Work Text:
Gillian always liked the rain. Storms, spritzes, ocean spray - the feeling of water on her face brings her clarity, a sense of connection to nature, a harmony with the elemental forces. It’s catharsis of a kind, the sky letting it all out, torrential, no reservations. Tears always did tug on her heartstrings; she’s a sucker for hard-luck cases.
Damn ironic.
This one isn’t a spritz but a downpour. How long has she been standing out here? She’s on the balcony of a spacious apartment, overlooking the bay. Her hair hangs in a limp curtain around her face; her t-shirt’s soaked through. She knows she’s been shivering for some time. But she doesn’t move.
She got the impression that shore leave was supposed to be a real fun time, full of parties and drinking and sex and other debauchery sure to get you a stink-eye from the doctor come Alpha shift again. That’s actually what she planned to do, twittering and laughing with her new friends aboard the science vessel, extracting promises from them to show her all the best spots that’ve popped up in the roughly two hundred years since she’s (technically) been in San Francisco. She planned to drop her stuff off here at the apartment, deeply grateful for the Captains’ offer of a couch to sleep on, and hit the town, hopefully to be back in time for nice conversation over breakfast tomorrow morning.
But then she caught sight of the skyline through the balcony window, those impossible buildings interwoven with impossible flying cars, like something out of a movie. At once familiar and unfamiliar, a quantum state, the way a live human might look to someone who’s only ever seen skeletons. Home. She went out and stood there and stared. And then it started to rain.
It’s not like she didn’t realize back then the enormity of what she meant to do. She knew it when she made the choice. She does not regret it.
Yet still she stands. In the rain.
Suddenly all the weight is on her shoulders, like she threw it up into the sky a while ago and just now had it fall down on top of her.
She shivers. She stands.
Behind her, she hears the door of the apartment open. They were meant to get off work, what, four hours after she arrived? Four hours, so it’s been.
After some time, the sliding door opens, and a tall, elegant form comes to stand beside her. A few moments pass in silence. He says, deep voice projected over the rain, “My home planet is a desert world. Rain was considered holy near-unanimously by otherwise dissimilar cultures separated by vast stretches of distance and time.”
“If you come from a desert, how did you know how to swim?” she asks.
“Nevertheless,” he goes on, without pause, “any Vulcan would agree that prolonged exposure to the elements, however venerated, often results in, to put it mildly, ill effects to one’s health.” He looks at her. “Please come inside, Dr. Taylor.”
She glances at him. Glances at the sky. “Alright.”
Inside, the rain sealed behind them, he sets a pot of water on the stove and fetches a thick towel from the hall closet. She strips out of her soaked shirt and drops it in a sad lump on the tile. Spock gives not the slightest indication that her now-bare breasts are noteworthy as he motions her to the couch and sets about preparing the tea. She sits wetly and leans her elbows on her knees, dropping her head toward the ground. She’s gotten around to feeling ridiculous when the towel finds its way to her shoulders and the mug of tea to her hands and Spock to the edge of the loveseat opposite her, watching her impassively over steepled fingers.
“Where’s Jim?” she asks miserably.
“He had some paperwork that required, in his words, some ‘finishing up’ in his office, and encouraged me to return without him, in the hopes that doing so would spare me the rain. He will be along shortly.”
She pulls the towel more tightly around her with stiff fingers, then takes a tentative sip of tea. Bitter, but warm. “You don’t have to do this,” she says. “Take care of me, that is, while I’m in this state.”
“I agreed to provide you with shelter for the duration of your leave. I am merely fulfilling the duties of host which I agreed to two weeks ago when you first informed me of your intention to visit.”
She sighs, looks away. Doesn’t know what to say. “Well, thank you,” she settles on. “I must’ve given you a bit of a shock.”
“On the contrary. I anticipated that you would face some emotional difficulty in the period of time after your arrival to the twenty-third century.” His gaze is steady. “It is fortunate that this episode has occurred when I am in a position to aid you, Doctor, for I owe you a great debt.”
“Ha.” She gives him a weak smile. “Am I really that predictable? I had myself convinced that I was all gung-ho about it. A chance to see the future - who would say no to that?”
“Many people would decline such an offer if it required leaving behind all those they hold dear.”
“Oh.” She looks up at him, meets his eye, and looks down again. “Well, you misunderstand the issue then, Mr. Spock. I didn’t really have anyone to leave behind, so that’s not why it hurts.” She swallows. “My, uh - my parents, they’ll be upset to hear I’m gone, maybe - or, they must’ve been , I guess - but they’ll get over it. We didn’t really ever, um, really ever know each other anyways. And friends, well, sure, I knew people, but I wouldn’t call any of them friends.” She forces a laugh. “Nobody gets that invested in a pair of whales if they have other friends, you know?”
“Your work was vitally important.”
“Yeah, but that’s just it, right? It was supposed to be my work - not my whole life. You know - you know what happened when I found out the whales were gone a day early? Even though it didn’t really change anything, even though it would end up the exact same way - just because I didn’t get to say goodbye to them, you know what I did?” She laughs miserably. “I cried! I went to my truck and I sobbed on the steering wheel for half a goddamn hour. All because I couldn’t say goodbye.”
Spock tilts his head. “I have found that humans place a great deal of sentiment on the concept of goodbyes. Additionally, I would restate that your work, and your devotion to it, were key in the survival of the entire human race. It was your outsized capability for empathy that led you to assist Jim and I and to ensure that the whales were returned to safety.”
“Empathy,” she mutters.
“While it often drives humans to act illogically, I have come to view it as a highly valuable resource,” Spock says with a quirked eyebrow. “Surely you agree - I find that Jim possesses a bounty of it, and you and he became quite close in a rather short period of time.”
That gets a real laugh out of her. “Oh, you’re a petty old queen if I’ve ever met one, Spock,” she says, and unfolds from her hunched position, leaning back on the couch’s armrest and folding her free hand over the damp skin of her sternum.
“I don’t take your meaning.”
“I mean I was never interested in him that way. I don’t go for men, romantically. Maybe that’s a surprise to you. It is to most people - I’ve been told I don’t look the part, that I’m too affectionate.”
“I am not surprised.” She turns her head and squints at him. He raises an eyebrow back. “Certain aspects of your behavior, in cultural and temporal context, led me to believe it probable, if not likely. I shall also clarify that I was not unfamiliar with the term ‘old queen,’ but instead meant to indicate that I took issue with the implication that a Vulcan such as myself would be ‘petty.’”
She laughs, throwing her head back. “Oh, I know you’re trying to make me laugh, but it’s working.”
She’s essentially lying down now, looking up at the ceiling. She quiets, watching the steem curl from her mug. It winds into the air like fingers on a gentle hand.
“You know, that’s one thing I noticed,” she says without feeling, “how little it matters now. What someone is.”
Spock opens his mouth to respond, but at that moment the door opens, and a profoundly drenched Jim Kirk staggers into the apartment.
“You’d think after breaking the light speed barrier we’d be able to come up with an umbrella that actually works ,” he pants, tossing a rather bedraggled one onto the floor beside the door, “but you would be - oh.” Eyes up, down, sideways, finally fixing on the far window. “Hello, Gillian.”
“Hello, Jim,” she says, sitting up to smile over the rim of her mug, not bothering to rewrap herself with the towel. “Anything on your mind?”
“Not at all,” he says, glancing at Spock, who appears archly unimpressed - though up close his eyes glitter with amusement. Stripping off his jacket, Jim shivers, shaking water off his curls. “Say, did you happen to make me any of that nice, warm tea?”
“It is on the counter. I added an obscene amount of milk and sugar, which I assume will be satisfactory.”
“So I’ll have to add more, you mean,” he grins, and disappears into the kitchen. Gillian gives in to decorum and draws the towel about her chest.
“I’ve spent so much time talking about myself,” she says to Spock. “I meant to ask you about the sights I should see in the new improved San Francisco… and, God, besides, what about you ? Have you gotten back any more of your old memories?”
“I have relearned many things since we last spoke, yes,” Spock says, “but the process remains slow and arduous.”
“I bet,” Gillian says. “I can’t imagine what that must be like.”
After a few moments of clinking, Jim emerges from the kitchen, carrying a large mug of milk-paled tea, at which Spock makes a minute expression of disgust. He settles down on the sofa next to Spock with a sigh, throwing an arm over the cushions. He doesn’t speak immediately, but he watches Gillian over the rim of the mug, his eyes glittering.
“So,” he says, casual, “I thought you were meant to be on shore leave with the rest of your crew, relearning the layout of San Francisco and getting blackout drunk. What’s a bright young researcher like you doing spending her first day of shore leave with two boring old men?”
Damn perceptive old men. “I don’t know, can’t I just enjoy your company?”
“You can just enjoy our company without soaking our carpet in rainwater, if that’s what you mean.”
She retreats back into the warmth of the cushions. “I guess I just didn’t feel like it,” she shrugs. “I like my crewmates. I just wanted… I wanted a break, for a minute, I guess.”
“ Crewmates , not friends?”
“No, I don’t mean it that way,” she says. “I do like them. I even have a girlfriend, I suppose.”
“My congratulations! What’s she like?”
“I suppose,” she says again, “I don’t really want to talk about it. What about you? How’s work?”
“Quiet,” says Jim, accepting the turn. “But that’s nice, at least until everything’s ready for us to set off again.”
“I find my work fulfilling,” says Spock. “A paper I authored on the calculations involved in time-travel recently won an award.”
“He’s being humble,” Jim says. “ Multiple papers, multiple awards, and a book in the works.”
Spock inclines his head.
“All thanks to you, in a way,” Jim says. “You know, we still get historians banging down our door to ask us about the 1980s. I try to be polite, but honestly I don’t have much to tell them… we were a bit busy at the time, you see.” Jim smiles. “I bet they’re just falling all over themselves to talk to you.”
The tea has cooled quickly. “That’s one nice thing about my current assignment,” Gillian says. “It’s apart from everything. Nobody can find me to ask me about what my life was like..” She chuckles. “And when they can, it’s all things I don’t know about. I wasn’t all that up to date on politics outside of conservation. I couldn’t tell you a thing about how car engines worked, or phones, or whatever the hell a touch-screen was - they really want to know about touch-screens. Sometimes they ask about things I would know, and I try to tell them, but they can’t understand, even the people who’ve come to know me well… it’s like a language barrier. They don’t have the context to understand anything I say, and there isn’t anyone in the world who does.” She swirls her tea. “I’m unique.”
“I find it hard to believe that nobody understands,” Jim says. “Sure, it was difficult for us to navigate your time, but my crew survived, even acclimated, in part… it looked different, sure, but it wasn’t impossible, not with a little effort. If we could understand that world, they can understand you.”
“I would disagree, in part,” Spock says, before Gillian can answer. “We were able to survive long enough to accomplish our goal, but had we been forced to live, long-term, in that era of the past, we would have had far more difficulty.”
“Yes, exactly,” Gillian says. “Day to day, I have no problems making myself understood. But fundamentally, emotionally… Here, I’ll give you an example.” She knits her fingers over her mug. “My ship has a shrink… a ‘counselor,’ you all call them. I went to her for a while on the regular, because, you know, everybody thinks I must be having a hard time, leaving everything behind. She tries to get me to talk about my family, about my past. I don’t really want to talk about those things all that much, but I humor her, thinking, if I ever really do have a problem, it’ll be useful to have her to understand me, right?”
Gillian looks down into her tea. With the milk swirling at the surface, it’s opaque, reflectionless.
“So one day I have a problem. I had a fight with my girlfriend. A real fight, one of those where afterwards she disappears from our room without a trace, doesn’t talk to me, won’t work with me, nothing. And the crux of the matter was, according to her, that I was ashamed of her, and I was being a dick about it, and I made her feel awful. Now, when she said all this, I said, you know, what are you talking about? I love you. And she started crying, and she said, how do you expect me to believe that when you won’t even hold my hand outside this room?
“I didn’t understand that. Of course I didn’t understand that. I didn’t even know she wanted to hold hands in public, much less expected it, because who would? It was alien to me. Completely and utterly alien.” She glances up. “Sorry, Spock. Turn of phrase.”
“I understand,” he says, and nods for her to go on.
“Well, anyway, I can’t get my head around this, so I go to the counselor, hoping she’ll explain it to me. I tell her all this stuff, and when I’m through, she asks, well, are you ashamed of your girlfriend? And I say, No! Of course I’m not ashamed of her. She’s a beautiful, smart, talented woman, and I’d do anything for her. Of course I’m not ashamed. And the counselor asks, then why won’t you hold her hand in public? ”
“So I go into all this stuff about the time I was raised in, about my family, et cetera, about how back then it wasn’t natural and it was even dangerous to do anything romantic with another woman outside the privacy of my own home. And the counselor is nodding along but she isn’t getting it, and I can tell she isn’t getting it, because she’s saying stuff like it isn’t like that anymore and you’re safe here. I catch myself feeling like a history textbook. I’m telling her what she knows is true, but she doesn’t know how to feel it, how these things can’t just be unlearned with the snap of a finger, because if you come from this place it lives inside you, grows inside you, is you in a way you can’t just un- be . I tried to give her an example, like I’m trying with you now.”
Gillian swallows. Outside, the rain drops off so noticeably it makes both she and Jim turn to look for a moment, blinking in the sudden light. “I apologize if this isn’t making sense. I haven’t talked about it with anyone else,” she says.
“No, go on, I follow you perfectly,” Jim says.
“Well, anyway,” she says, a bit unsteady, “the example I gave is, I said to her: I left my parents’ house when I was young, right? And after that they called me on my birthday, and they sent me holiday cards, but they never asked me about my life, because they didn’t want to know. And there was this understanding between us that I could have them or I could be a lesbian, and I chose the latter, so I didn’t have them anymore.” She clears her throat. “Some years after I left for the city, I met this butch. She was like me, on her own, didn’t ever have contact with her family, never talked about them. She was sweet, smart, and one of the strongest people I ever met - physically and in the heart. It was still so hard for me, and she was like this pillar I could lean on. She got me through so much. I can’t even tell you. We lived together, had a life together, shared everything… almost like a - like a real married couple, you know? I thought of us like that… as if I could be that, someone, uh, someone like me.
“Then one day she got a letter from her brother, telling her that her mother’d got cancer and she was dying, and she didn’t have anybody to take care of her. And my girlfriend had to go take care of her. I told her not to, but she had to, and I understood that, or I tried. I wanted to go with her, but she wouldn’t let me - said it would kill her mother on the spot to see her with me. She said it would only be a couple months, and she’d write me, and then she’d come back.’ It wells up inside her for a moment, and she has to take a breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Take your time,” says Jim, with infinite kindness.
“She, uh, she never wrote me,” she says. “I still had her things in my house. I had them for years - I still had some of them by the time I left, and I, I don’t know where they might’ve ended up. Maybe in the dump. The point is she left.” Maybe if she ignores the tears they’ll go away. “I saw her again, five years later. Just by chance. It was downtown, and there was this woman shopping with her mother, and she had long hair and a dress and this blankness to her face, but I knew it was her. As sure as I knew I was breathing. So I ran up to her, and I - and I tried to talk to her, and she acted like she didn’t even recognize me, acted like I was insane, to think she was who she was to me. But I could see in her eyes that she knew me. And I could feel her hating me for being there - begging me to leave her alone. So I did.”
The tears break from her eyes. “I wondered what I’d done. I doubted myself, but I knew it was her, and I thought I even knew why. I thought about it all the time, not only because I loved her, but because I was her, if only something had gone differently…She was so beautiful, so beautiful to me, and she died. She died and replaced herself with this thing that couldn’t love me, couldn’t know me, because she had to. Because that’s what it did to you, even if you were strong, even if you tried so hard - as hard as you could - you had to go back home or you spent your life running from it, and she chose the latter, and I -”
She cuts herself off, sniffs, and gulps her tea. You can’t cry while drinking - that’s something her mother taught her.
“Anyway,” she says. “Anyway. I tell all this to the counselor, and at the very end of it she looks at me with these big, watery, sympathetic eyes, and she says, so you’re afraid that your girlfriend will leave you, like this woman left you before, and that’s why you won’t hold her hand? ” She shakes her head and smiles, wry and wet. “That’s why I prefer whales to people, even in the 23rd century. The whales don’t even pretend to understand.”
A moment of silence, and she brings her eyes up to look at her two friends, her body hunched, embarrassed, wrung-out like a cloud after it’s dumped out all its rain. “I just feel so alone,” she says without inflection. “I’m out of time and out of place, and all the things that broke me in my life are ancient history to people, nothing more than theoreticals… How can I resent that people have it easier now than I did then? Isn’t that awful?” She sniffs, twists her mouth, and starts to apologize, but before she can, Spock leans forward, across the coffee table, to set a firm hand on her shoulder.
“You are not as alone as you believe,” he states, his dark gaze requiring her to meet it. “While you may believe your pain to be utterly unique, there are those in this world who, though their experiences are not identical to yours, have experienced that pain; and there are those, too, who will not understand, but who will nonetheless shoulder what parts of your burden they can and bear it at your side.”
“Really?” she asks, cringing at how brokenly the word comes out.
“You are not alone,” he says. “I know this for a fact.”
Something burns behind the placid void of his eyes that makes her, in this moment, believe him.
“I for one know why your girlfriend was angry,” says Jim, light but direct. “She knows you’re afraid of her. She hates the thought of hurting you, and so - in my mind, that is - she hates the thought that you think she might. She only sees you running from her - she doesn’t know how much bigger it is or how much deeper it goes.” He smiles. “But it’s her job to stop you running, and if she loves you like you deserve, she’ll never give that up.”
“Though the bulk of the burden is not hers to bear,” Spock says, releasing her shoulder. “To be known, you must allow her to know you. For that, you must look within yourself to find the woman who stops running and rises to meet her.” He frowns. “And you must submit a formal complaint about your ship’s counselor.”
She chuckles wetly. “She wasn’t that bad.”
“She did not listen.” Spock’s face softens. “May I offer a comment on the story of your wife?”
She freezes for a moment at the word, a shard of glass in her throat, but nods.
“In that moment, when you approached her on the street, I believe she still loved you,” he says. “She may have hated that she loved you, but she loved you all the more, in that moment, for trying to reach her, even if she was unable to reach back.”
Tears spill over anew. She has to pull away, avert her eyes for a moment. In her periphery, she sees Jim reach over to take Spock’s hand.
She pulls the towel tighter about her shoulders and brings the mug up to her lips, but the tea is gone. Spock notices and rises, reaching out wordlessly to take the mug from her hands. He takes it, with Jim’s and his own, to the kitchen, where he puts on another pot to boil.
When he returns, she looks up at him and murmurs, “Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” he says, sitting close to Jim, leaning lightly into his side. He cranes his neck back for a moment, and Jim looks down at him, and they hold each other’s eyes for short, rainlit moment.
Then Jim looks over at Gillian with a crinkled smile and says, “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”