Bare These Bones
To Be Human
For one day, just taking a nice break, Vahl'Sai didn't bother with human mannerisms. PADD's and folders of paper were scattered along the floor of her office, the woman sitting in the circle of information with her legs crossed. She didn't feel like sitting behind her desk in some cushioned chair, it was just leaving her with an uncomfortable back. Pursing her lips as she picked up the forms that Pike had dropped off, the white haired woman looked over the scrawled signature of the council that confirmed her placement on the starship Enterprise by the end of the year.
Putting that sheet aside, she instead picked up the course outline of what she would need to cover through her linguistics course. After having learned English, she knew the best ways to teach the language, so she wasn't concerned with that. The only problem she was concerned with was that it was a class of a couple hundred cadets and she had no teaching assistant; she would have, if anyone else knew Sahvarian.
Lifting the list of names, Vahl'Sai spotted Uhura's name just near the very top, as the names were ranked through grade average and not alphabetical. She recognized a couple of others from her defense classes, but most of the names were foreign to her. Letting the paper rest on one of her thighs, she put the PADD on her other thigh and began to pull up the information on the linguistics department.
Stretching her arms above her head with a loud groan, the woman felt a pleasant pull in her back after having been sitting still for so long. She was very careful about keeping her posture correct, but no matter what she couldn't stop her back from getting some twinges from sitting too long.
Her door chimed suddenly, telling her someone was requesting entrance.
"Allow entrance," she called to the computer as she lifting the PADD closer to her face to look at the file on a specific cadet, surprised that he was in the security program and yet he was taking an intermediate linguistics course. Perhaps a passion.
"Comfy down there?"
Glancing up, Vahl'Sai caught the eyes of Captain James Kirk.
"Yes," she confirmed with a grin, "for me, anyway. What can I do for you, Kirk?" she asked calmly, offering a faint smile. Kirk manoeuvred his way around her spread of papers, looking down at them only briefly to see that she had several things going on at the same time.
"Just wanted to give a warm welcome to my new strategist," Kirk explained with a grin as he fell into the chair next to her, looking down at her from his angle. He could see scars along her exposed ear, showing that she had once had a lot of piercings. It was hard for him to imagine, since he usually only saw her in a professional setting. Picturing her with piercings was almost as odd as imagining Spock with a tattoo.
"Well, thank you, Kirk, but we still have a while before we will actually be working together," she teased softly as she switched a page on her thigh for a different one on the floor. "Shouldn't you be chasing women around the city? After all, there are no classes right now," she asked calmly as her green eyes slanted up toward him with a grin to them.
Ever since the night they had gone to the bar, Kirk had noticed she had opened up more with her emotions. She teased him a lot more, and seemed to treat him as a friend. He had seen it when she spoke with Pike at times, treating him as someone other than just a human man that she had gotten to know.
"Aren't you cute?" Kirk asked rhetorically, seeing her eyebrow twitch as she glanced over at him with bright green eyes. "Are you really just going to sit here during vacation and go over your class lists?" Kirk asked as he began to fidget about.
"Kirk," she began in a warning tone, her eyes focusing on her work.
"Come on, Vahl'Sai, you can do more than just one night of having fun," he continued before she could scold him about something. "Come have lunch with me; I'm meeting with some from the Bridge Crew of the Enterprise that you'll be working with on the Bridge."
"You are very persistent," she commented with a small shake of her head before she looked over to him one more time, just briefly, and dropped the papers down. "Yes, I will join you."
"Great!" Kirk cheered as he rose to his feet, holding out a hand to assist her as well. "Just leave your stuff here and you can come back to it. Won't be that long," he explained when he saw her glance down at the mess of papers and PADDs. Sighing nearly silently, the white haired female took his hand and let him heft her up, even though Kirk was fairly certain that she had done most of the work on her own with her insanely powerful legs.
Vahl'Sai snatched her communicator off of her desk before they departed, walking next to Kirk toward the rather empty cafeteria. He explained briefly that the Bridge Crew had wanted to get together during the break, mostly just so they had more time to get to know who they were going to be working with Vahl'Sai wasn't the only one that was going to be new, but she was the first one that had never been on a Starship before—at least, not when she was working on it.
She remembered very vividly what it had been like when she was being brought to Earth for the first time, on the Enterprise in fact, and had nearly had a panic attack from the enclosed space. She had not had time to become accustomed to the metal structure before they were off, leaving her open, green world behind.
"Are you nervous?"
"For what?" Vahl'Sai asked, glancing in confusion over to the Captain. "To meet your Crew?"
"No, to be on the Enterprise. Pike told me that you've never been on one before, you went right from learning to teaching." Vahl'Sai looked forward again, cocking her head slightly as she pondered the question.
"I suppose, yes, I am. I am not nervous because I have never worked a job on a Starship before, but instead because I did not react well to my first trip on the Enterprise when they were first integrating me into the program." When Kirk gave her a curious look, the Sahvarian elaborated. "I believe that Pike once explained it to me in human terms as being 'claustrophobic'," she reiterated, seeing it dawn in Kirk's eyes.
Instead of finding it silly, as she had learned many others did, he nodded his head in understanding. "I don't know a lot about your world, but I do know that your people are very in touch with nature. To suddenly be stuck in a metal container in outer space, it makes sense."
Snorting in a rather rude manner, which made Kirk grin in amusement and surprise, Vahl'Sai quite nearly rolled her eyes. "That's a very apt description," she muttered. "A metal container."
Shaking his head as Kirk saw yet another, more open, side of the Commander, he continued, "I'm sure it'll be easier this time around. You've been here at the Academy for a while, getting used to our buildings and staying in classrooms and offices. I have faith that you'll do just fine." Green eyes slanted to look his way and Kirk could actually see the doubt within them, making her appear much younger than her angular features and mature complexion suggested.
It made her appear…human.
A human as someone can when they're a six foot tall Savharian with white hair and shocking green eyes, all offset with deeply tanned skin. Kirk was shocked when he realized that he had once had Vahl'Sai in the same classes while they were first in the Academy; he had never really seen her before. Then again, someone like her wasn't the usual female to attract his attention. He had never been one to strive for a girl's attention when she was as tall—now taller—as he was.
Belatedly, Kirk wondered what Spock thought of the woman. She and Uhura weren't exactly similar in appearance and as far as Kirk knew, the linguist was the only woman Spock had been with while at the Academy. They both had darker skin, though Uhura was darker than Vahl'Sai, but nothing else was the same between them. Height, hair, eyes, body types. They were polar opposites.
Kirk would admit that, in her own way, Vahl'Sai was beautiful. Not in the sense that humans seemed to believe, where you had to be tall and thin and fit to a certain standard depending on the era. But in a sense of being foreign and exotic, Kirk could see people drooling over her, even with her sharp teeth and unbelievable strength. Long and lean, muscles compact but there, she had the athletic look. If someone asked him, he would tell them, in all honestly, that she was gorgeous. Even with her white hair—which he knew is what brought pause to most people that met her.
He wouldn't want her to be human, though. For Vahl'Sai to be human would be taking away all of her quirks that drew him to her, things like her odd accent and perception of human slang and the way that people on Earth did things. He remembered when they were at the bar and he had snickered whenever she received a drink, her nose twitching as she discretely smelled the liquid. It had reminded him of a rabbit.
The cafeteria was quiet when they arrived, since most of the school was vacant anyway. It was only a couple days into the vacation, so there were probably going to be other people who would leave as well, meaning that what few students remained would dwindle even further. Vahl'Sai felt her nose twitch when she caught the strong scent of spices, her eyes flicking around to try and find where the scent was coming from. Spices weren't something she was accustomed to before coming to Earth; Sahvarian usually had a large abundance of fruit that were incredibly sugary and sweet.
"Hello, Lieutenant," Kirk greeted Uhura as soon as they arrived, appearing a bit too smug, which caused the woman to almost sneer at Kirk. Until she noticed the Commander standing off behind him, green eyes fixed on her expression.
"Captain!" she corrected herself, rising to her feet and looking to Vahl'Sai. "Commander," she greeted the white haired woman as well, offering a timid, almost embarrassed, smile.
"Cadet Uhura," Vahl'Sai greeted in return, offering a nod of her head before her eyes began to look over the other members of the long table. There were many who she knew were technicians for the Bridge, holding 'less important' jobs—as she had once heard an Admiral phrase it—while others were the navigator, communications officers, what could be deemed as the pilot of the large starship.
Even McCoy was there, which was a relief. Vahl'Sai was at least happy to see another familiar face.
All of the others, however, were unfamiliar and staring at her.
"Guys, this is Vahl'Sai. She's going to be filling a new position on the Bridge, as a Strategist," Kirk introduced, his hand falling on the back of Vahl'Sai's right arm. He could feel the tense muscle beneath his hand and gave her back a pat to try and calm her down. "Introduce yourself, because there's too many of you for it to be my job."
The Sahvarian's eyes slanted down to look at him and Kirk almost felt like he was getting punished, her eyes were like a disapproving parent's. Kirk fell into a free seat next to Bones and motioned for her to take the seat across from him, beside Uhura. The linguist looked pleased to have the Commander sit next to her, carefully listening to Vahl'Sai foreign tongue as the said her greetings to the other Bridge Crew members.
"You're the Commander that took over the Self-Defense classes after the Nero incident, right?" Sulu asked after he had introduced himself, sitting further down the table from the tall woman. "I have a couple of friends in your classes; they loved you as an instructor. They said no one else was as thorough with what they taught than you were."
"I am pleased to hear it," Vahl'Sai said with a faint smile, not enough to show her canines as Kirk only ever saw her do when she was truly happy about something.
"Hey, I'm gunna go get something to eat. What do you want me to get you, Vahl'Sai?" Kirk asked as he began to rise from his seat again, pleased that Vahl'Sai seemed to be relaxing around his crew.
"Kirk-"
"No, I pulled you away from your work, so I'm buying you lunch."
And then, in a fashion that caused the surrounding Crew members to lean away, Vahl'Sai smirked. "Believe me, Kirk, you couldn't afford to feed me even with your salary." The show of sharp teeth and a daringly threatening look, Vahl'Sai finally appeared like the savage that people called her. But she completely meant to show that facial expression and it only served to make Kirk snort in laughter.
She was taunting him.
"She's right," Bones commented as he looked over to his friend, arms crossed over his chest. "Sahvarians can eat up to twice their weight in a single sitting if they're hungry enough. Vahl'Sai's metabolism burns calories and fat at a rate that would cause a human to shrivel up and die." Sitting next to her, Uhura couldn't help but to look over Vahl'Sai's body, seeing how completely thin she was.
"Is that how you drank so much while we were at the bar?" Kirk sputtered, thinking about to how long it had taken the woman to final call for a bathroom break.
"Her body converts liquids into nutrients, adding water to her blood and hydrating her muscles. Their bodies absorb more than ours because they're adapted to surviving long periods of time with neither food nor water," Bones answered for her, knowing that Vahl'Sai would know how her body worked, but not how it differed from that of a human.
"I thought information on Sahvarian's was confidential?" Uhura pointed out, glancing between the three of them. When had they gone to a bar together?
"Now that Vahl'Sai's officially boarding the Enterprise, they placed me as her Doctor, so I was given all of the information that I needed in the case of her needing medical attention or what could cause abnormalities in her health." Vahl'Sai was beginning to feel somewhat uncomfortable with them speaking about her like she wasn't there, shifting in her seat as she glanced around. Looking past Kirk, her eyes fell on the approaching figure of Spock.
"Good afternoon, Commander," she greeted before anyone else had even noticed him. Kirk looked confused before glancing past his shoulder, spotting the stoic Vulcan approaching with a tray holding a bowl of soup. Sniffing again, the Sahvarian realizing that was where the spicy scent was coming from.
Delicately sniffing again, she realized that it was not something she had ever smelt before. This was new to her. Was it a Vulcan dish? That would explain it.
"Spock! Good to see you," Kirk greeted enthusiastically, seeming about to smack the Commander's arm in greeting but stopped when he realized that, as the Commander was carrying a tray of food, that may not be the best idea and decided against it.
"Captain," Spock greeted Kirk with a nod before he took the remaining seat at the end of the table, between Kirk and Vahl'Sai. Unable to resist, Vahl'Sai leaned forward and delicately sniffed the soup, her nose almost burning at the intense smell of the spices and flavourings. "Good afternoon, Commander," Spock returned her greeting, seeing her eyes fixed on the soup he had before him.
"Is that a Vulcan dish?" Vahl'Sai asked curiously, her green eyes meeting with his deep brown ones. During the discussions the day before he had told her of the spicier dishes from his planet, as Vulcan had rather dull taste buds, while she mentioned the sweet fruits from her planet. Unlike a Vulcan, her taste buds were incredibly sensitive, but her people ate just about anything.
"It is," the Vulcan confirmed calmly. Vahl'Sai's nose twitched before she exhaled suddenly, almost as though she had sneezed.
"How can you eat something so spicy? Just the smell is burning my nose."
"Most other species can't handle Vulcan food," Uhura pointed out from beside Vahl'Sai, sounding slightly soured. The Sahvarian decided to ignore that slight trace of irritation in the woman's tone, not understanding why it was there. "They can't really taste sweet things, so they eat their food with a lot of spices."
Kirk outright laughed at that one. "It's true! I dared Scotty to try a Vulcan dish when he lost a bet; damn near burned his tongue off."
Vahl'Sai was frowning at his words, seeming confused at his small story, but she decided against asking what he meant and instead glancing over at the bowl of soup again. In a move that Spock had only ever seen felines do, Vahl'Sai briefly stuck her tongue out, seemingly to lick the air, as she used her species advances taste-buds to catch the taste of the soup.
"Don't do it," Bones warned her, knowing that the woman wanted to try the new food. "You'll regret it, Commander, believe me. Don't."
Decided to follow the advice of her doctor, Vahl'Sai simply sniffed one more time before Kirk was hauling her away to buy the two of them lunch as well, leaving behind the rest of the Crew as they pondered over their newest addition.
This chapter was fun to write, don't know why but it was. I'm also in a class this year called Modes of Fantasy that teaches about fantasy and sci-fi in literature and film—it immediately made me think of this story. And my other Star Trek story, but still.