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Merit

Summary:

Tag to the gap between series' end and the first movie. What were some of the crew doing during Enterprise's refit? Getting well-earned promotions.

Notes:

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Her ceremony comes on the heels of Sulu's own promotion, which makes for an interesting week for a good quarter and more of the Earthside crew. Not that either of their overlapping circles is known for drinking to excess in celebration, at least when a difficult mission isn't newly astern of them - Pavel and Scotty are the cheerful exceptions, and they admit it - but Earth means time zones, and time zone differences, if nothing else. Nairobi is not--one stifled yawn does not become two, this is too exciting--San Francisco, unfortunately.

Her parents are in the first row, and though they'd told her in no uncertain terms that that's where they would be, denying the warm glow their jubilant presence gives her would require an outright lie to herself. Captain--Admiral Kirk, and that still takes conscious thought--looks a little distant in the face, which stings on a low frequency not entirely blocked by the causes she suspects are behind the expression. It doesn't take much consideration at all to pin one of those causes on the empty chair to Kirk's immediate right, but Dr. McCoy's to his left, and Sulu's in full dress just beyond. Chris leans around Hikaru to beam tiredly at Nyota on three separate occasions - the explanation for her weariness Nyota knows for sure, because in Chapel's own words, no matter how enjoyable, medical school will still wear a person out - and Pavel looks as though Christmas has come early. Scotty can't keep the smile off his face. Palmer's there, and Janice, and Mears, and M'ress, and Riley - she still owes him one, even taking Kathleen into account, no matter what anyone might try to tell her - and there's a brand new black insignia, speaking of ranks, marking the aisle-edge seated Tamura as an ensign.

Nyota's eyes are on the third gold pip Admiral Kachinska is pinning to her collar; her friends are here, her family is here, but that new marker glows like justified and justifiable pride and once she glimpses it in proximity, she cannot look away. "May God have mercy on your soul," she hears Palmer mutter in a jovial aside to a giggling M'ress as the admiral's confirmation makes her rank official, and then the applause drowns them out.

Commander Uhura can almost feel the joy of the moment, the truth of it, radiating both outward and inward, bouncing off her skin like auroral signals in night air. Her conduct, her skill, her innate design all warrant this recognition, and now denial is a genuinely impossible avenue for anyone who'd try. Let the record show: She's earned this.