Title: Patient’s Name: Uhura, Nyota P.
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Uhura
Summary: FH!verse one-shot. Part of a series.
Other Cases: Scott, Montgomery | Chekov, Pavel | Sulu, Hikaru

After much deliberation, this is expanding to become a series of one-shots centered around the Captain’s crew.
Next up…

Patient’s Name: Uhura, Nyota P.

“[…] I don’t know what to do if I can’t be in the Captain’s crew!” – A World of Crazy

Nyota almost burns down her fifth boyfriend’s house. Rather, she sets a fire and her initial plan falls apart.

She’s in love with him and he wants to break up a good thing. That’s bad. More than bad… it’s painful. He knows how much she loves him (doesn’t she tell him often enough?). Oh yes, that gorgeous, heartless son of the bitch knows.

He says she’s a beautiful, insane bitch. He says she’s too paranoid (“I told you I went out with the guys… don’t ever fucking follow me like that again!”) and that he can’t take her brand of weird-ass crazy.

Nyota does not care. Isn’t it her right to know where he is? They’re supposed to be together. Is it so wrong to want to be close to him (never let go)? They’re made for each other, she and he—need each other.

That’s the way it’s supposed to be, between soulmates.

When she is alone, her mind won’t settle. People are watching her—all the time, watching, trying to figure out why such a pretty girl is all alone.

So she keeps calling his cellphone but he won’t pick up. She goes to his house but his mother says he isn’t home. (That’s a lie; she sees his bike leaning against the side of the house.) His buddies won’t tell her where he is (goes, without her, all the fucking time).

Nyota is upset, wild in her anger and disappointment.

Then, when she’s parked two blocks down in her cousin’s car, she sees him. Walking home, that long-legged cocky stroll.

He’s not alone.

There’s a girl—some fucking skank—with her hand in the back pocket of his jeans, groping the ass of Nyota’s man. She watches them go inside his mother’s house. Watches and plans, because if there is anything Nyota Uhura is good at, it’s planning.

Everybody in the neighborhood knows how brilliant she is. Her family knows, is proud of all her school achievements and the sharp bright-eyed photos of their Nyota accepting numerous awards. All through junior high and high school, into the local community college. She’s smart, lovely and going places they tell her. Going to be somebody important.

Nyota likes to tighten her hands on the steering wheel until her knuckles are bloodless. It’s cathartic, a way to ease the rage that builds inside her sometimes. People make her so mad, always watching and judging. (Doesn’t she do her best? Always her best and then some?)

Her mother doesn’t understand why Nyota cannot maintain a relationship with a guy for more than a few months. She thinks that Nyota picks assholes for boyfriends (maybe she does, she admits). What’s she supposed to say? That they leave her because they cannot grasp how important love is? Two people, in-love, should be one; always together.

Ironically, the only thing that Nyota and her mother have in common (besides their lovely eyes) is that they both hate to watch a man walk away. Like her own father. How Mama raged over that for months, seethed and slammed doors, broke things. Uhura—just a young girl, then—felt the woman’s hatred soaking her skin, hated him too—for hurting her mother and herself.

Yet she needs a man to keep her balanced.

He wants to leave her? Fine. She’ll burn all those things she bought him, the tokens of her affection. He doesn’t deserve to keep them. They’re meant for a man who loves her!

His room faces the south-end of the small house. The window latch is broken, she remembers, because she kept bothering him about getting it fixed. (“How can you feel safe, if you can’t lock the criminals out?”) Well, that’s her ticket. So she waits until Friday night, when his mother and father go out for Bingo and her boyfriend—soon-to-be-ex—won’t even bother coming home. He likes to party on a Friday night. (Another way he wouldn’t concede to her; Nyota likes to be alone and cuddle, not party, and he hates that. Fuck him.)

There is no alarm system. No, his family is too poor for that, like everybody else in the neighborhood. Well, not Mr. Robbins two blocks down—he’s loaded, Nyota is pretty sure because she “accidentally” got some of his mail and wouldn’t you know it, the man gets letters from big-name brokerage corporations in downtown Atlanta. (Uhura likes to know something about everybody.)

It’s easy enough, in dark clothes, to blend into the shadows. She’s good at the spy game, been doing it since she was little. Used to lie under people’s porches, listening to the sound of their voices in their house—tried to hear words. People call her curious; think it’s because she is so smart that she needs to know everything. And that’s true, mostly. Nyota likes to know what’s going on, who’s going where and keeps a close eye on all her friends. The best part is that they don’t know how much she knows about their lives; won’t because she is so careful.

That’s her mistake, of course—losing her cool, but she didn’t know it then. Couldn’t think about anything but the betrayal of a man she loved.

Once she’s inside his room, she collects all the items that are relevant to their two-month relationship and dumps the bundle into the bathtub. A bottle of lighter fluid and one or two matches. The blaze is quite beautiful, poetic, because that’s how she feels on the inside. Let them all know.

Nyota’d planned on dousing the fire after a few minutes; it’s not that she wants to ruin anything belonging to his parents. It’s not their fault he’s such a lying, cheating bastard. (Not really.) But she doesn’t plan on the shower curtain catching fire, panics when it goes up in flames and there’s no safe way to pull it down without burning her hands. Then the fire starts to lick along the ceiling, and that’s when Nyota realizes everything is spinning out of control. She runs for safety and calls 911.

Watching the smoke leaking from the house as she stands across the street is frightening. Nyota does not hide. She waits until the firemen show up, barrelling through the narrow street, tells them about the fire in the bathroom and afterwards stands very still in the wail of the sirens. Neighbors are gathering along the broken sidewalk, parties and evening meals interrupted.

He comes running, her boyfriend, eyes wide and cursing a blue streak. The police have yet to arrive (it’s Friday night, after all, and Atlanta is not a safe city, even during the day). The man she thought she could grow old with, wanted to, until he broke her heart yells at her, “You crazy bitch! What did you do?!”

She’s crying, then. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know!“

That’s what she tells the police as they cuff her hands behind her back. It’s true, every word. She has no clue how things got so out-of-control in her life.

In the end, it’s only her clean record and the pleading of family and lawyer friend that save her from a jail sentence.

“Nyota’s such a good girl! Please, she was just accepted into a law school, please…”

“…the girl’s sick, Judge…”

She doesn’t argue when a certified criminal psychologist from the Department of Mental Health puts her through evaluation after evaluation. The questioning is extensive, invasive and sometimes strange.

How did you feel when your father left? Tell me about your boyfriends, Nyota. Why do you think you hate to be alone? Mr. Wilson—your neighbor, yes—mentioned a few strange incidents: You told him that the city lights were… bugged by the magistrate. Tell me about that. Do you often feel persecuted by others?

Nyota knows from her Psych 101 class (she’s a linguistics major; likes to take other courses, just to learn) that the state of Georgia is aiming for a label like paranoid schizophrenic; to declare that is she is a danger to “normal” people. But she could go to jail otherwise, and so when Nyota Uhura is found not guilty by reason of insanity and placed at Fleet Heights, she tries to make do with the shreds of her life.

It’s rather easy, actually, because there are a group of men—albeit crazy men—that are promising. (She’d be the only woman.) Nyota starts with a good-looking blond named Jim. Well, Captain Kirk, but that’s just makes the challenge more interesting.

Her mother never visits; the last she hears—some months later, from a nosy sister-in-law—Mama moved away to North Carolina. Nyota understands that she is alone, just as she had feared. Captain Kirk extends her an offer for the position Head of Communications on the starship Enterprise and she accepts. Better to be a part of a motley crew than nothing at all.

Related Posts:

• Patient’s Name: Sulu, Hikaru – from September 20, 2010
• Patient’s Name: Chekov, Pavel – from September 17, 2010
• Patient’s Name: Scott, Montgomery – from September 16, 2010