Chapter Text
“Doctor M’Benga?”
Uhura’s voice drifted through the murmuring crowd, a room full of people partaking in good food and bittersweet conversation. The memorial service had ended, and those who remained were enjoying the captain’s cooking and telling stories about the souls they’d lost. M’Benga turned, looking for Uhura, and saw the young cadet approaching from the other side of the room.
“Doctor M’Benga,” she repeated. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Hello, Cadet,” he said, his words clipped. He didn’t want to be uncourteous with her, but truly, speaking to another person was the last thing he wanted to do right now. After the service, he felt fragile in a way that he despised.
“I know that you and Hemmer were friends,” Uhura continued. “So I wanted to check on you today.” Her face was open, caring. He could tell that she was being earnest.
“It was a beautiful service,” M’Benga diverted. “Your speech, especially.”
“Thank you,” said Uhura. She seemed to study him for a brief moment. “Doctor, forgive me if… if it isn’t my place, but you don’t look well.”
“Neither do you,” he said with a weak laugh.
Uhura gave a sad smile. “I’m finding a way through it. I always do.”
“How?” M’Benga said, and his voice broke before he could stop himself, before he could contain the ocean roiling inside him. He felt tears forming, boiling hot and painful where they trembled on his eyelids. “When does it end? When do we stop losing people?”
“Oh…” Uhura murmured. Gently, she took M’Benga’s arm and guided him towards the doors, where they slipped out of the room where the memorial service had been held and into the corridor for a bit more privacy. M’Benga thought to thank her for her silent consideration, but his lip quivered in a way that made him feel unmoored and fragile, and most of all, angered him, and he knew that if he tried to speak, something would come crashing down inside him, something he wasn’t sure he could rebuild after this was over.
“Talk to me,” Uhura said gently. “It’s easier to carry when you share it.”
“I can’t,” he replied in a strangled voice. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”
M’Benga squeezed his eyes shut so hard it was painful. And in the darkness, he saw Hemmer and Rukiya standing side by side, in shards of light, like ice catching the sun.
“How do you keep going?” he whispered. “How do you bear it, Nyota? I don’t know how.”
Uhura took a deep, shuddering breath. “A few years before I was assigned to the Enterprise, my parents and brother were killed in a shuttlecraft accident,” she said. The quality of her voice told M’Benga that this was a rehearsed statement, words she’d distanced herself from in order to be able to express them at all. “It was like my whole world imploded. I had no idea how to exist in a reality where they were gone. But the days kept passing, I kept breathing, and life went on, no matter how much I sometimes wished it wouldn’t. I met people who understood my pain and made things a little bit easier—even just for a moment. And I did whatever I could to try to live in a way that would’ve made my family proud. To honor their memory. Those were some of the worst years of my life, but I made it through. I think… I think time teaches you how to live with grief. There’s no easier, better way around it—you just have to keep going, keep on living, the way your loved ones would have wanted you to.” She sniffed and wiped a stray tear from her cheek, smiling at M’Benga, and he marveled at the truly unshakable brightness that still burned inside her, despite everything. “I’m trying to think of Hemmer that way,” she said softly. “Whenever I ask myself how to survive this, my answer has been: to honor him by being the best officer I can be. By enjoying my life, and continuing to put my faith into others the way that he did. There’s a lot I’m still grappling with, but… that’s my bit of amateur wisdom for you.”
“I think that’s anything but amateur,” M’Benga said. “You have a way of connecting with people, Nyota. Never doubt that.”
Uhura smiled again, bittersweet and warm. She bowed her head and remained quiet.
“Hemmer and I… we had something,” M’Benga began, unsure. “I don’t know exactly what it was, or what it would have become. But we didn’t get the chance to find out.”
Uhura squeezed his hand tightly. “Thank you for trusting me with that.”
M’Benga sat in silence with her as they listened, from the end of the corridor, to the murmur of voices from the memorial service reception. Occasionally he glanced her way. Written across her face, he saw a grief similar to his own.
And in the lines of that grief, inexplicably, light.