s t a r s p e a k e r .

80's AU.

“I’m thirty years old, and I’ve peed in every pool I’ve been into. Every single one.”

@endeavvor

“I don’t like the water, Jim. So every time water and I interact I want it to know who is the aggressor and who is the bitch.” She swigged her scotch maintaining an uncomfortable amount of eye contact with the man across from her, missing the irony of how she is both aggressor and bitch.

@endeavvor

Part II An assortment of prompts taken from the movie Dune: Part One (2021). Adjust as necessary to fit pronoun and/or descriptor. In case of Multimuse, don't forget to specify which one/s. Reblog, please do not repost or add.

“ Yet you risk your life to help us. ”

“ Do you know what this place is? ”

“ Would you bare witness? ”

“ You'd make a play for the throne? ”

“ You're a lost boy hiding in a hole in the ground. ”

“ I know you walk two worlds and are known by many names. ”

“ We have to go. We have no choice. ”

“ I serve only one master. ”

“ The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. ”

“ We must move with the flow of the process. ”

“ His healing isn't complete. ”

“ Nothing survives such a storm. ”

“ They're dead. It's a certainty. ”

“ Don't be frightened. ”

“ There's much to learn. Come with me. ”

“ Follow me. Do the same moves. ”

“ I think this is the right direction. ”

“ We are not alone. ”

“ He does not speak or act like a weakling. ”

“ What wealth can you offer beyond the water in your flesh? ”

“ Conversation ran short. ”

“ Peace, woman. Peace. I judged hastily. ”

“ I would have not let you hurt my friends. ”

“ You talk like a leader. But the strongest leads. ”

“ When you take a life, you take your own. ”

“ I want you to die with honor. ”

“ May thy knife chip and shatter. ”

“ You should welcome my blade. ”

“ This world will kill you. ”

“ Do you yield? ”

“ You're one of us now. ”

“ If you'll have us, we will come. ”

HE RESISTS A SHUDDER ON THE plains of Arrakis. The sun is gone, bright gold away from the sea of red flecks and shimmering heat. Spock can still see it as it rises from the sands, a contradiction to the sensations she gives him, the cool touch of her fingertips. It is almost reverent, the hiss and curl of a slow-burning fire. But Spock is not so foolish as to consider what she does, the things she says to him, with anything else but teasing. He watches them nonetheless, partially distracted until Uhura calls him by the name given to him by the desert and its people. Hayalit, followed by others, other words that skitter, demanding things, against his skin and the curves of his ears.

It means to change, creature of the deep crimson sand with mutating scales. Spock stares nowhere, everywhere all at once, eyes dark when they pin somewhere between the ravines of her fingers. How can he change for the good of the many, never the few?

Never the one.

Spock cannot pretend to know; he loathes the answer. It seeks him regardless.

—fire and glass, a red flag streaming across a battlefield with the symbol of his father's house.

" Dragons? " Spock raises a brow. " D'rachanya, " he explains, Vuhlkansu knife-like where it sears off his tongue and he twitches his chin, sharp and an observant like a bird, " So they say. "

His hand fists, gripping hers, flexing and immediately stilling, as though aghast of its own involuntary movement. Spock shakes his head, " I have no wish to. " He cannot, calculating; despite its strangeness, there are greater possibilities than such a discovery. He leans, mouth quirking slightly above hers. " It would be more likely to become one. "

WHAT HE SAID WAS LOST INTO THE DESERT with The Maker while Uhura was lost inside of Spock's proximity – the way it was sudden, but simultaneously time elongated. No one sat this close; Uhura rarely permitted it of anyone. But she dreamt of him. She dreamt of his closeness. She dreamt of it as recently as that morning. For long years Uhura entertained dreamless sleeps, a blank void where exhaustion went to die and be remade into something useful in time for her to meet the sun. Uhura’s slumbers, just as her days, were functional, purposeful and planned; scarcely did she award herself frivolity. She loved her people, her Sietch; her whole, short and brutal nineteen years of life were committed to their betterment, their prosperity and defense – to their survival. Uhura could hear their laughter below echoing up from the Sietch – she wanted to turn her head, to briefly escape the weight of this intimacy. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. A fear lingered that if she broke this moment, if she looked away - it would slip through her fingers like spice on hot winds rolling up from the south. The moons were alight, reflected in vivid detail against the inky dark of his eyes; and if she trained her eyes against his enough, there mirrored in his she could even make out each finger of The Hand of God. Uhura could feel his breath against her lips, his air rolling over her tongue when she breathed in – breathing him into her lungs, into her blood. Uhura pressed their hands hard against her stomach, sliding her free hand overtop, pushing harder into her abdomen creating a natural lean-in, shaving away at the liminal space between their mouths. This pervasive kind of intimacy, fresh and new, like golden sun rising over the dunes - all the same it wasn’t natural to how she connected with people. With anyone at all. Not like this. But few things can survive, whole and joyful, on Arrakis; even in the secret places held by the heart. Because here she felt a stab of what felt like grief, but a grief she had not yet felt, followed with indecent haste by grief’s familiar bedfellow: Dread. What was this feeling? Harder she pressed their hands against the sinewy muscle of her belly, nails digging into his skin. She didn't dare to move. She let grief and dread wrestle against her bones, letting the breath in her throat paralyze while she fell headlong into the endless black of his eyes – there was something ill fated screaming from the expanse of a future she couldn’t dream. Instead rose the heat of her heart, an organ of brimstone promising ruin to anything that dared seek it’s favor. Uhura’s heart was an inhospitable place – molten fire flowed where there should have been blood; it was a place where only dragons could go.  A place where only dragons could stay. “ D’rachanya, ” repeating the word with barely a breath, heady in the way it came from her like a spell or conjuration. She closed the final piece of space between them. Would they burn the other if their lips touch?

Not outwardly. Rather it burned inwardly, where the point of origin was the center of her stomach, the place where Uhura still held fast to his hand with both of hers. Deeper she pushed into him, committing the details of his mouth to sacred memory. The swirling movement of her jaw, her lips, had slowed – slowing until finally she stopped and pulled away, but only just far enough she could level her eyes to his again. “ If you were to become a dragon – would you still come to Arrakis and find me in the desert? ”

They do not cry. Ever.

To give water to the dead is the most sacred honor that anyone could give but they rarely and never do that because it's ingrained in them to not waste water from birth. A single tear could mean life and death for them. To give water to the living? Unheard of.

Paul crying over killing Jamis in the book was a moment that astonished the fremen around him. Jessica ponders their reactions and knows that this is a holy moment.

Jessica then forcing Chani to cry for Paul(this was not in the book btw but I love it) is the ultimate betrayal of her autonomy. To force her to give what is essentially a piece of her life to him without her consent is sacrilegious and she knows it.

⸻one never knows how loyalty is born. ”