Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chris is a man fond of timing. He didn't need the Academy to drill it into him. He always understood it. The right word or look at just the right moment and you can turn the galaxy on its ear. He grew up absorbing the words of the greats. Can quote most of President Archer's key speeches chapter and verse. Knows every great address Surak ever gave the Vulcan assembly. Hell, he's even managed to translate a few of Kahless the Unforgettable's. Not just the words. He knows the gestures, looks, and he knows the time. The moments these men turned their worlds and their races toward something better.

He's practiced himself. Made knowing the right time for the right words and the right looks a key building block on which he's constructed his entire career.

Figures, then, that one of those men's descendants would throw his carefully designed practice right out the damn window.

He gets the short straw. Takes the latest batch of cadets to Vulcan's Forge for survival training. He's not alone. Other officers get pushed into duty as well including, he's told, his new science officer. Number One's been positively smug (well, he thinks she is) about landing Lieutenant Spock. The woman's scores upon graduation had guaranteed her pick of assignments.

She'd chosen the Yorktown. His ship. Him.

Chris is trying not to be smug about that himself, but, well, it's not going so well. He also shouldn't be thinking of it that way, but, well, that's not going so well either.

Which is precisely why he'd planned it all out. That first introduction. One doesn't meet the future face of all Vulcan easily. (He's never really understood the bizarre cultural/religious/scientific/political mix that is the Vulcan society, but the Vulcans have been mystified by Earth's myriad societies for a hundred years, so turn about, fair play, the whole thing) It's perfect. He knows she's overseeing the younger cadets on an easier section of the course - one supposedly used by Vulcan children on an ancient rite of passage - which puts her elsewhere. It gives him time to plan his approach.

He's almost got it perfect when someone screams. One of his cadets is running like mad back through the others. He's soon followed by others. Grabbing for his phaser, Pike has a sinking feeling. He remembers his briefing about Vulcan's idea of flora and fauna.

The fauna, as he recalls, is pretty damn vicious.

("That's a Sehlat?" Cait laughed, looking at the image. "It looks like a teddy bear.")

Chris hears the roar before he sees it. That sound alone's enough to scare the fuck out of him. The sight pretty much finishes him off. The thing barreling across the rock has as much resemblance to a teddy bear as he does.

The sehlat picks off one of the cadets, chasing him away from the others, and he follows. It's impossible to get a shot off. The sehlat and cadet weave back and forth in front of each other in an erratic dance that guarantees he can't fire. He misses, hits the cadet, and the sehlat has an easy meal.

Except, the damn thing already has one, the cadet trips, rolls, and the sehlat lunges. Chris decides to take his gamble, raising the phaser, but there's a flurry of non-sehlat movement. Two figures dropping down from the cliffs above. One grabs the cadet, the other him, and they're both being dragged back up the hill.

A woman's face appears before his, peering at him intently from beneath her hood. She's unnaturally beautiful, Vulcan, and familiar. "Climb," she orders bluntly and shoves him forward. "I would not suggest that you look back."

Pike doesn't. He scrambles up the incline like a monkey, not sparing a moment for his dignity, until her hand stops him. "We should be safe here."

He sits, back against the rock, chest heaving. The thin air.

A hypo hisses at his throat.

"Tri-ox?"

She nods, sitting beside him. "It is a stray," she observes, gesturing at the raging sehlat. "There is a preserve near here. The animal escaped. Wardens are en route to collect it."

He looks for the cadet. Finds him sitting on a similar incline with her companion. They're safely out of reach. Satisfied, he sits back. "So, not a long wait?"

"Unlikely." She folds her legs gracefully, presenting him with his phaser. "I believe you dropped this, Captain Pike."

Chris takes it. Great. Damn near let a cadet get eaten, probably nearly got eaten himself, and then topped it off by dropping his phaser before being saved by his own goddamn science officer.

He shakes his head. Rather than acknowledge the general clusterfuck that is his situation, he looks at her. He likes the view. "Lieutenant, your people have really domesticated those things?"

Spock nods. Her eyes seem to warm, possibly with amusement, and he knows he's stepped in it. Again. "Indeed. I, myself, had one as a child. I-Chaya."

He tries to picture her, young, hair in braids, big dark eyes, with one of those things hulking along behind her.

"I can't see it."

Her eyebrow raises, and yes, she's laughing at him. Vulcanly, of course, but she's laughing at him. "There are images. I shall forward you one upon my arrival aboard the Yorktown if you require proof."

She's laughing at him, but at the moment, Chris can't find it in himself to complain. He wipes the Vulcan desert from his pants and looks at her again. Seeing both the Vulcan woman and the bright-eyed imp of his imagination. He smiles. "Oh I don't require it, Lieutenant," his smile widens, "but I do look forward to it."

It's dusk, growing darker by the second and so he can't swear to it, but Chris swears he can see her blush.