Hello, followers of Breathe! I've been going back and editing it to make it a bit more canon. I should be replacing the chapters fairly regularly. The basic events will not change, but some little details will be changed. Also, a bit more explanation of the girls' backgrounds will be given - especially Camille being in the military, what with MACO being disbanded and all. Hope it makes more sense this time around!
I own nothing.
The shuttle ride hadn't been too bad. A little bumpy, but nothing she couldn't handle. Besides, Camille Osbourne had been told she was born to fly.
At least, that's what Dad had said when she'd leapt from the second floor of their burning apartment building in New York at eight. That was ten years ago, and she was still a tad bit accident prone. Okay, very accident prone. She'd never felt anything but safe in the air, though. It was the landing that was the problem.
This wasn't even her final stop. She'd spend a night in a motel before boarding the second shuttle to the Academy. Heck of a place to drop new cadets. Who'd ever heard of Riverside, Iowa, anyway?
On her way to the motel, she passed by a bar. Looked like the one place that saw any action in this town. Camille had only recently hit eighteen, the legal drinking age. Unlike most of her friends, she hadn't celebrated by getting hammered at every joint in New York. She'd been at West Point, admitted early because of her father's MACO achievements.
Camille contemplated MACO's final disbanding. The official one had been about a hundred years ago, of course, but one more conservative faction had held on in New York. They'd chosen as their headquarters West Point, the most famous military base in American history. And, for the past few years, that had been her home, for good or for ill. Mostly ill.
Just the thought of West Point made her lip curl. Military life was definitely not for her. And the Federation had made any of the countries on United Earth's surface moderately obsolete, along with all of their antiquated traditions. Still, Camille understood that it had been hard for the long-time military families, rather like her own, to let go of the fact that they weren't necessarily needed anymore.
Her own father, General Conrad Osbourne, had been personally asked to join Starfleet, but he'd refused fairly adamantly. Camille had been ten then, and that was something she had had drilled into her: Tradition was better to stick by for families like hers. Better to leave the exploring to those who hadn't been in the American military and then MACO after for generations.
Come to think of it, Dad hadn't specifically said that, but she'd always known he didn't quite approve of Starfleet. Even when she'd finally summoned her courage to tell him she was going, he'd reacted much better than she'd expected. The smile on his face was obviously pasted on, but he'd risen from the chair where he was sitting and said, "I'm happy for you, Cam. You're doing what you have to do."
She knew he was disappointed that MACO was not for her. But she needed this, needed to feel as though she were needed, relevant in the universe at large, for as long as she had left. And Starfleet could do that for her when MACO couldn't.
The blinking lights drew her attention back to the bar. Some townie was getting a pretty solid beating by a group of cadets who had probably been here a few days longer than her. An older man coming her way paused and stopped at the window. A frown darkened his forehead and he entered. He'd paused just long enough for Camille to catch the Starfleet insignia on his uniform. A captain, probably.
She decided to move on to the hotel before the others got kicked out – and so she wouldn't have to see the idiot on the floor drooling any longer.
Small as it was, Riverside, Iowa, was a big step from Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow Abbey in Vermont. Karina Bartowski muttered under her breath, "Verdammt." Then she smiled to herself. Sister Rebecca would never gasp in shock and cross herself at Karina's prolific language in German any longer.
Fourteen was a bit young to be admitted to the academy, but the nuns were at their wits end with her. Karina wasn't a difficult child, necessarily, just eager to leave the abbey. She'd been fascinated with the world outside, a world she'd never been allowed to be a part of. With her ability to talk her way out of anything – in fact, to talk in general – Mother Abbess had feared she would become a lawyer, or worse, a politician. So when they had discovered that she had secretly been learning twenty languages, including alien dialects, they had elected to send her to Starfleet and see if she might do some good in the world.
Karina didn't necessarily think she would have made a good lawyer, or a good politician. Both jobs required a certain hardness, a quality she did not possess. Her goal was to stay soft in a rough world. It wasn't an easy job, but it was the one thing she had remembered her mother saying before the car accident that had killed both her parents. She figured she owed it to Mom to keep that up, no matter what happened to her in life.
And as for the nuns, she didn't really blame them for not really nurturing her like some people would say they should have. After all, their cloistered life was just barely hanging on by a thread in this world. As was any form of religion. They had a lot on their minds, being a "beacon of light in an ever darkening world."
Karina might have bought that more if they ever left the abbey, but then again, what did she know about such things? At least, that was what they'd told her any time she'd precociously decided to bring it up.
She dragged her bag onto the lift. The only other soul was an older girl, who gave her an appraising look.
"You a recruit?" she asked.
"Yeah. Are you?" Karina thought the other girl looked more the part, certainly.
She nodded. "Camille. Camille Osbourne."
The name rang a bell. Karina tilted her head to one side before realizing. "We're roommates!"
Camille's expression mirrored her own a moment before. "Karina?"
"Yeah! I never expected to meet you before we even got to the academy!"
Camille smiled. "I know, right?" The pair of them lapsed into an awkward silence. Karina could feel Camille looking her up and down again. She found the stare slightly intimidating, but was determined not to squirm. She was pretty sure she knew what Camille was thinking.
"Fourteen," she muttered.
Camille was caught off guard. "Pardon me?"
"That's how old I am. In case you were wondering," Karina replied.
Camille shook her head. "Actually no. I didn't even think about that."
"Really?"
"Why would I?"
"You don't think I'm a little young for Starfleet?"
"Well, maybe. But if you can make it, who am I to judge? I'm eighteen. That's about five years younger than most recruits."
"Yeah, and I'm at nine years younger."
"Hey, I really could care less how young you are. You won't catch any flack from me," Camille told her. "If their entrance exams are so difficult most don't pass them until they're twenty-three, you're nothing short of impressive."
An awkward silence passed again. Karina cleared her throat. "So, what floor are you on?"
"This one. We've been standing here for the past two minutes," Camille replied.
Karina blinked, staring at the open button. "Oh. Right."
Camille laughed. "Relax, kid. I don't bite." She thought for a second. "And I will probably call you 'kid' a lot. And 'child.' But that's just the way I interact with people. I'm not demeaning you or anything." She stepped off the lift. "You coming or what?"
Karina nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, definitely."
Camille could hardly believe her eyes. The idiot who she'd seen get his butt handed to him the night before was on this shuttle? How?
Karina looked nervous. Camille glanced over at her. "You afraid of flying or something?"
Karina shrugged. "More or less. I hadn't flown before the ride from Vermont to here, so…"
Camille squeezed her hand. "Hey, don't worry. We'll be fine. I was born to fly, you know."
Karina smirked. "Sounds like there was a story behind that."
Camille shrugged and opened her mouth to tell it, but her attention was diverted by a commotion at the front of the shuttle.
"You need a doctor! Sir, you need a doctor."
"I don't need a doctor, dammit! I am a doctor!"
"Sir, you need to have a seat!"
"I had one, in the bathroom, with no windows! I suffer from aviaphobia. It means fear of dying in something that flies."
"Sir, for your own safety, sit down or I'll make you sit down!"
Needless to say, the man sat down. Right next to the poor idiot from last night.
The girls heard him mutter, "I may throw up on ya."
Camille couldn't deny the small thrill of satisfaction as the warning made the other man look sufficiently uncomfortable. "Yeah, well, I think these things are pretty safe."
"Don't pander to me, kid," the apparent doctor growled. "One crack in the hull and our blood boils in seconds. A solar flare could crop us, cook us in our seats. Oh, and wait'll your sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles. See if you're so relaxed while your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease, and danger, wrapped in darkness and silence.
She tuned out after that one. Starfleet was the one thing that was going to give the rest of her life some sense of purpose. She wasn't about to listen to someone gripe about the very territory in which it operated. Camille was not easily intimidated, but she doubted her ability to keep herself from turning tail and running if she listened to much more of this.
Camille turned to Karina, who was smiling. "Guess I'm not as afraid of flying as that guy."
Camille frowned. "Who was that paranoid jerk, anyway?"
Karina shrugged. "I don't know. But I like him."
