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The Feeling of Flying

Chapter 24: 2023

Notes:

Hey guys!

Have been super busy so this is a bit of a short one, but think of it as a prelude to some big reveals!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s not that Una was scary; that was not the right word.

Fear… it’s an irrational thing. It’s born from ignorance- a lack of understanding- from something worse than just primality.

To be human, to Spock, meant to face it all with tenacious curiosity. With the mindset that the universe could be explained, that equations could be solved and proved and built upon. It was only logical then, that fear was a worse emotion than something you simply experienced as ‘built into’ the human experience.

It was an affront to the very nature of what it meant to be human. Irrational in the most basal of ways.

That was why it felt so wrong to stand there scared. Inhuman, almost. Alien.

Una just blinked back, frowning at the doe like stance of boy, how he seemed ready to bolt at any sudden loud sound. It was not like him- and Number One seemed unsure of how exactly to navigate that effectively.

“Close the door?” she offered- making Spock wonder who that motion was meant to keep from escaping- himself or whatever uncomfortable topic was about to be brought up.

In the end, the kid spent too long pondering the question to move. There might have been a lesson about human nature to be learned there, but there were more pressing matters at hand, mostly surrounding the mitigation of a heart attack.

“Why do you hate Mr. Chapel?” He asks- though it comes out just a little bit too much like a demand.

He need to get better at that- bureaucracy- suggesting things delicately. Empathy.

For half a moment, he thinks about Christine. It’s unintentional. Cursory. It’s not the kind of thought that’s dangerous yet.

He hasn’t decided if, with a little more time, it will be.

Una though- she just kind of darkens a little. Not like she’s going to lash out but a lot more like she’s started shrinking in.

Spock realizes, then, that it’s the first time he’s seen the woman look something close to scared. And it didn’t make sense, not really. One had worked in reconnaissance, survived foster homes and hostage situations and was working to put a woman on the moon and, lets be honest, also Mars. Una Chin-Riley- she was all strength. All steel.

Five years from now, Spock takes a materials class for engineers. Learns about the properties of steel. How it shatters. Something about the high carbon content.

Carbon, the building block of life. He will wonder if being more alive makes you easier to break.

It all makes sense in his head. Somehow. Somewhere.

“Why do you hate Mr. Chapel?” She asks back, and there’s just enough tone there to be a challenge. A chance to back down.

***

She wants him to back off as much as she hopes he’ll hold his ground.

The thing with having a student- any maybe that’s not quite the right word but he’s both pupil and equal in her eyes- is that there comes a time when when they reach the break even point. The boundary of how far you’ve been able to go. At least they should, if you’re doing things right.

There comes the day where you have given them all that you know how to give. When it’s time for the push. That first step into the unknown. The first step they take alone.

Archer made her do that, once. He was dead now.

Maybe there’s a correlation there.

“Did Chris send you to me?”

Spock nods.

And she scowls.

Because that student she’s thinking of? It’s not the kid who’s standing in the doorway of her office. Spock’s still got a long way to go.

The man on her mind is cowering in the stables outside.

***

His wife comes around a lot more gently than he had been expecting. Not that he’d ever known her to rain fists and fury but- Una was rarely ever soft.

“That is not my story.” She remarks, leaning cross armed against the stall door as Mambo V sniffs her curiously. He knows it tickles; she doesn’t squirm. “You shouldn’t have sent him to me.”

Chris says nothing, just keeps sweeping. Doesn’t look his wife in the eye. Takes just a little too much time to decide on what his answer should be.

“I couldn’t get in the saddle for a decade.” He manages, because he’s past the point with Una where they really need to use the english language. It’s been half a century now. They’ve got their own way of communicating.

“And now you do.” She counters, foreign. “Everyday.”

And she says that like it’s obvious. Like it’s easy. Part of him wants to be mad about that but- well it’s Una’s way of intimately understanding something. Breaking it up into pieces. Holding it all in her hands. Disassembling and cleaning and putting something together again.

It’s wait made her a good engineer. Her ability to break a problem into pieces. To understand all the different stitched together parts of him.

Halfheartedlty, Chris wonders if she could pull out a voltmeter and fix all this or something.

“Una-”

“You have the input and the output-” Begins his wife, hands moving to slip inside his. “That’s where you start- you have all you need.”

For a moment, they say nothing. They don’t have to.

Her eyes are still blue, just darker, deeper. He wonders if any version of him in his youth could recognize them now. How different they are.

He thinks that by the time he turned sixteen, he would. That he’d know Una well enough to understand that nothing about the universe ever really changes. Just expands. That she’s got the old and new stars still in there.

They are expansive. That’s the word.

Una is expansive. He loves her.

“I just-” He swallows, struggling. “It’s hard, One.”

She doesn’t back down. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t falter. He loves her.

“It’s supposed to, Chris.”

He loves her.

Notes:

Next chapter will explain a lot :)