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Dinner with the Captain is of course a very well known part of life on the Enterprise - and Nyota Uhura will never forget that first time, and how she came dressed in her Starfleet finest. Eventually however, that dinner becomes one out of many; because what people who never served on the Enterprise don't know is that eating together seems to have been an integral part of the culture onboard. Some will say it is due to the Captain’s love for food, but Nyota never figured out which is the chicken and which is the egg.
Because before she is invited to the Captain’s dinner, Nyota has already joined another dinner one evening. It’s Cadet Hansen, with her big smile and blonde hair, who invites her for an evening with the other Cadets. Apparently, the Cadet “in charge” decides what they’re going to eat and then the rest of the invitees help make the dish. Nyota is in the kitchen by the mess hall which the Cadets have booked, making meatballs with potato and lingonberry jam for the first time in her life. It’s a fun evening, a way to connect and even if she is still apprehensive about this road she has chosen, it does feel nice to share it with these people.
—
She will also learn about the meals shared between those who belong to the same department. Here, it’s a bit uncertain how much rank plays in. Rarely will the senior officers join, but otherwise it seems as if there is a good mix of ranks. Nyota is excited to get to know the others who work with Communications. These evenings are not very strict, and most of those who wear red have a tendency to end up visiting each other's dinners. After having strictly stayed with the communicators, she then joins a young lieutenant to the security team's dinner, but it is with the engineers she feels at home. As much as she and Hemmer butt heads there is still that respect and understanding between them - maybe she would’ve been an engineer in a different life? Hemmer once shows up to a dinner with his engineers while she is also present - she has sneaked in with the help of her red uniform (and the fact that no one really cares). They give each other a nod from across the room, but she's certain she can see an amused smile playing on his lips.
But for most of the time, it’s just the junior ranks present. The engineers all seem to share a fondness for barbecuing. When Nyota manages to get an actual invitation to Lieutenant Suárez’ asado she is beyond thrilled, and honored.
–
Nyota was never really one to grow up in the kitchen and it takes her a while before she feels confident enough to host her own evenings. When she asks her grandmother for recipes of the meals Nyota remembers from her childhood, her grandmother is happy to help. She sends not only the recipes; one day when the actual, physical mail arrives her grandmother has sent her her mother’s apron. It isn’t very well-worn, her mother was more of the cerebral kind but Nyota appreciates the gift and the meaning it holds. She manages to make a decent ugali, and from there she slowly builds her skill.
The next time she is invited to the engineers barbecue potluck, she repays them all by making nyama choma.
—
As much as they share the meals in joy, they also share the meals in sorrow. When Hemmer dies they host a dinner in his memory. Nyoata remembers going, but not eating anything.
Because she can hardly imagine enjoying space again. She wants to go home to Earth, even though she knows that it is no safer there, but it can’t be as harsh and brutal as out here, can it? She’s asked to join a Cadet-dinner one evening, but declines. After a few more of her saying she can’t go, she finally confesses that she doesn’t want to and her roommates - with the help of Ortegas - eventually drag her to one of the ship's bigger food events. It’s the annual Harvest Fest, which seems to have been created because apparently most cultures all over the universe seem to have had festivities around the time when harvest could be made - and the Enterprise crew had to of course adopt and adapt the idea. Nyota sits by a table in the far corner of it all for the whole evening. But she went, and that’s what counts.
—
Not long after, there comes an invitation from the Commander. Nyota gets apprehensive and when Ortegas seems to know nothing about it, doesn’t even dare to joke about the whole thing - well, Nyota gets even more worried. The invitation says that they’ll have something sweet, that it’ll be in the Captain’s kitchen (please bring an apron if you have one) but just the Cadet and the Commander - and that is all Nyota knows. When she arrives, Number One is wearing a blue apron and shows the Cadet into the kitchen. She explains that the Cadet has nothing to worry about, that this evening is for her to talk, if she wants to. Or just bake, if that’s all she feels up to. Nyota dons her mother’s apron and they begin. They make a strawberry pie, with meringue topping, and in between crust that has to be partially baked and fillings that has to cool, Nyota slowly starts talking. And she tells the Commander about things she rarely says to anyone, and the Commander listens and asks and tells stories about herself.
It’s an evening about losses but also about gains, it’s about failure and growth and from that evening on Cadet Uhura will always say that strawberries are her comfort food.
It takes her years to understand that these evenings baking are the Commander's way to check in with her crew after their losses. As much as the Captain’s dinners create a sense of family and joy, the Commander is there to comfort in the dark and to help put the unspeakable into words.
—
And in this they become the parental figures she so desperately needs - even if she never says it out loud. The meals they share will mingle with the meals shared in her childhood and create a fabric in which the single threads are difficult to make out.
—
Over the years, Nyota will learn many new recipes. When the ship changes crew and eventually Captain, she and the others will teach new members of the crew about the traditions, keep them alive and be a part of making them seem like something that has always existed aboard the Enterprise - seeing as even they can’t remember a time before they did.
Captain Kirk isn’t much into cooking, she will learn. He is however a great host and will instead create a tradition of potlucks.
Sulu makes something called a Cobb Salad and amazing, tomato based, fish stew that she eventually gets the hang of pretty well. Bones always bring peanuts, prepared in different ways, as a snack. Scotty seems to have a thing for pies, until she learns that he doesn’t know how to cook anything else. A few years later, he has picked a few other recipes.
—
She might sometimes question if space is for her. But she chose Communications as her skill, and no one does so if they don’t enjoy connections - and with the people she meets and through the food their share she builds those connections, creating a web of shared memories and moments.
—
Her most difficult dinner is the one after they lose Pike. Spock has gone behind the back of all of them, making it sound as if he was ensuring they could not be sentenced to death with him but Nyota feels betrayed. Chapel is upset, but deep down they all realize they have to get past it. They are the only ones aboard the Enterprise who remembers Captain Pike, even though Lieutenant Hansen has heard much about the Captain from his wife. They decide to share a meal and make peace with each other. It’s a long night, and many tears are shed.
Sometimes later, Nyota gets a package in the mail. In it is a small, black notebook with recipes of savory dishes. Realization dawns on her and tears form in her eyes as she turns over the leaves. There, eventually, she finds the instructions to make strawberry pie with meringue topping. And Nyota understands that she will never again meet the woman who made it for her the first time. She had said her goodbye to them and Nyota knows that no baking can ever mend her heart.
She puts the little book on top of her mother’s apron, now well-worn and stained. That night, as she cries herself to sleep, Nyota promises the universe and the stars that she will continue the tradition of baking strawberry pie and share it with those who need it.
—
When she and Spock eventually make the team as Captain and Commander, it will be Nyota who invites her crewmembers to bake and talk when loss hits them and space seems too dark and cold. However, her crew members might not be just as surprised as she was at the invitation. Nyota has always been more talkative, more communicative than many other Commanders. And Number One was always very private, Nyota reflects. She wonders sometimes why she inherited the notebook. Though maybe baking should go with listening which - as much as talking - is just the other side of communicating.
Maybe it simply was made to stay in space, and by then Nyota had found her place amongst the stars.
—
Many years later, when she takes command of the Leondegrance , she is in charge of Dinner with the Captain, which seems to have become much more common throughout the fleet. Many of those who transfer to her ship have stories of meals shared on their previous postings. When she invites a new Cadet to a dinner she’s impressed by the wine he has chosen for the evening. He tells her stories of his childhood wineyard and she can’t help but wonder how his dinners will one day be.
—
And finally, she knows her time is nearly upon her. She can feel it in her body, and she is almost ready. However, there is one task left. Nyota puts her apron, her own red notebook with recipes and the little black notebook in a package and sends it off.
Nyota Uhura is known all over the universe, her voice having greeted most of it. She is known for more than her dinners and her baking, but she is happy that they too have been a way to connect and communicate.
—
Space can be cold, but also vast and beautiful. It creates distance, but also unprecedented meetings. And so - on the night the news of Nyota Uhura’s passing reaches the starship Enterprise - a bartender, who is also good at listening, will bake a strawberry pie with meringue topping.