When she was little, Gaila met a woman who claimed to be a fortune teller. It was her thirteenth birthday and she was accompanying her owner to a party. She was left alone to her own devices when the old woman approached her corner. "Would you like to know your future, Gaila?"
Her eyes widened and she glanced nervously at her owner. He was too absorbed in his own conversation to even notice her.
The old woman chuckled and grabbed her wrist somewhat painfully. "Don't worry, my dear. He'll never know."
Gaila swallowed nervously and that must've been the answer the woman was looking for because she smiled a toothless smile and turned her hand palm up.
"Oh my. How interesting," The old woman murmured over her hand, Gaila craning her neck to try and see what was so fascinating.
After a moment of silence, Gaila's curiosity got the better of her and she whispered shyly, "Will I be a slave forever?"
The old crone gave a start, then leaned close. With a kind smile, she replied, "Certainly not, child. You, my dear, will be a hero."
Gaila gave a small smile, but the old woman continued, "In your twenty-third year, you will meet five people who will save your life. You will forever be with the last." Gaila frowned in confusion, but had no time to ask for further clarification as her owner had come to retrieve her.
As they left, she turned back to give the old woman a grateful smile.
She was gone.
It was a week after her 23rd birthday when she sat down at her desk in her quarters, utterly exhausted from working three days straight, and flipped to the last page in her old fashioned journal. Very clearly she wrote:
'5. Nyota Uhura'
She thought of the old woman and her prophesy often - especially in the months leading to her 23rd birthday. Uhura's was the first name written in her notebook.
She had decided to keep the names in a countdown. Everything exciting happened with countdowns, she had found. Terran New Year's, ship launches, self-destruct sequences - they all started with a countdown.
Nyota Uhura, her roommate and best girl friend, earned her place on Gaila's list by such a simple act, Uhura herself denied she did anything at all. But Gaila knew better.
Thursday started out as an ordinary morning - breakfast, flirting, studying, flirting - but by noon she was with the rest of the cadets getting assignments for deployment.
Farragut. She had been assigned to the Farragut. Only a few minutes later, an unhappy Uhura grabbed her by the arm and dragged her over to Professor Spock.
"Spock," her voice radiated authority, "I'm taking Gaila with me on the Enterprise."
Here they had a small staring contest before Spock sighed - honest to God sighed - and made a notation on his padd.
Gaila thought nothing of it at the time, but later, as she watched the footage of the destroyed ships above where Vulcan used to turn, she realized exactly what had happened.
And as the Farragut's bow drifted across the screen, she put her head down and began to give thanks.
It was a few months later that she had to add another name in her journal.
'4. James Kirk'
She had been on an away mission with Kirk, whom she had met on her twenty-third birthday and immediately tried to bed, and Chekov, the ambitious young navigator.
Even now, she doesn't quite remember why a navigator and engineer were needed on an away mission, but she does remember the angry natives chasing they through the forest.
As they ran, the natives began to shoot at them, causing them to try and dodge shots as well as trees.
"Look out!" She was suddenly falling down a small hill out of control. She landed in something wet and unconsciously took a breath, only to have her lungs fill with fluid.
"Ensign!" Kirk was skidding down the incline, a frazzeled Russian following in his wake, as she pushed herself up from the water.
"I'm OK," she coughed out.
"That was close! Captain Kirk pushed you out of way of those arrows!" The boy was adorable, but he had to work on his Standard.
"You saved my life?"
Kirk actually blushed, "It was nothing. Now, let's get out of here before they figure out where we went."
It was only three days after that incident that she had to add the next name to her journal.
'3. Leonard McCoy'
It was the water she had inhaled that gave her an infection. It was the infection that gave her the fever. It was the fever that started to shut down her organs and sent her into a coma.
It took two days for McCoy to isolate the infection and come up with a cure.
But come up with a cure, he did, and she was back home writing in her journal in no time.
The fourth name she wrote with shaking hands.
'2. Montgomery Scott'
Her boss and pretty much best friend was someone she just couldn't help falling for. He was sweet and loving, bringing her sandwiches when they worked late and chocolate and scotch when she got dragged down into memories of her childhood.
He listened to her horrific stories and let her reminisce all she wanted. He would touch her scars gently and whisper sweet nothings as they made love.
He was the first man she ever truly loved and she was the only one who could distract him from his beloved Enterprise.
It was a Wednesday he saved her. She remembered everything so clearly. It was midmorning and she was working on the coolant reactor when it happened.
"Emergency lockdown. Evacuate immediately." The computer announced emotionlessly.
Everyone froze for a mere second before rushing for the exits. Gaila tossed her tools down and pulled herself from under the console as the doors started to close.
"Wait!" She skidded across the floor on coolant covered boots, unable to muster the necessary speed to get to the doors.
She slid into one as it locked shut. She started banging on it with all her might as she heard a hissing coming from the warp core. The computer continued droning on in the background, but she had stopped listening. "Scotty!"
Somewhere he had realized that she wasn't with the rest of the engineers.
She coughed out, still banging on the hatch, "Scotty!"
His worried face appeared in the porthole, panic in his eyes and an axe in his hand. He was speaking to her but she couldn't hear him.
As she started to black out, she heard a rhythmic banging next to her head, but she couldn't bring herself to worry about it.
It was only later she found out that Scotty had physically beaten down the door, grabbed her, then opened an airlock to vent the toxic fumes and carried her to sickbay. Kirk had taken to calling him Superman.
"You did all of that, just for me?" She asked quietly as she lay in the infirmary.
"Of course," he replied, as if she were completely daft, "I love you."
The woman had to we wrong. She had to be.
It was that night, when she lay alone, she thought about the list that lay on her desk and the fact that Scotty was only the fourth name on her list, and not the fifth, and for the first time since gaining her freedom, she began to cry.
She wrote the fifth name with a sigh.
'1. Pavel Chekov'
He was a nice kid, really he was, it was just - he was so young. She supposed, though, that Fate knew better than she.
When Chekov pulled her out of the way of the exploding replicator, she had begun to steel herself for an eternity with the boy. Handsome, nice, intelligent, sure. But he was no Montgomery Scott.
But, then again, who was?
She made her way, a week later, back to her quarters from the mess and stopped in shock. There was young Pavel Chekov kissing Hikaru Sulu full on the mouth and by the look of it, they weren't stopping anytime soon.
"But..."
She rushed back to her quarters with a smile on her face. Her list was wrong! It was wrong!
She thought about exactly what the fortune teller told her when she was a little girl and slowly crossed Nyota's name off the list. Uhura had been her roommate since she was 19. She met her long before she turned 23, so Uhura's saving her didn't count for the list! That meant that one more person was meant to save her and take the top spot on her list.
Her smile faded rather quickly when she realized that it still wouldn't be Scotty.
"Almost there. Almost there." She pulled the dead weight through the water that had begun to fill the turbine room. "Come on, Scotty, work with me." He numbly tried to help her, flopping his arms uselessly. "Great job, honey. Keep going." She shook her head violently in an attempt to clear it. The explosion that had opened up the turbines had also flung both engineers across the room and forced them to begin the trek to the hatch through the water.
"We're almost there. Almost... there..." Her knees buckled and she fell into the hip deep water with a splash. She broke the surface rather quickly, sputtering and shaking her head, "No! No, we've got to keep going. We can make it. We can make it."
They were suddenly at the hatch and she smacked at the door controls. It flew open, draining the water quickly and sending both engineers to the deck.
There, in front of them, stood a bewildered and soaking Kevin Riley. "Uh, hey, Gaila."
"Kevin! You... you saved us?"
He rushed to help her to her feet and check on Scotty, "No way, Gaila. I didn't do anything. You saved Scotty. And," he looked her in the eye, the young Irishman quite serious for once, "You saved yourself."
"I ... saved myself..." She looked herself in the mirror with a critical eye. A bruise on one cheek, a slightly split lip, all marks she bore proudly.
She grew into a new woman in the past year. It was her birthday tomorrow and she felt like she finally knew herself. She wasn't the shy little Orion slave girl anymore. She wasn't the sex-crazed school girl of her Academy days.
She was a confident, capable engineer on the Federation's flagship.
She was a free woman. That was it! All those years she had been a slave - first to men, then to Fate. She thought she was destined to marry whoever had saved her - but, really, she was free to make her own choices.
She could stay on Enterprise until they forced her off her, stay with Scotty until they were old and grey and ready to go peacefully. They would live in some little cottage in Scotland, teach at a little university...
She didn't care, she would be with him.
She wrote the last name in her journal with a confident hand and a small smile.
'0. Gaila'
She climbed into their bed that night, unable to get the smile off her face.
Scotty took one look at her and matched her grin with one of his own.
Maybe that old lady was right, after all.