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Lieutenant Commander Una Chin-Riley was not known for making mistakes. It was a hallmark of her life, essential, of course, for maintaining her secret Illyrian identity and quickly advancing in her career. The rank of Lieutenant Commander suited her very well. Someone would probably want to give her her own Captaincy eventually, but she was comfortable under Pike. Playing the role of the impeccable Number One was its own sort of camouflage. She was never thoughtless, never careless, and somewhat critical of those who couldn’t manage to do the same. Captain Pike and Mr. Spock had earned her respect by managing to reach her level of competence. Though Chris gave off an attitude of carelessness, he always cared, and Mr. Spock, though stricken with self-doubt, consistently did his best to make the right decision. Mistakes were the result of inattention, being blinded by emotion, and failing to comprehend the consequence of a situation. And she had learned, long ago—a chancellor’s guard shoving her quickly into line, her hat pulled down over her ears, her head down as she walked into the hold of the vast refugee ship, one of them and not one of them at the same time, the weights of precious objects sewn into her hems heavy and bruising against her legs—just how much a mistake could cost.
So it did not make sense for her to have slept with her subordinate, Lieutenant Noonien-Singh. It had all of the flavor and texture of a mistake. And yet, Una couldn’t consider it one. It had been an effective strategy, a chosen means to an essential end--the end being, of course, making La’an smile again.
Illyrians saw things differently than other people—specifically, they saw emotions as colors. Reading a room could be as simple as glancing around and seeing the clear green of unified focus, or the bursts of red-orange and sparkles that signaled a fight about to start. When she’d first met La’an, the girl was a tightly bound up haze, the yellow-green of panic. That brightness was how she’d seen the girl so well concealed in the vents and tubes. She’d known to be careful around her, that the girl was always on alert, always clinging, desperately to the prey animal’s determination for more life. But when Una touched her, a hand on her arm, the colors around the touch shifted. The green intensity blued towards calm, the yellow wildness faded to a reddish heat. It didn’t work with anyone else. A touch from a doctor or another Ensign made the yellow flare into shocking highlighter explosions. But Una was careful, La’an trusted her, and when finally lured into her bed, La’an’s bright colors faded into blue calm and then the colorlessness of dreamless sleep.
On the Enterprise, La’an was a forest green of confident intensity. No one else could see it, and yet Una suspected something in Chris picked up on it, knowing that his own bright curiosity and orange impulsiveness would be well supported. As a crew, they were green-means-go, and Chris’s dinners and his warm manners tuned them into a harmonious palette. It would have been painful to work with a less convivial captain, and even as he faced his own approaching death, Una knew that she would do whatever she could not to lose him too soon.
After the encounter with the Gorn the whole ship had been rocked with muddy spiking colors: distress, fear, grief, confusion. Una herself had been lucky to be in sickbay, where even as others suffered around her, M’Benga and Chapel had kept a blue-green focused calm. When she emerged—sooner than either M’Benga or Chapel approved of, but she healed faster than they suspected, and didn’t need to be taking up a bed—the ship had begun to settle back towards stable. But La’an hadn’t. La’an was spiking yellows and muddy orange and bursts of green that died all too suddenly. La’an was not healing. And Una had only one tried and true method to employ.
La’an had too much pride to accept physical comfort with grace. But Una liked a challenge. La’an had always been a challenge, and it wasn’t exactly in spite of that that Una liked her. It meant she got to tease her, and see the bright points of twitching irritation and amusement. Only this time, when she’d teased La’an about needing sex before she could submit to snuggles, the room had gone suddenly and unmistakably rose-purple with attraction. La’an’s face had completely changed as well. The brutalized despair she wore so well shifted into surprise, innocence? Then horror--she had been caught out. Emotions could be ambiguous, but not in context. The room was Pollock-painted with desire.
Una hadn’t quite taken it in stride. How could she? The moment had echoed La'an's look when she'd led the team to find her on Kiley 279, that relief mixed with pride. Those had been pure light blues and violets of their friendship, bright with how much Una still meant to her, and this, the was the inverse, the dark versions, perhaps, not to pun, the impure. Especially because it was La'an, who had never met an emotion she didn't interpret as a form of anger, it was . . . rather affirming.
There was more than one reason to confirm the invitation. Touching her already had a soothing effect, but touching her without barriers meant that Una could do even more to drive the pain away. It would be easy to mirror La’an's desires, because they were already intimate, already tuned, like an old-world radio, to the right frequencies. And La’an knew what she was. Sex could really be sex —in the Illyrian sense—the kind that forbade hiding. So she accepted it. Lieutenant Commander Chin-Riley was quietly, strategically, relentless. That night, the yellows in La’an’s feelings faded, and she slept.
It may have looked like a mistake, but she could not believe it was one. Afterwards, when La’an had looked up at her, the ever-present sense of her own impending doom for once lifted, offering her a shy look of what might actually be happiness, and a mirrored ocean-colored relaxed intensity, she’d known it was definitely not a mistake. Anything that made La’an smile like that couldn’t be a mistake.
But she was aware of the mistake that could come next.
Illyrians and humans differed in more ways than biology. Illyrians moved around things, smoothly—it had taken Una a long time at the Academy to learn to be upright, unmovable, and unmoved. Don’t go along with things. Follow the rules. Remember the six principles of command. Perhaps she overcompensated. But sexual mores were always the hardest to learn, because they weren’t covered by the six principles of command, and people always lied about them. She’d gotten in trouble a few times for using Illyrian cues—cheating—because she could see people’s moods, know what they wanted before they said anything. She’d learned how to ignore it, steer it, and flatly turn down a come on with a skeptical eyebrow. But the values were harder to unstick. Illyrians considered sex a companionate activity, a type of mirrored reflection, an extension of physical comfort, soothing, or playful interaction. Attraction could be intrinsic or it could be reflected, and it didn’t matter which. She hadn't even bothered to consider whether she was attracted to La'an. They were tuned, the attraction existed between them regardless of its source. But humans were different. Humans had expectations.
She waited for a cue from La’an—what did this mean to her? What did they have to talk about? What terms needed to be codified and agreed upon? Only, in the morning, the steadiness of her blue-green calm didn’t waver. She grabbed a sonic shower, dressed quickly, and then paused at the door, glancing back, the calmness warming just a touch with affection and remembered heat.
Then she’d tipped her head, given her an analyst’s salute and quick, amused, “Thanks, Chief,” and went on her way.
She’d acted . . . like an Illyrian.
Honestly, it was a little more unexpected than the alternative, but also a relief. And it confirmed what she’d already known. This had definitely not been a mistake.
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After Enterprise Bingo, they’d stood together on the hull of the Enterprise and seen that solar-sailed ship soar above their heads. It was a moment of complete wonder, all sparkles and lights, a moment that made all those silly games worth it. She’d caught a glimpse of La’an’s face in that moment, and then La’an had turned her gaze to Una. Her expression was just the same as it had been while staring up at that wondrous ship, framed in wonder, and Una hadn’t thought anything besides the fact that she was beautiful, and how she had become the kind of strong that could hold you up.
At the end of shift, saying goodbye outside La’an’s quarters—Una still had to report to Chris—La’an had screwed up her face into some kind of determination and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around Una. The sudden physicality surprised her, Una didn’t casually touch people, and La’an didn’t either. But it was just a hug. Una clasped her close, stayed steady and warm and welcoming.
“I don’t understand people,” La’an muttered half into her shoulder. “I have more fun with you than with anyone.”
“Back at you, fun’s funeral.”
“They didn’t call us—” La’an pulled back, realized she was being teased, and glared. She shook her head. “Night, Chief.”
“Goodnight, La’an.” And that was the moment that mattered: the press of the hand, the warmth and quiet understanding. Una could see the warmth, the gentle pleasure, the companionship. And she felt . . . something. But she let the feeling slip past her attention, let La'an watch her, at the end of her arm, for just one moment longer, then smile wryly, duck her head and walk away.
If there had been another Illyrian there, they would have blinked at the deep purple longing, vibrant, unmissable. But your own feelings were much harder to see.
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