The library had become one of Alice's sanctuaries on Campus. It was the only place where it was enforced that people make as little noise as possible, there was plenty of space for her to be nowhere near anyone else, and there were only two people who would interrupt her while she was there. It was a controlled area with controlled interaction. Perfectly safe from unwanted intrusion.
"Well, if it isn't my favorite tactical officer in training," Jim greeted in an overly cheerful manner as he and Leonard approached. "You know, you never did tell me why you picked tactical officer of all things."
Well, almost perfectly safe from intrusion. Alice didn't mind. Three and a half weeks of Jim's antics had gotten her pretty used to his questions, prodding, and obnoxious advances. She looked up from her PADD, tapping the stylus in her hand against her bottom lip playfully.
"And you choosing to go the captaincy route had nothing to do with your father, right?" Alice knew she was dancing on very thin ice with that joke, but she was willing to take the risk.
"Touché," Jim laughed, landing noisily into his chair, dropping his PADD onto the table.
Leonard sat down at the table much more gracefully, giving Alice a small smile in greeting. He didn't do it often, but Leonard had a smile that was more award-winning than the one Jim handed out freely. Alice thought it was a pity that he didn't smile more often. Of course, his trademark scowl, eye roll, and cocked eyebrow had their own charm to them as well.
"Studying for the ethics exam?" Leonard asked as a somewhat awkward opener.
"I could pass that in my sleep," she replied with a smirk. "Intergalactic Weapons and Defense Operating Systems."
"That sounds like twenty different kinds of awful," Jim chimed in.
"That's why you're going command and I'm going tactical," Alice said with a soft smile.
"Are you sure you want to become a red-shirt though?" Leonard said.
"You don't think I look good in red?" she asked with a sly wink.
"I'm not saying anything like that," he quickly answered. "Just concerned. Even I know the reputation of red-shirts."
Alice rolled her eyes. "The reason why red-shirts die more of than others are because half of the corps are security personnel. They respond to threats, sometimes violent threats."
"Just looking out for you, sweetheart," McCoy smirked.
"How very uncharacteristically sweet of you," Alice teased. It was Leonard's turn to roll his eyes at her, and she chuckled softly.
"Could you two tone it down on the flirting," Jim asked, mockingly annoyed. "Some of us are trying to study here."
"Oh, really?" Alice asked skeptically, before quickly snatching his PADD from its place on the table before him. On the screen was a beautiful Orion girl with stunning red hair, accented by her flawless green skin. "Is this your new lady friend?"
"'Lady friend?' What are you, Bone's age?"
"Ass," Leonard sneered.
"That wasn't a no."
"And what do you have here?" Jim asked, snatching something from her bag Alice had carelessly left on the table, deflecting her question with a question of his own.
She recognized what it was instantly and cursed herself for having not taken it out a week ago.
"It's nothing," Alice answered quickly, reaching across the table to retrieve what he had swiped from her; but he pulled it back just before her fingers could wrap around it.
"An invitation to a gala hosted by the Academy faculty and board?" he asked rhetorically as he read. "Oh, plus ones are welcome. Alice, I would love to be your plus one."
Alice finally managed to snatch the invitation back. "Stop it," she sighed, annoyed. "I'm not even going to the damn thing."
"Not a fan of formal events?" Jim asked.
"I have nothing to wear," she lied, shrugging off his question.
"I'm sure little Miss Daddy's Money can come up with a dress if she had to."
Three and a half weeks had gotten her used to Jim's carelessly framed questions and statements involving her personal life, but there were still times when things he said would hit a nerve. She clenched her jaw, a standard move used to keep one from saying something; for her, however, it kept her from walking out on them.
She didn't let on, but she heard Leonard kick Jim from under the table.
"You won't be missing out on anything," Leonard said nonchalantly. "The only good thing about 'em is the expensive alcohol they offer. And even then, you still have to pay for it."
"And you know about this how?" Jim asked sarcastically. "Oh, right, you used to be a privileged elite."
It was bitter, but Leonard didn't respond in kind, letting Jim deflect his obnoxious comments to himself and off of Alice. "'Til the ex-wife took everything, yup."
"And now you're back to studying late the night before an exam," Jim laughed. "How the mighty have fallen." But Jim wasn't going to let it go so easily. "How did you get this invitation anyway? It says it's only for faculty, alumni, and sponsors of the Academy."
"Well, my father fits into one of the three categories you just listed and he's insisting I go." Alice's patience for Jim's questions had run out, and she could hear her irritation making the words quick and cold against her will. It was hard to remain stoic when Jim knew how to be so damn annoying.
"Could I look over your ethics notes?" Leonard asked, out of the blue, being painfully transparent in changing the conversation topic.
"Sure." Alice was thankful for the drastic change. "I'll send them to you."
"I appreciate it, sweetheart," he said with a smirk.
Jim finally took the jarring hint to the face and let the matter go, following the new flow of the conversation. "Do either of you have any idea how the exam is going to be formatted?"
"Yeah," Alice answered, quickly swiping and tapping on her PADD as she looked for something. "It was in the syllabus…" her voice trailed off as she remembered it clearly, though the document had yet to appear on her screen. "All the exams are essays on one of the topics we have covered so far. Some will be arguing for or against, supporting or refuting, or something along those lines."
"Any ideas what it could be?"
Alice shook her head. "Uhura said it was on morality and gray areas within Starfleet law last year. But someone had told her it was on a completely different topic the year before."
"We have no idea beforehand then."
"Basically."
"Yeah, well, if you spent more time looking over your notes and less time gaping over what's-her-face, you'd be fine," Leonard chastised.
"At least I'm studying."
"Studying, my ass," Leonard sneered.
"Actually, I'm studying her ass."
"Unbelievable," McCoy groaned, but Alice couldn't stop herself from laughing.
"Nice one," Alice laughed.
"It is, isn't it," Jim sighed foolhardily, staring at the screen of his PADD before he also burst into laughter.
McCoy sighed loudly in frustration. "I'm surrounded by children," but it only served to send both Alice and Jim further into their fits of laughter.
Even though technological advances had given them the ability to travel faster than the speed of light in space, the Academy still used standardized, hard copy testing paper for all exams since. After all, it wouldn't be hard to cheat using all the fancy technological advances that cadets had at their disposal.
Alice tapped the eraser portion of her pencil lightly against the packet that sat closed in front her, no longer paying attention as their instructor, a shrewd woman with a mousy face and a nasally voice that made you want to cringe, droned on about the Academy's stance on cheating.
Beside her, Jim was fidgeting slightly, clearly just as impatient as she was to get it over with. Alice wanted to look back and see how McCoy was handling the nervousness that you usually get moments before an exam no matter how satisfied you were the day before with how much you had prepared yourself for it. But she might be cheating if she looked behind her, and it wasn't exactly a subtle movement. Jim would probably harass her for it anyway.
"You may begin."
Finally, Alice thought, inwardly sighing as she quickly flipped the packet open.
The first page was empty space, the second was a list of dos and don'ts when it came to writing down you essay response in the packet, which was then followed by the exact same policy on cheating that the instructor had just read through plastered onto the third page.
On the fourth page, Alice had finally found the prompt.
Alice's chest ached as her heart began to leap erratically within her, and her stomach churned making her feel nauseous as she read and then re-read the prompt over and over. Shock locked her up and froze her to the spot as she struggled to push through the panic that now surged through every fiber of her being.
No. No. No, no, no, she all but screamed in her head in disbelief, oblivious to the time that passed around her.
The words on the page seemed to grow larger and swallow her as the feeling of her clothes against her skin became painful, as if thousands of needles were being jabbed mercilessly into her skin.
Alice willed herself to move, to pick up the damn pencil and carry on, to not let it define her.
But the words on the page held her frozen, suspended in time.
"Defend the actions of the scientists during the Eugenic Wars. You may use scientific discoveries, medical advancements, or situational factors before, during, or after the Wars."
Those lectures had all but been torturous for Alice, but she had managed to sit through them, managed to stomach them, as the instructor had prattled on uncaring and matter-of-factly as if humanity had committed an atrocity nearly as grave as slavery centuries ago. At first, Alice had thought it had been the instructor's indifferent tone that had affected her so greatly. Now she knew it was the content of the material.
"Defend the actions of the scientists during the Eugenic Wars. You may use scientific discoveries, medical advancements, or situational factors before, during, or after the Wars."
She couldn't do it.
The packet was open, the pencil was in her hand, her hand was positioned on the packet so that she could begin to write, but no matter how many times she screamed and begged herself to move, to write down something, anything…
She couldn't do it.
"Alright everyone, time's up. Pencils down. Please turn in your packets on my desk."
It was like the restraints were being removed and she was being released. But the ice in her veins never dissipated.
Alice could move again, and she quickly slammed the packet shut before anyone could see that she had written nothing. The horror of it mixed with her embarrassment in a terrible concoction of guilt as she hurriedly grabbed her things together and walked to the front of the class to turn in her packet.
Her friends were all but forgotten as she rushed out of the classroom, losing herself in the crowd of cadets who were equally as eager as she was to leave but for completely different reasons. Alice did her best to avoid them, but there were just too many people packed into the small hallway that leads out of the classroom. Every time someone bumped into her or scraped against her, it felt as if she were being attacked. Her anxiety skyrocketed, and the pit in her stomach grew larger and heavier as she continued onward.
Alice felt as if she was either going to be sick or start crying in frustration and anger at herself for being so weak. But she couldn't do that here. Nothing would be even more mortifying than crying in front of all these cadets who understood nothing, who knew nothing.
"Defend the actions of the scientists during the Eugenic Wars…"
There was no way Alice could have done it. Even if her body had let her, her entire soul had screamed against it. The scientists during the Eugenics Wars were no better than the German scientists, whose footsteps they had all but followed, from the second World War; and she and half of the other cadets had to defend those monsters while the other half had the easy task of proving why they were the monsters history remembers them as. The history that instructor had clearly forsaken when creating the exam.
It was unfair and sickening. And she couldn't do it.
She hadn't done it.
The dread that she felt at her complete and utter failure on the exam was nothing compared to—
"Alice!"
No. Keep going.
"Alice!"
You have to keep going. You've come so far—
"Alice!"
Alice finally stopped. She couldn't do it. She didn't have enough strength for herself.
It was had been the concern in the voice that had stopped her, the kind hazel eyes that calmed her, and the steady, gentle hand that reached out to her but didn't touch her that guided her carefully away from the horrors.
~~.O.~~
Another update so quickly!? It's a miracle! :)
So I know this one is a little shorter than what I usually do, but that's because I have big plans for the next chapter. Let's just say the requests have not gone unheard. ;)
Anyway, thank you all so much for the love and reviews. You are a wonderful audience and I am happy to write for you guys.
