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“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Una says, looking completely unperturbed by the broken beer bottle in La’an’s hand and the enraged Nausicaans encircling them.
“I almost stabbed you in the face!”
“I know. But you would have actually stabbed him” – she jerks her head toward the nearest Nausicaan – “which would’ve been a felony, because you definitely started this fight.” She shrugs. “So here I am, risking my face to get you out of trouble.”
She doesn’t say again, but it hangs in the air anyway.
Just then, one of the Nausicaans lunges forward, and Una dodges neatly, grabs his arm, and flips him facedown on the table. Then she waves a little sack of credits in his face.
“How about you let this one go and take something for your troubles?”
There’s a negotiation in Nausicaan, which La’an doesn’t speak, and soon Una is tugging her out of the bar.
“If there’s any more trouble, I’m going to handle it, so you can put that beer bottle down right now.”
La’an’s not much for following orders, but Una has a voice that makes people – herself included – want to obey.
Though really, it’s not the voice. La’an’s met plenty of people with commanding voices: police officers, probation officers, and assorted foster parents, to name a few. She’s obeyed exactly zero of them, but she listens to Una because Una deserves to be listened to. Una would probably not be abducted by Gorn raiders, but if she were, she would absolutely not be eaten. That’s La’an’s standard for admitting people into her circle these days. It’s a very, very small circle.
Una’s footsteps don’t slow until they’re well into the light side of Luna. She’s not saying much, which makes La’an’s stomach clench. Usually she would’ve read her the riot act by now.
Maybe Una’s finally done with her.
“How did you find me?” she asks, just to break the silence.
“The usual way,” Una says, sounding tired. “Your foster parents were worried. They called me. It’s fortunate I was in the system.”
“You didn’t have to come,” La’an says, feeling a touch defensive.
“Of course I had to come. I told you, you’re my crew.”
La’an replays the statement in her mind and tries to decide if Una’s voice had wobbled. Probably not.
“I’ve taken an assignment on Titan,” she continues. They’ve almost reached the space port now, and Una’s voice and stride are brisk.
“What?” La’an almost stops in her tracks. “Titan’s not in your career plan.”
She’s seen the whole multi-screen document. There are three color-coded paths to the captain’s chair, each of which contain a plan A, B, and C. This is the other reason La’an loves Una: she talks to her like an adult, not like some traumatized child who has to be petted and cuddled into “recovery,” whatever that means.
They’ve reached Una’s ship now. It’s her personal craft, a stripped down and refurbished Starfleet shuttle with a ragged exterior and a thoughtfully furnished interior. She toggles in her security codes while she says, “Starfleet’s designing a new class of starship, Constitution class. I’ll be handling the navigational programming. Shoes off, please.”
La’an steps across the threshold and begins unlacing her Starfleet surplus combat boots. “You want to sit behind a desk and write code?”
“She who writes the code gets to fly the ship.”
“Is that how that works?” La’an’s memorized everything Una’s ever said about career planning, and she certainly doesn’t remember computer programming as a backdoor to a plum assignment.
“It’ll work that way if I want it to,” Una says firmly. She’s probably right, but La’an’s bullshit detector is humming.
“This is an opportunity for both of us,” Una continues, all business while she powers up the shuttle.
If she thought that statement would distract La’an, well, she was right.
“How?” she demands, sliding into the navigator’s seat. The console is dark, of course. Una won’t teach her to fly until she stops running away and starting bar fights, which La’an reluctantly concedes is fair.
Una licks her lips, a nervous gesture that La’an can’t remember ever seeing before.
“You know I don’t intend to procreate, so I have no idea what to do with a fifteen-year-old girl. But then, neither do your foster parents.” She clicks on the autopilot and turns to face La’an. “If you’d like to live with me on Titan, I’ve secured permission.”
“Yes.”
La’an doesn’t usually allow herself to be so transparent about her desires, but this is all she’s dreamed of since Una nudged a shuttle into Gorn space, breaking half a dozen Starfleet regulations to track down a faint ping from her jury-rigged distress beacon.
“This isn’t an unconditional offer, La’an.” Una’s face is grave. “You will have rules.”
La’an accepts them, fully and unconditionally, if she can stay with Una. Una had thought fast enough to pull her raft out of the gravitational web of a binary star. Una has black belts in three kinds of martial arts. She studies Klingon because it’s hard, and she kept a bat’leth scar on her right forearm to remind herself to learn from mistakes. She’s nothing like the soft-faced school teachers and church ladies who invite La’an to call them Mom. Faced with adversity, those women would lie down and die, just as La’an’s mother had. But not Una. Una would live.
And Una had taught her to negotiate.
“What are your conditions?” she asks, arching her brows just like Una does when she asks a difficult question and knows she’ll receive an unacceptable answer.
Una, predictably, isn’t daunted by La’an’s facial expression, not that she should be. “I’m dropping you off at a psychiatrist's office twice a week. You don’t have to say a word if you don’t want to, but the fact is, you have post traumatic stress disorder, I insist on at least providing you the opportunity to treat it.”
La’an offers a business-like nod, as if she’s carefully considering whether sitting in silence with a psychiatrist is a dealbreaker. “What else?”
“I’ve found a suitable self-directed homeschooling curriculum, but if you want to do that, you need to enroll in emergency medic training as well.”
“Wait, what?”
“It’s positively drenched in adrenaline, which you seem to like, and you can actually help people instead of hurting them.” The corner of Una’s mouth ticks up in a small smile. “Anyway, the medic always gets to go on the away mission.”
Una makes a persuasive argument, not that La’an wants to admit it. “Any more conditions?” she asks.
Una nods. “Mostly. You have to quit the brawling.”
La’an sucks in a breath. Of course, on paper, her bar fighting habit looks bad, especially since she’s too young to drink. But she likes it.
Una does the eyebrow lift thing again. La’an figures she’s going to say something like, name three specific, assignable ways you benefit from this terrible habit, which she’s said before. Instead she says, “I’m not the one with the conditions. Social services is. Believe it or not, they’re not crazy about pulling you out of school and moving you to Titan. If they think I can’t control you, they won’t let me keep you.”
That pulls La’an up short. Una’s reputation is on the line here, and La’an won’t risk it.
“I’ll talk to the psychiatrist about the fighting,” she says.
“Thank you. I know it’s hard.”
La’an’s heard that phrase before, usually rattled off by adults who felt like they ought to say it. But Una sounds like she really does know it’s hard.
La’an shakes her head. “No. Thank you.”
Una only sighs. “Don’t be too quick to thank me. I could only finagle a six month assignment while the lead programmer’s out on medical leave. It’s not much time to get your life together.”
“You took this assignment for me.” La’an can scarcely believe the audacity of what she’s saying. Who would disrupt their whole life to take in a renegade fifteen-year-old who couldn’t even save her own family? Surely not a woman like Una, with her myriad talents and intricate career plans.
But Una’s nodding. “I did.”
“Why?”
“I know what it’s like to be on your own, La’an,” she says matter-of-factly. Now she’s looking away, down at the helm console, even though the autopilot’s still on. “Survivors have to stick together.”
La’an’s itching to know what Una had survived, but she won’t ask. Una had never asked the specifics about the Gorn nursery planet, and La’an plans to return the favor.
Instead, she says, “I’ll repay you for this.”
Una looks up at her sharply. “It’s not a debt. The universe owes you for what it put you through. This is a very small attempt to balance the ledger.”
La’an pulls herself up straight, trying to mirror Una’s firm, upright manner. “No. I do owe you. And someday, when you’re in trouble, I’ll be the one who comes and saves you.”
Una finally shrugs and shakes her head. “Fine. If you’re determined to pay up, become the kind of person I could actually trust with a rescue mission.”
La’an doesn’t answer that with more than a nod. Where Una’s concerned, actions count for a lot more than words.
That night, her first night in Una’s tiny rental flat on Titan, she starts her own document: three color coded paths to becoming the sort of person who could run a rescue mission without getting anyone killed. One day, she’ll make good on her word.