A/N: Just a cute little one-shot I found when reorganising my writing folder
Trudy had always wanted to be a botanist, digging around in the dirt and studying how things grew. Actual plants, different plants, not just the mutated weeds that clung to the side of the apartment block, or tried to grow in the dead ground. She got good enough grades to warrant a scholarship, but scholarship would've only just paid for her - just - and not helped support her younger siblings, so it was to the Marines she went.
She didn't complain, didn't wish otherwise, but she'd read what she could, listen when she got a chance, and when on Pandora Quaritch assigned her to run the science sorties (she's easy-going, likeable, not inclined to pull macho bullshit, and Quartich does know how to use his people well), she'd listen even more. But not her job to ask questions, so she doesn't.
Not until she gets her chance, up in the Hallelujah Mountains. She'd already started to teach Norm to fly, a little (but a lot of that was flirting, an are you interested), but when he storms over to where she's hauling in supplies, she looks up and grins and says, "Y'know, you could teach me."
That stops him, makes him blink and look at her. Her grin widens and she tilts up her chin.
"Like you said, huh. We didn't come here just to wash dishes while Sully's off. I teach you to fly, you teach me something more about this place than what can kill me. Deal?" She offers her hand, and he has to stop thinking that this isn't happening, because people like Trudy are never interested in people like him, because clearly she's ignoring those rules, and Norm stops thinking like that and shakes her hand.
"Deal."