Like always, the hands were warm as they enveloped Uhura’s, which trembled mightily as she attempted to match her tricorder’s recording speed to his. It was vital they were in sync, or else, should another change be inadvertently made, the likelihood the rest would jump through the Guardian at the right time would decrease even further.

“Damn it!”

“You now sound like Dr. McCoy.”

Uhura wanted to laugh, to give into the tears buffeting against her eyes, but she merely said, “I want him back.”

“Yes.”

Uhura moved away, her hands not quite so shaky right then. “I’ve got it.”

The man before her stared for a long moment. “We will return.”

“We’ll come in after you if you don’t.”

He nodded. “When Mr. Scott goes, you go. I do not want you in the past alone.”

Uhura finally looked at Spock. Though his face was emotionless, his eyes spoke volumes.

“Mr. Spock—”

“I would think that a logical order. None of us should go through without a partner.”

She dropped her eyes again. “McCoy…”

“The odds of him surviving in the past alone are promising,” he assured her.

“Meanwhile mine…” Uhura muttered on a snort, the fear she’d been feeling since they’d lost contact with the Enterprise increasing dramatically. “Damn it! I should’ve brought down a subspace transmitter just in case—!”

“You could not have foreseen these events, Miss Uhura. In every other instance, our communicators have been sufficient.”

“But everything that’s happened has proved abnormal, Mr. Spock. I didn’t account for it—!”

“Stop this.”

Uhura glared at her tricorder instead of Spock. “I wish there were a way to rig up some sort of channel access between the tricorders so I could keep in touch with you.”

He came closer and covered her hands on her tricorder again. Uhura still did not look at him, knowing she would cry if she dared.

Uhura huffed. “You better, or I’m so coming down there and kicking all three of you in the ass—with or without Scotty!”

He squeezed her hands and walked away, heading towards the Guardian while Captain Kirk approached. He grasped her shoulders and ordered her to look him the eye when she’d started averting her gaze.

“I want you and Scotty to be the last to go should…”

Uhura nodded, wondering if the captain had come up with the idea himself or if Spock had suggested it at some point. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded as well, then bent his mouth to her ear. “You are not the only one who feels fear; but you are the only one brave enough to admit it.”

Her lips quirked and she raised an eyebrow not unlike their resident Vulcan and Chief Medical Officer. “As the communications officer, it is my job to report on the crew’s status.”

Kirk allowed a tiny grin, squeezing her shoulders. “We will return.”

“So everyone keeps saying…”

“Yes, well, you have an uncanny knack for keeping us honest, Lieutenant.”

Uhura’s eyes rarely left the portal after the captain and first officer jumped through. Yet, seemingly ten seconds later, they returned with McCoy in tow.

Something was wrong.

Spock and McCoy were solemn while Kirk appeared dazed. Uhura was afraid to know what they’d had to do to come back, even though she was glad they had, and couldn’t mask a relieved smile when she heard Sulu’s hail from the Enterprise.

When she relayed the message, Kirk glanced at them all, yet lingered on her the longest.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Uhura gave all three a very wide berth for days afterwards, not speaking to them outside of an official capacity. In turn, she’d somehow instinctively held herself apart from the others as well, hiding out in the communications lab, looking up and testing theories on time-space frequency channels. She did not want another experience like that, not being in contact with the ship or a landing party, so she vowed to find a way to hail frequencies using the most basic of tools she could imagine. Even though they had subcutaneous transponders, it would still be beneficial to know how to build something with long-range reach out of more crude parts.

Surprisingly enough, it was the captain who approached her first. He found her in the lab tinkering with an old communications board—a damn near relic—and a tricorder that had been left for dead, yet she’d somehow resurrected.

“I sometimes forget you’re almost as good as Spock with these things.”

Uhura squeaked and whirled around, her hand on her chest. “Captain!”

He smiled slightly but said nothing, his eyes taking in the various gadgets and gizmos on the worktable.

As well as the burns on her hands and one on her cheek.

“Uhura—”

“I’m fine, Captain,” she said, brushing away his concern and turning back to her project.

“Have you been to sickbay?”

“Yes, which is why you’ve yet to notice them until now.”

She heard him sigh. “Off hours.”

Uhura looked at him curiously.

“Bones would’ve said something to me otherwise.”

Uhura grunted. As much as McCoy touted doctor-patient confidentiality, he could bend the rules if he thought it in everyone’s best interest.

“Well, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

Again, Kirk didn’t speak, and he didn’t interfere with her work. For the next half hour, he watched her apply and reroute circuits in the old tricorder and the communications board, maintaining his distance even when several sparked and she earned a new burn on her forearm.

“Where’s the med kit?” he asked.

Uhura shot him a guilty look, then pointed behind her. Again, not speaking, he grabbed the supplies she’d “borrowed” from sickbay and came to her. Silently, he took her hands, quirking an eyebrow at her wince.

“Solved anything yet?”

“Not really,” she admitted, gasping slightly as he applied the salve on her arm.

Kirk nodded and placed a bandage over the burn. “I apologize for being—”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” Kirk insisted. “My sour mood has affected the bridge crew. Even though you have all performed with the highest professionalism, the atmosphere lacks the ease I’ve come to take for granted.”

Uhura couldn’t deny that, so she didn’t bother to try. She started to pull her arm away, but Kirk grasped her hand gently instead.

“He cares a great deal for you, Nyota.”

Uhura didn’t know what shocked her more—the fact the captain had used her given name or the fact he’d switched gears the way he’d done.

“Len?”

This time Kirk’s smile was much more genuine than she’d seen in a while. “Yes, him, but Spock as well.”

Uhura shrugged. “We’re friends.”

“Not just, Nyota.”

“Good friends.”

Kirk laughed softly and squeezed her hand. “Bones and I have suspected for a while, but it wasn’t until The Guardian that I realized it was more than ‘just’.” He stopped laughing and looked at her hand, letting a thumb drift over a scar.

“I had to let someone I cared about die so time could resume its shape.”

Uhura closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath. She’d known something bad had happened. “I’m so sorry, Captain.”

“As you can probably guess, Spock pointed out the logical decision to make, one that was by no means pleasant. If I chose my heart, it’s one life for millions. If I chose my mind, it’s millions of lives for one. I didn’t say anything to that immediately, but later I challenged him with my own question.”

Again, Uhura started to pull back, but he tightened his grip. “Don’t tell me this—”

“I asked him what if it were me? Bones? You? He dropped his eyes from mine when I mentioned you, but his voice was clear and firm and he said ‘A million for one, Captain.’”

“Captain…”

“Or one for four, the four of you on that planet. Or one for four hundred souls that were on a ship that wouldn’t exist if we didn’t make things right,” Kirk said, looking off into a past or a future only he could see. “It’s amazing how an obvious choice could be so difficult.”

“Happiness, at least,” Uhura whispered sadly. “I wished that for you.”

“And I had it,” Kirk assured her, smiling gently again. “For a little while, even as poor Spock spent his nights rigging one contraption after another to get us back home.”

“He’d do anything for you,” Uhura said with conviction.

“Yes. Funny, Edith said the same.”

“Edith? That was her name?”

“Yes.”

“She sounds like she was very perceptive.”

“That she was…kind of like someone else we knew.”

Uhura’s free hand settled on Kirk’s cheek and she kissed his other one lingeringly. Kirk held her close and breathed deeply.

“There will be other chances for it, right?” Kirk asked her, sounding more lost than she was comfortable hearing from him.

“I have to believe that, Captain, or else what’s the point?” Uhura asked in return, pulling back.

Kirk didn’t answer the rhetorical question, instead released her and told her he’d see her on duty tomorrow. She didn’t dally in the lab for much longer after he left.

The next bridge shift had felt more normal than it had since they’d been on that strange planet. Kirk had granted her a smile when he first appeared on the bridge, and even Spock had taken the time to nod in her direction as he went by to his console. During the lunch break, Dr. McCoy had sought her out in the mess hall and ate with her, telling her in an offhand manner one of his med kits wasn’t in the same place he’d left it after his shift yesterday, to which Uhura had blurted out she’d put it back where she’d found it last night, thus busting herself.

“You could’ve asked,” McCoy had said gently.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” Uhura had replied with a shrug.

“My dear, you could never be a bother.”

She’d smiled shyly. “Well, can I use it tonight?”

“It’ll be waiting for you when your shift ends.”

After eating dinner with McCoy, Riley, Sulu, and Chapel, Uhura made her way back to the communications lab that had been her third home for the past week, med kit in hand.

“Greetings.”

She barely clamped down on her screech, her eyes wide to see Spock looking over her work with a critical, yet impressed eye. “Spock?”

“You are far along in the application of your theory. I wonder if I may be of any assistance.”

“The captain tell you?”

“And Dr. McCoy.”

Uhura rolled her eyes and sighed, but she nodded. “Please. I could sure use the advice of someone far more skilled than I at this!”

“Do not diminish your talents in this regard, Nyota. I would even suggest you are probably farther than I would be in some aspects of this.”

“Really?”

“Yes. At times, your leaps of logic yield exceptional dividends, as with you rerouting this circuit here. It would have taken me seven sequences before I would have arrived to this solution.”

Warming at Spock’s compliment, Uhura went to him and showed him the rest of her progress. They worked side by side for hours, heads bent over delicate parts and wires, speaking in low tones why one thing or another would or would not work. One of his suggestions had failed in a major way, short-circuiting the mirror board they’d been constructing and sending a shock up Uhura’s arm that made her cry out. The sound hadn’t fully dissipated from the room before Spock was there.

“You are injured,” he stated, taking her arm gently.

Her arm still tingled, but she’d been more startled than hurt. “I’m okay, Spock. This isn’t the worst shock I’ve ever gotten.”

He nodded, yet trailed his index and middle fingers from her inside elbow to her inner wrist in a slow, contemplative fashion. “Jim told me about the conversation he had had with you.”

All Uhura could do was breathe, too focused on his touch on her bare skin.

“And while it is true I gave him the logical answer…it was more than that.”

“More than what?”

“Simple logic.” His hand now held hers. Like Kirk had done the night before, Spock pressed tender thumbs over the scars she’d accumulated while working on her project. However, her body hadn’t trembled then the way it trembled now.

“I see.”

Spock looked into her eyes, his thumb ceasing its strokes. “I was reminded of my time on Taurus II. Of being the acting captain. I did not envy the decision Jim had to make. I understood his dilemma far more than he realizes.”

“One for a million, Spock,” Uhura whispered. “That is part of your philosophy, isn’t it?”

“But happiness at least, Uhura,” he responded. “Is that not part of yours?”

“You don’t think you would’ve found some happiness back then?”

“You would not have existed, Nyota.”

Her mouth dropped open.

“Or you would have jumped through the time portal into a hostile era in your Earth’s history. I looked through the tricorder trying to find the focal point. People with your physical characteristics were not treated very well around that period. Where would the happiness have been for you?”

“Or you? A half-Vulcan on Earth during that time?”

“We did not belong there, Nyota. No matter what Jim felt for Miss Keeler, she was not meant for him, nor he for her.”

“Yet you would have stayed with the captain.”

She wondered if he knew his grip had tightened around her hand.

“But it worked out,” Uhura reminded him.

The pressure of his hand eased, but still, he held on. “Yes. But there are many other times when it may not. Other times when someone might have to choose between Jim, or McCoy, or you. I might have to choose.”

“You will make the right choice,” Uhura said, fully believing that.

The corners of his mouth softened. “Faith?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

Spock’s face returned to its normal impassivity. “It is not logical.”

“But even you know it can work.”

He looked at her hand once more, his eyes traveling from there, up the arm that had been shocked, and to her eyes. “I would rather more infrequent experiences with it, Nyota.”

Uhura chuckled, squeezing his hand before pulling hers away. “It’s a scary thing even for us humans, but I suppose we have a bit more practice utilizing it.”

“So it would seem.”

They went back to working on the project, much closer to a solution than she’d been before the start of the evening, yet not as close as she’d like to be. She sighed and stretched her arms over her head after they finished cleaning up the workspace.

“Thank you for your help, Spock.”

He nodded and stared at her for a long time. “I struggle with the choice often, Nyota.”

“The choice?”

“Happiness or logic.”

Her arms fell slowly to her sides. “Are they really mutually exclusive?”

“As I am Vulcan, I should not desire happiness at all. However, the longer I am around your kind…the more I am uncertain; although recently, there has been evidence of yes, it is.”

She felt overwhelming sadness on his behalf. “I’m sorry, Spock.”

Again he nodded and stared, putting his hands behind his back. “So am I.”

She approached him, clasping her hands before her. “Well, it is my desire for you to find a decision that gives you peace.”

His eyes softened again. “You will accept whatever I ultimately decide?”

Uhura cocked out her hip and tossed her head back. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry to disappoint, but you’ve got yourself a friend for life in me!”

Spock looked away for a moment, then held out his elbow for her to take, which she did. He did not speak as he walked her to her quarters and he entered with her once they arrived, though stayed by the door. Throughout all this, Uhura played it cool, though her heart beat twice the normal rate because of his unusual, although not entirely unwelcome behavior. When he approached her, Uhura reminded herself to breathe.

Yet when Spock reached out and grasped her chin, she found she could not.

“Whatever choice I make, I will endeavor to ensure you will forever remain my friend. Have a pleasant night, Nyota.”

Uhura had no idea how long she stood staring at the door after Spock left.