OTFC #25 Gazing Into Each Other's Eyes

PLEASE READ: I am taking the 30-prompt OTP challenge fav.me/d5dn7ex and CHANGING it to be "OTF"--"one true family," not "one true pairing." Hopefully it's obvious that Scotty and my OC, Orin, have a COMPLETELY INNOCENT, father-and-daughter-type bond, but I just wanted to make that extra-clear here. Most of the themes on this challenge are G-rated and can apply to parent-and-child relationships just as easily as romantic (and I thought they were just too cute to pass up, hence me jumping on the challenge bandwagon ), and the few that aren't, I of course will be finding innocent substitutes for.

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Day 25: Gazing Into Each Other's Eyes

"...Scotty? Are you okay?"

Uhura stood in the doorway of her old friend's quarters. Scotty was slumped over on his bed, flicking through a technical journal on his PADD rather listlessly. An empty Scotch bottle lay overturned on his nightstand.

"Och... come in, Uhura."

Uhura stepped in quietly. Without much hestitation, she took a seat behind the engineer on the bed, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. "...I know, Scotty. I know. I'm so sorry... about Peter."

Uhura had never heard the normally jovial Commander Scott draw in a breath with such shuddering deepness. "...So am I, Nyota. So am I." A tear trickled out one of his brown eyes, but unexpectedly, he turned around to his dear friend and managed a weak smile. "...Maggie told me 'twasna my fault. After I... I sent the transmission... told 'er wha' happened... her young son... well, it took her a while to reply, of course, 'twould've been inhuman for it not. But when she did..." the old brown eyes began shimmering, in that strange mixture of deep sorrow and deep joy; "...she told me, she still loved me, Uhura. God bless her. I was... I was so afraid that when I lost me nephew, I'd have lost me sister as well."

"Oh, Scotty, why would you think a thing like that?! Of COURSE it wasn't your fault!" Uhura couldn't help but cry herself at this point, and promptly hugged the engineer tight around his shoulders. He slowly reached up, and patted her arm gratefully.

"Aye... dear Peter. At least the lad's in Heaven noo... where there's nae more death, nae loneliness...." Scotty looked up wistfully as he spoke. "Ah hope he knows Ah still care for him."

"Of COURSE he does." Uhura's voice was reassuring, almost motherly. She leaned comfortingly onto Scotty's shoulder.

Scotty breathed a small, sad smile and looked down again. "...AH'M lonely, Uhura," he suddenly confessed. "Ah've ne'er really thought about it before. But Ah'm worried." He turned back around to face his beautiful friend of over twenty years. "Ye and I, Sulu and Chekov, the Doctor and the Admiral--and... and Mr. Spock..." he faltered again at the memory of another lost loved one, but then continued; "we've all been like family. But oor retirement isna really that far off. We're all growin' old--too old ta traipse aroond the stars. What are we gonna do, when the Enterprise is nae longer our home? Who will we have tae go home *to*?" Scotty seemed almost desperate--an emotion he rarely experienced, let alone showed. He was normally such a solid and cheerful soul.

Uhura sat back and pondered this for a moment, finally letting go of the engineer's shoulders. "...I'm not sure, Scotty," she agreed. "I still have some relatives back home. But no children. None of us have any children, do we? Except Sulu. He's lucky.... Oh, and Dr. McCoy, he has a daughter too, though she's all grown now, and he doesn't get to see her as often as he'd like.... And the Admiral has David now, too, I suppose...."

"Ah saw one o' the young recruits the other day, walkin' the halls after hours. ...She had a baby on her shoulder," Scotty whispered, referring to the small family units allowed onboard the Enterprise during her more normal, non-military missions. "I never would ha'e thought... but... Ah was almost jealous, Nyota. Me, an old man who's ne'er e'en really gone a-courtin'! Why would I be thinkin' o' bairns? But I was, suddenly..." Scotty's eyes went as deep and round as any doe's. "...Ah wish Ah had a bairnie, Uhura, o' me very own. A wee child... a lassie, I think."

Uhura almost chuckled--affectionately, not skeptically. "You'd be a *good* father, Scotty." The communications officer hugged the old engineer again, and planted a quick, encouraging kiss on his chubby cheek. "I've no doubt of that. Perhaps you should adopt a child, when we get back home to Earth." Her tone was bright and encouraging, hoping to keep her friend's mind off his recent loss.

"Aye..." Scotty almost agreed, yet seemed hesitant. "'Tis just...."

"What, Scotty?" Uhura asked gently.

"Och, 'tis silly, really...."

"No... whatever it is, it's not silly. Tell me."

The old Scotsman turned around to face his African friend. "Ah've been havin' dreams, Lassie. Three nights in a row noo... when..." he suddenly stopped and chuckled, almost embarassed at the childishness of his thought; "when I was a wee lad, Ah used tae play, imaginin' meself as a big bonny Highland dragon. Wi' silver fur, because o' the cold Scottish winters." He touched a lock of his hair, lying feather-like over his ear. "Noo Ah've got the color tae match it... half a century later..." he shook his head and continued. "Ah've been dreamin' Ah'm that dragon again, Lassie, a big old furry silver dragon. And I'm paddin' through the snow... and then I see a tiny patch of fur... whimperin', shiverin'... barely alive. And I nudge it... nuzzle it... press against it, tryin' tae warm it. And it stirs... 'tis a baby badger. An' it looks up at me wi' these brown eyes... BEAUTIFUL brown eyes, Lass!" Scotty's own brown eyes lit up with wonder at the retelling. "An' I look intae them an' realize... they're the very same brown as mine... an' they have a kindred light... an' I just know... this wee badger-bairn is *mine*."

"...And then you wake up?" Uhura finally found the voice to ask. Her hand had strayed to her heart, listening to her stalwart friend recount his dream with such startling tenderness.

"...Aye, Lassie. But Ah think it means..." Scotty fixed his gaze on Uhura seriously again; "...Ah think it means I'm meant tae wait. If Ah'm tae have a bairn... by adoption... it has tae be the RIGHT bairn, don't ye see? I have tae wait for HER tae come tae ME," he concluded.

"Well then," Uhura concluded gently as well; "perhaps she will. Perhaps soon."

"Uhura, Lass... thank ye." Scotty tilted over and kissed his friend on her warm bronze cheek.

"You're very welcome, Scotty."

The two hugged each other good night, and Uhura left the room.

Half a world away, on the planet Dinar V, two brown eyes flickered open. Another day dawning... but what did it matter? The brightening lights of the laboratory cells were the only indications of the outer world's morning anyway.

Little Orin Toggin turned over in her bed. It had been five months since her mother and grandmother had been lost in space, on a moon-shuttle flight (her father having left them far before her memory began)... and three months since her orphanage had been raided, she and many of the other Dinarian children herded into the clutches of the government scientists.

Most of the Dinarians were a peaceful, happy, simple people. All were small and slightly plump, when compared to the Terrans they otherwise resembled, and nearly a fourth of their number, including Orin, were "nelneers"--young children who never grew old, at least in the conventional sense. They gained the gray hairs and infirmities of age, but never reproduced, never grew as tall or un-childlike in form as the normal adults, never stopped playing, and never outgrew their need for the "melyimors," the "regular" adult Dinarians who were their guardians.

For a nelneer to be an orphan was hard. For a nelneer be locked away from any nurturing care at all was close to murder.

Such things would never have happened near the time of Orin's birth. But in the recent year or so--after the Dinarian high council had developed limited spaceflight to reach beyond just the local moons, and had heard of the United Federation of Planets, a grand galactic democracy they were eager to become a part of--the seperatists had seized control in several simultaneous coups. The seperatists were dictators, and isolationists, determined to control all of Dinar V for themselves and lock it away from the outside world.

They also were much less kind than the normal Dinarians. They selected sick and "deformed" individuals for study, for the "common good." What did individual lives matter, after all, compared to the well-being of the planetary nation?

Orin was unfortunate enough to be born with Loorkeet Syndrome. It wasn't a deathly disease--merely a condition that produced constant fatigue and heightened susceptibility to pain. But it warranted study, no doubt, to the seperatist scientists.

Orin's treatment, so far, had not been as brutal as it might have been. Simple tests--how much energy she could expend without collapsing; how much weight she could pull without bruising. Blood samples, small snips from her hair and fingernails. A few painful but endurable nerve-probes. That was all. But she had heard horror stories from the others, of how it might get worse.

She and the other orphans from her sector were all kept together, locked away in their little cells. They were all each other had. But Orin never really felt at home with the other children. She was a nelneer, and a bit of an introvert at that. She wanted to play and cuddle with a large, adult guardian, not with other small ones like herself.

"When will dey let us go?"

"Have they killed all th' grownups?"

"Th' angels will come an' rescue us."

"D' you believe in angels?"

Such went the orphans' normal discussions, for the past week or so of evenings.

"Of course I believe in angels," one said.

"What d' they look like, den?" asked another.

"They have ice-blue hair," one of the older girls declared, citing one of the sacred colors of Dinarian mythology. She wore her own blond hair in pigtails, and always seemed quite sure of herself. "An' they're tall 'n' slender 'n' beautiful, and sing like mother-ladies. An' their wings are like butterflies, 'r giant sparrows."

"My angel isn't a skinny lady," came a sad, quiet voice from one of the bed-shelves. The other orphans all turned to Orin--Orin the unusual. Orin who was a caring, gentle little girl, yet who never really wanted to play the same way as the others; Orin who trusted the "Keepers" even less than the others, who never even attempted to make friends with the blank, simple-minded laboratory matrons sent to feed them and check up on them. Orin who told strange stories from her imagination, whenever she talked at all. Orin who used to laugh and banter at least a bit in the orphanage, but had recently clammed up, always so silent and tired.

"Angels 're thin and young," one of the boys argued.

"Mine isn't. I've seen 'im in dreams."

"'Him?' Angels are girls," the blond-haired girl interjected.

"No, not all of 'em. Mother... Mother used t' tell me about male angels, in the Scriptillion," a red-haired boy argued.

"My parents never believed in the Scriptillion. They said it was just superstition."

"Maybe it is. Th' angels of th' Scriptillion 've never stopped th' Keepers."

"My angel'll be a man," Orin persisted, almost angrily, fighting to keep her voice above those of the other, now-squabbling orphans. "My angel will have silver hair, an', an' gentle hands, 'n' big brown eyes just like mine." She buried her face back in her pillow and began to cry, her listing of attributes now obviously as much a private wish as a foretelling. Her voice trailed off to a whimper. "An' he'll have a big, soft belly that 'e'll always let me snuggle... an' a warm rich voice... and he'll take me away fr'm here someday. An' everything 'll be safe an' happy again."

Orin hid under her covers. That was obviously all that the others would get out of her today, at least until the Keepers came to take them to their respective research rooms in a few hours.

Hardly anyone in the laboratory, scientists or captives, had expected the surprise that came that night. One of the oldest and most precocious of the captive children--an adolescent Dinarian boy, whose late father had taught him much about electronics and transmissions--escaped from his block long enough to race to the laboratory's communications tower and send a distress call, aimed randomly out into space. He had been shot with a tranquilizer gun and dragged back to his cell--but the seperatists had no way of knowing who, if anyone, had heard the orphan's cry.

The Federation had heard.

And of all its ships, the Enterprise had been nearest the sector, traveling on her way home.

Admiral Kirk was almost flabbergasted when Starfleet commanded the Enterprise to look into the affair at Dinar V. The crew was exhausted and had already been through a terrible ordeal--Khan, Seti Alpha, the Genesis torpedo explosion--and the ship herself was in dire need of repair from her battle scars. It would be a simple mission, Starfleet Command had assured them--the Dinarians had no true battleships, and even phaser technology was all but unknown on the planet's surface. Starfleet would send more ships, later, to look into the internal conflict of Dinar's recently overthrown democracy. But these orphans were suffering, and needed a quick rescue. The Enterprise could beam a few crewmen into the laboratory compound and beam them out again, the Dinarian children in tow, with very little difficulty.

So Kirk and his crew had followed their orders.

Orin and her compatriots had not known exactly what to think when the tall strangers had appeared in their rooms in a flash of light. Terrans! The giants their parents had once told them of, waiting out there in the friendly democracy of space!

"Quiet, Little Vuns," one of the smaller Terrans had whispered to them--he had stiff brown hair, and spoke in a slightly different accent than many of the others, who apparently were under his command. They all followed him through the compound, the strange light-guns in their hands raised cautiously. They occasionally shot at the Dinarian scientist guards, if they ran into them as they gathered the orphans from their cells, hallway by hallway. The guards fell, stunned rather than killed; none of the Dinarian orphans would have mourned for them either way. They were all frightened and confused, not sure whether the whole affair was a dream or a nightmare. It seemed more a dream--if anything, these new tall strangers seemed to care for them, and promised them hope. Most of all, they kept telling the children to be quiet, be swift. Hurry and follow them. The ship was waiting.

The ship? "Enterprise," they called it. The Terrans had strange phones in their hands, flipping them open, whispering into them. "Last quadrant, Admiral... Enterprise... little resistance... yes, we have them... transporter room... Scotty, beam us up now!"

Beam us up? Scotty? Admiral? What did it all mean?

The Dinarian children gave a collective gasp of shock as beams of strange blue energy suddenly coursed through their and their tall shepherds' bodies. Then they all disappeared in a shower of sparkles.

They reappeared in a warm, humming room, on glowing pads on a strange platform in front of the wall.

Spaceship walls.

"Transport complete," a sturdy sort of voice declared--it, too, had a strange inflection, different than most of the other Terran voices around it. But not in quite the same way as the perky, timid, buzzing one of the small brown-haired commander. This one was rich and lilting, and its "r"s made an odd growly roll.

The rich, growly voice came from an old, burly, silver-haired Terran operating some controls, in a booth further back in the room from the glowing pads. The burly Terran signalled some of the younger cadets around him, who swarmed to the platform around the orphans, offering them towels to cover their small, shivering forms, clad only in thin, number-tagged laboratory smocks.

The silvery Terran, obviously the ruler of this domain of the ship, came out from the booth and approached the platform as well. He was both older and fatter than any of the other Terrans Orin had seen so far. Despite his growling air of command, and his broad, strong frame, he knelt very gently in front of the little Dinarians, and gave them the most caring and reassuring smile Orin had seen in months.

Orin couldn't help but smile back as she noticed the old Terran offering his hand to her, to help her down from the platform--the transporter, they called it?

She took it, placing her tiny fingers trustingly in his. She barely even noticed the large, warm hand's obvious scar--a missing finger, almost stubless in the center.

What she mainly noticed was his face, round and friendly, with a salt-and-pepper mustache... and brown eyes.

Orin stared and gasped. Not just any brown eyes. Brown eyes like hers... the warmth in them calling out to her, welcoming.

Scotty gasped, too, as he took in the sight of the little girl whose hand he now held. She had caught his attention almost immediately after Chekov and the others had appeared. Poor little mite, poor cute wee thing, lying almost face-down on the transporter, downy brown hair in an almost-unravelled braid. Sweet round features, as if she could have been his very own.

And those eyes. Younger and framed with thicker lashes, but warm and shining and brown, just like Scotty's. Just like those of the baby badger in his dream.

The two pairs of brown eyes met and locked... and smiled. For a moment, they both could have sworn they had seen an angel.

"What's yer name, Lassie?" the sixty-odd-years-old Terran asked kindly.

"Orin... Orin Toggin," the not-quite-seven-years-old Dinarian answered.

"Orin," the old Terran repeated gently, and smiled a bit broader. "Ah'm Montgomery Scott, Chief Engineer o' the Enterprise. But all ye wee bairns can call me 'Scotty.'" He caught her as she stumbled weakly down the platform steps. "Careful noo--!"

Orin grasped the strong, chubby arms around her gratefully. "Thank you... Mr. Scotty," she looked up at her silver-haired guardian, and found that suddenly, for the first time in months, she couldn't stop smiling.

~~~

Well, there you have it... after almost a year of showing you guys my art and short stories these two, I finally got around to the story of their first meeting! Hopefully obviously, this story was supposed to be taking place between the second (The Wrath of Khan) and third (The Search for Spock) Star Trek movies. For those who didn't know this yet, Scotty sadly lost his (literal/biological) nephew, Peter, in the events of Wrath of Khan. Peter was the young engineering cadet who died in the sickbay scene. Most of the other scenes of him and Scotty were unfortunately cut from the final movie, including the moment when Scotty actually calls him "my sister's youngest," but the fact that they are related is still considered canon, as far as I know. I don't think Scotty's sister has a canonical name, so I just call her "Maggie."

I decided to show a bit of Scotty and Uhura's relationship in this one too--they aren't actually a "couple" at this point, but they ARE very loving friends, and they may become paired up in the future. I mainly focus on Scotty's familial relationship with Orin, of course, but I do often enjoy (innocent) "Scohura" things, so I leave that possibility open in my stories/pictures.

Anyways, I hope I managed to keep Orin's backstory interesting and plausible. Thanks for reading!