It’s nothing you’ve done.”
She could see his face shift, the glint of his eyes as they moved, but she couldn’t make out enough detail in the darkness to guess at his reaction. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s difficult to think about at the best of times. But I can’t seem to stop thinking about it now.”
“You’ll have to tell me about her, when it’s less fresh.”
Nyota blinked back tears. “I’d appreciate that. More people should know about her.”
He patted her arm, and she saw his eyes slip closed, finally (hopefully) asleep. She took a breath and decided, once and for all, that they were going to get out of here, if only so she could make sure her nyanya’s stories continued.