Pure Transparent Freedom
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Gen
Series: Becomes, a Woman
1
She is eight years old, and her mother is furious, grasping the razor hard enough to break. She's holding the dustbin in her other hand, switching between Standard and French as she shouts, accent going thicker the angrier she becomes.
Aella just runs her hands over her newly-shaved head in joyous wonder.
2
By the time she gets her second lip piercing at fifteen, her mother's given up on screaming. Somewhere between the hair, which is currently long and dyed rainbow-colors, and the nose ring, her mother just gave up.
And Aella loves her, really she does, so she stays away on nights when her parents have company, because she wants to let her mother pretend.
3
It's her dad who convinces her to apply to Starfleet. He knows her, loves her, Aella doesn't deny it. It's a distant sort of love, but that just means he can be objective in ways her mother can't. So she does it, because she trusts her dad and she wants her mom to feel like she can be proud of her.
4
She picks nursing because she likes people. Likes to fix them, yeah, but she becomes a nurse instead of a doctor because she doesn't like how detached it all is. The doctor may give the orders, but it's Aella who wields the hypo. It makes her feel connected, and that's the best part of fixing people.
5
Aella takes the civilian shuttle to Baghdad. Her mother honest-to-goddess cries at the Paris station, and her father ruffles her short, newly-bleached hair.
They spend the night in Baghdad, and that's where she meets Sulu. He's shy, quiet, and melancholy, while she's honest, open, and outgoing. It's one in the morning, and Aella's jet-lagged and an insomniac, and then she decides she wants to be outside.
Sulu's the only one still awake who seems vaguely interesting, so she drags him out with her. They sit on the hotel roof. He tells her about Japan and his ex-boyfriend in Tokyo, and she tells him about her parents and how the boys dance in Paris.
6
She's not so much drunk as a little buzzed, and Iowa cops obviously don't give a shit. She's got Uhura in the passenger seat, long hair teased out of its ponytail by the wind, and Sulu and Giotto are sprawled out in the back. The night is beautiful, and Iowa's all flat, so the sky stretches out forever.
Aella's bunked with Uhura, and when they collapse half an hour later, she tells Uhura it's nice to feel like she belongs somewhere. Uhura's asleep already, and that makes Aella smile.
7
Aella goes home for spring break her first year at the Academy. She's always known her parents loved her, but it's the first time she sees pride in her mother's eyes.
Aella's still got the fauxhawk, and she's got a tiny diamond stud in her nose, and she still wears her eye makeup thick and dark, but she's a nurse and she's in Starfleet. It's enough.
8
She meets Jim Kirk because Uhura knows him, which is how she meets Leonard McCoy. He's already a doctor, so he's an officer by the time that distress call goes out from Vulcan. And if it wasn't the Enterprise she might have been a little worried about favoritism. It's a bit hilarious that McCoy requested her, because they're drinking buddies, sort of. McCoy's one cynical son of a bitch if this is how little he trusts Starfleet Medical.
Aella likes him. Hell, she likes the Enterprise. Everybody's fucking crazy, and she's never felt more at home.
9
Aella's an insomniac, but she doesn't bother medicating most of the time. She'll work gamma shift sometimes, and then she'll catch up on sleep through beta. She likes working gamma, and even when she isn't she likes being awake during ship's night the way she never did on earth.
Uhura, Aella discovers, takes walks through the ship when she's too worried to sleep. They'll meet sometimes, and that's how Aella finds out Uhura's a runner. She takes walks because she misses running. Aella tells her she's had trouble sleeping since she was a teenager, and she likes the way the ship hums when it's quiet. Chapel bitches at her about it (she's picking up habits from McCoy), tells Aella she needs to sleep more, that her body can't handle it. Aella just laughs and ignores her.
10
The problem is, Aella knows them all too well.
She remembers Sulu when he was a quiet, awkward, heartbroken kid. And Kirk when he was an alcoholic slut. And Chekov, who's really grown up since the Academy. Uhura, she goes on midnight walks with, and McCoy… Well, McCoy hasn't changed much at all.
It's nice, really, being friends with them, but it kind of fucks with the chain of command. Aella, though. Aella doesn't mind. Because she's never been into authority, and when she was eight she shaved her head to prove it.