Home
Kirk never knew that Chizeta would be such a beautiful planet. With the bluest sky that he ever saw, lands until you can't see it anymore full of colors and cities that it seemed it came straight out from a fairy tale, or at least from a old fantasy cartoon, Jim could say that this was the place he would like to live after he's retired. With only one exception: the way that The High Council members were looking at his best friend wasn't so welcoming as the planet's atmosphere. It looks like to them, the pretty brunette was defying all laws by simple being there.
And damn if Selece didn't like to cause a commotion. Starting with the fact that now her shoulder length hair wasn't compatible with the short hair regular to the warrior class. Her smug expression wasn't even close to the emotionless expression that Jim was seeing on the High Council bodyguard's face and being a Starfleet officer, serving under the Earth's hero and in the Federation flagship obviously was going against what was predicted by the Council about her future. Selece wasn't, for them, good enough to be their warrior, but she still was the best that the Academy ever saw.
"How can a man in your position accept such a defective person in your crew, Captain Kirk?" Counselor Nioe said with disdain and Jim closed his hands in a fist, hiding them behind his back. His smile became strained and he glanced at Selece to see her reaction. The brunette only raised one eyebrow but didn't say anything in her defense.
"Excuse me?" The USS Enterprise Captain said with wariness.
"PT 4256, also known as Selece, was banished along with her creator from this planet for infringe the rule 545 paragraph 2C."
"May I inquiry Counselor..." Spock's voice reached Kirk's ears that was already thumping because of the rush of the blood to it. How dare these people say that his friend was defective? Selece was one of the most brilliant officers he had in the ship. After all, the Enterprise only had the best of the Starfleet, and she also saved his pretty little behind a lot of times. "what this rule refers about?"
"It's prohibit attachment between creation and creator, but it seems that Dr. Liori broke this rule. We caught PT 4256" Jim frowned intensively. She had a name and it was Selece. To be called by those numbers made her seem like a thing, not a live and rational being. "calling his creator with the title of 'father' more than one time." Jim and Spock exchanged a look and Kirk asked himself why his friend wasn't defending herself. All the time that the Counselor was talking with that tone of disdain, Selece only looked at him with darkened gray eyes but said nothing. It wasn't her nature to take an offense without one or two punches as a comeback, and her lack of reaction was pretty weird in Kirk's opinion.
"And what is so wrong with this?" Kirk almost spat the question on Nioe's face and the Counselor only gave Selece a long look that she seemed to understand very well.
"Captain." The brunette's voice reached Jim's enraged mind and brought his attention to her. "We are here to negotiate Chizeta entering the Federation, am I right?" Jim huffed. Chizeta was a planet that even if it collaborates with the Federation on time or another, still wasn't part of it. And now the young Captain was questioning himself if the effort was valid. They seemed too prejudiced by Jim's opinion and without any logical explanation for this emotional detachment between them. Vulcans he could understand, they were a race that had emotions, Spock proved that to him many times already, but chose to follow the logical pat because they felt more than humans and didn't want to be affected by that. But the Chizetan didn't have any excuse.
"Right." The Captain let out a long breath and composed himself, everything under the High Council's watchful eyes.
"If you follow me Captain Kirk." Nioe made a small gesture with his hand, pointing a pat along the corridor and Kirk moved to follow him, being imitated by his crew. "She can't come." The Counselor said when he saw Selece's movements.
"What?" Jim blinked and looked at his best friend, opening his mouth to say something but being interrupted by Selece.
"I'll wait for you here Captain."
"You can't!" Kirk protested. "She is my Security Officer." He said, looking to Nioe with flames of fury glowing in his blue orbs.
"I trust that Commander Spock will do a marvelous job in my absence." Marvelous? Absence? Since when Selece was the big words type of girl? She could curse more than a drunk sailor from the nineteen century and in five different languages.
"But..." Jim tried to protest one more time, but Spock was the one to stop him.
"Captain, Chizeta's High Council is waiting for us." The High Council could wait until hell freeze over if Kirk had any say in this, but the look that the half-Vulcan gave to Jim for everybody couldn't mean nothing, but Kirk understood very well. It was for him to shut up, go to the negotiations and wait for them to go back to the Enterprise to let out all his frustrations. And shut up Jim did and followed the Council into the conference room, leaving Selece behind.
It took two and a half hours for the office's door used for the reunion to open again and along this time Selece stayed put waiting for Spock and Jim return. Kirk passed by her like a storm about to touch the earth and she could almost see the dark clouds above his head together with the lightnings and thunders. She opened her mouth to say something and a 'Captain' was about to be spelled, but Jim's face made Selece swallow her words. Bemused, she glanced at Spock and his dark eyes fell on her with an ice glow in it that almost froze her.
"What happened..." Over Spock's shoulder she saw a bunch of Chizetan counselors and automatically she said afterwards. "... sir." If was possible, Spock's eyes became glacier just with what she said. "Was the deal sealed?"
"We could not reach an agreement, so the negotiations were postponed until tomorrow." Spock's back was more rigid than a board and Selece thought that he would snap any minute now. Behind him, the counselors were looking at them with a dark expression on their wrinkled faces and the weight of their look on them seemed to make the half-Vulcan become more and more tense. "Perhaps is better for us to go as well." Selece raised an eyebrow because Spock's tone seemed very contrite and he did something she never thought he was capable of, not without a gun pointed between his eyes, he touched her.
Nothing perverted, just a brief touch of his fingertips over the wrist hem of her shirt, but even then it was shocking. Her eyebrows almost disappeared under her hairline and when her gray orbs looked to the long fingers, Spock seemed to realize what he was doing and brought his hand close to his body so fast that it was like he had been burned. But nothing compared to the intensity of the counselors' gaze while they were leaving.
"What's wrong?" Selece finally asked when they were far away enough that the other Chizetan wouldn't be able to hear them. "Why the Captain left the room like the fire of hell was after him?"
"Perhaps is better if you ask the Captain yourself." Spock stopped outside the building used as an administrative center of the town and opened his comm, calling the Enterprise.
"Are you sure he's not gonna bite me if I ask something?" Was the last thing she said before the world around her disappear in bright little dots and reappear as the Enterprise's transport room.
"What happened down there?" Scott surprised face was what welcomed them. "The Captain just passed by us with an expression like he was about to kill someone." Selece glanced at Spock whose shoulders became, if possible, stiffer.
"You better go after him, Lieutenant. It's an order." Without having a way to protest this, she did what she was told and went searching for Kirk, only to find him fifteen minutes later in the observation deck, pacing like a caged animal.
"Captain..." Selece started to say, but was abruptly interrupted.
"How dare they!" Jim growled, turning to fix his glowing with fury eyes on the woman. "For two hours I had to listen their bullshit. Two hours of them saying that enter the Federation was a bad idea because if it can accept defective people, why would they want to be part of it?" He turned and before Selece could do or say anything, he punched the wall.
"Jim!" She called with alarm, going to him and taking his hand between hers. The knuckles were starting to swell a ugly purple color while the blond was still fuming and vibrating with anger.
"And you! You just stood there and did nothing. All big words and politeness, like you were somebody else. Like you were ashamed of who you are!"
"Is not that simple, Jim."
"Why not? Where is the fierce girl that can knock out a bunch of big guys with one hand? That do crazy shit because of a crazy person like me? That don't take this bullshit quietly?"
"She's still here."
"Where?"
"It's just... Coming back home after so many years brought back bad memories."
"You told me that you never cared about what you people said about you."
"I lied. It's hard to be banished from your own home, Jim. You know this better than anyone." It seemed that all Kirk's fury was gone with what she said. He knew better than anyone how was to feel unwanted.
"Just because you call your creator 'father'?"
"It's more than that. You saw how Chizeta is. For my people, perfection is above everything. They have perfect political system, perfect environment, perfect people. The planet is beautiful the way it is because its people made it to be that way. And, obviously, that their pet project, their perfect soldiers to protect their perfect planned little world could not be any different."
"But you are perfect. Your genetic..."
"Have some faults."
"What?" Jim blinked, surprised. Bone always used to joke calling Selece 'genetic enhanced little freak' because of her all perfect planned proportions, but now the woman was telling him that some things were not what they seemed to be? It was crazy.
"I was Dr. Liori pet project. He loved someone back home, a warrior, loved him..." Jim was startled. Him? "Yes, him, he loved him enough to want the perfect family with his love, like any other good Chizetan, aiming too for perfection. So he created me."
"I don't understand." Selece rolled her eyes.
"Chizeta has one flaw. Hierarchy. A warrior marries warrior, a politic marries a politic, everyone has to be involved with someone from their own class, it doesn't matter if it's a male or a female, it has to be from your class. An intellectual falling in love for a warrior was practically a blasphemy. Worse is that he used his knowledge in genetics to create a baby that is the best of both, a symbol of this forbidden love."
"You mean..."
"Yeah, I have two genetic fathers and no genetic mother. Dr. Liori was the first in all the alfa quadrant to be able to do this, put together two sets of DNA in a third person, suppressing this third person DNA to create a baby only with the first two sets."
"But if you are unique shouldn't they..."
"I belong to no class. I have the intelligence of the intellectual class and the body of the warrior class and this scares them. Because I'm unpredictable, my system is unpredictable and they can't say what I will be really capable to do. So, for this, they banished us. My father and I."
"What about your other father?" Selece turned her face, looking to the stars glowing beyond the watching window.
"He died protecting us. He gave his life to make sure that Liori and I could escape from Chizeta." Jim gulped. In the end they had more similarities than he thought.
"You're trying to make me pity you?" He arched his eyebrows.
"No fucking way. I'm just explaining to you why they don't like me."
"I get this part, what I don't get is why you were so formal and so distant while we where down there."
"Sorry, guess I had a momentary lapse for seeing the people who banished me from my home. It won't happen again."
"See that don't." Jim took a long breath and took his hurt hand from between Selece's finger. "And for you to know, and being a little sappy, my grandma used to say that home is where the heart is. So, Lieutenant, where is your heart?" Selece gave him a half smile, looked around them and then chuckled.
"I guess it is with this crazy guy that makes me cross the Universe in this amazing ship along with more crazy people."
"That's the spirit."
"Indeed Captain, indeed."
The next day the landing party went back to Chizeta to return to the negotiations and Kirk felt his skin burn when he saw the disgusted expression on Counselor Nioe's face.
"I thought we said that for us it's not a good deal to enter an organization that can accepts such a kind of person." And his dark eyes fell over Selece like she was the dirty on his shoes.
"Counselor..." The brunette opened her mouth before Jim could say anything in her defense. "Why don't you fuck off?" Spock arched one eyebrow and Kirk suppressed a laugh when he saw the perplexed look on the Council's face.
"That is my girl. Now guys if you don't mind..." Jim pointed to the conference room and smirked at Selece when he passed by her. "Well done Lieutenant," he murmured, knowing that her acute hearing would listen him. "well done."