Marrow of the Ancients
Long after the appointment was over, Vahl'Sai and Bones sat in the commons of the campus, taking up a section at the lip of the large fountain that sat in the center. Once more wearing her uniform, Vahl'Sai didn't feel nearly as shy but was still oddly unsettled at having someone seen her completely bare—someone she considered a friend, none the less. Bones had his PADD in his hands and was gushing about her results, asking her questions and hanging on her every, accented word when she gave her best answer.
"My great grandfather told me when I was a child, a legend of the strength of the warriors of our people. I suppose it is based off of some merit, but the practice is no longer followed as our knowledge in medicine advanced," Vahl'Sai began explaining when Bones asked her about her advanced healing qualities. "When a warrior was wounded in battle, even fatally, the other soldiers would deliberately break his sternum."
"The sternum and pubic bones are the best locations to access bone marrow. Breaking the bone with a clean break would release the marrow into the blood. That's putting a lot of risk on internal organs, though," he mumbled in fascination.
"Which is why it is no longer practiced. Our healers gained greater knowledge on herbs and other healing remedies that made it unnecessary to put someone into greater danger to save them," she finished explaining, her hand straying to where Bone remembered the fracture in her femur to have been.
"For the medicine you have, I would imagine it's nothing like ours. I mean, injections and pills."
"You are correct. It depends on the injury, but it's usually ingested. A tea, a paste of herbs, whole plants. If it's an external injury, it would be ingested medicine alongside an ointment spread over the wound. When I broke my thigh I was given a bitter tasting paste twice a day and my bandages and ointment changed three times a day."
"Was that considered a lot, because of the degree of injury?" Bones asked curiously, watching her nod her head in answer.
"When I broke smaller bones in my feet it was usually a tea in the morning with something to treat any torn skin and infection. All else is rest and letting the marrow do its job."
Bones looked down at his PADD. "I'm gunna have to check that sample out," he mumbled to himself. If Sahvarian's marrow was that good at healing injuries, there's a chance that they could find a way to make some kind of serum that could save people's lives. There were many advances in surgeries over the years, but there were still people who didn't walk away in the same condition as they were before an accident. Pike was able to walk again, even after the damage done to his nerves by Nero, but some people never fully recovered. Sahvarian DNA could hold a key to stopping that.
"Commander Vahl'Sai!"
Both superiors turned at the sudden shout, even though only Vahl'Sai was called. A Cadet was rushing up to them, one that Vahl'Sai realized was very familiar.
"Cadet Moore," Vahl'Sai greeted with some surprise in her tone.
Bones remembered where he'd see the girl before—she was in Vahl'Sai self-defence class, the same one as Kirk. She wasn't being evaluated for ship evaluations yet, since she still had another year to go. She was a tiny thing and it surprise Bones that she was taking a fighting class, but for certain placements in Starfleet it was required. He remembered that Vahl'Sai had been the one to evaluate her—he knew that professors weren't supposed to show favouritism or anything, but just as she had beat the crap out of the one who punched Kirk, she'd taken it easy on Moore.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," Moore started shyly, giving a shy smile to Bones at Vahl'Sai's side. "I was wondering if you were really teaching a linguistics class in Sahvarian next term?"
"Yes, I will," Vahl'Sai confirmed calmly.
Moore's smile immediately bloomed into a toothy grin. "Oh, that's great! I'm definitely going to be signing up!"
"I hear it's filling up quickly, I hope you make it in," Vahl'Sai offered with a smile of her own. There was a fragile innocence about Moore that caused Vahl'Sai to feel…gentle and protective. She didn't encounter many like her in her self-defence class, small and weak. Finding someone that she needed to be even more gentle made her want to treat the child like glass. In the beginning, such things terrified her. She hadn't known how to hold back her strength, she avoided most things that she could break. Now, she wanted to treasure it, cherish it, and protect it.
"Thank you! I'll leave you to your conversation. Have a wonderful vacation, Commander Vahl'Sai, Doctor McCoy." Before either could profess their own farewell, she'd already scurried off the way she'd first come. Vahl'Sai's lips were parted to express a farewell, but she'd stopped with her jaw open when the girl had taken off too quick to speak. Bones snickered at the appearance of it, before he looked down at the screen of his PADD.
"It's getting near dinner, I'm sure Jim's already in the cafeteria prowling for a single female. Want to go and disrupt him?" he offered, watching as a coy smile curled at the edges of the Sahvarian's lips and she nodded her agreement to his offer. They left the fountain behind, heading for the main building instead. They continued to keep up light conversation, bouncing between topics—Vahl'Sai asked about where Bones was from, he asked about different aspects of her culture, like music or food. Soon, they'd arrived at the cafeteria to see that Kirk was indeed flirting with a cadet.
"Would you like to do the honours while I get us a table?" Bones offered, motioning over to his Captain. That coy smile was back on her lips as the woman departed, making a beeline for Kirk. The cadet was sitting down, her body angled toward the Captain as he leaned on one hand on the table, leaning over her a bit as he—surely—bragged about something. Vahl'Sai wondered if she should grab his collar like last time, but figured that was already used and wouldn't be as amusing a second time.
Slipping up beside him, she draped an arm over the man's shoulders and neck, drawing her body right against his side as Kirk visibly flinched in surprise and looked at her in spooked surprise. "I'm sorry," Vahl'Sai began as she looked down at the cadet, a blush on her cheeks as she looked up at the tall woman. "I'm going to have to borrow Kirk, I'm sure you wouldn't mind, hm?"
She shook her head immediately, in quick movements with her blush darkening further. Vahl'Sai flashing a fully fanged grin at her before using the iron grip she had around Kirk's neck to haul him along after her. He tried to protest, but Vahl'Sai's hand snapped up to cover his mouth as she continued to drag him over to the table Bones had acquired on the other side of the room, perched on the edge so he could watch the scene unfold.
Kirk was trying to protest, his words muffled against her hand. He forced himself not to focus on the fact that her skin was very warm.
"Did you know that Pike warned me about you when I first got here? Might want to be careful who you converse with," she warned, getting a startled grunt from Kirk at the tidbit of information that she offered him. "Come on, it was either me or Dr. McCoy to come and get you."
"Trust me, he wouldn't want it to be me," Bones stated as greeting as Vahl'Sai released the blonde man, who huffed but didn't shout and cuss as she'd been half expecting him to.
"I think you put a kink in my neck," he complained instead, getting a snort from Bones before he cocked his head over to the food replicator so they could buy their meals. Soon, each had a tray in front of them—two, in Valhl'Sai's case. She had a couple of different things, dishes from both Earth and foreign planets. On one of her trays was the spiced soup that Spock had brought to lunch the other day, her desire to try it beating out the warnings that Bones had yet to stop issuing.
"You're going to lose your tongue! Your taste buds are even more sensitive than ours and we can't even handle it!"
"True, but isn't it true that certain humans love the human equivalent of spicy food while others cannot handle even the basic spices?" Vahl'Sai pointed out, causing Kirk to laugh as he pointed at his friend. "It will continue to bug me until I try it. If I do it once, I will at least have sated my curiosity—and what better time than with a Doctor at the table?"
"Buttering me up won't help you," Bones grumbled out before he waved his hand dismissively, turning instead over to Kirk as Vahl'Sai began on one of her other dishes first, letting the soup cool down as it was wafting with steam. If the spices didn't burn her, the temperature would.
Kirk and Bones were able to fall into their easy banter immediately—most would have thought that they were fighting, but thankfully Vahl'Sai had seen them together enough that she knew when they were fighting and when they were just mocking one another. They began recanting stories; mostly it was Kirk telling them and Bones correcting his friends over exaggeration every couple of sentences. Vahl'Sai just sat in amusement as she looked between them, wondering how the heck people so different met in the first place.
"I have to ask," she started once they'd finished telling her about Kirk getting locked out of someone's dorm and having to run back to his dorm with no clothes on. "How did you two even meet?"
"I puked on him," Bones answered in completely honestly. Vahl'Sai drew back in surprise, looking over to see that Kirk was a bit green in the face, nodding his affirmative. "It was on the shuttle ride here, back when we first joined Starfleet."
"It's easy to see you two have known one another so long," she snickered, pushing her empty bowl away from her, a tomato looking sauce left on the bottom from what she hadn't been able to scoop up with the bread supplied with the dish. It was like another planet's rendition of spaghetti.
Of course, this instigated more stories about when the first joined Starfleet, laughing loudly as they recanted the trouble that Kirk had gotten them into, Bones being the one who always got them out with as minimal punishment as possible. He may have a foul tongue and cranky disposition, but he knew how to kiss-ass when it came down to it.
It was at that point that Vahl'Sai pulled the Vulcan soup over to her, unrealized by the two men she was with as she sniffed at it again. It almost reminded her of a broth the healer made whenever her people were heavily sick—it was so strong it cleared all of the sinuses immediately and fought against internal infections and congestions like someone swallowed a bomb. This at least smelled better, less like medicine.
Filling her spoon, she decided to take the plunge all at once and took in the entire spoonful of soup—her tongue burned immediately, her throat soon following as she swallowing it with a thick gulp. It took a moment of throbbing pain before her pallet soothed itself, her saliva coating the burn down to a dull sensation that reminded her of when her people ate spicy food. The taste was indeed intense, so many different flavours assaulting her senses at once and leaving her to take in another spoonful, trying to appreciate them all.
Because the taste buds of her people were so strong they had very basic foods—everything always tasted so strong on its own that they didn't blend too many things into one dish. Vulcan's did the opposite and Vahl'Sai found she quite liked the change. The more she ate the easier it was, her sense of taste growing a bit dull in defense of what she was doing to it.
As she was nearing the bottom of the bowl, her communicator chirped beside her, alerting her to a message.
Bones and Kirk both glanced over to her as she pulled it from her breast pocket, hidden into the designs of her black jacket. Flipping the little sleek device open, the message appeared on the top screen in clear white lettering.
Please come and meet me in Building C West, there's something pressing we have to discuss.-Pike
The nature of the message caused her to frown. Pike didn't normally send her such formal messages on her communicator, usually he was more relaxed and friendly. This sounded like the summoning she would get from one of the other Admirals. What was more confusing was that his contact information was blocked, the ID of his communicator hidden from her.
"Something wrong?" Kirk asked when he noticed her frown.
Vahl'Sai hummed, unsure. Was there? "Pike wants to see me," she answered instead. "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to excuse myself."
Rising to her feet as she pocketed her communicator once more, Vahl'Sai glanced down at her unfinished soup. It was the only thing that still had anything edible inside, left unfinished. It bothered her, she hated leaving anything as a waste when it was perfectly good and she knew she could eat more. "Alright, we'll have to meet up again before the vacation ends!" Kirk encouraged, standing up to politely see her off.
"Of course, but maybe somewhere quieter this time," she agreed. Her ears had been ringing after they left the bar that he and Bones had taken her to, even if she had a good time there.
"Alright, alright," he agreed, mockingly reluctantly. "Say hi to Pike for me."
"Of course." Bidding farewell to the doctor, Vahl'Sai left the table quickly and made for the doors. Bones looked down at the nearly stacked dishes to one side, still amazed that someone so thin was able to pack away that much, before his attention zeroed in on the mostly empty bowl of soup that she had been eating when her communicator went off.
"Holy shit!" he nearly shouted, leaning forward to see how much was left inside the bowl. Kirk almost jumped at the man's outburst before he, too, leaned over the bowl to see how much was gone. "What? She didn't flinch or gasp or anything!"
"Sahvarians, super-strength and super-tongues," Kirk muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.
"What are you two staring at?"
The voice caused both men to almost jump back, landing in their seats as they looked over to who had spoken. Spock was standing with perfect posture, hands behind his back as always, but beside him was Admiral Pike—the one who had spoken.
"Pike? I thought you were meeting Vahl'Sai?" Kirk asked, leaning back in his chair casually. Bones, on the other hand, had tensed at the appearance of the older man.
"What?" Pike asked immediately, frowning through his own confusion.
"She was here just a minute ago, got a message that said you wanted to meet her," Kirk explained, but the look on the Admiral's face had his own going pale. "Please tell me you sent her that message."
"No, I did not," Pike answered loudly, his concern fraying his nerves immediately. "Where did she go?" he demanded immediately. Spock was looking between the three men before he lifted his PADD, which he had been holding behind his back, up and began tapping at it quickly. The other three didn't even notice him anymore but had instead stood up and were speaking quickly, talking over one another as they tried to figure out where she had gone.
"What's going on, Admiral?" Kirk finally demanded.
"Someone's been after Vahl'Sai lately, someone from Starfleet," Pike revealed in a low tone, glancing around to confirm that only cadets were in the hall. "It's usually lower ranking officers or lieutenants sent for some bogus health check, but we're usually able to intercept them somehow."
"So they hacked your communicator to lure her somewhere?" Bones demanded.
"Building C West," Spock answered, turned his PADD to Pike so the older man could read the message. He'd hacked into Vahl'Sai's work communicator, looking into her received messages for the last one from 'Pike'. "The ID is blocked, the only thing telling her it was you who sent the message being the signing at the end."
"I never write to her like this," Pike mumbled before he handed the PADD back to Spock and began a brisk walk out of the room, the other three following without having to be told. As he walked, Pike pulled out his own communicator and hit in an ID number before placing it near his ear.
"Sir?"
"We have a problem."